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heyclickadee · 1 month

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My take (that no one asked for) on every single Star Wars show and non-saga movie:

The Clone Wars (movie): It’s…okay it’s rough. This wasn’t supposed to be a movie at all, putting three episodes of the show together and releasing it theatrically was part of the distribution deal with Cartoon Network, as far as I know, and it does show. It’s grown on me, though.

Clone Wars (The Tartakovsky Series): I think I’m probably in the minority here, but I actually don’t love this one. It’s fun, slick, and stylish, like everything Tartakovsky does is, and I don’t dislike it, but it just doesn’t do much for me. It’s cool. Maybe it’s a little too cool. Great art style, though.

The Clone Wars: Very high highs, very low lows. Though to be honest, I actually love a lot of the goofier episodes. They’re fun. It doesn’t have to be all drama all the time. Sometimes you can let Jar Jar be an agent of chaos. Sometimes you can have an episode about interest rates. I don’t have the nostalgia factor going with TCW the way a lot of people do—I didn’t watch it until I was in my twenties—so I do have to admit that it is tied with one other show as my least favorite of the animated shows, but that’s not a bad thing. I still love it.

Ewoks: I’ve only seen about six episodes. It’s veeerry 80’s. I think eight year old me would have gone insane for this show had I seen it. Adult me actually has a bit of a soft spot for it. I’ll watch the rest of it eventually. (Aaaand now I have the theme song stuck in my head. It’s. It’s definitely a theme song.)

Droids: I…haven’t seen it.

Resistance: I finally had a chance to get all the way through this show (I was eyeballs deep in “okay fine we’ll try this college thing AGAIN” when it was airing and just didn’t have time to check it out) and you know what? It’s actually pretty good. It’s definitely skewed even a little younger than Star Wars typically is, but it does what it does really well. Sort of feel like this one is slept on.

The Mandalorian: It’s a fantastic adventure of the week show. I actually don’t dislike the “plot” episodes, but mostly I’m just here to watch what shenanigans Din and his small green force son get into. Season three is weaker than the first two, but I don’t even really think that season is bad. There was some great stuff in it—just uneven and mixed in with some not so great stuff. Overall, good popcorn viewing, as far as I’m concerned.

Andor: Okay, yeah, Andor is fantastic. I do think some of its popularity is that it’s one of two (maybe three) Star Wars shows made for adults more than anyone else, so some people don’t quite have the same “why isn’t this making me feel like Star Wars did when I was a kid?” dissonance watching it, but it is also genuinely amazing. Probably the best thing Star Wars has ever done even if it’s not technically my favorite.

The Book of Boba Fett: Is it a mess? Yes. Do I still enjoy it? Yeah. My main problem with BoBF is that it’s got some serious structural issues. Even besides Din coming in and taking over two whole episodes, I think that the telling the story via flashbacks was a mistake, and that we should have followed Boba through the childhood bits and slowly caught up to him in the present. Maybe revealed it was all a flashback while he was in the bacta tank from there. And I…don’t love Robert Rodriguez’s directorial style all that much, never really have. That said, I do hope we eventually get more of this, though if we do I think it will be folded into something else. Still don’t love the live action pike design. (I actually have a conspiracy theory that BoBF was originally just a few episodes or even a season of The Mandalorian, and that it was made its own thing for marketing purposes.) I want more Boba, more Fennec, and more Sand People, if nothing else.

Solo: One, killing off Val Beckett was a huge mistake. It’s not story breaking or anything like that, but doing so when she’s one of very few black women in Star Wars and half of one of, like, two interracial couples in the entire franchise means that it hits in a way it wouldn’t if she was someone else. So, yeah, don’t like that. Two, the rest of this movie is a blast and audiences just hate fun. I don’t care that no one asked for this movie, it’s fun and campy and there’s a heist and I like it. Three, Enfys Nest has the sickest armor design in the whole franchise and I need more of her.

Kenobi: So…maybe unpopular opinion here, but…I really like Kenobi. Kenobi’s a delight. It’s not perfect, it’s got some problems, but I like that it’s about a guy who’s that depressed and alone slowly regaining his sense of hope, I like that we had something focus on Leia for a while (because Anakin and Padme had two kids and Leia always gets left second string), I like that you’ve got grifters like Haja and former imperials doing what little bits they can to help even though they can’t fight the whole empire. And I know that thoughts are mixed on this, but I actually thought it made a couple bits of A New Hope make more sense where Leia is concerned; kid me could never figure out how she knew who Ben Kenobi was when that was the name he only went by in exile on Tattooine (“Ben Kenobi? Where is he!?”), and it kind of made the switch from the very formal request for aid on behalf of her father to the more personal, “Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi,” a little more poignant, for me, anyway. Reva is an amazing character, she’s a perfect parallel and eventually perfect foil for Anakin, she’s a mess and a he’s in pain and I just. I love her. I have mixed feelings on the live action Grand Inquisitor’s performance (and mixed feelings on the makeup—on the one hand it could be better and on the other hand the other main live action pau’an we’ve got—the actor’s head was just shaped like that). Nevertheless, this show for me was mostly about the big emotional beats, and it hit all of those really well.

The Bad Batch: This is a magnificent show and I adore it apart from That One Thing and the fact that everything was left completely open, even going into the epilogue, apart from Omega’s coming of age and the Hunter’s and Omega’s relationship’s arc. That was resolved very well. I am mildly insane about this show. I love it. Also, it vexes me. Tied with two other shows as my favorite Star Wars show in spite of all that. Amazing soundtrack. Sidebar: If it turns out I’m right and That One Thing is an extended fake out and we’re not quite done with these characters, I’m sorry, but I’m going to be the most insufferable person alive.

The Acolyte: Everyone is very pretty and just a little stupid. Mae is very fun. The good scenes are very, very good. The writing is pretty uneven; judging from interviews I have a completely different view of writing than Leslye Headland and had a hard time picking up why a lot of the characters did anything, but when it hit, it hit. It’s…very CW drama, which isn’t a bad thing—just not always my thing. That said, Sol is a fascinating concept for a character and Lee Jung-jae did an incredible job with what he was given. Same with Qimir and Manny Jacinto. It’s honestly not my favorite Star Wars show, but I’m still disappointed that it looks like it’s not moving forward. The leftover story might end up being folded into the high republic book series, but I still hope we get some kind of on-screen continuation. I think the public needs more of Darth Babe the Jacked.

Rogue One: It’s great. Yes, the entire main cast dies, but the central message was still about hope. Vader gets to pun. I remain somewhat dismayed that the only thing a portion of the audience took away from it was that the Vader hallway scene was cool. He’s a horror movie monster there. Still a great movie. (Also, Saw, why do you have that??)

Young Jedi Adventures: This skews very young; most Star Wars is for kids in the first place apart from Andor, the Acolyte, and mmaaaaaybe the Tales of anthology (the other live action shows are, in my opinion, solidly whole family), but this really is made for very young children. That said, I have watched it, and it’s a very well done show for very young kids. Also I would die and kill for Nubs.

The “Tales Of” anthology series: Yes, I am counting this as one, because even though there’s a shift in focus from the Jedi to the empire between seasons, it all follows the exact same format and structure. I’d argue this series is the one that’s primarily for the adults who either grew up watching Star Wars animation or got into it as adults. It’s good, lots of atmosphere, the episodes do range in quality but I generally like them, and it’s nice they get to play around with different techniques, like making miniatures and incorporating them into the animation. The Dooku and Barriss episodes are probably my favorites.

Ahsoka: I know the fandom is divided on this, like they are on most things, but I love this one, okay? It’s not perfect, but I have a good time watching it. It just happens to be this perfect blend of campy, fun, dramatic, and mystical that really feels like Star Wars for me. I like it when Star Wars gets weird, has silly little guys, and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Lucky for me that this series has extragalactic travel via whale, Ahsoka being dragged to Force Therapy by Anakin, and Ezra hanging out with the space fraggles. That, and I love some of the concepts. I like the idea that force sensitivity isn’t the be all end all, that connecting to the force is something you can learn with practice even if you weren’t blessed with the genetic lottery. Peridea and the space it occupies in folklore is neat. And the music is wonderful. It is a little uneven, it’s not Andor or anything quite that amazing, but I’m eager for more.

Visions: This anthology is fantastic and you’re missing out if you haven’t seen it. I don’t love every entry, but even the weaker ones are worth seeing once, and the stronger ones are worth seeing a whole lot more than that. It’s a great blend of styles and takes from people normally not involved in creating Star Wars. This is in a three way tie for my favorite Star Wars show.

Rebels: Again, it’s not perfect, because no show is, but I also think it’s the strongest standalone show Star Wars has besides Andor. Yes, there are weaker episodes, but on the whole it’s remarkably consistent, and the second half of season four might be some of my favorite Star Wars outside of parts of the original trilogy. Also, it has some stunning backgrounds, and while the art style doesn’t always work for every character, the character animation ends up really hitting its stride towards the end of the second season, and just gets better from there. And, as always, the music is fantastic. Rebels rounds out that three way tie for my favorite Star Wars show along with TBB and Visions.

#Star Wars #this is all just personal taste #I guess tldr is that I enjoy some more than others #but I enjoy basically all of it on some level

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yarameijer · 4 months

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Hey! So I know I’ve written once before but I’m really interested to know: what is your literary background? When did you start writing, and do you see yourself having a career in writing anytime soon?

Also… is the IE love coming from childhood nostalgia, or is it just me 🤓

Hello hello! I started writing in 2015, I'd just turned fifteen at the time, I think? I'd only recently started reading fanfiction and was pretty obsessed with Inazuma Eleven GO, and honestly I was kinda disappointed in the stories I found on FFN (basically 75% of it was romance one-shots, and barely anything on my favorite characters or anything that was longer than 5K) so my solution to that was to, uh, start writing things myself?

Mind you, I had zero writing experience, I was very bad at English, and I knew next to nothing about writing in general, so my first story was pretty bad. Very quickly abandoned it and started on Stand, which was probably where I first really discovered my love of writing. Ended up getting advice from a few other writers on FFN and through, I guess sheer stubbornness, I improved? Especially in Stand you can see how much I improve throughout the chapters. At that point I'd read quite a lot of fanfiction in other fandoms, discovered a love for time travel stories, and found myself heavily disappointed that there were no Inazuma Eleven time travel stories.

So I, once again, decided that the obvious solution was to write one myself, and that's how Accidental Reverse was born.

So yeah, that's about it! No literary background beyond fanfiction writing whatsoever. If it comes to stories, though, it's a bit different - I've always had a very active imagination and apparently could spend hours by myself playing with my toys and making up whole stories as a kid (in hindsight, I realize they were quite dramatic so that at least hasn't changed). I also have suffered from motion sickness my entire life, and we went on vacation every year by car, so ever since I was small (think 6-7) whenever I had to spend a whole day in the car I couldn't read or draw and instead started fantasizing about cartoons or movies I watched and making up stories for said cartoons. Sound familiar? XD

As for a career in writing, no clue. I'm kinda bad at writing original stories, don't have the patience for introducing a setup for a world or unknown characters, but I've got some ideas for a book series that I'd like to write but probably won't for the next decade. Who knows, maybe someday I will.

This turned out a whole lot longer than I expected, whoops. As always, I can't keep things short. Sorry for the info dump XD

Also yes, IE love is nostalgia but also just because the show is so ridiculous and fun. The plot, no other sports anime has such ridiculous plot lines and I love it. It's so chaotic and fun.

#welcome back to another episode of 'yara can't write short things to save her life'#with the number one example #''all we are was supposed to be a 7K oneshot and is now 100K+"#to quote AR!Tenma #oops #is it me quoting him if i'm the one who wrote it?#aren't i technically quoting myself?

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moviemunchies · 4 months

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Some-BODY once told me that Shrek was a really good move. It was huge when it first came out; everyone, I mean, everyone I know loved it, and it was freaking everywhere you looked. I was never that into it, though. In the past few years, it’s experienced something of a revival–I’ve seen discussions of how it’s actually a really good movie, covering themes like acceptance and self-image. And Dreamworks has made a lot of really good movies! So I thought it was about time I re-watched the film since I found it on Netflix.

And during this re-watch, I discovered that…. I don’t like this movie.

Shrek adapts a picture book by William Steig that you’ve probably never heard of into a CGI animated feature about the titular ogre. Rejected by ordinary people, Shrek lives alone in his swamp, until he saves the life of Donkey, a talking donkey and would-be victim of Lord Farquaad’s attempts to purge his realm, Duloc, of fairy tale creatures. Farquaad is forcefully re-locating these creatures to Shrek’s swamp, much to the ogre’s chagrin. Walking straight into Duloc, Shrek and Farquaad make a deal: he’ll get his swamp back if he goes and saves Princess Fiona to be Farquaad’s bride in order to legitimize his kingship. Of course, saving Princess Fiona isn’t so easy, and she has her own secrets that she’d rather not let anyone find out; and even then, Shrek finds that handing her over to Farquaad isn’t what he really wants.

Alright, so you can’t really talk about this movie without mentioning that the entire thing is built from the ground up as a massive ‘F*** YOU’ to Disney. Jeffrey Katzenberg, one of the co-founders of Dreamworks Studios, was former chairman of Walt Disney Studios and had a falling out, to put it mildly, with both Roy Disney (Walt Disney’s nephew and member of the board) and Disney CEO Michael Eisner, to start his own company. It’s popularly speculated that the villain of Shrek was designed to resemble Michael Eisner, and also his name sounds like ‘F***wad’.

If you did not pick up that the movie hated Disney and everything about it, that information should give you enough to work with. Though it is blindingly obvious; the princess plot where things don’t go according to plan, the fairy tale characters acting mostly as pests, the dirty jokes, how Duloc’s entrance brings to mind Disney theme parks with even a parody of “It’s a Small World”, the bird exploding when Fiona’s singing with it… It’s pretty much all there.

And yes, Disney had sort of gotten a reputation for squeaky-clean princess stories, and their attempts to move past those haven’t made much money–in part because management didn’t know how to market and when to release those movies. Treasure Planet and Atlantis: The Lost Empire might have been hits if it weren’t for those factors, but the people in charge didn’t think they’d be money makers, and thus screwed them over and said, “Welp! Those movies don’t do well, I guess!” It’s understandable, then, that a guy who worked at Disney might have had some frustration about how he couldn’t break out of the mold, and hold some resentment for that mold and then make a movie about it.

It’s so… crude, though? Much of the humor in this movie just isn’t my thing. It doesn’t feel like a passionate or thoughtful deconstruction of Disney, most of the time, it feels like taking a hammer to it, except that hammer makes fart noises. There are so many jokes that aren’t aimed at kids, but they’re not really funny as much as ‘Tee-hee, look what we put in an animated movie vaguely aimed at families!’ Like, no, I did not need a bit that implies Lord Farquaad is jacking off to the image of Princess Fiona in the Magic Mirror.

Farquaad is also annoying and that he clearly has some sort of hang-up about fairy tale creatures, and wants them out, though it’s never really developed much. Why does he hate fairy tales so much? Again, as a stand-in for Disney’s management, the notion that the guy in charge wants a standardized feel to his kingdom, and will ship out anyone different/magical makes sense; however, this falls apart because the fairy tale creatures are again, clearly meant to be annoying/stupid! And the whole idea of not judging people based on how they look or who they’re born as is thrown out the window with all the jokes about how short Farquaad is!

Probably not helping is my past experience with this movie. Many years ago, when this was A Thing, and kids just watched all the time, we were at some dinner party or New Year’s party or something. It got late and we started three different movies (this one, Princess Bride, and Willow), so probably New Year’s. The kids at the party put on this movie, and dear Lord do you have any idea how annoying it is to watch a movie where your fellow audience members know all the jokes, and say it along with the movie? Except their timing is off, so they say it right before it’s said in the movie? Yeah, that was this viewing experience. It was the most annoying way to watch what’s supposed to be a comedic film.

A lot of the jokes just don’t make much sense to me, either. Why is Robin Hood French in this movie? At first I assumed that it’s a roundabout allusion to Kevin Costner having the wrong accent in Prince of Thieves, but I looked it up, and apparently, no! It’s just because the people making the movie thought it would be funny. That’s dumb and makes no sense.

There are some things in the animation that haven’t aged well, but they had no way of knowing it at the time, they were doing the best with what they had. And so ‘meh’ on that front.

And I can’t help but think that if it hadn’t been for Shrek that so many things would have been different–the dominance of CGI over other forms of animation, the over-reliance on pop culture references, celebrity voice actors, the big dance party at the end of the movie–Shrek wasn’t the origin of all of these ideas, but it definite catapulted them into popular consciousness. Oh, and putting Eddie Murphy in tons of things. That was A Thing That Used to be A Thing for years and we all hated it.

There are some things in this movie that I do like, to be clear! I like Shrek and Fiona’s relationship! I like their character development. I like their interactions. I like that their journey consists of both of them accepting themselves and not worrying about conventional attractiveness. I don’t generally like the, “The couple has a misunderstanding based on half of a conversation,” thing, but here it’s because it reflects both of their self-loathing and I think that’s actually really interesting!

[There’s a Tumblr post about it, too.]

And there are, I guess, some jokes I liked.

Overall, though, I don’t like this movie. I can’t like this movie. Shrek doesn’t feel like a movie made by people telling a story they love, it feels like a bunch of people rambling on about how much they hate the Walt Disney Company. And to be clear, there’s a lot to dislike about the Walt Disney Company and the movies it makes. That alone doesn’t make Shrek a good movie, though. I have heard that Shrek 2 is good; I haven’t seen any of it to my recollection, so I might give it a try? As it is, though, with all the other fantastic films Dreamworks has created, I’m struggling to see why people are so attached to this one.

#Movie Munchies #Shrek #Dreamworks #reviews #animation

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drsoulblast-official · 4 months

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The Fourth SoulBlast Newsletter is here!

What's new?

Our Team Members have recently been working on SoulBast's Intro Sequence (GONER_MAKER replacement) and its path chart, where each individual ending and choice has animations which are still being planned! How many choices/animations are there? Well...

Here are the references (provided by Terra and Alternimo) showing what's next to come!

The Cosmic Starplaza Update is Here!

We decided to replace DELTARUNE: CHAPTERS REATOMIZED with a WIP Shift AU that has a couple Deltarune characters in original roles. It has some SwapSpin inspiration and some StoryShift inspiration, specifically the roles papyrus and sans are in. What does that mean? You'll have to wait and see!

Yes, the songs ARE back! Maybe!

The SoulBlast composers are cooking once more! This time for something with a much different tone to what is often teased here, but we hope that you still like it!

There isn't a thumbnail made yet, but it may be done alongside some other songs, which have a chance of coming out this month!

What's Terra been up to?

“It’s Terra again! I’m on vacation right now, but we’ve got a decent amount of content done. We’ve had a couple songs finished in the last week, and Alter and I have been planning out the SoulBlast opening sequence. I might not make it the first thing we do dialogue-wise as it’s super ambitious and big, although I had a really cool idea as of how to “realize it”. I don’t know if I’ll go forward with this idea, but who knows. That’s all I have to say for now, peace!”

What's Alternimo been up to, too?

“Hey, I’m back with another newsletter section! I’ve decided to do one every other week (mostly because of my current work pace, and also because Alter doesn’t necessarily entirely equal SoulBlast), but here we are again! As for what I’ve been up to…well, not a whole lot, to be blunt. I’ve been away on vacation after vacation, trip after trip…kinda doing some small work off and on, but nothing too crazy, and likely not until mid-June or so, when I get back from this big trip I’m on now. Not too much has been going on in the SP!Deltaswap (AKA CandlelitSeal (if you’re interested, DM me for more info!)) field, though I’ve been putting together a few last minute ideas and laying everything out for myself to track my progress. Preparing for some dialogue revisions too, alongside the designs for the rest of the main cast. SoulBlast-wise…not much either, though I’ve been helping out a bit with the intro sequence (which may or may not been teased somewhere in this newsletter) and some tiny logo tweaks. With that, though, I’ll quit my yapping, as there’s plenty of other (probably more important) content to be getting to.”

The SoulBast gets an update?

The SoulBlast Team has been working to improve the original logo! Here's what we've done so far, with different versions by Alternimo and SnowyBoi64

(Minor Logo Rework by Alternimo, although some color things would still be changed)

(Sprite Version by SnowyBoi64)

Speaking of SoulBlast Reworks...

The Character Guides are back, and are currently in a stage of early construction! Not much more is able to be said unfortunately, but we'll get updates to you whenever possible!

The SoulBlast Team has a New Member!

"Heya! I'm the I Man, and I recently joined the SB/NM team. I do some spritework, background music and maybe a bit of writing, if I'm feeling particularly wild. I've made a few works over the years and I have a few AUs of my own, (including two whole Underswap takes), but I figured I'd join this project because it seemed interesting (I was right). Anyways, I can only hope I live up to the expectations set for me, and I hope to see you in the future."

That's all!

Go check out our stuff below! The next newsletter will be posted in 2 weeks (since it’s biweekly)

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@soulblastau5574?si=fuh6MJy1Hgd4FVaT

SoundCloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/UVadRL6CSVdqxkRv9

Discord: https://discord.gg/3bAtNkxH2P

#undertale #deltarune #deltarune au #soulblast #soulblast au #terrasavior #au announcement

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kirby-the-gorb · 2 years

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reply roundup :)

I am so sleepy. also photo of my fancy phone case I was so excited about under the cut.

on [flap] @macro-microcosm said: HAPPY KIRBY FLAP HAPPY KIRBY FLAP HAPPY KIRBY FLAP- so glad I'm not the only one who thinks he does this. and I relate, things aren't great but at least there are cute things to be a comfort

he is my little projection orb, therefore he must flail his little nubs around in excitement as I do. (also I hope things have improved for you, I’ve still got another 2 1/2 weeks to wait but hopefully the news will be good -n- )

this is how the phone case turned out btw! it’s by CandyDulceDeco on [etsy] or at candydulcedeco.com, they were very patient with working out all the little details and everything :> (that little post in the top corner is for a little loop to put phone charms on, I repurposed a bracelet with rainbow gummy bears as a little phone strap sometime after taking this photo)

on [meds] @plushslug said: I have MCAS too. Sucks hard. Keep fighting the good fight out there and may your symptoms be manageable 🫡

same to you *salute emoji I can’t find rn* (love your icon btw)

on [milk] @graycoin said: Ah shit, that sounds rough. You can Get Through It, but I am sorry you gotta. :/

thanks, I appreciate both the vote of confidence and the sympathy -n- (and in your other comment as well. thank you in general to the folks leaving supportive comments even though I don’t post them all, I really do appreciate it.)

I also appreciate everyone who rushed to give baby his choccy milk or demanded he get it, with special mention to @justawanderingfan who went so far as to [add] the glass (and the resulting smile) themself :)

on [keyblade] @angeryspeedo said: look at him. he is just a little guy...

every time someone tags my kirb as “just a little guy” or “a bean” or something like this I become more powerful :) (I even made a post on my personal blog when I first saw this tag that it means I Win At Art. there are many ways to win at art and I win often. drawing something that makes me laugh, drawing something my wife thinks is pretty, drawing something, drawing something that makes a stranger add a funny tag, etc. these are all Art Victories of equal value. I think this is a good way to think of creative hobbies.)

also on [keyblade] @joekingv1 said: *wonders who was baby's favorite character*

I think of the playable characters in birth by sleep, ventus would be their favorite. (both because kirby probably relates to him most and because his combat is most amenable to just mashing regular attack and dodge the whole time (which is mostly what I did lol)) out of all of kingdom hearts I do think they’d vibe with sora. my dirtboys.

on [crochet] @duerme07 said: this -feels- crochet in a way that few other images have conveyed

thanks! it’s because I hate making small gauge amigurumi and have bad eyesight so this is exactly what I looked like for approximately 3 hours immediately following this drawing :)

on [blanket] @ceylonsilvergirl said: life has its ups and downs, is never just one or the other. stick it out through the difficult times And I will find comfy blanket time again

comfy blanket time can be anytime. even or especially during the hard times. (I hope you’ve got a break coming down the line too.)

on [valentimes] @wishiwould said: I sent this to all my family and sent the creator money on ko-fi bc delightful

extremely sweet of you, thank you so much! I always love finding valentines like this to send to my wife so I’m so glad I could make something similar for someone else lol (yes I did send this drawing to my wife and my partner for valentines day :v )

on [vacant] @sagessmoke said: he's a static image right, when i scrolled onto him he blinked and i need to know if im okay

yep, he’s a static image. when you’re seeing stuff directly from me, I always tag any moving image with “gif” even if it’s a small amount of animation. (my eyes play tricks on me sometimes too.)

anonymous asked: Do you like META KNIGHTTTT METAKNIGHHHHHYYYTTT

yeah he’s pretty neat! significantly more Shapes required to draw him than a kirborb tho lol

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bad-danganronpa-ocs · 4 months

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I have decided to give you My Ocs for you to look at. (BE HONEST!!!)

KEITH ROGERS.

Full name: Keith Rogers

Gender: Male

Pronouns: He/him

Age: 17

Nationality: American

Sexuality: Pansexual

Ultimate Talent: ULTIMATE SUPPORTER

Personality:

He is a Kind and supportive person who cares for everyone and tries to help out Anyone who needs it, But he isn’t stupid and is pretty smart and can tell when people are trying to manipulate him.

Keith is also pretty distrusting of some Doctors due to his trauma in the past. (But that doesn’t stop him from getting help from others.)

(I hope I wrote it the best I could)

Appearance:

He Looks somewhat like Hajime Hinata but with glasses. (And without the ahoge)

(I know that feels generic and I agree.)

Backstory:

(Note - I hope I wrote this well, This is the first time creating a full backstory written wise due to how many notes I’ve created for him.)

Keith Rogers is born to a normal family around the early 2000s (Probably 2003.)

Keith was a normal kid who wanted to do good things and leave his mark on the world, Even at a early age he was a fan of movies and pop culture and stuff like that and that give him the urge to want to create books that could change the world and change peoples perspectives on it.

But this would be taken away from him due to him being put into a mental hospital that was because of a doctors misdiagnosis and stuff like that.

Keith would be in that Mental hospital and would be put though HELL!!! From Electro shock therapy to untested medication that made Keith sick weeks on end which almost Killed him.

Keith isn’t alone though…as he would make some friends with some of the child Patients who also had there own issues. (I didn’t create characters for them but I would make them in the future cause I’m still improving on my writings.)

Keith would stay in that mental asylum until one faithful Stormy night…

…Keith was in his bed and was trying to sleep though the night and decided to get a glass of water from the Hospitals cafeteria (I haven’t been to one so I don’t know where it would actually be.)

But when he was going back to his room…He saw there was dead bodies everywhere!!! Some were Hanged some were stabbed and some had there wrists Slit and there was alot of blood.

Keith didn’t know what happened…But that image stayed in his mind as he ran back to his room and was going to open the door when he saw one of the older teen patients he knew was holding a knife and was looking crazy…

“The Medication made me do this Keith…It made us go MAD…Your next Keith…Your next…YourNextYourNextYourNextYourNext…”

Keith then freaked out and ran out the window and into the stormy rainy outside…Keith had escape his nightmare…

Keith would then escape and went into hiding for a few years and the police never found him!

(Note - Keith Could have been hallucinating due to the untested medicine and the patient with the knife wasn’t really there! Or the Guy was really there and he Killed some of the patients. What was true though is that the other patients killed themselves probably due to the medication or other reasons.)

(I’m just clarifying some stuff if you need some extra notes.)

Meanwhile the mental hospital would be shut down and the rest of the living patients would be given real medical help because of the untested medication probably hurt them really bad.

Years later…Keith would be put into the 93rd Killing game created by Team Danganronpa in 2020 and it would change the world forever…

———————————————————————

I hope you enjoyed this weird Oc that I created in the past.

Keith was inspired by Hajimes backstory somewhat but with some changes and stuff like that.

AND YES!!! There will be a Izuru type character as well as a OC but they would be a separate character and they would be the Ultimate Phantom thief.

Once again I do not do reviews anymore. I put this blog down like the hideous small animal it is. But I guess if you want comments I’ll just say that that’s not really how mental hospitals work nowadays, like at all. You’re not allowed to have any sharp objects on hand, and I don’t just mean knives, I mean sharpened pencils, pens, anything with a glass screen that can be broken, etcetera. You also can’t have rope or anything else you could hang yourself with. When I went as a kid they took the drawstring out of my pants, and the beds don’t have sheets on them.

Also in the modern day ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) is still used, but only with informed consent. Basically Keith would’ve had to agree to undergo ECT beforehand. Even still, it’s only really used as a last resort.

A friend of mine actually suffered a lot of medical misdiagnosis as a kid, and they were put on so many different medications that it actually gave them brain damage, so ECT doesn’t necessarily need to be part of the backstory at all. Of course if you’re really going for the more horror movie-esque Victorian sanatorium type of mental ward, I’d just make the doctors more sinister than the patients. Sufferers of mental illness are more likely to be victims of murder than to murder others.

Basically you have a decent start and just need to rework the hospital backstory to be more believable and less accidentally demonizing the mentally ill.

Maybe I should just make this a writing help blog.

-Mod Soda

#submission #mod soda

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taz-skylar · 2 years

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hi roh!

hope this week has been kind to you 😌 (despite all your finals) as a working adult (?) fumbling through the world, sometimes (most times) I really miss my school days hah

asdfghj I confess to not watching op *sweats* I briefly considered bingeing it to make your gift but when I googled the episode count, this was me: *insert homer simpson backing into bush meme*

I'm enjoying both of them! sxf was kinda slow the first few episodes, but I really enjoyed the tennis tournament ones. blue lock is absolutely amazing so far! I went into it knowing only that it was about football/ soccer so the first episode had me going ?????? omg is it that dramatic? 🤣 the additional time really had me laughing though, especially the recent one with kunigami crying 💀 tbh I don't remember much of link click but I remember it keeping me on the edge of my seat, and whenever the first few notes of the ending song started playing I would go "ah yes here comes the cliffhanger ending"

your answers were so fun to read, especially the characters you relate to! if anyone ever asked me that question I would probably struggle to answer, but you have so many and that's so cool! you and moh sound like a chaos duo asdfgh but it's such a nice dynamic! my brother and I aren't that distant but we don't share similar interests and don't spend much time together, so we don't have a lot of things in common to talk about. increasingly the only time we interact is when we go on family trips which are becoming shorter and rare as the years go by 😔 you and moh sound close and I'm really envious about that!

and here's this week's questions: do you have any plans for the end of the year? do you have anything new you're looking forward to or want to try next year? could be an activity, a hobby, a place to go to, ...

- your animanga secret santa 🦖

finally finished all my exams so i’m just exhausted and finally got back home on monday night so i’m just catching up with my family and friends and on tv shows/movies that i missed while school was going on.

flkadfja i’m honoured that you even considered bingeing op for me 🤣 that’s hilarious and amazing !!! yeah, op is definitely the longest animanga series out there but i will say that it’s definitely worth the read/watch! and if you ever do, lmk and we can scream about it together bc i definitely feel like you’d enjoy it :D

yes, sxf was pretty slow in the beginning but i’m glad it’s picking up now ! the tennis tournament was absolutely wild and my sister and i had to keep pausing and rewatching certain scenes bc we couldn’t stop laughing (like when loid started dodging the bullets by swinging all over the place fjaldkfa). my favourite thing about blue lock is that, while all other sports animanga are like ‘there’s no i in team’ and everything, blue lock’s like fuck friendships, i’m winning this shit flkfjad the additional time bits are such a cute little add on, i love them all!! since i got super busy with school, i wasn’t able to get back into link clink but now that i’m home, i’m hoping i finally can (especially since i stopped on a two parter)!

faldfj i wanna know who you find yourself relating to now that you posed that challenge 🧐 that question was super fun, and initially i definitely struggled and had to go through my anime list bc i suddenly forgot every single character that i’ve ever seen fjaldkfja (also why i asked moh what she thinks which was a mistake, clearly)

yeah, moh and i are very chaotic. i think everyone who knows us can attest to that, our parents like to say that when we fight, we’re like cats so that’s fun 🤣 aww i honestly can’t imagine not being close to my twin sister or my brother. is there anything that you and your brother do enjoy doing together?? do you guys live close to one another? maybe starting with something small can bring you closer than you are?

answer for this week’s question: my plans for the end of the year consist of me being home with my family and friends for a bunch of parties since i haven’t seen them all for 4 months and eating all the homemade food my mom and dad can make bc i missed it so much 💙 i really want to explore the city i’m living in next year so hopefully school will calm down a bit and let me do that bc i’m only there for one year and i don’t want to just be sitting doing nothing but studying 😭

thanks for the ask!! love hearing from you, bud! 💙

#rohreplies #🦖#animangasecretsanta #animangasecretsanta22 #good news: i finished my gift for my giftee so now i can finally open discord up properly and look through all my messages #!!!!

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tmisaccidentreportbook · 2 years

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MAG030, Killing Floor

Case #0130111, David Laylow Release date: August 3rd, 2016 First listen: 5th November, on the walk home. I remember walking past the Rushy Lake wall as the statement was starting.

In which I sat down to start writing, pulled up the episode, saw the title, and walked away to go make dinner early… I’m also going over my messages with dodgylogic at the time of the first listen and this one is in her Top 3 episodes.

- So I’ve done a little looking and I was somewhat shocked to see that Dalston is actually in London. Now, disclaimer, country bumpkin here, but it’s within the A406 ring road so as far as I’m concerned, it’s London. And the fact that I’m shocked, is exactly what I think this statement is going for; the fact that this sort of work is going on so close to major populations. Ok, now, I’m probably going to fumble this, but I don’t think it had computed in my brain, I’ve just always envisioned abattoirs out in the countryside, close to farms and with plenty of room. Or alternatively, the whole process handled by a butcher, because, yes, I grew up in a the sort of village you’d expect to see on the front of a biscuit tin and we have a traditional family butchers. They did damn good work during the pandemic, chased out folks who’d driven in to buy up their stock when they have an ageing an immobile population that depend on them. Taylor's Family Butchers, big respect. Anyway, I’m examining this now because historically, yeah, the animals would be driven into town to be butchered and processed in the community they were going to be sold. Makes sense. So I think it may be quiet telling that my brain had just glossed the concept over. Bit embarrassing and stupid really, my university town had an abattoir site until it was torn down in 2014. I think it’s a Premier Inn now.

- ‘I won’t say which one.’ I get that fear. There’s been so much I want to write about, about my work. Exciting things, entertaining things, things that need to be muttered into the ears of law makers with all the threat of King Claudius’ poison. But I haven’t and when I do, I keep it vague, although the discerning could probably work it out. Because my employer hasn’t the clearest guide lines on social media use and such and it became a whole lot easier just to not. Which made it all the more galling when the social media teams did put up stuff and got it wrong. It’s not like they had the experts to ask a few offices away, or failing that, the internet to ask, but I will leave that rant for the foot soldiers being kept from saying their piece for another time. But yeah, saw folk higher up the chain posting whatever they want and I was there in the knowledge if I put anything up, it would come down on me like a tonne of bricks, so forget it. Also, my industry is pretty niche and fairly incestuous, and I’ve seen stuff come round to bite folks in the arse.

- ‘I never did (get a weird vibe)… Maybe that says something about me, though.’ I work with animals. Have done for near a decade now. And people always ask me how I take the deaths, because there are a lot of them. I’m not sure if I’ve hardened or if my mentality of ‘Every day is a knife fight with God’ has solidified, but in most cases, it elicits a sigh and a small swear before I start the process of preparing for our vets to perform a post mortem. Not often does an animal’s death impact me to the point I where I grieve, it has happened, but not often. These aren’t pets of mine, they’re more like strange little work colleagues, that have a natural life expectancy much shorter than my own.

- ‘…every damn animal in that place knew exactly why they were there.’ I can believe. It doesn’t matter how well it’s cleaned, but cattle alarm pheromones will stick around and induce fear and stress to other cows. You spook one, you spook the herd. And the herd that comes after that. And the one after that. That’s before we even talk about the stress of a new environment, noise, travel etc.

- Hearing David talk about the ‘casual human brutality’ is difficult. Really difficult. Because you know it happens, not just the abuse itself, but the fact that the observer can become so numb to it. Can disassociate what is happening given time and practise. I’m thankful to say I’ve never witness what I’d consider ‘human brutality’ to animals, but I have seen ‘unnecessary carelessness’ which has often had me gritting my teeth and saying something. It’s typically down to a difference in husbandry practises. And I try and be civil. And if I couldn’t be civil I’d go get our vet, who is a woman who takes exactly zero shit and has no problem telling the collection manager exactly where he can stick it if he refuses to wear gloves despite me asking him, twice.

- ‘… just noisy meat.’ prolonged pained conflicted noises

- ‘…you start to kind of see people as meat too.’ I wonder if that’s the case in other professions too. Probably not to such a severe level of disassociation maybe, but do morticians look at people and measure them for a coffin? Do forensic pathologists try and see what would be cited as the cause of death? Do surgeons think about how much pressure they’d need to apply for the first incision?

- ‘…it’s hard to believe in any special spark that makes us humans any different.’ Mood. The only thing that makes us special is that we figured out agriculture and domestication of other species. All goes down hill from there.

- ‘…we could turn into a lifeless carcass just as easily.’ The human body is so fucking ridiculous. I am saying this as someone with a first aid level of medical training, I am very much a layman here, but the fact that we can lose limbs, multiple limbs, and pull through is incredible and wild. But you roll over funny and you can say good bye to walking or you hit you head just wrong and it’s lights out. Humans are so squishy. We make no sense.

- ‘I only worked it for a few months, and now I can’t work on any killing floor anywhere.’ Very sensible, good working practise and all, but this is a terrible jump for my brain to make and I can’t decide if it’s terribly disrespectful or poignant or both, but I recently learnt about the Sonderkommandos that worked the crematoria of Nazi death camps and how teams were liquidated at random intervals and… yeah.

- Yeah, I need a mug of tea now.

- ‘Of the people who’d worked the killing floor for over ten years, do you know what percentage went on to commit murder? One hundred percent.’ I’d like a citation of this study please. I would like to read it. But I’ve also done a quick search of more recent studies, and I realise that it’s too long since I’ve needed to read any scientific paper with anything more than surface level understanding. And while study David references would have been carried out in the 50s, there are still concerns to this day. A 2021 study, drawing data from U.S., Australia, South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, Denmark, and Ireland, found that there is a higher prevalence rate of mental health issues, depression and anxiety in particular, those affected tended to employ a variety of both adaptive and maladaptive strategies to cope, and there is some evidence that slaughterhouse work is associated with increased crime levels. Worrying, as the U.K. slaughterhouse industry has a 70% migrant workforce, people already vulnerable.

- ‘They call it “stunning”, but that’s never sat quite right with me.’ Yeah, that’s… that’s just lobotomising. more concerned distressed noises

- ‘The Bleed Crew’ is at once a horrifying concept and a baller band name.

- Tom Haan. Interesting, complicated one. The fact that he is from China and doesn’t appear to speak much English is a good representation of how the U.K.’s slaughterhouse industry relies on an immigrant work force who may otherwise be short on options for employment and are, unfortunately, easy to take advantage of. On the other hand… yikes. I have ague memories of this being discussed and Jonny unintentionally feeding back into some unfortunate stereotypes. I don’t know what prompted him to make Tom Haan Chinese, whether it was an honest desire to have more cultural variation in his characters, but he accidentality walked face first into the wall of racist stereotypes.

- ‘…but in practice no-one asks to be moved (from the killing floor). It shows a weakness that most of the people working there aren’t comfortable with.’ Iiiiii’m gonna go out on a limb here and say ‘most of the people working there’ are under the influence of toxic masculinity and a protestant work ethic amongst other things.

- ‘My feelings weren’t really working back then.’ (Hears this.) Concerned noises. (Remembers my darker days of late 2020.) Concerned noises at half an octave higher.

- ‘… in perfect English, ‘You cannot stop slaughter by closing the door’.’ Sinister in many ways; the actual words, the supposedly hidden grasp of English, and also, ok he doesn’t specify the accent, but if it IS in perfect BBC English… look, we’re the bad guys in movies for a damn good reason. And considering the British Empire’s historical relationships with mainland Asia… yikes.

- I’ve done some jobs where I was able to just switch my brain onto idle and go through the motions. I would find it therapeutic, especially one volunteer role I had at a foodbank processing stock takes. And it was wonderful because it was like reverse retail therapy, I had some semblance of control over something for 2½hrs on a Monday morning because I put the cans where they went on the shelves, and the background was a lovely group of recent retirees and stay at home dads who were happy to be a listening ear to a twitchy early 30s lass who was just trying to get her bearings. The point is, it worked because that trance like state made me very receptive, and thankfully what I was receiving was good vibes, kind advice, and tea with slightly stale biscuits. David is receptive to a circle of hell in that state.

- ‘It was the silence that finally brought me back to myself.’ The troupe of ‘it’s quiet… too quiet.’ is one of the most unnerving ones for me. Especially when there’s meant to be animal noises about; livestock, bid song etc. Because they’ll know things before we ever could.

- ‘There was no clock in that room.’ Is that typical? Or safe? Or is this just for spooks?

- ‘I surprised myself a bit with how quickly I accepted this situation.’ Another example of someone accepting the situation and dealing and processing it. I wonder if there’s a part of the psyche that realises that realises that what’s being experienced is something eldritch and unknowable and so shuts down logic and reasoning and instead concentrates on survival.

- Ok, so we’ve got a labyrinthine complex, our lone hero, and we’ve had cows coming through… Theseus and the Minotaur anyone? Also, sidebar, did you know the Minotaur of legend actually had a name? Asterius or Asterion, meaning ‘child of stars’.

- ‘These rails would never normally follow the passages of the slaughterhouse like this, and that fact bothered me, though I’m not quite sure why.’ Some little animal part of the brain still screaming ‘WRONG, NOPE, BAD’. I’ll do that, I mean, you’ve seen how I try to make the timelines behave when it can so easily be explained with ‘eldritch fuckery’. But I think I remember getting real bogged down in the delicacies of the heart surgery in Iron Man 3 that the science of the Extremis procedure completely washed on by.

- ‘Meat-bone separators, splitting saws, scald tanks.’ Delightful names.

- ‘… I don’t know how long I wandered. It felt like hours, though.’ Wibbly wobbly ooky spooky timey wimey.

- ‘The sky was a dull pink – the colour of blood being washed into a drain.’ … Yikes.

- ‘… and I began to cry. It was like something numb within me had shattered, and I couldn’t… I just couldn’t.’ I think it’s clear that David had been struggling with his mental well being before the incident took place, struggling and aware as he asked to be removed from the killing floor team. But this emotional and mental self awareness is refreshing in these statements. Especially from a man in an industry as rife with toxic masculine ideals as this.

- ‘(The scent of blood) had a strange sort of comfort to it, as it was the smell of the slaughterhouse as I had known it.’ I think the underlying horror of this other place, this abattoir in waiting is exactly that, it’s waiting. The threat is there and it hasn’t been actioned yet, it’s just waiting.

- ‘Pigs, cattle, sheep, I think I even saw a few humans in the pile, though without heads or limbs it’s hard to tell the difference between them and pigs.’ YUP. There a reason pig carcasses get used in forensic science to demonstrate the changes a cadaver goes through.

- ‘But (Tom Haan) didn’t make me fire it. I did that myself.’ Ooof, buddy.

- ‘I wish I felt bad about his death, but I don’t. I don’t feel anything at all.’ Good grief, please seek professional help.

- It got discussed in one of the Q&As that for an Avatar to… ascend shall we say, that a death was typically involved, or at least a metaphorical death. With some Avatars, the deaths have been of others; Peter Lukas’ with Jon becoming the Archivit, Jude Perry with her banking colleague, Agnes Montague with her own mother. Tom Haan’s death seems to be his own chrysalis, if this is indeed the point at which he ascended from agent to Avatar. Seems fitting, that it should be the case for The Flesh.

- I did a surface level google and couldn’t find an Aver Meats in Dalston, but there’s reason to believe that this London is not Our London, so I might leave it there. It might be Jonny has had to invent a business, it might be that if there is an abattoir in the area, they have a discreet web presence that I’m missing.

- ‘…which I would say are symptoms of PTSD, but he has strongly declined to seek treatment.’ Oh buddy, no, seek help. David was aware that he wasn’t well mentally and he’s emotional state was declining. If anything, he’s well on the way to the mental state that was so often referred to in the studies done on slaughterhouse work and crime.

- ‘… he had been renting a house in Clarence Road for almost a decade, and it was in quite a state of disrepair when he left.’ Between this and MAG018 The Flesh really seem to be murder on property, don’t they? Dread to think what the fridge looked like.

- ‘Immigration authorities are somewhat useless…. No official effort has been made to locate him, and the police were reluctant to open a new case, so we didn’t push it.’ Well… doesn’t that just make you feel fucking warm and fuzzy on the inside. Oh what? That’s rage? Oh no, yeah, that tracks.

- ‘… having trouble retaining builders, four of which have already quit.’ Interesting, considering it’s another male dominated field. I wonder if that was indeed Tom Haan’s ascension and the transformation has left a permanent scar on the site having it ‘already seemed to be way too big’.

- And I think there’s some very important discussion to be had about the industrialised meat industry. It has gotten monstrously big, and faceless, and removed, and wasteful. That image of carcasses just falling off conveyor belts and into a pit for presumably grinding up, is a terrible, wasteful image, of animal and human life and of the meat as a resource itself. I don’t know enough about butchery to know what sort of percentage of an animal goes to waste when processed for meat these days. I don’t know, I know small scale butchers will work differently but small scale and specialist butchers are harder to find and can be more expensive to buy from. I will buy local from suppliers I trust as best I can, but I’ve got the privilege of living in a market town in a rural area. And while I have the resources now, between working for a charity and the cost of living crisis, I’m having to think carefully, And I have the resources, a lot of folks may not. It grinds my gears how, like with fossil fuel burning and global warming, the ethical guilt of meat, egg and diary production is foisted onto the individual consumer who may have limited access and financial freedoms to chose, when really animal welfare and husbandry should be protected and held to a higher standard legislatively and support offered and research done properly. I know they try but I’ve heard some DEFRA horror stories and a few bad apples, whole barrel, you know the drill. Still not over the hell they put us through during the 2020 AI outbreak. Ok, I’m getting off the soap box, it’s gone midnight, I’m ranting with no receipts.

- I’ve done a little bit of butchering in my time. I’ve been part of keeper teams that’s tended tigers and lions. I’ve butchered what I think was horse meat, delivered in blue plastic barrels and thawed overnight. I’ve worn the butcher’s gauntlet, got 2 as curios on my bookcase Mum found at a car boot for me. I’ve plucked more quail and gutted more rats than I care to remember. But I’ve only ever had to kill a handful of animals, and that was always as humane euthanasia after veterinary training. Still fucking sucks.

#the magnus archives #MAG030 #The Flesh

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occasionalsurveys · 2 years

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Survey 3

Be honest with yourself, are you proud of your actions? Uh, generally I suppose. Have you ever had an operation? Wisdom teeth and I had surgery on my foot when I was 18 Favorite sit-down restaurant? Theres a couple sports bars my Husband and I love going to close by! What have you eaten today? Nothing, just some coffee so far

Who has made you laugh the hardest in the last week? My husband, he always makes me laugh If you had to get a tattoo on your face to save your life, what would it be? Probably like a line or even like...a dot lol that would work, right? Didn’t say it had to be a design! What is something you find romantic? Writing little notes to each other What is your style? Anything comfortable. I’ve never cared about fashion trends If you could be doing anything you like right now, what would it be? Standing in line to vote >< I like getting up and getting stuff done but my Husband is the opposite and he’s still sleeping. But we’ll go when he gets up What is the best movie you have ever seen? I’m not sure, I like a lot of movies but mostly comedy What makes you attracted to the person you like right now? He makes me feel really safe, he’s rational and has a good head on his shoulders, makes me laugh and he’s genuinely a good person How long was your longest relationship? 12 years and still going strong :) Why did your last relationship end? Distance - my ex was stationed in Hawaii with the Navy and that distance was too much for us. It worked out though, I met the love of my life and he met his wife shortly after we broke up! Would you rather live in a castle or a spaceship? Castle I suppose Have you ever felt unimportant in someone’s life? Yes and we’re not friends anymore. Has someone ever made you a Build-A-Bear? No. Did you have any unread texts this morning? Nope Who was the last person you were “in a relationship with” on Facebook (including anyone you may have put “in a relationship with” for a joke)? I don’t use FB Do you think a relationship with a 16-year-old girl and a 35-year-old man would work out? Do you think age differences like that (when they’re under 18) should be legal? Are you fucking kidding me? What pedophile wrote this survey and can we have him arrested thanks. <------ABSOLUTELY AGREE. WTF. Were you ever “the other man/woman”? How did it turn out? How do you feel about it today? Kind of? A different ex and I kissed after we broke up and he was in a new relationship with someone else. It happened one time but I don’t know if he told her - they didn’t last too long anyway (and this was over 15 years ago) What do you think of open relationships? If your partner suggested it, what would you say? We’re both against it Would you ever date out of your race? I have before Who were you with yesterday? My husband, and Mother-in-Law/Father-In-Law Have you ever had a reptile for a pet? Yes! We had a couple iguanas when I was younger What time do you have to get up tomorrow? No specific time but I like getting up early Have you ever kissed anyone with a tattoo? Yes, a couple people. How long have you been with your boyfriend/girlfriend? Been together 12 years, married for 2 What kinds of alcohol do you like? Mostly lighter craft beers - my favorite one right now for Autumn is ShipYard Pumpkin Head. I also like Shandys - Like Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy. But I also like Daiquiris/Pina Coladas - specifically them mixed together called “Miami Vice” :) Did you have a swing set when you were a kid? Yes, but it got super old and rickety so my parents brought it to the dump a while ago Can you do the alphabet in sign language? I used to be able to but I’ve been meaning to learn it again Is the person you last kissed yours? Yes :) Do you think you can last in a relationship for 6 months without cheating? Uh yes, very very easily. Have you ever been so hurt that you wanted to stop feeling completely? Oh definitely, but that was years ago State you most want to visit? I would like to visit the states in the North East What is a book that you really want to read? I have so many on my “to read” list - mostly sci-fi/fantasy books. But I need to get through the last book of Wheel of Time first. What brand was the last lotion that you used? I don’t use lotion What color is your underwear? Multi-colored :) mostly blues, greens and purples What was the last type of cookie that you ate? I don’t remember, I haven’t had a cookie in a long time If you could be anywhere right now, where would you be? In our new house! We’re having one built - it was supposed to be done in April 2022 but because of the world right now, there have been a ton of delays. HOWEVER! They officially started clearing the land last week!!! We’ll probably be moving into it in Feb/March 2023. - As a side note: We’re currently living with my in-laws until they finish it and it has NOT been easy - I’m ‘extremely grateful for them letting us live here as its allowed us to save up money for the downpayment.

What genre was the last song you listened to? Video game soundtrack What sort of surveys catch your interest and which ones bore you? Ones with fun questions, more of “getting to know me/interests”. I don’t like ones that make me think of how horrible the world is, if that makes sense. What books do you usually enjoy reading and which do you not enjoy? I LOVE reading. I mostly read sci-fi/fantasy books. I’m currently on Book 14 of Wheel of Time. Theres a lot of different types of books that don’t interest me >< What is something that you really want to try, whether it’s a hobby, food, etc.? I would love to cook more but I’ll do that when we have the house. Or knitting/crocheting but again...when we have a house...mostly anything i want to do, we gotta wait until we have our house >< What websites do you frequent most often? Tumblr is my top favorite social media site, I also like Reddit and Twitter - as long as I stay away from the political side of those sites If you could go back in time, would you prefer to go forward or backward? Back - there are a few small things we’d do differently like buy a house a long time ago! Had we known some stuff we know now, we’d probably have a house and children by now :/ Post a link to the last video you watched online. I’m not going to post a link but I’m currently watching the most recent Amazing Race episode on CBS’s website Is there anything bothering you at the moment? Eh, not really What color was the last shirt you wore? I’m wearing a dark blue shirt now What sort of things do you like to post or look at on Tumblr? Video games, anime, animals/insects, science stuff, wrestling gifs, fan art and fan fiction...I have a very long list of interests so my main blog if full of all sorts of random things lol What scent was the last candle you burned? Scented candles give me headaches :/ What type of people are you usually attracted to? Anyone who can make me laugh Do you collect anything? If so, what? Video games. I have a pretty large physical game collection that I’m always adding to! and I can’t wait to have my entire collection displayed when we have our house! When you look to your left, what is the first thing you see? What about the right? Left: my husband sleeping on the bed. Right: a wall What room are you currently in? Our bedroom What color are the walls/floor? Walls are like a creamy beige? The floor is tannish? What color is the last blanket you used? Dark blue What do you smell like right now? Nothing in particular, my shampoo I guess? If it was possible to celebrate a holiday everyday, which would you choose? Ahh, I’m not sure?? If you could compare yourself to a celebrity or character, who would it be? I feel like I’d be Nyneave from Wheel of Time - she’s my favorite character Which male celebrities do you find attractive? Paul Rudd like never ages! Also Henry Cavil

Which female celebrities do you find attractive? I honestly cannot think of any at the moment. I don’t pay too much attention to celebrities If you could marry one of your favorite celebrities and have a happy relationship until the end of your days, who would it be? Lol Henry Cavil - watching him put together that gaming computer?? *swoon* What song are you listening to at the moment? Its some annoying commercial What is currently on your desk? Handful of things: wireless keyboard/mouse for my desktop computer, I’m typing on my laptop, a Galaxy-themed large mouspad, cup of coffee (in a Stardew Valley mug my husband bought me for my bday), comb, and my phone What brand is your computer? Laptop is HP, desktop I’m not sure as my Husband helped me build it How often do you take naps and how long do they usually last? I never take naps unless I’m sick Which season do you wish lasted all year? Wish Autumn lasted a bit longer! I live in FL so its pretty much always Summer :/ What is the last part of your body that itched? My arm Is there anything that you should be doing right now? Nothing in particular, just wasting time until I wake my husband up to go vote then go visit our house to see where the progress is :) Is there anything you’re craving right now? I’m kinda hungry so I’ll probably eat something after this Do you prefer regular or flavored coffee? What about regular or flavored creamer? I just use heavy whipping cream as a creamer. I’m pretty specific about coffee I drink like I can’t drink artificial flavor creamers because they just taste chemically to me >< How do you take your tea? Hot with honey

#survey #surveys #about me

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missmentelle · 4 years

Text

Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things

If you’ve been paying attention for the last couple of years, you might have noticed that the world has a bit of a misinformation problem.

The problem isn’t just with the recent election conspiracies, either. The last couple of years has brought us the rise (and occasionally fall) of misinformation-based movements like:

Sandy Hook conspiracies

Gamergate

Pizzagate

The MRA/incel/MGTOW movements

anti-vaxxers

flat-earthers

the birther movement

the Illuminati

climate change denial

Spygate

Holocaust denial

COVID-19 denial

5G panic

QAnon

But why do people believe this stuff?

It would be easy - too easy - to say that people fall for this stuff because they’re stupid. We all want to believe that smart people like us are immune from being taken in by deranged conspiracies. But it’s just not that simple. People from all walks of life are going down these rabbit holes - people with degrees and professional careers and rich lives have fallen for these theories, leaving their loved ones baffled. Decades-long relationships have splintered this year, as the number of people flocking to these conspiracies out of nowhere reaches a fever pitch.

So why do smart people start believing some incredibly stupid things? It’s because:

Our brains are built to identify patterns.

Our brains fucking love puzzles and patterns. This is a well-known phenomenon called apophenia, and at one point, it was probably helpful for our survival - the prehistoric human who noticed patterns in things like animal migration, plant life cycles and the movement of the stars was probably a lot more likely to survive than the human who couldn’t figure out how to use natural clues to navigate or find food.

The problem, though, is that we can’t really turn this off. Even when we’re presented with completely random data, we’ll see patterns. We see patterns in everything, even when there’s no pattern there. This is why people see Jesus in a burnt piece of toast or get superstitious about hockey playoffs or insist on always playing at a certain slot machine - our brains look for patterns in the constant barrage of random information in our daily lives, and insist that those patterns are really there, even when they’re completely imagined.

A lot of conspiracy theories have their roots in people making connections between things that aren’t really connected. The belief that “vaccines cause autism” was bolstered by the fact that the first recognizable symptoms of autism happen to appear at roughly the same time that children receive one of their rounds of childhood immunizations - the two things are completely unconnected, but our brains have a hard time letting go of the pattern they see there. Likewise, many people were quick to latch on to the fact that early maps of COVID infections were extremely similar to maps of 5G coverage - the fact that there’s a reasonable explanation for this (major cities are more likely to have both high COVID cases AND 5G networks) doesn’t change the fact that our brains just really, really want to see a connection there.

Our brains love proportionality.

Specifically, our brains like effects to be directly proportional to their causes - in other words, we like it when big events have big causes, and small causes only lead to small events. It’s uncomfortable for us when the reverse is true. And so anytime we feel like a “big” event (celebrity death, global pandemic, your precious child is diagnosed with autism) has a small or unsatisfying cause (car accident, pandemics just sort of happen every few decades, people just get autism sometimes), we sometimes feel the need to start looking around for the bigger, more sinister, “true” cause of that event.

Consider, for instance, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. In 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot four times by a Turkish member of a known Italian paramilitary secret society who’d recently escaped from prison - on the surface, it seems like the sort of thing conspiracy theorists salivate over, seeing how it was an actual multinational conspiracy. But they never had much interest in the assassination attempt. Why? Because the Pope didn’t die. He recovered from his injuries and went right back to Pope-ing. The event didn’t have a serious outcome, and so people are content with the idea that one extremist carried it out. The death of Princess Diana, however, has been fertile ground for conspiracy theories; even though a woman dying in a car accident is less weird than a man being shot four times by a paid political assassin, her death has attracted more conspiracy theories because it had a bigger outcome. A princess dying in a car accident doesn’t feel big enough. It’s unsatisfying. We want such a monumentous moment in history to have a bigger, more interesting cause.

These theories prey on pre-existing fear and anger.

Are you a terrified new parent who wants the best for their child and feels anxious about having them injected with a substance you don’t totally understand? Congrats, you’re a prime target for the anti-vaccine movement. Are you a young white male who doesn’t like seeing more and more games aimed at women and minorities, and is worried that “your” gaming culture is being stolen from you? You might have been very interested in something called Gamergate. Are you a right-wing white person who worries that “your” country and way of life is being stolen by immigrants, non-Christians and coastal liberals? You’re going to love the “all left-wingers are Satantic pedo baby-eaters” messaging of QAnon.

Misinformation and conspiracy theories are often aimed strategically at the anxieties and fears that people are already experiencing. No one likes being told that their fears are insane or irrational; it’s not hard to see why people gravitate towards communities that say “yes, you were right all along, and everyone who told you that you were nuts to be worried about this is just a dumb sheep. We believe you, and we have evidence that you were right along, right here.” Fear is a powerful motivator, and you can make people believe and do some pretty extreme things if you just keep telling them “yes, that thing you’re afraid of is true, but also it’s way worse than you could have ever imagined.”

Real information is often complicated, hard to understand, and inherently unsatisfying.

The information that comes from the scientific community is often very frustrating for a layperson; we want science to have hard-and-fast answers, but it doesn’t. The closest you get to a straight answer is often “it depends” or “we don’t know, but we think X might be likely”. Understanding the results of a scientific study with any confidence requires knowing about sampling practices, error types, effect sizes, confidence intervals and publishing biases. Even asking a simple question like “is X bad for my child” will usually get you a complicated, uncertain answer - in most cases, it really just depends. Not understanding complex topics makes people afraid - it makes it hard to trust that they’re being given the right information, and that they’re making the right choices.

Conspiracy theories and misinformation, on the other hand, are often simple, and they are certain. Vaccines bad. Natural things good. 5G bad. Organic food good. The reason girls won’t date you isn’t a complex combination of your social skills, hygiene, appearance, projected values, personal circumstances, degree of extroversion, luck and life phase - girls won’t date you because feminism is bad, and if we got rid of feminism you’d have a girlfriend. The reason Donald Trump was an unpopular president wasn’t a complex combination of his public bigotry, lack of decorum, lack of qualifications, open incompetence, nepotism, corruption, loss of soft power, refusal to uphold the basic responsibilities of his position or his constant lying - they hated him because he was fighting a secret sex cult and they’re all in it.

Instead of making you feel stupid because you’re overwhelmed with complex information, expert opinions and uncertain advice, conspiracy theories make you feel smart - smarter, in fact, than everyone who doesn’t believe in them. And that’s a powerful thing for people living in a credential-heavy world.

Many conspiracy theories are unfalsifiable.

It is very difficult to prove a negative. If I tell you, for instance, that there’s no such thing as a purple swan, it would be very difficult for me to actually prove that to you - I could spend the rest of my life photographing swans and looking for swans and talking to people who know a lot about swans, and yet the slim possibility would still exist that there was a purple swan out there somewhere that I just hadn’t found yet. That’s why, in most circumstances, the burden of proof lies with the person making the extraordinary claim - if you tell me that purple swans exist, we should continue to assume that they don’t until you actually produce a purple swan.

Conspiracy theories, however, are built so that it’s nearly impossible to “prove” them wrong. Is there any proof that the world’s top-ranking politicians and celebrities are all in a giant child sex trafficking cult? No. But can you prove that they aren’t in a child sex-trafficking cult? No, not really. Even if I, again, spent the rest of my life investigating celebrities and following celebrities and talking to people who know celebrities, I still couldn’t definitely prove that this cult doesn’t exist - there’s always a chance that the specific celebrities I’ve investigated just aren’t in the cult (but other ones are!) or that they’re hiding evidence of the cult even better than we think. Lack of evidence for a conspiracy theory is always treated as more evidence for the theory - we can’t find anything because this goes even higher up than we think! They’re even more sophisticated at hiding this than we thought! People deeply entrenched in these theories don’t even realize that they are stuck in a circular loop where everything seems to prove their theory right - they just see a mountain of “evidence” for their side.

Our brains are very attached to information that we “learned” by ourselves.

Learning accurate information is not a particularly interactive or exciting experience. An expert or reliable source just presents the information to you in its entirety, you read or watch the information, and that’s the end of it. You can look for more information or look for clarification of something, but it’s a one-way street - the information is just laid out for you, you take what you need, end of story.

Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, almost never show their hand all at once. They drop little breadcrumbs of information that slowly lead you where they want you to go. This is why conspiracy theorists are forever telling you to “do your research” - they know that if they tell you everything at once, you won’t believe them. Instead, they want you to indoctrinate yourself slowly over time, by taking the little hints they give you and running off to find or invent evidence that matches that clue. If I tell you that celebrities often wear symbols that identify them as part of a cult and that you should “do your research” about it, you can absolutely find evidence that substantiates my claim - there are literally millions of photos of celebrities out there, and anyone who looks hard enough is guaranteed to find common shapes, poses and themes that might just mean something (they don’t - eyes and triangles are incredibly common design elements, and if I took enough pictures of you, I could also “prove” that you also clearly display symbols that signal you’re in the cult).

The fact that you “found” the evidence on your own, however, makes it more meaningful to you. We trust ourselves, and we trust that the patterns we uncover by ourselves are true. It doesn’t feel like you’re being fed misinformation - it feels like you’ve discovered an important truth that “they” didn’t want you to find, and you’ll hang onto that for dear life.

Older people have not learned to be media-literate in a digital world.

Fifty years ago, not just anyone could access popular media. All of this stuff had a huge barrier to entry - if you wanted to be on TV or be in the papers or have a radio show, you had to be a professional affiliated with a major media brand. Consumers didn’t have easy access to niche communities or alternative information - your sources of information were basically your local paper, the nightly news, and your morning radio show, and they all more or less agreed on the same set of facts. For decades, if it looked official and it appeared in print, you could probably trust that it was true.

Of course, we live in a very different world today - today, any asshole can accumulate an audience of millions, even if they have no credentials and nothing they say is actually true (like “The Food Babe”, a blogger with no credentials in medicine, nutrition, health sciences, biology or chemistry who peddles health misinformation to the 3 million people who visit her blog every month). It’s very tough for older people (and some younger people) to get their heads around the fact that it’s very easy to create an “official-looking” news source, and that they can’t necessarily trust everything they find on the internet. When you combine that with a tendency toward “clickbait headlines” that often misrepresent the information in the article, you have a generation struggling to determine who they can trust in a media landscape that doesn’t at all resemble the media landscape they once knew.

These beliefs become a part of someone’s identity.

A person doesn’t tell you that they believe in anti-vaxx information - they tell you that they ARE an anti-vaxxer. Likewise, people will tell you that they ARE a flat-earther, a birther, or a Gamergater. By design, these beliefs are not meant to be something you have a casual relationship with, like your opinion of pizza toppings or how much you trust local weather forecasts - they are meant to form a core part of your identity.

And once something becomes a core part of your identity, trying to make you stop believing it becomes almost impossible. Once we’ve formed an initial impression of something, facts just don’t change our minds. If you identify as an antivaxxer and I present evidence that disproves your beliefs, in your mind, I’m not correcting inaccurate information - I am launching a very personal attack against a core part of who you are. In fact, the more evidence I present, the more you will burrow down into your antivaxx beliefs, more confident than ever that you are right. Admitting that you are wrong about something that is important to you is painful, and your brain would prefer to simply deflect conflicting information rather than subject you to that pain.

We can see this at work with something called the confirmation bias. Simply put, once we believe something, our brains hold on to all evidence that that belief is true, and ignore evidence that it’s false. If I show you 100 articles that disprove your pet theory and 3 articles that confirm it, you’ll cling to those 3 articles and forget about the rest. Even if I show you nothing but articles that disprove your theory, you’ll likely go through them and pick out any ambiguous or conflicting information as evidence for “your side”, even if the conclusion of the article shows that you are wrong - our brains simply care about feeling right more than they care about what is actually true.

There is a strong community aspect to these theories.

There is no one quite as supportive or as understanding as a conspiracy theorist - provided, of course, that you believe in the same conspiracy theories that they do. People who start looking into these conspiracy theories are told that they aren’t crazy, and that their fears are totally valid. They’re told that the people in their lives who doubted them were just brainwashed sheep, but that they’ve finally found a community of people who get where they’re coming from. Whenever they report back to the group with the “evidence” they’ve found or the new elaborations on the conspiracy theory that they’ve been thinking of (“what if it’s even worse than we thought??”), they are given praise for their valuable contributions. These conspiracy groups often become important parts of people’s social networks - they can spend hours every day talking with like-minded people from these communities and sharing their ideas.

Of course, the flipside of this is that anyone who starts to doubt or move away from the conspiracy immediately loses that community and social support. People who have broken away from antivaxx and QAnon often say that the hardest part of leaving was losing the community and friendships they’d built - not necessarily giving up on the theory itself. Many people are rejected by their real-life friends and family once they start to get entrenched in conspiracy theories; the friendships they build online in the course of researching these theories often become the only social supports they have left, and losing those supports means having no one to turn to at all. This is by design - the threat of losing your community has kept people trapped in abusive religious sects and cults for as long as those things have existed.

#missmentelle #askmissmentelle #conspiracy theories #cults #psychology #science #neuroscience

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transias · 3 years

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Hello!! I saw your taking requests and I was wondering if you could write a johnny x reader where the reader is related to kreese maybe he's their uncle or godfather anyways one day kreese has the reader there with him to show them off and johnny connect's dots that there related , Its okay if you dont wanna write it I love your writing btw💕

An Unexpected Surprise.

Pairings: Johnny Lawrence x Godchild Kreese!Reader

Warnings: Mentions of death

A/N: Thank you so much, y'all are so sweet oml! will always be more than happy to write for all of you, so don't even worry about it <3

〰️

My parents had died about two weeks ago. Everything happened so quickly, I barely had time to process it.

It wasn't like I could put my life on pause for a moment. If my parents were here I know they would probably say something like, "(Y/n), keep going. You got this, life goes on no matter what happens. What matters is that you're brave enough to fight back and continue."

And that's what I was planning to do.

"(Y/n)?" A voice called out, pulling me away from my thoughts.

I look up and smile softly, "Kreese, it's so nice to see you!"

"Hey kiddo." He greets, "I haven't seen you in forever, you've grown up so much!" Kreese ruffles my hair, "I'm so sorry about your parents, how are you feeling?"

I shrug, "I don't know. I'm still processing it but i'm fine, it'll all be okay. Right?"

He nods, a smile curling onto his lips, "It will. Now come on, we have a drive ahead of us." He places his hand on my back, guiding me out to the car.

Kreese and I talked about settling into California, what I liked to do, and his job as a Karate Sensei.

"You know, (y/n). We could use someone as strong and wise like you in Cobra kai." He says.

I furrow my eyebrows, "You really think so?"

Kreese nods, "Yes. My students are all brawn but no brain, well maybe except one of them." He chuckles, "He's my best student, I think you'll get along with him."

I think about it for a moment. Me? Karate? A minute of silence goes by before I sigh, "Alright, i'll join you."

Kreese smiles widely before ruffling my hair, "'Attakid."

〰️

The next morning we went out for breakfast, got enrolled at a nearby school, bought a couple of things I needed, and basically helping me settle into California.

It was not a little late in the afternoon and I sigh, looking out the window. "How would you describe the kids here?"

Kreese looks up from the television then back to me, "Annoying."

I scoff a little, "Well that's helpful."

"I don't know, (y/n). I'm old! It's not like I can roll up to the skate park and just say, "how do you do, fellow kids?"" Kreese replies.

I chuckle and shake my head, "Fair enough. Plus you're a Sensei so i'm sure being in charge of a bunch of kids and teenagers isn't so much fun."

He nods before looking at the time, "You know what? There's this place that all my students go to hang out in. Golf n' Stuff, I think it's called? Anyways, why don't you go over there and try and get acquainted with some of the kids?"

"Yeah! That'd be awesome!" I stand up, grabbing my jacket and a bit of money I had saved up.

"You need me to give you a ride there?" Kreese asks. I shake my head, "I'll take my bike so I can also try and get familiar with the streets." I smile at him.

"Alright, just make sure to be back home by 10:30!" He added. I nod, "Got it, see ya!"

〰️

I lock down my bicycle at the racks, taking a deep breath before walking into the place.

Loud noises from chattering and machines filled my ear, I was somewhat regretting this already but screw it, I had nothing to lose.

Grabbing some tokens for a few of the arcade machines, I step up to the Donkey Kong machine. I quickly start tapping on the controls and avoiding the barrels he'd throw at my character.

"Shit!" I mumble, losing the game. I turn around and see a boy with blonde hair, staring at me along with two of his friends.

I furrow my eyebrows before making my way off to another game, I can still feel their eyes staring at me and before I knew it, the blonde boy was next to me, a smirk on his lips.

"Hey i've never seen you around here before, are you new?" He asks, leaning on the wall. I nod, "Yeah, I just moved here yesterday to live with my Godfather." I reply, "The name's (y/n) (y/l/n). Nice to meet you...?"

"Oh, i'm Johnny Lawrence!" He replies, "(Y/n), that's a lovely name for a lovely person like you."

I chuckle and I can feel my cheeks warm up, "Is that something you say to all of the people you flirt with?"

Johnny shakes his head, "Nope, only with majestic people such as yourself."

"You flatter me, Lawrence."

"Well, I assume you're here alone. Would you like to hang out with me?" He offers. I nod, "Yes, please! That would be lovely."

The entire night is incredible, Johnny and I played on the arcade games, mini golf, and he even tried winning me a stuffed animal from the crane machine but unfortunately fails.

"Let me try!" I step up onto the machine.

"I don't know, babe. It's a little difficult."

I aim for a giraffe stuffed animal and successfully winning the animal, I lean down to reach for my prize and look over at Johnny who looks amazed.

"Here, a little prize as a thank you for being so kind to me, tonight." I hand it over to him.

He chuckles softly and shakes his head, "You're incredible."

I look over at the time and it's 10:21, my eyes widen and I quickly walk outside with Johnny.

I begin to unlock my bike, "I'm so sorry! I have to be home in nine minutes! But thank you for tonight, it was so lovely."

"Wait!" Johnny exclaims, placing a kiss on my cheek, "I hope to see you again, (y/n)."

There goes that not so familiar yet wonderful feeling fluttering in my stomach. "See you around, Lawrence!" I wave goodbye at him, quickly biking back home and making it a minute before my curfew.

〰️

Monday rolls around and so does school and my first lesson at Cobra Kai.

I'm grabbing my books out of the locker when all of a sudden I feel a pair of hands on my shoulder, "Nice to see you again, stranger." A familiar voice rings.

I turn around and see a smiley Johnny, "Johnny, hey! I didn't know you also went here." I smile at him.

"It's a small world, isn't it?" He raises his eyebrow, "So, I realized that I never got your number! This weekend was a little torturing since you were on my mind the entire time but I couldn't call and hear you sweet voice."

I chuckle, "Smooth, Lawrence. And fine, you can have my number." I pull out a piece of paper and write my number on it, handing it to him.

The bell rings and soon everyone is leaving, "I'll call you, see you later!" He waves, I wave goodbye before trying to find my first class.

〰️

Later on, I grab my bike and make my way to Cobra Kai earlier than most of the students.

I push the door and see Kreese, practicing a few moves before I clear my throat and catch his attention. "(Y/n), welcome to Cobra Kai! I have something for you."

I remove my shoes before walking onto the mat and closer to him, he pulls out something white and I gently take it from his hands, "This is my uniform, right?" I ask. "It's called a Gi. You will wear this during class so make sure you always bring it, got it?" He crosses his arms.

I nod, "Yes!"

"Yes what?"

"Sir?" I furrow my eyebrows.

"It's Sensei, not sir, not Kreese. Sensei."

"Yes Sensei!"

I change into the Gi and walk outside to see a group of teenagers gathered around the mat.

A familiar face catches my attention and I wave over at him, "Johnny, hey!" I smile.

He excuses himself from his friends and walks over to me, "Hey! What are you doing here?" He asks.

"Oh, my Godfather asked me to join Cobra Kai. I'm not looking forward to getting my ass kicked though." I chuckle.

Johnny nods, "Don't worry, i'll help you out."

"Lawrence! I see you've met my Godchild." Kreese exclaims, walking over to us.

Johnny furrows his eyebrows before finally realizing, "Oh- yes, Sensei, I did!"

A nervous look forms on Johnny's face and Kreese walks closer to us, "Everything okay?"

Johnny gulps, "Yeah! This is just an unexpected surprise. That's it."

"Everyone! This is my Godchild, (y/n). They will start training with us and I expect you to treat them as one of your own. Is that clear?" Kreese announces.

"Yes Sensei!" The class replies.

〰️

"So, that was quite unexpected." I hear Johnny state.

I nod, "Yeah, i'm guessing you're that 'best student' he mentioned to me."

"Oh jeez, this complicates things a little. Do you think Sensei will kill me if I ask you out on a date?"

I pause and look over at him, "You were gonna ask me out?"

Johnny nods, "I'm still planning on it." He smirks and walks closer to me, "I think you're worth the risk."

#karate kid #karate kid x reader #karate kid imagine #johnny lawrence #johnny lawrence x reader #johnny lawrence imagine #cobra kai #cobra kai x reader #daniel larusso headcanon #daniel larusso x reader #daniel larusso

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writingwithcolor · 3 years

Text

Gingerbread man as golem

@yaronata asked:

I would like to write a character who is Jewish and uses a Golem. She's based on the D&D class of the artificer which looks magic but isn't, because they produce all their effects with inventions, like the "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" quote. Her story is that her very Jewish town was under attack from a terrible monster when she was little. Her Rabbis made a Golem to protect the town, and it succeeded but was torn to pieces in the process. She was fascinated by the Golem and as a kid didn't see a big difference between it's sentience and person's so was really thankful for its sacrifice like you would a person's sacrificing their life for you. They thought all the pieces had been devoured by the monster before it died, but she went looking and found the piece used to animate the Golem, which she, kinda misunderstanding called its "heart". She kept the piece and grew up to be an incredibly skilled cook, specialising as a baker in the town. I imagine she would make a lot of really good food for the Jewish holidays, or to break fasts on ones like Yom Kippur or Tish'abav. But she also made a town specific holiday to honour the Golem's sacrifice and the town still being alive, because I feel "we are not dead woo" is a big theme for Jewish holidays from my research, so it could fit, for which she invented ginger bread men to be the golem, and gave them little "hearts" of fruit or honey, and you're meant to eat them limb by limb like the beast did before eating the heart. This would be the inspiration for using the "heart" piece later to make her own giant gingerbread Golem to help her save the world.

These are my questions 1) would it be considered bad or disrespectful for someone who isn't a Rabbi to make a Golem, or is this method of taking an animating piece someone else made disrespectful? 2) Her journey will take her far from her town and her Jewish family and friends and she will likely travel with gentiles. Would it be disrespectful for a Golem to be used to protect a lot of gentiles and one Jew in the course of saving the world? I don't want to fall into the stereotype of someone putting all their effort into valuing and protecting very specifically the group that in real life is oppressive to them. 3) While she is not using magic and is actually mimicking its effects with technology she invents, is this drawing too close to the line of "magical Jew"? 4) I like to "play test" my characters in ttrpgs to really get a feel for them before I write. Would it be disrespectful to play a Jewish character when I am a gentile, and would it be disrespectful to play a Jewish character in a setting where there are demonstrably real gods other than the one of Judaism?

I really like this character idea and I think it's cute and fun and rooted in Jewish culture but I really want to make sure it's respectful and as good as I, a gentile researching on the internet, thinks it is. Thanks so much! Have a nice day!

My answer to this is very complicated because there are things I both like and do not like about this premise. First of all, I love the idea of a cookie golem, and I'm even imagining the magic word that brings him to life (EMET/truth) would be written in icing. And I'm okay with the part about how she found a piece of the old golem and used it to build a new golem, because that makes sense for a golem made from a baked good when you think about how people use sourdough starter to make a new batch of sourdough.

However, here are the thing that make me cock my head to the side like my little sister's German shepherd:

1. re: "magical Jew" - that's not a trope I've ever heard of. Remember, marginalized groups don't receive identical disrespect across the board. It is indeed a trope to use Black people or disabled people as supernatural plot devices who exist only to further the stories of white main characters or able-bodied main characters. But I can't say as I've ever seen anyone using Jewishness that way. Usually if we are someone's one-dimensional plot device it's as someone's lawyer, fixer, "money guy", etc, not a supernatural force. So this isn't something you have to worry about.

2. I have a certain level of discomfort with you playing as a Jewish character just because playacting as a marginalized culture you're not part of strikes me as off, but I understand that that's how you gain insight into a character you're about to write so it's more of a writing exercise than anything else. (I wonder if D&D regulars from marginalized groups have written about this -- I've only played a few times casually with family so if I did run into this type of discussion in my social justice reading I wouldn't have absorbed it. If anyone is curious I played first as Captain Werewolf, and then switched to playing as Cinnamon Blade because lawful good was too hard. :P )

3. I would prefer you omit the detail about eating the cookies piece by piece symbolically, for two reasons: a. it unintentionally evokes Communion by having appreciative people consume a baked good symbolic of an entity who sacrificed his life for theirs, and b. focusing on the details of flesh consumption reminds me too much of Blood Libel (yes, a gingerbread man is in the shape of a person but how many of us actually think about it literally, the way this act would cause?)

As to your first question: I'm fine with her making a golem even though she's just a rando. Second question: I see what you're saying and maybe it could be more okay if it's really clear how well these gentile folks are treating her? And questions three and four are answered above.

I really do love the idea of a giant gingerbread man golem. Cookie golem T_T <3

--Shira

I would like to second Shira’s point about not ripping apart the gingerbread cookies. I honestly would prefer they were used as decoration, and other cookies eaten instead, since that part just feels so not-Jewish to me, but I don’t have golem-specific issues other than that. It seems like you have already been doing a lot of research, which is appreciated.

As far as the ttrpg/DnD aspect… I bounce back and forth on the topic of playing characters that are so very different from our experiences, other than in fantasy-related ways. However, I am aware that a lot of people will play with, and experiment with gender in game, and learn something about themselves in the process (the number of trans players of ttrpgs who tried out their gender in game before they were out is high). It’s different with Judaism, and even more significantly different when it comes to things you can’t convert into, like various actual, real-world races. But because people do sometimes experience growth from experiences like this, I’m hesitant to dissuade players completely. I do urge you to, at a minimum, bring the same care, research, and willingness to learn, that you brought to this question.

--Dierdra

This sounds like a creative storyline that you could have lots of fun with 😊

At first I was confused by this part:

She also made a town specific holiday to honour the Golem's sacrifice

But then you really got me thinking about different types of Jewish holidays and how they come about, so thank you for that!

Because it’s often the little details that either make a story super powerful or kind of nonsensical, I think it would be a good idea to decide what type of holiday is being created here:

A full-blown chag with restrictions on labour and halachic obligations? These are commanded in Torah and new ones can’t be added.

A minor yom tov with halachic obligations but no restrictions? These were instituted by the rabbis prior to the destruction of the Temple, so again new ones can’t be added.

A public holiday or equivalent? This would usually be declared by the Knesset in Israel, and filter to the rest of the Jewish world from there.

A community-based yom tov with specific customs only for people in the know, such as certain Chasidic groups celebrating the birthdays of their deceased leaders? I asked around, but no one can really tell me how these holidays get started, which is probably a good indication that they arise quite organically from a group of people who all just feel that it should be celebrated. Probably not created by a single person, as such.

Something she runs from her bakery, not religion-based, but more like a day of doing special products and deals the way many small businesses do on their anniversary?

Now, if the people of a modern-day town were actually saved by a real live Golem, that would arguably be the most overt miracle for many generations, so there would be a decent chance of options 3 and/or 4 happening. It’s entirely plausible that there could be special foods for this day that become a tradition, including Golem cookies. People who directly benefited might also return to the site where the Golem fought the monster and recite the prayer, ‘Blessed is Hashem, Master of the Universe, Who performed a miracle for me in this place.’

Alternatively, if it’s important that your MC created the holiday, something like option 5 might be the best. Hopefully this will still fulfil what you need: you describe her as incredibly skilled, so I can imagine the day when she goes all out on the Golem cookies being one of the most exciting events of the year for the townspeople, just because her baking is that good. Plus, they already have a personal stake in the Golem’s sacrifice, so I definitely think it could be a thing without being an official holiday. Also, if she is outside of an all-Jewish environment, don’t forget that she would have to decide whether to commemorate the anniversary in the Hebrew calendar or the local one.

Coming back to the cookies, sorry if we’re getting a little repetitive on this point! But I don’t see the cookies being torn limb from limb as part of a celebration. First of all, this doesn’t sound like a very celebratory thing to do, to say the least. Can you imagine explaining that to a three-year-old on their first Yom HaGolem? They would be terrified! (I don’t read this suggestion as accidental anti-Semitism so much as getting carried away with a metaphor, which I’m sure as writers we have all done!)

But also, it’s worth pointing out that our commemorative foods aren’t usually that literal. If you think about hamantaschen, maror, or apple in honey, they’re all symbols. That’s not to say that having Golem-shaped cookies is a problem, as this sounds like just a bit of fun that the MC is having and not something that is directly at odds with Judaism or Jewish culture. But it’s worth bearing in mind that the more literal you go from there in terms of tying the cookies to the event they commemorate, the less culturally aligned your holiday food becomes.

Finally, about the Golem protecting non-Jewish people: I like this idea! There’s a stereotype that we only use whatever is at our disposal to help ourselves and other Jewish people, so a Golem being created by Jews but helping others as well is a big plus for me. Of course, as has already been pointed out, this would be an odd choice if her Saving The World team were anti-Semitic or otherwise disrespectful to her/her community, but I don’t think you were headed that way!

-Shoshi

I have to come back in here just to squee over the phrase “Yom HaGolem.” Well done :D

--Shira

#asks #Jewish #dnd #golem #food #Jewish stereotypes

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soramei · 3 years

Text

From Resentment (hhj)

Pairing: Hyunjin x Reader (she/her)

Summary: After a fated meeting involving a cute and fluffy puppy, you found yourself drawn to Hwang Hyunjin: the school prince. Everybody in high school loved him. It was hard not to. Not only was he rich, smart, and athletic, but he was also incredibly kind-hearted.

However, one day seemingly out of the blue, everything that you thought Hyunjin was came crashing down.

Now a freshman in university, you were excited to live out your dreams. That was, until Hyunjin came hurtling back into your life like an uncontrolled meteor. His presence threw a curveball on all your plans, and would eventually change your perspective on everything that you thought you knew.

Genre: studentl!hyunjin au, angst, enemies to lovers

Warnings: cursing, tw puking

Word Count: 8.8k

Masterlist

A/N: Not an Intentional update but a hyunjin oneshot!! disclaimer: no aspect of hyunjins personality here was drawn from real life — irl hyunjin is a ray of sunshine <3

You looked at your math homework, proud that you got all the answers correct. Since it was a slow afternoon at your job today, you had extra time to focus on your homework. The boss at the convenience store you worked at allowed you to have your homework out, as long as it was hidden behind the cash register.

As you stared at the rest of your homework, you started to feel the weight of tenth grade pile up on you. Because it was your first year of high school, you were still trying to adjust to everything; your grades, your teachers, and all the new students walking around the halls.

You stuffed the rest of your homework in your backpack. It was the end of your shift, and you wanted to go home as soon as possible to start with the rest of your studying. Crap. No matter how hard you tried to zip up your backpack, it wouldn’t close. After trying one more time, the zipper tore from your backpack.

You cursed under your breath. You couldn’t afford to buy a new backpack right now.

You had just been able to afford your new school uniform by taking up extra shifts at the convenience store, and you still needed money for your grandmother’s prescriptions. You sighed, annoyed to have another monetary stressor weighing on your shoulders.

Walking outside with your now torn backpack, your eyes widened at the group of boys in front of you. You immediately recognized them from behind.

The school princes. These three seniors were all known for three things: being extremely smart, handsome, and talented.

On the left was Seungmin, and from what you’ve heard, he was the smart and quiet one. He was always helping the teachers, being the class president and all. Any time a girl or a boy needed academic help, Seungmin was there and happy to assist.

The person on the right was Jisung. With his charming and charismatic personality, he had dated tens upon tens of girls in his grade. Just in the last year. It helped that he was really good looking — and also stinkin’ rich. His father was a notorious restaurateur, and with him being the first son, he was basically given unlimited spending rights.

The only person richer than Jisung was the boy in the center of them both: Hwang Hyunjin. This boy was the school prince. The prince of princes. He somehow managed to participate in music clubs, engage in study groups, and captain the soccer team all the while keeping up excellent grades. Every girl that Jisung had dated was said to have been rejected by Hyunjin first. That was his only flaw: he was notoriously cold to any and all romantic confessions.

You followed behind the three princes, staring at your torn up sneakers. You knew you didn’t exist in their world, but even being near three handsome and rich teenage boys made you nervous.

Suddenly, you heard a whimper coming from behind a bush to the left of you. It sounded like a hurt animal.

Worried and curious, you walked over to the bush to see what it was.

It was a puppy. Small and fluffy, it looked up at you with it’s beady black eyes and cried out. His paw was bleeding.

You panicked. Having never seen a hurt puppy before, you had no idea what to do. You called out for help.

“Help!” you cried, hoping that somebody had heard your call for help. You desperately wanted to help this hurt puppy, but you hesitated to touch it, afraid that you would hurt the animal even more.

The puppy howled in pain, making your panic rise. You were about to call out for help again, when you heard somebody running up behind you.

“What is it?” The voice asked.

“I-I don’t know. I just saw this dog here, and-and his paw is bleeding,” you anxiously stuttered.

“Here, let me take a look.”

You heard the voice behind you, so you shuffled over to make room.

It was Hwang Hyunjin. The person that responded to your cry for help was the most popular and well-liked person in the school. You were shocked, a bit intimidated actually, so you silently moved to the side for him. His black hair shone in the sunlight as he bent down to examine the dog.

“Come here, boy,” he chirped. The puppy listened, and started limping to him. “Something hurt you, didn’t it.”

He stood up, picking the puppy up along with him.

“C’mon,” he gestured with his head, “my vet isn’t too far from here actually. We can make it by walking.”

You silently nodded and followed him.

He was right. The walk to the veterinarian clinic, though very awkward, wasn’t too far. The clinic was empty at this time of day, with the receptionist being the only person in the room.

“Hyunjin! Always a pleasure,” the receptionist beamed. It seemed like Hyunjin’s likeability wasn’t only confined to your school. “My, what do we have here?”

“There’s something wrong with his paw,” Hyunjin tried to show the receptionist where the blood was coming from, “is the doctor free right now?”

“As a matter of fact, he is,” the receptionist said whilst checking the schedule. “I’ll take this little boy to the back where he can get prepped for the veterinarian.”

Hyunjin handed the puppy carefully to the receptionist. The receptionist took out a crate for the dog, put him in, and then disappeared through the back door. The two of you were now left alone in the waiting room.

“Uhm,” you coughed, “thank you. I know you probably want to get back to your friends, so you can leave now.”

“No, I’ll stay,” he looked at you and smiled, “those idiots are just playing LOL at the PC room anyways. Plus, I want to see how this little boy turns out.”

You smiled back at him, nodding your head. A few moments of awkward silence passed.

“I’m Hyunjin by the way,” he said.

“I know. I’m Y/n.”

“You’re in your first year, right?” he said, looking at the colour of your uniform.

“Yeah, it’s so hard to get used to though. I’m trying my best with my homework, but I think this school stuff just doesn’t click with me,” you rambled.

“Oh?”

“I want to go into dance. I’ve never been able to afford professional lessons, but I’ve always wanted to go to university for dance. My grandparents said they would let me if my school grades were high.” You didn’t know why you were giving your life story to Hyunjin. He just had this natural charisma that made you want to spill everything to him. It was the way he looked at you with those cat-like eyes.

“I know what you mean. It took me forever to convince my parents for me to major in dance. I got in by early admittance, but I’m sure they still have their reservations about my major.”

“You’re majoring in dance?” you asked, eyes wide.

He smiled. “I’ve loved dancing ever since I could remember. It’s my passion, and truthfully, the only thing I’ve got going for me.”

You were shocked. At school, Hyunjin was known for so many things other than dancing. Hell, you didn’t even know he enjoyed dancing and you thought you’d heard everything about him already.

The two of you chatted for a while longer before the vet came out with the now happy looking dog.

“It seemed like this little guy got into a fight with something, and he got a pretty large gash on his paw. Luckily, it wasn’t bleeding too much so I just gave him some anaesthetic and stitched it right up.”

You sighed in relief. “Thank god he isn’t too hurt.”

“Yes, it’s good that it wasn’t too bad,” the veterinarian agreed. “I’m assuming this is your dog? As soon as you finish with the bill, I can release this little guy and the both of you are ready to go.”

Oh yeah. The bill.

Although you knew you couldn’t afford to pay the vet bill, you didn’t know where this little dog would go if you couldn’t take him home. You did the mental calculations, and if you worked some extra shifts, you could probably be able to pick up the bill today. Buying a new backpack could be saved for another day.

“Sure, where can I pay?” you asked.

“Just over by the receptionist.” The veterinarian pointed.

You walked over to the receptionist, and she handed the bill over to you.

You almost fainted.

Just the anaesthetic and the stitches alone cost over two hundred dollars. This was extremely over your budget, and probably even more than the amount in your savings. You felt uneasy.

“Uhm, actually, I don’t think I can-”

“Do you take cash?”

Hyunjin had interrupted you, walked up to the receptionist, and pulled out his wallet. He peaked over your shoulder and took out a huge wad of cash to hand to the receptionist.

“Hyunjin, you don’t have to,” you begged. You felt bad that this guy you didn’t even know had just offered to cover you for over two hundred dollars.

“Think of it as a good luck gift from a fellow dancer.” He smiled.

That was when it clicked. You didn’t know what clicked, but it just did. It was his smile. It was the way the corners of his eyes crinkled up and how the corners of his lips pinched at the end. You now understood why all the girls at school were in love with him. He was quite literally perfect.

You thanked him profusely, even after the two of you had left the clinic. With the dog in your hand, you walked side by side with Hyunjin.

“So,” he started, “have you thought of a name for this guy yet?”

Oh yeah — he was your dog now. “Hmm, I don’t know yet.”

“What about Coco?”

“Coco?”

“Yeah, let’s see if he likes it.” Hyunjin leaned in and cooed at the little puppy. “Hi, little Coco!”

The puppy’s eyes lit up, and with his tongue stretched out, he started panting.

“I guess he likes it,” Hyunjin smiled. God, his smile could melt all of Antarctica.

“Coco it is.” You poked at Coco’s nose.

Hyunjin was about to say something back to you when his phone buzzed. He took a peak, rolled his eyes, then smiled. “My friends are god awful at games. I swear, they can’t even win one round without me. You’re okay with going home alone?”

He was going to walk you home? Could he be any more perfect?

You nodded your head. “Thank you, Hyunjin. I’ll pay you back for the bill one day.”

“No need,” he winked. “Like I said, it’s a good luck gift. Oh, and you can ask me if you need help with any school work. Anything to help a fellow dancer.”

He waved goodbye, then went running off in the other direction. You held Coco close to you, heart pounding. Although you didn’t want to be like all the other girls who fell for him, you felt like you were already falling for Hyunjin.

The next day, you had planned to go shopping for dog supplies after school. After a really long and arduous debate with yourself, you decided to sacrifice all of your savings in order to buy everything that Coco needed. You knew Hyunjin owned a dog himself, so throughout the whole day, you worked up the nerve to ask Hyunjin to come with you.

At the end of last period, you gathered all your stuff from your desk and headed to the soccer field where you knew Hyunjin and his friends would be. Whilst you crossed the field, you noticed Jisung staring at you. You found his stare intimidating, but you tried to brush it off. He then whispered something in Hyunjin’s ear.

“Hi, Hyunjin,” you said anxiously, biting your lip. “Umm, do you want to come with me to shop for Coco?”

He stared at you for a couple seconds, then, a look of disgust appeared on his face. “Why? So you can use my wallet again?”

You stared back at him, wide eyed. Who was this person? It wasn’t the Hyunjin that so graciously helped you out yesterday.

“W-what? No!” you exclaimed. “I-I just wanted your opinion…”

“Sure,” Hyunjin smirked coldly, “opinion my ass.”

“Hyunjin,” tears were pooling in your eyes, “I don’t understand.”

“If you need money so much, here.” He reached in his pocket and turned up a wad of cash, throwing it at your feet. “Just don’t come to me next time. And buy yourself a new pair of shoes while you’re at it.”

You looked down at the money, trying to hold back your tears. Why was Hyunjin being like this? You didn’t understand. His two jockeys beside him didn’t even bother to stop him. As you tried to stop yourself from crying, you felt your sadness turn into rage.

“I don’t need your stupid money,” you said, kicking the cash back to him. “Maybe you can use your daddy’s money to buy yourself a new personality.”

Hyunjin’s two friends tried to hold back their snickers at your words. Hyunjin heard, turned around, and gave them both death stares.

You didn’t bother to listen to whatever he was going to say next and simply stomped away, rage burning inside you. Everything about him was a lie. His charming and charismatic personality, his generosity, his kindness. They were all lies. He really was nothing but a rich, spoiled boy living with his father’s money.

There was rage behind every step you took. Wiping away your tears, you headed to your locker. You didn’t need him anyways; it was better to realize his true personality earlier rather than later. Hands shaking from anger, you dialed the combination to your locker.

“Hey, sorry about what happened earlier.” A voice came from behind you. “He can be a real jerk sometimes.”

It was Jisung. You rolled your eyes. You didn’t want to see him either.

“Why didn’t you do anything about it then?” Your voice came out shaky. It was obvious that you had cried.

“Once he starts, there’s no stopping him. It’s usually better to let him finish uninterrupted, or else he will get more mad.”

“Oh,” you said. Your hatred for Hyunjin grew even more.

“I could come with you, though. I don’t know much about dogs, but I can help you carry your bags.”

“I don’t know…”

“C’mon, no way you can carry everything by yourself.”

You hesitated. “Okay, I guess.”

And so, you left for the pet store with Jisung, still confused about everything that had happened. It was strange with him. He was nice and cracked a joke every now and then, but it was just different from being with Hyunjin. At least he was nice, you thought.

Your trip went well. You managed to buy everything you needed for Coco. In a turn of events, Jisung had actually come in handy as he offered to carry the huge bag of dog food you bought. He even offered to buy you a coffee.

“Thanks for all your help, Jisung.” You stood outside the door of your apartment, smiling at him.

“No problem, gives me an excuse to work out my guns.” He pretended to flex his arms.

You choked back a laugh.

“You should get going now. It’s late,” you said.

“Alright,” he started to leave. “Hey, if you see me in the halls, feel free to say hi.”

You nodded and waved to him as he turned and walked away, remembering his words. Every time you saw Jisung in the school hallways, you gave him a small wave in which he happily returned. However, whenever you saw him walking with Hyunjin, you made sure to purposely avoid them. You didn’t want any negativity in your life.

You kept up the waves, and soon, waves turned to small conversations which soon turned to flirting. By the end of the semester, you and Jisung somehow ended up as a couple. Jisung was polite and sweet, unlike a certain person. With every free moment you had, you hung out with Jisung — all the while avoiding Hyunjin.

The two of you stayed a couple for the rest of Jisung’s senior year. Somehow, the two of you had even kept up your relationship throughout your whole high school experience. It was hard at times as he went to university, but with a lot of effort, you had made your relationship work out. You barely had time to talk with him, but you enjoyed the little time that you did have. Jisung had never even once mentioned Hyunjin when you were together, and with time, you had totally forgotten about that jerk. You weren’t even sure if they were still friends.

You worked hard in school and reaped all the benefits. Your rank had consistently been in the top twenties amongst all the other students, and you even had time to practice your dancing. You remembered the day that you received your acceptance letter from university. Hands shaking, you had barely managed to open the letter all the way before you screamed. You had gotten into university with your dream major: dance.

Because of your excellent grades, you were able to pay a lot of your tuition with scholarship money alone. You hesitantly decided to quit your job at the convenience store to focus on university. Although quitting meant that your bank account would take a big hit, you decided that it would be best in the long run. There was a lot in your savings, and you even had a little extra to buy a new outfit for your first day of school.

Jisung had been busy on the first day of university. He had previously promised to show you around campus, but with him being a no-show, you wandered around by yourself to try to find your classes. You had trouble with the campus map at first, but after walking around for a bit, you were able to find all your classes with ease.

Your first few classes were a snore. Because they were all theory, you had to down two cups of coffee in order to stay awake. Somehow, you managed to take coherent notes despite being bored out of your mind. You just wanted to dance.

The good thing was, after sitting through many classes, your time to dance finally came. Your last class of the day was an introduction to dance course, and you couldn’t wait to go. You wanted to know your teacher, your peers, and most importantly, express yourself.

The dance class was in a studio in the university’s fitness center. It was huge, way bigger than the tiny gym in your high school. Upon entering the studio, you were immediately met with the sight of students, exactly like you, already stretching. You chose a spot in the room and started stretching as well, making good use of your time before the instructor comes in.

After some time, most of the students — including you — had finished stretching and were sitting in silence waiting for the instructor. The door swung open, breaking the silence. The instructor had come in.

“Hello new students,” he said, “welcome to Dance 100. Today, I will go through the curriculum with you as well as introduce your final project.”

The instructor whipped out a projection of the curriculum and started explaining the purpose of the course, what you would be graded on, and how you would be graded. He then read through his class expectations before moving to your final project.

“This final project will act in place of a final exam,” he explained. “You will be required to create a dance that includes everything we’ve learned in class and write an essay explaining all the elements in your dance. It will be worth half your grade.”

The class gasped in surprise. Not only did this project sound extremely difficult for a first year course, but the fact that it was worth half your grade made it borderline unfair.

“I know it might seem difficult, but worry not, you won’t be doing this alone. Every year, the first year dance students get mentored by the third year dance students for the final project. Each student has already been assigned a random mentor which will be introduced this class.”

The whole class murmured, talking amongst themselves and expressing their opinions on this project. It was definitely an interesting project. You hoped that you would be paired with a good mentor that would actually care about how well you did.

There was a knock on the door.

“Ah, this must be them.” Your instructor opened the door and a wave of third years came flooding in. Each one of them had a name tag pinned on their shirts. “Class, these are the third year students.”

You all politely greeted them.

“Now,” the instructor continued, “I will put the class list on the projector, and each of your names will correspond to a third year mentor.”

The instructor put out the list for display. You scanned down the list of names, eventually finding yours. Following the dots to your corresponding mentor, you almost choked on air when you saw yours.

It was Hwang Hyunjin.

You were at a loss for words. Just when you thought he was out of your life forever, the man that was so incredibly mean to you — the man you hated with your whole soul — was now your mentor. Just the thought of being in the same room as him filled you with disgust.

You scanned the sea of third year students, and your eyes immediately found him. He was staring back at you with the same shocked expression that you had on.

He looked different. Not only had he grown taller, but he had lost all his baby fat as well. His hair was different too. It was bleached blond and it almost hit his shoulders. What was the same, however, was his intense stare and his plump lips.

You walked over to him.

“You look different.” His eyes scanned up and down.

“So do you.” You clenched your jaw and sighed. “I guess we have to work together.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said flatly.

“Listen,” you copied his tone, “I’m not excited about this either, but I want to get a good grade for this class. If you don’t wanna help me, just say so and I’ll just work alone on this.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he rolled his eyes, “this is part of my grade too. I can’t let you fuck this up for the both of us.”

You rolled your eyes back at him and pressed your lips in a thin line. Ignoring what he said, you asked, “where do we start?”

“Let’s find a time to meet every week.” He pulled out the newest iPad model from his bag. Of course he would have the newest iPad. “I’m busy every day except Saturday, so let’s meet then.”

Way to consider your opinion. He was lucky that you weren’t busy on the weekends.

As Hyunjin worked on sorting his schedule, you took your time to look at how he had changed. With his hair blonde, he looked like a completely different person. You didn’t understand why he kept his hair long though. It kept falling in his eyes.

“Stop staring at me. It’s freaking me out.” He narrowed his eyes at you.

“I wasn’t.” You crossed your arms, defending yourself.

“Whatever.” He tucked his hair behind his ear and put his iPad back in his bag. “Don’t be late on Saturday.”

And with that, he left. You looked around the class. Most of the other students were still with their mentors, presumably getting to know each other and discussing the project. You almost wanted to ask your instructor to switch with somebody else, but that would mean passing on the nightmare known as Hwang Hyunjin onto a perfectly innocent person. You had your moments, but you weren’t evil.

The interaction with Hyunjin had left you in a sour mood for the rest of the day. You tried to study, but you were too distracted by the thought of having to work with that monstrosity for a whole semester. It was worth so much of your grade, too. You had just hoped that Hyunjin was as good at dance as he previously told you. You remembered him saying how dance was his passion in life. That was when you still liked him. Who knows, maybe he only said that so he could play you like every other girl he played with.

For the rest of the week, whenever you thought of the dance project, you were filled with dread. You tried to ignore it, and sometimes it worked, but most of the time it kept reappearing in your mind like a virus. The way Hyunjin had infected your mind bothered you to no end.

Time passed fast though, and before you knew it, Saturday had already come. Searching through your closet, you picked out a simple outfit for practice today. You slid on your tattered old sneakers and headed off to the studio that Hyunjin had told you to go to.

Entering the dance studio, you noticed that you were right on time. However, Hyunjin was not. Great… He made such a big deal over you being on time that he himself forgot to be punctual. You sat on the wood floors and started to do some stretches to warm up.

Eventually, after you finished your stretching, he entered the studio. With a girl. Holding a textbook, Hyunjin handed it to the girl and put on his signature deceitful smile. His ugly, perfect smile. The girl batted her eyes and waved her fingers goodbye before strolling out the door. You rolled your eyes at this, feeling bad for the girl. Hyunjin was playing her right in front of her own eyes and she didn’t even realize it.

“Were you really late because of a girl?” you sneered.

“Why do you care?” he retorted, flinging his bag to the corner of the room.

“I don’t.”

“Sure you don’t.”

Not wanting to waste time with that childish banter, you decided to end the conversation then and there. “Okay, well anyways, I’ll show you what I learned in class this week.”

Hooking up your phone to the speaker, you chose the song that you’ve been practicing with for the whole week. As the song progressed, you found it hard to not get lost in the music. Just dancing was the easy part; incorporating everything learned in class was another story. Although it was fairly difficult, you thought you executed everything very well as the song came to an end. Finishing up, you panted from exhaustion and looked at Hyunjin for his comments.

He stood, with his arms crossed across his torso, leaning against the speaker. There was a blank expression on his face.

“Not bad.” He started to walk up to you.

“But?”

“But you’re too stiff. You’re too focused on perfectly executing the technical moves that you forget to just move your body. Do what you did half-way through the song again.”

You turned the music on, trying to do the dance with Hyunjin’s criticisms in mind. Looking in the mirror, you did your best to show as much emotion as possible, all the while moving more fluidly. The room was filled with heavy bass and the squeaks from your sneakers.

Suddenly, the music was abruptly cut off.

Hyunjin had stopped the music and was making his way over, face still unreadable.

“You’re still trying too hard and it shows.” Hyunjin shook his head.

Clenching your jaw, you did your best to hold back your anger. Were you just not supposed to try? This annoyed you. Just because he didn’t need to try to be good at anything didn’t mean you couldn’t.

“Well,” you tried to say calmly, “how can I do this then?”

“You have to relax.” He put one hand on your hip and started to guide you. “Don’t focus on each individual aspect, but try to imagine everything as a whole. Then, things will come naturally.”

You followed his hand, allowing Hyunjin to guide you to his own rhythm. After a while, every movement felt so fluid and you didn’t even notice that your face started to match your movements. Glancing at your reflection, you gasped, noticing how different your dancing looked. You whipped your head to face Hyunjin, the two of your inches apart and breathing heavily.

“See,” he mumbled, looking down at you. “Once you stop thinking, everything just comes naturally.”

You looked back at the person inches away from you. It almost felt as if he was being kind. But you knew the type of person he was. You weren’t going to let this happen again. Snapping out of what weird trance you were in, you pushed him away in an act of self perseverance.

He didn’t say anything.

“I’ll try again,” you said.

Hyunjin strolled over to the speaker and turned on the music. This time, you didn’t think about anything you learned in class or Hyunjin’s criticisms. You just trusted in your body. Everything else was blank.

Taking a step forward while still in your trance, your shoe lost its grip on the floor, causing you to fall right on your knee. You cried in pain, holding on to your knee.

“Fuck,” Hyunjin hissed. He ran over and bent down to your level. “Can you move it?”

“I think so.” You tried to straighten your knee. It hurt, but you were still able to do it. There would most likely be a nasty bruise there the next morning.

“You’re still wearing those scraps that you call shoes? They’re literally coming apart at the seams. This is going to happen again if you don’t get new ones.”

You blushed in embarrassment from his remarks. “I’m not going to spend money on things that I don’t need.”

“Well, you need shoes. Just go buy a new pair later.”

Was he being serious? Or was he just spoiled?

“Hyunjin, not everybody can just go spend money whenever they want,” you loudly sighed. “Unlike you, I need to consider my budget for most things.”

“Well, why can’t you ask your boyfriend to buy it?” he sneered. “Seems like you’re good at doing that.”

How did he know you were still dating Jisung? What did he mean by ‘good at doing that’?

“What?” You crossed your eyebrows. “Do you think I’m with him just for his money? Do I really look like that kind of person to you?”

“You used me for my money,” he mumbled under his breath.

“What?” You couldn’t hear him right.

“Nevermind, rehearsal's over.” He stomped off, leaving you alone in the practice room holding on to your injured knee.

You busied yourself with everything and anything you could do over the weekend in order to forget what happened during rehearsal. However, no matter how hard you tried to forget, Hyunjin’s comments on your shoes stuck in your mind like glue.

During your shift at your job, you couldn’t help but keep staring at your worn sneakers. You never paid attention to your shoes before until now. They did the job, so why would you need to buy a new pair? Still, you unconsciously paid attention to every step you took.

On Monday’s dance class, you decided to go early. It was always nice to warm up in a room with other try-hards. They felt less judgemental than the others.

The studio barely had anybody in it this early before class. Everybody was either stretching or had already started going over what was taught last week. Shuffling your way over to your locker, you couldn’t help but compare everybody else’s shoes to your own. You’ve never cared about trivial matters such as shoes, but you couldn’t help but feel a little self conscious as your worn-in sneakers squeaked its way over to the lockers.

Opening your locker, your eyes widened, shocked at what you saw. Inside was a box containing a brand new pair of sneakers. It was an expensive brand as well, a brand that you never thought you would be touching in your life. You turned your head around, scanning the room. Everybody seemed to have been busy with their own thing.

Did somebody put these in your locker by mistake?

Taking the shoes out, you noticed a small slip of paper fly out. You picked up the note.

Keep these. I was a jerk.

You knew who had sent this. It was Hyunjin. You didn’t know what game he was trying to play at, but you weren’t going to fall for it like you did that day in high school. Gingerly putting the shoes back in your locker, you decided to return these back to Hyunjin at your next practice.

“No, I gave them to you as a gift.” Hyunjin turned his nose up at you, refusing to take back the shoes.

“Why would you give these to me if you think that I only use people for their money?”

“Because,” he rolled his eyes, “if you’re unable to dance then my grade is screwed as well.”

He made a good point, but you were stubborn. “Still…”

“You know what? Keep it, give it away, sell it, I don’t care. Let’s just start practice.”

After that dance practice, you threw your old shoes in the trash.

It was midterm season a month into school. You thought you had gone to hell and back with high school, but this was even worse. Each day consisted of waking up, studying, and going back to sleep. You lived on coffee and toast. It wasn’t much, but it gave you the energy to sit at the library for hours to study.

You didn’t see anybody during the midterm season, Instead, you chose to hermit yourself up at the library for days on end. This meant that, at least for a couple of weeks, your dance practice with Hyunjin was put on hiatus. Not that he minded, of course. He happily deleted the practices from his schedule.

You also didn’t see much of your boyfriend, Jisung. Ever since school started, he seemed to always be missing in action. He would almost never have time to be with you, and with the few moments that he was, it seemed like he was always so apathetic towards you. You brushed this off as stress though, as you finally knew what it was like to experience university exams.

It was a clear and sunny day on the morning you finished your last midterm. Leaving the exam room, you looked up to the sky, basking in the sun. Today was going to be a good day. Not only were you now stress free, but you were also invited to an end-of-midterm party for your dance class tonight. You had never gone to a university party before, so when a classmate asked if you wanted to go, you eagerly accepted.

Wrapping up your dance class, you stood at your locker, gathering the rest of your stuff.

“Hey.” An arm wrapped around you.

“Hey, Jisung.” You smiled, turning around to face him.

“You’re done all your midterms?”

“Yup.” You nodded happily.

He took a look at your shoes.

“New shoes?”

You hesitated in answering his question, not knowing where Jisung was with Hyunjin in terms of friendship. It was better to be truthful now rather than apologizing later.

“Hyunjin gave it to me.” You looked down, fiddling with your fingers. Why were you afraid of Jisung’s response?

“Wait, what? Hwang Hyunjin? Like from high school? Y/n, I thought you hated him.”

“I did! And I do,” you tried to explain, “but he had a reason to give me this.”

“Bullshit, Y/n. You’re really gonna believe any reason he pulls out of his ass? I thought you actually matured from high school.”

“Well, you would understand if you were around more often!” you yelled. You knew it was wrong to address other problems and blow this out of proportion, but you couldn’t think straight. Your mind was clouded with anger.

“What does this have to do with anything?” Jisung barked back. “What we’re talking about is how you, no matter how shitty of a person Hyunjin is, keep going back to him! Y/n, all that man does is take. He takes from you and he sure as hell takes everything from me. I won’t let that happen this time.”

When had he taken anything from you? All he had done was give.

“Jisung, let’s end this.”

“You’re right. Let’s cool down and talk later tonight.”

“No,” you shook your head, “I mean, let's end us.”

Jisung looked at you in disgust. “It’s Hyunjin, isn’t it?”

“No,” you vehemently denied, “Jisung, you never have time for me, and the little time we do have together you act like a different person. And now you’re being all possessive just because Hyunjin gave me a gift? I’m sorry, I just don’t see us recovering from this.”

“Fine, whatever.” Jisung turned around. “We’re done. But Y/n, don’t come running back to me when Hyunjin screws you over like he does with everybody.”

After Jisung left, you stomped your foot on the ground, tears pooling in your eyes. It was for the best — breaking up with him. For the past month, you hadn’t been happy with where your relationship was going, but this wasn’t the way you wanted to end an almost three year relationship.

Wiping away your tears, you tried to compose yourself before heading over to the pub. Jisung wasn’t worth the tears.

The walk to the pub wasn’t far as every establishment catered to students was a short walking distance from campus. For your entire walk over, you kept your head down so as to not receive looks from others. The headache from your cries and a blush of anger still lingered with you. Hopefully you’ll look somewhat normal by the time you reach the bar.

Checking your reflection once more in your phone camera, you fixed your hair a bit before going inside.

The bar was filled.

With students from both your dance class and the third year class, there was not an empty corner in sight. The music was loud, but the sounds of chatter coming from the students were louder. The place was dark, with the only source of light coming from very dim, bright blue LEDs.

It was surprising to see everybody in a different setting. You were used to the sight of your classmates being only in sweats and workout clothes, but now that they actually had time to get ready, everybody seemed like a completely different person.

You saw a few of your classmates wave at you, beckoning you over to where they were sitting. As soon as your butt landed on the chair, they spared no time to push a shot glass filled with clear liquor in front of you. You gladly took the drink, wanting to just let go and forget about everything that happened today. Holding back a cough, you scrunched your face as you felt the alcohol burn in your throat. It had been so long since the last time you drank.

After five you stopped counting. Partly because you knew you were going to drink more, but mostly because your head couldn’t even count to five anymore. Scrunching your eyes, you tried to focus on the blurry figure of your classmate complaining about her professor. Bored out of your mind as her mindless babble went on forever, your eyes started roaming around the bar. As your eyes wandered, you noticed somebody behind your classmate staring at you.

Hwang Hyunjin.

Even in your inebriated state of mind, you knew that it was Hyunjin. What other university student had the balls to bleach their whole head blonde? Your eyes met, and he ran a hand through his golden locks. Why do the most beautiful people harbour the most wretched personalities?

You tried to ignore his staring by focusing your attention back on your classmate, but eventually, you couldn’t help but glance back at him. He was still looking at you.

You saw a girl come up to him. She was the same girl that showed up with him on your first ever practice session. Because of the dimly lit bar and your drunken vision impairment, you had to really squint to make out what was going on. The girl, all smiley and giggly, put her hand on his shoulder, making Hyunjin break his eye contact with you. He smiled at the girl, mouthing words that were drowned out by the music. For some reason, this made you furious. Why was he so nice to everybody else but you? What had you ever done to him to make him hate you so much?

You kept your eyes on the girl, knowing full well that you shouldn’t have. You hated that — even on your night off, even when you had just broken up with your boyfriend — Hyunjin was still in your mind like an unkillable parasite. You hated the way he tucked his hair behind his ears. You hated how the corners of his eyes crinkled up when he smiled at her. You hated him.

You watched as she leaned in and whispered something in his ear, causing him to laugh. That was the last straw. In a drunken haze, you took your phone and bolted out the door, ignoring the concerns of all your classmates. Maybe it had been a mistake breaking up with Jisung. Maybe he really did know what was best for you.

Stumbling out onto the street, you tried to dial Jisung’s phone number. It proved to be too difficult of a task, however, as your drunken fingers could only tap on random numbers on the screen. You cried out of frustration.

“Y/n.”

The voice coming from behind you startled you, causing you to lose your grip on the phone. It dropped on the cement with a loud crack. Tears welled up in your eyes as you bent down to pick up your phone. There was a huge crack right down the middle of the screen.

“You cracked my phone,” you said, trying to keep your composure.

“So? It’s not like it’s worth much anyways. Just ask your boyfriend to buy you one.” Hyunjin’s evil eyes squinted down at you.

“Why are you still on about this? Hyunjin, I’ve never used anybody for money and I never will!” You couldn’t control the tears flowing down your face. “Plus, I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I broke up with Jisung today.”

You didn’t know why you were spilling your guts to the last man in the world you would trust. Surely, it was the alcohol.

“Y/n.” His tone had completely changed. He almost looked — concerned?

“Whatever, Hyunjin,” you slurred. “Just leave me alone. You can go back to that girl and have your fun with her.”

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t care.”

“Y/n, why do you care?” His tone got louder.

“I don’t!” you yelled at him. Your tears made everything even more blurry.

“Y/n! Tell me, why do you care?!” He spat back at you with just as much fury.

“Fuck you, Hyunjin. News flash, not everything in the world revolves around you and your rich and prestigious life. Maybe you wouldn’t be so toxic if you would just understand that.” You screamed at him through your sobs. “Also, I don’t know where you got this stupid story of my being a cash whore from, but I will say this one last time: I have worked for everything in my life and I have never and will never use anybody for their money.”

Hyunjin looked back at you, shocked. You stared back at him in disgust. Not wanting to waste anymore time on him, you stumbled down the street to look for a taxi. However, as you wobbled down the pavement, everything became even blurrier than before. You felt nauseous. You couldn’t control it anymore.

You threw up. All over the sidewalk. You couldn’t stop. Every time you thought that it was over, more and more came out. Your throat burned, and it wasn’t just the alcohol.

As you hurled out all the remains of today’s lunch, your hair was held back.

“Get away from me, Hyunjin,” you groaned. You didn’t want him to see you this weak.

“Who else is gonna take care of your drunk ass, idiot,” he mumbled.

That was the last thing you heard before everything went black.

It was a blinding white light that woke you up. You groaned, trying to block the light with your forearm. Cracking your neck, you tried to holster yourself up.

You were on a leather couch. Squinting, you surveyed the room you were in. It was clean, spacious. The floor was a white marble — there wasn’t a single speck of dust to be seen. Across from you was an incredibly wide TV with many game consoles scattered around it. You looked behind you. There was a large kitchen island illuminated by warm pendant lights. Sitting at the island, on his laptop, was Hyunjin.

“Wh-what happened to me?”

“You’re the worst fucking drinker I’ve ever seen, that’s what happened.”

You rolled your eyes.

Hyunjin ignored you, standing up and leaving for another room. Less than a minute later, he reappeared with a toothbrush and a roll of toothpaste.

“Go clean up. You look disgusting.”

You snatched the toothbrush from his hands. He pointed over to the bathroom and you trudged your way over. His bathroom was huge, almost bigger than your bedroom at home. You felt as if you were in a hotel.

“Your bathroom is huge.” After washing up, you felt not only cleaner, but more awake. “You’re really living the life with your family’s money, huh.”

Hyunjin sighed, slamming his laptop shut causing you to flinch. “Why, after everything, do you think I’m this rich, pretentious fuck?”

You rolled your eyes. Not this again. “Well, why do you still think I’m this money hungry monster?”

“You really wanna know why, Y/n? It’s because Jisung told me so. He was the one who told me that all those years ago.”

You were shocked. Jisung was the one who told him that? Your ex-boyfriend that you had loved and dated for almost three years? You didn’t want to believe it, you really didn’t, but there was this tiny whisper in the back of your mind telling you that it was true. He had a reason to — Jisung was always going on about how Hyunjin always took from him.

“But Y/n, I-” He stopped mid-sentence.

“You what, Hyunjin?”

He pressed his lips to yours, caressing the back of your head. You were shocked, but almost autonomously, your lips parted feeling the heat of his breath against yours. He pressed his body to yours, running his hand down your waist. His lips, the same lips responsible for his perfect smile, felt so soft against your own. You heard the thuds of his heartbeat as he held you closer.

You broke apart, gasping for breath. The realization of what you had done just hit you.

In a panic, you used your whole strength to push his body away from you. “I-I have to go.”

“Y/n, wait!” Hyunjin called.

You paid him no attention. Instead, you ran across the marble floors, hoisted the front door open, and sprinted out. Hoping that Hyunjin wasn’t following you, found your way outside and took a taxi home.

You sat in silence, trying to process what had just happened. You had just kissed Hyunjin. You had just kissed Hyunjin. Hands shaking, you grasped at the ends of your hair, trying to calm yourself down. Did that just happen?

You were more mad at yourself than at him. How could you have just kissed Hyunjin? You hated him. He was nothing but rude to you, never smiling and always accusing you of things that were clearly lies. He made you feel self conscious, nervous, and everything in between. You hated him.

But he was so sweet on that fateful day in high school. He gave you a new pair of shoes when you had slipped during practice, and he held your hair for you when you were drunk. His hair glistened in the sunlight, his smile made your heart race, and his lips ignited sparks of every colour in the rainbow in your chest.

You hated Hwang Hyunjin. You hated how fast you became infatuated with him on that day in high school, and no matter how much you tried to deny it, you hated that your feelings haven’t changed ever since. You hated Hwang Hyunjin. You hated that you loved him.

Curling up in your bed, there was no stopping the tears flowing down your face. You cried and cried upon this realization, and you remained this way for the rest of the day. The effect Hyunjin had on you was bigger than you ever expected, and you hated it.

At school, you tried to avoid as many people as possible. The kiss you had shared with Hyunjin was plaguing your mind, distracting you and igniting the fire that was your inner turmoil. Even the thought of Hyunjin put a strain in your heart. It was the way his breath fanned over your nose, gently tickling it like a bird’s feather and the soft silk of his blonde locks brushing up against your cheeks.

You shook your head, trying to erase any and every thought of that man. Walking to your locker, you were stopped in your tracks, the dam in your eyes starting to crack. You couldn’t do this today. You turned around to go somewhere else — anywhere else.

“Y/n, wait.”

You sniffed, wiped stray tears from your eyes, and picked up your pace.

“Y/n.” He grabbed your shoulder, turning you around to face him.

“Hyunjin, please, I can’t do this today.”

“Are you… Are you crying?” He touched your face, wiping your tears with his thumb. “Y/n, why are you crying?”

You shook your head. You were scared of what would happen if you opened your stupid mouth.

“Y/n, please.” Hyunjin begged. His voice was shaking. “Tell me why.”

You shook your head again.

“Y/n, please.” His voice cracked.

“Hyunjin,” you paused, taking a shaky breath, “it’s because I love you. I’ve loved you ever since the first moment you smiled at my pathetic ass. Even when you hurt me more than anyone has hurt me before… I never had a choice, Hyunjin. It’s always been you.”

You tore yourself away from Hyunjin, embarrassed to your core. That was the most humiliating thing you’ve ever done, but at least you had closure now.

“Y/n…”

“No, Hyunjin. You’ve torn me down and humiliated me enough already. What more could you possibly want?” You demanded, aware that everybody around you was staring.

“Y/n,” Hyunjin rasped, “It’s only ever been you. I’ve spent the last three years miserable knowing that you were with someone else. I’ve-I’ve never even been with another girl in the past three years. I know you have no reason to believe me because I was such an ass. I am such an ass. Y/n, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for projecting my insecurities on you, I’m sorry for accusing you of things I know you’ve never done, and I’m sorry for anything else I might have fucking done. Y/n, I love you. Please, I don’t fucking deserve it, but is there any way you could forgive me?”

You stared at Hyunjin’s bloodshot eyes, tears freely flowing down your cheeks, and before you could even think, you found yourself pressed against his lips. Your eyes closed, savouring the feeling of his soft lips touching your own. His wet cheek pressed against your own, and with a nudge of the nose, Hyunjin deepend the kiss with a raw passion in which you’ve never felt before.

You cradled his head, relishing in his silken blonde hair as you brushed your fingers through his locks. He sighed in response, his breath tickling against your cheek. You were fully aware that everyone on campus had seen both your messy confessions of love, but you didn’t care. All you could do was replay the moment that Hyunjin had said those words — those three tiny words — over and over in your head as you ran your fingers through his hair and kissed his soft, honey lips.

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cuttoothed · 3 years

Text

A little fic for @jonsimsandcats and also inspired by some adorable art on discord! Featuring notes on kitten rearing, and of course some Jmart because it’s me.

Jon works at the Institute here, but a non-spooky version of it!

Martin is doing a final check on the fish tanks when he hears the bell above the front door jingle. He sighs; he knew he should have locked up first. Just his luck.

“This is your fault,” he tells the angelfish balefully. They don’t seem contrite, too busy nosing in the fine gravel for any food they’ve missed. Martin walks out to the front of the shop, preparing his best customer service smile to tell whoever’s come in at—he glances at his watch—three minutes past eight that they’re closed, and no, they can’t just wander around for a few minutes to look at the animals. Honestly, some people seem to think there’s no difference between a pet shop and an art gallery.

There’s a man standing at the front counter, looking around anxiously, a bundled up jumper clutched against his chest.

“Sorry, we’re—” Martin begins, and that’s as far as he gets before the man unleashes a frantic tirade.

“Please!” the man says, “I need your help, I-I’m not sure they’re breathing and they were out there for hours on their own, I know you’re not supposed to move them in case their mother comes back but I couldn’t just—just leave knowing they were still there, and all the vet offices nearby are closed, this was the only place I could think of!”

The man is wild eyed, almost panicked, and Martin lifts both hands in an appeasing gesture.

“Woah,” he says, “Uh, maybe start from the beginning again? Slowly?”

“Right, ah, sorry. Sorry. I spotted them this morning, under a bush just outside my work.” The man sets the bundle of jumper down on the counter, and unfolds it to reveal two tiny scraps of fur: one gray, one black. Kittens, Martin realizes, so small they can only be a week or so old; certainly not old enough to be without their mother.

“I left them alone, because I’ve heard that the mother usually comes back after a little while. A-and I meant to go and check on them again during the day, make sure.” The man sounds anguished now, his face miserable. “But I—I got caught up in work, forgot about it. It was only when I was leaving that I remembered. And they were still there, on their own. Barely moving. Please—is there anything we can do?”

Martin looks down at the tiny creatures in their nest of wool; he can just about see the shallow in-out of their breathing. All day outside alone, at their age, the odds aren’t great. But he’s met enough kittens to know that they’re shockingly resilient little sods, and he’s never given up on a so-called hopeless case before. He’s not about to start now.

“You did the right thing moving them,” he assures the man, moving to flip the sign on the door to CLOSED. “We need to get them warmed up and get some food into them. Body heat is the best thing for them right now—can you start warming them with your hands?”

“Oh—ah, yes,” says the man, turning to his bundle of jumper with a worried frown. Martin leaves him there while he rushes around the shop, grabbing kitten milk replacer and nursing bottles, and then into the back to heat two mugs of water in the microwave while he makes up the bottles. He pops them into the mugs to warm, and brings the whole lot out to the front. The man now has a kitten in each hand, and is holding them pressed carefully to his chest for additional warmth; his expression is still worried, but also desperately tender, and Martin feels a pang of something behind his ribs at the sight.

“One of them is moving,” the man says eagerly as Martin sets the bottles down. Martin can see the gray kitten wriggling weakly in the man’s grip, responding to the heat. Its sibling is still motionless, and Martin’s heart sinks a little.

“That’s great,” he says. “Hold onto her for another minute, and let me see if I can get her sister moving too.”

He holds out a hand, and the man almost reluctantly passes him the black kitten. Martin doesn’t try to notice that the man has lovely hands, with long, slim fingers, narrow wrist jutting out of his shirt sleeve, but, well, he notices a bit. He turns his attention to the kitten; he can’t make out the motion of its breathing anymore. He takes it in both hands and starts to massage it gently. It lies limp in his palms, head lolling, and Martin starts to feel despair crawling cold up his spine.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he murmurs, “You can do it.” The man is watching him anxiously, the gray kitten cradled against his chest, and Martin knows he can’t give up. He keeps rubbing the kitten’s small body, trying to will warmth and life back into the tiny, fragile form. At last, after what seems like an eternity, the kitten squirms in his hands and a faint, plaintive mew escapes it. An answering mew comes from the gray kitten, and Martin laughs, relief washing over him.

“Right, let’s see if we can get them to eat.”

After checking that they’re not too chilled to feed, Martin tests each of the kittens with a drop of formula on their tongue; thankfully they both seem able to swallow without difficulty. He shows the man how to feed the gray kitten, holding its body in a neutral position with the bottle tilted for a gentle flow. It doesn’t take long for the kittens to figure out the process, and Martin can feel the tug on the bottle as his kitten begins to suckle.

“Oh,” he hears softly from beside him, and turns to see the man gazing in delight at the gray kitten, whose tiny, unfurled ears are twitching as it sucks.

“She’s doing great,” Martin comments. “Good job.” The man gives him a tentative, pleased smile, and Martin still isn’t trying to notice but it’s a very nice smile. “I’m Martin, by the way.”

“Jonathan Sims—Jon,” says the man, and then gives a small, tense laugh. “God, I haven’t even apologized for storming in here while you were clearly trying to close up for the night.”

“That’s all right, I didn’t have any exciting plans tonight anyway. I’d much rather be spending time with these little beauties.”

Jon smiles again, more sure this time, and all right, maybe Martin deliberately notices the dimple in his right cheek. Just a bit.

Once the kittens are fed, Martin shows Jon how to stimulate them; both of them only pee a little—poor things are dehydrated—but it’s a good sign. They clean them up and tuck them back into the nest of Jon’s jumper, where they curl up into a small puddle of black and gray. Jon gives a sigh that’s somewhere between relieved and exhausted.

“Thank you,” he says. “I, ah, I think I forgot to say that as well. You know a lot about this.”

“I volunteer at a shelter, there are a lot of kittens. If you like, I can take them for tonight and bring them in tomorrow?”

“Ah,” says Jon. “Do you think that’s—I mean...I-I’m not sure I’d feel right, handing them off to someone else. Not that I think you’re not capable!” he rushes to add, and Martin finds himself smiling.

“No, I get it. You found them, you want to take care of them. I’ll warn you, though, it’s a big commitment. For the first couple of weeks you have to feed them every two hours, even during the night, and then it’s every three or four hours until they start weaning. It’s like having a newborn baby.”

“I don’t get much sleep generally,” says Jon. “At least this way I’ll have something to do while I’m up all night. And my work is—well, I’ll explain the situation.”

He looks set on it, brow furrowed with determination. Martin considers arguing more: that a shelter will be better equipped to care for the kittens, that there’s no guarantee they’ll survive in any case, that Jon doesn’t know what he’s signing up for. But the shelters are always crowded, and kittens this young have simple needs, and really, a dedicated foster parent—armed with the right knowledge—is probably the best thing for them.

“Right,” he says, “Let’s make sure these two are well wrapped up before you take them home.”

He scrounges a cardboard box from the back and they settle the kittens into it, still wrapped in Jon’s jumper along with a soft fleece blanket printed with cartoon fish. Martin gathers a couple of cartons of liquid formula and extra bottles to get them started, and shows Jon how to pierce the nipple so the flow isn’t too strong.

“It should be warmed to body temperature,” he explains, “But not directly in the microwave—put the bottles in heated water, like I did earlier. Do you have a hot water bottle?”

“Yes, I do,” says Jon, frowning intently as he listens. Martin nods.

“It’s better than a heating pad at this age, they’re less likely to get overheated. Don’t make it too hot—body temperature, again—and wrap it in a blanket so they’re not touching it directly.”

“Got it,” says Jon firmly, and Martin believes him. He bags up the formula and bottles and an extra pet blanket, and presses them into the hands of a startled Jon; the till is shut off for the night, but Martin can explain and pay for the items tomorrow.

“What’s your phone number?” he asks, and Jon looks even more startled.

“S-sorry?”

“Or your email. I’m going to send you some links—videos, a couple of good blogs that should be helpful.”

“Oh, ah, right. Of course.” Jon recites his number and Martin saves it under “Jon (Kittens).” He peeks into the box one last time before Jon scoops it up, and sees the kittens snuggled in the folds of the jumper, paws waving in little kitten dreams.

“Thank you again, Martin,” says Jon. “I honestly don’t know what I would have done without you tonight.” His tone is shy but genuine, and it sends warmth through Martin’s chest and up into his cheeks.

“Any time,” Martin says. “And feel free to text me if you need anything—if you have a question or...anything. Or call me if you like.” He’s aware he’s rambling a bit, but it’s not every day an attractive man says that he doesn’t know what he would have done without you, so he can hardly be blamed.

“I will,” says Jon solemnly.

He doesn’t text Martin any questions that night, but when Martin sends him the links to a youtube channel and three blog posts on kitten care, he replies:

Thank you :)

Martin spends most of the rest of the night wondering what that smiley face means.

He doesn’t necessarily expect to see Jon again, and certainly doesn’t expect to see him the very next day. But just before one o’clock in the afternoon the bell above the door jingles and there’s Jon, looking tired and more than a bit sheepish.

“I got all the way into work this morning before I realized I’d never paid for any of the things you gave me,” he says, reaching for his wallet.

“Those were gifts,” Martin tells him firmly. “Sort of a “welcome to foster parenthood” care basket?”

“No, I couldn’t let you—” Jon starts to protest, but Martin shakes his head emphatically.

“It’s no big deal, honestly. I get an employee discount anyway.”

“I...well, then I suppose I need to thank you yet again,” says Jon.

“It’s becoming a bit of a habit,” Martin jokes, grinning, and Jon smiles in return. He hesitates a moment before continuing:

“Maybe I could buy you lunch instead, then? To pay you back.”

“There’s no need, honestly,” says Martin, even as his brain berates him: What are you doing, idiot, he’s asking you to have lunch with him? Say yes!

“Please, I’d like to,” Jon says, and then gives a thoughtful frown. “Only if you want to, of course, don’t feel obligated—”

“I’m on lunch in five minutes,” Martin blurts out before he can overthink it.

“Great!” says Jon, sounding pleased. “If you have time, we could go by my office as well and visit the kittens. I just fed them before I came to see you.”

Before I came to see you, not before I came to pay you back, and Martin feels that warmth crawling up towards his cheeks again. Even if Jon’s intentions are purely friendly rather than...anything else, well, Martin could always use more friends.

“How were they last night?” he asks, and the smile that spreads across Jon’s face this time is pure delight.

“Oh I barely got an hour’s sleep,” he says, waving a hand. “And today they’re sitting under my desk reminding me every couple of hours that they need attention and that they are far more important than whatever I’m working on. They’re perfect.”

“Sounds like cat parenthood suits you,” Martin teases gently, and Jon laughs.

“I think it rather does.”

Lunch is...nice, and only slightly awkward in the “getting to know a new person” sort of way. Jon is serious, but also funny in an understated, acerbic way, and there’s a gentleness to him that wouldn’t be immediately apparent, if Martin hadn’t seen him cradling two tiny, fragile lives to his chest last night. He’s the kind of person Martin would like to know better, he thinks.

Afterwards they go to Jon’s workplace, which is extremely academic with a brass nameplate by the door and everything, and down to the basement office where Jon works; Martin doesn’t really know what archiving entails, but it looks like mostly a bloody great pile of paperwork. Jon’s two colleagues give Martin friendly and extremely curious glances as they pass; Jon pointedly ignores them in favor of directing Martin to his desk and the cardboard box sitting beneath it.

When Martin glances inside, the two kittens are curled up in the folds of the fish-print blanket, lying against the shape of what he assumes is the hot water bottle. Their bellies already look rounder than they were last night, thanks to regular feeding, and their limbs twitch as they sleep.

“I’ll take them to the vet for a check up after work,” Jon murmurs quietly, gazing down at them with a soft expression. Martin recognizes that look of adoration, and he knows this pair won’t be going to a shelter or anywhere else; they’ve found their home with Jon.

“They’re lucky you found them,” he says, and Jon smiles self-consciously.

“I think I’m the one who was lucky,” he says.

They spend a bit more time with the kittens, and then Martin realizes that it’s about time he got back to work if he doesn’t want to get in trouble. He excuses himself, waving goodbye to Jon’s still curious colleagues, and Jon walks him out to the grand front entrance of the building.

“Thanks again for lunch,” he says. “And—you have my number, right? The offer is open, if you need anything, just text me.”

“I will,” says Jon. “And, ah, let me know if you’d like to come and see the kittens again. Any day. Well, most days,” he corrects himself. “We could, ah, maybe have lunch again?”

“That sounds...really nice,” says Martin. Jon smiles, pleased, and Martin isn’t trying to notice the faint flush that spreads across his face, but it’s very cute anyway.

As he walks back to work, Martin’s phone vibrates with a text. It’s a picture of the kittens, curled up on top of each other, with the message:

Come back and see us soon!

Martin grins; the kittens, he thinks, weren’t the only ones lucky to be found last night.

#the magnus archives #jonsimsandcats2021 #my fic #jonmartin

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fortuositywritings · 3 years

Text

The Great Animal Rescue

Summary: You should have minded your own business, but try saying no to a little girl who was crying for her cat. Now you are stuck in a tree trying not to embarrass yourself in front of the attractive individual who comes to your rescue.

A/N: This is a Skye/Daisy x reader short that is meant to give some background for them in I Said No

___________________________________________________________________

2:17pm

Y/N where r u??

You are stuck in a tree with no way down is where you are. You should really learn to say no to people. It’s what got you into this mess in the first place. You were on your way to meet your friends at the movies after stopping at an ice cream shop for a cone. You thought, why not walk the way there? It is only a few blocks away and it’s nice outside.

So you began walking, licking your ice cream happily. It’s nothing compared to the ice cream shop in the small town where your cousin lives, but this one is still pretty damn good. Not two minutes into your stroll, the sound of someone sniffling made you pause. You hesitated to investigate where the noise was coming from, seeing that your cousin’s husband has given you plenty of lectures about stranger danger. You ignored the voice in your head saying he might have a point. He spends a lot of his time in New York; there are a lot of weirdos there. This is LA in broad daylight. The worst thing that could happen where you were at the moment would have been getting run over by an electric scooter.

Clearly you were wrong.

It turned out to be some kid crying because her cat wouldn’t come down from the tree. You asked her where her parents were. She said they were inside the house and wouldn’t come outside because if the cat could climb up, it would eventually come back down. You told her they were probably right and were about to leave her there on the sidewalk but that was before she gave you some of the most adorable puppy dog eyes and a “please”.

You asked the girl to hold your cone while you spotted the cat. It didn’t seem to be too far up into the tree. You started climbing up, grabbing a branch and hoisting yourself up. One branch made a on your green sweater, making you mumble in displeasure the rest of the way up to the cat. You should have listened to her parents as well. As soon as you had reached the cat, the damn thing ran past you and ran down the tree like a squirrel. You nearly lost your balance.

The girl thanked you even though you didn’t really do anything and ran inside her house after her cat, taking your ice cream with her. After mumbling to yourself on never falling for some puppy eyes again, you realized how far up you actually were. Your face blanched and your grip tightened around the tree branch keeping you balanced.

You felt your phone vibrate and it took you 5 minutes to actually take it out to read the message. That’s where you are at right now. Trying to message your friend Ola back, typing with one shaky thumb.

2:23pm

Stuck intr ee two block sway help

Before pressing send, you think it over. Should you message her back? You know if you tell her to come rescue you, she would come with the rest of the gang and they would never let you live it down. Is it worth it? Better that than dying up here, you think.

Going to press send, your sweaty hand loses its grip on your phone and it falls onto the grass below. “Fuck!”

“Fuck!” Someone echoes from below, startling you in return. “Shit!”

You’re practically hugging the tree at this point. The person below you speaks to you, “You scared the shit out of me. What are you doing up there?”

You hesitate to look down but brave the fear of looking down to see the woman talking to you. And what a spectacular view you have. Had you not already been weak in the knees from being so terrified, you would have some now from looking at this gorgeous person. She’s clearly waiting for your reply, so you clear your throat and say, “Rescuing a cat. What are you doing?”

“Walking to my van.” She points to the van across the street. “Where’s the cat?”

“What?” you ask. She raises an eyebrow at you. “You said you were rescuing a cat, but I don’t see any.”

“Very observant of you,” you point out, not answering her question. She narrows her eyes at you. “You’re not like some weirdo trying to peek into someone’s bedroom are you?”

You scoff. “What?! No! I’m one for one on rescuing cats, actually. It went back inside to its house.” You defend yourself. “Besides, you’re the one with the creepy ‘I’ve got candy inside my van’ van, so.”

Now this stranger looks embarrassed. “It’s for work.”

“Who do you work for? The CIA?” you joke, making the woman laugh. “They’d wish.”

It’s your turn to give her a questioning look at the odd response. She ignores it and loops back to you. “So if this great animal rescue went just like you said, why are you still up there?”

“To, uh-get better reception,” you lie. She looks at you unimpressed and you see why when she bends down to pick up the phone you dropped. “You mean for the phone that’s down here on the ground?”

You laugh nervously. She catches on when she notices how tight your hold on the tree is. “Are you sure you’re not just stuck up there?”

“What? Stuck? Me?” you laugh as if what she is saying is just offensive. “No, I just liked the peacefulness the tree provided. I dropped my phone on purpose. Yeah, I didn’t want it to distract me from really appreciating the beauty of the world around us.”

“Yeah, the McDonalds down the road really does look beautiful in the daylight,” she quips.

“It’s the wonder of the golden arches,” you retort, pulling a genuine laugh from the woman.

“Well, then I’ll leave you to it,” she says. You dryly swallow, afraid that your chance at getting down from the tree will leave with her. She speaks up again. “But before I go, would you like me to send the message to Ola that somewhat reads ‘Stuck in a tree two blocks away help’?”

She smirks and you sigh at being caught. “Okay, truth is I’m deathly afraid of heights. I didn’t realize how high I actually was until I tried coming down.”

“Well, that’s okay. It is one of the most common fears,” she reasons.

“It’s embarrassing. I can’t even look at a plane without feeling nauseous.”

“Well, I think you’ve been doing well so far. Look how long you lasted up there while looking down towards me.” She points.

“That’s only because you’re a good distraction,” you confess.

She begins to climb up towards you. “Aww, are you trying to call me beautiful?”

You blush and don’t say anything though the silence speaks for you. She finally gets to you. “I’ll take that as a yes. Now, let’s get you down this tree, Robin Hood.”

“Robin Hood?” you question the nickname. “Is it because of the tree?”

“That. Also, the tights and green top pull it all together. We just need to get you a bow and some arrows and you’ll be set.” The irony at the fact that there are plenty of arrows and bows at your cousin’s house due to her husband’s profession isn’t lost on you. Unfortunately, any joke you could make about it would get you in trouble, so you just smile at the beauty trying to help you down.

She offers you her hand and helps you get down the tree branch to branch with all the patience in the world. Not once does she complain about the death grip you have on her hand. When your feet feel the ground beneath them, you feel like crying. Instead you just let go of the stranger’s hand and try to get your heartbeat to settle down to it’s regular pace.

“Not too bad, see? Soon you’ll be bungee jumping,” she jokes.

“That’s a big leap from getting down from a tree.”

“Well, yeah. It’s bungee jumping. Leaping is the first half of the process,” she says sarcastically. You roll your eyes at her playfully. Then she smiles at you with a gleam in her eye as if she just had the best idea in the world. “How about we start with something smaller then? What are you doing on Friday?”

“Um, I don’t have any plans yet.”

“Now you do. Friday night, you will be taking the next step to conquering your fear of heights!”

“It’s not bungee jumping, is it?” you ask, petrified. As beautiful as this girl may be, risking your life for the chance to see this girl one more time doesn’t seem like a well thought out trade.

“Calm down, Robin Hood. I was thinking more along the lines of getting you to ride the ferris wheel at the fair,” she reassures you, making you blush.

“Like on a date?” you shyly ask. God, you hope you didn’t just embarrass yourself.

“Like on a date.” She smiles at you and your heart feels like it’s skipping.

“Y/N.” You throw out. She looks lost so you explain, “Every Robin Hood has a name for when they aren’t up in trees ready to rob rich people. Mine happens to be Y/N.”

“Skye.” She offers her name and you take it so willingly, letting it ruminate in your mind. “Here.” She pulls your phone out of the pocket she had put it in. She goes to your contacts and adds herself in before handing it back to you. You stare down at it in wonder.

“Well, I think your friends might be waiting on you, so…” She begins walking backwards. “I’ll see you Friday, Y/N!”

She turns around looking both ways before jogging across the street towards her van. You see her pull into the street nodding at you before driving off. You wave back after the van, dumbstruck. “What the hell just happened?” You mumble to yourself.

****

“You know when you said I would be getting on the ferris wheel, I assumed you meant you would go on it with me,” you grumble, making your way over to Skye who was waiting for you by the exit gate of the ride.

She reaches for your hand pulling you closer to her. “Some things, you have to learn to do alone. You just have to let the belief that something great will come out of pushing through your fear guide you through that fear.”

“I don’t think any funnel cake we get later was worth that experience,” you pout.

“Okay, then how about this,” she says before pulling you in to kiss you. It doesn’t last long but you let it consume you for the seconds you have. You open your eyes when she continues, “and a second date?”

“Only if it ends just like that,” you counter. She kisses you again, the second kiss leaving you just as dazed as the first.

“Deal,” she agrees, pulling you towards the funnel cake truck. “Next date, Robin Hood takes on Six Flags!”

“Wait, what?!”

_____________________________________________________________________

So, just a side little thing for some Reader and Daisy/Skye context before she eventually shows up in I Said No. It feels like I’m giving this reader a whole Universe. The world does in fact revolve around Y/N.

Obviously (or maybe not) I dropped some references to the other fic but really you could read either without needing to read the other (if it truly breaks your heart to see reader with anyone else).

@madamevirgo @marvels-writings @gayarchnemissis @myperfectlovestory @purplemeetsblue @magicallymaximoff @b0mbdotc0m @helloalycia @ironscarletwidowsoilder @cantcontroltheirfear @trikruismybitch @your-my-mission @imagine-reblog @fayhar @idek-5 @causeitswhatjesuswouldfreakingdo @bemyvitamin @musicinourlips @paumxmff @wandamaximoffsrings @yeetus-thyself @lostandsearching @when-wolves-howl @euphoriaszn2 @gingerbreadcookieforlife

#agents of shield #daisy johnson x reader #skye x reader #daisy johnson imagine #agents of shield imagine #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff x you #wanda maximoff imagine

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