#she changed and cut her hair. became more confident. and i loved her still. she even talked to me bc she wasnt scared anymore

[sar3nka]

Ladies the feelings of longing got to me. Enjoy tags. Or don't. Spare yourself the cringe?

[lani-heart]

|| series masterlist || next // previously

parings -> riki nishimura x reader genre -> non-idol au, school au, hyrbid au warnings -> n/a word count -> 2.4k

abstract -> he's perfect how he is... but can maybe change for her.

y/n’s perspective

“Niki, we always do this” I whined as he locked himself in the bathroom. I needed to get him ready for tonight’s party. If I didn’t have to go I wouldn’t… but with my family pushing me into choosing a major in business, they're making me befriend other kids who are from wealthy families. 

“Please… I don’t want to go alone” I begged but he didn’t respond. It was running late and the driver was gonna be here soon… so I might have to go alone today. 

I gave up trying to convince him and I went to do the final touches. Grabbing a jacket, fixing my makeup, and grabbing everything I needed. 

When I left my room, I couldn’t help but smile. 

“You’re gonna go with me?” I asked and he nodded. “I can’t let you go on your own” he muttered and I chuckled. “Besides, look at how forgetful you are,” he said as he pulled my hair roller off my bangs. “Oh,” I said genuinely forgetting as he laughed at me. 

“Do you–” “Yes, I have my tail ring on. I’m ready, now let's go before your dad starts calling”

Riki Nishimura was a stray hybrid I met when I was a kid. We were on a vacation trip to Japan when I saw him. I offered him some food I had on me and he took it from me to eat it like he was starved. 

My parents were already wanting to get me a hybrid so I begged them to keep him. In which they reluctantly agreed. However, when we found out he wasn’t a normal black cat hybrid they agreed. 

He was a panther hybrid and has been with me for years. We grew up together… However, my parents never liked how rowdy he was. Even now they tell me to get another hybrid, one that could join me in dinners, parties, and one who is overall more well-behaved. 

I wasn’t gonna let them replace him. He was my best friend, my number one confidant. Besides… who needs a fancy and well-behaved hybrid? Niki was way more fun!

niki’s perspective

It was the same old party they threw with the same kids as their rich human parents and new collectibles. They liked to collect new hybrids where they’d show them off and then throw them away… but not y/n. 

Without her, I probably would still be mistaken for an overgrown cat hybrid on the street. It doesn’t mean I liked being gawked at and set a price on what they’d trade her for me. Of course, she’d never let them... I’ve seen how annoyed and angry she gets and it made me happy she cared so much. 

I cared for her too… She was clumsy and an idiot so she needed someone to take care of her. So I'm here… at a stupid party filled with spoiled rich kids. 

Not to say she isn't spoiled… she is. However, I never questioned that she loved me. She always makes that clear with everything she does for me. 

“Oh! You’re y/n right?” I heard and I saw a girl behind us with what smelled like a bird hybrid. “Mmhm… have we met before?” she asked why I didn’t think so… I would’ve recognized her and her hybrid. “My name–”

I didn’t care what she had to say… I just didn’t like how her hybrid kept on staring at me with those eyes of his. What was his problem?

I was cut off from my thoughts when suddenly the topic of discussion became me… 

“He’s really pretty and exotic too! I just haven’t heard good things about him, you know?” she said and I had to refrain from growling at her. Who was she to talk right in front of my face about me? And to y/n?

“Jay here is well-behaved! He’s from America you know–” Is that supposed to make him impressive? Congrats bird you’re a pet! “–it's just a shame you know. I wanted a bunny or maybe a cat hybrid” she pouted and I could see his disappointed expression. 

“Oh, Niki is really sweet but he’s solitary–” “You should invest in a social hybrid you know?” she cut her off to say. Rude… why would she need another hybrid when she has me?

“I like the way he is, he’s been with me since we were kids so there's no way I could ever replace him like that,” she said and I felt proud. 

“I heard about how much you care for him. I guess rumors were true” she said and I knew she was amongst those who talked about why she couldn’t get a nicer and social hybrid who smiles and dotes on her. I do dote on her… and I’m only nice to her. Everyone else was pushing it. 

“What is he if I can ask?” she said and y/n only sighed while looking up at me. “He’s a puma hybrid from Japan,” she answered. “Woah! I heard puma hybrids were rare! I thought he was just a cat… makes sense then for how tall he is.” she said as she got closer to me. 

“Oh please don’t do that. You’ll make him uncomfortable.” y/n said as I went behind her. 

“You should take him to the training you know. It's for the hybrids who need manners… they are opening classes in your university for hybrids'' she said… she stalked y/n to know what university she was in? She needs a life. 

“Oh… I know of them. I think he is just fine the way he is” y/n said and she bowed. “If you’ll excuse us,” she said and we walked away from the pair. “She was a bitch” y/n muttered and I laughed.

“Calm down, you have an act to uphold,” I said and she sighed. “y/n?” I said and she looked at me with her eyes filled with determination to answer to give me anything I asked for. “Why didn’t you tell me your uni is having hybrid classes?” I asked and she sighed. 

“They're mainly about etiquette. She said how to take care of your owner… how to behave in a social setting, etc” and I nodded. 

“I want to go,” I said and her eyes widened. “But you're perfect–” “No, I’m not… I caused you a lot of trouble. I heard your dad get mad again this morning. He didn’t want me here because of last time” I said and she shook her head. 

“Yah! Don’t do that!” she scolded and I smiled softly. 

“Please? You said you would give me anything I asked for. I want to be a better hybrid for you” 

“I can’t believe I'm agreeing to this,” she said and I smiled. “Thank you for letting me do this,” I said and she sighed. “I hate that the class requires collars though. I would’ve rather you had the tail ring instead” she complained and I chuckled.

“You’ll do great in your midterm, okay? Don’t worry about me” I said as I kissed her cheek. “After we’ll go for some Japanese food,” she said and I grinned. “Takoyaki!” I yelled and she chuckled. “I’ve been craving some curry udon,” she said and I nodded. 

“I’ll do my best for you,” I said and she smiled. “You already are. Don’t change, okay?” she asked and I nodded. I just wanted to improve for her… 

When I entered I was immediately overwhelmed with the many scents of hybrids. I ignored the stares of the familiar scents and went down into the big lecture room. 

I sat down in the middle of the third to first row, not expecting others to approach me. “Ah! I’m not late!” I heard as I saw a Golden

A Retriever hybrid suddenly entered… he didn’t have a collar nor the scent of a domesticated hybrid. He grinned at me and I suddenly regretted staring… “I’m Jake, and you are?” he said as he approached me and sat next to me.

I heard the laughs around us, probably of me socializing with another hybrid. “Riki,” I said and he nodded. “I think your collar is cool!” he said and I chuckled. “Of course it is, I chose it,” I said and he looked confused. 

“Your owner must be kind,” he said with a wagging tail and I chuckled. “Hey, isn’t that miss l/n’s hybrid?” I suddenly heard a bunch of whispers and I sighed and slouched down to my chair. 

“Oh? Do they know you?” he asked and I scoffed. “Don’t get it mixed up, they know OF me, they don’t know me” I said and he nods 

“They seem to know your owner,” he said and I scoffed. “They don’t know her…” I muttered. “Is she nice?” he asked and I laughed. 

“She’s perfect” 

y/n's perspective

“I thought you were going home after?” I heard and I saw Wonyoung with Seonghwa. I nod, “I do, I just need to pick up Niki, he’s taking etiquette classes,” I said and they both froze. “Your dad is making him take classes?” Wonyoung said and I chuckled. 

“No, he wanted them for whatever reason. I tried to convince him otherwise but he insisted” I said and they both looked at each other. “Oh shut up the both of you,” I said and they chuckled as they caught up with me. 

“He’s so spoiled if you just fold like that,” Seonghwa added and I scoffed. “You do spoil that cat a lot” Wonyoung teased and I rolled my eyes. “Have you told Hongjoong–” “He would kill me in my sleep if I ever brought it up” Seonghwa cut me off and I chuckled… that's true. 

We finally made it to the building where the hybrid classes are taking place but I didn’t see Niki… I saw the hybrids out already so where was he? 

“How long is it gonna take for him to come to you?” Wonyoung asked and I didn’t know. I looked at my phone, and the class should’ve already ended by now. “Why’d you even allow it?” Soenghwa asked and I sighed. 

“Cause he wouldn’t let go of it. He begged and begged… I couldn’t keep denying it” I said and they sighed. “She’s whipped for him, that's the answer,” Wonyoung said and Seonghwa nodded. 

“Oh? y/n!!” I heard as I saw the girl from the party again with her hybrid. What was her name again?

“You’re Wonyoung and Seonghwa, right? I’m e/n” she said. “I’m glad to see you’re having Niki taking this class,” she said and I sighed. “His name is Riki,” I said and she looked confused. “Oh? But you call him Niki?” she asked.

“That's a nickname that she only calls him, he will glare or even scoff if he hears you call him that,” Seonghwa said and it was true… I've called him that since I was a kid and yet he never let anyone else call him that. “This class should teach him otherwise,” she said and I had to refrain from scoffing. 

“Oh, you should look into a secondary hybrid,” she said and I glared. 

“I wouldn’t get another one,” I clarified. “Riki would get too jealous,” “Or he’d kick the other hybrid out himself,” Wonyoung and Seonghwa added. 

“But if you were to get one he’d have to comply with her. She’s the owner,” she said and I shook my head. “Well, I was thinking of something cute… maybe a fox? Ooh or a pretty cat!” she said while looking at herself in a pocket mirror fixing her lipstick while her hybrid looked at her with a sad expression.

“I wanna go home” I suddenly heard. Niki? 

“Why do you have scratches on your face? Are you okay?” I asked and he avoided eye contact when I grabbed his jaw to look at his wounds. He nodded, “I wanna go home” he repeated and I sighed. 

“Ok, just let me take this off,” I said as I took off his collar and took out his tail ring. “Riki!! You forgot… Oh. Please don’t be mad at him! He was only defending me!!” I saw a dog hybrid yell while he held Niki’s backpack. Seonghwa grabbed it, holding it for me. 

“Please, it's all my fault. Don’t abandon him because of me!” he pleaded and even bowed. I looked at Niki who looked away. “Why would I abandon you? Niki, what happened?” I asked and the other hybrid soon stood up but looked down to my hands. His collar? I sighed and turned Niki around when I clipped his tail ring. “Thank you for caring about him but he’s not in trouble. You should find your owner, they must be worried about you–” “He’s a stray” I was interrupted by e/n.

A stray? “Did you see? It's why they make the hybrids wear collars because they need to know by the end of the class who is a stray and who is owned. It's a mixture of people like us who pay and hybrids of low status who need major help like him. He’s probably also a runt” she said suddenly in disgust as she stepped back.

“Thank you for looking after Niki,” I said and he nodded with a small smile. I grabbed the backpack from Seonghwa as I looked at him and I saw his worried eyes. “Come on, I'm hungry,” I said as I dragged him away from the lecture hall and everyone else while I heard Wonnie and Seonghwa complain about me abandoning them…

“I still want that udon curry,” I pondered and he sighed. He grabbed his backpack and clipped his collar there as he walked silently. “Did you fight for him?” I asked and he nodded silently.

I smiled. “That’s very kind of you,” I said and from the corner of my eye, he looked at me confused. “What were they doing to him?” I asked and he sighed. “Called him a runt… a stray… useless. It was all when the teacher left for a break and I don’t know why I did but I fought for him” he said and I smiled. 

“That was very brave of you. I’m proud of you Niki!” I said with a grin and he smiled softly. “The teacher gave me a warning cause he said if he told you that you’d return me,” he said and I chuckled. “We’ve been together for years! I could never do that” I said and he nodded. 

“Still want takoyaki?” I asked and he chuckled. “Always!” he yelled as he ran ahead of me. 

“HEY!! NO FAIR!! YOU HAVE LONGER LEGS!!”

taglist -> @ilovecheese09 @gudkc @nikisvanillaccola @blossominghunnie @mheretoreadff @k1ttylvr

please don't be a silent reader !! reblog, comment, and like <3

[sillyfairygarden]

fairy once more 🌹 my c!hannah design is complete, full design process is under the cut :)

wrow it has been like 1.5 yr since my first c!hannie drawing 😭 ourgh i love her sosososo much. i really went back n forth on whether or not to actually complete this design, due to my... complicated and strenuous relationship with the dsmp... but after talking it out and going through these pieces i wanted to do it justice one last time :)

without further ado here is a (near-complete) history of my c!hannahxxrose design. i have included text descriptions since my handwriting is notoriously doctoral (bad):

DESIGN EVOLUTION:

In the beginning the design was very simple, and leaned heavily into the popular fanon. [pointing at image of c!hannah with leafy, thick foliage leaves from fall 2021: this was drawn before the event where c!hannah got her wings, aka i'm psychic teehee]

(i didn't really know much about her character, so these aren't tied to the canon and got scrapped!)

[pointing to a design of c!hannah with fairy wings from early 2022: this simple dress was a staple in my early design...]

Post-Elytramaggedeon:

her wings! i think when she lost them, it really drew me into pinning down a design for her. i toyed with the imagery of torn, tattered wings, but then turned to a more melted look. i love the multicolour spread of her wings, through over time her wing shape changes from a butterfly wing to a more dragonfly/fairy-style.

i toyed with the idea of her wings being torn off completely, but at the end it was more true to the imagery to have these massive, multicoloured wings, useless and tattered.

[text beneath a c!tinarose piece from march 2022: first time drawing c!tinarose B) very uninspired outfits. also, why does c!tina have little wings??? The line "he ripped your rings, my little fairy :(" lives in my head rent-free. I wasn't happy with how this came out.]

[text beneath a c!tinarose piece from july 2022: genuinely one of the best pieces i've ever done. c!tinarose nation 4 lyfe ✌️ Really nailed the melty, shredded wing design here!

Design Exploration:

While working on those [above] pieces in 2022, i started exploring different ideas for my c!hannah design.

[text pointing to a sketch from september 2022, where c!hannah has a large, tree-like arm: in this, c!hannah is a flower nymph whose body is apart of nature--the tree arm is borne! i LOVE asymmetrical designs. In my notes, i wrote: 'she draws her energy from nature to heal after losing her wings- in return, nature returns to claim her body... as time goes on, the bark grows.]

Concept: pre-DSMP design:

[text pointing to a sketch of c!hannah kneeling, hair wild with flowers and covered in climbing vines: a rosebush who becomes a girl-in her early days, she is more plant-like than human girl! i loved this hair. so fun.]

Introduction of Armour:

[text beneath multiple drawings of c!hannah from summer 2022, where she is wearing armour: in these sketches, i was feeling the urge to draw some armoured ladies-and so c!hannah became my victim!

i'm always craving sleek, feminine silhouettes in my armoured designs, without turning into battle corsets and bikinis.

at the same time as this, i was in the brainstorming/conceptual stages for other dsmp characters, and i wanted c!hannah to be unique from the generic, full-netherite design.]

Final Design:

A year and a half after my first art of her, and i collected the varying design elements from past pieces into one final concept!

Knightly yet feminine, strong but still wearing (literally) the scars of pain. I wasn't confident in ever finishing this, but then i heard that she gets her wings back after the 2023 """finale""" of the smp... it was time to bring closure to this character design that i have poured a whole part of myself into. This was the final sketch.

[text near a sketch of c!hannah's final design: flower spirit, mix armoured with flowers (utena core).]

for the final piece itself, i wanted to reference the colours of hannah's minecraft skin, while still adding that fantasy-knight element. the wings are trimmed, but still retained that beautiful, multicolour melty look. her tree arm is finally blossoming and blooming with pops of colour, to signify regrowth after the trauma of losing a piece of herself. her insignia is not for any nation, but for herself.

References:

The works of these illustrators greatly guided this design. Additionally, my peers and other artists who have drawn/interpreted c!hannah before <3 feminine, strong designs are so beautiful!

[not pictured are the works of JC Leyendecker, Jasmin Darnell, CLAMP, Thores Shibamoto, and my dear friend zma. their works orbit my head like a ceiling fan whenever i put the pen to paper <3)

a few things didn't end up making the cut (the cape from the final sketch, her other forms and ideas for pre-SMP, etc) but at this point, i am really excited to just stop looking at this piece LOL. it has been staring at me for forever. im very pleased with it and touched something special at seeing my own abilities, ambition, and concept designs grow within my own work. even if no one reads all 213445345 words of this, it's a wonderful capsule of the work i put into this design and im quite pleased.

aneeeways if any1 read this far i hope u like it 🙇 ok im going eepy now gnight ^^

[emmis15]

Domestic Affairs with Bucky Barnes

―I used to cut my father's hair while he was working in the lab, so I know what I'm doing― Cass said as she placed a towel over my shoulders and covered my chest.

It was time for a haircut. Steve had told me, Sam had told me, and Natasha had laughed at me because I couldn't always have it in my eyes, and I was fed up with it. Besides, Dr. Raynor had said that maybe a change in my appearance would help me think outside the box and do some exposure therapy to deal with crowded spaces or being touched by unknown beings. I wasn't comfortable with that, and since I urgently needed someone to help me, I reluctantly asked mini Stark for help.

―Just… do it quickly, I don't want to be here for too long― I said uncomfortably.

I looked in the mirror of my bathroom and saw her with a small empathetic smile, touching my metal shoulder, which made me feel worse. It wasn't a part of my body that I loved.

―I want you to know that if you feel pressured or have any horrible Hydra flashbacks while I'm cutting or using the machine, you need to tell me to stop because it won't be good for you to keep that to yourself. Trust me, I know from experience― she said, looking at me through the mirror.

I nodded with little confidence, but we were already here, and I wasn't going to let anyone I didn't know touch me.

―Tell me about what you've learned about the new world recently― she said, wetting my hair with a sprayer, and my skin quickly became goosebumps. I sighed, closing my eyes.

―Steve has been showing me music or the one he started delving into modernity with, but I still prefer 40s music.

I felt the metal blades against my nape, and I was momentarily startled, but Cass's free hand gripped my shoulder, tapping or making patterns to keep me calm, something she did to herself sometimes when there were loud noises or her father talked about her time in Hydra as an experiment. She played with her metal heart-shaped pendant on her chest.

―¿What music did he show you? ¿Pop? ¿Rock? ¿Hip-hop? ¿Rap?― she asked, very concentrated as she cut. I could feel my long hair falling to the floor.

―He showed me a band, Nirvana, ¿maybe? He likes them a bit, but I don't know. I have to listen to more things― I said with a grimace.

―Their albums are on Spotify. Dad kind of likes Nirvana, and I'm okay with their lead singer― she said, her tongue sticking out, too busy to connect my gaze with hers in the mirror.

―¿Is Spotify that round black and green thing in every room of the house?― I asked, confused. I had been trying to be explained things like the screens in every room or the circles that, when touched, showed other things, but it was still hard to grasp.

She let out a amused laugh, stopping cutting my hair to grab the modern version of my flip phone. She liked old things but with a new version for this time, or so she kept telling me when I asked her how a young and beautiful girl could kiss and love an old and broken man like me.

Leaving the scissors on the sink and talking to the house's robot, an old 40s song began to play. I didn't like it much, but it was nice, and I liked how she swayed her hips, resuming work and humming a few things.

―You'll hear the songs that have been left in your personal music registry by Steve and some songs of mine with certain similarities in melody or tempo, so you can find new things without leaving your comfort zone― my hair was getting shorter, and the time to use the machine was approaching, but Cass's sweet and calm voice was like a fog to my mind.

―I still prefer record players― I said.

She laughed again.

―Of course you do― she said, putting the scissors on the white marble and resting her forearms on my shoulders. ―¿What do you think? ¿Shall I start cutting with the machine or leave it like this?"

She asked me, looking into my eyes through the mirror with a little smile.

―Shorter, nothing behind the ears, and little hair on the face― I said confidently.

She smiled and gave me a small kiss on the cheek before stepping away from me and grabbing the machine carefully.

―Let's go carefully, ¿okay? If you feel pressured, if you don't like it, if the noise is too much, we can stop whenever you want― she lightly massaged my shoulders.

I nodded carefully, sighing and closing my eyes and staying with the soft sound of the guitar and violins playing in the bathroom. Cass's soft voice singing along with the woman in the song trying to distract me from the sound of the machine so close to my head was comforting.

―It's called 'The Lakes.' It's from a very calm and deep album by Taylor, the blonde girl I have plastered all over my room― she said near my ear with a calm voice.

―¿The one you spent making bracelets and made me one?

―Exactly, you'll like this album. It's very calming and has very beautiful lyrics, and it helps you sleep because of how sweetly she sings. I have the vinyl, so someday, when you have nightmares, we'll listen to it.

―I always have nightmares.

―And that's why we're going to listen to it tonight― she kissed the top of my head before turning me around to face her.

Both of us face to face, her eyes shining with excitement with the machine in hand, and for a moment, I remembered that thing passing by me, and I didn't even feel it.

―I have to tap ahead, so I need you to be very still and calm, ¿okay? You can hold onto my waist if something scares you― she grabbed my chin with a smile on her face.

―It's okay, Doll, I promise.

She stopped looking at me and focused on cutting the front part of my hair while my arms were around her hips, watching her from below. Her concentration was the same as when she used to create her machines or when she did things in her laboratory, so she was taking her work very seriously.

―I vaguely remember my mother cutting my hair when I was little― I said, looking at her.

―That's sweet, Buck. For a long time after Daddy rescued me from Hydra, I couldn't get near anything sharp because I wanted to end my life on Earth, so when they had to cut my hair, Dad and Adriana, his assistant, would put on Disney movies for me, and both of them would cut my hair― she hummed a few lines of the song from before from time to time.

She suffered for three years what I did for 50 years, but we were still at the same level of pain and trauma. She was very young, a preteen, and she was already a killing machine, and they not only messed her up mentally but physically with that star on her chest and putting cables instead of veins.

―I'm sorry.

―Buck, everyone has their response to the situation. Mine was wanting to throw myself out the window because of the pain, but now I'm better and ready to help you in everything― she bent down to kiss my lips carefully before turning me around to look at her in the mirror.

It didn

't turn out bad at all; she had talent for this, and it showed by how proud she was of her work.

―I like it, I thought it would look worse― I said surprised as I approached the mirror to see myself; it was weird to see myself with short hair, although I didn't dislike it.

She looked at me incredulously, but it didn't last long as that proud smile appeared on her face again.

―I'm glad you like it, Buck, and I'm very proud of you for overcoming another fear today. You were very brave with me― she looked into my eyes through the mirror before leaving a kiss on my head.

―Thank you, Doll.

―It was a pleasure, my love.

[hanafubukki]

From Rose Red to Snow White

Summary: Riddle struggles to accept his hair color change, and you support him through it all.

Pairing: Riddle Rosehearts X Reader (Gender Neutral)

Notes: *Minor spoilers for chapter 6* I had many feels and thoughts about Riddle’s hair color change. Honestly, he looked so cute! I wouldn’t mind if it stayed that way. But then I got thinking, and wondering how this might affect him for…well, deeply, I guess you could say. So this is what came from it. 💕🌺🌸

EDIT: Reposting because story isn’t popping up in tag, I’m going to fight you tumblr, I swear to god. 

·      You stared as Riddle once again pulled at his white hair.

·      You could tell that it bothered him greatly.

·      His iconic rose-red hair was replaced with snow-white hair.

·      While his dorm members knew better than to make fun of him, you could tell even they felt mixed about this change.

·      It was only with you that he spoke the truth.

·      How he did not feel himself.

·      Not only because the face in the mirror did not fully match what he was used to.

·      But it was now another part of him that separated him from her.

·      His mother.

·      You knew he was still working out his relationship with his mother.

·      You knew he was trying to become independent from the strings she had pulled all his life.

·      And his red hair, the same his mother had, was another connection he had to her.

·      With that color gone, it was another way he had cut ties with her.

·      And you could tell he had mixed feelings about that.

·      When he spoke his feelings to you, you held him.

·      You didn’t know how to help him.

·      You could only support him as he sorted out his feelings.

·      But all you could say was, “Red or white hair, it does not matter. It does not change who you truly are. You are Riddle Rosehearts. You are my Riddle Rosehearts. I will always love you.”

·      You wanted to say more.

·      How maybe it was better that he had white hair instead of red.

·      It was one less connection to her.

·      The one who made him suffer all through his years until he came to NRC.

·      Until he felt true freedom to be who he truly wanted to be.

·      But it wasn’t your place.

·      All you could do was love and support him.

·      Be there for him while he learned who he wanted to be in this life.

·      And you could tell he appreciated all the love and support you gave him.

·      From the way, he confided in you.

·      From the way, he relaxed around you.

·      From the way he let go of that regal persona and just became Riddle with you.

·      Riddle Rosehearts who loved tea and strawberry tarts.

·      Riddle Rosehearts who loved to play with the hedgehogs.

·      Your boyfriend who came to you to help him keep up with the trends.

·      Even though you were barely learning about this world.

·      Your boyfriend that you loved to cuddle and give all the kisses to.

·      And really, that was all he needed from you.

·      Your love and support.

·      And you would give it to him.

·      You hugged him tighter and kissed his forehead, feeling him relax even further into you.

·      As you both fell asleep, you had one thought.

·      I love you.

Riddle is precious and I love him. I really believe he deserves all the love and support he can get as he learns to be himself. I truly believe that if he shares the same hair color as his mother, he would have mixed feelings about it changing. And really, he needs time to accept that change bit by bit while you support him silently. Especially since it’s another way that he is growing up and away from her and her ideals and rules. He’s being his own person.🥺💕🌺

[blankvort]

you've probably answered something like this but favourite songs from the stage show and i want details, GO‼️

pezberrywhoreee i cannot even begin to describe the dearth of times i have answered anything related to mean girls and the amount of times i have internally cried and screamed wanting to interrupt a conversation to talk about mean girls. i say that god is dead but you are doing his work right here. putting this under a read more because you said details and this became a study of why every song in the stage show is better than opioids and thin mints combined <333 no articulacy here just 8000+ words of vibes and ranting

first of all if cady sings a single line i am violently shoving every note of the song into a mental folder called faves in such eldritch fonts that my brain computer is halfway to summoning cthulhu whenever it loads the soundtrack. she is described as the heart of the story on the backstage casting call page for a reason and that reason is her absolutely incredible range as she struts from the plucky guitar gyrations and membranophone-focused percussion of it roars into the candid, confiding, crescendoing (and other c words you can probably guess based on the verbiage i use in dms) keys of stupid with love and then climb the vocal volcano that is apex predator and akfjskhfidbdihgshejfhiajw i love her and i love her songs and i need to shut up now i’m sorry

second (but not really because i’m still going on and on about cady i’m sorry) i’m upset abt most other productions burying cady’s fourth-wall breaks and kind of making the segue into revenge party less. i don’t know riled up?? because 1) where did my girl janis’s influence go it is so much more impactful when cady’s main reason for going along with the revenge plot and pushing it further is hearing about janis being outed from janis herself! when her main motivator becomes aaron, who she likes super superficially by the time more is better rolls around, you think wow! what a bitch! for even longer! like you don’t even have to cut the “your hair looks sexy pushed back”/”are his eyes gray or green” conversation that prods her into sending gretchen over the edge this isn’t a time issue 2) where did cady’s brain go bring me a whole box of profound regret and impulsive decisions let the people in the back hear the hows and whys of her descent into plastichood and moreover i would like her to sing more and most of all i love it when characters break the fourth wall. by that i mean i want the “sounds kind of bad right to spy on someone but they’re the first friends i’ve had and i don’t want to have none” things back because the narrative nudity and the way it follows the melody of the verses in fearless is a+++

now. my legitimate favorite songs from the stage show in chronological order

a cautionary tale: the repartee the art freaks have is elite and so are their riffs. The lyrics are 3am notes app poetry lines and that’s an amazing thing for mean girls. It’s not the typical broadway opening number but it’s rough and brash and brilliant. To me the cast of mean girls strikes the perfect balance between caricature and lived-in character and the insouciance of this song towards seriousness reflects that wonderfully. Janis assuming the worst of everyone by saying that the temptation to be popular and hot is far too great and saying that you can’t buy integrity at the mall is some nice, if blatant, foreshadowing regarding cady losing her integrity as she gets caught up in the perilous biome of shopping centers with such dangerous patrons as build-dat-bear. The last line of the chorus abruptly changing the amount of beats in the measure adds an extra kick layout fosse quality that i love too. The ending is the apotheosis of mezzo-soprano/tenor harmonization. Need both janis and damian to step on me but for different reasons. No i will not elaborate

it roars: i have a soft spot for wild life but it roars is superior in every way to me because it introduces cady, the show’s sense of humor, the cast’s incredible skill when it comes to singing and dancing (seriously i had never seen an ensemble that made me want to be ensemble before mean girls), and the perfect transition from a cautionary tale will always get me hyped. i have many thoughts about the many changes the mg script and score have gone through throughout the years but oh my god my jaw dropped at the breathtaking belting of “i have danced with the maasai, i have climbed kilimanjaro” when i first heard it mashed up with it roars and the callback the verse gets in fearless 2.0(?) totally dislocated it. Also i know that it’s a pairing so unpopular it’s basically nonexistent but hear me out when i say that it roars is just a more optimistic, afrobeat inspired version of what’s wrong with me. Cady never seems to think that it’s the student body that needs to change, she thinks she needs to fight and win to belong just as gretchen thinks she needs to serve the most powerful person in school to be deserving of… idk anything?? Of course you cannot trust me on this because i will ship cady with anyone if you give me the chance. Writing cady/the marymount girl fanfic as we speak

it roars is the first indicator that musical cady is pretty different from movie cady in that she earnestly wants to go to the us, wants to have more/better friends, wants to try high school and skateboards and rapping and starbucks venti chai. which makes sense because you know you gotta have that sick i want song so characters feel less tossed about and more thrusting into. there’s a better way to word that but i don’t have the skull size to summon a less immature dictionary right now. a curious thing about it roars, though, is that kenya, being a country and all, has high school and skateboards and rapping. no starbucks because apparently rwanda was an easier location to settle into but that’s a good thing actually nobody should support starbucks. either way you can really see that cady’s been sheltered from the realities of any society past the stone age and idolizes this incredibly abstract view of friends and people. she’s equal parts desperate and determined, artless and acute. it’s ironic, i feel that at first her speech patterns (lions and birds and stuff) seem at odds with her sub-saharan surroundings as though she’s already trying to integrate herself with this slangy teenage culture she knows nothing about and then when she finally finds herself in slangy teenage culture she compares everything to the survival-based rules of the savannah. i know this is probably for streamlining purposes but it’s also so interesting to me that her immediate reaction to her parents’ funding being cut is wow adventure wow possibilities. she knows that everybody wants connection but she doesn’t yet know why connection has to be culled by all these arbitrary rules like fashion or acting cool. like i don’t remember where i read this but some novel said that the only thing worse than being smart is being smart and sensitive because then neither the logical nor emotional explanations for any event can make sense. i swear i will find that book someday to take a photo but today i am bedridden because i walked the five or so inches from home to the grocery store

back to it roars. i hate the grammar in the line “none of my closest friends even has hands” but i love everything else about the song. the beat is so bouncy and the ostinati of the wind and brass sections are top tier. the comedic beats are underscored by cutting the music and then the vocals come back in soaring alongside the strongest bass since george perry and i could die happy if hospitals changed the flatline noise to any cady singing “so exhilarating”.

two paragraphs and we’re still going strong dead god help me. personally i feel like the best delivery of the ensemble lines have to be as obnoxious and deafening as humanly possible but i get people who feel differently. it’s just really great to me when cady is polite and confused and very presumptuous and sonja aquino’s actively going through act two of the exorcist in real time. i think that’s why danielle wade is my cady of choice too. love it when autism: the song is put through the epiglottic funnel of anxiety. also i’m wiping tears right now about the fact cady refers to phones as little screens in her first act one song and in the act two opener she’s glued to her phone because she wants attention so badly and still doesn’t feel like she has enough even though she talks about how america and the plastics are so much more than what she’s used to. Also very interesting that cady views inclusion as a game that needs to be won (and eventually comes to view baleful adoration as winning) even though she later exhibits a sort of survival of the fittest mentality that shows up as early as her mention of baboons attacking those that go near their pack. Fun fact i think her takeover of the plastics mirrors dispersal in male baboons wherein mature male baboons leave the pack they were born into to find another troop to temporarily stay in and usually if they end up replacing the alpha male of that non-natal troop they commit infanticide because then he can reproduce with the alpha male’s old mate/s. That’s not super fun but it is a fact to me. but i’ll talk about the strange views musical cady heron seems to hold about winning more in my do this thing essay which i am definitely going to write despite my best efforts to make this post under five thousand words

gonna slide the it roars reprise in here too because it’s not on the soundtrack but it still makes me feel things. “i’m sixteen just like everyone here but not like everyone here” and what if i said mean girls is the best dissection of the torturous dichotomy between being desperate to belong and being desperate to be unique. There’s a thing called theatrical exaggeration but for mental health purposes i choose to believe that north shore class of x immediately clocked cady as a weirdo utterly undeserving of trust or respect when they saw her wear socks and sandals. I know i just complained about people calling every iteration of cady boring but i feel like i haven’t seen actual hate for musical cady (at least not as much slander as i’ve seen sent to og movie and especially movie musical cady) because you can better bear witness to her most vulnerable moments when she’s singing directly at you instead of saying things in a soundproof recording studio. She’s not quitting she’s regrouping! Which is a fascinating choice of words to me because regrouping in math is basically carrying over values because they’re too much. She gets sucked into this idea that more is better even though she has to compartmentalize the information she’s learned from hostile classmates and teachers and draw connections to her experience with animals because more is not better without proper management. Also this bitch is gonna get e coli if the janitors don’t care enough to clean the slut-shaming graffiti on the wall they are not wiping down those cubicle doors

where do you belong: i love gay people. “so what if all the ducklings think you’re ugly it’s because they’ve never seen a swan” is ted talk worthy material. never getting over the fact that damian knew this girl for all of maybe one introductory french class’s worth of interaction, accused her of doing drugs, and then built her confidence back up from the seventh circle of hell. the “your mother called you baby girl?” “singing!” exchange is peak best friend banter and showcases the art freaks’ dynamic of frank, funny jerk with a tarnished heart of gold and budding broadway babe with a shocking amount of wisdom obscured by hilarity and hypocrisy. the debate team rejected damian because he was too fabulous to be deigned to one oregon-oxford role i’ve decided. i love unreliable narrators and damian shooing cady away from the mathletes as soon as she shows the barest interest in them is an entertaining way of showing that nobody in this story is free from social norms. the lunch tray percussion is something all marching bands should adopt and so are the lighting cues. janis’s reactions to damian killing his dance breaks are the best. rachel hamilton is my fave ensemble student i don’t care if she gets maybe two or three lines total.  she was giving bombastic side eyes before anyone knew the word bombastic. i desperately need to know if she knew what cady was actually saying or if she thought cady was just a lion king stan asking to be canceled. damian painting everyone but his two-person clique as problematic is also peak teenage behavior. everything at that age is just finding the lesser of two evils and figuring out whether or not you want to meet the bigger evil anyways. janis deriding “the geeks and the freaks” despite being labeled as an art freak by every mg promo is also amusing and barrett and mary-kate’s deliveries of “christian believers” could send me to heaven any day they want. the ending is so satisfying to listen to and even more satisfying to watch. also i do mean it when i say that cady was adopted by the local gays in this number. are janis and damian aware that having their own table in a school that makes juniors and seniors have lunch at the same time makes them more powerful than all the politicians of the globe combined

stupid with love: ALSKAJLDJASLDAJLLKJ. stupid with love is the best musical representation of how a crush driven by hormones and being treated with the barest sense of humor and dignity can devour a person taylor swift eat your heart out. the music really sweeps you up into this story like you’re a close friend privy to even her most embarrassing thoughts and the way her love life flashing before her eyes just shuts out whatever aaron was going to say about lebron james is the funniest thing because yeah! you can be convinced you’re totally in love with someone when you’re that age while ignoring everything that makes them a well-rounded human being! the way cady’s clearly grown up in a caring household that’s so chock full of trust that her parents can’t fathom that she’d do anything remotely dangerous while having the whole house to herself for more than one hour BUT also feels like she doesn’t “get” love is super interesting to me to like most sixteen-year-olds have the idea that their parents don’t understand them sure but has she come to the conclusion that familial love isn’t enough? that she doesn’t get enough familial love anyways? that love is unknowable? does she wholeheartedly believe that she fell in love at age five? stupid with love is a song of so many possibilities and it’s as giddy and delusional as you’d expect, every emotion heightened by cady’s new brand of eloquence. fetch may never happen but calculust absolutely should. the little snippets of dialogue in between are so endearing on both cady and aaron’s ends to the point where i can forgive ms norbury clearly not knowing how to conduct a class. who’s gonna tell cady to raise her hand before she answers. i’m kidding she can do whatever she wants, even ignore the existence of multiplication. multiplication is a bitch cady i get it

we once again see that cady is determined almost to the point of self-destruction and that she’s desperate to live a ‘normal’ life by getting together with the normalest boy of all time and the song so perfectly sets up why we should care about cady and aaron as a couple–he’s the only person thus far to not even suggest what she should think/do, encouraging her in a teasing way to be herself (ie smart) instead of telling her to be dumber so he can feel better about himself. cadaaron is the only straight ship ever argue with the wall. also the instrumental on its own is literally such a bop?? i’d drop a grand piano on myself daily if the keys could just perpetually play the song. quoth my own blog my heart belongs to every video out there of a cady opting up on the last “i learned math so i can learn love” it just fits so well thematically and makes the song even more satisfying because it makes you think yes!! summon that girlfailure swag and learn love. also this song is so next to me from twihard: a new musical coded with the pencils and/or feet providing the musical pulse. this is me very subtly begging you to listen to twihard: a new musical as put on by the esoteric ensemble productions and uploaded like a full decade ago starring danielle wade 

apex predator: i love women. i love bon jovi. i love zoology. this song was made for me tina fey told me herself. i can even forgive whoever made halls rhyme with dolls because of the regina furry confirmation. the first few chords kind of give me jaws theme vibes. it’s grinding and warning and doused in grit. you get the brightness of cady’s other songs cut with the flinty, darker strings of janis’s numbers. the heavy drum sort of sounds like a heartbeat, quickening as cady realizes the might of the pride and considers how regina’s help compares to janis’s in an almost clinical manner. shout out to erika henningsen’s “exotic pet” obviously. that line should be studied by every ivy league with a literary program because regina and cady considering the other an exotic pet instead of a real friend but still seeking each other’s approval……. maybe the narrative foils are really reflections of my tin foil hat but hear me out. it’s so interesting that they refer to regina as an apex predator because apex predators are animals without natural enemies but almost every single friend or admirer of regina’s exhibits an envious kind of awe when it comes to regina. regina’s so magnetic that you can’t be her enemy but close enough to pseudo-celebrity that you can’t exactly be her friend either. also the harmony at the end combined with the epic percussion deserves its own award. no longer does egot mean anything. One must be an egota (emmy grammy oscar tony apex predator singer) to be considered showbiz royalty

stupid with love (reprise): cady is so so smart and so so stupid. aaron getting confused at a genuine compliment not solely based on his looks is adorable but i also love it when the line delivery gets changed to be more like “wow i already know i’m cool but it’s nice to hear it from the cute possibly murderous girl who sits behind me”. same goes for cady’s “shit” right after aaron swears off dating–it’s funny as hell whether she’s smiling through the pain or so disappointed in herself she looks like she’s experiencing medical shock. her making love into a function is similarly messed up but funny as hell. i literally have a google drive folder full of audio clips of the “i just don’t get it–i’ll never get it–i just don’t get it–somehow…” part it’s so serious

sexy: this is modern feminism talking i expect to run the world in shoes i cannot walk in - the greatest mind of our generation karen smith. if the national emergency alarm was changed to the ending riff i would become an arsonist just to hear it over and over again. a youtube commenter said that she sings every line like she’s waiting to be shown the script and redo it and whenever acting and singing can waltz along in magnificence together i sob in joy even if that waltz is set to trashy pop. literally every costume shown is worthy of fashion week and then some. the sex doctor bit is beyond saturday night live. sexy rosa parks deserves the world. modern feminism is a mess but at least it built the last verse of this incredible song.

someone gets hurt: regina pretending to cry and aaron being confused again and then being manipulated into a makeout session is so so funny. so terrible but so funny. the incredible blare of noise after that first “until someone gets hurt” feels like being pushed off a cliff and into a sea of warning sirens which feels fitting. if any song from the stage show were to be played by a chamber orchestra i would want it to be someone gets hurt because everything about it is almost four seasons by vivaldi to me. as i said do not expect sensible comparisons from this review. it’s really dark and intense like all of regina’s numbers but this time her style of seduction is on full display, highlighted by some heavy timpani work and a male ensemble that’s carrying more than just regina on their backs holy cow. squidward would worship regina with how she made the bass clarinet sultry despite hitting something in the high fs during each “hurt” and holding that “go” for like five seconds. the ending is giving celine dion’s villain arc. it’s also maybe the first time the audience sees aaron through the eyes of anyone other than cady who’s so starstruck she might as well be blind and we see a guy who’s still susceptible to regina’s yknow reginaness. she guilt trips him about his potential infatuation with his body and then gets extremely touchy with him while wearing a playboy bunny costume. she asks if she was a game he wanted to play despite (maybe devoid of remorse) playing him just to get back at cady. she’s making so much shit up because peeling away too many layers of her perfection would be dangerous but so would losing aaron to cady’s actual openness. first she says “fine” to mean that she’ll be fine without aaron in the reverse psychology sense, then they say “fine” to mean that they’re both hot af, then he says “fine” to agree to get back with regina and possibly to convince himself that his interest in cady can and should be pushed aside because being with regina is better for them both. love this song. hate being unable to sing a single note of it.

revenge party: my overall fave song of the obc album, the stage show, and the movie musical. words alone cannot describe the excitement that electrocutes my nerves when i hear “now you know, caddy—” because everything from that line onwards is going to be stuck in my head for at least a week. some people can’t function until their first cup of coffee in the morning, i can’t function until my first listen of revenge party. in slight relation to that gretchen’s squawking will make me spit out any drink; such has been scientifically proven over the course of several years. i actually have a line-by-line analysis of revenge party drafted so i won’t go into detail right now because i need viewer retention but i mean it when i say art freak harmonization is the best kind.

whose house is this: if kevin g has one fan it is me. let the man rap even if half his lyrics don’t make sense. i have heard the big fun from heathers comparisons. i have heard the halloween from be more chill comparisons. all of them are so incorrect i could set several houses ablaze with the rage i feel at the very suggestion that whose house is this isn’t a masterpiece. no joke this is the first song on my workout playlist. the way nobody even cares about cady in this number is hilarious and so is kevin refusing to swear. gretchen deserves all the thank yous and so does the horns section. karen’s actions are just. Absurd as they always should be. the mario kart ass instrumentals during that “turn the freaking music up” segment make me pleasantly stressed. there are traces of jungle techno but little to no traces of cady’s signature sound and the usually lax but articulate and expressive rhyme scheme of her songs switching to frenzied verses full of immaturity and inconsideration makes me feel things that should not be felt while listening to a rave number with flatulent bass.

more is better: the only romantic duet to ever exist if you ask me. the fact that cady switches from the more sincerity-charged love to like most likely because the plastics’ philosophy is to be cool about things makes me want to bite the bars of alcatraz prisons. the way cady’s signature sound only really returns after aaron chooses to leave her because she’s become regina 2.0 without even acknowledging it is the stuff of emotionally resonant legend. as i said in my aaron review post the only thing that bothers me about this number is aaron kissing cady while she’s clearly drunk and he isn’t but cady kind of gets him back after do this thing so. yay equality. aaron’s so tired of being manipulated and told to shut up i feel so bad for him. cady’s so in denial about missing her old home in any capacity and being uncomfortable with the skin she’s tried to grow into for aaron’s sake and i feel so bad for her. the shimmering sound that comes with cady singing “stars” makes me feel better though. 11/10 would be sad again. say no to excessive air conditioning and light pollution

someone gets hurt (reprise): i like it when gays have bad breakups without even dating. what more do you want. but actually i am obsessed with the way this is blocked out because the way the chaos of cady’s house gradates into the dark street where there’s nothing but her and her crumbling friendships. the link between janis and regina is really reinforced by this song and it makes me feel insane.

world burn: the only way regina can redeem herself for wearing a black turtleneck and black pants is by slaying so hard you forget she’s just printing shit and polluting the corridors and she does it in world burn. her having a recurring set of notes to follow until she absolutely loses it is iconic. i learned so much about hernia formation through this song so i think it’s also an educational heritage site. the contrast of her 1984-esque lyrics and beats with lines like “trang pak is a grotsky byotch” is beyond hilarious but in the context of the show it makes my timbers shiver. she is both manipulated and the master manipulator. renee rapp’s opt up for the ending is golden but every regina brings their own flair and intensity to it. something that really interests me is how different actresses interpret the lines “this is what i get for helping / helping someone lame fit in” because to generalize regina either thinks she was actually helping cady or is trying to convince herself/the audience that her primary motivator was controlling cady’s every action before she got too hot to ignore or because she saw her hanging around janis and damian or because regina can’t ask a girl out like a normal person. idk it’s very fun and very satisfying to listen to and ramps up the ante for all antagonistic songs ever!

i’d rather be me: did you mean the feminist anthem of the twenty-first century? i’d rather be me is pure janis in her sort of jumpy, edgy, eleven o’clock exasperated glory tuned to this effusive fusion of pop and rock. the energy this has is soooo good because every girl in school is tired of being treated like shit because of the expectations placed on them by society and the idea that by i’d rather be me the female student body of north shore is so exhausted of the plastics’ bs that they parade janis around despite shunning her for years is amazing. most criticisms of this are abt how wordy it is or how it’s not worded right but hello janis is a teenager her inner and outer monologue is not going to be as mature as fucking grizabella the glamor cat and it can include words that anyone would study for the sats like sycophant. sycophant is not that fancy a word i learned the word sycophant from a star wars fanfiction i read when i was seven how could you not know the word sycophant at age seven squared after making a living out of reviewing shows written by wordsmiths like sondheim. sorry that was mean i’m just tired of people either going “they wouldn’t talk like that they’re teenagers” or “they shouldn’t talk like that they’re part of a theatrical production worth millions of dollars!” lmao

ok so i think that janis was losing herself just as much as cady over the course of the revenge plot taking place because okay she’s ruined regina but she’s barely changed anything about herself and if her plan had worked without hitches wtf was she going to do. was she going to keep hanging out with cady. was she going to fill the power vacuum left by the plastics herself. was she going to run regina over with a bus herself. i’d rather be me is the culmination of the crushing pillars of her revenge plot and the full realization that revenge wasn’t what she wanted–she wanted to change the way the world works, change it into a place where people can just do and be without being ostracized. to me the instrumentals and the mockery in the lyrics are almost stinging?? someone with even could describe this better than me but the strings during the instrumental section between verses remind me of a mosquito bite because they’re high and sharp and put against the heavy drums and cymbal crashes they really paint this picture of a dam of anger breaking and giving way to a new wash of awareness. 

also i cannot stand it when ppl say this song is the show giving endorsement to janis being a hypocrite there is a reason why all the lyrics are in future tense. she is wrapping her mind around the notion that there is no pleasing everyone, that there is no true gratification gained by holding grudges and letting them control your every thought, that if you don’t let yourself have the liberty of lashing out you’re only going to manifest your maliciousness in worse ways with longer-lasting effects. that being said let girls be haters

also the obc album should’ve let janis swear. every public performance of i’d rather be me should let janis swear. let her have a line with bite before her throat turns into a cavern where vowels go to melt into a singular solution

also janis’s costumes over the course of the whole show are amazing but her look in i’d rather be me goes so hard. if i had any of janis’s jackets i think i’d curl into it like a cocoon and wait until the heat death of the universe for metamorphosis into coolness

do this thing: no joke this is the second song on my workout playlist. i hate the title so much but i love also the audience reaction when ms norbury starts singing as if she didn’t just slay the what’s wrong with me reprise gets me every time. truly the actresses in the adult women track are so underappreciated and so are the adult women in general. kevin g’s unabashed doing of the thing regardless of the haters is iconic. the return of the heavy percussion is so enjoyable and so are the mathletes’ lines lining up with the steaming kettle sound somehow behind each buzzer even though i hate buzzers because in real life mathletes nobody wants to answer on beat. ms norbury best matchmaker ever i LOVED the detail of aaron being present for the mathletes’ win but cady clearly focusing on the competition above all else. i’m pretty sure the mathletes are also the only characters to drop an f-bomb in a song which is just fantastic + the gretchen/regina parallel between kevin and marwan regarding schquillz is phenomenal. “the limit does not exist” being both the answer to the question that signifies cady’s return to her old self with more self-assurance and the theme of the musical in terms of not limiting other people is a level of genius i will never reach.

i see stars: i’m sorry they gave cady a big finale where she calls everyone beautiful and bright and holds hands with the other girls she’s hurt and you expect me to not love it?? this one had to grow on me though because i was so bothered about the stars imagery coming up maybe like five songs before when we’d been following animals and math for the whole show. as we all know characters can only have one or two interests before they become completely incoherent. but now i know more about light pollution and have played the video of this song with the pride chorus more times than i’ve blinked so i get it. shane oman also breaking his crown during the escalation of the instrumentals from a very optimistic but singular combo of strings and cymbals into the violins and heavier drums and whatever else is such a good detail. i still get goosebumps with that “you stars” there is just so much emotion packed into this finale and the rest of the ensemble joining in is as effective as onions being cut directly into my eyes when it comes to crying. obviously my fave version of this is the one with cady and janis’s mini duet during the rhinestones don’t shine part but guaranteed this one will make me cry no matter what

now. for the songs that didn’t make it onto my absolute fave list they are still my children just bastard ones and i will go into detail about them too because there is no point in writing this post if it does not crash the tumblr dashboard for you

a cautionary tale (reprise): akin to its origins, the reprise of a cautionary tale kicking off act two is there to introduce the act, but unlike its first iteration, the reprise is literally just there. no jokes no nothing. would love to see it reworked into something that reminds the audience they’re north shore freshmen being told this story by janis and damian because i forget about that framing device until the dialogue break in i see stars every time lmao but other than that it’s serviceable and any song that involves art freak harmonization is a solid song

meet the plastics: maybe i don’t love women as much as i claim to. I don’t know why i don’t like this song more truly. Maybe i just need to listen to it more lmao because the lyrics are great, the tempo changing with each introduction is great, and gretch waiting until regina’s out of earshot to try and convert cady into a fetch truther is great. Maybe it’s the “humps my leg like a chihuahua” line that turned me off from it because nell benjamin i do not care that you wrote legally blonde i do not think regina george would bring up animal humping imagery considering what her mother puts her through unless she was hopped up on pain meds. All that being said i would die for the polyphony at the end and karen playing with cady’s hair near the end is so cute

what’s wrong with me: gretchen it’s not you it’s me and i like songs with a specific sort of climax and what’s wrong with me really does feel like a music box piece played by some dusty not-quite-antique you find in the attic that makes you feel a particular, peculiar strain of melancholy because it’s so cyclical and fragile. which is the point, probably! It just sounds really different from the rest of the show and i feel like the lyrics don’t quite fit the language we’ve heard gretch using so far but maybe that’s also part of the point. That being said the line “see that you see what’s wrong with me” makes me go mad because there are so many ways to interpret it. Is she telling the audience that they should be able to see what’s wrong with her? Is she saying that the audience sees something good in regina that she can’t see anymore because of her constant mistreatment? Is she once again asking what’s wrong with her or has she finally had a breakthrough about her dismal self-esteem?

fearless: oh my god a cady song and act ender that i’m not totally into sound the sirens. but really fearless without the revisitation of the it roars/wild life passage that tells the audience what makes her fearless aside from wanting to move to america (which might make her more fearless than i thought now i sound that out but still) isn’t my favorite songs despite it having some of my favorite moments like karen’s ribbon dance, gretchen’s very cool dance, cady mirroring regina’s pose on top of the cafeteria table at the start of meet the plastics at the end, the mini someone gets hurt reprise at the end, it isn’t my favorite to listen to because the lyrics are just all over the place. Cady why are you saying that she’ll go cry to mama do you think mrs george is sober enough for that. Cady why are you spouting live love laugh merchandise ass quotes. Cady why are you quoting dwayne the rock johnson “imagine stronger, better, bolder” are you going to play a lacrosse game against regina. Why does karen not wear more vests after this number

You know what made me care about fearless?? The fearless reprise. Oh my god the fearless reprise. I need to make a separate post about the fearless reprise but i can’t listen to it more than once a day or i’ll end up crying for hours on end.  

stop: is it homophobic of me to put three damian songs on this list? probably but i make up for it by filling that broadway cares bucket every time i can. and it’s not that i even really dislike stop!! I have so many thoughts about stop!! i just don’t like it when compared to the other songs that can hold up inside and outside the context of the show!! i just feel like it has to be experienced live to understand its award-losing enormity unlike where do you belong and even then it sounds noticeably different from the rest of the show + essentially pauses the narrative to talk about a whole other story that never gets resolved outside of damian being ghosted (i thought theater was supposed to provide escapism 😔) and then frays a bunch of threads out from the ensemble in a way that doesn’t feel quite as well sewn in as the worship we see during apex predator or after rockin’ around the pole because like. it’s funny sure but just the act before we saw that things can be funny while also moving the story along past attempting to hammer in the message “stop ignoring your real friends” in cady’s thickened-by-makeup head. 

also how does damian even know about her word vomit. cady barely even word vomits in the stage show. it’s all just word coughing fits of confusion and unintentional comedy under peer pressure. whenever she says something embarrassing she either gets cut off or turns it into a whole song. i’m sorry damian i love you and your stupid straw hat but we just saw the whole show we don’t need a recap of everything that happened in the last hour with almost zero internal rhymes and without the frantic pacing of ya got trouble from the music man. cmon.

onto things i love about stop tho which are a) the gaiety (and gay-ty) b) the dancing and c) the staging. i love it when gay characters just get to be silly goofy instead of singing themselves to their graves and even if damian was built off the dramatic thespian homostereotype he gives me the impression of a silly goofy teen trying to balance the interests of his best friends with his sanity through the medium he’s most comfortable in which happens to be literally show-stopping song-and-dance number. also we get cadnis content in the background and the choreo i’ve seen for how janis plays keep away with cady’s phone only gets better (which of course is a synonym for gayer. let the babies hold hands before they yell at each other in the street and see a 15-second death they’re both sort of kind of responsible for). the dancing of course is wonderful. i mean does it make sense in-story for damian to somehow be popular enough with the ladies to rally them into a giant dance break after asking them to divulge their biggest, darkest secrets like an hour after being kicked out of the girls’ bathroom and calling one of them danny devito? probably not. is it really enjoyable when you aren’t itching to get back to the main story? yes. it also makes north shore feel more authentic in a sense?? obviously there’s so much about the social hierarchy exaggerated for comedic effect but yeah public high school is that crazy one day you’ll hear that a classmate got into a drunk driving accident and the next you’ll hear that the same classmate scored an audition for the x factor. and the transition from the art classroom, which is one of my fave sets in the whole show because aghhhh i want to pause everything and analyze art whenever it comes up in a tv show or movie or video game or musical because it’s almost never just art present for the sake of filling the set! there’s a reason why the set designers put that there or downloaded that asset or whatever! based on the official yt video in stop we see a sort of cubist portrait of janis ian, a few monochrome figure studies, and some more abstract pieces and i so want to know what this number would’ve looked like in-universe. did cady legit just run out of class to confront damian and get swept into a gay tea spilling session until the end of the day. be glad you got suspended girl

so. while i cannot begin to fathom the stamina it takes for damian to go from that gorgeous dance break into the grand vocal ending—philip doesnt know what he’s missing out on for sure—stop is not something i play on purpose but if the obc album shuffles to it i won’t complain!

what’s wrong with me (reprise): is it homophobic of me to put every gretchen song sans whose house is this on this list? probably but again it’s just not something i can put on repeat/a number i think depends on the production to arouse much entertainment value. it’s fucking hilarious though i’ll give it that. like it might be in the top three of mg songs when it comes to unadulterated comedy. my heart breaks when gretchen realises she’s stuck in this cycle of servitude and is still being hurt by the people she most desires the approval of and her work is still going unappreciated and then i get a heart attack from laughing because regina’s reign of terror is so absolute even her own mother has feared her from the age of three onwards?? in addition to that what’s wrong with me reprise is why i cannot stand for mrs george hate she’s just a girl too. a toxic girl who never emotionally developed past high school but like. what do you want her to do. she has never had a heartfelt conversation with her daughter ever. also “why couldn’t it just be drugs” is so funny to me because yknow. reggie gets hit by a bus and spends the rest of the show so high she forgets her love languages are acts of slanderous service, passive-aggressive gifts, weaponized physical touch, quality time spent playing hard to get, and words of refutation. taylor louderman deserved a tony for pulling the kalteen bar scream off every night too i think it’s night queen aria levels of difficulty.

the funniest part of this song to me is probably the way it starts and ends so abruptly. usually you can tell when a song’s about to start in a musical but gretchen nearly breaking down into sobs as soon as cady turns her non-self-tanned back without missing a beat is both relatable and hysterical. my girl is clinging to les mis motifs and middle school herd mentality in a world meant for fosse tributes. the spotlight is only on her when she talks about how dim her light feels in comparison to other characters. then mrs george joins in and you get the first female/female duet to rival defying gravity since idk. everything in fun home. i take cash and credit not criticism.

but really the gretchen/mrs george connection is so interesting because they tether themselves to regina in a style that’s irreconcilable with happiness on either end and they know that but possibly for a mix of selfish and sympathetic reasons don’t want to leave in any capacity. the way they’re separated on stage by little more than a change in colored lighting is interesting too and raises the question of whether or not they’re aware that regina’s sun is burning those closest to her in general.

also. can plastic cady snap and yell at me i want to feel something

in conclusion i love you pezberrywhoreee thank you for asking this. i think i said the words “also” and “but” more times than i said the word “gay” and that’s a real hurdle to fly over. i think i expect many random things in your inbox hereafter as retribution/reward depending on how you see it

[detroitbecomeonline]

Cast & Sugar

Summary: Connor teaches Puma, the hallway PM700, how to make shortbread. But it never really was about shortbread. (G, wholesome)

Link to ao3.

Word count: 2,498.

Puma loved the cheer over shortbread.

When she was a machine, she stood in the corridor on the way to the Detroit Police Department's break room, where exhausted police officers plodded their way past with a coffee in hand, typically from the café across the road if not made by the DPD coffee machine, and a decade-old dullness in their eyes. She'd greet them with a smile, answering the occasional question that they grumbled through their teeth. She'd never be a cop like them. Or a human. Just a PM700 to monitor the halls.

Puma returned to work after the demonstration as a deviated entity. Over time, she developed close working relationships with Officer Chen, Officer Person, and Connor. Puma noticed the cheer humans had for the little things, even when their days may have been ruined by an early phone call or a wrong coffee order. But they always smiled at the shortbread. The mysterious plate of baked goods, after the dawn of the demonstration, appeared every Monday in the break room. She empathised with the humans' enthusiasm for the biscuit, but could never taste it for herself. She had neither a tongue that could know the sweet, sugary treat, nor the stomach for coffee. Before long, the cheerfulness turned bitter in her mouth. She convinced herself that most humans hadn't changed in the last several months; they just became distracted by things more important than androids, like shortbread.

All the while, Connor had been providing the devilish plate. He'd arrive early and set it on the right-side silver table where people would smell the dessert as they passed. As Puma lingered in the doorway, Connor offered her one. Bewildered, she stepped back, asserting that not only she had no ability to eat, she didn't want to, especially those shortbreads. Though the words didn't seem to bother him, her assertion crumbled as Tina Chen waltzed in with a coffee and bid them both a "good morning" before she plucked a vanilla goody from Connor's plate.

Puma asked him once why he did it. He was an android who couldn't taste or eat a full shortbread, a faint concern seeping into her mind at the idea he'd been taken advantage of by their former self-proclaimed superiors. Connor tilted his head, eyebrows raised and tone softened: "Because it helps."

She furrowed her brows. Her lips parted as she shook her head. "How does a plate of shortbread help anyone? It's the bulletproof vests and the co-workers that help. And you can't even eat."

"You seem too focused on what others are doing, Puma." The corner of Connor's mouth picked up into a languid smirk. "Maybe you should focus on what others are."

She thought about that phrase a lot over the next few months.

When Officer Person contracted the flu, Puma dove into the wide banks of the internet with full confidence that she'd find a quick cure. She thought she took Connor's advice; she focused on what Officer Person was. She was a human, and as a human, she needed care when her body became suboptimal. While Person's husband worked, Puma popped around with a large bowl of chicken soup, fresh and hot, a recipe she followed from online sources. Crisp noodles and carrot shreds swirled around the surface of the green-brown broth. Person sniffed a thank-you at her front door, black hair mottled to her sweaty forehead and cupped the weighty bowl with pallid hands.

"It's still warm," she said with a tired grin.

It's the little things that brought out a human's gratitude. When she had been programmed to notice every minute detail, the whimsy of the world simply converted into data to keep on file. The cutting of vegetables upon a wooden board, the sprinkle of spices between her fingers, the bubbling of the stew. It was all lost on her.

"I hope it helps. I'd rather have you back at work sooner than later. The office isn't the same without you."

Officer Person returned to work in a week. Puma wished the soup had brought her to health sooner, but human immune systems were unpredictable. The shortbreads in the break room were there to greet Person. She took one.

Officer Chen often complimented Connor's baked goods. She loved them as much as she loved her morning coffee, ready to snag the first treat when she arrived just to make sure she never missed out. Her fondness for Connor had grown over the time she talked to him. Though Tina's efforts of conversation began forced and stale, Connor's patience knew no bounds, and week after week, Tina's heart of guile had thawed. She had warmed up to androids in general; Puma had Connor's shortbread to thank for that. And as Officer Chen dunked the sugary biscuit into her coffee and chatted with the android detective, Puma focused on what they are. They're equal people, locked in friendly gab.

She wondered if this was Connor's definition of 'help'. If it wasn't really for humans, but for androids. To build a community around something as simple as butter and vanilla, to bring the anxious and weary to the table and reassure them. She wondered, as the only other android left in the precinct, if he'd done it for her.

Connor was a mastermind of manipulation and strategy. She knew this, and his past, and sourness curled into her wires. She had to try the impossible: Be one step ahead.

Puma knew everyone's routine. She watched with a vitriolic, green stare as the humans trickled in, one by one. She marched over the other side of the bullpen at the smell of coffee or left to stare at the sink in the bathroom when Person walked around with a shortbread in hand. The audio of people cooing over the sweet treats ground her teeth. They'd still have no respect for androids without the desert to placate their hatred. She stewed with grips on the rim of the sink, lip curled at the thought that she wouldn't have a positive relationship with Chen and Person if not for the shortbread training them like dogs to be kinder to her. The whole operation was a mind game and Connor was the king piece.

But one evening, Connor caught her in the staff car park before she headed home for the night. He wanted her to come over when the clock struck twelve, just as the night rolled onto Monday morning. Stunned at his social advance, Puma emulated a swallow and nodded. She didn't know what to make of it. He lightly smiled and reached a hand out for hers. Puma clasped his forearm, their skin disintegrated to reveal the white nylon underneath, and he gave her his address.

Puma stood in Hank Anderson's kitchen, stark central light overhead and red bowls scattered across the marble bench along the back wall. Connor had been fortunate enough that the human had offered a place in his home after the whirlwind of the android revolution. She observed the take-out menus on the fridge and the fresh butter on the bench and watched as he tied a blue apron to the front of his wiry frame. She saw a glimmer of hope. Of co-existence without coercion. Of sugar bought by request rather than demand.

Connor couldn't taste. He couldn't eat the shortbread he made. But he could sample the dough. He could tell what percentage of sugar it needed, if it required more vanilla extract, less flower. And the only way he knew what tasted good is if he got Hank to try a cookie with each batch every day. He followed recipes online, but not all of them worked out. Some had different outcomes, like charred disks on the baking tray or powdery rectangles that broke under the press of a finger. He wanted them to be just the way Hank liked them. So he adjusted the recipe until it became his own. That's what he gifted to the break room.

Puma's brow creased. As the deviant hunter gingerly cut the precise amount of butter required for his recipe, all she could think about is how much the RK800 wasn't built for this, yet he did it because he chose to.

"Why did you start?" asked Puma in a whisper, careful of her volume when Hank slept in his bedroom.

Connor whisked the butter and sugar together in a glass, red-stained bowl, his sleeve rolled up above his elbow. His voice was husky when he spoke. "Too many reasons." He slowed down, then eyed her. "Here." He passed the bowl to her. "...I wanted to teach you this because... If you ever find a human you care about, you can do this for them."

Was the shortbread to make Hank happy? Did Connor care about his human co-workers? After they had been so nasty to them and their kind?

"Pain doesn't make anyone tougher." Connor lifted Puma's smooth hand. He gently positioned her wrist so that she'd have the best angle to whisk. She mindlessly stirred the bowl, attention solely on his face. He continued in his deliberate, articulate tone, "Damage never helped anyone get stronger. People tend to think that once someone comes out of a dark place, they've gotten over it."

Puma had stopped whisking. She studied his averted gaze, his brown eyes now locked onto something, anything, out the dark window.

"If you hit a dog, it cowers from you and anything like you. It takes care and dedication to fix what you damaged. How can you see a bone break and then watch as a caring hand wraps it in a cast and say: 'It’s the pain that made it stronger.'" He noticed that she stared, motionless, and corrected her hand position. "You can't."

His face was expressionless as he talked. He was the deviant hunter, bound to halt the revolution in its tracks right up until he broke free from his code. He couldn't have done it without a caring hand that mended his broken bones... Hank. Anderson had shown Connor tolerance and helped him find his place in the world even before he became a deviant. He hoped that the humans could break free of their code, too. Find tolerance. Find placement. Peace. Puma, completely attentive, watched her co-worker as the realisation unfolded before her.

She placed the bowl and whisk on the bench. With a visceral thud into Connor's chest, she wrapped her arms around him. Her chin tilted up against his shoulder and her fingers clawed into the back of his shirt. The thin man hugged back. He rested his nose in her hair, his thirium pump beating consistently below his chassis. Strength is built from love, not from the lash of pain.

Heavy with emotion, Puma clung tighter to him. Her chest caved as she spoke. "I suppose I'd better pay attention to how to make shortbread." She choked a laugh.

He exhaled. A faint smile came with it. "Then I'll show you how."

The hug broke, but the palpable warmth lingered between them. He opened the flower, the sugar, he retrieved the silver-wrapped butter from the fridge, and brought out a pristine blue plate. He laid a white, plastic hand on Puma's back and brought her a step closer to the bench. He scooped flower onto the plate in one swift motion, a fluff of excess powder escaping the main pile.

Connor pinched the flower like gold and rubbed it between his fingers. Puma followed suit. Her system was designed to observe, but now, she did so with purpose. Her bright eyes fluttered closed. It was a cloud on her fingertips, soft and fine. She squeezed it like a hard-won coin. It compressed between the synthetic pores of her chassis. A tuft of flower bopped on her nose. She opened her eyes to see a white spot on the bottom of her vision. Connor scooped sugar out of its container as if he had nothing to do with the powder. She smiled and wiped it away with the back of her hand.

Sugar felt much more coarse. It rolled between her fingers like sand. It got under her nails and it was crunchy upon her teeth. Salt was similar. Butter, akin to a strange soap, lathered easily on her hands. She could slide her fingertips across the bench with ease. It left a greasy stripe. Her hands sank into the plushness of a fresh towel. She logged the fluffiness of the dough, the consistency between her index and thumb saved to her internal files. She felt the cool of the fridge on her skin, the heat of the oven on her hand.

She picked out the grains from underneath her nails below the faucet of running water. The butter and flower melted from her hands and drained down the sink.

"Here." Connor squeezed pink hand soap into her palms. "Because it helps."

Her throat hitched at the same words he had spoken all those months ago.

When Puma brought her own perfectly-rectangular batch of shortbread into the DPD two weeks later, she did so quietly. Officer Chen sat on the edge of Person's desk. They chatted idly, not yet indulging in the bitter coffee the break room had to offer. Puma stretched between them and placed the saccharine treats with a click on the desk.

"Shortbread?" Tina frowned.

"Puma, did you make these?" Officer Person already picked one up and studied its glittery sugar in the artificial light.

"Yes." She nudged the plate in encouragement. "I know a recipe." Connor's recipe. Androids truly did follow instructions well.

"Why?" Tina asked the single word in wonder rather than hostility, a gleam in her eyes as she too plucked one from the plate.

And yet the question had so many answers. Because the humans needed to be nursed back to their usual personalities after being hit. Because it created community, connections, love. Because she could feel the textures on her skin and the heat on her hands. Because she focused on what things are. Because when she crumbled the shortbread in her hand and let it pour out from her palm like sand in an hourglass, she relived the time, process, and affection put into it. Because she became human for the moments she deliberately took in the little things.

"Connor taught me the recipe and he said that if I ever found any humans I care about... I should make this for you."

And in the evening, as Puma carried her empty plate through the staff car park, she brushed past Connor who made his way to Hank's car. They said nothing for several comfortable steps, but Puma couldn't help but lift her sparkly gaze to his soft features.

"Why?" The word slipped out without warning. No context, no build-up. Yet Connor glanced at the empty plate and he knew.

"Because," his even tone articulated, "you had a broken bone someone needed to cast."

[hecatemoon87]

BOB SAGINOWSKI x FEMALE OC

Warnings ⚠️ smut

NO minors!

Read Part I

Part II: When God closes a window...

Right as Jocelyn unleashed her blasphemous confession, the church doors opened, and a group of elderly parishioners entered. Bob sighed with relief, grateful for the intrusion.

When he turned back to check on Jocelyn, she winked and blew him a kiss before she opened the door from the confessional and walked out of the church.

He returned to the dormitory where the junior priests lived and took a cold shower. A whirlwind of thought upheaved his mind as he thought once more of why he had become a priest.

He believed in God and respected God. But also, he feared God. He had done something in his younger days, something so awful he thought the only way to wash the sin away was to serve God.

He had committed murder. The man he killed was a very bad person. Nonetheless, he carried the guilt for a long time. After he joined the parish, he thought he'd feel better. But after two years, nothing really changed. He still felt bad, and now he always felt alone.

The parish was filled with good people, and yes, he did have a sense of community there, but he soon realized the hole that he needed to fill was companionship, with a woman.

He had confided in the Archpriest, who had told him to pray and that God would tell him whether to stay or leave the priesthood. Was Jocelyn's return the answer to his prayers? He wasn't sure.

A couple weeks later, Bob's cell rang, and he saw it was Jocelyn. He picked it up and flatly said, "Hello."

"Hey, I haven't heard from you for a while..are you mad at me?" She asked cautiously.

"Actually...a little," he said.

"It was a joke... but I guess it wasn't a good one. Look, I was calling to see if you wanted to go for coffee? Or do you never want to see me again?" She asked, laughing nervously.

Bob closed his eyes briefly. He thought long and hard before answering. Maybe he shouldn't see her again. Maybe he should cut off ties with her and double down at becoming a better priest. Or maybe he should see her again and let God guide his heart.

"Bob?" Jocelyn asked, a hint of anxiety in her voice.

"Yeah, sorry. Spaced out, uh, sure. Just text me the time and place," he said.

It was a few hours later, and he was sitting across from Jocelyn in her apartment. She was dressed down, t-shirt, black jeans and vans. Her hair was up, and she wasn't wearing any makeup. Yet, she still looked beautiful.

They sat on opposite ends of the couch, drinking cups of coffee.

"So, this priest business is legit, then?" She asked dubiously over her cup of coffee.

"Yeah, why wouldn't it be?" Bob said.

"I dunno, I guess it makes sense. You always were a good little Catholic boy," she said, sitting her cup on the coffee table.

"And you always were a trouble maker," he said, smiling.

"I missed you when I left. I should have told you that before you became a priest," she said, sighing.

"We were eighteen, hard to regret something when we were so young," he said, staring into his cup.

"Why, Bob? Why a priest? I mean...religion is so complicated. No one really knows the answer to all this, why dedicate yourself to an institution that is obviously a social construct," Jocelyn asked.

"Why are you so annoyed by that? I believe in God. This is my life, my choice. I can't help that you don't believe in anything," he said.

"That's not true! I believe in love and kindness. I don't need God to tell me how to be a good person when in my heart those are the things I want to be anyway," she protested.

"And seducing a priest is good?" He said, trying to make a joke, but it seemed to upset her.

"No, it isn't, okay? I said I was sorry!" She said, her voice raising and then cracking at the end. A tear trickled down her face, and she quickly brushed it away.

"Whoa, hey. I was kidding," Bob said, getting up to sit next to her. He placed his arm around her and squeezed. She wiped a few more tears away from her eyes.

She looked at him for a moment. Her lovely light brown doe eyes glistened from her tears. Bob felt his heart fill up with love. He had an overwhelming sense to protect this woman. He then kissed her.

Jocelyn gently returned the kiss. Their lips parted, giving the chaste kiss some heat. For a few blissful seconds, they shared this moment of desire. But suddenly Bob's cell rang, pulling him out of his trance.

"Oh, uh...uh..." Bob stuttered as he pulled out his phone. It was Jason Choi, his dorm mate, a fellow junior priest.

Priest. Shit, he was still a God damn priest!

Bob jumped off the couch and walked backward towards the door, "I need to leave. And I'm so sorry, Jocelyn. I shouldn't have done that."

She frowned and stood up. "Go then! What's that fucking saying? When God closes a window, he opens a door? There it is, Bob, there's the God damn door!"

"Actually, you have it switched around..." Bob said, attempting to correct her. But her face was telling him to get out now, or he'd soon see God in person. "Okay...I'll call you?"

"Out!!"

[xoxiu]

twinkle - ot7 x reader

chapter 08

table of contents

masterlist

join the taglist

summary: she had just wanted attention, that’s why she kept texting the strange number, updating him on everything in her life. little did she know how dangerous this relationship actually was. it had been jimin’s idea to kidnap the girl, but the ability to travel across the world to actually do it had been all hoseok’s doing. convenient how some things work, right? they knew that they were destined to have their baby with them, whether she wanted it or not.

tags/warnings: kidnapping, forced age regression, spanking, noncon, mafia au, drug use, stockholm syndrome, caregiver!bts, little!reader, nonsexual, diapers, panic attacks, fluff and angst, sickfic, referenced child abuse, unrequited love

a/n: i wrote this fic in 2018 on ao3 and wattpad, but im putting it here for archival reasons ♡

The end of the day was drawing near, and Jin was too anxious to properly function. Everyone except Jin, Yoongi, and Namjoon were called in for a drug exchange involving a very unpredictable client who had a tendency to skip out on his payments. Not long after that, Ophelia started to gain confidence, considering that the majority of her captors were now gone. She became much more stubborn to the point where she even ended up punching Namjoon in the nose.

"We have to drug her again, Jin," Namjoon said, talking quietly so the child in question wouldn't be able to hear them. She was currently in time-out, sitting in the corner of the kitchen where she was previously this morning. 

"No, I don't want to," Jin replied, running a hand through his hair. "I want her to have at least the freedom of movement. She can relax more that way."

The couple turned around to look at Ophelia, who was quietly sitting with her head leaning against the wall. Jin would most likely have to put her to bed soon after her time in the corner was done- it was long past her bedtime. Jin sighed before speaking again.

"She hasn't eaten at all today, Joon. Nor has she used her diaper or taken-"

"Shh," Namjoon cut him off, "Don't stress about that. Give it time- it's only been a day."

Checking that 10 minutes has passed (and also that it was half past 11, they'd really better get Ophelia to bed soon), Namjoon approached the sleepy girl in the corner and gently picked her up. "Can you say sorry for hurting Appa?"

Silence.

Namjoon only sighed before looking towards Seokjin, but still speaking to Ophelia. "I bet you're hungry, baby. Do you want Eomma or Appa to feed you?"

Silence yet again. 

"Come here, sweetie. Eomma will get you ready for bed while Appa makes you a bottle." Jin took Ophelia from Namjoon and slowly rocked her and hummed a song. Poor thing was too tired to give her usual fuss at being held.

Ophelia was dozed off when Jin entered the nursery, so changing her into her pajamas was much easier than changing her out of them earlier that day. He currently had her on his lap, rocking back and forth in the rocking chair next to her crib. The door opened and Jin expected his boyfriend to enter with the bottle so he could finally put Ophelia to sleep, but Yoongi walked in instead.

"She's finally calmed down?" He cooed, running his hand through the mess of pink hair. Seokjin hummed in agreement, bouncing the girl on his lap slightly to ensure she doesn't fall into a deep sleep just yet.

"She was calm most of the afternoon, only a little fuss before bedtime," Seokjin raised an eyebrow at the shorter blond, "Of course, you would've known that if you left your computer."

"Hey," Yoongi tried defending himself, "I'm the only one here that works 24/7. Give me a break." Seokjin rolled his eyes right as Namjoon walked into the room.

"I'm going to take a shower and head to bed," Namjoon said, handing the bottle over to Jin, "She doesn't have to drink it all- she's pretty tired out." Namjoon bent down to press a kiss to the top of Ophelia's head and then one to Jin's lips before leaving the room. Right before he left, he turned to Yoongi, "You should get some sleep, too. You and Tae are going to be the only ones home in the morning, and you're not sleeping in until noon and leaving Taehyung alone with Ophelia the entire time."

Yoongi followed Namjoon out of the nursery with an "Alright, I'll wake up at eleven," which promptly got him a playful smack on the head from the younger. Seokjin chuckled softly before placing his attention back on Ophelia. 

"Daddy's silly, isn't he?" Jin bounced her again, resulting in a whine from Ophelia who only wanted to sleep. Jin cooed at the sleepy girl, giving a kiss to her head as well. "You can sleep after your bottle, okay, bug?"

Once the bottle in question was brought to Ophelia's attention, she covered her mouth with the back of her hand, wanting anything but the bottle near her lips. In her weak and tired state, Jin was easily able to move her hand back down to her lap. "None of that, baby," Jin whispered as he put the nipple between Ophelia's lips, facing only minimal resistance.

Frustrated tears formed in the corners of her eyes; Ophelia just wanted to sleep and have this nightmare end already. Her stomach sabotaged her, and soon she found herself frantically drinking the vanilla flavored milk. Jin's hand not holding the bottle started stroking Ophelia's hair, making Ophelia tense up slightly.

After a few more minutes the bottle was empty, and Ophelia was back on the brink of sleep. Jin continued to gently rock back and forth before placing her in the crib, placing a kiss on her forehead. 

Taehyung was too excited to sleep. He woke up at 5 in the morning hoping that Ophelia would be awake only to have his hopes crushed when he saw her still fast asleep on the baby monitor. For the next two hours, Taehyung went back and forth from trying to sleep to checking the monitor.

By 7, everyone except Yoongi and Taehyung had left for work. Taehyung took this as the perfect opportunity to wake Ophelia up and get her ready for the fun day the two of them had ahead of them. Entering the nursery, he almost had a heart attack at the sight of Ophelia cuddled in her blankets with her stuffies surrounding her, dressed in a brown bear footed onesie. It got rather cold that night, but Ophelia looked warm and cozy under her pile of blankets. 

"Baby," Taehyung cooed, "It's time to wake up." He picked up the sleepy girl with a smile while Ophelia whined, wanting to go back to sleep. Before she could fully wake up, Taehyung quickly changed her diaper and put her in day clothes- a yellow and red striped shirt and overalls. 

"You are so cute!" Taehyung squealed, covering Ophelia's face with kisses. When he pulled back, he was met with an angry scowl, which he still thought was adorable.

Taehyung picked Ophelia back up, and immediately Ophelia dug her sharp nails into his arms. "Ow!" Taehyung let out an overexaggerated hiss of pain, "Lia! That hurts!" When Ophelia refused to stop the assault, Taehyung placed her back in the crib. Looking down at his arm, he noticed blood was starting the form on the crescent-shaped scars. Ophelia, however, showed no remorse, and laid herself back down and wrapped a blanket around herself. 

"That wasn't very nice, baby," Taehyung said, bending down to make eye contact with the girl. "Say you're sorry and then we can go eat some yummy pancakes."

Ophelia was quiet for a moment, carefully observing Taehyung's face. She could apologize and get on with her day, but that was the last thing she wanted. 

"Fuck off."

Taehyung sighed, desperately wanting her to apologize so nothing would escalate. "Do I have to go wake up Daddy? He won't be too happy to hear that his little girl is being bratty so early in the morning."

"Fuck off." Ophelia rolled facing away from Taehyung now, further swaddling herself in the pink blanket. She no longer cared about how 'Daddy' felt.

Without a word, Taehyung left the nursery. He didn't plan on waking up Yoongi- he wasn't that stupid- but instead wanted Ophelia to sit and calm herself down. He went downstairs and sat on the couch, playing games on his phone to pass the time. A door slamming upstairs caught his attention, and he immediately ran back up the stairs. 

The first thing he saw was the door to the nursery wide open, and Tae started to panic. Just to make sure, he quickly checked to confirm whether or not Ophelia had left the room. The crib was empty, and there was no sign of the girl. 

Taehyung began checking every room upstairs but still couldn't find Ophelia. The only room he hadn't checked was Yoongi and Jimin's room, but the chances of her being in there were slim since Yoongi still resided in there. Just to make sure, Taehyung tried turning the knob, only to find it locked. 

The door to the library opened, and Taehyung saw a flash of pink hair fly down the stairs. Taehyung was certain he looked in there- how could he not have seen her? After a moment of confusion, the taller man ran after her until she locked herself in the bathroom.

Tae kept pulling at the handle in hopes it would magically open, and loudly cursed when it wouldn't budge. "Lia," he pleaded, resting his forehead on the door, "Please open up." He could hear through the door Ophelia's shuddering breaths, indicating she was crying. 

On the other side of the door, Ophelia curled herself into a ball in the corner of the large bathroom. She honestly didn't know what happened in the past half hour, but the more she dwelled on the threat of 'Daddy' dealing with her behavior, the more she remembered the last time he had dealt with it as well. She tried her best to convince herself it was all a sick joke, but then remembered how much it had hurt, and how embarrassing it was, and how much she just wanted to go home. 

The feeling in her legs had thankfully returned enough for her to run for her life basically, and explore the house she was imprisoned in just enough to find an exit or hiding place. Thankfully she was small, so she could fit almost anywhere. It was a surprise, however, when Taehyung had walked right past her hiding under the computer desk as if he wasn't actually looking for her. 

Once the knocking and talking outside the bathroom stopped, Ophelia didn't know whether to stop panicking or panic even harder. Her brain just felt so overwhelmed, and her tears had a mind of their own at this point. 

Even though she hated it, Ophelia wanted to be back home. She would take the insults and beer bottles thrown at her over whatever her current situation was any day. Although she often cried and complained over having to play mom over Rose, she missed how the baby would calm down whenever she so much as heard Ophelia's voice. She was essentially that baby's whole world, and now she was gone. Ophelia couldn't imagine how Rose was currently being treated, but only hoped that her brother had the sense to take her and leave the house immediately. Ophelia felt guilty for leaving them to fend for themselves.

Taehyung had given up trying to get Ophelia to open the door herself, and resorted to calling Seokjin to see what he should do. 

"Calm down, Taehyung-ah," Seokjin said, trying to calm down the panicking man, "Go get Yoongi and see what he can do. I'll try to be home by noon."

Taking Seokjin's advice, Taehyung went to wake Yoongi up. After knocking, the still half-asleep man opened the door with a glare, almost daring Taehyung to say something.

"Hyung, Ophelia locked herself in the bathroom and I don't know-" Yoongi cut him off with a groan, saying he'd be down in a minute. 

Taehyung went back to sit in front of the bathroom door, feeling like a failure. 

Taehyung still felt dejected even after Yoongi had pried the door open. He felt more pain than Ophelia did as he heard the loud spanks from inside the bathroom, tearing up himself as her cries echoed throughout the house. 

Yoongi still had her in his arms as he made her bottle, gently shushing her when her sobs started to increase. Since her punishment had ended a while ago, Taehyung knew the sobs now were from whatever was going through the little's head. Taehyung hesitantly entered the kitchen, and Ophelia briefly looked up at him from where she was previously hiding her face in Yoongi's shoulder. When her puffy red eyes still glassy with tears met his own, he almost wanted to break down crying. 

Turning around, Yoongi noticed Taehyung's discomfort and concern over the little in his arms. "She's fine, Tae." He confirmed, rubbing her back soothingly. "My little one's always calm and well-behaved after a spanking, isn't she?" Ophelia let out a cough in return. Taehyung was concerned she'd make herself sick from crying so much. 

"Does she... need anything?" 

Yoongi hummed in thought, bouncing Ophelia in his arms when she started fussing slightly. "Maybe her pacifier will settle her a bit after her bottle." 

Taehyung walked away to retrieve the item, with the older man adding on as he left, "Make sure you grab the strap as well."

[superjumpintomyheart]

Shiver/Frye: Shiver giving Frye forehead kisses? Maybe something with insecurities? Or just regular soft stuff!

Been seeing a lot of Frye slander :( especially the forehead jokes...

As a pearl stan myself i will NOT stand for frye forehead slander!!! she is beautiful and the influence from south asian and/or possibly Brazilian culture in her design is SO beautiful i love her and shiver loves her <3 [Shiver uses they/them pronouns here!]

“Do you think I should get bangs?” Frye asked, twirling her tentacle hair while looking in a handheld mirror. Shiver sat behind her, helping her with styling the back of her head after she became too frustrated with the double mirror technique. Their brows furrowed in confusion, continuing to tie the ribbon around Frye’s fluorescent locks.

“Bangs? I’m not sure,” they mused. This was the first time they had heard of the inkling wanting to change her hairstyle, it took them a moment to imagine it. “Do you want to get bangs?”

Recently, Frye had been constantly checking her social medias in excitement for the splatfest, but there was a group of people who were dedicated to making jokes about her appearance. Particularly, her forehead. It was a low branch to grab at really, they couldn’t say anything to her she hadn’t heard growing up. 

Many kids had tried to bring her down and make her feel bad about herself just because she looked different, the shape of her eyes, her long ears, her wide forehead... she clearly didn’t fit in. Her mother had taught her a very important lesson one day when she came home crying after a day of teasing had really gotten to her. Just because some people don’t find you beautiful in their eyes, doesn’t mean that the whole world agrees with them. 

That phrase had always stuck with her whenever she was facing bullying in school, and it gave her confidence to be her true self. However, with all the exposure of the Anarchy Newscast and Deep Cut as a band gaining popularity, more people had started to say those hurtful things about her. As much as she tried to remind herself those comments didn’t dictate her self worth, she couldn’t help but start to think she should change her appearance. 

“I don’t know, I was just kinda thinking about it cause a lotta people have been saying I should,” Frye responded, purposefully leaving out that people suggested the hairstyle to cover up her forehead. 

Shiver had seen the posts too, and they were concerned for their girlfriend’s wellbeing with all the nasty comments she was reading. They finished up with the ribbon and secured it well, admiring the work they had done with a satisfied smile. Though, they still wanted to help Frye know she didn’t need to conform to others’ standards of beauty when she was so beautiful already.

“As much as I think you would look great with bangs, and any other hairstyle-” they wrapped their arms around Frye’s waist, pulling her back into their arms as the inkling’s head rested on their shoulder. “I love how you look most when you express yourself, your hairstyle, your jewelry, your clothes. All of it is perfect if it’s how you want to show yourself to the world.”

They leaned over, their own tentacles falling in front of their face as they kissed the temple of Frye’s head. With the small yet bright smile on her face, Shiver was encouraged to continue with more kisses pressed along her hairline, between her eyebrows, right on the tip of her nose - which made her giggle - and finally with their lips meeting in a proper kiss. Each time the octoling kissed their girlfriend, it seemed to fill her with more joy and confidence.

“Do you really think so?” Frye asked with a small hint of doubt still in her voice.

“Of course I do. Besides, I’m the only one who gets to date you, shouldn’t my opinion matter most?” Shiver teased, winking at their love.

Frye giggled again, turning around fully so she could wrap her arms fully around her partner. She thought about the phrase her mom had said to her when she was young, she really had been right. Shiver was her whole world, and the world said she was beautiful. 

She sighed, relaxing into their embrace, “Thanks, Shiv.”

[ballistashoot]

-Princess (Katsumi Orochi x fem!Reader)

So, I know this might be really bad, but please take into consideration that this is my first time writing something that's not a headcanon. (ft. Grammarly, bc writing is not that easy)

That was one of those nights where the Tokugawa mansion was full of people celebrating the inauguration of the new tournament... and something else. Hundreds of people were wearing fancy clothes and eating exotic foods, the house was carefully decorated, with creamy-toned curtains and golden balloons. Everyone was having a great time. Except for a certain young lady upstairs...

-Miss... I know how nervous you are, but you know how excited your grandfather is...- Said one of the maids.- I promise you’ll be all right, and oh dear you look beautiful.

-Thanks Hina, I know it can’t be that bad, but having the spotlight on me all night... It’s terrifying.

A sudden knock interrupted the conversation. 

-Y/N, darling, it’s about time.- Mitsunari Tokuwaga’s voice was heard across the door.

Shyly, the young lady opened the door to see her grandfather standing with a proud smile.

-You are gorgeous as always, I’m so happy you finally agreed to join the family tradition.- Small tears almost started falling from the old man’s eyes as the started walking.

Eventually, they stood by the giant stairs, and Mr Tokugawa drew the crowd’s attention to them with a loud clap.

-Dear guest, we’re all reunited here to celebrate the opening of what will be the biggest marcial arts tournament, the Maximun Tournament! And mosts importantly, my granddaugther’s joining to the family tradition! As you all know, my dear Y/N will anounce the encounters from now on. All said, please wellcome, Y/N Tokugawa!

The man’s words were followed by applauses as the girl went down the stairs. Minutes later, the party continued, and only one thing changed, everyone’s eyes were on Y/N. The girl was quickly cornered by people asking her questions and congratulating her, after half an hour, the crown finally calmed down and left her alone.

She looked around the room looking for a certain someone. She recognized some faces, the Shinogi brothers, Mr.Shibukawa, Mr.Igari, Mr. and Mrs. Orochi, and a few other figthers, but she couldn’t find him anywhere.

-Hey Y/N, what’s up?- The girl turned around to see a certain brown-haired boy.

-Baki! You’re also here! Do you know...

-He’s outside.- She was cut off by the teasing voice of the teenager. He knew her well, she was like a big sister to him, he knew all her secrets, and he also knew who she was searching for.

-Thanks Baki, you really are the best.- She responded hugging him tigthly before sneaking to the garden.

And there he was, black hair, confident posture and a charming smile on his face, god was he handsome. The one and only Katsumi Orochi, her best friend and the boy he has loved all her life. 

She still remembers when they first met.

...

At that time, both of them were 5. Her grandfather took her to the Orochi's house, apparently there was a new member of the family. They arrived to see Mr. Orochi standing by the door, Doppo greeted them with a smile and invited them in. She was about to say hi to Natsue when suddenly, a black haired boy appeared behind her. He was pretty tall and already had some muscles, he wasn't a normal 5 years old boy.

-Y/N, Mitsunari, I'd like to introduce you to Katsumi, our recently adopted son.- Said Doppo.

Since that day, they became inseparable.

...

-HELLO! EARTH CALLING Y/N!- Katsumi's voice brought her out of her thoughts. She hadn't noticed how she had been staring at him the whole time.

-I knew you would eventually get overwhelmed and come here.- Sighted the young man.- You look... really nice.

The girl felt flattered yet a little disappointed, deep in her heart she wanted him to tell her she looked beautiful, not just "nice".

-You know, I really appreciate the fact that you're here, I was starting to feel even more anxious with all those people looking at me.

Suddenly, their conversation was interrupted by Tokugawa's voice being heard from inside.

-Now please pay attention to my dear Y/N, who has prepared a speech to inaugurate the new tournament!

OH SHIT. THE SPEECH.

Yes, she had completely forgotten about it, great way of making the first impression to hundreds of people Y/N.

-Katsumi.- She said looking at the young man beside her.- Take me out of here.

-You don't need to say it twice.- He responded before picking her up in bridal style and jumping through the fence, running away from the party.

Soon, the Katsumi stopped running and left Y/N on the ground, then they began walking calmly through the streets. Of course, people stared at them, I mean, who wouldn't stare if they saw a man in a Tuxedo accompanying a woman with a ball gown. They didn't mind people staring, until...

-Look, mommy! A princess!- Screamed a little girl to her mother.- Hey miss princess! Where is your crown?

Y/N was about to tell the truth but the illusion on the girl's face prevented it.

-Oh! My crown! You're right! I must have forgotten it at the castle!-She said before looking at the girl's mother with an accomplice smile.

-I see...- Said the little one.- Hey, is that your prince?

Katsumi's face went red for an instant, but he decided to play along.

-Of course! I saved her from a 100 men army!- He said while placing a confident hand on her waist.

-Excuse me, can my daughter take a photo with you two?- Said the mother.

-Of course!- Y/N responded before her "prince" could say anything

Katsumi held the little girl in his arms, and after taking the photo, the kid and her mother continued with their walk.

-You know my grandfather is going to be super angry at us, right? Will you be as brave as you now when you have to take responsibility?

-To have you as my princess? I will be the bravest.

[seariii]

I'm sorry things feel so overwhelming. I promise there's no being left behind! Everyone is doing everything at their own pace, no matter how it may look. You are right where you're supposed to be :)

While I'm here uhhhh can I hear about the girls kissing and holding hands!!!!

Hii lovely anon! Thank you... Yeah life is not a race and I really should chill about that heh... Thank you

About my girls, let's see... What can I tell you about them... Let me see if I have some old drawings! (After searching) okay some of this are bad but hey Seari was experimenting lmao

Infodump under the cut

Okay so, I was particularly thinking about this two girls, their names are... Well... I guess I should talk about context first

(I did this quick sketches to explain lmao)

So, they are childhood friends (there is actually a third friend, it was a group of 3, but she has her own stuff going on). They are orphans, and well, grew up on an orphanage. The girl with the side ponytail arrived after an accident that took away her parents, and she, reasonably, was a crying mess and was badly depressed. The girl with the long hair kept insisting and insisting to look after her, to befriend her, and would pull her along on her silly adventures.... Actually I feel bad for not talking about the third one

(old drawing) so, this is the 3

The girl with long hair is kinda... Hmm... Innovative let's say, and she loooooves nicknames, so she just calls herself A, and that's how the other two girls know her as, and a nickname that stuck the rest of their lives (her name is Arely). The side ponytail girl goes by M (Mimi), and the green haired girl is K (Karen).

A would always pull M along everywhere, and M is extremely grateful for that, she feels like she saved her. K was also dragged along and as much as she hated to admit it, she enjoyed the other 2's company.

K was serious and easy to anger, she had very little patience and would prefer to so stuff on her own instead of dealing with others, and used to be like that until one day after M's arrival she did something for her. She saw her struggling and without hesitation went and helped her. Later on M told A about this and A adopted her into the group, despite K's complaints.

Each of them have her own little details like how M loves to learn more about flowers, K collects different color laces and stickers, or A trying to come up with her own language.

Some more pictures

But yeah, as they grew up, at some point they got separated, they went their own ways.

Even as an adult, M always missed the other two very much, she just wanted to see them again. She also noticed that whenever she thought about A she had a pain in her heart, but she wasn't sure what that was.

On her own life, A became a designer for a popular fashion magazine, while K is doing her own thing (quite literally has her own story, but she's some sort of wizard that helps to watch over the world).

One day because gay destiny, M and A finally cross paths again, they recognize each other instantly, despite how much they've changed. During the whole time they talked M kept feeling her heart beating loudly. They parted ways but not without exchanging their phone numbers.

They continued in contact after that, and at some point M noticed that she was badly in love with her childhood best friend, and as she started reflecting about it, she notices she had always felt this way about her and is like "I've loved her for all my life?!?" And gay panic lmao

A is REALLY DENSE and she's not gonna notice anything unless explicitly said, and even tho M is more confident, she still can't dare to do that and keeps trying to drop subtle hints. On the other hand, while A has less energy, she is still really affectionate and does some gay shit like placing her hand on M's cheek or playing with her hair, which absolutely kills M. Non functional lesbian lmao.

I don't really have a sexuality assigned to A, but the girl is obviously queer lmao. And I'm pretty sure she also likes M, but is unaware of it and just thinks it's because she loves her childhood best friend, will notice her type of love isn't the friendship kind when they meet up with K.

A: how weird... When I saw you I wanted to hug you

K: what?

A: yeah, when I saw M something in me wanted to kiss her, but when I saw you I just wanted to hug you

K: *looks at the non existent camera like "do you hear this shit"*

K: and why do you think that is

A: ... Maybe because you were always grumpy?

Poison: you're in love-

Poison is another character lmao but she's part of K's story. Anyways yeah

Also, M has a framed picture of them together. My ginger girl is down bad and she needs to kiss her girlfriend lmao

But yeah that's them, the girls that need to kiss and hold hands

If anyone read all this, thank you, this are some of my gay babies and I love them very much

[lani-heart]

|| series masterlist || CHAPTER ONE -> PREVIEW ||

parings -> riki nishimura x reader genre -> non-idol au, school au, hyrbid au warnings -> n/a word count -> 1.1k

abstract -> he's perfect how he is... but can maybe change for her.

y/n’s perspective

“Niki, we always do this” I whined as he locked himself in the bathroom. I needed to get him ready for tonight’s party. If I didn’t have to go I wouldn’t… but with my family pushing me into choosing a major in business, they're making me befriend other kids from wealthy families. 

“Please… I don’t want to go alone” I begged but he didn’t respond. It was running late and the driver would be here soon… so I might have to go alone today. 

I gave up trying to convince him and did the final touches. Grabbing a jacket, fixing my makeup, and grabbing everything I needed. 

When I left my room, I couldn’t help but smile. 

“You’re gonna go with me?” I asked and he nodded. “I can’t let you go on your own” he muttered and I chuckled. “Besides, look at how forgetful you are,” he said as he pulled my hair roller off my bangs.

“Oh,” I said genuinely forgetting as he laughed at me. 

“Do you–” “Yes, I have my tail ring on. I’m ready, now let's go before your dad starts calling”

Riki Nishimura was a stray hybrid I met when I was a kid. We were on a vacation trip to Japan when I saw him. I offered him some food I had on me and he took it from me to eat it like he was starved. 

My parents were already wanting to get me a hybrid so I begged them to keep him. In which they reluctantly agreed. However, when we found out he wasn’t a normal black cat hybrid they agreed. 

He was a panther hybrid, and so has been with me for years. We grew up together… However, my parents never liked how rowdy he was. Even now they tell me to get another hybrid, one that could join me in dinners, and parties, and one who is overall more well-behaved. 

I wasn’t gonna let them replace him. He was my best friend, my number one confidant. Besides… who needs a fancy and well-behaved hybrid? Niki was way more fun!

niki’s perspective

It was the same old party they threw with the same kids as their rich human parents and new collectibles. They liked to collect new hybrids where they’d show them off and then throw them away… but not y/n. 

Without her, I probably would still be on the street mistaken for an overgrown cat hybrid. It doesn’t mean I liked being gawked at and set a price on what they’d trade her for me. Of course, she’d never let them... I’ve seen how annoyed and angry she gets and it made me happy she cared so much. 

I cared for her too… She was clumsy and an idiot so she needed someone to take care of her. So I'm here… at a stupid party filled with spoiled rich kids. 

Not to say she isn't spoiled… she is. However, I never questioned that she loved me. She always makes that clear with everything she does for me. 

“Oh! You’re y/n right?” I heard and I saw a girl behind us with what smelled like a bird hybrid. “Mmhm… have we met before?” she asked why I didn’t think so… I would’ve recognized her and her hybrid. “My name–” I didn’t care what she had to say… I just didn’t like how her hybrid kept on staring at me with those eyes of his. What was his problem?

I was cut off from my thoughts when suddenly the topic of discussion became me… 

“He’s really pretty and exotic too! I just haven’t heard good things about him, you know?” she said and I had to refrain from growling at her. Who was she to talk right in front of my face about me? And to y/n?

“Jay here is well-behaved! He’s from America you know–” Is that supposed to make him impressive? Congrats bird you’re a pet! “–it's just a shame you know. I wanted a bunny or maybe a cat hybrid” she pouted and I could see his disappointed expression. 

“Oh, Niki is really sweet but he’s solitary–” “You should invest in a social hybrid you know?” she cut her off to say. Rude… why would she need another hybrid when she has me?

“I like the way he is, he’s been with me since we were kids so there's no way I could ever replace him like that,” she said and I felt proud. 

“I heard about how much you care for him. I guess rumors were true” she said and I knew she was amongst those who talked about why she couldn’t get a nicer and social hybrid who smiles and dotes on her. I do dote on her… and I’m only nice to her. Everyone else was pushing it. 

“What is he if I can ask?” she said and y/n only sighed while looking up at me. “He’s a puma hybrid from Japan,” she answered. “Woah! I heard puma hybrids were rare! I thought he was just a cat… makes sense then for how tall he is.” she said as she got closer to me. 

“Oh please don’t do that. You’ll make him uncomfortable.” y/n said as I went behind her. 

“You should take him to the training you know. It's for the hybrids who need manners… they are opening classes in your university for hybrids'' she said… she stalked y/n to know what university she was in? She needs a life. 

“Oh… I know of them. I think he is just fine the way he is” y/n said and she bowed. “If you’ll excuse us,” she said and we walked away from the pair. “She was a bitch” y/n muttered and I laughed. “Calm down, you have an act to uphold,” I said and she sighed. “y/n?” I said and she looked at me with her eyes filled with determination to answer to give me anything I asked for. “Why didn’t you tell me your uni is having hybrid classes?” I asked and she sighed. 

“They're mainly about etiquette. She said how to take care of your owner… how to behave in a social setting, etc” and I nodded. 

“I want to go,” I said and her eyes widened. “But you're perfect–” “No, I’m not… I caused you a lot of trouble. I heard your dad get mad again this morning. He didn’t want me here because of last time” I said and she shook her head. 

“Yah! Don’t do that!” she scolded and I smiled softly. 

“Please? You said you would give me anything I asked for. I want to be a better hybrid for you”

taglist -> @ilovecheese09 @gudkc

please don't be a silent reader !! reblog, comment, and like <3

[freaky-munson]

Rude p.3

masterlist

Summary: Eddie Munson really wants to marry Y/n Hopper but her dad strongly refuses; based on song “rude” by MAGIC!

fic is kinda au

this part has actually something going on in so i really hope you will like it 🫶

Warnings: a little bit of angst, mostly fluff

Words: 1,477

introduction part one part two part three here part four part five epilogue

~

It turns out that Jim Hopper didn’t start to love Eddie Munson. Somehow he liked him even less, which he thought was impossible. Actually the young man didn’t do anything bad per say, he just said what was on his mind and asked simple question - it wasn’t his fault that the older man didn’t exactly like it; when Jim heard knocking, he opened the door, quite rudely greeted the boy and unwillingly invited him inside; overall he wasn’t that big of an asshole.

At first he didn’t think much of his sudden visit. Curly haired boy was well dressed and polite with heart on his hand. One could think he was going on a date with his daughter, but what was weird was the fact that Y/n was at work today.

So after realising that, chief didn’t like the whatever reason behind his sudden visit, moreover his change in appearance, as in good suit and clean, tied up hair.

Before Eddie could say something, Hopper was slightly aware what could come out of boy’s mouth, he wasn’t that stupid - also thanks to Joyce and her little comment about potential future marriage of his little girl, which made him lately think about it more than he would ever like to.

What was a surprise was that it was happening now, way to soon in his mind.

They barely graduated high school, they never lived together, besides secret unknown to the father sleepovers and it was possibly both of teenagers’ first serious relationship.

“Hello Mr Hopper. What a beautiful day we have today, don’t you think so?”

“Cut the crap kid. What exactly brings you here? You know that Y/n’s working today.”

“I know. Actually I came to see you, sir.”

Hopper’s worst suspicions were getting more and more real. Even though it was only 10 am at Saturday morning he decided to bring out the beer out of fridge and drink some of it to calm his nerves.

Eddie seeing this little action, became even more stressed. His hands became uncomfortably wet with sweat, his stomach came up to his throat. He almost felt like the day he met his girl, but it was much more scary and unpleasant. Also this time his lack of confidence wasn’t cute, it was almost damaging.

Taking deep breath he decided it’s now or never.

“Not to offend you Sir, but I happen to believe that you are more of old-fashioned man. And I also think that Y/n really cares about you and your opinions so much. So to already get over with it, I’m here to ask you for your blessing to marry your daughter.”

“No” this was exact answer Eddie was not hoping to get, but he knew would get.

“I know you may not really like me. But I have never ever been so sure about anything in my life. And I promise that I will always take care of Y/n, cherish and love her. Nothing will ever harm her as long as she allows me to be with her”

“I like your determination Eddie, but I’m not going to sugarcoat it - I simply don’t like you and I don’t think you are suitable man for my daughter, for many reasons. Of course I want her to be happy but you are young, you don’t know what you want in life. You barely graduated, how do you imagine getting well paid job enough for you to pay wedding and shared house? Because you know Y/n plans to go to college, right? I was once young and in love so I know how easy is to make stupid and rushed decisions. You want my daughter for the rest of your life? I’m sorry but my answer is still no. You’ll never get my blessing till the day I die.”

“Not to disrespect you, but I’m really tired of this “you’re too young” bullshit speech. I’m sorry that I’m not perfect husband you would like your daughter to have someday. But I’m willing to try to be as close to perfect as man could ever do. I’m a human too, I know my feelings better than you ever could so if I love Y/n I will marry her whether you like it or not. I thought that maybe when you will see how serious I am, you would change your mind about me and my relationship with your daughter but you are just rude at this point. That’s all what I have to say to you. So goodbye chief, I’ll see you at the wedding.” Eddie could clearly see the pissed off look on older man’s face.

At the moment he felt good that he could say at least 1% of the thoughts that had born in his mind. Rest of them were much more vulgar and would made his situation much worse if that was even possible.

Right now he only had to propose and convince Y/n to marry him without her dad’s acceptance.

At the same time Y/n was really bored sitting at the front counter in the local bookstore. She felt like she already has spent eternity there.

Her thoughts drifted away to Eddie, as always they did when she had some free time. All she could think about was today’s their weekly movie night full of best greasy food and lots of make out sessions.

What she wasn’t aware of was the bad mood of both her father and boyfriend were in.

Jim was so upset that even his lunch date with Joyce couldn’t take his mind of this morning experience. And she could clearly see that something was wrong. Based on her observations this was big and probably concerning one of his girls.

“Is everything okay honey? Is El breaking the 3 inches rule again?” she smiled softly trying to make her partner reciprocate gesture; but it seemed that his mind was somewhere else and the question went unanswered.

That only made her sure that it was something really concerning.

“Jim. Talk to me” only when she put her hand on his, he finally turned his head towards her and looked straight into her questioning eyes.

“Am I rude that I don’t want my daughter to make mistake?”

“I don’t think I know what exactly you mean”

“Munson boy came to me today. In the morning. Truthfully saying it was very nice visit” the sarcasm was so evident that it made women flinch a little; that only meant one thing - he was angry and the meeting definitely didn’t go well.

“What happened? He came to propose or what?” her light tone of voice made him only clench his face muscles even more which meant her little joke wasn’t a joke anymore “Oh”

“Oh indeed Joyce. For fucks sake, he is 20 years old. To top it all Y/n is only 18, how is he even imaging it? This has no right to work out well. It’s the recipe for a freaking disaster.”

“I think you are exaggerating a little bit. Yes, they are young and maybe are new to this whole relationships stuff, but love doesn’t choose Jim. And clearly between those two there is so much love.”

“I don’t think you are listening to me. They don’t know what love is, they are kids. They don’t even know what they want to have on dinner and you’re implying that they know anything about marriage? That’s delusional.” the loud voice filled to the brim with harshness hit Joyce with huge force; she was really surprised he was so against Eddie so much he didn’t see the happiness and love that his daughter beamed with for the almost last 2 years.

“Okay, I feel like you have to cool down. I don’t like the tone of voice you’re using while speaking to me. If you want to be mad, be mad at your stubborn ass who doesn’t notice anything around itself. If you actually spent 5 minutes on talking with this boy without any prejudice you would see what everyone else sees” with that she got up from the table leaving Jim Hopper alone with his thoughts again.

Meanwhile Eddie wasn’t feeling any better. Not wanting to speak about it with anyone he rode his van through the whole Hawkins in search of some good ideas. He had no idea what to do in such situation. Yes, he was rejected multiple times in his life, but he didn’t care about anything else like that before.

The proposal could still take place but the fact that the only Y/n’s parent figure present in her life didn’t approve it, didn’t sit well with him.

And the only person who could change Jim Hopper’s mind was at the same time the only person that could know nothing about it.

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@offical-bee @lilylilyyyyyy @bakugouswh0r3

[bougainvillea-and-saltwater]

for the ask game—👄 and 🪞 for Miraak; 🪞 and 💇 for the lovely Jia! 😊

Aww, thank you so much for asking me about these two favorite dragons of mine! 🥰🥰

Miraak:

👄 What is your OC’s smile like? Is it bright and wide, or thin and reserved? Does your OC wear any lipgloss or lipstick? Do they chew their lips?

So, similar to Jia, Miraak's smile is quite reserved. He had not an easy life either, and as he grew up in an era of draconic oppression, tyranny, blood, and constant death, I believe Miraak was pained and emotionally inhibited from a young age. Not to mention an almost death blow dealt with by his friend, whom Miraak considered brother (Vahlok), and right afterward, his endless imprisonment in Apocrypha. I think he has forgotten how is it to feel and thus smile, so at the beginning of his liberated life in Nirn, he mostly smirks--imperceptible and thin, so whole-hearted smiles are quite rare for him. But similar to Jia, he will gradually find his smile, and together they might be able to feel again. 👀 🥰

🪞 How does your OC perceive themselves? Do they believe themselves to be attractive, unattractive, or average? Does their view of themselves affect their self-esteem, or are they unbothered by their physical appearance? (If your OC does have things they’re confident or insecure about, what are they?)

Ahh, that's my favorite question! Well, I personally imagine Miraak as a handsome man, maybe not with the typical norms of beauty, but still a man with an imposing bearing. I believe that before he became tainted with Hermaeus Mora's ink and his appearance altered, he had sufficient self-esteem, and he comprehended he maintained a distinct, mightier aura than the rest, not necessarily because of his towering Atmoran physique, but mostly because of his dragon blood which made him stood out significantly. But after the color of his eyes, his skin, and generally his whole being was marked by Mora, his self-esteem became non-existent, and in my headcanon, he feels uncomfortable and ashamed when people notice the Daedric impact on him (poor boi Miraak 😢).

Jia:

🪞: As for Jia, her self-esteem about her appearance was mostly non-existent. And although she is attractive, or more like unique considering her features, she views herself quite differently than the rest of the world. She wasn't always like this, but after the most traumatic experience of her life, in which, among others, she was constantly being humiliated for her mixed-raced blood, she gradually started to hate the way she looked, and she ended up not particularly caring about her physical appearance at all. Of course, this quite changed when she fell in love...🥰

💇 What is your OC’s hairstyle? How do they maintain their hair? Do they wash it and/or cut it regularly? Have they ever dyed their hair?

Jia has long hair, so in her adventures, she cannot but bound it. She plaits half of her hair in multiple little braids that usually are entwined with each other so they look like dragon scales, something very close to Daenerys' braids! When she is in her house she leaves her hair entirely free (again, something very much appreciated from *someone* 👀). She washes it regularly with her favorite lavender-vanilla soap, and she had dyed it only once when she had to sneak into the Thalmor Embassy incognito; the color then was black as coal. 

[solitarywitchinthecity]

diary entry - deity worship for self-love and glamour magick

tw: weight, body, eating, mental health issues

today is Full Moon in Capricorn. since i have many Capricorn placements in my natal chart including my Venus, i've thought this evening is a nice moment to reflect upon my self-love journey.

earlier in this year, there was a Venus retrograde in Capricorn, so i also had my Venus return at this time, and it motivated me to change a few things about my life, mainly focusing on venusian topics. in january, i wasn't feeling very well mentally, and it took a lot of strength to crawl out of this dark place. in february, during the Full Moon in Leo (which is my rising sign) i cut my hair and set up a smaller altar for self-love. i was determined to work on myself, since i wanted to fix the way i see myself. i needed to release all the hate i held for myself - and looking back, it was life changing step.

the altar was set up for Aphrodite/Venus, since i have their statues (i know that they are seperate deities, but i have an Aphrodite statue from Greece and a Venus statue from Italy - although i'm going to refer to Aphrodite now on, because it's her statue i eventually put on my altar). the altar consists of a pretty vintage glass bowl in which i put rose quartz, amethyst, sea shells, sigils for love and confidence, bay leaf, a pink stone from Cyprus (which is the birthplace of Aphrodite) and jewellery that my loved ones gifted me. i also have a beautiful collage of lyrics from Aurora's songs (my best friend gifted me for my 20th birthday), a wooden love spoon from Wales, and of course, a pink candle. when i light the candle, i listen to beautiful love songs, do skin care or make-up, dress up and most importantly, write self-love and beauty affirmations in my manifestation journal with pink ink. i've been writing these affirmations almost every day since february and it's incredible how much these small, mundane tasks have been helping me during these month.

i changed so much, and the people around me, my friends and family members also noticed this energy shift. i used to hate my body and hate myself for my flaws and mistakes, i used to hate how i look, how i dress, how i smile, how i talk, how i move - i hated every part of me. it was insane. writing affirmations really changed how i look into the mirror and how i view myself - i started to accept myself, i started to love myself. these small tasks i did for myself with the intention of self-love and gestures for Aphrodite completely changed my mindset. when i say or think something negative about myself, i immediately feel guilty about it. i view myself as a valuable and lovable person, and now i can finally give the love for myself i need and i deserve. when i look into the mirror, i see myself as a beautiful woman. i feel comfortable in my skin. i became confident.

i changed physically, too. my skin became clearer and i lost weight (i didn't start a diet, i think my eating habits became a little bit balanced - i'm still kind of midsized, i think). i'm getting more and more compliments from people who have seen me during my worst times, and they've been telling me how beautiful and confident i became (and it really feels nice, i'm very grateful for them).

although i dedicated the altar and the small gestures for Aphrodite, i have never tried to reach out to her. i'm really content with worshipping her and i like the idea of her being proud of me, even though i don't even search for signs from her. i just love embodying all the values she represents.

i did a small tarot reading for this journey of mine, and these are the five cards that came out, in order: Ten of Swords, Five of Pentacles, Page of Pentacles, King of Cups and The Lovers. i think these cards represents these couple month really well.

all in all, i'm very grateful for this change. it doesn't mean that i'm free from all my insecurities and i always feel good about myself - i still have bad moments sometimes, but i learn how to overcome them. i sincerely accept and love myself for who i am. and it makes me so excited, that it's only the beginning.