#he's such a...character...but we like him anyway

[nythracwn]

#what at hing to say. what a THING to say for the woman who said 'for mine is the choice of Luthien' #for the Evenstar of her people whose whole LIFE has been overshadowed by an awareness of The Fated End #by the sure knowledge that her very species' basic existence in Middle Earth will end within her lifetime #for someone who is in her own way more bound by fate than anyone else #AND LIKE - I KNOW that neither the books nor the movie frame Arwen this way - and maybe they SHOULD #but although she's meant to be this wise and impossibly old semi-mentor/lover who is never truly shaken by anything #arwen is trying to save HER OWN happiness here just as much as the larger narrative's #if she were allowed to show more internal conflict and dissonance as a character #rather than the eldritch mentor/lover almost preternaturally disinterested on a purely personal emotive level in the struggle #(and beyond the fundamental beef we all have with the way tolkien wrote women i don't even think its the WRONGEST choice made artistically #arwen is millenia older than aragorn and as ive said already aware of the end of her people in middle earth - AND galadriel's favorite) #then arwen's storyline would read...almost like a major key version of lady macbeth? (i'm struggling for a better comparison goddamm it) #arwen is living in a dystopia. the end of her people the end of the WORLD the end of even the remnants of past glory #and she has already fallen in love with a mortal. she has made that choice and in the way of elves she can't UN-make it #her future is for better or worse tied to this human man unless she chooses to rip out a chunk of her heart #which may very well kill her anyway - see above re: elves and their emotions and sailing to valinor without your True Love #SO. aragorn HAS to succeed. he is forced by various historical and legal precedents to be The Figurehead of the resistance #and he absolutely HAS to win or arwen has no hope at all of even the brief joy they would share before he inevitably dies #so arwen urges him! if the fucking text allowed it she might even urge him desperately! FURIOUSLY! HE IS ALL SHE HAS TO FIGHT THIS #and AS I'VE SAID looked at from a distance without elvish bullshit it's EXTRAORDINARY how calm arwen is about that fact #that aragorn is one of her only means of exerting any agency on her circumstances and her OWN fate #and ANOTHER author/director might take that emotional context and let their beautiful princess in a tower go JUST A LITTLE BIT INSANE #HIE THEE HITHER THAT I MAY POUR MY SPIRITS IN THINE EAR #AND CHASTISE WITH THE VALOR OF MY TONGUE ALL THAT IMPEDES THEE FROM THE GOLDEN ROUND (takiki16)

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) dir. Peter Jackson

[chamisulgrape]

THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY 𖤐 [trailer]

One summer. 4 boys. Follow Y/N as she navigates her first heartbreak, first love, friendship and forbidden romance. (Or, before parting ways, y/n and her sister decide to have one last summer together. With her best friend since diapers, her sister's boyfriend, her sister's boyfriend's brother, and your best friend's older brother--the boy she's been in love with since forever, there's really no way this could go wrong. Right?)

ᢉ𐭩 acts i | acts ii | release date: tbd (soon)

word count → trailer wc: 741 | full fic: tbd starring → heeseung lee as the sister's boyfriend, jongseong park as heeseung lee's younger brother, sunghoon park as the first love and jake's older brother, and jaeyun sim as childhood best friend, side characters from other groups tags → tsitp au, slice of life (ish), love squares, trope galore, smut, angst, jealousy, some fluff, rivalry, sexual tension, yearning/pining (always) rating → 18+ a/n → i've been wanting to write this since the first season came out but never got around to it, so what better time than now! i had a wip i was working on as well, and decided instead of the og idea it'd be perfect to start this one! i know many people are waiting for parts of my other works, but this has been rotting inside my brain for so long hehe.. so excited to write this one :3 cr. to yanalee for the hyungline picture! taglist → open! pls send ask or reply to be added to the taglist for this (if u r not alrdy on my perm taglist) fic playlist here! | back to my masterlist

♪ 'cause i took so much time to reset my life, but in just one look, i'm back, now all i remember is what we had nobody, nobody, nobody compares to you somebody, somebody please help me get over you

Every summer since you can remember, there’s been a tradition.

It started with your family’s beach house, somewhere a couple hours away. Every summer, your family and your mom’s best friend’s family stayed there together, making memories—a tradition your mom and her best friend didn’t want to die out. 

For the first couple of years, it was just you, your sister—Yunjin, your best friend Jake, and his older brother. You can’t even remember meeting Jake. Your parents are best friends which made you two best friends automatically, so in hindsight, you’ve been friends since birth.

Jake was born first, a fact he makes sure to hold over you at any given moment, but it doesn’t really make a difference. “Thirty seconds doesn’t mean anything!” You’d say. ��I came out first, suck it!” He’d reply.

Jake is also Yunjin’s best friend, obviously, but deep down, Jake was your best friend first. You guys are closer, anyways, ever since Yunjin and H—pause. We’ll get to this later.

Anyways, there was a point in your life where you absolutely hated Yunjin. It’s a rite of passage to sisterhood, you think. You hate each other until you don’t, and then it brings you closer together. You don’t really remember how or when it started, all you remember is that’s just how it was. Maybe it was the fact that she was way more popular than you and had too many friends that weren’t you, but you were also eight and she was nine, so it must’ve been something stupid and petty.

You can’t even remember why, but you both laugh about it from time to time.

Even so, you, Yunjin, and Jake were always stuck together like glue. You spent almost every waking moment together. From being sisters and best friends to being seatmates at school, all of your memories are painted with Yunjin and Jake right beside you. Their parents used to even joke about Jake and Yunjin getting married and growing old together. Yunjin would roll her eyes, Jake would laugh, and Jake’s older brother would tease them without end.

Ah, Jake’s older brother. How could you forget to mention him?

Sunghoon Park is… you don’t think there are enough words to describe him. Although ninety-nine-percent of your memories were made with Yunjin and Jake, the one-percent that will always stand out the most to you are the ones you’ve made with Sunghoon.

During the small period of time that you drifted from Yunjin out of spite and pettiness, you found yourself finding solstice in Sunghoon. You’d always thought that Sunghoon was the coolest person you’d ever met. Jake thought Sunghoon was a huge loser, but you felt like you saw through the whole cold-hearted, chic vibe he tried to give off.

That was all crushed the day you realized that the adoration you felt was actually a big, huge crush.

You liked Sunghoon years before you even knew what a crush was, only realizing it two years into middle school. You remember it like it was yesterday: a hot summer day, Sunghoon smiling at you a certain way while passing you a glass of crisp, ice water, and the feeling that erupted like an explosive damn volcano in your stomach.

You finally understood what your classmates were saying when they talked about crushes and butterflies.

From then on, the four of them were as follows: you and Yunjin, your older sister. Jake, yours and Yunjin’s childhood best friend. And Sunghoon, Jake’s untouchable, cool older brother who you will forever be in love with.

There are no secrets too big or small between you, Jake and Yunjin, but this feeling is something that you wanted to keep to yourself. A small, curious and self-indulgent garden of flowers in your heart that you wanted to tend to alone for once.

You had thought that this was just a harmless infatuation. You never planned to actually do anything about it in fear of rejection and losing Jake, but from spending time with Sunghoon in your younger years to growing up beside the Park siblings, you had been hopelessly falling in love.

Looking back now, you wish you had fallen in love with anyone else. Either way, anything would’ve hurt less than this. 

Wait, you haven’t even gotten to the rest of the story yet. Well, buckle in, because there’s two more boys you haven’t mentioned yet and a whole summer ahead of you—and it’s going to be one hell of a ride.

© all rights reserved to chamisulgrape. pls do not translate or repost elsewhere.

[creatingblackcharacters]

wait sorry is epic specifically antiblack? was unsure what that meant (did vote julian anyway cause he deserves the win !)

I've explained this before! It's the entire purpose of this blog, right? To create your Black characters with intent. And that includes knowing what happens when you thoughtlessly characterize. You can cast race blind all you want, but no one is blind to the race of the character once they are chosen (thus, why there's a backlash every time a character people like is Black).

So if I take a character that is deemed sexually aggressive, sexually threatening, sexually desirable and yet not meant to be desirable at all onto the (anti-)heroic white leading man that is trying to get back to his narratively Good white wife, trying to seduce him away from his wife because she wants him... And I cast her as a dark skinned Black woman. And this sort of narrative has historically been used to oversexualize and sexually abuse Black women, to deem them as (hint!) Jezebels in comparison to Good Pure White Women... What have I written?

If I take a character that is a violent, sexually aggressive, predator whose goal is to defile the narratively heroic white woman who is trying to save her home and herself for her (anti-)heroic white husband returning home from battle... And this sort of narrative has historically been used to oversexualize and target Black men as (hint!) rapacious beasts worth subduing (and even killing) to protect the sanctity and safety of White Order... What have I written?

These are two of the oldest and most violent stereotypes that have been projected onto my people, that persist in how we are treated to this day. And my disgust and upset with that lack of consideration, especially in something everyone is supposed to enjoy, is part of why I do not want to consume that piece of media.

And even if they were written with nuance, I can say with full confidence that White Fandom will still happily view these characters through that biased lens because we live in a world that is still informed by those stereotypes (they'll do it with Black characters that AREN'T these things).

I'll pass. There's no level of entertainment I'll get out of it that is able to overcome my distaste at that part. I've been able to let certain things roll off to have a good time, but this isn't one that beckons enough for me to do that. I hope the people who enjoy it continue to enjoy it, though I'd at least appreciate it if they were aware, but. Oh well.

[jennelikejennay]

A thing I need neurotypical Star Trek fans to understand is that Spock—and the whole Vulcan species—are heavily autism-coded. Originally unintentionally, but now it seems that they're doing it on purpose.

Autistic fans feel this deeply and relate to Spock a lot. When he acts really weird and his friends accept him anyway, it's so comforting. We can be weird and off-putting and people will still love us! This was something the TOS writers very much intended, because the point was befriending people who are different.

But when Vulcans are constantly racist, when Spock is seen as only happy and lovable when he changes, when human characters announce that what REALLY matters is emotion and community, which Vulcans can never understand....well.

One wonders if that's how you see us. Especially when we see neurotypical fans accept this viewpoint uncritically and lean even harder into it than the show does.

I wrote about this at length on my author blog, but all I'm really asking right now is for you to think for a second about what you say about Vulcans and ask: if I subbed out the word "Vulcan" for the word "autistic," do I sound like a raging asshole? And if the answer is yes, don't say that thing!

[zerocoded]

summary: your estranged grandmother left you exactly one thing in her will: a sprawling luxury apartment in the heart of seoul — the kind of place that could singlehandedly cover your entire college tuition if you ever decided to sell it. now you had a penthouse all to yourself, a pink-tiled kitchen you weirdly adored, and a hopeless, slow-burning crush on the absurdly attractive neighbor who barely looked your way.

authors note: chapter two is here and i couldn’t be more grateful for all the support i’m getting for this story, i hope we can all enjoy our time here <3 for this one i’d like to clarify that i’m still trying to improve my writing and pacing so pls bear with my anxious ass until i can properly proofread it. anyways, let’s cut the bs and thirst over our confused funny reader and her hot vampire neighbour. PLS, READ THE WARNINGS FOR A SAFE AND COMFORTABLE READING.

warnings and tags: mommy issues • explanation of a cancer treatment (not detailed) • reader was forced to become an adult at thirteen (matilda's vibes) • her dad has cancer • mentions of lab reports, chemotherapy, prescriptions, hospitals • detailed descriptions of fever and sickness symptoms • reader is sick and passes out • THIS IS ANGST, I'M WARNING YOU • but we also got sarcasm and hot neighbors if that makes you feel better • this is so introspective i'm sick • jungwon is fully tatted in this story, i think i should add this • soulmates!au • vampire!au.

word count: 16k.

previous chapters: series masterlist.

the jeonghyeon building was known for its picturesque internal design, even the elevators had decorations.

today, it was pastel ribbons — thin, barely tied things, looped lazily along the edges of the brass railing like an afterthought. 

you didn’t notice them when you were ascending to the rooftop last night. not when your embarrassment was so loud you could hardly breathe. not when you practically fled to the greenhouse after niki barged into your apartment. not when you came back down much later, heart racing, pupils blown, mouth dry.

not when your concern for your hot neighbor — because that’s all he was supposed to be — soured into something heavier. something quieter. something that curled low in your stomach and refused to leave.

sunghoon was a complex character. that much you'd noticed the very first time you saw him — standing in front of your door, black coat, mail in hand, giving you the kind of silent nod that felt like it had punctuation. he didn’t bother with small talk. didn’t seem interested in charming anyone. he was cute. quiet. mysterious in that brooding, emotionally unavailable way you hated admitting you were into.

but after last night... he became something else entirely.

not just a guy with good cheekbones and strange eyes. not just your weird, hot neighbor with an allergy to speaking.

something had shifted. and not in a fun “i think we had a moment” kind of way. more like a “maybe i was one minute away from being a missing person” kind of way.

and you weren’t saying he was dangerous. you were just saying… if this were a movie, and you disappeared mysteriously next week, he would be the first suspect. and the internet would agree.

at first, you thought maybe sunghoon was just allergic to something — you didn’t know, maybe air. maybe there was a weird flower up there in the greenhouse and he was reacting to it. you genuinely wondered, for one disoriented second, if he needed an epipen.

then you realized he wasn’t having an allergic reaction to the environment. he was having one to you.

and that’s when the alarms started going off.

because it wasn’t just weird. it was canonically weird. the kind of weird that didn’t fit into real-world logic. not just him — the whole thing. this building. his roommates. the greenhouse that felt like it shouldn’t exist on a rooftop, but somehow did.

the moment you saw his eyes — blown wide, pupils dilated like he’d just been drugged or bitten or both — you knew something was happening. and it was serious.

he couldn’t breathe right. he kept making these awful, strangled movements — like he was trying to swallow something back and failing. and then came the gulping. the salivating.

so much saliva.

you weren’t a doctor — hell, you hadn’t even passed your college entrance exams yet — but you knew what a medical emergency looked like. and that? that wasn’t that.

that wasn’t a panic attack. that wasn’t low blood sugar. that was something that didn’t belong to a normal person. and he had looked right at you while it happened.

so your thoughts, as you waited for the elevator door to open — so you could escape and hide in your apartment for the rest of the night because he begged you to leave him alone — were something like:

did i fuck up by moving here?

are they criminals? 

omg, what if they’re human traffickers?

what if this is actually a cult and they’re looking for their next victim?

you weren’t being dramatic. you were being logical. or at least that’s what you told yourself as you stared at your blurry reflection in the elevator panel, trying not to have a full-blown breakdown while descending back to your floor.

you chalked it up to adrenaline. or hormones. or the silent, creeping onset of a stress-induced stroke. because how else were you supposed to explain the fact that your limbs were shaky, your stomach twisted in knots, and your mouth — for some reason — kept watering like you were watching someone eat cake on tv? 

as you were inside that elevator, your head was spinning, your legs felt like someone had unplugged them mid-walk, and your skin was so oversensitive that even the elevator air felt too loud. it wasn’t fear. not exactly. it was something stranger. heavier. like your entire body was reacting to something your brain hadn’t caught up to yet.

the worst part was that, when the elevator finally opened and you stepped onto your floor, niki was there. again.

of course, again.

just standing in the hallway like a casually summoned demon. hands in his pockets, party attire perfectly unbothered, like he’d walked straight out of a hongdae fashion editorial titled ‘trouble but make it cute.’

you blinked at him. or — at least, you thought you did. hard to tell. it felt less like a voluntary movement and more like your body was running on lag, processing commands with a half-second delay. even your eyelids weren’t cooperating anymore.

he blinked back, completely unfazed. like finding you half-frozen in front of the elevator, breathing like a hunted animal, was just another tuesday night.

but this wasn’t a tuesday night — this was a friday night where you were supposed to have finished your college entrance essay four hours ago and kept things lowkey inside your pastel-colored apartment, eating dry cereal and pretending to be emotionally stable.

instead, you looked like you’d just seen a ghost. or worse — a really hot hallucination in a greenhouse that almost gave you a cardiac event. your hoodie was slightly damp from stress-sweat, your slippers were mismatched, and your mouth was still parted in that half-shocked, half-“please don’t let me die in a designer building” kind of way.

niki tilted his head, one brow barely lifting, like he was trying to place a scent or decode your entire existence using only his nostrils. the hallway lighting buzzed faintly above you, casting him in soft gold and you in fluorescent anxiety.

“you good?” he asked, nose twitching — subtle, but just enough to make you feel like he’d caught something in the air. something off. something you.

his small reaction made your stomach tighten, though you couldn’t explain why. embarrassment bloomed in your chest — sharp, involuntary — and you weren’t even sure what you were embarrassed about. the greenhouse? sunghoon? your face? the fact that your body still felt hijacked by a panic you didn’t understand?

you smoothed your face into what you hoped was neutral indifference. why? because you did not want to become a part of whatever cult these boys were running. you didn’t want to incriminate sunghoon in front of his possible accomplice before even knowing if they were a team or not. “yeah. totally. why?”

“just asking,” he said, tone too light — like a cat batting at a dying bug. “you look weird. smell off”

“oh, wow, thanks.” you did feel weird. but you weren’t about to unpack your almost-panic attack with your stupidly dressed neighbor while standing in a haunted hallway.

at midnight, mind you.

“you’re welcome.”

you sighed, already unlocking your door, ready to bolt inside in case sunghoon showed up with a knife. or a sword. at this point, you weren’t ruling anything out.

“what do you want, niki? it’s late as fuck.”

he shrugged. “i was asking if you wanted to come to this party with me.”

you turned to him. stared.

“niki, i’m not going to a party with you at midnight.”

he raised an eyebrow. “why not?”

“because we’re not that close, okay? and it’s fucking midnight, i need to finish this stupid essay and i need to sleep and walk my frog, whatever suits you.”

niki blinked. “you have a frog?”

“no, niki. i do not have a frog.”

he nodded slowly, like you’d just confirmed a suspicion.

“so you’re not coming to the party,” he said flatly — like your face wasn’t still flushed with nerves, like you hadn’t just come down from a near the vampire diaries death episode. 

“no, niki. i’m not.”

“shame.” he didn’t pout. didn’t try to convince you. just accepted your answer like it was weather. like you were a passing cloud.

then he turned. walked off.

you watched him disappear down the corridor, steps light, hands still buried in his pockets. you kept staring until his figure was swallowed by the metal of the elevator. the doors closed with a soft ding.

and then you frowned. cursed under your breath.

what a fucking weird set of neighbors you’d managed to pull.

because what kind of approach was that? what kind of person — someone who had the audacity to call himself your friend — invited you to a party and then just... gave up. no convincing. no teasing. like the second he saw your clothes, your freezing cheeks, your wide eyes, he decided it wasn’t worth the effort. like he already knew your answer.

or worse — like you weren’t the one deciding at all.

you let your thoughts about niki slip away the second you glanced into your apartment.

inside your apartment, the first thing you did was lock everything. the front door, the balcony latch, the windows — even the sliding one in the bathroom that barely opened. then you cleaned, because what else could you do? it was either that or scream into a pillow, and your neighbors already thought you were weird. 

so you tossed the half-bitten cookies niki had tasted earlier, like his saliva could infect your air or something. you washed the coffee machine you still hadn’t figured out how to use without flooding the counter. you folded your laundry into uneven stacks and told yourself you’d wash them properly in the morning. everything was done with a kind of desperate, mechanical precision — as if moving fast enough might stop your thoughts from catching up.

you were trying to return to normal. to do human things. to signal to your own body that there was no threat. but even after hours had passed — after the rooftop, after the greenhouse, after sunghoon’s eyes and niki’s nose twitch and whatever the hell had happened up there — your chest still felt tight. your blood pressure was high enough to make your ears ring. your fingers twitched when you paused too long. your heart, traitorous as ever, kept hammering like it knew something you didn’t.

eventually, your body gave out before your brain could. you laid down without brushing your teeth, without washing your face, without checking your phone. just collapsed into bed fully clothed, limbs aching like you’d run a marathon, mind buzzing like a dying lightbulb.

——

living in seoul city for five weeks now had been less like a teenage dream and more like a young adult nightmare. it’d only been a little more than a month, and you were already regretting changing your emergency contact to someone who once got lost inside a daiso for four hours and blamed capitalism (niki).

the whole move was supposed to be a fresh start — a quiet little apartment, a somewhat normal routine, a chance to reinvent yourself as someone who didn’t spiral every time a stranger looked at you too long. but after the greenhouse incident, you hadn’t reinvented anything except your ability to dissociate on command.

you hadn’t seen sunghoon since that night. not even once. not in the elevator, not in the hallway, not in the weirdly lavish mailroom with gold-trimmed cubbies. even niki had stopped popping up uninvited like a cursed genie in high-top sneakers. radio silence. total blackout.

at first, you assumed it was guilt. or maybe they'd gone out of town for one of those mysterious rich-people getaways where everyone pretends to hike and secretly joins a cult. then, after a few days, you started wondering if you'd hallucinated the whole thing. the greenhouse, the pupils, the gulping. maybe it was just a panic attack — one of those real dramatic ones your body pulls when your serotonin hits zero and your caffeine intake is at god-tier levels.

you almost convinced yourself. almost.

until the acceptance email came.

at first, you thought it was spam. the subject line was too cheerful. too optimistic. too full of polite korean university jargon. but then you opened it, and there it was — bold and clean and terrifying:

congratulations on your admission to the department of psychology at hanil women’s university.

you stared at it for a solid minute, unsure whether to cry, scream, or throw up. maybe all three. you read it again. and then again. and then once more just to make sure it wasn’t a prank from your father, who once photoshopped your middle school report card and printed it on the fridge “for motivation.”

and then you called him.

“you got in?” he said, picking up after one ring, as if he’d been waiting next to the phone like a k-drama dad.

“i got in.”

“to psych?”

“yes.”

“so you’ll finally be able to explain what’s wrong with you.”

“that’s the plan.”

he laughed like it was the best news he’d heard since kim yuna’s olympic gold. you could hear the pride tucked behind his teasing, even if he still refused to say anything too sappy. this was how you and your father celebrated: sarcastic banter, cheap delivery chicken, and maybe — if you really pressed — a heart emoji in a text message two days later.

you saved the acceptance email in three separate folders, took screenshots, emailed it to yourself again just in case the system crashed and erased all evidence that you were now, officially, a psychology student. march semester. hanil women’s university. you made it.

it didn’t fix everything. your head still hurt more days than not, and your stomach kept doing this fluttery thing like it was waiting for the other shoe to drop. but it helped. it grounded you. your dad even sent a voice message where he tried to pronounce “clinical psychology” and accidentally said “clitoris” instead. you cried laughing. saved that too.

and then, just as you were finally starting to convince yourself that life was back on track — that the sunghoon incident was just a weird blip, that niki wasn’t ever coming back to sniff your hallway anxiety again, that your body would stop rebelling against you any day now — your phone buzzed.

just one notification. just one line.

save my number. how’s city life? 🌼

you read it like it might explode. because of course it was her. of course it was now. right when you were managing to piece together something resembling peace — there she was, barging in with lowercase friendliness and a fucking flower emoji. no warning. no apology. no context. just a digital ghost pressing its face to the glass of your almost-healed life.

you stared at the message for a full minute, thumb hovering over the screen like it might bite. she hadn’t contacted you in months — not since she sent you those cold, bullet-pointed instructions on how to legally transfer the lease of your grandmother’s penthouse to your name. not a call. not a birthday emoji. just radio silence. and now… this. polite. breezy. like she was reintroducing herself.

you and your mom never had a real relationship. not after she left your father — not even two months after he started chemo — because her own mother couldn’t stand the idea of her daughter being married to a countryside fisherman.

there was no explosive fight. no door slamming or screaming match. just a quiet kind of abandonment, like someone slowly stepping backward out of the frame. you didn’t beg her to stay. you didn’t cry at her feet. you were thirteen, already too familiar with watching people leave and too tired to stage a dramatic protest.

you never had that teenage rebellion backbone — not the kind that slammed doors and yelled “you don’t understand me” through tears and acne. mostly because you didn’t have the time. you were too busy trying to hold the house together.

your mornings started before sunrise, heating up leftover rice and folding the blankets your father left on the couch when he was too nauseous to sleep in his bed. you’d take the bus to school, headphones in but nothing playing, brain looping through test dates and pharmacy receipts. in the evenings, you’d come home, drop your bag, and start cleaning again. washing dishes, checking the water filter, cooking something he could actually stomach.

your grades hovered somewhere between “survival” and “bare minimum,” not because you weren’t smart, but because you were exhausted. every hour of algebra felt like a theft — time stolen from the real emergencies. and when your classmates complained about their parents being annoying, you stayed quiet. you didn’t know how to explain that your mom had vanished into a new apartment across seoul, and your dad was losing his hair in clumps in the bathtub.

you learned how to read lab reports before you could even understand half of them. you taught yourself how to refill prescriptions without crying at the pharmacy counter. and at some point, you stopped wondering whether your mom was going to call. because she didn’t.

for years, han seo-jeon vanished. and you were too busy to care about that.

and now, here she was — texting like she was trying out for mother of the year. asking how city life was like she hadn’t helped drop you into the middle of a building that felt cursed. you didn’t know what pissed you off more: that she reached out, or that some small, bitter part of you was still hoping she meant it.

you did save the number. not out of sentiment, but logistics. she was, unfortunately, still your mother. and if she was going to start texting again, you at least needed to know when to emotionally flinch.

life in the city had not been the neon-lit montage the commercials promised. no rooftop parties. no cute cafés where you accidentally met your soulmate while reaching for the same scone. instead, you got: weird neighbors. a haunted greenhouse. and an apartment that echoed too much when you were overthinking — which was, statistically speaking, most of the time.

for the past two weeks — since your hot neighbor had an allergic reaction to you — your days were a blur of mild headaches and to-do lists you never fully finished. you woke up late, ate bland convenience store meals, and tried not to notice how heavy your limbs felt lately. it was like your body was trying to warn you about something but refused to be specific. even your skin felt wrong — itchy but not irritated, like your cells were in a group chat and everyone had started subtweeting you.

it’s been two weeks since the greenhouse incident and you haven’t seen this building as empty as it’s been. not a single glimpse of sunghoon — not in the elevator, not in the halls, not even in the mailroom where you used to hear his shoes before you saw him. 

and niki, who once acted like the hallway was his personal runway, had vanished too. no impromptu visits. no weird comments through the door. not even a single “you good?” text with the passive-aggressive concern of a guy pretending not to care.

you stopped hearing late-night music thumping through the walls. the gym — which was always suspiciously clean for a place that niki once described as “his meditation zone” — stayed dark every time you passed it. the whole building felt like it was holding its breath. like it knew something you didn’t.

and maybe the scariest part wasn’t that they were gone. it was that no one else seemed to notice. no neighbors asking questions. no complaints about noise or missing faces. just… silence. echoing down perfect, pastel-colored halls. like the jeonghyeon building was designed to swallow noise. and people.

you told yourself the silence was a good thing. that it meant peace. that it meant maybe things were finally settling into something normal — something liveable.

but when nighttime came, when your apartment dimmed into shades of grey and soft buzzing fridge hums, when you hadn’t more essays to finish because you finally had been approved, the quiet got loud.

it crawled up the walls and pressed against your windows. it sat with you on the couch, next to your half-eaten dinner, and watched you scroll through your phone like it was waiting for you to break first.

you weren’t sleeping much. the insomnia wasn’t new, but it was different now. not the usual overthinking or anxiety kind — not the kind you could talk your way out of with youtube playlists and peppermint tea. this was… physical. your body didn’t want to sleep. it felt like it was bracing for something. like your heart refused to settle into a rhythm unless it knew you were alone, and safe, and not being watched.

at first, you chalked it up to the winter weather. maybe you’d caught a cold walking home with wet hair. maybe the convenience store ramen diet was finally taking its revenge, one sodium-packed headache at a time. your body ached like it had been through a minor car crash — but you were a student again now, technically. a little exhaustion came with the territory.

but when the symptoms hit the two-week marker, you started to get restless. it wasn’t just fatigue anymore. it was this bone-deep tired that sleep didn’t touch. your limbs felt heavy. your skin pulsed under certain lights. your migraines weren’t even announcing themselves like normal — they just showed up, sharp and unapologetic, like a knife pressed between your eyes.

some days you couldn’t even look at your own reflection without feeling like your face was one second away from morphing into someone else’s.

you tried to brush it off, blame it on stress, or hormone shifts, or anything that wasn’t weird supernatural fallout from a rooftop garden horror show. but your dreams said otherwise. and the worst part? you were starting to believe them.

sleep had never been your strong suit — not since you moved into the seonghyeon building, not since that night. some nights you fell asleep without realizing it, slipping into unconsciousness between one thought and the next. other nights you’d lie awake for hours, heart pacing like it was running laps without your permission.

but lately, it wasn’t the lack of sleep that bothered you. it was what came after.

you were never one to actually remember dreams in the morning. you’d wake up blank, maybe with a flicker of color or the echo of a word on your tongue, but nothing concrete. now, though — now they clung to you. heavy and wet. 

they didn’t always make sense. sometimes you couldn’t recognize the places or the faces. sometimes there wasn’t even language, just this overwhelming pull — like your subconscious was trying to lead you somewhere you weren’t ready to go.

and the worst one came midweek, on a tuesday or maybe a wednesday — you’d stopped keeping track. you’d been up until 4 a.m. trying to finish your entrance essay, blinking at the screen like it might write itself if you stared hard enough.

eventually, your body gave up before your brain did. you passed out right there on the couch, lights on, laptop humming warm against your leg.

in the dream, you were back in the greenhouse. only it wasn’t beautiful anymore. the air was wet and sour, like rotting soil and mold. the plants were shriveled, leaves curling in on themselves like dying hands. 

the glass walls were fogged over, and the lights buzzed low, flickering. you couldn’t tell how long you’d been standing there — just that your feet were bare and your skin was cold.

and then you saw him. sunghoon. standing still in the center of it all, surrounded by the decay. same black clothes. same unbothered posture. but his eyes… they glowed this awful, pale gold, like old moonlight trapped behind water. he didn’t speak. didn’t move. just watched you. watched you like he knew something. like he was waiting for you to admit it out loud. whatever it was. 

you woke up gasping. drenched. fingers clenched in the fabric of the couch cushion so hard your nails left dents. your skin was damp with sweat, and the back of your neck felt like it had been kissed by frost. your heartbeat didn’t calm down for ten full minutes. 

you didn’t go back to sleep after that, or the night after that. and now, without even noticing when it started, you hadn’t properly slept in four days. not real sleep. not healing sleep.

you were running on half-hour naps and caffeine shakes, staring at your ceiling like it might blink first. your body was forgetting how to rest — how to switch off — and your brain? well, your brain had entered that fun little stage of exhaustion where everything started feeling like a hallucination.

you kept misplacing things. your keys. your charger. your sentences. your skin felt too tight, your ears kept ringing, and your eyes burned every time you blinked.

you tried to blame it on the season, the new routine, the stress of college. because you had gotten in — that was real. the email had arrived last tuesday, and you’d cried over it in the bathroom like a girl in a coming-of-age movie. but even that joy felt distant now, like it belonged to someone else.

and now it was monday night again. fourteen days since the last time you saw any of your neighbors — not sunghoon, not niki, not even the middle-aged man with the dog that barked at its own reflection in the lobby mirror.

the building had gone eerily silent. the kind of silence that didn’t feel like peace, but like someone was holding their breath.

you were lying on your back, staring at the ceiling like it owed you answers. your phone rested on your chest, heavy and useless, buzzing every now and then with reminders you’d already missed and ads you’d never clicked. one missed call. one weather notification. zero messages from the people you told yourself you didn’t care about hearing from.

your brain was cotton. your limbs were bricks. your spine felt like it had been politely removed and mailed to another country. nothing helped — not water, not caffeine, not your fifteen-minute attempt at yoga that ended with you lying flat on the mat wondering if this was how people in cult documentaries started.

and the dreams weren’t letting up. they came every fifiteen minute nap now, and each one ended in that same suffocating greenhouse, with those same rotting plants and those same pale gold eyes watching you like a question you didn’t want to answer. you were starting to feel haunted by someone who hadn’t even spoken to you in two weeks.

so you called your dad. not for answers, not even for comfort — just because monday nights were the kind of nights where calling him felt like survival.

“kid,” he answered on the second ring, voice thick with sleep and instant worry, “you sick?”

you scoffed, immediately offended. “wow. no hello, no i missed you, just straight to the diagnosis.”

“your breathing’s weird. you’ve got the voice of a medieval orphan. you eating real food or just surviving off noodles again?”

the thing about your father is that he became your friend sometime between your fourteenth and fifteenth birthdays — sometime between hospital visits and pharmacy receipts, between learning how to drain an IV and helping him shower when the chemo made him too weak to lift his arms.

that kind of routine broke people, sometimes. made them distant. awkward. in your case, it did the opposite. it turned him into your favorite person. the only person who really knew you.

and by “knew you,” you didn’t mean in that fake, sentimental way people threw around when they wanted to be close. no. he knew you.

he could read your breath like punctuation. he heard your sighs like subtext. he could tell when you were lying just by how you said the word “fine.” he always knew when your laugh meant happy and when it meant not right now, please.

so when he picked up the phone and didn’t even say hello — just launched into a casual, “okay, how long have you been pretending you’re fine?” — you weren’t surprised. you just let your head fall to the side and sighed into the speaker.

“jesus, dad. give a girl some mystery.”

“mystery’s for strangers. and you don’t call me this late unless something’s up. so. what’s wrong? food poisoning? heartbreak? crime?”

“crime?” you snorted. “what kind of crime?”

“you tell me.” he yawned. “you’re the one whispering like someone’s watching.”

“i’m not whispering.”

“yet.”

you pulled your blanket higher up your chest. the warmth didn’t help much, but the sarcasm did.

“it’s not a big deal. just haven’t been sleeping.”

“for how long?”

“…i plead the fifth.”

“that’s an american law, kid.”

“then i plead being very korean and very tired.”

he chuckled on the other end — that low, warm sound that always made you feel like a person again. “okay. insomnia. check. what else?”

“you want the list alphabetically or emotionally?”

“surprise me.”

you paused. the line stayed quiet. and then:

“you ever feel like your body knows something you don’t?”

that made him go silent for real.

then, in the most casual tone imaginable:

“are you finally becoming a vampire?”

you groaned. “dad.”

“what? you always had the teeth for it.”

another thing about your dad was that he was, in fact, obsessed with vampires since his teenage years. how did you discover that?

oh, he never kept it hidden.

the man had tastes, and they were proudly undead. your childhood home had shelves dedicated to vampire literature, half of them worn out from rereads, the other half banned from your school’s book list.

it wasn’t just books either. halloween — a day that barely made a ripple in your korean school life — was his super bowl. even if there was no party to go to, no one to impress, he’d still show up on october 31st dressed like an eighteenth-century romanian warlord, sipping blood-red juice from a goblet he bought off some sketchy forum in 2009.

once, he wore a victorian frock coat and a prosthetic bite wound to your school’s parent–teacher meeting because he forgot to change. you’d never lived that down.

he was harmless about it, though. just enthusiastic. you used to think it was a dad thing — like model trains or grilling. but as you got older, you realized he didn’t just find vampires cool. he respected them. like they were a dying species whose stories deserved to be preserved.

he claimed it started as a joke. some middle school phase, back when vampires were still making headlines. but it stuck. and now, years later, he still made the same awful jokes and kept the same bookshelf and watched the same bootleg documentaries that used actual vampire interviews from the early days, back when coexistence was something society still tried to publicly understand.

he used to say, “one day they’ll come back around. real ones. they never disappeared, they just got quieter. like wolves when the forest burns.”

“you’ve been waiting your whole life to say that, haven’t you?” you mutter through clenched teeth, voice scratchy with exhaustion as another migraine slices across your skull like a dull knife.

“literally. your mother hated when i made those jokes. said it would scare you.”

“it didn’t scare me. it made me judgmental.”

“same thing at your age.” he paused, then added more gently, “what’s your symptoms?”

“i think i’m dying. pretty sure. either i’m dying or i’m the chosen one. probably both.” you grimace alone in your bedroom, pressing the phone tighter to your ear like proximity might somehow dull the ache — like your dad’s ridiculous voice might drown out the static building behind your eyes.

he chuckled. “you always wanted to be special. now look at you. main character syndrome.”

“dad, i’m serious. something’s off. i’ve been having migraines and dreams and…” you trailed off. rubbed your temple. “weird stuff. i can’t explain it. it’s probably stress, right?”

“or,” he said, entirely too cheerful, “you’ve been marked by a vampire.”

you groaned. “not this again.”

“hey, you brought up chosen one energy. don’t act surprised when the lore gets involved.”

you stared at the ceiling, lips twitching despite yourself. “lore? have you been sneaking onto aeri’s tiktok again? you’re obsessed.”

“obsessed is a strong word. passionately informed, maybe. listen—back in the eighties, they were everywhere. on the news. in magazines. talk shows. you’re too young to remember, but vamps were the real deal. civil rights protests, televised feedings, designer blood banks—hell, they had perfume lines.”

“dad.”

“and the soulmate stuff? wild. freaked people out. imagine waking up one day and realizing some pale bastard with three centuries of unresolved trauma has you bookmarked in his little undead brain. bam. linked for life.”

you snorted. “you say that like it actually happened.”

“it did happen. i had a friend in middle school—joon-seok—swore up and down his aunt bonded with a vamp in the seventies. met him at a blood drive or something. said she had dreams about him for weeks before they even locked eyes.”

“uh-huh.”

“i’m serious! back then it was like—vampires weren’t some secret club. people knew about them. they had ID cards, worked night shifts, bought supplements, did press tours. hell, there was this old drama your grandma used to watch where a vampire opened a pharmacy. they were around, okay?”

you raised an eyebrow. “then where are they now?”

“vanished,” he said, a little too dramatically. “right after the second blood regulation act in '93. that’s when everything got strict. no more voluntary donors, only licensed feeding centers, stuff like that. vamps started leaving the cities. some went underground. some just… stopped showing up.”

“so now they’re like urban legends with tax records.”

“basically. but back in the fifties, when the law passed that made them part of school curriculum, people freaked. there were protests. some parents didn’t want their kids learning about blood bonds or mortality rights. said it was corrupting the youth. but most people didn’t care. not really. they figured the vamps were gone anyway, so what was the harm in reading a textbook about them?”

you were quiet for a second. your fingers traced the hem of your blanket. “but they’re still around.”

he sighed, softer now. “probably. just hiding better. or maybe they figured out humans aren’t worth the hassle.”

you didn’t know what to say to that. you didn’t even know if you believed half of what he’d said — and yet… you wanted to.

maybe because lately, your dreams were starting to feel less like stress and more like memories that didn’t belong to you.

“you’re quiet,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

“just thinking,” you replied, which was technically true, but your voice came out thinner than expected. you shifted on the bed, pushing the blanket down to your waist, your skin suddenly too hot. you’d been feeling like that all day — warm in your joints, flushed in your chest, like your blood was dragging itself uphill. it wasn’t a fever, exactly, but it wasn’t nothing.

on the other end, your dad went silent for a beat. “how long has this been going on?”

“what?”

“the weird dreams. the migraines. the fact that you just said three words without a single joke in them.”

you rubbed your forehead. “don’t start.”

“i’m serious, kid.”

“so am i. i think it’s just... the city. or the stress. or hormones. or caffeine withdrawal. or,” you inhaled, voice flattening, “i’m dying and it’s a really slow, poetic demise.”

“you’ve always been dramatic,” he said, but he didn’t sound amused anymore. “have you seen a doctor?”

“no insurance yet.”

“baby—”

“dad,” you cut in, then sighed. “i’m okay. just a little off.”

he didn’t answer immediately. and when he did, it was softer. older. “you sound like how your mom used to get.”

you blinked. “what do you mean?”

“back before... everything. she’d go quiet like that. said her skin itched from the inside out. said her dreams smelled like soil and smoke.”

that made your stomach twist. “you never told me that.”

“you never asked.”

and there it was again. that quiet, pulsing unease. like something was being handed to you in pieces — but the full picture still refused to come together.

“you know,” your dad added, offhand, like it wasn’t about to lodge itself under your skin for the next several years, “your mom used to get these weird spells too. back in the day.”

you blinked. “what kind of spells?”

“feverish, bone-deep fatigue. said it felt like her whole body was… not hers. she’d get these migraines that knocked her out for days. always happened around seasonal shifts or when she got really stressed. i took her to the hospital once and they ran every test imaginable. nothing ever came back.”

you stared at the ceiling, the shape of your own breath shifting slightly. “you’ve literally never told me that.”

“you’ve literally never asked.”

your heart gave a slow, reluctant thud — like it was unsure whether to beat faster or stop altogether.

“i thought it was just anxiety,” you said.

“it might be,” he replied quickly, too quickly. “probably is. you’re under pressure, adjusting to a new city, new apartment, starting college — it’s a lot.”

but he didn’t say it like he believed it.

and you didn’t hear it like you believed it either.

he seemed to sense the silence hardening between you, because he cleared his throat. “okay, let’s just make a list, yeah? go full nurse mode.”

you exhaled, quietly grateful for the deflection. “sure.”

“fever?”

“not exactly.”

“headache?”

“migraine.”

“appetite?”

“dead.”

“joint pain?”

“like old creaky stairs.”

“chills?”

“yes. but only sometimes. like… internal shivering.”

he hummed. “hm. sounds like what your mom said, too.”

you didn’t answer. not really because you didn’t want to. more because you couldn’t — because the words sat heavy on your chest, like something that had been waiting to be remembered.

he kept talking, light again, half-joking like always. “could be an autoimmune flare. could be your iron. could be a ghost. could be—”

“a vampire?” you deadpanned, waiting to see his reaction.

“finally! thank you for saying it first. you brought up ‘chosen one’ energy. don’t act surprised when the lore gets involved,” he repeated with far too much glee.

you scoffed, shifting the phone to your other ear as you curled deeper into your blanket cocoon. “you need a new hobby.”

“i do. how’s city life treating you aside dying from fever dreams and vampire encounters? made any friends yet?”

you hesitated. just enough for him to catch it.

“...no,” you said eventually. “not really. just weird neighbors.”

“hmm.” a beat. “any of them look suspicious to you?”

you scoffed again — but it came out closer to a laugh this time. not because it was funny, but because it was accurate. “dad. this building is suspicious. the floor tiles look suspicious. i’m pretty sure the elevator music changes based on your blood type.”

he snorted. “so that’s a yes.”

“i didn’t say that.”

“you didn’t have to.”

you rolled your eyes, but a small part of you was glad he asked. even if you weren’t about to admit that the weirdest one of all had glowing eyes in your dreams and possibly an allergic reaction to your existence.

“look, kid,” he said, suddenly serious in that half-joking, half-dad way of his. “if any of them turns out to be a vampire, you call me first, okay? i want to meet one before i die.”

you snorted. “right. i’ll schedule a coffee date between your blood pressure pills and my hallucinations.”

“i’m serious. call me. and then you run, alright? don’t be cute. don’t do that heroine nonsense where you try to understand him or fix him or whatever. just—bolt. fangs equals exit.”

you rolled your eyes, even as your chest squeezed a little. “yeah, yeah. wooden stake, garlic, sprint in the opposite direction. got it.”

he paused. “...you still carrying that pepper spray i gave you?”

you didn’t answer immediately.

“do not tell me you lost it.”

“technically,” you said, drawing the word out, “it’s not lost if i know it’s somewhere in my kitchen junk drawer.”

“god help you.”

“god’s not the one with bloodlust in my building, dad.”

“exactly why i’m saying this.” his voice softened. “you’re a smart girl. just… trust your gut, okay?”

you didn’t have the heart to tell him that your gut hadn’t been reliable since sunghoon looked at you like you were something to be devoured and saved all at once.

“okay,” you whispered instead.

“good. now go drink water or something. you sound like you’re dying.”

“thanks for the emotional support.”

“anytime. love you.”

“love you too.”

you hung up. and for the first time all week, your apartment didn’t feel entirely empty. just a little haunted.

monday night came in like a ghost—silent, heavy, and cold. for the first time in a while, you weren’t sure if you were awake or dreaming. after you hang up the call with your father, your body floated through your night routine of existing while your mind kept slipping out of your grip. everything tasted like metal. your skin was clammy, your head hot, but your fingers ice-cold.

you fell asleep that night without meaning to, face buried into your pillow, phone buzzing somewhere under the blanket. and for the first time, the dream didn’t take place in the greenhouse.

this time, you were at a bar.

warm lights buzzed overhead, golden and slow, like honey. niki sat across from you in a booth too plush to be real, his hands wrapped around a glass filled with something electric blue. you were laughing—no clue why—but the kind of laughing that made your ribs ache, cheeks flushed. he was grinning, head tilted, like this was a game he knew how to play.

and then it changed.

like someone had ripped the film reel and taped another piece of movie over it.

the lights dimmed. the music stopped. everything blurred. your breath came out visible, like fog. and niki looked at you without smiling this time. not cruelly. not kindly. just looking.

"he didn’t mean to scare you, you know." his voice was so thick it made your insides tremble.

you blinked. "what?"

"you’re not supposed to feel it this strong."

you opened your mouth, but nothing came out. the booth dissolved around you. the lights disappeared. and then you were falling, stomach-lurching, skin searing.

you woke up with your hand clenched in your sheets and the inside of your mouth tasting like copper. your body was soaked in sweat. the window was fogged over. your throat felt raw. every muscle in your body ached like you had been sprinting in your sleep.

by the time you sat up, your phone said it was 6:02 a.m.

you didn’t think. didn’t even wash your face. you just threw on your thickest hoodie, dragged yourself into your boots, and called a cab. you needed a hospital. something was wrong. your body had been telling you for weeks. you were just finally ready to listen.

you grabbed your keys off the kitchen counter with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking. not dramatically — just this quiet, persistent tremor, like your body was trying to ring some kind of alarm your brain still hadn’t heard.

your hoodie felt too hot and not warm enough at the same time, clinging to the sweat still clinging to your skin. your breath fogged the front door glass. you ignored the mirror by the entrance completely. you already knew you looked like shit.

stepping out into the hallway was like stepping underwater. the building was so quiet it felt wrong — not peaceful, but hollow, like it had been emptied out moments before you arrived.

your boots were too loud against the marble, each step echoing in a way that made your stomach twist. and then you pressed the button for the elevator.

you pressed the button. the elevator arrived.

and that’s when you saw him. a someone you have never seen properly.

red hair. tall. face like someone who didn’t try to look good, just was. hands in his pockets. bored expression. headphones around his neck, not on. you blinked, confused for half a second — and then your brain clicked into place. heeseung. that’s what niki had said. the quiet one. the scary one. the one that belonged to your hot set of neighbors that had disappeared for two whole weeks.

you’d never actually spoken to him. hell, you’d never even seen him this close before. just glimpses inside their apartment once, whispers in passing. but now, at 6:13 a.m., in your half-dead state, he was standing in the elevator like some glitch in your morning programming.

heeseung didn’t look at you at first. just shifted slightly, like he wasn’t expecting company. and then — his nose twitched.

subtle. sharp. 

just like niki had done that night after the incident.

and then he turned. slowly. deliberately. his eyes scanned your face, dropped to your hands, then back up again — like he was taking inventory. like you were… something.

he didn’t say anything. didn’t smile. but he definitely noticed you.

you stepped inside anyway. because you had to. because your chest felt too tight and your throat burned and if you didn’t sit down in a sterile waiting room within the hour you were pretty sure your organs would give out.

heeseung moved slightly to the side, still watching you out of the corner of his eye. the doors closed. the elevator began to descend.

you focused on the panel, the numbers lighting up one by one. he didn’t speak. didn’t clear his throat. didn’t reach for his headphones. he just… stood there. completely still.

you were too exhausted to care. too sick to feel awkward. too scared to ask why, when his nose twitched again, his throat visibly tightened — like he was resisting the same instinct you’d seen flood sunghoon’s eyes on that rooftop.

the elevator dinged softly as it reached the lobby, the sound barely registering through the static in your skull. your limbs moved before your mind could catch up — muscle memory, maybe. or sheer desperation. you stepped out, blinking under the fluorescent lights, the air colder here, sharper, like it hadn’t been used all night.

heeseung didn’t follow immediately. you paused, slow, turning your head slightly, just enough to see him still inside the elevator, standing exactly where he’d been the entire ride down. his gaze flicked toward you. brief. unreadable.

and then he turned — not toward the glass exit like you had, but deeper into the building. no words. no goodbye. just a quiet pivot on his heel and footsteps swallowed by the corridor tiles. gone. like he hadn’t just stared at you like you were something he almost recognized.

you stood there for a moment, dazed. the outside world waited on the other side of the sliding doors, all grey sky and early winter air, your breath already fogging against the glass. you were still half-drenched in cold sweat, your hoodie clinging to your spine, fingers twitching with leftover dream static.

then, as if on cue, headlights flashed against the curb. your cab.

you pushed through the doors. the cold hit you instantly — fresh and cutting, but grounding. you stumbled more than stepped toward the car, collapsing into the backseat with all the grace of a wet noodle.

you didn’t look back. not at the building. not at the glass doors. not at the place where heeseung had disappeared.

you just pulled the door closed, gave the driver the hospital name, and leaned your head against the window.

whatever was happening to your body — whatever strange, slow collapse you were crawling through — you were done ignoring it.

—— 

the ride to the hospital was slow. slower than it should’ve been for a six a.m. trip with no traffic, but maybe that was just your body dragging time behind it.

every turn of the cab made your stomach lurch, your pulse throb at the base of your skull like a broken metronome. you curled tighter into your hoodie, eyes half-shut, watching the city yawn awake through the fogged window.

streetlights flickered out. bakeries opened metal shutters. someone walked their tiny dog in a matching jacket. the world was still spinning, business as usual — but your body hadn’t gotten the memo.

hospitals were never your favorite place. you’d spent too many late afternoons in one, slumped beside your dad while he slept through chemo, trying to balance a school textbook on your knees and pretend you weren’t thirteen and terrified.

back then, hospitals smelled like antiseptic and fear. now, they smelled like routine and something sour rising in your throat.

the emergency wing was mostly empty when you stumbled in, barely able to speak past the burn in your chest.

they made you sit. take a number. the nurse who called you in was young, her ponytail too tight and her smile too professional to be comforting. she took your temperature, your blood pressure, asked how long you’d been feeling this way — and your answers were all a blur of shrugs and mumbles.

she furrowed her brow. called in someone else. another nurse. a maybe-doctor. you were poked, prodded, and ultimately left with a note scrawled on hospital paper and a prescription for the most generic painkillers known to man.

nothing definitive. no test results. no dramatic diagnoses. just vague nods and “it’s probably viral” and “get some rest.”

you’d nearly laughed in their faces. but your lungs hurt too much.

you’d barely made it down the hallway before your phone slipped out of your fingers twice while trying to open the ride app. the nurse at reception gave you a pamphlet about hydration and a smile like she thought you were dramatic, and maybe you were — you were twenty-three, chronically underslept and iron-deficient.

of course you were dramatic. but you were also right. something was wrong. they just didn’t have the equipment to name it.

the cab smelled like mint gum and cigarettes, and the driver didn’t ask questions, which was kind of perfect. you stared out the window the whole ride back, watching the city flicker past in washed-out gray. your throat burned, and your stomach rolled, and there was only one place your body wanted to collapse.

and then, finally, the seonghyeon jaega building came into view — dark, looming, stupidly expensive. familiar. you tipped the driver more than you should’ve and slid out without a word.

you stumbled into the lobby like a cartoon ghost, hoodie strings dangling, hospital paper crumpled in one hand. this time, the doorman was there — the one with the dead fish eyes and the ridiculous thermos with a cartoon shark on it, hyunwoo, you think.

he looked up from his crossword and smiled politely.

“good morning, miss.”

you nodded, tried for a smile, something automatic. it barely stretched across your face. “morning.”

he didn’t press. just nodded back, went back to his puzzle like you weren’t the walking dead in fuzzy socks.

your chest was still tight by the time the elevator closed behind you. your fingers fumbled the painkillers into your mouth like muscle memory. water, swallow, sigh.

the elevator doors closed with that same slow, deliberate finality they always had, like the building itself was chewing you up and giving you a moment to realize it. you leaned your back against the mirrored wall, the cold glass seeping through the cheap fabric of your oversized hoodie. underneath, you were still wearing the thermal pajamas you’d left the house in — flannel with little blue bears on them. cute, in theory. tragic, in the fluorescence of an elevator that smelled like metal and lemon cleaner.

the temperature was impossible to pin down. too warm around your neck, but your fingers felt icy. your breathing grew shallow — not panicked, exactly, just... off. like your lungs were trying to inflate through a coffee straw. your legs ached, your spine was stiff, and your vision flickered at the edges like a dying film reel.

and then there was the music.

soft, aimless, infuriatingly cheerful — some instrumental jazz cover of a pop song you couldn’t name. it filled the silence like a joke you weren’t in on.

your head tilted back. your eyes slipped closed just for a second.

your knees wobbled.

you didn’t even notice the bell ding — didn’t realize the elevator had reached your floor until the doors sighed open, cool air brushing against your clammy face. you blinked once. twice. the hallway felt darker than usual. not unlit — just dim in that way that made shadows stretch longer. 

and that’s when you heard it.

music. faint, pulsing through the air — not elevator music, but actual music. bass, low and smooth, like a party was happening behind closed doors.

your neighbors. their apartment. the one that had been silent for two full weeks. you hadn’t seen any of them. not even a sliver of a shadow beneath their door. but now, someone was definitely inside.

you stood frozen, one hand halfway inside your hoodie pocket, searching for your keys. the motion felt foreign now, like your limbs belonged to someone else. you looked down — or tried to — but the world tilted slightly, just enough to make your breath catch.

your fingers felt too thick, your palms too sweaty. and your vision… it was wrong. blurry in the center, like someone had smeared vaseline over your pupils.

it hit you, then — the vertigo, sudden and sharp. like your body had lost the plot entirely, like it was trying to reject gravity itself.

your knees buckled, and you had to lock them to stay upright. the hallway stretched before you, distorted and too quiet. like it was holding its breath.

you tried to laugh. just a small, sarcastic breath. but it came out wrong.

if this was how it ended, death in fuzzy socks and blue bear pajamas, you hoped the morgue at least had the decency to change your clothes.

your hand was still braced against the wall when your vision gave out for real.

it started at the edges — a gray blur creeping inward, slow and soft like fog rolling off the ocean. and then came the ringing. a high, steady whine that drowned out everything else.

you blinked hard, tried to shake it off, maybe whisper a curse to yourself just to prove you were still awake, still standing, still you. but your tongue felt too heavy in your mouth. your body didn’t move. it just paused — like a system crash in real time.

you took one step.

the floor shifted beneath you, or maybe it was the hallway that leaned — you couldn’t tell. all you knew was that the walls started breathing. that was the only way you could explain it.

the plaster pulsed like lungs. the light above you buzzed louder. the key in your hand slipped again, bounced once on the tile with a sound that echoed way too loud for something so small.

you tried to grab it.

you didn’t make it.

your knees folded first — no drama, no warning. just gone. the weight of your body hit the floor with a dull thud. your cheek pressed against the cold tile.

it felt good, almost. like sinking into something solid after floating too long. your ribs ached from the fall, or maybe they’d been aching for days and this was just the last straw.

you saw the elevator doors closing in your peripheral. heard the soft whirr of them sealing shut. somewhere behind your eyes, the pressure built. like something ancient and wrong was trying to crawl out.

and then darkness. not unconsciousness, not yet — just a deepening shade. like the hallway was dimming just for you.

then came the black. final and quiet.

you didn’t hear the door open across the hall. you didn’t see the figure step into the light. you didn’t know someone had been watching.

——

you came to like a body surfacing from black water — slowly, painfully, limbs cold and heavy, breath dragging itself in ragged pieces through your nose. your eyelids were leaden. every blink took effort.

the world behind them was gray, not quite dark, not quite light, just there, suspended and quiet like someone had pressed pause on the air itself.

your head ached. not the sharp pain of migraines, but the dull, submerged throb of something deeper, more systemic. like your blood was moving wrong inside you. like your insides had been shuffled, then stitched back together under anesthesia.

but you weren’t numb. no — there was sensation. your skin felt… balsamic. cooled over. like someone had run ice across your arms hours ago and it still hadn’t melted.

the air in your lungs was stale, metallic. your tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth.

you didn’t open your eyes at first. couldn’t. the weight of your body was too much. even the pulse behind your knees hurt. even your fingertips tingled with the kind of exhaustion that belonged to the sick — not the tired. the sick.

you didn’t remember falling asleep.

you didn’t remember making it back to your apartment.

hell, you didn’t remember getting off the elevator.

eventually, after a few minutes — maybe longer — you managed to open your eyes halfway. the ceiling was the first thing you noticed: tall, shadowed, vaguely ornate in the dark, like you were looking at it underwater. not your ceiling. not your room.

your pulse spiked. something primal stirred in your ribs. you shifted, just slightly, and the sheets under your skin told you everything — they were too soft. too expensive. too not-yours. you registered the faint smell of something woodsy and warm — bergamot, maybe. something layered, complicated. familiar.

but the rest of the room came in pieces. the walls, dark and blurred. curtains, still drawn. a dresser with gold accents, a lamp too dim to see the switch. shadows shifted in the corner.

and that’s when it hit you.

you weren’t at home. not yours, at least.

you swallowed, throat raw. you tried to shift your head, to look, but even turning your neck felt like moving through water. 

the room swam as you turned, your eyes dragging across the edges of expensive shadow — velvet curtains pulled halfway closed, light bleeding through in soft golds and sickly grays.

the bed beneath you was too soft, the sheets too smooth, like they belonged in a hotel room or a catalog, not your life. you weren’t used to this kind of comfort. and now, it felt wrong.

you blinked hard, vision blurring again, and finally the rest of the room began to settle into focus. a dresser — vintage. gold-framed mirror with a crack near the corner. a collection of books lined up too neatly. and coats. coats you didn’t recognize, thrown carelessly on a chair too clean to be real.

and then — the unmistakable curve of a shoulder. the long shadow of someone standing still.

you froze. someone was there. no.

not someone. multiple someones.

you couldn’t move your neck fast enough to catch all of them at once, but you didn’t need to. the room felt occupied. the atmosphere itself buzzed with quiet attention, like your awakening had flipped a switch you couldn’t see.

your vision tilted sideways and that’s when you caught it: a tall figure near the corner. motionless. arms crossed. sharp silhouette, too familiar.

niki.

your chest pulled tight. not with relief — not exactly. something in your body recoiled before your brain could make sense of it, like it hadn’t decided yet if his presence meant safety or danger.

you blinked once. twice. tried to clear your sight, tried to will away the syrupy haze still coating your lashes. but the outline remained. long limbs. black clothes. the way his weight shifted from one foot to the other, lazy, like standing upright was an inconvenience.

you should’ve felt comforted. he was the only face you recognized here. but instead, your muscles locked into something colder.

slowly, pieces started dropping into place, memories unrolling in the back of your skull like loose film: the elevator buttons glowing too slow. the air going stale. your ears ringing. fumbling for your keys. the elevator music mocking you with that stupid, upbeat jazz. your knees giving out. music from a nearby apartment — one you hadn’t heard life from in two full weeks — and then nothing.

darkness.

and now — this.

you shifted your eyes again, dragging your vision past the edge of the dresser, and there it was. someone else. younger, maybe. shorter than niki but not smaller — no, the space around him shrunk. like he was pulling it into himself.

he stood with his hands loosely clasped in front of him, hair parted too neatly, posture too perfect. he wasn’t looking at you. but your chest still caved a little the moment your gaze landed on him.

you didn’t know his name. hadn’t seen him around. but you had seen him once — blurred through the peephole on your first day here, flanked by the same crowd of sharp-dressed men. mafia, your brain had offered. or something worse.

he looked like he could kill someone with a sentence. and that if he did, he’d do it with impeccable grammar.

and then — the final one.

your eyes caught movement near the door. not coming in, not leaving — just standing there. someone with their back to you, broad shoulders squared, head tilted like they were listening to something you couldn’t hear.

his coat was expensive. dark. layered like he’d been pulled from a noir film and dropped straight into your fever dream. even from behind, you recognized him.

you didn’t know how. maybe the shape of him was burned into your brain now, maybe your blood had started mapping itself around the sound of his voice. but it was sunghoon. you knew it as sure as you knew your own name.

and despite every reason your brain tried to throw at you — the rooftop, the eyes, the way he looked at you like he was starving — your body… relaxed.

just a little.

and that scared you the most.

the realization landed with a thud — no drama, no crescendo. just a slow, icy spread of fuck.

your body recoiled, bones stiffening like it was trying to protect something inside of you that had already been exposed. because this was real. he was real. sunghoon. standing right there.

and that fact alone made everything else around you sharpen into clarity.

you had passed out. not inside your apartment, not in bed, not even in the privacy of your own little rented anonymity. no. you had passed out in the hallway. on a tuesday morning. in winter. wearing your dumbest socks and your oldest hoodie and whatever pride you had left.

and now you were here — not in a hospital, not even with a nurse — but in their apartment. his apartment. the place you’d only ever imagined from the other side of your thin wall. and you were being watched. by too many people. too many eyes.

but the worst part?

you still felt sick.

not flu sick. not tired or hungover or “i skipped breakfast” sick.

this was something else.

this was nausea curled around your spine like a snake. this was your blood running too fast, then too slow, like it couldn’t decide who it belonged to. your skin didn’t fit right. your limbs felt like borrowed furniture. and deep inside — somewhere between your lungs and your stomach — something was pulsing. thrumming.

you didn’t know what was happening to you.

but you knew it wasn’t natural. and it sure as hell wasn’t over.

your fingers twitched first.

just barely. just enough to make the blanket shift near your hip — a slow, traitorous movement that betrayed your consciousness before your eyes could.

you tried to stay still. to keep your breath shallow, chest frozen mid-rise. but your body had other plans. and the moment you shifted your hand again — not on purpose, just from the static ache of your joints — the air in the room changed.

you didn’t see them react at first. you felt it.

like the drop in pressure before a thunderstorm.

then a rustle. fabric brushing against leather. the creak of wood beneath shifting weight. soft, purposeful movements, like they were trying not to scare you. or maybe trying not to startle each other.

“she’s awake,” someone said, voice low. careful. male.

you didn’t know who it was — not yet — but it pulled your eyes open like a string had been yanked from behind them.

the blur cleared slowly, and then you saw it: niki had moved closer. crouched near the bed now, his usual smirk absent, replaced by something you didn’t recognize — not quite concern. not quite guilt. just… watching.

behind him stood the other man — shorter, more compact, but no less imposing. he looked at you like you were a puzzle he didn’t mind breaking apart to solve.

niki’s eyes didn’t leave your face, and for a moment, you could almost pretend this was a dream again. that none of this was real.

but the ache in your limbs, the heat still trapped under your skin, the taste of metal on your tongue — it all said otherwise.

niki looked at you with something that hovered between pity and worry — unfamiliar emotions when filtered through his usually unreadable face.

for some reason, that scared you more than anything else.

“you’re stabilizing faster than i thought.” it’s the first thing he says, slicing clean through the quiet and making your ears ring. the words hit you wrong — not just because of what they meant, but how they sounded. too casual. too clinical. like this was normal. like you were normal.

your face twisted on instinct, some pained reaction caught between confusion and disgust. your lips curled back, eyebrows pinched. it wasn’t even what he said — it was how he said it.

“jesus,” you muttered, pressing your palm to your temple, “did you always sound this annoying or is that a new post-trauma tone?”

niki didn’t laugh. just tilted his head slightly, like your bite had confirmed something for him. like he’d expected the fight. like he preferred it.

your voice sounded terrible — like gravel soaked in fire, your vocal cords rasping out their protest with the elegance of a dying cat.

the boy behind niki — the terrifying one with that calm, unreadable face — took a step back as soon as you spoke. not dramatically. not even with alarm. just a slow, calculated shift in weight, like the sound of your voice had confirmed something for him. like he hadn’t been expecting you to sound that wrecked.

your eyes cut to him instinctively, and for a second, all you could register was that air around him felt different — sharp, quiet, waiting.

what really made you feel awful — worse than the nausea, the fever dreams, the throat that burned like you’d swallowed sandpaper — was that sunghoon still hadn’t turned around.

he was right there. you knew that it was him, your brain was certain of it.

tall, straight-backed, motionless. staring at the door like it was going to solve all his problems if he just glared hard enough. you didn’t know what exactly you expected from him — maybe an apology, a grimace, a nod of acknowledgment — but definitely not this. not silence. not cold shoulders when your blood was still boiling in your veins like it was trying to cook you from the inside out.

how dare he not stare at you like his other two friends were doing right now. how dare he not even glance at you now that you were awake.

you hated that you were hyper-aware of his silhouette. that you recognized the slope of his shoulders already. that, even without looking at his face, you could tell he was tense. worse than that, you hated that the tension didn’t feel rooted in indifference. it felt rooted in guilt.

or shame.

was he fucking embarrassed?

good. he should be. he should be mortified, actually. you blamed all of this on him. every fever spike. every migraine. every dream that left your sheets soaked (not in a good way) and your body aching in ways no human sickness had ever managed.

you blamed it on the way he had looked at you that night. like he was starving. like you weren’t real. like you were his.

you shifted slightly under the covers, the motion sending another wave of heat curling behind your eyes. your voice was wrecked, your body was failing, and your patience was hanging by a thread made of spite and caffeine withdrawal.

and then, through cracked lips and clenched teeth, you rasped:

“do you plan on facing me anytime soon, or should i just keel over again while you brood in a corner?”

niki and jungwon glanced at you, then back to sunghoon — the silence dragging, thick and charged. they weren’t saying anything, but the exchange between the three of them was unmistakable.

it felt like waiting for a bomb to go off. or a verdict to drop. you didn’t like it. didn’t like being the center of some unspoken tension you didn’t understand, didn’t cause, didn’t even want to be a part of.

you felt the tension, too. but not the romantic kind, not the kind that sizzled in books or made girls blush in school hallways. no, this was the kind that crawled under your skin and nested there. this was physical. literal.

your body had latched onto sunghoon like a tuning fork the second your eyes opened in this weird room, and his silence was making it worse — like your cells were offended.

like something primal inside you was throwing a tantrum, demanding acknowledgment. and the longer he stood with his back to you, the more your nerves twisted.

you were sick. god, you were sick. not just flu-sick or stress-sick — something else. something worse. it was spreading now, minute by minute, like acknowledging sunghoon in the same room was gasoline thrown on a fire you’d been trying to smother.

your head pounded, your stomach twisted, your limbs buzzed like your blood had turned carbonated. this wasn’t anxiety. it wasn’t psychosomatic. it felt like your entire body was trying to make you get his attention — or punish you until you did.

and honestly? this was embarrassing. not just uncomfortable or inconvenient — embarrassing. your brain was offended by the sheer audacity of your own body, reacting like this on a tuesday morning, no less.

like what, did your bloodstream forget the concept of normalcy? you were sweating through your clothes, your eyes were stinging, your limbs were shaking, and sunghoon — the root of all this insanity — hadn’t even looked at you.

what the fuck was your problem?

you didn’t know. you couldn’t name it. you just felt it — wrong, off, tilted. like the world had taken a sharp left and forgot to tell you.

you shifted again, groaning under your breath. you hated that you were still wearing your ridiculous blue pajamas under your outer clothes, soaked through with sweat despite the sub-zero weather. your skin felt clammy, your hands trembling against the silky throw blanket that wasn’t yours.

you hated that your mind was starting to spiral — that part of you was honestly considering the possibility that you were going insane.

or maybe… maybe not insane.

maybe they were exactly what they looked like.

sunghoon. niki. the terrifying man with the unreadable stare. even the one with the red hair and sharp profile you saw earlier in the elevator. they didn’t move like regular people. didn’t talk like regular people. and you’d read enough books — watched enough late-night documentaries with your dad — to know that this wasn’t just exhaustion anymore.

it felt like you were part of something unnatural.

and god, the thought of even entertaining this? it was ridiculous. not in the cute, ironic way where you half-believe your horoscope and laugh about mercury being in retrograde — no. this was full-blown absurdity. the kind of absurdity that scraped the edges of delusion.

believing in vampires wasn’t the problem. of course they existed. humanity had shared space with another species for centuries. that wasn’t up for debate. they were in the history books, the legal records, the school curriculum.

you had taken a literal midterm in middle school about post-war vampire rights. designer blood banks. the civil coexistence acts of the 1950s. it wasn’t a mystery. it just wasn’t relevant anymore — at least not to you. not in your life.

but this? the idea that they were here — your neighbors? that one of them — maybe more than one — had looked at you and decided something behind those sharp eyes? that one of them could’ve… claimed your attention? affected your body in a way you didn’t even understand?

no. absolutely not. you weren’t that girl. you refused to be that girl.

you didn’t realize you were breathing hard until the unnamed one — the quiet one with the suffocating presence — finally spoke.

“she’s peaking again.”

his voice wasn’t loud. but it was clear. measured. like he was stating a fact about the weather, or about war.

you blinked. tried to sit up again — a stupid, impulsive act, born not of logic but of panic. the kind that crawled up your spine when the world felt too heavy, too strange, too wrong. you wanted to ask what he meant by that, what was his name, but you felt panic instead.

the blanket covering you was soft, maybe even expensive, but it felt like lead pressing your bones into the mattress. too thick, too warm, too intentional.

you clawed at it, fingers shaking, limbs weak and disobedient. your shoulder burned with the effort of moving half an inch, and the moment you tried to raise your head, the blood in your skull surged like a wave crashing against a too-small shore.

and then, finally, he moved.

not much — not dramatically — but enough for every cell in your body to register the shift. a shoulder rolled back, barely. a hand unclenched at his side. his head tilted, slowly, as if listening to something only he could hear.

and then, almost reluctantly, like it cost him something, sunghoon turned.

his body twisted first, then his face, the shadows catching on the sharp lines of his jaw, the curve of his neck.

his hair looked darker in here, like ink had soaked through the strands, and it framed his face in a way that made your stomach twist. but it wasn’t the usual twist. not awe. not that stupid crush-thrill that had haunted your bloodstream weeks ago.

this was something else.

his eyes found yours — and stayed there.

and god, he looked tired.

not in the human way. not sleep-deprived or hungover. but hollowed-out. like someone had reached into his chest and scooped something vital out and left him barely functioning.

his cheekbones were sharper, his skin too pale under the warm light. he wasn’t perfect anymore. not in the haunting, statuesque way you remembered from the rooftop. now he looked… worn. real. something tugged at the corner of his mouth, not quite a frown. not quite anything.

and then it happened. the second his eyes fully met yours — that aching, gnawing illness that had been feasting on your nerves for two weeks cracked. like glass under heat.

your breath hitched. your ears popped. you blinked, and suddenly you could breathe.

the pain that had curled up beneath your ribs for days loosened, just like that. the weight behind your eyes lifted. your limbs still ached, yes, but something shifted — unmistakably — in your bloodstream. like your cells remembered how to work again. like they’d been waiting for him.

you stared, open-mouthed. because what the fuck.

you tried moving your toes — and felt all of them. you blinked once. twice. your vision wasn’t swimming anymore. the walls stopped melting at the edges. when you sat up, the room didn’t tilt sideways. your head didn’t lurch. your chest didn’t pull tight. nothing throbbed. nothing screamed.

you stared at your hands like you’d never seen them before, like they belonged to someone else. you flexed your fingers. no tremble. no twitch.

what the actual hell.

you ran a quick mental diagnostic, the kind your body had trained you into these past two weeks. 

legs? check. 

feet? check. 

shoulders? solid. 

ears? blessedly unclogged. 

your stomach growled, sharp and dramatic, like it was protesting the way you’d ignored it for days. you touched your forehead, your neck. no fever. no chills. just warm. human. whole.

you were sitting up. fully. like a normal person. and it was terrifying.

because, what in the vampire diaries was this? you weren’t stupid. people didn’t just collapse in a hallway at 7 a.m. and wake up completely cured in a stranger’s guest bed with three unsettlingly hot men watching from the corners of the room like this was twilight fanfiction on crack.

you were hungry. you were confused. and you were so fucking exhausted. because even if your body had stopped screaming, your brain hadn’t caught up. and the worst part? sunghoon was still staring. 

and your heart was still doing that thing — that pulling thing — like it wanted to beat in time with his.

he didn’t say anything at first — none of them did. they just stood there, still and watching, like they were marveling at something sacred. like your ability to sit up without grimacing was some impossible phenomenon they hadn’t planned for. 

and yes, you felt like a miracle too. a tiny one. a quiet one, sitting in borrowed sweatpants and last night’s hoodie, in a room that didn’t belong to you. but now wasn’t the time to feel flattered.

not when three strangers — supernatural or not — were staring like you’d just pulled a sword out of stone.

you cleared your throat. it was the only sound in the room. your stomach growled again, louder this time, and you winced. no one laughed.

finally — finally — sunghoon moved.

his shoulders rose with a quiet inhale, and then dropped again like it physically cost him something. he didn’t step forward. didn’t close the gap between you. he just turned his head slightly, enough to look at you fully now, no barriers.

his eyes were darker than you remembered — not just in color, but in weight. like he hadn’t slept since the last time you saw him. like whatever edge had once made him look untouchable had dulled into something heavier. human, almost. except not. never.

his voice, when it came, was low. steady. practiced. but you could hear it — that thread of something cracked beneath the surface. not regret. not guilt. something older. 

“you weren’t supposed to feel it this strongly.” and just like that, your pulse dropped into your stomach. 

because what the fuck was that supposed to mean?

you blinked. once. twice. your body had just gone from full-system meltdown to sudden clarity in the span of — what? ten seconds? the math didn’t add up. the science didn’t add up.

and now you had a boy — no, a man, a something — standing in front of you, speaking like this was all part of a manual. a protocol.

“excuse me?” you rasped, voice still barely more than sandpaper dragged across metal. your chest felt tight again, but this time from sheer indignation. “what do you mean feel it? feel what?”

sunghoon didn’t answer right away. behind him, niki let out a breath — not a sigh, more like a slow exhale that made you want to throw a pillow at someone.

the other one — terrifying, well-dressed, probably-did-taxes-at-5-a.m. mafia looking guy — finally stepped forward like he was about to explain something official, something devastating.

but all you could focus on was the way sunghoon’s jaw clenched. how he didn’t look away. how he looked like he hated that you were asking. 

and suddenly, you were fuming. not the dramatic, cinematic kind of anger that makes you throw vases and scream into the rain. no. this was worse. it was the kind of white-hot rage that made your hands go cold and your thoughts get sharp. the kind that brewed in the back of your skull like static.

because what the actual kind of fucking sorcery was this? 

you had just woken up in a stranger’s — correction, a vampire’s — bedroom, after two weeks of progressively dying in slow motion, only to be cured by a pair of stupidly symmetrical cheekbones and a statement that sounded like a deleted scene from twilight: the bureaucratic cut.

you flung the covers off with all the rage of a disney villain in her final act. “okay,” you started, voice still wrecked but gaining steam, “somebody’s going to tell me what the hell is going on. and i swear, if the word stabilizing gets thrown around again, i’m going to stab someone with your vintage coat hanger.”

niki winced. the mafia guy blinked like he wasn’t used to being threatened before breakfast. and sunghoon — oh, sunghoon — had the audacity to look guilty.

“no one thought to leave a note?” you spat, swinging your legs over the side of the bed. “a sticky note? a voice memo? a ‘hey, just for your information, you’re about to experience soul-level cardiac arrest, but don’t worry, it’s a normal thing?’”

“we didn’t think you’d feel it this strong,” niki tried again, cautiously.

you narrowed your eyes. “you already said that. say something new or i swear i’ll start singing gospel.”

sunghoon finally looked like he might actually say something, but you were already on a roll. 

“do you people just hang out in designer clothes waiting for humans to drop dead in your hallways? is that your little fun pastime? is that why the gym’s always empty now, niki? were you all just sitting up here like, ‘oh, don’t worry, she’s just experiencing a little metaphysical collapse, she’ll be fine?’”

they all looked at you, quiet. not surprised — no, you weren’t lucky enough to have shocked them — but almost… contemplative.

you stood up, or tried to. your knees buckled slightly, but you powered through, fueled by indignation and a decade’s worth of unresolved parental issues. “i want answers,” you snapped. “and water. probably water first. but then answers.”

sunghoon finally, finally, moved toward you. slow. cautious. like you were a scared animal. or a bomb. (which, okay, fair.)

his voice was robotic, weird when he spoke. “you weren’t supposed to react like this.”

you tilted your head, deadpan. “oh, wow, thank you so much for that astounding medical diagnosis. i’ll be sure to write that down in my death journal.”

sunghoon’s jaw ticked, he seemed in pain. “it means we need to explain. all of it.”

sunghoon sat down.

that, in itself, felt like a betrayal. for a full minute, none of them had moved — like you were something volatile, like one wrong breath might set you off again. but then he finally took a breath and lowered himself into the chair across from you.

it was the way he moved that made your throat clench — careful, controlled, like sitting too fast might shake the ground beneath you.

his expression was unreadable, jaw tight, shoulders squared like this was an interrogation and not a conversation. and then he spoke.

“you’re not dying,” he said first. like he needed that part on record.

you raised an eyebrow. “thanks, doctor. next diagnosis?”

niki let out a quiet snort from where he leaned against the wall, arms folded, one boot tapping lightly against the floor. sunghoon ignored you both.

again, he seemed... weird. robotic.

“what’s happening to you,” he continued, voice low, measured, almost too calm, “is rare. it’s not supposed to happen anymore.”

you blinked. slowly. your brain took the words in like they were pieces from different puzzles. “you mean… like a sickness?”

“not a sickness,” sunghoon said. “more like… a reaction.”

he paused then. visibly debated what to say next. that’s when the third one — the one you now associated with do-not-fuck-around energy — stepped forward. the shorter guy. black coat, buzzed undercut, broad shoulders.

there was a tattoo creeping out from his collarbone, just a sliver of black ink crawling up his neck. when he finally spoke, it was without inflection.

“she doesn’t need the full story yet.”

sunghoon didn’t even look at him. “she deserves to know what’s happening to her.”

niki raised an eyebrow at that, but didn’t speak. instead, you locked eyes with sunghoon again and asked, “what kind of reaction?”

he exhaled. “soulmate.”

you laughed. out loud. an ugly, sputtering noise. “are you fucking serious?”

niki grinned. “oh no, she’s reacting like a normal person. i like her.”

sunghoon’s mouth twitched. not a smile. maybe pain. maybe something else.

“it’s not common,” he said, softer now. “not anymore. vampires used to… imprint. or whatever you want to call it. we’d form bonds. it was mutual. chemical. metaphysical. the human would feel it. the vampire would feel it. but it hasn’t happened in decades. not since the accords. not since—”

“humans stopped mingling with your kind?” you asked.

“not since both sides decided it was too dangerous.”

that made you pause. your throat was still dry. your hands clenched the blanket around your waist like it might anchor you back into reality. “dangerous how?”

“for you,” the shorter dude said this time. his voice was razor clean. “not for us.”

niki sighed. “it’s like a hormone overdose. a body-wide meltdown. like your system’s trying to recalibrate to match something it doesn’t understand.”

you scoffed. “and the something is you?”

sunghoon didn’t answer. but his silence did.

and that’s when something inside you shifted. clicked. because even if this sounded like delusional bullshit, your body was nodding along. it made too much sense. the fever. the dreams. the sudden gravitational pull toward a man you’d barely spoken to. the way your pain had vanished the second he’d looked at you.

“so let me guess,” you said slowly, “i’m your little imprint? your cosmic girlfriend? lucky me.”

sunghoon flinched. just slightly. “it doesn’t work like that.”

“doesn’t it?” you asked, voice rising.

and then — the twist.

“you’re not the only one who got sick,” the scary dude said. calm. final.

the room stilled. niki looked up. sunghoon closed his eyes. your breath caught.

“…what?”

“sunghoon’s been sick too,” niki offered, quieter than usual. “not the same way. but bad enough we had to cancel everything. bad enough he couldn’t feed. bad enough he barely stood up until yesterday.”

your mouth went dry. “what does that mean?” you asked, but your voice sounded distant even to yourself — like it had been dragged through water, then filtered through static.

was it too much to know? absolutely not. not for your overactive brain that consumed conspiracy podcasts like candy. but feeling it — sitting here, blanket bunched around your waist like armor, stomach churning, heartbeat crawling under your skin like something foreign — that was the hard part.

this didn’t feel like a reveal. it felt like a slow, rotting realization you hadn’t asked for.

you swallowed, throat raw. maybe it would be better if you passed out again. at least then, you wouldn’t have to process the idea that one of your neighbors — a hot, emotionally unavailable, glacial-faced vampire, apparently — had also been in a near-comatose state because of you.

great. incredible. what a legacy.

soulmate? imprint? some long-lost paranormal bond that now had you sharing symptoms like some twisted long-distance couple flu? no, thank you. return to sender.

you opened your mouth to say something clever — something biting and cruel and devastating — but nothing came. your lips parted and then closed again, your body betraying you in the worst of ways.

your eyes flicked back to sunghoon.

his hands were clenched in his lap. his cheekbones were sharper than usual, like he’d lost weight. there was a vein visible beneath his jaw. and when he finally raised his head to meet your eyes again, the exhaustion behind them wasn’t just physical. it was soul-deep.

“you were the first human i’ve spoken to in years,” he said, voice barely above a breath.

that made your stomach turn.

niki shifted, almost like he wanted to say something, but didn’t.

the mafia looking guy just crossed his arms tighter and stared, waiting — like this wasn’t new to him.

you blinked once. then again. your body still wasn’t reacting the way it should — no more pain, no more fever, no more frost behind your eyes. but your mind? your mind was racing.

“this is insane,” you muttered, because someone had to say it.

“agreed,” niki chirped. “but hey, at least you didn’t throw up. the last one did.”

“niki.”

“what? i’m comforting her.”

you didn’t laugh. couldn’t. your body was still deciding whether to fight or flee.

niki broke the silence first again after minutes of no one breathing. of course he did.

“well, the good news is you’re probably not gonna die,” he said, rocking back slightly on his heels where he’d crouched again beside your bed. “probably.”

you blinked at him slowly. deadpan. your expression alone could’ve been used to file a restraining order.

he raised both hands. “hey. optimism. it’s a dying art.”

from behind him, the man in the coat shifted for the first time. he didn’t look at you. didn’t even acknowledge niki’s running mouth. just turned his head toward sunghoon with an unreadable expression and said, voice like a closing door: 

“she needs rest.”

sunghoon didn’t argue. maybe he couldn’t. there was something off about him now that you were fully awake, fully conscious — something glassy in the way he held himself, like his body wasn’t all the way his.

the man placed a hand on his shoulder, and sunghoon moved. slow. obedient. not like himself.

you watched them go. watched their silhouettes shift through the doorway. neither of them looked back.

the moment the door shut, niki let out a long breath through his nose and flopped — not gracefully — into the armchair near the window. it creaked under his weight. he didn’t seem to care.

“so. fun fact,” he started, adjusting the sleeves of his hoodie. “your new boyfriend? yeah, he’s been high for the past three days.”

you stared. “what?”

niki gestured vaguely, like that explained everything. “inhibitors. cocktail of them. pretty top-shelf stuff. he’s, like, five thousand newtons of vampire strength wrapped in a sculpted jawline, so—” he clicked his tongue, “—we kinda had to knock him out the hard way.”

you blinked. again. “we?”

niki looked pleased with himself. leaned in like he was about to share a bedtime secret.

“took all six of us. and i mean all of us. it was like trying to sedate a tank. even then, he almost won. but we found the right combo. he’s on it now. dulled his receptors, numbed his instincts.”

your stomach curled slightly. “why?”

niki’s smile dimmed. not gone — just quieter.

“because,” he said, “he would’ve come for you.”

you didn’t respond.

he leaned back again, eyes flicking toward the ceiling. his voice, when he spoke again, had that same dry humor, but underneath it — something else. something brittle.

“we had to leave,” he said, almost like a confession. “jungwon-hyung’s family has a camp house. middle of nowhere, no cell service, no risk of you running into him if he… broke through. that’s why the building was dead. we took him far. like, drive-five-hours-and-still-hear-his-teeth-clench far.”

you stared, unmoving. your hands were still clammy against the covers. your chest still felt like someone had scraped it hollow and filled it with something cold.

niki scratched his jaw. “it was either that or lock him in the basement. which, by the way, sunghoon would never let happen. pride and all. so, road trip it was.”

you opened your mouth, but nothing came out.

“don’t look at me like that,” he added, side-eyeing you. “it’s not like we knew this would happen. we don’t do this soulmate thing. not anymore. not since—” he paused, teeth clicking together. “never mind. point is: it’s rare. it’s old. and you? you weren’t supposed to feel it this strong.”

your breath hitched. that phrase again.

“but i did,” you muttered. “feel it.”

niki looked at you. quiet. unreadable for once.

then, almost gently: “yeah. you did and he did too.”

“i honestly thought this was bullshit,” niki went on, scratching behind his ear like he wasn’t casually upending your entire understanding of reality. “jake-hyung was the only one we knew who got tangled up with a human like that. we all thought it was a one-time glitch. but sunghoon? he was even worse. and i think it’s the age, you know? the older they are, the stronger the… pull.”

you didn’t move.

niki shrugged. “sunghoon-hyung is the most powerful among us. has been for a while. not that he brags about it or anything,” he added, eye-roll implied. “but this?” he gestured vaguely toward your body, the bed, the air. “this nearly broke him. we didn’t think—i mean. imprinting is beautiful, yeah, sure. sacred, whatever. but it’s a lot of fucking work. especially when it hits this hard.”

you still didn’t respond. your gaze had unfocused, lips parted slightly, shoulders slumped. and eventually, niki caught on.

“you okay?” he asked, voice gentler now, less performative.

you didn’t answer him. not right away.

because your thoughts had gone quiet. not blank — not numb — just… quiet. like the cold hush of a library, a cemetery, a paused dream. 

you were confused. obviously. angry, too — because what the fuck was imprinting and why the hell did it choose you, of all people? you were a mess. you were a scholarship kid with ramen-induced ulcers and mommy issues. not a mystical blood-linked soul beacon.

but still. somewhere beneath all that static, you felt it: a pinprick of something else. something smaller. softer. 

sunghoon had been sick. sick because of you. 

and not just sick, but fighting it. drugged. dragged across the country just to keep him from getting to you. you’d blamed him, cursed him in your head, built this whole miserable theory of him being cold and detached and cruel — but he’d been hurting, too. maybe even more than you.

niki watched you for a moment longer, like he was trying to figure out what version of you he was leaving behind. but he didn’t press. didn’t tease. didn’t smile.

“yeah,” he said, brushing invisible lint off his pants as he stood. “you should rest. the worst’s over. probably.”

you weren’t sure if that was meant to comfort you or just be vague on purpose, but you didn’t have the energy to dissect it.

he crossed the room with that same unhurried gait — loose-limbed, strangely quiet — and paused at the doorway. “someone’ll be around if you need anything,” he added, voice already softer, like he was already halfway out. “and if you wake up starving… don’t freak out. we left you snacks. normal ones.”

your lips twitched, almost a smile. “thanks.”

“don’t mention it,” he said, then looked at you over his shoulder, eyes gleaming under the low lighting. “really. don’t.”

the door clicked shut behind him with a softness you didn’t expect.

you lay there, for a long minute, staring at the ceiling. the silence in the room was different now — not heavy, not buzzing. just there. a presence instead of a pressure. you shifted under the covers, and for the first time in what felt like weeks, your limbs didn’t ache. your lungs didn’t pull tight. your stomach didn’t twist.

you closed your eyes, and your body let you.

this time, you didn’t dream of anything.

author's note: clap if you find respectful but feral sunghoon hot. yes, i will die on this hill. yes, our couple mught hate each other now but i swear they'll be all cute soon. thank you for reading! send me a request • my masterpost

taglist: @ikeugirly @vixialuvs @hoonprksung @kyunlov @verialuv @sagegreenhairclip @gal821 @nekkodiaries @httpenhoon @questionsdearreader @mynameis-rosie1 @ninistranaut @staygenesblog @stercul1a

[sleepymccoy]

I ran a murder mystery once.

I had a recent string of sex workers going missing, and just now they found a body that died a few weeks ago. The cops aren't taking it seriously so they went to adventurers for help. Had some false leads in the body, so they had to hit the library to figure out what the cause of death might've been (no blood cells in her blood, which aligned with a demon I made up as a red herring)

Then there's like three possible suspects mentioned. There's the repeat client who creeps out one of the sex workers, there's the rich asshole, there's the guy across the street who watches but never comes in.

And then, if the players are invested in the style of game, they go and ask each one! It is important to make sure the players engage genuinely though. You can tell them over the table that the game will be more fun if they interview all the suspects and come back and talk about it, and that as DM you'll reward investigation over rushing the ending.

Anyway, I had it ending up being the rich assholes son, who was a recent vampire (the rich guy wasn't, but he was covering for his son, so the zone of truth didn't get too much out of him cos he just didn't volunteer it). The son would see the sex worker leaving and catch them on the way home, drain them of blood, then through some medical stuff I vagued a little lol put water back in their veins so they didn't look totally exsanguinated.

Because of the library research they weren't asking vamp questions, but I did give the rich place vamp vibes for the fun of it. It's DnD!

I also had one of the missing sex workers come back after they'd interviewed all the suspects to muddy the waters. She'd just left town for a few weeks. So they started to doubt the truth of the serial killer narrative.

The repeat client had a crush on the bar tender and hired sex workers just to have a reason to swing by the bar lol, but the players grilling him so hard he backed off and they had to do a follow up to walk it back

The guy watching across the street was looking for his sister. They were sooo sus on him, it was hilarious. Ended up his sister was one of the dead sex worker bodies they found later

It was really fun! And we had a dramatic show down as they figured it out and went to the madam, who was like oh no I just sent a girl over to that house! So they got to save a woman and arrest the guy.

The people I played with were awesome, they did a stake out of the house to see if the father acted dodgy so I could slip in some fun details and clues there. They would spend time in character arguing how to split their resources and who they needed to focus on. They cast spells plenty, but it didn't seem to give them much more power than a cop has. Like, they disguised self to go in as the chimney repair guy and snoop around - that's fine! They cast zone of truth - fine! The suspects had secrets so you can feel them all dancing around a topic. It's up to them who they believe.

The magic rushed the ending a little, it's quite easy to catch someone when it's four on one. But that's fine too, at that point the mystery was over and they were sure they had the right guy. So they caught him and we wrapped up the game. It was very good!

How would you handle a murder mystery in D&D? A lot of spells would make short work of most mysteries (speak with dead, zone of truth, various command spells, etc). Now of course those spells do have limitations but still.

Does the party you're currently running the adventure for have access to these abilities? No? Then don't sweat it. Part of leveling up is gaining access to abilities that let you circumvent certain types of adventure ( such as teleportation letting you skip minor travel). Mysteries are best run low level when the culprits are mortal with mortal motives.

Agatha Christie It: one of the hallmarks of detective fiction is that due to circumstances, all the suspects of the crime are bottled up in the same location, letting the detectives ( and audience) have a limited number of targets to chose from as they build up a case. Have your mysteries happen in isolated places with a limited number of variables to sort through.

Magic can only go so far. Any society that knows about magic is likely to have laws about when/how that magic can be used, especially in matters of law. Cornered your likely suspect and used dominate person to force out a confession? A) the party aren't lawmages recognized by the magistrate, that confession isn't reliable in court B) someone ensorcelled could be compelled to say anything, so enchantment isn't trustworthy. C) Using magic against someone in that way is tantamount to threatening them with a weapon, hope your party is prepared to also go to court.

A good mystery is all about piecing together incomplete information, meaning that no one person ( and thus no one spell) contains the complete truth. The dead person won't necessarily know what killed them, just who they suspect, and any good killer would know they needed an alibi/decoy in order to throw off witnesses. Having your party pick through these clues is the fundamental fun of solving mysteries.

Likewise, it's not enough to know that someone did the crime, the party has to PROVE it, which requires gathering more evidence than just a magically compelled confession. Sure a spellcaster could kit themselves out for solving crimes, but that just means the murderer is liable to take a swipe at them while the gang is split up and searching for clues.

[unnamedcorvid]

i was relistening to Part 6 and just really love and want to think more about Arthur’s behavior here and the snapshot it gives into his character cause like. This is Arthur before pretty much all of The Horrors. He’s flourishing. Just out of a nice month-long nap and has a new mystery to solve. He’s in his element here! This is what he Does! It’s probably one of the closest peeks we get into what his life had been like before everything, how he did his detective work, all of that. We learn how he goes about his investigations (before any of the post-horror desperation and moral issues hit) and just. This is how he worked. This is what he Did.

and what do we see? CRIMES. this man commits CRIMES. on the DAILY. without a second thought. just acts like it’s totally and completely normal.

this man walks into a store and very casually, matter-of-factly lists off the items he wants. A .45 Automatic with bullets to go along, a flashlight, matches, and a way to force a lock. like. That shit outta put him on a list or something, ESPECIALLY when he’s asked for an ID he says he doesn’t have one, and just. buys a new (fake) one. like. Thank god that clerk was dirty or else he’d be arrested cause what the fuck kinda sketchy shopping list is that? my brother in christ I don’t think there is any legal reason to have a way to force a lock. not to mention that and a GUN

Then he promptly heads off to a recently murdered girl’s apartment, and when finding the door locked, just picks it. Without a moments hesitation. And he does it really fuckin fast too, like. You know that guy’s had a Ton of practice. he did that in like one single second while blind and without control of one hand. he even admits it, says he’s done this many times. this guy’s a fucking menace.

Once inside the apartment (that he broke into. also the apartment of a recently murdered girl, not just dead but MURDERED like. She was KILLED HERE not even a week ago. this was a CRIME SCENE) he just kinda. Rummages around and takes a book. I mean yeah, she is dead, but also. you can’t just break into someone’s apartment and snatch their shit my guy??

and then at the docks. oh my GOD dude. You’d THINK a GROWN ASS MAN would maybe CONSIDER the CONSEQUENCES of STEALING A WHOLE ASS FUCKING BOAT OFF A PUBLIC DOCK IN BROAD DAYLIGHT but NOOO. that’s actually his instant go-to. Can’t get a ride? cool, I’m stealing a boat. there wasn’t even a second of hesitation or deliberation. What to do next? Oh I know. Steal a fucking boat. doesn’t even think of the consequences or that there’s actively people here (and he just gave his name to one), just up and takes it. it’s such a normal thing to do.

anyway all this to say that Arthur Lester Malevolent has always been a feral little creature with no regard for conventional approaches. he’s always been like this. I mean yeah he’s gotten So Much Worse but like. he didn’t start from ground zero either. Even in Part 4, when he needed to distract Kellin, when his first idea to honk the horn on his truck was turned down, his next instant suggestion was SET HIS HOUSE ON FIRE. there is no middle ground with this man. he will always jump straight to crimes without a second thought and I love that for him

[chaoticace2005]

After episode 5… looking back at these flashes of emotions we have of Jax in episode 2 when Ragatha brings up Kaufmo’s funeral…

Gooseworx has said the character who abstracted before Kaufmo is Ribbit, which… based on the name is likely the frog guy we see Jax stop at the door of during intermission, and that was likely Jax’ friend.

So, the last funeral that took place would have been Ribbit’s

I think that may have been what was going through Jax’s mind in this scene, thinking about his friend. Possibly he couldn’t handle going to another funeral or maybe he never went to Ribbit’s (or by some circumstance Ribbit didn’t have one.)

If he and Ribbit had a fight before he abstracted, as some people suspect, maybe he felt too guilty to go. Or too angry. And he regretted it later. And then with Kaufmo’s funeral he just figured it was best to keep the trend going. Where is the fairness in him showing up for Kaufmo but not Ribbit? Besides, nobody probably wanted him there anyways.

[prettyflyshyguy]

eucalyptus tissues have once again saved me from the torment nexus (the yearly cold/flu that you inevitably will contract every winter) and despite being in and out of bed all day - i have to complete my civic duty so lets do this.

You know the drill. Live slug reaction under the cut.

EP7 lets give it up for EP7

Firstly -- jesus did they not take anytime to give Gura a new uniform because he's barely patched up, and covered in someone elses brain matter and this thumbnail pic looks like they're on the hopper getting ready to EXIT STAGE LEFT

not the ONE MONTH EARLIER timeskip you cant DO THIS TO ME

Ok but like. Bharadwaj did you have to admit infront of the entire group AT A FANCY RESTURAUNT that you and Pin Lee had a bit of a fumble like "Sorry for the discomfort I caused you" GIRL THE WHOLE ROOM CAN HEAR YOU GNILERSNGILAEGNBLIHB

--- wait I'm an idiot they're doing a group sharing thing arent they. They were literally chanting her name a minute ago. Jesus christ the flu's left me one impatient little shit hasnt it LMAOO

Anyway before I move on -- can we talk about how pretty Bharadwaj is in this scene wtfffff

Tiktok voice: WE LISTEN AND WE DON'T JUDGE

STOP THAT STOPPPPPPP I'M IN THIS PICTURE AND I DON'T LIKE IT AUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH thank you mr dastmalchian for the performance of my life

Ratthi saying "Who is the next victim!" I'm crying its gonna be gurathin isnt it

THIS BACKGROUND CHARACTER I'M SOBBING

I could write a fucking essay on this scene regarding the class difference, the cultural differences and the undertones. But I have the fucking flu. You're all smart people you can psychically connect with me on this right.

OH. HOMEBOY WAS A SPY. WORKING FOR THE CORPORATION RIM.

GNURIEHGULEAHNURTSGHUIERGHJUIEHGNUERISG

that was a fucking bombshell revelation

Re; him being forced to take substances as a means for coercion and control. Look I'm not sorry this is just making me go bonkers he's just like my best girl O'Byrne for real you guys don't understand the accidental parallels between him and her are sending me into a fucking frenzy. I made her like in 2016 for a story and I swear I've never even heard of murderbot till this show came out I can't believe this holy shit holy fuck

This also adds SO MUCH MORE WEIGHT to how angrily he shut down LLB's suggestion at cracking open a medkit for stimulants (for fun). Initially I got the vibe that it was just a general "thats a stupid fucking idea we need those they're important" but now its like

Ah.

this show's going to make me fucking cry his performance is going to make me fucking cry

This was a very. Very good conversation between these two. I am once again in this picture and I don't like it. Maybe its the sickness, maybe it's because I've been self reflecting, but this hit me in a soft spot.

"My risk assessment module was a piece of crap" yeah yeah alright blame it on the fucking module ya dickhead go on then hahahahahahahahahahahaa idiot

GOD AS really just has an incredibly imposing figure combined with excellent camera work to make this thing look deeply unsettling. Great body acting. Great framing. I love a good freak 10/10

THE WAY EVERYONE INSTINCTIVELY JERKS BACK HOLY SHIT OF;IJEIRGHALIERHJA;EOGHJEOSJGH

YESSSSSSS YEEEEEEEEESSSSSSS HAHAHAHAHAHAHA OH MY GOD THE WRITERS GET IT. THEY REALLY GET IT. THEY REALLY REASLLY GET IT HAHA YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

"I'm asking you to please get in the hopper. Unless you feel like dying.

I-I mean from them. Not from me."

screaming crying throwing up this show is both so so so fucking funny and just hits such a particular itch I have in character dynamics and the monstrous I'm cackling. Every time it awkwardly stutters or fumbles its words when it realises it came across wrong for how it's trying to present itself I feel giddy ("you're not disturbing. Me." when it was trying to hide and now THIS)

"You should be afraid of me. Please don't be afraid of me." real shit I'm slurping this up like the chicken soup I made last night

this is just like when I watched Supernatural for the first time last year and it made me go insane and I doubled down on writing my own story after and now murderbot is fuelling me now you dont understanddddddddd I'm going to explode if I dont publish Virtual Ground in some capacity by the end of this year

I have to. This show makes me want to make my own damn story better and stronger and get this shit out there SO BAD

RATTHI I LOVE YOU BUT I'M STRUGGLING TO WATCH THIS SCENE THE 2ND HAND EMBARRASSMENT WILL KILL ME

"Cooool. Okay good talk."

SOBBING

"Aah thank you so much for the concern."

"I didn't indicate concern, I was stating a fact."

bitch I need them to get locked inside a room for 12 hours. I need them to have to undertake a duos mission forcibly. I need them to have to cooperate on a highly specialised task that they both are required to participate in and cannot do alone completely.

Do you understand it makes me physically ill

"Ungrateful." WELL WELL WELL IF IT ISNT THE ACTIONS OF MY OWN CONSEQUENCES IRHTGALUHGELGAEULRH

Love that this is just one humungous miscommunication error on full display on both human and construct sides. Both cannot quite understand how the other operates and at this fundamental base incompatibility it results in both struggling and tension constantly forming. Impeccable. Waiter can I have another serving please.

ALSO IT'S STUPID LITTLE GRUMPY WALK AWAY HAHAHA

Thank you Mensah voice of reason (and I'm crying at everyone consistently not pronouncing LBB's name right)

"I was one whole confused entity" UGH WHAT A GOOD LINE

once again I love how this show uses subtle chromatic aberration to show when MB's having a moment of mind palace imagination.

"Circle"

"Nope."

"Absolutely not."

NFGBUIERAUHGULIJEHGLIHBERSUTGHUISLRTHGLUSRHG

You guys didn't even *try* and explain to it what you're doing and why, you just assumed it'd understand!! You need to talk to it!! You need to tell it what this whole thing is! Just like Gurathin "I'm not very good at this game" you have to communicate it!!!!!!!!!!!!

oK i've just been absorbing the entire outside-the-hopper conversation and its good food your honor. No one is happy. Everyone's getting snappy. No one has a good plan. Everyones confused and upset. Uguialerhguhga

CRICKEY, WHAT A BEAUTY!!!

BLIMEY!!!!

Ok that took a shocking and unexpected turn

I'm not going to comment on this

YEP.

God.

PIN LEE I'M SOBBING I ALSO DON'T WANT TO LOOK AT THEM

THIS FUCKING FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHY IS SO FUNNY

BHARADWAJ COMING IN WITH THE ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And then they confiscated their clubs and my rock...

sorry that's a shockingly specific reference to a Dead Kennedy's track in which the frontman just tells a story. Anyway here's a relative timestamp to the quote.

ANYWAY. That's not the flu talking, I have a habit of just quoting that.

If I had a dollar for every time there was robot vore in this show I'd have two dollars. You know the rest.

once again I am looking respectfully at the robot gore on this show however

"We're going. You can come. If you want."

Loving the emphasis on the reality that MB has a choice. It's shitty and pissy about it and it sure does love to complain but it's chosen, thus far, to protect them. It's chosen multiple steps of the way to be helpful.

It's still not entirely clear to the prexaux crew that thats the case (bar Mensah. She gets it the most.) but I think they're starting to recognise it a little more. The focus, care and attention it gave when the worm showed up was the biggest indication.

But MB itself also deeply struggles to recognise the whys and the hows of how prexaux approach it and feel about it. Cause after all it's just one whole confused entity. Aren't we all.

Anyway. I'm still not satisfied in the Gurathin reveals. I need to know so much more. I'm so fucking hungry. This only furthers my theory that he was augmented against his will. It's thrown a jerry can onto the bonfire actually.

I swear to god it wont happen this season but if we get a season 2 (I know the books go different places hear me out) I NEED MB and Gurathin to go on a shitty little duo mission together where they're forced to hang out and cooperate on something IT'S LIKE LIFE SUPPORT TO ME.

IF THE SHOW WON'T WRITE IT, I WILL.

Anyway I love that, once again, everyone has problems, and half of them arise from communication breakdowns. And it feels like we're getting closer to a breakthrough of mutual understanding. Mensah does your back hurt from how much you're carrying right now.

Now this meme comes with inevitable 'parent' connotations -- put those aside for a sec because it's not about that it's about her being the one fucking thing thats keeping two very chaotic forces together (everyone else in presaux and MB) and stopping them from destroying themselves or each other

Anyway. My whole body aches. I feel so fucking ill. I'm worried I've said something really stupid or nonsensical or a bad take here -- flu brain's got me paranoid.

I love you Gurathin you make me want to write my own story so much more and I swear to god I'm gonna make this a thing. I hope I can make Virtual Ground a mere fraction of how enjoyable this show's been to experience.

[headspace-hotel]

me: so, the character who is Tortured In The Science Facility--

hard scifi side of brain: yes, continue

me: its about the ambiguity of the distinction between his body and the equipment that is used to maintain it. the human body is separate from the surrounding world, but when there is machinery and technology intruding into the body, and when the various fluids and biological functions typically inside the body are being taken outside of it and processed by devices

aesthetic side of brain: YEAHHHH

hard scifi side of brain: sounds great. to what extent is the supportive medical technology distinct from the user's body? a fascinating topic for sure

me: so. what are our ideas.

aesthetic side of brain: so obviously he has a bunch of metal and shit in him like metal bolts and pins and exoskeleton looking pieces

me: yes

aesthetic side of brain: you know, so he looks like human flesh implanted onto a metal frame that kind of protrudes painfully through the human facade

me: awesome.

hard scifi side of brain: so i assume the metal stuff is like making his skeleton stronger and protecting his organs or something?

me: yeah I guess

hard scifi brain: so is it implanted inside him or is it visible on the surface somehow

aesthetic brain: its both, he has like rivets or something sticking out of him so it looks like he's been bolted together underneath

hard scifi brain: so the metal stuff is like sticking out of his skin?

aesthetic brain: yes and theres gnarly scarring like his body has tried to reject it but he's had to heal and re-form around it

me: okay this sounds great but let's go a little deeper into the whole ambiguity between the human body and technology thing

hard scifi brain: if he needs external support systems that suggests the implantations either damaged his bodily functions or that his organs can't keep up with the demands of his new body. so we have to figure out what is being supplemented technologically and why

aesthetic brain: you know what's sick? tubes

me: i'm listening

hard scifi brain: they could use a feeding tube but you've already established that this character cooks for himself, so, why

aesthetic brain: MORE TUBES

aesthetic brain: they plug into him like that one scene in the matrix where Neo is in the goo

hard scifi brain: they probably used mechanical ventilation sometimes but also, why

me: so did they give him a bunch of, like, HDMI ports or something

aesthetic brain: okay hear me out

aesthetic brain: you know those portholes they install in cows to study the cow's digestive system

me: i love where you're going with this

goblin brain: MORE HOLES GIVE THIS MAN MORE HOLES

me: as i was saying

aesthetic brain: RIGHT!!! anyway the tubes have green fluids in them probably

hard scifi brain: okay and what is the green fluid? and what does that do? what organ system is it connecting to? if its delivering a drug, why would they install a permanent cannula in him instead of give it by any normal way

aesthetic brain: its evil science fluid. it doesn't have to be green we can try other colors

me: okay there's some technology they have to heal injuries super fast, maybe it has something to do with that

hard scifi brain: but how does the evil science fluid actually get delivered to the part of the body its supposed to affect

aesthetic brain: does he collapse when they unplug him? that would be sick

aesthetic brain: i mean obviously they have him strapped to a scary table by default with super strong handcuffs and restraints and shit

aesthetic brain: and the room looks like an OR and there's like tubes going everywhere and wires and monitors attached to him so it's like aesthetically mirroring nerves and blood vessels and intestines etc so it looks like a body being opened up during surgery and everything is taken out and sprawling all over the room but its like technology and machines. ordinarily being in surgery with your organs taken out is transient, but he is trapped in this liminal state

hard scifi brain: but what are the tubes FOR

aesthetic brain: SYMBOLISM

Torn between the need to write hard scifi intimately grounded in reality, and the need to have the Aesthetic on point

[hebezuart]

HI ITS ME THE GUY WHO SAID I WANTED UR TENNA DESIGN DESPERATELY AND FOLLOWED IT UP WITH A WOOHOO I LOVE YOUR MTV AU AND I THINK THE DESIGNS ARE ABSOLUTELY GORGROUS. ITS RLLY IN CHARACTER AND ID LOVE TO HEAR ANY MORE THOUGTS YOU HAVE RELATING TO IT IF YOU HAVE ANY AT ALL. PENNY FOR THE POOR , PLS MAY I HAVE SOME MORE, ETC, OK THNAK YOU . I FEEL LIKE I SHLD SIGN OFF BUT I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO,. YOU PICK IF YOU WANT

Ooh, a returning customer!! (/silly)

Y'know, since you sent this ask, I actually have had quite a few thoughts about the AU. Which, funnily enough, are mostly pertaining to various theoretical gameplay mechanics. I highly, highly doubt this AU will ever become a ROM hack of any kind (seeing as how I... don't know how to make those), but pondering stuff like this is still really fun anyways. Lemme talk about it.

Their party is relatively similar to that of the Fun Gang's, in terms of specialty diversity. MTT is the lighter weapon user, mirroring Kris and their sword. His attacks can be strong, but usually that honor goes to Mads, the heavy hitter, much like Susie. With her brass knuckle boxing gloves, anything she hits is gonna hurt hard. And Blooky is the group's magic user, like Ralsei. Although, they're definitely not as skilled with it as they'd hope... we'll get into that in a minute though. Let's break each character down.

Starting with Mads, she's basically a mashup of Sonic the Werehog and an ARMS character. Her body parts are able to detach like they did in Undertale, so she uses the sports tape around her arms as a tether to rocket her fists forward for long range, hard hitting punches. This applies to her head, too: She can take it off and hold it in her hands, shooting her arms forward to use her teeth as an attack.

An extra strong attack that costs a lot of TP would entail something like spinning around like the Tasmanian Devil and dealing major damage to the entire enemy team, but taking a chunk of recoil damage in return. Despite this, she'd be one to attack as often as possible and quickly spend big chunks of TP for her finishers.

MTT is, for lack of a better term, a complete fail boy. Whereas the other two has some sort of intuition about how to use their weapons, MTT is completely out of his element. That element being... staying inside and doing nothing. His weapon is meant to be used like a spear, being long and pointy and used to keep your distance from enemies. However, he ends up using it half like an axe, and half like a sword. Swinging with wild abandon in fear, or trying to bang enemies on the head with it to little results.

He eventually starts to get the hang of it, of course, but most of the time opts for defending and gaining TP, letting Mads and Blooky do most of the work. However, with enough TP, he's able to do an attack that supposedly deals an insane amount of damage... with a 50/50 chance that that damage lands back on him instead, knocking him down instantly. He's a bit of a glass cannon.

Blooky I think was my favorite to come up with ideas for (aided too by my friends in the server we share). They're a magician, so they have both the magic from their wand and whatever they can pull out of their hat. The wand works like you'd expect, casting spells for both attacks and healing, all at a relatively low TP cost, but in turn, a relatively low-powered spell.

By saving up a little more TP, they can flip off their hat for a random event. Dubbing this the Hat Roulette, a number of things can emerge from the hat. A rabbit that heals a single party member, a flock of doves that does significant damage to the enemies (although, it has a small chance of doing that same damage to the party), and a host of other things. What comes out of the hat is completely up to chance, making Blooky really weigh their options before spending the TP.

I have lots of other ideas of course, but I'll keep it contained to just this for this post. This AU has already been loads of fun working on :)

[nataliaphantomhivesblog]

Season 5 of Black Butler has been out for a bit now, so what better time to gush about one of my favorite parallels from the Green Witch arc?

Sullivan and o!Ciel's emotional journeys run parallel in a way that deepens the arc.

1. The shared burden of survivor’s guilt over the deaths they caused.

When o!Ciel is trapped in his own mind, we get to see the inmense amount of guilt he holds due to the sacrifices he has made in order to stand where he is.

Beyond the visual depiction of the ghosts of his pasts taunting him while he's caged, I think the narritive itself textually provides us with enough evidence to understand the burden he carries.

o!Ciel is fully aware that the contract he made with Sebastian set off the chain of events that led to many of the deaths he now feels responsible for, and when he was emotionally scarred by the mustard gas, the feeling of remorse intensified tenfold.

As for Sullivan, she indirectly caused the deaths of many through actions she believed were magical. Manipulated by her mother into thinking she was a true witch, she was unknowingly creating weapons of war under the illusion of wonder and power.

And she is clearly distraught when she finds out, feeling incerdibly betrayed and guilty about what she's done.

Anyways, both o!Ciel and Sullivan, for different reasons, carry incredible survivals guilt but both were shaped by manipulation and the haunting weight of lives lost because of their actions.

2. Both characters deal with suicidal ideation due to said survivals guilt.

o!Ciel's suicidal thoughts tend to manifest in a more metaphorical way. The twin brother in our earl's head keeps implying to "stay here forever", which basically translates to, "why don't you just give up? nothing will hurt you if you die."

o!Ciel is wrestling with this decision deep inside his mental palace, while r!Ciel softly coaxing him to consider the offer of death.

r!Ciel keeps pushing o!Ciel to “stay here forever” and give up on revenge, revealing just how drained our Earl is from bearing that heavy burden.

But asking him to give up revenge, the very thing he lives for—speaks volumes about the depth of his despair, and the dark implications it has, closely tied to thoughts of suicide.

And we know these suicidal thoughts tie from o!Ciel’s raw pain and regret tied to the “proof of sin” (Sebastian ) who is the driving force behind so many lives being lost.

Sullivan’s wish for death parallels o!Ciel’s survivor’s guilt, but unlike o!Ciel’s more metaphorical struggle, she expresses it openly and verbally, giving us clear, direct textual evidence of the pain she carries.

She wants to die because of the heavy responsibility she bears for creating those deadly, war-inflicted gases.

3. Both of them get a wake up call and inspiration to keep living.

Here is when things get intresting *rubs hands together like a sly little fly*

Sebastian is the one who pulls o!Ciel out of this fragile, guilt-ridden mindset by reminding him of the true nature of their contract: revenge, the very reason our Earl keeps going.

The demon "wakes him up" aggresievly by taunting him and almost killing him by eating his soul as a result, forcing o!Ciel to confront the harsh reality of his situation and cling to the one thing that gives him purpose.

Sebastian’s tactic essentially jolts o!Ciel awake by numbing his emotional turmoil—he pushes him to dismiss his pain and focus instead on the fact that this revenge is for “his own sake,” not anyone else’s.

In doing so, Sebastian helps o!Ciel dissociate from his survivor’s guilt and bury that crushing weight deep down.

while Sebastian’s approach is effective at snapping o!Ciel out of his spiral, it’s not exactly healthy for his emotional growth.

It basically encourages him to shut down and bury his feelings instead of truly processing and healing from them, but for a demon who thrives on a deeply scarred and traumatized soul, it’s the perfect mentality: keeping o!Ciel trapped and dependent.

And while our Earl runs to Sebastian, passing by the deaths he feels guilty for, the visuals show those memories fading away like petals, highlighting how he’s trying to leave those emotions and his past behind.

This coping mechanism holds up for a while, as we can see in o!Ciel’s cold and standoffish attitude at the start of the Blue Cult arc. (before Agni's death and r!Ciel's reveal)

Anyhow, the key point is that Sebastian forced o!Ciel into a life-or-death situation, putting him in a position where he had to reclaim his purpose to live again.

How does this tie to Sullivan? Well...

Interestingly enough, in this moment, o!Ciel steps into Sebastian’s shoes, pushing Sieglinde Sullivan into a life-or-death situation to force her to rediscover her own purpose for living.

But instead of threatening to consume her soul like Sebastian would, o!Ciel points a gun at her.

Something I love because it really highlights how Sebastian has shaped him. After all, this demon has been raising the kid for about three years, so it makes perfect sense.

To quote Yana really quickly: "Sebastian, a demon by nature, and Ciel, who has a twisted personality due to said demon’s education."

Anyway, o!Ciel’s use of Sebastian’s demonic tactic gradually works on Sullivan, as he slyly suggests that if she keeps living, she can atone for those deaths by creating the ultimate medicines to save lives.

I love how o!Ciel gives Sieglinde a purpose—harsh as his method may be, and even if it mirrors that of a demon. What sets it apart is that, unlike his own revenge-fueled path, he urges her to find a reason to live that isn’t rooted in getting back at those who used or hurt her.

Instead, he pushes her to recognize the power she holds to save others.

While Sebastian urged o!Ciel to shut off sentimentality completely in order to move forward, our earl pushed Sullivan into a path filled with hope.

You can see it clearly in the way Yana draws her, her eyes wide and bright, sparkles surrounding her.

She’s found something o!Ciel hasn’t: genuine hope, and a reason to live that isn’t rooted in pain.

And that is what sets Sebastian and o!Ciel apart, because at the end of it all, our earl is still human. He may use ruthless tactics and mirror a demon’s cold logic, but deep down, he still understands the fragile need for purpose beyond revenge.

Both of them were able to snap out of their suicidal state, but while o!Ciel's purpose is emotionally numbing and dark, Sullivan's is filled with light and hope.

4. o!Ciel and Sullivans respective guardians and how they fuel their reason of living.

I don’t think I need to go too deep into how Sebastian drives o!Ciel down the dark path of revenge; after all, that’s the entire foundation of their contract and the core of the story.

What’s important to note is how clearly the Green Witch Arc highlights this dynamic, especially in the moment where it’s Sebastian who has to remind our Earl of his motivation for revenge.

Sebastian doesn't nurture healing or growth; he sharpens o!Ciel into a weapon, one forged in pain and aimed at retribution.

Sullivan’s guardian, on the other hand, Wolfram, though initially distant and harsh, offers her genuine care and loyalty. He doesn't see her as a means to and end, or a weapon of war, he sees her as an ordinary girl.

While o!Ciel’s guardian deepens his wounds, Sullivan’s helps her begin to heal.

Sullivan's newfound purpose is to save lives, and the very first life she saves is, fittingly, Wolfram himself.

And while it’s o!Ciel who urges her to take that step and save him with her own hands, it’s Wolfram, the one constant in her life, whom she feels the grand need to save.

Which beautifully closes the loop: the man who once protected her becomes the first person she protects, solidifying her shift from a weapon of destruction to a healer with purpose.

So while Sebastian is a taunting, ever-present reminder of o!Ciel’s darkness and the path he’s bound to, Wolfram stands as a constant reminder of the light Sullivan carries within her.

And what’s especially powerful is that this mindset, the belief that she could use her gifts to save rather than destroy, was first planted by o!Ciel.

It was his words that nudged her toward the idea of redemption, and it was Wolfram who later nurtured and strengthened that belief.

And I think that says a lot about our Earl: despite being trapped in a cycle of revenge, grief, and manipulation, there's still a part of him capable of inspiring hope in others, even if he can’t quite give that same grace to himself.

To close all of this off...

Both of these characters parallel each other in their emotional journeys, but while one walks the path of self-destruction, the other chooses the path of healing.

o!Ciel, burdened by guilt and driven by vengeance, continues to suppress his pain and descend deeper into a life defined by trauma and control.

In contrast, Sullivan, though similarly scarred, begins to embrace hope and transformation, choosing to turn her regret into a force for good.

all in all, I love my cute little children !!! <3

thx for reading hehe

[rooksamoris]

in a previous post, i mentioned the catcher in the rye in reference to the twst characters and the theme of childhood in the game overall and i’ve been thinking about that and a few of the characters recently. im still out on my trip but wanted to say a few things.

contrary to popular belief, i don’t think leona hates children nor do i think he’s particularly bad with them. i have a lot of younger family members and ive worked in childcare a few times and leona does not strike me as a kid hater. he finds cheka suffocating because of what he symbolizes, but he does not hate cheka.

when cheka is introduced at the end of book 2, the only time leona “yells” at him is when he jumps onto his stomach and hurts him. kids have pulled my hair or smacked me, and my reaction has been the same “ahh! hey, let go!” and usually afterwards i explain to them why that behavior is wrong and so on. after that, leona mentions his retainers to which cheka cheekily answers that he left them to go see his uncle.

regardless of leona’s feelings regarding what cheka symbolizes, i don’t think he dislikes cheka at all. in fact, im sure he is just fine with cheka so long as he is not a) hurting him, b) making too much noise when he’s trying to rest, or c) breaking shit and causing trouble. leona was hurt very badly as a child, he was treated like he was some monster because of his unique magic and he was constantly compared to his “better” brother. he is cunning and calculating, but he’s very intelligent as well. hurting cheka would never help him, so why would he bother? cheka seems quite attached to his uncle and i would argue that’s because leona is nicer to him outside of the few moments they interact. the most negative we ever see leona regarding cheka outside of his overblot/dream is when he’s just annoyed because kids can be annoying.

furthermore, i wonder if falena is too busy for his son. cheka is soooo attached to his uncle, it makes me wonder how much time he truly gets with his father. leona went to nrc because things were getting suffocating with the addition of cheka, so he probably had to spend a lot of time with the kid. all that’s to say, i don’t think leona hates kids and i think he treats them well. he was hurt so badly as a child, and i doubt he would ever do the same to another child.

that scene in the catcher in the rye when holden describes wanting to watch the children run in the rye field and catch them before they fall down the cliff applies to him. his childhood was so marred by bad things, i doubt he would ever do the same to another child or view them as anything more than innocent little nuisances. children need to be protected because they are vulnerable and leona is not very good with his own vulnerability.

i think leona is also more in-tune with what’s going on with his people. since he is viewed differently to his brother, he probably hangs out around the villages and the cities. he probably interacts with other children who have less than he does, and yet still act so bright because they aren’t old enough to understand the situation. leona has contextualized his feelings and these kids couldn’t understand the concept of the word. there’s something precious about that and i think he’s perceptive enough to understand that.

anyways, here’s a short little thing i might work into a fic about leona interacting with kids from his homeland:

“Yeah, and then what happened?” he asked as his fingers skillfully braided the hair of the girl. He was sitting on a stump and she was sitting in the grass in front of him, braiding the earth’s hair as he braided hers.

She shifted a bit, “And then— and then we got into— she’s always fighting me. I told her mom but she said we both hafta apologize ow— you’re pulling too tight!”

Leona sighed and loosened his grip, “Sorry,” he muttered. The little girl seemed to have gotten her hands on scissors recently. Her layers of hair were uneven making it difficult to pull them all into even braids.

“Are you a hair styling person? You’re very good. I’m good at running, you wanna see? I can run up far and like to my school super fast.”

“Hmm? Sure, lemme finish your hair first.” There was something so soothing about just braiding this kids hair and listening to her ramble about who knows what, untouched by whatever strife would meet her in the future. Her tiny fingers were braiding the grass, but it looked nothing like the braids Leona was weaving. In fact, it looked quite bad.

[ladyloveandjustice]

#on the one hand steph not being a prodigy like the other bats but doing what they do anyway fearlessly is one of her most charming traits#and I say this as someone who's other favorite bat characters are damian and cass i love prodigies in fiction#but it doesn't feel true to who steph is. she's always defined herself as one of the 'have-nots' in a world of 'haves'#but you're absolutely right that it boggles my mind how she's genuinely so good in canon when you take context into consideration#they never ONCE mention fighting training! not even a perfunctory 'oh steph got in lots of scraps as a kid'#because...i genuinely don't know why not!#post-52 after Steph has had SO much bat training she's still extremely low ranked in the batfamily in terms of abilities#i stand beside the fact that tim may have technique but steph has raw strength creativity and a scrappiness that could give her edge#she should at least be able to take tim. i feel this in my heart (no hate to tim)

I do agree that Steph having to struggle is part of what makes her so relatable, but it just...wasn't written in a way that made much sense when you look at what she can do vs how little support she had. There are other ways to write her as having to work harder (she could struggle in specific areas but be acknowledged as prodigious in others, for example) that would have been more consistent Either way, it would have been realistic to have seen leaps of improvement by the time she was Robin.

It's kind of the double edged sword-- Steph being an underdog, her resilience, not giving up when everyone's against her, is part of what makes her loveable and inspiring, yet the reason she's was an underdog is because of sexist writing where other characters's treatment of her was often incredibly condescending at best or nonsensical and cruel at worst.

As for Tim, yeah she should absolutely be on his level at the very least Look at this part in Robin 5-- In one corner, Tim has been trained by Lady Shiva and Batman and fought multiple big deal supervillains. In the other corner, we have Steph is out crimefighting on her own for her second time ever with only high school gymnastics experience and scrappiness to rely on.

She gets the drop on him and overpowers him! It might not have stayed that way if the fight had continued, I'm sure Tim-Drake's-gotta-be-the-best truthers would say, but the fact she gives him this kind of beating when there's such a huge experience gap between them?

(and also. despite his claim here it didn't hurt that much he then immediately indicates it actually did and even complains about it in the first page of the next issue, which I always found very funny)

(Tim you're the same size)

So, realistically, you look at this and think she should be better, or at least as good as Tim, if she receives the same training.

And it wouldn't be a knock against Tim if she had been more skilled than him in that area after recieving Batman training, he often admits that he's not the athletic prodigy other Robins are, that that's not his strongest area, his strengths have always been strategizing and outthinking threats, and he can outdo Steph in that area easily.

One thing that always bothered me as a kid, and still bothers me, is it honestly makes so little sense Steph didn't rank super high on the scale of Martial Artists after receiving the Robin training, if it's so amazing. Considering what she could do while untrained, the experience she had, it's baffling that no one ever considered her a prodigy, or that she wasn't at least notably more skilled than say, Tim was, when she started out as Robin.

Like, Steph was in the field and knocking out grown men twice her size with zero training. It was not even mentioned that she took martial arts classes or anything to explain how she can do this, just gymnastics and softball. And both were high school gymnastics, high school softball, not fancy expensive classes??? Even Babs, in Batgirl Y1 had the advantage of having taken martial arts classes and presumably a lot more since her goal was to be in the FBI.

Meanwhile Steph like. She's jumping off rooftops and surfing trains and taking down bad guys with nothing. Tim's gone through extensive Batman training and trained with Lady Shiva and all this stuff, and obviously she's not as good as him and needs him to watch her back at times, but she can keep up with him, and even saves him or get the jump on him quite a few times, and that's incredible when you think about it. Tim gave her gadgets and instructions in the field, but it's never shown that he taught her any moves.

There's even a panel where Batman notes Stephanie almost snuck up on him and "not many people can do that" when again, no training, no martial arts classes, this is way before he agreed to give her any help at all-- and then for some reason, after noting this girl with no training is more talented than most people he knows, just keeps telling her she's not good enough and should go home.

That's a ridiculous level of raw talent, and it's honestly so bizarre nobody in the Batfamily ever noted that and kept telling her to go home. When she does get training, it's very sporadic, it is not clear how much Batman or Black Canary trained her the first time, he disappeared on her and then fired her as soon as he came back, and we never saw her get trained on screen by Dinah (the only person who ever acknowledged she had talent). She sparred with Cass, but Cass never taught her anything. Despite all this, she was noticeably getting way better during the era.

But when she received the six month Robin training that's supposed to make them so strong or whatever...how did that not result in her being a prodigy? She's the only Robin who was an experienced superhero before she took on the mantle?

Bruce literally tells her "Tim did this better" when he was training her about something, which makes no sense considering she came into being Robin with way more skills and experience and martial arts prowess??? When she was surviving on her own and fighting villains before that? When she could nearly sneak up on Bruce even before that?

You could claim she's a "bad student" or whatever, but she was a clearly very good at taking her gymnastic coach's instructions, enough to become a genius at it, so that doesn't really hold water.

The only explanation that would make any sense would be that Bruce taught her badly on purpose. which. unfortunately wouldn't be too far out of character from how he treated her in that era. (And that she apparently improved a lot under Babs tutelage as Batgirl but not his. So. Not a good look for him)

I mean the real answer for why all this makes no sense is DCs misogyny ofc. But it’s pretty wild how there’s no justification for this in universe.

[accio-victuuri]

two years ago, i mentioned how i’ll be adding stuff to the devil timeline universe lol. this is part of that (sort of) and it is the type of cpn that will make so/os and other cpfs roll their eyes. but if you are into galaxy brain cpns & fake stuff then this is for you.

anyway, this is about the movie Crystal Sky of Yesterday. one of the characters (Qi Jingxuan) was voiced/dubbed by WYB. the film is uploaded here with english subs if you are interested.

story about dreams, friendship, family and first love in their youthful days. Tu Xiaoyi, Yao Zhetian and Qi Jingxuan are high school students in a small town, Lanxi, in southern China. This is a story about dreams, friendship, family and first love in their youthful days. ☁️

it’s a coming of age story, the characters are about to take the gaokao and are thinking about what they want to be when they grow up. tu xiaoyi meets the infamous qi jing xuan and they form a friendship that will stay with both of them for years to come.

i will be mentioning some similarities and why this is a queer film and the last part is the fanfiction aspect. ⬇️⬇️⬇️

the movie starts with Tu Xiaoyi in the year 2018 ( tho the majority of the film is in 1999 when they were in high school ) , all grown up and back in his hometown of Lanxi. he resigned from his job as a manga artist because he wants to pursue making his own story. looking at the character with the glasses and the fact that he is an artist immediately reminds us of XZ.

and it’s common knowledge that XZ has his own company with his friends ( design studio ) before he decided to enter the entertainment industry. so he had a similar story of sorts, working at an office then branching out on his own. you can also say that him leaving his “job” to become a “singer” is the same thing that the character is doing. he is following his dreams.

2018 was also the year they became closer— working on the Untamed together. A reunion of sorts. so that year being mentioned in the movie as when the MC goes back is an interesting coincidence. The source material for this was serialized in 2011 ( when WYB joined the circle ) & movie started production 2015 ( when XZ entered the circle ) 👀👀👀

The MC also likes to draw blue sky and white clouds + paper planes. two things that are a symbol in the bjyx fandom. not because we made up the connection, it was there. they both showed it to us so the cpn was so easy to make.

Qi Jingxian is someone who dreams of becoming a pilot. At some point, WYB said he wants to become a pilot ( during TTXS and tbh he can do anything he wants lol ). He starred in a film where he is a pilot too, Lei Yu in Born to Fly.

During the promo of the film, WYB posted on Douyin. It’s his photo as a kid and the transitions to him as Lei Yu. Idk if this is a direct way of him saying he dreamed of being a pilot, and now he technically gets to be one but the implication is v strong.

coincidence too that in the movie, QJX mentioned that his parents said he wanted to be a pilot and he had a photo. the photo is kinda like WYB’s.

it’s hilarious to me how WYB’s character is so like him. there is a sort of love triangle here cause the MC ( Tu Xiaoyi ) likes a girl. Qi Jingxian who views MC as a good friend knows this and helps him out in his own way. However the girl likes Qi Jingxian who is not even thinking about romance lol. He just wants to become a pilot and get away. 😂😂😂😂 the MC saw them talking tho and sort of holding each other so he went on angst mode. this brought some distance between him and QJX too.

years later, the MC is making a manga about their childhood and the panel shown is him with Qi Jingxian. Not the girl. 🤡🤡🤡🤡 the main page of the manga too — notice how prominent Qi Jingxian is?

the “reveal” part of this movie is giving some serious 🏳️‍🌈! i don’t know how anyone can miss it. earlier in the film , the girl gives the MC a “magazine” and inside it says “try your best.” It’s because of this that he finally decides to make mangas. but it was revealed that Qi Jingxian asked the girl to give it to MC. to make it seem like it was from her 😭😭😭

Right then I knew, from that moment i knew, the magazine Qi Jing Xian gave me opened the way for me to go make mangas in Shenzhen. I think if that summer would have been longer, maybe i would have said “see you”. If at that moment i said “i will see you” then would it have been possible to see each other again?

it’s so freakin sad 🥹🥹🥹

and the mention of that “summer”. the time he spent with his friends, but most of all Qi Jing Xian and how he wishes it was longer. ugh. it’s like the summer when CQL was filmed.

the film ends with the manga being published and a pilot picking it up from a store. this is Qi Jing Xian who made his dream come true. then his voice is played, when they were young, he was teaching the MC to play a game and in return MC must write a manga about them. and he did. it’s an open ending of sorts. they both became what they promised to be when they were young. as a viewer, we hope that they will reunite.

on a more serious note, an important message in the film is: “Whatever you do, I just want you to move forward. Try your best. Jiayou!”

this is something that the two of them always say. or a form of it. that when you find something you like, work hard for it. and that if you find someone special to you, you will shine for them. you tend to become a better version of yourself.

during the promotion of the film, we got some clues too:

p1 when they posted about the release date the kadian is 38 which is zhan bo. p2 is yibo’s weibo post for the film and the first one is the photo of the MC. the rest is his character. the caption is literally i hope you can meet qi jing xian in your youth, but the first one got cropped to show the MC and the whole photo is QJX and the MC. the kadian also, i will love you forever.

the production team weirdly enough, posted with reference to XZ. because he worked with both productions.

the official weibo of the movie was also leaning towards the whole 🏳️‍🌈 support cause they shared fanarts of the TXY x QJX pairing. Also the way the tag “QJX likes TXY” was popular. 👨‍❤️‍💋‍����

so now we have come to the fanfiction part and why this could be part of the devil timeline. the question is why was WYB so passionate about this project. he was finalizing this in 2018 as well, along with the other hundreds of things he was doing that time. was there a personal connection? probably. they might have known each other before and have communicated — which is the whole premise of devil timeline. XZ liked the manga and recommended it to Bobo and that’s why he took the project. Maybe they both loved the message of it and chasing your dreams. Maybe they both understood what was really going on between the two male leads too. ✌🏼

that’s all. take what you want this information. 💛

[poofmagictrick]

Thoughts on TADC episode 5

ITS FINALLY HERE. This episode was genuinely soooo worth the wait!! Before the episode drop, I've been theorizing and commenting on what this episode will lead to. So glad to see that goose's writing exceeded my expectations, she did a great job developing mainly jax and ragatha this episode. On that note, THEIR DYNAMIC IS STARTING TO REVEAL ITSELF AND I WAS SO HAPPY WATCHING IT UNFOLD AND DEVELOP THROUGHOUT THE EPISODE AAA

In the episode, Jax seems to warm up to Pomni throughout the whole episode which a lot of people including myself were spot on about that. Jax starts to chill around Pomni and make jokes, not being the usual mean jerk everyone thinks of him as.

Although that adventure was shorter compared to the other adventures cramped together, it stands out so much in terms of character moments for Jax and Ragatha. When Ragatha whispers "not anymore," and the way jax looks at her like she had the audacity to talk.

I theorise that next episode they'll possibly explain what happened to Jax's friend. Not sure if during the intermission time, the door Jax stops at of an ex circus member was possibly his close friends but I can't wait until we get told more about that!!

Anyways, another scene that stood out to me was the bar scene (fooled us all into thinking it was a mafia adventure lol). Where Jax ACTUALLY apologises to Pomni of all members for what he did today. Pomni is taken aback by this similarly to episode 4, the Spudsy's adventure, where it was the 1st time we see them talk 1on1. (Can I just mention I'm so glad we get to see more of Zooble too tho?!? They're able to do something that they once enjoyed in their past life too!). Now the highlight and I'm sure everyone and their mother will be talking about this is the massive lore drop of each of the circus members past lives before being transported to the circus! Except for Kinger and Gangle who we've known have mentioned briefly about what they've done. But I mainly wanna focus on Ragatha's past life and how it ties into her general behavior.

Ok bear with me here cuz I'm gonna ramble endlessly about it lol. So Ragatha mentions having grown up in a financially stable family who owned livestock (which could be a huge farm that's well known which may be why they're fairly well-off). The moment she started to talk about her mother who verbally abused her and guilt tripped her back then, her body starts to tense up. God knows what kind of abuse besides verbal did her mother do to her as it's shown she clearly didn't enjoy remembering it all and even the other circus members including who jax looked really concerned for her.

I related to her so much in this scene because of this, when you grow up with a parent who guilt tripped, verbally abused you, one of the many ways you would cope is to vow to never be like that and be nothing like what your parents were before. So you try to be the opposite of them. While there is nothing wrong with wanting to be diff and prevent yourself from becoming just like your parents, but being nice may not always make you genuine to other people. It's just like what Jax and Gangle have mentioned about Ragatha that she tries too hard to hard and when you tell people they're loved and what not it loses its meaning. When you keep saying these things to people its hard to tell if they're being genuine.

They're probably the only ones to have been the most aware of this coping mechanism that Ragatha uses as a way to cope with the trauma of her verbally abusive mother. Ragatha doesn't know how to connect with the other circus members, so to do that she tries to be nice by helping them, encouraging and many other things. It's kinda like she's almost giving them so much of her love she's afraid they'll stop talking to her the moment she stops being all nice and loving to them. In fact, later in the softball adventure when Ragatha gets to sit together with pomni and have the 3rd (?) heart to heart talk scene in thsi entire episode, Pomni tells her "It's ok to let out your negative emotions sometimes and we all kinda have to be a jerk sometimes."

But Ragatha doesn't want to be like that because it likely just makes her be reminded of her mother back in her past life.

People like Ragatha who tend to be nice to everyone ends up being extremely lonely despite that. But it's kinda sad because ultimately she just wants someone to be close with and connect with someone. She tried with Gangle, possibly Zooble, Jax even though she hates him, Kinger and now Pomni. One could probably say Pomni is aware that Ragatha is tryna warm up to her and get her to be her friend but the way Ragatha and Pomni interact is pretty distant. While Jax the whole epsiode laughs with Pomni and even opens up with her.

I'm gonna credit @zoshizick for this point they made where they theorise Jax and Ragatha will be fighting for Pomni like a toy they want so badly. Not in a romantic sense, but both R&J are incredibly lonely people and just want someone to talk to. That's when the new girl (Pomni) comes into the picture and they both are so desperate to win her attention. For instance in the bar scene when Jax grabs Pomni and says obnoxiously "WOW, the first steps of a budding friendship. Right Ragatha." As if to purposefully annoy her and of course she looks at him like she's about to explode.

I wanna add on and say that Jax and Ragatha know that they hate each other but don't want to admit that they are both two sides of the same coin. It makes their character all the more deeper and complex cuz really who would they both fight for to be their friend? Zooble? She's distant with everybody except for Gangle but they're both already friends so nope. Gangle? She gets bullied by Jax and doesn't like him and she's kinda friends with Ragatha? but she's with her likely because rags defends Gangle from Jax. Kinger? Jax isn't that close with Kinger and just thinks of him as weird and Ragatha is fine with him but wouldn't seem like someone she would open up to like Kinger doesn't remember what they were even talking about 1 second ago unless in darkness. That leaves Pomni, the neutral person in the whole circus who hasn't made any connections yet. I think the next episode will raise the stakes with R&J's cold war of winning Pomni's friendship. While Ragatha does hates Jax, I don't think Jax really hates Ragatha all that much just probs want her to be herself more. Possibly even wanting to get to know her cuz they're not as lonely as they realise they are, just that they refuse to talk it out is all.

I think that's all I gotta say and amazing work from the team, animators and other people who worked on the episode!! I hope ya'll can understand by endless rambling about all of this as I was super hyped about the episode and the day it dropped although a day late to the party haha. Gosh my hands are in pain from typing this long.