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yssjj · 1 year

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american psycho: he's just like me fr

In No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai, there’s a passage where the main character, Yozo, who is ostensibly Dazai (it is a semi-autobiographical book), struggles to figure out exactly what the hell his Sister wants from him in a fairly obvious situation:

“One autumn evening as I was lying in bed reading a book, the older of my cousins–I always called her Sister–suddenly darted into my room quick as a bird, and collapsed over my bed. She whispered through her tears, “Yozo, you’ll help me, I know. I know you will. Let’s run away from this terrible house together. Oh, help me, please.” She continued in this hysterical vein for a while only to burst into tears again. This was not the first time that a woman had put on such a scene before me, and Sister’s excessively emotional words did not surprise me much. I felt instead a certain boredom at their banality and emptiness. I slipped out of bed, went to my desk and picked up a persimmon. I peeled it and offered my Sister a section. She ate it, still sobbing, and said, “Have you any interesting books? Lend me something.” I chose Soseki’s I am a Cat from my bookshelf and handed it to her. “Thanks for the persimmon,” Sister said as she left the room, an embarrassed smile on her face…”

At this moment, Dazai/Yozo provides an accidentally hilarious moment through his lack of empathy. Even though Yozo faces similar despair, he is unable to connect sadness to the sadness of others. After several trials of this sort of situation where a girl comes to him crying for support (which despite his wishes is a recurring theme in his life), he has figured out a simple, effective solution—distract them with sweets, books, anything at hand, even a suicide pact.

Of course, this isn’t the correct “answer” to these situations. He could have just… talked to her! But this is impossible for Yozo because claims to be completely disconnected from her. And he’s too terrified to try to reach out. He imagines that all other people have a monster behind their mask, ready to attack him at will.

The entire book is like this, a person who doesn’t know how to interact with other people because he is actually terrified of everyone around him, which is all rooted in his feeling of spiritual isolation. The title is a direct statement of the narrator’s feeling towards the world around him—as someone who is just faking being human, what point did he have in existing when he has to live in fear of everyone around him, who is ostensibly better at this being “human” thing than him?

American Psycho was this to me, an attempt by another alien (Patrick Bateman) to decipher exactly what the hell is happening in 80’s yuppie corporate NYC. Or as he aptly puts it:

EVELYN Well, you hate that job anyway. Why don't you just quit? You don't have to work. BATEMAN Because I...want...to...fit...in. I think he wants to fit in!

Patrick Bateman has decided, unlike Yozo, that he will fit in. He—at least, consciously—believes that he is stronger than everyone around him. Christian Bale does an awesome job monologuing with the emphasis on monotone, dry, and powerful from his ability to seemingly separate himself from the riff-raff around him. This might be why a lot of men (from what I have heard, no citation given in this article) take from this movie that this is the way of a “sigma” male, one who is different from the rest of the pack.

(This is where I would submit my sigma male test score but I couldn’t find the screenshot.)

fear and anxiety

Because of all the (wrong) takes on American Psycho being anti-feminist because of its violence against women, or the idolization of Patrick Bateman because he can cull his competition, you would think Patrick is good at killing people. This is not true in the movie. Patrick Bateman is actually very, very bad at killing people. When he kills Paul Allen, he becomes a total wreck, running through his apartment to come up with some sort of alibi, slamming open closets and desperately packing together a cute little travel set. Not that I would know how to commit a murder, but you would think for someone who considers himself to be in control Patrick would have a better idea on how to proceed with this kind of thing. His answers to Detective Donald Kimball’s questions range from guilty to insane. When Detective Kimball asks him if he knew Paul Allen was missing, Patrick jumps to asking him if the “homicide squad” is deployed on the case.

He even panics out of a murder when Luis Carruthers hits on him because it’s so unexpected, ending with Patrick desperately looking for any reason to just leave (“I’ve gotta… I’ve gotta… return some videotapes.”—as a bonus, he uses this SEVERAL times in the movie to leave uncomfortable situations). He then washes his gloved hands in the bathroom in an attempt to try to return to a “normal” interaction. It’s not pride and power pushing him forward. It’s anxiety!

Like Yozo, Patrick is also afraid. When he lies to Jean that he got a reservation for two at Dorsia (his trigger word apparently), he decides that the only course of action is to kill Jean before they make it to the restaurant. To directly discuss the traditional idea of toxic masculinity (as referenced by the men who want to be Patrick), theory would say that Patrick kills to gain power over women or to flex his masculinity. But his pride isn’t on the line when he tells Jean that he got a reservation to Dorsia. And he’s not trying to be powerful and masculine when he decides that killing Jean is the only solution. His decision is a panicked answer to stay disconnected from Jean at any cost.

Just as Yozo accepts a suicide pact from a woman because he doesn’t know how else to comfort her while avoiding connection to her, Patrick decides with how smoothly he handled Paul Owen’s murder that staging another murder is a get-out-of-jail-free card from the impending doom of having to admit that he actually can’t get a reservation for Dorsia.

And his Dorsia fear manifests in reality as a personal hell when the maître d’ hysterically laughs at him, screeching, when he first calls for a reservation that night at 8:30 for a date with Courtney. The second time he calls he gets a normal response, with the maître d’ telling him that the restaurant is completely booked for the night. But Patrick’s fear response is already baked in from the first interaction he created with his own anxiety.

societal normalcy and self-acceptance

There’s something deeply relatable to the need to try to figure out what is “normal.” Especially, the further you might naturally be from “societal normal,” the harder it is to try to figure out how to get there. At this point, the proverb “be true to yourself” might seem to come into play. But our urge to be normal is because we want to connect to others. We want to not be alone, even if that’s at the cost of suppressing our true selves.

Patrick manages to fit in at the boy’s club at work by performing all of the gestures of the others, at lunch, at Christmas parties. But his true self is completely isolated from his coworkers. He’s someone who is unrecognized as his own person to the point that people mistake his identity for others in the group. His fiance knows nothing about him and doesn’t care to, even when Patrick is trying to tell her that he has homicidal urges. The only reason she’s even getting married to him is because they have the same friends and breaking up “wouldn’t work.” Even Carruthers only hits on him because of the clothing he wears.

But even when you fit in, you want people to understand you. So Patrick tries to connect with people over and over again. But when he does try, it’s unreciprocated. The only time he can talk about his interest in pop music is with prostitutes he hires for sex—almost as if the sex is just an excuse (which might be why his violence is also focused on them). His jokes constantly fall flat with his peers. His joke about Ed Gein sticking women’s heads on sticks could be inappropriate (and is given the rest of the context of Patrick’s personality), but it’s a very vulnerable moment for Patrick. He is purposefully revealing part of who he is and receives worse than a bad reaction—no reaction. When your friends rebuke you, it’s a decision to reach out and connect out of care. No reaction is the choice to pull away.

And when he finally does meet someone who is genuinely interested in him as who he is and is willing to reach out to him, he is unable to complete the connection. Jean is the only woman in the movie who isn’t willing to mask to just “fit in.” When Patrick takes her out and talks to her in his condo, we can immediately get a sense of who she is because she’s telling the truth. But Patrick takes this vulnerability and tries to push it away from him—thus the attempt to kill her with a nail gun—and fails as his own vulnerability (he’s cheating on his fiancee) is revealed via inopportune phone call (from said fiancee).

Silence. Jean is obviously embarrassed and upset. JEAN Was that...Evelyn? Silence. JEAN Are you still seeing her? Silence. JEAN I'm sorry, I have no right to ask that. Silence. JEAN Do you want me to go? A long pause. BATEMAN Yes. I don’t think I can...control myself. JEAN I know I should go. I know I have a tendency to get involved with unavailable men, and...I mean, do you want me to go? Another long pause. BATEMAN If you stay, I think something bad will happen. I think I might hurt you. (Almost hopefully) You don't want to get hurt, do you? JEAN No. No, I guess not. I don't want to get bruised. You're right, I should go.

And at the end of the movie, Jean is the only one who is able to find Patrick’s “true nature” because she is worried about him after he calls her. Patrick doesn’t reveal who he is to her. She’s the one who searches his desk and finds the drawings he has made of his compulsions, of his real or imagined crimes against humanity.

violence

After violence, Patrick responds with desperation and panic. We even see this in Paul Allen’s murder, the one murder Patrick seemed to really enjoy, where Patrick scrambles to come up with something so that he avoids getting caught. Patrick claims to have killed Christie only because “she almost got away.” In the final chase scene, the consequences come for him at an amazing tempo; police cars surround him after the sound of the first shot dissipates into the air, he escapes but is surrounded again and forced into a shoot-off, then is chased down by helicopters.

But that’s ridiculous—it’s totally fantastical. Because these scenes are in Patrick’s view of reality, it suggests that he wants to get caught. Patrick wants to be held accountable because it’s the only way he could imagine others understanding the immense amount of pain he’s in.

Part of our connection to people who really like us for who we are is that they can help us understand when we feel off. We want our pain to be vindicated as something that’s not okay. In times of desperation, we want to be able to reach out to others and hear sympathy, or reassurance that we are right to feel that something is wrong and that we should go get it checked out.

Patrick describes his need to hurt other people as a consequence of being in pain in the first place at the end of the movie. It’s a call for help for someone to notice and get him arrested so he can get fixed. But Patrick is completely alienated. Beyond Jean, nobody else cares about him to bother being concerned. When he tells a woman that he’s into “murders and executions,” she mishears it as “mergers and acquisitions” due to the level of attention she’s giving that conversation. When he leaves a long, rambling confession of all of his murders to his lawyer, his lawyer first mistakes him for someone else, and then laughs it off as a silly joke. Even as Patrick tries to double down and tell him that he was telling the truth, his lawyer takes the reality of the situation (that Patrick is at least delusional, since Paul Allen is alive and kicking) and decides to tell Patrick off for taking the joke “too far.”

In Patrick’s last monologue after his conversation with his lawyer, he “surpasses” having anything in common with the least sympathizable people.

BATEMAN (V.O.) There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed... INT. BATEMAN'S OFFICE - DAY Jean is alone in Bateman's office, looking through his diary. We see the pages that she is looking at. They are filled with doodles of mutilated women and their names...Jean looks lost and frightened, and begins to cry. BATEMAN (V.O.) My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. I fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no escape. INT. HARRY'S BAR - EARLY EVENING As the film ends the camera moves CLOSE on Bateman. He is leaning back in his leather armchair, drinking a double Scotch, his eyes blank. BATEMAN (V.O.) But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing...

He knows that losing his connection with even the most insane people will mean his internal pain will find no catharsis. Nobody can reach him and soothe his pain. So he inflicts his pain on others, even though it doesn’t help his pain, because it’s better than not doing anything. All he has left are the drawings that Jean has discovered, his last call for help.

Pain will always exist. But connection makes us understand that our pain is human, even our pain seems to come out of us in terrifying ways. In this way, Mary Harron has created a feminist movie by simply letting guys have emotions. The consequence of allowing men to have feelings is that they want to find other people who truly understand them. Patrick and his coworkers simply “fit in” but they don’t belong to each other, to anything at all beyond a sheer facade, a mask that can be put on and peeled off at the end of each day.

Then maybe we can rework toxic masculinity from being a way to have power in social situations to wanting to just “fit in” as a way to get some sort of connection to others, even if the people you hang out with don’t really understand you. But the consequence of this is that these shallow connections don’t fulfill us, and when we undergo pain, it becomes easier to take it out on these people that you don’t even like anyway, or people who aren’t even in your ingroup. When men see Patrick Bateman as a sigma male, is it that they see someone in control? Or is it that they see someone who shows a way to cope with the pain they feel, even if the method is violent and doesn’t even work, but at least it seems cathartic on the movie screen?

#american psycho #movie review #no longer human

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elliepassmore · 2 years

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Moongarden review

4/5 stars Recommended if you like: sci-fi, middle grade novels, fantasy, magic, magic schools, conspiracies Big thanks to Netgalley, Pixel+Ink Books, and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review! The concept of the book was interesting. Humanity has largely moved off-planet due to environmental degradation that rendered all plants (and the air) toxic. In addition to this, a lot of people have powers related to certain fields, such as math, electricity, medicine, etc. I liked the setup for the powers and thought the way they were depicted was interesting. I did have a hard time picturing how Number Whispering might work until Myra is asked to do it in class, lol. I think I would've liked to see a bit more emphasis on the 'space' aspect of the book. Some of the conflict is a result of not having access to plants, but that feels like an issue that would be present on earth or on the moon in this situation. Having the characters talk about crater landmarks or seeing earth/other planets in the distance, etc. would've brought the setting more to the forefront of the book. As it is now, I kept forgetting the characters weren't just on a ravaged earth. Myra is someone who's in a dilemma. Virtually everyone has high expectations of her and her parents have both high and specific expectations, but Myra knows that she won't be able to meet them. She desperately hopes that she'll either find her magical niche or will be able to fake her way through school. With this at the forefront of her mind, she doesn't really care that much that she doesn't have any friends. There are moments when it seems to bother her, but particularly in the beginning of the book she doesn't let it get to her. Myra is also strong-willed and curious to a fault, willing to do a lot just to get answers. Canter is the SLAM headmaster's son. He comes across as kind of douchy at first, but he makes up for it later on. I was actually surprised at how well he turned around, since he definitely seemed like the tattle-tale type at first. He and Myra are able to bond over their parents' expectations and over the garden. The garden seems to be good for him and slowly but surely he develops into a more mature person over the course of the book. Canter and Myra's friendship is fun to read. They both can have a very dry sense of humor at times and enjoy (playfully) picking on each other. Since they both have prominent parents, they're also able to sympathize with a lot of what each other is going through and the pressure they both feel. Lila is one of Myra's roommates and also has a rough start in the book. Myra got shoved into a triplet room as the fourth roommate after her original roommate didn't show up (and apparently unlike college you don't just get to be in a single), so none of her roommates are really thrilled about it. Lila, at least, seems like the least bitchy of the bunch, which turns out to be true. Despite a rough start on both sides, Lila is more than willing to put things aside and becomes a good friend and ally. In terms of MG/YA categorization, I think this book has some trouble. On the one hand, the characters are 12-13, putting them solidly in the Middle Grade category. On the other hand, Myra narrates like she's an older teen. I spent a good amount of time at the beginning of the book thinking Myra got randomly placed in a dorm with a bunch of middle schoolers, not realizing she is a middle schooler. In addition, her roommates (who are also 12) get dressed up to go to a sports game/go into town, but the way Barry describes them makes it sound like they're dressed and make-uped to go clubbing. I also question the sanity (and safety) of a school that lets hordes of students harass a twelve-year-old-girl and constantly attempt to see her expose some skin. This whole subplot is nonsexual, people are trying to see her Creer marks, which show up on arms, but in hindsight it's suspect. I suppose it follows with schools generally being terrible at handling bullying and SA, but it's passed off in such a blase manner in the book that it's kind of troubling. I also wonder why it's such a big deal. I get the students in Years 1 and 2, and maybe Year 3 being interested, but do the older students really have nothing better to do? The garden itself was a neat concept. I liked the scenes Myra and Canter spent there, and the things they learned about plants and growing things. There was a lot working against them, but they managed to get it healthy and happy in a relatively short period of time. Overall, I enjoyed this book and I think other MG readers will as well. There's a nice blend of fantasy and sci-fi in here, though I would've liked to see more emphasis on the moon thing. The characters do act a bit old for their age, but it's a minor thing so it isn't really an issue.

#book review #book recommendations #fantasy #scifi #sff books #ya scifi #middle grade book #middle grade scifi #bookstagram #booklr #bookblr #magic #bookish #bookaddict #bookaholic #netgalley #netgalley read #netgalley review

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lovenona · 3 years

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ON THE SACRED BONDS OF BROTHERHOOD.

synopsis; choso may be their beloved frat brother, but he’ll always be your brother first. (for the frat au collab.)

pairing; frat boy! choso x f! reader

contains; stepcest, dubcon (reader is under the influence but having a good time), extensive descriptions of knife play and blood play, marking (choso carves his name into you), oral (f! receiving), borderline yandere/possessive choso (he loves you A Lot), choso goes from mean to Soft, consumption and romanticization of drugs and alcohol, (1) use of ‘angel’, reader is afab and uses she/her pronouns, this is essentially all foreplay and ends before the fucking because i got tired, minors do not interact or perish

word count; 6.5k

the yard outside is clean, well-kept. there’s talk that the house’s landlord is a retired gardener who receives great joy from keeping up the hydrangeas and peonies along the sidewalk. it’s certainly award-winning, that front yard, with its colorful blossoms and plush bees circling the mailbox.

they’re so lucky, students bemoan on their way to and from class. i can’t believe the frat boys get to live there. i bet they don’t even know how lucky they are.

it’s a seemingly kind house from the outside – recently renovated with navy blue paint and white trimming, a large front porch and a few inviting windows. the place that omega lambda now calls home is, simply put, a dream. it sits just a few minutes from campus and it tells the street proudly, fondly, that there is no better place to be than here.

it’s true, in some respects, that omega lambda likes to see themselves as above the sweat and grime of their fellow frat brothers. they don’t spend their weekends “fucking and drinking” and tracking dirt across the carpet like animals. their fun is calm, refined: to be invited to a night with omega lambda means a night of smoke curling into the air, of gossip over olive-colored couches, of pills under tongues, of ease and relaxation.

it’s slower than the others, they say in the back of monday morning lectures, but no less extreme, no matter what those boys try and tell you.

i think i was tripping for days, the girl from psychology 101 boasted. whatever the fuck yuuji gets is strong.

such stories amaze you: and even as you stand on the sidewalk outside the perfect blue house, petunias curling inward with the evening breeze, you cannot believe they are real. it’s hard to imagine the face of your beloved stepbrother tied to these antics. it’s hard to imagine that the boy who used to come home every winter and summer with bloodshot eyes and a beat-up skateboard also swore a loyal, unbreakable oath of brotherhood to a band of boys you’ve never met.

it’s hard to imagine that your own stepbrother, choso, the one who taught you how to ride a bike and how to apply eyeliner and how to kiss without teeth, quite literally runs what has been dubbed the chillest fraternity on campus.

but yet, here you are, new to university, fresh-faced and eager, cowering outside the door of the omega lambda residence. your favorite skirt hovers around your thighs and you tug at the collar of your shirt, fiddle with the charm of the necklace choso gave you for your birthday a few years ago.

he’d invited you here almost immediately after learning that you and your roommate had tried your hand at partying with beta pi epsilon. naoya is trash, choso’s fervent texts read the next morning. absolute dick – don’t trust him. come hang out with us instead. he’d attached the address of the blue house along with a reminder to have a snack and take some medicine for your godforsaken hangover.

the message had taken you a little by surprise. choso’s always been sweet to you – doting, even, if you wanted a better word for it – but you hadn’t been sure how he’d handle attending the same university. your other friends all complain that they’d rather die than see their families; twins separate after orientation, brothers and sisters look the other way if they pass each other in the quad. you feared choso would be the same, that the omnipotent attention he gave you at home would completely dissipate the moment you moved into your dorm.

but his text reaffirms you, if anything. and although your roommate had opted to be wined and dined by the boy from calculus this evening, you don’t mind attending alone. her absence from your side only means you will be able to see your stepbrother without a distraction.

the music buzzes through the door as you knock and wring your fingers on the doorstep. should you just walk in? should you text choso and wait for him to fetch you? the ins-and-outs of frat etiquette cloud your mind until the door swings open and you’re met, face-to-face, with a young pink-haired man dangling a blunt from one hand and his phone, opened to his spotify playlist, from the other.

“hi,” you say, words foreign in your throat. “choso invited me?”

“oh, cool,” itadori yuuji says, shrugging his shoulders like he never would have questioned it. “come on in. you can put your shoes over there.”

while omega lambda is not packed from wall to wall as your night at beta pi epsilon had been, the various couches propped against the walls and surrounding the living room coffee table are nearly packed to the brim with the frat brothers and their guests. the air, hazy with smoke and desire and drinking, shifts and swirls as it curls around purple LED lights before fogging up the windows and disappearing up the stairs. it is warm here, easy, like dropping into the depths of a pleasurable dream.

“there’s drinks in the kitchen,” yuuji is saying, voice thick with his high, “and we’ve got some other stuff on the table, although you’ll have to pay yuuta for those–”

yuuji’s narration is cut off as a familiar figure crashes into yours, sweeping you into a hug so tight you fear your bones will snap from the pressure. choso smells like the cologne you bought him for his birthday, like fresh laundry and comfort; you breathe him in, deeply, and let yourself relax into the soft cotton of his black t-shirt.

“glad you could make it,” choso mumbles into your skin. he draws back slightly, drinks you in, your little skirt and your dainty socks that he’s always been partial to. he looks from you to yuuji, still vibing to the side with his playlist, and his eyes crinkle in what must be mirth.

“it’s good to see you,” you say.

“you saw me at lunch with mom last week.” choso smiles, the black line across his nose crinkling when his eyes light up.

“you get what i mean.” you tap his shoulder, lightly, as emphasis. the anxiety dissolves; it’s you, and him, like it’s always been. it’s your stepbrother choso who watches your shadow and wraps you up to keep the rest of the world at bay.

but the tender moment is broken when someone, a tall blonde girl with the aura of a lioness, calls out to choso to ask him for assistance. he looks at you, a bit forlorn, before telling yuuji to help you get settled in and making his way to the other end of the living room.

“yes, this way!” yuuji grabs your arm and drags you across the floor like you’ve known each other forever. “i make some fucking good drinks if i do say so myself.”

which, consequently enough, is how you find yourself losing your mind within the walls of omega lambda.

it’s not that you’re a virgin to the world of cocktails and lime and pills: it’s that you’re too sweet to know when to stop. it’s hard to tell yuuji no more, thanks when his face is so bright, when he and the strange, blue-haired frat brother mahito are asking you to try this and try that and to let us know what you think.

so you let yourself sway through the house, from couch to couch, listening to this mahito boy tell you about his latest philosophy courses as he dances cold fingers across your shoulders, listening to yuuji explain the very serious business of pulling an all-nighter without coffee, watching the LED lights shift from purple to blue and back again.

(you’re not sure where choso is. perhaps, in your altered state, he’s sitting just across from you and you don’t even know it. but you don’t mind, because his brothers get along with you just as well. you don’t mind, because you’re too drunk or too high to know any better.)

“and how are you doing?” a dark-haired man slides into the empty couch space next to you. arms littered with various tattoos and dark hair pulled back into a casual half-bun, he could have been your beloved choso had he not exuded such finesse, such arrogance, which choso could never be capable of doing.

“i’m alright,” you say, but you’re more than alright. the room is so warm and your brain is so fuzzy that you might melt into the couch if someone looked away for even a minute. “i don’t think we’ve met before? i’m choso’s stepsister.”

he simpers, a humid thing, one that coils around your eyelids and sets your insides alight. “ah! i’ve heard a lot about you. it’s nice to meet you.” he holds out a manicured hand; black nail polish glimmers in the dim light. “geto. i’m one of choso’s frat brothers.”

his handshake might take your soul with it. his hands are smooth, refined. you swear he can feel your quickening pulse as you introduce yourself. he watches you like you might be the only person in the room, like you might be the sweetest thing to have ever crossed the threshold. and filled with rum and liqueur and confidence you take it, gladly, because you’re young and the thought of university still puts stars in your eyes.

“so what are you studying?” geto is saying, prying you apart, picking through your history. he’s in his final year and you’re in your first and he knows all there is to know while you still have nothing. you latch onto him because he gets it, because he’s handsome, because you’re silly and desperate and drunk. somewhere along the way your thighs touch and his hand greets your shoulder and you think that you finally made it into his lap because mahito complained that the couch was too full.

geto smells like expensive cologne. you smell vaguely of lemons and shampoo. yuuji jokes with you from across the table and you like it, the way these brothers’ eyes fall on you.

so you spiral, further and further, into a daze you cannot escape from. you barely react to geto’s firm hand snaking up your bare thigh because you are too busy trying yuuji’s latest creation and asking mahito for more of whatever he gave you. it’s fun, it’s weightless; you feel beautiful, supreme, like the kind of college girl you’re supposed to be. you’re desirable, cute. you’re the girl to be in love with, the one who sets the scene.

those rumors were right. the party is certainly slower than the other frats you’ve visited, with more emphasis on sitting and vibing than on dancing and drinking games, but no less extreme. you’re so far out of your brain that you wonder briefly if it will ever be possible to come back down. maybe you’ll be her, on monday morning, the girl who’s still tripping.

“you know,” geto is saying, his breath eerily close to your pulse, a moment away from pressing a kiss to your cheek, your neck, “you should stop by more often.”

“yeah?” you hope you sound sexier than you are. “i’d love to–”

“excuse me,” choso’s voice cuts through your lazy fantasy like the sharp fall of a guillotine. “i’d prefer if you didn’t hit on my sister, geto.”

geto’s laugh reverberates against your back, your ears. his grip on you lightens immediately, and whatever words he’d saved for you die away. “i’m not,” he says, but his voice is too easy to be honest. “just keeping her company. right, sweetheart?”

you’re finding it hard to see straight. caught in this game of cat and mouse you find you can do nothing but sit lamely in geto’s lap and watch choso’s favorite necklace reflect the purple light. it’s only after a revolution around the sun you realize you haven’t spoken, that you’ve done nothing but hover, a lot of drunk and a little high and a little nervous, between one man and the other. you mumble a yes in affirmation but it’s clear from the tension that choso doesn’t believe it.

“oh, for fuck’s sake,” choso sighs. “come on, then. you’ve had enough for one night.” familiar arms lift you off the couch and you stumble, much like a baby gazelle, into the safety of choso’s chest. the room spins with the sudden change; you cling to him like a lifeline as you abandon the party to head upstairs.

of course, bedazzled out of your mind, you do not question when choso leads you to the end of the hallway and over the threshold of his bedroom. it feels expected in a way, safe, as if the party had always been meaning to end here. as if there was no other place you should be.

“so?” choso asks, casually, shutting the door behind him with a damning click. “did you enjoy being a little whore with my brothers?”

his words take a long moment to settle in your ears. you’re caught in the swirl of euphoria in your brain, the black t-shirts scattered across the floor, the small houseplant you once bought him seated on the windowsill. it warms your heart to see it there, after all this time.

“well?” choso demands your attention. he takes your jaw in his hand and lifts your eyes to meet his gaze. his silver rings, imposing and cool on slender fingers, burn into your heated flesh like embers. his eyes swim with distaste and you know it’s your fault, somehow, but when the walls tilt and your rationality fogs over, you can’t quite pinpoint why.

“i–” your words catch in your throat. it’s clear, from the darkness in his eyes, from the way his nails dig into the soft flesh of your jawline, that anything you say to defend yourself will be futile. it’s choso’s world, you’ve always known, and even now, you’re merely living in it.

“i invite my sister to see me, because i miss her,” choso’s words nestle themselves deep into your bloodstream, settling amongst the brandy and wine, “and she chooses to spend the night bending over for my brothers. how do you think that makes me feel?”

it’s a look you know: a look that has haunted you for hours and days, a look that you know better than any other. it’s the look that guides the hand between your legs at night and the look you recreate in your mind’s eye when your vibrator just isn’t enough. you’re crumbling already, like sand beneath his touch.

“i’m sorry,” you say to him, but the words are soft and whispered things, shy beneath the weight of your own guilt and disappointment. “i didn’t mean to–”

“no,” choso admonishes. he steps closer, guiding you backwards until his bedsheets brush the backs of your knees. “of course you didn’t. you’re still too dumb to know what you’re doing.” his voice, evenly condescending, hardly matches the gentle brush of his fingers as he moves to cup your cheeks. you close your eyes against it, savoring the shivers he sends across you body with every heartbeat, every movement. “still need your big brother to keep you in check.”

you do not respond: he does not intend for you too. instead choso presses you back until you fall onto his bed, crawling over you to cage your body beneath him like a predator and its prey. your brain falters with the sudden movement, with the lateness of the hour and the depravity of your position, but you can do nothing but look at him with your helpless doe-eyes while something saccharine pools in your belly.

“look at you,” choso says. “high out of your damn mind. good thing i caught you when i did. who knows what would have happened.”

you believe him, you do, especially when choso dips his head to kiss you and demands your subservience. his tongue licks the aftermath of your cocktails from your lips and claims the expanse of your mouth, your teeth, your sanity. you let him take you, body and soul, even when you’re clamoring for air and freedom. there is no safety but choso’s lips, flavored with his cinnamon chapstick, no sacred home but the warmth of his mouth.

“there’s my girl,” choso breathes, nose brushing against yours as he pulls back for air. “going to be good for me now? going to make it up to your big brother?”

he doesn’t wait for a response; fingers dance along the silk of your blouse as he undoes each button, one by one, letting his fingers dip slyly against the newly exposed expanse of your collarbone and your chest and your stomach. you make no move to stop him, caught somewhere between choso’s aura and reality and time.

(and maybe in another life you would have stopped him. maybe in another life you would have been ashamed. but it’s choso, your sworn protector and god among men, and you would be a fool to try and stop the one who knows best. he is safety, protection. who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t taken you away when he did.)

“is this new?” choso asks, studying the curve of your bra as he rests against your hips. “who are you trying to impress?”

it’s thin lavender lace, choso’s favorite. your face warms at the observation and you turn your head away, nestling among the sheets, as if you could escape choso’s eyes: but his fingers still trace the material and you can still hear him breathing and you know he will never look away.

“i just got it,” you answer, humbled and mildly humiliated and certainly a little fucked up. the words are slow and imprecise as you stumble over your own tongue. “i wanted to…treat myself.”

choso’s exploratory hands move from your bra to the waistband of your skirt. “could’ve just asked me,” he says earnestly, intently. “i would’ve gotten it for you.”

your affirmative hum is lost when choso mindfully pulls your skirt down your legs and discards it somewhere in the shadows of the room. he says nothing of it, of the thin fabric or the way it flattered you just right. perhaps he is jealous of it. perhaps he does not want to remember the way his brothers looked at you when you wore it, the way geto’s hands caressed the places no other man should go.

“they match, i see,” choso gestures towards your underwear. terrified and knowing and aware that you’re growing damper with each passing minute, you press your thighs together. “they’re cute.”

“t-thank you,” you whisper. “i… i got them for you. your favorite color.”

he smiles, a precious and glorious thing, a smile that causes flowers to grow and birds to sing. you electrify at the sight of it, blissful only when he is.

“i’d hope so,” choso says, “because i don’t think i could take it if this was meant for someone else.”

he reaches over to the nightstand while his words claw through you. choso smells like cinnamon and safety and pleasure; your heartbeat quickens as his t-shirt brushes against you, as your world collapses into nothing but choso’s profile, his butterfly hair-clips and his glowing skin and his power.

when choso settles back over you, resting against your thighs until you think you might die of it, something silver and shiny rests in his palm. you’d recognize it even if your eyes were closed, if the room were so dark that you couldn’t see if you tried. a searing and insatiable sensation lodges itself in your veins; it is fear personified, it is anticipation of a behavior you cannot even name.

choso twirls his beloved switchblade deftly between his well-manicured fingertips. it reflects the low-light of the room. it calls out to you, the beautiful and dangerous thing, a siren’s song that promises both your misery and your fortune. choso’s face is relaxed, serene, as the envy and the fury seemingly melts away from him and leaves only a disinterested vessel behind.

he lets you study it, lets you study him, and you know he’s pleased when he can feel your thighs tense, when you try so damn hard not to let choso know just how affected you really are. he shifts, grinding gently against your pelvis as he moves, causing you to bite your lip in a desperate attempt to surpress the gentlest of moans.

“well,” choso says, disregarding the state he’s slowly working you into. he shifts down your body and runs a lackluster hand across the lacy expanse of your underwear. shivers pierce your navel, silver rings poison your skin. it’s all you can do to watch him, his heartless eyes and his casual form, as his thumb prods at the place where you underwear crosses your hip. “let’s get these off. i’d hate to have anyone else see you in them.”

you feel the blade before you see it. cold, unfriendly, it rests against the gentle skin of your hip, a killer ready to take a life. a humiliatingly choked whine is out of your mouth before you can swallow it; your gasp reverberates throughout the room, the sound of one who knows they’ve lost a fight.

“choso–” you breathe, but you don’t know quite what it is you’re asking him for.

he doesn’t answer immediately, opting instead to tease you further with the blade as he presses it against you until goosebumps rise in chorus. your fingers curl in on themselves, desperate for purchase, while fear and longing hum everywhere in your being.

“don’t worry,” choso says. “i’ll buy you more. now be good and stay still.”

you want to writhe, to lash out and squirm beneath the intensity of the moment, but you fear choso’s disappointment more than you crave such release. your big brother choso has never been afraid to hurt you: to pierce the skin where it hurts, to draw blood where he means it. if you move, the blade will move with you. you know this as you know every scar choso has left behind.

it’s agonizing, this pace. choso’s tongue peeks out from between his teeth as he works with the ease of a great master. it’s like watching paint dry, like waiting for grass to grow or continents to shift. he cuts away at the expensive lingerie you bought just last weekend like he has all the time in the world, like he does not care if the sun rises and you are still crying beneath him.

(and he does it, you know, because you’ve never been one to be patient.)

“choso,” you whine, drawing his name out, long and frustrated, as if in song. “go faster.” your legs twitch in protest and the blade comes ever closer.

“no.” choso does not even spare the kindness to look at you, his beloved little sister. “stop whining.”

the rest of your complaints lodge in your throat. you fear disobeying him, so you grip the comforter like a lifeline, exasperated tears pooling in the corners of your eyes as the blade cuts through your clothes and ghosts across the bare skin beneath. it’s embarrassing, really, the way you can feel yourself becoming more and more desperate the further choso drifts away from you, the more he refuses to indulge.

you wonder if he can sense the arousal on you, feel it, smell it, even, like you’re nothing but his own little plaything in heat.

after an eternity, the blade finally cuts through your panties with a satisfying rip. the torn fabric sits pitifully against your hips, a reminder of your own subservience, until choso peels it away from you with enough condescension to move you to tears. the cool air of the room hits your thighs, your cunt, like a ghost who’s taken up residence beside you.

blissfully unaware of your feelings, choso studies the remains of your ruined underwear, the thin fabric and the obvious stain of your arousal. locking eyes with you, he bring it to his nose for a brief and pleasurable inhale before he discards it somewhere on the other side of the room.

“there we are,” he says, as if he hadn’t just smelled yourself in front of you. “now no one will ever know about it but me.”

“choso,” you whimper, hot. it’s a gift and a humiliation to be beneath him like this, to shake with need and yet to be denied it, to ask for something, for anything, in a voice so unabashedly loud that anyone who passes by the door might hear it.

he ignores you, again, and turns his attention to your bra as it flutters against your fervent chest. you watch with wide eyes as the blade comes closer, closer, dancing against your ribcage and sending ice into your lungs until it slices through the front of your bra, down the center of your chest, like the thin fabric was made of nothing but water.

“get rid of this,” he says; you listen. with quick and quivering fingertips you shimmy your way out of the delicate material and toss it over the side of the bed faster than the speed of sound. choso, pleased with your obedience, intently traces the curve of your breasts, thumbing your nipples until you find yourself arching into his touch.

(choso, you mumble, eyes falling shut at the feeling. still, as always, he does not listen. he draws his hands away.)

it kills you, the way choso’s eyes possess you, own you, dictate the movement in your bloodstream. it’s akin to being pulled along on marionette strings, a puppet of choso’s own design, made to dance for him and him alone.

it’s the prize he deserves, your big brother, to own you and protect you, body and soul.

it’s that very intensity which moves you to misty tears, which causes your hands to fly out to meet him against your better judgement. choso lets you pleasure yourself for a moment with the texture of his t-shirt and the outline of his shoulders before brushing your hands away like unnecessary flies.

“did you whore yourself out like this when you went to naoya’s?” choso prods. the patronization lies beneath feigned and genuine curiosity. there are no inflections, no signs of anger. this is how your big brother gets you, every time: it’s the neglect, the disinterest, that breeds your guilt. “are you really so easy for every boy that comes your way?”

you shake your head and wish you could bury yourself further into the bedsheets. no, never. try as you might the first-year college boys here just haven’t been enough, the older ones too preoccupied with better cunts to look your way.

“just because those guys are my brothers,” choso continues, shifting further and further down your body, spreading your legs until he can fit himself comfortably between them, “doesn’t mean i have to share everything with them.”

“i’m sorry, choso,” you try again, “i’m sorry. i don’t want anyone else–”

“that’s right,” choso interrupts. “you don’t need anyone else. no one is ever going to love you the way i do.”

the way your big brother does, his eyes say, but he doesn’t have to voice it. you already know. it’s true that no one knows you better than choso does. no one understands your limits and your desires the way your brother has for as long as you’ve known him. no one knows how to caress you when you cry, how to run their tongue across your lips to silence you when you’re too eager. it’s always choso. it’s always been choso; but sometimes you’re just too much of a fool to see it.

the blade, cool and demanding, presses against the soft flesh of your thigh, just below the hip. you twitch in surprise at the sensation and curl your toes to quell the ache in your cunt. it’s slick, weeping; you can feel it, the arousal, as it pools and pools and drips quietly onto the comforter.

“choso, what are you–” you ask, breathily, pitifully, but choso’s quick glare reduces you into obedient silence.

he licks the cinnamon chapstick on his lips. a stray hair falls across his eyes and kisses the dark line across his nose. he is love and danger, a cocktail of possession and surrender. “i think,” choso says, the words slow and thoughtful, “you need a reminder of who loves you the most.”

a strangled cry escapes your lips when the blade pierces your skin just enough to draw blood. the sting travels up through your spine and fogs up your senses, causes your cunt to weep in horrible anticipation. it hurts, it does, the first cut, but still you find yourself waiting for more of it, more, in terror and lust and love.

“choso–” you cry, a misty tear escaping out of the corner of your eye, but the call is met by another stroke, longer this time, drawn out, until your knuckles clutch the bedsheets so tensely they might as well turn to stone.

“stay still,” choso admonishes amidst the burn of it. “you’ll hurt yourself.”

as if you were the one in control. but you listen, obediently as always, and the alcohol from earlier combined with the need in your chest mixes together until your body is as taut as a desperate wire, until you no longer have control of yourself or your limbs. the knife cuts easily, choso’s hands as steady and precise as ever. you can feel the blood dripping onto his sheets like a series of hot tears.

it’s too much, all at once. it is a fire which destroys you, which renders every coherent thought into ash and causes you to sob nothing but drawn-out cries and pleads of choso’s name into the dark bedroom. he has you just where he wants you: pliant, dumb, obedient. if he asked you to fetch him a star, you would have asked him which one he needed.

choso’s tongue darts between his teeth as a steady hand continues its masterpiece. you sob unabashedly in reply with every stroke, with every flex of his fingers as he works his blade against your tender skin. and yet, as the pain grows, so does your need for something, for anything, for release; with every aching minute your cunt grows hotter and lonelier and emptier between your thighs.

you crave something, anything, choso, perhaps even more than you wish for air.

“there you go,” choso says, just as you release another cry so piercing there’s no way even yuuji wouldn’t have heard it. “all done.”

you sit up on your elbows to peer down at the masterpiece below your hip. smeared with blood, aching and raw from the blade, the word CHOSO spreads across your upper thigh in an uneven but heartfelt script. it makes you dizzy, this marking, this sign that no one owns you better than your sacred brother does. you wonder if it will leave a scar, if it will heal; and even more so, you wonder if choso will merely rewrite it, again and again, until every cell in your body knows that you are nothing without him.

you say nothing; a whine escapes your lips as your eyes flit from the mark to choso’s eyes, dark and possessive, as he looks back at you.

“you like it?” he asks, once again the sweet thing, the doting one.

“yes,” you whisper back, never one to lie to your perfect big brother.

but you cannot hide the insatiability. choso notices the way your thighs twitch from the intensity, the way your cunt drools and your eyebrows furrow because you cannot relieve this ache on your own. you’re helpless, entirely at his mercy. choso tilts his head with a soft and unreadable simper at the sight.

“you’re really worked up, huh?” he pretends your distress is not blatantly obvious. he twirls the bloodstained knife between his fingertips for a moment before bringing the flat edge of the blade against his lips in a somber kiss. “this little thing’s got you down bad, i see.” he flashes the switchblade at you like a diamond. you watch, entranced, as choso slides his tongue across the metal until any traces of your blood disappear into his mouth.

your belly’s on fire. the switchblade shines with choso’s spit and he smiles, your blood on his tongue, while he prods your legs apart, further, until you’re entirely open for him with nothing to hide. you whine lowly as choso’s eyes flicker between your eyes, dazed and helpless, and the slick on the bedsheets.

“choso,” you repeat. “please, help me.” your eyes are wide and your voice is small and you crumble beneath the weight of your own needing, of your own body working of its own volition, of the high that collapses all over you.

perhaps it’s the way you call for him, your big brother, in your time of need. perhaps it’s the way choso can never really deny you, even when he feigns disappointment or rage or neglect. he’s bound to you, your protector, and you can see in the way his eyes soften ever so slightly that choso will not deny you this request.

“sure thing, angel. let me clean this up for you.” choso’s voice is generous as he bows his face towards your hips with the reverence of one before the altar. he leaves no room for your answer. an eager tongue swipes across your thigh and laps at the blood which pools there. his movements are indulgent, refined, as he holds your legs open with intimidating palms and drinks you in like medicine.

“choso–” you gasp, unable to look away. his eyes flit back to meet yours in reply but he continues his ministrations, slow, teasing, as he ignores your cunt entirely and licks at the fresh wound until it’s finally, sacredly, clean. your newly beloved CHOSO glimmers with his spit when he pulls away. he smiles at you then, praying over your hips, lips stained red with your blood, with your being.

“i may be their brother,” choso gestures towards the door, to the party which must still rage below, “but i’m your brother first, and now you’ll never forget it.”

the words are followed by his tongue on your inner thigh, fervent this time, as he travels downwards, downwards from his name on your leg until his nose is a breath away from your clit. you thrust your hips towards him impatiently and he accepts it, gratefully, burying his face deep into your cunt like he’s searching for gold. choso lavishes your clit with plump lips and an eager tongue, drawing the bud into his mouth and kissing it until you cry, until your legs tremble as they ensnare him in your garden.

“choso–” you’re crying, voice transcendent throughout the frat house, his favorite song. there’s a tongue prodding against your hole and a silver ring on your clit and you lose yourself within it, within choso’s breath on your folds and the fire which erupts into chaos.

when it comes to pleasing you, choso does not require air. he refuses to resurface as his tongue explores every inch, as he laps away at you with the passionate abandon only an older brother can provide. what you need, he needs, and what you desire most, choso is always willing to provide. he holds you steady as he works so you cannot escape him. he forces you into stillness as he abuses every sacred inch of your cunt, as he works you into a frenzy with his fingers and his tongue until you can think of nothing but wanting to cum.

and then, then, at the precipice of pleasure, choso pulls away. you pause as you catch your breath, heartbeat like an earthquake, and recollect your shock. why has he stopped? where has he gone? you’re about to sit up, to feign sobriety, to demand what the matter is, when something cool and smooth presses against your clit.

choso’s cheek rests against your inner thigh as he presses the flat edge of the switchblade against your cunt. it’s cold and dangerous and sublime and you cannot help but think of the way it could ruin you, that if you shifted or choso wanted it everything could end here, now, forever. and it is this fear, coupled with the coolness of the blade suffocating your clit, with the alcohol in your bloodstream, that sends you into a place from which you may never return.

the orgasm is as violent as a hurricane. the moment you tense and begin to quake with a strangled sob choso replaces the blade with his tongue and rides you through it, coating his lips with your cum and swallowing the vibrations and heightening the sensation until you are tortured by it, by the sting of pleasure and overstimulation and want.

(“that’s it,” you think he says into your skin, but your ears ring too loudly to know. “cum for me, just like that.”)

it takes some time for the waves to recede and for your body to become still again. with a head comprised of of jelly and limbs made of water you lie still, panting, as choso nonchalantly licks your slick from the switchblade with a hum and gingerly sets it back down on his dresser. you watch as he slides the belt out of his jeans and tosses it into the dark room, as he hovers above you like an angel and its lover.

“better now?” he asks against your parted lips. you nod. he kisses you, deeply, a kiss made of iron and cum and blood, tongue swiping across your teeth before he draws the air from your lungs. your vision swims when he plants a kiss on the tip of your nose, your cheeks, your forehead, between your eyebrows. he plants his love until there is nowhere left untouched, until you are buzzing with the security only your brother choso can give you.

“yeah,” you mumble back to him, content, satisfied. even the sting of his name on your body is a pleasantry now.

“good.” choso wipes the perspiration from your brow. his jeans scratch against your pelvis, and it is only then that you finally register his cock, hard and eager, waiting patiently for its turn. it is only then that you realize choso’s lesson is not yet over, that your brother’s desperate need has only begun.

“now,” he purrs, gently, lovingly, “can you show me how much you love me?”

(as always, forever, you do. you show him your love, endlessly, even when the party ends and the house falls eerily silent. you show choso everything, all of it, loyally, just as he asks, with an only you, choso, and a no one else loves me like you.

because although choso offers his love to the brothers downstairs, he will always, forever, be your brother first, til death do you part.)

#tw incest #tw dubcon #tw knife play #tw blood play #tw marking #tw yandere #choso smut #choso.#it's dark in here #it's hot in here

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neversetyoufree · 2 years

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with this new episode.. would you think noé has a crush on jeanne? i've never seen it as something possible up until this episode. like i have no idea why he would, but this episode is making me think otherwise??? i just can't think of an explanation as to why he'd love her, it's really confusing so that's why i'd like your thoughts on it. </3

I do think it’s a possibility, yes! I wouldn't call it a full-on crush or anything, but I do think he's at least a little attracted to her.

I don't love the anime's tweaks to chapter 12 in ep 7, and especially not them putting extra emphasis on Noé and Jeanne (since ch 12 thrives on a very careful balance of subtext imo), but there is evidence in the manga for some one-sided NoéJeanne attraction.

Starting in chapter 3, when we get Jeanne's big reveal spread, Noé looks just as struck by Jeanne's appearance as Vanitas does, and we know for certain that Vanitas finds her quite beautiful.

In fact, given there's that little extra slim panel of Noé looking surprised before he reacts to her appearance, you could even argue that more emphasis is put on Noé seeing Jeanne than on Vanitas seeing her. So if we know Vanitas seeing her here is a big deal, and Noé gets even more emphasis, then this moment is probably important. And the important thing happening is that Noé is quite struck by the way she looks.

Continuing on, when Noé and Jeanne fight in chapter 4, Noé holds his own pretty well at first. Then Jeanne looks at him and he freezes up, allowing her to kick him through a wall.

Given that there's a heartbeat sound effect and a blush on his reaction panel, it's pretty clear that seeing her face here once again has an effect on him. He even reacts like this after recovering from the blow:

which is more or less how I'd expect Mr. "what on earth is love" to react to being attracted to a woman for the first time in his life.

There's a couple other similar moments in the bal masqué arc (his reactions to hearing Jeanne is at the ball and having her thank him the day after), but I'll save the in-depth analysis of those. For every moment after Vanitas kisses Jeanne, you could argue that at least some of Noé's interest in her is connected to his trying to make sense of her "romance" with Vanitas, but in chapters 3 and 4, I really can't think of any explanation for how Noé acts other than "he thinks she's really pretty and doesn't know what to make of it."

You could read that as romantic attraction, or maybe just very strong aesthetic attraction (esp if you're a fan of aro-spec Noé like me), but either way, he sure does seem to be attracted to her in some form.

Furthermore, when future Noé starts narrating about the "feeling stirring in his heart" that he's yet to understand in chapter 12, it's immediately preceded by him looking over at Jeanne, and shown over the image of him stepping on Vanitas's foot.

The images shown with narration like this are pretty important for implying future meaning, and there's definitely a way that you can read these pages as implying a future crush on Jeanne. After all, Noé turning to look at Jeanne right before the narration about his feelings does sort of make it feel like it's his seeing her that prompts romantic thoughts. Her face is also shown larger than Domi's or Luca's, making it seem like Mochijun wants to draw extra attention to her importance here as Noé talks about love. Or, we could argue that he's just looking at Jeanne because he's baffled by Vanitas's explanation of his feelings for her, and thus naturally staring as he tries to puzzle it out. He feels things about Vanitas and Jeanne's relationship, and he's drawn to talking about it and watching the both of them as a result, but it could well be that Vanitas is the one he's really jealous about.

Similarly, if we set aside Noé looking at Jeanne and say the image actually under the narration is what's important, we run into a similar split. If the foot stepping means something, it could be foreshadowing about Noé someday stepping on Vanitas's toes in a less literal way via some kind of relationship with Jeanne. I don't know whether the "stepping on someone's toes" metaphor is something relevant at all in Japan, or if it's exclusively an english phrase, but it's at least possible that it's what Mochijun is referencing here. Or, it's possible that the foot step itself isn't the significant part, but that it is important to have Vanitas and Noé interact under the narration. After all, even if it's a silly interaction, it does draw attention to the two of them while Noé talks about his future love, so maybe it's Vanoé foreshadowing, not Noéjeanne.

In other words, the end of chapter 12 could be a setup for Noé's future crush on Vanitas, or his future crush on Jeanne. It could maybe even be both. That's how I've always read not only this scene, but the whole chapter. We just don't know which of them he's jealous of.

However, it also seems worth noting that chapter 12 is pretty much the last time we get any indication of this semi-crush Noé has. After that point, Mochijun almost never has them interact, with only two notable scenes between them in 40+ chapters. And within those scenes, the only even slight hint of attraction on Noé's part is a single panel of him blushing when Jeanne literally twists her leg around his neck and shoves her thigh into his face:

which I'm not inclined to read into all that much.

I think literally anyone even a little bit attracted to women would be blushing in that moment. It's quite possible even people who aren't attracted to women would be blushing in that moment. So it's not exactly compelling evidence for a future NoéJeanne plot.

Overall, I think it's fair to say that, while Noé hasn't interacted enough yet with Jeanne to "love" her in a notable way, he does seem to be at least a bit attracted to her. I have a lot of thoughts on what Mochijun could be doing with this thread, and where I think the whole Vanitas/Jeanne/Noé romantic mess is going to go in the future, but given this post's word count, I think I'll be saving that ramble for another day.

#I'd still like to think that the foreshadowing about Noé's feelings in 12 is about vanitas #because I think that's the most interesting option for everyone involved #but I can't fully discount the possibility of Mochijun exploring Noé's attraction to Jeanne at some point in the future #vnc #vanitas no carte #the case study of vanitas #noéjeanne #noé archiviste my beloved #noé arqueueviste #english major hours #also yes this is another months old ask that I'm answering #anon I'm so sorry #ask #anon #ID in alt text

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sobdasha · 3 years

Text

been thinking about the really weird dynamics of the Honda family

and the ways they parallel with the Souma family.

Tohru's relationship with Grandpa Honda has always been really inscrutable to me. It seems like Kyouko liked him quite a lot, and the feeling was mutual, so their relationship ought to be close, right? But despite relying on Grandpa around the time of Katsuya's funeral, I get the impression that Kyouko and Grandpa aren't very close after that? He takes Tohru in after Kyouko's funeral, but doesn't provide a place for her to stay during the renovations, and they don't seem to keep in touch.

I figured this was for the convenience of the plot. If Tohru was close with her grandpa, then she wouldn't have no family, no one left, after her mom died. If Tohru had somewhere else to go, it wouldn't be so vital that she be allowed to keep living in the Souma house.

I've been thinking about Shiki, though, and about Akito and Shigure as parents within the Souma estate, and I'm wondering now if this wasn't actually a parallel playing out in brilliant Takaya fashion.

Starting with a recap, because a summary of info is always useful to me:

Kyouko grows up in a family that is very much about Keeping Up Appearances and Knowing Your Place. Her dad is verbally and emotionally abusive and isn't above slapping people either. Her mother isn't affectionate and doesn't protect her, probably because she's primarily concerned with protecting herself from the fallout when anything sets off her abusive husband. Kyouko has never had her emotional needs met and she's never been socialized to see others as real people with real feelings. Before even 7th grade she's become part of the gang scene in a cry for help and attention, and because these are the only people she can kind of understand. Her father has told her she's kicked out of the house at least once prior before he finally makes good on it and disinherits her at the end of 9th grade.

Katsuya and his younger sister grow up in a family that is also very much about Traditional Values and Keeping Up Appearances. Grandpa Honda is a teacher, and he puts a big emphasis on Proper Manners (and probably also other things like Good Grades, Fitting In, and Knowing Your Place). He's stern and pressures Katsuya to become a teacher as well. We don't know what Katsuya's mother was like, but I'm assuming she was also not particularly affectionate. It's only after her illness and passing, probably when Katsuya is somewhere around 20, that Grandpa Honda reevaluates his life and what's most important to him.

From a young age, Katsuya flew under the radar by heavily masking--ie, he made a cardboard cutout of what society expected him to be, so Polite, Quiet, Respectable, Studying To Become A Teacher, while underneath it all being filled with apathy, resentment, and loneliness. His moral compass is deeply skewed--see his teasing of people, his attitude of looking down on people, his bragging admittance to using his father's influence to get away with things, his creepy expressions that are identical to those of The Root Of All Evil (ie, Shigure). He has no real interpersonal relationships--family, friend, or romantic. He's a 23 year old TA who is fixated on and marries a 15 year old girl because she's the first person he ever recognized as human--he saw her in the middle of a violent meltdown and it was the first time he was ever really struck by the realization that someone else might feel the same feelings he does.

(Which, in addition to the dubious legality and widely-regarded ickiness, is just downright pathetic. I'm sorry, but it's true. Fruits Basket itself backs me up.)

The first parallel that jumps out at me is between the stories of Kyouko and Katsuya, and Ren and Akira:

Ren is an Outsider. We don't know what her family life was before joining the Souma clan, but based on everything about her I feel it's safe to assume it was also abusive. A large percentage of the Souma family is against the marriage, but Akira is adamant because Ren is the first person he's ever connected with. Similarly, the Honda family (save Grandpa) disapproves of Kyouko and she remains forever an outsider to them.

In Kyouko's case, Katsuya is able to ditch his family and start fresh with Kyouko. Ren, on the other hand, has to live within the toxic Souma family to be with Akira. Both husbands die, leaving a grieving widow and child behind. Kyouko treasures her daughter and finds a new reason to live in Tohru, away from the rest of the Honda family; Ren, already jealous of Akito for getting in the way of her relationship with her husband (and not dealing well with being pulled even further into the Souma family bullshit with all this curse stuff), and trapped within the toxic Souma family with no one on her side, chooses to perpetuate the cycle of abuse.

The thing I've been thinking about most is the parallels between Tohru and the Honda family and Shiki and the Souma family:

As I said before, Tohru's relationship with Grandpa Honda is very strange. It's not just me--Yuki and Kyou make comments to this effect also, I'm pretty sure. But I think I can finally make sense of it now, if I think of it in light of Shiki.

I think there are a couple chapters of FBA out there that I haven't read (the one with Akito, and were there other chapters beyond volume 3?), but Mutsuki implies--and I think we should take this at face value--that Akito and Shigure hope that Shiki will leave the Souma family. They are not kicking their child out. They want this as loving parents, who have done their best to raise their child in a good home in the midst of a very toxic environment. I like to think they will do a good job of explaining this to Shiki, explicitly and clearly. Akito could have walked away from the Souma family, but she chose to stay because she had a hand in perpetuating the toxicity and generational abuse in the Souma family and she is taking responsibility for trying to end the cycle. She has finally stepped up as the head of the family. She could have walked away, but she didn't.

Shiki had no hand in making the Souma family what it is. Shiki is not obligated in any way to put up with that bullshit. Shiki can and should walk away from that toxic environment, go somewhere new, and be happy. He and his parents and all his non-toxic relatives can visit and call each other and still maintain relationships, but in healthier places, as everyone learned to do at the end of Fruits Basket.

This, I believe, is what Grandpa is also doing for Tohru. He's just less explicit and messes it up at first.

I don't know exactly why we don't see more of Grandpa's relationship with Kyouko and Tohru after Katsuya's death. Is it because Tohru, as the narrator, is prioritizing Only Me And My Mom stories? Is it because Kyouko didn't want to be a burden (is that part of where Tohru absorbed it)? Is it because Kyouko couldn't maintain a good relationship with Grandpa with the Honda Family Toxicity in the background?

The Honda family toxicity shows up in full force again when Kyouko dies. Tohru is a riceball that doesn't belong in the Honda family fruits basket. No one, save Grandpa, will take her in.

And then he invites his daughter's family, which he knows is toxic and will abuse Tohru, in to live with the two of them.

I don't know who came up with the idea--if it's Grandpa, that's a bit cold, as he should be caring for Tohru. If it's his daughter ("Dad, you're getting older, you should be living with us so we can take care of you") that does make sense, both as a reasonable social expectation (which dad raised her to adhere to) and as a power move (the Outsider shouldn't be getting so cozy with dad, and dad's inheritance, without supervision). I'm leaning towards the daughter, as I don't think the family combining was intended to get Tohru to leave. I think the remodel, though, was something Grandpa Honda saw as a good opportunity to convince Tohru to leave the Hondas.

I think "I'm having the house remodeled and I'm staying with my daughter, but you weren't invited, I could pull my weight or maybe you could find your own accommodations with a friend?" was intended to give Tohru permission to not feel obligated to the Honda family. I think it was intended to let Tohru find someplace she would actually be happy, a found family living situation where she could flourish. I think Granpda sincerely thought Tohru would move in with Hanajima, instead of into a tent, and realize that she was so much happier and fulfilled there that she never came back to the toxic Honda family and had no regrets.

Grandpa's judgment was a little iffy there but he tried.

I'm realizing that, if everyone moved into Grandpa's house because it was bigger, and it's being remodeled specifically for that purpose...the fact that Tohru is sharing a room with her cousin is very significant. Grandpa was so confident, there is no place for Tohru in that house. Tohru was never supposed to come back after the remodel.

(I don't know that much about houses so it's possible that they just didn't have room; depending on whether that's the uncle or the son, you've got to have 4 or 5 separate bedrooms, which I guess could be a lot. But this is a manga, they aren't strictly constrained to realism, and Takaya makes every damn detail count.)

Tohru isn't supposed to come back after the remodel, but she does. She does, and the family is toxic to her, and Grandpa tells her more overtly that she is not obligated to live here out of familial loyalty. If there's somewhere else Tohru is happier, even if it's a really unconventional living situation, she should feel welcome to choose that instead.

Grandpa's a parallel to Akito here. He's been becoming aware, since his wife died, that his priorities were all wrong. That he raised his children wrong. That Katsuya appeared to have no real emotions and had never connected with anyone outside of Kyouko and their daughter. (Maybe he learned to make work friends?? But I doubt it.) That his daughter is judgmental and cares more about the appearance of being proper than about not being rude.

Don't think poorly of him, Grandpa says. Deep down, they're just evil people. But Grandpa recognizes that he had a hand in creating those evil people. And instead of being like Machi's mom, who goes "well maybe I fucked up" and then throws her out of the family, Grandpa takes responsibility for the family he made. He recognizes that he raised his kids in a way that caused them to be shallow and rude and to think of people as means to an end, and he also recognizes that it would be shitty to reject his kids for turning out exactly as he raised them. He has to live with them (and his choices), he says, but Tohru doesn't.

Looking at it like that, I respect Grandpa Honda more. He seemed a bit wishy-washy before--useful for some plot and character development points, but wishy-washy all the same. But it's a tough decision, and having to prioritize people is always shitty. Grandpa not rejecting his daughter means sacrificing a stable home for Tohru. Akito staying as the head of the Souma family so she can ensure the freedom of the former Zodiac means that her child will be subjected to the same generational abuse, no matter how loving and supportive of a home life she and Shigure provide.

But they're both trying to do a right thing in a crappy situation.

And Tohru, like so many of the former Zodiac, does find happiness and fulfillment in the new family she's able to make for herself. She learns to make her world bigger, and she learns that leaving doesn't have to be the same as cutting ties. And so I'm very optimistic that Shiki will find the same.

#sobdasha fic adjacent #fruits basket #fruits basket another

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persephoneyss · 3 years

Text

Bad Movie.

Pairing: Jung Hoseok x f! Reader. Ft. Jungkook.

Genre: Yandere, dark themes, angst, gore a little.

Summary: ❝Looking for the person you love, beautiful woman.❞

Warnings: Yandere behavior, obsession, harassment / stalking, humiliation, forced marriage, non-sexual intercourse, abuse of power, implicit murder, drug use naming, minor past master / pet relationships, secondary character abduction, ugly hallucinating hoseok , beatings, blood, photos depicting abuse, mistreatment and death, bribery, sexism and humiliation (directly aimed at female prostitutes), hoseok mistreats and humiliates jk, awkward marriage proposals, use namjoon as a secondary character because it hurts more:(, etc.

Number of words: 6000+

︙Author's Note: This is my longest fic so far, I think. It took a lot for me to do it, especially since I didn't have a clear idea about the whole plot that would take and the role that each character would develop. So if you see Jungkook in a kind of strange character, blame my mind for including him almost last. Also, I hate Hoseok in this fic. Namjoon angel and fallen soldier, by the way let me know if they cried with his death, it hurt me to write it. Thank you very much for the 200 notes in my previous fic, I'm crying.

Read the Warnings well and enjoy!

(Sorry for any mistakes, my first language is not English and I am not fluent either.)

Puedes leer este fic y más aquí en español.

Confidence, a beautiful and treacherous feeling at times.

Feeling superior is a constant whisper of the ego within you, calling to be released and make others feel as what they really are, despicable and useless trash. It was fun laughing at losers when you haven't had that sense of defeat yet.

Hoseok fervently watched his rivals fall at his feet, laughing at his incompetence and stomping even more pathetic defeated form even though they were already dead in tears of pain. He smiled, he always did when he felt invincible and He bit his lip gently to hold back an excited laugh.

No one could be compared to him, and in his high sense of power he could never be alert when he struck him with a blast of vengeance.

It was you.

His eyes stared at you in horror and anger, his ego inside him hated you from the first moment. Because while despicable, he loved you for much more than his pride and winning sense.

He fell at your feet but he never made you notice it, behaving as he normally would around you even though he was always behind you.

Luck was her greatest ally, he always smiled at her and she helped him. It was fun to play with your opponents pretending to be the victim, the cornered mouse and then smash everyone with a snap of your fingers.

His mother looked at him with love and his father with pride, he was the only and favorite son of the Jung family. His success was never derived from love, much less, it was blasphemy in his family to say something so false and impossible.

Hoseok admired his family when they met in the great message of his parents' house, his grandparents smiled and his relatives brought out their most exquisite stories to entertain. They were all crows pretending to show interest in a prestigious place in the will of the family's monarch, his grandfather.

It was at one of those dinners that he got to meet you, he used to get bored of hearing his cousins tell their anecdotes with prostitute women who mostly called, whores of a night. Mocking their shocked faces when they refused to pay them and threw them out of their big luxurious houses.

He rolled his eyes when a family friend, little Jungkook who was known to his father because of his prestige in his last name, chimed in trying to get into the conversation with a shy smile.

Lucky bastard, he thought bitterly. He didn't like the little idiot sticking his hands in boiling water, he wasn't even supposed to be there.

He hummed a goodbye as he walked out the front doors, walking aimlessly to his bored eyes. His feet stopped abruptly with a strangled sigh when he first saw you, you looked tired as you apparently searched for a key inside your bag. Could visualize the logo on your shirt from the grocery store where he assumed you were employed, He stood looking for what seemed like an eternity at you before you find the keys and rush through the back door. He snorted before lazily continuing on his way, however the next day he ended up following in your footsteps again and with even more confidence.

It took a few weeks for him to be able to enter the small commerce store and be able to look you face to face for the first time, it was expected that you would serve him with a smile asking if he was offered something. But he did not see you anywhere, he looked for you before another equally young woman approached him kindly, he sighed making a face of disgust surprising the she worker, his expensive shoes got dirty on the floors of the humble place with shame. His little investigation and search took him through many corridors of the establishment, he observed the shelves and each person who seemed to be wearing the uniform of the store thinking of finding you distracted with your work, maybe he thought of approaching you and asking for directions which he clearly didn't need. Knowing that she you couldn't refuse because that was your job. In a way, you were there to serve him.

He let out a bored sigh, tired of playing hide and seek, he turned around ready to leave that place that disgusted him so much in a certain way, but once again he stopped in an instant. It was a moan. He clenched his fists, walking hurriedly to the place where the noise came from, he was sure it was your voice and that made him even more angry thinking that he would find you in a compromising position with someone.

He did not think that his lover would be such a stupid and dirty person.

You were crouched on the floor, grimacing with pain and exhaustion. You seemed very annoyed trying to lift a box with your arms, the scene was tender and certainly pathetic, she smiled noticing that you were so distracted that you were never aware of how I was watching you with carnal desire and painfully bad adoration.

"I-can I help you." He was surprised at his little babble, justifying himself later. Nobody ever managed to make him nervous, his father used to despise weak people and certainly he always sought his approval by doing things that were not correct. "They seem heavy."

Your face pale before the scare, turning into a face of shame quickly, you shook your head with a gentle movement, smiling still pained. "I'm fine sir. Can I help you? Maybe he got lost, let me guide-..."

"Actually, I do need help but not with your services." I speak in disagreement, you seemed confused but she nodded at his request. The customer is always right, right? How convenient. "I need you to allow me to help you with that heavy box, not to be rude or calling you weak miss, but you can't seem to handle it."

Lie, under his politically correct excuse was a dialogue about how insufficient you are even with things as easy and common as carrying a box, obviously you needed his help and Hoseok could give you that and more, much more. You just had to say it, it was so simple and fun.

"I -... I can do it, but i will accept your help sir ..." He smiled making an emphasis for he to give him his name, he let out a small laugh finishing his sentence.

“Hoseok, you can call me Hoseok, darling..." He mock imitating his position, your name left your lips like a melody and he immediately felt the sweet taste of it slide down his tongue. Beautifully perfect, indeed. "Now that we can finish the introductions please allow me."

Her expensive outfit crumpled as she bent down to lift the box with ease, you were once again oblivious to her incoherent and certainly crazy fantasies, it was like a romance comedy movie in her eyes. The charming fellow always stays with the girl. And likewise, no one could go against the fictional plot.

He was immersed in the beautiful narrative that you would be hers at the end of the credits.

It was not the last time she saw you, she returned to her same routine of continuing to stalk you with obvious impudence. The only thing that really changed was her new setting and her character, he was hiding between the shelves waiting for the right moment to appear in front of you with a charming smile. Over and over, he was locked in an infinite loop.

He was starting to get tired of just having you in his arms and sheets just in his heavy and lustful dreams.

"A date? How funny Hoseok."

His face twisted in annoyance, but he put on a fake smile again when you looked at him again. "Hobi." He corrected in a high-pitched voice, insisting that you call him that. "And she spoke very seriously my dear, everything is ready."

"Eh ... I -..." A simple wave of her hands was enough to shut you up, you frown in confusion and secretly disgusted.

"On Saturday, I'll send you the address of the restaurant. Goodbye, dear!"

You watch it for a few seconds but he's already gone, you resign yourself to continuing with your work of ordering the products on the shelves. Thinking and trying to remember when you gave him your number. A very characteristic noise distracts you, a call makes you smile with love and adoration.

The plot is taking an interesting turn.

Hoseok was charming by nature, his economic position made him even more desirable to the opposite gender and even his own. It was not strange to see people flirting with him or being suggestive with his proposals, he was on a pedestal and he enjoyed it. His subconscious whispered a little bored. I couldn't deny that he became boring in a way, but you appeared in the story as an extra who soon became a main character. You changed the script of his life already established and narrated.

You were so funny.

He smiled in front of the mirror when he thought of you, since he met you that day he started chatting with you secretly from your supervisor. You had told him several anecdotes to make him laugh, you were also naturally charming pulling out various expressions of adoration that you did not even notice. Oblivious to that, you'd better get ready for the climax of the movie.

The wind was strong in the streets of Seoul, your hair was noticeably messy causing you to let out a tired sigh. You should be planning your wedding banquet right now, but you honestly didn't want to leave Hoseok alone at the dinner he had organized. You put the invitation in your bag, thinking of giving it to her when the time was right with a smile. He seemed like a good person and undoubtedly a good friend in the future.

"You're on time, I was just about to order our food. Honey." The last word slid down his tongue with malice and arrogance, Hoseok inwardly chuckling at your disengaged expression.

"Thanks, but don't stop you can order for both." You say arranging your chair correctly.

The restaurant looked relatively empty, there were only three other people including a couple who ate dinner while chatting enthusiastically.

You smile unconsciously, thinking about what would also make you feel the same way.

"I was looking forward to this dinner, my dear. I also hoped I could tell you how much you have captivated me for a long time, specifically since the first day I saw you." And the others too, he thought shifting your posture.

"Thank you, I'm very flattered to cause that feeling ... in, good in you." You whisper clearly uncomfortable forcing yourself to stay calm. You were sure that you had never given a hint or anything else in Hoseok to establish romantic feelings. "But I-... "

"I know, darling. That is why I have to offer you the opportunity to be my girlfriend and my future wife."

Wife?

For a moment, you feel a rush through your body. You refuse to make a scene in front of all the few people present out of respect, you calm down by counting to ten slowly in your head, but it becomes very difficult for you as you continue to observe his comfortable smile and how he behaves. He seemed very sure of the affirmative respect you would give him, you snort angrily at the thought.

"I am sorry to have been misunderstood Mr. Hoseok, but I am not seeking a relationship with you and very sorry I reject any relationship beyond friendship." Your body lifts up, making Hoseok laugh well in advance of your final sentences. "I am engaged and my future husband is waiting for me, good afternoon."

Trembling, you leave the invitation in silence, leaving the luxurious premises in the same way. The waiters watching you with surprise, being an audience of rejection and humiliation on your part. Hoseok sighs, sipping his wine glass patiently pretending not to hear what the couple behind him are saying.

What a bad luck.

Life wanted to want to return all his damn vanity to him, making fun of him with your almost imminent rejection, obviously he knew that you were engaged and that you loved the poor man who had the bad luck to be his competition, but love is not always the important thing in a relationship or at least not of both parties. The voices of the waiters and the couple distract him from his plans for his next step, he clenches his fists angrily dropping the silverware on the plate calling the attention of everyone in the place.

"Filthy vulgar and talkative people, she will be my wife even if her words have been heard by her prying ears." He raised his voice, causing everyone to shut up. "It's just part of the script."

Maybe if the character who wanted to be the main loses the role of him, he should be the villain. The bad guy in the movie.

He read the invitation with meticulous delicacy, laughing at the little message you put aside. He thought about attending for a second, wondering if it would be nice to walk in to go straight to the altar and shoot your husband willing to take his place by your side. But that would be risky.

"Where are we going, sir?" He asked his driver with a smile.

"Take me to the best brothel in Seoul." He whispered delicately, smiling just as happily as before your rejection. I'd make you pay double the bill for your indulgence.

And likewise, the world is a truly small place. Jungkook nodded clearly uncomfortable obeying someone other than Mr. Jung. Hoseok cornered him like a helpless rabbit in the claws of a cunning fox, flashing his jaw in warning. He felt confused about his little assigned task, watching the direction pointing the right way to his chauffeur who only followed orders.

A small feeling of remorse ran through him, making him want to vomit when he remembered how Hoseok's face was so close to his with arrogance, as his hands roamed his arms gently. He was disgusting how he used his power to such a useless and demanding gain, sometimes without any realism.

"Little Jungkook, you have a very lovely name. I'm sorry I didn't tell you before, you were so insignificant that you seemed pathetic to me." He whispered making her wince. "My father told me that you are good at obeying, I would like to test his theory." His cold hands were constantly running down his arms, making a shiver run through his body. "Still remembering well, I already did it before."

Jungkook was weak under his cloak of power, where he could so easily hide it. Lose it. "Yes, h-hyung." An inappropriate moan came from his lips causing him to cover her mouth in shame, a little touch near his crotch was enough to tempt him. Hoseok smirked, narrowing his eyes before walking away slowly wiping his fingers on his expensive clothes in disgust.

"I want you to befriend someone, don't ask, just do it. I'll tell you your next step when you're done." He ordered bored.

"We are here, young Jeon." Notice Jimin with a smile, Jungkook sighed wearily thanking him before getting out of the car ready to fulfill his mission.

I observe him for a few seconds standing in the entrance without doing anything, he was cleaning the windows of the building with force. He seemed like a nice person, certainly a bit humble. He approached making the man bow respectfully, even though he was older. Money can buy everything, they say.

"I am young Jeon, a new investor. May I have a chat with you?"

The man was surprised, no one who was someone by name and a few numbers along with several zeros would be able to notice his presence and at least greet him. A coffee sounded more intimate and undoubtedly inconvenient for him, but again out of respect he accepted the offer with a smile adorning his features.

"My name is Jungkook informally, but I like you and you can call me that." He spoke kindly.

"Namjoon, Mr. Je -... I'm sorry, Jungkook." He corrected sheepishly, making her smile.

He still didn't understand that he planned to do Hoseok with a building cleaner, but he didn't feel in a position worth asking. Furthermore, he would still not receive an honest answer.

He passed by the same place every day, pretending to enter the building only so he could meet Mr. Kim and talk about unimportant subjects. He gained his trust almost immediately, promising that he would give her a better job soon at his own company. He felt like an idiot taking advantage of the man in front of him in such a way for a simple whim from Hoseok.

He was an idiot, but he didn't want to go back to what he was before. A pet.

"I'm very happy, I think she will make a good wife." He responded with encouragement, seeing how Namjoon nodded looking for a picture of his fiancée to show him. He seemed excited, Jungkook understood his happiness after he explained that he saved for a long time to achieve his dream of getting married in a church. They were both in it together, in looking for a future.

He got lost in his thoughts, maybe if he lied to Hoseok about gaining trust from him, saying that Namjoon was a very cold and quiet man, he could make him forget about it. He sighed squeezing the coffee cup in his hands, Namjoon caught his attention by showing a photo of you smiling at the camera with a background of the bridge and the sun behind making a beautiful background.

Jungkook became alert, having seen that face before.

Hoseok had you as the wallpaper on his phone, he knew it was you because of your characteristic features and the scarf you wore in both photos. You were the new fad of a rich fool.

"T-is ... She's so cute, you're very lucky."

Namjoon nodded with a smile, apologizing before returning to his work upon being called by his supervisor. Jungkook put aside his cup feeling the bitter taste of his thoughts, Hoseok was planning something, he knew he was a son of a bitch who liked to keep his plans under lock and key and in a deep grave. He walked away calling for Jimin quickly, before being accosted by Namjoon who came running over, seemingly forgetting something of the utmost importance.

"I apologized Mr. Jeon, but I wanted to give you this personally. It is an invitation, in addition to the proposal to be the best man at our wedding. My fiancee said that it would be appropriate for me to choose someone and I decided that you were perfect, you can decline if you prefer. . " He spoke kindly, as always. Namjoon seemed to have no hatred in his heart, making his own feel heavy on his chest.

Could he bear the blame?

"It's my pleasure to accept her proposal, thank you for considering me. Good afternoon, namjoon-hyung."

He said goodbye by getting into the car as fast as he could, making Jimin look at him with derision. Obviously noticing his nervousness, Jungkook sighed hiding the invitation as much as he could before reading Hoseok's message ordering him to go to his house to sort out his affairs.

It seemed like a joke as he always looked so flawless, ready to humiliate him again.

"Jungkookie, I'm glad to see you again. Now, we'd better come in for our talk." He smiled making anger grow inside him, Hoseok sat on one of his expensive furniture before pouring himself a glass of wine. "Well, I heard from a little bird that you accomplished your task. Good pet."

"Don't call me that, hyung." He grunted in annoyance, making him laugh. "I can't go through with this, I did what you wanted. Leave Namjoon-hyung alone."

"Oh, they're close now really cute. But you forget that I can't fulfill your wish, because "Namjoon-hyung " is an essential piece in my little game." I speak mocking him as always. "Then we will move on to the next step ..." He thinking for a moment, before snapping his fingers. "Invite him to a bachelor party night at the brothel in the center, I already made the reservation. When they are there, leave him alone. A whore will take care of him properly, and maybe you can go make him a oral another yourself." He sneered evilly, reminding her of his past, Jungkook bit his tongue resisting the urge to respond properly. "Since you're clearly good at it, little pet."

"Yes, hyung."

Hoseok nodded saying for him to leave asap, tired of seeing his stupid face. He got up ready to do so, but his arm was taken tightly before bringing his face closer to hers, Hoseok let out a sigh, doing he could smell his breath of mint and wine combined. His hand lowered him into his pockets dangerously close to his crotch, he bit his lower lip to resist a moan escaping him, this had happened before and he begged it to stop forever. From his pocket, she pulled the invitation out, making her gasp in horror.

"Godfather of wedding, new facet of you... kookie." Rolling he eyes pushing him away from him, he fell to the ground before being met by a blow to his cheek. "What a shitty pet, you idiot."

Two days was enough for you to tremble at the thought. Your dress was proud to be seen, it was the most comfortable dress you could find at a fair price. Namjoon tried to enter but he was stopped by your friend who said that he will wait until you keep the dress out of his sight avoiding bad luck. A smile wavered on your face, everything was perfect up to a point.

Namjoon looked at you, a blush covering his cheeks before asking his obvious question. You didn't expect him to want a bachelor party, but you couldn't refuse because you simply trusted him.

Maybe it was your mistake.

You wished him luck, feeling an inexplicable emptiness. Your friends didn't offer to make one for you, they just sat on the couch in their living room talking about movies and arguing about what color the cake would be. It was the calm before the storm.

Jungkook felt a giant headache, the lights of the place were making him dizzy. Jimin had insisted on going with him to such an 'unusual' place to keep him safe. Namjoon had brought a couple of friends who seemed to be always close to him preventing the woman who did the job Hoseok had him do from becoming difficult.

He smiled, thinking that he would have no choice but to let it go. But Hoseok was not a good loser, and neither was he a good winner.

Hoseok:

He distracts his friends, and be careful what you say, kookie.

Received at 11:30 p.m.

He bit his lip, glancing around the bar, thinking he'd find him sitting somewhere spying on everything but nothing looked suspicious. He sighed, sending Jimin out for drinks with one of Namjoon's friends who he gladly accepted. He got up having pushed one away, the other who introduced himself as Jackson seemed more reluctant to leave his friend alone but with a few excuses about feeling bad managed to get him out of sight.

Believed that he would find Namjoon sitting right where he was before but no, he was gone. He felt a burning feeling of guilt, maybe if you didn't find out, nothing would happen.

"You're still the same as before, boss." Jimin sat down next to him, making him uncomfortable.

"Same as before? I am no longer a child."

"But you continue to obey as one. The manipulation they use on you is your greatest weakness, you are afraid, you obey without hesitation thinking about how this will indirectly affect you. But you never do anything to avoid it, you feel bad about this but you still sit here without doing nothing."

"What can I do, Jimin? I don't know if he really left by his will, or if they forced him. I don't want to enter a room in this dirty place and see him sleeping with another woman, because he wanted to and is a fucking infidel . "

Jimin ignored his words, falling silent after several seconds.

Feeling unhappy is a horrible feeling without a doubt. The curious eyes looked at you as if they themselves could judge your story.

Namjoon disappeared as quickly as the wind, many sharp tongues said that he eloped with a lover so as not to marry you. Others believed it was a kidnapping, maybe a robbery gone wrong and he was taken away or he was killed somewhere far away. A sob escaped you just thinking about it, the detective in front of you watched you cautiously.

"We don't know anything about him yet, but we will continue with the investigations."

You nod, without saying a word. Jungkook came in minutes later with a handkerchief in hand, he observed you before gently hugging you. You had the pleasure of meeting him after Namjoon disappeared that night, he introduced himself as a close friend from work and quickly offered to help you with the search.

Maybe he felt guilt.

"Thanks, Jungkook." You smile wiping the tears that escape from your eyes.

"They are looking for the best they can, they even alerted the Japanese embassies in case they might take him there."

"Japan?" Puzzled questions. "Why would someone take him so far? He's just a man with little money, that's ridiculous."

"We don't know, but I promise I won't rest until I find it."

Hoseok sighs bored, witnessing the moment. He had been bribing the bloody police force to hide the information from you about the discovery of your fiancé's corpse floating in the middle of the waters of the river where they used to go together. The only thing that was removed intact from his clothes was a small photo of you smiling, sitting on the banks of the same river.

The police mourned the death, but his faces left grief when they saw the money in his hands. He made fun of Jungkook as usual, who passed by him ignoring him when he went to his house to talk to his father, he knew that the useless little one was very meddlesome in the search for your future husband and ex-fiance. He rolled her eyes remembering how she used to look at him with discontent in meetings, suspicious of him.

He was a good detective, he couldn't deny the obvious.

"You didn't have to do this, a I'm sorry was enough." You say admiring all the bouquets of flowers that came to your house from him. "And I'm sorry for your loss."

He wasn't sorry.

"My dear, losing a loved one is something without a name. I can give you more than this if you promise to smile again, I love your smiles."

Jungkook snorts approaching you from behind, Hoseok to growl at noticing him so close and see how he puts his hand on your shoulder, apparently like support.

"Hyung, he didn't think it's a good time for ... That."

"But little kook, when is not a good time to express how you feel about your loved one?"

"When that person you say you love is crying over the loss of someone special because of evil people who don't know what remorse is. Do you understand that, hyung?"

"No, not really." He laughs cynically making you lose your patience, your little body comes between the two men, with one already furious and the other inadvertently giving up, you make a face of annoyance before speaking.

"Sirs!" You yell at him immediately, Jungkook steps back adjusting his tie. A mania that he had and that you noticed when he presented himself in front of you with regret, he did it when he was uncomfortable or nervous. "This is not the time to argue, I think you'd better leave my house if you're just wasting your time. Thanks for the flowers Hoseok, and Jungkook ... I, I want to continue the investigation on my own."

"That?!"

"What you heard, don't feel responsible for Namj's disappearance -..." You tremble correcting your words, making Hoseok scoff. "My husband, he was just at the wrong time in the wrong place. Thanks for your help, I'll see how to pay you very soon." Jungkook denies trying to insist but fails when you are already closing the door and giving him an apologetic smile.

Your breath feels heavy, you sigh falling to the ground sobbing again. You wanted to find Namjoon, but a large part of you was afraid of how. Dead, with another woman, with serious injuries or simply ... Alive but with trauma for life. You did not want to see him suffer, it was your judgment in life to see the person you love cry in his pain.

You observe yourself, telling yourself that you would be fine when you find it.

Your email seems to explode with thousands of messages received from people claiming to have seen a man like Namjoon near their homes. You ignore them knowing that most of them were false, the first few days you read all of them giving the police false clues that they quickly denied and dismissed.

You dry your tears, closing all the windows and cooking a simple instant soup, eating in absolute silence. It was overwhelming feeling alone at home, where you were supposed to feel safe indoors.

The rain, thunder, and evil outside seemed to be invisible within that place.

A chill runs through you, the control of the television seemed tempting to calm that neat silence and avoid your boredom. You give up turning on the TV, you see the first channel, you keep changing looking for the unknown, you didn't know what you wanted to see. Maybe a newscast saying they found a tall man with dark brown hair and charming eyes unconscious, with a couple of blows to the face and a few scratches but okay, safe, alive and waiting to see your face waiting for him with a warm smile.

Swearing never ever to let go.

A couple of tears slide down your cheek, ruining your fast food. A few knocks on the door manage to scare you, causing you to bite your lip in anger.

"Who is?!" Questions in a shout.

Nothing.

"It better be good ..." You say in muttered, you open the door expecting to see a child running to his house laughing at his childish joke.

But no, there is no one at the door. Just a small envelope that easily slipped underneath, you take it hoping it's a letter from the police announcing good news. Maybe a simple identification of suspicious faces, or footprints at the club.

"I hate being the bad guy, it makes me feel good.

He's dead, I did it for you. For me. For us. I want to make you happy but it's so difficult when I don't know what you want, tell me what you want.

Love you. Love you. Love you.

My heart is so weak in your cold eyes, I feel that you look at me with ignorance of my feelings. Do you want to find it? Do you want to do it?! Okay. Good luck with it. "

It was everything, plus a picture of a golden ring with a large diamond shining brightly. You wrinkle the letter in anger, tossing it into the first bin you found nearby. It seems that in the end, someone did want to joke with you.

Your days remained the same, you went out to work and in the afternoons you called each of the investigators to ask for new news, it was almost always a solid wall, there was nothing really important to report and little by little, they gave up.

Jungkook knocked on the door, he heard some footsteps approaching making him have a little hope. But when the door opened he saw you with a worried face, he felt his heart squeeze in his chest when he tried to get closer but you avoid him by leaving in a hurry. You were dressed in a long black skirt and a white blouse, you were elegantly ready for something.

"Where are you going?" He ask stopping your hurried pace, taking your arm tightly.

"Yo, listen... He... Or her, I don't know who it is but ... You know, he or her know where, he's alive I know. I just don't have time, please."

Your mouth moves wiht fear, you were hiding something but not from him. You were willing to tell him but not now. Not at that time.

"Let me accompany you, I can take you and I will feel better if you are safe."

You nod, letting go of his grip and running down the stairs, outside there is a very elegant car, apparently waiting. The driver smiles at you as if he had known you before, you make an uncomfortable face trying to continue on your way but Jungkook introduces him saying that he works for him.

"Jimin, he's Jimin. He's a good person and a great friend, I've told him about you before."

"I see, sorry." You speak with a bow before climbing to the back, Jimin just smiles kindly, as always.

"Where are we going today?" He asks animatedly, Jungkook takes your hand for support making Jimin remove the smile from him. Your nervous state and your afflicted face are enough for him to understand the situation.

You give him an address, Jimin searches the map being unknown to the place. Your eyes sparkle when the lights of Seoul are reflected in them, Jungkook holds your hand tightly in fear of letting you go again. He felt sick when you stopped calling him, cutting connections with him totally to this day. He spend sleepless nights looking for more clues, the only thing I had until that moment was the identity of the woman, she was a prostitute without anything special, when he spoke with her he seemed indifferent saying that he did not know Namjoon and that the last time he saw him It was when he drugged him and left him in a room as ordered.

The whore made fun of him saying that he would give him this information if he did not tell the police anything, he obviously accepted. Now he repented, the woman disappeared after that and days later she was found in a garbage container. It seemed to be a suicide, the container was from her building, the window of her old apartment faced just where she was supposed to fall if she threw herself without thinking twice.

Right in the garbage.

The wheels of the car made a thud when it stopped, it was a cabin, the only one nearby. You came down quickly thanking Jimin who just made a flirty face. Your hands trembled with the cold, you look at the letter that tells you where and when you should be standing at the door.

"Wait for me here, if we don't go out or you hear noises, you know who to call."

"Yes sir!" Jimin obeys with a laugh at the boss's serious tone of him.

"Y-you should go, I can do this alone." Your voice rises in the echo of the silent place, Jungkook rolls his eyes before offering his arm to you, making his decision clear.

You laugh calming your nerves, the door opens just as you both step close to it. A man stops them, saying that only you can enter the next room. You stop Jungkook who was to protest, you calm him down by leaving your ring in his hands with a smile.

Your body disappears when another man closes the door silently, Jungkook sighs looking annoyed at the guards who ignore him.

A message coming to his phone distracts him for a few seconds.

Jimin:

Should I call the police, Mr. Jung, or the hospital?

Received at 9:35 p.m.

Smile ready to answer before hearing the door open again, he approaching you to ask everything and at the same time nothing. Your pale face is enough to make want to hit the person who was inside with you. Questions remain in the air, your arms surround him while you sob for forgiveness.

From the shadows Hoseok smiles, admiring the document in his hand, your signature shiny as gold is glued to it. He thought it would be more difficult to convince you to accept his marriage proposal, but the precious and expensive ring fit you perfectly. He raised his hand proudly admiring his own, the wedding would be planned as soon as possible making him jump like a happy child.

You had accepted, with the promise that he would bring you back to Namjoon.

But it was never specified in the contract that he would be alive.

The wedding was in a meadow, outdoors with distinguished guests and a few friends and family of yours. Hoseok greeted everyone, by taking your hand tightly introducing you as his wife immediately. It's as if he wants to show everyone that you now belong to him, as if you were a prize.

And maybe if you gave him the key to her success.

"You better smile my dear, nobody wants to know what will happen if you don't." Her lips brushed your hand before placing a chaste kiss on it. "I love you, my beautiful protagonist."

You sob, tears falling from your face as you melt into his disgusting caresses. The man in front of you, your un-predestined husband. The one who stole the position of your true love, he was kissing you delicately.

"Don't cry, decorate the room just the way you wanted. The photos were a special touch ..." His teeth bit into the sensitive skin of your neck, an involuntary groan of pain escaping. "Love you."

Your eyes move desperately to find a photo where the beaten, abused or dead body of Namjoon cannot be seen. You scream when you find one where you see blood everywhere, you are resigned to look down at the ground where Hoseok was crouching kissing the inside of your thighs.

Your mind tried to process the idea that Namjoon had been killed, mutilated and thrown into a river that washed away his body along with happy memories. Farewell to him was prolonged as your body faded in pain.

Hoseok enjoyed the sight of your eyes tightly closed, his cock throbbing inside you as she fucked you like his wife.

The head of the bed moved crashing into the wall, and unconsciously your walls tightened around it causing it to release a curse aloft to the sky.

We got to the end of the movie, smiled as he dazzled the credits by seeing Jungkook's lost name. His little bitch who was his toy for many years, laughed remembering how she did wonders with her mouth.

He pretended not to know him when her father introduced him, taunting her hurt face.

He held you in his arms tightly, you had been struggling to free yourself from his grip as he continued to abuse you over-stimulating your pussy. Your eyes closed falling asleep from crying so much.

He caressed your face, kissing your dry, chapped lips.

The end.

#bts #bts smut #bts yandere #yandere #kpop #yandere bts #yandere bts au #yandere kpop #yandere!bts #hoseok yandere #yandere hoseok #jhope #yandere! jhope #jhope smut #hoseok smut #bts fic #bts x reader #hoseok x reader #yandere hoseok x reader

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astranva · 4 years

Text

Dream With Me

Word Count: 3.8k

Warnings: Some explicit language? Not really though.

Category: Pure fluff!

Summary: One thing Harry loves about his girlfriend is her ability to make up the most interesting bedtime stories for him every night. How does it make her feel when he narrates one of her own to the world?

The one where Y/N makes up bedtime stories for Harry and he records one for the world to listen to.

When you tour the world, sing and prance on stages, write, model, play the guitar and piano, get interviewed, have people follow you everywhere, it’s safe to say that the best time to relax and let loose is when you sleep.

Harry enjoyed staying home with his girlfriend more than anything. Relaxed, chill days were his favorite; days when she’d be on the couch reading or on her laptop playing whatever video game she decided to try with people from online, he’d be lounging lazily beside her, his breath steady and calm when she’d run her fingers through his hair momentarily or when he’d be subconsciously playing with hers.

Days when their apartment would smell like pastries after she’d try baking something she saw on the television, or when it would smell like her favorite homecooked meal that Harry’s eyes would almost glimmer with happiness when she’d sneak and steal from the food he was cooking, watching her closing her eyes and a smile making its way to her face the moment she does, and he’d know that he has done a good job this time, again.

Harry loved the domestic life as much as he loved his job as an artist and entertainer. The euphoria he got the moment the crowd sang back to him, is one that he felt he achieved as well when he was with his girlfriend of 2 years when she’d be dancing to his songs in his clothes. The happiness he felt when someone would hug him and tell him that he means so much to them, is one he feels within just her smile in mornings or the soft, random kisses she’d give him. The bashfulness that would engulf him when someone would tell him that he’s good looking, was one that he felt when his girlfriend would tease him by wolf-whistling when he’d show her a new outfit or suit or just going anywhere really.

Don’t even get him started on how he feels with every single “I love you” she promises him because he was sure there would be no feeling close to what he feels when he hears those words from her, and especially her.

But there was something else about her, too, that nobody could give him but her – her stories.

Touring the world and doing what he does is hectic, of course, it is. It can be stressful, pressuring, and just plain tiring. So when he goes back home later than her after her job, and he goes straight into her arms, she knows he’s going to need a story to sleep better.

He’d nuzzle his head in her neck, smelling the scent of her shampoo with a whiff of her bodywash, his arms around her waist, hers around his neck, her hands moving to gently and lightly scratch his scalp.

“How was your day?” Harry would mumble, closing his eyes and letting her softly sway them in their place.

“Was alright,” she’d answer softly, “How was yours?”

And the sigh he’d release would be enough of an answer – tiring.

“Take a quick shower, yeah? Are you hungry?” She’d pull back to look at him, a soft smile on her lips as she asks him.

Harry would shake his head, “No, still feel too full from lunch.”

“Let me grab you an apple though. Lunch was a long time ago.” She’d pat his chest, “Go. How do we feel tonight? Do we feel like rescuing dwarfs or ending capitalism?” She’d grin, and it would instantly make him grin.

“Anything is fine. Just want to sleep with you beside me.”

On some days, they’d lie on their bed and she’d make up a story about how there were 3 dwarfs who lived in a mansion with everything miniature-sized and would climb each other and wear a coat and a fedora whilst outside. Why? “You can’t tell me you never wanted to try that, Harry!”

Then on other days, she’d tell a story about a boy named Harry with a rapidly growing fish in his backpack. Ring any bell? She remembers starting that series a long time ago with him, adding twists, comedy, and metaphors along the way until Harry decided to surprise her one day with an idea for his music video;

“Hey, baby, remember the fish in my backpack? We’re using that in Adore You! See you soon! Love you xx” he had texted.

Other days she’d make him think with the most random questions and assumptions.

“History is biased, Harry. When will the world stop considering Christopher Columbus a discoverer and instead take accountability for what he did to the natives of the land? What if Christopher never happened?”

And he’d be looking at her as she talked, one of her hands playing with his hair while the other moved all over the place for emphasis and to show how absolutely wonderful and amusing that mess of her mind was.

Some days, she’d be too tired. Drained from a day at her work, she’d be lazily playing with hair as her story was told in some sort of slurs.

“And then-And then they held hands, got on their horses and- no, they got on their skateboards,” she’d chuckle sleepily, “And they ran away. They didn’t have children because they didn’t want children and figured that the world was too ugly for that right now, so they adopted a blind dog and a deaf cat, and lived happily ever after.” She’d be out the moment she finishes, and Harry would be smiling at that and his heart thumping with love for her and love for how hard she has been trying to keep the ritual of a bedtime story alive, even when she was too sleepy and tired. It could be a 1-minute story and he’d feel better, and lighter.

It was one day when Harry went back home, turmoil evident and clear on his face. She noticed how tense his body was, how he clenched his jaw and saw him rubbing his temple as he took off his cardigan and was proven right when she put her laptop on the couch beside her and Harry took a breath before letting her know what happened;

“Fucking paparazzi. Do they think that’s an actual job?”

That day, he had showered and changed into one of her oversized hoodies (he was sure it used to belong to him) and shorts before joining her in their living room to find a tuna club sandwich waiting for him with a small cup of orange juice, his girlfriend under a blanket which she had retrieved when he was showering.

He told her all about the drama he faced that day over his tuna sandwich, giving her “thank you!”s every single time she agreed with him on how annoying they were.

“I get that people are different and that the economy is shit and everybody’s doing anything to get money but trying to trip me so they could get a photo? Why?” He rhetorically asked, shrugging.

“I agree, like,” her eyebrows furrowed as one of her arms reached out as if she was talking to somebody else but him, “Treat people with kindness, you assholes!”

And then there was a pause before Harry began to giggle, all the way to a loud laugh and struggling to catch his breath. She joined him, choosing to tackle him in a hug, hugging his head close to her chest before kissing his forehead, “Nobody is allowed to make you mad, you hear me, Styles? Now finish up, I think I know what to say tonight.”

She had taken a seat on Harry’s piano right after she uttered her last word, Harry turning his body around as he watched her with excitement and amusement. She cleared her throat, “This next song is dedicated to my mans,” Harry laughed, taking his phone in his hand and recording her as a keepsake, “It’s a song I worked very hard on. Stayed up all day and night.” She played offkey notes on the piano, “Harry, love,” she said slowly as she turned her head around to look at him, laughing when she found him recording her with the biggest grin on his face, “This one is for you.”

He had taught her how to play the Happy Birthday theme song on the piano when she joined him on tour once and began laughing when he heard her playing exactly that but with her own lyrics.

“Y/N makes me good stories, Y/N makes me good stories, Y/N makes me good stories,” she pressed the wrong key, letting out a tiny “oop” before continuing, “And she will make me sleep better toooonight.”

After, what she called a “skit”, they both brushed their teeth, did their night-time skincare routine, and were finally in bed.

Taking their usual position, Harry was on his side, looking at her with one arm draped around her waist. She was on her side, looking at him, one hand playing with his hair.

“Let’s try something different,” she suggested softly. “Close your eyes.”

Harry smiled at her, squinting teasingly which caused her to chuckle softly.

“Close your eyes, you baboon.”

So he did.

“Follow my instructions. Take a deep breath in,” she instructed, watching and hearing him follow her, “And then out. In.” He did as was said, “And out.”

Harry felt like almost sleeping from just how soft and gentle she was being, with the couple of deep breaths that he took, it felt like he could really feel how soothing the setting was; his hair played with, on clean sheets that smelled like the vanilla detergent they both loved mixed with her own scent, her presence beside him. It felt like heaven.

“Have you ever wondered what happens when you sleep?” She rhetorically asked, “Where you go, and what you feel; the places that you seek. When you start to drift away, your mind becomes a book,” she paused, “That writes itself then fades away before you wake to look.”

Harry almost swooned at what she said, embracing the calmness her words, voice, and overall presence radiated.

“Tonight, we’re going to think about anything you’d like.”

His mind instantly flashed to a scene that he had been dreaming and thinking too much about. The beach, him and his Y/N, wet with water and laughing before 3 kids were squealing and running around them. Call him a sap, but he saw a future with her and he loved kids.

“But let’s visualize some scenes. Clear your mind, love.” The hand which played with his hair stopped momentarily before he felt her knuckles softly caressing his temple and down to his cheek, making his reflexively smile which instantly put a smile on her face. “Let’s head to places more celestial.” She whispered.

“Imagine you’re there beneath the stars, which when you pause to think about it, actually, you are.” A sweet, gentle kiss followed her statement on his nose, watching him scrunch it with a wide smile and a hot face with a blush.

“You are, too.” He whispered, inching closer to her.

“Hush.” She said jokingly but blushed, before continuing the story which she had actually been thinking about for a while but saved for the right time.

She went on, describing sceneries for him and watching his lips tug into smiles as he listened to her, his face showing her different emotions despite having his eyes closed.

“Travel with me to moonlit valleys, blanketed with heather, the kind of landscape you and I could dream about forever.”

Harry was sure that if he wasn’t so sleepy, he’d be grabbing his journal to jot down everything she was saying and make it into a song, but he couldn’t cut their moment short. He didn’t have the heart to.

His Y/N continued, letting him relax more and more with every word she said.

He probably smiled the widest and felt like his heart would beat its way out of chest when she spelled out the word “love” to him, pecking different parts on his face with a kiss as she did.

“L,” she pecked his nose, “O,” she pecked one of his eyes and giggled when his face scrunched up in surprise, “V,” she pecked his temple, “E,” she pecked his cheek, “Love.” She kissed him softly and quickly.

And when she told him to think of “the ones he cherishes the most”, Harry couldn’t help but let out a low sigh of contentment as he imagined a garden with his family, friends and in between them, right under a spotlight, stood his Y/N in a flowy white floral dress, smiling so lovingly at him.

That night, Y/N watched Harry’s body get more relaxed by the minute, breath getting steadier until she realized that he had fallen asleep, his arm limp on her waist and his leg draped over hers.

“Goodnight.” She whispered.

He woke up before her the following morning, with a smile that proved that he, in fact, had a good and peaceful night's sleep. When he woke up, he realized that she was spooning him; one of her arms holding him tight, her leg over him, her head leaning against the back of his as he held her hand which was draped on his stomach.

Harry had to pause and reflect. Yesterday’s bedtime stories were probably one of her best and he was sure that if his Y/N decided to take that to the next level and write it down and read it to help ease those with a difficulty sleeping or anxiety, she would be helping out more people than she would imagine.

He stayed in his place for a while, scrolling through his phone and watching the previous night’s video without sound so that he wouldn’t disturb her. He watched how she laughed in that video, how domestically free and shamelessly herself she was, how she effortlessly managed to carry the weight of that day’s burdens off of his shoulders and throw it away.

Y/N woke up not long after and Harry felt it when he heard her let out a groan before she stretched, him instantly turning around to see her. “Good morning, beastie.” He joked as he always did to her in the morning.

“Morning, beauty.” She replied sleepily with a smile. “How was your sleep?”

“I’m certain that you’re a magician, Y/N. I’m sure of it.”

“Oh shoot. Caught.” She teased, wrapping herself around him by climbing and lying on top of him, feeling his arms wrap around her. “But really, how was it?”

“It was amazing. What was that last night?” He asked gently.

“What? You didn’t like it?”

“Like-Y/N, I loved it. That was some therapeutic shit right there.” His chest vibrated with chuckles, “Seriously. I think I want you to record that.”

Her eyebrows rose up and as did her head as she looked at him, “Really?”

“Yes!” He nodded eagerly.

“Wait, I have to show you something now that you mentioned it.” She grinned before climbing off of him and getting out of bed and walking towards her bedside table, mumbling about how she could’ve “shifted closer and gotten it without having to get out of bed.” She opened her drawer, taking out the notebook Mitch had gifted her for some reason last Christmas. It was a medium-sized notebook which had koalas on it with the title being “I’m 100% koalafied to become president!”

She sat beside Harry, who sat up and looked at her with both confusion and excitement as she shuffled through the pages.

“Here,” she stopped at one page, “That’s like, an outline? I don’t know what you call it. But I decided I’d write a bedtime story for you and that’s what I read to you yesterday.” She looked like a kid who had just won first place at a spelling-bee competition as she gave Harry her notebook.

His eyes fell on the title, “Dream with me.” He said softly.

“It’s cliché I know, forget about it.” She said bashfully, waving her hands around.

“No, it’s not,” Harry shook his head, “I did dream with you. Darling, this is incredible.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes!” Harry laughed excitedly, putting the notebook aside, “Write more, will you?” He asked softly as he opened his arms, letting her move to place herself on his lap and wrap her arms around him.

“Don’t treat me as if I’m a professional. You’re overfeeding my ego.” She joked.

“And why not? You are the best bedtime storyteller I have ever seen.” He said lowly.

“You think too highly of me, Harry.”

“Not too high,” He shook his head with a smug smile, “Just enough to appreciate how bloody talented you are.”

And that began a new ritual. It then became usual for Harry to find his girlfriend perched up anywhere, her koala notebook supported on a cushion on her lap as she wrote away stories which she told him every night, deciding on the perfect ones according to different times and moods.

One day, an idea popped in her head.

Due to the pandemic and how they were both staying safe and going out only when absolutely necessary, Y/N knew how chaotic and sad the world was. She knew some chaos needed to happen, knew that some chaos was revolutionary which is why she decided against staying home and silent and was with Harry during the BLM protests, knowing that something had to be done and that something wasn’t to sit and mope.

But everyone deserved the breather. Everyone deserved to let out a breath and to catch a good night's sleep.

It was when she stumbled upon a video on YouTube that was a 39-minute video of just Harry talking with rain in the background and she saw the comments from fans that she gasped and almost sprinted to Harry.

Harry, sitting in his recording and music room, was sat on a chair with his guitar, strumming and humming when his girlfriend barged in and began to ramble. “I’m sorry I didn’t knock but it’s so important! There are so many people we can help, or like, you can, and it’s super easy, you already have the equipment and ev-“

“Y/N!” His eyes widened as he called for her and put his guitar aside, “Honey, calm down. It’s okay. Let’s talk. Come here.” He held his arm out.

She blushed and began laughing quietly at herself as she seated herself on his lap, brushing back her hair. “Sorry, sorry, too excited.”

Harry smiled, “And I absolutely love it but I’m having just a liiittle bit of hard time understanding.”

She laughed before taking a deep breath and straightening her posture, “Alright. You know how awful everything has been? How-How busy and noisy the world has been for a while?” She asked and Harry nodded, “Well do you know that your fans have a video of you on YouTube with many interviews in there because they love your voice? And they added rain and everything, reduced noise.”

“Oh, wow.” He tried to conceal his blush by laughing.

“I know! You know how good your voice is so why don’t you give the world a little something?”

Harry furrowed his eyebrows, “I sing?”

“No, they know that. They have your songs and covers and everything but you talking?” She raised an eyebrow at him with a suggestive smile.

“Baby, I really don’t think I’m getting anything.”

“Read them something! A bedtime story.” She suggested with an excited smile and a gleeful tone.

“Like you do to me?” He asked, wanting to understand better.

“Yeah, exactly like that. You can upload it on your website or see if any app is willing to partner, whatever you want.”

“Do you think people would like that?” Harry asked again, wrapping his arms tighter around her to bring her closer as he looked up at her.

Y/N smiled and gently cupped his face, “They’ll absolutely adore it.”

Harry hummed, in thought. “Yeah well, I can’t do that on my own.”

She nodded, “You have connections. Jeff has connections, you can find a part-“

“No, love, I mean I can’t do it without you.” He grinned up at her, watching as her face then showed confusion, “Not without your beautiful, absolutely wonderful stories.”

Her eyes widened, her head tilted. “What? No. These are for you. Told you I’m no professional, Harry. I’m sure there are faaar better people.”

Harry rolled his eyes, “Nonsense. We do this together or we let people have trouble sleeping.”

“You manipulative piece of shit.” She shook her head with a smile, leaning her head back, Harry chuckling.

“Dream with me.” He said after a moment, “I can read Dream With Me.”

She looked at him for a moment, her smile widening before she nodded, leaning down to capture his lips in a kiss. “I love you.”

Remember what I said about the indescribable feeling he got when she said those three words? It was there.

And she felt it, too, when he replied with a promise of his – “I love you, too. So much.”

---

Harry had contacted Jeff, who had contacted some people before finally landing on a partnership with Calm. There were two conditions in this work;

Harry would record from his home.

He would be reading his girlfriend’s story.

Now imagine owning a company of that sort as Calm and having Harry Styles contact you with these two conditions. Yes.

It took a couple of days. In the comfort of their own home, Harry and Y/N had him record then they would tweak some stuff then they would listen and try again. They were aware that music would be added, and Y/N was way too excited to listen to the final product.

In his denim hat, black t-shirt, striped cream-colored pants, using his Vans as slippers – which Y/N always cringed at and told him that it would ruin his shoes – and the script in his hand, Y/N stood on the side, admiring. He had allowed his scruff to grow, which she definitely wasn’t complaining about. A bracelet she made him when they were only friends years ago on his wrist, its colors washed out from when he’d shower or swim with it. Headphones were on his head, but she knew he could hear her if she said anything.

When she took her phone out to take a picture, Harry’s eyes moved to her before moving back to the script with a smile.

“Maybe all the memories that we’ve gathered here tonight are all dreams now remembered or wishes in plain sight. No matter what, they’re with us now, for this night and forever. And every time we close our eyes, they’re yours and mine to treasure. Goodnight, and sleep well.”

Harry then turned to look at her, eyes gleaming with happiness and calmness, as her hands were clutched together against her chest, watching and listening.

“I love you.” He added.

913,746 likes.

yourinstagram: Goodnight❤

#wellbeafinelime #AAA FIRST ONE! LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!#harry styles #dream with me #harry styles imagine #harry styles fluff #harry styles fluff imagine #harry styles one shot #fluff one shot #harry styles dream with me #harry styles fluff one shot #fluffy #harry styles social media au #harry styles social media imagine #harry styles instagram #social media au

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tl-notes · 3 years

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Kobayashi’s Maid Dragon S2 Episode 9 Notes

...設立から大分地盤が固まってきており、少しずつだが、業態は改善されている。

One thing to note here is that Kobayashi(‘s narration) isn’t saying the company has already made solid improvements, it’s that the company has finally established itself somewhat (as it was only founded relatively recently, and typically new companies are especially busy while trying to get off the ground) and now is starting to make improvements.

Similarly in the second sentence, it’s not “was” slow going, it’s “is still” slow going, and the working conditions “are” improving, not “have improved.”

This is がんば ganba, short of course for がんばって ganbatte, which I’m sure most of you are familiar with: the (in)famous “do your best.”

I only mention it because I like this shortened version of it. Ganba!

This is a fun little idiom(?)/saying: 鼻で笑う hana de warau (conjugated as hana de warawareta), lit. to laugh using the nose. It’s used to describe laughing at someone you’re looking down on for whatever reason (not necessarily in a super serious way, could just be a friend being dumb etc.; in this case it’s Elma’s being naive).

Typically it refers to like a “heh-but-through-the-nose” kind of “laugh,” but as you can see in this scene (where clearly Kobayashi is laughing with the mouth, even starting with “pff” lips) it works idiomatically even if the laughing isn’t only through the nose.

You may have heard that Japan is/was a “lifetime employment” country, where typically people would get hired right out of school and stay at that company until retirement. While that’s much less true today than it was even a couple of decades ago (and has become kind of controversial in ways), it’s still much more common of a practice than in say the US.

One result of this is that there’s a much bigger distinction placed between hiring people in spring as part of the annual graduation rush (the Japanese school year ends in March), and mid-career hiring. Typically you can’t participate in the fresh grad hiring if you aren’t one, even if you’re new to the field in question.

For larger employers (i.e. 5k+ employees), roughly two-thirds of all hirings come from fresh grads, and only small employers (<300 employees) hire more mid-careerists than people directly out of school.

Of course, this split tends to apply mostly to “standard” full time jobs, not so much part time, and is not necessarily a thing in every industry/at every company.

Just as a minor point of clarity, this “organized text” in Elma’s document refers to the phrase まとめられた文章 matomerareta bunshou. In a literal sense, matomerareta can mean organized/consolidated etc., and bunshou text/passages, but meaning-wise it’s more like “writing that gets its point across clearly/cleanly.”

This is a pretty big compliment and a very useful skill to have in organizations like this, as writing such that people can quickly and easily understand exactly what you’re trying to say often saves a ton of time and frustration.

我々はエルマの気迫に押されるがままにその書類を読み始めた。

Another minor point, but where the English could imply that they were overwhelmed by Elma’s intensity through the act of reading her report, the Japanese implies more that they started reading it because of how intense Elma was being.

It doesn’t really make much of a difference either way, but it stuck out a little for me.

To justify mentioning it, I guess I’ll explain the grammar point Kobayashi uses: されるがままに sareru ga mama ni. Sareru is a generic verb/verb conjugation for having something done to you (technically here it’s 押される, to be “pushed/pressed/pressured”), and mama refers to a state, condition, or “way” (like “do it this way”).

Put together, the whole phrase is used to indicate “you” do/did something that someone else wants you to, without (meaningful) opposition. (Something similar in raw meaning but with a very different connotation would be “going with the flow.”)

If a friend says “hey let’s go do something,” and next thing you know you’re out bowling despite preferring to stay at home, this is you.

You can stick the mama ni to various other things as well to come up with a similar idea, but without the sareru the nuance may end up different.

The word for clairvoyance here is 千里眼 senrigan, lit. “eye(s) [that can see] a thousand li”, li being a Chinese unit of measurement for length (shorter than a mile, but for general purposes “eyes that see a thousand miles” is basically the gist).

Despite the perhaps physical-sounding nature of the term, it does actually describe the same power as “clairvoyance” in English: being able to perceive things outside your actual range of vision, including potentially into people’s hearts and minds etc.

Hence why it’s a thousand screen display, when she updates it with tech knowledge:

“Tainted by work” here is 職業病 shokugyou-byou, lit. an occupational disease. The “proper” definition is a disease one gets from working in a particular job, such as black lung for coal miners or even posture-related health issues for desk workers.

Additionally, it’s used colloquially to refer to noticeable habits or quirks that people in a certain profession pick up, like a baker always waking up super early or a programmer using programming lingo out of context in normal conversation. The latter being especially noticeable in Japanese, as a lot of such terms are English in origin.

“Shocking” here is a fun word: ドン引き don-biki. “Don” here is added just for emphasis; the main meaning revolves around 引き hiki/biki, from the verb 引く hiku, meaning to pull.

The idea is that someone does/says something that you recoil from. Maybe it’s gross (“I only shower once a week”), maybe it’s mean (“They didn’t smile enough so I didn’t leave a tip.”), maybe it’s creepy (“I sent like 30 texts yesterday but still no reply.”), just anything that has you feeling like you might want to create some distance because... phew.

It’s kind of similar to the current use of “cringe” as an adjective/noun, though with less of an internet-slang feel* to it, and generally used more as something the speaker is doing rather than describing whatever/whoever is being cringe.

(*I think it started being used popularly in this way in the early-to-mid 90s, with the “don”biki variant specifically popping up around 2005.)

A “Premium Friday” is the last Friday of the month, where you get to leave work at 3 pm. It is largely theoretical.

The idea was created by the Japanese government as a way to reduce working hours and encourage domestic spending (boost demand), but it has not been implemented by all that many employers, and especially not many smaller employers. There isn’t, after all, any mandate or government-provided incentive for doing so.

Evidence from the places that did implement it suggests it is actually good for the economy, but good luck convincing bosses to give extra paid time off.

“Last Friday of the month” was chosen because most people get paid on the 25th each month (Japan tends to pay monthly instead of every two weeks), so it would usually be right after payday, when people are more willing to get spendy.

Kobayashi saying eight hours here reminded me of a “fun” fact: the typical Japanese work day is eight hours plus a one hour break. Plus a one hour break, not with. So a typical work day is actually nine hours. Most commonly 8 to 5 or 9 to 6. Not many “nine-to-fives” here.

The characters for Joui are 上井, which usually read as Kamii or Uwai. It’s “Joui” because that means, when written as 上位, “superior.” As in “a superior life-form.” Like a dragon, say.

でも、ゆっくりやる事業改善案を見せてもらえたじゃない？

This one is actually kind of a critical mistake. In the English it sounds like she’s talking about the improvement proposal that Elma made and that the boss looked at. In the Japanese though, she’s talking about a different plan, one the boss showed them*, that is similar in idea but is going to take longer to be fully implemented**. So we’re being told that while Elma didn’t get what she wanted as fast as she wanted it, it is still basically going through at a slower pace.

*In ”見せてもらえた misete moraeta,” the misete vs mite means they were the ones who got shown something, rather than the ones who got someone to look at their stuff.

**Which you can tell from the ゆっくりやる yukkuri yaru, where yaru is basically “do” and yukkuri means (in this case) at an unhurried pace.

(Re previous note: Hence why she says “immediately” here.)

“Black (ブラック)” and “white (ホワイト)” in the context of Japanese employers refers to how well employees are treated: a company with good benefits/pay, reasonable levels of overtime, and feels safe to work at is “white,” while a company that has excessive overtime, often pays poorly, breaks labor laws, and allows harassment to fester is “black.”

While “white company” was created simply in contrast to the term “black company,” the latter finds its origins in front businesses for organized crime, which were called “black” in the sense of “illegal” (similar to “black market” or something being in a “grey area”). Given the international reputation of Japanese work life, you can imagine that “black company” as a term sees much more use.

There’s been some discussion about maybe replacing it due to the racial implications (especially since it uses the English word “black”), but while typically English translations drop the color for that reason (e.g. ブラック企業大賞, an “award” given to Japan’s worst employer each year, is officially “Most Evil Corporation of the Year Award” in English), it hasn’t really penetrated to the mainstream at this point.

The rice there is in a 飯盒 hangou, a metal container that looks… like that, and is the stereotypical item of choice for cooking rice while camping. It has its origins in the mess kits used by the military, but these days they’re primarily marketed as portable rice cookers for camping use.

You can get round ones too, but the bean shape is very popular.

“Settings” here is 設定 settei, lit. exactly that, “setting(s).” E.g. if you open a computer program and look at the settings menu, it’ll be settei in the Japanese language settings (settei).

I bring it up here because there’s a bit of a difference in how it gets used colloquially like this. In English, the “setting” for a story typically refers to where and when it’s set. In Japanese, “setting” in that sense is usually 舞台 butai. But settei is still used when talking about fiction, just in a different, more expansive way.

Often in these cases settei is used to refer to the various conceits that provide the context in which the story takes place. In this show, for example, one such “setting” is that dragons are real: another is that magic exists. It comes up especially often in fantasy/sci-fi type stuff where there are major distinctions between that universe and the real world—not that stories in a real-world setting don’t have settei of their own, but they often are lumped into descriptions of the plot in that case (”a dragon comes to live with an office worker in her apartment”).

It also refers to the “settings” of characters, like name or age, and things like “they run a bakery that’s going out of business and are trying to save it.” Basically all the details you’d have in a character profile.

It also gets used in conversation to refer to pretend things or (basically) lies: like here, where Saikawa thinks Shouta is playing pretend with his ley-lines talk, or e.g. if someone is trying to tell you some outlandish story (“my uncle works at Nintendo…” or someone asking for love life advice for “their friend”) and you’re just like “Okay so that’s the settei here, I see.”

Not really a big deal, but Elma’s line here in Japanese implies she won’t let Tohru call her that anymore (see her もう mou). Tohru’s response is also more of a “I haven’t been?”, since of course she wasn’t aware of Elma’s-mental-image-Tohru tormenting Elma in the previous scene:

The word for “full of” in the title here is ざんまい zanmai (a suffix form of 三昧 sanmai), usually meaning that there’s a whole lot of [whatever] to immerse oneself in. I mostly bring it up because there’s a famous restaurant chain called Sushi Zanmai that specializes in, obviously, sushi.

And you know, Elma is a water dragon that looks kinda like an eel… I’m just sayin’…

Not really a translation note, but wild that Elma didn’t even touch her parfait. (Not so wild that Fafnir finished his so quickly.) Serious business ahead...

“Genuinely” here is 素直に sunao ni, where the “ni” is used like “-ly” to make sunao work as an adverb. Sunao itself is an interesting word that falls into that category of “simple concept that is often hellish to translate.”

For some context, the first character, 素, is also used in the word 素顔 sugao, which is a face without makeup and 素材 sozai, basically raw ingredients/materials. The second, 直, is used in words like 直線 chokusen, a straight line, or 正直 shoujiki, honest.

Put them together, and you’ve got a word with connotations of directness and being unadorned. The original definition of the word tends toward “simple, natural” in the sense of e.g. life growing up on a rural farm.

The more common use for it these days is to describe people and their actions. Positively, it can mean something similar to a person being happy to help, or kind of like the opposite of conniving; open, frank, genuine. Less positively, it can mean someone is too trusting and easy to trick into doing things OR someone who is “too honest” and says hurtful things.

(If it helps: tsundere characters are often described as explicitly not sunao.)

In this case, the idea is that Tohru accepted the invitation easily as-is, without putting any conditions on it, or doing any “ugh, what a pain, do I have to, jeez” rigamarole—she just accepted. Another way you could put it in this case might be “It’s even more unusual for Tohru to accept an invitation like this without a fuss.”

Just to point out the hand on head thing again.

Also just to point out that this is another example of otsukare, as a reminder of how ubiquitous that word is.

And it makes a good place to end on: thanks for reading!

#maidragon #Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid #kobayashi-san chi no maid dragon #translation notes #anime

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gamebunny-advance · 2 years

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Nice. (+ Self Reflection)

Well, so far at least 5 of you have looked at that thing, which is about 3 more than I expected, so the fic is doing much better than I thought it would, so thanks for taking the time to check it out \(^o^)/

But it is in my nature to not shut the hell up about my inner thoughts, so here they are (warning, contains spoilers to "Heart and Soul"):

The main idea of getting separated from your parent on an elevator is based on something I saw in real life once, except it was an escalator and probably didn't involve robo-security. I always wondered what happened to those kids afterwards...

I really should have cut more out. I feel like there's just a little too much "nothing" happening.

Is calling Tatiana, "Miss Quartz" annoying? The idea with the narration early on is that while it's a third-person narrator, it's still mostly from Yinu's point of view, so her inner thoughts inform the narration more often than not. I dunno, it's kind of inconsistent, and I'll probably stick to something more traditional if I ever rewrite this.

I feel like I accidentally set up the hairbands to be more important than they actually were. They were just supposed to be the cause of the inciting incident, just something to get Yinu to the elevator, but since the front end is the most heavy with description, it put too much emphasis on them. There was one version of the draft where instead of the bandage, one of the bands was her token of appreciation, but it didn't make sense to me to give 1010 a wearable keepsake when his physical body is routinely destroyed, and it would have been lost over time. Having him just lose the memories should have been sad enough on its own. He doesn't need to lose what she gave him too.

I hope that I fixed most of the instances of 1010 being referred to as "it". He's supposed to be an "it" up until he has a proper name, but in an earlier version, the pronoun would change depending on who was focusing on him, so Yinu and Neon J. use "he/him" because they recognize him as a person while Mama and Tatiana use "it" because they don't. I thought it was confusing, so I tried to fix all of them, but there might be some remnants left over. OTL

I feel like I could have cut all this action if I'd just thought to set this during a power outage instead of having 1010 be willingly defiant. I didn't think about this until I was taking a shower after posting. Sometimes shower thoughts are useful. If I ever rewrite this fic, I'll try that out to see if I can keep it saccharine through the entire run. I didn't mean to play "Gotcha!" and make it sad out of nowhere, but that's just where it felt like it was going. If they were both lost due to a power outage, then I think them sticking together and not being able to find the adults is a little more justified.

I should have checked if "Heart and Soul" is actually in the public domain first. I don't think it is, so it doesn't make much sense for 1010 to be programmed with it as one of his default songs. But the whole fic was written around getting to the scene where they play that song together, so I was willing to bend that plausibility to get there.

I wrote this imagining 1010 with his MKI design, hence the cap, but the implication is that he's currently a MKII and then gets upgraded to MKIII. So... yeah. If I rewrite this, I'm gonna have to fix that.

It's not that I don't like stories where the robot outlives its human companions, and it has to learn to cope with that, I just feel like in reality, it would be more likely that the robot either breaks down or loses their memories before their human companion dies. Machines are fragile.

I hope I didn't write Yinu to seem too young. I'm not exactly sure how mature that age range is supposed to be. At 8, she'd be the equivalent of a 2nd or 3rd grader, so I figure this is an age where she can understand complex thought but just not have the vocabulary for it.

#gbunny writes #it's got some problems but i still like it #i usually have such a hard time writing stories but this one came pretty easily #with some actual editing it could probably be a 7 out of 10 instead of the 4 out of 10 it probably is XP

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regicidal-defenestration · 3 years

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Victoria Died (and then some other things happened and we all got a bit distracted sorry about that Victoria)

A Death by Dying / Lost Cat Podcast crossover fic, because I think the Lost Cat narrator and Obituary Writer deserve to meet each other

[Lost Cat Narrator]

They say you have to go far away to realise what you had close by all along. They never did say exactly how far though…

[LCN]

“You need a holiday,” said Bojana.

“What.” I said, because it’s quite an odd topic to spring on a person like that.

“You need a holiday,” she said again. “I’ve booked us the plane tickets already.”

I didn’t say “what” again, because you can overdo these things. “I have work.”

“Your podcast?” Bojana asked, and she sounded unfairly incredulous.

“And make music,” I added. “And-”

Bojana stopped me. “You can do all that in America.”

America? I thought to myself. “America?” I asked out loud, with more emphasis. “I’m not going to America.”

“Yes you are,” Bojana said, and like that, it was sorted. We were off to America.

[LCN]

The sign cheerfully welcomed us to the small town of Crestfall, Idaho, and informed us that it had been 5 days since the last unexplained death.

“That isn’t very reassuring,” I said.

“It’ll be a local joke,” said Bojana, but she didn’t sound very sure. Unexplained deaths, it seems, are an international uniting factor. Fun!

We stayed staring at the sign for a few more moments, in case any more unexplained deaths happened whilst we were watching. And one did, technically, although we didn’t actually get to see anyone die, which was disappointing. A man pushed past us, felt tip in hand, and carefully crossed out the number 5 and replaced it with a 0.

He turned to us and frowned. “You’re new.”

This felt accusatory.

Bojana said: “Did you kill them?”, because Bojana is good at cutting to the point, whereas I am more used to using enough words to make a story seem long enough to be worth it.

The man didn’t answer, which was definitely worrying, because you would think it is easy to say whether or not you’re a murderer. He had a firm, steady gaze, the kind that seems to have an internal monologue behind it, just on the edge of hearing. An internal monologue that might have sounded something like:

[Obituary Writer]

Victoria was dead, to begin with.

She was dead afterwards too, but I think misquoting famous literature always helps set the mood.

Victoria was dead, to begin with, and when I went to update Crestfall’s Unexplained Deaths Board, there were two strangers there, staring at it. You can always tell who’s new here, because for some reason they all react to the Unexplained Deaths Board with the same concern.

I turned to them after changing the number, and introduced myself.

“I am the modest and handsomely dressed Obituary Writer of this little town called Crestfall. You must be new here, I can show you around if you want?”

I also took a moment to adjust my stance so that they could both hopefully see the enamel pin on my lapel, which is in the shape of a typewriter and coloured with the bisexual flag colours, because they both seemed friendly, and you never know.

The woman looked at me suspiciously. “Did you kill them?” she asked. Her eyes bore into me like she was trying to read the truth of my very soul, like if she just looked hard enough all the secrets of Victoria’s death would be laid out before her. It was the kind of stare that you can hear the internal monologue behind. An internal monologue, that might sound something like…

(the sound of howling wind. In the distance, a crow caws)

Only joking. It’s impossible to hear other people’s internal monologues, no matter what Dan the Fake Tarot Man who lives on the edge of town claims.

A crying shame.

“You’re taking a long time to answer that,” the man pointed out.

“I am merely investigating Victoria’s death,” I replied, sounding suitably serious about the whole matter. “If you would like, I can show you my current notes?”

The man frowned. “Why is an obituary writer investigating a death?” he muttered, more like he was speaking to himself than to me. However-

“Obituary Writer,” I corrected him.

A slight pause. “Yes? That’s what I said.”

“You called me an obituary writer, but I am the Obituary Writer." Ugh. Tourists.

The man and I held each other’s gazes. He seemed to be having an internal discussion with himself, perhaps even an argument.

Again - it really is a shame we cannot hear the thoughts and motives of others, don’t you think?

The silence stretched out long and sharp. I shifted. His eyes flicked down to my enamel badge. I looked slightly past his left ear. He looked up to a spot between my eyebrows.

"I’m Bojana,” said Bojana. “Can we see your notes?”

[LCN]

Currently, my life does not have a motto, but if it did, I might decide on “never follow someone back to their house when they have already talked, at length, about murder.”

“We’re going to die,” I whispered to Bojana.

“We might not be,“ she whispered back, unhelpfully. "Besides, we’re on holiday. Lighten up a bit.”

“Whilst searching for my cat, I have found all manner of things,” I whispered, although it was louder this time, and so more like a murmur. “Some of those things have been death, and some have been worse still, although I won’t go into those, since we are on holiday. The point is - I have no wish to be killed again.”

“You two aren’t very quiet whisperers,” the Obituary Writer called back, stopping in front of a door and rooting around in his pockets for a key.

“Besides, I’m not a murderer, and I find that accusation slightly offensive.”

Beckoning us to follow, he pushed the door open and disappeared inside.

I must admit: the house fit his whole aesthetic exactly. The curtains were a deep red, the carpets thick and shaggy, and there was, naturally, a typewriter, rather than a computer, left out on the dark oak table. There was another little pride flag in a skull-shaped mug, and on one wall hung a cork board that was covered in notes and red string.

“The house at Land’s End” read one note, which connected to another that said “The end of Land’s House???”, with three question marks, which is far too many for any normal person to use. Clearly, this job had put the Obituary Writer under large amounts of stress.

I went to read further when -

(the meow of a man-eating cat)

- my thoughts were interrupted.

He has a cat?

“You have a cat?” Bojana asked before I could. Damn.

[Obituary Writer]

The One Who Hunts wound himself between the man’s legs, purring.

“Three, actually. The One Who Hunts, The One Who Glares, and The One Who Sulks. They don’t eat people.”

My two guests didn’t take that last sentence quite how I thought they would. The man stopped his idle scratching between The One Who Hunts’ ears. Bojana took half a step towards the door.

“Okay, usually,” she began, “you don’t need to reassure someone that your cats won’t eat them.”

“But I like to reassure people.”

Bojana frowned. “I don’t feel reassured.” She looked over at her friend. “Do you feel reassured?”

“I got eaten by cats once, whilst searching for my own,” the man said, with a dramatic stare into the middle distance. “They ate my right hand and my left foot, then they ate my nose and my tongue. My ribs were gnawed and my heart-”

“Dude,” interrupted Bojana. “We’re on holiday, remember?”

The man held up his hands apologetically but I was keen to hear more. If he had truly been eaten alive by cats, then I, the Obituary Writer, wanted to write him a damn good obituary. And with all due respect to Victoria, who was a much loved member of the community and will be sorely missed by all - this was the most interesting thing to happen all week.

“No please,” I said, “go on. I might even write you an obituary.”

The man smiled- no- grinned.

“Well then. How about I tell you, over a glass of wine?”

(the narrator begins his song. It’s bittersweet, about missing cats, lost friends, and returning home at last)

[LCN]

When I finished telling my story, the Obituary Writer thought for a long time.

A long, long time.

“I think,” he said, at last, “you should meet my friend.”

[LCN]

Bojana said: “Dude.”

I said: “I know.”

Bojana repeated again: “Dude.”, a little more firmly.

I said: “I know.”

She pinched her arm. “Am I dreaming? I don’t think my imagination is good enough to make this up.”

“We’re going, on the insistence of someone who may well be a murderer, to see the Angel of Death, who is not, as it were, a metaphor, and who is, unlike her sibling, the Angel of Life, quite a nice person, apparently.”

Bojana sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that,” she said sadly.

“If this all turns out not to be a metaphor,” I took a deep breath, “I’d just like to say-”

“I’m not going to kill you,” someone interrupted with a voice like light refracted in glass.

We screamed, Bojana grabbing my shoulder and me grabbing her arm. When we realised what we had done, we stayed like that anyway, because sometimes the comfort of having another person is worth more than pretending to be cool.

The woman was beautiful in the way that wildflowers growing up and out of a sheep’s skull are beautiful. She was pale and almost translucent, with a pair of great wings of bone folded against her back. Her eyes were old and sad, and her dress fluttered in the breeze like moth wings.

The Angel of Death.

Bojana opened and shut her mouth a few times, trying and failing to find the words. “…dude,” she whispered at last, awe-struck. And then, slightly more worried - “Are you going to kill us?”

The Angel cocked her head at us curiously. “I just said I wasn’t. Besides, I do not kill people. Only Life kills people.”

I asked: “Can I use that line in my podcast?” and Bojana trod on my foot to get me to shut up.

The Angel ignored both of us, which was probably for the best. “Why have you come to see me?” she asked instead.

“Your friend is concerned about my friend,” Bojana said. “It was the bit about getting eaten by cats, I think.”

In the trees, a raven cried out. “Woeful are the lost and woeful are the found! Caw!”

You know, I never realised American ravens were so eloquent.

“They didn’t kill you though,” asked the Angel, in a way that wasn’t a question.

“I got better.”

“You bled out all over our nice carpet,” Bojana muttered.

The Angel of Death didn’t say anything and that was an answer enough.

“My cat is lost, and I miss it,” I began. “My search for it has lasted many years now, because I know that it isn’t dead. I have found people playing at being monsters and monsters playing at being people and I have found everyone else, who just sort of exist in the middle of those two states. I have been to strange places through strange portals and I have been to strange places like America, and, despite all, of this my cat is still lost.”

The wind blew through the trees, a dog barked in the distance, the world turned on and on. My cat, wherever it is, meowed.

The Angel looked at us with her sad eyes. “Why do you search for something forever out of reach, ignoring those around you? Your cat will return - all lost cats must show up somewhere.”

In a flurry of feathers, a raven settled on her shoulder. The light glinted off its eyes and I saw they were not eyes at all, but buttons. It cawed again as the Angel fed it a berry.

“Listen please: in life, death. In death, life. Enjoy it. Live a full, good life. It will make the wine taste better” She frowned for a moment. “Another person said those words before me, but I like them. Sometimes, it’s nice to have someone else tell you about what you already know.”

And then she was gone, fading away like smoke spreading out into the night sky.

Bojana let out a long, quiet whistle. “Do you think she’s single?”

#yes this fic has two narrators and sometimes they narrate the other person's speech what of it #death by dying #the lost cat podcast #writing #podcats (note spelling)#tumblr stop fucking with the formatting challenge

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posthumus · 4 years

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hullo boys, today i’m writing about my thoughts on the Dickie incident in Maurice. (potential content warning for sexual assault and pedophilia — if you’ve read the book, though, it won’t get more graphic than that)

i’ve actually always appreciated the Dickie scene, controversial though it is. i first read the book when i was fifteen — the same age as Dickie himself, iirc (EDIT: I did not, in fact, recall correctly; see here) — and i feel like i got it instantly: to me, it serves to highlight the extremely fucked-up attitudes towards sex society helps to internalize. that said, your mileage may vary on how much discomfort you’re able to withstand, and i think it’s completely fair to feel that the incident makes Maurice — the character and/or the book — irredeemable. i’m able to forgive a lot of the more problematic elements of Maurice because i think they’re adequately criticized in the text (at one point Forster literally calls Clive and Maurice misogynists). however, i don’t blame anyone for feeling uncomfortable with them. mostly, i’m trying to explain why i personally like the function of Dickie within the story, and why i think the whole episode requires a nuanced approach.

first up: i’ve seen the whole Dickie thing’s presentation interpreted as completely uncritical, which i think is pretty misinformed. i’ll certainly admit that at the start of the chapter, it’s quite ambiguous as to which way the novel will frame Maurice’s feelings. it’s extremely uncomfortable to read, especially in a modern context: there’s an element of suspense as you try to guess whether or not an author of this time period would have endorsed sexual assault. but the catharsis comes at the end of the next chapter, when the horror of the whole situation snaps into sharp focus: “was it conceivable that on sunday last he had nearly assaulted a boy?” for the previous chapter, Maurice had been kidding himself about the whole thing, and it doesn’t seem quite as rapey as it actually is; but then we’re thrown the word assault, and it becomes clear that we are, in fact, meant to understand that this was a horrible thing to even think of doing.

in my opinion, the book in no way endorses Maurice's thoughts — i actually think that, for his time, Forster was taking a pretty noble stance. the introduction to my copy of Maurice, by David Leavitt, includes a quote from Lytton Strachey, who wrote to Forster, “you apparently regard the Dickie incident with grave disapproval. why?” like, pederasty was still celebrated amongst a lot of gay men at the time. the fact that the Dickie thing reads so uncomfortably at all is a testament to Forster's (correct) stance on the issue; i think you're meant to be grossed the fuck out by Maurice's thoughts. (also, not that this exempts him from criticism, but Forster himself was assaulted as a child; i think he very much understood the gravity of what he was suggesting.)

secondly, Maurice is an EXTREMELY flawed character, and it seems ludicrous to suggest that we're expected to sympathize with all of his thoughts and actions. he's an asshole for most of the book. much emphasis is placed on the fact that Maurice is an entirely average man within his time, location, and class; his opinions and actions fall in line with that, which is why i’m personally okay with his misogyny (even though i’d throw hands with him in real life).

the big misunderstanding with a lot of Maurice’s flaws, i think, is that he isn’t a self-insert character, either for the reader or the author (consider the terminal note: “in Maurice i wanted to create a character who was completely unlike myself”). none of Forster’s characters are blank slates, to my mind — they all have extremely specific personalities; we’re not meant to be following them wholeheartedly the way we would with, say, Harry Potter. i worry some people read the book expecting to be able to back him 100%, but i think we're supposed to be observing Maurice, not putting ourselves in his shoes. (the omniscient narration helps with that, as we're told about elements of his psyche that Maurice himself isn't aware of. also, i’m no expert, so don't quote me here, but i think the concept of a self-insert protagonist is a sort of newer one? i feel like most books pre-mid-twentieth century have characters you're supposed to observe and criticize, and not wholly empathize with — Nick Carraway comes to mind.)

lastly on his flaws, i think the genre you place the book in influences how angry you are at Maurice. if you see it as a romance novel, which is certainly a fair reading, his sudden moments of insane fucked-up-ness make it much harder to root for him. i’ve come to see it as more of a bildungsroman, so i think the point is Maurice's mistakes; he has to reckon with a lot of his actions, including the Dickie incident.

the part of the whole Dickie debacle that’s the most fascinating to me is its context within Maurice’s discussion of sexuality. i think the Dickie incident showcases how sexual repression and internalized homophobia can pervert your perspective on all sexual relationships. within the novel, sex in general feels like something criminal (certainly in Maurice’s case this is true for sex between men; however, there are also the diagrams on the beach at the start of the book, and Anne’s complete lack of knowledge about sex when she marries Clive). if you view all sexual relationships as immoral, though, pedophilia and sexual assault become no more unethical than consensual sex. it’s interesting in that light, then, to compare the Dickie incident to the moment with the man on the train two chapters later: one absolutely should be illegal, but they are both interpreted by Maurice as obscene, and both (if acted upon) would have been criminal offenses. i also think it’s interesting that the man on the train is perhaps the closest comparison to Forster himself within the novel, as Forster, in middle age, cruised London’s public spaces in the hopes of finding someone to hook up with. while Maurice loathes the man on the train (David Leavitt’s introduction, again, discusses how Forster wrote a love story that deliberately excludes himself), i don’t think the reader is meant to.

personally, the Dickie scene resonates with me as someone attracted to women. being told that your own desires are inherently predatory doesn’t dispel those desires, but only makes you ashamed of them, and warps your perception of healthy sexuality. i tend to interpret Maurice’s feelings about Dickie more as intrusive thoughts than actual, tangible want — this kind of obscenity, to his mind, is inevitable for him. i don’t think Maurice would have actually assaulted Dickie. i think he was cracking under the pressures of an openly hostile society, while grappling with his own repression and unmet needs.

TL;DR — Maurice is a flawed character and Forster is critical of his actions. further, the Dickie incident gives us a striking picture of Edwardian society’s attitude towards all sexual relationships, which still has applications today; the episode also gives us insight into Maurice’s mental state. it’s uncomfortable, but in my opinion necessary to the core message of the book.

#swinging the bat at the hornet's nest huh #honestly though this was kinda fun to write #it's the first complete essay i've done in a while #idk. like comment subscribe maybe?? again this is just my opinion #i don't wanna go around acting like only my interpretation of the book is correct #just also like. stop trying to cancel classical literature for being classical literature #idk... the question is do i want this showing up in tags #maurice #em forster #my posts

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deanpinterester · 3 years

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Thoughts on The Young Elites trilogy now that I finished my reread!

Good stuff first:

> Even if I don’t love a Marie Lu book, I’ll at least still like the concept of it, and the concept of TYE is undeniably amazing. I keep looking for protagonists to “turn to the dark side”, so to speak. I remember watching Star Wars and desperately wishing Rey actually did at least dabble in the dark side. So it’s pretty great to have a book series where the main character has the reasons to turn evil and DOES turn evil (although “evil“ is honestly subjective because the Daggers really aren’t that much better people lol).

> Lucent? Maeve??? I’ll take more. In fact, I WISH there were more. But unfortunately they aren’t the main characters, so their relationship doesn’t have too much time to flourish.

> These books are generally fun reads! I’d give it 3/5. I think the Legend Trilogy is still my favourite Lu books, and I’d give that 4/5.

> I want to see this series developed as a TV show so, soooo badly. Bonus if it’s animated because I think the aesthetics of the story really lend themselves to an illustrated medium rather than live action. Cmonnnnn let’s make this happen.

Now for the stuff I’m not so hot about, which I’m putting under the cut so y’all don’t have to see negativity unless you choose to.

(TLDR; the execution is what knocks it down a point for me. The trilogy had a lot of potential that I don’t think was entirely tapped.)

1. This is a problem I have with all of Lu’s books: there’s a lot of telling instead of showing. Biggest examples are whenever Adelina says something along the lines of “I feel the darkness stir in me” like okay....can you describe that darkness and what exactly it’s doing to you please. And also when characters narrate “I think of the time when xxx happened” and what about it? Why are you thinking about it? What impact and emotion is it bringing to you? What exactly about that memory is drawing you do it? Elaborate thanks.

2. The characters generally feel flat, mostly for the above reason. Enzo in particular, who Adelina is supposed to be infatuated with: she describes him as having “boyish mischief”, but this is something we barely saw. The only vibe I get from the man is brooding. She spends a lot of time thinking about wanting to see him, but we could have used more narration of WHY she wants to see him. We know it’s because he rescued her--the writing could have put more emphasis on that. Show us Adelina imagining Enzo rescuing her over and over again. Show us how she feels that he’s the first person to save her, the one thing she’s wanted for a long time. And for this reason I’m not so into their insta-love, and I almost would have preferred if Enzo did admit that he only loved Adelina because she reminded him of Daphne rather than actually being in love with her. Because I see why Adelina would fall head over heels in love with Enzo, but not why Enzo would fall for Adelina in that short amount of time.

3. I’m kinda :///// whenever Magiano is described as looking savage or as having animalistic behaviours, since he is the only black main character in the series and is the only character described as such (You could debate whether Enzo is black or not, but Lu has confirmed he is Italian only). I don’t know if Lu is already aware of this because it seems like those descriptions calmed down a whole lot in the third book.

4. The premise of the third book has always been iffy to me, especially since it didn’t feel like the deities / godly realms ACTUALLY existed in the first two books. It all just felt like lore. And to suddenly say “actually yes the gods are real, and we can go to the Underworld, and we can give back our powers” feels very jarring. It’s the same issue I had with King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo, where up until the second half of that book, it’s established the saints were likely just extremely powerful grisha instead of gods, but then it turned out that not only were they actual gods, but they’re also existing in.....an alternate pocket dimension? Because apparently that’s possible now? And I don’t even know how this could be remedied! I don’t know how Lu could have shown the deities were real in the first two books! So this is just pure frustration for me.

5. ADELINA’S DEATH. Adelina’s death. Oh my god. She went through all that just to die. It’s so hard to find redemption arcs in media that don’t just involve the character dying in the end to “atone” for their sins. I think I would’ve preferred if Adelina had to actually face the consequences of her actions and actively try to fix it after realizing she was wrong. Her sister died because of her, and she has to live with it. If anything I find that more tragic.

6. Adelina has a lot of villain shorthands and I’m not sure they’re all...handled properly. I’ll make a full post about this later.

7. The markings disappearing at the end. I’m not sure how to feel about this one. On one hand it could be a good insight into how even without obvious markings, the unmarked will still remember who was marked and still be prejudiced against them, because prejudice isn’t based on logic. But on the other hand, it just feels like...a cop out? Adelina spent this whole trilogy trying to undo the prejudice against malfettos. Her solution to introduce more prejudice was clearly presented as wrong, and by the end of the story, the “correct” way the problem can be solved is if...everyone just didn’t have markings anymore? Huh.

#uhhhh me #the young elites #marie lu

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otp-armada · 4 years

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"Bellarke doesn't make sense," they say. They say because Clarke hasn't done anything that resembles romantic gestures toward Bellamy.

Conceding to march to her possible death in exchange for Roan sparing Bellamy's life. Obstinately fighting against Bellamy's stubborn wishes to remain outside the Ark while Praimfaya burns to the world to ashes. Shattering her soul by choosing 100 people to live and writing his name on the list, because he must survive. She can't have it any other way. Relinquishing 50 of those spots to Azgeda when Bellamy is captured and threatened, and Roan calls her bluff. Desperation driving her to the extreme to ensure the survival of the human race, yet unable to kill Bellamy to keep the bunker closed and the grounders from possibly killing Skaikru. Leaving the guaranteed safety of the fort to stay by Bellamy's side on the brink of global cataclysm. The bittersweet yet soft head and heart exchange she prompted. The hesitation in her last remark before imploring him to hurry.

4x13 ends six years and seven days post-Praimfaya with Clarke radioing Bellamy on the Ring. An activity she performs daily for six years. In any six years of my adult life, my only daily consistencies have been limited to breathing, eating, and sleeping. This girl is devoted enough to send her equivalent of love letters into the emptiness of space for 2,199 days. Season 5 opens with her trying to survive by herself in an apocalyptic wasteland. She spends her journey narrating to him her unvarnished struggles during the most traumatic experience of her young life to date. Her despondency. Her loneliness. Her agony. Her desperation. Her small victories. Her discovered treasures. Her determination. Her doubt. Her guilt. Her defeat. Her morbid self-reflection. Her relief and contentment. Her happiness. Her admission of missing him. She shares all of it with only him. Only he is permitted to know her to this depth. Not any of her other people on the Ring. Not any of her people in the bunker, a group including her mother. Not a spiritual communion to the great, big love of her life Lxa, situated on her throne in the high heavens and waiting for her trophy wife, for Clarke to stay connected to her dearly departed. Isn't that the sort of behavior that might occur by a bereft widow?

After finding an oasis to rest and call home, even after discovering a companion to build a life with, she continues with her radio calls. It doesn't matter that he never received her communications. The importance of the gesture- the intimacy of sharing her life and thoughts with him while he was gone- remains the same. The magnitude of her devotion to him made clearer through the absence of a single responding utterance.

She lovingly tells Madi stories of Bellamy as her hero. Gazing warmly, hopefully up at the stars as if she longs for her vision to cut through an endless pitch-black sky and find dark curls and freckled constellations from thousands of miles away.

"Bellarke doesn't make sense," they say. They say because post-Praimfaya ended with an established B/E.

As Clarke looks up at the stars, questioning if she'll see Bellamy again, we transition to our first glimpse of Bellamy after six years, forlornly looking down on Earth to the very spot of green where he is unaware of who is yearning for him to return to her. Contrary to Clarke, who is covered in warm firelight when thinking of him, he is colored in cold, muted greys and blue, no speck of warm hue. (The rhyming scheme was unintentional, but hey, I'm going with it.) Behind him, his family is sparring, but he's distant from them. He's trapped within this tin can, his arms folded, his body taut, not facing the view on the other side of the glass, but still enraptured by the sight of his home below.

We see what changes to the characters and their dynamics have taken place until, at long last, we uproariously cheer as Bellamy & Co. find a way to return to Earth, the sole event we've been anticipating for eleven months, to the point we could feel it at our fingertips, jittery and tingly. Bellarke reunion!! He's going to know she's alive! Yes! Finally!! Break out the champagne! We're celebrating, dammit! It's going to be so damn emotional! Authors start crafting mental fanfics. People are bouncing off the walls like bright, errant fireworks, unable to sit still. I can't believe it's finally happening...what do you think it's going to be like? Will he run to her? Will he be stunned and speechless? Will they sob uncontrollably?!? They'll be clutching the life out of each other! Another Bellarke hug!! The very best hug!!! They're never going to let the other out of their sight again! He's going to meet Madi! Mom, dad, and adopted preteen make three!!! There's no way they're not getting together after this!! He just got her back after six years of thinking she was dead!! The reunion's not going to happen this episode, but maybe next week, when do you think? You mean we have to wait seven days before----

B e c h o.

We stood on the precipice of what we agonized and crawled through for eleven excruciating months, only for an anvil to drop, and our heads to be clubbed. Our bodies fell through the floor, descending lower and lower with immense haste, to take up residence in the seventh circle of hell.

Do you think the framing of these events wasn't intentional?

Do you think the powers that be behind the creation of that calamitous bombshell for our protagonist, intended for us to root for B/E?

By us, I'm not restricting the effect of the blow to Bellarke shippers. The entire audience, casual and fandom alike, shippers and non-shippers, was meant to await this reunion. We were all meant to feel devastated by this revelation.

If they didn't want to invoke in us feelings of support for B/E at their inception, how in the name of all things holy is a purported B/E endgame your conclusion?

"B/E doesn't make any sense," they say, "when last we saw them, she was his enemy. Nothing more, nothing less."

Do I think their pre-Praimfaya status as antagonists rendered it impossible for B/E to have a convincing love story or sexual relationship?

I think, if Jason were so inclined, we could have gotten flashback Ring rendezvous of secret trysts between Bellamy and a googly-eyed, blonde-wig-wearing broomstick designated Clarke 2.0. So no, I don't consider B/E a deviation inherently outside the realm of romantic possibility. Jason is an artist, and this show is his canvas. He can give life to almost any whim he'd like in his work of fiction. Not only that, but B/E is also hardly the first pairing in this series modeled by the enemies-to-lovers trope.

"Bellarke doesn't make sense, they'd say, "absent any concrete evidence alluding to a romantic relationship." "Seven years running, and not a trace of romantic love," they'd conclude.

Remind me, what was B/E's sublime prologue into coupling up again?

Furiously choking the life out of an enemy in a fit of rage two episodes before revealing her as his new girlfriend evidently can be considered by some an adequate precursor to a sensational romantic relationship. But endangering Earthkru's lives by risking the wrath of two societies in refusing to let Clarke die, pumping her heart for her to stay alive while begging her to fight so she can come back to him, cannot be.

Either this show is quite the oddity, or it’s fandom's periodic knee-jerk, ass-backwards, charming zeal at play.

The lack of rising development is all the more reason why B/E's grand unveiling demanded perfection. Instead, our first insight into their union is overshadowed by Clarke and the impending Bellarke reunion. B/E isn't central enough to the narrative to warrant focus that would put to rest any discord of illegitimacy. But you know which pair of the two is concentrated on for seven seasons now? Three guesses...

But don't despair. Fandom has decreed, by its own appraisal, the shorthand of kissing and sex has rectified the discrepancy of a complete absence of pertinent on-screen development.

"It's not ideal storytelling," they say, "to exclude B/E's development. But The 100 has historically been a plot-driven, fast-paced, contained drama. It has always evaded expanding on character dynamics to fans' satisfaction.”

The writers have done more to present Josephine and Gabriel as soulmates with less airtime than B/E ever had in total. They don't lack the skill or time to fortify B/E in anyone's mind as the central romance. Jason made a conscious choice not to. Why would he? Does he think the endgame love story of the show's deuteragonist doesn't merit attention to detail by the writing? Or does it seem more likely, it was never his intention for B/E to cross the finish line?

And, for a plot-driven, fast-paced, contained drama, they sure have an awful knack for finding the time to showcase Clarke's kicked puppy reactions to an embracing B/E. We've had three thus far. One for science, one for emphasis, and one to say, "Do you people get it now?"

"Bellarke doesn't make any sense," they say, "if they wanted each other, they'd have gotten together by now."

A long time ago, someone stated, "Lovers are supposed to do that you know and if they don’t do that it means their relationship isn’t romantic if sexual intercourse isn’t added."

And to that, I posed the question, "Where exactly is it written that "if a pairing is not made canon by season [insert arbitrarily chosen number here], it will never be made canon, period?" Was I just absent from fandom class that day and skipped to the lesson on slow-burn ships?" We are going into the final season, and I stand by this question today as I did then. Bellarke could refrain from physical expressions of love and candid confessions to season 17, and their journey could continue to exemplify a love story. Because the absence of either one doesn't preclude two people from falling in love. Nor does the inclusion of either one necessitate two people falling in love.

"Bellarke doesn't make any sense," they say. They say because Bellamy is her dearly beloved, but platonic, best friend.

Well, you've got me there. I'm stumped. How can it be possible for friendship and romantic love to behave as anything but mutually exclusive concepts? It's not as if friendship can be contorted to serve as a foundation for love.

The cornerstones of strong friendships include trust, care, support, devotion, and many other features of a similar nature. Love- deep and genuine love, that is- involves frequent kissing and passionate, vigorous sex. The wilder the display, the stronger the pairing. The dozens of couples, love interests, and sexual liaisons before B/E who have kissed and had sex before dying must not have first consulted the manual for proper protocol.

And the inverse? Once two people fall in love, they cannot fall back to say, a familial connection. No, no, no. Such a regression would be the work of a tragic, reprehensible flaw in the cogs of the universe. Speak nothing of it.

"It doesn't make sense for B/E to break up," they say, "when B/E has stayed together for two seasons sans any indication Bellamy loves Clarke more than Echo, enough to want to leave his loving girlfriend."

How many times has Bellamy tried and failed to honor his commitment to Echo? How many weak attempts are met with a corresponding scene of Bellamy shifting his attention to the girl he tells himself to get over?

Echo leaves for Shallow Valley, his focus immediately turns onto persuading Clarke not to leave his side. He symbolically chooses Echo in the fireside scene by touching her sword. Yet, he looks at his girlfriend for the first time since their separation with the most aloof expression unsuitable for the occasion. No hope to be found anywhere. They share a brief reunion hug, no time for intimacy. He is reunited with Clarke and casts a nervous glance at Echo when bombarded with Clarke's appreciative gaze. Still no time for intimacy between B/E before a decade-long nap, but time can be carved out for a warm, flirty Bellarke reconciliation, complete with intensive heart eyes. No inspired, emotionally wrought, double sunlit embraces for B/E. If Bellamy is going to look out of a window at his future home, he'll either be by himself or snuggling Clarke into his side. There's no place for Echo in the lock of his arms anymore, only room for flanking him in the way loyal lieutenants tend to do. His girlfriend glances over at him as their exploratory team roughly plummets to new territory, and he does the same at Clarke. B/E reconnects lakeside, him asking for a swim with her and leaning into her arms at a campfire. He sits by her side on a swing set, amidst talk of moving their people into an abandoned village. And it's all well and good for B/E, right? They're presenting the front of a happy, unified couple.

Until...Clarke walks away behind his sight, and he leaves Echo's side to seek Clarke's missing presence where the flirting and warm gazes and near confessions are kicked into overdrive. He calls Echo to hear his latest discovery, then proceeds to ignore the hell out of her, communicating exclusively to his co-leader. He stares wistfully at Clarke dancing with her new flavor of the night, cannot stop doing so even while excoriating Echo for her stoicism, expressing his frustration at her inability to fulfill his emotional needs.

He recommits to Echo, as Clarke is kidnapped and her body is stolen, with nary a transition, suggesting we are meant to link the two incidents together. For all his resolve to face the future with Echo, he spends the whole of the next episode with a wary eye on Clarke, to the point that he is the first to realize Clarke is not herself. In the ensuing arc ranging from 6x05 to 6x11, approximately half of the season, what was B/E, again? Was that a thing concurrently happening with Bellamy's Operation: Save My Clarke? Because I seem to be able to recall only Bellarke goodness. Oh, my mistake, there was the consoling hug which, oddly enough, did nothing to soothe him. As evidenced by his choice to grieve alone. No girlfriend he wanted close by for comfort, knowing clear as day she couldn't provide it if she tried. Not with who he just lost.

B/E gets another brief reunion hug, the majority of which is spent with him peering at Clarke. The show saw that hug and raised us an Austenesque-quality counterpart that would do Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy proud.

"B/E endgame is the only sensible outcome," they say, "they love each other so much."

I don't contend they don't love each other. But we are shown two people determined but incapable of snuffing their deep-rooted feelings out of noble propriety, and most importantly, out of needless fear of unrequited love. And another two people who sought- and failed- to keep grasping the wisps of a gentle relationship slipping out of their hands since they left their comfortable space bubble. For anyone in this conundrum to be happy, the only natural course of action is for the latter to call it quits. The writing has been on the wall for too long.

Maybe a single Bellarke scene plucked out of the lineup can be interpreted on its own as platonic buddies being platonic buddies. But when all those individual moments are woven together, what forms is an ornate tapestry with a pattern so vivid, any inane rhetoric involving a hint of the word "platonic" is little more than ludicrous anti drivel transparently cooked up by those wishing a different endgame.

I hope you've enjoyed my second long-winded rant, @sometimesrosy, @jeanie205, @travllingbunny. One born of a teaching moment in which I learn for the umpteenth time it's best to steer clear of Twitter.

#the 100 #bellarke #b/e #c/b/e #my post

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