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thatanimewriter · 1 year

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HOMEMADE HUGS.

➳ request: Can i make a request? I want Soma, Ryou, Akira, Alice, and Eishi (from the anime food wars) with a S/O who is neutral to fancy food or anything that is the opposite of homemade food because for them homemade food is just the best for them. It’s like they don’t the food to be like the best they just want the food to be made with love and thoughtfulness. apologize if this is too much for you to ask

➳ character/s: yukihira soma, kurokiba ryo, hayama akira, nakiri alice, tsukasa eishi

➳ warnings: swearing, hayama being homeless and orphaned as a kid, marriage fever (soma)

➳ notes: food wars is love, food wars is life, people should get over the weird foodgasms so they can actually watch art ._. (also soma is my ideal man, when can i find one-)

𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐬 / 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 / 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 / 𝐰𝐢𝐩 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

── 𝐘𝐔𝐊𝐈𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐀 𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐀.

talk your shit

he'll get you a megaphone to say it again

he agrees with you 100%

now you have to marry him btw :))

constantly trying out any new yukihira diner recipes on you

he may be at totsuki, but he still wants to take over the diner and make happiness affordable and memorable

you don't need fancy shit to bring people joy >:((

he also drags you to tons of festivals n markets to try the street food and festival food

if unhealthy, why taste good??

screaming if you ever make him something homemade

and he will scoff that shit down

he gets sick of fancy food too, so he's more than happy to have your homemade things in between classes

constantly leaning over your shoulder at the dorms to see what you're making

always licks the bowl if it's a cake or something

personal dish washer

will make you a yukihira diner dish in bento form every time you have to be away for something

comfort food and a movie at least twice a week

jokingly calls you 'wifey' regardless of gender because he's determined you'll get married for the homemade food thing

joichiro approves-

── 𝐊𝐔𝐑𝐎𝐊𝐈𝐁𝐀 𝐑𝐘𝐎.

a lowkey judgmental squint at you

-.-

he's unsure if he agrees with you

but he's never gonna say no to trying anything homemade that you offer him

will give you the hum of approval every time

maybe he's starting to see your point-

you're not always the one making him homemade food though

sometimes he comes to you to go on a cute little picnic date and has made you a special dish from denmark to share with you

will just listen to you talk while he eats and occasionally pitches in

don't challenge him too much though, because if you make a joke that your homemade food is better, you're in for it

can you have a shokugeki with 'peasant food'??

alice's words, not yours-

he's not very open with emotions but you can tell from the little smile he's suppressing that he feels loved when he eats homemade food

and it also lets him relax after classes and outside of trying to destroy soma

he gets to make cute and quaint dishes for you and not stress about the quality of the dish

n he gets to see that smile of yours :))

not that he'd ever admit that-

but like soma, he's hovering over you while you cook

probably snacking on the leftovers

── 𝐇𝐀𝐘𝐀𝐌𝐀 𝐀𝐊𝐈𝐑𝐀.

ask and you shall receive

he has probably never had a homemade meal before-

and homemade meals are now your love languages

also probably cried when you first made him something homemade

just a couple snivels and tears

that's also when he first fell in love but you won't catch him saying that to anyone else

makes you a lot of indian street food to connect more with his culture and introduce you if you're not already familiar

always makes you something if you feel upset or down

and it's always very urgent??

he's a very attentive lover

he hears you're upset and he's speed running a lil curry n naan for you and he's COMING OVER RIGHT NOW-

y'all always make lunch for each other because if you're not with each other, you feel the love you have for each other either way

and if you have lunch together, compliments (and kisses) to the chef

unlike the others, who snack on whatever is leftover while you cook for them

hayama feeds you your leftovers

gently feeding a lil carrot stick to you ;v;

he made his own spice blend that he thinks encapsulates you as a person and you definitely can't find that in stores-

people have asked him what the spice is called

n he just called it by your name

── 𝐍𝐀𝐊𝐈𝐑𝐈 𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐂𝐄.

she doesn't get it-

homemade food isn't as exquisite???

what are you on??

this is entirely because her parents are elitists and she never got HOMEmade food

got professional food only

and she doesn't know what homemade food actually tastes like

and that's kinda dumb tbh-

how does one survive without a lovingly made dish??

loving the cooking is different to making something BECAUSE you love them

so now it's your mission to convert her :))

it didn't take very long, you gave her breakfast in bed and she was sold

now she knows what love actually feels like and this is a pivotal moment

to be fair though

she can't really replicate homemade cooking for a while

because she never got taught and she can't get the strict training out of her system

how do you make molecular gastronomy homey??

it's fine, you'll just have to teach her

bonding time in the kitchen

she'll get the hang of it eventually, but for now she's fine with just having you cook loving meals for her

── 𝐓𝐒𝐔𝐊𝐀𝐒𝐀 𝐄𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐈.

somehow it's more nerve wracking making a homemade dish than a fancy one

because you like homemade things more ;v;

and he doesn't want to disappoint you

also probably doesn't know how to make a homemade meal-

are you sure you can't just treat him??

he's baby

he can't handle this shit :((

gladly takes homemade food from you though

but he wants cuddles while he eats your cooking

will also learn to make more homemade things and let go of the reins a little bit with PRESTIGE

probably also cried when he first tried your cooking

and this is lowkey what he wishes totsuki was

less stressful, more time with you, no more panic attacks-

the first time he ever gave you a homemade meal he was sweating bullets and shaking like crazy

but he got rewards, so now he does it all the time

kisses

"you could just ask for a kiss, you know."

"...'s so embarrassing..."

you now know a homemade meal means he wants kisses

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y-rhywbeth2 · 7 months

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Lore: Life in Faerûn, Part 1

Disclaimer & Other Stuff [tldr: D&D lore is a giant conflicting mess. Larian's lore is also a conflicting mess. You learn to take what you want and leave the rest]

---

Demihumans in common society (ie human society); common is not a daily language; the postal service; some stuff about gender, gender roles and body modification in the Realms; social strata... Plus some details about other things - most of which will be built on in other posts.

Also featuring; what to do with your leisure time in the realms: like literature, theatre, cafés, where to go clubbing aaand the festhalls.

Education: church school, rich idiots at academies, bardic colleges, etc.

And how good medicine is on Toril, if you can't find a spellcaster to heal you. Baths are both mandatory and freely available, we shall have no unwashed peasants in this setting.

-----

Humans are the dominant peoples of the Realms, and the vast majority of cultures one will find oneself in are human cultures. Nine-in-ten people are human, with the one remainder being one of any of the eight non-humans (some of whom are more commonly encountered than others).

Most of what is said here refers to human lands and cultures (which is 99% of the world anyway), and non-human cultures I'll cover in their own write ups.

Humans mostly know the other "common" races - elves, dwarves, halflings and gnomes, whom they call "demihumans" or "humanoids" - as trade partners or as neighbours belonging to minority groups within their home cities.

Demihumans are mostly accepted as fellow citizens within human lands, although the elves are often viewed with mistrust due to the stereotype that they are fickle fey creatures who get uppity when you start tearing down nature and building your cities in their lands. This tolerance is not extended to people who are categorised as monsters, including the Underdark races, tieflings and "goblinkin" - a category that includes orcs, goblins, bugbears and so forth. Half-orcs usually find themselves being sorted into this category, and most have to deal with a lot of respectability politics in order to be accepted into their human family's lands. Elves and dwarves also share this hostility towards orcs, and have a long history of wars with them.

The hin (halflings, to non-hin) and gnomes who find themselves living in human cities are accepted by being seen as useful in the eyes of the Big Folk. Both are known as being useful as couriers, tinkers and repairmen, and for running laundromats. Gnomes in particular are the chief inventors and innovators of the realms, and due to their tendency to be quiet and helpful they are heavily overlooked by others.

Dragonborn are a rare sight, but have mostly built a reputation of respect.

Most humans do not know much about non-human cultures, knowing them only through story, rumour and whatever personal experience they have. Stereotypes are often taken at face value, and being more used to the likes of lightfoot halflings and silver elves, the average person would probably be quite surprised by the different cultural attitudes and colder receptions they'd get from, say, ghostwise halflings or gold elves.

Outside of cosmopolitan areas, where your neighbour can punch you in the face for stupid comments, humans feel no particular pressure to be respectful to demihumans and foreigners, and would roll their eyes at what their Earth equivalents would call "political correctness" if you told them off.

On the nonhumans' end, humans are watched with concern, as they do tend to cause their fair share of disasters that rapidly become everyone's problem.

Many of the people of Faerûn move around a lot; religious pilgrims, traders, immigrants and those bloody adventurers transcend the boundaries of culture and country on a daily basis. For this reason, the Common tongue was invented.

People do not use Common as a daily language, though certain terms may enter daily speech as loanwords. Common is a pidgin trade tongue that grew out of Old Chondathan and Alzhedo (mostly the former), the language spoken in Central and Western Faerûn. It's a simple language, easy to learn and spread around, and useful for exchanging basic information with people from other lands who don't share a language with you - but it's useless for daily life. While it has a written form, most people can't read or write in it.

Maps are rare, and if you want an accurate map you'll usually find it in the possession of local rulers and temples (which supply the Realms with most of their scribes and such). Each realm has a book of maps (atlas) available for the use of their military and other officials.

If you want to send a package or letter in the Realms, temples often double as a post office. The delivery will be sent from temple to temple until it reaches its destination and will be delivered to the addressee,

Most of the Realms does not consider men or women to be inherently lesser or greater than the other and all genders are equal under all laws, though they do have traditional gender roles that it's believed most are better suited for - or at least areas where one gender is more represented than the other. Women dominate in trade and domestic areas, while men dominate in war and crafting, however it isn't considered immoral or unthinkable to see somebody defying the gender norm. If your daughter picks up a sword, learns to use it and runs away to fight dragons your primary concerns are less "oh no, a girl is fighting" and far more likely about the threat to her life and who in the hells is going to help you run the family store now if she has no siblings? Gender roles can be looser or more rigid, depending on where in the Realms you go. Some realms may be Patriarchal or Matriarchal, but it's not the rule and some of these places have grown more egalitarian over time.

Organisations do not generally discriminate in any way based on gender when it comes to their members.

The term for transgender in the Common tongue is sildur. (Elven: Alur, Dwarvish: Thulol, Gnome: Thoulal, Hin: Zalshaer) Transmutation magic is the primary form of body modification and transitioning on Toril, although apparently most people will turn towards divine magic before trusting a wizard to do it. Mages are expensive to hire and viewed with some measure of fear by the common person.

You can petition the gods at their temples for body modifications in return for sufficient offerings, if you don't trust wizards. Be that "I want to be blond" or "I don't want these breasts." Exactly how much and what the god is going to expect in exchange for this varies on the faith of the petitioner and the past relationship between them and the god. Naturally, certain gods are favoured above others for this kind of thing. You're more likely to petition Sune (love and beauty) or Liira (joy and freedom) than the likes of Bane and Shar. ---

Faerûn has its social classes, defined by wealth and family lineage, but they do not have true feudal or caste systems, or any system where upwards social mobility is totally impossible (though the upper classes will certainly do their best to prevent that. (Hi, Waterdeep, I'll give you your own post)). Any commoner could theoretically gain a noble title to the distress of the hereditary nobility. In Sembia if you have enough coin, you can just give yourself a title and everyone has to shut up and go along with it, because money. And that's how most of them got theirs anyway.

Slavery is illegal in all of Faerûn with the exception of Dambrath, Thay, Mulhorand and Unther. The slave trade still exists underground elsewhere, and is quietly overlooked in some places, but it is considered evil by the world at large and somebody found to be a slaver will be met with violent reprisal.

Nobles are... well, nobles. They're rich and have powerful friends and the law is far nicer to them than to the lower classes. They're mostly corrupt and constantly scheming against each other. Their kids go through rebellious stages and do drugs and cause chaos for the commoners and join weird cults.

Landownership outside of kingdoms and such with codified property law generally follows the rules that you can do what you like with whatever land you hold; charge rent, put up signs, make the rules... but you own it only by the tolerance of your neighbours. If they don't like the way you do things, you're quickly going to find yourself in trouble. Also led to my one of my new favourite quotes:

“If you set up an inn and then murder everyone who stops there and keep their goods, even if that’s morally acceptable to you as a devout follower of Bane or of Cyric, it will not be suffered to stand."

Yes! Screw you, edgelord!

Crime and punishment varies depending on where you are, but carries fun stuff like fines, brandings, prison labour, floggings, stockades and executions. I think the concept of the law, "justice" and court proceedings will be left for another post where I will passive aggressively judge a young Astarion and his corrupt magistrate ways.

Leisure:

Literature: Literacy is a hit and a miss in the Realms. Some people prize literacy, and it's common enough that broadsheets and newspapers are in business and PCs can read and write by default; but there are still others who can't and couldn't care less if they can't read some bard's chicken scratch. The ruling class in particular gets a little nervous about the idea of a fully literate populace, since that would allow them to be educated, and better suited to communicate with each other and get ideas. That bit varies though. Cormyr, for example. has encouraged its population to learn to read and get educated for several reasons including making it harder for the country to be infiltrated by enemy spies.

Chapbooks are serially published cheap little paperback things. They contain all sorts of things, like children's tales, donated recipes, political opinions, random bits of advice from people on trades and such, gossip from other countries disguised as news, memoirs, and smut. The rating of that last bit varies in rating. In Waterdeep they favour romantic stories over sex and over in Amn they're just flat out publishing porn about the goddesses of love and sensuality, Sune and Sharess - with the full support and encouragement of their churches.

The most popular genre of actual novels is the personal travel logs of explorers and other wanderers. The Realms are flooded with such books.

There are also non-fiction books available. Philosophy (which is written through the lens of religion, as a rule); books on rulership (controlled by the noble class, sometimes outlawed); and on business (which are subject to attempted control by the likes of merchant guilds)

Book printing is a sketchy business. Authors may one day discover that there are whole new best selling reprints of their books they've never been informed of (or paid for). Plagiarism is also a common problem.

Theatre: Aside from actual theatres, there are a few ways to catch a play.

Traveling caravans are known to sport a few actors, who can make a bit of extra money for the group by putting on a performance as well as advertising the stock their caravan carries (product placement everywhere). Most bards have the "classic" scenes of famous plays memories, so as to perform them on demand.

Theatres often hire doppelgangers, as their shapeshifting ability is very useful in realistically portraying monstrous characters too dangerous to actually hire. Of course there's also this little issue where your doppelganger hirelings may start killing people outside of work hours, but eh. The show must go on.

There are also puppet shows like Punch-and-Judy called Oldboots - because the shows are actually done by wearing worn old boots on your hands instead of actual puppets.

Establishments: Alehouses - Pubs and bars, existing primarily for those looking for an alcoholic beverage. The term "barkeeper" is unknown to Torilians, who would refer to them as tavernmasters. The word "mug" and "pint" also do not exist. Inns and Alehouses don't have menus, you're eating whatever's being cooked.

Dining-house or Feasthall - Known to us as a restaurant. Establishments are also known by the Chondathan word skaethar which is used as a formal term in Common in other parts of the world. In larger inns, one might find a section of the building that acts as a dining-house. Most of the time the menu is a chalk board on the wall, informing customers what's fresh. The really fancy ones, visited by the rich (or those who want to seem so) get paper menus printed by machine or made with fancy calligraphy.

Kaeth house - A café. Coffee is known in the Realms as kaeth or kaethae - or "fireswill", colloquially. The drink is rare and expensive northwards of Calimshan, but is available in large cosmopolitan trade cities, as far North as Waterdeep. Calishite coffee is taken black with nuts and spices like ginger. Sembian and Chessentan styles of coffee are often mixed with chocolate and liqueur. In lands where coffee is widely known, they tend to have their own drinking utensils and customs around it, but in the north it's just served in tankards. Hot chocolate is also on the menu. Teas exist, but are less popular and are seen as a medicinal drinks.

Temples of Liira - The goddess of joy and revelry charges her followers with hosting parties and making everyone they meet is having fun and feeling happy. As such, going to her temples is kind of like going clubbing. The main hall of the temple is a dance hall, with other rooms branching off to include lounges and a well-stocked bar. Liirans also offer dance lessons.

Temples of Sune - As devotees of the goddess of beauty, Sunites are obligated to give you a makeover if you ask, so this is a good destination for a haircut, pedicure or fashion consultation or whatever. As Sune is also the goddess of love, Sunites can also be asked for matchmaking services. The church also sponsors schools and classes teaching all forms of art (including music, song, performance arts, etc).

Festhalls - Try not to confuse these with feasthalls, or you're going to have an embarrassing time. Ah Festhalls, where to start. They're spaces considered outside of society; everyone leaves their real life, identity, social rank and all of that outside and comes here to just let go for a few hours. Festhalls will provide you with a warm bed for the night; they'll wash, mend and dry your clothes; they have hot baths and spa services; you can dance to music, or just lounge around enjoying a good drink and some company; it's also something of a casino, where you can play cards and gamble or even just play normal board games or something... And they're strip clubs, BDSM scenes and specialty brothels! You got a kink none of the brothels can scratch? Festhalls provide and cater to goddamn anything that turns you on, so long as it's legal, safe, sane and consensual.

---

Education: What counts as an education varies from place to place and depends on what the realm desires of its public. Some places will emphasise the commoners knowing the basics of military drills, the chain of command and such in case of the need for a levy. Other places, like trade centres such as Waterdeep, prioritise maths and literacy.

In most of the Realms - especially in rural areas, a basic informal tutoring involves teaching basic maths, local laws and customs and some basic knowledge of the alphabet and market/road signs.

Most schooling is done by priests, which is free to the public. Unless you're dealing with the sketchier gods or the ones with deeper mysteries, all clergy are also happy to teach everything about their faith when asked. While some may obscure less savoury details, no follower of any god will outright lie about the details of their faith, as that is considered a sin.

If you're not rich you can get a basic education by hiring "low sages" - the likes of book shop owners, hedge mages, retired adventurers and other people with access to information who can share with you what they know. Of course, what they know may not be the most accurate information in the world.

You can also purchase some basic short paperback school books.

Most trades guilds will provide a basic education in that trade in exchange for a coin or two. Although some of this will simply just be "don't do this at home, hire a professional." They also hold classes open to the public now and then.

Schools as educational organisations also exist and are usually founded by bards or monastic orders in large cities. Most schools and academies are simply a handful of ageing, well educated people with a house who provide lessons for enrolled children there - though larger establishments exist.

For nobles there are Academies, which will also teach their children social etiquette and other things the upper class needs to worry over lest their reputation drop so low it falls into the Lower Planes and dies in the River Styx. Sometimes these Academies are actually just social clubs for young rich idiots to get drunk, do drugs and have orgies in, but that's not so common and gets shut down when it does happen.

While the rich and powerful have the opportunity to send their darlings to Academies, they'd rather not. It's... embarrassing. It means you can't afford a private tutor (or that your darling is a brat with a personality that suggests they're a demon spawned in the Abyss).

Bards are usually trained at Bardic Colleges - these vary in quality and specialty (some may be better for certain instruments, for example). The only requirements for entry are that one passes an audition, impressing their interviewers enough that they are taken on.

Civic information is typically freely available to anyone who asks for it, and courtiers and scribes are obligated to share the information.

---

Medicine: Medicine is primarily the practice of demihumans, who've been around for much longer than humans and had more practice. They also tend to hold the market, finding a place for themselves in human lands by offering their services as physicians and herbalists.

Faerûnians have an almost Earth-level awareness of human anatomy; the organs and their function, the function of blood and the cardiovascular system as well as the risks of shock and infections are common knowledge. While the concept of microbes and spread of disease is unknown, the importance of hygiene in staying healthy is known, and there are establishments that offer baths and laundry services to travellers and homeless people. The filthy unwashed peasant is not a thing on Toril. Plagues are not as disastrous as they were in Earth history - most households and communities will avoid being totally wiped out, but they are terrible and mysterious things and the afflicted are avoided.

Medicines as we know them - called "physics" - are expensive and hard to get ahold of, and most people rely on herb lore or priests like clerics and druids. Herbal anaesthetics are widely used. Cauterisation is a common practice, and many people have scars from it.

Most trade towns have apothecaries, be they part of a shrine or a business.

Physicians are often in conflict with divine spellcasters, since they're competing over the same market.

Some diseases are known by different names in the Realms: Windchill fever - Pneumonia Sallar - Typhus Whitewasting - Leprosy Foamjaws - Rabies And a heart attack is known as a heartstop.

#hunting down Ed Greenwood's notes and twitter posts can be a pain #bg3 #baldurs gate 3 #long post

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knightsickness · 6 months

Note

If you like TMA and HOTD, which Fears do you think the HOTD characters would be?

!! fun question had to think about it

broadly the targs are desolation-aligned fire and blood lets burn another woman to death in childbirth to produce our unburnt messiah etc. rhaenyra and daemon(+aemond) especially desolationpilled bc theyre both mimicking visenya the most desolation targ ever. however i dont think they actively worship the desolation in the way most cults do i think its almost a byproduct of their family imperial cult and idealisation of old valyria. viserys idealises a kind of glorious conquerer’s desolation of the past but is not cognisant of the destruction his own wellmeaning peoplepleasing is wreaking

velaryons strongly vast-aligned the wide open sea and the wide open sky, fear of majesty and the dizzying superiority of others, but as the dance goes on and they lose everything become more lonely-aligned. me and the sea with my children at the bottom and the fog and the fog and the fog

otto is eye-aligned but not in a sincere faith actually believes in the cult’s goals or ideals way but in an elias following the eye bc the insight it grants him can be used to further his own murderous scheming way. alicent is eye-aligned in a being raised by otto has made her constantly obsessively paranoid about being watched by others or a higher power and found wanting and has in response developed a sort of spiteful self-defensive watching rhaenyra’s indiscretions with her lip curled faith

larys has some eye tendencies type of guy to crank off to a four car pile up and there is something to be said for him being a bit like otto as part of his relationship w alicent. however imo he’s corruption-aligned fear of rot deformity/disease and unhealthy love relationships. hes not into the flesh hive or the collective angle but i would lean into the he controls and listens through vermin theory thats vv fun

i think the horror of the construction of harrenhal was a huge fear event it got the attention of half the entities i think the bones of harrenhal are aligned with the flesh/corruption/buried/web/slaughter and any lord who holds it never leaves without taking one with him

all knights slaughter-aligned to some extent chivalric cult and soldiers are a slaughter institution but criston is like. ridiculously insanely slaughter aligned. senseless violence and butchery especially when enmeshed in some papery shell of i didnt have a choice it was out of my hands hands bloody all the time even when they arent. lancelot did many people see me while i was mad quote

helaena is strongly end-aligned fear of death often prophets and dives much further into this after b&c thats her madness. cassandra girl also not a single person notices

i want one of the great houses to be hunt-aligned (in a combination of jocular aristocratic hunting culture and peasant fear of being a resource hunted for sport cannon fodder) or flesh-aligned (eat your young class and body horror) feeling baratheon and lannister

#a song of ice and fire #asoiaf #hotd #house of the dragon #tma #the magnus archives #rhaenyra targaryen #daemon targaryen #aemond targaryen #corlys velaryon #rhaenys targaryen #viserys targaryen #otto hightower #alicent hightower #larys strong #criston cole #helaena targaryen

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whitefoxgirl · 10 months

Text

🦊Culture Shock🐰 A Jungkook Series - Episode 5: Television/Shows (Ft. Yoongi) (+ mini scenario)

Summary: Jungkook starts a podcast with his best friend who is a foreigner to discuss different topics they were shocked culturally about.

Author's Note: Hello my beautiful readers! I GOT A JOB! WOOOOOO!!! I manifested this!

Author's Note PS: If you'd like to be tagged, interact with this. I am tagging people who reblog, but if you wish to be tagged comment or simply reblog and I will add you! If you see your name in red, I was unable to tag you for some reason, so for that I do apologize.

Pairing: Jungkook x BFF!Reader (not dating, just two best friends)

Fandom: BTS

Warnings: Mentions of sex, cringy, full of crack moments.

Genre: Fluff, crack.

Word Count: 5.3k

Taglist: @7ndipity; @yoongimentita7; @ancoraesisto; @lovemeforeternity; @hrtss4jk; @ellelabelle; @fullpaperperfection; @minpdrecs; @chaconnelatte; @myemmap; @4ev3rdarkarti5t; @hushbabesblog; @drop-dead-yulisa; @bubbletae-1e; @alylista; @jarenpolitovari

🡸 Previous episode

[PODCAST INTRO/THEME]

🦊: *bumps into the mic* Oop! *in between chuckles* Sorry guys!~

Jungkook: Get it together!

🦊: Oh my god~ HEY, King!

Jungkook: Hello peasant.

Yoongi: *snickers*

🦊: O- You know what? That's mean~

Jungkook: *trying not to laugh* Okay

🦊: He's just pouty because he lost in a 1-v-1 on Splatoon against me. Jungkook: It's a stupid game~ Why is it in third person?~ And, why can you see my snipper laser?

🦊: Just get over it!~

Jungkook: Okay!~ Fine! *long pause* For our listeners~

🦊: Exactly. For our listeners~

Jungkook: Before we begin, we do have a millennial in our sights.

🦊: *snickers*

Jungkook: *in between chuckles* This is our second guest! Min Yoongi!~

🦊: *claps their hands*

Yoongi: Hello everyone! I'm Suga from BTS.

Jungkook: Hyung, don't be so formal~ Our listeners don't care.

🦊: Legit, they like that we're relatable.

Yoongi: Okay, okay

🦊: Just like Suchwita.

Yoongi: Without the alcohol.

Jungkook: *gasps* Should we?!~

🦊: *gasps* Daehyun?

*long pause* *muffled voice*

🦊: *gasps* Okay! I'll get it! *in a distant voice* Whiskey?

Yoongi: Yes, please

Jungkook: Get us a beer, please!~

[Spongebob Narrator: Five minutes later]

🦊: We all have our alcohol!~

Yoongi: Thank you, Y/N.

Jungkook: Thank you!

🦊: I would just like to say, we saw Barbie~

Jungkook: We saw Barbie.

Yoongi: Oh! I haven't seen it.

🦊: *gasps* Oh my god~ You know, it's okay. I'll take you.

Jungkook: Y/N cried!

Yoongi: Really?~ Why?

Both: Well-

🦊: Okay! First off, I did NOT expect that Billie Eilish song to hit me so hard!

Jungkook: And not to give spoilers but, it was everything good.

🦊: It's a TRUE feminist icon. It's not misandry, which is what basically every publication is saying it is-

Jungkook: Oh! Absolutely not.

🦊: And it's not misogyny. It's true feminism. Wh-

Jungkook: Without spoiling anything, it had all three-

🦊: Yeah!

Jungkook: It had misandry, misogyny, AND feminism. And it showed how both misandry and misogyny can just be downright ugly and hurtful for the people who are being disliked, and prejudiced while feminism is genuinely something we should all aspire to do.

Yoongi: Oh! I'll give it a shot.

🦊: I saw that in East Asia, a lot of women are taking their partners, especially their cis-male partners, to see Barbie. And basically, they're testing how much of a green flag they are depending on how they feel before the movie, how long they last during the movie and what is their thoughts after the movie.

Jungkook: Oh! Wait, am I a green flag?

🦊: *long pause* Well-

Jungkook: *in between laughs* WHY'RE YOU THINKING ABOUT IT?!

Yoongi: *laughs*

🦊: *in between laughs* Okay! You're the type of green that is making its way toward yellow, but it's not completely yellow.

Jungkook: Okay, at least I'm not completely yellow or orange OR RED!

Yoongi: Be grateful.

🦊: Exa- Thank you, Yoongi!~

Jungkook: Definitely watch it, hyung.

Yoongi: Would you have watched it if Y/N hadn't taken you to the movies?

Jungkook: *silence*

*Yoongi and 🦊 laugh loudly*

Jungkook: Okay! Okay! I would have, but I would not have dressed up!

🦊: I was SO surprised we were the only ones dressed up!

Jungkook: Obviously, I was Ken!

🦊: I dressed up as Barbie!

Yoongi: Y/N when we go, do you wanna dress up too?

🦊: *gasps* Really?!

Yoongi: Yeah, I'll be K-

🦊: No~ Be Allan~ Because you're one of a kind~

Jungkook: *gasps* OH! Okay RIZZGOD!

Yoongi: *snickers then laughs*

Jungkook: You trying to rizz up Yoongi-hyung?

🦊: No~ *long pause* Okay, yeah~

*All laugh*

🦊: Before we begin! I would just like to say that this topic was thought up by Jungkook.

Yoongi: I would have liked to participate in the music one.

🦊: Oh! We can have your opinion on that!

Yoongi: *long pause* Well, I would but honestly Jungkook basically said what I thought about reggaetón.

🦊: Fair enough. I know you have some... *chuckles* Opinions on dembow and phonk.

Yoongi: *chuckles* They're just not for me, but you and Jungkook look like you have fun while dancing to it.

Jungkook: And not like... perreando!

🦊: OH! HE ROLLED HIS R'S!~

Jungkook: Rrrrr~ *laughs* We just goof around.

🦊: We meme dance.

Yoongi: *chuckles*

🦊: Like... You know how there's the stereotype that white people can't dance? We dance like that stereotype.

Jungkook: Just for fun. Not to make fun of anyone.

🦊: Mmno

Yoongi: They look cute together.

Jungkook: We're not dating.

🦊: So, in this episode we're gonna talk about television shows.

Jungkook: Y/N wanted to bring Yoongi on because he's about to head to th-

🦊: Oh my god! Please don't remind me!

Yoongi: *snickers then laughs*

Jungkook: Y/N is really close to all seven of us, but they're especially close to Hobi-hyung, Yoongi-hyung, and me. And since Hobi-hyung is already there~

🦊: I'm suffering...

Jungkook: They have- Okay, they have not taken it well!

Yoongi: Really?

🦊: Yeah... I think that's why in the last episode I cried. You told us- Or, rather, told your close friends when you were leaving, and it was no joke, the day before we decided to record.

Yoongi: Oh!~ I'm sorry!

🦊: I really tried to hold it in, but like thinking about Hobi already being there, and you leaving, just made me think, you know-

Yoongi: It's inevitable...

🦊: Yeah... Jungkook is gonna leave too, and that made me really sad because Hobi and you are my close friends, and that hurts. And I have cried. But Jungkook is my BEST friend... So...

Jungkook: But it's not like you're NOT gonna see us for a year and a half. We saw Hobi-hyung and Jin-hyung!

🦊: Oh my god, I hugged Hobi SO HARD! You guys have no idea. I lowkey cried too.

Jungkook: Both of them had tears in their eyes.

Yoongi: It was so beautiful to see.

🦊: *singing* When did it end?~ All the enjoyment?~

Jungkook: *singing* I'm sad again!~

Both: *singing* Don't tell my boyfriend~

Jungkook: *singing* It's not what he's made for~

Yoongi: *chuckles*

Jungkook: Going back to it.

Yoongi: Mhm.

Jungkook: Y/N wanted you here to get a perspective of shows you watched as a kid since when you were in first grade, we were both just about to be born.

🦊: *snickers*

Yoongi: *hums* Interesting.

🦊: Which, okay, let's be honest. You at the age of 12 were already a professional producer, so...-

Jungkook: Ballin' with a dollar in his pocket.

Yoongi: I was making money but it wasn't like-

🦊: A lot.

Yoongi: Exactly.

Jungkook: Funny how we brought a guest who didn't watch-

Yoongi: *laughs*

Jungkook: *in between chuckles* A lot of television as a kid.

🦊: But he wasn't ostracized, right?

Yoongi: *in between chuckles* No~ no... I did see it here and there, I just didn't dedicate my time to it since I was focused on music.

🦊: We love an ambitious person.

Jungkook: I didn't watch a lot of television either, but, Y/N introduced me to a lot of shows.

🦊: And he doesn't have time for a lot of them but-

Jungkook: The ones that I really like, I invest A LOT of time. I poop with my phone on my lap-

*Yoongi and 🦊 laugh*

Jungkook: *in between laughs* Everywhere! I try not to lose sleep, but when I'm invested. I am in. ves. ted!

🦊: I remember when I was obsessed with "House of Dragons" and I wanted to gatekeep it from Kookie because~

Jungkook: Wh-!

🦊: BECAUSE! It's such like... Okay, it's the prequel to "Game of Thrones" and the television series is over, but the BOOK series is not over! So I didn't want you to get invested so that afterward you get disappointed!

Jungkook: I didn't know that the "Game of Thrones" ending in the series is not canon!

Yoongi: It's not canon and in the book, Jon is still asleep or in a comma.

🦊: Iconic.

Yoongi: Y/N got me into it because they know that I would get invested but I don't make it my personality, like Jungkook and them.

🦊: Yoongi is an observer~

Jungkook: He is.

🦊: Slytherin energy~

Yoongi: *imitates a snake*

*Jungkook and 🦊 laugh*

🦊: First things first, my first exposure to East Asian shows was anime. And I don't remember which one came first because they all kind of merged together in my head, and it was "Inuyasha", "Naruto", "Pokémon", and "Yu-gi-oh!"

Yoongi: Interesting, because all those shows are from the 90's.

Jungkook: Yeah, when I was born those were already long running.

🦊: Well, I think it's because getting them to the western side, especially to the U.S. and Latin America, took some time.

Yoongi: In Korea, Pokémon first aired in 1999, and I was 6~

🦊: Oh! Puerto Rico, it was also 1999 too

Yoongi: You watched it from the womb?

🦊: *snickers* *in between laughs* Okay! Okay! I remember watching the first episode but I GENIUNELY don't remember how old I was.

Jungkook: I didn't watch ANY western shows as a kid other than Spongebob.

🦊: The icon himself!

Yoongi: Jungkook and Y/N watch Spongebob for fun.

Jungkook: But the first seasons, you know?

🦊: It's the most fun, you can tell when the creator walked away and when it because just not fun.

Jungkook: Mhm.

Yoongi: So, what's your culture shock?

🦊: Oh! Okay! Sorry! Okay, so, I did get exposed to shows, but it was interesting when I grew up I started watching dramas. And with dramas, there's like reality shows and stuff like that.

Yoongi: Right, for promo.

🦊: Exactly. Especially if you wanna be *in between chuckles* Delulu~ And you fall in love with the actor's looks~ And~ *laughs*

*Yoongi and Jungkook laugh*

🦊: Wanna get to know them?~

Yoongi: Right, right.

🦊: One of the things that I picked up on quickly was, the plots were all the same. Poor girl meets asshole rich dude. The rich dude has either a cousin, brother, friend, like someone close to him who is just the nicest person ever and THAT'S the love rival. She still chooses the rich asshole because he changed for her, but then something happens. The most common one is that the mom of the rich asshole finds out and pays her to leave, then one of them has an accident and somehow they make it work and boom. Happily ever after.

Yoongi: That's pretty much the jist of them.

🦊: But, my biggest culture shock is the variety shows.

Jungkook: Really?

🦊: Yeah, I just... Okay. It was- I had a weird feeling, like, I didn't know how to feel.

Jungkook: Why, what happened?

🦊: Okay, so, I remember the first one I watched was Weekly Idol, or Doni and Coni which... EW! They're... I remember when I watched you guys' episode, like the first time you were there and I loved it because I was a child. But watching it as an adult? I was like... Oh my god-

Jungkook: *chuckles* Your ARMY is showing.

🦊: I just! Okay... I just don't understand how someone can harass and be so mean to their guests and get away with it because it's "comedy"... Like... How is saying that Yoongi's song was "shit" comedy?

Jungkook: Ugh...

Yoongi: People have their own opinions, I guess.

🦊: Well, their opinion is WRONG. Like... Side eye. You could have just said it wasn't your taste without saying that it was bad and shit, you know?

Yoongi: I agree.

🦊: But, going back to it, the variety shows took me aback because everything is over-edited.

Jungkook: What do you mean?

🦊: Like... They put colorful subtitles on almost every sentence and these subtitles could be what the person is saying, what the person is doing, or what the editors think the person's inner thoughts are.

Jungkook: Ooooh! I hadn't noticed that. But, it's true~

🦊: And then replaying something shocking multiple times in *in between chuckles* multiple angles

Yoongi: *chuckles* 맞아~

🦊: Which, if you think about it, it's very stimulating and lowkey catering to the deaf community, since closed captions and interpreters are in scarcity on the Western side.

Jungkook: I hadn't really thought about it that way, but it's true~

🦊: That was my biggest culture shock. I got used to it after a while but, you know?

Yoongi: Were you shocked about the games?

🦊: *hums* Okay, so, I was but at the same time I wasn't? I don't know how to explain it.

Jungkook: Says as they're about to explain *chuckles*

🦊: *chuckles* So, I wasn't shocked because variety shows on the Western side also have games, but I was shocked at how queerbait-y the games are.

Yoongi: Like passing a paper member to member with our lips

🦊: It's so obvious fan service, but fan service can be very queerbait-y.

Yoongi: That's true.

🦊: Like, shipping friends with each other is... *groans* Not good~

Jungkook: Yeah.

🦊: But, yeah, I don't have any negative culture shock. Except for me being a Doni and Coni lowkey-highkey hater.

*all laugh*

Yoongi: Y/N introduced me to a lot of 90's shows. And, even though this wraps into the music category, I was shocked at how rock-inspired a lot of shows' intro was.

🦊: Which shows do you have in mind?

Yoongi: "Total Drama Island", "Teen Titans" from the 2000s. "American Dragon: Jake Long", and "Ben 10".

🦊: Okay but the other ones~

Yoongi: We saw "Wizards of Waverly Place", "Hannah Montana", "Sonny with a Chance" and a couple others with real people. And some of those also had inspiration in pop-rock.

🦊: Which is so 2000s if you think about it.

Yoongi: Was pop-rock popular in the 2000s?

🦊: In the western side, ESPECIALLY in the U.S. it was very popular.

Yoongi: I was just listening to hip-hop.

Jungkook: Yes he was~ Hip-hop classes were real.

Yoongi: You loved them

Jungkook: I did!~

🦊: As you can hear, Yoongi truly is an observer.

Jungkook: That was your culture shock?

Yoongi: Yeah!~ I was exposed to U.S. culture fairly young since I really like hip-hop culture.

🦊: What was your culture shock, Galletita?

Jungkook: Mine was... I guess the pipeline?

Yoongi: Pipeline?

🦊: Ooh~

Jungkook: So, Y/N basically explained that there's a pipeline of television, especially if you grew up in the 2000s.

🦊: Yep.

Jungkook: Basically, every kid in the U.S. watched either Disney channel with sitcoms or watched cartoons, but all of them came together to watch the hot new show-

JK and 🦊: "Total Drama Island"!

Jungkook: And basically "Total Drama Island" was-

Yoongi: It was a cartoon reality show.

Jungkook: Exactly. So it didn't take long for a lot of kids to get into real reality shows like "Next", "Cribs", and basically any reality show on MTV.

🦊: The pipeline gets split though. If you continued to watch cartoons, you get into anime. The pipeline goes EVEN DEEPER because if you watched anime, and listened to the openings, you probably got into Vocaloids, which are synthesized voca- I don't know why I'm telling you, yo-

Yoongi: I know about Vocaloids, yeah. I danced with one.

🦊: I. CO. NIC! I was genuinely SO jealous when I found out you were dancing with her. SeeU was SUCH an icon.

Yoongi: *laughs* Really?

🦊: I- Well, I fell in BOTH pipelines, but, I definitely fell more into the anime one.

Yoongi: Right.

🦊: But like, the vocaloid pipeline somehow brings you to the kpop pipeline. Which WEIRDLY the heavy metal rock or even rock music pipeline ALSO brings you to the kpop pipeline.

Yoongi: Interesting.

Jungkook: So, one day Y/N got nostalgic and we kind of watched a show that they were into as a child and I, unknowingly, also followed Y/N's pipeline.

Yoongi: Do we have a pipeline?

Jungkook: *long pause* I guess one of the biggest pipeline is that a lot of men in Korea want to be in either entertainment OR sports just to avoid military duty.

Yoongi: Which is not common, but happens a LOT!

🦊: Did you follow that pipeline?

Yoongi: No, hell no. I wanted to be a producer from a very young age not because I wanted to avoid military duty, but because I genuinely love music.

🦊: You did say it was your first love.

Yoongi: It was.

🦊: *sighs smiling*

Jungkook: If we had a camera recording us, I would look at it as if I was Jim from "The Office"

🦊: *snickers then laughs* Why?~

Jungkook: If you know, you know.

Yoongi: *long pause* I feel like I'm out of the loop for the first time.

🦊: You and I both.

Jungkook: You're ALWAYS out of the loop.

🦊: Okay! If I was out of the loop, how did I find out about the aliens BEFORE you?

Jungkook: Oh god~

Yoongi: What kind of aliens would you like? Ones that can transform like Ben 10? Aliens that look human but have superpowers? Or shapesh-

🦊: SHAPESHIFTING!

*Jungkook and Yoongi laughs*

🦊: You guys DON'T understand! If the aliens could shapeshift, I have a LIST!

Jungkook: *in between laughs* A LIST?!?!

🦊: *in between laughs* I have a list that the alien MUST follow!

Yoongi: Who's on top of the list?

🦊: Okay, right now, Toji Fushiguro~

Yoongi: Mmmm~

🦊: I have a lot of people, mainly anime men, because... I can bag a human.

Jungkook: You can't BAG YOUR CRUSH!

🦊: *gasps*

Yoongi: Jungkook-ah!~ *chuckles* Be nice to Y/N!

🦊: I can bag him, I'm just being respectful.

Yoongi: Exactly... Y/N just respects people's boundaries. Wait... So... Who's on the bottom?

🦊: Sukuna. Ryomen Sukuna. But, not because he's not hot, it's just tha- *muffled giggles*

Yoongi: Oh! They're covering their face!

Jungkook: *groans* Here we go

🦊: He has four arms~

Yoongi: *long pause* Right...

🦊: Two mouths~

Yoongi: *long pause* Okay...

🦊: *long pause* And one of those mouths can move anywhere.

Yoongi: Wait... *snickers* Are you...? *laughs* Are you sayin- I don't even wanna say it!

🦊: I'll say it for you!

Jungkook: *laughs* Stop!

🦊: Please let me say it!

Jungkook: Okay!~

🦊: I want an alien to shapeshift into Ryomen Sukuna because he has four arms, so, he can touch my chest with one hand, guide me with the other hand, stimulate my *clears throats* south with the other hand, and grab the back of my head and pull my hair with the other.

Jungkook: You're forgetting something.

🦊: Oh! Because one of the mouths can move, while he's kissing me, he can lick ANYWHERE he wants with the OTHER tongue~

Yoongi: 세상에!

Jungkook: Tell him about-

🦊: OH MY GOD! Okay... So, he- Okay, he... has two... *long pause*

Yoongi: *gasps* TWO?!

🦊: TWO!

Yoongi: Are they side by side? Up and down?

🦊: We actually DON'T have ANY confirmation. But my headcanon is that they're up and down.

Yoongi: How many balls does he have? Two or four? Are they ALSO up and down or side to side?

🦊: Hmm... I hadn't thought about it.

Yoongi: If it's four, there's more.. um... Milk *giggles*

*Jungkook and 🦊 laughs*

🦊: Yeah... And I wanna be filled by Sukuna.

Jungkook: WHY Sukuna, he's LEGIT EVIL!

🦊: Okay~ He's not EVIL!~ He's just... Umm... He's ju-

Jungkook: *deadpan* Y/N, his first lines were "Where are the people? The women? What a wonderful era to be in. Women and children are crawling everywhere like maggots. It's marvelous. It'll be a massacre."

🦊: I can fix him.

Yoongi: *laughs* Can you?!

🦊: I can!~

Jungkook: I mean-

🦊: Well, I-

Yoongi: I have no doubt about that.

🦊: *silent*

Jungkook: I'm looking at the invisible camera.

🦊: Guys?

Yoongi: Hmm?

🦊: Let's pause for a minute. I need to use the bathroom. *muffled movement sounds*

Jungkook: They have a small bladder when it comes to alcohol *chuckles*

🦊: *in a distant voice* You can edit it out, right Dae?

*muffled voice*

🦊: Purr, be right back.

[silence]

Jungkook: *whispering* Are you gonna do it today?

Yoongi: I don't see a point...

Jungkook: Why?~

Yoongi: Well... They JUST called me their "close friend" just now, and I'm about to leave for the mi-

Jungkook: *scoffs* Okay. YOU get to go home because you're going to go to a government office because of your shoulder

Yoongi: Yeah, but I can't do an-

Jungkook: Hyung... Why can't you trust me? I'm their best friend! I know better!

Yoongi: *sighs* *mumbles* You don't get it...

Jungkook: *sighs* *long pause* I'll leave the episode early, so you can close with them. They listen to the podcast, so, if you don't do anything, I'll post it unedited.

Yoongi: Why would y-

Jungkook: Because I know you, and I know them... You two need a little push and this is it.

Yoongi: *gulps* *sighs softly* fine...

🦊: *from a distance* I'm back!~ Sorry I took so long *giggles*

🦊: What else is there to talk about?

Jungkook: How was your first time at HYBE?

🦊: Oh! It was awesome! I was so happy I get to teach the trainees~ Though I wouldn't have minded if I got you!

Yoongi: It would have been fun for you to teach me Spanish...

🦊: Right?! But, I don't need a job to teach you! We're friends, right?

Yoongi: *hums agreeing*

Jungkook: Plus, he's just learning to impress you!

🦊: *scoffs then giggles* Stop! He already impresses me with his music. 28 is my ANTHEM!

Jungkook: You switch the lyrics to Spanish!

🦊: It's fun!~ *singing* Me 'stoy volviendo un adulto~ No me acueLdo 'e na'~ Mis sueños y ambiciones donde estan? Estan lejanas~ Ya no veo ni donde esta la meta!~

Yoongi: *chuckles* 재밌네~

🦊: 그죠~ Jungkook doesn't like it when I do it, but it's SO fun~

Jungkook: Guys... Do the closing without me, I have to go somewhere.

🦊: Wha~ *pouty* But your schedule is free! I got it right here...

Jungkook: It's something with Bam... I'm sorry! It's an emergency!

🦊: OH MY GOD! GO GO! Take care of my nephew! HURRY!

Jungkook: *muffles movements* *in a slightly distant voice* *chuckles* I will! *long pause* Hyung...

Yoongi: 어... 할게...

🦊: 뭐가 할거예요?

Jungkook: Don't worry about it.

🦊: Well! Kookie had an emergency! But Yoongi and I can finish up, right?

Yoongi: Yeah. Thank you for having me here today.

🦊: Thank you for being here!

Yoongi: *gulps* What if I came back to the podcast, would that be okay?

🦊: Oh! That'll be so dope! I'd love to hear your opinion on more things.

Yoongi: I'm an avid listener, so, it's gonna be weird listening to today's podcast once it goes live.

🦊: You'll love it. Daehyun does aMAZING editing.

Yoongi: *long pause* You never reveal your crush, do you?

🦊: *in between chuckles* No... I just- *long pause* *mumbles shyly* I know he listens, his friends have told me...

Yoongi: *hums*... *long pause* Do I know him?

🦊: Mmmm... Maybe!~ *chuckles*

Yoongi: *hums*

🦊: *in between chuckles* Why are you staring at me?

Yoongi: I just noticed how long your lashes are...

🦊: What?~ That was so sudden!

Yoongi: Well... *chuckles* I don't know, it's- I find it kinda cute..

🦊: W-WELP! That's all the time we have! Our producer is telling us to wrap it up!

Yoongi: Leave suggestions for Jungkook and Y/N in the comments and what you would like for them to talk about in the future.

🦊: Yep. And don't forget to stream the D-Day trilogy but Agust D!

Yoongi: Again, thank you so much for having me.

🦊: *mumbles shyly* You're welcome anytime...

Yoongi: 여러분 안녕히게세요

🦊: Hasta el proximo episodio!

Daehyun gives you a thumbs up, indicating that the recording is done for Yoongi and you. You look at him and bow slightly as he smiles softly. You take off your headphones and look back at him smiling slightly then said

"You did great, our listeners are gonna like it!"

"You think so?" He responded. A bit shyly, but not enough to be shown.

You nod and then stand up, a bit too enthusiastically. Daehyun signals you to come to him to inspect the track and what needs to be edited out. You nod at him and then look back at Yoongi, asking him if he would like to be shown out. He shakes his head and then tells Daehyun that he would like to help edit the episode, something that surprised you.

"I thought you had a schedule to-"

"It's okay. I can stay for a little longer" He interrupted.

"I don't want you to get in trouble..."

"I won't. Daehyun can you play it back at exactly minute 49?"

You furrow your eyebrows and look at his empty whiskey glass, thinking to yourself how he couldn't be drunk, since nobody got refills, as per Daehyun's request. Then you put on your headphones to listen back to the audio, pushing the microphone slightly away and taking off your notebook to take notes. You hear yourself stumbling away from the microphone and telling Yoongi and Jungkook that you would be right back. There's a long pause, and you weren't there, but you could feel the air thickening, just as it is at the moment you and Yoongi are playing back the audio. You gulp writing down that this part should definitely be taken away. Then, you hear it. Yoongi and Jungkook talking about how he should do something today, by the sounds of it, a confession. A love confession. You pause your writing, keeping your face as neutral as possible. Looking at the notebook, rather than the eyes that are definitely looking for your reaction. You feel your eyes begin to twitch as if they're about to sprout water, your nose begin to flare, and your cheeks begin to redden as you puzzle that they're talking about you.

Jungkook knew about your crush on Yoongi. He also knew that you didn't want to do anything because you thought it was only a simple crush, but that came to a crash when he called you and told you when he was leaving for the military. You faked your nonchalantness and told him that you would miss him as much as you missed Hobi, but that was the day that the snow melted and spring came when it came to your feelings. You cried to Jungkook that day, and coming into the studio he rented to record was hard. Especially because you had to fake being enthusiastic and happy. In the end, you couldn't hold it in. You were gonna miss Jungkook, he was your best friend. But missing Yoongi was gonna tear your heart apart. When recording that episode ended, Jungkook said to not give up hope and that something for sure was gonna happen. Something happy.

You looked at Daehyun nonchalantly and told him to keep it as it is without any editing, the excuse being that the listeners would like the authenticity. Then, you quickly took off your headphones and gathered your things. Fearing that you wouldn't make it to the door, you rushed your steps. It's not you... You don't wanna get your hopes up. You know he wouldn't like you in a romantic sense. You two are vastly different, another reason why you never spoke your feelings to him. You were bubbly, outgoing, a bit extroverted, loud, and talked with anybody and anything. Complete opposite of him. When you stepped out the door, you let out a breath you didn't know you were holding and let your tears fall. Silently crying.

"Y/N? You okay?" You heard Jungkook's voice, but that was quickly dismissed as a hand grabbed yours.

You looked up and saw Yoongi, motioning you to follow him. You nodded and followed him to an empty studio.

"You don't like me?" He asked, a bit unsure and insecure.

You shook your head, disagreeing with him, something he understood. You felt tears staining your cheeks, your breath shorten, and your cheeks reddened as you said

"I like you..." In a shaky voice. "I like you a lot. I just didn't think that you'd like me. I'm not tall, I'm loud, I'm- I don't have any qualities that you'd like..."

His face softened as he got closer. He cupped your cheeks and wiped your tears with his thumbs. You continued by saying

"I stumble in my Korean. I'm not even Korean! Why would you like me?"

"Why wouldn't I?" He responded in a soft, slightly hushed voice, taking you by surprise.

"I like that you're extroverted." He continued "If we eat out, I know I can count on you helping me with my social anxiety. So what if you're not tall? I think you'd fit nicely in my arms."

He pulled you into a hug, smiling softly. He then nuzzled his face in the crook of your neck and slowly took in your scent. He leaned back a little.

"I was right." He said smiling gently. "You have other qualities that I like... Like... How excited you get talking about anime and video games is so beautiful to me. Your eyes sparkle, your tone of voice gets higher, your body language gets more expressive, you use your hands more."

He gently pushed a strand of hair away and looked into your eyes while saying "So what if you stumble in your Korean? At least you know Korean! Which is more than I can say when it comes to Spanish."

You chuckled, smiling while wiping your tears.

"And so what if you're not Korean?... I fell in love with YOU, not your nationality or ethnicity"

You gasped softly and looked into his eyes whispering "Love?" He chuckled and nodded then sighed.

"I know it's a big word, but it's how I feel... And I don't wanna leave for the military without telling you how I feel."

You cupped his cheek and studied his face. He has gotten chubbier in the cheeks, his skin paler than usual, and his hair was shorter, probably to prepare it to get cut. You got on your tippy toes slightly and pecked his lips first to see if it was okay. This took him by surprise but it didn't last long for him to hug your waist and kiss you back.

You pulled away and smiled then hugged him. His arms hugged you back as you leaned your head on his right shoulder, sniffling slightly and apologizing for crying, something he dismissed quickly. Your moment was quickly ruined when you and Yoongi almost fell from Jungkook jump-hugging you.

"AY! YA! Don't be stupid!" You said as you pushed Jungkook away. Yoongi already taking the liberty of letting go of you so that you and Jungkook could push each other around.

"You got your love confession! Thanks to ME~ The BEST wingman EVER!" Jungkook exclaimed as he wrapped his tattooed arm around your shoulder and neck. You groaned playfully and pushed him off you, but that didn't stop him from doing it again.

"Say I'm the best, and I'll let you go~" Jungkook said smiling from ear to ear.

"You're the WORST! Estupido, how could you force a confession out of Yoongles!~"

"Hey! He wasn't planning on doing it, and you were all mopy. I had to do something!"

You sighed and hugged him, burying your face in his chest, and said in a mumbled voice

"You're the best..." which came out in a slightly muffled sound.

"AH! Did you hear that, hyung?! THE. BEST! I gotta tell Jimin!" Jungkook said as he pushed you off of him and took off his phone.

You and Yoongi looked at each other and smiled. Promising to talk to each other more in his apartment.

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chocodile · 2 years

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I am curious about you're world-building seeing how their beef stew in this world would mean it comes from cows but there like furry people there as well so are there like anthro and feral furry or is there just a mess-up food chain in line lmao and would that mean herbivores can't eat alot of meat or else they get sick or not? Am just really curious so I hope you don't mind me asking all this!

Good question anon! There are indeed regular Earth-style animals in this setting (which I think will be referred to as "beasts"), and they exist alongside the "people" (furries).

As far as the relationship between people and beasts go, that depends. Some feel a sense of kinship with their animal cousins--they can read the animal's body language easier and tend to understand them a little better, so it's not uncommon to see, say, an equine equestrian for this reason.

Others find their beast counterparts to be rather "uncanny valley", similar to how some humans find monkeys creepy, and don't like to be reminded of the resemblance. This tends to be more common for those whose "species" comes packaged with negative stereotypes.

(Side note: @kwillow suggested that in the native language of this setting, there is a difference in how the animal's name and the furry species name is said/written. So someone can say the word "rat" and have zero ambiguity as to whether they're talking about Theo or the critters in his traps… unless they were intentionally trying to insult him, of course. As an English approximation, I figure "Rat" with a capital "R" would indicate a person, "rat" would indicate the animal.)

Back on topic… how strong the association is also varies between culture. In the Western Kingdom, where Hyden is from, the association between person and beast is weaker and it's fairly normal for a Rabbit to eat a rabbit. Maybe a little uncomfortable if they're weird about it, but generally accepted overall. Especially in the colder norther areas where food is more scarce, the idea of turning your nose up at an opportunity for a nutritious meal just because the animal it came from kinda looks like you would be seen as ridiculously wasteful.

That is absolutely not the case in the Eastern Kingdom. They have a HUGE taboo against eating "your own kind" and do view it as cannibalism-adjacent. This is something important to keep in mind when traveling between the two countries or meeting foreign delegates!

As for how a furry's species effects its dietary needs, they're all omnivorous to some degree, but tend to be happiest eating food their species is suited for. Usually.

Poorer classes such as peasants rarely got that much choice, though, and diet is also shaped by culture, so most people just make due with whatever food they have access to. Being a picky eater was a privilege reserved for the upper class. This is even more true in the "present" setting, after the apocalyptic magical "nuclear winter" renders the world far less hospitable… so this "present"-era dinner table with Ridge, Alex, Chicken Lady, and Hyden must have hit the jackpot to have a different type of fresh food available for each of them.

Phew, long writeup! I actually have even more thoughts on how cuisine differs across the different regions and between the "past" and "present" settings (been watching a lot of Tasting History with Max Miller lately and getting some great inspiration) and I will probably cover that topic more in another ask response. Hope that this answered your question, though! Thanks for the ask!

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sophieinwonderland · 10 months

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New to your blog and I saw in one of your posts you mentioned the demonization of DID within media and horror especially. I'm used to knowing this as things like the movies split etc but you mentioned werewolves aswell. As an avid dnd player I never really connected the dots but it makes a lot of sense how things like werewolves could be an allegory for people with DID and perhaps other horror related media and stuff also do that (perhaps jekyll and hyde).

I'm not well versed on the topic and was wondering if there's other creatures through mythology or stuff like that that are possibly rooted an abilism and stuff like that that you could point out for me? Sorry if any of that came across as offensive or anything

-Ben (only asking in anon because my main blog is a fan blog)

Hi there!

And there's a ton of it.

Before going further, it's important to note that pluralphobia can be broken into roughly two categories. The first is the fear of BEING plural. Of sharing your own body with someone else.

The second is a fear of someone else being plural, or otherwise not being the same person they used to be.

Stories of demon and spirit possession will touch upon both forms of pluralphobia and I've talked about them a lot.

But something that's not brought up often that contributed to this is body snatchers.

Many mythological creatures throughout history have fallen into this category. Despite not technically being plural, these stories stigmatize and demonize people for acting differently than they did in the past. For being different people.

Take, for instance, a story of a girl who goes into the woods collecting mushrooms and goes missing. She's found days later by her father who is overjoyed to have her returned.

Afterwards, strange things start happening around the farm. Animals start dying. And the girls' brothers are sent to watch the lifestock at night. One by one, the brothers tell the father what they saw, and he doesn't believe them.

One of the brothers is banished by his father while the others don't speak of it further. He goes to live at a temple for a year when one of his brothers comes to get him, telling him he needed to return.

The brothers return home to find their estate in disrepair, and their livestock and the rest of their family dead. Only the sister is alive, when she's revealed to be a Kumiho: A 9-tailed fox demon who replaced their real sister.

(Note: I'm summarizing the version from the Myth & Legends podcast we heard well over a year ago from memory, so some of the details may not be totally accurate. Also, that's a really great episode and you should check it out even if I did spoil the ending.)

This story isn't intentionally pluralphobic. It's intentionally sexist, with the moral being to believe your sons over your daughters. But the pluralphobia isn't intentional.

However, stories like this and many others created environments where systems couldn't exist.

These stories weren't JUST stories. They were superstitions that shaped cultures.

I don't know if people believed this specific story as an accurate historical account of something that really happened. But they believed in the Kumiho and creatures like them. Just like people believed in similar creatures that could replace your loved ones.

Luckily, I don't know of anyone killed because their relatives believed them a Kumiho. (But we likely wouldn't know. These were peasant beliefs most popular in times when lower classes were illiterate and much of this history wouldn't be recorded. Let alone survive to be translated into English.)

But when it comes to superstitions of Fae body snatchers, Bridget Cleary wasn't nearly so lucky.

Murdered by her husband with several others who accused her of being a Fae.

For other ableism, some have also linked changelings to Autism and other mental illnesses, being used to justify child abuse and torture.

What would it have been like to be plural before the modern era?

With this in mind, I think it's important to consider why we don't hear much of psychological plurality until recently. The body snatching trope may not be a direct allegory for plurality in the same way as demon possession. But it contributed to an environment of superstition and fear.

Today, being out as plural, headmates wanting to go by our chosen names instead of the body's, means that we may be disowned by family, abandoned by friends, harassed on the internet or lose our jobs.

But historically, it's likely that plurals who came out would have feared treatment like that of Bridget Cleary unless they lived in a society with culturally accepted plurality, where spiritual possession might be welcomed.

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under-olympos-bodhi-tree · 1 year

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On Xenia, Missionary Work, and Living in a Broken World

I'm still getting used to writing these blogs, but I had something nagging at me from earlier today, I hope this essay does it justice. Long post ahead!

A friend of mine, not a close friend but still a friend, works at a sit-down restaurant and has shared difficulties with life and the service industry with me. Earlier, they shared that a Christian group visited their restaurant, ordered notably expensive food including steaks, and were not generally the best customers, but they left a $100 tip to my friend at the end of their stay.

This bill, however, turned out to be fake. On closer examination, it was a concealed note made to look like a $100 bill advertising a local Christian group, informing them that "Jesus is worth more than this bill!" followed by an ad for their congregation. Setting aside that the bill was literally worthless, as it was not worth any money, this... upset me. But let's peel back a little.

A common theme among religions is that the gods show up in the poorest of society. The concept of Xenia in Hellenic Polytheist religious belief and Ancient Greek society is built around the idea that Zeus and any other deity could appear as a poor beggar asking to sleep under your roof in the rain, or at least that they might be watching.

For those who may not see things so literally, it is still fundamentally a religious matter that humans built the world and make it what it is, even if we all still dance to the invisible tune of the Theoi and the Fates, and that we have some kind of a responsibility to build a better world from those who walked before us.

All of that is pretty common among religions, with only the details changing. Buddha lived as an ascetic with his only shelter being a tree where he had his awakening, the ancient Israelis were penniless slaves who were led by Moses who was essentially an exiled refugee, Jesus was a peasant carpenter, etc. The idea that the divine comes to our without money at their lowest is not new.

There is, however, a very toxic mentality that I have mostly observed among preaching and missionary Christian groups. It is that, because Jesus lived without money, that he is the wealth that matters. The idea being that faith in Jesus is the only thing that matters, as someone without him is damned, and the more souls you save by making them realize his supposed trueness makes you a better person by making them realize this, and possibly earns you better brownies in Heaven.

This is, however, disregarding virtually every other cultural experience in exchange for having this world view. Well-adjusted, comfortable and safe communities who worship a different god must obviously be proselytized against in this view of the world, for even the happy and comfortable cannot truly be happy for they do not know the son of your sun god if you seek conversion rates above all else in the mortal world. We have all seen this in effect.

There is a grim cowardice to this entire world view. It is a fundamental unwillingness to see the perspectives of others, to have empathy, and move your mind out of your own head. In this world view, no one who isn't you can be happy and good, all must be bent to your shape to match the perfection that you were so obviously built in.

I was raised Mormon, and this cowardice has been weaponized to an enormous degree by building entire cultural cornerstones by preaching and conversion and proselytization. Those who do not surrender vast sums of money in order to travel to strange places without friends and family purely so they can bother other people with this 'truth' that they do not want... well, to not do it makes you less than a person to the Church, unworthy of the paradise they promise you.

I in no way wish to state that sharing religion is bad. Talking to people that you know, sharing your world view, talking about what you believe, telling them about the beauty of the divine that you have witnessed, all of these I feel are an innate good. But if you see the world narrower than a pinhole, if you believe that every humans who is born, toils and dies under our sun must believe in Jesus and God in order to have a shred of value and thus seek to force it on them by any means necessary, you have perverted the entire arrangement.

Dan Olson did a wonderful documentary on Flat Earth and qAnon in which he stated that to Flat Earthers, they are not simply in ignorance of geography, but that the simple denial of truth is a weapon, a tool, in which they seek to build the world in their image by denial of facts through a force of will to build a metaphorical flat earth in which they are right and their enemies are silent. When you do not seek to enlighten, to share, to learn, and instead seek to use your will, words and resources in order to hammer anyone you ever meet into a familiar shape, to build the good little Christian paradise on Earth that is so clearly strangling those who do not see it as a paradise, you have built a horror.

And it is into this environment that the final horrors take shape. The denial of refugee aid by powerful religious organizations without conversion, the refusal of helping others without getting something in return, the clawing tendrils of rigid enforcement of religion and culture that forces people into your group for fear of leaving it, the refugees and poorest people in my city who were forcefully converted by missionaries in return for food and shelter is the final result of such a narrow world view, in viewing every human as needing to conform to you and your way. This is homousian as the horrors that have ravaged the planet for centuries, that has devastated native cultures, killed generations of queer people, and built the worst of the world.

It is in all of this that the introduction to this essay began. A Hellenic Polytheist, working a thankless job, bringing fine steaks to those who taunted them with fake money while promising that their note had the only thing of value.

What if I told you that my friend was moving away from an abusive lover or parent and desperately needed money for shelter? If they were trying to scrounge together money to pay for insulin without insurance? What if I told you they were paying for an unexpected funeral and were facing the reality of being unable to bury a loved one? What if I told you they had cancer and needed every penny to get surgery and chemotherapy?

Thankfully, they do not have any of these things to my knowledge, and were simply annoyed. But to dangle a religious truth that they are not interested in, teasing them with the money that, to the knowledge of these Christians, may have saved their lives, while taunting them that your carpenter god would cure these things for fealty like a feudal lord, is a vile and small-minded idea. That this person was likely not the sole executor of this evil and likely was simply promised by higher-ups that they were doing good, that they meant well and genuinely thought they were helping, does not decrease the horror of the world and mindset that would create this circumstance. Because next time it will be someone with cancer you yank hope away from.

I hope, dear reader, that you can extract my meaning on the purpose of Xenia, and good deeds from this, and see a small piece of the dark horror that small minds and narrow eyes can build. When Zeus appears at your doorstep dressed as a ascetic beggar, the fact that this beggar may not be Hellenic does not matter. That he may not be your color, or that he may not be healthy, or that he may be different, is not an excuse not to be kind, to think outside of your own experience, and to embrace those who need us the most. Because your $5 and your kindness and understanding to your waiter or barista or your uber driver is far, far more valuable than a pamphlet and a condemnation.

I'd like to send you off with a small story I like about the Buddha. This story is neither historical nor truly about the Buddha, but it is an enlightening tale containing a deep religious truth told through fiction, not unlike our Greek mythology:

While the Buddha meditated beneath his Bodhi tree, searching for truth and enlightenment, he peered beyond the mortal realm and saw a thief in hell who had repented and begged forgiveness. The Buddha, seeing that the man wanted to change, to come back to Samsara and to fight to be a better man, lowered a spider's web into hell for him to climb.

The Thief graciously began climbing up towards the Buddha. However, the other denizens of hell began climbing up after him, and he feared that the delicate spider's web would break and take him back to hell, so he began kicking them off. The spider's web was stronger than the finest steel and could have taken all of them, but his kicking broke it like it was thread.

Be kind, love each other, and always seek a better world.

-Lady Nikki

#hellenic polytheism #dodekatheism #hellenic pagan #pagan #hellenism #zeus deity #xenia #buddhism #dharma #spirituality #philosophy #anti capitalism #anti missionary

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etirabys · 1 year

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book review: she who became the sun

Woohoo, this stacked well with reading the "end of Ming, early Qing" stretch of The Search for Modern China. It's set in a similar time period, and Zhu, the "random peasant who turned out to have an amazing knack for leading a rebellion" protagonist, fits neatly into the historical period where many peasants or failed bureaucrats were discovering that this was their calling.

GOOD novel. Chewy. It's good. Had enough crazy brilliant protagonist energy to remind me of the Vorkosigan saga:

"That monk knows exactly what he wants. The night before the battle at Yao River, he asked me to make that gong for him. I made it, he used it, and he won,” Jiao said. “I’ve met his type before. They either go far or die early. And either way, they have a tendency to make collateral damage of normal people.” He raised his eyebrows at Yuchun. “Are you special, little brother? Because if you’re not, I’d watch out."

Will definitely be buying the sequel.

(At this point the review becomes spoilery.)

One of the most gorgeous blood feud I've ever seen! The players in the blood feud are:

- Ouyang, the sole survivor of the massacre of his Han family – begged for his life as a child, was spared but castrated, and has grown up into a fearsome Mongol general

- Chaghan, the high ranking Mongol military commander who did the massacreing

- Esen, Chaghan's son who conforms perfectly to Mongol masculine warrior ideals. Loves Ouyang as a best friend but fails to see, at all, how bitter Ouyang is with his life and how set he is on revenge.

- Wang, Chaghan's half-Han nephew whom he adopted as a son.

Each pair of the above either outright hates each other, OR is plotting the other's destruction despite great love, except Chaghan and Esen. It's fabulous! Ouyang is... oh, just read this short post about CS Lewis's definition of damnation. Ouyang is very damned.

Oh, Ouyang. Women are terrible! The politics.” He groaned. “Consider yourself lucky you’ll never have to suffer this kind of torment.” Esen never meant to hurt, and Ouyang had always taken care to pretend matter-of-fact acceptance about his exclusion from family life. Why should he blame Esen for not reading his mind to see the anger and pain there? But the truth was: he did blame Esen. Blamed him even more than he would a stranger, because it hurt more that someone so beloved should not see the truth of him. And he blamed and hated himself, for hiding that truth.

Ouyang's arc is a superbly executed tragedy. The climax, I think, physically winded me slightly.

And Wang –

This book is primarily about people-who-are-not-fully-men by the Mongol standards of manhood, and of the GNC characters, Wang was the one who struck me as queerest by nature/volition rather than circumstance. His gender is Accountant Who Loves The Arts, and his Manchu relatives HATE him for it. His gender noncompliance seems like "I'm doing this because I really want to and anything else is painful" rather than "I'm doing this because I was castrated" (Ouyang) or "I'm doing this because I was going to literally starve to death unless I latched on to the niche that was meant to be my dead brother's" (the protagonist).

Said GNC people sniff each other out quickly and feel Weird Magnetism. "Like calls to like" is an italicized refrain. In fact, Zhu's nonbinarydar is so advanced that she intuits Ouyang's emotional damage within minutes of meeting him, and feels a magnetic pull to him for the rest of the book. As a shipper, I'm a huge fan. (What I want: Ouyang/Zhu/Ma triad fic.) As a person who yearns for anyone to understand Ouyang, I'm a huge fan. But I'm an anti-fan of "these two people who are very different are of the Same Kind because they don't fit into mainstream culture". Such groupings are politically expedient but I feel allergic to seeing them painted as intrinsic similarities – to say, these two things are the same because they are not X, seems to ontologically center "X vs not X" when the political project should be to dissolve the salience of that division.

Through that strange quiver of connection to the Yuan’s eunuch general, she had seen beneath that carved-jade mask to his shame and self-hate and anger. He had a wound for a heart, and that made him a more dangerous opponent than anyone here realized.

I feel weird writing a paragraph about this, but the book is really explicit that these radically different GNC people are on the same wavelength and I'm like, NO, they're really not!... they could have grown into the weird intense soulmate enemy bond they immediately have in book 1, and that would have felt narratively rewarding to me – recognition through inquiry and (reluctant) empathy and reflection, not, Nonbinary Frog Pheromones

Finally: I loved Zhu's romance arc and childhood trauma and fucking everything. She's ten years old when her father is kicked to death by bandits for not offering them enough food (the whole region is some years into a famine), and by the time she's an adult this feels so faraway that... well, as an adult she sees a food seller at a market being extorted, and the scene goes like this:

“Hey, granny!” Well, less hope for some. Zhu, observing the unfolding human drama, felt a stirring of unease: the memory of something witnessed so long ago that it might as well have been in a past life.

Seriously, the kicked to death thing never comes up again, and the elision is vast and leaves a lot of room for echoes. Similarly – several minutes before being kicked to death, the desperate father, who devalues girl children in a culturally unexceptional way, offers ten year old Zhu as food for the bandits so they'll leave him and his son alone. (This whole scene is amazingly written, and does not get in the way of the inherent intensity and awfulness of this event.) Zhu does not process this onscreen At All. Once her entire family is dead she starts rolling on her journey to becoming a warlord like a polished marble. Said journey involves her taking her brother's place at a monastery and playing at being a not-girl so well that even the heavens won't notice that she's of the Grindable To Nothingness gender, all while having ZERO thoughts about the "eat my daughter and leave us alone" incident. Fucking fantastic.

Anyway, at the beginning of becoming a warlord, she meets Ma, a Girl Who Is Somehow Nice Despite The World Making This Very Hard:

in her face there was such a depth of raw and innocent emotion that Zhu’s eye was drawn as if to the scene of an accident

and

Zhu, watching Ma with an alien ache in her heart, saw the girl turn away at the critical moment [of someone she cares about being executed]. There was nobody to comfort her. She simply folded over onto herself in the middle of that empty bubble in the crowd, crying. Zhu felt a strong protective urge rise up in her at the sight. With alarm she realized it was a new desire, already rooted alongside that other desire that defined everything she was and did. It felt as dangerous as an arrowhead lodged in her body, as though at any moment it might work its way in deeper and cause some fatal injury.

and marries her. I love this, because I'm a huge sucker for "I am a very bad person and I love you and hope you will keep me in line" ships, and this is explicitly part of their deal!

However, after fights about less taboo atrocities, Ma comes back to Zhu after Zhu kills an eight year old Ma is attached to (for being a ?dalai lama? who is inconvenient to Zhu's goals), so it's a little unclear to me how much Ma is going to keep this function.

#rambl #she who became the sun

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nrdmssgs · 8 months

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Any advice in making a character

Oh, I`ve got so many, I actually had to restrain myself))

Be self-indulgent! This is the most important thing to do. If any of my further tips conflicts for you personally with this one - this must always win! The main purpose of your character is for you to have fun, to get a voice, to be able to talk about whatever is important to you! Pay no attention whatsoever to people accusing you of making Mary Sue or Bella Swan. It is ok to learn, make mistakes, make characters, that will make you cringe in a few years.

Make as much moodboards as you need! 5 pinterest boards for 1 character is ok, even great! Don't hesitate to make a full moodboard for their home, even if you are planning like 1 short scene in the house.

Moodboards are good not only for pictures! Feel free to add quotes, that remind you of your OC, make playlists for them, go to your favorite clothing online catalog and pick, what would they buy from it! I for example have a thing for scents and I make perfume moodboards for characters (just helps me to feel them better). I use Miro for multimedia moodboards, highly recommend it.

Try starting your character as an 'archetype'. What I like to do is to go to this page and take a test from a perspective of my character The results often help me understand, how would my character react to different people and manage different situations. There are different personality tests, you can use. I believe, this one is the most well known, but I find my first option more helping in writing.

Character 'growth' is not obliged to be something positive. Your character can always become a worse person and it is still a growth.

'Play' with your character constantly! Even if you made them for one short text - ask yourself questions about them every now and them! Would they pick the same type of cheese as you? What was their favorite music genre, when they were 10? And now? What was the most awkward date, they ever had? Dont be shy, use writing promts to come up with little stories about them. This all will give you an indepth understanding of your character.

One of my favorite games to play with my characters is '3 interviews'. I imagine my character taking part in: 1. a talk with a psychologist 2. a cross-examination in court 3. an interview with a journalist. These are 3 situations, that motivate the same person speak on very different topics and relive different emotions. So I like to just examine their behavior. You will be surprised, how many ideas this little game adds to your character.

Don't be shy to ask others to tell you about your character. Request little stories or headcannons about them. The goal here is not to have the same perspective on your OC as your friends do. The goal is to understand, how others see them and which detail (and why) work good or bad for you. There are some authors out there, that take requests and commissions for others OCs.

It is ok to make your characters look like an average person and it is absolutely ok to make them look incredibly beautiful. Don't force yourself to change anything in your OC just because their partner is very good-looking, or because some said to you, that such a beautiful person has no place in this fandom.

Give your OC friends, hobbies, interests outside their job and love-life. Please. You will be surprised, how useful it is to keep this emotional hideout for your character.

Killing your OCs parents is not the only way to make them move out of their parents house. (don't worry, I myself have 2 OCs, whose parents are dead).

Making your OC kill someone is not the end of your OC. Your readers wont start hating them.

The more power your character has - the less freedom they get. Life of a queen is planned to the minute, life of a peasant - endless pool of possibilities))

Watch video essays where therapists talk about different characters in popular culture! There are so many ideas, you can get there for your character. My favorite channel is cinema therapy they have so many wholesome, funny, serious vid on this topic!

By the way, never be afraid to borrow some ideas.

Wanna see a trick? Ok, I'll describe briefly a character to you and you will try to guess, who am I talking about. So our guy, a middle-aged man, lives in a depressing gray world, full of violence and indifference. He loses his job and escapes his constant suffering in fantasies, where he is famous, has his own show on TV, the audience loves him and even his favorite late night show host applauds him. But these are only his fantasies, when in reality nobody care about him except for his senior mom, who genuinely loves her son. Youre thinking something like "Arthur Fleck" or "Joker"? Well, I've just described you Rupert Pupkin, the main character of 1982 American comedy "The king of Comedy", which had a great impact on 2019 film Joker.

My message here: it is not bad to revisit your favorite stories and characters and let them form your OC.

Abandoning one OC and moving on to the next is not a betrayal. Having multiple OCs for one fandom is not an inability to concentrate. Your brain produces many ideas - it is ok to give yourself creative space.

Self insert can be fun and interesting. Just don't forget, that you are not obliged to insert yourself in one and only character - you can always give your thoughts and traits to multiple characters in the story!

Your character needs flaws, not because it is a shame to write somebody perfect. They need flaws, because that will actually help them navigate through their lives.

#nrdspeaks #nrdmssgs

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fleshdyke · 1 year

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TELL ME ABOUT THE GHOSTS

there is so much shit in my brain abt them that’s probably never going to leave procreate or my notes app. i could write essays abt kitty and her family and thomas and his death and robin and the moon and mary and annie and like everything going on with cap yk. like it’s just so many tragedies wrapped up in a comedy and that’s like my favourite type of media. kitty was a scapegoat for her sister and father and her innocence/naïveté despite being a grown woman stemming from neurodivergence and her brain’s defense mechanisms to see all her memories through rose tinted glasses so she can’t be hurt any more by them. thomas wasn’t a great poet and was kinda annoying that’s pretty evident but like he spent the entirety of his last day alive being mocked and bullied by people that barely tried to hide it. his death was a public spectacle, everyone at the party coming to watch the duel but not a single person sticking around as he died. he died alone and all because his cousin wanted to live in a big house. and he was (and remains) so desperate for someone to love bc he just thinks that’s how it should be. i’m also a huge aromantic thomas truther. robin has been dead for 22,000 years at least and the only thing, the one and only thing that has stayed constant is the moon. stars have blinked out and moved in the sky and the ice age ended and thousands of people lived and died where he was and hundreds of houses were built and torn down and he’s watched everyone he knows come and go. but the moon was worshipped when he was alive as well, and it was the only thing that stayed. he’s watched language evolve and stopped going by his original name and he’s lost so many people. but he assigns them each a star because the night sky was the most important thing to his culture when he was alive. and he remembers each and every one. mary was only really happy for three or so years of her life because she actually loved her husband before he was killed. she lived for however many more years after that alone and dealing with the conditions women faced in the 15th century and then was picked to blame for the crops failing. she faced a devastating tragedy when her husband died, lived the rest of her life as a widowed peasant woman, and was just a little weird (autism). so they killed her. she died in pretty much the most painful way you can die, and then was pretty much alone for centuries because she was still so caught up in the restrictions of her life. but when annie died in front of her and immediately started cursing out the men that treated her so horribly in life. annie was her first friend since her husband. and then annie moved on and mary was left alone again. cap is so closed off and i think he knows that he’s gay but just refuses to admit it because he’s scared. he’s still so stuck in the mindset from the war and being the leader of the button house base that he’s just learned not to think about it. and the one time he gathered the courage to possibly say something about it, he got interrupted. he’s not planning on ever admitting it because he’s scared. i have too many emotions about this man to ever properly put it into words so it’s like completely incomprehensible but ohhh my god i feel insane sometimes yk.

#thoughts abt how cap died are in my head 24/7 btw #i can’t remember if they ever said when robin and mary died so im just going off educated guesses #asks #long post #bbc ghosts

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vullcanica · 1 month

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Nikodemus' avid interest in music and dance stretches far back to deep antiquity where his earliest iterations partook in peasant folk music and the oral traditions surrounding it. To him, melody has always begotten movement - whether of the body or mind or, likewise, spirit - and is at its best when written for such purposes. Krilnei was rich in folk music divorced from the ceremonial and religious movements of the outside world and held more personal connotations for its commonfolk and the various festivities celebrated in the village. The culture also freely borrowed from settling travellers and nomad musicians, who would contribute their own practices and foreign influences to the krilneian musical craft. There was unchecked freedom of expression and, tangentially, a staggering speed of innovation in rhythm, melody, lyricism and harmony, borne of experimentation. To this day, the Necromancer is partial to rich, full, layered music and multiple voice compositions.

Nikodemus' later venture out into the world and his several stints into organized religion - a leading authority on music at the time - left him bored of the stiff tenets of plainchant, where he nevertheless flourished into his natural baritone. He followed more closely the works of free composers who were spared the limitations of faith-sponsored musical education and largely benefitted from that - men and women whose contribution to the creative word were never recognized and preserved as holy, and thusly have not survived anywhere but the bowels of Nikodemus' libraries of personally transcribed songs. His curiosity about the originality of the sung word lead to him supporting - and even quietly pushing, through the orchestration of several religious rebellions and sects (already a frequent meddler in those affairs himself) - the full divorce of music from the limitations of the holy language, and then, from the whims and patronship of the rather droll ecclesiastic class. Then sat back and watched musical diversity grow as it moved away from the sacred.

He opted to finally pursue a musical education in later eras and in many forms from lands far more vivacious, just in time to catch several Golden Ages where he greedily picked up languages, songs and dances like a man parched - then returned to his homeland, taken by the rapid development of classical composition, the rudiment of opera and the transition from courtly dancing to partnered romantics. He sought brief operatic training - only so far as the whim held him - then resigned himself once more to participating in the creative world in other ways. Easy wealth - sometimes earned, mostly not - always allowed for patronship of the musical arts when he felt like it; money he would blow elsewhere anyhow. When the practical need to pose as noble or even royal arose, an excuse to fill courts and travelling parties with household musicians did too. He would always have a flutist, oudist, drummer and harpist in tow. In later centuries, a pianist as well. All always specifically famous for their dance music.

Every few centuries he would hire select musicians to try and bring to life his library of old krilneian music - at times to resounding success, other times to failure, but never to the survival of the chosen few. It's a nostalgic indulgence of his none are privy to - for long, at least.

#𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐑 ‒ nikodemus ║ HEADCANONS #i'm reading the history of classical music and sth possessed me ig #i just love nik putting his grubby little hands into religious rites and the world of nobility #which were the two main patrons of music for a long while. so one thing usually leads to another #nik intermittently delving into the higher echelon world and finding it sounding terribly similar a few hundred years in a row... hilarious #nik vc: fuckin BOORIIIIING bust out the lutes #tbh some of these little details apply across verses. always finds it a terrible shame when religions employ music as a tool.#is always a hipster about his taste in artists. ALWAYS loves to dance.

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superectojazzmage · 1 year

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Still on my Star War streak, so I’m gonna write out a post that I’ve kinda written the sloppy bare bones of in tags. So, like, this Mando episode really highlights Bo Katan’s big character flaw. And it’s the denial that she could do anything wrong. Even at her biggest Depression Era, she never lets the blame fall on herself or her family.

In her head, it’s not the Kryzes and Deathwatch’s faults that Mandalore fell into civil war and decline, it was because of all the other factions, it was because all the stupid lowborn peasants and True Mandalorians wouldn’t shut up and do what the Kryzes or Deathwatch said, because they believed in something bigger then an earthly authority. It’s not her fault that every time she gains power everything crashes and burns, it’s because other people won’t bend the knee and fall in line. It’s not her fault that people don’t like her and don’t respect her as a leader, it’s because they’re obsessed with superstition and arbitrary rules that distract them from doing what she thinks needs to be done (which just so happens to be “listening to what Bo Katan says”) and it’s because people like Din keep “dividing” them from her.

And this extends to her treatment of and dismissal of the Resol’nare and the larger Mandalorian religion as just pageantry and superstition. Because that’s how both her family (self-hating Mandalorians who sold out to the Republic and served as colonial authorities in the name of power) and Deathwatch (brutal heretics who went hard in the opposite direction and wanted Mandalore to be nothing but glorified pirates and conquerors) saw and treated it. Neither of the groups she was a part of truly believed in the Mandalorian faith or its cultural identity. They just followed a shallow, materialistic mockery of it, performing and appropriating crude equivalents of the Creed because it made them look good, while secretly rejecting all of its actual tenets (“no outsider will rule Mandalore!” declares Bo Katan, supposed member of a culture that places huge emphasis on being open to outsiders and held up outsiders as some of its greatest rulers, despite the fact the Kryzes were almost certainly outsiders themselves).

At best, these groups see things like the Living Waters, the Mines, the Darksaber, the Mythosaurs, the Resol’nare, the Beskar, and the Mandalorian Pantheon as tools to placate and control the masses, even though both groups continually fail to use them that way. Because they don’t respect those things and don’t understand why most Mandos take them so seriously and refuse to acknowledge the mysticism and spirituality and religious power behind their civilization.

And Bo Katan specifically refuses to do so because if it is all true, if it really all is more then just words and children’s stories… that would mean Bo Katan isn’t a good Mandalorian, and certainly not a good person.

If any of the Mandalorian religion were true — and it most certainly is — and if any of the bad things that happened under her and her family’s watch were their own faults, that would mean that other people are right to reject Bo Katan, right to call her out as a traitor and hypocrite and bigot and failure. It would mean she and her family really were bad or at the very least severely misguided people who betrayed their culture in order to suck up to and emulate an uncaring, decadent Coreworld government. It would mean her and her precious Deathwatch really were just terrorists spitting on everything Mandalore stood for instead of “bringing back the old ways”. It would mean she really was a bad leader who led the Mandalorians into a slaughterhouse by leading open revolt against the Empire instead of operating in secret like the rest of the Rebel Alliance did. It would mean that she really was undeserving of the Darksaber and the title of Mand’alor and that she really was just totally inept at rallying her people in the aftermath of the Empire’s defeat.

It would mean that Bo Katan didn’t deserve the one thing I think that she always really wanted deep down; acceptance and love.

Bo Katan was the child of a colonial quisling family who looked down their nose at all the other Mandalorians for being a warrior culture. Of course she wouldn’t have been popular and well-regarded, not really, and certainly no amount of childhood “pageants” held as insulting concessions to the old guard would change that. So she left that life and went in the opposite direction of the pacifism that Clan Kryze and their “New” Mandalorian government preached. She went to the terrorists that said they were bringing back the old ways and hoped that would make her a hero of the people… only for them to instead just be terrorists who followed a warped, twisted version of the Mandalorian Way where they fought for its own sake and nothing more. That didn’t really earn her popularity points either — a small cadre of loyal followers, but certainly not widespread adulation, especially after she went running to the Republic again when the political winds shifted out of her favor and got installed as a Republic-friendly ruler yet again.

But then, salvation came; she was handed the Darksaber on a plate in exchange for helping fight the Republic Empire that she and her family had previously relied on for back up. She had all the power she could ever want with that sword and with that power would surely come the love she always wanted. People would cheer her on as Mand’alor and she would be beloved for all time. But that didn’t happen. And she led her people into the worst catastrophe in their history. But if she could just get the sword back, properly this time, and be the one to avenge the Night of a Thousand Tears by beating Gideon, then they would all love her right? Except she fails again; someone else defeats Gideon and gets the saber, and even if she had gotten it, it may not have been enough.

And, of course, through it all she just kept losing people. Whether to death (her dad, her sister, her lover) or to abandonment (her followers, her friends, her allies), she just lost friend and family at every turn until what few people were actually able to put up with her before were all gone, and it was very often her own fault, at least partially.

And along comes fucking Din Djarin. Everything Bo wishes she was. A Mandalorian beloved by his people and outsiders alike. Someone with friends and family and people who care about him. Someone who actually believes in and follows the true Way of the Mandalore and is very obviously happier for it. Someone who lucked into the title of Mand’alor that Bo had spent decades trying to attain in any way she could. Someone who stumbles into the magic and wonder of the Mandalorian Creed in ways that Bo Katan has never been able to, like finding a fucking Mythosaur by stepping off a ledge. Someone who is a walking reminder of every failure and mistake Bo Katan ever made and she could oh so easily have avoided them.

No wonder she has such blatant conflicted feelings about him.

I will also note that this is all really brilliant when you keep in mind the larger cultural influences behind Mandalorian culture and the worldbuilding and lore around them. The Mandalorians were generally fleshed out and designed with significant influence from Celtic (Irish, Scottish, Welsh, etc.) and Oceanic/Pacific Islander (Māori, Hawaiian, Polynesia in general, etc… the Māori connection is particularly prominent given two of the most notable Mandos — Jango and Boba — are played by a Māori actor) cultures… up to and including being victims of colonialism and repression of their native culture and faiths from Britain/the Core. This all, I feel, adds an extra layer of depth to Bo Katan’s story, as she’s functionally a child of two worlds, being more or less of both colonial and native descent. She’s divided between two cultures, between simultaneously wanting to downplay or dismiss or do away with her native heritage and beliefs for the sake of respect from/fitting in with the colonials and outsiders, yet paradoxically also wanting the approval of her native community and relatives and wanting to defend their way of life. It’s very fascinating and shows a complex character.

#star wars #star wars the mandalorian #the mandalorian #mandalorian #mandalorian s3 #mando #star wars expanded universe #star wars legends #star wars analysis #star wars lore #mandalorian culture #longpost #long post #star wars opinion #indulging my inner nerd today and presenting you all with more of my star wars nerdness

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