#look these drawing meme has been going around on twitter and i MUST take part

[secretlyaraven]

nicenicenicenice

[monsterenergysimp]

Permanence

corpse husband x fem!reader 

summary: you meet corpse on a stream and you’re surprised when he reaches out to you 

warnings: cursing, mentions of tattooing

word count: 1.9k

notes: This is proof read but could have missed some stuff. This is my first corpse fic and my first time writing fanfic since I posted that super cringey book on wattpad when I was like 12 or something. I’d appreciate feed back so please reach out to me :)

main blog @itsmysleepover

read part 2 here!

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

You were cleaning up your station so you can get home and stream. You loved your day job as a tattoo artist but you also really enjoyed streaming. It started as a way to promote yourself as an artist and the shop you worked at but it eventually became a really fun way to destress at the end of the week (or day if you were really itching to stream). “Hey Y/N was that your last client?” your boss, KC, asked as she walked to the front of the shop and put new flash drawings on the walls.

“Yes ma’am!” You said back excitedly. You finished cleaning your station and tossed your black gloves in the trash. “And you can’t trick me into staying and taking walk-ins,” you joked with her. She rolled her eyes and walked back into her office “It was one time,” she said as you slid on your jacket. As you walked out your phone buzzed in your pocket and you checked to see who had texted you. It was a message from Sean asking if you were free to play Among Us with him and some other streamers. You replied that you were on your way home right now and totally down. You were excited to see who was playing this time around since their Among Us streams are super entertaining and have gotten really popular.

On your way back you tweeted and posted to your Instagram story that you’d be streaming soon and set up all your stuff once you made it home. After a few minutes, you had a couple of thousand people watching. You entered the discord chat and Sean spoke up. “Everyone this is Y/N she’s sensitive so be gentle.”

“It’s nice to finally meet you guys and I’m not gentle, I'm ruthless,” You say into your mic and notice the chat calling you a liar. Everyone was in the lobby waiting for the game to start. “You sound way too sweet to be ruthless,” Corpse said. The countdown started and you were imposter with Charlie.

“This should be fun,” you told the stream. Yout tried playing strategically but after such a long shift your brain was mush. You saw Poki in nav and killed her then vented into shields. Not long after the body was reported and you were sure you were going to get voted out or at least sussed.

“Where was the body?” Felix asked. “Nav and I didn’t see anyone near there so whoever is imposter must have vented,” Corpse responded. Felix spoke up again. “I think I saw Y/N walk that way and I haven’t seen her since.”

Shit, shit, shit shit. “I’m in shield right now so-” you said trying to defend yourself but Charlie spoke up. “I was doing tasks with her earlier and I saw her walk into shields so she’s safe but I’m still not sure about Rae.” Everyone discussed a bit more and some people, including Corpse, voted for you but Rae got the majority vote and was ejected. You released your breath and kept playing being extra careful.  

“Okay, guys that was super close. Corpse knows and is out to get me,” you said to the chat. You were eventually voted off but one round later victory was written across your screen with your ghost and Charlie’s avatar. “Good game guys,” Corpse said.

“I told you guys I was ruthless!”

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

You sat at your station doing nothing because a client had canceled a four-hour session. You were listening to music and sketching some stuff but you were bored out of your mind and you didn’t want to leave in case you got a walk-in. The music got quiet as you received a twitter notification saying someone had messaged you. You reached for your phone and saw you had gotten a dm from Corpse.

C: hey :)

You didn’t know what to respond. You were mostly confused as to why he decided to message you out of the blue. Did he want something? But what would he want?

Y: Hii! This is sudden

C: was i bothering you?

    shit sorry!

Y: Youre fine I wasn’t doing anything rn

C: how has your day been

    i dont usually do stuff like this

Y: Im glad you did im doing better now I was so bored

C: what were you doing that was so terrible

Y: NOTHING! thats the problem :(

C: im sure youll find something to do

You stared at his message. Unsure what to respond.

Y: Im gonna give myself a tattoo

C: what?

    NO!

You tossed the needles you used for your tattoo into the sharps box. “Oh my god you didn’t,” KC said. She noticed the wrap on your calve from the tattoo you just gave yourself out of boredom. “It’s not my fault I didn’t have anything else to do!” You said trying to defend yourself. She sighed and just shook her head. “Just go home business is slow today.” It was raining so the shop probably wasn’t going to get a walk-in anyway and you didn’t have any more clients for the day. It was only 2 pm but you drove home and after making lunch for yourself decided to stream. You weren’t expecting too many people so it was bound to be super chill. Your leg felt sore reminding you of the tattoo. You snapped a quick pic of the fresh jack-o-lantern on the side of your calve and messaged it to Corpse.

Y: [image] it came out nice!

C: thats  super cool actually

    i was concerned why you would just give yourself a tattoo but i found your instagram and       youre super talented

Y: Thank you!

For some reason, it felt strange to just have that be the end of your response.

Y: Im about to start streaming if you wanted to watch

    [link]

C: ill be watching ;)

What’s that supposed to mean?

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

You sat in your apartment watching tv, hand lost in a bag of Doritos, and scrolling through twitter. You had stopped paying attention to the anime playing on the screen since you’ve watched it a hundred times and knew you wouldn’t miss anything. It was Saturday and you usually take those days off. Take the time to do chores or meet up with some friends but today you felt like not doing any of those things. As you continue your endless scroll (not helping the twitter addiction you told yourself you’d try to get a handle on) you got a message from Corpse.

C: wanna talk?

You looked down at the message unsure of how to answer. It was a simple yes or no and the obvious answer was yes. You and Corpse had started talking more regularly. You still didn’t have each other’s phone numbers but it was fine. Your conversations weren’t too big-- just you sending him memes, tiktoks, and telling him how much you liked the songs he would drop. Or him complimenting a tattoo you did. Sometimes he’d message you during streams telling you funny stuff his fans would say in the chat and you’d do the same. You learned a bit about each other but nothing too deep or serious. Like how you two lived a few cities away and you both really liked Donnie Darko. When Sean first invited you to that game out of everyone else there you were most excited to meet Corpse. He’s just so sweet and funny. Of course, you’d love to talk to him but you were also itching to talk to him and the last thing you’d ever want to do was make him uncomfortable.

Y: Yeah id love to talk

Here goes nothing.

Y: Wanna facetime or something?

     No pressure or anything it could even be a regular call

     I think facetime is just my default lol

You sent those last two messages quickly after you had sent the first. You wished you could know what he was thinking. It was killing you to think you had turned him off from talking to you completely. You put your phone down on the couch and went to wash your hand of Dorito dust. When you got back from the kitchen you turned off the tv and tossed yourself onto the couch.

Still no message.

Why am I so fucking stupid?  

Just as you were standing up to stretch from sitting on the couch all day your phone buzzed. You reached for it fast and looked to see that it was him. You became super excited still not even knowing what the message said. It could have told you to never talk to him again for all you knew.

C: sure lets facetime

    xxx-xxx-xxxx

You had his phone number. You added him to your small but growing contact list and called. You sat on your couch waiting for a response when he finally picked up the screen was black. It didn’t upset you; you kind of expected it and didn’t care what he had to do to make himself more comfortable during this call.

“Hey,” he said. His voice was raspier than usual.

“Did you just wake up?” You asked and looked at the time. It was about a little past noon and you had only eaten Doritos all day. Shit, you should probably make a decent meal.

“Not that long ago but yeah,” he responded and giggled. That giggle.

“Well, I’ve eaten nothing but Doritos all day while rewatching Ouran High School Host Club, so you’re welcome to join me as I make myself something to eat.”

“Sounds like fun; what are we eating?”

“I don’t know yet,” You said as you stood up and made your way to the kitchen. You opened the pantry and looked. You noticed a can of diced tomatoes and reached for it then checked the expiration date. It was still good. On your counter were some onions and garlic. “How about some tomato soup?”

“Sounds delicious.” you smiled at Corpse and your phone screen not knowing if he was also looking at his screen or not. “You’re really pretty-- you know that?”

“Thanks, but you don’t have to--”

“I’ve already told you what an incredible artist you are so many times I bet you’re tired of hearing it, but you already know what a talented artist you are.”

“That is very kind of you Corpse,” you said to him bashfully as you chopped the onion and opened the can of tomatoes. “But once again you don’t have to reach so far to compliment me.”

“I’m not reaching you are talented and beautiful and--”

“I thought I was pretty.” You could hear him chuckle with a smile on his face. “You’re both,” he said. You could feel your face getting warm from blushing.

“Fuck you you’re making me blush. My face is all hot and stuff.”

He laughed at how flustered you got. “That’s the cutest thing ever.”

You didn’t know how to respond so you just put some olive oil in a pot and tossed in your onions. It became silent but it was a comfortable silence. You turned the stove on and watched the flame for a few seconds. “If it was dark we could pretend we were together and having a bonfire or something,” you said to the phone as you turned the camera to show him the flame (still not 100 percent sure if he was looking at you or not).

“I’ll put it on the list of things to do when you visit me someday.”

[gukyi]

for you, anything | ksj

summary: in the popular online multiplayer game, kingdom, you are the top-ranked knight with money, fame, and power. in real life, you’re a graphic design geek who’s got a very unsubtle crush on her gorgeous coworker, kim seokjin. but when you’re suddenly dethroned from the first place spot in your game, you and your kingdom character embark on a journey to reclaim your title, and learn on the way that things are not always as they seem. 

{friends to lovers!au, enemies to lovers!au}

pairing: kim seokjin x female reader genre: fluff, comedy, fantasy word count: 21k warnings: alcohol mention, brief and non-graphic descriptions of violence, this is basically two fics in one so you get double the fun and double the word count!! a/n: once again, a massive, massive thank you to @aurawatercolor for commissioning me!! you can find her on twitter as well under @btspresso_!! she’s the genius behind this enemies to lovers and friends to lovers seokjin fic wrapped up into a nice package just in time for the holidays!! you ever seen a fic with e2l and f2l together? that’s right, i didn’t think so. enjoy!!!

check out the post-script drabble here!

♚ HERE ♚

“Oh, shit!”

From twelve feet away comes the sound of these three things in this order: fingers furiously mashing keyboard keys, wheels of an office chair swiveling angrily on the linoleum floor, and a war cry. All of which could either belong to a video game world championships in a big-city stadium or your simple, office of two-floors in a more-than-one-hundred-stories skyscraper based in graphic design and media for small start-up companies. 

“I can’t tell if Photoshop crashed again or if you’re playing that weird online multiplayer game again,” Yoongi grumbles from across the way, where he’s gnawing on a Clif bar in one hand as he mindlessly taps his mouse with the other. 

“Please,” Jimin says, carelessly waving a hand. “Don’t act like I haven’t caught you watching My Hero Academia multiple times this year while we were supposed to be doing work, you absolute piece of toast. But if you must know, I was in fact playing Kingdom.”

“I’m going to tell Namjoon,” Yoongi says with zero emphasis, because everybody knows that Namjoon’s got dirt on everybody in the office anyway (including Yoongi) and that if you try to expose somebody else to him, he’ll expose you back. It’s colleague culture. 

“And what’s Namjoon gonna do? He already knows you carry a flash drive of illegally-downloaded animes with you wherever you go,” Jimin retorts casually. He’s not wrong, and you can confirm that Yoongi indeed carts around a USB drive in the shape of a pineapple that has 64GB of anime. 

“What do I know?”

Namjoon comes trotting into view from the corridor that leads to the gender-neutral bathrooms with glasses hanging from the collar of his sweater vest, a clipboard with nothing attached to it in his right hand, and a steaming cup of jasmine tea (he hates coffee and declares this publicly at least three times a day) in his left. 

“You know that Yoongi—”

“Has been doing his work the whole time you were in the bathroom so you don’t need to worry about him,” Yoongi interrupts quickly. 

Namjoon shoots both Jimin and Yoongi a suspicious glare, but moves on. He’s got enough blackmail on the both of them to bury them into the next calendar year, but he’s wise, and he only uses it when absolutely necessary. “Just doing checkups on you guys before Boss Man calls me back into his office and gives me a pile of over one hundred hours of work I’m supposed to do in a forty-hour work week.” It’s been obvious from the moment you were hired that Namjoon does the most work out of anybody in this office, including your boss, and gets very, very little from it. 

“You don’t even have any paper attached to your clipboard,” Taehyung points out rather unhelpfully, from where he’s been drawing hearts on the cheeks of the Surprised Pikachu meme he’s taped up on the wall his desk is pushed up against. 

Namjoon looks down at his clipboard like it just spit mad fire at him, furrows his brows, and lets out a sigh equivalent to three years worth of pent-up aggression. “Shit.”

Jimin cackles from his computer. 

“Whatever, I’m still going to do checkups.” Namjoon takes the pen from behind his ear and writes himself a note, presumably to get paper for his clipboard later. “Jimin, you’re still working on that website layout for the art critic and photographer. Yoongi’s on coding for that search engine that we all know is never taking off but is still paying us. Taehyung’s on marketing because he’s got the most charming voice and Hoseok and Jungkook are on media production for the indie movie company. Y/N and Seokjin, you guys are on clientele and coding. Everybody good before I go get more paper?”

“Yes, Tiny but Large Boss Man,” Jimin says, and it’s enough of a confirmation to send Namjoon scurrying down the corridor again in search of paper as everyone else returns to their prior business. 

“Y/N?”

You turn around from the font website you’ve been browsing for about half an hour to find Seokjin standing behind you, an earpiece in his ear and that charming smile on his face. It’s the same smile he gave you on your first day on the job when he was introducing himself, same smile he gives when he meets clients in person, same smile he gives Namjoon whenever the man is about to have a breakdown. It’s a friendly, personable-but-universal kind of smile. The kind models need. The kind that Seokjin has mastered. 

“Hey, Seokjin,” you say, only just then coming to realize that Seokjin is much closer to you than his voice originally implied. You’ve rotated 180 degrees in your office chair and he is hardly a foot away from where your feet are. It’s a lot. Seokjin is always a lot. In the best sort of way. “Is anything the matter?”

“No, just wanted to check in and see how the project was going for that one guy that wanted a nice advertisement to put on Angie’s List,” Seokjin says, leaning down to look at what you’ve been doing. 

“Oh, well I’ve been browsing this font website for ages and I still can’t find a nice one for the sub-heading. All of these are too flashy or difficult to read,” you say, beginning to scroll as you and Seokjin both look for one that you like. 

“Hmm, I see what you mean,” his voice sounds like honey and if you had any less dignity you’d let the chills send shivers down your spine. Luckily, you know how to maintain your composure in an office setting. And you also know that Yoongi and Jungkook would never let you hear the end of it, ever. “Oh, how about that one?”

“This one? Rose Quartz?” You ask, pointing to it. 

“Yeah,” Seokjin says. “It has a nice flair that matches with the font for the business name, but it’s still easy to read. It would probably look really nice with a crisp shadow behind it, don’t you think?”

“Maybe you’re onto something,” you say, clicking to read the fair use and copyright. 

“Couldn’t have done it without all the hard work you’ve put into this,” Seokjin says, standing up and shooting you another one of his famous smiles. “You’re the best partner anybody in this tiny media production and design company could ask for.”

He leaves without bidding you farewell, but it’s enough to have you staring blankly at your computer, contemplating existence itself. Sometimes, a little part of you wonders if Seokjin only treats you like this and none of your other coworkers, but then you immediately remember that Seokjin is naturally charming and that he probably speaks to newborn babies in the same way.

Yoongi wheels over to your desk from where his is, smirk lacing his features as he chews on another, different-colored Clif bar. 

“Ever heard of a personal bubble?” You ask snarkily, because you already know why he’s over here, and so does he.

“Why aren’t you asking the same question to Seokjin, hmm?” Yoongi taunts. He’s know about your dumb crush on your coworker (of all people, your coworker! A fellow employee!) for months now. He isn’t being any more helpful whatsoever. 

“Go watch your pirated anime,” you grunt out, too overwhelmed with the way Seokjin smiles at you to really give Yoongi your full attention. “I have nothing to say to you.”

“Sure, but I’m not Seokjin,” Yoongi says. Then he wheels away and you’re left staring at the Rose Quartz font, whose sample text reads: This was meant to be. 

At least Namjoon doesn’t know.

It’s midnight on a Tuesday, and you’re just about to turn off the lamp on your bedside table and get some well deserved weekday-night shut eye when your phone begins to blare, a disgustingly ugly picture of Jungkook’s face appearing on the screen.

You stare at your phone like it’s personally offending you (which, if Jungkook’s face is anything to go by, it definitely is) before you turn off your ringer and close your eyes. Jungkook can wait. Very seldom is he at the top of your list of priorities.

Barely five seconds after you’ve put your head on your pillow, your phone begins to vibrate, this time even angrier than the last. Aggravated and a little concerned—because Jungkook never, ever calls twice—you pick up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Y/N! Something crazy just happened!”

“I hope so, otherwise you wouldn’t be calling me at midnight on a work night,” you grumble into the phone, monotonous voice a stark contrast to Jungkook’s easily excitable one.

“Have you been on Kingdom recently?!” Jungkook asks, and you practically see his eyes bulging out of his head in front of you. One of your youngest coworkers, it’s moments like these that remind you why he bears a striking resemblance to a university student—up late playing video games even on a work night—despite having a couple years in the workforce under his belt. He keeps telling you that he wants to go back to school and get a Masters in something, but he isn’t sure what yet. 

“No,” you tell him like it’s obvious, because it is. You typically begin to wind down your night around ten, which means that anything that’s happened on Kingdom in the past two hours you are thoroughly unaware of. “Can’t this wait? Kingdom’s fun and all, but I really do need to sleep.”

“But Y/N,” Jungkook says with a whine, insisting that you stay on the line, “someone beat you! You’re rank two, now.”

If Jungkook’s loud voice and jumpy attitude didn’t wake you before, you’re certainly wide awake now.

“What?” You ask, shocked. “Just now?”

“Yeah, like fifteen minutes ago! I don’t know what happened,” Jungkook says sadly, lost. “I was dueling with another knight when the horns and banners appeared on the screen and said there was a new top player. You’ve been dethroned!” He cries out like it’s him who’s lost their place. 

You’re fumbling out of bed, making a beeline for your desktop computer across your bedroom. Normally, you’d be ashamed about how high-school you’re behaving around a video game, but you’ve invested an embarrassing amount of time and energy into Kingdom, and you’ll be damned if you think someone else can outdo you. 

As you’re logging onto the game, Jungkook continues to wail into the phone. “I don’t even know who this person is, I feel like I’ve never seen them before! I mean, they must be really good since they practically appeared out of nowhere, but still! I’m a decent player so we must have crossed paths. Maybe I just don’t remember…”

Sure enough, the moment you open your screen the horns blare and the banners appear, congratulating a different player on achieving the top rank. You watch helplessly as the celebration fades on your computer before the leaderboard appears in the top left corner, your name a sad second place. 

“Who’s JK0901?” You shout into the phone, earning an exasperated sigh from Jungkook on the other end. You scowl at the name that’s knocked you off your pedestal, before narrowing your eyes to look at it more closely. “JK? Is that you, Jungkook? Are you just calling me to make fun of me for beating me? Don’t disrespect your elders, Jungkook.”

Jungkook gasps like he’s been accused of murder. For people that take Kingdom as seriously as you and Jungkook, it may as well be. “No! What the heck, Y/N, you know that my username is KookieMonster97, for God’s sake. Accusing me of being the best, how could you?”

“You should have just taken the compliment,” you frown into the phone, “Now all the girls are gonna know you aren’t, in fact, the number one Kingdom player.”

“Fuck, you’re right,” Jungkook mutters. “But it’s not me, I swear. You would have received a very different phone call from me if it was. In fact, I probably wouldn’t have even told you and then ruined your day in the office tomorrow. So it’s not me.”

“I can’t tell if I’d be more or less angry if it was you,” you admit.

“Why, because I’d finally have something to hold over your head other than my unwavering youth?” Jungkook taunts. Definitely still a university student at heart. 

“No, because it means I’d have to hear the entire office praise you for a day, and I’d rather permanently pop my eardrums,” you tell him informatively. Jungkook has enough of a head. You actively try to not do anything to enlarge it unless he wholeheartedly deserves it. 

“I love our coworker chats, you know,” Jungkook says. “Whoever this person is though, I bet they’re receiving bucketloads of praise for knocking you off the top spot. You’ve had it for like, three months now, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” you tell him through gritted teeth. “I’ve put my blood, sweat, and tears into this game and look how it’s repaying me,” you grumble, staring down the Kingdom home screen. 

“JK0901 probably did a ritual sacrifice to beat you,” Jungkook supplies unhelpfully. 

You sigh. Whoever they are, they proved that they are just as good at Kingdom as you are, a veteran player with an embarrassing several years of experience under your belt. In fact, they proved that they’re better than you. 

♚ THERE ♚

It’s cloudy today, which means that more of the market stalls are out on the main street. You pass by them on your way to the castle, vendors calling out to you with promises of apples, jewelry, and perfumes. 

You’ve got money to burn and your responsibilities can wait a couple of minutes, so you indulge one of the stalls and purchase a couple of apples. One should give you a bit of energy now, and the rest can be roasted later for a better meal. 

“Miss Y/N, off to the palace?” The vendor asks. From how much you frequent this part of the kingdom, every artisan, farmer, and merchant alike knows your name. That, and the fact that you’ve amassed quite a group of followers from your daily knightly escapades. 

“Of course,” you respond happily, paying the merchant with a couple of silver coins and then some, just as a thanks. The extra money helps the farmers raise the quality of their crops and allows them to earn more for their efforts. It also boosts your standing amongst the townsfolk. “His Majesty requested my presence for further instructions on fortification, most likely. But I’m just honored to be recognized.”

“As you should!” The man responds dutifully. “You are our best knight, after all.”

“Please, you flatter me. When the work day is done, go home and feed your children well, alright?” You ask, giving a firm nod to the merchant before you’re on your way. As you stroll down the stone-paved path, other vendors call out to you, hoping that you, too, will indulge in their finest clothes and trinkets on your way to the castle. 

Maybe another day. 

You take a hearty bite of the apple as you head towards the palace, a satisfying crunch ringing through your ears as the townsfolk nod and bow to you. It’s easy to figure out that you’re the top-ranked knight in the kingdom, with badges of honor pinned to your torso, ink black armor clinging tightly to your body, and red sashes tied around the black ones on your wrist, signifying approval from the highest ranking military official in the kingdom: the king himself. 

The guards at the palace gates step aside as you nod to each other, bowing courteously. You repeat this process several more times as you slowly proceed towards the throne room, where the King (and maybe the Queen) are likely to be waiting for you. They had increased their security at every door frame after an attempted assassination several months ago, which you (with the help of other high-ranking knights and castle officials) discovered was a plot orchestrated by Their Majesty’s second-most-trusted advisor. 

Finally, you reach the golden arches that signify that you’ve arrived at the most expensive room in the entire palace (save for Her Majesty’s bathroom, which, though you have never been inside, is rumored to have a golden bathtub and sacred water from the River Blancheur, over two thousand miles away. But you cannot confirm nor deny.), threatening red doors slowly creaking open as the King and Queen come into view. 

They’re sitting on their thrones, as per usual, but they aren’t the only ones in the room like they normally are. Instead, there’s another knight, as equally decked out as you, standing before them, arms crossed behind their back. 

“We hope that you can wear these honors proudly and do your duties with pride,” the King says regally, deep, thick voice echoing throughout the room. 

“I will stop at nothing to ensure this kingdom’s greatness,” the knight says back, just as formal. The knight gives a long bow, red sashes around their wrist dangling towards the ground. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think you were being replaced. But of course, that’s not the case. 

“Oh, Y/N,” the Queen says happily, noticing your waiting right in front of the closed doors to the throne room. “Prudent, as always.”

“I aspire to please,” you say with a bow. The King gives you a warm smile, one you’re willing to bet that this other knight isn’t often on the receiving end of. 

“Your timing is impeccable,” the King says, ushering for you to come forward. You do so, taking calculated steps along the red carpet, woven nearly two centuries ago and maintained ever since. “We were just congratulating Sir JK on his recent accomplishments in the Black Forest.”

“Of course,” you say with a nod, refusing to turn to your left so you can stare down this Sir JK for yourself. “The military made groundbreaking strides for our kingdom there.”

“You are the first person to know this, other than him, of course, but we’ve decided to appoint him as the Head of the Royal Knights of the Kingdom of Kalar,” the King says proudly. 

It takes everything in your willpower not to let your mouth drop open. You blink rapidly, making sure that you aren’t in a daze nor still asleep. Sure enough, you’re wide awake and your ears and eyes seem to be working perfectly. The knight next to you is taking over the highest position a knight can hold in your kingdom, one that even you haven’t been given. 

You’ve been replaced. 

“What an incredible honor,” you say, body stiff. You can practically feel the ego of the knight next to you radiating off of him. It makes your nerves twitch. 

“I think so as well,” the King says proudly. He has, luckily, not picked up on your sudden mood change. “So, I’ve called you here to appoint you as his second-in-command.”

You bow graciously at his words, ensuring that, despite your bitter attitude, you are still thankful for this opportunity. Mostly. You are mostly thankful for this opportunity. 

“I’m honored and grateful, Your Majesties,” you say, head facing the carpet. “I would rather die than let down my kingdom.”

“You two are to work together closely,” the Queen advises, words that make your ears bleed. Oh, wonderful, now you have to work hand-in-hand with the person that stole your favor with the royal household right from underneath your feet? You can think of nothing more enjoyable. “Your cooperation alone will ensure the utmost safety and security of this kingdom.”

“We shall do better than our best,” the knight beside you says. His words make your eyes roll back into your head, but you’ve been a bigger brownnoser in your past. You can forgive that, even if the man next to you radiates an energy you’d rather not surround yourself with. 

“I’m pleased to hear it. Your training and work together begins now, so do not hesitate to get to know each other.”

You and him take one baited breath each before turning to each other. You both bow out of obligatory respect, which satisfies the King and Queen well enough. And as you come up, you catch a glimpse of each other’s eyes. His are dark, rounded pupils. They’re hiding something. 

You’re determined to figure out what it is. 

“Call me J,” the knight says the moment you’ve stepped foot outside of the palace. The setting sun shines dimly on the main road, and many of the vendors are beginning to pack up their belongings in order to head home. 

“Okay, J,” you say suspiciously. Everything about him unsettles you slightly. Perhaps it’s the fact that behind the armor and the mask and the badges, he’s extremely good-looking. Or maybe it’s the fact that he swiped the top-ranking knight position right from your fingertips. It must be that. “It’s baffling to me that we haven’t met yet. If you’ve been in such high favor with the King and Queen, then I must have seen you somewhere.” You wonder if he can hear the bitterness lacing your features. You sure hope that he can. 

“I guess our paths just never crossed,” J says, taking a bite out of a peach he just purchased from a farmer’s daughter, who was watching over the stall as her father haggled with another vendor. You watched as he winked to the girl as she gave him two peaches for the price of one. “I’m more on the ground than you are, am I not? You spend much of your time strategizing in the castle.”

“You don’t know what I do,” you huff out. He finishes the peach and wraps up the pip in a piece of cloth from his pocket before tucking it away. There is no place to dispose of it on the main street anyway. 

“Don’t I?” J says with a sly grin, one that makes you want to kick him in the shin and push him into the grass. “Everyone knows what you do, Y/N. You were the King and Queen’s favorite.”

The way he uses the past tense doesn’t go unnoticed by you. 

“But, as it seems, being on the battlefield outweighs directing it from above,” J says. He keeps his eyes off of you and his head held high while your gaze focuses in on him out of pure fury, just another way to hold his newfound superiority over your head. Five minutes next to him and he already seems to know how to push every single one of your buttons. 

“So it seems,” you say bitterly. 

“You and I really must get along, Y/N,” J says casually as you begin to stray from the hustle of the main street. Neither of you seem to have a particularly clear destination in mind, only a path that must be taken for the sake of the greater good. It’s only the prospect that if you do well enough, you’ll impress the King and Queen and regain your favor with them that’s keeping you from socking J in the face and dashing off, taking his second peach with you. “We’ll be spending lots of time together.”

“Doesn’t that sound like the bee’s knees,” you mutter to yourself. For the greater good. 

“Should it not?” J asks innocently. It makes you want to wipe that smirk right off of his face, that knowing tone in his voice. “I certainly don’t have a problem with you, Y/N. Do you happen to have one with me?”

He asks it because he knows that whatever you say will incriminate you. He knows that if you say no, you’re a goddamn liar, and that if you say yes, you’re weak. Weak because you’re admitting that you can’t handle spending time with him even though you have to. Weak because you’re showing him that he has power over you. 

“No, of course not,” you say, plastering the fakest smile on your face. Two can play at this game. “In fact, would it be alright if I had that other peach? I’m absolutely starving.” You can be civil. If he can, at least.

“Sure thing,” J says, unwrapping the peach from the woven napkin the farmer’s daughter gave him.

You reach out to take it from him, but in the blink of an eye his hand dangles it over your head, too far out of reach for you to grab without losing all of your dignity in the process. 

“What do we say, Y/N?” He asks sweetly, like a parent disciplining their child. God, everything he does absolutely aggravates you. 

You take a deep breath and close your eyes. Perhaps you aren’t on the front lines as often as he is, but you sure know how to fight. Maybe now is a good time to remind him that you received the same training he did. 

“Please?” You ask, just as saccharine. 

“As you request, Y/N,” J says with a bow, finally handing it over. 

If this is what the next several months have in store for you, you wonder if maybe sinking down to a lower ranking might be worth it after all, especially if it means you’ll never have to see him and his bouncy hair and dark eyes again. 

You take a bite into the peach. It’s sour. 

Just your luck. 

♚ HERE ♚

When you walk into work the next day, a hush falls over the room. 

It’s not even as if the entire office has been quiet so far this workday, not as if the clock struck nine o’clock and everyone decided to start a competition to see who could shut up for the longest amount of time. 

(For the record, if anyone were to win that competition, it would be Yoongi, who usually only speaks either 1) when spoken to or 2) to let someone know when they’re being dumb via insult. The first person to lose would be Namjoon, because his job description is to boss people around. And he’s awfully good at it.)

The elevator door dinged on the twenty-third floor and you could hear Hoseok’s loud gasps and Jungkook’s cackled laugh even through the glass door that separates your office from the rest of the companies that take up residence in this particular city skyscraper. And then, as your loafers tapped on the hard linoleum floor and the glass door creaked open, the entire office fell silent. 

Quickly, you wonder if you’ve forgotten someone's birthday or if anybody’s due for a celebration of some sort. But nobody’s come to mind and the lights aren’t off, which means that this isn’t the kind of sudden silence that precedes a surprise party. 

This is the kind of sudden silence that makes everybody go, “Oh shit.”

It feels like you’re walking on eggshells as you make your way over to your desk. You’re a couple minutes late due to oversleeping (for reasons that start with J and end with -ungkook) so everybody’s already here, and the office should be as boisterous and rowdy as always. And yet, something’s different. 

You’re left entirely in the dark in concern with what the reasoning is, so you just decide that you’d rather not be the one to break the tense quiet that’s befallen your office and settle down, logging into your work desktop and checking today’s assignments on Slack. 

Five minutes pass and you can’t help but think that, of the many, many days you’ve spent in this office with these people, this has got to be the most awkward by an overwhelmingly long shot. Not even the time Namjoon showed up with his hair dyed purple and traces of a sharpie drawing with a certain phallic design on his cheek was more awkward than this. 

It seems that even Namjoon’s picked up on the vibe of your workspace today, walking in and out without a word. He wheels in a portable whiteboard from one of your meeting rooms and writes down everybody’s assignments on the board in his handwriting, which makes his O’s look like D’s. 

Ten minutes in and this is the quietest your office has ever been in the history of mankind, probably. You’re almost convinced that genuinely no one will speak to each other until five o’clock, when Jimin’s end-of-work alarm goes off and you all pack up and go home, and that today’s workday is an exercise in meditation and peace, two things that are seldom available in your usual office environment. 

And then, out of nowhere, 

“Oh my God, I can’t take it anymore,” Hoseok says loudly, letting out a breath you didn’t even realize he had been holding. It’s highly unlikely that Hoseok spent the past ten minutes holding his breath because he wasn’t allowed to talk under your office’s societal norm of silence, but you honestly can’t put it past him. Speaking is essentially the equivalent of breathing to him. “I’ve been wanting to bother Jimin for not responding to my email from yesterday for the past five minutes. I don’t even know why we’re doing this, it’s clear that Y/N doesn’t care at all about what happened.”

“What don’t I care about?” You blurt out, equally as curious as everyone else also seems to release their baited breaths. 

Hoseok and Jimin immediately begin to argue about appropriate email-response time between coworkers and Yoongi rolls a couple of feet over from his own desk to enlighten you. 

“Jungkook told everyone that you had been docked from your top rank in Kingdom, and the whole office seems to have taken it very seriously,” Yoongi mutters into your ear, making you scrunch up your nose in exasperation. Is he kidding? 

“That’s why everyone was so quiet? Because they didn’t want to bring it up?” 

“I guess so, but I was just quiet because it was nice to have the whole office shut up for a few minutes in the morning,” Yoongi says with a shrug before wheeling back to his own desk, where an anime you vaguely recognize as Haikyuu!! is playing on his monitor. 

Immediately, you whip around to meet eyes with Jungkook, who looks like he’s been expecting your furious glare all morning. He smiles guiltily and can offer you literally nothing other than a mouthed sorry because you two are in a workplace environment where shouting is, generally, socially unacceptable. 

Despite your standing on the game, it’s easy to argue and even easier to prove that your coworkers care much more about Kingdom than you do. The loading screen of the castle in Monet’s art style is Hoseok’s desktop background. Jungkook has a little sword decoration next to his computer, and a couple of his pens are official Kingdom merch that you’re pretty sure he purchased from Hot Topic. Taehyung and Jimin play during their lunch break, the only time in the workday where shouting is socially acceptable, and the both of them came to last year’s Halloween party dressed as knights. Even Namjoon’s in on the game, though he rarely has time to play and usually has no idea what everyone else is referencing when they talk about Kingdom. 

Contrastingly, you enjoy the game but very seldom do you actually broadcast that affection in public. You need to have at least some semblance of personal dignity in this absolute free-for-all of a place of employment. 

So really, it’s no wonder that all of your coworkers acted like it was the end of the world when you got knocked from first place. To them, that would be like having a winning lottery ticket only to drop it onto train tracks and watch as the public transportation system has a field day with it. 

“We’re really sorry, Y/N,” Taehyung says as he comes over and hands you a Tootsie Roll from the stash he keeps in one of his desk drawers for bad days. Apparently, this is a bad day. “Jungkook told us and we didn’t want to put salt in the wound.”

Even if their methodology was weird and slightly unsettling, the sentiment was there. “Thanks guys,” you tell Taehyung with a smile, “but I think you guys took it harder than I did.”

“Of course we did!” Jungkook says with a cry. He is objectively the most torn up out of the lot of you. “We had the top player in Kingdom in our very office, and now what! You were famous, Y/N! Whoever that bozo is who took your place is gonna feel the wrath of Jeon Jungkook and company.”

“Who’s feeling the wrath of Jeon Jungkook and company?” Seokjin asks as he strolls into the office, even later than you. To be fair, it’s looking like he’s got a box of a dozen Dunkin’ Donuts, which is enough for anyone to forgive him, even your hard headed boss. “Is it Jimin? Did he steal your Post-Its again? I saw he had a new pack.”

Jungkook’s eyes widen for barely a second before they narrow in on Jimin, who is already skirting away to find Namjoon so he can use him as a human shield. Jimin has quite the history of taking Jungkook’s office supplies only for a second and then failing to return it. 

“No, but I’m gonna deal with him later,” Jungkook says, fishing through his office supplies on the hunt for his Post-it notes, which may or may not be currently in his possession. “We were just talking about how Y/N got knocked from the top spot in Kingdom by some asshat none of us have ever heard of, and now he’s going to feel the wrath. Of us. Specifically me, but also us.”

“What wrath?” Taehyung jokes. “You’re fresh out of college. You’re practically as intimidating as a baby bunny.”

Jungkook growls just for emphasis, and it only proves Taehyung’s point more. He’s always had a baby face.  

“Well, I brought doughnuts to cheer everyone up,” Seokjin says, opening the box to reveal a dozen doughnuts of varying kinds that is likely to be finished within the next thirty seconds. 

“Oh my God, Kim Seokjin, I love you,” Hoseok says before immediately taking one and a half and bouncing off. 

“Save the pink-frosted one for me, will you? It’s my favorite,” Seokjin requests. He’s not even monitoring the box, too busy putting all his stuff away and getting settled at his desk. He’s basically asking to be robbed. 

“Aw, I wanted that one,” you joke sadly, already going for the chocolate-frosted one with rainbow sprinkles. The box is nearly three-fourths empty. Even Namjoon’s materialized out of nowhere to take the glazed one to eat while he completes the next fifty-four things on his to-do list. 

“Then let’s split it,” Seokjin says without missing a beat. Your heart does the exact opposite. 

“Jimin, you wanna split one with me?” Taehyung asks. 

“Ew, gross, no way, I want a whole one to myself,” Jimin immediately rejects. 

“I’ll go and grab it,” Seokjin says, standing up to nab the doughnut for some evil being (by the name of Jimin) takes it for himself. He plucks it from the box and takes two napkins, too, walking over to your desk as he splits the doughnut in half. 

“For you,” he says casually, like it isn’t making your heart beat out of your chest. 

“Thank you, kind sir,” you say jokingly, taking the doughnut and placing it on the napkin he hands to you. 

“Tell me about this Kingdom thing? You got knocked from first place?” Seokjin asks, making conversation as he lingers by your desk. It’s obvious that nobody’s going to be getting any work done. 

“Yeah, but it’s really nothing special. Everyone was making a huge deal out of it, which you should be very glad you missed, because the first ten minutes of this workday were absolutely silent and it was awful in every way that something can be awful,” you tell him. 

Seokjin laughs, and it warms you from the inside out. “Then I’m glad that I came late,” he says with a chuckle. “I couldn’t imagine a day where Jimin and Taehyung were silent for more than two minutes.”

“I lived through it,” you say, smiling. “Anyway, everyone seems to have gotten over the fact that I’m no longer the top-ranked Kingdom player. I’m kind of down about it myself, just because I worked really hard, but whoever it is that took over, I’m glad for them. I mean, it’s just a game.”

“That it is,” Seokjin says. “How about a toast to your Kingdom-playing skills, and to whoever it is that beat you.”

“Cheers,” you say, holding out your half of the doughnut. 

“Cheers,” Seokjin echoes. 

The two of you clink doughnuts, and they squish together awkwardly. 

“You should bring doughnuts more often,” You muse.

“If it means we don’t have to work and can just talk like this, then I will,” Seokjin says as he takes a bite, already heading back over to his own desk. He waves goodbye with a smile, and only then do you finally indulge. 

Sweet. As always. 

♚ THERE ♚

When you were moved to the Military Tactics Unit, the King and Queen pulled you out of military training in favor of you spending more time working on strategies for the Kingdom’s armies rather than sparring with fellow Knights. It was a wise move on the part of Their Royal Highnesses, who feared losing you to a rebel group or warring kingdom, and you didn’t mind not having to engage in the physicality of training with those that would be spending more time on the battlefield. 

And at the time, you saw it as a much-needed break from hand-to-hand combat training for years on end when you hadn’t set foot on the front lines in months. But now, that decision has decided to come back and bite you where it hurts. 

Because as second-in-command to the Head of the Knights, you (and J, both luckily and unluckily) are tasked with the important duty of supervising the military training of the new recruits. This spells doom in various ways, some of which include (and are not limited to):

Having to spend more time with J. 

Having to spend more time with J without letting all of the recruits know you both vastly dislike each other. 

Having to spend more time with J in a scenario in which there is constant hand-to-hand combat. 

Having to spend more time with J without being able to make up an excuse about needing to attend to urgent military business in order to leave. 

Having to spend more time with J. 

Attempting to remember how to spar.

So, in essence, you’re screwed. 

This is the mindset with which you walk into your very first training session in over six months, a few minutes late, of course. Recently you’ve been attempting to calculate the maximum amount of time you can spend either being tardy or leaving early from events that involve J without you facing any repercussions. So far it’s been working out well. 

When you walk in the door, before you can greet any of the recruits or even offer J a slightly sarcastic wave, he says, “Look who’s finally shown up,” loud enough for all of the recruits to turn to look as you stroll in tardy. 

“I got held up by a vendor on the main road, my apologies,” you lie like a liar. It’s obvious that J does not believe you whatsoever, but it satisfies the recruits, who return to their business as usual. 

“Well, you’re just in time for warm-up,” J says, false positivity radiating throughout every single word. 

You walk up to where he stands at the front of the room, wearing much less of his official armor than he normally is. Right now, he stands in front of you in a plain tan cotton shirt and training pants, similar to the rest of the recruits. It’s really quite jarring, to see him dressed so differently from what he usually wears—dark armor and scarlet red sashes. It makes him seem… almost softer. 

“Thought you might have bailed on me,” J mutters into your ear as the recruits begin to stretch. 

“Have a little more faith in me, for God’s sake,” you grumble in return. You may not like him, but you aren’t about to abandon your responsibilities just because of a little bit of distaste. 

“Do you wanna take warm-up, or should I?” He offers, motioning to the recruits. They all look so nervous, so desperate to prove themselves on the first day of training. It reminds you of yourself, like you’re looking into a mirror and a time machine all at once. 

“You’re the boss,” you say, unabashedly letting the bitterness seep through your tone. “You choose.”

Unsurprisingly, J decides to let you handle the warm-up session, something that is just a precursor to the main event and therefore, not as important. He takes a couple of steps back and follows your instructions as you go through stretches and basic movements in combat, allowing all of the recruits to get a feel for what knighthood is really like in the Kingdom of Kalar. Warm-up was always your least favorite part during training, so boring in comparison to the sparring and hand-to-hand combat that you would engage in soon after. Sure, it was necessary, but when you were a wide-eyed, overeager trainee, you were willing to risk a pulled muscle if it meant you could beat someone up sooner. 

With this in mind, you wrap up the session in a fairly timely manner, letting the recruits do their own stretching after everything absolutely necessary has been covered. It also means that you can sit back and let J do most of the heavy lifting, which, while you’re bitter about him getting all of the attention, is better than having to do it yourself based solely upon memory. You remember combat well enough to handle yourself in the battlefield, but the technicalities of training have completely slipped your memory by now. 

J and everything else about him may leave a sour taste in your mouth, but you have to admit that he’s a good teacher and an even better morale booster. This must come from his experience out in the field, on the front lines, where raising his troops’ spirits came as a necessary quality to develop when times were tough. 

He speaks slowly, explains everything in enough detail to cover all of the bases without losing attention, and frequently opens up the floor for questions. And as per usual, the recruits already begin to cling to him like vines, desperate to soak up every ounce of knowledge that he doles out. 

J doesn’t need the ego boost, that’s for certain. 

“Now that I’ve gone through everything, I believe that the best way to learn how to spar is just to start doing it, even if you haven’t the slightest clue what you’re doing. Despite what you may think about me, experience is the best teacher,” he says with a smile, earning a laugh from the crowd. 

You roll your eyes. 

“Um, sir?” A timid recruit raises her hand, her body curled in on herself. You take one look at her, and know that she’ll come out of her shell soon enough. 

“Yes, a question?” J asks. 

“Would you mind giving a demonstration? Just so we can watch. So we, well, don’t injure ourselves or each other while we’re sparring.”

A demonstration? You blink, having awoken from the trance you had placed yourself in one J stepped up to take over the training session. Doesn’t a demonstration mean… well, you and him?

J seems to come to this realization at the same time that you do, and grins wildly, giddy. He knows exactly how much you’ll hate doing this, which is all the more reason to say yes. “Of course, we’d be happy to. Y/N?”

You hold in the sigh you’ve been wanting to let out for about five minutes now, taking a deep exhale as you turn to face J. You’ve been in close proximity to him before, but you are about to get a whole lot closer. 

“If you say so,” you say with a shrug, trying to keep this as lighthearted and casual as possible. Though, both of those things are likely to be tossed out the window now that you’re about to spar with your worst enemy. 

J grabs a mat from the side of the room to lay down on the floor in front of you, and the two of you step onto it. Instantly, you’re transported back to when you were still in training, bouncing up and down on your feet with your fists raised in front of you, ready to take on the next recruit. You had always been quite good at sparring, back then. 

Now is a completely different story. 

“Are you ready?” J asks as you face each other in front of a crowd of recruits, all of whom are watching you with hawk-like intensity. 

“Guess I can’t say ‘no’, can I?” You joke, though if J offers you a way out of this, you’d gladly take it, shame and dignity be damned. 

“Well then, do your worst.”

He’s an open target. You’ve never been given an opportunity to sock him in the face before now, and you’d absolutely love to take it, but this is a sparring session, not a revenge session. That can be saved for a later date. Instead, you bounce on your feet like a nervous, excitable recruit, and aim for his neck. 

He easily dodges, but you expected that, and counter his attack with your leg. It goes back and forth like this, as your muscle memory kicks in and you remember exactly what sparring was like back in your training sessions. For a few seconds in the middle of it, you genuinely think you and him are on a pretty level playing field. 

And then—

One punch gone wrong and he’s got you lifted up off of the ground and onto his back, having grabbed your wrist at the perfect time to hoist you over his shoulder. You gasp in shock, body not necessarily remembering this part, and then—

He slams the both of you down onto the mat, your back hitting the cushion with a thud as the breathe gets knocked from your lungs. You definitely haven’t done this part in a while. 

You know the recruits are all watching you intently, but you refuse to lose like this, even if this is normally the part where the person pinned underneath the other one surrenders. With both of your arms and all of your force, you attempt to shove J off of you by using your elbow to punch him in the chest. If you go down (which you most certainly will), you will go down with a fight. 

He sees your move coming from a mile away, and immediately pins both of your arms above your head with a simple swish of his hand. The other one is holding up his body by your head as you both stare at each other, breathing heavily. His leg sits in between both of yours, resting up against your thigh, and his head hovers a very dangerous less-than-three inches away from your own. If a particularly near-sighted person were to stumble upon the both of you, you’d be absolutely screwed. 

The both of you gaze into each other’s eyes for a second, the wind knocked out of you. You never quite realized what his face looks like up close. His cheeks are bright red. But it’s a second too long because the recruits have gone silent, refusing to applaud or do anything else to signal that the sparring match is over. 

And then, it feels like a million years pass as J slowly removes himself from on top of your body, standing up and dusting his hands off before leaning down and offering his hand to help you up. Too floored and absolutely speechless to reject his extended palm like you normally would, you grab onto his hand and let him hoist you up, unable to speak. 

“How was that for a demonstration?” J asks the recruits, who are all blinking like they’ve just witnessed something far too shocking for their liking. 

Another trainee, a boisterous young man who walked into today’s session with his energy fully up and his eyes on the prize, raises his hand. “Could you show us again?”

You and J take one look at each other. 

No. Way. 

♚ HERE ♚

Because your office is both tightly knit and also uncannily resembles a cast of grown adults playing various high school stereotypes in a Hallmark movie, every year you do Office Superlatives. Office superlatives are basically an excuse for everyone to come up with a way to insult each other 1) while getting paid to do so and 2) without facing any repercussions whatsoever. 

For three years in a row, your office has designated you as “Most Likely to Spill Coffee on Someone Really Important”, a superlative that came about because on your very first day, you spilled your coffee on the one and only Kim Namjoon, who you then mistook as your boss, and thus ensued the most embarrassing one minute and thirteen seconds of your entire life in front of a bunch of colleagues you would have to see every weekday for the foreseeable future. 

Thankfully, you haven’t spilled your coffee on anyone important since then, even if you do regularly knock over your pencil cup and send every pastel-colored highlighter flying across the hardwood floor. It became such a frequent occurrence that, for April Fool’s Day last year, Taehyung and Jimin taped every single thing on your desk to your desk to see how long it would take you to notice. 

(It took you over three weeks, but that’s besides the point.)

“I know that the saying is ‘the customer is always right’, but this client I’m working with right now is literally wrong,” Taehyung says with a sigh. He collapses back in his office chair, mindlessly playing with the fur of the stuffed Pomeranian dog he keeps on his desk, staring down the email on his desktop. “Like, I’m not Squarespace or Wix. Either you pay me to design your website entirely, or you do it yourself. I’m not a drag-and-drop of a person, and I don’t get paid to be consulted on every font choice.”

“Didn’t you write on your resume that you can identify every standard Microsoft font without being told the name?” Yoongi asks with a frown from across the office. He’s making the most of his gigantic desktop computer, and has a tab open with One Punch Man right next to a Photoshop logo design he’s working on. 

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I want to do it,” Taehyung says with a frown. “I need someone who knows how to let people down easily.”

“Jimin?” Hoseok pipes up unhelpfully, earning an eraser to the face from Jimin, who is notorious for going on a bunch of first dates and very, very seldom going on a second one. You don’t even think that for the entire time you’ve known him, he’s ever gone a third date with someone. Ever. 

“Do not make fun of my lifestyle choices!” Jimin shouts out defensively. “I just like meeting new people.”

“Yeah,” Hoseok says like a white girl in a Disney Channel Original Movie, “and then never meeting them again.”

“That’s where you’re mistaken,” Jimin tells him pointedly, already beginning to stand up from his office chair to attempt to further convince him that serial-first-dating isn’t all that bad. “Two weeks ago, I saw this guy that I had gone on a date with last year and he told me that his friend was starting up a small pet barbershop business and needed help with the graphic design for his company. Now I’m designing this guy’s logo and backsplash for his wall.” He says matter-of-factly. 

Hoseok frowns. “So, what I’m hearing is that you saw a guy you had gone on a date with last year, and what you got out of it, was more work.”

Jimin opens his mouth to say something else, but he flounders. Hoseok cackles to himself, shaking his head because Jimin’s just proved his point further. 

“I’ll ask Seokjin,” Taehyung says with a sigh. “He could tell me that I’ve lost my job and that I’m getting evicted from my apartment and I would thank him.”

Amen. 

“Hey, where is Seokjin?” Jungkook asks, spinning around in his office chair for the most efficient way to scan the entire office in search of the man. “He was just here watching One Punch Man with Yoongi.”

“I didn’t even notice he had gotten up,” Yoongi says, turning to the empty spot next to him where Seokjin once was. 

“I’ll go look for him, I need to grab something from the printer, anyway,” you volunteer, pushing your chair back, standing up, and avoiding the gazes of anybody in the office who happens to have knowledge of your not-so-secret secret crush. This means that you are staring down at the lines of the wooden planks in the floor as you walk over to the back hallway, because every single person in the room currently has at least… well… some insight. 

“He’s all yours, Y/N,” Taehyung wolf whistles, making you roll your eyes as you head down the hallway.  

Too busy counting the planks that make up the hardwood floor and hoping that you’ll maybe be able to identify Seokjin by the shoes he’s wearing rather than anything else, you don’t look at where you’re going as you make a beeline for the printing room. That is, you make a beeline for the printing room until you crash right into an unsuspecting colleague. 

“Oh, shit!” Said colleague cries out.

Oh God. 

You look up to find Seokjin standing in front of you, a nearly-empty cup of low-grade office coffee in his hand, and a growing brown stain on his pale blue dress shirt. One look on the floor and there’s a puddle of coffee gathered at your feet, wet splotches on your flats and his loafers. 

“Y/N, are you alright?” Seokjin asks, eyes wide and apologetic as he immediately searches for some place to put down his coffee to avoid any more casualties. He looks right at you, making you want to curl in on yourself, before his eyes train down to your torso.

Only then do you realize he’s not shamelessly staring at your chest, but rather at the massive brown stain on the front of your blouse, quickly seeping into the fabric, the scalding temperature of the coffee having gone right over your head the moment you realized who exactly it was that you crashed into. 

“Uh…” you stammer, brain crashing as everything that’s just happened in the past thirty seconds catches up to you all at once. 

“Oh my God, I’m such a mess,” Seokjin says, fumbling awkwardly as he finally finds a trash can to toss his sad lump of a coffee cup into.

No you’re not, you want to tell him, but the words don’t come out and you’re left standing there, looking sort of like you blame him for everything, when in reality, you just have no idea how to function in front of him. 

“Coffee stains,” Seokjin says, hands fishing through his seemingly bottomless pants pockets (he could probably fit an entire Nintendo Switch and its dock in there) until he pulls out this measly little thing that vaguely resembles your orange highlighter. “Here, I have a Tide To-Go pen.”

Before you can tell him that you can just deal with the stain and wash it in the privacy of your own home where you don’t look like a bumbling idiot, he grabs your hand and pulls you into the gender neutral bathroom nearby, locking the door as the light flickers on. 

“Here, do you need help?” Seokjin asks, holding out his Tide To-Go pen as he wets a paper towel made of entirely recycled materials and begins fruitlessly dabbing at his shirt. 

“I’m alright, really,” you insist, staring into the mirror and trying desperately to avoid the fact that Seokjin’s shirt becomes transparent when it’s wet. Maybe quitting your job and moving to another city doesn’t sound unappealing after all. “I can just get it out with OxiClean at my apartment, Seokjin, seriously.”

“Are you sure? That’s what the Tide To-Go pen is for,” Seokjin says, holding it out towards you again as a final attempt to get you to use it. 

“No offense, Seokjin, but I don’t know if the Tide To-Go pen is even going to make a dent in the stain on my shirt,” you chuckle, the only thing you can think of to get him to stop offering the thing to you. The Tide To-Go pen is meant for when you accidentally get a bit of ketchup onto your jeans as you move the french fry from your plate to your mouth. Not when you’ve got a giant coffee stain on the front of your shirt. 

“God, I’m so sorry, Y/N,” Seokjin says, unbuttoning the top two buttons of his shirt to try and get a better grip on the fabric as he relentlessly scrubs at it. God help you. He may as well take the whole thing off at this point—though you really, really hope that he doesn’t. “I’m such a klutz.”

“No, it’s my fault, I wasn’t looking where I was going,” you tell him. You still know that you passed by 107 wooden planks before you crashed into him, because that is what you do when you don’t want to look anyone in the eye. 

“Seriously, though, I had the cup of coffee. I feel really bad, I could pay to get it dry cleaned for you?” He offers, eyes wide and in search of some way to make it up to you. 

“No, no, that’s not necessary. I’m can handle a stain, Seokjin. I’m an adult. I live in my own apartment and everything,” you say firmly, refusing to accept anything else from him. God, if he paid for your dry-cleaning, you’d never be able to live that down. “Maybe I’ll finally stop being voted Most Likely to Spill Coffee on Someone Important,” you joke, trying to make light of the fact that you’re standing in the tiny gender-neutral bathroom together, Seokjin’s practically got half of his transparent dress shirt unbuttoned, and you both have massive and very conspicuous brown stains on your tops. All wonderful, wonderful things. 

At this point, Seokjin stares down at his shirt and, quite frankly, just gives up, smoothing out his shirt as best as he can and tossing the poor, now-coffee-colored paper towel away. 

“I suppose it’s high time we give you a break for always knocking over that pencil cup of yours,” Seokjin jokes back as he opens the door, motioning for you to leave first. 

“We should invest in some Velcro for it,” you suggest, making Seokjin chuckle as he shuts the door behind him. 

“Uh… what the fuck?” 

The two of you are stopped in your tracks by a particularly suspicious Taehyung, who just witnessed the two of you walk out of the same bathroom with both of your clothes fairly askew. 

“It’s not what it looks like,” you immediately tell him, eyes wide. Count on him to get the wrong idea. 

“Okay,” Taehyung says, eyes narrowed. “Sure.”

“Taehyung, come on, I spilled coffee on the both of us,” Seokjin attempts, but Taehyung is absolutely not having it. 

“That’s what they all say,” he says cryptically, nodding as he heads to the printer room with his eyes still narrowed. He glares at the both of you until he rounds the corner, out of sight, and by then your cheeks have heated up so badly you think you might actually start sweating.

“Now the whole office is going to think we’re dating,” you say, somewhat jokingly but also somewhat seriously. There’s no way Taehyung’s going to be able to keep his mouth shut for any longer than the next five minutes. 

Seokjin laughs, looking at you and shrugging. “There are worse things, right?”

Are there?

♚ THERE ♚

“Oh, Y/N!”

You inhale. 

Of all of the places in the Kingdom that J has not yet infiltrated and ruined for you, the small cafe on the edge of the kingdom borders has to have been the last one. You discovered it while you were on night watch as a baby knight, a task given to those too dedicated to the job to release but not yet prepared enough to fight on the front lines. It’s a quiet place, open more hours of the day than closed, owned by an old lady with no other family to take care of the business. You’ve already promised her that after she passes, you will immediately begin funding the cafe yourself, too much money on your hands and not enough wonderful places like this to spend it on.

When days are loud and hectic, when the King and Queen and all of their military advisors are stressed and have been snapping at you all day, this is where you come. The old lady keeps her door open especially for you (at least that’s what she tells you), always with a steaming cup of jasmine tea and a wise old story to tell you. Sometimes, you’ll get to tell a story back, and you exchange words of wisdom from a knight at the highest ranking in the kingdom and an elder with many years of experience in the kingdom behind her. She always tells you, “keep your eyes wide and your heart open, because things can only enter it if you’re looking out for them.”

You’ve held those words close to your soul ever since the first time you heard them. 

But when your eyes are wide and staring down a certain knight in the kingdom who seems to have stumbled upon your one sacred place, you’re a little bothered, to say the least.

You exhale.

“Fancy seeing you here,” you say sourly, the scalding tea burning your tongue as you take a sip. 

“I’ve never seen this place before,” J admits helplessly, already bowing to the old lady who runs the place. He introduces himself handsomely, and much like everyone else bewitched by his good looks and unrealistically charismatic personality, she immediately warms up to him. 

“I wish it could stay that way,” you mumble to yourself, far too quiet for anyone except you and your tea to hear. “It’s far away,” you say to him as the lady ushers him to the seat next to yours, already promising him tea on the house. You sigh. “Wouldn’t expect you to go hunting for a nice tea place when there are so many wonderful places in the city.”

“I guess it’s nice to branch out,” J says with a shrug. “I have to say that I don’t really go out to cafes all that often. Too busy.”

“You know I understand how that goes,” you tell him honestly. For once, it’s something you can actually relate to. “But I think that it’s important to take a break from our duties and just relax. We don’t have much time to do that, you know.”

The lady brings over tea, and J insists he pay her for it despite her insistence for him not to. She shuffles off into the back before he can even get out some coins.

“Tell me, where can I leave this? I feel terrible not paying,” J asks you. It catches you off guard, really, mostly because he seems to be the kind of person who walks around the center square winking at every vendor in the hopes of receiving free merchandise. 

“Oh,” you say, embarrassingly speechless. “Well, I suppose I could take it and give it to her. If we left rather soon then we could simply leave it on the counter for her to find. It’s likely that she won’t come back out for a while, since I have company.”

“Am I your company, Y/N?” J asks, almost teasingly. It makes you want to chuck your cup of jasmine tea into his face. 

“Don’t think too much of it,” you advise him, a warning to tell him to knock it off. “We’re just here together.”

“Lucky us,” J says, holding up his cup of tea for a toast. You indulge him (begrudgingly so), letting your glasses clink together as you both finish a much needed warm drink on a chilly afternoon. 

Too soon, the respite of the cafe is broken by a knock at the door. You both turn to find a messenger waiting patiently outside the cafe, motioning for J to come and speak to him. 

“If you’ll excuse me,” J says, scooting back his chair and heading over, shutting the door behind him. 

The moment the door closes, the old lady reappears from the back of the room, collecting your finished cups as you both listen intently to the murmuring outside. 

“That young man mentioned that the two of you spend lots of time together,” the muses, cleaning the cups with a wet rag. She’s got a knowing look in her eye, like she’s picked up on something the both of you seem to have overlooked. 

“We’re both knights,” you correct. It’s important to you that she knows that you don’t spend time together out of personal preference. It’s merely obligation. “So we see each other quite often.”

“I’ve never seen him around before,” she says pointedly, “but he seems to know quite a lot about you.”

“Oh, not really,” you insist. How could he? You’ve barely known him a month. Still, it’s clear that the lady doesn’t believe you. 

“As you say,” she says, skeptical. 

You’re about to open your mouth and reject her notions further, but then the door opens up again, and J looks terribly apologetic as he walks inside, joining your side. “We’ve been called in.”

As per usual, the Kingdom appears with impeccable timing to ruin the rest of your afternoon. It has a striking tendency to do that. 

“For what?” You ask, exasperated. J doesn’t look much happier. 

“Criminal hearings,” J says, and the words make you you toss your head back and sigh. 

Criminal hearings and its many, many procedures are quite possibly your least favorite part of being a top-ranked royal knight. With your knowledge of the ins and outs of the military and the kingdom’s inner workings, as well as with you being an advisor to the generals and the King and Queen, you are often obligated to attend these, just in case there is a desperate need for the technicalities of military crimes that no one else can provide. It is, admittedly, extremely boring, since you can’t really offer any sort of insight or opinion on the actual criminal and their crime at hand. 

“Fine,” you say, suddenly much less energized than you were approximately thirty seconds ago. “I suppose that we’ll have to be on our way.”

“Ma’am,” J says, attracting the attention of the old lady behind the counter. He holds out some coins, palm facing up. “Please accept this from me. I couldn’t leave without paying you for your wonderful tea and service.”

“Oh, pish posh,” the lady says with a shake of her hand. “Any friend of Y/N’s is well-deserving of some tea. You both work very hard. You should take any opportunity that presents itself to relax, and enjoy being young.”

“Please,” J insists, placing the coins in her hand, “a token of my gratitude. We shall return soon, right Y/N?” He gives your shoulder a nudge, making you look up at him. Return? You’d be blessed if J forgot about this place entirely, though you know that he’s bound to come back soon. 

Perhaps there are worse things than losing your favorite cafe to him. Perhaps, you can simply learn to enjoy his company, instead. 

“Of course, how could I resist?” You say, waving goodbye to the lady at the counter. “We really must be going, but I shall see you soon.”

“Take care of yourselves, the both of you!” She sees you off with a smile and a wink directed right at you for a cause you aren’t too keen on picking up. Old ladies are always so vague. 

When you walk outside, you’re surprised to find yourselves alone. “Where’s the messenger guard?” You ask, looking around to see if he’s found a tree to take respite from the sun under. 

J laughs, warm and hearty. “I sent him off, told him we would be able to make it ourselves.”

“Oh, alright,” you say with a shrug, already beginning to trudge the familiar path towards the castle. 

You take six steps before realizing that J is neither next to you nor following you, still standing on the porch of the cafe as the sun makes his hair glimmer a dark caramel in the light. 

“Aren’t you coming?” You turn around to ask, an eyebrow raised as you tap your foot on the cobblestone road. 

“Have you ever skipped a criminal hearing before, Y/N?” J asks, and the very notion of bailing makes your eyes go wide. 

“Skipped?” You clarify. 

“That’s what I said,” J confirms. 

“No…” You trail off, feeling more and more like the try hard you once were while training, wide-eyed and eager to prove yourself. Standing in front of him, rocking back and forth on your toes and twiddling your fingers as he steps off of the porch, taking long strides to reach you, makes you feel so nervous. With every step he takes closer to you, your heart begins to beat faster, faster, faster. 

“Well,” J says, reaching out his hand to take hold of your own. “Would you like to start?”

When you were stationed on the Kingdom’s borders, you thought you had explored every nook and cranny of Kala. You had wandered through forests, across rivers, and into small edge villages with goods you had never even heard of before. You thought you had seen it all. 

Clearly, you were mistaken. 

J pulls you off of the cobblestone path and immediately takes you into the woods that surround the cafe, weaving past trees and ferns and grass alike. This time of year, the forest is ripe with greenery, right when summer is coming to an end but the leaves have yet to begin to fade to brown. Even without landmarks or a path to guide him, J seems to know exactly where the two of you are going, like he’s taken this road a million times before. And still, you had never seen him before this. 

It’s a wonder that the two of you missed each other for so long. 

“Where are we going, J?” You ask, laughing as the exhilaration of skipping your duties in favor of a fun day in the forest begins to flow through your veins. You’ve never done this before. 

“Just wait, you’ll see,” he says cryptically, taking you down a large hill. You must be out of the Kingdom borders by now, with how far you’ve been going, and yet, no one had ever thought to place guards in this area. 

Five more minutes of travelling and you’re near convinced that J is about to take you to some cave in the floor of the forest and murder you, when he tugs you up a hill to reveal—

It’s a clearing with grass so green you’d almost think it was enchanted. The leaves of the trees whisper to each other, voices flowing with the wind that breezes by each and every one, saying hello to the branches as they rustle. Tall grass and ferns grow on the edge of the forest, disguising the clearing to anyone who wouldn’t bother to keep looking, make their way through the overgrowth and into the oasis. 

Never in a million years would you have been able to find this place on your own. 

“What do you think?” J asks excitedly as he pulls you into the middle of the clearing, where the leaves of the trees have left an opening for the sun to shine through, a halo in the middle of the forest. 

“I—I’m speechless,” you say, eyes wandering from every piece of bark to every blade of grass. You’ve always loved your Kingdom and its beauty, from the extravagant castle to the little shacks on the border, but this is more than that. This isn’t just beauty—it’s magic. “How did you find this place?”

“Strayed from the pack during military training outside,” he says guiltily. Clearly, skipping out on responsibilities has become a habit of J’s. 

“Unbelievable,” you say, fingers tracing along the wildflowers growing close to the forest floor. You take a seat in the middle of it all, letting the sun stream through the leaves as the flowers open their petals at your touch. It’s as if every single living thing has been enchanted—like none of this could exist naturally. 

“Do you like it?” J asks, taking a seat on the stone next to you. He reaches down to run his fingers through the grass, letting the soft dirt gather on his skin. 

“I don’t think I have the words,” you tell him. You thought you had found a hidden respite from the hustle and bustle, but he has found not just a respite. He’s found a home. “Why would you show me this place?”

“What do you mean?” J asks. He finds a small yellow flower, a buttercup, and plucks it from the ground, twirling it between his fingers.

“I mean, why would you bring me here? Wouldn’t you want to keep this place all for yourself?” You inquire, curious. Certainly, that’s what you would do. 

J pauses for a moment, staring down at the buttercup in his hands. Wordlessly, he hands it to you, watches as your fingers touch his own, taking the buttercup from him. You twirl it between your fingers, and wonder what all of this means. 

“No,” he eventually answers. “Because a place like this deserves to be shared with the people that deserve to see it.”

♚ HERE ♚

[You have 5 unread messages]

Jungkook (5:53PM): Is it still acceptable to talk about Kingdom at company dinners? Jungkook (5:53PM): Is the ban that Yoongi instated last company dinner still going? Do you think he’ll be mad if I talk about how I just got a bunch of gold from solving the mystery of the time capsule?

Yoongi (5:55PM): If I have to sit through another company dinner where everyone is talking about Kingdom and nobody is talking about anime or my dog Holly I will lose it

Taehyung (5:57PM): You’re coming, right? You mentioned having a thing that ended pretty late this evening so you weren’t sure you’d make it

Seokjin (6:03PM): Excited to see you tonight! Promise I won’t spill anything on you tonight haha

Your office’s annual company dinner is the one and only opportunity you, as employees, get per year to talk about whatever you like in front of your colleagues, all while getting a meal paid for by your wonderfully unassuming, hardheaded boss. It is both a celebration of camaraderie and, of course, being employed, and a chance for your personal group to talk about Kingdom for two hours straight without repercussions. 

Needless to say, many of you are looking forward to it. 

To Jungkook (6:07PM): Yes, but only if we get to talk about how I’m still the best at the game out of everyone To Jungkook (6:07PM): Also, don’t forget to talk to Yoongi about My Hero Academia I know that you secretly love it

To Yoongi (6:08PM): Bring earplugs? Or maybe a manga book to get the conversation going?

To Taehyung (6:08PM): Yeah, I’ll be there To Taehyung (6:08PM): Probably be late though To Taehyung (6:09PM): Save me a seat!

To Seokjin (6:10PM): Not sure if I can promise the same thing! Fingers crossed we make it out tonight unscathed by scalding hot liquids

The company dinner starts at 6:30, which means that it really starts at 7:00 by the time everyone arrives, but even still, you’ll probably be late because you are actually doing last-minute laundry, and not attending a special event like you had told Taehyung. Sue you. Your clothes were dirty. 

Standing in the middle of your apartment wearing the slouchiest clothes you own, you wonder if it’s even worth going when you know that you will probably 1) be late and 2) have to endure two hours worth of Kingdom talk and other things that leave you thoroughly embarrassed, like your nonexistent love life. 

You’ve never skipped out on a company dinner before, but then again, never have all of your colleagues been so on top of you about your very insignificant, not at all soul-crushing, extremely minimal, super unimportant, tiny little infatuation with a certain coworker, so there’s that to consider. 

Not to mention the fact that your entire office genuinely believes that the two of you hooked up in the gender neutral bathroom during the middle of the workday, which is a circumstance so improbable you have no idea how Taehyung managed to convince everybody that that was actually what happened. It’s not as if your coworkers didn’t see the ridiculous brown stains on the front of your and Seokjin’s shirts, or didn’t smell the office coffee stench all over the both of you. 

So, for once in your life, you are genuinely considering just staying at home, finishing your laundry, and eating the frozen veggie burritos you bought from Costco two weeks ago. It sounds very tempting.

This thought is immediately combated by the fact that you usually have some of the most fun during the year at this company dinner, and a free meal at a nice, upscale restaurant is something that you would normally never pass up. But then again, Seokjin will be there and he will be dressed very nicely, and the rest of your coworkers will also be there, and they will be relentless. 

Jungkook (6:33PM): Tae said you’d be late but please come soon! We can’t talk about Kingdom without the best player present!!!! Jungkook (6:33PM): Oh no Namjoon sees me with my phone

And out of every possible text you could have received that night, that one is the one that convinces you to pull out the same dress you’ve worn to the company dinner (it’s not as if anyone else will remember) every other year, tug it on, and head out. Your Costco veggie burritos will have to wait for another stay-at-home night. 

You arrive fashionably late as always, walking into the restaurant and just asking for directions to where the “big group of loud office workers” is, a term easily identifiable by the scrambled hostess with fifteen different tables to seat all at once. She points you to the back room, where you can already hear Hoseok’s laughter from outside in the main dining area. 

“You guys are loud,” you say in lieu of a greeting, everyone letting out cries of “Y/N!” and “You made it!” as you look around for the last empty seat. 

“Here, saved you a spot right next to me,” Seokjin volunteers helpfully, motioning to the empty velvet chair next to him. In the seat next to that sits Taehyung, who is grinning guiltily, like he didn’t just dupe you into thinking he had saved you a seat next to him and someone else other than the person you were hoping not to embarrass yourself in front of. 

“Thinking of me when I’m not even here, how thoughtful,” you say, walking over and sending a glare Taehyung’s way as you take your seat, the glass at the top right corner of your placemat already filled. 

“How could we forget about you?” Seokjin reasons, and he says it so casually but it makes your heart flutter all the same. 

When Seokjin’s finally started talking to Hoseok and Jimin on his other side, the two of them attempting to explain the inner workings of Kingdom to him (to little avail, as per usual), you round on Taehyung, who is every bit the best wingman and the worst friend in the entire world. 

“How could you do this to me?” You hiss at him, trying not to attract the attention of the man sitting on the opposite side of you. 

“I said I had saved you a seat!” Taehyung says defensively, clearly enjoying himself way too much. 

“This was not what I had in mind,” you tell him pointedly. 

“Obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t have hidden it from you,” Taehyung says. He motions to Seokjin, who’s laughing at something that Jimin’s just said, eyes crinkled into half moons as the waiter places the cocktail he’s ordered down in front of him. “You know, it’s not so bad having a crush on him, right?”

“He is our coworker and way out of my league, of course it is,” you remind Taehyung. 

Taehyung shrugs you off with a wave of his hand. “Give yourself some credit, Y/N. You’re hot. Embrace it.”

“I will not, thank you very much. This conversation makes me want to hurl,” you say as normally as possible, blinking to show your discomfort to Taehyung. 

“You need to stop being so afraid of what might actually come out of this,” Taehyung says, a reassuring hand on your arm. “You never know what might happen.”

“What’s definitely going to happen is that I’m going to feel too cold from the vent above my head, and we’re going to switch seats,” you say. You immediately make to stand up, but Taehyung grabs onto your wrist and looks up at you like a child begging for candy in a supermarket. 

“Please, Y/N? Just give it a try, and if you hate it by the time the entree comes around, we can switch. Alright?” He asks, a simple compromise to get you to sit back down. 

You sigh. You suppose it wouldn’t hurt to shoot your shot, no matter how terrible your aim is. 

“I didn’t order any soup, so hopefully we can last through this dinner without ruining more of our clothes,” Seokjin says, an icebreaker to ease the obvious tension between the two of you. He breaks down your walls so easily, carves out a path in the side of it to waltz right through. 

“I don’t know,” you say sarcastically,” you better finish that cocktail soon or we might both be in big trouble.”

Seokjin chuckles, warm and full, and takes another sip of the fruity drink for good measure. “Don’t know how you keep getting crowned Most Likely to Spill Coffee on Someone Important when I’m here, a walking coffee volcano.”

“When the superlatives roll around, I’ll petition the court and see if we can crown you instead,” you promise. 

“I’m honored. I’ll cherish that title for as long as I live,” Seokjin jokes, bowing to you just for good measure. “This is nice, you know.”

“What is?” You ask, peering down at the large group menu. Everything looks awfully delicious and awfully expensive, so you just go for a classic pasta dish and hope that Taehyung orders something different, so you can try each other’s. 

“Sitting next to you,” Seokjin says like it’s obvious, making you blink at your menu like it’s just offended your entire family ancestry. “I don’t think we’ve ever been paired up like this at a company dinner.”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything, right?” You ask hopefully. 

“It’s nice,” Seokjin says. “I feel like we don’t get to talk very much at work.”

“You said you’d bring more doughnuts,” you remind him. Seokjin has held up on his promise, actually, and since the first round of doughnuts, he’s brought on two more occasions to brighten up everybody’s day. 

“I think I need a better excuse than doughnuts,” Seokjin says to himself. “I can’t keep going to Dunkin’ right before work, pretty soon all of the workers will know me by name and that is a level that I’m not sure I’d like to reach yet.”

“Don’t feel bad,” you tell him, a hand instinctively coming to rest on his shoulder as comfort. “Some of the Costco employees recognize me even when I’m wearing my sunglasses inside.”

“You wear your sunglasses inside Costco?” Seokjin asks with a laugh. 

“Sometimes I just forget to take them off when I walk from my car into the store!” You say defensively. “It’s really bright in there, sue me.”

“No, no, I think it’s cute,” Seokjin assures you. “Maybe being recognized by the Dunkin’ employees won’t be that bad. At least they probably wouldn’t know who I was if I had my sunglasses on.”

“I’m being attacked, I’m pretty sure,” you say pointedly. 

“Only affectionately. You’re still ridiculously endearing.” Seokjin says with a chuckle, smiling at you as Jungkook calls your name to tell him something about Kingdom that he’s forgotten. But even as Seokjin gets tugged into another conversation and you get pulled into your own, your brain can’t help but replay the sound of his voice in your head, over and over. 

You’re still ridiculously endearing.

“Hey, Jungkook,” Jimin asks over a mouthful of complimentary bread with olive oil. “Did you ever figure out who knocked Y/N from the top spot in Kingdom?”

“No,” Jungkook cries out, suddenly thirsty for justice. “It makes me so mad that I don’t know who they are, especially since they’re getting all the in-game brand deals and Y/N gets nothing,” he says pointedly as he motions to you, clearly exasperated for a cause that wasn’t even his to begin with. 

“Jungkook, it’s not a big deal, it’s just a game,” you remind him, the table too wide to reach over and pat his hand comfortingly. “I still get a lot of things in second place.”

“What’s Jungkook talking about?” Seokjin asks, motioning to where Jungkook seems to be on a rampage as Jimin and Namjoon listen in. 

“Oh, Kingdom, like always,” you say fondly. “He’s determined to figure out the name of the person who dethroned me.”

“Is that so?” Seokjin asks with a laugh. “He’s got his work cut out for him. How many people play Kingdom?”

“Hundreds of thousands, probably,” you say. “Maybe millions.”

“Millions of people, and somehow we ended up with the second-best player in the game right at this table,” Seokjin says with a grin. “We should be honored.”

“It’s just a game,” you remind him, even though the sentiment is awfully sweet. “I think I much prefer the real world, don’t you?”

Seokjin smiles at you as the waiter comes around to offer him another cocktail. 

“Another one, sir?”

Seokjin looks down at the cocktail, then at your unstained clothes, and he shakes his head, laughing to himself. “No, I’m alright, thank you.” The waiter nods, taking his empty glass and moving onto another coworker. He looks at you, and his eyes are swimming in stars. “I think that I do, too.”

Dinner ends with Hoseok and Jungkook gobbling down everybody’s leftovers, your boss paying the bill without even glancing at the check, and you laughing alongside Seokjin, who keeps your end of the table entertained with fantastic stories about his past job at a luxury department store and less-than-fantastic dad jokes that he prides himself for coming up with on the spot. 

Taehyung had nudged you when the entrees had come around, motioning to the vent above your head, but you hadn’t even noticed the cold. 

“Ugh,” Jimin says with a groan as the group of you head outside once everyone is finished, the chilly night air hitting your skin as you open the door. “I hate that we could only schedule this for a Wednesday, because it means we have to come into work again tomorrow.”

“When else are we supposed to schedule it for?” Yoongi asks with a frown. “Did you even look at the When2Meet? Nobody had any free time for the rest of the month.”

“Well, if everyone’s cleared their schedules just for this dinner, anyone want to keep the celebration going at my apartment? I just bought a box of wine from Trader Joe’s,” Jimin asks. 

“On a Wednesday?” Yoongi says, nose scrunched up in disapproval. 

“Yeah, when else would you drink boxed Trader Joe’s wine?” Jimin responds like it’s obvious. 

Everyone begins to either disperse back to their cars or get Jimin’s address so they can get wine drunk on a Wednesday like you’re supposed to, leaving you and Seokjin out of the crowd. 

“Are you heading over to Jimin’s?” He asks you as you begin to walk towards your cars, taking a step every five seconds as you watch Jimin tell everybody his exact address, loudly and slowly enough for any burglars and axe-wielding murderers within a three-mile radius to also hear him. 

“No, I think I’ll just head home for the night,” you say, checking the time on your phone. It’s nearly ten, already. Where did the time go?

“Ah, then I guess I will, too,” Seokjin says. “Oh, here’s my car.”

“You parked close,” you comment. 

“I thought that I’d be late because I arrived at 6:45, but I was the second one here,” Seokjin tells you, making you laugh. 

“Sounds like our office, doesn’t it?”

“I guess. We’ll have to do this again sometime just to see how late everyone shows up,” Seokjin says. 

“Promise I’ll be early next time,” you say. 

“Next time, then?” Seokjin asks, already opening his car door and beginning to step inside. You stand on the sidewalk in front of him, watching as he pulls the door shut and waves to you through the windshield. A next time sounds awfully nice. 

“Next time.”

♚ THERE ♚

The King and Queen never do find out about your truancy, though you have to admit, you were never really worried about that in the first place. Not when J was grinning as he told you he had sent the messenger guard off, laughing as he dragged you through the forest, smiling as he twirled a buttercup between his fingers. He had done it before and he’ll do it again, and look where that’s gotten him. 

Maybe you could learn a thing or two from him. 

Still, despite your high ranks, the two of you can’t avoid your responsibilities forever. Eventually, you will always have to report back to the castle, get a new assignment, and start the cycle all over again. 

“At least they’re letting us go together,” J reasons as the two of you nod to the knights standing guard at the border of the kingdom, by the main forest that leads directly to a kingdom with whom your relationship isn’t all that strong. No wars have broken out between your two lands in years, but never has stability been one-hundred percent earned, which means that both kingdoms must be on high alert. You never know when a rebel group will attempt to invade the land. 

“Like I’d want to spend any more time with you,” you joke, giving J a nudge in the side as you stroll along the forest edge. In the middle of the day with the sun high above your heads, neither of you are particularly worried about being attacked. It would be foolish for an enemy group to do so, especially at a time when the kingdom’s guards are the most awake. 

“Am I really such awful company?” J asks, and he’s smiling but he asks in such a way, it’s almost as if he means it. The two of you have never been on the best of terms, but you’ve found yourself growing out of the competition-fueled rage you once always found yourself in whenever you were near him. No longer is regaining your first place your most important priority. Rather, it’s doing your job and doing it correctly, upholding the duties that the kingdom has entrusted you with, regardless of who’s by your side. 

(Though, even if you’d never admit it, J makes quite good company, most of the time.)

“No,” you insist, a hand reaching out to rub comfortingly at his forearm. “You aren’t.”

“You think so?” J says with a laugh, almost bitter. “I must say, you’ve never been that fond of me.”

“You may have charmed your way into the rest of the kingdom’s hearts, but I needed some convincing,” you remind him, reminiscent of how he would tease you constantly, dangle his promotion right above your head like a trophy you’d never be able to reach. 

“Did I do a good job, then?” J asks, hands in his pockets. It’s a quiet day, today. Even the birds have begun to murmur. 

“You did quite alright,” you say, nudging him. “Though I must say, I absolutely hate how all of the vendor’s daughters fawn all over you and give you free items like fruit, and jewelry. I’m never given that treatment.”

“You just don’t have my naturally charming, handsome, soft looks,” J says, posing in front of you as the two of you walk. The obnoxiousness of it all makes you almost want to chuck the apple you’re about to eat right at his face. 

“What do you mean? I can be charming,” you say with a pout. You pretend to flip your hair, just for emphasis. 

“You and I are different types of charming,” J says casually. “You’re strong. You speak loudly and clearly and you don’t ever flounder. You always know exactly what you want, and know the best way to get it. You aren’t afraid of anything, and are always willing to take on any challenge that comes your way. It’s… it’s different.”

And even if he thinks you never flounder, never stumble over your words or stutter, for once, you can’t think of anything to say. You’re walking along the forest’s edge with a knight you had convinced yourself that you would never befriend, and he’s just told you all of these wonderful things about yourself you never would have known he’d thought otherwise. 

J’s right. It is different. This is different. And you can hardly remember when it started to be like this. Only one day, it was just like this, and it never stopped. 

“Do you really think all of those things about me?” You ask, staring down at your boots as you walk along the dirt path, kicking small pebbles as you go. They go flying off into the grass, never to be seen again. But sometimes, you come across one you had kicked a few steps back, and you try again, earnestly hoping to see how far it will go with you by its side. 

“I mean, well…” J says, stumbling. “I don’t just think those things about you, you know? They’re facts, aren’t they? Those are things that, well, I suppose, everyone would think about you. Right?”

“You know what I think?” You ask, looking up at him. His dark hair shimmers in the light, like reflects of gold have been sprinkled amongst the ink black. “We are different types of charming. You’re charismatic and friendly, always willing to listen. You accept things graciously and are always grateful for what you receive. You pay people back whatever they’ve given you, even if it’s not the same item, even if it’s just the thought that counts. You always want to do better, and then you do. You work hard for each thing you get, and you never take it for granted.”

J grins down at you. “But you don’t actually think that, do you?”

“Nope,” you say, shaking your head. “Just facts.”

“Just facts,” he echoes. 

When did talking to him become so easy? When did it all start coming to you naturally?

“Did you ever hate me?” He asks you, curious. He knows, he must, that that’s not the case anymore. 

“No,” you admit, perhaps more to yourself than to him. “I think that I just hated that you were better than me. But… like you said, it’s different now. Now, I don’t care if you’re better than me. That sort of competition makes me a better soldier. You make me a better soldier.”

“Really?” J wonders, genuine. His eyes are wide in surprise, shocked at such a candid admission coming from you. To be honest, you’re surprised with yourself, as well. “I had no idea.”

“Keep it up, then. You know—”

A taut string let go. 

The wind stopping in its tracks. 

And an arrow headed right for your heart. 

“Oh my God!” You shout quickly, unable to do much except alert the man next to you that the two of you are in imminent danger. 

Before you can even blink, close your eyes and wait for the tip to pierce your heart, J is pushing you out of the way, sending you flying to the forest floor and he pulls his bow from his back, sending a steel arrow flying in the direction of the woods. You both wait there, only a second but it’s a second too long, until you hear a thud on the ground, a final breath, and then—

Silence. 

The moment you’re both positive the assailant is dead, J turns to you, eyes wide. “Y/N, are you alright?”

“I’m fine, I’m alright,” you assure him, telling him (and yourself) over and over as he pulls you up from the ground. Your heart is racing and you can’t quite seem to catch your breath, but you’re alive and so is he, and that’s all that matters. “Are you?”

“Yes,” he immediately says. “As long as you are.”

You look behind him to find an arrow stuck in a tree, but what alarms you more is the sight of blood on the tip. Immediately, you turn back to J, only to find the side of his arm covered in blood, bleeding right through his armor.

“Oh my God, J, you’re hurt,” you cry out, fumbling for something to stop the flow.

“I’m alright, Y/N, really,” he insists, placing a hand on top of your own, rubbing the back of it with his thumb for good measure. “It’s just a graze. I’ll be fine.”

“We have to take you back to the kingdom,” you push, already beginning to head back towards the gate. 

“I’ve suffered worse injuries, Y/N, seriously,” he tells you, hoping to ease the pit of worry in your stomach. “I’m a top-ranked knight who prefers the battlefield over anything else. I’ve broken bones, gotten stabbed, and nearly died. This? It’s nothing. Really. Please, don’t worry.”

“We still have to get you back to the Kingdom and patch you up,” you insist firmly. “Even if you say you’re alright.”

“Whatever you say, Miss Y/N.” J goes with you obligingly, lets you walk him back to the kingdom gates. 

You urge him into the local medical practitioner, sit him down on the bench and watch as the doctor bandages his wound, reminds him not to engage in any strenuous activity while it’s healing. He sits patiently, glaring at you slightly and rolling his eyes any time the doctor speaks, which is fairly frequently. It’s clear only one of you wants to be here right now, and it’s the one of you without a scratch on your body. 

When the doctor leaves to tend to another patient, you get up from where you’re seated and sit down next to him on the bench, resting your head on his shoulder. 

Working for the Kingdom makes you stronger. Sitting in the cafe makes you think. But being with him, standing by his side, it makes you wonder. It makes your heart race and your mind clear. It makes you feel safe. 

“I think you saved my life,” you whisper softly, clutching onto him like a lifeline, like if you let go, one of you will drown. 

But that’s not the case. Neither of you will let go. Not without the other. Never without the other. 

“Really?” He asks. He already knows the answer. 

“No, I know you did,” you tell him. Things are different now, but maybe they’ve always been like this. You just never noticed. “Because in a heartbeat, I would do the same for you.”

♚ HERE ♚

“I have not seen Seokjin all day,” Jimin comments loudly one day, making everyone immediately turn to Seokjins’ desk, which looks practically untouched. His computer is asleep, his chair is pushed in, and his desktop is empty. The only thing that suggests that the man is even here in the first place is the messenger bag resting against the desk drawers, though it doesn’t look like it’s even been opened today. 

“Probably too busy avoiding you,” Yoongi deadpans, earning a “zing!” from Hoseok that makes you feel even more like you’re standing in the middle of a high school movie made by people who don’t know what high school is like. 

“Is he even in today?” 

“He is,” you pipe up. “His bag is here.”

“Of course you would know!” Taehyung teases, and he earns a highlighter to the face for his trouble. 

“He’s probably just trying to get his work done in a place that doesn’t consist of screaming and constant insults being hurled across the room,” Jimin says with a sigh, turning back to his work. It’s a fair statement, especially when the environment in your office is most often distracting, loud, and not at all an ideal work environment. It’s an absolute wonder that any of you manage to get your work done while you’re here. 

“Y/N, wanna go hunt him down?” Taehyung suggests, sending a wink your way as your eyes widen. 

“No, absolutely not, no way. I will not be tricked by you again,” you say, very reminiscent of the last time you went to go look for Seokjin and ended up with a coffee-stained shirt and a group of coworkers who thinks the two of you hooked up that one time. 

“If you say so…” Taehyung says, voice trailing off as he turns back to his work. 

But for once in your life, Seokjin’s absence is more noticeable than ever. He’s become a fixture in your everyday office life, always stopping by your desk with a second cup of low-grade office coffee for you (with a lid, of course), sending you emails complaining about Jimin and Hoseok when they’re being loud, asking you for help on every one of his difficult font decisions for logo designs, drafting emails to clients with you. It’s a sort of closeness that you never really had before—sure, you worked together and often got paired up for projects, but it’s different now. Like you jumped ship on being just colleagues but instead of drowning, you began to float.

Five more minutes pass and you pretty much resign yourself to getting back to your work, knowing that Seokjin’s probably just grabbed his laptop and found a place where he can work in peace and quiet without Hoseok’s shrill voice interrupting his thoughts. You’ll have to ask him what place he’s discovered. 

When there are four minutes left in the workweek and you are finally beginning to close out of the fifteen thousand tabs open on your Google Chrome window, the door busts open. 

It doesn’t actually bust open, so much as Seokjin comes flying through it and it slowly goes to rest on the padded door frame like it’s been designed to. His tie is loose around his neck like he’s been tugging on it all afternoon, his laptop is clenched carefully between his arm and his torso, and he’s got a flurry of papers freeballing it in a stack in his hands. 

“Oh my God, what tornado did you come from?” Jimin asks as Seokjin rushes over to his desk, cramming everything into his tiny messenger bag that definitely isn’t meant to fit a laptop and a stack of papers that thick. 

“Sehun just dumped an entire project on me that’s due on Sunday at noon with no warning, and now I have to pull together fragments of a crumbling magazine label before their final review on Sunday afternoon,” he says, terribly out of breath. He’s scrambling to gather his belongings, crashing into anything within a two-foot radius of him. 

“Dude, what the heck? I’m gonna tell Namjoon to kick Sehun’s ass,” Hoseok says with a frown, nose scrunched up. “Do you need help?”

“No, no, I’m alright, I can do it,” Seokjin insists, rubbing a hand through his hair as he leaves before the clock has even struck five. 

“Are you sure? You look like you want to jump out of the window,” Hoseok asks again, just for clarification. He’s not wrong. You don’t think you’ve ever seen Seokjin become so stressed in such a short period of time before. “At least let one of us help you get settled back into your apartment.”

To your right, Taehyung whispers into Jungkook’s ear, who then does this sort of weird hand movement to Hoseok, who nods understandingly. It looks suspiciously like they just plotted someone’s murder. 

“I can’t,” Jungkook says with an obnoxiously fake yawn, suddenly speaking much slower than usual, “I’m deadbeat tired.”

“Me neither,” Taehyung says, coughing in the way people do when they just want to get out of something. “I think I’m coming down with something.”

You whip your head around as everyone besides Yoongi comes up with an absolutely bullshit excuse not to accompany Seokjin to his apartment—Jimin says he has a date right after work and Hoseok says he needs to feed his puppy before he gets too hungry, leaving only you and a Yoongi that hasn’t been listening to the conversation whatsoever to vie for the spot. 

“Yoongi?” You ask, somewhat desperate not to be the one to accompany Seokjin to his apartment. You turn to your head to glare at Taehyung, who shamelessly coughs again when he meets your eyes, smiling guiltily. 

“Huh?” He asks, turning around. 

“Fine, you know what? I can come with,” you say with a sigh, already grabbing your belongings as Taehyung and Jungkook high-five next to you. 

“Oh, really? You’re a lifesaver, Y/N, you know that?” Seokjin says, and even when he’s stressed it’s like the weight has been lifted off of his shoulders once you volunteer, and you suppose that there are worse things that can happen than accompanying Seokjin to his apartment for ten minutes. 

Seokjin gives you the address of his place so that you can drive to it yourself, the both of you pulling into the parking garage underneath his apartment complex at the same time, waving to each other from adjacent parking spaces. 

“I really, really appreciate this, Y/N,” Seokjin says with a smile as he brings you into his apartment complex, nodding a friendly hello to the security officer in the lobby. “I know that it’s a Friday night and everything as well. You’d probably want to be doing something else.”

“Ah, yes, you know me, I frequent all of the clubs and bars in this city,” you say sarcastically as you walk into the elevator. Seokjin hits the button for the seventh floor and laughs. “Seriously, it’s not a big deal. It was a dick move of Sehun to drop this on you when it’s due in, like, thirty-six hours.”

“Tell me about it,” Seokjin says, exasperated as he leans back against the steel walls of the elevator. “I thought I would just get to go home this Friday night, pull up Netflix, and have a one-man movie night, but now I have to spend the next thirty-six hours doing this.”

“Well, you know all of us are just looking out for you, wanted to make sure you didn’t injure yourself from stress before you got back to your apartment,” you say as the elevator door dings. Seokjin leads you down the hallway to his door, sticking his key in and jiggling it until the door pops open. 

Admittedly, you have never been in Seokjin’s apartment, but you it was like you had already painted a picture of it in your head from his personality traits alone. You thought it would be fairly minimalistic, clean and neat, not too many flashy colors or kitschy items but things like photographs and magnets to make it feel like an office and more like a home. Pictured it as a sort of very simple, modern home, like the ones that celebrities live in because they can afford to keep their belongings clean all the time, because Seokjin looks exactly like a celebrity, gorgeous and put-together. 

Instead, Seokjin’s apartment is almost a hodgepodge of everything he could think to find to decorate, a stack of photobooks on his coffee table, slouchy leather couches wrinkled from wear, various kitchen supplies splayed all over his countertops. It’s the kind of place you can imagine him being in, existing in. You can see him standing behind his kitchen island with all of the ingredients and supplies for this wonderful dish he’s making littered across the counters. You can see him curled up on the couch, leaning against the corner of it to find that perfect spot, watching television. 

There’s a difference between owning a place, and living in it. Living in it makes it feels like a home, like it’s real, and not just for show. 

“Wow, your place is—”

“It’s really messy right now, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t expecting guests,” Seokjin says, letting his messenger bag plop down on the ground as he scrambles to make his living space nicer for you. 

“No, I was going to say it’s lovely,” you tell him. “It feels exactly like you.”

“Does it?” Seokjin asks genuinely, a soft smile lacing his features. “Well then, thank you.”

You wait around in his apartment awkwardly, not really sure if stepping past the front of his couch is socially acceptable since you’re just “visiting” and he hasn’t officially invited you inside yet. The main objective of accompanying him to his apartment has already been accomplished: you made sure he got home safely and that he can do his work in peace. Finished. But even still, you’re hanging around, wondering when he’s going to kick you out for being a weird, unknown fixture in his home. 

“Um, would you like to stay for dinner? I made soup last night and I have way too much for me to eat on my own,” he offers, opening up his fridge and taking out an enormous pot. It clinks as it hits his countertop, the metal sound echoing throughout his apartment. 

“No, I wouldn’t want to intrude,” you say, taking this as your cue to remove yourself from the situation before you do anything else to make an absolute fool of yourself. 

“I insist, please,” Seokjin says, stopping you in your tracks. “I may have a whole project to finish by Sunday, but we should at least spend this Friday night together, right?”

You look down at your shoes before looking up at him, meeting his eyes from where he stands behind his counter island. 

“Then I will,” you say, removing your flats and padding over to where he stands, coming to a stop on the other side of the counter island. “But only if you let me help you with the project, too. It was asshole-y of Sehun to dump it all on you. At least let me handle some of the graphic aspects.”

“Y/N,” Seokjin says, reaching his hand out over the counter, “you have a deal.”

This deal mainly consists of you eating some of Seokjin’s homemade soup on his couches, your laptops on his coffee table and that ridiculously thick stack of papers spread out amongst you. Seokjin already has a fair bit of information about the project at hand, but he still has absolutely zero progress since he received the assignment four minutes before the end of the workweek. 

“So, basically, what we have to do is re-organize the magazine’s overall design and aesthetic before their final review on Sunday, because if they don’t appeal to the publisher, they’re getting tanked,” Seokjin says, paging through the papers in search of a sketch. 

“So we’re their last hope,” you summarize. 

Seokjin nods. “We’re their last hope.”

“Great,” you say, not at all enthused. “No pressure at all.”

“I know. I’m so relaxed right now,” Seokjin says, clearly not relaxed. 

“You know what’s making me relaxed? This soup,” you say, finishing the last of what’s in your bowl. “It’s delicious. I didn’t know you cooked.”

“It’s just a hobby of mine,” Seokjin says with a shrug. “I picked it up when I moved to college and didn’t know how to make anything except toast.”

“You’re a very fast learner, then,” you say. “I’d pay you to make all of my meals, honestly.”

“Would you like more? I have a ton, so we can eat it all if you’d like,” he asks, already standing up and reaching his hand out for your bowl. 

You hand it over, shaking your head as he makes his way back to his little kitchen, ladling more soup into both of your bowls. “You’re too nice, Seokjin. Seriously. How am I supposed to pay back this kindness?”

Seokjin lets out a warm chuckle as he warms up your next serving in the microwave. “Believe me, Y/N, volunteering to take on this project with me with a due date in less than thirty-six hours is more than enough. You really don’t have to do this, you know.”

“No,” you tell him. “I want to. You deserve someone who’s willing to help you with big things like this. You shouldn’t have to deal with it all on your own.”

Seokjin grins as he returns, handing you your bowl of soup as you get back to work. “I don’t deserve you, Y/N.”

What was supposed to be a couple of hours spent grinding out a project over a shared pot of soup turns into a night’s worth of work, scribbles on paper and the redoing of the same logo fifteen different times on your computer’s much slower, less-updated version of Photoshop. The application crashes on three different occasions, causing you to nearly slam it into the wall, but you just try to look on the bright side. Find the silver lining. Of which there are none. 

Seokjin doesn’t seem to be faring any better than you are. You’ve never seen the man under such pressure before, not in the office and certainly not while you’re out of the office. He’s tugged on a crewneck sweater over his dress shirt and paces around his apartment in bright pink slippers, brainstorming aloud as you bounce ideas off of each other in a panic. 

“What if we rebranded them?” Seokjin suggests wildly. When you turn to look at the digital clock underneath his television, it says 11:17PM. You’re surprised he hasn’t collapsed underneath the pile of work he’s got on his plate. 

“What do you mean? Do we even have the authorization to rebrand them?” You ask, pulling up a new tab on magazine marketing techniques. 

“The project description says requests for anything that will keep them afloat,” Seokjin says. He immediately opens an old photobook, buried underneath your laptops, sketches, and papers, flipping through before he sits down right next to you on his slouchy leather couch. “What if we gave them more of a minimalist kind of style? They’re trying to jump off of this super quirky, very basic Urban Outfitters kind of aesthetic, but I think it makes the magazine too young, you know?” Seokjin suggests. “We could do something more grown-up, attract their market audience.”

“Are we allowed to do that?” You ask, thoroughly interested. Maybe Seokjin’s onto something. 

“Who says we can’t?” Seokjin responds, and it’s good enough for you to hop on board. 

Sitting in his apartment like this, brainstorming different ideas and collaborating on logo designs, magazine layout, and website design together, you are more productive than you’ve been in a very, very long time. Even as the night stretches on into the early hours of the morning, as you watch the clock turn from 1:00AM to 2:00AM to 3:00AM, the two of you are wide awake, the only things illuminating his apartment being a floor lamp by his television and the blue light of your laptop screens. 

“It’s…” Seokjin yawns when it’s nearly four in the morning, pen slipping from his fingers, “so late.”

“I know,” you say back, feeling your eyelids beginning to sink. “I’m surprised we’ve even stayed up this long.”

“Haven’t been up this late since college,” Seokjin says, smiling hazily at past memories. “Always had code to finish for my class the next morning.”

“At least we get to sleep in now,” you joke. Even if you still have to finish putting together a brand new image for this magazine that’s about to go under, tomorrow is still a Saturday. 

“Thank God,” Seokjin says, resting his head on the back of the couch cushion, letting his eyes flutter shut. “I feel like we did a lot tonight.”

“We were very productive,” you agree.

He yawns. “We work well together, don’t you think?”

“Hmm?” You ask, leaning over to move your computer from your lap to the coffee table, exchanging it for a sketchpad to keep brainstorming. 

“I think,” Seokjin begins, and it must be just the sleepy haze his brain has entered rather than anything else that could spur him to express this, that makes him say, “that you and I make a perfect pair.”

You sit up straight at this, looking over at Seokjin as the pencil in between your fingers falls onto the sketchpad before rolling onto the floor. It looks like he’s fallen asleep, exhaustion finally overcoming him as all of the work he’s done catches up to him. In the dead of night, the only sound in the room is his soft breathing, chest rising and falling slowly as his mind begins to wander. You watch him, eyelids heavy, and think that he couldn’t have possibly thought that. No way would he say such a thing to you if he was perfectly cognizant, wide awake. After all, you’re the one with a crush on him, not the other way around. 

You lean back, pondering why a man like Seokjin would ever invite you into his home, offer you soup, and shower you with subtle compliments that couldn’t just be friends being friends, and before you know it, your eyes fall shut. 

It is nearly one in the afternoon by the time you wake up, the sunlight streaming in from the side of his apartment. It forces you to finally open your eyes, groaning as your blurry vision begins to clear. 

That is when you register these four things in this order:

This is Seokjin’s apartment.

This is Seokjin’s apartment, in which you worked on a project with him last night.

This is Seokjin’s apartment, and you fell asleep on his couch. 

This is Seokjin’s apartment, and he thinks that you’d make the perfect pair. 

You hear a clink from across the room, and turn to find Seokjin, still wearing the same thing he was wearing last night, standing in his kitchen, pouring two glasses of orange juice. 

“Morning,” Seokjin says. He pauses, then corrects himself. “Afternoon, actually.” He walks over to you, handing you a glass of orange juice as you rub your eyes, waking yourself up.

“How long have you been up?” You ask him, too tired to thank him out loud for the glass of orange juice. 

“About an hour,” he says, checking the time. “I didn’t want to wake you up. You looked so peaceful.”

“I feel awful, I didn’t mean to intrude on your apartment for, like, an entire night,” you say, rubbing your forehead as you try to smooth out your hair, make yourself look less like you fell asleep at four in the morning in your gorgeous crush’s apartment. 

“No, it’s alright, really,” Seokjin insists. “It was nice having company, for once. And I think we got a lot done.”

“I still feel bad, I didn’t mean to stay so long,” you say, looking around for your belongings as you try to gather your bearings. 

“It’s fine,” Seokjin reassures you, sitting down on the couch next to you as he begins to clean up the absolute mess of the coffee table. “But your phone has been ringing nonstop, so someone must have missed you.”

You fumble around for your phone before finding it having slid in between the couch cushions, pulling it up to see three missed calls from Taehyung and two missed calls from Jungkook, as well as a slew of texts from the both of them. 

“Oh, it’s just Taehyung and Jungkook,” you say with a shrug, deciding that now is not the time to bring them into the conversation. A quick scan of the texts gives you a rough summary of what you would have heard if you had answered their calls instead. 

Taehyung (9:35AM): Y/N Taehyung (9:35AM): HELLO Taehyung (9:35AM): ARE YOU ALIVE??? Taehyung (9:36AM): YOU NEVER SLEEP THIS LATE ARE YOU OKAY??? Taehyung (10:03AM): I WENT BY YOUR APARTMENT AND YOU DIDN’T ANSWER IS EVERYTHING ALRIGHT Taehyung (10:04AM): TEXT ME 1 IF EVERYTHING IS OKAY AND 2 IF EVERYTHING IS NOT OKAY Taehyung (10:05AM): LAST TIME I SAW YOU YOU WERE GOING HOME WITH SEOKJIN DID HE MURDER YOU??????? Taehyung (10:18AM): oh Taehyung (10:18AM): oh wait Taehyung (10:19AM): OHHHHHHHHH Taehyung (10:20AM): ;)

Jungkook (12:18PM): Kingdom just started a new event! Get online with me and let’s crush this thing pleaseeeee

“Just want me to play Kingdom with them,” you say, ignoring Taehyung’s text messages and pretending like they don’t exist.

“You really like that game, don’t you?” Seokjin asks. 

“Oh, they like it more than I do, really, I just try and keep the obsession to a minimum,” you say casually. 

“But they always talk about how good you are,” Seokjin adds. “You’re ranked second, aren’t you? That’s a big accomplishment.”

“Yeah, but it’s not that exciting. I mean, it’s just a game,” you shrug it off. 

“But you like it, which means that’s important,” Seokjin says. “You shouldn’t be ashamed of the things you like. They matter to you.”

“You think so?” You ask, smiling at him. 

“I know so. Tell me about Kingdom,” he urges, nudging your side. “Please? I’d love to know.”

And for once, you don’t just shrug it off and brand it as a game you play occasionally. You let yourself love that game, for all it’s done for you and your friends (even if you aren’t the best anymore) and your happiness, and you tell Seokjin about it. About how you started playing it when you were bored one day during work and saw a forum on it. How you got the rest of the office hooked on it as well, even if they were much more obnoxious about it than you are. How you go home after a long day of work and log on, letting yourself relax as you weave your way through the rankings and quests, finding solace in the familiarity of it all. You tell him why you love it, and why you probably won’t stop playing it for a long time, no matter what becomes of your ranking. 

“It was nice being ranked first, but I actually don’t mind whoever it is that’s taken over,” you tell Seokjin honestly. “Jungkook wants to hunt them down, but I think that, whoever they are, they deserve that spot. You know, I used to hate them because the top-ranked player gets all of the best rewards, but our characters have recently started to spend so much time together that I feel like they’d probably have fallen in love by now.” You chuckle to yourself. If life were a movie, everything would always work out perfectly.

“You do?” Seokjin asks, eyes wide. 

“Yeah, of course,” you say. “They spend so much time together. Who wouldn’t, right?”

“I suppose you’re right,” Seokjin says, smiling. “I also have something to tell you.”

You shake your head. “Don’t tell me you’re obsessed with anime, please. That is where I draw the line.”

“Don’t shame us,” Seokjin says, a hand on his heart like he’s been personally offended. Your eyes widen. “I’m kidding,” he says, laughing as you exhale, relieved. “I actually play Kingdom, too. I just wanted to ask you about it.”

“Seriously? All this time and you just pretended like you had no idea what it was?” you say in disbelief. He’s been hiding this from you for how long? God, the rest of your office is going to have a field day with this information. 

“I just wanted you to tell me about it,” Seokjin admits sheepishly. 

You shake your head. “You could have talked to me about other stuff, you know.”

“I know, but you never talked about Kingdom and I could always see how much you loved it. It was nice, listening to you tell me about it,” he says. 

“I’ve been betrayed,” you say dramatically, opening up your laptop to pull up the game. “What’s your ID? We can add each other.”

This is where Seokjin goes silent. “Actually, I think you might already know who I am. I’m above you in the rankings.”

Your mouth drops open. 

“You’re JK0901? Are you kidding me?” You ask, absolutely floored. All this time and you had no idea that Kim Seokjin was a Kingdom expert. “What does JK stand for? I was convinced it was Jungkook and he was just lying to my face, but in reality, it was you who was lying to me!”

Seokjin lets out a chuckle. “Jin Kim. I’m surprised you guys didn’t figure it out earlier.”

“I can’t believe this,” you say, practically speechless. “How long have you been playing?” 

“Not that long,” Seokjin shrugs. “I picked it up because I wanted to impress a girl I liked.”

“Really? All this effort for a girl you like?” You ask, still in disbelief. You suck up the way your heart is sinking at the thought of him liking another person, but then you remember that it wasn’t like you had ever made a move on him anyway. Smiling, you ask, “Will you at least humor me and tell me who it is?”

Then, Seokjin looks you dead in the eye, and says, “You.”

He doesn’t give you time to respond. Instead, he wraps a hand around your torso and pulls you into him, pressing his lips firmly on yours as you gasp into his mouth, body tensing up before you melt into his touch. 

It’s a quick kiss, nothing too crazy, but it overwhelms you nonetheless, leaves you gasping for air like you’ve been underwater this whole time and have finally surfaced. When you part, you look up into his eyes only to find that they’ve turned into crescents. He’s grinning down at you like he’s finally gotten it right. 

“You did all of that for me?” You ask. “How did you even know?”

Seokjin looks particularly guilty. “You’re not necessarily… that discreet, Y/N.”

You close your eyes, the heat already flaring in your cheeks. “Oh God, you knew?”

“It was fairly easy to figure out,” Seokjin admits. “But the good news is: I felt the same way. So, no harm done.”

“I’m so embarrassed,” you say, curling into his chest so you don’t have to look him in the eye. 

“You’re incredible, Y/N, you know that?” He asks, pulling you away from him just so he can get a better look at you. He’s standing in front of you, looking at you like this is what he’s been waiting for. Like all this time, he’s been waiting for you. “I’d do it all over again if it meant I could end up with you.”

“You would?” You ask, pulling him in for another kiss. There’s plenty more where those came from, but you’re already feeling greedy. Why wouldn’t you? If life was a movie, then wouldn’t this be the happy ending? 

“In a heartbeat.”

↳ links are broken, but don’t forget to message me with any thoughts or feedback!

↳ check out the post-script drabble here!

[billblok]

The Pony Fandom, and moving on (PLEASE READ!)

Let's start with something obvious:

Out of all the little fandoms and groups I've been a part of, nine-- almost ten years of pastel colored horses was the most amazing ride with all its ups and downs; beautiful artwork, fantastic music, hilarious memes and just a hint of drama; because what is a fandom without a little bit of drama?

I love and loved the pony fandom, and never regretted being a part of it.

However this is where I must go into the point of why I started writing this journal in the first place, and something that might disappoint many of my followers. I feel like it's time for me to move on. For just about nine years I lived and breathed pony; reading and writing fanfics and fan-comics. But much like any other thing that attracts my interest, I think as I've grown older, my tastes have "matured" so to speak. There will always be a place in my heart for ponies, but I'm sure my watchers noticed already that I've somewhat passively quit ponies anyway what with my less frequent posting of ponies in the first place.

Simply put, I've started to crave working on my original content. Of course it's far more difficult to create something out of whole-cloth, and it's harder to gather an audience through something that doesn't have an audience already, but I feel that my work on ponies has inspired me and given me valuable practice for writing and drawing. I want to work my imagination. I want to make something that can't become irrelevant to my interests in five years. I want to create things on my own, that I can call 100% mine. I've already been doing that, and I've found less interest in drawing pastel colored ponies over time, to the point that I'm afraid it's become a chore; an obligation only posed by myself to do something that I'm not sure I'll even feel good about finishing when it's all over.

I just knew things were coming to a head concerning my big pony comic when I was more interested in things that weren't related to ponies at all... in the comic about ponies.

This was a very difficult decision, but it's time to move on. As of today, I'm officially ceasing active work on Friendship Management.

So what does that mean for me? Well I think for the most part when the muse fancies me I'll still draw the candy-colored horses, but by letting go of my pony comic it frees up my time to work on two things which I would encourage you to follow:

The Prospect, which is my new passion project about a physically disabled alien with big dreams of being an appraiser of ancient technology...

and On a Lone world, my one picture per update Twitter series that features hybrid furries on an alien planet.

I hope you my dear followers, in spite of the disappointment, stick around for my original work. And even if you don't; I thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to look at my creations, comment on my work and favorite my things. I got so much out of MLP, and out of you too!

It's been quite a ride; and while I might be done with Ponies for now, I'm certainly not going anywhere any time soon. Thanks Everyone!

--Billblok

[enigmatic-elegance]

Mas’ Must Follow MASterpost

[In no particular order]

People

@risrielthron One of the best. You will feel as if you are talking with your lifelong friend. Sweet, friendly, and generous. A true example of who we should all try to be more like.

@theodorebennas Daddy Beans. Chill dude. Knows he can be a bit of a meme and owns it. Actually extremely smart and has a ton of good sense. Crusade!

@tanzrielle Super chill in the most not chill way. Will talk your ear off about their awesome characters and want to hear all about your own too. Great person to know and bounce ideas off of.

@thebattlesheep @a-sheep-does-art Sweet thing. Loves to meet new people. Does not RP much but when they do they kill it.

@possum Loser. (Seriously such a humorous, sweet, and all around amazing person.)

@wiedaashcroft Really great character, and the person who plays them is extremely laid back and chill.

@the-petalpaw-family They don’t RP as much right now, but their stories and characters are next level. No lie, they take things like plot and character lineage to places you rarely see. Amazing places.

@kat-hawke ICly very interesting and intense character. OOCly a more grounded individual. Blunt, but never cruel.

@darthscharactervault Someone who does not give themselves nearly enough credit for how creative they are with their ideas and characters.

@gwenya Often NSFW but she’s a gem of a person. Amazing, chill, down for whatever. She’s the raunchy friend you never knew you wanted.

@the-real-arcanist-val Smart person, fantastic writer, extremely sensible and rational. All around someone you want to know.

@vaard Never personally interacted with him, but he’s an iconic figure among the community. Everyone should follow. (Does not take commissions but is an amazing artist, too.)

@harvee-sarah-zena One of my closest RP partners. Might not post as much as they SHOULD but if you can catch them their RP is some amazing work. And their characters are all so unique.

@thegreatnyehehe Likely not returning to WoW any time soon, but still one of the best characters ever. To this day, worth reading through their posts.

@kinzorscarstorm Chill dude with a cool character. Have not interacted much IC, but respect them OOC for their char and methods.

@open-world-azeroth Not really a ‘person’ but a great resource for some fantastic RP spots.

@mediocre-bladeleaf Very cool aesthetic, and from what I see of their writings they have some awesome characters.

@draenei-tales Shout out to a fellow active and really cool looking Draenei RPer. All I see from them is extremely interesting.

@leora-strauss Don’t know much about the character but their aesthetic is so amazingly cool.

@serelia-evensong Active and interesting RPer. Will fill your dash up with fun to read posts of all kinds.

@susan-gampre Hoe. But she knows it. And she’s good at it. The character and RPer both are sassy and take no shit, and I love them for it.

@storykeeper-wra Spooky character. But not tired and boring spooky. The sort that’s very interesting. Like a good book. Makes sense they are the storykeeper, because their story is very appealing.

@halforc-mercenary Have always wanted to interact with their character but never much got the chance. Still adore their writings on my dash, and they often impress me with their plots and quality.

@rhysgoodwin Cute char, updates often, fantastic writer.

@priestess-nightfury Elf RP/Aesthetic at some of its very best.

@stonestridernerd They will love you and make you feel like the best person ever just be hurling likes at you and complimenting your work. They are just a gem of a person. So, so sweet.

@theshadowborn Shame I’[ve not interacted with their character much, but they are a clearly talented writer.

@durotan-ofthe-frostwolf Lot of OOC silly stuff, but genuinely a cool person and always a pleasure to see on your dash.

@ranekvilmas Just a very talented writer and all around chipper guy. One of those people who always has something interesting on their blog to read.

@penvenomstarkstar A good head on this one’s shoulders. ICly their character is extremely well written with so, so much depth. Endless things to discover here.

@ravenpriest DAMN awesome aesthetic. Really nails the gothica vibe.

@longveil Such a cool aesthetic. I’d follow for that alone, and there is so much more there too.

@kyuusei-shadowleaf Another blog worth the follow for aesthetic alone. So cool to see across your dash.

@k-sunrael Followed for a long time. Their blog can sometimes be a bit NSFW but the content is quality.

@monster-of-master In the vibe of ‘dark’ aesthetic without being overtly in your face. The sort of subtle horror we all secretly crave. Very much enjoy their content.

@summysparklesprocket Such an amazing, kind, and funny person. And the character is next level because they are a Gnome taken seriously. Love them.

@quai-mason @andrew-mason Extremely talented writer and one of the few who posts so, so frequently. You’ll eagerly await their next post, trust me.

@unabashedrebel ICly they are a very cool character with awesome stories. OOCly they are a smart and conscience driven individual with a good moral sense. More than once they’ve shown they are not afraid to stick up for what matters. Lot of respect.

@safrona-shadowsun Killer character aesthetic, great reblogs, and does not ruin their theme with bullshit. Fantastic follow, this one.

@helryder666 All over the place with their posts, but its never unwelcome or uninteresting. They always seem to know what you wanna see, even if you don’t know.

@thewardancer Some of the best troll aesthetic I’ve seen, honestly.

@brandstonethings Just a big bear of a man. I love him, and you will too. He’s so well written he feels alive.

@archmage--khadgar I hesitate with people who RP lore characters. This one managed to be one of my few exceptions. They actually do a really great job with it.

@forhonorandglory Only followed for a short time, but still worth it in my books. Sharp wit, great character.

@covexalexanderkingsley Don’t know if they still RP as much these days but they remain a very fantastic and creative individual.

@eilitheduskbringer Very talented writers. One of the best I’ve seen. And they host to an amazing community I’ve come to respect.

@thepalewolfhowls Great artist too, but I mainly know them for their awesome character and fantastic sense of story and plot.

Guild/Other

@the-royal-courier A fantastic source of events and stories. While they don’t host many writings of their own, they still reblog community events. Absolutely advise a follow.

@stormwinduniv Been around about as long as my old arse. Very talented group of writers who put on so many community events and intellectually focused debates.

@the-silver-circle A group of extremely talented writers focused entirely on Kaldorei writing and storylines. Very high levels of respect from me.

@moment-in-time-wra Less a ‘guild’ but still a great service for in game photography. They make your events look fantastic! Run by Risri.

@atc-wra A very talented small group of RPers who know how to make stories pop. You just want to be a part of them, or read what happens next.

@deadsunharbor Very fantastic crew who are open to all manner of amazing RP opportunities. They do criminal/dark correctly and with finesse rarely seen.

@oathswornvanguard Lawful good guild done proper. They have stood the test of time not only with their quality but their kindness and openness to the community.

@wraconnect A great source of WoW events and blogs to follow.

@wowrpevents Another fantastic source of WoW events and blogs to follow.

@wracentral ANOTHER fantastic source of WoW events and blogs to follow.

Artists

@whimsicallyart @elaianna Talented, intelligent, observant, and all around a gem of a person. Worth knowing.

@littleliongod One of the best I have worked with. Talented, priced very fair, extremely punctual, very communicative. Can not possibly recommend enough for any commission work.

@artofaokori Worked with them before and would absolutely do so again. Their style is very unique and you’ll recognize it anywhere in a good way.

@vintrove @vinsketchbook Extremely talented. Some next level stuff. Commissioned them twice and both times they blew me away with the end product.

@catbatart @cat-bat Such a shame I’ve only worked with them one time. One day, I must commission them again because they are the sort of artist who will go that extra mile and bring your piece to life.

@ferachidoesart They are Ferachi. They do art. Really well. Great style, super unique, and their commission prices are way more reasonable than you’d expect for their amazing quality.

@auggusst-art @auggusst Really such a kind and talented soul. One of those hidden gems of tumblr. They deserve more notice, so go give it to them!

@blackdogmelancholyooc @blackdogmelancholy Nerd. But actually a really cool dude with a ton of raw talent. They are great to work with.

@anzka Have not posted here in a while, but you should take a peek. Why? Because no one. Draws. Gnomes. Better.

@planktonheretic You like thick ladies? What about buff ones? Then my friend, have I got a treat for you. That treat is Plank. Check out their Twitter too for even more fantastic work!

@kellydidathing Amazing artist. Very busy person, but worth the investment because the art is top notch.

@izzarra Talk about raw talent refined into a craft. This artist is going places, seriously. Amazing stuff.

@thestringking @jane-fitzgerald @ahn-qiraj Extremely talented young lad who I know will go on to kill it in the art industry. Already one of the best out there, no lie.

Self Plug

My blog should be easy to find, right at the top of this post here, or the bottom. If you want to see all my character blogs, please check out RIGHT HERE (under repairs atm so a few of the characters might not work or link improperly) for a complete list. Each character page here contains a link just under their summary that will take you to their individual blog. Check out the ones that interest you!

Also want to plug my own guild, @coldwall-collective, for still being some of the best writers and content creators I’ve had the pleasure of working with. Go check us out!

Not Here?

Don’t be sad! Many reasons could be the cause. Maybe we’ve just not interacted enough. Or maybe I’ve not seen many of your posts. Maybe I overlooked you because I’m silly. Any of these could be a reason. If you don’t see yourself here, it does not mean I don’t appreciate you. I do. You’re a part of what makes this community great and I have all the respect for you.

[edorazzi]

Well, here we are again! Twitter said yes to a review post for a Miraculous magazine that suddenly showed up in my local area. ‘Tis the season after all, and by that I mean someone bought it for me as a joke birthday gift and I was way too happy about that.

I’ve done previous reviews of the Miraculous Christmas calendar, Easter egg set, superhero fashion dolls and action figures, so let’s dive into the unknown world of merchandising yet again!

(As always, if you enjoy my posts, please consider checking out my Twitter page or supporting me on Patreon for lots of bonus content!)

4 FREE GIFTS! PACKED WITH ACTIVITIES! MEET THE KWAMIS! PRANKS & LOLS! CUT-OUT MEMES! FANGIRL ALERT! NAIL ART! 100% OFFICIAL! I’m overwhelmed! It feels like I’m having a seizure just from the packaging!!! 

I should preface this by saying I haven’t bought a magazine like this in years. Possibly ever. I read things like the Beano, Animals & You and the odd Disney Princess zine when I was a kid but I have no idea what to expect from a free-gift-packed kiddie magazine in 2019. If the outside is anything to go by we’re in for a wild ride.

I’m noticing that it says “Miraculous #20″ on the back. Does this mean I’ve missed 19 previous issues? I’m genuinely a little upset by that. My local area is a complete dry zone for Miraculous so I haven’t had the chance to pick these up.

First step: let’s separate everything out and get a look at these freeeee giftssss. Except they aren’t free, because this magazine was like £3.99. This does seem to be the current trend - it’s kinda rare to see any kids’ zines without the excess packaging crammed with ‘free’ stuff. Is it really too expensive to just produce the magazine? Probably, in this economy.

Chat Noir is revealed on the cover! He was on the back of the plastic jacket, but it’s still nice to see the kids as a front-cover duo. Apparently we’re going to learn to draw Pollen, too, which sounds fun. I’m actually liking the look of the gifts as well, but we’ll get into those in a minute.

This hairbrush............. is adorable. Oh my god. It’s pretty cheap and flimsy but it functions the way it’s supposed to, and the Ladybug design has been taken into account in a better way than “it’s red/black, that counts” (lest we forget the UTTER BULLSHIT of the Christmas calendar, and YES I’m still mad about that). I don’t know how well I expect the outer sticker to last, but if it can take a bit of wear and tear this would be an adorable little travel brush. Nicely done, lads!

These nail stickers? Also adorable. They remind me of the kiddie makeup sets I had when I was little, back in the early 00s when plastic stick-on nails and decals were all the rage. Are they still a thing? That’s nice to know.

There are 13 designs (that I can count) - a Queen Bee mask, Chat Noir pawprint cake, macaron, cupcake, heart-print cookie, Ladybug stud, flower, lightning bolt, love heart, Marinette heart, bee, fox tail and star. The majority are directly related to the show and that makes them feel special. No Carapace though? :(

I’ve put a little Marinette heart on my furthest finger. At the time of typing this up (about a day later) it’s still firmly in place. I haven’t really knocked it around, granted, but it’s not flimsy enough to fall off after five minutes either. It’s also really cute to look at. Guess I’m still a decal-loving 2004 girl at heart......

These stickers though!!! Wow! They’re those holographic and slightly-puffy kind and they feel like pretty good quality, and the designs are so cute! I can’t fault these, they’re absolutely adorable. I immediately want to stick them everywhere.

So I’ve stuck them everywhere. I’m especially proud of the light switch pun. My room looks GREAT.

I saved these “mystery stickers” for last because I’m weak for the thrill of mystery bags, and there wasn’t anything on the packaging to indicate what kind of designs to expect. And OH!!!! OH, IT’S MY BOY!!!! Look at him!!!! 

I made jokes with the Christmas calendar about all the Chat Noir items being stolen ahead of time, but that’s definitely NOT the case with this magazine. I have been SPOILED with the presence of my cat son.

These stickers are similar to the sticker sheet (and the Chillin’ Out design is reprinted), but they’re puffier and non-holographic. I’m deeply allured by the “decorate your phone or tablet” suggestion on the packet, but I’m going to see how the previous stickers withstand the wear-and-tear of my laptop lid before adding any more. If I damage these beautiful Adrien stickers I’ll be devastated.

Those are our free gifts! They’re actually very fun and cute, I’m really happy with them! I guess now it’s time to get into the magazine itself...........

I genuinely almost forgot the magazine was the main part of this package. I figured I was done, but we’ve barely even started! Here’s a splash page of the kwami. Kwami with a capital K? Kwamis? I still feel like it should be singular-lower-case-k-kwami. I’ve never been happy about this “miraculouses” business either.

But is that--

It IS!!!! It’s Nino!!! 

I guess this is the new flavour of Miraculous tie-ins. Now they’ve broadened out to a full team we’re seeing a lot more of Adrien alongside the girls, and Nino is the elusive hero who shows up once in a blue moon. At least this time his name isn’t in the title of the gotdam show.......

Anyway, I can see I’m supposed to draw my “fave Kwami”. Better get to it.

Felix just wants a break. Just one break. But not in this magazine.

Speaking of seeing more of Adrien (and, tragically, less of Nino), this is the kind of splash page I want to see! Both kids are here! The banner themed with Marinette’s signature flowers is a nice touch too; that’s associated with her arts ‘n’ crafts in the show already and it makes sense to apply it to the creative portion of this magazine too.

I LOVE the promotion of Chat Noir nails as something the little girls buying this magazine will definitely want to try. I’d expect them to do Marinette vs Ladybug nails, but instead we get a boyish option! Hell yeah!

I’m a little confused by the Queen Bee masks apparently going on the Chat Noir nails though. I guess they’re friends? Is this secret AdriChlo confirmation? Watch out, Marinette, Kagami’s not the one to be worried about.

SURE WOULD BE NICE TO HAVE SOME TURTLE STICKERS FOR AN ALL-BOYS THEME BUT I GUESS NOT HUH

Next up is a short merch catalogue (why would you put the big bold arrow pointing right to the underoos.....). Would those Chat Noir socks come in my size? Asking for me.

Then there’s......... this page. FANGIRL ALERT. God. It’s like the Ladyblog, if only the Ladyblog ever gave a heck about reporting what Chat Noir’s up to.

THE SPELL WAS BROKEN AND THE FANDOM IMPLODED WITH JOY.

I really have to wonder what age range this is meant for. Do kids know what a “fandom” is? Do little girls consider themselves “fangirls”? I guess most kids have enough internet access to figure it out these days (all the hashtags and LOLs and memes speak volumes), but I can’t imagine being young enough to fit the target range of this magazine while also knowing these terms. I dunno.

(Also, the definition of ‘implosion’ is ‘an instance of something collapsing violently inwards’, so I’m not sure that’s the word they’re looking for. Unless the return to the status quo in Dark Cupid and the continuing stagnation of the love square was enough to make people quit in frustration? Probably.)

I’m filling it in, of course. Because I must.

I gave up on the pre-approved ratings system pretty much right away, but I think this is an accurate rating of my LadyNoir opinions. 

I might be kinda cynical about it here, but I am actually pretty fond of how this magazine sells Ladybug and Chat Noir as a couple. The show’s portraying it as very onesided lately, with Chat pining over Ladybug who has absolutely no interest in him (Glaciator was a TERRIBLE episode and I’m still hurting from it), but reading this zine I’d guess they were already dating. It’s cheesy, but in a nice way.

I have to laugh at “the most amazing thing about this super duo is that they always look out for and protect each other” though. Chat’s usually pretty focused on LB, sure, but there are endless instances of LB using Chat as cannon fodder and just generally abandoning him to get mauled by akuma while she carries out her personal private plan to save the day. Maybe we’re just focusing on the better-written episodes, huh?

Moving ahead. I’ve been dreading this page since reading “Plaggs Pranks & LOLs” on the back of the packaging. I feel hatred in my very bones just looking at it.

I like that there’s ONE instance of the term “ladybird” in the joke column. This is a UK-based magazine and that IS the word we tend to use over here - “ladybug” is an Americanism - but it’s like they’re worried kids could have got to the middle of this magazine about a superhero named Ladybug and then not understand the bug jokes. Maybe whoever was writing this page slipped up?

OH NOOOOO. MARINETTE, NOOOOOOOOOO.

THIS IS WHY FELIX GOT RID OF YOU, PLAGG. THESE ARE ADRIEN’S PROBLEMS NOW.

(mmm whatcha saaaaay)

I mean........... YEAH, I guess, but we absolutely did see Plagg destroy Felix with an entire shelf of heavy books. I guess he’s nicer with Adrien. It’s all fun and games until someone has a nervous breakdown in the library.

I do love the concept of Tikki getting glitter-bombed by Plagg through the mail. She just curiously opens up the little letter which got slipped into Marinette’s purse, and-- WOOSH. One entire wall of Mari’s room is glittery except for a little Tikki-shaped silhouette. 

Next up is a two-page comic which is absolutely adorable! Look at those little chibis! The warm and soft colour palette! This is nicer than most of the official Miraculous comic book art I’ve seen, I hope they keep giving this artist work.

Nino’s here too (and he looks great!), and I like the touch of Marinette and Adrien playing as each other’s superhero characters. Adrien even wins the match, though I guess there’s something to be said about Ladybug beating Chat Noir (again)...... 

It does raise the question yet again of where this tie-in merchandise is coming from! They’ve had action figures, a movie, music video features, now an arcade game... Who’s getting the royalties here? Who’s profiting? Is this how Fu can afford to buy all those rare ingredients for the magic potions?

Over the page we have an activity to Design your Secret Lair! Right away I love the Marinette theme of the page, the soft pink and flowers, and the drawing space looking like a page in a binder with marker tabs and everything.

I have to design my secret lair, of course: 

What do you think? I’m very creative. I’ll need an adult to send in the drawing of my hideout but I think I’ve really got a shot at those unicorn headphones.

Now we’re on to puzzles and character pages. I don’t know what ol’ Gabe is doing trying to meet a 13 year old girl in the dead of night without telling anyone, you’d think if he’s got that much free time on his hands he could be spending it with his son.

I don’t know how those points in Ladybug’s power profile are awarded or what they mean, but you can tell this is a fan magazine. Official sources would have put her at a 10.

Standard House of Villains page! Most of these were good episodes but I’m deeply offended Riposte isn’t on here. Maybe her motives weren’t dramatic and cartoonish enough to be up in the ranks with Glaciator and Gorizilla?

“Cat Noir’s dad is also the evil Hawk Moth”, huh? I mean that’s not WRONG, but is it really something to put in his power profile when Adrien doesn’t even know yet??? Feels like we’re kinda jumping the gun on the poor boy. What if he picks up this magazine?

Apparently he’s one point weaker than Ladybug (seriously???), two points faster, equally as agile, one point less skilled and two points less cool. Despite all those lesses he still comes out at an equal 9, which is a relief! These kids are a team, putting either of them below the other would have been a big no.

I did the colouring page too, naturally. Je suis un artiste.

Now we’ve got a page fresh from the Ladyblog, a Miraculous quiz! Not a lot of excitement, but it’s nice to see Alya getting her own section.

I like that the qualifications of “you could be Ladybug herself!” are knowing what city Marinette lives in and what school she goes to. Well done, Mari! You’re doing your best!!!

TEACHER I AM SO HUNGRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

I gotta say, I’m not so sure about decorating donuts with fondant. I’ve never tried it so I could be wrong, but it feels like rolled icing instead of frosting(?) would be too heavy for an entire donut. The texture is totally different.

I mean I guess if you’re going to load your kids up on sugar you might as well go all the way. They’re going to look like they’ve eaten something horrible with all that black fondant, but they’ll have fun. Adrien would love these.

WHERE’S NINO. THIS IS JUST UNFAIR. You’ll have four out of five heroes, then a double of Marinette and Tikki? Maybe this just goes to show how little memorable dialogue Carapace has.

Though if “Spots On!” is Marinette’s dialogue and not Ladybug’s, why are the other transformation phrases attributed to Rena Rouge and Queen Bee instead of Alya and Chloé? Surely they could have picked something better for Marinette to justify having her on this list twice instead of Nino.

The next page brings us one of those flowchart quizzes! And ouch, yet again the absence of the other heroes is obvious. I can understand not including Chloé here since she’s technically not a “friendly” character yet, but no Nino? Alya and Marinette are close friends, but Adrien doesn’t really hang out with them without Nino around. Having the three of them together just seems strange.

I do like the little fashion page! They’re all cute and affordable and easy to find on the high street here. I’d love to see how other issues of this magazine are structured; is there a different fashion spot every time? Styles to channel each individual hero would be adorable.

Moving on to a tutorial for a Ladybug notebook! I would have made this, but I didn’t have the time nor a notebook to stick it to.

Between this and the donuts, it seems weird that these designs are based on, like... an actual beetle, eyes and antennae and all. Shouldn’t it be Ladybug’s symbol? These come across more like “fun animals” arts ‘n’ crafts instead of themed after Miraculous specifically. I think if I made this (or decorated the donuts) I’d miss out the head and match the spot pattern to Ladybug’s symbol. 

The hidden message design is adorable though. I can see this being a craft kids are super proud of.

Another activity page! I didn’t have a go at these but they’re pretty standard. It’s cute that the coded message designs are the same as the stickers and nail decals!

Also, apparently Ladybug’s ‘secret’ is “LB mask + heart + CN mask”, which was (somehow) stolen by Volpina. Is that the secret Hawk Moth was talking about earlier in the magazine? Is he blackmailing Ladybug with revealing she has a crush on Chat Noir? How did Volpina ‘steal’ this secret? Is LadyNoir finally reciprocated???? THIS IS A WHOLE EPISODE IN ITSELF, I NEED ANSWERS--

Next page we have an ad for another girly magazine (Quizzes! LOLs! Celebs! Cringes! Puzzles!). I think I’ll pass, no matter how appealing that giant microphone pen is. 

And a “Miraculous Identity” quiz! Tikki’s apparently super fickle with her wielders, three seasons of relentlessly praising Marinette and now she’s telling us we’re the Chosen Ones. You can’t fool me with those big ol’ eyes.

My inner superhero is Marvellous Fox, by the way. Though yet again I’m noticing we don’t have turtle options...................

And on the back cover... the memes. Oh, sweet lord, the memes. They’re hashtag-SoRelatable! And I can cut them out to keep! Oh boy!!!

Is this what kids do when they have limited internet access? Cut fresh memes out of magazines and carry them around? I need to know.

That’s a very sinister Ladybug at the bottom of the page though. What’s-- What’s she going to do to me if I don’t cut out and keep these memes. Ladybug what are you going to do if I d--

Well that brings us to the end of the magazine! And yet again I’m surprised by how much time it takes to just put a bunch of photos together and write about them.

This is a neat little magazine all in all! The ‘free gifts’ are pretty nice, there’s a fair amount of content and the whole thing is pretty cute for young fans of the show. I could see myself buying this again - if it ever shows up on shelves, Miraculous is so scarce around here that I fully expect it to disappear again after this one issue - just for the free junk, but it would be interesting to see how they’d structure different issues too!

I notice we never did get that promised tutorial on how to draw Pollen; the one advertised on the cover. Was the “draw your favourite Kwami” activity supposed to cover that? I’m not sure that really counts.

If you got this far, thanks for joining me on this Miraculous journey! We’ll meet again whenever I get another piece of weird ML merch to cover. Bien joué!

[musicprincess655]

Like a dam crumbling away, once Itsuki gives Mei a piece of his life, it all starts coming out. After the first few days of stumbling around each other, unsure how to fit together, the few bits Itsuki gives Mei must mesh with all the pieces Mei has given Itsuki for months in his emails.

They start to click again.

It’s little things at first, Itsuki telling Mei of his plans for their days off. Usually, all he plans to do is run by the grocery store and try to meal prep, or maybe play a video game until his brain goes numb and his muscles stop aching, but sometimes, it’s a plan for something a little more fun, and sometimes, if Mei’s lucky, he even gets to tag along.

At first it’s only with the rest of the team, a round of drinks for everyone at an izakaya after a particularly rough week of practice, but Mei thrills in Itsuki sitting next to him, leaning in to be heard over the noise. And if they’re still there when almost everyone else has filtered out, talking about the dog video Mei showed Itsuki on Twitter, there’s no one there to judge them.

Then Itsuki gives Mei his LINE contact information, and Mei uses it to take shameless advantage of the new ability to send Itsuki stupid memes. A lot of them are from the English feeds Mei still follows, which means Itsuki hasn’t seen most of them, and Mei can still get a laugh out of him for older ones. On a bus trip to a practice match, they can cut out the middle man of LINE and Mei can plop down next to Itsuki for the whole ride, showing him anything and everything on his Twitter feed to distract Itsuki from the restlessness that lives in his bones, keeping him from ever really enjoying a long trip.

Mei wonders idly how a road trip would go over with Itsuki, if that restlessness could be appropriately distracted by a careful combination of new scenery and engaging conversation, if Itsuki could settle the way he can’t stop moving for long enough to get somewhere new. Mei grew an appreciation for the art of the road trip while in America, and he wonders and wishes at the possibility of sharing it with Itsuki. He used to be restless, too, unable to drive for more than an hour without stopping to run the stiffness out of his muscles, but he grew past it, and the autumn before the Olympics, he took himself on a long road trip across the northernmost part of America, around lakes and across prairies and through mountains, just because he could, just to see what was there. The freedom was exhilarating.

Then, on their next free day, Mei offers to buy Itsuki dinner once again, and this time, when they’re asked to leave for closing time, Itsuki follows Mei past the train station and all the way home. Mei doesn’t question it once, afraid that if he points it out, Itsuki will change his mind. All he does is offer Itsuki a glass of cold tea and let the conversation continue until Itsuki decides it’s time to go home.

While they’re still not ready to talk about what happened between them back in high school, Itsuki starts to slowly share pieces of what his life has been like since. He went to college, played there for four years, and has a degree to show for his efforts. It’s just a basic sociology degree, nothing special, but it’s more than Mei has, and considering how much more emphasis Itsuki always put on education, it doesn’t surprise Mei that Itsuki went for a degree even while he kept pursuing baseball. Even if Mei refused to see university as an option, he recognizes that having a backup plan is the smarter choice.

Itsuki is both more serious and more relaxed than he was as a teenager. He has more focus and more confidence in himself, and that seems to have given him the stability to relax, to release that drive he used to have to always perform. Even when Itsuki used to argue with Mei, when he blustered and shouted and made terrible puns, it was always bravado, and Mei could recognize it because some of it was a trick he used too. But now, Itsuki stands securely in his own skin, and he doesn’t bother to put on a show.

He doesn’t have to.

“Hey, are you busy Monday?” Itsuki asks.

He’s sprawled on Mei’s floor, head resting against the couch as he sits up. He put some anime he’s been watching on the TV, but neither of them are really watching, just using it as background noise as they both scroll through their phones, exhausted after a particularly rough week of practice matches. Their schedule has gone weird, and Monday happens to be a day off for them. Mei had been planning on sleeping.

“No,” Mei says. “Did you have something in mind?”

“Inashiro is gearing up for the summer,” Itsuki says. “I usually like to make an appearance. The players love seeing pro alumni, and Coach appreciates the help.”

Mei expects to have mixed feelings about going back to that school. After all, he has a lot of bad memories mixed up in the good. To even his own surprise, there’s no pain in his desire to go back. There’s a bitter sweetness, a nostalgia that Mei can already tell will fill his chest with something like happiness and something like loss, but not with pain. That’s something everyone gets when they return to treasured memories.

“When do you want to leave?” Mei asks. Itsuki taps at his phone, looking at train times, and holds a few up for Mei’s inspection until they find one they can agree on.

When Mei shows up at the station, it’s with an extra coffee for Itsuki, the order with just a bit of cream and a bit more sugar remembered from the last time they swung through a café. Itsuki accepts the cup gratefully, taking a swig.

“You know how I take my coffee?” he asks, eyebrows raised in surprise.

“We’ve gotten coffee together before,” Mei shrugs.

“But you remembered?”

“Of course.” Even if they’ve settled into a true friendship over the course of a few months, Mei still doesn’t know nearly as much about Itsuki as he’d like. He holds tightly to the pieces he’s allowed, waiting patiently for Itsuki to give him more.

Itsuki lapses into silence, probably allowing the coffee to wake his system up as they board the train. It doesn’t take long for Itsuki to wake enough that his leg starts bouncing at being stuck on a train, but it’s not a long ride, and Mei allows the outlet of energy without a trace of annoyance. The gentle shifting sound fades into the background noise of the train, just another color in the tapestry of sound around them, and Mei hardly notices it.

As soon as Mei gets out of the station, he’s assaulted with memories. This is where he spent three of the best years of his life, this is where he fought with his teammates, his friends, this is where he started on a path that has led him across the world and back.

The nostalgia is here. And it hurts, but only in that nearly comforting way, like poking a bruise earned from hard, rewarding work. Mei doesn’t want to run from it, only chase it further.

He and Itsuki don’t pick up a conversation as they walk. Mei is too wrapped up in memories, and while Itsuki has admitted to coming back more often, he might not be any more immune than Mei is.

Maybe nine years is enough time that Mei should have forgotten his way, but he hasn’t. He knows the way to the field, and it feels like coming home.

“Look who finally decided to show their faces!” The feeling of nostalgia grows in Mei’s chest. Carlos is there, waving at them. Yamaoka and Fukui both look up, a smile growing on Fukui’s face when he seems them both.

“It’s good to see you two,” he says. “Glad we managed to steal you back from the Americans, Mei-san.”

“Good to be back,” Mei says. “Nice to see you too, Fuku-chan.”

“Tadano-senpai.” Mei turns to see Akamatsu approaching Itsuki. Akamatsu is even taller now, and even more eye-catching. “It’s been a while.”

“Nice to see you, Shinji,” Itsuki says, easy smile falling into place.

“And Narumiya-san.” If Mei had been unsure whether Akamatsu liked him in high school, he doesn’t have to wonder now. The way Akamatsu’s voice goes cold is enough to tell for sure.

“Hello,” Mei says. He knows exactly why Akamatsu doesn’t like him now. His preference for Itsuki was never a secret.

“I don’t remember organizing a team reunion.” A familiar voice cuts off their various conversations.

Coach Kunitomo looks a little older than the last time Mei saw him, but no less stern. Mei once joked that Kunitomo would be coaching baseball until he couldn’t get to the field anymore, and he doesn’t think he was entirely off, but Kunitomo looks years from forced retirement.

“Hello, Coach,” Mei says. He already feels seventeen again, already feels the need to drag his feet and be childish again, because he’s back in a place where it’s safe to do so.

“If you’re all visiting, you can all make yourselves useful,” Kunitomo says. “We’re splitting into groups by position to work. We have a new team to build, and almost no time to do it. Find someone you can help, and give them something that will help us win this summer.”

“Yes Coach!” they all chorus.

Mei walks next to Yamaoka, catching up, and lets Itsuki talk with Akamatsu alone. He should feel jealous, but he really doesn’t. Itsuki is allowed to have other friends, and Mei gets the feeling Akamatsu hates him now because he was the one that had to pick up the pieces of Itsuki that Mei left behind.

Okay, so he might be a little jealous. But he doesn’t have much right to feel that way, and anyway, that feeling is his problem to deal with, not Itsuki’s, not when Itsuki’s done nothing wrong, so Mei largely tries to ignore him.

There are plenty of pitchers and catchers to draw Mei’s attention when they get to the bullpen. Kunitomo might still believe in the idea of an absolute ace, but only an idiot would put all their hopes in one pitcher. Mei might have the stamina to pitch a full game, might have had it back in high school too, but that was only possible with the safety net of another pitcher to either start and save his energy or to take over if he went too far. When they had no one to sub in for him, they lost.

Mei settles himself in to watch a first year pitcher trying out a changeup. It’s a little sloppy, a little telegraphed. If a batter was up, they’d see it coming. But the fastball is good, if rough, and Mei stops him after a few tries to offer advice for the changeup. It only works if it looks like a fastball right up until it isn’t, and it hasn’t been Mei’s signature pitch for years for nothing. He doesn’t immediately fix everything, but the first year looks grateful and a little awestruck, and maybe there is a slight improvement.

It won’t be an overnight success, but the kid has potential. Inashiro is still rebuilding, though a lot of that work will have already been done. The third years of last year may have just graduated for good, but they’ll have retired after the summer, and the first years and second years coming behind them already had to build a new team. Now, all that’s left is to fit the first years into the spots they left behind when they moved up.

They only do position work until lunch, before they move on to team drills, sprints and resistance training and all manner of hellish workouts. Being a pro is no walk in the park, but Mei still remembers being fifteen and convinced his legs were going to fall off because his body just wasn’t ready for the long days of hard work. Those days had seemed so long, but Mei kept pushing forward for his dream.

The alumni stand by the sideline, watching the drills with a fondness of remembered pain. It had hurt, fuck had it hurt, but it had made them strong, and turned them into the players they are today.

“Really brings you back, huh?” Mei sighs. Itsuki doesn’t answer. “Sometimes I miss it. Being an adult is fun, but even when they’re working hard, they’re so carefree.”

“Mei-san.” Itsuki’s voice is a warning, but a gentle one.

“Can I say one thing?” Mei asks. He waits until Itsuki nods before he continues. “I don’t regret any of it. Any of the time I spent here. Any of the time I spent with you. The only thing I regret is how it ended.”

There’s a lot more that he could say, should say, but he thinks that’s all he’ll push Itsuki today.

The team runs until the sun starts to go down, and then they disperse for dinner. Mei watches them go. They’ll have to be back in an hour for night practice under the lights, and Mei doesn’t think he’ll stick around to watch that.

The early spring sunlight falls across the field in uneven stripes through the fence, and for the first time, Mei’s nostalgia feels painful. It’s not the death throes of summer, but he still can’t help but remember all the ways he’s screwed up.

“It’s good to have you back in Japan.” Mei whips his head around. He hadn’t noticed Kunitomo joining him. “You were always meant to play Japanese baseball.”

“I think I did pretty well for myself in America,” Mei says.

“You’ll do better here,” Kunitomo says. “It’s what you really trained for. It’s where you belong.”

“Maybe so,” Mei says. He won’t admit that he thinks Kunitomo is right. American baseball is incredible, and Mei learned so much, but he worked for years as a teenager so he could stand at the top of Japan.

“And it’s good to see you and Itsuki in a battery again,” Kunitomo continues. There’s an inflection in his voice that has Mei looking at him twice. Something just a little too serious for baseball…

“You knew about us,” Mei realizes. “Back then, you knew.”

“What you do in your private life isn’t my business,” Kunitomo says. “I just coach baseball. I only care about what you do on the field.”

“And I didn’t ruin things on the field?” Mei asks, partially to be a brat, but also because he knows it’s a question he can’t ask Itsuki.

“Itsuki isn’t nearly as fragile as you think he is,” Kunitomo says. “He had a rough time. He kept moving. He was the player the team needed him to be. You can see his resilience yourself.”

“He’s something else,” Mei agrees. The alumni are starting to leave, Itsuki swept up with them, but he lags to the back of the group, turning to look at Mei, waiting.

“Some unsolicited advice, not that you’ve ever listened to me before,” Kunitomo says, following his gaze. “Second chances aren’t nearly so common as people would have you believe. If you have one, don’t waste it.”

“I won’t,” Mei says. He already knows what it is to ruin things with Itsuki, and he genuinely doesn’t think he’d survive doing it a second time.

“He’s waiting for you,” Kunitomo says. “Stop wasting your time here already. Your place is somewhere else.”

“Someday you’ll have to stop telling me what to do, old man,” Mei complains.

“When you learn how to do things for yourself.”

Mei rolls his eyes, but he can’t help the smile. He used to strain under the weight of Kunitomo’s words, but there are very few things Kunitomo ever said to him that he wasn’t right about.

“Ready to go?” Mei asks Itsuki.

“What were you and Coach talking about?” Itsuki asks as they start to walk.

“Oh, just reminiscing,” Mei says. “I think I’m getting too old.”

Itsuki snorts a laugh, and they walk the rest of the way to the train in companionable silence. Mei walks Itsuki all the way back to his apartment, catching a taxi back to his own.

It feels, just a little bit, like forgiveness.

[teamcalamity]

Okay, newbie. Let's move!

A new competitive season has started, Opus VIII is about to launch and Team Calamity has a blog... BOOYA!!

If you want to see more variety than a dialogue with Squall, topics that hit harder than Sephiroth into the back of a flower girl and tips more useful than Vaan's point in the story, then this is the blog for you.

In this first article we thought it might be best to introduce you to some of the team who will be regular staples on here. Hopefully this brief insight will help put some of their upcoming content into perspective.

First up is our resident judge - Mitch.

How did you first get into FFTCG?

It was a dark time in my life; I had just finished one of my favourite TV series for the 15th time and worst of all I had a piece of apple skin stuck between my teeth. There was no light at the end of the tunnel.

I received a call from the UK Champion (but not world) Peter Sherratt, he spoke to me like a true champion with grace and honour “you alright dickhead?” he told me that he had just gone to a new comic book shop, the infamous Calamity Comics. Peter knew I always had a creepy girlfriend affection for Final Fantasy and our recent card game was now just an OTK shit show. So we thought let’s give it a go.

Pulled Bahamut legend, fire seems strong; I bet this card will be good for a long time, 10000 damage AND removed. Peter got Foil Light Cloud. This card is also future proof, if there’s one thing I know about card games, is that removal is key and this has it in spades…

From that day I was hooked, scratching at my arms for the next fix of spoilers, tapping the vein, breathing FFTCG and dealing with my new addiction.

What style of play do you favour?

I like to win, but more importantly I like to be a smug prick and to do this, I love my combat tricks. Nothing lifts the table up on my side more than doing something your opponent cannot see coming. I also love removal and drawing cards so if someone could explain to me how to play earth that would be great. Thank you.

Biggest hype of Opus 8?

While all the cards aren’t out yet, I am especially excited for Lunafreya, the stuff that she can enable; it means your opponent will not want to kill off some of your best forwards. That said this will all change depending on the new Garnet, if there is one.

Peter - the 2018 UK Champion (not world)

How did you first get into FFTCG?

I played yu gi oh at the time and I saw FF being sold at Calamity Comics in Hatfield.

Eric the store owner said they were doing a tournament on Friday night's (an attempt to remove the magic the gathering crowd) .

I had played FF7 and I've never liked mtg so sounded like a win win for me. All that was left was to convince mitchell to go with me to hold my hand through it all.

Didn't take long to convince him and off we went to go purchase some cardboard crack. First pack I opened....foil Cloud L!! Wooo

First deck I played was fire ice. We didn't have a clue what we were doing but got it after a couple of goes.

Mitch went home that night to learn the rulings. It became an obsession of his for a while. He would wake up in the middle of the night about illegal plays the night before.

What was even better was we convinced our mates Joseph and Azlan to join also. Fucking great game. Needs more cleavage though.

What style of play do you favour?

I really like all 3 of the main tropes. They all have a special place in my heart because of the decks ive played with.

Mono wind has generally been a control deck. Midrange ice is tempo. Discard ice is quite aggressive.

I'm gunna vote for tempo. After a short amount of set up I do love using dull freeze or discard mechanics for those cheap easy wins. It's like eating 20 mcnuggets. You know it's bad but it feels so good.

Biggest hype for Opus 8?

Sherlotta, Fina, Alexander, Lasswell & Time Mage.

The one I will talk about is Time Mage though because I honestly think it's perfect for what ice needs right now.

Wind earth is an awful matchup where we can't choose Zidane, get fucked by big daddy etc etc. So we're investing 5cp for a huge tempo swing. Huge. I'm a big big fan. It's a multicard too so extra copies may be played.

Mono ice will return with a vengeance!!!

Rich - Team Calamity's synergy specialist.

How did you first get into FFTCG?

I have zero history of playing card games, so my interest in FFTCG was purely as someone who had played nearly every game released under the title, who just fancied trying it out. I bought the starter decks on release date to gauge if it was something that I was going to stick with, and pretty soon I was part of the Opus I stock disaster, hunting the shelves of every Toys'r'Us in driving distance trying to find packs (I'm not proud to admit that). Two and a half years, and many £'s later, here I am writing my first blog post after years of being a lurker on the fan page.

What style of play do you favour?

I have always run decks that I find genuinely fun to build, play and tweak. Sometimes that means I run stuff closer to the meta, and sometimes I run more obscure decks. The vast majority of decks that I run revolve around combo cards such as Yuri/Chelinka/Alhanalem or Seifer/Raijin/Fujin. Nothing turns me on more than the text "If you control card name "X"".

Biggest hype for Opus 8?

Just give me 3 Lasswell in foil. I love that the card has been made with a specific purpose in mind (Fire/Ice deck), and all 3 abilities feed into what those elements want to achieve. I'm not quite sure how best to make Lasswell work, but I'm sure someone much smarter than I am will find a way to make him a beast!

Tom - Blog editor, specialist subject the 'Tombo Combo'

How did you first get into FFTCG?

I got into the game by chance around Opus 4. I'd never played a TCG before but out browsing for a cheap PS4 game in the January sales I spotted Cloud and Squall booster packs in the bargain bin at a local game shop. A Final Fantasy card game, what even is that?! Went home, googled it, rushed back the next day, bought the lot and ordered all the starter sets. I still remember opening my first packs and getting so excited by how many shinys I was getting, like one in each pack, I must be so lucky! Next step a venture to Calamity as the only local place to play. I didn't win a game for about 2 months but was having the best time!

What style of play do you favour?

I like to do things differently so for me I'm all about the meme life and unashamedly so. I like to shy away from the meta (to my own detriment) as I get much more enjoyment from doing things myself and if someone tells me something is shit, it just makes me want to play it more. That said I still believe you can meme and be successful and hope to go someway to proving that this competitive season (here's to 0-X at every major tournament this year)

Biggest hype for Opus 8?

Not seen the full list yet but I'm buzzing for the new FF7 starter deck. I'll probably look to take the Earth parts into an Earth/Fire setup maybe utilising the new 15 characters if space. For me a big part of enjoying the game is using characters I actually know of and love so this should fit nicely. I've also got some ideas for a Fire/Water rush style deck and a new Opus launch wouldn't be complete without me trying to make FF8 work (where are you Cid Kramer!).

I hope this is the set where things really open up and we don't see the same few decklists dominating the circuit.

Team Calamity's OP runs every Friday from 7pm at Calamity Comics in Hatfield (North of London). You can also follow us on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook (teamcalamityfftcg) or contact us on email (teamcalamityfftcg@gmail.com). Alternatively just write anything on the FFTCG Fans Facebook page, Team Calamity's James Stevenson will no doubt comment on it.

[ennergetics]

FILLED REQUEST: down with love, a fuckboi! seongwu au

(image credit)

pairing: ong seongwu x reader genre: fluff, angst wordcount: 3023 summary: Ong Seongwu is the campus’s resident type-A fuckboy. when you, an unknown writer, attempt to steal his spotlight, he tries to get revenge by making you fall in love with him. warnings: provocative situations, but nothing too steamy (inspired by the movie of the same name! same verse as the sungwoon prince au, but with a different reader + earlier time period. cross-posted on ao3.)

one | two

Each term, Ong Seongwu beats three of his own personal records: the number of features editors who’ve quit at the campus publication he heads; the amount of attention its social media has garnered under his editorship; and the size of his contacts list, the names of interviewees mingling with those of all the people he’s slept with.

Everybody on campus knows Ong Seongwu, and he wants to keep it that way. A consummate professional, he entered university knowing exactly what he wanted and how he was going to get there. After all, one doesn’t become an excellent reporter and social media influencer overnight; Seongwu built his brand through hard work, god-given good looks, and a knack for making people laugh. He flirts with all of them and fucks them without batting an eyelash, and none of them can say they didn’t know what they signed up for.

Yes, it’s easy to fall for Seongwu, with a story like his: a talented boy on scholarship with big dreams, eager to find someone to share his life with. The best lies are half-truths, after all. Seongwu does work hard, but he doesn’t think there’s a place in his life for love. Still, that doesn’t mean he can’t have fun, and he’s broken the many hearts of people who’ve wanted more.

PRODUCE, the publication he helped found as a freshman, is his current project and only love. He can’t help it if all the features editors up to this point have fallen hopelessly in love with him, tried to change him, and quit their jobs after failing. They were then banned from ever returning to PD101, the fond nickname for the publication’s office on campus. It’s been Seongwu’s home for his entire stay at college, and no simple flings would be able to drive him out of there.

Seongwu is at his usual spot in PD101, alternating between scrolling through PRODUCE’s social media accounts and editing the article queued for publishing within the week, when someone clears their throat.

“Boss, I’ve got an interesting piece you might want to look at.” The current features editor is a deceptively quiet boy with a knack for finding the best stories. Park Woojin quite easily turned down Seongwu’s early attempts at banter, and Seongwu’s glad to find an editor who might actually last till the end of the year and beyond. Woojin is clever enough that Seongwu might bring him onto the team when he expands PRODUCE beyond the campus, but that’s not important right now. If Woojin says a story’s got promise, Seongwu’s willing to bet on it.

He takes the tablet from Woojin and skims the article someone sent in to their submissions email. The sender, one L/N Y/N, doesn’t even have a picture up on their profile, which is a red flag for Seongwu. He gives it a cursory read-through, his expression souring as he gets further. It’s well-written, sure, but the article hinges on a tip for those lost in love: take control of their romantic lives ‘by not fucking scrubs more than once.’

He vaguely remembers what the word means: it’s a gender-neutral word for “fuckboy” that was popular in the ‘90s. Seongwu snorts. “Of course we’re not publishing this. It’s barely worth the minute I gave it my attention.” He doesn’t really think that, but PRODUCE is his magazine and he’s not going to publish anything so contrary to his own lifestyle. There’s something about this piece that feels like a personal attack, though Seongwu can’t quite place his finger on it. Before texting his next hook-up for the week, he gives Woojin a look; Woojin shrugs; and that’s the end of that.

Two days later, everyone on campus is talking about an explosive blog post promoted through the school’s online billboard system, titled “DOWN WITH LOVE.” Seongwu checks out the link and finds a more polished version of what had been sent in, complete with properly sourced memes and gifs. That annoys Seongwu enough, but now none of his regular fuck buddies will pick up his calls or reply to his texts—that is, except for the three who sent him a link to the blog post.

Seongwu looks you up and discovers you’re quite attractive, your photos tastefully shot and social media clean. He’s scrolling through your twitter when he sees a question about whom you think ‘the worst scrubs on campus’ are.  There’s only one name there: his. “Never met him, but everybody tells me he’s an ass,” your answer says.

That’s the moment he decides he’s going to get his revenge. Ong Seongwu doesn’t lose, and it should be easy enough to make you fall in love with a self-proclaimed fuckboy like himself. You’ve never met him—in fact, you refuse to meet with him or any of the PRODUCE staffers—and his carefully curated social media means he can control his image perfectly. Seongwu puts on glasses, parts his hair in the middle, and borrows from his friend Jisung’s wardrobe, making himself practically unrecognizable, then sets himself up as a new student in your project management class.

Adopting a Busan accent that’s a passable approximation of Woojin’s way of speaking, Seongwu strikes up conversation with you. “Hey,” he says softly, “have you got a copy of the syllabus? I just shifted into this class.”

“I do,” you say, your tone oddly hopeful. “You don’t know who I am?” You look surprised that he’s talking to you. He imagines you must not be popular; infamous, yes, but you probably didn’t make many friends publishing and promoting your post like that. Your campus is filled with easily identified scrubs who probably didn’t take too kindly to having their beds suddenly empty.

Seongwu cocks his head in a way he knows makes hearts flutter, blinking at you. “No, should I?”

“No, no, not at all!” you say, a grin lighting up your face. “Here, I’ve got it on my phone.” You hand him your phone, and Seongwu makes sure your fingers touch his. He exaggerates his reaction, looking down with a sheepish smile, but he feels his cheeks turn warm. Seongwu shakes his head. It’s been a while, he tells himself, and that’s all it is.

The class starts and he has no chance to return your phone. You’re engrossed in the professor’s explanation—something about the various management frameworks, and Seongwu realizes he’s in over his head here as a communications major—but you glance at him occasionally, worrying your lower lip with your teeth.

Within ten minutes, the class is over, the first day a simple explanation of the syllabus. Seongwu doesn’t need to graduate with Latin honours, but he wants to. This class is beginning to look like an obstacle, and he curses how foolhardy he was with this plot. It spoke volumes about how much you’d shaken up his routine. Still, there was a way for him to kill two birds with one stone.

“Um, thank you for lending me your phone,” he says, scratching at the back of his head. “It’d be great if we could be study buddies?” Seongwu says, letting his hair fall over his forehead just so. “I’m Hong Sungwoon, but my friends call me Ong. They say I’m too much of an old man,” he says, chuckling. This way, you’ll use a name he’ll recognize, but won’t know it’s him.

You’re smiling up at him, then he sees a spark in your eyes. Bullseye. “Maybe I should get your number, Ong-sshi,” you say. “It wouldn’t be hard to study with a cute face like yours beside me.”

Seongwu covers his mouth with his hand. “Gosh,” he says, “I’ve never had anyone be this forward with me before, especially not someone as attractive as you.” Your eyes soften, and Seongwu admits it’s a look that makes him feel warm inside. He almost feels bad about how he’s going to break your heart.

“Then we’ll both be lucky,” you say, handing him your phone. Your fingers linger at his arm, tracing a light pattern on his bicep as Seongwu inputs his number. He ignores the shiver up his spine at your lazy smile, keeping the act up and trembling slightly when he hands your phone back.

Your first study session is in the following week, right before a quantitative quiz Seongwu has no idea how to answer. Hong Sungwoon is a man afraid of crowds, so the two of you study at the roof of the old biology building, a spot you’ve apparently been keeping to yourself since you got to university. It’s conveniently near PD101, so everything works out for Seongwu.

He’s sitting with his side flushed against yours, watching you push up your glasses every few moments while explaining the necessary diagrams to him. When he feels you shiver at the chill, he places an arm around you as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “You shouldn’t be cold,” he says, wide-eyed.

You grin up at him, snuggling closer and leaning your head on his shoulder. The hand with the papers you’re scribbling on falls onto his upper thigh, and when you show how the items flow from one department to another, he feels the pressure of your finger against his skin.

The rest of the session continues like this, with Seongwu finding excuses for innocent touches here and there, with you escalating each one. Your breathing becomes shallow, a cute flush beginning to show on your skin. Seongwu resists the urge to pull you into a kiss, internally reminding himself of the part he has to play. It’s when you’re done explaining the whole lesson, practically sitting in his lap, when you turn to him and place your hand on his chest.

You draw your face close to his and whisper against his mouth. “Ong,” you say, looking into his eyes, “how would you feel about lessons of a different kind?” And Seongwu springs away as if burned, sputtering while trying to hide his laugh at how corny your line had been.

“I couldn’t possibly do that, Y/N-sshi!” he says. “I mean, I’ve never really done that kind of thing before, and I want to save myself for someone special, you know?” But before you can say anything else, he adds, “I would certainly be honoured to take you out on a date, though. You seem swell, and I’d love to get to know you better.”

Seongwu sees you considering it, and for a moment he’s worried you won’t take the bait. “I mean,” he says, pressing his hand into the small of your back, as if he doesn’t feel you shuddering under his touch, “it’s hard for me to control myself when you’re so pretty, but you could be...”His fingers curl up, scratching lightly against your shirt in a way he knows you’ll feel. “…you could be my first.”

He’s got you there, and right after a grueling, fifty-point quiz, he takes you out to a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant. The auntie running the kitchen waves at him when he ushers you in, flashing both of you a big smile. “I’m not the most well-off,” he says, milking your sympathy. As you look around with wide eyes, though, he feels his throat itch with apprehension. In a way, this is an honest side of himself, one no one, especially not his hook-ups, ever get to see.

“I love it,” you say solemnly. He orders for the both of you, and you dig into the home-cooked meals with gusto. Seongwu makes sure to feed you once or twice, ignoring how your tongue slips out to lick the rich sauces off your lips. The whole time, you both talk about how you ended up at the university, Seongwu giving you a sanitized version of his history, omitting how cutthroat he’d been throughout the years while building his virtual empire. He finds out that you’re just as driven as he is, with a mind skilled at data visualization and a minor in publication management.

You insist on splitting the bill, but the auntie surprises you both by telling you the meal is free. “This young man is a regular customer, and I’m happy to see him finally out on a date,” she says, and Seongwu thanks the stars for having her back up the alibi he’s given.

He walks you home, and at your doorstep, you give him a kiss that tastes like auntie’s best tteokbokki, and Seongwu deepens the kiss for a moment before remembering the long-term plan. You’re breathing hard when he pulls away, your pupils dilated and your grip on his neck tight. “Come in,” you say breathily, your hand moving to stroke at his jaw.

“I-I’m not sure that’s a great idea,” Seongwu says, though every bone in his body—as well as all the blood that rushed south at the feel of your hips against his—disagrees. “I’ll see you in class next week.” He kisses you on the cheek before extracting himself from your grasp.

Numerous dates and study sessions go by, with your hands wandering his body more and more desperately and his famous self-control slowly but surely being eroded by your touch. One night he gives in and you make out on your couch, his grip around your waist tight as you grind against each other. He waits till you come and leaves with a terrible case of blue balls, insisting on being a gentleman all the while. Never mind how dirty his groans are when he jacks off later in the shower, your name on his lips. As he leans his head against the shower stall, his heavy pants fogging up the glass, Seongwu thinks something has to be done.

You’re at one of the smaller study halls, one rarely frequented by students, when Seongwu decides it’s time to enact the final phase of his plan. He ignores the uneasy feeling at the back of his mind, willing himself not to feel anything when you thread your fingers between his. For once, the two of you aren’t caught up studying, and he pulls you to a rarely visited section of the hall, where you crowd him against the bookshelf and pull his lips to your own.

Your lips are puffy and his hair’s a mess when he pulls away, stilling the gentle grind of your hips with one steady hand. “I’m not sure,” he says, putting all the confusion and turmoil he’s feeling into his next words. “I think—I think you’re the one for me, but I don’t know how you feel.”

Seongwu’s set up a hidden camera on the top shelf, ready to record your confession for posting at prime-time. Everything’s in place for him to succeed, but he can’t deny the apprehension he feels. He wants you to confess because it means he wins, that you’re a hypocrite who doesn’t walk your talk. But part of him wants you to confess because he wants to know how you’ve felt about these last three months you’ve spent together.

You sigh once. Seongwu holds his breath. “I’m in love with you. I wrote an article decrying love and its associated pains, but it all feels like a lifetime ago. You’ve made me so happy these past three months. It was impossible for me not to fall for you.” And Seongwu smiles, having won both your heart and the competition you hadn’t even known about.

“That is, if I hadn’t fallen for you already, Ong Seongwu.”

You stand on your tiptoes and reach for the camera, switching it off. Seongwu’s jaw hangs open, and while he’s staring at you wordlessly, you begin to speak. “A year ago, an impressionable junior applied for the features editor opening at PRODUCE magazine. I needed some experience for minor credits, and yours was one of the most-talked-about and better-run among the accessible publications. I was starstruck by you then, so smooth and suave and skilled. You knew precisely what you wanted and how to get it.

“I told myself that I wouldn’t sleep with you, even as your flirting got more intense. It’s easy enough to fall in lust with you, Seongwu, but the sides you showed during the magazine’s times of trouble, the rare moments you bared your heart—in the end, I fell hard. You took me to bed during the Christmas party and never talked to me again.”

Seongwu’s brows furrow. “So you wanted revenge by getting me to date you?”

“No, you silly boy,” you say, reaching out to touch Seongwu’s face. “I just wanted you to like me. I knew it’d be irresistible to you, the idea of making someone crack, to the point that you’d let down your cool exterior and be the you no one else gets to see.”

He’s floored. There it is, that feeling again, of being bested by someone else—the same someone, no less—but it’s overshadowed by the realization that everything you’re saying is true. Maybe he hasn’t fallen in love with you just yet, but he’s certainly getting there. Ironically enough, words aren’t always easy for him, and he hasn’t verbalized the meaning behind his enthusiasm as he checks for your messages in the morning; the energy he feels after laughing in class with you; the tenderness of your interlinked arms as he walks you home.

“I do like you,” he says, “more than I knew. More than I should. But we can be happy now, can’t we? I’ll release this cover story, we’ll go on dates for real, I’ll ask you to go steady, and we’ll live a good life, or whatever it is always comes at the end of romantic comedies.”

You look troubled for the first time, and Seongwu feels the seed of worry grow. “I can’t. So many people here on campus are better off because of me. No more awful ghosting, no more one-night stands that they expected more from, and no more silly attachments.” You shrug before pulling him close. “I’ll miss you.”

Taking the camera with you, you smile sadly, giving Seongwu one last chaste kiss. “I guess I’m a down-with-love kid, after all.”

[meme-aesthetics]

what memes had to do to us: breakdown for the meme-illiterate

What is a meme?

We talk about them all the time, but does anyone actually know how to define a meme? The most common form of meme is the image macro (pictures that get passed around with edited text/captions on them). But what about reaction gifs, planking/dabbing, Photoshop memes, Twitter hashtags, etc.? The image macro is only one kind of meme, though it’s the most archetypal kind of meme there is. How would one define “meme” in a way that encompasses all of these?

Time to dive into meme theory.

I’ll be basing this first part on a paper called “The Anonymity of a Murmur: Internet (and Other) Memes” by Simon J. Evnine. According to Evnine, a meme is a set of norms (Evnine 308). Or, more specifically:

Memeₒₙₜ: A meme is an abstract artefact made out of norms.

Meme𝒸ₒₙ: M is a meme if and only if M is made, as part of memographic practice, out of norms for producing things as parts of that memographic practice.  (Evnine 315)

Where memeₒₙₜ = meme (ontological) and meme𝒸ₒₙ = meme (conceptual).

The ontological is just a more general definition answering what kind of category a meme falls under, while the conceptual specifies the exact thing within that category. For example: What is a teenager? Teenagerₒₙₜ = A person. Teenager𝒸ₒₙ = A person from the ages of 13-19 (Evnine 304).

Now...Unless you’ve read the paper, chances are that means next to nothing to you. Let’s break it down, starting with the ontological definition.

By "artefact", Evnine is referring to the result of someone imposing a concept onto some sort of matter in an intentional act of creation (Evnine 314). Basically, if you take matter and have a specific concept of what you want to make out of it, then go and intentionally create that thing out of that matter, you have an artefact. The meme is an “abstract” artefect because the "matter" it is made of is a set of norms—aka, it is made out of something that is not real.

How is a meme made out of “norms”? Well, take for example the distracted boyfriend meme, one example of the image macro. For the meme-illiterate, an example meme:

(Source x)

The “norms” of the distracted boyfriend meme is to use this picture, place text over the three figures, and have the relationship between the 3 labelled figures be that the boyfriend is distracted by/appears to prefer the girl in red over the girl in blue, who is presumably the girlfriend.

Now for the conceptual definition.

Meme𝒸ₒₙ: M is a meme if and only if M is made, as part of memographic practice, out of norms for producing things as parts of that memographic practice. 

“Memographic practice” is kind of like the "meta-level" activity around a meme (Evnine 305). It is the process of sharing it, recreating it, riffing upon it, transforming it, etc.

Here are some examples of the distracted boyfriend meme that participate in memographic practice, which I found just by searching “distracted boyfriend meme” on Tumblr:

(Source x)

(Source x)

(Source x)

So basically, a meme is something that someone intentionally makes by imposing the concept of a "meme" onto a set of norms that were already pre-defined by memographic practice for the purpose of continuing memographic practice. Continuing the tradition, so to speak. 

What about the first instance of a meme? When/how does a meme actually become a meme? Evnine has an answer for that, too. The first instance of a meme, i.e. the first time someone used the distracted boyfriend picture before there was memographic practice surrounding it to establish it as a meme, is part of a more general instance of meme that the Evnine calls MEME (Evnine 313).

MEME is just a meme𝒸𝒸 that results from the overall general existence of memographic practice, where meme𝒸𝒸 = meme common contents (a specific kind of meme, like the distracted boyfriend meme), and memeᵢ = one instance of a meme𝒸𝒸 (the example meme that I showed above).

So MEME covers initial instances of different kinds of meme𝒸𝒸 by being an overall meme𝒸𝒸 where its norms is the existence of memographic practice in general.

A diagram I made to illustrate this concept:

Additionally, a memeᵢ need not comply with all the norms in meme𝒸𝒸 (Evnine 317). For example, other photos of the same people in the original distracted boyfriend picture can be used, or a completely different picture could be substituted in if the relationship and positioning of the figures in that picture are recognizably similar to that of the original picture. Sometimes it isn’t text that is put on the figures, but the heads of characters from someone’s favorite show.

Some more examples:

(Source x)

(Source x)

(Source x)

The point is, not all of the norms must be followed—just enough for it to be recognizably part of that meme𝒸𝒸 tradition. Thus, the norms within meme𝒸𝒸 may change/transform over time (Evnine 318).

So that’s what a meme is. Or at least, one conception of what a meme could be. What about memes in the wild? How do they function, what is their appeal?

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How memes work

What’s unique about memes, then, isn’t that they’re participatory, or that they remix visuals and stock figures. What makes a meme a meme instead of a cartoon, a joke, or a fad is...a meme is an atom of internet culture...Creating, sharing, or laughing at a meme is staking a claim to being an insider: I am a member of internet culture it says, and if you don’t get this, then you aren’t (McCulloch, location 3668) 

The above quote is from Gretchen McCulloch’s Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language (which, by the way, I highly recommend.) 

The in-jokes, the drawing of boundaries between those who “get it” and those who don’t, the group-bonding—that, is essentially, the heart of memes.

According to McCulloch, the internet is a “third place”:

The first place is home, the second place is work, but people also need a third place to socialize that’s neither home nor work, like a coffeeshop (McCulloch, location 3161)

This makes the internet a major site for linguistic change and innovation. It’s a place where people who may not have had pre-existing strong ties come together and socialize or exchange ideas. This aspect of the internet is also what allows the meme to thrive: ideas that catch move fast, and they spread further than they would have if they were otherwise confined in tightly-knit groups.

However, despite the fact that the internet functions on a network of (mainly) loose connections (I’m not saying that internet friends aren’t real friends—I’m simply referring to the fact that you probably follow more people and have more mutuals than you have internet friends), memes gain popularity because they create a sense of community.

Popular posts tended to strike a balance between somewhat obscure but not too cryptic—in-jokes and references that appealed strongly to a distinct subset of people (McCulloch, location 3292)

But what makes a popular post a meme? After all, it’s not as though any post that reaches a certain number of likes, reblogs, replies, retweets, upvotes, etc. automatically becomes a meme. Well, according to McCulloch:

A meme in the internet sense isn’t just something popular, a video or image or phrase that goes viral. It’s something that’s remade and recombined, spreading as an atom of internet culture” (McCulloch, location 3431)

In this sense, McCulloch’s idea of a meme aligns with Evnine’s. What makes a meme a meme is the existence of memographic practice surrounding the meme.

What was unique about the memes that took off was not the in-jokes, but the scale: in a world where in-jokes happen all the time and distribution costs are zero, a few of them can get really big because their in-groups are actually very large, like “people who agree that this particular cat looks very grumpy,” or “people who saw the previous very popular in-joke.” (McCulloch, location 3537)

“People who saw the previous very popular in-joke” is key. A lot of memes have a kind of absurd, incomprehensible humor to them. Why are they funny? No one knows. You can talk about dada-ism (or e-dada, like this Tumblr post suggests) and the state of the world but really, the humor behind the most popular memes are self-referential. They’re funny only because you get the reference, even if the reference itself doesn’t make sense. 

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Aesthetique™

Now that we have a working definition for what memes are and how they work, I would like to talk about what memes do. The affective qualities of the meme. Or, the aesthetic.

To explicate this, I will be using, of course, loss.jpg and Lucky Luciano (aka “you know I had to do it to em” guy). 

Since this is written for the meme-illiterate, I'll be using copious examples of memographic practice in an attempt to illustrate the way memes overall affect us.

Let’s start with loss.jpg.

Loss.jpg starts with this comic, drawn by Ctrl+Alt+Del:

(Source x)

According to the KnowYourMeme page, the meme started out as “mockery” of the strip, generating countless parodies across the web. Though, at this point, I’d argue that loss has become so ubiquitous that even if it started out as mockery, it’s looped right back around to a kind of awe. 

(Source x)

Most notable, however, is the fact that “norms” that make up loss have expanded and transformed to include minimalist portrayals of the comic.

(Source: the KnowYourMeme page)

Some examples:

(Source x)

(Source x)

(Source x)

Lucky Luciano started out on Twitter, in a post that is no longer available to the public. Of course, the internet being what it is, it has been preserved for our viewing pleasure:

(Source: the KnowYourMeme page)

KnowYourMeme classifies this meme as type “Character, Photoshop”. The common norms of using this meme is to take a picture that someone else posted, and then repost it while hiding Lucky Luciano somewhere in the photo, “Where’s Waldo?” style. The meme became so popular that several blogs dedicated to documenting and furthering its memographic practice were created (wherethefuckishe​, where-the-fuck-is-he​ and locate-lucky-luciano​ are the ones I’m aware of). 

(Source x)

(Source x)

(Source x)

(Source x)

(Source x)

And my personal favorite:

(Source x)

And just for fun, here’s a combo meme:

(Source x)

For those who don’t get that last one, the icon was edited to have both Lucky Luciano and loss.jpg:

The replies also included a Rickroll, which KnowYourMeme classifies as a “bait-and-switch” meme.

You might have noticed a lot of mixed reactions in the screenshots I included. “I am tired and I will never be free”, “fuck you op” (op stands for original poster in this context), or this fantastic reaction image provided in the last one:

What feeling do these reactions represent? What emotion is being evoked?

I would argue that the answer to these questions is “stuplimity”, a term coined by Sianne Ngai in her article “Stuplimity: Shock and Boredom in Twentieth-Century Aesthetics”. As the title suggests, stuplimity is described as a mixture of shock and boredom.

The sudden excitation of “shock,” and the desensitization we associate with “boredom,” though diametrically opposed and seemingly mutually exclusive, are both responses that confront us with the limitations of our capacity for responding in general. Both affects are thus frequently invoked in responses to radical art usually dismissed as unsophisticated... (Ngai)

Not all memes are created equal. Or perhaps, though they may start out somewhat equal, through memographic practice, some rise above others. I’d argue this is the case with loss.jpg and Lucky Luciano, which have become so well-known and common on the internet as to be veritable cultural phenomenona. Memes, being abstract artefacts created out of norms, are necessarily a group effort. Norms can’t be established by an individual. Memographic practice is a communal project. The first few times we see a meme, the first few times we “get” a meme, we may be delighted. But eventually, over time, many people become tired of the meme. Bored. And yet, they cannot revoke their own knowledge of the “joke”, and each time they come across a new iteration they are both astonished that there are versions they have not yet seen and bored by the same joke being used over and over. “I am tired and I will never be free” is the common sentiment, and I would label this sentiment as “stuplime”.

...a rethinking of what it means to be aesthetically overpowered: a new way of theorizing the negatively affective relationship to stupefying objects previously designated by the older aesthetic notion of the sublime. One way of calling attention to the affinity between exhaustion and the astonishment particular to the sublime, invoking the latter while detaching it from its previous romantic affiliations, is to refer to the aesthetic experience I am talking about—one in which astonishment is paradoxically united with boredom as the stuplime... (Ngai)

But this isn’t the result of a single instance of a meme. It’s the collective effect of all memographic practice surrounding a meme𝒸𝒸 that constitutes stuplimity. 

Stuplimity is thus the final destination, the final form if you will, of the meme.

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In conclusion,

(Source x)

Get it?

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References

I’ve collected all the Tumblr memes in a tag here (though not in any particular order) and all non-Tumblr references are collected in a works cited page here (link will only work in browser).

[rhv]

Junkertown Notes

listen i’ve been rambling on my twitter all night about junkertown so here’s a compilation of some of the map/lore/trivia/easter egg detail stuff i discovered by watching way too many streams of the map’s gameplay and rewatching the shorts over and over again lmao. there’s a lot of things people haven’t noticed yet or have noticed but couldn’t make the aussie connection so i’m here to shed some light for y’all

(and here are my notes on actual gameplay things instead of just map lore/detail stuff)

"the queen's decree: 1. NO omnics 2. pay your share 3. finders keepers 4. settle your own scores 5. troublemakers will be EXILED" 

"WARNING: NO FUEL FOR 375KM" sign often appears around the map. though there is also giant red “petrol” tanks around the map but who knows about the actual rations hmmm

“DANGER KEEP OUT” around the map but most importantly it’s a sign that appears on the dunny i’m laughing that must be some explosive shit they got there (dunny = outhouse)

recycled rain water tanks has “RECYCLED” crossed out and written on it is “DRINKING WATER” so looks like they rely on rain water as source of water rather than possibly radiation poisoned rivers/lakes/etc

if you missed it there’s a pit of dead omnics by the throne/at the last checkpoint. also hilariously enough they placed a healthpack in that pit. 

SIGNS SIGNS SIGNS so many street signs scattered about and also written signs like arrows pointint to corridors, signs for stairs, exits, also a “WATCH YOUR STEP” sign on ledges lmao

posters for junkrat and roadhog scattered around junkertown that read  "do NOT admit [drawing of roadhog and junkrat] shoot ON SIGHT"

poster for “wrecking ball champion” and another poster i can’t quite make out ‘LOD--’ (dashes stand for letters i can’t make out but the first two letters might be partially covered hard to tell atm)

scrapyard sign reveals location of junkertown to be near perth

pub name is “wolf wood’s” possible game of throne reference? also is a spawn point

the tattoo parlour has an image of roadhog’s stomach tattoo “wild hog power” hanging on the wall with a label “SOLD” on it. junkrat’s shoulder tattoo is also on another wall of the parlour

kelvin 506 poster referencing the novel fahrenheit 451 aka dystopian anti-intellecual totalitarian future

restaurant sign says “take-out” when really it should be “takeaway” literally unplayable how could u do this to us blizzard lmao (jk, it’s just a small error but for aussies it’s noticable ok and here’s a hilarious thread about it)

you can Sit On Roadhog’s Bike this is important ok 

roadhog’s bed has a breathing apparatus installed so it looks like our boy hoggie has some serious breathing issues confirmed 

junkrat’s work desk is actually quite small and neat 

colour association is pretty big in overwatch yeah and it looks like the queen’s weapons next to the thrown has yellow medic vial attached or something similar, so it could suggest that she’s part medic. thinking about it it’d make sense given that in an irradiated area then medicinal knowledge and skills would be highly valued in the society

betting counters in the scrapyard for fights. art on the wall depicting two fighters ‘elvin sog vs bludger’ (edit: deciphered, it says elvin sog. not sure what it’s referring to though)

there’s a blackboard in junkrat and roadhog’s warehouse with their plan written on it “THE PLAN: 1. amass [--------] 2. load the trolley 3. acquire disguises 4. put on disguises 5. take trolley to gate 6. [scribble] sneak inside 7. light fuse 8. profit”  point 1 is going to be about amassing wealth/treasure/gold or something but i can’t make out the Exact Words right now. but lol. old ‘profit’ meme

what the heck the tattoo parlour is named “SWAGMAN’S NEEDLE POINT” LmAO. okay on a serious note swagman = labourer who moved around from farm to farm with their belongings in a bedroll aka a ‘swag’ (wiki here about swagman)

the wreckyard is named “BRUCE’S WRECKYARD” first of all bruce is the MOST cliched aussie name we can get mate lmaooo. but also, possible jaw’s reference to ‘junkyard bruce’ the only surviving prop shark from jaws movie after surviving in a junkyard for 25 years!

i haven’t slept since idk how long so i might have forgotten a few things and left them out but yeah enjoy! i’ll edit in things if i remember any more so feel free to check back again for updates

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Required Reading

A total solar eclipse as seen on Monday, August 21, 2017 above Madras, Oregon. The total solar eclipse swept across the continental United States from Lincoln Beach, Oregon to Charleston, South Carolina, while a partial solar eclipse was visible across the entire North American continent along with parts of South America, Africa, and Europe. (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani, via NASA’s Flickr)

A witness to the Charlottesville terrorist attack explains how he ended up at the center of various conspiracy theories and “fake news”:

Desperate to lay blame on anyone besides the alt-right, they seized on these facts to suggest a counter-narrative to the attack, claiming there was no way that someone with my background just happened to be right there to take the video. Even ignoring the fact that someone with my background—raised in Virginia, UVA graduate, lives in Charlottesville, worked to resolve ethnic conflicts overseas, politically progressive—is exactly the kind of person you’d expect to find at a protest against Nazis, their theories were absurd and illogical. They wrote that I was a CIA operative, funded by (choose your own adventure) George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, the IMF/World Bank, and/or a global Jewish mafia to orchestrate the Charlottesville attack in order to turn the general public against the alt-right. I had staged the attack and then worked with MSNBC and other outlets controlled by the left to spread propaganda. They claimed my ultimate goal was to start a race war that would undermine and then overthrow Donald Trump on behalf of the “Deep State.” (I’m generalizing here as the theories are widely variant and logically inconsistent, and I’m only aware of the small percentage I could be bothered to read.)

Satirists can’t keep up with Trump, but they’re trying. Here a bunch discuss various magazine covers they created post-Charlottesville.

The Working Family Party had a great response to Louise Linton’s (Steven Munchin’s wife’s) tone deaf Instagram post this week:

Louise Linton, wife of foreclosure bankster @stevenmnuchin1 tagged brands on her Instagram. We tagged how she bought them. http://pic.twitter.com/57PTHkzc7k

— WorkingFamiliesParty (@WorkingFamilies) August 22, 2017

ProPublica reports on how major tech companies are helping far-right websites monetize their hate:

But ProPublica’s findings indicate that some tech companies with anti-hate policies may have failed to establish the monitoring processes needed to weed out hate sites. PayPal, the payment processor, has a policy against working with sites that use its service for “the promotion of hate, violence, [or] racial intolerance.” Yet it was by far the top tech provider to the hate sites with donation links on 23 sites, or about one-third of those surveyed by ProPublica. In response to ProPublica’s inquiries, PayPal spokesman Justin Higgs said in a statement that the company “strives to conscientiously assess activity and review accounts reported to us.”

A far-right group is trying to smear antifa groups with a fake meme campaign. BBC summaries Bellingcat’s findings:

The online campaign is using fake Antifa (an umbrella term for anti-fascist protestors) Twitter accounts to claim anti-fascists promote physically abusing women who support US President Donald Trump or white supremacy.

Researcher Eliot Higgins of website Bellingcat found evidence that the campaign is being orchestrated on internet messageboard 4Chan by far-right sympathisers.

Guatemalan artisans are going after the fake sellers on Etsy and elsewhere, and with some success:

Using bots to scan for keywords and specific types of images, Dillon locates products on Etsy, Google and Shopify that seem suspect and then reaches out to individual sellers to ask what percentage of profits are passed back to the artisans, what their transparency policies are and more. Sellers who can’t prove that they have legitimate relationships with Guatemalan artisans are then reported to their hosting sites to be removed. So far, this process has led to the identification of over 64,000 products on Etsy alone that infringe on artisan copyrights, and communication with Etsy’s legal team has led Dillon to believe the company will be cooperative with Ethical Fashion Guatemala’s requests for infringing product removal. Similar conversations have taken place with teams at Google and Shopify.

David Batty takes a look at the accusations of anti-semitism against Larissa Sansour’s new film project showing at the Barbican:

In a letter to Sandeep Dwesar, the chief operating and financial officer of the Barbican, Merron wrote: “While the Barbican synopsis casts the film as a sci-fi feature about fictitious technologically advanced aliens who land in an area to implant a ‘false history’, I understand that the film is clearly filmed in Israel and that the dialogue is in Arabic and purports to show the ‘aliens’ seeding the land with porcelain in an effort to create the ‘false’ impression that they have a historical connection to it.

Requesting its removal from the exhibition, Merron said: “It is therefore not much of a stretch to suggest that the film is a means by which to deny the historical Jewish connection to Israel and an exercise in delegitimisation. Accusing Jews of falsifying our connection to Israel smacks of antisemitism and is of grave concern.”

In reply, Dwesar said: “The short film has been programmed for its poetical vision before anything else. … Having spoken to the curator and the artists, the intention is that the symbolic visual language in the film speaks of history and tradition, yet it cannot necessarily be placed in any distinct or quantifiable time period.”

Wolf Warrior 2 is the second biggest grossing film in Chinese film history but there’s a darker side to this pro-military propaganda flick. Writing for RobertEbert.com, Simon Adams breaks it down:

This is the second highest-earning film in all of Chinese history, and its characters’ sense of patriotism is built on the back of racist assumptions that would, in a European or American narrative, be rightfully criticized for being part of an ugly “white savior” power fantasy. In time, “Wolf Warrior 2” might seem benignly kitschy, though its core ideas about how only the Chinese military can save a nameless African country from bloodthirsty native rebels and amoral European mercenaries, will always be gross.

… Look at how the Africans celebrate their newfound savior by behaving like racist fantasies of uncivilized mindless savages: they dance around an open bonfire while pounding on hand-drums. Look at Tundu, Leng’s portly African “godson” sidekick who sells bootleg porn and eats a lot. Heck, look at Tundu’s mom, an overweight woman who breaks bottles and body-slams African rebels to protect her son. Tundu’s mom’s heroism might be a sign of her being a secret bad-ass, but her violent outbursts are played for laughs. She’s a punchline, not a supporting character. She has no more depth than the African rebels who shoot up Tundu’s fellow victims.

And there’s this distressing piece of news: Chinese Film Critic Feared Fired After Damning Review of ‘Wolf Warrior II’

A group wants to fix our mistaken assumptions about bubonic plague images and they’re doing something about it:

Between about 1347 and 1353, the Black Death wiped out an estimated 50 percent of the European population. It was horrendous. “People were terrified,” says Jones.

You would think, Jones says, “that if this was such a major catastrophe, there must be drawings of it. But there aren’t.”

The web’s most toxic trolls may live in Vermont (while Iowa and Nevada come in neck and neck in second place):

And … This Website Will Mail Your Ashes To The GOP If Trumpcare Kills You. Really.

Required Reading is published every Sunday morning ET, and is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.

The post Required Reading appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[nothingman]

Lots of people have been sharing mashups of neo-Nazi Richard Spencer getting punched in the face and, as Natasha Lennard wrote in The Nation, you can thank Black Bloc for the original source content. (My favorite right now is set to “The Boys are Back in Town.” ) Black Bloc is a tactic that has a unique relationship to attention and anonymity. Individuals mask up to remain anonymous but the collective group is meant to draw and direct attention. It is, in this way, not unlike Reddit and so it should be no surprise that black bloc is so compatible with virality. The tactic, however, was invented pre-internet and so it is worth looking at how radicals are weathering (and strategically utilizing) this relationship to digital networks and mass media.

That person who punched a Nazi may be facing up to 10 years in prison on felony riot charges if they were one of the 200 people arrested that day. Even if they escape state prosecution, white supremacists are crowdsourcing a bounty for information on the anonymous Black Bloc participant. More than a funny meme, what happened on inauguration day is a political act that is still playing out. How this event and similar ones are covered in the media has tangible consequences.

One common criticism of the Black Bloc is that white people are overly-represented in the bloc which points toward a dynamic where privileged folks are making an otherwise safe environment, dangerous. Proponents of Black Bloc tactics turn that argument on its head by saying, as Lennard does in her piece:

Not everyone can participate in a black bloc. Those with a vulnerable immigration status, or arrest records, or good reasons to fear police repression because of the color of their skin, often don’t participate in activities where the risk of arrest is high. Friday’s bloc was by no means all white, but it was predominantly white. If bearers of white privilege can do one thing, it is put ourselves on the line and take risks where others can’t.

Black Blocs draw the attention and resources of the police away from other parts of a demonstration and have even been known to “unarrest” people who have been kettled. They also, as the video of Richard Spencer attests, will violently engage people who pose a danger to others.

All of this was true before the internet though, and what has changed is the degree to which particular moments can be captured in media and precision-guided into specific audience demographics. Whereas the Black Bloc tactics deployed in years past were subject only to the framing of mass media gatekeepers, today we have access to a wider range of media producers. It is perhaps only because of individuals’ ability to record and distribute what happened on #J20 that a wider discussion of the Black Bloc can take place at all. How the Black Bloc shows up on our screens may be just as important as what the Black Bloc does in the streets.

New technologies, however, do not automatically change the common sense around political tactics. I won’t draw actual quotes from specific people but a cursory reading of the comments on Lennard’s article and in my own social media feeds indicates that Black Bloc is largely seen as a delegitimizing force. By smashing windows, openly confronting the police, and punching Richard Spencer the media narrative will decenter the message of the protestors and instead “turn violent.” That is, the cameras will seek out anything resembling a riot and largely ignore law-abiding citizens exercising their first amendment rights. When the media produces their piece on what happened that day the protestors in a permitted march get lumped in with the broken Starbucks windows and the word “incivility” gets thrown around.

Protest tactics in one form or another are all about attention and awareness. When protests are violent or destructive it is because another form of violence has been sanctioned or left unseen for a long time. That is why riots, as the Martin Luther King Jr. quote goes, “are the language of the unheard.” The decision by protestors to set a trash can (or limo) on fire is at least partially informed by the desire to direct attention. It is through empathy—the assumption that people would commit these acts because something truly bad is happening—that this tactic works. If media makers and their audiences focus only on property destruction that is a failure of empathy, not tactics. It is ironic that media Twitter loves to describe bad things as a dumpster fire only to fight for the ability to photograph actual trash fires during protests.

https://twitter.com/cwarzel/status/822537665828495360

To put this in Stuart Hall’s terms, the idea that property destruction is never a legitimate form of protest, or that the police should never be met with resistance is part of our dominant cultural order. Protestors, according to the dominant American culture, are the ones that decide to make protests violent and police simply react when laws (and windows) are broken. This culture has taken years to cultivate but that does not mean it is immutable. Through careful work activists and media makers can popularize an alternative interpretation.

Hall argues that media making and consumption is a process of encoding and decoding. Media are encoded by their producers and decoded by audiences. Interpretations of news events are created by power elites and are broadcast by professional media producers. “When the viewer,” writes Hall in his essay Encoding/Decoding, “decodes the message in terms of the reference code in which it has been encoded, we might say that the viewer is operating inside the dominant code.” Put another way, when you don’t question how the news frames an issue, you are perpetuating the hegemonic discourse that benefits power elites in a systematic way.

Questioning or interpreting media in a way that runs counter to elites’ interests is what Hall calls an oppositional code.  When reading media against the encoders intended message, the decoder must have some “alternative framework of reference.” Hall suggests by way of example that when people hear that some policy is in the “national interest” they should assume that to mean it is in the “class interest” of the elite.

What would be the oppositional code—the alternative framework of reference—for Black Bloc coverage look like? We can start by inverting many of the value connotations within the dominant code. The oppositional code should flip present common sense on its head.

It is the police’s decision, not protestors’, to make arrests. Many news outlets were quick to draw contrasts between the inauguration Day actions and the Women’s March the next day. While 200 people were arrested in the former, there were no arrests in DC, LA, and many other cities during the latter. There are countless examples, from Standing Rock to Ferguson, of peaceful protestors being violently arrested. Or, as Zeba Blay in The Huffington Post put it: “Let’s be real. A large group of mostly white women wearing knit pink hats is simply not going to be policed in same way a large group of people of color would be.” The Black Bloc was far less destructive and violent as past Super Bowl “revelers” but faced far more arrests and harsher charges.

What gets called a riot matters: The double standard of what gets called a riot and who is deserving of police violence is also a function of race and class. One could even go so far as to say that riots have been unfairly maligned. Regardless of whether riots eventually lose their negative connotation that word is used today as a means of dismissing legitimate dissent.

Assuming violent and destructive protestors have no reason to do so is the result of a profound lack of empathy. The present hegemonic discourse assumes that riots and demonstrations are collective tantrums at worst, and tragically wasted energy at best. An oppositional code interprets property destruction and violent acts as a sign of deep injustices having been ignored. This decoding scheme posits that humans do not choose violence lightly and so something profoundly wrong has taken place. Something that must be rectified and, if possible, reconciled.

Categorically denouncing the black block normalizes Trump. If open white supremacists are taking up key leadership positions in the White House, if David Duke feels like his community won a national election, then there is a much larger and more organized form of violence taking place here that must be opposed.

These are just four small steps toward what needs to be a comprehensive, totalizing, worldview that opposes our present dominant discourse. It is not (only) up to those that participate in black bloc tactics to normalize and legitimize their behavior. That is up to the people who cover and write about what happens at political events. Digital networks and media making technologies mean that a far wider range of people and perspectives can frame the discourse.

The very fact that a Nazi getting punched has gone viral is a signal that oppositional media practices are already forming and that more mainstream media outlets will look different juxtaposed to Richard Spencer getting punched to the beat of X Gon’ Give It To Ya. They will look different precisely because that viral video will breed more essays like Lennard’s, and essays like Lennard’s are what will propagate oppositional codes.

David is on Twitter.

Image is a still from this video.

via The Society Pages