#also love the other vids this same user has go look around

[toadstool32]

us: yugi and yami should have had more body switch hijinks

the mmd comunity: hold my drink

[wrongcaitlyn]

AHHHH I ALWAYS FEEL LIKE I SEND YOU TOO MANY ASKSMHFJGXJC BUT ANYWAYS- the greatest of luxuries takes place around 2018, right? Which is also coincidentally around the time tiktok got popular so just like hear me out-

Nico is a chronic tiktok user and definitely makes tiktok dances (he was supposed to use it for promotional purposes and it's not until Apollo asks him about it that he actually does)

Nico and Will are those tiktok friends, the kind that you see videos of and it just looks like they came straight out of a coming of age movie- same goes for whenever Leo is featured in Nico's tiktoks like they are so iconic

Apollo definitely gets tiktok for the shits and giggles, only to go accidentally viral constantly- like he could make one silly random tiktok of freaking alley cat he found and it'd get like 50 million likes 😭😭 (bros tiktok account consists of his children and their silly friends)

ANYWAYS HAVE A GOOD DAY 🫶🫶🫶🫶

NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR TOO MANY ASKS I LITERALLY LIVE FOR THEM LIKE YES PLEASE ASK ME A MILLIION QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS AU THAT CONSUMES MY ENTIRE LIFELKSDF

and you are RIGHT OHMYGODSKLJF i keep thinking of a way to incorporate it bc rn they're in 2019, but i'm like, ahgsdf how do i bring in tiktok, do i make it a whole convo or just casually mention it orrrr

i do have quite a few tiktok headcanons in relation to them but i LOVE your ideas they're so real😭

these are the hc's that i had before reading this but tbh might have to go back to the drawing board on some of them becauseee i mean

(also i deleted tiktok a while back bc it was too addictive so tbh i have no idea what's going on over there anymore... nor was i there in the early daysSDLKF)

nico already strays away from social media quite a bit, and i think over the music industry changed, it's def encouraged for artists to like promote their music there and stuff. BUT. he has a bit of an addictive personality (relatable) and so when he eventually downloads it (because he would resist for a very long time) would get hooked. except he rarely posts, instead, he's that verified celeb account that you find in the most random comment sections and he spams all his friends with vids. he definitely gets a lot of pet videos i feel like, like the cute dogs and cats and he would send a vid of like yk YK WHAT VIDS IM TALKING ABOUT like two cats snuggling with each other or smth and send it to will with 'us' i just KNOW he would bc it's incredibly sappy but doesnt require too much descriptionsfkljs

he probably has 235829348 drafts and he mostly posts random stuff that's completely unrelated to his music. like i bet there would be a few people (when he occasionally says something related to his job) who didn't even know he released music despite definitely having heard it

i didn't really envision him doing tiktok dances eXCEPT maybe they all stay in his drafts. bc i dont think his vids would really be focused on *him* because he's not a huge fan of being on camera, so it'd more just be like those rants where you can only see his forehead or random studio vids oR TRAVEL VIDS WHILE ON TOUR. he would def do those. there's def some people who think he's a travel influencer and then find out he's a grammy award winning artist and are like ??? NICO?? FROM TIKTOK???

but he isn't called a "tiktok artist" despite some people knowing him from tiktok because he literally ALWAYS forgets to promote his own music in his vids. his fans are promoting it in the comment sections to try and get the people who think he's a travel influencer to listen to him😭

but his posting schedule is so very sporatic like he'll post ten vids in a day and then nothing for a month. it's fully based on vibes and is completely chaotic, just like everything else he does

will, like any other social media platform, has a private account. (nico also has a private spam) so will is that person who tags people in the comments like all the time (whereas nico sends it more often just bc he doesnt wanna risk being on the wrong account accidentally)

he appears a LOT on leo and lou ellen and cecil's tiktoks (and nico's) and every other week there's a huge internet search to find out who this guy is on a new famous person's tiktok account and then someone will be like "it's just will solace again HOW THE FUCK DOES HE ALWAYS FIND THESE PEOPLE"

like when he randomly shows up in taylor swift's getting ready for her nyu graduation post. like he's definitely there for a brief second in just like the reflection of a window or something and everyone goes CRAZY

before realizing it's this cryptid guy again who seems to be surrounded by every famous person to exist

he definitely posts a lot on his private account though and often it'll just be him rambling about something he's learned in class or him documenting every time he sees a cute animal in public

eventually he'll be dared to make a public account and he decides "haha that's funny okay sure it's not like anyone will find me"

WRONG. this guy is allergic to being not-famous. he will never be allowed to be a normal guy. his first video goes completely viral. he posts once in a blue moon, usually documenting his friends being crazy and every single time he does, it gets like a million views with people in his comments being "how does he know them???"

but you are DEFINITELY right about his account always seeming like it comes out of a coming of age story

and there are most definitely thousands of shippers in every single comment section with literally every friend. so he tries to have at least two other people in every single video so that people can't ship him with just one other person. but it's unavoidable. esp when he comes out as bi, people are just shipping him with ANYONE who shows up on his account

he also does those screaming lipsync vids to whenever a song by one of his favorite songs comes out he's a huge fanboy

OH and he gets to show off his vinyls there. he loves doing that. he's got so many and vinyl tiktok admires it.

also in every single video there's at least one comment that says "you look like apollo the singer"

EVERY SINGLE ONE

leo's the most active on tiktok, as he is with every other social media

it's either him building something, him setting something on fire, him with his friends, him talking to the camera while walking down the street (you know the genre of tiktok)

he is very similar to will in the aspect of "HOW DOES HE KNOW THEM??" but he's been a bit more public than will so people will know him more

he doesn't go viral as often as will (despite posting 132532x as much) but when he DOES it goes VIRAL viral. like tens of millions of views. it still happens quite often and he has the highest follower count of the friendgroup

and he's also the most active in comment sections like he's in every comment section you can't escape him and he replies to like every single one on his vids, usually with very cryptic responses that leave you with more questions than you started with

he ALSO tags will and nico in a bunch of videos, but not in a private account. he doesn't have a private account. he just tags them (obviously, avoiding any romance-related / stuff that could out them, in which he would send it to them) in EVERYTHING

and that's also the highest chance you have of will (on his public account) commenting on a video bc he's mostly on his priv

he also (when him and jason eventually come out) makes a million couple tiktoks and does all the trends

most recurring character in his vids are piper (and shel) (and will and nico over the summer when they're not so far apart)

apollo runs the account for delphi records

i know i haven't shared much of this BUT most people 100% assume that it's run by some intern or something bc of how casual it is but it's actually just him

he loves comment sections and hyping up all of his artists

oh BTW leo and will and apollo do all the promotion for nico because of how much he forgets about it

it's very common for nico to be posting a random ass video and then the top comment is Delphi Records ✓ Check out Nico's latest single, ______!

he also EVENTUALLY gets a tiktok for himself

that is just entirely his kids

as he should

aside from leo, i think kayla and piper are most active on tiktok

piper knows all the inner fandom details from shel (who has an editing account 100% bc i have an editing account and im projecting onto her)

piper's vids are mostly with leo they're such an iconic duo

idk why but all i can think of when thinking about piper is that her feed is like momona tamada?? like that's the vibe we're going for here

and ofc she promotes charities and other important topics there too!!!

and if there's a wlw trend going around yk that piper and shel are going to be on that first thing, probably the top video under whatever audio it is

and KAYLA. GOD. KAYLA'S TIKTOK IS SOOO ICONIC i think she's second to leo with most followers

the lip sync videos for sure, also out of all of them i think she'd def do tiktok dances she'd slay them all

and then some of them are just trends or her in the archery range

somewhat similarly to will, she often gets comments that say "how does she know them??"

but like a good 30% of people watching the archery events of the olympics are there just because of her tiktokSDLFKJS

she also happens to go viral. all. the fucking. time. like i swear apollo's kids just HAVE to go viral all the time they can't escape it they're made for fame and it's likeee kayla does love it (will not so muchKSDF and austin has avoided this problem by just not downloading tiktok at all! except apollo's video of him performing has gone viral. oh well.)

so those are my hc's feel free to add on to these!!! i would love to hear what y'all think bc AHGSDFL writing about these characters' social media is one of my favvv things to do - thank you for the ask!!!! sorry for the lengthy rambleKSDJF

[delicrieux]

—MAKE YOU SAY “OH” EXTRAS: TINDER

extra meaning non-canonical occurrence; can be placed anywhere in the “make you say oh” timeline after couple (cha. 14) and before the final “oh”. 

pairing—corpse husband x f!reader warnings—tinder profiles, tw: men, swearing.  word count—2.6k. format— written. ─── ❥ req by nonnie​:  y/n makes a youtube vid/live stream where she's just swiping through her tinder acc and corpse literally blocks her lmao

author’s note—akldsljfs this was such a funny idea i could not not write it lmao

ultimate masterlist. myso masterlist

You have pulled the biggest brain move by setting up both a facecam and a screen recorder on your phone. All is beautifully displayed and visible during the stream. Your fanbase is particularly intrigued on what exactly are you planning on doing today, seeing as your tweet of “strea” had been a bit vague, if not downright ominous. No emojis. No elaboration. You couldn’t even be bothered to finish the word. Truly, a mystery. Everyone tuned in and are currently waiting with bated breath.

A few of your fans must sense upcoming doom because the overall mood in the chat turns from optimistically intrigued to...evil. It’s an entity all on it’s own now, clawing at you through the screen with various renditions of laughter and devil emojis. A few eggplants thrown in there for good measure, accompanied, naturally, by the scandalous water drops. At first the common consensus is that you’re biting the bullet and going through your camera roll on stream. Definitely an idea worth considering, though you frankly don’t know what lies at the start of the 11k photograph journey, and you are afraid to check in public. Could be a harmless meme, could be a salacious pic you had saved of an OF star. It’s really a gamble. Either way, you would definitely get banned. You might still get banned. Why do you insist on doing shit like this?

Because it’s funny. Because you’re kinda stupid. Because it’s just so absolutely laughably easy to do.

A smile quirks your lips, and while it is not explicitly smug, the look in your eyes sure is, “Greetings,” You utter lowly, dimming the lights--the budget for this stream! Ugh, you went all out, “my children.”

mother i crave violence

sensing evil energy rn!!

i do not claim the energy in this video for myself or anyone else watching this 💖💖

^with peace and love shut the fuck up

“I know y’all lowkey hoes-” Upon your words the chat splits into two: one side eagerly agrees (even shares a few OF accounts! How helpful, supporting small businesses!), whilst the other feverishly insists on innocence. You make a face stuck somewhere between offended and bewildered, “Now c'mon now-I know you. I know you all. We’re the same, don’t-what was that?”

You try to scroll back to the comment but it’s loss in the sea of incoming messages, “I swear to God I just saw-”

Corpse_Husband: i love late night streams it’s not like i have anything better to do.

“COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORPSE!!!!” 

rip headphone users

i cant feel my face when im with you by the weeknd but instead of face its my fucking ears

yall think full vol on pc is better?my parents woke up 😭😭😭😭

To think he’s spending his last waking moments for today with watching you (he probably still would have anyway, because you do not posses an ounce of shame or self-control and pester him relentlessly)! It makes your heart sing, and suddenly, a traitorous, fun hating idea barges it’s way through the crowd of incoherent buzzing and states: don’t do this. For some reason it also has the voice of Rae. As if that would work in guilt-tripping you- Rae never succeed, and her fictitious rendition in mind won’t fare much better either.

Still, you thought about it. That must count for something. Corpse will understand, won’t he? Why don’t you want to upset it in the first place? Men look so funny when they lose their shit, like hello, don’t you have anything better to do? But the image of Corpse just sitting there, hurt, distraught, leaving you on seen because he’s in his sad boy hours leaves a sour taste in your mouth. 

queen rly went from  🥺😊 to 😕 u ok bbgirl?

Corpse_Husband: no pouts cutie

akjdjoeijdfse cUTIE??? deadass boutta r.i.p.

Well that succeeded in eliminating everything from mind, doubts included. If this was an anime, the scenery would shift into something roseate, with flowers and bubbles and sparkles all around you along with a halo or two. Alas, not an anime, rather reality. The led-lights, however, seemingly possessing a will of their own, slowly turn from deep violet to pink. You smile brightly, like the absolute dumbass you are, and you are met with a ray of heart and blushing emojis. You are just so cute, a real cutie! Still in your disguise adorable state, you swipe your finger on your phone screen, the grin never leaving your lips.

There, among the plethora of apps, nestled sits a red square with a white fire plastered on it. The delicate calligraphy on the bottom reads: TINDER.

The mood changes once again- you’re giving the roaches emotional instability by how quickly everything flips over- and the chat spams eggplants vigorously; some, of course, bravely fight against the thirst.

nooooooo i thought y/n is gonna stream in a god honoring way!!!

^pack it up girl defined

“So, Charlie and I-” You note a few awfully curious comments and squint, “-yes, we talk a lot. Charlie is a really good friend of mine. We’re best friends. Brothers. Sisters. Cousins. The whole fucking family tree-no, that sounds weird. Delete. Anyway, Charlie, being the absolute fucker he is, said, hey, you know what would be funny? And I was like, nooo, what would be funny, Charlie? And he says to me, he says, says, making fun of men on Tinder. And if y’all need any more proof that Charlie and I are platonic soulmates, then dunno, my children, my roaches, I dunno-I dunno what more to give you.”

You can’t be bothered reading the comments, there’s too damn many. You also need to save your reading comprehension for the actual bios. It has a time limit, that darn thing. 

“Okay, so I made a profile earlier, but I hadn’t swiped on anyone yet-” Despite the fact, Tinder helpfully informs you that already 99+ people have swiped right on you, “So, this is me,” You show the pictures you have of yourself, and damn, not to be a conceited narcissist, but you look really good. Like if you saw yourself on Tinder, you’d super like instantly. “Uhm, so, my bio-my bio says: let’s sauce in the tub together, ya dig? splishy splashy, giggle giggle.” 

i cant believe we are witnessing y/n trying to form a coherent sentence live 

shes trying give her time

ya dig??? y not capeesh

what scene from the godfather is this lol?

“My anthem, is,” You laugh, covering your lips with your hand, “Corpsie, this is form you-” Proudly, you show that indeed, Corpse’s E-GIRLS ARE RUINING MY FUCKING LIFE is listed as your anthem on Spotify, “Hehe.” Yes, you say that aloud.

Corpse_Husband: you’re killing me Corpse_Husband: thanks baby Corpse_Husband: now delete tinder ❤︎

You ignore his last quip, deciding it’s finally time to get this show on the road, “Right, let’s do this shit. I’m not actually going to swipe on any guys that look, uh, decent? Yuck, can’t believe I just said that, uhm, because I-because I feel like some actually deserve a chance with someone? I don’t wanna get anyone’s hopes up, as I am currently in a long distance relationship with Chrollo. So I’m just gonna swipe on, like, frat boy assholes. Because I don’t care if I hurt their feelings. Quite frankly I don’t think they possess them in the first place.”

The chat voices their agreements. With the ground rules set, you, giddy, click on the first profile.

Does Tinder know what you’re doing, your plan? The FBI agent watching you through your phone must be working overtime, bless his heart. They must, because the the first guy to meet you is named Jason, and there he is, blond hair and blue eyes, holding up a fish the size of his torso. Marginally adequate in looks, pretty good muscles. A solid 7 bordering on 8. He’s the same age as you, 15 miles away, and he studies at some college you don’t care enough to look up. Bio reads:

I like to drive fast. Fishing is my passion, but if you can’t catch me by the ocean, you’ll catch me catching waves, bro! Love a good gym date. You do squats, and I’ll keep a close eye to make sure you’re doing it correctly ;) You probably saw me at a party. Leader of the The Phi Kappa Psi. I’m a Gemini, if that matters lol.

You, of course, read it aloud, dramatically; provide some constructive criticism-he seems nice, but he’s a Gemini, so naturally, you can’t trust him at all! Also, that gym date session leaves little to be desired. With your rant done, you swipe right, and shocker! (not), it’s an instant match.

“Okie, I still wanna swipe of some profiles, so I’ll see what he’ll text later-” For a second you wonder the legalities of this stream, but you’re having too much fun to think of it further, “guys, I won't get sued, right?”

NOW she considers it

well....

if you do, we’ll kickstart your lawyer dw <3

Onto the next profile. Kevin, 25, is seen fixing his car- or, you assume he’s mid-fixing it, you don’t really know why else he’d hold a wrench and be covered in oil. He’s shirtless, and the caveman part of your brain echoes something closely resembling AWOOOGA!, but...but!...blonde hair, blue eyes. You pout again, “I don’t...I don’t really like blond boys, ya know? With the blue eyes and all, it’s just not my thing, uhm, unless it’s like-like...Armin from Attack on Titan. Else I don’t care.”

Onto the bio:

You have to treat a car like you treat a woman: go on long rides, take the lead, but most importantly, keep her oiled up 😜 

“What the fuck did I just read?”

The chat is equally confused. You swipe right anyway- another match. Too easy.

The stream continues without incident for a solid thirty minutes- all of your matches, expect a few that genuinely looked like normal dudes that really couldn’t write a decent bio to save their lives, had been blond hair blue eyed gym rats with ranging forms of misogyny. Some opened with asking for nudes out right, some asked about your day first before asking for nudes. You prefer the former. Straight to the point! You admire the gall. 

But then, down the forty-five minute mark a profile popped up that made you still by your phone, your smile dying as your eyes bulged. Dear God. Lord in heaven. Who is this demonspiit lookalike and why is he so fucking hot? The neck tats, the skateboard, the clothes- holy shit, you gotta close your mouth before some drool dribbles out.

No bio, just his name, Tyler, and that he’s 23.

“He boutta be 23 in me.” You mutter, swiping right with lightning speed.

WHAT DID SHE SAYYYYY?????????

tyler is y/ns karma for relentlessly mocking that one guy that had a whole ass list on what his “female” partner should be

^he deserved it and also tyler seems like a typical fuckboi y/n grow a braincell

look at mom 🥺 her eyes are sparkling

It wasn’t a match right away. You somehow expected as much, but it still upset you. Simp behavior, pathetic. The stream continued bravely, and when Tyler messaged you a simple “yo” you totally didn’t sequel. You didn’t manage to text him back on stream: texting all those guys that you didn’t really find all that attractive was easy, but this...You’re a sucker for a man who radiates red flag energy. His whole profile is a red flag. He might just be a red flag himself.

What can you do? Suddenly becoming color blind is not easy. Once the stream ends, you unmatch with everyone expect Tyler. He you chat with for a bit, but a sudden craving for different company makes you abandon him, too. You don’t feel too heartbroken for him- you’re certain there’s already too many girls in his dms. You wish them luck.

Happily, you delete Tinder. You go to Twitter, notice you’re trending again- look at you go! Queen shit- and as you compose a thank you tweet, something strange happens. You go to text Corpse, but when you click on his profile you grow cold.

YOU’RE BLOCKED. You can’t follow or see @/Corpse_Husband ‘s Tweets. 

...Pardon? You hop onto Instragram and-also blocked. Seriously? And you thought you’re one petty bitch. Corpse is seriously prissy about everything. Damn, if he didn’t like your stream, he could’ve just said so. Didn’t need to, like, block you from his internet existence. So not cool.

You try texting him but no text go through. Well how will you let him know you deleted Tinder just like he asked? You relieve your frustrations by punching your pillow a few times. Later, you apologize to her, you didn’t mean to hurt her, it’s not her, it’s you. Fuck, 5 minutes of exile and you’re already loosing your mind.

“Raeeeeeeeeeeee!” You whine loudly. It’s roughly 2am now, but you don’t care. You’re too heartbroken to care. There’s a thump from her room, but nothing else, “Raeeeeeeeee!!!” You wail, wallowing in self-pity on your bed. You hear a very loud, very annoyed sigh from her room, followed by angry marching. Your door is abruptly thrown open, and in the dim, colorful light you see her scowl.

“What?” She grits.

“Can you please tell Corpse to unblock me from everything?”

“What did you do now?”

“I made fun of men on Tinder.”

She pauses, “...That doesn’t sound so bad.” She surmises, voice laced with suspicion, “What else?”

“...There was one really hot guy that I kinda sorta talked to after--”

“Y/n.”

“-But I totally deleted Tinder and honestly he was pretty boring, so, like, uhm, please?”

She sighs, the servery of which implies she is holding the weight of the world on her shoulders, and instantly you know that you won. She taps away at her phone, “You owe me one.” She states, and before you can reply, she exits your room and slams the door behind her.

Grinning, you text his phone again. The message goes through, oh gosh, you’re so relieved you feel like crying. This has been, officially, the worst five minutes of your life.

You Y DID U BLOCK ME LOSER!!! MAJOR LOSER ALERT!! I DELETED EVERYTHING IT WAS A JOKE r u still mad at me? y u always mad at me i never do anything:(

my husband You’re my baby, how do you think I’ll react when I see you publicly simping for some asshole on Tinder?

Oh no, he used the words, he delivered the killing blow. You’re finished. Your heart can’t take such a workout. 

Not that you would ever admit it to him, though!

You hehe ur jellyyyy u always dis jealous hehe?

my husband Not jealous.

Yeah, you might not be the brightest tool in the shed, but even you know that’s a lie. You send him an array of kissy emojis that he doesn’t have the decency to reply to. Then, completely unprompted and dead serious, you send him a simple voice memo, saying: “You really have nothing to worry about, you know? You’re my favorite, Corpsie.”

He responds via text, reiterating that he’s not fucking jealous and that he just doesn’t like when you show such outward interest in anyone but it’s not like he cares or anything. It’s just really, like, weeeeird to see his baby simping for another man like that totally ruins the whole dynamic!!! It was only natural that he should block you on every social media platform, including his personal number (which, like, was completely necessary! Doesn’t matter that his viewers can’t see it, it’s gotta be super believable!), and inform his followers of that, because it’s all a joke, like, for the dynamic, that Youtube grind, you know? Ya dig? No personal feelings were involved at all. He totally wasn’t upset that you found someone else cute, no way!

my husband I’m not jealous. Lol.

You ik u repeated tht like 50 times  u trynna convince me or??? lmao

my husband No comment. ...You don’t actually talk to anyone else like we’re talking, right?

You no one else calls me their baby if thts wat ur wondering at least not to my knowledge lol im all urs

my husband That makes me very happy to hear:)

Yeah, it makes you very happy, too.

hope you liked it!! xx

[franeridart]

Anon said: Ahh I really love your art, especially the way you present your story telling in the comics!! I smile every time I see them on my timeline haha thanks for making my (and likely many others) day! Wishing you all the best!!

Thank you so much!!!!! Especially glad to hear you think my comics’ storytelling works ;O; it means a lot!

Anon said: your satosugu arts give me life omg it's so beautiful and i love how smitten gojou is in all of them😭❤️ thank you for giving us pleasant escape from the disaster that is canon

AH GOSH thank you!!! Gojo lives all his feelings to the fullest doesn’t he! He’s a lot of fun to think about as happy and in love, he gives of the feeling of a warm hug to me ;; back in high school Geto was more reserved with his feelings, but I think he’d show it in his own very soft ways.....ahhhhh man, I love them ;;

Anon said: Your Satosugu is giving me life and also the fluff i need because HOLY SHIT THOSE CHAPTERS ;-;

I KNOW gege really looked at the old gen and went “enough with these dudes” huh lmao but I’m excited to see how everything is gonna turn out from now on! Esp since having been abandoned by the elders the protags are gonna have at the same time more options and less wiggle room.......... interesting!! Can’t wait!

Anon said: hey hey hey i just found your acc and i'm so invested in it already GDJSKALA I LOVE YOUR ART as a beginner like can't draw a circle beginner i truly admire your work also do you have any tips on what i should do to improve my art? because i'm on the brink of giving up istg cause my progress is just none there's no progress idk what to do like pls help me HAHAHHAHA idk what to watch how to practice what to do nothing absolutely nothing but i'm trying my best to hang on cause whenever i keep seeing artists like you it just makes me hang on and be like just keep going but even though i say that i'm going nowhere still so pls help... - 🍄

Ah man, I’m glad I can make you feel like keeping trying!! I answered an ask like this a while back here and I can’t say I have anything new to say on the matter? I hope it’ll help you! In the end the biggest suggestion I can give you is to try to figure out what it is that you want to draw and just draw it! Even if you don’t know how to, just draw it the way you can! As long as the act of drawing itself makes you happy more than the final result you’ll keep up with it and the improvement will come for sure! 

Anon said: your art always brightens my day. thank you for sharing it!

Thank you for liking it!!! ;;O;;

Anon said: Idk anything about jujutsu kaisen (I hope I write it well), but seeing your fanarts tempts me to start watching it 😍😍😍

I hope you’ll like it if you do try it!!!!! It’s not a story for everyone, but it is a great story for its own genre! And the studio animating it is doing a wonderful job of making it a work of art too TT0TT

Anon said: Hi! Don’t mean to bother but I wanted to let you know that the user yslkeii on tik tok has reposted some of your art. It’s the “some of my favorite dilfs” video, I think the thumbnail is a photo of Levi Ackerman. She knows that none of the artists in the vid allow reposts but won’t take it down so I figured I’d let them know

Thanks for letting me know! Sadly, I have literally no clue how to act on this for tik tok orz if they could at least credit................ I’m not even too opposted to having my stuff used in videos if there’s credit...................................sigh

Anon said: Hello, I was wondering if I could use some of your old mha art as a reference? I won’t post it anywhere, or trace your work I promise!

Sure you can!! If you don’t mean to post it you don’t even need to ask for permission! Just, you know, my stuff is full of mistakes everywhere so don’t take it too much as a good source for proper anatomy reference and stuff like that!

Anon said: a thought i've been sitting on, having not seen it, that is sending me. gojo/geto color pallet swap

You know, I did see that a while back! White-haired Geto and black-haired Gojo, it was stunning! Didn’t look much like themselves though, Gojo especially hahaha the white hair is really distinctive of him, isn’t it? With it black he kinda looks like first-year!Yuuta with sunglasses hahaha

Anon said: Hey! How you doing? So, i wanted to ask you if I could use one of your Kamijirou's fanarts in my Twitter edit, with credits of course! I hope you get mad with this shitty ask, i totally understand if you don't let me use, is your right ♡

I’d prefer it if you didn’t, sorry!!

Anon said: huhghhuhfjfjd i was scrolling thru your art and i hit a todokiribaku thing you made for a friend an d honestly that's all ive ever needed in life. your friend's taste is impeccable *sobs*

She does doesn’t she!! That’s still one golden ot3, I doubt that’s gonna change any time soon

Anon said: sfdghffgdgd gojo has the right idea. they should just make out

They should!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wish they had!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anon said: i've been looking at your art for months and i //just// realized you've started drawing noses from different angles *facepalm*

I’m trying my best!! It’s one of the things that limited my style the most AND one of the most difficult things for me to tackle, so I’m giving it a shot but still, you know, expect them to stay inconsistent for a while haha

Anon said: so five ish years ago i followed you for haikyuu, then got into bnha through your art and now im very tempted to watch jujutsu kaisen because of you as well

ANON!!!!!! I’m so glad and happy you kept me company this long and through this many fandoms!!!! TTATT if you do try jjk I hope you’ll like it! And if you don’t and decide to leave that’s okay too, I’m just really grateful you stuck around this long already!!! ;;A;; <3<3

[cloveroctobers]

• TALIA NASCIMENTO•

IG info/bio: @/callmetalia333 | 524k followers | Journalist | TALIA. but u may have formerly known me as user: brdf0rdsvasquiff—rip!!!1! so don’t even think about it 😌

(23) 25 going on (26) years of age

I’ve read a canon that her name is just Talia and not short for anything & I agree with that + she’s always quick to correct someone if they get it wrong too

Her hometown is Watford, England

but she was originally born in Maidenhead in the backseat of a car during a severe rainstorm

Nonetheless watford taught her all she needed to know when it came to music

She found her first love when she heard the sound of music soundtrack for the v first time as a young girl but is often nervous to admit that?

her father is Brazilian and is a firefighter

her mother is Bulgarian and works as a secretary in a elementary school

her mother is more traditional than her father when it comes to their cultures

I originally felt like she gave only child vibes but I can deff see her giving off big sis energy since she did mention she has a younger brother

V protective over her little brother

there’s a three year age difference

her parents have separated multiple times before which caused a riff in the family dynamic

The constant coming and going from her dad became quite irritating

And Talia was the most vocal by wanting them to figure it out and NOT get a divorce

Which led to talia’s commitment issues when it came to relationships herself

was born with blue eyes yet they shifted to brown once she grew

“Tom-boy” growing up & still is

netball was her sport and man was it something to see her play?! She was quick on her feet and can definitely shoot far-range with ease

Always down for contact sports too

She lost count how many bruises and scrapes she would come home with much to her mother’s horror but she would always brush it off—it was never that big of a deal to her

yet she takes time in healing her scars with homemade treatments or purchases from beauty stores when she wants to show her legs off

she didn’t get into “girly” wear until recently, she never thought too much of her body or when she started to get curves...she always hid that behind big tee’s, fitted jeans, and kicks—that’s what she was used to

she’s got broad shoulders and toned arms

had thick bushy brows that almost formed a uni brow growing up

her mother used to have her hair always plaited since she is very superstitious, believing that “the devil lives in the woman’s hair”

yet talia’s hair texture was much different than her mother’s, maybe due to the fact that her mother always had her hair up and out of the way? Talia’s hair is much bigger, heavier, and naturally curly

+ her mother used to say some harsh things in Bulgarian about her hair — that says a lot when you’re taught to hate your hair trust!!!

when she got a little older and able to manage her own hair + afford it, She learned how to love it herself and that’s all that mattered. Her hair became v important to her, it was her source of comfort

that’s the only thing she’s high maintenance about tbh

she spends a lot of money on her hair but devacurl can still piss off

diffusing is one of her fav things to do to her hair—besides washing it, and deep conditioning, after a night of letting her hair air-dry

loves rose jam

has a embroidery machine, along with a collection of her work but only one piece is showcased in her flat. She didn’t want her place to look completely like her bába’s (Bulgarian: grandmother)

her closet is filled with many Havaianas, they’re all piled up in a wicker basket and ready to tumble over on her top shelf... if she moves one of the ceramic pots her mother left in her flat for luck, that whole shelf might come crashing down

Swears drinking guaraná the next morning cures any hangover you may have

commonly sleeps in big t-shirts and panties or not or booty shorts depending on her time of the month—it’s freeing to her

Has torn her achilles due to whatever contact sport she decided to join in on during a beach vacation with her mates

has a touch of arthritis in her shoulder

this is where her love for massages came from due to injuries she’s faced

+ It’s always a good sign when you can make someone else feel better ya know?

She’s been told she’s great with her hands ;) it all takes practice

bi mami *cringe* but she likes what she likes, and feels what she feels

she kinda has a type but doesn’t want to admit that

her mother doesn’t understand this but her father easily accepted her preference/orientation

her little brother was the first she came out to, “alright!...you still suck”

always wants to fix situations WHEN it comes to HER friends but is oblivious when it’s come to her own issues whether its in relationships/friendships +

was called out by one of her friends who she often argues/butts heads with from time to time “you’re always sticking your nose in people’s business but can’t solve your own shit!”

maybe it’s the journalist in her? she’s not afraid to ask questions or look at things from a outside perspective

her group of friends are all from different ethnic backgrounds to Indian to Ethiopian

has been in and out of relationships...maybe had one stable relationship? Outside of mc but that relationship failed after a year and she feels it has something to do with her parents and how she watched their relationship unfold but won’t openly admit that

Doesn’t like to argue in relationships and often is a little undermining with how she responses to her partner’s feelings...she’s trying to be better at being understanding and listening, her mother is like this with her father

Aquarius girl + Scorpio moon + Taurus rising

loves the water + watching water sports rather than playing them since she almost drowned once by letting her confidence get the best of her

used to be a directioner and isn’t ashamed to admit that!

take me home album stan 100% bitch there’s no point in arguing!!! Buh bye!!!

She is ashamed however to admit that she used to write for them, mostly ziam fics with a touch of Harry thrown in the mix as well...take that how u will

has a few merch pieces as well, they’re mostly loungewear + that powdery perfume they dropped. YES she still has it, no she won’t sell it to u

still supports them on the low since you know, she’s a music journalist and reviewing songs is what she makes a living for so why the hell not? They will always hold a special place in her heart. She grew with those boys

she’s not in denial like Hannah that they’re get back together

If someone wants her to film a reaction vid to zayn’s new album or release a written review? She WILL. Her top 3? 1. When loves around ft Syd 2. Outside 3. Unfuckwitable

If someone wants to hear her thoughts on Harry’s mv’s + breaking down his lyrics, she’ll tell you what you NEED to know whether U agree or not she don’t give a damn lol

Can throw hands and stomp a bitch out if she needs too. Has gotten kicked out of clubs/bars for defending her friends mainly not because someone chatted shit to her, that’s whatever but once you cross her friends? It’s on

Allegra got lucky 🦶🏼☕️ and Lucy

remained super close with jake and tim as expected...Rohan’s cool too ofc! but she’s not here for their rapping shit sorry. She’ll hit them both with a quick side eye and snarl if they start or if jake wants to recite some poetry. She’s outta here

Talia hardly had issues making friends easily with the boys it was always harder with the girls :/

they hang out all the time!

she actually became close with sammi as well, which was nice to have another girl friend around even tho they weren’t together in the house long like the others. She’s spontaneous, cute, resourceful, and kind so talia had no issue reaching out to her first to see what she was about outside of the show

don’t even ask her about what she thinks of the new seasons, she’s not here to chat shit and have her words twisted like she’s watched many of the cast deal with. If you want to talk about the over kill use of pop as the soundtrack for each season, then yeah she’ll talk to you about that

doesn’t use social media much, she finds it funny how whenever she does pop back in people are begging her to post SOMETHING so that they know that she’s alive

Pretty private

she also can’t grasp why they want her to do the bussit challenge? Lmao like hey don’t get her wrong, some of them were pretty great but she’s barely got a bum to bounce and little booties matter ofc!!! but she can’t see herself doing it unless she’s drunk off her arse!!!

maybe mc can convince her...for the fans duh!!! “Give the ppl what they want! Talia! It’s not like you won’t be around music!” “I’ll think about it...nah.”

she’s been busier since the show, able to tour more and WRITE which is what she loves to do

Her secret pleasure is watching those nurse shows and firefighting shows in her free time and those singing shows you already know that’s a given

Wanted to be some form of a nurse growing up but knew she could help people in another way

*inserts* “music Is The best Medicine” overused but true quote here!!

I feel like she’s a r&b lover

listens to those hour long rain sounds on YouTube to help herself fall asleep

she‘s not the best cook but she’s a foodie and she’s down to try new food always

occasionally her and Tim are jake’s Guinea pigs when he’s whipping something up for his menu 

and hates eating the same things all the time unless it’s breakfast! There’s not too much more you can do with that

that’s also her specialty, making breakfast for u in bed

Morning afters with her are intimate but humorous. She’ll poke fun if you’re both looking crazy, always joking and in the best mood whether things got physical or not she’s just happy to have you here 🥲

I think her love language is quality time

if you’re playing her route and Lucy is the ex, and you’ve decided to fully commit to each other I deff see Lucy still trying to pull some shit outside of the show just because she feels like she can but once Talia see’s that it’s really starting to get to you despite how much you try to brush it off or snap at Lucy or even Talia!!! Talia is on Lucy’s ass in seconds! She doesn’t need a ex to ruin her possible future , “you’re not gonna fuck up this good thing I’ve got just cause you’re flimsy at relationships babe, so go be a cunt somewhere else or you’ll be sorry. I promise.”

anthem: Snow Tha Product — Shut up

[strigital]

Hey! So I love your Miraak and it kind of inspired me to make my own. Only problem is that I can’t freaking figure out how to mod him. I’d be super grateful if you could give me some tips!

hello there! sorry it took me like a million years to reply. my life’s been heckin’ wild these past few days. anyways, let’s talk about modding the miraakulous ass.

first of all i am in no way a modder, this small little .esp that affects the face and body of a follower from another mod is the first and only working mod i’ve ever made. second - my main sources of info were these two vids (i followed the first one to the T in order to make my miraak fully standalone, i. e. not dependant on any cosmetic mods that, if suddenly removed, would mess up my boi’s face):

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this second one mostly helped me to understand NifSkope and NifMerge.

so uhhh... yeah. i basically just followed these two tutorials in order to make my miraak have a unique face and body meshes and textures. anyways, i made this mod mostly by just trial and error, lots of loading and reloading, redoing stuff, changing stuff. so imma just tell you the short version of my process (which hopefully i still remember correctly, it’s been a while).

first thing first - get yourself some tools:

creation kit (how else ya gonna make miraak’s face, ya dummy?)

nifskope if you need to know each and every texture your man is using on his face

nifmerge in order to slap your desired textures onto a ck generated miraak’s facegen

install racemenu in your skyrim. just do it

cosmetic mods of your desire, such as mods for custom hair, brows, beard, eyes, skin, scars, warpaints and tattoos

and now... LET US BEGIN THE MAGIC!!1

step one: launch skyrim and create a miraak of your dreams.

i just loaded my latest Nim’s save, created another save, typed showracemenu 14 in the console and went to town with sliders. i race changed my gorl into a Nord (another race may cause some unseen bugs so better choose Nord), sex changed her into a dude and just... made myself a miraak.

once done i used Racemenu to save his face as a preset for future use and then exported it using a name like MIR_FACE_NEW or something like that (refer to the second video to know where the exported face file is kept). 

then i pressed done, confirmed his name as Test Miraak, opened console again and typed savenpcface miraakface.

now, with these two files, we’re ready to go into the ck and do some magic.

step two: open ck and make your .esp file and do some modding magic

if ya wanna make your miraak standalone, refer to the videos i linked to learn how to do that. i followed the first video and was able to succesfully make my miraak have his own body and face textures (gotta love that dragon tattoo on the back!).

remember to save often and to have multiple copies of your .esp file! ck crashes like a motherfucker, just as todd howard intended.

when you’re ready to edit miraak follower, load your mod as an active file with miraakfollower.esp also enabled, go to the actors tab, search for miraak. note: all things added by the miraak follower mod will have letters MF in their names. find miraak follower, you’ll know it’s him by the potentialfollowerfaction faction addedd to him as well as some 30+ users in the users tab. now, listen up. idk what’s the matter with ck or what the hell are users, but by the love of talos make sure the number of users for miraak remains the same! if you see that users are now 0, exit ck without saving, reload your .esp and check if number of users is back to being something over 30. if not, reload an older .esp version, even if it means redoing a lot of stuff. why you should care about users? i don’t know, but i noticed that if users are 0, then the mod won’t work, your miraak will be pure vanilla and won’t use any of your modifications. complicated stuff, i know, just keep those pesky users above 0 and miraak shall work as intended.

now, double click ya boi and with the help of the videos i linked edit his face meshes and textures. if you also created custom body textures (how to do that - refer to the beginning of first video where you’re shown how to create them) you should apply them at the very first tab, the same tab that also gives you the ability to edit his scale and weight. me being hellbent on the fact that atmorans were huge folk, i edited his scale to be something like 1.2, just a tad bigger that an average Nord (note: if you edit his scale you’ll notice a lot of shrinking and expanding whenever he’ll be using various animation markers around the world, such as a smelter, a stool, a wall to lean against... that’s normal, just a bit silly).

anyways, when you’re done editing his face in that window, save the changes (or apply, i forgot what the button says) and press ctrl+f4, twice for good measure. why? it’ll export your new miraak’s facegen, don’t know what it is but it’s hella important! check again if users are above 0, if yes then save your .esp and close ck. refer to the second video to learn how to use nifmerge in order to make your miraak use custom make up and warpaint textures.

once all that is done, place your .esp file after miraakfollower.esp, disable any other miraak face mods to avoid conflicts and load your game. now... at this moment many things may go wrong or refuse to work, idk why. :\

if you have the ability, load a save before the game spawns miraak follower in if you edited his weight. if not, load any save with him at your side. why? that’s because npc’s weight is baked onto a save and it will not change to match your mod’s. however, the neck of the npc will morph to match the weight you set in the ck and thus miraak may have a permanent gap between his body and neck. loading a save before the miraak follower mod’s quest sends you to get some sleep at raven rock and then check his temple is best in such case, because then the game will spawn miraak in with body weight modded and thus no neck gap!

once loaded, locate your miraak follower, click him in the console, use the unequipall command to get him naked, maybe even toggleai to keep him still. take a look at your homeboi. no grey face? body textures loaded as intended? he looks like you expected? good. dress him up again and go kill some bandits. or use some Other Type of mod to enjoy that new face and body. but if no, click him in the console again and type disable then enable a few times. eventually he should pop into his new textures. it took me quite a few resurrect commands before his grey face bug disappeared.

and... that’s it. really. i dind’t explain much, because these two vids is all you need to know how to make a custom face and body for miraak. they do a really amazing job at explaining, plus the first vid has a doc file in the describtion that you can download and use in the future. it’s very easy to follow step by step.

all i can add from myself is that don’t despair if shit doesn’t work for quite some time. it took me like a dozen attempts before my miraak .esp began working as intended and even to this moment i worry that something might break. just try again, make a fresh clean .esp, reinstall miraak follower mod if something got overwritten. look for more tutorials online. if you feel like making him standalone is way too hard, make him dependant on cosmetic mods, you won’t have to create custom texture files, but in case any of these mods get deleted, your miraak might end up bald or without eyes XD

TL;DR

i just used these two vids for the entire process, exept i didn’t create a follower, i edited an existing one from miraak follower mod.

[deannastrois]

to the end of the decade

I started this decade out…not great. And straight. I’m ending this decade maybe not perfect but accepting that I need to get better and working on it through therapy and drugs. And bi. So I’d say that’s at least something of a step up despite that I’ve had bad depressive episodes this year alone.

I also started this decade being a shadow in fandom, a lurker with nothing to say and not making friends. I’m ending it on a completely different note having actually begun creating and writing and having people on this site I’m more grateful for than anything. (and I’ll put my thanks to specific people under the cut cause I am nothing is not a weak, soft bitch at heart)

To all mutuals, thank you really for sticking around. I know I’m not the easiest to get along with and I hope to talk to some of you more at some point. I’m just so bad at it but <33333

@lembeau, I know things have been weird this year and that’s on me but at the end of the day you are always my forever girl and original otp. I don’t know how I would have gotten through some of the years without you, you’ve been my (salt)rock and best friend and everything in between. I hope things go well for you in the coming decade and know that I’ll always have your back and be immensely proud of what you’ve accomplished. I love you more than Eliza loves Goliath and in every universe the Middleman could ever give us.

@xsarahx, you were the very first person I started talking to and befriended on this site, even pre-musketeers days which is more of a throwback. We’ve come a long way from the Andrew Lee Potter days and I am always glad to talk to you about anything, including, of course, how comics have fucked up so badly these days. I’m with you till the end of the line, babe.

@sidewaystime, okay this one time I’m not gonna go with the red vs blue joke with your name I promise. Even if in my head I definitely am. Thank you for standing by all these years and I disastered my way through a career in computers, I’ll always appreciate someone knowing my absolute pain when it comes to users. Beyond that you’ve always got the best ideas for fandom aus and I love to hear them, especially if they’re old 90s fandoms. (and Canadian)

@sweetlyfez, remember back in the day when I was figuring out I was bi and it was all Constance’s fault? Well thank you for standing beside me as I figured that all out. And then laughing about it later because okay let’s be real, it is amusing in hindsight. You encouraged (and sometimes goaded) me on to writing femslash and I’ll never forget that.

@fonapola, we’ve come a long way from the musketeer-ing days. Who’d have thought our love our rare pairs would take us here but I’m glad we got there. Thank you for always letting me ramble on about those ideas and your own amazing ideas and fics and vids and everything when it came to that. You let a small thing grow large and kept the excitement going. Maybe one day we really will write our own thing together and have a shared world of sci fi and magic and someone clearly ready to be played by Howard Charles…Here’s hoping there’s more games I can drag you into it because I cannot wait.

@biportamis, oh Hannah I’d say I’m sorry for the million and one spams this year but that’s a lie and I’m not and if you’re gonna make me have musketeers feelings in 2019 then I’m gonna make you cry over Hawke. It’s equality. Jokes aside though I’m glad we always have those and holy shit you wrote a book!! Remember that?? That’s wild and I’m so proud of you for it, I can’t wait to see what you do this next decade.

@vulpyx, I am eternally grateful we got to talking and sharing fandom things, you’ve always been fun to talk to and I look forward to every pokemon game so we can make jokes about it and just be excited over it. And books! We need more good books, I hope that next Kyoshi one is gonna be good. I’m also really thankful that you’ve understood my anxiety and I wish I could help you with your own but know that I’m always here if you want to talk or need a distraction. <3

@waverly-earp, we have been through a lot of fandom madness together. Starting with AoS way back in the day and it just kept going. You’ve been a wonder through it all and an inspiration to make better gifs that look half as good as your beautiful edits. I love everything you create and wish this site wasn’t so terribly broken that it missed out on a good chunk of that stuff, but I hope you don’t stop because they always look so good. See you in the next decade with probably a dozen other fandom things to complain about (sorry not sorry)

@amandatapping, wild how quickly we bonded when it came to star trek but I’ll never regret that, the crazy things and injokes we ended up coming up with still make me laugh and you are the only person (aside from those femslash events) I’ll make ENT gifs for. Sorry I don’t love it like you do but I’m always willing to hear about how much you love it because it’s important to you and you’re important to me. #legged, baby!

@girlonthelasttrain, has it really only been two years since we started talking because it feels like we’ve been sharing memes forever. I’d say I’m sorry for spamming you with them but let’s be real, I’m not and it’s what Tidus would want. Truly a millennial icon. But really thank you so much for being around these past few years, I appreciate it every time you let me go on about my latest worries and panics and hyperfixations. I hope we get to share even more terrible memes over the next decade and I love you more than 13x7.

@alluringcliche, it’s been a while since the AoS days which really feels like it was already a decade ago but regardless I’m glad those days made us friends. Thank you for supporting me when I needed it and being there, I hope I could do the same when you needed it. I’m always down to talk about whedon shows even if joss has disappointed us terribly and this is our city now. All the best for the new year/decade and I hope to keep up more.

@dragoncharming, I was gonna call you my fandom backup but then that doesn’t feel like the right term but I also can’t think of the term to use when you’re always the person I count on to know if I’d love/hate something. You’re my guiding star for fandom, knowing where to steer me and what to steer me away from and I love you for it. I hope we get to play dnd together soon because that would be so exciting and thank you for everything.

@boydetective, oof I need to get better at texting more because I feel like I fell off the map this year and I’m sorry. I love getting to talk to you about small fandom-y things and sharing the wildness of KH and BNHA (aaaand I need to catch up again) and thank you for just rolling with it as I appear and disappear and I’m sorry about that. I’ll try to do better next decade.

@vulpixelates, thank you so much for letting me join a dnd group, it’s been a lot of fun and I am looking forward to meeting more of your characters in one shots and later on. And thanks for letting me ramble on about a million things and have Bi Panic about fifty times a year because that’s very real and I am very bad with it.

@adhd-athena, you know how next decade is starting with the KH DLC and it’s like…finally…some answers…. Well I bet we spend the next decade with just more questions and by the end of it we’ll finally have KH4. And even more questions. Regardless I’m looking forward to speculating all about that and DSC and other things with you, sorry for all the spams about those in advance I’m sure. Thank you for always listening <3

@malarkiness, I’m tempted to stick a picture of troi in here because that’s usually what I send to you and I have no regrets. Okay that’s a lie, I send you other things and I’m grateful I can always send you the most random things or rambling things and you just roll with it and amazingly haven’t blocked me yet. I hope we get to talk more about KH and FF and holy shit the remake is so close but it’s only like ¼ of it and Nomura what are you doing. (no one knows, not even him) All my love for you and the next decade of SquareEnix confusion.

@twilightacespect, it’s funny to think that I didn’t know you on this site until only about three years ago because it feels like we’ve always had this friendship. And by this friendship I mean you sending me cowboy things and me being haunted by them. Thanks beks. Okay okay, I love you a lot despite the cowboys. We’ve shared a lot of stuff and you’ve let me go on about a lot of fandom things and I’m sorry for the million and one spams over it when I hyperfixate on something we share. Except I’m not and suffer with me.

@organasoloskywalker, this year has been hard and I’ve said it a dozen times before but I wish I could be there with you. I’m always here for you though and I love you so much. Thanks for always being around to watch things with me and dragging into PGSM hell (“it’s a musical, you like those!” LIES LEXI, IT WAS PAIN) and a dozen other things. I hope we get to see each other sometime in the future and do a TAZ show or something but I’ll always be the voice on the other end of the line texting you pictures of my cat and loving Wedge Antilles. (and you) Also you know see you tonight for Fantasy High watching. <3

[throwing-summers-at-the-walls]

Hello half valid anon here (i like my nickname 😂). I got through all your fics and they were all great. Right now im just reading a lot of poi fanfics and watch fanvids cause i can't accept that the series is over 😂 --- i know what you mean about fics affecting you negatively. I had this with 13rw (the Show and some fics) everything was so dark and hopeless that i had to stop watching it. I also love to seek out fics where someone is hurt so i can feel my pain through the characters (1)

But i try to read only fics with lots of comfort so it kinda feels like i get comforted as well (dont know if that makes sense). If it makes you uncomfortable or if its unhealthy for you to write about this i completely understand and i dont mean to come of as pushing you to write. I just hope whatever you do will be the right decision for you! As for you feeling suicidal im sorry to hear that. Let me know if there is ever anything i can do to help! I wish i could say sth more comforting but Im not super good with words :( i just hope you have people in your life that support you! 💛

maybe root will grow on you too? Or maybe you can skip her scenes and enjoy John, Harold and most importanly Bear! 😂 Yeah Shaw definately looks really good. She is a bit like Reese minus the caring. At first it seems she doesnt care about anything at all but thats not exactly the Case. There was an episode with Shaw and a little girl (3x5) and i really loved it (have you seen that one?).

I really think Shaw would grow on you (especially since in the beginning she does a lot with John) but then again a lot of her later scenes include Root so im not sure. Yes i love that there were never any romantic undertones with her and John!!

yeah the core four were great. I was so sad when Carter died! :(

i guess everyone sees chemistry different, i think Shoot and Rinch post have great chemistry ☺️

as for John being good with people: YES!! he is always so compassionate and such a great listener as well. I especially like him with children. John and the baby were so cute or John with the boy who offered to pay for him. John + Kids was always a great combination and i wished we would have seen it more often. Also regarding children we did we never got to see a John Taylor scene after Carters death? I needed that!

yes John the badass is also amazing! His character has so many different sides and i love him so much!!

i think Grace Harold was really cute but i dont really see a future for them, i mean he lied to her for so long! but then again they really loved each other so idk maybe they work it out. Im also not into John/Harold/Grace but like you said good for the people who like the ship :)

John and Zoe were great! i wish Zoe would have appeared more often!

I have so many things to say about John and the boring therapist but i think i better not say them :D i wish i could just erase their relationship from my mind!

of course he didnt die! i didnt see a dead body so i refuse to believe he is dead! i also just wanted them to be happy. what kind of an ending is it to let the main character die? i refuse to accept this! -- thank you for the rec i will check it out :) while i do like fluff i mostly read h/c (with the focus on the comfort) cause i just want John to get his much needed comfort :D -- i have no idea where season 1 is supposed to be boring. but idc the people can live with their wrong opinions :D

(today: tumblr user nourann3 discovers the option to indent text after almost 5 years on tumblr...)

Hiii !! It is a very valid nickname 😂 That's nice !! Hmu if you want more recs ! Lol same honestly, I can't believe it's been 4 years since the show ended ! I can give you a link to my poi/Rinch fanvids playlist if you're interested 👀

Oh boi 13rw is so cursed, can't believe I watched all of the 1st season 😬 I remember being afraid of the suicide scene making me uncomfortable but it was so cringe, unrealistic and just bad that I wasn't even that uncomfortable, I cringed when she cut her arms but that's it.

Yeah big mood I project a lot on comfort fics as well. For suicide fics, I think it also depends on how the fics adress the subject. It's something that is complicated to write. If I read a suicide fic with no recovery I'm gonna project but feel like shit. But with recovery, I can project into the recovery as well so it's better ! I read a really good ace attorney fic showing Miles recovering after a suicide attempt, it was thoughtful and didn't fall into the pitfalls of magical super fast recovery/love heals everything, and some lines stuck with me, it was really good and comforting. But yeah if it's just a suicide/suicide attempt then I don't think it's good for me (but sometimes I still read it bc I'm a Dumb Bitch).

Dw you didn't come off as pushing 💜 I'll see how I feel about continuing it or not. I have to figure out if writing about suicide is positive or negative for me 🤔 I mean I'm not portraying John's suicidal crisis as a positive thing, and he reaches out to Harold, and considers he might get better so I don't think it's bad for me ? Another problem is that I have a tendency to drop my wips to write a new shiny idea I get, and then I never finish anything gkgkffjfjf I dropped the suicide fic for the body horror fic which I dropped for the time loop fic, and there's also the hanahaki fic I started last year but I haven't touched in months, plus a bunch of random shit floating around OneDrive lmao someone stop me

What helps the most is venting, just getting that shit out is helping y'know. I appreciate your support ♥️ at least it's not as bad as it used to be

I doubt Root will grow on me, catch me watching her scenes at 1.5 speed lmao, also yes you bet I'll enjoy watching them !!

Yes I remember that ep ! Iirc the little girl tells Shaw she has feelings but the volume is lower than in other people or smth along those lines ?

I hope she'll grow on me bc she seems cool. I remember I was a bit afraid of her just becoming a sort of hollow copy of John, like "look we added another badass to the show". Seems to be more than that though ! Also I'm curious about their mayhem twins dynamic. But yeah if she has a lot of scenes with Root idk how much it'll annoy me

I feel like I wouldn't be able to get the Shoot chemistry bc I'm too biased against Root lol

Ikr the crossing hurt me so much. But thinking about it takes me back to my careese days and my first fics lol. I feel like the death of one of the core four + the abandonment of the library really alienated me from the show (did I already say that before ?). And here I'm gonna shamelessly derail from Carter to the library bc boiii do I have a lot of feelings about the library !! And you're here, talking about poi, so you're the perfect subject to throw these feelings at. This post really says what I feel about it (I'll put the link at the end as well if you wanna read it after you're done with this l o n g reply). It was in a way its own character and its forced abandonment/destruction really hit me (fucked me up when they broke that glass board). It says something that it's one of the few things I remember from S3 along with Carter's death and 4C. I loved it a lot, it was a cornerstone of the show. It was a safe place, a home for Harold and John (and Bear !). I love when they're together in there, I love this cracked glass board, this yellow stained glass in the windows !!! (at least I assume it's stained glass ?), these lights, Bear's cushion, the whole cozy/safe/isolated feelings, just absolutely everything. And yeah later they have the subway, idk when it's introduced I don't remember if it's early enough for me to have watched it. And maybe it's nice, I can't judge rn. But it's like trying to give me a new MC after a MCD, make him as nice as you want I'll be clutching the previous MC until I die. Gkfkfkff I went overboard and off topic but I just love the library ok

Ikr I love how he's badass but also gentle and understanding and nice to people ! I love him !!! Yeah wolf and cub is really good, also I love when John smiles to Darren at the end !! I use this moment as my pfp bc I love it so much. He's just so cute ! I wish he smiled more (did we ever hear him laugh in the entirety of the show ?). Baby blue is so great, Harold and him are such a married couple in this ep ! Yeah same more content with John and children would have been nice.

I never thought about how much we needed a John Taylor scene but yes !! We were robbed :((((

Speaking of John being a cool badass. Here's a badass John vid rec it's super good

Yeah they were cute in the past. I think it's good he went back to her bc it gives closure to both of them. But I don't see their relationship working again. She grieved, probably started to move on after all these years and knowing he lied all this time probably won't make her want to go back with him. I've never been in love so what do I know lol, but were I her I probably wouldn't want to go back with him and I'd just be happy knowing he's alive after all.

Same I need more Zoe (also she's hot)

Lmao let's just forget about that weird relationship shall we

Aren't we all the same, firmly believing he's alive and happy out there ! It was foreshadowed since the first ep and it made sense but do I care ? No, fuck that shit John is very much alive

You're welcome ! John needs all the comfort and the love !!! I think I have a preference for fluff bc he gets hurt enough in the show lol

Indeed they can, veryyy far away from us

Sry if this is shit I have like half a functioning braincell today

The post abt home bases I mentioned

[gukyi]

moonlight melody (ii.) | jjk

summary: when your loving best friend playfully pranks you one too many times, you decide that revenge is best served hot, over a period of thirty days, and with a little extra help from the best violinist you know (sorry jimin).

or, the one where during your month-long vacation in italy with your youth orchestra, you realize that vengeance is sweet but fake dating jungkook is sweeter.

{fake dating!au, university orchestra!au, vacation!au}

pairing: jungkook x female reader word count: 25k (still sorry mobile users) genre: fluff, minor angst warnings: more obnoxious slow burn. lots of comparing jungkook to famous italian renaissance artwork. characters being oblivious. the usual in your fake dating lineup. the beautiful image of hoseok wearing bright yellow shorts with green polka dots. a/n: i said a week, i actually meant a week and a day. here she is, folks. this fic is straight up 104 pages in my google doc, what a beast. is this the monster or am i? the world will never know. big thanks to everyone who’s been waiting so patiently for this fic!! you guys are the reason i even finished it. im now going to hole myself up in my room and watch my concert vids.  edit (4.16.20): the very wonderful @jtrbluv​ made this incredible playlist for this fic and i can’t recommend listening to it enough!!!!! please put this on while you read <3

part one | part two (finale)

The first thing that Seokjin says when your train pulls into the Santa Lucia station in Venice is, “if I don’t become an Instagram model and make thousands of dollars off of tea detoxes and teeth-whitening products after this trip, then I don’t want to hear it.”

The first thing that Yoongi says when your train pulls into the Santa Lucia station is, “You have fifty-three followers and all of them are fake accounts you made to follow yourself.”

Seokjin gasps, appalled at such an accusation thrown his way. “How dare you challenge my integrity, my honor, and my dignity.” He asks like a presidential candidate being insulted during a televised public debate. The comparison honestly isn’t that far off.

“You had any of those to begin with?” Jimin mutters under his breath, but it’s loud enough for everyone within a five feet radius of him to hear it. Taehyung chokes back something between a bark of laughter and a snort, and winks when Seokjin turns his head around to glare at him both threateningly and affectionately.

“Okay, second of all, fuck you,” Seokjin spits out, the resolve of the aforementioned presidential candidate shattering. Though, with any hint at how politics is turning out these days, you suppose swears probably aren’t off the table just yet.

Namjoon scrunches up his nose, looking as lost as he always is. “What happened to the first of all?” Seokjin shrugs because it’s incredibly clear that he has no idea where the first part went either.

“Feels like just yesterday we were in Rome,” Taehyung muses to himself, false-nostalgia tainting his tone. He looks thoughtfully up to the sky as if reflecting on past memories.

“It was yesterday,” Hoseok interrupts. “In fact, it was this morning, too.”

“Did. I. Stutter.” Taehyung says sharply without turning his head. Perhaps he would look a little more menacing if he didn’t have this absolutely horrendous sunburn decorating his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, making him look more like a Strawberry Shortcake character than a university student. It doesn’t help that his shirt is almost comically frilly. He looks like he walked right off of a high fashion runway.

You barely notice Jungkook coming up behind you, suitcase and violin in hand. He touches your side to get your attention, and when you turn to him you make no effort to fight the smile that grows on your face. His being always seems to lighten up your mood.

“Hey,” you say.

“Hey,” he replies. “You didn’t hear it from me, but Bang wants to give us this week off to explore Venice on our own,” he whispers, out of earshot of everyone else. You know that the second Jimin is going to hear this he’s going to beat his chest and holler like Tarzan. Jungkook knows better than to speak loudly.

“Seriously?” You ask in disbelief. Even if you are all college students you are, quite frankly, shocked that Bang would give you that much freedom. A whole week all to yourselves? It sounds like a recipe for disaster, but everyone always says to try new things.

“Seriously,” Jungkook confirms with a nod. “I think Bang’s gotten so sick of us that he’s willing to let us loose like animals for a week so he can recover his lost brain cells.”

You hum in agreement, Jungkook’s suspicion probably not that far off. A middle-aged man can only take so much from fifty college students before he is driven off the edge. You don’t blame Bang in the slightest, especially because on your last night in Rome, it took seven of you to convince Taehyung not to sneak into Bang’s room and write the entire Bee Movie script on the complimentary notepad. You are wholly unsurprised that Taehyung still has at least the first 300 words memorized.

“We don’t have any performances here, do we?” You ask Jungkook.

Jungkook shakes his head, purses his lips. “Don’t think so. They start back up in Florence.”

It’s hard to think about Florence, now that you’re here. But Florence is only a week away and then you only have about ten days there before your trip is over, your time is up and you have to board a plane back home. It feels so far away and yet at the same time, you know that it is right at your doorstep.

“Really?” You ask, skeptical. “I’m surprised Bang didn’t schedule any.”

“I will bet you all of my college tuition that Bang organized this trip so he would have this week of peace right in the middle of all the chaos. The eye of the storm.”

“Are we the storm, Jungkook?” You ask even if you already know the answer.

Next to you, it seems that Jimin has convinced Hoseok to play his newest piece out loud, and so Hoseok’s grainy rap blares through his grainy speakers as everyone hoots and hollers. You are pretty sure that Taehyung is doing every outdated dance he can think of to the beat, crying out in enthusiasm at Hoseok’s song. It’s a good song, you’ll admit that much. If this were a movie, then some agent or music producer would coincidentally be walking by, hear Hoseok’s song, and offer him a prestigious record deal right on the spot. Instead, the only passersby are disgruntled tourists who frown as they pass your rambunctious crew, shaking their heads to themselves.

Jungkook nods. “We’re the storm.”

You wish you could say you were shocked.

Bang rounds everybody up at the lobby of the hotel you’re staying at, not necessarily one of those chain lodgings but also not a tiny alleyway of a place. Behind you, you can hear Jimin and Taehyung plotting to steal Seokjin’s clean underwear. Boys are disgusting.

“Okay, everyone,” Bang announces with a clap of his hands, loud like the beat of a snare drum. “As you may already know, I don’t have any performances planned for this week in Venice.”

Small gasps and very loud whispers break out throughout the orchestra. Jungkook reaches down, and for a second you think he’s going to grab your hand, but instead he pinches the side of your shirt and makes you squeak, much to the disruption of everyone else. As the blood rushes to your cheeks you give Jungkook a heavy shove, your upper body strength from all that cello-lifting paying off when he stumbles slightly. Fucker.

“And I am making the slightly-unsettling decision to give you all this week off to do what you please,” Bang continues, and so do the gasps. You can hear the smack of skin that signifies a high five, and turn around to find Jimin wincing slightly as he caresses his reddened palm. Next to him, Taehyung grins, almost proudly. “Nothing is planned save for a couple of small things closer to the end of our stay here in Venice, so you all have until then to do what you wish.” He eyes Taehyung and Jimin suspiciously. “Please don’t make me regret this decision.”

And even if Taehyung and Jimin are orchestral hooligans at best, you know that they’ll keep on Bang’s good side.

Bang ends his announcement there and goes to speak with the hotel staff to check in.

Namjoon clasps his hands together as the seven of you turn to face him, waiting for his next move. “Now that Bang’s not going to be breathing down our necks, I say that we take our time in Venice to go—”

“Sightseeing.”

“Drinking.”

Seokjin and Yoongi glare at each other.

“Uh, I was going to say we go and explore, but alright, I guess,” Namjoon says tentatively. “I think that we should divide up into two groups just to make travel a little easier, though. I don’t think the water taxis outside can handle eight fully-grown college students.”

“Well,” Taehyung interrupts. “Seven fully-grown college students and Yoongi.”

Yoongi tweaks Taehyung’s nipple in retaliation, eliciting something between a hiccup and a squeak from the latter.

“Okay, I call Namjoon,” Jimin announces, latching himself onto Namjoon’s arm. The process feels eerily similar to when you had to pick groups for projects in high school.

“I call Jimin,” Taehyung mimics, and suddenly Namjoon’s got himself an entire conga line on his arm. He sends something of a pained look Yoongi’s way, and you’re pretty sure that it is out of pity that he joins Namjoon’s group, leaving you with Jungkook, Hoseok, and Seokjin.

“Have fun losing all of your brain cells, fuckers,” Seokjin teases. Namjoon’s face, if possible, becomes even more distorted.

“Bold of you to assume I had any of those to begin with,” Taehyung responds cheekily, just the right amount of self-deprecation evident in his voice. “At least we’re not stuck with Mr. and Mrs. Lovebird McLovebirdson.”

“Excuse you?” You say, only mildly offended that Taehyung would tack a name such as that onto you and Jungkook’s relationship or whatever the hell it is that the two of you have going on.

“Leave him, Thumper,” Jungkook says with a fond smile. Taehyung glares at him suspiciously. “He’s just teasing you.”

“You’re the only one allowed to do that,” you say with a pout, making Jungkook poke a pointer finger into your chipmunk cheeks.

“Is that right, Thumper?” He asks with a smirk.

Seokjin huffs out a sigh. He looks about as pained as Namjoon, but for an entirely different reason. With a groan, he asks, “Anyone willing to trade?”

The films that romanticize early mornings in foreign countries and strolls along cobblestone alleys are bold-faced lies, that’s what they are. They are ridden with the sweet, deceitful art of movie-magic and morphed into constructions designed to appeal to the losers in their bedrooms watching them on their shitty Windows laptops. They are anything but the truth.

It is six in the morning when Jeon Soyeon is shaking you awake, and six-thirty in the morning when a certain fake boyfriend is outside your door, a guilty grin on his face.

“Care to explain why I’m up at the ass-crack of dawn, Jungkook?” You ask with a single raised, eyebrow, tapping your foot impatiently with your hand resting on the side of the open door.

“Okay, first of all, the sun rose like, an hour ago, so I don’t wanna hear it,” Jungkook points out. “Second of all, Seokjin and Hoseok said that they’d meet us in San Marco at eight, so I thought we could grab breakfast together.”

“Did you text Soyeon and ask her to wake me up for you?” You continue to interrogate, paying little attention to the plans at hand that Jungkook’s suggested.

Jungkook smiles guiltily. “I wanted to surprise you?” He says it more like it’s a question that he’s asking you rather than something akin to a romantic statement.

You turn your head around to sneer at Soyeon, who is honestly too kind to be blackmailed into doing Jungkook’s dirty work. She’s pretending not to listen to your conversation, whistling loudly to herself as she stares at the corner of your hotel room, acting natural. You know you won’t be getting any direct eye contact from her before you leave for the day, so you exchange the glare on your face for a sigh, looking back to Jungkook. He’s looking as hopeful as ever, though you have a sneaking suspicion he already knows you won’t turn him down.

“Fine,” you relent, rolling your eyes. You grab your mini backpack from where it rests against the television stand/dresser hybrid. “You owe Soyeon a gelato for getting her to do this for you.”

“Believe me, I know,” Jungkook says with a nod, clicking his tongue and sending a finger gun Soyeon’s way. She grins in response, waving wildly to the both of you. At least someone’s getting something out of this ridiculous deal. “Come on, we better go before Bang catches us up this early.”

And this is how you land up at a small Venetian café far from any major tourist sites after stumbling around the slowly-waking city. The tourists aren’t awake yet, the busy streets aren’t filled yet, and it feels sort of like this is your everyday reality: a coffee in the morning on a sidestreet in Venice with your boyfriend. Well. Almost boyfriend. Very close to being a real boyfriend boyfriend. Fake boyfriend.

“You ever crave something disgustingly unhealthy for breakfast?” Jungkook asks as he digs into his breakfast pastry, berry-colored jam leaking from the sides.

“As in?”

“Some healthy, hearty Shin ramen.”

“Don’t tell me you eat that for breakfast,” you say in slightly horror, looking up at Jungkook. Sure, you’ve had your fair share of ramen for meals, but at least you tend you gravitate towards granola bars for most of your morning meals.

Jungkook doesn’t respond, instead choosing to grimace as his answer.

“That is absolutely horrifying,” you tell him.

“It does a fantastic job of waking you up, that I can confirm,” Jungkook tells you, pointing at you with the spoon by his untouched caffé latte. You told Jungkook he could just order a hot chocolate since he hated coffee anyway, but the latte was barely two Euros and Jungkook honestly panicked at the last second. You feel bad, because he’s wasted his money either way, so he might as well do it on something he’ll enjoy.

“If you won’t drink your latte, can I have it?” You ask tentatively, motioning to it. Nothing like a good bit of caffeine in the morning to get you ready for action.

Jungkook nods, almost too enthusiastically, even going so far as to push the saucer towards you, the pattern in the cup swishing with the movement. “Sure, go ahead.”

You take his cup and bring it to your lips, sipping softly as the hot liquid runs down your tongue, stinging your taste buds just the right amount. Your group doesn’t have too much on your itinerary for today, which must be the reason why he’s so resigned, so laid back. Or perhaps that’s just his normal disposition. Regardless, watching Jungkook as he plays around on his phone distracts you enough while you’re drinking to give you an awful foam moustache, much to Jungkook’s enjoyment.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Jungkook says as you’re reaching for your napkin. “Let me take a picture of you.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” you mutter to yourself. “Must you?”

Jungkook’s adamant. “Yes. I don’t have a single photo of you on my phone and we’ve just spent the last week and a half in Italy.”

“So the first one has to be of me with a coffee moustache?”

“You look cute!” Jungkook insists.

You scoff. “I beg to differ.”

“The more you talk the more your moustache fades,” Jungkook tells you with a pout. “C’mon, Thumper, please?”

You resign. “Quickly.”

Jungkook silently fist-pumps the air before snapping a photo of your pout. The moment his camera begins to lower you wipe off the remains of your coffee moustache with your finger, sticking it in your mouth to finish the job. You paid money for this thing. Actually, he paid money for this thing. And you’re not going to let it go to waste either way.

“See? Cute,” Jungkook says, shoving his iPhone in your face to reveal your glowing, coffee moustache-laden grin as his lockscreen, visible to anybody who turns on his phone and swipes left to spam his camera roll. You have to admit, even with the unflattering view Jungkook’s knack for photography still shines through. The photo looks much better than anything you could ever do. “You look great, Thumper. Lockscreen-worthy.”

“Can you explain to me where the Thumper came from? I feel like I never got the memo,” you ask, the thought just popping into your head. The nickname is endearing, sure, much more so than something basic like “baby” or “angel” and much less greasy than “darling” or “sweetheart”, but you’re not exactly sure where it came from. Not that you’re complaining.

“When your cheeks puff up,” Jungkook says over a mouthful of pastry, “you look like Thumper from Bambi. You know, the rabbit. The resemblance is, quite frankly, uncanny.”

“You’re saying I look like a cartoon bunny.”

“In a cute way!” Jungkook emphasizes. And then, softly, “You should know by now that I think everything you do is cute, Y/N.” Jungkook says it like he’s discussing the weather, taking another bite of his breakfast.

You pause, parted lips slowly sealing themselves as you sink back in your chair.

You didn’t know that at all.

Piazza San Marco has already begun to overflow with tourists by the time you and Jungkook arrive, seeking out familiar faces. The conversation from earlier is almost entirely forgotten, save for you. Sometimes, in fake relationships, you’re starting to think you prefer it when everything is a lie rather than hearing the truth come out.

Jungkook, on the other hand, is as normal as ever, tugging you with your hand in his own when he spots Seokjin and his bright red baseball cap, worn backwards like a frat boy. You can only hope that he’s got SPF 100 on his face, because the sun already seems to be burning right through the pavement. Hoseok has on his terrible shorts. Maybe you should stare into the sun, go blind just so you don’t have to lay your eyes on those monstrosities. Permanent retina damage doesn’t seem like the worst idea in the world.

“I cannot believe you are wearing those,” you say when you walk up to them, staring Hoseok’s shorts down. He flaunts them, feeds off of your disgust. They look just as awful now as they did in eighth grade. Not much has really changed since then. Maybe your heights.

“Were you under the impression that I wouldn’t?” Hoseok challenges, posing a valid question. Perhaps Hoseok packed them just to spite you at eleven at night, three hours before you had to go to the airport, but he also definitely fully intended on wearing them, and now, here you are.

You narrow your eyes. “Touché.”

“What are we doing today, Less Important ‘Seok?” Hoseok asks enthusiastically, hands on his hips like a superhero from a cartoon. He turns to Seokjin with a grin on his face like he didn’t just send him a thinly-veiled insult, one that takes Seokjin approximately five seconds to process.

Then Seokjin says, “Excuse me?”

And Hoseok smiles.

“I say we go explore,” Jungkook suggests, adjusting the straps of his backpack. He’s got luggage locks on the damn zippers like the world’s most cautious tourist, but you find the neon green locks quite endearing. Nothing like the fluorescent color of a Sharpie highlighter to deter those pesky pickpockets. “Today’s a great day for all of those Instagram shots you want.”

Seokjin seems to perk up at that idea. “Nice, brand deals here I come,” he says, rubbing his hands together evil-villain-style.

“I could really use some photos for my portfolio,” Jungkook says, sort of like an aside.

“You’re making a portfolio?” You ask him, curious. It’s incredible, that Jungkook has so many projects going on at once, so many talents that he’s already refined, perfected. You can barely walk in a straight line, sober.

“Yeah,” Jungkook tells you softly, hand reaching up to tug on the camera strap around his neck. “To remember the, uh, the trip. It’s very picturesque here.”

Seokjin’s loud voice interrupts the both of you, shifting to see him standing in the center of the piazza with a peace sign by his face. “If it’s so picturesque then why am I not being photographed for my very first sponsorship?” He shouts, motioning to Jungkook’s camera like a CEO standing at the top of a skyscraper, watching down at his minions doing his dirty work. If Seokjin, God forbid, ever became Instagram famous, you know that all of you would end up suffering. He would hold his follower count over your heads for everything.

Jungkook sighs, pressing the silver button on his camera without even bringing it up to eye level to peer into the screen, haphazardly clicking away after making an educated guess as to the lens view. He’s either right on the money or currently taking about ten shots of Seokjin’s knees and nothing else. Either way they are Instagram-worthy.

Seokjin takes absolutely no notice of the fact that Jungkook is half-assing his photos and moves back towards the group after about thirty seconds of random camera-clicking, satisfied. You wonder why Hoseok always has it out for you with his outlandish pranks when you are almost certain that Seokjin is infinitely more gullible than you in every sense of the word. There have been multiple occasions during in which Seokjin has searched for his glasses, only to find out that they were not only on his head, he was also wearing them.

“Okay, the sun is shining, the clouds are gone, it’s only marginally burning temperatures, which means that we are going to avoid every tourist attraction in this city for the entire day,” you declare, clapping your hands together. Nothing sounds truly more awful than marching around a densely-packed part of town with no air conditioning and a million other people with a million other body heats.

“Dude, I’m sweating just standing here,” Hoseok says, taking his grossly-fluorescent visor off of his head and fanning himself with it.

“We could probably alleviate that problem by moving into the side streets, which are shaded,” you say.

Jungkook chuckles, but the lot of you are already moving out of Piazza San Marco, veering towards the nearest side street that you can find, eyes scanning for shade. “Emphasis on the word ‘probably,’” he jokes, an entirely valid statement because even in the shade you can feel the sweat running down your back.

Even without the use of water travel, you manage to find some pretty spectacular places within walking distance. Venice is like playing legato notes in an allegro piece, the kind of city where you hold onto each moment for as long as you can even though your days there are numbered, even though the fast pace of your travel will catch up to you eventually. Bang always reminds the orchestra that you can’t cut legato notes short otherwise they just become mundane, average notes. That’s Venice.

There is no method to your madness, if you could even call it that. Without the pressure to see all of the tourist sites at once, time limits and schedules entirely vacant, you are not walking around Venice so much as you are strolling around Venice, taking in the scenery and landscape without a rush to be anywhere at all.

You would almost imagine that it would be just you and Jungkook together, hand-in-hand as you waltz down the pavement in a gorgeous foreign city, if it weren’t for Hoseok cracking jokes next to you and Seokjin stopping your entire group every block in order to snag another photo. Not that you can really blame him any more, now that you think about it. You’d want to remember as much of this trip as possible too.

“We’re gonna get back to the hotel and I’m gonna plug in my camera and every single photo is going to be Seokjin with a peace sign in front of his face,” Jungkook tells you in mock exasperation, rolling his eyes as Seokjin beckons him over towards a piece of street art that he wants a photo in front of. It’s a very tasteful street art image, an incredibly bright red stack of buildings with a face coming out of it. You laugh at Jungkook’s expense, because that’s what he gets for being a kind, giving, and photographically talented individual.

The two of them prance over to pose in front of the wall as Hoseok and you stay back, hanging around on the opposite side of the street.

“Y/N,” Hoseok says, nudging your side. His voice is soft, muted, meaning that he’s about to tell you something he doesn’t want the other two to know about. “You and Jungkook seem to really enjoy each other’s company.”

You scoff, a little concerned about what direction this conversation is about to go to. “Why wouldn’t we? We’re dating.” Fake dating.

“Well,” Hoseok says hesitantly. “I mean, you’ve barely ever spoken to each other prior to this trip but after you guys got off the plane it just… it seemed like you were happier. You know? Especially this past week in Rome, and now. You just seem really happy.”

“Am I typically unhappy?” You ask with your eyebrows raised.

“No, not like that,” Hoseok says. He lets out a big sigh and keeps his eyes trained on Seokjin and Jungkook, who are still fooling around across the street. “You just seem to really like him. I’m glad.”

You keep silent. For a split second, you feel guilty again, guilty that you’re tricking your best friend into thinking that something so real, so genuine, is a sham.

“I’m glad he’s making you happy,” Hoseok continues, and as bad as it sounds, you want your best friend to shut up and stop talking. Stop saying these things because they make you feel bad and confused and worried all at once. “You deserve someone like Jungkook.” And, as if that isn’t enough, he says, “He looks like he loves you a lot.”

Does he really?

It’s then that Hoseok straightens out his posture and returns to his smiling self as Jungkook and Seokjin make their way over, giggling about something stupid that you didn’t notice. You wonder if Seokjin got some good photos, but then you realize that with Jungkook, they won’t be anything less than perfect.

(Jungkook looks gorgeous when he giggles. His nose scrunches up and his eyes crinkle and he laughs like he doesn’t know how to stop laughing.)

“Ready to go, Thumper?” Jungkook asks, reaching a hand out. You take it without a shadow of a doubt. It’s strange. It’s beginning to feel like it belongs there.

“Where to next?” You ask, facing a crossroads. Each way leads down a different path, one that could lead you somewhere else, but that’s the beauty of it all.

Jungkook grins. “Anywhere.”

You make a vow to yourself that you’ll come back to Italy when you’re rich and famous and can afford to splurge on ten thousand dollar Dior dresses and fast passes to the biggest attractions, but even as a college student with an exponentially increasing amount of student loans and about four dollars and thirty-three cents in your bank account you know that there are some things that you just have to do in Italy.

One of which being a gondola tour.

“You know,” Namjoon says matter-of-factly with his mouth filled with some sort of unnamed pastry with jam, “the gondola tours are 100% not worth your time. You’d do better just walking around yourself.”

The eight of you are gathered at the same café that you and Jungkook found on your first full day here, far from any tourist traps and bustling morning crowds. The old lady who seems to be the only employee speaks very little English, but even though you, a youth orchestra group in which none of you speak Italian, are her only customers at such an early morning hour, she is making a wonderful effort at communicating with you.

Namjoon has already picked up the vernacular of the region. No big deal.

“Okay Mr. I Spent Fifty Euros on the Doge’s Palace,” Hoseok mocks pointedly, drinking his latte with a very unappealing slurp. “Stop being such a hater.”

“In Namjoon’s defense, it’s called the Doge’s Palace,” Taehyung points out.

“Yes, because a hallmark of Venetian Gothic architecture and its rich history have anything to do with a deceased meme from five years ago,” Yoongi deadpans, downing another one of those tiny little espresso shots like it’s nothing. It travels down his esophagus and lights everything on fire along the way and he doesn’t bat an eyelash.

“Doge may be dead in our minds but he will live on in our hearts,” Taehyung preaches.

Namjoon rolls his eyes and turns back to you, the genius who had the idea of an overpriced gondola tour for the four of you in the first place. “They’re overpriced, overrated, and severely underwhelming,” he continues like some politician trying to convince you to join his cause against overpriced gondola tours for the sake of his campaign. Since when did he become the end-all be-all of tour guides? He bought that one travel book on Venice and suddenly he thinks he’s—

“I don’t know, I thought it was a good idea,” Jungkook adds in, swinging an arm over your shoulder as moral support.

Taehyung frowns. “That’s because you’re in love with her, dumbass.”

Jungkook chuckles at that, but you can tell that it’s forced and awkward and uncomfortable from the way his body stiffens beside yours and the way his eyes begin to dart around. He must feel just as guilty as you about this whole arrangement, grimacing at the way everyone thinks he’s in love with you.

(“He looks like he loves you a lot.”)

“Very funny,” Jungkook says with a glare to his best friend.

Taehyung winks.

“Listen, if you guys wanna spend your money that way, be my guest,” Namjoon says, resigning his argument. It’s very clear that his debate skills will only get him so far when he’s trying to utilize them with a group of college youths in a foreign country very recently hopped up on caffeine. “But it’ll be a waste of your money.”

Hoseok scoffs. “We’re in Italy on a school-sponsored trip and we already have thousands of dollars in debt because the American banking system is ass,” he reasons. “What’s a couple more dollars going to do?”

To that, everyone cheers.

The last time you were on a boat, you had accompanied Hoseok’s family on his annual fishing trip during spring break when the both of you were twelve. Against both of your better judgement, you and Hoseok climbed into his father’s kayak to boat around the lake that your lodging rested up against despite the fact that neither of you knew how to kayak. Five minutes later the both of you were held up by your lifejackets as the kayak floated away, unmanned, far out of reach as the both of you tread the freezing cold water. It’s one of your fondest memories.

It’s been six years since you were on a boat and the uneasy, queasy feeling you receive from being on one still hasn’t faded. In fact, it seems to be amplified now that you are surrounded by new friends who haven’t seen you throw up before, unlike Hoseok.

Granted, a gondola is kind of the Venetian dream, when you think about it. The kind of activity that everyone in the movies does whenever they visit Venice, and soft violin music is playing in the background as an unnamed man steers the main character and their love interest and everything is romantic and soft and not at all sweaty and crowded.

This is not a Venetian dream. It’s more like a Venetian reality.

Seokjin and Hoseok have been bickering for the past ten minutes on the correct way to put on a lifejacket when neither of them are wearing theirs correctly, and your fake boyfriend is paying you hardly any attention because his face has been stuck in his camera ever since you boarded. The added cushioning is causing sweat to dribble down your back in droplets, turning the part where your shorts meet your t-shirt into a damp, uncomfortable mess. This kind of sucks and yet, you don’t think you’d rather be anywhere else.

Seokjin sighs, looking towards the back row, where you and Jungkook are sitting. He’s got one arm wrapped around your waist—you feel bad because his hand is most definitely damp from your sweat—and the other is holding his camera up to his eye, snapping as many photos as he can as the boat travels down the water, like he’s going to make some stop-motion animation film. “You guys are so lucky,” he says.

“Us?” You ask, confused.

“When I’m rich and famous I want to bring my significant other here and get a gondola tour and travel the city together, and you guys get to do it even though you are neither rich nor famous,” Seokjin declares, exasperated, envious of whatever the hell you and Jungkook have. “This is like, a prime love location.”

“Yeah, because you’d know anything about love,” Hoseok says with a taunting sneer. “Pretty sure the only girl in your life is your bassoon.”

“Talk about her behind my back all you want, but do not insult Bessy in front of me,” Seokjin says, a hard glare etched on his face. The expression makes Hoseok double over in laughter. You’re almost 100% sure that if it were socially acceptable, Seokjin would sleep with his bassoon every night just to make sure it was warm and protected. You know, like a sentient being. Except it’s a wooden instrument. With keys that can bend very, very easily.

“You and your bassoon can suck my ass,” Hoseok continues just to be unbearable. You know Seokjin isn’t taking what he says to the heart, but it doesn’t stop the older from reaching over to ruffle Hoseok’s hair. You swear you can see droplets of maroon sweat fall from his locks as Seokjin gives them a good shake.

“You guys are some lucky motherfuckers, I hope you know that,” Seokjin says, pointing to the both of you accusingly. He’s got something in between a fond look and a sneer on his face. You know he means nothing but the best.

Jungkook pulls you in for a side hug, your body squishing against the heat of his own for a brief second before he lets go. “What can I say, you’re a catch, Thumper.” He presses a sweat-laden kiss to your cheek, but the touch of his lips on your skin no longer catches you off guard. In fact, it’s almost like you were waiting for the next time he would kiss you. Almost.

“I think I might throw up and not from seasickness,” Hoseok says with the most horrified look on his face.

You turn to Jungkook, only to find him grinning unbearably wide, a sun of a smile on his face as he looks down at you. Looks at you like he’s spent all this money just so he could be in a gondola with you in Venice, not for any of the sights along the way. His camera’s still held up in his hand but he’s no longer clicking away, instead savoring the view right in front of him. You can’t imagine what sort of otherworldly acting skills Jungkook might have if he’s able to see some façade of beauty in your sweaty, heat-stricken body, but you suppose that anything’s a stretch at this point. You’re already head-deep into this fake dating thing. How much further can you go?

“Oh!” Seokjin gasps aloud. “The lighting is perfect here! Quick, Jungkook, take a photo of me!” Immediately the man strikes a perfectly constructed pose, pretending to look off into the unknown distance with his head turned away from the camera, faking a candid photo to the soft sloshing of the water against the boat. Seokjin, quite frankly, looks ridiculous, but you have to admit that the light gives him a sort of heavenly glow. One that will probably translate very well on Instagram.

“He’s right, Thumper,” Jungkook says, bringing his camera up to his eye. “The lighting is perfect.”

And without warning, suddenly Jungkook is turning himself ninety degrees and snapping a photo of you before you can stop him, the fond smile on your face too slow to be erased before the camera click goes off.

“Jungkook!” You hiss.

“What?” He asks defensively. Seokjin’s still posing with his head facing away from the camera, and so he’s been totally bamboozled into thinking that Jungkook is snapping photos of him. Hoseok seems to have noticed this fact, and is trying to muffle his laughter as best as he can without giving it all away. “The lighting really is perfect.”

“I look and feel like a pile of sweat in a plastic bag,” you tell him like it’s obvious that he should have noticed how truly disgusting you look. Even though you are by the water it feels like your body is burning from the inside out as a result of the blazing sun despite the copious amounts of sunscreen you’ve been layering on your body. Your hair is matted down and everything is sticky.

“Drifting through the wind?” Hoseok supplies unhelpfully, making you reach over and smack him.

“You look beautiful,” Jungkook corrects, and he takes another photo, just for good measure. “I don’t have enough photos of you on my camera, Thumper. You’re my girlfriend and I’ve barely been taking pictures of you.”

“So?”

“‘So?’” Jungkook repeats. “Thumper, everything you do deserves to become a memory.”

For the rest of the day tour, Jungkook snaps countless photos of you, ones of you posing and ones of you caught off guard, refusing to stop despite Seokjin’s indignant cries of “I asked first!”. He says it’s because he doesn’t have enough on his camera, because of all the places you’ve been to in Italy thus far this is the one where he wants to remember you most.

You wish you were good at photography. Maybe then this whole fake-dating thing would seem a lot less fake.

When Yoongi suggested drinking as a legitimate activity that the eight of you did together while in Venice, he genuinely wasn’t kidding. Jungkook texts you after another long day of walking around and avoiding tourist sites together, skipping down side streets and eating big cups of gelato, while you’re fresh out of the shower in your room. The rest of the girls are all out, so this is the only time you can secure a nice wash other than a rather unholy two in the morning. You just want to decompress, maybe go out in a little for some bruschetta but nothing else, when you read:

going out tonight gonna crack open a lot of cold ones with all the bois

please come with taehyung really wants to try italian alcohol

And then, because you apparently have no choice when it comes to him:

dropping by ur room to pick u up in twenty minutes

Which leaves you twenty minutes to get dressed, dry your hair, and put on some makeup before Jungkook is knock, knock, knocking at your door. The only reason you’re even putting effort into your appearance for such an excursion is because said excursion is occurring at a time when the sun is not beating down your back, and therefore copious amounts of sweat are no longer a factor. Well. If Taehyung has a club in mind, then maybe copious amounts of sweat will be a factor. But that is a bridge you will burn when you get to it.

You don’t really know what nightclub life will be like in Italy, though you’re fairly certain sleazebags of the male specimen are probably a universal issue. Luckily, you’ve got yourself a very handy dandy fake boyfriend to rescue you should any trouble arise.

To be quite honest, you’re surprised that nobody in your group’s made any effort to legally acquire some booze beforehand. You’d think that they’d take advantage of the lower legal alcohol limit as soon as they set foot in the country, but it doesn’t seem to be very high on their list of priorities. That is, until now.

You have just finished adjusting the collar of your dress when Jungkook knocks on your door, the sound of his fist against the wood reverberating around your entire hotel room like an echo getting farther and farther away.

“No entourage?” You ask, surprised to see him standing alone. You’d been half-expecting him to knock on your door with the entire possy behind him, waiting. He’s been fidgeting, that much you can tell, by the way his hands have been clasped together and his right foot’s unnatural position towards the left one.

“Just me, Thumper,” Jungkook admits guiltily. “Ready to go?” He holds out his hand, warm palm waiting for your softer, rounder fingers to join with his long, slender ones.

“Nothing quite like getting drunk in Venice on a university-sponsored vacation,” you say in lieu of any sort of greeting. You figure that your hand intertwined with his is enough of a hello.

He grins. “If the entire world turns to shit, we can blame Taehyung.”

It seems like a good enough plan to you.

Speaking of the devil himself, you and Jungkook meet him and the rest of the bunch in the lobby. Taehyung’s got sunglasses on the head—even though it’s eight at night—for the aesthetic and a very nice satin shirt you are absolutely positive is going to be going into the garbage after tonight. Not that you have ever had any drunk experiences with any of them besides the occasional thing with Hoseok in high school (you drank together in your bedroom without your parents knowing, how scandalous), and even then it was in the comfort of your own home without much of a risk factor.

“You are going to lose those sunglasses so damn quick, Tae,” Jimin says as you walk out of the hotel, already beginning to scan the streets for the closest bar. He even makes a show of snatching them off Taehyung’s head, wearing them himself just for fun. Taehyung makes grabby hands and says some stupid insult about Jimin’s height as he retrieves them from Jimin’s nose bridge. “Last time you got drunk you lost your Epipen. Who the fuck brings an Epipen out to go drinking?”

Taehyung gasps. “You never know which places might have corn!”

“In their drinks?”

“Is Taehyung allergic to corn? Is that what I’m getting here?” You ask, leaning over to ask into Jungkook’s ear. Not that Taehyung wouldn’t answer you perfectly fine either, you just think he seems rather busy, bickering with Jimin and playing a game of capture the flag with his sunglasses that he’s wearing at night.

“Yeah,” Jungkook nods. “But it’s like, just raw corn. The moment you cook it, he’s not allergic to it anymore.”

Not that you’re one to judge allergies or the people who have them, but Taehyung’s allergy is so specific that it fits him perfectly. Like, if nothing else, that is the most Taehyung thing about him. His allergy to raw corn.

“Hey! There’s a bar!” Seokjin shouts as you stumble across a little nook tucked away on one of the Venetian side streets, a wooden sign hanging above the open archway that reads BAR. Not many people are frequenting said joint, mostly because it’s a weekday at eight and literally nobody except people with a lot of free time (i.e. college tourists) go drinking on weekdays at eight.

You don’t rush into the bar per se, but the average speed of the group overall seems to increase before becoming a constant rate of significantly-faster-than-before as everyone gets to the bar, ready to live the dream of being zazzed in a foreign country to the highest degree possible. You know, even if you’ve never gotten drunk with him before, that Taehyung would immediately go up to the bartender and demand the strongest thing they have if the two spoke the same language. Unfortunately, Taehyung’s trapped looking at the chalkboard with fun chalk colors and hoping that his alcoholic beverage translations are accurate.

Not that any of the drinks would have raw corn in them to begin with.

For a particularly bustling city, even on a pretty average day, it surprises you that despite the date and time, there are only a couple of other patrons in the bar. Venice is busy every hour of every day, even if some times are more packed than the others, but your group makes up a hefty majority of the people in here. Rambunctious, boisterous college students who don’t know good alcohol from bad because all alcohol tastes the exact same flavor of instant regret.

Even still, Italians are known for their booze, and that is simply something you cannot escape while here. It doesn’t take much, just a bit of clambering to order, before you can already feel the liquid going to your brain, a haze settling in in your mind that doesn’t seem to be able to dissipate. Not that anyone else in your group is faring any better, because quite frankly, none of you seem to be able to hold down your alcohol well. Besides Namjoon, who is doing remarkably well.

Hoseok is draped over Seokjin’s back, unintelligible moans leaving his lips and fanning out on his shoulder. The heat makes Seokjin drunkenly try to toss ice cubes Hoseok’s way, but his aim is very unsurprisingly terrible. You’re almost positive Seokjin doesn’t have that kind of hand-eye coordination even when sober. Yoongi has struck up a wordless conversation with the bartender and seems to keep receiving drinks upon drinks, but they are very obviously watered down with soda and lime. Jimin is only the slightest bit of a disaster, but it is Taehyung that is slowly jumping off of his rocker.

The alcohol seems to have subdued Jungkook slightly, leaving him in the same mindless fog that you’re in. Neither of you know what’s just happened in the past five minutes but you know that you’re in Venice, and you know that you’re together.

And that’s really all that matters.

Taehyung is in the middle of a recreation of the Bee Movie script yet again, only he is reciting it dramatic monologue-style, meaning he’s about to collapse on the table as part of the theatrics of it all, when Namjoon suggests that you leave and start heading back. It’s late. The time feels like it’s passed too quickly. Jungkook is warm and the alcohol has given him a soft glow. He is gorgeous and you adore him, really adore him, only the slightest bit.

Even if Namjoon is definitely the most sober one out of all of you—something you admire, especially since over the course of the evening he certainly didn’t shy away from the drinks when given—none of you really know where you’re headed. Your cardinal directions have switched and the sun is already far below the horizon so you can’t figure them out. Namjoon’s phone is on three percent. The world is your oyster.

There is nothing quite like the fantasy of stumbling around a romantic, street-light-laden city like Venice while inebriated. Not to the point of any serious harm and certainly not enough to incapacitate you so severely that you’re incapable of any sort of basic function, but enough to have your head spinning and for all of the lights that decorate the streets to bleed together, like a photo out of focus. Enough for the world to seem a little bit happier even if nothing has changed, and even if there has just been a new political campaign designed to ruin the very foundation of democracy.

When in Venice. When life hands you an instrument, it is music that you must play.

Somehow, someway, you get lost. Not that you’re at all surprised by this since it took five minutes to get from the hotel to the bar and you’ve been clambering around Venice for at least fifteen. Somehow the direction your group has vanishes and it is like all hell breaks loose but nothing actually escapes. Jimin and Taehyung are in a constant state of giggles, laughing and laughing and laughing about something that nobody else will find funny. Namjoon has somehow been coerced into giving Yoongi a piggyback ride, and so he trudges along as Yoongi sucks on an ice cube from the plastic cup in his hand, wincing whenever the cold touches the back of his front teeth. Somehow, Seokjin and Hoseok haven’t ripped each other’s heads off and are instead engaged in a very serious game of drunk chopsticks, Hoseok continuously pulling the move where he splits up his one hand into two, just to bother the elder.

Somehow, Jungkook hasn’t let go of your hand. Not since when you left to go down to the lobby a couple of hours ago. This entire time you’ve been connected by a lifeline, your two hands interlocked between your bodies as you sip your margaritas and cocktails and pretend just for a second, that none of this is fabricated. Pretend that just for a little bit, when your brains are clogged and your hearts are beating, that there is no big reveal at the end of this trip to devastate your friends, no messy breakup you have to stage all for the act. That Jungkook can be Jungkook and you can be you and the us, whatever us it is that you have, can just be an us.

Somehow, after another eight minutes of walking (and three of Jimin yodelling) you find yourselves in, of all places, Piazza San Marco. The tourist traps are closed for the night but the view will never die, the sight of such a gorgeous location will forever hold the same beauty. Not that Piazza San Marco was your intended destination, but it certainly is a stunning one. One that even at night, when all of the visitors have gone back to their hotels and only the locals, free to roam as they please, are out for a nighttime stroll, takes your breath away.

“Hey, I recognize this place,” Hoseok points out mindlessly. He won the game of Chopsticks, and now Seokjin wants a rematch.

“Piazza Marco Polo,” Jimin tacks on incorrectly, too busy trying to wrap Taehyung up in his sleeves. So far Taehyung’s shirt is wholly intact and his glasses have made their way from the top of his head to the back of it, hanging off of his ears like a true college student.

“Gorgeous here,” Namjoon comments aloud, only one who can articulate such an admiration for the view while mildly hammered. He’s one of the lucky ones; the alcohol flows in and out of his system at the snap of his fingers. “Even at night. Gorgeous.”

“Imagine living here,” you add on just for some food for thought.

Living in Italy would be as much of a dream as you could imagine. A little apartment in the good side of town, top floor with no elevator or air conditioning. Dark red shutters and a soft breeze that blows through the windows. Street music playing from below, history right at your doorstep. Art museums with the world’s treasures only a fifteen minute walk away. The best cheese, wine, meat in the world, at your fingertips.

And then suddenly the dream changes. You blame it on your drunkenness before you can make out the new image in front of you. You’re still in Italy, still have that apartment in the good side of town with a soft breeze and maroon shutters. But there’s a figure standing by the tiny kitchen island. A violin case by the couch. There are Polaroids decorating the walls, each with scrawled dates underneath them. The figure turns around and it’s Jungkook. Suddenly the image is different, you are in Italy and you have an apartment and you eat the best cheese and drink the best wine and Jungkook is with you every step of the way. Almost like it would feel strange if he wasn’t. Like he belongs here.

There is art, and there is art.

There is art that the world has analyzed, stared right through the cracks in the paint. Art that is revered, honored, with plaques and Wikipedia pages and courses dedicated to them. Art that is meant to be shown off, boasted by museums as if to say “Look what we have”, art meant for the human to look at.

And there is art, art that the world has ignored. Hidden art, shadowed by the things that people recognize, that people know. Art that peeks in through the cracks in the paint and raises its hand softly to say that “I’m here. Don’t forget about me.” Art that is meant to sit in plain sight, right in front of you but never obtrusively. Art that moves with you.

There is Jungkook.

Lost in thought, you turn to find Jungkook sitting down on an empty step, swallowing heavily as his body slowly but surely rids itself of the alcohol. The haze is still there but no longer is it growing. Only settling.

“Hey,” you say softly, finding yourself getting down next to him. Jungkook’s eyes are transfixed on the stars. “You’re drunk.”

“I am not,” Jungkook says, swaying only the slightest bit. You could blame it on the wind if there was any. He keeps his gaze trained on the sky above. Not many stars are visible from here, the city lights keeping them hidden from his view, but you can make out a few. The lucky ones, not shadowed by the weight of human life.

“You are,” you insist, and he doesn’t fight it. “What kind of a fake girlfriend am I supposed to be when my fake boyfriend is drunk?”

Jungkook forces a chuckle before pausing. You don’t really expect him to answer. When you look back down, the rest of your group are charging around Piazza San Marco, so much free space that they don’t know what to do with themselves. If you squint, you think you can see Yoongi and Taehyung sparring. Or at least, Naruto-running towards each other.

“You don’t have to be my fake girlfriend,” Jungkook suddenly blurts out. You turn to him, caught off guard and surprised he even responded to you when you had spoken to him well over thirty seconds ago. “You could… we could—” You don’t understand. What’s he trying to say?

“Jungkook?” You ask, leaning in, hoping that his eyes will meet yours, even just for a second. He sounds like he’s about to spill out his deepest secrets, his darkest fears, to an unsuspecting stranger.

“Oh, God,” Jungkook says before he rushes to his feet and beelines to the nearest public trash can. You gasp to yourself, watching in horror as Jungkook leans over, body rocking back and forth. He doesn’t actually vomit, nothing comes out of his mouth, but it is the sight of such uneasiness that has you truly worried.

“Jungkook!” You should, getting up yourself and jogging over to him. He still has yet to empty any of the contents from his stomach out of his mouth, and as you reach him his body seems to slow, like the whole thing was just a false alarm in the first place. “Jungkook, are you okay?”

Jungkook looks up at you, and even if you are both shrouded in the darkness of the night you can tell that he’s embarrassed. But it’s like his entire demeanor just shifts, a volta in his personality, when he sees you, his shoulders lightening up and a soft grin breaking out onto his face. “Yeah, Thumper,” he says, promises, even as he stands next to a public trash can. You swear someone wolf whistles, but you are hardly paying attention. “I’m okay.”

Venice ends like this: for once, the skies are cloudy. Not that the overcast weather makes the temperature any less boiling, because even if the sun is gone the humidity remains. But the clouds are nice. You’re leaving on a Thursday, when all of the other tourists who are leaving on the weekend are still in the heat of their explorations around the area, desperate to cram in as much as they can in a three-day period.

Venice ends like this: even though you’ve seen Jungkook plenty since then, he hasn’t made a single mention of what happened that night in Piazza San Marco, and you aren’t going to press him on it any further than you did then. What Jungkook said that night was a fragment, pieces of an incomplete sentence that his brain couldn’t add the finishing touches to, not necessarily just because he was drunk but because it didn’t seem like he had the final words to say anyway. Venice ends with what you are certain are memory cards after memory cards of Seokjin and you in Jungkook’s possession. He could never really keep himself from pressing the silver button on his camera.

Venice ends like this: with an unfinished story on a cloudy day.

“Florence, here we come!” Seokjin shouts as everyone is rolling out of the hotel, ready to head to the train to take you all the way down south, the final destination on your trip.

It feels bizarre, calling it the last stop. The final place. Because you still have over a week there, but it’s the last over-a-week you’ll have in Italy, the last several days before you inevitably have to fly back home, a plane ride you are absolutely dreading. Italy is the kind of place that makes you wonder why you didn’t visit sooner. Florence is where all of the lasts will be, last gelato, last museum, last sidestreet. Last performance, last painting. The very last of your relationship with Jungkook, whatever behemoth of a fake relationship it’s turned into.

Time flies so quickly, and yet you feel as though the next week will pass by like molasses. A last week to savor the best and forget the worst. The last week you will have to spend walking around Italy with your hand in Jungkook’s, with him taking an unnecessary amount of photos of you, with him stealing your pasta and you sharing his pizza.

Lots of lasts. Lots of firsts, too. Everything is unfinished but this feels final, no matter what.

“Can’t believe we’ll be home in ten days,” Namjoon says, his words eliciting a grumble from the rest of the group, who refuse to face the truth until it knocks them square in the nose.

“Feels like just yesterday Yoongi destroyed his internal organs by downing multiple shots of espresso,” Taehyung reminisces like Yoongi’s nothing but a memory, a piece of the past.

“I’m right here, fucker,” Yoongi mutters, standing next to him with his flute in his hand.

“Sometimes I can still hear his voice…” Taehyung trails off, purposefully looking in the opposite direction from where the flutist is standing just to bother him more. Yoongi then proceeds to practically knock Taehyung right into Seokjin, who then shoves him back, leaving Taehyung caught in a push-and-shove sandwich as the two go back and forth like Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

“Better make the most of this, right?” Jungkook asks to you as you slowly migrate from the hotel, saying goodbye to the staff as you shuffle out with your big suitcases and backpacks and instruments. You’re positive that the hotel employees are thrilled to be rid of you. “Only one place left.”

“So many things that we have to see there,” you say, already dreaming of the gorgeous artwork and the history-rich architecture that’s waiting for you a mere two hours by train away.

“Well,” Jungkook says somewhat haughtily. He can’t hold your hand because his are filled and so are yours, but he can nudge up against you, sticking close to your side, like he’s afraid that if he loses you he’ll never get you back. “We’ll just have to stick together, hmm?”

You think of Venice. And Rome. And the way that Jungkook can see the beauty in everything, the way he can capture it even better than he can view it. The way that with a simple change of degree the whole angle changes, the perspective alters and becomes something brand new but not any less beautiful. You think of Jungkook and you think that, if it’s your last week in Italy, you may as well milk this relationship dry while you still can. Before whatever comes after a fake relationship, be it friendship or that awkward limbo of acquaintances or barely acknowledging each other on the sidewalk. And even if you know that Jungkook is waiting for the day when you break up to come as well, you pray you won’t lose him to distance, to time. Pray, selfishly so, that he’ll stay close to you.

It is people like Jungkook, you recognize, that are people you need to cherish.

On the train, Hoseok and Jungkook play rock-paper-scissors to decide who gets to claim the seat next to you. What’s funny about this round, however, is the fact that Hoseok puts out scissors three times in a row, making it easy for Jungkook to beat him and secure the spot right beside yours as his home for the next two hours. Hoseok had taken a psychology course in freshman year and his professor taught him the most foolproof way to win at rock-paper-scissors every time and Hoseok disregarded it entirely. Curious.

Jungkook, having very evidently not gotten enough sleep the night before, settles in down next to you before saying, “I’m tired, can I use you as a pillow?” He leaves no space for a response as he places his head in the crook of your neck and his eyes flutter shut.

Florence does not need photos to take your breath away. Florence steals your lungs right from your body, leaving you no room to even try. Cuts off your air supply from the source in order to leave you in a permanent state of awe, like you’ll never get used to a city like this.

Granted, you’re extremely excited just to be here, an enthusiastic puppy getting taken to its new home for the very first time. Not unlike the other two cities you’ve visited thus far, Florence is rich with art, history, culture, and you simply cannot wait until you dive head first into it all. Florence is the type of city that always has you on the edge of your seat, wanting more. A perpetual cliffhanger.

The nicest thing about the city is that everything is within thirty minutes of everything else. At no point in time will you need to hop onto some form of public transportation, whether it be a train, a taxi, a gondola. Nothing is truly off limits in Florence, not when you have so much time to spare. Florence is the city where you are meant to get lost, begin wandering down some side streets and lose your way entirely, because what is the beauty in the destination if you ignore the beauty in the journey?

“I was supposed to be saving my money for textbooks next year but fuck that shit!” Jimin cries out as you head down towards the Arno, making your way right towards Ponte Vecchio. Not that any of you have any intentions of buying jewelry that costs more than a mortgage, but you know that the stores along the main street that takes you there are worth your while. “Thank you illegal PDFs!”

“What the hell are you even going to buy?” Seokjin asks, looking Jimin up and down like a mannequin. “You already own like, one of every single clothing item in existence.”

“I reject this statement,” Jimin declares, but it’s no use. Seokjin’s right. Jimin seems to own everything despite what you know is a lack of funding in his bank account. He must go thrifting a lot. “I’ll figure out a way to spend my money, don’t shame me.”

“Think about it, Seok, how often you gonna get to go shopping in Italy?” Namjoon reasons, the peacemaker within the group.

Seokjin scoffs, as if that’s even a question he’s being asked. “Lots, obviously? Just gotta wait until my Instagram career takes off. Then I’ll be here every summer, bitches!”

Everyone laughs, partly because Seokjin’s enthusiasm is just genuinely amusing and partly because you all know that his Instagram career is going nowhere except the garbage. Things like that only happen to people with connections or people who are rich. Seokjin is neither, though he swears that he has a second cousin who’s a K-pop star. You aren’t necessarily sure if you believe him.

“Have fun melting your goddamn face off,” Jimin comments bitterly. His pointer finger and thumb are pinching the collar of his shirt as he fans it out in the hopes that he’ll cool down what must be burning skin underneath. Jimin’s got a casual dress shirt and shorts on and his sweat stains are quite honestly, record-breaking. You can’t imagine yourself to be any better. Simply walking on the concrete makes your body temperature rise something fierce and unrelenting. “It’s balls hot here.”

“It’s balls hot here everywhere, climate change is real,” Yoongi says snidely, though he isn’t faring much better. “This is what greenhouse gases are doing to our goddamn ecosystem.”

“I’m sorry?” Taehyung asks, and you already know that whatever is about to come out of his mouth is going to earn him some sort of physical response from Yoongi. “Global warming is a hoax created by China to steal American jobs. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Yoongi mutters even if the fondness peeks right through his words.

Fanning yourself as you beeline to the closest shaded part of the sidewalk, where the veranda offers a brief and weak respite from the blazing rays beating down on you, you heave out, “I could go for a water bottle. How about you Jungko—?” You turn to find the boy you thought had been walking right behind you gone, vanished into thin air. You know he couldn’t be far but the crowds on this road seem to be never-ending, and for a split second you’re worried you’ve lost him entirely.

“We lost Jungkook!” You shout to the rest of your friends, who are currently loitering outside a watch store as Jimin and Namjoon take a peek inside. They all shrug in response, none of them feeling any sort of a sense of urgency to find the boy. What if he’s been sucked into a black hole and none of you know because none of you bother to look for him?

“Of course we did!” Hoseok says, shrugging it off like it’s nothing. “He’s probably taking photos in one of the alleys!”

“I’ll go get him!” You shout to them. Hoseok gives you a thumbs up before he caves and walks into the watch store, desperate for any sort of air conditioned haven that he can find, even if not for very long.

Walking against the current of the crowd, your eyes scan the smaller streets that jut out from the main one, searching for the boy with the camera. He must be down one of these, in no scenario would he ever stop in such a busy road to take photos. And then, near the very beginning of the downhill slope, you see a mop of dark hair and a camera.

“Jungkook!” You call, rushing over to him. He’s looking at some smaller works of street art, tiny little drawings on the sides of buildings and walls of political cartoons, lips, stick figures. They look like tattoos on the skin, each with a different meaning, spread out along an arm or a chest or a back. Little drawings that make up a bigger picture. “Jungkook, you disappeared on us!”

“I hate being in the sun,” he tells you, which, valid. You hate it too. Never have you hated that ball of fire in the sky more than this vacation. “And these drawings are amazing. Very quirky, would probably get accepted into a top college.”

“You can’t just vanish like that, you know,” you tell him pointedly. “It’s busy as shit here. We’d lose you. I’d lose you!”

Jungkook places a hand on his heart, feigning appreciation. “Aw, would my girlfriend miss me if I was gone?”

You barely take notice of the way the word “fake” has slipped from his mind.

(Maybe if you pretend it’s not there this time, you can pretend that it was never there to begin with.)

You scoff, rolling your eyes even if his words cause a little grin to break out on your face. Jungkook seems to have this permanent effect on you where, in his presence, you’ll always end up smiling. He’s just a wonderful person. Someone worth smiling for. “No, just don’t wanna be held liable for your disappearance. I’d have to pay your college tuition. Fuck that.”

“Ever the romantic, Thumper,” Jungkook says. His smile reaches his eyes, makes little wrinkles appear at the corners of them. People say wrinkles are bad but wrinkles are proof that you are living your life the right way: filled with laughter and joy. Finding something truly wonderful and being unabashed about your admiration for it. That’s how you’re supposed to live your life. “Say Firenze!”

Yet another classic Jungkook as he catches you off guard, quickly pulling up his camera and snapping a photo before you can object, the familiar click of the camera ringing out throughout the alley. You know what the photo looks like before he can show it to you, know exactly what it’s going to be before seeing it yourself. It’ll be you, standing in front of the conjunction between the alleyway and the main street, the perpendicularly-moving crowd an unfocused blur behind you. It’ll be you, clear as day, with the beginnings of a giggle on your face.

(You. In love with the man behind the camera.)

“That’s going into the portfolio for sure,” Jungkook declares as he quickly scans through his most recent takes. “Some of my finest work, if I do say so myself.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Jeon,” you say as a warning, even if you know he’s right. In everything that Jungkook does he is improving, getting one step closer and closer to complete and utmost perfection. Jungkook is the kind of person God created and then realized that they were too close to immaculate, but it was too late, because he was already here. “Come on, we gotta meet up with the rest of them. Pretty sure Jimin’s about to drop all of his money on a watch.”

Jungkook sighs. “Not again.”

This time, when you walk into a clothing store, it isn’t one with articles that cost more than a car. Luckily. Meaning you can comfortably shop without your eyes widening comically when you look at the price tag. It’s another one of those movie fantasies, shopping in a visually, culturally, and historically breathtaking place like Italy. Another one of those silly tourist things you’ll do just for the hell of it.

You’re in the middle of inspecting a button-down shirt, one that is entirely asymmetrical in both its design and its pattern, with horizontal and vertical stripes crashing into each other, when Hoseok comes up to you with the most obscene shorts you have ever seen (save for his awful, awful denim ones). They are a fluorescent canary yellow, the color you would find in a Crayola box for elementary students, and they have bright green polka dots covering them. They’re horrifying, and yet, only Hoseok would ever be able to pull them off.

“What in tarnation,” you say, not so much a question as it is a gasp, eyebrows furrowing instantly as Hoseok holds up the offending article of clothing. It looks more like a very diseased banana than a piece of clothing.

“Aren’t these great?” He asks enthusiastically. “And they’re on sale!”

You wonder why. Maybe if you were back home, at your own shopping mall, you would tell him that he’s about as fashionable as a colorblind giraffe and that it would be a waste of his money, but you’re not back home. You’re in Italy, and if in Italy Hoseok wants to buy what may or may not be the ugliest pair of shorts you’ve ever laid eyes on, then, well, who are you to stop him?

“You know what, Hoseok?” You say, nodding your head in support. He deserves to treat himself, even if his tastes are questionable at best. “You do you.”

“Treat myself, bitch,” Hoseok says confidently, turning to face what you’re browsing through. It’s mindful shopping, not the same kind that you do back home, because you only have one chance to buy something nice. No returns, refunds, or exchanges. “What are you gonna get?”

“I don’t know. Something nice.”

“Way to be specific, Y/N,” Hoseok says sarcastically.

You scoff, accosted. “You have no right to be talking to me about fashion when you have those monstrosities in your hand.”

Hoseok gasps. “How dare you insult these shorts. They are now my pride and joy and I will always wear them around you just to spite you.”

“First of all, fuck you,” you spit out though there is no animosity to your words. Hoseok cackles before prancing off to find some other hideous items in the sale section hidden in the back corner, away from the customer’s view. Not without good reason, of course.

With your best friend gone, frolicking around the store’s lower level, you begin to migrate yourself, eyes scanning the racks and shelves and mannequins for something to catch your eye. For some reason you seem to have become pickier than before, as if the change in location suddenly altered your own taste when it came to shopping, like you’re being stingy because you know you can’t just up and return the items like you could elsewhere.

That is precisely when you feel a figure slide up next to you, placing a soft kiss on your cheek to alert you of his presence.

“Hey, Thumper,” Jungkook says. “What do you think?”

Over his graphic tee, he’s got on a faux leather jacket, a sleek black material that looks much more expensive than it actually is. It fits him extremely well, hugs the biceps he’s gotten from so many years of violin-holding and perhaps a couple years of some devoted weightlifting as well, compliments his flawless figure and small waist. It looks great on him. You find it only a little strange that a store in Italy is selling a high-quality, thick leather jacket in the middle of summer.

“It doesn’t go with your shoes,” you tell him, looking down at the Jesus sandals look he’s sporting.

Jungkook rolls his eyes. “Aside from my shoes, what do you think?”

You can’t help but be honest. This relationship has turned you into one hell of a softie. “It looks great on you, Jungkook. Everything does.” It comes out kind of like a sigh, like it’s something he should already know, so why is he bothering asking you? Does he need you to tell him that he’s beautiful too?

“You really think so?” Jungkook asks, looking at you as he takes the jacket off, hanging it over one arm as he flattens it out.

“Well, after Hoseok came up to me with the Satan of shorts, everything in this store seems nicer than it really is,” you joke. Jungkook laughs knowingly, having obviously caught a glimpse of Hoseok and those demons while walking around as well. “But yeah, I’m serious. You should get it.”

“It’s a little expensive,” Jungkook says hesitantly, eyeing the price tag. “I don’t know, maybe it’s not worth it. It’s not even real leather.”

“So? Save a cow and get it,” you tell him. “You shouldn’t be scared of it. We’re in Italy. You’re with your youth orchestra group. I’m here. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Words to live by.

Galileo Galilei once said that you must “measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.” And you’ve lost count of the amount of times that Jungkook has pulled his hand into yours but you know that he’s kissed you on the cheek five times and you’ve seen him smile about as many times as there are stars in the sky. But what you cannot measure is your relationship with him. There is a contract written on a napkin somewhere but you wonder if he’s accidentally thrown it away while cleaning out his backpack, and you begin to wonder if you even care if he has. Galileo Galilei says that you need to make measurable what is not but you don’t know how you’re supposed to begin counting out your relationship with Jungkook when you yourself don’t even know how to define it. All of these numbers must add up to something but there is an unforeseen variable that you cannot solve for.

Galileo Galilei is a genius, but even still there are some unanswered questions.

On the edge of Florence and north of the Arno river is a smaller, less frequented church than the Duomo in the center called the Basilica de Santa Croce, and it is where Galileo is buried alongside people like Dante, Machiavelli, and Michelangelo. It is the deathbed of legends, of names permanently etched into history as shining stars, forgers of what is now the present. The Basilica de Santa Croce is not only an architectural wonder but it bears the names of some of the world’s most famous writers, philosophers, artists, leaders.

It just so happens to be your tourist stop of the day.

“That’s Dante!” Jimin shouts as you come up to the church, pointing towards the statue to the left of the main doors. Engraved in the stone is his name, Dante Alighieri. “He wrote that one book about hell.”

Namjoon looks as though he’s about to have an aneurysm with Jimin’s very obvious lack of deep and immense respect for not only the book but also the author behind it. You are willing to bet very good money that Namjoon poured out his heart, mind, and soul into the study of the book, whenever he was forced to read it during his mandated schooling. Coughing, he corrects, “He wrote the Divine Comedy, largely considered to be Italy’s greatest literary work, one of which features the poem Inferno. Yes.”

“That’s what I said,” Jimin says pointedly, making Namjoon sigh. You suppose that’s what he gets for easily being the only one in this entire group who’s somehow managed to retain the majority of his brain cells. You are actually quite impressed he hasn’t lost more considering how often he spends time with Taehyung.

“I’m really looking forward to this one,” Jungkook leans in to tell you as Namjoon doles out the tickets. It’s the middle of the day on a weekday and there is absolutely no line to enter, a shocking sight in a bustling tourist center like Florence. “Inferno was my favorite thing that I’ve ever read in all of high school. Knocked out Slaughterhouse-Five for the top spot.”

“Damn, what did Vonnegut ever do to deserve that, huh?” You joke, holding out your ticket for the guard waiting at the door to inspect. He gives a hearty yet stern nod and you and Jungkook walk inside. Ahead of you, Seokjin and Taehyung are already “ooh”-ing their way around the Basilica, much to the chagrin of literally everybody else. Hoseok’s already on his way to shushing them.

Jungkook loses his ability to speak when his eyes catch up with his mouth as he takes in the sight before him. Graves are littered throughout the entire building but shrines have been built into the walls, with messages and statues and marble decorating their designs. The people here deserve to be buried with such high distinction, revered so deeply not only by Italians of hundreds of centuries but by the whole world for their contributions to society, beliefs that have shaped the world as you know it.

You’d think he’d been rendered entirely speechless if it weren’t for the awe-stricken “Wow” to leave his mouth as he stares around the building, unable to focus his eyes all on one spot for there is simply too much to see. He doesn’t know where to turn but he does seem to be drifting towards Michelangelo’s tomb, a move you definitely saw coming considering the past two weeks spent here. Namjoon, Jimin, and Taehyung are busy looking at Machiavelli’s burial site, and a quick glance their way tells you that Namjoon is currently reciting all of Machiavelli’s greatest accomplishments as Jimin and Taehyung dumbly listen in. Hoseok and Yoongi are strolling around without a clear destination in sight, letting the grandeur of the place sink in. Seokjin has striked up a conversation with another group of Korean tourists, a family with two young children. They seem to be getting along incredibly well, and Seokjin even offers to take a photo.

“Never in a million years did I ever think I’d get to be here,” Jungkook tells you as you come up to Michelangelo’s tomb. A bust of the artists rests atop a stone coffin, and next to it, statues. “These women represent Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting,” he informs you, pointing to each respective statue. “His favorite things.”

“That’s—”

“It’s nerdy, I know,” Jungkook jokes, even if he continues to stare. He takes it all in like a breath of fresh air after being locked up for a year, lets it pierce his skin and melt into his bones. “I don’t know, I just think that he’s a genius.”

“It’s not nerdy,” you promise, equally as floored by the sight in front of you as well as beside you. Jungkook speaks like his passions aren’t worth being passionate about, but you think that he’s brilliant. “It’s really fucking cool, actually. The fact that you love this stuff so much, Jungkook. It’s incredible.”

“You think so?”

You nod. Knowledge is beauty and Jungkook is the most beautiful of them all.

Conveniently, right beside the Basilica de Santa Croce, on a road barely a five minute walk away, is a gelato store with an abundance of flavors to choose from. And it just so happens to be next on your list of places to visit, the overwhelming heat of Florence scorching your skin the moment you leave the blissful shade of the church.

On the Via Dei Neri there is a little gelato shop that bears the same name as the street, and when you arrive it is mostly empty, save for a couple of tourists who are seated in the plastic chairs in the corner of the store. Admittedly, the gelato here looks a lot more scrumptious than the thick, artificial flavors of Rome and Venice, beautiful colors and swirls decorating the tubs of the sweet.

“Wow, look!” Hoseok says, smacking your shoulder roughly as he points. “Mango cheesecake! And rice!”

“Rice?” Seokjin overhears, budging in. “Move over. My Asian ass is shaking.”

The one in Rome had over a hundred flavors but every single one of these look more delectable than any of the ones there. You can’t help but ache to taste each and every one, even if you know you’ll only be able to consume one or two before your stomach is filled to the brim.

This time, you are a little more giving with your blackberry and rose gelato, allowing Hoseok a single scoop of each with that tiny plastic spoon of his, letting him divulge into your gelato as you respectfully decline a bit of his own. He’s already attacked the entire surface area of the damn thing, and while mango cheesecake sounds delicious, Hoseok’s saliva, less so.

“It’s your loss,” he tells you over a mouthful of the dessert. He then proceeds to slurp up half of it like an animal starved. Your best friend is, quite frankly, disgusting.

“What’d you get,” Jungkook asks as he plops down heavily into the open seat next to you. You can hear the bone-shattering crash of something and peer under the table to find his phone lying face down on the floor. “Ah, fuck it. It’s already broken.” He shrugs carelessly and makes no move to retrieve his cellular device, much to your anxiety. You don’t know what he’s on but it’s certainly doing wonders for your fine lines.

“Blackberry and rose.”

“Oh, can I have some?” Jungkook asks hopefully. You sigh, resigning yourself to a life of letting all of the people close to you mooch off of your food, and hold out the cone to him. He helps himself to a small scoop of each flavor, humming in appreciation as he pops the whole thing into his mouth. “Mmm,” he says. “A rose by any other name would taste as sweet.”

“Nice wordplay,” you compliment dryly. “Let me have some of yours.”

“It’s mango,” he tells you, scooping some and holding it in front of your lips, ready to feed you. You comply instantly, opening your mouth to let him pop the spoon inside. And then, catching you off guard, he quickly takes a dollop on the tip of his finger and wipes it on your nose, much to your shock.

“Every fucking time we get gelato they’re at it again,” Jimin huffs when he sees the both of you giggling in the corner, retreating to the table where Seokjin and Yoongi sit, clearly trying to avoid looking your way so they don’t vomit up their gelato. “I think we’re gonna have to exile them from our gelato-scapades.”

“You know you don’t have to talk about us like we can’t hear you, right?” Jungkook asks pointedly.

“We know,” Jimin nods. “Go be gross elsewhere. I’m trying to stuff my face into the food of my culture.”

“Gelato is not the food of your culture,” Yoongi says. “We have the same fucking culture.”

“Ah ah ah,” Jimin says, shushing Yoongi with a finger to his lips. Yoongi, in retaliation, licks Jimin’s entire digit, but Jimin doesn’t even flinch. Like it’s normal for his finger to be licked by his friends. “This is rice gelato. Therefore, food of my culture.”

Seokjin, the biggest cone of rice-flavored gelato in his hand, high fives him.

Almost never does Bang receive enough credit for the work he puts into this orchestra. It’s his heart and soul and you are almost positive it’s the only thing he cares about, even if he’s spending the majority of his time sending glares Taehyung’s way. He’s the reason you’re even in Italy in the first place, and he is also the reason that you are currently standing in a line with tickets to enter Florence’s most famous art gallery instead of having to wait around for four hours in the blistering heat just for a spot in line.

“I pray to all of the higher powers above us and perhaps some demons as well just be sure that this place has air conditioning,” Taehyung declares as he attempts to fan himself with his ticket, the floppy piece of paper doing absolutely nothing for his body temperature. Even though you’re standing in the shade, covered by the shadow of the Uffizi, the heat is, quite frankly, still overwhelming.

“Don’t hold your breath,” Seokjin mutters. “The Lord works hard but the sun works harder.”

“Fuck that,” Taehyung grumbles, as if that’s going to do anything to calm the 500% humidity currently permeating the air.

“If you’re going to spend this entire trip complaining about the heat you’ll never be able to actually enjoy it,” Namjoon advises wisely, preferring to keep his obvious distaste for the weather to himself.

“That’s where you’re wrong, good sir,” Taehyung says, shooting Namjoon a finger gun alongside a wink. “I can complain about the heat and enjoy the trip at the same time. I’m a good multitasker.”

Namjoon rolls his eyes. Taehyung’s always been like this.

The Uffizi, ironically enough, is shaped like a gigantic U, where you start at the very top floor of the museum and make your way around and down, slowly traipsing through room after room of stunning artwork, whether it be sculptures, paintings, and everything in between. You find the setup to be much more manageable than some of the other museums you’ve been to in your time as a museum aficionado, the layout easy to navigate and certain exhibits entirely unhidden.

More than once does Jungkook urge you to break away from your tour group and go exploring, and you almost cave in once or twice, but you understand that, between the two of you you are part of that select group of kids in your orchestra that don’t actually give Bang minor headaches, and therefore you should probably stay with your group, for Bang’s sake.

“This city is the birthplace of the Renaissance as we know it, please?” Jungkook asks, tugging on your arm as you enter another room filled entirely with stone sculptures and busts. You actually find his desire to abandon the tour group quite endearing, like he appreciates art so much he wants to explore it, admire it, cherish it in his own time, without having to keep up with the quick pace of the tour guide. It is something so unabashedly Jungkook, an unapologetic want to let the art sink in for himself without the crackly voice of a tour guide speaking into his ear.

“Jungkook, you know we shouldn’t,” you advise him, quite honestly shocked that you have turned into the sole diligent orchestra member between the two of you. Never in a million years could you imagine Jungkook wanting to break the rules and you wanting to follow them considering who you are as individuals and who you hang out with as friends.

“Aw, come on, Thumper, live a little,” he pleads. “Look, we’ve already drifted to the back of the group.”

He motions up ahead of you, where the tour group is currently gathered around a particular sculpture that even Jungkook bears very little interest in. You and Jungkook have strayed behind, and the rest of your friends are closer to the front, too immersed in the tour to notice your absence. Jungkook’s got a gleam in his eye and a wonder decorating his features, like he’s aching to get out and explore as much as he can. One of his hands is held tightly to his camera, the other, in your own. You can’t believe you’re about to do this.

“Fine,” you submit to his desires, not that you seem to mind very much either. You seem to have gotten progressively weaker and weaker to Jungkook’s causes as the trip’s gone on, both a blessing and a curse. “But if we get in trouble, it’s your fault.”

“Yes!” Jungkook cheers. He keeps his eyes trained on Bang, and when the conductor has his back turned to you, he grabs onto you and you quickly shuffle out of sight.

“This is literally such a shitty idea, Jungkook,” you tell him as you enter a different room, filled less with sculptures and more with art from the Gothic, pre-Renaissance periods. “We could get lost.”

“We’ll be fine,” Jungkook says, shrugging off your concerns. “I snagged a map. Look. We’re a couple of rooms away from The Birth of Venus and Primavera.”

“You just wanted to explore this place by yourself,” you say matter-of-factly, sighing as Jungkook tugs you towards another piece of artwork, lined with gold, blue, and red. It portrays a part of the story of Christ, a common muse amongst the artists of the age.

“This is true,” he admits to you, “but I’m not by myself. Look, I’m here with you.”

And maybe he only means that in a literal sense but you take it to heart anyway, allow yourself to fall into this fleeting dream where you and Jungkook are in Italy together, no loud group of friends or youth orchestra to interrupt your plans, where it is just you and him and the city of Florence all to yourselves. Where you can do what you please and take as much time as you need and explore all you want without anybody stopping you. Where you can hold hands and it isn’t just for show and take pictures of each other to preserve in the photo albums of your brain and your heart. A dream where you are in Italy together and there is no contract standing in your way, a bitter reminder that even if the location is real your relationship is not.

“I guess,” you say out loud, more a reminder to yourself than to him that you are together physically and nothing else.

“Come on, Botticelli is a couple of rooms over,” he says quickly, tugging you towards the prize he’s got his eyes trained on, arguably the most famous of the pieces housed in this museum. They’ll have crowds in front of them, for sure, but that’s alright. Jungkook’s tall, and he’ll be able to lift you up in more ways than one.

Though Jungkook does seem to be in a bit of a rush to get to the paintings, he takes his time exploring each room, reading the plaques in earnest and staring as closely as he can at the paintings, analyzing each one like the art student he was meant to be. It’s wondrous, really, the way he falls so deeply into the art in front of him, like a well he’ll never escape from. He looks at each piece like it is just as important as the one next to it, even if they aren’t nearly as famous as others, because to him art is a gift, a treasure that should be preserved, recognized, and celebrated.

As you approach the open doorway to the room containing Botticelli’s work, Jungkook gasps softly beside you, floored even from seeing the work from far away. It’s right there, right in front of him, and it’s as though Jungkook doesn’t really know what to do with himself now.

“Hey, let’s go,” you murmur to him. His feet seem to have given up and he’s rooted firmly in place, like if he takes another step he’ll simply collapse. “Come on, Jungkook. You’re almost there.”

It seems as though he’s in a trance as he follows you along, tugging him closer and closer to the piece. Primavera has less of a crowd in front of it than The Birth of Venus a few meters away, and so you pull him up close, standing right in front of the painting as he stares at it from in front of the glass that protects it.

“Look,” you whisper to him as if he needs the extra instruction. Jungkook can’t help the way his camera immediately comes up, knowing that even if he stares down the painting for another fifteen hours it will never be preserved in his brain the way a photo is.

You don’t know if you’d rather gaze at the artwork or at Jungkook, who is as much of a masterpiece as everything else in this museum is. You elect, just for today, to let your eyes drift to the art, because maybe, selfishly so, you’ll be able to continue looking at Jungkook long after you’ve left Italy. You barely notice the way he leaves your side to get a couple of different angles of the painting, allowing yourself to sink into the art as much as he has. You lack the analytical abilities and artistic prowess that Jungkook possesses at the tips of his fingers but that’s alright because you don’t need either of those to know that this is a piece of artwork worth saving.

“Beautiful,” Jungkook says when he joins back up at your side, your fears of being caught by your tour group long forgotten. You can’t help but wish that he wasn’t talking about the art but instead talking about you, but that is a thought to be shoved into the deep crevices of your mind, far from anything that may leave your mouth.

The crowds mean absolutely nothing when Jungkook lays his eyes on The Birth of Venus, the painting illuminated by a single bulb but otherwise shadowed for safe-keeping purposes. There’s an entire Chinese tour group standing in front of the painting, old ladies whipping out their massive iPads to take a thousand photos from the exact same position as though one of them will turn out better than all of the others.

“This,” Jungkook says when you finally make your way towards the painting. He doesn’t need to elaborate. You know. Italy is a dream for someone like Jungkook, someone who can’t help but fall in love with every new piece of art he comes across. And Jungkook is a dream for someone like you, someone who can’t help but fall in love with—

“Is this what you had dreamed of?” You ask him softly. Jungkook isn’t taking out his camera for this one. He doesn’t need to. This one he’s studied, analyzed, inspected, down to each and every stroke of the brush. Even if Jungkook isn’t an art major he is an artist nonetheless, and a painting as famous as this one is something he doesn’t think he’ll forget. Not in a million years.

“More,” he whispers back, and it feels sort of like a slow motion movie, like the world is stopping but you’ll forever be able to gaze at this painting, like it is the only thing left for your eyes to look at. That’s what this feels like. Jungkook’s grip on your hand has gotten tighter but you don’t mind at all, not when he looks like he’s just seen a supernova burst in front of him. Jungkook’s eyes are permanently decorated with wonder but right now they seem to have something else in them too, like awe, like amazement, like pure beauty is staring him right in the face and he doesn’t know what to do with himself because of it.

“Don’t you want to take a photo?” You ask, nudging his camera. Jungkook’s camera hangs limply from his neck and even if he’s got a hand holding the device he makes no move to do anything about it.

“No,” Jungkook says. “This is the kind of thing I want to remember all to myself.”

Sometimes, you wonder what goes on in that head of his when he sees artwork like this. Artwork so famous, so revered, so breathtaking, that he doesn’t know what to do with himself, how to react other than with an open mouth and an awed expression. But then you realize that the way he feels when he stares at paintings like The Birth of Venus, like The Last Judgement, is the way that you feel when you stare at him. Because even if he doesn’t realize it, he himself is art, the same kind of art that he loves. Art that is worth remembering.

You and Jungkook catch up with your group somewhere along the first floor, near the end of the guided tour. Not that any of them noticed that you were missing in the first place, though Hoseok does send you a wink and a cheeky little smirk when you make a reappearance. And as the tour guide wraps up, pointing out a couple of the last few notable pieces of art, you ask Jungkook how he feels, and he tells you that he never wants to forget this moment, right now, because it is everything he has ever wanted.

The city of Florence is littered with so many art museums, galleries, palaces that it’s hard to catch a break in such a bustling city. Not that you really mind, especially since they give you the evenings off to do your own thing, but it’s easy to recognize that this city is the birthplace of the Renaissance when, with each corner you turn, there is another place to be discovered, art to be found.

Someone who very, very obviously does not mind this whatsoever is Jungkook. In fact, when you spend so much time with him you often times find yourself roped into his expeditions to seek out more paintings, sculptures, churches, architecture, anything that even screams Florentine art to him. Not that it’s something that particularly bothers or inconveniences you. Especially when the rest of your friends are sick of Jungkook’s unyielding desire to art and you are, as his honorary fake girlfriend, are not.

Throughout your week and a bit in Florence you can’t count on both of your hands how many different museums, churches that you’ve explored together. Jungkook’s got a hand on his camera and he doesn’t seem to want to let go, constantly taking photos of the art and the mosaics and the designs and of you, even if you sometimes tell him you look awful and that the art is worth remembering more than you are. Jungkook seems to beg to differ. He says that all the photos are for his portfolio. You imagine that thing must be a mile long at this point considering how many memory cards he’s gone through during this trip.

“I’m hungry,” you whine one day when you’re journeying on your own for a little around lunchtime. You’ve got an arranged tour (courtesy of Bang) for later in the afternoon, a trip to The Academy to see Michelangelo’s David, but right now you’re free to do what you please. Jungkook’s already gotten you to go into the Basilica di San Lorenzo this morning, and your stomach is grumbling.

“Hey, here’s a place,” Jungkook points out as you come up the street to a restaurant in a square-that-is-not-a-square-but-more-like-a-triangle, a place with indoor and outdoor seating. The smell that wafts through the air is enough to have you and Jungkook both asking for a table for two, sitting down by the side of the covered outdoor veranda as you stare down the menus. They’ve got a pasta list the same size as some of the essays you submitted in high school, all of which look as appetizing as the previous.

“This place knows how to treat pasta-lovers well,” Jungkook comments as you pick out your pasta of choice, one with truffle that you know is going to be stinking up your breath for the rest of the day. It’s a sacrifice you’re willing to make for the sake of the meal. “I want to order everything.”

“Slow down there, tiger. We can come back, if you’d like,” you suggest, the implications of another fake date slipping your mind. The question of “What are we?” makes you laugh from how overused it is, but even still, it applies perfectly.

The waitress comes by quickly, taking your orders and swooping up the menus, and you’re left alone listening to the sounds of the street music from several meters away, a father and a son performing in the middle of the square to passersby. It feels peaceful, homey. Like this is where you are meant to be.

“Let me take a photo of you,” Jungkook pleads, already making to get his camera out. “Please?”

Instead of objecting like you normally would, you nod, allowing Jungkook to snap as many pictures as he wants. It’s high time you indulge him, with how much he asks you to. Smiling softly, you grin towards the camera as he snaps away, unable to erase the smile that grows on his face at the sight of you. You wonder if you really are that photogenic, because all of your school IDs say otherwise, quite frankly.

“Okay, now let me take a photo of you,” you demand, making grabby hands over the table towards Jungkook’s camera. Very rarely is Jungkook ever the one in front of the camera, always preferring to be behind it, have his finger clicking away on the silver button, which you find astounding considering how deserving Jungkook is of having his photo taken, deserving to have that luxury just as everyone else.

“What? No way,” Jungkook says, holding his camera near and dear to his heart. “No. I don’t get my photo taken.”

“That’s about to change,” you declare, going so far as to stretch over the table to see if you can loop Jungkook’s camera over his head to snag it for yourself.

“Excuse me?” Jungkook asks indignantly, though he’s making absolutely no move to stop you, already resigning himself to the reality of you snagging a photo of him. You easily pull his camera from him, sitting back down in your seat and holding the camera up to your eye, letting the lens focus in on the man sitting in front of you.

“You heard me,” you tell him. “Smile, Jungkook. A picture’s worth a thousand words.”

With a sigh, Jungkook does. He closes his eyes and grins widely and even through the tiny viewfinder he looks gorgeous, looks like he’s just part of the photo instead of the focus of it. Looks like he belongs here, in Florence, surrounded by the art that he so loves and the food that he craves. He smiles and it reaches the corner of his closed eyes and God, he’s beautiful. You don’t think the camera does him justice, but it sure as hell comes close enough. With a click, you take the photo and lower the camera, hoping that maybe, if he doesn’t hear you, you’ll be able to look at him just a little longer.

“Alright,” you say softly, handing him back his camera. “There. Now you’ll get to remember yourself here, too.”

Maybe, if you’re lucky, he’ll remember the girl behind the camera as well.

Michelangelo’s David is the kind of art that you don’t know what to do with yourself when you finally lay eyes on it. The kind of art that renders you not only speechless but your mind blank, an iconic piece of work that is the emblem of an era, an art form in and of itself. That’s what it is. David is the kind of art that holds nothing less than the highest praise possible.

It’s strange, organizing a tour group for a place like the Academy. It’s small, well-known only for its housing of Michelangelo’s famed statue. There’s not very much else to see other than some lesser known pieces, nor is the place suited for massive herds of people at a time. Even still, the building manages to cram in fifty youth orchestra members without too much of a hassle, so you suppose that the capacity is bigger than you thought.

David is, unsurprisingly, the main attraction. He has an entire section of the biggest room all to himself, standing proudly at the end of it. And even peering through the cracks of the doors in the entrance is enough to get Jungkook grinning, aching to see the sculpture for himself. Michelangelo isn’t necessarily Jungkook’s idol but he’s someone Jungkook knows so deeply, so profoundly, that it leaves a heavy impact on him either way.

When you make it inside the main room, Jungkook stops. His breath catches in his throat as he stares up at the sculpture, the five-meter tall man of marble proudly waiting for him at the end. The rest of the group shuffles ahead of him, desperate to get as up close and personal with the statue, but Jungkook refuses. He stays back to admire, looking above all of the people gathered around the glass barrier protecting the sculpture, a perfect view of the Biblical hero. Wordlessly, he pulls out his camera, immediately snapping a photo.

There is so little to say and so much to look at. What you are laying your eyes upon is nothing less than the symbol of an artistic god. Jungkook keeps a firm grip on your hand but says absolutely nothing, instead opting to simply walk up to the sculpture, look at it with his own two eyes, let the sight sink in like he has with so many others. This is a piece of art he wants engraved into his brain, etched permanently into his memory, and it’s easy to understand why.

He says nothing but he doesn’t need to. You can see it in his eyes, the way he gazes at the statue like if he blinks, he’ll forget it entirely. That expression of pure wonderstruckness in his eyes, decorating his face. He’s smiling, though. Like this is where he’s meant to be, nowhere else. He’s smiling and he’s beautiful and David is art but so is Jungkook, in every sense of the word.

It’s strange. It’s like you’ve fallen for Jungkook without even meaning to. Like the napkin on the tray table means nothing anymore.

With two days to go before you have to leave Florence, leave Italy once and for all, things are beginning to wind down. With visits to the major attractions already tucked under your belt and your last performance over last night, Bang seems have lost all motivation to keep his youth orchestra organized and instead has just given the lot of you free reign until you have to meet in the lobby of the hotel the day that you leave. It’s probably a mistake on his part, but you aren’t going to ruin your freedom by admitting that aloud.

Hoseok dragged you out the entire day on the hunt for clothes, leaving Jungkook to his own devices as Taehyung clung to him like a koala bear, citing his newfound girlfriend as reasoning for their lack of physical contact over the past few weeks. Jungkook had repeatedly reminded Taehyung that the two of them have slept in the exact same bed every single night since the beginning of the trip, and Taehyung is no stranger to draping his entire body over his bed buddy for the sake of warmth and comfort.

You and Hoseok and Jungkook and Taehyung reach the lobby of the hotel at roughly the same time, far past normal dinner time for such non-Italians like yourselves. Hoseok’s got about five shopping bags in his hands and looks about ready for a fat nap, but Jungkook and Taehyung are alive as ever.

“Long day, Hobi?” Taehyung asks when he sees your best friend, already collapsing into one of the chairs in the lobby.

“The longest,” Hoseok agrees. “Made all the more long by this one right here.”

“Excuse me!” You cry indignantly. You can’t believe Hoseok would roast you like this in front of your own fake boyfriend and his best friend. How could he do you like this. “I am a morale booster and incredibly fun to be around. Jungkook, vouch for me.”

“She’s fun sometimes,” Jungkook admits nonchalantly, making you sneer at him. Of course.

“Alright, fuck you.”

“You wanna bet?” Jungkook challenges.

“I’m taking Hoseok to the hotel restaurant before the two of you start doing something about the obvious sexual tension in the room. Okay, bye!” Taehyung says quickly, grabbing onto Hoseok’s arm and practically dragging him towards the hotel elevator before either you or Jungkook can stop him. The two of them disappear from your sight faster than you can say Florence, and pretty soon is it just the two of you waiting in the lobby.

“Have you eaten?” Jungkook asks, checking the time. It’s nearly eight o’clock, and the last thing you had was some plum gelato in a gelateria by the Duomo a couple of hours ago. You are, admittedly, a bit hungry.

“Not yet,” you tell him.

“Cool.” Jungkook nods. “Let’s go out.”

And so you and him leave the lobby in search of a nice restaurant to settle down in, perhaps indulge in a spritz since it is your second-to-last night, after all. Not that there’s a shortage of them around, but most of them seem to be filled to the brim with tourists, persistent waiters inviting you inside in the hopes that they’ll be able to gain your custom.

“Was there really some unresolved sexual tension between us in the lobby?” You ask, Taehyung’s words popping back into your head as Jungkook swings your interlocked hands together in between your bodies as you walk. “I didn’t even notice.”

“I don’t know, man, you were the one who said ‘Fuck you’. I didn’t know you wanted to bone that bad,” Jungkook jokes, though the sentences come out of his mouth completely seriously, making you gasp.

“Not like that! My God,” you exclaim in shock, giving Jungkook a shove. “Don’t talk about it like us wanting to bone. That’s so… unsexy.”

Jungkook chuckles. “Would you rather me be sexy about it? Didn’t know you were into exhibitionism, either.”

“You’re unbearable.”

“You love me,” Jungkook teases. It’s weird. Maybe you do.

“That’s debatable,” you warn, especially after the conversation you’ve just had. “Don’t forget about our napkin contract. Nowhere did it have any specifications on any sexual tension, real or not. So I don’t wanna hear it.”

Jungkook nods, lips pursed into a tight line at the mention of the napkin. “Yes, the napkin contract,” he says stiffly. “I had almost forgotten about that.”

That makes two of you.

You eventually stumble upon the same restaurant you had eaten at the day you went to see Michelangelo’s David, the one in the square-that’s-a-triangle. It’s busy, but the sound of Italian drifts through the air and you and Jungkook both know that you’ve found yourselves a restaurant worth visiting a second time, one without obnoxious tourists such as yourselves to ruin the immersion.

The two of you order the exact same things you did the last time you were here, but Jungkook’s left his camera with Taehyung (on accident, of course), meaning no photo opportunities tonight.

“Cheers to our second-to-last night in Italy,” Jungkook says, holding up his orange spritz. You grab your own, clinking his glass.

“Cheers.”

It’s bittersweet. You don’t want to go but you don’t know how much longer you can do this if you stay. Like you’re trying to hold onto something that’s not real in the hopes that maybe, if you grab tight enough, it will be. You know that the feelings, whatever kind of feelings they are, you have for Jungkook are indecipherable at best. Wondering if you’re in love with him or just in love with the feeling or if you’re even in love at all. When you look at Jungkook it’s not necessarily love. No fireworks, no fanfare. It just feels like beauty. Like you’re staring down a sense of euphoria in the face, and it’s him. Peculiar.

Your curfew is at ten o’clock sharp, but you and Jungkook have spent the last two hours lounging at this restaurant, making mindless jokes and tasteful commentary and laughing all the same. You’ll probably miss your curfew, but neither of you seem to mind. It’s gotten quieter at the restaurant now, most of the customers long on their way, but you and Jungkook have stayed. Watched as the sun set and the street lights came on, illuminating the cobblestone roads and alleyways as everyone makes their way back home.

“Do you wanna go?” Jungkook asks. The check has long since been taken but you and Jungkook made no effort to leave when it did. In fact, your waitress even gave the two of you a small glass each of complimentary champagne.

“I don’t want to go back to the hotel,” you whine, the idea of bringing this night to a close so soon incredibly unappealing.

Jungkook shrugs. Grins softly. Holds his warm hand out. “We don’t have to go back to the hotel.”

And this is how you end up strolling the streets of Florence, long after the other tourists have gone back to their places of lodging and only the locals remain, celebrating at bars and making their way back to their own homes. It’s a clear night tonight, not a single cloud covering the navy of the sky. There are hardly any stars visible in a bustling city like Florence, but that’s alright (Jungkook’s eyes are more than enough to keep you satisfied) because the moon is out, a crescent glow alongside the warm yellow of the street lamps.

The feeling is like the first day you put fairy lights up in your room and the sun sets and suddenly everything is romantic and wonderful and cozy all at once, a foreign sensation you are perfectly willing to get used to. That’s what this night feels like. Cozy. Homey. All things that make you wish it wasn’t so soon that you had to go, because you’ll never get something like this again. Something so intimate, so real.

There are only a few street musicians out playing now, most of them having packed up for the night, awaiting the next day to start the process all over again, but there is enough to create a little soundtrack for your stroll, the hazy hum of background music soothing your pounding thoughts. Jungkook doesn’t have his camera but it’s nice to see him without it, nice to see him walking with no purpose in mind, without his beautiful eyes hidden behind the black device in his hands. Without that camera looped around his neck it feels more like an everyday evening stroll rather than an excursion in Italy, like this is something you do normally, a routine that you have. It’s nice. It’s warm. It’s all him, really.

“This is so peaceful,” Jungkook comments as you stumble upon a lone street musician. She’s playing a soft melody on her flute, the soprano sound soothing, music to your ears. You don’t recognize the tune but you don’t need to, not in order to appreciate good music and talented players.

You and Jungkook wait around her for a while, loitering on the other side of the street as the moon reflects off of the silver of her instrument. She seems to notice your presence, smiling to herself as she continues to play. No dancing, this time. No need for it. You and Jungkook can simply sway back and forth the sound, the melody, without needing to break into moves.

When she finishes what you are sure is the fourth or fifth song you’ve hung around for, Jungkook walks up to drop a five Euro bill into the case in front of her, a donation she greatly appreciates. She deserves much more than five Euros, the both of you know as much. Someone as talented as her deserves a spot in an acclaimed orchestra. She’s not playing Top 50 Disney tunes, she’s playing sonatas, chorales, etudes, classics, all from memory. It’s clear she’s been studying the craft for plenty of years. The two of you clap as you leave, continuing to meander down the rest of the street, telling her grazie as you go. She deserves a lot more than this, but it’s all you can offer her right now.

“That was so nice,” Jungkook comments as the two of you wander around. You have no idea where you are, not with all of the stores you had been using as landmarks closed up, blinds drawn and doors locked, but that’s alright. Sometimes you don’t need to know where you’re going, you just need to know that you are going.

“I know,” you agree softly, humming the tune she had left you with. “Bang would like her.”

“I think that the London Symphony Orchestra would like her, quite honestly,” Jungkook compliments, something you absolutely have no choice but to agree with. She made your night.

“This is nice, too,” you add on softly. There’s little energy left in your bodies after such a long day, but just enough for you to continue to wander, no desire to go back to the hotel any time soon.

“This?” Jungkook asks, confused. He doesn’t stop walking but he does turn to look at you, a bewildered expression lacing his features.

“This. Walking around at night with the street lamps. It’s like… seventy degrees and breezy. There aren’t any more tourists. The alleyways are dark but still comforting. I like this. I like being here.”

The “with you” goes unsaid but you hope that Jungkook picks it up anyway, hope that he recognizes all the thoughts in your head you are too afraid to say aloud for fear that they may be lies or worse, that they might come true. Hope that the things left unsaid are said nonetheless, but in a wordless way.

Jungkook hums to himself, turning back to face forward. You don’t know what that means, but you can feel the way his hand on yours gets tighter, afraid to let you go. What’s bizarre is that you’re afraid for him to let you go as well.

There is something about Florence that feels more final than any of the other trips. Like this is the end of the road, the last stop. Because the nagging voice in your brain keeps reminding you, over and over, that you and Jungkook agree to stop with this fucking nonsense, put an end to this fake relationship but this real contract at the end of this vacation, and here you are. When you first wrote that thing down on the airplane napkin the end of your trip in Italy felt light years away but now, now it’s just on the horizon but you think you’d rather never see the sun again.

“I like being here, too,” he says softly, so inaudible that you could barely hear him if it weren’t for the quietness of the world around you.

You eventually become aware of your surroundings when you come across the magnificent Duomo, made all the more enchanting in the moonlight. It’s difficult to miss and even more difficult to not know where you are, other than the center of the city. Your hotel shouldn’t be too far away from here, down one of the side streets that connect to the square where the Duomo rests. Even in near darkness, it is an architectural marvel. The stones aren’t as colorful in the dark but that’s alright because you can still see the different patterns, the different shades of marble as they blend together.

“Hey, look,” Jungkook says, pointing up. There’s a bird flying overhead and it makes the entire scene all the more romantic. “A beautiful end to a beautiful stay in Italy.”

“Speaking of ending things,” you say, the idea popping into your head before you can stop yourself. You know you shouldn’t. Selfishly, you know that if you don’t mention anything then maybe this façade of a relationship can continue far past the end of this trip, but you won’t do that to yourself and more importantly, you won’t do that to him. You’ve fallen in love but it feels more like you’ve fallen in love with the feeling than with the boy. You can’t do that to him. “When are we gonna tell our friends?”

“About what?” Jungkook asks, clueless. Like he’s really forgotten.

“About us, silly,” you say, hoping to keep the tone light in spite of the darkness around you. “We’re finished in a couple days. The least we could do is fess up and come clean.”

“Oh,” Jungkook says, the realization sinking in. The smile that once decorated his face is gone, replaced by something unreadable. “Right. I forgot about that.”

“Yeah,” you say, forcing a laugh. Oh God, it’s getting awkward. It’s getting awkward and tense and stiff and this is exactly what you didn’t want, what you were hoping wouldn’t happen because that means that this fake relationship has become too real. It means that somewhere you had crossed the line between acting and reality but neither of you know when that happened and now you’re too scared to go back. Fuck. “I mean, I’ve always been pretty bad at confessing.”

Jungkook’s silent. He’s thinking. You can tell by the way his mouth sits solemnly on his face, the furrow of his brows. He’s standing in front of the Duomo with you but no longer are your hands intertwined. You can’t remember when they stopped being connected, and more importantly, you can’t remember who did it first. He’s thinking and you’re afraid to find out what about, worried that whatever he says will cause the whole thing to come crashing down like a wrong move in a game of Jenga. That’s what this feels like, now that you think about it. That’s what this whole relationship has felt like. Like a game of Jenga where everything is fine until everything isn’t.

And then, Jungkook pulls you in close, his one hand on your waist and the other around the back of your neck, and he kisses you.

Really kisses you. His warm lips press firmly onto yours and you gasp at the sensation but your body immediately melts into it, a feeling you cannot believe you starved yourself of for so long. He’s always been right there but you’ve never done anything about it until now, and now you don’t know what to do because of that. He really kisses you and it feels like a million years and a split second all at once because holy shit Jeon Jungkook is kissing you and you’re kissing back and then—

“I’m bad at confessing, too,” Jungkook says shyly, out of breath. His eyes are wide, like he can’t believe he’s just done that but it’s too late to take it back.

“Jungkook, what—”

“This whole thing, I don’t want it to end, Thumper,” he tells you. “It’s always been real to me. Fuck the napkin contract. I’ve always wanted to be with you, prank or not. I don’t want it to be over.”

It’s too much. It’s everything you were hoping to hear but your mind can’t seem to process it. Like a tsunami crashing into a pier, and you’re standing on the edge of it hoping that you stay dry but at the same time wishing it takes you with it.

Practically speechless, you say, “Jungkook, I—”

“Please, Y/N,” he begs, but you already feel yourself drifting away, a piece of wood floating out to sea. Your feet are moving faster than your heart but that’s alright because when in doubt, run.

“I can’t, Jungkook,” you say softly. You don’t notice the tears until they’re streaming down your cheeks, warped from your footsteps on the cobblestone as you dash away. “I can’t.”

You don’t turn back around but you don’t need to, not when you know Jungkook will still be there, as heartbroken as ever.

The next day is spent in your hotel bed, and that’s it.

You’re kidding, but you wish it was like that. You snuck into your hotel room far past curfew to a bed and a half of your sleeping roommates and, barely remembering to wipe away your makeup and brush your teeth, climbed into bed sniffling, wishing that the whole thing had just been a memory.

You know that it’s real when you wake up the next morning to find five missed calls and a dozen texts, all from Jungkook. You swipe away each one, letting the notification disappear from your phone, and that’s when you notice your empty room and the knock at your door. Hardly caring about your just-rolled-out-of-bed appearance, you trudge up to the door and find an animated Hoseok behind it, eyes wide and bucket hat a fluorescent highlighter yellow. He’s always had a thing for colors like that.

“Y/N! Ready to—oh my god, are you okay?” He asks.

“I’m fine, Hobi. I just woke up,” you tell him, not wanting to alert him of anything alarming. You’d hate to ruin his vacation with woes of your non-existent, pretend love life. It’d also mean explaining the entire thing to him, and you don’t know if you’re willing to sacrifice yourself like that. Not yet, at least.

“You just woke up?” Hoseok asks, in shock. “It’s noon! You never wake up this late, not even back home! Are you sure everything is okay?” He asks. He’s too good of a friend, too used to your mannerisms and habits. Nothing slips by him, goddamnit.

“Yes, I swear, Hobi,” you say, rubbing your eyes to get the sleep gunk out of them. “What do you want?”

“Well, I was going to ask you if you wanted to come out with me and we could go on a last-minute adventure before we have to leave tomorrow,” Hoseok suggests, an excursion that sounds much-needed considering the overwhelming amount of time spent with Jungkook the past few weeks, only to find yourself starved of his contact. “You could invite Jungkook, if you want. I don’t know what he’s up to…”

“No! No, it’s okay. Jungkook doesn’t need to come along with,” you exclaim, perhaps a bit too loudly for your liking. Hoseok scrunches up his nose in confusion, tilting his head like a bewildered puppy. Quickly, you search for an excuse before he can say anything. “I’ve been spending so much time with him recently. We should just do something together.”

“Alright… whatever you say, I guess.” Hoseok’s still hesitant, rightfully so, but he leaves you be and lets you get ready, camping out on your bed playing the new Harry Potter game on his phone. Last you heard, he was getting ready to duel that “bitch, Merula” in the courtyard. You emerge from your bathroom fifteen minutes later, though you would hardly consider yourself Italy-ready, you look mildly acceptable and hope that you’ve done a good enough job disguising the bags under your eyes, that the puffiness from last night’s crying extravaganza has gone down. It’d be nice if you could just simply go through the rest of the day without having to think of Jungkook but you can already feel yourself worrying about him and what he’s getting up to, what state you left him in last night. You don’t think you can bring yourself to see him again, even if on accident.

Hoseok’s animated self keeps your mind fairly occupied, though. He does a good job of distracting you even if he isn’t trying to, another one of the qualities he possesses that you so envy. He barely takes note of your less-energetic self, much more tired and reserved that normal, chalking it up to vacation fatigue rather than self-inflicted heartbreak. Luckily enough. You’d rather not start out your next conversation with him with, “Hey, remember when I told you Jungkook and I were dating? Well, it was all pretend except I ended up falling for him and now I don’t know what to do with myself, please help?”

“We didn’t get to spend a lot of time at Palazzo Vecchio, let’s go back,” Hoseok suggests, skipping up the street. “There’s that baby David that we didn’t get a very good look at.”

“We saw the real thing, Hobi,” you remind him.

“I know, but this one is just as cool and just as important,” Hoseok insists. “Namjoon told me that Palazzo Vecchio is Florence’s city hall. Isn’t that cool?”

You suppose it is. Though, anything that Hoseok gets excited about is cool in your eyes.

You spend the day out with Hoseok and it lightens your mood extraordinarily, Hoseok’s joy and excitement contagious, getting the best of even you. You knew that you made the right choice when you befriended Hoseok back as children. He always seems to know exactly what he’s doing, without even trying. The sun works hard but Hoseok works much harder.

“Can’t believe this is all over tomorrow,” Hoseok admits as he spreads out in the center of Palazzo Vecchio, happily lying down like a starfish in an aquarium display. You wonder if just the front of his body will get tanned from this, even if he spends only five minutes in the position. You’ll never let him live it down if he returns home from Italy with the front half of his body much darker in color than the back half. He’ll look ridiculous. “Wish we could stay here forever.”

“You and me both,” you admit. You wonder what Jungkook is doing right now, if he’s thinking of you just like you’re thinking of him.

“Feels like just yesterday Yoongi was downing three shots of espresso in quick succession.”

“He did do that yesterday, didn’t he?” You ask. You have this vague memory of him at a cafe somewhere in Florence, ordering either a third or a fourth espresso shot like the absolute heathen he is.

“Wait, let me rephrase that. Feels like just yesterday Yoongi was downing three shots of espresso in quick succession in Rome,” Hoseok emphasizes, making you laugh. He’s right, though. It does feel like just yesterday you were landing at the Rome International Airport and Jungkook was placing a slobbery, wet kiss on your cheek. Feels like just yesterday the two of you confessed your relationship to your friends. Feels like just yesterday you were standing in the Sistine Chapel, staring up at the ceiling together.

And it was just yesterday when all of the memories came crashing down around you, an earthquake striking your mind and leaving it in nothing but a pile of rubble.

“Are you gonna want to come back here? When we’re out of college and paid off our student debt?”

“So, never?” You joke even if the harsh reality permeates your jest. Capitalism can suck your left big toe.

“Okay, true,” Hoseok admits. “But seriously. Are you going to want to come back? When you’re older? Before the rising sea levels suck this entire peninsula under the ocean?”

And you think to yourself that you’d love to, but only if you got to come with a certain someone. Wishful thinking.

Hoseok drops you off at your hotel room after you grab some sandwiches to eat for dinner, and you’re about to close the door and pass out from a long day of walking and an even longer day of thinking, when you spot Seokjin jogging towards you. You think that he’s going for Hoseok but then he stops at your room, sending you a small smile.

“Hey, Y/N,” he says. “Mind if I come in for a second?”

“Come on in,” you invite him inside. Seokjin paces about the little floor space left in your room—Minnie’s ridiculously messy—before taking a seat on the edge of your shared bed with Miyeon and the only surface that isn’t covered in clothes. “What’s up?”

“Have you spoken to Jungkook recently?” Seokjin dives right in. The mention of his name is an arrow to your heart but the abruptness of it all causes alarms to go off in your brain.

“Uh—” you begin, sputtering for an answer that won’t lead to you giving yourself away. “Why do you ask?”

“Because his mood has taken a 180 this past twenty-four hours and I am almost certain it has something to do with you,” he says, but it doesn’t feel like he’s placing blame or pointing his fingers at you. It more just feels like an observation, something he’s picked up on in the past day. You’ll give him credit for that, at least.

“Wow, alright,” you say, hands up in surrender.

“Listen, Y/N,” Seokjin says before running a hand through his hair. It reaches the back of his neck and he tilts his head back, exasperated. “I know that you and Jungkook have had a fake relationship this entire time.”

“What?”

You stumble for a response, stuttering hopelessly even though Seokjin’s very obviously seen through your entire act. Are the two of you that transparent?

“Unlike everybody else, I didn’t have my headphones in when the two of you were discussing the terms of your agreement on the plane. I had very conveniently locked them up in my overhead carry-on and was much too lazy to fish for them,” Seokjin says pointedly, making you groan in despair as you collapse on the bed beside him.

“God, could this vacation get any worse?” You ask to the higher powers above you.

“I didn’t tell anyone, obviously,” Seokjin reminds you. “And quite frankly, I had no idea that it would snowball into this. I thought the two of you were just doing this for laughs and that’s it. You were gonna get everyone real good.”

“That was the plan,” you mumble bitterly.

“You know, Taehyung and I spoke a couple of days ago. About the two of you.”

“You didn’t tell him, did you?” You ask, grumbling into the pillow you’ve stuffed over your face. If you pray hard enough, maybe the ground will open up and swallow you whole.

“No, I’m rather good at keeping secrets, even if I wasn’t supposed to find out in the first place,” Seokjin says haughtily. “Taehyung told me that he was really proud of Jungkook for stepping up and confessing to you on the flight.”

You suddenly feel very guilty.

“He said that Jungkook had had this huge crush on you for ages beforehand and was just too scared to do anything about it.”

That makes you pop up like a puppet in a box, the pillow coming off your face and straight into your lap as you turn to Seokjin, shocked. “What?”

“He said that Jungkook really deserved somebody like you, because you made him so happy,” Seokjin continues, as if the life-altering revelation that Jeon Jungkook has been harboring this massive crush on you for ages prior to the agreement isn’t enough. “He said he hadn’t seen his best friend this happy in a really long time.”

(“He looks like he loves you a lot.”)

“You’re fucking with me,” you declare, the only feasible explanation at this point. There’s no way this is real. This is just another big prank orchestrated by all of your friends because Seokjin went on blabbing and now they’re getting back at you in the cruelest of ways. There’s no way that this is real.

“I’m not,” Seokjin insists firmly, and there’s a desperate part of your heart that’s aching for it to be true but your brain has the power and it’s telling your heart to move on. “But Jungkook’s been really down lately. I know that maybe you thought that the relationship was fake but it’s obvious that he didn’t.”

“It—I—” you begin, unable to form a coherent sentence. “But I was the one who fell in love with him! How is this even possible?”

Seokjin chuckles, a smile blossoming on his face. “I guess he had already fallen in love with you before this whole thing even begin.”

“I’m so fucking stupid,” you groan to yourself, collapsing back onto the bed and pressing the pillow over yourself, muffling your wails.

“You’re not, Y/N, listen,” he demands, pulling the pillow away from you. You wrestle him for a couple seconds but eventually let him have his way, the heat of the cushion coming off of your face. “Maybe the relationship was pretend on paper but it was rooted in reality. For the both of you. It’s clear that there are some feelings between the two of you. Maybe that’s why we all fell for it. Because it was real. You guys thought you were fooling us but the only people you were tricking were yourselves.”

“When did you get so wise, hmm, Seokjin?” You ask ruefully, unsure as to what to do next. You can’t just go back to Jungkook and ask to call an end to the fake part and but leave the relationship.

“I’m not wise, Y/N,” Seokjin says. “You two just looked like you needed a third party to help out.”

You grin, unbelievably thankful for a man by the name of Kim Seokjin. “I guess so, huh. So, what now?”

“Well, as far as I last heard, Jungkook was hanging around the Duomo. He told Taehyung he wanted to stay back for a little while.”

Your face lights up and your heart starts beating. “Really?” You ask, perhaps a bit too hopeful.

“Yeah,” Seokjin nods. “Go get your man.”

You bolt out the door.

Sure enough, you find Jungkook walking around the edges of the square, headphones in as the sun slowly sets over the horizon. There are still plenty of people out and about, finishing up their meals or just settling into their seats, and the street musicians are alive and active. Jungkook comes to a halt in front of a pair of violinists playing on one of the smoother streets in the area, a small crowd gathering around them.

Quickly, wordlessly, desperately, you dash up to Jungkook before he can slip from your sight and out of your hands forever.

“Jungkook!” You shout, and he can barely hear you over his music but he turns nonetheless, eyes widening when he sees you rushing towards him, already out of breath. You’re in orchestra, not a sports team. “Jungkook, wait!”

He doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, but he does take a single earbud from his ear, turning to you with furrowed brows and a scrunched-up nose. “Y/N, what—?”

“Jungkook, don’t go,” you say as you catch up to him. Your shout seems to have interrupted the music in the background, both violinists and the crowd around them stopping to watch you. “I don’t want this to be over either.”

“What are you saying—?”

“I’m bad at confessing, too. Really bad. You probably already figured that out,” you joke, chuckling bitterly to yourself. “But when you said that you it’s always been real to you I realized that it’s always been real to me as well. That I don’t want to let you go, not here, not on the plane, and not back home. I want to be with you wherever you go.”

“You’re shitting me,” Jungkook says.

You shake your head, smiling at his disbelief. Like he can’t believe that all of his dreams are coming true. “I’m not. Fuck the napkin contract. That shit’s probably all crumpled up anyway. I want to be with you for real, no faking it, no acting, no games. I don’t want to pretend anymore. I want you.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Thumper?” He asks, coming up to you. His warm hands find purchase on your waist as he pulls you in close, guarding you tightly. You don’t even realize that you’re crying until his thumb comes up to wipe a stray tear away, and you laugh.

“I love you, Jeon Jungkook. For real, this time. No more contracts,” you tell him, gazing up into his eyes.

You have seen Jungkook stare at the most brilliant pieces of art in the world, seen him gaze into his camera to get the perfect shot, seen him glance at his music quickly before launching off into a song he’s memorized, and finally, you can say that you’ve seen Jungkook in love.

“You know what, Thumper?” He asks. “I love you too.”

When you kiss, the entire crowd and the two violinists explode into applause, but you barely take notice of them when Jungkook’s lips are on yours. Maybe Italy’s over but you and him are just beginning.

“Tell me about that portfolio you were making,” you say on the flight home. Everyone’s asleep around you, all but Seokjin wholly unaware that your relationship was even a farce to begin with. You think you’d like to keep it that way. Though maybe, in five years, you’ll come clean. Hopefully by that point, none of them will mind anymore. You’ve pushed the armrest that separates your seats up so you can snuggle up against him, his body temperature all the warmth you need on this frigid airplane.

“Oh, that?” He asks. He pulls up a page on his computer, and suddenly you’re presented with an entire album of pictures of just you, some you recognize and some you didn’t even realize he had taken. “It was this.”

“Are these all of me?” You ask, leaning in close. There must be at least four hundred photos in here and each of them have at least a bit of you in them, whether it be you talking with Hoseok or Namjoon or Yoongi or staring at art without knowing that Jungkook had been behind you, or the ones he’d convinced you to pose for or the ones that he sniped right before you had realized.

“Essentially, yes,” Jungkook admits guiltily, a cherry red tinting his cheeks as he curls in on himself, embarrassed. “I thought that when Italy was over, we’d just go back to being acquaintances or something, and I didn’t want to forget it. So I made this.”

“You have an entire album dedicated to me?” You ask. God, being in a relationship has turned the both of you into fucking softies. “I’m touched. Thank you.” You add onto your gratefulness by pressing a kiss into his cheek, making him blush impossibly harder.

“Yeah, well. I didn’t want to forget anything,” Jungkook says, something you can definitely agree with.

“Well, now you don’t have to,” you promise. “We can make new memories all the time, so you can delete that photo album of me. Or at least turn it into an Italy album rather than just a My Girlfriend album. That’s fucking cheesy as shit.”

“Are you kidding me? I’m never getting rid of this thing. There’s gems like this,” Jungkook says, pulling up a photo of you blowing into a tissue after a particularly hard sneeze in Venice.

You gasp, both endeared and incredibly offended. “Oh my God, I hate you.”

“You love me.”

“I hate that I love you.”

“You know what? I’ll take it,” Jungkook says, pulling you in and planting a wet kiss on your cheek, right at the corner of your lips. “I hate that I love you, too.”

“Get a room!” Jimin shouts from next to you, sitting in the seat directly across the aisle from yours. He’s got this disgusted look on his face, but you and Jungkook just grin to yourselves. You have a feeling that you’re never going to get sick of grossing out your friends with your obnoxious public displays of affection.

“Can’t, the bathrooms are too small for what we want to do!” Jungkook calls back, making Jimin dry heave onto the floor beside the two of you before angrily stuffing his headphone back into his ear and hoping that the two of you will just shut the fuck up, for once. “I’m never gonna get sick of doing that.”

“Good.”

“Hey, Thumper, do you want to see all the photos I took of Seokjin? He’s gonna become Instagram famous, but not in the way he wants to because all of these photos are meme-worthy,” Jungkook asks, already clicking around to pull open the album.

“Oh my God, yes. You gotta send all of these to me,” you say, wrapping your body around Jungkook’s left arm as he begins to filter through each photo.

Jungkook’s got the window shade next to him cracked open the slightest bit, the night sky wholly unobtrusive considering the rest of the cabin is dark. You can’t make out the moon but you know that it’s there, somewhere, singing a melody that only the two of you can hear.

⇒ hmu with feedback or just talk to me here!

[kenbunshokus]

#ZOSAN

zoro/sanji, nami/vivi | 3.5k words | 1 of 7 chapters

“Who are they even… 'shipping' me with? They know Usopp is with Kaya, and didn’t you just make your whole thing with Vivi public a few weeks ago—“ Zoro trails off as realization hits him, all at once, and he feels his stomach drop in the same way it would whenever he faces a particularly strong opponent in a kendo match.

“No,” he breathes.

“Obviously,” Nami says, shoves her phone into his face and points at a comment that says, OMG PLZ blonde and green are sitting side by side again. OTP! as Zoro sees his life flash before his eyes. “They’re shipping you with Sanji.”

(Or, the one where the Strawhats are Youtube personalities and people, naturally, start shipping Zoro and Sanji.)

(ao3)

catburglar 572 posts | 2.1M followers | 47 following Nami Bellemere stealing your hearts, one picture at a time http://youtube.com/user/thestrawhatshub

❤ 8,277 Likes catburglar lunch with the fam @sogeking @pirateking @strawhats #food #nofilter #cafe

View all 5,405 comments

ivolatan OMG THOSE TWO GUYS ARE IN THE PICTURE AGAIN

bananapigeon ok seriously, who are those two untagged guys in these pics. esp the blond one with the eyebrow. i keep seeing them in the vlogs too.

mikphail @catburglar Can you tell us the name of the green-haired guy sitting on the right? Beside the blonde? Asking for a friend.

+

“People are asking for you,” is the first thing Nami says as Zoro walks into the apartment she shares with Usopp and heads straight towards the fridge.

“Which people?” Zoro asks, suspicious. The comment seems innocent out of context, but Zoro narrows his eyes at her anyways because it’s Nami. “Actual people? Or,” he pauses, sifting through his mental vocabulary before giving up and settling with, “your people.”

He can hear her laugh from the living room. “Zoro, people from the internet are still real people.”

“They aren’t just people,” Usopp pokes his head out of his room to join in the conversation, “they are the subscribers, nay, followers— nay — fans of the Great Usopp—“

“They’re strangers,” Zoro points out, matter-of-factly. He doesn’t really get this whole…internet thing Usopp and Nami seem to have made a decent amount of money from no matter how many Technology 101 Lectures from Franky he’s sat through. They work for Luffy’s YouTube Channel—the Strawhats Hub—and post a bunch of videos online about how they have burger for lunch or some other mundane shit, and somehow people pay for that. Well, the sponsors pay for that, technically, but they get money all the same. Zoro doesn’t really get it.

He does understand one thing for sure, though. “I don’t give out my details to strangers.”

“Zoro, you’re like, a decade too old for Stranger Danger,” Nami says, disapproving, “and you know you can’t avoid being famous if you want to be the strongest swordsman in the world.”

Zoro sighs at the familiar argument between them, and makes sure he groans loud enough for her to hear. He’s usually up for any kind of sparring, verbal or otherwise, but not today—not after four back-to-back, two-hour lectures at the university and kendo club training afterwards with no breaks in between. He snatches the nearest canned beer with a little too much force, and it hits the fridge door with a loud bang.

Nami seems to catch on the sour mood and switches the subject. “You know, I think they’re shipping you.”

Zoro blinks. He waits for a second, two, three...yeah, the words still don't make sense. He gives her a confused stare. “What does that even mean?”

“it means they want you to be together with someone,” Usopp, their designated Technology-to-Zoro translator, explains. “Like, together together.”

Zoro scoffs. “What is this, high school?” He waves a dismissive hand at Nami, deciding to focus more on the free beer in his hand instead, eyeing it appreciatively. Nami’s an unpredictable storm with a flexible moral compass reminiscent of a witch, but she provides an endless supply of booze and is the only person who can hold her own against him, so Zoro figures it all balances out in the end.

The cold liquid hits the back of his throat with a familiar biting sensation, and it calms him down enough to finally process Usopp’s words. “Who are they even… shipping me with?” The foreign word stumbles clumsily out of his mouth, and he pauses, trying to wrap his mind around the concept. “They know Usopp is with Kaya, and didn’t you just make your whole thing with Vivi public a few weeks ago—“

Zoro trails off as realization hits him, all at once, and he feels his stomach drop in the same way it would whenever he faces a particularly strong opponent in a kendo match.

“No,” he breathes.

“Obviously,” Nami says, shoves her phone into his face and points at a YouTube comment that says, OMG PLZ blonde and green are sitting side by side again. OTP! as Zoro sees his life flash before his eyes. “They’re shipping you with Sanji.”

+

nami @catburglar

We’re kind of bored, so @sogeking and I are answering everyone’s questions in the next hour! Don’t forget to use the hashtag #AskUsoNa <3

 nami @catburglar

so a million dollar AND a free trip around the world? I’d take it! 

\m/ @queenmelissa

Would you get a million dollar but every time you sneeze you’re being teleported to a random place in the world #Askusona

 nami @catburglar

I’ve known Usopp since high school. I’ve known Luffy the longest, though. We’ve been friends since we were cute little ten-year-olds.

Jenna Rowen @jrowen

#AskUsoNa How did you get to know each other? Love your vids!

 nami @catburglar

Zoro and Sanji are roommates, not dating. Or are they? ;)

bad luck kate @gingerchic

are the two guys in some of your vids dating (U KNOW WHICH TWO) #askusona @sogeking @catburglar

 bad luck kate @gingerchic replying to @catburglar

HOLY SHIT DID U JUST

 bad luck kate @gingerchic replying to @gingerchic @catburglar

WE JUST GOT A FUCKING NAMES REVEAL. @ STRAWHAT RPF FANDOM THIS IS NOT A DRILL

+

The smell of well-cooked seafood, mixed with a tinge of booze, touches every nook and cranny of his apartment as people eat, drink, or laugh with each other (or, in Luffy’s case, all three of them at once). Zoro sprawls comfortably across his favorite sofa in the middle of the cacophony, and he closes his eyes, soaking in the familiar atmosphere, a half-empty can of beer dangling by his right hand.

Today isn’t their usual weekly Friday Night Hang Out; today, Ace is on leave from the military for the first time in ages. Luffy promised his big brother a huge, awesome feast, and their ragtag group of broke college students deliver the way they know how—His and Sanji’s apartment, Brook’s music, Sanji’s food.

Zoro doesn’t care much about parties, but he does like Ace and his stories about Whitebeard's platoon. Free booze is also a plus.

“Tired already?” A voice asks over his head, and Zoro has spent enough time with Luffy’s family ever since he was ten to know it’s Ace without having to look up.

“As if,” he says, skipping the greeting. “Just making sure I don’t appear in Usopp’s videos.” He thinks of the photo Nami showed him a few days ago, the one on the… instant… gram… thing… and adds, “or photos.”

“Oh, I’ve heard about that!” Ace plops onto the other sofa across the table, entering Zoro’s field of vision. “I heard somebody’s famous now.”

“Tch,” Zoro grunts, but refuses to elaborate. He doesn’t like where the conversation is going.

“And I heard,” Ace continues anyways, his grin all-too-innocent and therefore completely terrifying, “someone’s famous with someone else.”

Zoro jolts upright from his position, for once ignoring the beer he spilled on the carpet—Sanji will kill him for that later, but whatever—and turns to search for Usopp among the crowd. He glares at Usopp in a way that says, I’m going to deliver you a drawn-out, painful death, and Usopp pointedly looks anywhere but back at him.

Ace chuckles, impervious to Zoro’s death glares. “Actually, Luffy was the one who told me.”

“The shipping thing sounds so cool,” Luffy, that traitor, chimes in around a mouthful of meatballs. “I wonder who they’d ship me with.”

“Meat, probably,” Sanji says before Zoro could, and bodily pushes Luffy aside with his leg to place a plateful of fried prawns on the table. Both brothers’ eyes widen comically at the sight and the two of them dive into the plate as Sanji narrows his eyes at Zoro, “that is, if people can even be trusted these days. I still can’t believe they, what’s the word— ship me with marimo head over here when Nami is also in the picture.”

That—well.

Stings a little.

Zoro mentally maneuvers around the flare of jealousy and opts for anger, because it’s easier. Familiar. “Not like I’m enjoying the idea of being a boyfriend of someone with those eyebrows,” he fires back.

Sanji’s left eye twitches at that. “Didn’t know you have enough intelligence to even form an idea, seaweed brain.”

“Pervert cook.”

“Brainless moss.”

“Please keep the lover’s spat within the privacy of your bedroom,” Nami teases as she somehow manages to gracefully pluck a prawn out of the mess Ace and Luffy are making on the table.

“Right, Mellorine!” Sanji sing-songs in record speed.

Zoro sighs and puts his face in his hand. “Do you even listen to yourself, idiot,” he says, and narrowly dodges a kick to the head.

“Says the person who got lost so often the train station officers from the neighboring city start recognizing him!” Sanji yells back, and avoids the pillow thrown at him with practiced ease clearly born through repeated fights.

“How are you two even friends,” Ace observes in between chews, amused.

Zoro and Sanji instantly whip their heads towards Ace in unison, and say, in eerie synchronicity, “we’re not friends.”

Nami shakes her head, but it’s fond. “That’s how.”

+

❤ 2,103 Likes catburglar exclusive photo of Zoro enjoying Sanji’s food #nofilter #candid

View all 7,151 comments

martiknee I assume Sanji is a chef, then?

thefantasyren I still can’t believe we’ve been blessed with their names. Strawhat Fandom, rejoice!

ostenmah @martiknee ur an idiot, he could just be someone whos really good at cooking

martiknee Wow, thanks for the unprompted hostility, I was just asking. Either way, do you fucking have eyes, look at those prawns. Look me in the eyes and tell me he cooks THOSE and doesn’t cook for a living. @ostenmah

  brie @strawhatnami

so I heard Zoro is in his college’s kendo club

 a gay @bisexualusopp replying to @strahwatnami

he’s the CAPTAIN

 brie @strawhatnami replying to @bisexualusopp

source pls?

 Kal @THEKALZONE replying to @strawhatnami @bisexualusopp

can confirm, my brother goes to the same college as him, wasn’t exactly difficult to find a dude w green hair named zoro

 a gay @bisexualusopp replying to @THEKALZONE @strawhatnami

apparently he used to appear on a bunch of tv shows about modern swordsmen or sth with his sister back then?

 brie @strawhatnami replying to @bisexualusopp @THEKALZONE

HOLY SHIT I REMEMBER WATCHING IT WHEN I WAS LIKE. FIVE. kuina was my fave. I wonder if she goes to the same college too?

+

The thing is—the crux of the problem of this whole mess of a situation is that—Zoro has code. Some sort of personal, unsaid rules he has dedicated his life to following. And now this whole fiasco is slowly breaking these codes—two, particularly:

Zoro, as a general rule, dislikes attention. He used to be some sort of a child star way back when, before Usopp and Nami and even Luffy, before—the thing with Kuina. It was hardly bearable when Kuina was with him, holding his hand whenever it started to tremble during tapings, and now with her gone he’s not touching that industry with a ten-feet pole. That means no stupid interviews with awkward pauses and one-word answers, no troublesome photo shoots that leave him with cramps at places he didn’t know could get cramps, and most importantly, no getting recognized on the street by random strangers. He looks like shit on photos. He doesn’t even have an autograph.

Zoro has the largest, most pathetic crush on Sanji, and nobody can find out.

The second rule is more important than the first, of course. So far the breaking of the first code only results in minor inconveniences, but the fact that there’s a whole group of people dedicated to telling the world that Zoro wants to get into Sanji’s pants is not something he can live with. Not something Sanji can live with, that’s for sure. Sanji has been brushing them off as a joke, thankfully, but Zoro figures there’s only so much the Straightest Man on Earth could take before he would start avoiding Zoro in disgust and pretty much stomping on Zoro’s heart in the process.

Which is why, as soon as he spots Usopp coming out of the college’s workshop, Zoro stops him in his track and growls, “this is all your fault.”

Usopp covers his head out of instinct and stammers, “whatever it is, I didn’t do it and I’m sorry.”

Zoro crosses his arms in front of his chest and huffs. “Stop it—I’d never hit you just because I feel like it.”

“This bump on the right side of my head disagrees,” Usopp says as he peeks through his fingers, “I think it’s developing into a tumor .”

“You can’t get a tumor from getting knocked in the head,” Zoro says.

“I don’t think you’re qualified to make that judgment,” Usopp insists, but visibly relaxes anyways when he doesn’t see Zoro’s hands anywhere near his head. “What is it?”

“It’s just,” Zoro says, almost ominously. “People.”

“You’re not a fan of them. Yeah, I got that, like, five years ago when I first met you.”

“Shut up, I’m not done. People, they—“ Zoro drops his voice as low as possible to adequately convey the severity of his predicament, “—they started recognizing me. From your pictures.”

Usopp visibly perks up at that. “I know , right? People say, Usopp, being famous on the internet is nothing, no one’s going to know who you are in real life, but hater’s gonna hate, you know? One time a princess from a European country asked for my autograph—“

“It’s not a good thing,” Zoro cuts in, ignoring Usopp’s make-believe story. “Three different people asked for my photograph on the way here. A girl tried taking a picture while I was eating and I accidentally spat in her face.”

Usopp at least has the audacity to grimace at that. “I guess—I guess I can see where you’re coming from, but come on, Zoro, live a little!” He emphasizes with a  friendly pat on Zoro’s shoulder. “There are, literally, thousands of people lining up to be in your shoes.”

Zoro can’t help bristling at the touch. “I didn’t sign up for this. Not like you and Nami did, with Luffy and the whole YouTube thing,” he says and adds, more urgently, “especially not for the whole thing with the Cook.”

Usopp should know. Usopp does know, because Zoro told him once under the influence of one too many drinks. They never really talked about it afterwards because Zoro has the emotional constipation of a sixteen-year-old emo teen who still listens to My Chemical Romance, and Usopp has enough self-preservation instinct not to bring it up, but there’s always this silent agreement that Usopp knows.

Usopp raises his hands in the universal sign of defeat. “Look, I admit things did go out of hands a little bit, but it’s nothing big. It’s the internet. People will ship any two people who so much breathe the same air.”

Zoro narrows his eyes critically at Usopp, and while Usopp gulps under the scrutiny, he also looks—honest. Trustworthy. Damn it, Zoro does have a soft spot for his tattletale of a friend, and one day it’s going to be his downfall.

“All right, fine, I’ll take your word for it,” he says, and Usopp releases a relieved sigh, which immediately gets sucked back in as soon as Zoro growls, “but if Nami even says something remotely different—“

“If I say something what?”

Zoro is a skillful and trained martial art practitioner. Rumor has it that he has no openings; opponents who go into a fight expecting one would get a reality check in the form of a kendo sword to the head. He’s like a wild predator, they all say, and you are his natural prey.

They are all wrong. Sitting comfortably on the apex of the food pyramid is Nami, and she knows all of Zoro’s weaknesses like the back of her hand.

Zoro jumps and thinks his heart stops for a moment as Nami appears out of nowhere and joins in the conversation, and she laughs when she notices his surprise.

“Shut up,” he growls, and she just grins even wider.

“I was just telling him about the shippers,” Usopp fills her in, oblivious to Zoro’s mini-heart attack, “that they’re. You know. Harmless?”

Zoro doesn’t like the unspoken question mark tacked at the end of Usopp’s sentence, and he likes it even less when Nami says, “well, I wouldn’t exactly call them harmless.”

Zoro glowers at that. “Explain.”

“I mean, you’ve been way too closed up about yourself, you’re practically an urban legend,” Nami says, “and people love knowing things, Zoro. It makes them feel like they’re part of something special. When the internet wants something, there’s no stopping the internet.”

“Like legalizing weed,” Usopp adds, “give them information and you can control what’s coming out. Give them nothing and you’re unleashing a hungry beast.”

“I’m not going to start using The Instant Gram for them,” Zoro says, frustrated, and bits his lips in a way that almost resembles a pout. Not that he pouts, of course.

“I told you it’s not called the Instant—you know what, I tried,” Usopp says under his breath, and Zoro ignores him.

“We’ve been at this before, you know,” Nami continues, shaking her head, “they want to know things about you, and they’re going to find out. Age. Height. Blood type. The brand of shampoo you use. Which side of the bed you’re sleeping in. The fact that you have a crush on Sanji—“

Zoro stops in his track. He blinks. “No one—no one knows that,” he says, and curses himself for stuttering. He catches Usopp’s eyes, and reluctantly adds, “unless I told them.”

“You never told me,” Nami points out.

“You don’t count,” Zoro insists, “you can read me like a book.”

“I want to be flattered,” Nami pats him on the head, like humoring a small child, “but it frankly doesn’t feel like much of an accomplishment when your book only says I HAVE A CRUSH ON SANJI in eighty point bold font.”

He definitely doesn’t blush at that. Desperate, he turns to Usopp. “This isn’t what you told me.”

Nami looks at him, and is that—damn it. Is that pity in her eyes? “Zoro, I don’t know what lies Usopp has been telling you this time, but everyone knows you have a Big Gay Crush on Sanji.”

“One, it’s not a—a Big Gay Crush,” he sputters, “and two, both of you hardly counts as ‘everyone.’”

“No, really,” Nami says as she pulls up safari on her iPhone to open the fuckyeahzosan tumblr page, “I mean everyone.”

+

FuckYeahZosan

The very first Zosan Blog. Zoro and Sanji flirt with each other and ignore everyone else in group pictures because they’re assholes in love.

mods: zorosanjis and queerbellemere

our edits

fanart | fanfics | fanmixes

 fuckyeahzosan

Nami just posted a new picture and it’s everything we’ve ever hoped for.

#sanji is cooking for zoro #what is air #zosan #official

452 notes

 fuckyeahzosan reblogged zoro-sanji-for-the-win 

I can’t believe we only got their names a month ago and today we’ve got two dozens new pictures where they surreptitiously look into each other’s eyes, found out they’ve been roommates for years, gone on yearly road trips with just the two of them, and are practically canon.

I feel like this has all been a collective fever dream we just haven’t woken up from.

It’s all real and you better believe it.

#reblogged #text

2,252 notes

 anonymous asked

Ugh, people like you are the reason why I hate the Strawhat Fandom so much. Zoro and Sanji aren’t even SIGNED to the Strawhats Agency. They’re just FRIENDS of Nami and Usopp. And now they’re the most popular pairing in this fandom? Bullshit.

Sorry, we can’t hear you over how often Zoro and Sanji appear in the Strawhats' videos they may as well be Strawhats, and how even Shanks treat them like they’re part of the fandom.

#asks and answers #mod a

564 notes

 fuckyeahzosan reblogged queennami

zoro + looking at sanji with a love-struck look on his face when he thinks no one’s looking

#THE THING THAT REALLY GOT ME ABOUT THEIR RELATIONSHIP #or friendship or whatever #is that it’s so loud and flashy you can’t help but notice #but with glimpses of quiet moments like this #like you KNOW they have the typical alpha male friendship #roughhousing and name calling; the whole package #from the way nami and usopp talk about them in interviews and stuff #and how they glare at each other in pictures with insults teetering on the tips of their tongues #but sometimes we get glimpses of this when they think no one’s looking #zoro staring at sanji – startsruck – like there are constellations clinging on sanji’s back #and there’s always that small smile zoro probably reserves just for sanji #and I Die #stab me in the chest and it would’ve hurt less #zoro #sanji #zosan #strawhatedit #rpf for ts (via queennami)

#reblogged #photoset #tags #lord have mercy on me

4,425 notes

+

Usopp is so going home with a new bump on his head.

[starryseo]

superhero!johnny

background: in this alternate universe, the members of nct will have various superpowers and abilities. this bulleted series will describe them in school situations - a school of superheroes/ villains - and also outside of school, in non-magical settings, for instance, describing a non-magical job they may have. it’s kind of like harry potter in the sense that only people with powers can access this magical world (where the school is) but magic users can easily travel in between both worlds. enjoy!

shapeshifting;

johnny would be a shapeshifter & im willing to fight anyone against this

he probably wouldn’t use this much in something serious unless he really needed to

always uses it when he gets the perfect opportunity to prank someone

ten always gets t r i g g e r e d when he thinks back to his first meeting with johnny in school

they had a lot of classes together so they saw each other every day

and johnny being the ass he is

shapeshifted into an ever so slightly taller version of himself every day

and the change was so gradual that ten didn't notice

until he was going through his gallery and he sees pictures of the two of them together

the first picture, ten was taller than johnny’s shoulder

and in the next johnny’s shoulder was miiiiiles above ten’s head

and he was just like what tf dude

how could you play me like that <\3

has also probably made ten cry by shapeshifting into a taller version of him (ten) and then mocking him

but it’s all in good nature & ten always gets his revenge (will be explained in ten’s one ;))

johnny also loves playing the “Which one is Hyuck?”  game [brownie points to whoever gets this reference ;^)]

so he shapeshifts into donghyuck, and he and hyuck wear the same clothes & caps and the rest of the gang have to guess who is who

the only person to have ever guessed it correctly was mark

he was like “that one’s obviously hyuck bc look at that smirk. damn, that has scarred me so many times i can just tell that that’s hyuck”

no one understands wtf he's talking abt bc they look exactly the same

but mark’s never wrong 

so he’s now been banned from playing

he probably does still play though bc it’ll be 30 mins into the game and everyone’s still just like “uhhhhh,, idk that one could be johnny?? damn this game” and mark is straight up like “hoW CAN YOU NOT TELL THIS ONE IS HYUCK??!?!?!?! CAN’T YOU TELL HE’S INSULTING YOU ALL IN HIS MIND”

anyways,,,,,

johnny is a h u g e drama fan

is always starring in the school plays because he loves transforming into famous actors/ actresses and acting like them for small, crappy school plays

people used to think the school actually hired a famous actor

but nah

it was just johnny

loves doing this to the youngers though

will ask a kid who their favourite actor is and then next week he comes to rehearsals as that actor

does it to have a good time and to make the kid happier, not to trick them though

probably has a youtube account of clips where he’s transformed into famous actors and does really bad renditions of their most famous films

like he did a parody of Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back, shapeshifted into a crappy darth vader with a black curtain for a cape and was like

“Luke, I’m yo’ daddyyyyy” [even tho the actual script is “no”, not “luke” shh]

he’s done so many and like the real celebs have seen it and are like? ??? i don't remember doing this wtf???

makes him laugh so much when they go into interviews and one of his videos come up and they’re so confused like ?? that’s not even my youtube account and i've never done that?? that’s a really good look-alike damn

the magic council h a t e  h i m bc johnny wtf?? you could expose magic like that?? but no one’s actually thought he was a shapeshifter, just that he was really good at make-up and he’s hired multiple people for his vids (lmao little do they know it’s all one man)

OK SO

you actually know him from school

he’s in your chemistry class and he’s got like a month-long detention for impersonating the professor when she went outta the classroom really quickly

yeah she has a long vendetta against him ever since he transformed into the principal and was telling her to make her lessons more interesting, include more experiments and banned her from giving detentions

it was going so well until the actual principal announced that a fire drill was happening later on in the day

had to happen at that exact moment in time gosh the coincidence

and johnny was just there like “ah... that was... pre-recorded??”

she literally looks for any excuse to ruin his life and vice versa

anyways, the lesson had started

and unfortunately, you were running a bit late so you came to class like 5 mins into the lesson and got a detention after school

you went to the detention knowing she’d make the 30 mins detention 3 hours long if you didn’t come

so yeah, it’s after school and you and johnny are the only ones there and she’s getting you guys to clean her mess of a classroom

she laughed whilst telling you she had the youngest year in the school doing a messy experiment last period

“i want this place absolutely spotless, i should be able to see my reflection in the beakers. i’ll be back in 30 minutes and you both better still be here.” and then she went off to the staffroom

you guys just had really generic conversations until like 5 mins in when you both gave up on cleaning the tables

he called sicheng and asked him to really quickly buy the two of you food and sicheng the lil cutie ran over as fast as he could with pizza <3

so you both just talked about your mutual dislike for the teacher whilst eating and then johnny decided that now was the perfect opportunity to prank her

johnny: “she wanted to see her reflection in the beakers riiiight :^)”

he locked the room’s door in case she came back earlier

and then transformed into her

you took a picture of him and then logged on to the computer in the room whilst he took out all the beakers and flasks he could find

you printed off like 100+ copies of her face and spent the next 10 minutes putting the papers with her face on them into the beakers

you threw away the scrap paper just as johnny unlocked the door and the teacher came back

at first she was like “trying to leave the classroom johnny?”

“no ms of course not”

you were trying not to laugh out loud at how he was trying to be good so she would let you both out quickly before noticing what you both had done

she gave you a quick talk on not being late before letting you both go

y’all ran outta that class so fast you’d give sicheng a run for his money

and then news spread around school of that teacher screaming because someone had stuck her face in the beakers etc but you and johnny had both kept it a secret and the whole school were kinda laughing at her bc apparently her scream could be heard on the top floor even tho she’s on the bottom floor lmao

no one knows who actually did it and she has no proof it was you guys so the school can’t really do much and no actual harm was done so??

but johnny came up to you that day and was like “wow, did you hear? the chem teach had the fright of her life today”

“yeah i heard, i wanna know who the masterminds behind that prank are”

“masterminds? i’m pretty sure it was just one person. you don’t need 2 people to take a pic and print it off”

“i will expose you johnny seo”

“gosh at least take me on a date first”

and you did lmao

y’all are the pranking power couple i swear donghyuck is jealous

-

sorry this is so late & hasn't been proofread properly rip. what member should i post next???

[pizsospa]

Schneeplestein ARG

So this blog @schneeplestein made by @crazions​ caught my attention some day and it looked very interesting and I decided to follow it. Since they there have been a bunch of posts in what looks to be like an ego ARG (Alternate Reality Game) which also involves 2 other blogs. (It might not really be that but I will call it that anyway)

I like code solving and I love ARGs so i took the time to read through all of the story and decode what I can to combine it all in one post for anyone interested... Note that this thing has ended

Also note that I’ll only really go about the “hidden” material, not story, and I don’t want to repost any logs so I highly encourage anyone interested to go take a look at the original blog first. Some great work has been put into it and it deserves to be appreciated!

NOTE!! After I finished this post I did find out someone else made something and I don’t want to change anything in what I solved and take credit for stuff I haven’t done so I will just leave BIG LINK to this doc file by @3ksal that contains a lot, some stuff which I would have never been able to do

(Its a bit long so... everything is under read more)

TO SET THINGS DOWN FIRST! I might have been a bit too late to investigate all of this since I started this basically few posts before it offically ended. Some stuff seems to have changed and I have missed it :( So we start off with Henrik’s blog posting a text post containing a nice big link.

This link leads to a Vimeo upload with a placeholder text title, black and white patter and seems to contain morse code and someone speaking, all distorted. (I don’t know if there is anything behind that speech, I’m not good at all with such stuff. I also tried to solve the morse code, really tried, downloaded the video to slow it down but I just really have trouble with making out audio so... sad but I gave up on it) Besides that there is one QR-code displayed 2 times! That code is a Imgur link which will lead to this

A nice edited hospital hallway gif with some text, one of which is a code and the other another Imgur link to that

(thanks for no double coding)So we have a key and a code which I put into AES 128bit decoder (I know the creators seems to like that) and got..

A blog @97-110-116-105 . Now I found this blog way before I saw this so it was kinda useless to solve and the blog already had some posts on it. From what it looks like it belongs to Anti, so I’ll just call it Anti’s blog.

The actual story starts of with Henrik telling us his blog has seem to got all posts deleted and he has memory problems. He finds out he has some logs laying around and starts posting them along with general text posts about his situation and answered asks. After the link the first suspicious post there is this one. Some zalgo and some binary which translates to: 

Someone clearly mocking Schneep On his post “a small update” is also the first time google doc links is added under the word “God”. More links like this are on some other posts later too

Some time later Schneep’s blog posts a second post similar to his very first one, it contains a Vimeo vid uploaded by the same user who uploaded the first one. It’s a glitched out distorted old ad for Camel cigarettes and wouldn’t you know? There is another QR-code in it! This time it links to a private page on Anti’s tumblr.

It shows us a morse code and a hexadecimal one.

First and foremost: I haven’t solved this. The hexadecimal code brings ”aGFwcGllc3RiaXJ0aGRheS5jYXJyZC5jw==“ which def looks like AES again but I can’t make out the key. I’m sure its in the morse code from the post plus from the video description and title but different decoders give me different answers and it just looks like a lot of random letters. Might be an anagram (that contains the word fun) but idk...

Sometime later regarding the story you might have noticed a 3rd blog from Chase that is also part of the story. It doesn’t have any hidden codes on it like the others. He interacts with some of Henrik’s posts and later even posts a convo between them!

But after some time we get a post of him on the floor along with a google doc that sounds like someone had shot him.

(Small post to note with a google doc link, I just like the writing)

Sort of hidden in some text posts throughout is a whole seperate website! (it is linked on 2 different posts) 

NOTE that there was a countdown! 

Taking a look at the header you can clearly tell it was counting down to Henrik’s birthday. I only found this on said date so i didn’t get to see this live, only when you click on the link it appears for half a second. And of corse... more aes code...

A sweet little message! Doesn’t mean much so back onto what the website showed after the countdown:

A german “welcome” greets us and you can have a dialogue with someone (sounds like Anti imo). 

You will reach an end and depending on if the one you’re talking to liked your answers or not you will be guided to a blank page or to a site on Schneep’s blog.

Sneaky little creator has changed the picture on this page and I wouldn’t doubt it didn’t change before I saw it too, I only got to see 2 images though. First time visting I got this

Probably a picture of infusion bags hanging? highly saturated with filters on top. Changing levels of the picture in the right top corner you can see some binary but...

The picture is small... and it was way too hard to read no matter how I changed filters so what/if that means anything is still out there and hopefully not too important.

The changed picture is this now:

This is all that was to the extra site if the picture doesn’t change again. (I checked the source code too but since it seems to be made with the help of a website tool i doubt you can even hide anything in there)

Anti’s blog starts off with this

I fairly simply Cipher that really doesn’t mean anything(or does it?). It translates to: I REMEMBER IT LIKE IT WAS YESTERDAY

In general he laughs around at the other’s misery and mocks them.Here he links to some imgur post 

(”DO YOU WANT HIM TO DIE?”) Doesn’t look like there is something hidden in it, but I have to appreciate the work, it looks really cool imo

In another post he tags it something weird looking but the “?=“ definitely told me it should be a youtube video link. I have tried to solve this and the “https://youtube.com/watch?=v” is sure but the rest of the link is hard to do. I have put it through Caesar Cipher decoder and decoded it by hand a few times, but the link doesn’t seem to work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i73ddxye4c I don’t know if it’s on my part and I actually did do something wrong, the video was deleted or lil Anti just played a trick all along. 

Second post that links to another imgur site:

Looks like Henrik’s workplace with all these logs, a phone with broken screen, sticky notes and empty coffee cup and yet again!

Another code...There is one across all and then even damn morse code on the red one, really doesn’t make it easier to read with the 3d effect on top. I like to think I typed it off right and that “XILDM” was the key but it didn’t work. Plus the morse code is hard to read and I’m not sure in which order it should be so.... this is still open to be solved.

The last suspicious thing he posts is an audio post that sounds like an old clock ticking (?) getting louder. The name of it is yet another code and the picture a QR-code! The QR-code just leads to this, a google search for “does space have a sound” I thought for sure that would be the key to the code to solve it but no. I even thought ‘Maybe the key is the answer’ or the zalgo tag but no, don’t know what this one means.

All in all... I really enjoyed this!! I’m really sad to leave a bunch of things unsolved but I am not the brightest person for this. I haven’t seen anything like this in the community and outside it only a few that aren’t that interesting. While many will do a lot of code solving like this one, this also had more story and so much extra work put into it. Seriously, Google docs, the logs that were actual scanned papers, photographs, polaroids, The videos, A whole other website, The amazingly edited gifs and 3 whole blogs. A lot was put into this and I really like it, kudos to the creator, it was a really neat project! :)

[filmfreak1994]

Change the Channel

A lot of people have been talking about their experiences with Channel Awesome in the wake of the 60+ page document released by Allison Pregler and several other former content creators for Channel Awesome. I figured I might throw my own experience with the site and its people (mostly Doug) too while the topic is relevant, even considered dusting off the old camera I got for Christmas to film a video but allergy season is upon us and I’m coughing up my lungs so the written word it is.

I was a frequent user of YouTube in the early days of its inception, mostly to look up viral videos and just go on a stream of pointlessness for hours on end with each recommended vid in the sidebar (mostly consisting of parodies to Star Wars, LotR, and entire Simpsons episodes uploaded before the great purge of early 2008). In all that time between 2006 and 2007, reviewers like the Angry Video Game Nerd and The Nostalgia Critic eluded me. I saw plenty of the 5 Second Movie clips and thought they were hysterical but didn’t even make the connection that they were made by a “Nostalgia Critic” until around the end of 2009, when a friend of mine at school told me to look up NC’s review of Sonic the Hedgehog (the weird TV show and the futuristic evil Jim Cummings one). I finally gave in which led me to watching some of his other, recent reviews like the “Star Wars Holiday Special” which was freaking hysterical (and still brings a warm smile to my face just thinking about it). By the time the new year rolled around and I had discovered That Guy With The Glasses I was hooked.

For a while I stuck to watching reviews on YouTube when fans would rip them from the main site, but decided to eventually support the site itself where I mostly stuck to NC videos but also watched content from the other producers when it interested me; Spoony and his Final Fantasy reviews, Linkara and any comic with a subject material I was familiar with, Marzgurl and her Don Bluth retrospective, so on and so forth. Like many other people, I wasn’t keeping up with every producer’s videos weekly like I was with NC, but when I decided to watch something else their content was worth it, being funny and informative all at once, even creating new branches of my interest and giving me new perspectives on media criticism.

I watched Nostalgia Critic religiously every week and, sorry to say, started to take his opinion as gospel, and the opinions of other reviewers as well, treating certain movies and shows as bad just because they said so and didn’t have an opinion for myself for the longest time. It was when I started to pay attention to Doug Walker himself and his philosophy that you should like what you like and every movie is a miracle that I started to chill out and even disagree with his opinions at times (I remember his “Little Nemo” review made me seek out that movie and I actually quite enjoyed it).

TGWTG was a formative site for me in my high school years, developing much of my sense of humor and how I look at movies. I watched all the anniversary specials, started to watch a greater portion of producers that included Lindsay and Kyle’s more analytical reviews and Brad Jones’s and Matthew Buck’s mix of cynicism and snark with genuine analytical praise and criticism. I even started to look at music critics like Paw or Todd even though I can’t judge music for shit (if it has a catchy beat I’ll more or less dig it, I’m not picky). I always imagined when I moved out for college (yeah, how’d that work out for ya, younger me) that I would start my own review series in the vein of these online personalities and even be picked up for the site where I too could join in on the anniversary movies and have a swell time and make friends with the people I looked up to and have a good time filming huge crossover events with them (in hindsight I can only imagine what role Doug would have me play in them, if I was even deemed important to be in them at all). Whenever people criticized the anniversary movies I just shrugged it off and said, “Yeah, they’re dumb, but I like em anyway,” and when rumors starting going around about some upside down crucifixion going on I shrugged them off as just rumors (and to be fair it wasn’t upside down but the real thing isn’t much better).

Anyway, around the time when To Boldly Flee came I enjoyed the movie a lot (I only saw it the once and I was eighteen, eighteen-year-old me and present me don’t get on anymore) and thought it was a bittersweet conclusion to The Nostalgia Critic but was excited to see what new projects Doug and the company would do after its conclusion. Plus the other contributors still had their content to keep TGWTG going strong into the foreseeable future. At least I thought.

I didn’t hate Demo Reel, but I didn’t like it all that much either. I only caught around a few episodes before losing interest, saying I’d get back into it eventually but never going out of my way to see them. By accounts they got better as they went along and I was interested in the episode that paid tribute to Elizabeth Hartman (which I think is the same episode that had Mara Wilson and Arin Hanson? I might be wrong (I didn’t even know who Arin was at the time but hindsight is 20/20)), but I just put off watching them until, oh look, NC’s back. At the time I thought this was interesting, there was plenty he could still do with the character given his new ground rules and the emphasis on skits gave the show a different tune that I felt, at the time, kept it fresh from what it was before. I missed the simplicity of the earlier reviews but I happily stuck with the NC again, as well as the same creators I’d happily watched before and plenty more I started to watch like Phelous (around the time he did that weird Aladdin meets Pagemaster movie, I used to rent that from Hollywood Video all the freaking time).

It was around this tumultuous time that Doug actually kinda started to annoy me. Never to the point where I stopped watching NC, but he sort of seemed to forget his whole “Like what you like,” message and outright attacked fans who disagreed with him. Certain jokes in his reviews rubbed me the wrong way (if Irate Gamer can’t get away with blowing up Ubisoft cuz they wouldn’t let him into a conference, you can’t get away with pretending to blow up Happy Madison just because they make shit movies) and he had a general vindictiveness to those who liked movies like “Man of Steel” or “The Lorax” that just seemed mean spirited and not a funny little video meant to entertain (though I guess the signs were always there like when he added in a dig at “Avatar” in his “Conan” review for no reason). But by and by he seemed to mellow out (no doubt dealing with problems letting go of Demo Reel and how big a success he thought it would be) and I still watched his stuff, including the vlogs he did with Rob regarding “Avatar” (the good one, hey I did it too!), “Korra,” “Adventure Time,” and any recent movie that came out. I started to agree with them less and less but they were still entertaining guys and I liked what they were doing.

Some of the shadier stuff going on at the site more or less flew over my head. The game show they did was pretty much “Demo Reel” part two for me in how much interest I had in it and that faded from public consciousness pretty quickly, and it was around the time the site switched from TGWTG to just Channel Awesome that a real shift began to become more noticeable. People were leaving. People I may not have watched all the time, but they were leaving, often times unannounced and seemingly unprovoked (because quite a few of them were). I read about what happened to Allison, aka Obscurus Lupa, who I had watched on and off again and thought that was pretty shitty, and got a general grasp that the management of CA itself wasn’t very good from what she and Lindsay alluded to (or just straight up said, they really should’ve had some NDAs if they cared so much about how they look) in some posts on Tumblr or Twitter but I still carried on watching NC and the other creators on the site mostly because I just figured what every fan figured at the time, Doug was mostly innocent and it was Michaud and Rob who were the real strings behind big decisions like who stays and goes (I liked Rob fine, but even back then I knew he could be kind of an ass).

More and more people from the classic era of TGWTG were leaving or not producing as much for the site as they did and that was a shame. CA was never what TGWTG felt like to me, even if the purpose was to put more focus on the other producers (supposedly (hell, TGWTG did a way better job of featuring producers in my opinion even if it wasn’t perfect)). But whatever, I carried on every Tuesday watching NC, watching other creators when their stuff interested me, but it still wasn’t quite the same as before, and I had become more aware of the general bad experience most people had filming the anniversary movies even if the full extent of that didn’t come until a few days ago.

It was really when Lewis announced that he had left and I found the Change the Channel hashtag that I started to take notice of these stories, finding plenty of them on my own from the links to Twitter conversations many of the former contributors were having before reading them on the Google doc. I was torn, wondering if I should boycott NC with all that I had read and decided to make it a temporary one until the doc came out and to see if he or CA would provide a statement. Well, the doc came out and the apology not long after. And yeah, I moved it to a permanent ban after that bullshit.

I’ve given up watching people I loved before, JonTron and his racist bullshit was the last straw in supporting anything he did, and even with the Me Too movement I’ve given up any kind of support for people like Kevin Spacey who I used to love as an actor (now it’s pretty easy to see how he was able to play such scumbag villains over and over again). I know Doug isn’t a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer, and to my knowledge he hasn’t used his position to sexually take advantage of anyone (though he has turned a blind eye to others doing the same and the same can’t be said for taking advantage of people in other ways), but I just couldn’t watch stuff directly made by him and for Channel Awesome with all this information. It wouldn’t be right, even with an adblocker. 

I don’t mean to threaten the livelihood of people on his team like Malcolm or Tamara, I like them a great deal and they’re very talented, heck I even enjoyed the skits on NC a lot more than most because of them (and Rachel, she was great too). But I said to myself until an actual apology is listed and some form of action is taken to truly better the site, I wouldn’t watch them. Others have suggested and I have thought the same, that the best thing to do would be to fire Michaud, though I realize this would create a slew of problems given that he owns the IP for NC and is the founder of CA. Still, some form of acknowledgement from the Walkers would go a long way to bettering the public response to all this. More and more contributors have left in the wake of this document, either out of fear for their own image or to show solidarity with the many complaints levied toward the site (and their reasons are completely valid no matter what, they’re trying to make a living), looking at the site today it’s practically a ghost town. I don’t blame those that have stayed for anything, but the reputation of CA is tarnished and at this point, especially with that piss-poor “apology,” it’s going to take several huge leaps to get it back.

I realize the purpose of Change the Channel was never to create a boycott of NC or any of the Walker’s content, at least by the majority of those who contributed to the docs, and those who choose to boycott do so of their own volition. Well, that’s my volition. No matter how much NC shaped my sense of humor in my younger years and inspired me to look at movies critically myself, I can’t deny the damage that Doug and Rob have been complicit in nor turn a blind eye to the shady practices they, Michaud, and past executives on the site have done. 

I really do wish that what was seemingly apparent in front of the camera, that this was a site filled of talented people who were also good friends having a good time, was true behind the scenes as well. People have been hurt, assaulted, taken advantage of, and tossed aside when they were no longer useful to the site. It’s not right, and I’m literally changing the channel until actual change is made.

[ma9l]

Opinion Series: Instagram and It’s Effects on Depression

1st audience: Influencers

Source 1: Why Social Comparison on Instagram Matters ://ezproxy.uvu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsgao&AN=edsgcl.586241540

Source 2: Why Instagram is the Worst Social Media for Mental Health https://time.com/4793331/instagram-social-media-mental-health/

Source 3: An Instagram With No 'Likes' Could Have A Big Impact On Mental Health. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/instagram-hiding-likes-mental-health_l_5cd092d3e4b0548b735e50bc?guccounter=1.

YOU ARE HUMAN TOO

How do you do it? How do you always look happy and put together? I would dare say that it’s definitely not an easy task trying to appear like your life is perfect and that nothing is wrong, when in reality you are human just like the rest of us. You have your own struggles that you face, but you can’t bear the thought of losing followers and so you fake a smile to present a pleasing image for the world. What really goes on behind the scenes of Instagram? I’m sure what people see online is not the real you-at least not entirely…

INFLUENCER OR ROLE MODEL?

You are the role models of the future. Teenagers adore you so much so that they want to be like you, which is great and all, but not when it leads to feelings of depression and insecurity. “Research has shown that people compare themselves with those they perceive as having positive characteristics (upward social comparison) out of a desire to become more like their comparison targets” (Hwnag) This kind of practice can bring about feelings of depression because they are constantly feeling inferior and are aiming for an unrealistic goal.

MAINTAINING THE IDEAL

The pressure is ever heightened for you to maintain an ideal status. The atmosphere is very competitive. You sponsor products that you don’t actually use, get lip injections that you don’t even need, and for what? The money? There is a common phrase that states the following: “money can’t buy happiness.” Maybe it can temporarily, but pretty soon, it loses its value. Similar to how you receive positive reactions from followers, which at first is exciting and makes you feel good, but then you realize they have no idea who you are. What if that was taken away from you? What if you couldn’t see how many people liked your posts? Well, a test run was performed in Canada to see how the experience for Instagram users changed by taking away the visibility of likes. A participant named Sarah Roberts said this: “Personally, I love not seeing the like count. It feels a bit weird to say, but I’ve stopped comparing myself to bigger accounts. I’ve also been more personal with the things I actually like versus what everyone else is liking. This feels like more of what Instagram should be rather than an advertisement of ourselves on our page.” From your point of view, as an influencer, I would guess this wouldn’t have the same effect on you. In fact, it would probably reap a lot of havoc with in you to not see how your followers are responding because you wouldn’t know how well your posts were doing and most importantly, wouldn’t be able to tell if they were being influenced at all when that is the sole purpose of your account. Something interesting to keep in mind in regards to the comparison aspect of your followers relation to your account, is that studies have been done comparing those who follow strangers and those who don’t and compared how it affects them mentally. It turns out that “People using Instagram or other SNS to keep in touch solely with people they know personally are not at risk for negative consequences… However, following strangers may lead to or reinforce already existing negative feelings about the self by triggering negative social comparisons.” (Lup) 

2nd audience: Utah Moms

Source 1: “Can Your Instagram Photos Reveal You’re Depressed?” https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/can-your-instagram-photos-reveal-you-re-depressed-ncna794041

Source 2: “Does Social Media Cause Depression?” https://childmind.org/article/is-social-media-use-causing-depression/

Source 3: “Why Instagram is the Worst Social Media for Mental Health”

https://time.com/4793331/instagram-social-media-mental-health/

EVALUATE USAGE

Utah mothers of teens: does your child own their own smartphone? Do they have personal social media accounts? Are you aware of what they do online? What about how much time they spend scrolling? These are just a few basic questions that may be helpful to consider when you’re wondering why your teen is acting “off”. Sure, you can blame it on the hormones or claim that they are just “going through a phase”, but are there other factors that come into play? Certainly! A lot of parents monitor their children’s phone usage, but a fair amount do not. Because so many teenagers are glued to their phones most of the time, and pay more attention to their devices than anything else in this technology driven world, some parents may feel like their relationship with their kids is being hindered. The phone is a distraction, and an interference that can create a gap between a teenager and the amount of face to face interaction they engage in with others. They may seem distant or hard to reach. They may seem irritable or annoyed when asked simple questions. This could very well be because of the negative strain they’re receiving from an endless array of information across social media-more specifically, from Instagram. Did you know, that Instagram ranked the highest in social media platforms that contribute to anxiety and depression? Right up there with Facebook and Snapchat. (Macmillan) Instagram tends to pressure individuals to meet a certain standard or obtain a particular ideal which adds more stress to the lives of teens who are already bombarded with stressors like school, friends, work, etc. 

HOW TO HELP

In the NBC article “Can Your Instagram Photos Reveal That You’re Depressed” it talks about a computer program in the works that is able to spot depressed people just by scanning their Instagram photos. This could be helpful for parents like you if your child isn’t very open about his/her life. You shouldn’t rely on it to give you an accurate diagnosis, but if their posts are looking dark, it could be a sign that something is up. The article suggests you bring it up by saying something like: “I noticed you’re not eating and not going out as much. You’re spending hours on the screen in your bed, you seem really tired — like you’re not sleeping well — and you have a lot of dark pictures on your Instagram.”....... Then ask your child, “Have you noticed that, too? Do you feel any different?” This way you aren’t necessarily accusing them, you are just stating the facts and checking in. A couple other tips are advised in the article “Does Social Media Cause Depression”. Try the following: focus on balance, turn off notifications, set a good example, teach mindfulness, and enforce phone free time before sleep.

UTAH

Obviously in Utah there is a unique dynamic with the large majority belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Now, whether or not you fall into that category, you probably still agree with me when I say there is a distinct standard for how people parent in our state and it entirely revolves around the family. Your family means everything to you. I can’t even imagine, being a mother and having all the concerns and worries that you do for your children, hoping that they don’t get screwed up or lead astray. That is a heavy burden to bear. Finding the balance between being too strict and too carefree is tough! So while keeping an eye on your children and their social media use may be another stressor for you, let me reassure you by saying “you are doing better than you think you are!”

3rd audience: “The student”

Source 1: No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression.” Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.uvu.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=acf0bc8f-62a2-42ca-a54c-5fb0eabe7791%40pdc-v-sessmgr05&bdata=#AN=133426611&db=pbh

Source 2: Instagram: Friend or Foe? The Application’s Association with Psychological Well-Being. http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.uvu.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=cd3ba391-56c3-46b9-97d5-383a27d2d6fa%40pdc-v-sessmgr02&bdata=#AN=2019-53246-004&db=psyh

Source 3: Is Social Media Hurting Your Mental Health? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czg_9C7gw0o

ARE YOU “LIKED”?

How does it feel when your phone buzzes, notifying you that your latest Instagram post just got 50 more likes? Do you feel the gratification and approval from your peers? Do you feel important and liked? What about when you post something and it doesn’t do as well as you hoped? Do you immediately take it down because it’s embarrassing or do you shrug it off and say “My next post will be better!”? Either way, most people your age are trying to find themselves and fit in so what you post tends to be influenced by your peers. You care about what they think because you don’t want to ruin your reputation. Am I right? Some of the most common mental illnesses these days are depression and anxiety, especially among youth. A lot of studies have been done in order to confirm or deny whether the hypothesis that social media plays a role in our overall well being is true or not. 

INSTA ON THE COLLEGE CAMPUS

“The Center for Collegiate Mental Health found that the top three diagnoses on University campuses are anxiety, depression and stress. Numerous studies from the US, Canada, the UK, you name it, have linked this high social media use with these high levels of anxiety and depression.” (Parnell) I don’t know about you, but as a college student, I can relate with this. Even though we are all on our own journey to success, a lot of us tend to worry about how we are doing compared to others even though they are taking an entirely different route that is not even relevant to us at all and then end up feeling sorry for ourselves because we see how much good is happening in their lives and how much they are achieving by viewing their social media posts. Why do we do that? They have nothing to do with us, nor do their feeds depict real life. They could have failed an exam just yesterday, but never posted about it so you had no idea and then turned around and posted about passing one the next day which is all you saw. It’s all about sharing the highlights and the positive moments in life online so people will like you and think you’re cool.

HOW MANY USERS?

“As of March of 2018,... 71% of young adults used Instagram” (Hunt) I would consider young adults to be between the ages of 18-30, so your typical college student. The numbers may be slightly off due to the slight advance in time to today, but roughly 70 percent of young adults use Instagram. That is a pretty good majority. With this high of a number, it wouldn’t be surprising for at least some of the app’s users to face problems with it.

INSTAGRAM ANXIETY

In a scholarly article titled “Instagram: Friend or Foe”, it uses the phrase “Instagram Anxiety” to describe how one might feel in their online engagement with the app. “Instagram anxiety was associated with both depression and anxiety. This specific form of anxiety refers to feeling anxiety symptoms about specific processes involved in using the application. It may also be that users who feel anxious about posting pictures or receiving feedback may also tend to feel more anxious in general.” Anxiety and depression go hand in hand. You may not be diagnosed with either illness, but you have probably still experienced some of their symptoms-especially if you use social media often. I know I have. Now, we are all imperfect and all make mistakes so it’s no wonder we beat ourselves up about not having the ideal Instagram account like so and so does, but we have our agency and we can choose to use it more wisely. “Is social media hurting your mental health? The answer is: it doesn’t have to.” (Parnell)

[onisionrants]

I've been debating making a post about joysparklebs for a while and it looks like the time has came, so here we go. I found joy when she still had under 400 subs, I commented on some of her vids and we chatted a bit. I told her I was the one that wrote the Polyamory vs. Polygamy rant, to which she said she loved and so on. She even offered to pay me for an "interview", to which I'm glad I didn't, on the subject. Some weeks later I started the chat and she was one of the first to join, being there for the first chat. When I started the chat I wanted it to be a "safe place" for everyone to talk about onion. Things that we couldn't talk about on our blogs and such. I try to screen everyone before adding them to the chat for this reason. Granted there were some pretty big red flags from both her and her minion Angel, but I give people chances and over looked it for the time being. About a month into the chat I found konstigo's vid. Like I said in the chat when I posted it for everyone to see, I didn't want this to be posted about because she is a teen after all and she is brainwashed by onion, not her fault and something she will grow out of. I didn't want this girl to get hated on or anything. Well joy decided to seek her out and do an interview and we all saw how that played out. I do not agree with what happend to this 17 year old girl at all, which joy likes to say she stole, but she wouldn't have anything if it wasn't for that girl anyway (and saying she spent time editing it is hilarious, you only added your intro). It was a witch hunt. During the last interaction you also said "I didn't know what rob was going to say" but you had tweeted him a few hours before asking him to email you about the 17 year old before he made the vid. You, joy, should have never contacted her, she is a fan, she is naive, but you are a grown ass woman. You should have known what you were getting yourself into by the mentally his fans tend to have. This is your fault to begin with. Then she displeased you by "stealing" (again something you wouldn't have with out her) and go on a rage calling her a bitch. This is a child, she is one of the one's you say "you're trying to help", you know her brain is not as developed as 30+ year old you, and again you knew she was a brainwashed. I didn't want her posted at all cause I didn't want any hate her way, you brought hate to her. In the beginning I tried to help joy. I told her I was appart of lolcow (and despite what angel said to joy in their private chats, I didn't lurk her thread until the konstigo thing happend), I tried to give her advice on it when ever she got her first thread and such as to not draw attention to herself, instead she (and angel) decided to troll them. Then we started noticing that angel would come in and say nothing, very weird, after her and joy came in together being defensive, so I figured something was up. Around the konstigo incident joy and angel had a falling out, I'm still unsure why (I have a few ideas though) and angel posted a vid of their skype convo. Granted it was a fast vid but me and another from the chat got some nice screen caps ( and if you wamt joy I can post those caps too) of them talking about us and the chat. Funny how joy is now saying not to talk behind people's back and everything but in the chats they talk about eavesdropping on us and talking shit like "what a waste of time" after telling us we "know our stuff and are knowledgeable" (and ya know taking info from us to use for your gain). It was the 2 faceness I didn't like and that she didn't know about when we finally blocked her. I'm wise to your game. Now I have been apart of your lolcow thread, and you are everybit as bad as onision. You say you want to help these kids but your actions prove other wise (not just in Do5 case). In your meltdown chat lastnight/today you also brought up how people were bringing up your past, mainly your beliefs. I don't have a problem with what anyone chooses to believe in as long as it doesn't hurt anyone, but (much like onision again) you are indigo, you (info from your old myspace) have made money scamming people into believing you talked to angels. I've seen your writings of healing people and the indigo documentary you tried to make. You are doing the same now. Going off on people like Mr Rep for criticism of how many vids you made vs the info in them. I didn't blame you for making many onion vids because each had some new stuff in it and was for the most part worth it, but this, making up to 12 vids a day with each vid being repetitive with maybe one new fact is not the same, that's using the issue to make money, which you say you're donating SOME (she never has said all) but still no " receipts". Then also bashing others who have done way more for this family then you have or ever will (nick, based, chambers.... even if I don't agree with each of them 100%). You are a user, you used them just like you used us, just like you've used many before. I'm going to end this here for right now, but if you would like to come to the chat and talk private about this, joy, we will welcome to a new different chat with those who were affected by you in the original chat, you know how to reach me. And in your onision like narc rage your in right now if you want the "FAAAAAXXXXXXX" me and a couple others have many many caps for you.

[bionicdragonguardian1]

MHA Doctor Theory With 222 Spoilers

Spoilers are under the cut, so everything else is Anime S3 safe.

This idea has been bouncing around my head for a couple weeks and I think I finally figured how to say it in a concise way.

A quick recap of the Original Doctor Theory before I try and explain what exactly is changing or being added to the theory.

The Original Doctor Theory says that the Doctor from Episode/Chapter One of MHA who told Deku he’s Quirkless is actually the same Doctor who works for All For One, as he is seen tending to him in Chapter 59/Episode 38 (2x25).

(Also what the Doc says in the English Version of the Manga is SO much darker than what he says in either version of the Anime, holy shit)

That’s actually where the actual theory ends, but the Vol 7 extras are really what holds this theory together since we were given this shortly after Stain’s Arc finished. It is just begging to be elaborated on.

Okay, now that the recap is over I want to explain what has been bouncing around in my head to add on to this theory.

If you wanna blame someone for this ridiculous idea blame ToxiCurE’s IfSo Factso MHA vid series (Explanation, Quirk Qs 1,2,3) because I have a problem with listening to YouTube vids while I work and part 3 came on… and yeah. I mean part 2 has a point I’ll touch on for all of two sentences, but it’s mainly part 3.

What I want to add is what I think the Doctor’s Quirk might be.

I know what you’re gonna say, but Horikoshi confirmed that he’s- and yeah yeah I know, but I honestly don’t remember if that’s a Spoiler or not and also there’s multiple reasons why they wouldn’t share the same Quirk because you’ve got him obviously having a kid with someone who could’ve had that kid’s Quirk or even that kid’s other parent had that Quirk, which seems more likely to me… I’ll explain below the cut cuz Spoilers.

Now, in Quirk Questions Part 3, there was one question that was posed. “How do people with freaky ass Quirks know what their Quirks are?”

Which I hate to say I never actually gave much of a thought to… until I read this fic: The Price of a Quirk and everything just clicked for me.

I WILL NOT take credit for this Quirk idea because it is literally straight out of that fic, but I won’t go super in detail because it is a little bit on the busted side.

But, if the Doc is the same one, then that means his Quirk has to be suited to his profession.

Which was… what again?

Right, Quirk Specialist.

Which is how I think I can answer the question posed in Quirk Qs pt 3. The answer, someone has a Quirk that lets them identify what other people’s Quirk’s are. How broken this power is kinda up in the air, I mean it could really be busted and say that the user can write a whole analysis of the Quirk even if the kid doesn’t know what it does.

If ANYONE in MHA was going to have this Quirk wouldn’t be someone whose job is to be able to identify what kids Quirks are, because clearly he’s had instances where kids have come in assuming they either were late bloomers or didn’t have a Quirk for whatever reason and then someone like Toga shows up and he’s like… uh yeah, you’ve got a Quirk but it turns out you need to drink blood to activate it.

Like Holy Shit.

This could tie into how people’s Quirks get named too because ya know HellFlame and Cremation don’t scream “I didn’t come up with this!” then I don’t know what does.

But yeah that’s what I think his Quirk might be and that can tie into how Deku might’ve had a Quirk and Doc was lying and had him get his Quirk stolen by AFO, because… if you can look at this four year and go “Ooo this kid has a Quirk my boss would like” text/call the guy saying “Yeah kid with SUPER powerful Quirk here, do you want it” and if he says yes, he teleports there and the Doc just has to get the kid alone for two minutes (or brainwash the parent to forget he was ever there) and boom AFO’s got another Quirk.

Done.

Here’s the deal, I know how some people are wishy washy on how they’d feel if Deku had a natural Quirk that was stolen, but here’s the thing, even if Deku did have a biological quirk it wouldn’t change how he grew up. The shit he had to deal with, from everyone in regards to that. Nothing that makes Izuku Midoriya Deku changes. Because yeah, that might change, but as a person he’s still the same protag we love.

INTO SPOILER TERRITORY WE GO!

Dear chapter 221, thanks, I can no longer look at a Nomu the same way anymore. Fuck.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but this (220) is the first time we ever got confirmation that Doc was creating the Nomus. Which, I think I actually missed the first time through and until I was going back through recent chapters for this post did I fully process it.

Because I feel like this is kinda our first hint that the Doc is six degrees of CREEPY.

Also can we point out that the Doc has been around AFO long enough that he isn’t afraid of Gigantomachia? Because we know he’s ancient, but everyone other than Tomura is scared of this guy, but he’s running on a power high I’d be lying if I said I was surprised.

In 221 we see the League get teleported in the exact same way they were back in the Hideout Raid Arc, which we find out in 222 is this guy’s doing.

Which… I… uh… nope, I don’t wanna talk about this, thank you.

Also, uh Doc’s lack of morality is definitely shown by this panel, but also by this one, because I don’t care how twisted you are, that’s SO wrong on so many levels.

Also… how would they have possibly known that Tenko’s quirk isn’t an Emitter?

If they didn’t know that, putting his gloves on could be a safety measure, sure, but this AFO, you really think he’s scared of a traumatized four or five-year-old who he DID hug without said gloves on?

(Also, no thank you, I don’t wanna talk about the Doc’s offer to ‘fix’ Tenko. At all. Ever.)

But the reason I think this can tie into the Doctor Theory is that he’s using -chan to refer to a lot of the Nomu, which I don’t know if he’s doing because he created or if it’s because he captured children. Children with strong Quirks.

Also, I feel like being able to look at someone and see what their Quirk is would go beyond being convenient in this position to be damn close to required.

I mean, yeah, he’s got reams of paper running along his work station and at some point you start to remember aspects of things like second nature, but if he’s making Nomus, and have been for… awhile, presumably, then at some point you’re gonna start losing tiny little details and I doubt he’s got ALL the data attached to every Nomu tank.

I mean look how big this warehouse is, while we can only see twelve tanks with Nomu, this warehouse CLEARLY keeps going beyond the Doc’s workspace.

So yeah, I feel like a Quirk like what I’m envisioning for the Doc, where you can see what someone’s Quirk is just by looking at them would not only do a good thing for the World that Horikoshi is creating, but would also be an extremely important part of the job for someone who has been creating Nomus for AFO and if he is the Doc that Inko to Izuku to, having a Quirk like that would make too much sense.

On the world building side, I’m gonna be drawing from Fanfics, but here’s why: in MHA we’ve met exactly three Quirkless people, two of them confirmed to have at least one parent with a Quirk. Not to mention the way Deku was treated growing up (which I mean yeah some of that you can pin on Kacchan, but remember that almost every adult in his life between four and fourteen did NOTHING to stand up for him. And don’t get me started on his Jr High teacher we actually meet.) But with such a wide assortment of Quirks, it is completely understandable for occupations to become dependent on people’s powers.

Oh, you can ID someone’s Quirk with a look, sweet you’d be really suited to go into this field, or you have an emotion altering Quirk, have you ever thought about criminal psychology?

You get where I’m going?