#but mine is fundamentally just hit the wall

[voxiiferous]

Prime Time Reruns

Anyone who’s known Vox for a very long time know there was a change in him, though there’s no clear ability to pinpoint when exactly it changed, though everyone agrees it started sometime in the early 90s. Valentino‘s seen it, Hellaina, even Alastor has seen it in its purest flashes. Velvette never knew him before the boredom set in— the closest she ever saw were its earliest phases.

People who meet him assume he’s going to be the feared and all powerful TV Overlord, like he was in the 60s, 70s, even the 80s. They expect cruelty and a joy in the suffering of Hell— and what they actually get is someone so very tired. Even his periods of self-destructive tendencies have tapered off— the USBs of Exe.stasy have gathered dust, he doesn’t seek Alastor out for a fight in the same way, his relationship with Valentino rings increasingly hollow: empty apologies, empty promises.

And he pretends that it’s all fine— he grins and he shows up on cameras, endorses the new Vogitek product. He’s the media Overlord! He’s got so much money, and everything he could ever want— don’t you? Just pay a small fee and you can have everything. Lean into the brand loyalty and you’ll be rewarded. But the performance has been getting more transparent as he hurtles towards pure and abject burnout. His own smiling face on the billboards stares down at him and he wants to tear it all down some days.

He never stops. He builds and he makes and he broadcasts everything from his spot high in his tower looking down on everything he’s made. But he doesn’t really see it either. He sees the flaws— every artist is their own greatest critic— the breakups that are becoming more frequent, sex has become a routine pastime, every time the ratings drop. And part of the problem is that there’s been nothing new in a large way. The internet was but that was the last big thing that really booked in and about the mid 90s.

It’s a prison of his own making, but he doesn’t know how to fix it either. Part of the problem is his lack of hobbies. He used to like reading, but he hasn’t picked up an actual book in decades. He loved dancing in a way he’s never really loved anything else, and he can count on less than two hands how many times he’s done it since he died. He hasn’t built something like the little trinket she made as a child since he was one.

Those are just things he has control over, not considering the fact he can’t eat or drink, and the inhumanity in that bothers him more than he lets on a lot of the time. He can smell, sort of, and it taunts him. He brings people out to eat because it makes them more easily charmed and pliable when they get free food, and yes, he’ll laugh and he makes jokes about it, but it serves as a reminder to him that he isn’t really alive.

He feels trapped— he’s retreading the same old talking points he’s said a thousand times over. The smile is forced, and nothing is a threat so he can’t focus his attention on keeping everything he’s made. It’s fine, it’s stable, he’s made it so it’ll outlive him if something were to happen.

He’s been waiting for the boredom to pass, boredom does eventually… and it hasn’t, it’s just gotten worse.

[latin5mamii]

Pretending - Jude Bellingham

Warnings: none, maybe a bit smut (?)

Summary: Why moving on needs to be so hard?

Author's note: i don't know about this...let me know if you like it! masterlist

Genre: reader x Ex!JudeBellingham (wordcount: 1425)

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ

I could hardly believe my eyes.

Just when I thought I’d moved on, ready to start a new chapter and forget about him, there he was, looking like an angel descended to earth, a living Michelangelo masterpiece.

Was it the alcohol, or had he always been like this?

The sad truth was that I missed him more than I was willing to admit, and deep down, I hoped he missed me too.

When his eyes met mine, panic surged through me. I quickly turned away, pretending I hadn’t noticed him, as if that could somehow shield me from the storm of emotions brewing inside. I was terrified to face him, to meet his gaze, to exchange even a simple hello.

If I had truly moved on, I wouldn’t be feeling this way. No nervous fluttering in my stomach, no racing thoughts. But let’s be honest, this wasn’t just anyone. This was Jude Bellingham.

I could pretend I only noticed some of his teammates, but that would be a lie. He was surrounded by girls, their eager eyes betraying their desperation. Not that he paid them much attention, but they were ready to do anything to get close to him.

Before I met him, I had never been a jealous person, but what I loved most about him was his loyalty. Now, even though our relationship was over and I should have moved on, a pang hit my heart.

I had sworn to my friends that I wouldn’t fall for him again, no matter what. At the time, it seemed easy enough. I was confident, even defiant. But then I saw him, and all the walls I’d built crumbled in an instant. The progress I’d made was undone with a single glance.

“Show that you’ve moved on, you’re a fuckin’ independent girl.”

“He’s such a loser thinking he can get you back.”

What they didn’t know was that if I could, I would have jumped into his arms the moment I walked into the place. But I couldn’t. Maybe because my ego is as high as a mountain, and I’ve always followed this fundamental rule: Don’t go back to your exes.

Little did I know that soon this rule was going to be forgotten.

With my back still turned to him, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Before turning around, I tried to imagine who it could be. I hoped with all my heart that it was him, but all my hopes were shattered the moment I turned around.

There stood a man, visibly older than me, with a dazzling smile as he offered me his hand.

“Would you like to dance?”

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ

Jude has always been the jealous type, the kind of guy who feels the need to protect his territory. And I loved that protective side of him to death.

Ever since that guy asked me to dance, Jude hasn’t been able to take his eyes off me. I smiled slightly to myself because I knew the effect I had on him. I could see that irritated expression of his, the one that said, “I don’t like what I’m watching,” and butterflies fluttered in my stomach at the thought that maybe, just maybe, he still wanted me.

The guy had gone to get drinks, and while I was waiting, I heard a voice behind me, a voice too familiar to ignore.

“Were you trying to catch my attention? ‘Cause you did.”

My heart skipped a beat as I turned slowly, almost afraid of what I might find. There he was, closer than I expected, his eyes locked onto mine.

“I’m just trying to move on, like you should too,” I lied, my voice barely steady.

“Oh, sure you are,” Jude replied, his tone laced with sarcasm, but his eyes told a different story. They were searching mine, as if trying to find some truth behind my words.

“I saw how you were looking at me before, pretending not to notice,” he continued, stepping closer, my hands trembling harder than before.

“And I saw how you looked at me,” I shot back, my breath catching in my throat.

He smirked, the kind of smirk that made my knees weak. “So, what now? We keep pretending? Or are we going to talk about the fact that neither of us has moved on?”

I didn’t know what to say. I knew this night was going to be a long one.

His eyes and that little smirk. My heart was beating faster than it should have. Why was moving on so hard? My desire to jump into his arms was stronger than ever.

“Stop looking at me like that,” his voice pulled me back to reality. His gaze flickered away, a lazy smile tugging at his lips as he ran a hand through his hair.

“Like what?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

He leaned in closer, his breath warm against my skin, sending shivers down my spine. “Like you always did before.” He hesitated, then continued, “I miss you so fuckin’ much.”

His words hung in the air between us, the kind of tension that made it hard to breathe. “I miss you so fuckin’ much,” he repeated, his voice rough, as if the confession had taken everything out of him. His eyes, dark and intense, locked onto mine, searching for any hint of what I might be feeling.

I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but the words caught in my throat. It was impossible to think straight with him standing so close, looking at me like I was the only person in the room.

“Tell me you don’t miss me,” he whispered, his voice barely above a murmur, “and I’ll walk away right now. But if you do, even a little…” He trailed off, his gaze flickering down to my lips before meeting my eyes again. “Then let’s stop pretending.”

My heart pounded in my chest. I wanted to deny it, to tell him that I didn’t miss him, that I was perfectly fine on my own. But you know what the truth was.

“You’re making this really hard,” I finally managed to say, my voice shaky but laced with the frustration of someone who was desperately trying to hold it together.

He reached out, his fingers lightly tracing the curve of my jaw, sending a shiver down my spine. He closed the gap between us, his lips brushing against my ear as he spoke, each word sending butterflies to my stomach. "I know you want me. I can see it in your eyes. You can't hide from me, not now."

He pressed a soft kiss on my jaw, making me grip the bottom of his shirt. His hand then took my wrist, a grip much stronger and demanding. His fingers intertwined with mine.

I timidly sought his eyes, which immediately met my gaze.

“Am I going to regret this?” Words came out in a whisper. Enough to be heard but not enough to hide myself from him. I could never.

“Not if you want to.”

And there it was. In that moment, I was fucked.

I pulled him by his shirt to bring my lips closer to his, first just brushing against them, then Jude's hand slid around my hips, pulling me closer as his lips finally moved against mine with a fervor that took my breath away. I responded eagerly, wrapping my arms around his neck, deepening the kiss with a hunger that matched his own.

As his kisses traveled from my lips to my neck, the sensation of his warm breath and soft, tantalizing kisses made it hard to think. His lips brushed against my collarbone, moving lower, each kiss sending shivers down my spine, like always.

“I think we should take this to my place, yeah?”

[delusionalfanficwriter]

forgive me

My heart pounded in my chest as I turned the key in the lock, the anticipation of finally being home after what felt like an eternity abroad making my hands tremble. I had missed Leah desperately during my time away, longing for her comforting presence after I missed the possibly winning penalty for the USWNT. But now, as I stepped inside our apartment, that longing turned to dread.

The soft glow of lamplight illuminated the living room, casting eerie shadows against the walls. And there, on the couch, lay Leah, wrapped in the arms of another woman. My stomach dropped as the scene before me registered, the shock and disbelief hitting me like a tidal wave.

I wanted to scream, to demand answers, to tear apart the fabric of reality until this nightmare dissolved into nothingness. But all I could do was stand there, frozen in place, my heart shattered into a million irreparable pieces.

Leah's eyes met mine, a fleeting expression of surprise and guilt flickering across her features before she spoke. "Y/n, I can explain," she whispered, her voice barely audible above the pounding of my heart.

She quickly got up from the couch in her panties and long t-shirt while the other woman I did not recognize gathered her belongings and ran out without hesitation.

I didn’t respond and as Leah took another step towards me, I took one back, shaking my head in disbelief. 

“Say something, y/n. Please. I know I fucked up, but I can explain.”

I block out her words and just stare at her, tears filling my eyes as my heart breaks every second I stand there. I take a shaky breath before saying, “I am going to pack a bag and go.” She goes to argue but I shake my head and interrupt, “Leah, you need to let me go.”

Leah's face crumpled in anguish as my words hung heavy in the air, the weight of them pressing down on us both like a suffocating blanket. She reached out to me, her hands trembling with desperation, but I recoiled from her touch, unable to bear the thought of her hands on me after what I had just witnessed.

"No," she whispered, her voice thick with tears. "Please, y/n, don't do this. I love you, I swear, I never meant to hurt you."

Her words cut through me like a knife, reopening wounds that had barely begun to heal. I wanted to believe her, wanted to cling to the illusion of love and happiness we had shared, but the reality of her betrayal loomed large in the space between us, an insurmountable barrier that threatened to swallow us whole.

"I can't do this anymore, Leah," I said, my voice cracking with emotion. "You've hurt me in ways I never thought possible. I’m sorry I wasn’t enough for you."

Leah's eyes brimmed with tears as she reached out to me again, her desperation palpable in the air. She knew how hard I worked in my self-confidence but this just took the biggest blow to it. "Don’t for a second think you are not enough, y/n. I’m the problem. Please, y/n, give me another chance. I'll do anything to make this right, anything to prove to you that I love you."

But I shook my head, my resolve hardening with each passing moment. "It's too late for that, Leah. You've broken my trust. I can't just forgive and forget."

I ignore her as she begs for forgiveness while I head to our room to grab a few extra items as I already have a suitcase filled because of my trip with the national team. 

As I hastily packed my belongings, Leah's pleas echoed in my mind, each word a painful reminder of the love we once shared. 

Leah followed me into the bedroom, her footsteps hesitant as if she were treading on thin ice. "Please, y/n," she implored, her voice choked with tears. "Don't leave like this. We can work through this together, I promise."

Her words stirred a flicker of doubt within me, a small voice whispering that perhaps forgiveness was possible. But as I looked into her eyes, I saw not just remorse, but a deeper struggle, a fundamental flaw in our relationship that could not be easily mended.

"I need some space, Leah," I said, my voice firm despite the tremors of uncertainty coursing through me. "I need time to figure things out on my own."

Leah's shoulders slumped in defeat, her gaze falling to the floor as tears streamed down her cheeks. "I understand," she whispered, her voice barely audible above the din of my racing heart. With a heavy heart, I zipped up my bag. As I made my way to the door, Leah's voice stopped me in my tracks.

"Y/n, wait," she said, her voice wavering with emotion. "Just know that I'll always love you, no matter what."

I let the tears I have been holding back drop silently as I look her in her eyes one more time. I love her so much but obviously I am not providing enough if she’s seeking more elsewhere. 

I get into my car and drive around aimlessly before arriving at Katie McCabe's place, seeking refuge in the familiarity of her warm embrace, she immediately sensed something was amiss. Concern etched across her features as she ushered me inside, her voice laced with worry.

"Y/n, what's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost," Katie exclaimed, her eyes scanning my face for any sign of explanation.

I managed a weak smile, attempting to mask the turmoil raging within me. "It's nothing, Katie. Just... a rough day."

But Katie wasn't easily fooled. She took my hand gently, her touch grounding me amidst the chaos of my emotions. "You know you can tell me anything, right? I'm here for you, no matter what."

I hesitated, the weight of my unspoken truth threatening to suffocate me. But as I looked into Katie's compassionate gaze, I knew I couldn't bear to burden her with the tangled mess of my heartache.

"It's complicated," I finally admitted, my voice barely above a whisper. "I just... I don't want to talk about it."

Katie's brow furrowed in concern, her instincts urging her to push further. "Is it Leah?" she asked softly, her words hanging heavy in the air.

I flinched at the mention of her name, the pain of betrayal still fresh in my mind. But I couldn't bring myself to tarnish Leah's name, not when the love I once felt for her still lingered like a ghost in the recesses of my heart.

"I can't," I choked out, tears threatening to spill over. "I can't do that to her. I still love her, Katie. I can't bear the thought of anyone hating her."

Katie's expression softened with understanding as she wrapped me in a comforting embrace, her presence a soothing balm to my shattered soul. "You don't have to say anything you're not ready to, y/n," she murmured, her words a whispered promise of unwavering support.

…………. ……….. ………… ………….

As the days passed, life seemed to go on as usual. I returned to my routine, throwing myself into training with the Arsenal team, my mind a whirlwind of conflicting emotions. Despite my efforts to appear unaffected, the tension between Leah and me was palpable, a silent rift that threatened to tear us apart.

At practice, the atmosphere was strained, the weight of unspoken words hanging heavy in the air. My teammates exchanged knowing glances, their curiosity piqued by the unspoken tension between Leah and me.

Leah, ever persistent, continued to plead for forgiveness, her desperation evident in every fleeting glance and tentative touch. But I remained steadfast in my resolve, refusing to entertain the possibility of reconciliation until I had fully come to terms with the betrayal that had shattered my trust.

As we gathered on the field, preparing for another grueling session, Leah approached me tentatively, her eyes brimming with remorse. "Y/n, please," she whispered, her voice pleading. "We need to talk. I can't bear this distance between us any longer."

I shook my head, my resolve hardening with each passing moment. "Not now, Leah," I replied, my voice firm despite the turmoil raging within me. "I need time to process everything that's happened."

“Please, y/n. I can see you training extra hard just to avoid thinking about this. Please, I don't want to see you hurting.”

“You did that, amore. You hurt me. I knew I wasn’t enough and you reassured me countless times I was. I was stupid to believe you… that I was enough for you.” I whisper before walking away. 

“Y/n, wait! At least tell me why no one else knows? I was expected to get some lash back from the gals.” She grabs my arm before I face her once more.

“Despite all you have done, and might think, I still love you.”

As Leah and I stood on the training field in our emotional exchange, a voice interrupted from the sidelines, cutting through the weighty atmosphere with unexpected levity.

"Well, whatever Leah did, it must be forgivable if she's still alive," came a joking remark from one of our teammates, interrupting the solemn moment with a touch of humor.

I turned to see Alessia smirking playfully as she approached us, her eyes twinkling with mischief. Despite the seriousness of the situation, her lighthearted comment momentarily lifted the heaviness that had settled over us.

"Seriously, y/n," Alessia continued, nudging me gently with her elbow. "You must be a saint to consider forgiving whatever she did. I mean, I can barely forgive her for stealing my snacks, let alone whatever this is."

A small smile tugged at the corners of my lips, the tension easing slightly under the unexpected reprieve of humor. "Trust me, Alessia," I replied, my tone light despite the lingering ache in my heart. "It's going to take a lot more than snacks to make things right."

[charmac]

Today I spent about an hour around/with Rob and I'm gonna write about it.

He recognised me from last night, came up and talked to us where I really lost all ability to calm or filter myself (which was, admittedly, already very little). He told me he's been seeing a lot of my Tweets and I asked why he followed me. He said he thought I had "a lot of fun and interesting things to say." I did not expect that, literally at all, I was trying to see if he knew my handle, @/pqdres, was for San Diego's baseball team, so I derailed myself from that conversation a bit lol oops.

The night before this he signed my S10 DVD cover on the plastic protector I had, so he offered to sign it properly when he noticed I had it with me again tonight:

I know I just kind of bulldoze over his words, (He said “Thank you for all the Twitter love”) but it’s because I had a script in my head and.. I'm sure a lot of you guys get it, lol. He didn't seem bothered, which I really appreciate.

He took individual photos with everyone who wanted one (like half the people in the bar (which wasn't even that many) had no interest in him) and when we were taking mine he asked for someone to shine an overhead light so we could get a good picture together bc I offhandedly said I needed to turn off my front flash.

I met him again, a little later at another bar (like Charlie and Glenn in October, he just kinda was walking around and hitting up various bars Four Walls was advertising at) and I apologised for my constant presence around him. The reason I stuck around was because I had one last request for the night, something I very much owed to @macdennissurvivor. I told him Emma was the person who got me into the Sunny fandom, and I would appreciate if he could say hi to her on camera. I started recording and then he said 'Nope give me your phone' and then went on a walk and recorded a 20 second video for her on my phone. I think that moment was a fundamental tilt for me.

I know I criticize this man a bit, but god-fucking-damn-it if he isn't the creator of my favourite show in the whole world, one of my favourite characters of all time, half of my URL, the reason I am writing and creating as much as I currently do, the reason I have made actual, real, deep friendships in the past few years, and he took so much time and patience with me, he recorded a whole video for my friend because he does fucking care. He sees us, this part of the fandom, and he appreciates it: that we’re a community and truly connect through his show. Words really can't express my emotions. Thank you Rob, for this.

[rennsdeaddoves]

The Future Past.

ya'll i don't know where this came from but i just started to type and it wouldn't stop. idk what part of the story this is gonna be from but it is definitely before Rukong is a thing.

enjoy!

-------

the fire had long since burned itself out, but still, Rue refused to sleep, her golden eyes stayed locked on the dying embers and spreading ash seemingly captivated her attention. Wukong rolled his eyes at her, she was being stubborn again and if she didn't sleep soon she would complain all fucking day tomorrow about being tired and he was not about to deal with that.

walking over to the human girl he put his hand on her shoulder to shake her out of whatever funk she was in, but as soon as the palm of his hand made contact with the exposed flesh of her shoulder his eyes widened as he was forcefully pulled away from his body and into somewhere new.

the Sun was high in the sky and the Monkey King could make out many tall boxes all around him. The noise was overbearing and so much was going on, but he had to focus on finding Rue and returning. off in the distance he heard the unmistakable laugh of his second human companion, it was lively, and there was an air about it that made it distinctly hers. he followed it through the crowd, being carful not to run into anyone or draw any unwanted attention to himself, and within time he caught up to the laughter, only to find someone he did not recognize...

it looked like Rue, hell she even sounded like her too, but her hair was completely greyish blond, and her clothing was like nothing he's ever seen (it showed too much skin in his opinion), she carried herself differently than the Rue he knew... Wukong didn't know how to place it but something was fundamentally different... but he had to take the chance.

"Rue!" he called, chasing after the girl, "RUE!" he tried again louder, this time finally managing to clap her shoulder. however, once contact was made everything but them stop, all life, every sound, the very breeze itself stilled. Rue wiped around, a face full of fury and a hand raised like she was about to hit him but as soon as she saw who it was her eyes widened. Her hand faltered and her whole demeanour shifted, clothing too, into the human he knew. she looked at him with something akin to fear and his chest constricted, never in all of their time together had she ever feared any of them.

"wha-" her voice cracked.

she looked back to the girls she had just been walking beside, opting to completely ignore Wukong (which infuriated him) she shook their shoulders but nothing budged. Wukong could see tears pooling in the corners of her eyes and thought she deserved it.

"are you fucking done? we have a master to get back to you wimp"

he snapped at her, and she turned on him full fury on her face.

"am I fucking done? WHAT KIND OF EMOTIONLESS BASTARD ARE YOU?!?"

her fist collided with his chest, but he just stood there, looking down at her with pity.

"the kind that really doesn't want to deal with your shit right now."

a resounding smack echoed around them. it bounced off the walls of the buildings and beyond. Wukong's eyes widened at the sting he felt on the left side of his face and noticed that he was looking in another direction.

Rue had slapped him.

"EVERY DAY I BOTTLE IT UP! EVERY FUCKING DAY I HELP YOU AND YOUR MASTER, I HELP YOU ALL GET PAST THINGS AND MOVE FORWARD TO YOUR GOALS NOT KNOWING IF I WILL EVER RETURN TO MINE!!!"

he looked at her with wide eyes, he had never seen such fury and sadness combined into one swirling emotion until right this second. and something in his gut told him that it was wrong.

"ALL OF YOU ONLY THINK ABOUT YOUR ENDINGS!! TRIPITAKA AND HIS ENLIGHTENMENT, YOU DEMONS AND YOUR PARDONS!! BUT WHAT ABOUT ME?! I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF I GET TO GO FUCKING HOME!!!"

he took a step forward, arms spread, ready to receive, something in him told him she needed this... more than he needed to keep up his pride and whatever other lies he put on for his group. right at this moment Rue did not need the mighty Sun Wukong, great sage and monkey king.

she needed a friend.

when he finally managed to get his arms around her in an embrace she beat at his chest again, every hit that echoed through his ribcage only made him hold just a little tighter. And finally, when she realized he wasn't letting her go, her anger melted into anguish. Sobs racked through her body, tearing from her chest, up her throat, and ripping out of her mouth. when her knees gave out Wukong gently guided them both to the floor, her hands had gripped so tightly to his clothing that she was beginning to pull at his fur but he didn't care. swallowing his pride once more, he spoke softly.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have dismissed you like that."

the apology only made her sob harder. burying herself further into his hold. he panicked slightly but got over it fast and settled them into a more comfortable position.

he waited till her sobbing turned to crying, then eventually the crying gave way to hiccups and Wukong was relieved she was ok.

when she looked up at him, her eyes were full of shame.

"I- I shouldn't have yelled like-"

"stop."

her mouth shut quickly.

"you had every right to." he could feel himself filling with shame, "how long have those emotions burdened you?"

he wanted to know how long she felt like that? when did her mind begin to conger the worries that this journey was hopeless for her? why hadn't she said anything to Master about it? surely he would have been able to soothe her worries on the subject.

"it was when i brought it up with Tripitaka..."

'Are you FUCKING kidding me?!?!?!' what kind of stupid bullshit had that monk said to her??

"actually, never mind... I'll only get angrier if you tell me"

he needed to find something for her to talk about and fast. so he pointed to the girls she was with before.

"who are they?"

she looked surprised that he's even asked, but she turned around in his arms and began her explanation.

"They were my friends... we had met in our first year in a humanities lecture and it turned out we were in the same tutorial. our teacher had put us all together for a group project and after that, our friendship only grew."

Rue took a deep breath, pointing to the furthest one; "that Alex, she wants to get into medical school to be able to support her parents, but she's also an amazing singer."

she pointed to the next one, the one she was beside; "that's Vivian, her goal is to be a successful author one day, make one of the best high-fantasy sci-fi books the world has ever read. and she had some kick-ass ideas."

finally, the last girl who was on the other side of Rue; "that's Sam, she got in on a sports scholarship and is trying to make it to the Olympics for high diving. we go to every one of her meets and then get food afterwards."

she seemed more at ease now, definitely more relaxed than she had been.

"they sound really nice."

it was all he could say, he didn't know what half of those things were but by her tone they were important.

"they were. I miss them so much... and my parents. I think about them all the time and what they must think happened to me..."

the amount of pain in her voice when she said that almost broke something in him. but to that front her could relate.

"i think of my home every day" he admitted, "I think of what all of the monkeys are doing if they are ok. I think about if Yu Xi had her children alright, and I wonder how they are growing."

damn! he was making himself fucking depressed thinking about it now.

"Yu Xi?"

Rue sounded curious, so Wukong, knee-deep in memories himself, divulged; "she was one of the cubs born after I took my spot as king. I watched her grow and find a love of her own, she was like a god-daughter to me. before I got sealed under the mountain I took the time to catch up with everyone in the cave. she was pregnant at the time... I never knew what happened after, but I like to think that she and her cubs are safe."

slowly the landscape around them both faded, Rue and Wukong were back in the camp, in front of a fire that had long since died, not even embers were left.

Wukong shook his head and rubbed his eyes, finally back to normal. Rue blinked and shook herself out of it as well.

"thank you"

he looked at her with confusion, but as she stood up and faced him, she also grabbed his hands. Wukong didn't know what to do, on one had he wanted to pull away and blow off this whole thing, but on the other something about her eyes captivated him.

"thank you for telling me about Xu Yi, I'm sure her and the rest and living wonderfully waiting for the day you can return to them."

Rue began to turn away, but Wukong didn't let go of her hands.

"I'll make sure you get home. you will see your friends again."

she smiled, nodded to him and walked away, from her posture and the look in her eyes...

she didn't believe him.

[kingprinceleo]

BET YOU DIDN'T EXPECT ME SO SOON

I did the dessert vampires playlist first since it was the shortest!

Stampede- very good interplay with the characters. Gives the vibe of I respect you but we fundamentally disagree on some big issues. Would be fun to play in the background of like a joint operation scheme? like they've gone undercover at a fancy party and this is them working together during it

Vulture- this is such a Shadow backstory song like- i don't know exactly what happens with GUN and Maria in this au but THIS is the song you play to express his feelings. The first verse at least low-key also sounds like Knuckles during or immediately post transformation to Rouge. He's very angy

Welcome to the Circus- a jaunty little tune. bar/saloon coded, probably plays wherever Amy works i think?

Recommend songs for this playlist: Desperado by Rhianna and maybe the entire Anti album based on vibes alone.

Blood Like Lemonade- strong vibes

Trouble Valerie Broussard- more Rouge centric i think

For other playlists:

Like a Vampire Catrien Maxwell, for vamp au Sonic

A Little Wicked - im thinking of Rouge for it but if it fits a different character i wouldn't be surprised

Little Girl Gone Chinchilla - very vamp au Shadow coded imo

Eve Precious Pepala- Shadow coded

All up in your mind- feels like Shadow thinking about Sonic's effect on him in vamp au

Hope these are good and have a nice timezone 🫶🏽. I go to sleep now

~🩸🎵

welcome back fhbghbjfdfdg !!

This playlist is a little more tough to explain bc i havent shared the major plotpoint that changes the whole title of the au fjgfjghf, but ill get there eventually !! Stampede- idrk know how to explain this one beyond its just Them, their conflicts their compromises, how the two are trying to work together in the situation theyre in, big time agree on the respect with huge disagreements tho, thats one of their major sticking points Vulture- RAHHHHHHH THIS IS IS KNUCKLES @ SHADOW !!!!! the entire time its knuckles rage and defiance !!! and im slamming my head into a wall so fucking hard i prommy it makes so much sense when i share the plot Welcome to the circus- its a rouge @ knuckles song ! like i said the subject itself is kinda weak but it hits on some of their core dynamic pieces --- Desperado- this one i could see being very rouge @ shadow but its a bit too forward and honest ! rouge would defo more take the angle of "im following you bc ur hopeless without me <3" Blood Like Lemonade- strong vibes on its own but doesnt particularly fit with anyone at least right now, i might come back to it after fleshing more people out (also i am sadly biased against songs that are kinda slow sob. i need that constant stimulation music {i almost didnt include vulture in the playlist bc of its speed but it was just too accurate and picks up with some heavy hitting stuff near the end}) Trouble- very correct w the rouge part !! defo eying this one up in consideration

---

Like a Vampire- defo not vampire au sonic , it actually lines up more with desert vampires rouge (i adore the singers voice btw omg) idk if its going in any of the au playlists but it sure is going in mine ! dfhhdfhg A little wicked- shrug tbh ! i see it for rouge but it feels like its missing something, her spunk, her 4kids saxaphone (im assuming if you dont specify an au you just mean for the canon gamers !) Little Girl Gone- THIS IS SO VAMPIRE AU SHADOWCORE LITTLE UNHINGED BASTARD !!! the blood on my teeth line caught my attention....and then the screaming part sold me HDSHDHF hes sooo silly <333

Eve- im so sorry im really biased against love songs so i dont see it personally !! esp not for shadow </3 All up in your mind- eeh there are a few lines there that work, but overall just misses slightly. big fan of the idea that shadows just making up all those lines tho and sonics never said any of it, thats funny fdgjfjdgfg i feel bad for not enjoying all of them wahh, but i am just really picky tbh,,, its gotta bounce the braincell right... but i appreciate the suggestions sm!!!! tyyy!! have a good sleep !!!

[mermaidsirennikita]

ARC Review: Say You'll Be Mine by Naina Kumar

4/5. Releases 1/16/24.

Vibes: fake dating but with good reasons, heroes with daddy issues, and justice against "that guy who's soooo nice and great and he won't make a move but I love him" guy

After finding out her longtime friend and crush (well, maybe more than a crush) Seth is engaged, Meghna decides to move on. I mean, she's going to be his best man--it's time. Although she doesn't hit it off with the grumpy Karthik, she is willing to take advantage when he agrees to be her fake fiance. She looks fully moved on from Seth, and he gets to shake his mom off his back. There isn't any drawback, right? Right?

This is a light-but-not-too-light contemporary, with a winning main couple and an emotional authenticity that was both engaging and... gentle? For want of a better word? Will please both the fake dating lovers and the haters (me).

Quick Takes:

--I have a real soft spot for a book where the heroine realizes that the guy she thought was THE shit, who never really made the kind of move she wanted but took advantage of her attention (keeping her on the hook, essentially) is... not the shit. This is one of those books, and it has the added nuance of Seth having zero real respect for Meghna's background and culture. It's not just that he doesn't really know her--it's that he doesn't even want to make the effort to get to know her on the most basic level.

That said, Meghna never comes off as pathetic during the story, which is honestly a credit to the way Naina Kumar writes and handles the story. She's vulnerable, yes. She's in denial, yes. But she's not pitiful. (This is also because Meghna is kind of a classic endearing romcom heroine--Say You'll Be Mine does read an actual romcom, which definitely can't be said of a lot of romcom books at the moment.)

--Karthik is a lot pricklier... and I imagine that some people may find that frustrating. But two things to consider: firstly, his prickliness makes it more satisfying when he gradually melts with Meghna and becomes emotionally connected to her. Secondly, his reasons ring true. At least, for me they do.

Karthik fundamentally does not want to emulate his parents' troubled marriage. He'd rather hold himself at arm's length, staying closed off to love, than risk recreating what they have (we love to read about men with daddy issues). As a someone from a ~broken home~ he really came off as authentic and relatable to me. He's not not overly angsty, he's really not an asshole. But he has walls, and they're deeply rooted in his childhood.

And I mean--again, I think it's incredibly important for that block to be there. This is overall a sweet, soft book, but Karthik's inner turmoil (and of course Meghna's relationship or lack there of with Seth) keeps it from being without stakes.

Ultimately, I want to stress--this is a really sweet romance. You feel that sense of knowing and comfort slowly rise for these two, until the extent to which they value each other is really clear. It's very comforting and kind of cozy, which works for this time of year especially.

The Sex:

The sex is sorta quiet here--just one more euphemistic scene towards the end, preceded by another kinda low heat over the pants action moment. (Which I did like a lot.) However, it does remain quite romantic, if not super steamy.

I really enjoyed this gentle yet entertaining romcom, and I especially liked Naina's writing style. She has a strong voice, and I definitely want to see more from her.

Thanks to Netgalley and Dell for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[yourlocalmissingtexture]

There’s this thing my mom, grandma, me, and some of my great aunts so that I’m sure is pretty common but honestly I don’t see that often (might have something to do with the fact that I don’t get out much but eh). Idk but I really like it because it’s so silly.

Unless the subject is like deathly serious, if people are talking and someone says something just right, we’ll get reminded of a song and can’t help but sing.

Some hypotheticals that I could absolutely see happening because I can’t think of any specific examples:

“Wait you guys aren’t talking about me are you?”

“You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you, you’re so vain (You’re So Vaaaaain), I bet you think this song is ABOUT YOU, DON’T YOU, DON’T YOOOOOOOU?”

“Show me where you found that.”

“SHOW ME HOW TO LIE YOU’RE GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME AND TURNING ALL AGAINST THE ONE IS AN ART THAT’S HARD TO TEACH”

[talking about a movie] “It came out in 1985.”

“Debbie just hit the wall, she never had it all, one Prozac a day, husband’s a CPA, her dreams went out the door! When she turned 24. Only been with one man, what happened to her plan?”

“I can’t get this thing to go back together.”

“I know the pieces fit ‘cause I watched them fall away mildewed and smoldering, fundamental differing-”

Then of course there’s the random unrelated singing. Mostly Mom and I do that. Often it’s stuff stuck in ours heads but sometimes I’ll just randomly remember a song and have to sing it. We annoy the shit out of each other with those because she listens to tons of slow songs (which are fine! Just most aren’t my thing) and I usually have Insane Clown Posse or Rammstein stuck in mine.

Idk. Family bonding lmao.

[makorays]

I'm curious if its ok to ask about how it is to be bipolar like do you feel different or anything? have you always been bipolar? how do you know you have it?

you'll want to get a psychological evaluation done, it's how i got diagnosed. but even without a diagnosis i probably could've figured it out. this is a chart i made of how my overall mood felt on a scale from 0 to 10 on every day of 2022 and 2023. anything below that red line in the middle is when my mood is low enough to make accomplishing anything more than super basic tasks very difficult.

i actually really wish i had another chart to compare mine to, because uh, i'm PRETTY SURE this isn't normal. see how i'll like, have a string of good days, but then all of a sudden i flip and feel like absolute garbage for a bit?

bipolar is characterized by one's mood shifting in and out of hypomania and depression with little to no apparent cause. it typically doesn't manifest until adulthood. starting from when i was an adult, i kept feeling super super depressed without having any idea why, i'd always search my head to see if there was anything weighing on me at the time but i always came up short. or if i DID find something to be upset about, it was only on my mind AFTER the bad feelings already hit, and the bad feelings made me ruminate on the upsetting thought and feel hopeless.

imagine being so happy for a couple of days that you accomplish everything you wanted to do that week, music feels more amazing than usual, everything is exciting, you love the world and everyone and yourself and everything is great.

now imagine waking up after one of those days and having the first thought of the morning being "god i want to die." not a single apparent reason for it, you were feeling fine the night before, but all of a sudden everything is just wrong. everything hurts. you feel so weak that you have to muster up strength just to do basic household chores. you don't care about anything. all of your dreams, everything you've spent your life working for, all of it feels completely pointless. even if you had the motivation to work on something, you certainly don't have the energy. the simple act of moving your body starts to feel like you're swimming through black sludge. your personality shifts and you become a worse person because you're filled head to toe with pain and apathy and you have zero energy to deal with anyone's shit. your brain starts dedicating a ton of resources to inject you with raw suffering. you know that feeling you get when you hit your knee against a sharp corner? when a romantic partner breaks up with you? when someone manages to insult you in a way that hits every single insecurity you have? y'know...Pain? imagine feeling JUST that pain, without any of those things to cause it. imagine your default state is not one of neutrality, but of suffering. imagine a voice in your head, indistinguishable from yourself (because it IS you, just not a you you'd like to be) starts mocking you, calling you pathetic, telling you you've wasted your life and you'll never find happiness. imagine being so used to this voice that you've pretty much gotten a total handle on how to silence it, but silencing it does nothing for all the wordless pain you're also feeling. imagine clearing your head of all your worries, searching for that inner peace that normally acts as the bedrock to your mind, and finding it to have been replaced by a fundamental sensation of wrongness. imagine feeling so trapped in the torture chamber that is your head that you start asking yourself which wall of your bedroom would be most optimal for bashing your skull through. imagine questioning how it could be possible for anyone to be forged this broken. imagine being so intimately familiar with the chronic psychic pain that your only logical options are to either suppress it with medication or kill yourself.

now imagine going back to that other version of yourself, the happy one, the one whose brain tells them everything's fine. imagine starting to pull your life together, making more complex and healthy meals, working out every day or two, practicing skills, making progress with projects, and then imagine suddenly and completely losing all motivation to continue doing any of that because another inevitable downswing hits. imagine watching your muscles go back to how they were before you started working out because you literally do not have enough willpower in your entire body to do it consistently while in this state of mind.

so imagine now that there are two versions of you. one of them is living a happy life, making progress, pursuing his dreams, enjoying his time. but then there's this OTHER you, who always trips and falls back down the stairs you worked so hard to climb, who has spent their entire life feeling chronically depressed for no reason, and they're starting to get tired of it. the happy you starts to show up less and less, and the sad you gets to go further and further through their character arc. except, if you're anything like me, that storyline ends in suicide. you have to not give that version of you what they want, no matter how powerful their voice becomes, no matter how badly they want it, no matter how sick and tired they are of having to deal with this, no matter how much suffering they are experiencing. you have to keep torturing them, force them to live, until you can find the right medication to kill them in a way where they won't take your better half down with them.

and i should clarify, this is not multiple personality disorder. i'm still "me" whenever my shifts happen, the different voices in my head are just how i describe my conflicting thoughts. i am a democracy of neurons whose job is to make sure the dark and irrational neurons get outvoted. unfortunately, i can only influence the ones i am conscious of.

anyway hopefully these meds work :)

[garf-eats-vomit]

WATER BOTTLES.

When I was younger I had a lot of punishments. I still do. I live with my parents even though I'm 18 and they [mostly mother] treat me like a child. This hasn't happened in years, but there was a Maximum Punishment they would inflict once in a blue moon when they deemed it necessary. It was called water bottles. It was set up by grabbing two full water bottles, and my dad [he's a tall muscular man, much more so than myself, just for context] would come with me into a secluded room in the house. One time it was me and him in the kitchen at night, and I was in my pajamas. I don't remember if he actually got me out of bed, but that did happen a few times. Other times it was in his room, or my room, or the garage. Anyway, the way you played the game was you took two water bottles and held one in each of your hands by the tops, straight out in a T pose. You would do this until your arms got tired, and if they dropped for too long dad would make me put them down and you'd go over and get spanked. And he didn't do the usual light spankings where it was just a light swat. This man had me bend down over his knee and he'd smack me at full force, usually with a coat hanger, occasionally with his hand, several times. Then you'd go back over and do it all over again. This usually lasted for at least an hour. The whole time this was happening, he'd be asking you questions and lecturing you on whatever it was that you'd done. Usually this was school related. It boiled down to me not doing my work for no real reason. I just didn't want to. So they had to *make* me want to. Eventually this evolved, two tines in fact. The first was when water bottles were replaced with five pound weights. It was really just a matter of convenience. I still don't like the way weights feel when I lift them. Anyway. This change was largely inconsequential. The second change happened when I got older, from elementary to middle school. There was a new challenge added to the game, wall squats were introduced. They worked fundamentally the same as the water bottle/weight portion, do the squats until you couldn't anymore and go over for a spanking. The many times this has happened the game was played much the same, the only thing that really makes any individual time stick out in my memory is the location. Bedrooms in different houses, sometimes mine, sometimes my parents', that one time in the kitchen. I believe that was the very first time that punishment took place. It was for drawing with marker on the part of the tile that would never clean off. I might’ve been seven or eight. I don't remember. I think one of the most vivid memories I have is when I was perhaps in seventh grade. We had been doing water bottles for a while, in my parents' room. I was laid out over my dad's knee, crying my eyes out and getting snot everywhere. He hit me with the coat hanger once again, and the force was so strong the plastic broke, and it snapped clean in half and it flew across the room. I look back on it as funny now.

In the same house, I vividly remember coming home from a bad day at school, and the first thing I did was lock myself in the bathroom, sit down, and pray to God I wouldn't have to do water bottles.

Generally while he was talking, my dad would work himself up the longer it went on, and he's kind of an angry person in general. As a reminder, he's tall and muscular, going to the gym regularly, daily now. He would scream and break things. We still have an old cd player with a big black dent in it from when he kicked it with his boot. And for years one of our closet doors had a gaping hole in one side where there was evidence of him getting angry.

It's been years since I've had to do water bottles. We've moved past that. I don't believe he's hit me in years, I've grown up. Mother still does occasionally, but she treats me like a child in general, so that's not a surprise or anything. Suffice to say water bottles had something close to the impact they were looking for, I suppose.

[tacko3d]

Tangent about Wall Running (Advice? IDK)

A few weeks ago I was at a student game showcase. And I tried out some of the games and I was just trying to find a way to break them.

So there was one game with wall running and I remembered an issue I had for wall running. and I purposely caused it when I was playing so they would learn about it. And its that most wall running mechanics kinda work the same

Heres the time I tried it doing wall running in unreal when I ran into that problem. This was I think August 2020? (I SWEAR THIS ISN'T AN EXCUSE TO PLUG THE YOUTUBE CHANNEL THIS IS JUST THE CLOSEST CLIP I HAD ON HAND)

especially if you just found it on youtube. And its that basically you can mega man X wall climb the walls. If your smart about it, you could easy make this a feature. But it was definitly not intentional.

so you just keep spamming jump while wall running and you can either leap out of bounds OR get stuck somewhere. and they were like "How did you do that" honestly, best way to prevent that is to clamp your jump count.

so it doesn't refresh until you another wall or the ground. of course, don't remember 100% how to refresh for walls. Because you'll want different identifiers for those conditions. At least I think so

but you can just cap the jumps to whatever many jumps you are supposed to have and have that counter reset when you hit the ground. In Unreal they already have the variable isinAir? for you. So if its check if isinAir is false, your jumps are refreshed.

but you'll want to make an "and/or" condition based on whether you are jumping on a different wall. Unless you make it so that it's basically impossible to make it upward. By limiting player movement when they are being launched off the wall.

IN THAT CASE, I guess you can get the "forward vector" (in quotations cause you want that an angle, not the true forward) to make the player can't make it to the wall in time to climb it. They'd either stay in place OR fall.

I'll try and prove this when I'm back on my PC. Right now, my mac is not in the best shape. Its their 7th birthday in a few months and I think if I tried doing anything on it, it WILL explode.

but yeah, thats how I'd solve the wall jump thing. So if you try that out, let me know if that helped ya.

Its interesting how both my and their set up for Wall running eventually ran into the same issue. Despite mine being in Unreal and their's in Unity. I guess they're both C based scripting languages, so are they that different fundamentally? I'm probably totally wrong on that. I'm relatively "new" to programming. I only started in 2019.

[hauntedfalcon]

living in midnight

for day four of Nile Freeman Week: "Nile & Struggle" plus a fantasy AU in which superheroes exist, Nile isn't one of them, and she doesn't let that stop her. 1700 words, rated M for swearing. content warning for wounds and needles because it's Nile's turn for sapphic patching up, as a treat

the title is from Lianne La Havas’s “Midnight”. many thanks to @flightsofwonder for beta reading <3

read on AO3 or below

Nile opens her eyes to see an unfamiliar ceiling. There is an unfamiliar pillow under her head, and she is recumbent on an unfamiliar sofa. Above it is a window, where streetlights reflect in the sinuous trails of raindrops.

Rain. Knives. Three attackers. She fought like hell, might have broken someone’s arm, but they landed one good hit. They left her for dead in an alley. She watched her own blood run into a puddle.

She bolts upright--and hisses when a wave of agony breaks over her, starting in her abdomen and shooting everywhere.

“Please don’t move,” says a softly accented voice. “You’re safe here. I haven’t seen your face.”

Nile collapses back down to the pillow and touches her face, just to be sure. Her mask is still in place. She drops her hand and forces one eye open, blurry with pained tears, to get a look at whoever dragged her in from the alley.

A white woman. Dark shoulder-length hair. Youngish, maybe Nile’s age. Dressed all in black, much like her--not for stealth but for soft goth vibes. Cute, if she’s honest, but this isn’t the fucking singles bar, get it together Freeman.

“I staunched the bleeding,” her rescuer says, “but I was waiting until you were conscious to do the stitches.”

“Do we have to?” Nile groans before she can stop herself.

A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it smile. “I’m afraid so. Would you like some fortitude?” The amateur surgeon holds out a bottle of Everclear.

Ugh. Nile takes the cap off and drinks deep, leaving enough in the bottle to sterilize whatever needs to be sterilized. It tastes like ass and lingers at the back of her throat.

Before the alcohol can set in and obliterate her senses, she says, “Can I borrow your phone?”

The woman hesitates. Very wise of her.

“Listen,” Nile says. “We had two leads come in at the same time. Al-Tayyib took one and I took the other, and mine was a decoy, which means...” She can’t, won’t, say it aloud. She hates how feeble she sounds. “I just have to check in with him. Please.”

The woman hands her a smartphone, unlocked. Nile hits the keycode to make the call anonymous, then dials Joe’s shitty flip phone from memory. He keeps it on silent when he’s on the rounds, and he’ll only answer if he’s safe.

Pick up, she wills him, because if she has to hear his stupid cheerful voicemail greeting now of all times, she’s going to scream right in front of this poor woman who didn’t ask for any of this drama in her life. Pick up, pick up, pick--

“Pronto.”

Nile’s gut tightens (painfully, but that’s not what matters right now) at the sound of another unfamiliar voice. The assassin. Joe walked into a trap.

“Where is he?” she demands, trying to sound hard and not like she’s lying on a stranger’s couch with an open wound.

A gust in the speaker. Is he laughing at her? She strains to hear anything that would give away their location: traffic, a clock tower, machinery, anything. There’s nothing else. No hint of Joe yelling in the background, either.

“I will return him to you presently,” says the asshole. Very formal.

“What, after you shank him like your goons did to me?”

“They were instructed not to kill you,” he says in a voice that wouldn’t fog a window in January. “Did you die?”

White-hot rage flares out of her with no place to go. “Where is he, you son of a--” But he has already hung up on her.

Nile resists the urge to growl. If this was her phone she would throw it against the wall. Instead she quickly deletes the record of the outgoing call, and hands the phone back to the woman, who pockets it. “Thank you,” she says tightly.

“I’m sorry to say so,” says the woman as she holds the tip of a curved needle in a candle flame, “but you are in no condition to save anyone right now.”

She blows out a sigh in answer. When she pulls the hem of her shirt up and peels away the medical tape and bandage pad, she discovers that the woman is absolutely right. This isn’t the worst Nile has been hurt and still fought, but it is pretty bad.

And it’s one thing to trash a gang of traffickers while she’s actively bleeding. It’s something totally different to track down a guy who has been three steps ahead of them this whole time, and seems to have removed his sense of morals with an ice cream scoop.

There’s only one thing left to do: say a silent prayer. The way she learned to pray feels insufficiently casual for the circumstances; she wishes she knew more about the format of the rakat. All she remembers is, “God hears the one who praises him,” so she starts on the Lord’s Prayer because praise comes before petition.

In place of, “Give us this day our daily bread,” she substitutes, “Get Joe out of this with his head,” and then she has to hold back a giggle at the rhyme. She must have lost a lot of blood.

The woman wipes the needle down with Everclear. “You know, I met the old Guardian too.”

Nile eyes her carefully. She won’t say Andy’s name in this woman’s presence. She won’t say Joe’s name either, much less her own. She won’t slip no matter how much blood she’s lost or how strong the alcohol is or how fundamentally good and trustworthy this woman seems or how much this is going to hurt. “Not under the same conditions,” she presumes.

“Very similar,” the woman says with another fleeting smile. “I hope she’s well?”

“She’s good,” Nile hastens to reassure her. “She retired.” And she left Nile her nom de guerre and all the weight that went with it.

“I’m glad she made it that long.”

“Probably thanks to you,” Nile says, and she gets a longer smile for it.

Then the needle bites into her skin and Nile whimpers softly and throws an arm over her eyes. She’s hard. She’s tough. This is what she does.

The woman’s gloved hand pinches the wound closed as she stitches. She works quickly, professionally. “I’m really glad you found me,” Nile manages. “I can’t exactly go to a hospital.”

“I think you would be surprised,” the woman says. “You are well loved in this city. People would protect your identity.”

That’s not it. Nile can’t go to hospital because there’s a chance her mom would be on shift, and the only thing worse than keeping her alter ego secret from her mom is the idea that she would find out because Nile came in on a gurney. She can’t do that to her.

A tug, as she ties the thread off, and then a snip of the shears. Nile lifts her head and looks down at a slightly puckered, neatly stitched, no longer bleeding knife wound.

Her laugh sounds brittle, just this side of hysterical. The woman glances at her. “I have work tomorrow,” Nile says weakly.

The woman tapes a fresh bandage over the wound. “Me too.”

No rest for the righteous. “The struggle is real, huh? Sorry for keeping you up late.”

“I will call in if you do,” the woman offers.

But going into the office in the morning might be the soonest opportunity to make sure Joe is okay. Nile pulls her shirt down and zips her bomber jacket over it. “I should go.”

The woman sets one hand on Nile’s arm. “Please stay. You shouldn’t be out alone tonight.”

“They might have been watching when you brought me inside,” Nile warns.

“Then I will need your protection, won’t I?” the woman says without blinking, as if she’s not the one that just saved Nile’s whole life.

Nile cracks an incredulous smile but the woman just gazes at her solemnly.

“Okay,” she says at last. “Okay, I’ll stay. Thank you. And I’m sorry for bleeding on your couch.”

It’s not enough, but the woman just sets about cleaning up her supplies. Nile settles back against the pillow and wills her muscles to unclench.

“May I ask,” the woman asks as she washes her hands, “why you do this? You don’t have superpowers.”

No, and none of the people who do have taken this city under their protection. Flippant, lazy answers parade through Nile’s mind, because she’s not in a charitable mood. Anger issues. No one else is gonna do it. I’m a giant masochist, actually.

But when she opens her mouth, the first thing that comes out is Andy’s answer, from when Nile asked her years ago. “Because there are people worth fighting for.”

Then Joe’s answer: “People who won’t get justice any other way.”

And, finally, one that’s all hers. “I have a responsibility. This is my city”

She’s going to pass out any minute, but beneath her fatigue there’s still a live coal of the feelings that made her put this mask on in the first place. This is her damn city. She spends so much time in the guts of its shitty justice system, and the rest of the time punching assholes, that she sometimes forgets her city is full of ordinary, decent people. Good people. People who will bring someone in from the rain. People like…

“What’s your name?” Nile asks, and then catches herself. “I can’t--give you mine. Sorry. It might be safer if I don’t know yours.”

“Celeste,” says the woman.

Good people like Celeste. How comforting that is.

Her pain is down to an ache instead of a burn, and her eyes drift closed. In the morning, she’ll be out of Celeste’s hair. She’ll shower at her apartment, carefully, and she’ll go into Legal Aid, and Joe will be there, a little banged up but alive. He’ll hug her, quick and tight, and they’ll loiter by the coffee maker and speak in low voices and sort out their next play. And when the work day is over, they’ll go with Andy and Quỳnh down to Booker’s for drinks and darts, and Nile will order a bouquet of flowers sent to Celeste’s apartment in thanks. Everything, for given quantities of everything, will be fine.

Confident in her safety, secure in her purpose, Nile rests.

[exmortia]

Shadowgast soulmate ficlet: Found Familiars

Essek/Caleb soulmate AU where a wizard’s familiar manifests from a fragment of their soul, but if they have a soulmate, the familiar comes from their soulmate’s soul instead. Regular D&D familiar mechanics don’t apply here except for pocket dimension poofing and un-poofing. Rated T for someone almost dying.

Like every student at the Soltryce Academy, the time finally comes when Bren learns how to summon a familiar.

It’s a week-long elective course he wasn’t planning on taking yet, preferring to focus his current semester on the fundamentals of magic, but Eadwulf is the first of their friend group to enroll, and he walks into the dorms next week with a raven perched on his shoulder. It becomes a nearly permanent addition to his friend, large and jet-black, with a deceptively strong beak and eyes filled with confidence and intelligence. Eadwulf spends the next few days answering the same standard question from their peers and teachers - “no, it’s mine.”

Astrid borrows Eadwulf’s notes on the spell and summons her own familiar not long after, a razor-eyed falcon that never stops scanning their surroundings and quietly observing anyone within range. Bren is only a little disappointed when she says “it’s mine, I can tell.” He knows, like everyone else, that soulmates are rare.

Soon it’s his turn, and his friends are making good-natured jokes about what form his familiar will take. They’re hoping for another bird just for the irony of it. “Maybe an owl,” Astrid says with a smile. They make bets. Eadwulf puts ten silver on a songbird, and Astrid puts twenty on a bird of prey.

Bren performs the ritual that night in the privacy of his room. As the incense drifts into the air, he secretly hopes for a feline companion, like the one he knew in childhood. Something soft and warm, curled up in his lap and welcoming him back to his room after a long day of classes. He keeps his eyes closed until the spell completes. 

When he looks down, there’s an unexpected shape on his desk, like a scarf dropped lengthwise into a pile. Then it begins to move, glinting with iridescent color in the candlelight as its body slides and shifts on itself, and then he recognizes the creature when a rounded head emerges, tongue flicking out to taste the air in his direction. 

“A snake?” he whispers to himself, confused and disappointed. Where he’d hoped for fur (or even feathers in retrospect), he sees shiny black scales like an inkspill across his desk where the light doesn’t hit. There are no emotions in its tapered face and round, lidless eyes. When the initial shock wears off, he takes a moment to focus and reach for his connection with it, hoping that what he finds is a reflection of himself, just like what his friends have, but what greets him is a feeling so new and foreign that he can’t lie to himself anymore.

Bren dismisses the familiar in a moment of panicked shame. He spends the night agonizing over what he’ll say to his friends and what their reactions will be. “It’s not mine,” he whispers to himself, dreading the moment when he’ll say it to them in person tomorrow. “I don’t know whose it is, but it isn’t mine.”

“You have a soulmate,” Astrid will say with a small, tight smile, the words neutral on the surface, but there’s a guarded expression in her eyes. Bren can only nod in reply, feeling like he’s wronged her somehow, as Eadwulf inspects the coiled snake presented to them in Bren’s outstretched hands.

“I’m sure it will come in handy,” he declares, trying to soothe Bren’s worries the only way he knows how. Astrid agrees, and the tension passes as they walk to their first class of the day. Bren considers dismissing his familiar again, but then he looks longingly at the companions perched on his friends and carefully tucks the serpent into the neck of his shirt beneath his robe. Its cool weight settles across his shoulders, the movement a slow, shifting pressure that feels good in the summer heat and even better when he’s working through a difficult assignment later.

Bren doesn’t find out until a few weeks later that his familiar is dangerous. An altercation with another classmate leads to him being shoved against a wall, the other boy’s grip twisted into the front of his robe with one hand while the other pulls back for a swing at Bren’s face, and suddenly there’s a blur of motion and the boy is stumbling back with a pair of tiny red dots on his chin. He almost dies right there on the floor, lips blue and foaming at the mouth, before one of the professors is drawn to the shouting of gathered students. Bren is instructed, under threat of expulsion, to keep his familiar dismissed while in the presence of others.

Ten years ago and hundreds of miles away, Essek Thelyss stands in his laboratory, blinking incredulously at the small, furry creature that has manifested in front of him. The trouble with being a wizard of a long-lived race who can’t summon a familiar is that you don’t know whether your soulmate has already died or just hasn’t been born yet. Essek didn’t think he needed a familiar, particularly, but he’d gotten into the habit of trying the spell once every few years when he remembered, partly because it stung to be an accomplished wizard who couldn’t summon one, and also because he secretly hoped that his soulmate, the one chosen for him by The Weave itself, had not already departed this world.

He’d lost count of the attempts, but it was somewhere between twenty and twenty-three when the spell finally worked, much to his surprise. His new familiar, with its striped orange fur and long tail curled neatly around its legs, sat on his ritual table and looked back at him with eyes that glinted in the low, ambient light. ‘My soulmate is alive out there,’ Essek thought with a relief he would never admit to, reaching out to stroke the cat’s soft fur as it stretched and began exploring the table, then his workbench, and then anywhere it could possibly get into.

In his youth, Essek had hoped for a more suitable familiar - something that could blend in, yet contribute to his image as a formidable spellcaster, like a snake or a spider, but he’d grown accustomed to not having one. His new feline companion becomes a sort of household pet. It’s not physically affectionate beyond the occasional rub against his legs. Mostly, it prefers to sit elsewhere in the room and watch him work from a distance. When he trances, it patrolls the halls and kills any small, unfortunate animal that dares enter his home. He wonders about the sort of person his soulmate might be, to have their soul reflected in this mindful, intelligent, and often ruthless creature.

One night, a little over ten years after he first summoned his familiar, Essek returns from his work at the Lucid Bastion and begins going about his routine, only to find that his familiar is nowhere to be found. He wonders if something has happened to make it decorporealize, like accidentally toppling a heavy object onto itself (unlikely), or maybe it had gotten outside somehow and didn’t care to return yet (a common recurring event). His familiar had changed over the past few months, becoming even more standoffish and less receptive to physical touch than before, so Essek doesn’t worry about its absence until the following day, when his familiar is still nowhere to be found. Before using his components to repeat the summoning ritual, he decides to make a quick search of his tower, and there, crouched in the furthest corner beneath a display cabinet in an unused room, his familiar stares back at him with wide, unblinking eyes. 

When Essek reaches for his companion, its sudden, piercing, feline scream sends him pitching backwards in shock, until he’s on the floor and his familiar has left behind a series of long scratch marks where it fled. Essek is shaken for the few moments he sits there, confused, and then later, deeply concerned for someone he’s never met before. 

This state of mind becomes normal for Essek over the next eleven years. His familiar is a ghost, hiding and wedging itself under furniture and bursting from its hiding spot in a terrified, screaming bolt of fur and claws when Essek unknowingly gets too close. Sometimes he goes weeks without catching sight of it, but Essek finds himself too sentimental to dismiss his former companion. He fears for the source of his familiar’s soul fragment, whoever this person is, and whatever it was that must have happened to them to cause this.

Hundreds of miles away and a few months later, Bren, now Caleb, accepts a torn-off piece of stolen bread from his new goblin companion, and hundreds of miles away, Essek’s familiar creeps out from beneath the workbench in his lab and slinks out of the room, but not before making brief eye contact with Essek, who stares back in disbelief with a set of alchemical reagents forgotten in his hands. 

A few weeks later, after being roughed up and chased out of town again, Caleb remembers his silent protector from his school days, and Nott watches with fascination as a black snake appears in Caleb’s hands with a snap of his fingers. Nott’s fascination turns to concern as he spends a long moment staring at it, drowning in the memory of those days at the academy before he and his friends caught Trent Ikithon’s eye. Later that evening, Nott asks to hold his familiar, and Caleb worries for a moment, but it allows itself to be handed over, and Nott must constantly adjust her grip as its body moves and slips between her fingers. 

“I think he prefers his master,” she says kindly, and although Caleb hadn’t cared to gender his familiar, the pronoun rings true somehow. Caleb accepts the snake from her and tucks it back into the neck of his coat where its cool, comforting weight helps quiet his intrusive thoughts.

It takes a few more months before Essek can run his fingers through his familiar’s striped fur again. Progress has been slow, but steady, and Essek is relieved not just for his familiar, but for the unnamed soul attached to it. 

Things eventually return to the way they were before, and then continue to change. His familiar becomes his shadow, dutifully following him into every room of his tower. Where before it would perch out of arm’s reach to watch him work, now it walks across the paperwork on his desk and jumps into his lap and demands attention, before it’ll curl up and allow him to keep working. It’s an adjustment compared to what he’s used to, but there’s a weight lifted from his shoulders when he thinks about his soulmate now. At least, most of the time. His familiar refuses to leave his home and still vanishes for hours when he gets visitors, even when they remain on his doorstep and converse with him briefly through the open door.

The day comes when a group of strangers walk into the Lucid Bastion. Even among the chaos that follows, Essek’s attention is drawn, inexplicably, to one of their group - a surprisingly well-spoken human with copper-colored hair and pink, freckled skin, covered in mud and Luxon knows what else. 

Caleb, dressed in nothing but leather straps, had dismissed his snake familiar out of necessity back in Asarius. When the situation in the Bright Queen’s throne room eventually dies down, his attention is drawn to a figure sitting near the dias, imposing in equal measure to the other high-ranking drow around them, but something about this individual catches his attention and keeps it indefinitely. 

Later, when he and the Nein are free to wander Rosohna, Caleb decides not to risk going about with his venomous, spring-coiled companion for now, just in case there’s a misunderstanding with the locals or the guards. 

Essek has his work cut out for him, and these new people don’t stay strangers for long. Despite his frustration at their behavior (often disrespectful and almost always culturally inappropriate), he finds himself responding eagerly to their requests for help when needed. When he sees them, his attention is always drawn first to their wizard, Caleb Widogast, and when he teaches Caleb that first dunamantic spell, it’s a challenge to monitor Caleb’s attention to the correct page of Essek’s spellbook, rather than Caleb himself. Everything about this human man, from the way he murmurs to himself while he works, to how he wrings his hands together during tense conversations, to the purely unexpected talent and raw power in the spells he demonstrates, has captivated Essek over the time he’s spent with these newcomers.

Caleb quietly scolds himself whenever the Shadowhand catches him staring. He’s not accustomed to being around dark elves, and even after the novelty wears off, something about their assigned handler, his new and unexpectedly generous teacher in the dunamantic arts, is drawing his attention and thoughts like an arcane compulsion. Caleb carefully keeps this to himself, not wanting to jeopardize their tenuous position in Roshona or the Shadowhand’s willingness to share his knowledge.

Eventually, as the weeks pass and their relationship with Essek grows out of familiarity and Jester’s brute force method of making friends, the Nein are invited to the Shadowhand’s tower for breakfast and the promise of some collaborative spellwork.

Caleb is regrettably late to the event as he makes a detour to find spell supplies, not wanting to impose on their host any more than necessary. When he arrives, there’s an awkward, semi-private moment where Essek answers the door and greets him. Then he’s led further inside where the others are gathered around a large table, and there’s a weird sort of prickling in the back of his mind as he enters the room. Fjord and Beau are talking and leaning against the table while the others are seated in a small group on the opposite side, except for Jester who is kneeling on the floor and talking to someone or something in a high-pitched voice.

A moment later, Jester makes a sad sound and watches Essek’s familiar slip out from under her hands to go trotting across the floor towards its master, or so she thinks. The cat’s gait breaks into a run, and she gasps as Caleb suddenly falls to his knees, his expression that of a mother who’s been searching all day for their missing child as the cat jumps into his arms. Essek’s familiar must be super friendly with other wizards, she thinks, until she sees the startled look on their host’s face. ‘This is the first time in many years that my familiar has not hidden itself from visitors,’ she remembers him saying as they arrived at the tower, and then he coaxed the cat towards them after she asked if she could pet it, which it accepted with mild, friendly interest. Now Caleb is clutching at its orange striped fur as it rubs against his face over and over again, purring loud enough for everyone to hear, and she’s not sure, but it looks like he might be crying a little.

Caleb carefully stands with the cat cradled in one arm, its outstretched paws making biscuits in the air. He reaches out towards Essek, and there’s a small flash of arcane magic before Caleb’s serpentine familiar appears there, balanced in a tight knot of coils in his upturned hand. Essek stares at it, motionless, until the snake begins to move, its body quickly sliding away from its master and into the space between Essek and Caleb, apparently not caring if it falls before it’s caught. 

Essek reaches out with both hands to meet the snake’s trajectory, and soon the familiar is wrapped around Essek’s forearm, coiled tightly in place like a permanent fixture. Essek lifts his arm and stares into its eyes, carefully running his fingers across the black, iridescent scales with a gentle reverence.

“He’s yours,” Caleb chokes out in joyful tears, knowing but not caring that his friends are watching with a combination of amusement and concerned looks. “I always wondered, but I never dared hope . . .” Caleb clears his throat as Essek stares at him, the drow’s expression hard to read. “He, uh, likes to be up high, around your neck, where he can, um . . . he’s v-venomous by the way. I had to learn that. From experience. But he is a good snake, a very good snake,” Caleb insists as more tears threaten to wet his face. In Caleb’s arms, his new familiar trills and then purrs louder, satisfied, when he bends down to nuzzle his face into its wonderful, beautiful orange fur.

Essek makes a quick decision not to ask about what happened to his feline familiar over that eleven-year period. Maybe later when they’re comfortable and alone. For now, he admires his snake companion, the subtle magical thread of connection between master and familiar already transitioned, painlessly, from old to new. He feels whole and complete, and not just from finding his true familiar. Essek’s affection is quiet and immeasurable as he meets Caleb’s overjoyed grin with his own soft smile.

“Thank you for this,” is all Essek can say without his voice breaking. Later, after Caleb’s friends have staged a friendly interrogation about what happened and what it means for two wizards to exchange familiars (and after he’s taken Caleb’s advice and tucked his new companion into the neck of his robe where it fits perfectly), he’ll take Caleb upstairs, his former familiar dutifully following its new master, and spend a few hours alone with his soulmate. At the end of trading stories about their lives and hardships and hopes for the future, he’ll hold the human’s face in his hands and take the first step towards sealing their bond with a kiss.

[r0b0tb0y]

Yet Another Fic Meme: 3, 4, 6, 7, 10

3. A fic of yours you wish someone else had written

Originally, A Ship Is A Republic was a concept that I pitched to a friend. Then I signed up for a Big Bang and in absence of a better idea, I took it on as my own thing. The project wrung a lot of joy out of writing Black Sails for me, and it never really felt like my story.

4. Someone else's fic you wish you had written

I feel like this could go in a mean direction. If I really like a concept I'll do my own take on it, with Inspired By attribution. I do get like 'fuck! god! I want to write like that!' about authors like @ghost-teat and @bright-elen but there's no specific fic I wish was mine. Maybe something long and well-rounded, in general.

6. Your pettiest fandom pet peeve

When people get weird about grown characters acting like adults. Either they're smol babies too naïve to know the sins of this world or they're sweet doddering grandfathers or I must be doing some time-twisting AU to pair like, a 25-year-old with a 50-year-old. I think the idea of 'but that would be naughty!' in general, when someone's clearly voluntarily clicked something I enjoyed writing, grinds my gears.*

* Unless it's my monsterfucker stuff then like, yeah fair cop.

7. A fic idea you love but abandoned

I kept hitting the wall with the Portrait of a Lady on Fire AU for finnpoe. I knew starting out that rewriting a story so fundamentally anchored in women's relationships would potentially strip all the individuality and joy from it. Even though I love the premise, and I drafted a bit of it, it just wouldn't come together in a way that does the original justice.

10. If you could turn a fic into a movie who'd you want to be the director

I'd love to see Edgar Wright's version of 1 Rogue Street.

[justasparkwritings]

Peace: Coming of Age

Pairing: Jungkook X Reader

Genre: Angst / Slice of Life

Rating: PG15

Word Count: 2.6k

Warnings: Swearing 

Summary: Jungkook takes his first steps in creating a life for himself. 

Listening: peace by Taylor Swift 

Peace Master List

         Jungkook paced the room, the grey walls agitating him as he searched for answers. He’d filmed the video five times. Three with a hoodie on, two without. He kept refilming to perfect his vocals, or at least that’s what he told himself. Perfectionism was easier to grapple with than baring his soul to millions. Was he ready to show the world what he’d done?

           Jungkook had spent the last third of his life in the spotlight. The articles, photos, videos, all captured him growing up. He went from a fresh-faced tween barely through puberty to a full-fledged man. He had grown in front of their eyes, finished high school, and debuted with a band that had captured the world’s attention. He had been taken under the wings of Jin and his five other hyungs. They had watched him struggle, both academically and professionally. They had guided him through the drastic changes in his life, from leaving his family to relentless dance practices and endless vocal lessons. They guided him when he was falling apart, and through their love he had grown into the man he could happily say he is. He’d taken little parts of their personalities and combined them into his own. It was hard to tell when JK ended and the six hyungs began.

            Jungkook hadn’t told the rest of BTS of his plans, of what he wanted to do in order to feel that he had completed his metamorphosis. He was cagey, dodging glances and prying questions. He was private, but there wasn’t anything he couldn’t tell them. Except this. It wasn’t until they had snuck up on him one day and caught him reading an article about the significance of tattoos in western culture that they grew concerned that he would taint his flawless skin.

           Hoseok sat him down first, tone damning, asking him what he intended to do, and why would he choose to ruin his body? Through the years Jungkook had become accustomed to Ho-Seok’s aversion to anything that would harm or change his physical form. Dying his hair was the closest thing he would do, and even that felt like he was desecrating a sacred temple. He didn’t pierce his ears, he certainly would not get tattoos, and though he had an unusually sunny disposition, body modification of any kind made Ho-Seok’s skin crawl. He respected his members decisions to pierce their ears, two, three, five times, but him? No thank you. He had thought that tattoos were always going to be off limits, even when years prior Jungkook had expressed his desire, on camera, to stain his skin. No member had committed to something so permanent. Piercings close, hair can be dyed back, but this?

          Hoseok couldn’t tell if he was mad at JK for recklessly ruining himself, or worried that his decision would endanger the rest of them.

           So, he pled his case, and a day or so later, Namjoon tried to talk any sense into JK. He knew it was no use, but as leader he was mandated to speak to him.

           “Why do you want to do this?” Namjoon asked. They were seated outside, beers in both their hands.

           “Do you feel like yourself, 100% of the time?” Jungkook countered, glancing at the fading sun.

           “90% of the time, yes, I do.” Namjoon responded.

           “And you feel comfortable in who you are?”

           “Why are you interrogating me?” Namjoon stared at his golden maknae. He had raised this boy, crafted and melded him into the man sitting in front of him. Had it been too much?  

           “You write most of our lyrics, you express your emotions.”

           “Yes, and I understand how you’re feeling,”

           “Do you? I am me trying to navigate this life that I somehow signed up for when I was a child. I have had to conform every day of my life. I have struggled to find my identity, to showcase who I am, without ever having the time to grow or discover myself. Now I’m a man, who doesn’t know any life outside of constant cameras and the six of you guarding me. What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is yours, but what if there’s nothing of me? What if they’ve taken it all?”  

           “You signed up for this Jungkook,” Namjoon felt defensive. His moves, silent and unseen, had pushed Jungkook to this position. His invisible strings had carved him from a child to an adult, his guidance had constructed the golden boy. Namjoon had nurtured Jungkook to be strong in his convictions and fierce at heart. He encouraged his hobbies, to obsession at times, and pared space for him to study and learn, encouraging him to speak English. Didn’t Jungkook know himself better than any members did?

           “The devils in the details, Namjoon,” He countered.

           “So, what, to feel like yourself you need to permanently decorate your skin?” Namjoon felt the anger rising. Big Hit would surely blame him for this.  

           “It’s a part of me, a part of me that I am trying to hold onto. I don’t want to hide part of myself because I’m being told I’m supposed to. I want to be me, I want to make choices for myself,” Jungkook’s passion was evident in the grip he had placed on his glass.

           “And what if that part of you changes?” Namjoon wanted to know.

           “Are you still the same person you were when we started?” Jungkook asked.

           “No, I’ve grown, and I’ve learned a lot,” Namjoon sat back and thought about the challenges he’d overcome in the time BTS had been together.

           “Then give me the space to do the same, hyung, please,” Jungkook pleaded.

           Namjoon nodded, recognizing that molding Jungkook into the perfect band member had done more damage than he realized, the cracks were beginning to form. When Jungkook had joined, RM and Seokjin had been placed as his guardians. They were to protect him, keep him focused, help him grow. He was a child, a baby, compared to the older two. His insecurity and shyness had tried to swallow him, and would’ve if not for the doting care the members had given him. Namjoon had, in a word, overstepped. His grip on Jungkook’s life was impenetrable to the point that sometimes it was hard to know where Namjoon ended and Jungkook began. He wasn’t raising Jungkook, he was manipulating him. The devil had always been in the details, at the hands of Big Hit, that devil was Namjoon.

           “Jin’s supposed to try and knock some sense into you…” Namjoon said, standing.

           “What’s he going to say that you and Hosoek-hyung haven’t?” Jungkook asked.

           “I don’t know, but listen to him,” Namjoon reminded the maknae to respect his elder, something he had thrown away when speaking with Joon.

           Namjoon left, leaving JK to sit in his thoughts. He didn’t know when Jin was planning on showing up, and he wasn’t sure he could handle another confrontation and berating. Jungkook was lost in his thoughts, his glass slowly emptying when Jin strode in, keys in hand.

           “Let’s go eat,” He said. Jungkook nodded, following him.

           As they sat at their usual table, drinks on their way, Jin wasted no time diving in.

           “They’ve all been hard on you?” Seokjin asked.

           “Yes,” Jungkook responded.

           “Well, what do you want me to say?” Jin questioned.

           “That you support me,” Jungkook’s gaze never strayed from the empty spot in front of his glass.

           “What does management say?” Jin asked, ignoring Jungkook’s suggestion.

           “That they can’t technically stop me, but I’ll always be covered. No t-shirts on tour, music videos, anything. If everyone’s in a tank top, I have to be in a tank top with a jacket or long sleeves.”

           “Even in summer?” Jin questioned.

           “Even then,” Jungkook answered.

           “And you’re okay with that?” Jin wondered.

           “Yes,”

           “Alright, have you thought about ARMY?”

           “I can’t imagine they’d be mad at me,” Jungkook said, glancing at Jin. Jin was calm. Jin was always calm, particularly when it came to heady conversations about the direction Jungkook was taking.

           “Okay, if you’re sure,” Jin left it at that. He quickly moved to ask Jungkook what he wanted to order, their usual banter resuming.

           Jungkook sat in the tattoo artists main chair, arm exposed, hand at the ready. The artist asked if he was without a doubt positive he wanted ink decorating his dominate appendage, and he nodded, telling them that each item stood for something. As the artist began, he recounted why.

           “The inverted V is for Taehyung, that’s his nickname. He’s funny, and charismatic. The most indecisive person. He is one of the best dancers, and just makes me laugh all the time. He comforts me when I’m upset and is always making sure that I’m okay. RM is for Namjoon, he’s the eternal leader. He’s wise and thinks before he acts. But he’s clumsy. He always pushes me to think deeper, to find the emotion that a song needs, or to remind me to slow down when I’m pushing myself too hard. RM’s our guiding light. M is also for Yoongi, who understands the parts of me that I sometimes think no one does, but he also doesn’t understand the fundamental parts of me… The Y completes ARMY, I am nothing without them.”

           The phrase had become common place, BTS is nothing without ARMY. They eat, sleep and breathe ARMY. Who are they if ARMY doesn’t stand beside them, encouraging them on?

           ARMY was the reason for his success, but they were also the thorn on his rose. Army watched every move he made, every note he hit, every smile cracked. They’d glommed onto him immediately. Isn’t Jungkook so cute? Did you see how Jungkook dances to Boy in Luv? Have you seen his smile? They cheered when he succeeded and picked him up when he fell. As much as the members had raised JK, he recognized that ARMY was the reason he had to be raised by his hyungs in the first place.

           Being raised by people other than your parents is an odd experience. Leaving home and forging a new path without so much as a safety net below would be scary to anyone, but particularly for a child who hadn’t experienced much outside of his home. Jungkook had talent, anyone could see it. He had potential, because he had potential, Big Hit had taken a chance on him. They had molded him and groomed him into a superstar. So much so that by age 23, a song dedicated to him negotiating his stardom with quality of life would become a sexual anthem. Big Hit’s ownership of his existence had sent him into many a tailspin. He compensated the only way he could: working himself to extreme exhaustion and spending nights drunk in the dorms. The other members addressed it delicately, but when his back was turned, they spent countless hours discussing the “problem with Jungkook”.

          Perfectionism is often a sign of OCD, a way to control what feels uncontrollable, a way to manage anxiety and stress through precise and repetitive habits. If practice was four hours, Jungkook danced eight. If it took Jimin ten takes to nail an eight count of vocals, Jungkook took twice that. He practiced diligently, sweating through layers and layers, never satisfied until his body gave out. He worked out seven days a week, often hours long sessions not including time with trainers. He was obsessed with his physic and how he could make it stronger. BTS often worried and tried delicately to address their concerns. Jungkook wouldn’t listen, until he blew his heel out an needed stitches. What was meant to be a wake up call ended up giving him more focus and increasing his desire to be perfect.

          “Perfect for who?” Suga had asked during an intense discussion of Jungkook’s workaholic tendencies. Jungkook stared at him, Suga, who hates working out, hates other people, and would be content to sleep for days on end, was asking him a stupid question. He turned to Ho-Seok, who nodded.

          “Perfect for ARMY, perfect for him,” Ho-Seok had responded.

          Hoseok and Jimin both nodded. The three of them formed the dance line, the strongest dancers with Taehyung closing in at #4. Together they banked hundreds of practice hours, innumerable tapings and work ups by the medical team, and were responsible for BTS’ dance routines coming together. They bore the brunt of the work, and their bodies, though young, managed the wear and tear. Ho-Seok worked hard, but Jungkook worked harder.

          Namjoon listened to every conversation about Jungkook with ears peeled, writing down any information he needed. If there was a problem with Jungkook, it would soon fall to Namjoon to correct, though his perfectionism had been a drug Namjoon had heavily pushed.

          “What’s the J for?” The tattoo artist asked, pulling Jungkook out of his thoughts.

          “That’s for Jin, Jimin and J-Hope,” He responded, looking down at the work being done on his body.

          “They’re your elders?”

          “Yes, Namjoon and Seokjin raised me. They’re all my brothers, but Namjoon and Jin helped me study, they encouraged me, bought me food and made sure I was spending enough time on studies and training. Jin drove me everywhere before I could drive myself, and he spent years teaching me how to be a good person, and a good man. Jimin’s a terror, and Ho-Seok is the only one who understands my drive.”

          “The plus signs tie you together?”

          “Yes,”

          “The heart? And the symbol?”

          “ARMY will know.”

           Jungkook had waited a few days before displaying his ink to BTS. They were skeptical and unsure how they liked what he had done to his right arm. They were honored he had chosen his hand to honor them and concerned what it meant for him going forward.

           Jungkook wasn’t ready for the world to see, and neither was management. He spent the first few months with band aids on his hand until his ink was healed, then layers and layers of make-up.

           As he paced in the gray room, a cover of Never Not waiting to upload, he decided to honor himself, to honor his heart, and post the video where his tattoos were exposed. Management had said he could share them when he was ready, and it would be at that point that they stopped covering them in make-up, except in specific situations where his ink would be a detriment to the group. He took a deep breath, like his ink, this choice was permanent.

           Once the dust of his ink settled, through a few poor choices and copious empty liquor bottles, he found himself out in Echo Park. A stranger had commented on his ink, and Jungkook’s mind wound back to the conversation he’d had with the tattoo artist about them. His tattoos meant something to him, and their meaning intensified every day.

          This is why, on a chance encounter in a low-light restaurant in Echo Park, Jungkook had been so taken with yours. The delicate ink on the back of your arm, the art creeping up your calf sent a shock through him. Who were you, and what did these symbols mean? He cautiously went up to you at the bar, nodding at the bartender who asked for his ID immediately. He flushed. Should he abandon ship?

           You turned and smiled. It was blinding.

           “Hi, I noticed your tattoos,” He said, thankful he had spent the past few years working on his English.

           “Oh,” You were unsure how to respond.

           “They’re really beautiful,” He said, his cheeks flushing again. Having spent his youth in Big Hits control, flirting wasn’t a game he knew how to play.

           “Thank you,” You responded, your cheeks turning rosy.

           “Can I buy you a drink?” He asked, right eyebrow raising. You smiled at the quirk.

           “Yes, and you can tell me about yours,” You said, already making sense of the ink in front of you, and the man it belonged to.

           “I’m Jungkook,” He said, extending the same hand you had been admiring.

           “I’m Y/N,” You said, extending yours to shake.

           Jungkook swore the earth began to quake at that very second, your skin meeting his for the first time, your smiles blinding the patrons of the restaurant. Everything melted away as the heat from your bodies glued you together. It was in the moment after, when you had unwillingly returned his hand to him that he realized his coming of age had come and gone, he had transitioned into a man, ink and all.

Next: Wasting Your Honor

[mariaiscrafting]

can i ask why you dislike dream? im not being passive agressive or something lol i am genuinely curious

S’all good, kinda figured you weren’t being, and a lot of people have asked me this lol. There are so many reasons, and I’ve said this so many times already, but I’ll try to go over some of the main things I can remember:

1) Arrogance: kinda put me off how he’s always responded to criticism. Always kinda had an air of superiority about shit, and it never really bothered me on its own because I think lots of CCs are arrogant & I’m arrogant myself, but combined with all of the following, it became a reason for me to dislike him lol

2) Manipulation of his audience: look, I kinda always knew that CCs with huge fanbases, especially CCs who grow this quickly, have some kind of grasp of how to treat and foster their audience to their greatest advantage. I’ve always been wary of CCs that put on soft or nice personalities, especially since the whole Shane Dawson debacle. But with Dream, it’s been a whole other thing ever since his cheating response video, and I’ve never been able to see him in a good light in regard to how he responds to his fans, ever since. I went into it in a lot more detail back when I first watched the video, the day it dropped, but I’m too exhausted to scrounge that post up, so I’ll summarize: that video had a very specific strategy that he used to victimize himself and appeal to his fans’ compassion for him, and after rewatching the video for the third time that day, it felt gross and calculated to me. The way that he focuses very little on the actual mathematical part of his argument. The way he frames the issue of the mods having favoritism or bias. It was already proven on Reddit and throughout Twitter that the numbers the mods looked at were for good reason, and not because they just wanted to pick the numbers that made Dream look the worst, but that’s how he framed the argument. When I logged onto Twitter and Tumblr that day, there were thousands of fans who had latched onto what he said in the latter half of that video and coming to Dream’s defense, and that’s kinda when it hit me: this guy fucking knows what he’s doing, and he’s doing it well, and I really really dislike it. There’s about a hundred other ways he manipulates his audience, including not coming to people’s defenses when huge chunks of his audience attack them (even though the people had respectful and correct criticisms of him), defending stans so adamantly in the face of antis, and posting periodic alt tweets that help garner the illusion that he super cares about his fans; but, that cheating response video was the major red flag, for me.

3) Cheating & lying: as is likely no surprise to y’all, I think Dream cheated lmao. At first, I was ecstatic that he had actually made a detailed response video and put out a report with the help of an actual professional, but as I read up on his supposed statistical argument and dissected the parts of his argument that felt off to me, I realized maybe he had cheated. Talking to some STEM major friends of mine, who weren’t into MCYT but had obviously heard about the whole debacle because they like Twitter and Minecraft, kinda put the nail in the coffin for me. I’m not nearly smart enough or have a good enough memory to detail exactly why I think he cheated on this blog, right now, in April, but essentially: his main argument relied upon claiming mod bias, instead of a sound mathematical or statistical argument; there’s no way of proving that the world files he provided to the mods and in the open source weren’t altered; the statistical problems he points out (i.e., stopping effect) don’t actually skew the original mods’ model nearly as much as his supposed PhD guy would say; and the odds he comes up with might not be nearly as impossible as 1 in 7 trillion, but they still come up to around 1 in 100 million, which is still fucking ridiculous, considering that there are only, like, 120 million people in the world who play Minecraft.  Not impossible, but laughable that he expects people to believe that. But... I guess they did, lmao. The thing that peeved me the most about the whole thing was the adamant lying lmao. When you look at the situation from the perspective of “dream cheated,” you realize just how fucked up all his Twitter responses, his adamance in streams and that video, and the general mood among his friends is... idk man, it’s just highly fucked.

4) Relationship with stans: look, there are significant numbers of  his fans that take part in Twitter cancelling vendettas, who spread around information about other CCs and their fellow fans that is false and meant to villify them, etc., and he never fucking says anything. It really, really bothers me. There are too many instances to enumerate, but a few that have caught my eye were when Dream stans would attack Techno, prior to their battle and when a Native American woman politely explained why he shouldn’t use Native music, he responded and said he wouldn’t, but tons of stans continued to attack her in her replies for “being so harsh/mean.” Like, he knows that just one word from him will make his fandom follow his beck and call. All it would’ve taken was one fucking word. There are so many fucking people that have been harrassed off of social media platforms because of the hivemind that is dttwt, for christ’s sake.

5) Reddit posts: All of the above were reasons for me to mildly dislike the guy prior to the Reddit posts, but they weren’t really enough to make me stop posting about c!Dream or reblogging fanart or reading DNF fics or watching Manhunts. I kinda just clowned on the guy, answered the occasional ask about the cheating thing or something related, and left it at that. The Reddit posts not only pissed me off for their content, but for the lying, as well. Do you think I fucking cared about him cheating at speedrunning Minecraft, of all games? Fuck no. What I cared about was the adamant lying that went into the whole debacle. Kinda the same with the Reddit posts. I’m one to usually forgive creators who acknowledge past errors, obviously. It is creators who try to brush stuff off, or even worse, create an elaborate lie to cover up allegations, that put me off a fuck ton. This is the reason I could never be comfortable with watching Pewdipie after I realized all the shit he had brushed off, and it’s now the reason I can’t go back to watching Dream. There is so much evidence that points to guilt, including but not limited to: his first move when the slideshow dropped (before posting to Twitter) being deleting as many old Discord messages as he could, the contradiction between him at first denying the account was his at all then changing the story to say he shared it with a friend, the wording and phrasing in the political posts being almost identical to the non-political posts that were clearly him (i.e., the one that explains his demographics perfectly), and the timing of the political posts (some of them being posted mere minutes after posts that were verifiably him, like the picture of Patches to the cats subreddit). People can claim that he’s likely changed, and what this it matter, as long as politics don’t affect his work now, but I can’t believe this fundamental misunderstanding of why bigotry in entertainment matters. I’ve always had a problem with the adoration this fandom has for cishet white men, and the constant criticism of non-cishet, non-white, non-men, but this really feels like the final slap in the fucking face. It’s like everyone truly believes that it doesn’t matter, that his beliefs couldn’t have possibly affected the way he’s treated fellow CCs in his circles or any of the number of people that depend upon Dream, directly and indirectly, for employment/CC clout. It’s like everyone truly believes that political ideology has no effect on the way we perceive, treat, and behave around other people in literally any field, not just politics. I, just... Christ. I don’t really wanna unpack my emotions about this whole thing right now, so I won’t. I’ll just say: I dislike Trump supporters and ex-Trump supporters alike, I dislike conservatives who claim they’re centrists (every fucking guy my age does this, it’s infuriating and makes me want to bash my head into the nearest wall), I dislike people who levy their fans against criticism - even when it’s righteous - and I dislike people who lie about their past actions; Dream fits all those categories, so I dislike him.