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rainbowsky · 12 days

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Sorry I've taken so long to address this, I've had a very busy day and didn't have time to finish this post (which I started yesterday).

I'm talking, of course, about the incredibly controversial situation surrounding DD right now. I've gotten some messages about it so I figured I'd give my thoughts in a bigger post so that I don't have to keep repeating myself.

(CW: racism, spoilers FPU)

I know that by now most people are aware of the situation, but I'm going to start from square one for those who are just catching up on the topic.

There is a scene in Formed Police Unit where Chinese UN peacekeeping troops need to rescue a group of citizens who are surrounded by terrorists. In order to accomplish this they disguise themselves as people from the community. This being Africa, the troops were disguised using blackface.

Yes, I am saying that DD and his castmates appear in the film in blackface.

I am not going to post a picture of that here. It's just something I can't post on my blog. I understand that many of you will want to see for yourself so I'll link a clip of the scene, which was posted on Weibo. Please be aware before clicking - this is full-on blackface. Always take care of yourselves, and if you think it might be upsetting to you don't click. You don't need to see it to be a 'good fan'.

Background

For those who may not know, this movie was filmed years ago, in 2021. During those years I have seen many anti attacks against DD, claiming that he is racist and has worn blackface. Here's the photo that was circulating back then.

At the time I thought the makeup that he was wearing was likely anti-reflective black paint or camouflage paint such as is used by snipers (which he played in the film). I assumed that he was wearing his own hoodie over part of a military costume, because he was wearing a cammo shirt and what might have been combat trousers.

I was certainly not expecting full-on blackface from this movie.

There's no getting around it - this is extremely difficult to look at.

Blackface is widely viewed as offensive and racist. It shouldn't be hard to understand why. Putting on another person's ethnicity like a costume is deeply insensitive, particularly when you consider that BIPOC (black, indigenous, and other people of color) are so frequently targeted, exploited and marginalized. For those in positions of privilege and power to put on the appearance of the people who they oppress and exploit... it's just shocking and awful.

Blackface is most frequently talked about in an American context, but it's actually a problem globally - including in China. More on all that here.

The film

I have not actually seen the film, so I don't know much about the context beyond what is being discussed in the fandom. As I said earlier, in the film a group of UN police officers need to infiltrate an area in the community and take on disguises in order to do so.

In promotional media this film is being presented as based on true stories from real missions*. It seems the situation in question really happened on a Chinese peacekeeping mission, and the UN troops disguised themselves as black citizens in order to infiltrate and extract the endangered captives.

*I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt on this because it doesn't change how I feel it should have been handled.

This is important context that is being conveniently left out of much of the backlash about this situation. People are outright claiming that DD plays a black person in the movie - that he wore blackface to perform a role that a black actor could have played. This simply isn't true, and people making these claims are antis and liars. There's simply no excuse for not knowing the full context.

Having said that, I don't really think it matters how it ended up in the film. I do not think there is such a thing as a palatable or appropriate use of blackface. In this day and age it is nearly universally understood to be racist, and it's extremely controversial.

I can understand if they were trying to be accurate to the mission that they were portraying, but surely there are other ways they could have accomplished this scene (perhaps with the clothing but not the blackface). 'Historical accuracy' isn't as important as cultural sensitivity, not by any stretch of the imagination. In the interest of respecting audiences they could have adapted the scene to make the use of blackface unnecessary.

I really see no excuse for anything like this in 2024.

Audience reactions

Chinese sensibilities around these topics are very different from what we are used to in the West.

According to fan repos audiences initially didn't recognize any of the actors, and once it became apparent that they were in disguise, laughter erupted around the room. In fact, most fans are laughing a lot at the photos and video even on social media (although some Chinese netizens have been upset by it and have voiced complaints to various stakeholders).

It is also being widely discussed on Chinese social media as an exciting scene of heroism in the film.

I feel the need to point out that the laughter and mockery is a huge part of the harm, here. As if it's not bad enough that these actors are performing in blackface and presenting a perversion of black ethnicity, it also becomes an opportunity for audiences to mock and disrespect black people. It's become an opportunity for social media to be filled with racist jokes and mockery.

Roadshow statements

There have been some clips circulating of PR and roadshow moments with black cast members and some black audience members who have spoken up in support of the film and to thank the cast and crew for telling the story. Here's one example.

International fans have been dismissing those statements as ignorant or coerced, which I think is offensive and deeply fucked up. There's no planet on which I'm going to - with a totally straight face - say that a black person's response to the movie is not legitimate just because it doesn't comport with my own view.

This is a complex issue and there are inevitably going to be a lot of different perspectives. I hope people won't exacerbate the problem by supplanting black voices on this issue with their own, no matter what's being said. If there's any manipulation going on, let's assume it was in their choosing supportive black figures to speak for the film rather than claim that the black spokespeople are insincere.

China has a lot of issues with racism, there's no doubt about it. It's a huge part of why so many people try to whiten their skin, or why they mock each other when their skin gets tanned/darker. There is a lot of sinister, fucked up stuff going on in China around race - both in the country and in their dealings with other countries.

But we can't claim to speak for black people in China, particularly when they are speaking for themselves! I would hope this is extremely obvious!

Where's DD in all this?

It's understandable that bystanders will react to what they're seeing and might immediately deem it unacceptable - and DD along with it. Their reactions are valid, but as fans I hope that we can look at him with a bit more empathy. I hope that we can take a moment to try to see things from his perspective.

DD has been interested in and an avid fan of black culture since he was a small child. We've all seen how much he immerses himself in hip hop, street dance and the accompanying music and fashion. And yes, he's been accused of cultural appropriation in the past for wearing locs and durags.

However, I think fans need a bit of perspective here to get a sense of where DD might be coming from. Here's a guy who loves black culture, who has close friends who are black, who regularly works with black artists and who supports black artists, in a culture where racism against black people is prevalent and often extreme.

I think DD would probably be amazed to hear the accusations of racism against him. He likely has very few people in his orbit who are anywhere near as supportive of or as closely connected to black people as he is. He likely stands out in his circle as being particularly into black culture and connected with black artists, and probably regularly faces ignorant questions or digs from people around him about his close association with black artists and culture.

Not just because of racism alone, but also due to the racist parallels the government tends to draw between black culture, street dance, hip hop, etc. and criminality/moral degradation*. It's likely that ignorant people in his orbit have expressed concern or wariness toward him because of these associations.

*That is, until breakdancing became an Olympic sport, then they were suddenly onboard with some of it.

I'm not saying that he doesn't have a lot of learning to do (and if this situation becomes what I think it might become, he'll have a big opportunity to do so), I'm just saying that his ignorance isn't mean-spirited. He's coming at this from a totally different angle than any of us are, and he is immersed in a totally different cultural perspective than our own. In his world, his interest likely makes him a bit of an anomaly.

So those painting him as a horrible racist... it's just not how I see it.

The element of choice

I've heard many people say that DD 'didn't have any choice' about this role, that turning it down would not have been an option or that he would be under some kind of threat if he didn't take this role. I don't agree with that characterization of things. I don't think it's quite as 'gun to the head' as a lot of fans paint it.

I think it's more likely that he simply didn't realize that the role would involve blackface when he accepted it, or that he thought that blackface in this context - to infiltrate a terrorist cell and save civilians - would be fine. We don't need to depict China as forcibly compelling actors to take unwanted roles if we want to make sense of this. There are simpler, more logical explanations.

DD wouldn't have been the one deciding how to depict the scene - he didn't have that power in 2021 - but I also doubt he would have had a major problem with it given everything we know.

We must overcome our Western tendency to see things only from our own perspective. This has a totally different cultural context in China, and the voices we listen to about it should not be issuing exclusively from white faces that are not at ground zero of this situation.

Final thoughts

This film has had me worried from day one. I think most people have been expecting it to be full of offensive portrayals and propagandistic fuckery. There are so many ways in which a Chinese film about the UN is potentially a sticky, tricky mess. This blackface thing is likely just one problem on a towering pile of problems.

However, I'm not going to sugarcoat this - this has the potential to be a real shitshow for DD, and I am concerned. Especially if this film gets an international release.

We need to brace ourselves, because I don't think this is going to just disappear. DD has endorsements with international brands, and this could definitely cause backlash for those brands unless the issue is addressed and the scenes removed. There's no planet on which brands like Chanel and Lacoste can afford to have one of their spokespeople plastered everywhere in blackface.

If this film gets an international release and those scenes are left intact, it's possible he will lose some brands.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that, but let's face it - things like this have consequences, and that's why it's so important for producers and artists to be sensitive about what they're portraying.

While I think there's some endorsement risk here for DD, and the potential loss of some international fans, I want to be clear about one thing: I don't think this will threaten his career overall. In China this just isn't an issue in the way it is internationally.

I do hope the film team addresses this issue in some way, ideally by removing the scenes. They just finished doing a massive edit to remove ZZH from the film, surely they can handle something like this. But let's not hold our breath...

Everyone has the right to make up their minds about DD. As I've often said, being a turtle isn't for the faint of heart. That's not just because turtles are frequent targets for bullies, or because we have to constantly live with uncertainty and doubt.

Being an international turtle also isn't for the faint of heart because there are a lot of cultural and political minefields to navigate, and many ideological differences to adapt to. There's a huge learning curve and a lot of unknowns, and turtles who want to survive have to make peace with the fact that we and the boys are from different worlds in many ways. We may never know where they really stand on issues that are important to us.

However, in this case I feel confident that I know where DD's heart is on this issue. He simply doesn't hold hatred, disrespect or disdain for black people. Quite the contrary.

I think we'd all just feel a lot better if he had a good grasp on how to be a better ally.

And while we're waiting for that, I think we should put our money where our mouths are and learn more about these issues ourselves, both in China and locally at home. We want DD to be a better person; let's be better people too.

#bjyx #yizhan #ggdd controversies #please rebloggers don't tag with his name or the name of the film #i don't want this outside the turtle circle - the fan wars are horrific

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roger-that-cap · 8 months

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seven summers

bradley bradshaw x fem! reader

this my first fic in what feels like a century for a completely different fandom. i have been gathering up the courage to do this again, and i've been sitting on this for about two months now. take it easy on me y'all i feel like a sixty year old veteran re-enlisting right now and i have NO idea how to reload my weapon

warnings: absolutely none! well theyre a little sad for a minute but nothing that tumblr can't handle

word count: 5.9k

Loud spaces weren’t really in your list of favorite places. You could tolerate bars more than you could do clubs, though, and your best friend took that into consideration when she planned the night out for you two. The music was loud and the people were starting to get rowdy, but at least no one was grinding on you or begging for a dance. That was always when you would wrap it up for the night, shaking your head at even thinking that it was a good idea.

“Thank you,” you told the bartender, an exceptionally gorgeous older woman who always seemed to have a meddling look on her face. Her hair was lightly waved around her face as she looked you up and down for a second. You thought she was going to say something, but she just nodded at you once with a small smile before you turned away again, facing the crowd of people you were about to delve back into. You were just leaving the bar top with a soda (you were the DD, as always) when you tripped over someone else’s huge shoe.

“Oh, shit,” a manly voice said as you tripped, and hands caught your arm before you fell over all the way. You looked up and saw a blond man in an achingly familiar navy uniform looking down at you, and your eyes narrowed as his eyes grew wide. “I’m sorry.”

His uniform nearly brought you to a scene of painful flashbacks. You knew you were bound to run into attractive men in uniforms so close to a base, but there was an air about this man that made you feel like you were almost running right through the mist, right through the shadow of a man that you once knew, and a man that wore that very same uniform as he walked away.

You loved Alexandra, your friend you met through other friends. The only downside was that she was in the Navy, and that meant that you were almost always surrounded with memories of your ex boyfriend when you were with her. Him and that stupid uniform that stole him away.

“No worries,” you said after a few seconds, smiling at him. “It’s crowded here.”

“Oh, nice tattoo,” he said, and your hand immediately went to your collarbone, where the one tattoo you had rested. It was a nicely done tattoo of a honeybee, a mark of your past. Something you probably should have gotten removed, but every time you tried to convince yourself, you gave another reason to not get it removed. Deep down, you knew why you couldn’t go through with it.

“Thank you, I got it a while ago.” That was all you could say as memories flashed in your mind, but you managed to smile.

“You look really familiar,” he said, and you noticed that he also had an air of confidence to him as well as familiarity. He was an attractive man, almost too perfect. And he had a smile that you knew lured girls in far too often to be completely innocent.

“I’m kinda new to the area,” you said, shrugging your shoulders. “Maybe we’ve run into each other at the grocery store or something? Or if you’re a frequent flier at the hospital.” That happened a lot. People you had never had as your own patients would sometimes recognize you, especially if they were often there.

“Yeah, maybe.” He looked you up and down one more time, almost like he was genuinely trying to figure out what his own mind was trying to remind him, before he nodded his head at you with a small smirk and a toothpick between his lips and left just as quickly as he came. And then your friend was taking his place, jabbering on about something as you tried to clear your own head.

You never wanted to be one of those people that lived in the past, and for the most part, you weren’t. You lived in the moment. You loved to make new memories, find new things to do, and meet new people. You loved meeting new people. However, the problem with meeting new people, especially men, was that there was that one guy from that one specific relationship that you had gotten yourself in that made it feel like everything was all for nothing.

Bradley Bradshaw.

You didn��t even know exactly what it was. You had been in plenty of summer flings that were passionate and fun, but you got over them easily enough. You had met so many people, loved and lost, and they all stuck with you in different ways that all felt sweet in one way or another. But Bradley? There was something about him that stayed with you in a different way. The thought of him kept a lingering taste of something distinct on your tongue.

In a way, he was the biggest waste of time you had ever spent your life on. There were two years that you shared being officially together, but it felt like forever. You should have known he was trouble the second you saw that military-grade mustache, and the confident walk he always had. You should’ve known he would cause you some pain the second his eyes and his smile proved to be a deadly combo. You poured so much love into that man in a short time in the grand scheme of things, and looking back, it was as much of a waste as it was a privilege.

For a while, you prayed for his return. He had broken your heart right before he left for his deployment, but that didn’t mean that you wanted anything to happen to him. You prayed for a while for him to come back safely and then come right back to you, and then that progressed into you praying to never see him again. You wished for his safety, you always would, but you never wanted to hear anything about him ever again unless it was saying that he landed safely back on US soil. After that, you wanted his name to be gone with the wind and buried with the dust of time.

Either way, he was in your thoughts forever and always, regardless of how many summers passed or how many people there were after him, how many you had met to pass the time. And as you stood in the middle of the bar with Alexandra, you were frozen in shock as you realized that you probably manifested the very fighter pilot in front of you.

He had seen you first. He was surrounded by attractive people in uniforms that you knew had to be his friends, and when you caught the eyes of the very blond man that you fell over before pointing at you with the angle of his head, your jaw dropped a bit. The man from earlier looked at you and slapped Bradley on his back, giving a blinding smirk before saying something to him that you couldn’t hear.

You were sure you looked silly standing there, freezing up the second you recognized him with a pool stick in your hand. You felt all the tension in your body work together to keep you as straight as a board. You blinked when your friend nudged you, completely oblivious to the mini panic attack you were about to have, and you swallowed and looked away like it didn’t nearly hurt you to stop looking at him.

You felt like you were drowning.

“You’re not tapping out or anything, right?” Alexandra asked, narrowing her eyes at you. “We’ve barely been here an hour, and you already have that uncomfortable look on your face.”

“What look?” You managed to murmur, completely aware that he was still looking at you. His gaze felt as familiar as it had back then.

“The one where you’re looking for escape routes,” she teased, even though she was starting to look concerned. “You do it all the time. Hey, are you okay?”

“Yeah!” You said, way too loud to be normal. “I’m good.”

You prayed he didn’t approach you. He had plenty of distractions on his side of the room, lots of friends to talk to even though it was obvious they were trying to get him to go over to you. You were hoping that he would never come up to you or look your way again, but you were sick to your stomach when you realized that him walking away would mean he didn’t care nearly as much as you did.

You closed your eyes for a moment as you tried to understand that none of what you were seeing was a dream.

“Hi!” A woman’s voice from behind you said, and you turned around. You saw a woman in uniform smiling politely at both you and Alex, and you assumed that she knew her, but then her attention was on you. “I’m sorry, I just had to come over and say I love your dress.”

You were a simple creature, and one of your fatal flaws was that you were exceptionally friendly. That easily, the tension left your body as you spoke to the woman. You smiled kindly at her. “Thank you! I got it at a thrift store, but you can check the back to see where it’s from if you want!” She grinned at you, and then you saw her eyes wander to your hand.

“Oh, your ring is pretty, too!” The woman said. “When’s the wedding?” She joked, and you laughed. You wanted a big wedding, back then. Back when you could see the groom in your head, imagine the words he would say, and even imagine your first name combined with his last: Bradshaw. But that was nothing now.

“Thank you! You’re so sweet. It’s from my mom though, she gave it to me a few years ago.” She gave it to you, her big, shiny ring that her first husband had bought her just as a gift. Instead of pawning it, you begged her to have it. It had no sentimental value to you at all. It kind of looked like an engagement ring, but you couldn’t bring yourself to take it off. It warded off men for the most part, and it was a piece of her.

“Aw, that’s so sweet. I’m Nat! Most people around here call me Phoenix.”

You grinned at her and shook her hand before telling her your name, and you knew right then that you liked her. She was extroverted, but very polite. Just your type of person.

“It’s nice to meet you.”

“You too!” She smiled at you before she continued her walk to the bar, and you didn’t think anything else of the nice girl in uniform.

The next few minutes went without any issues at all, and you felt like you could ignore the situation at hand and have a good rest of the night with Alex before it was time for you guys to head home.

“Hey.”

You weren’t hearing his voice. You just weren’t. You made your next shot in the game and ignored him.

You could feel him get closer to you, so close you could smell his cologne. Your eyes watered when you realized it was the very scent you picked out for him all those years ago. He still wore it.

You heard a very manly throat clear from beside you, and you realized that he wasn’t going to give it up. “Hi,” he tried again, and you breathed through your nose and finally turned around, looking face to chest at him before you looked up.

He was smiling down at you. He was smiling down at you as if nothing had happened, and no time had passed. You smiled back at first like muscle memory, but then your face dropped to a frown almost immediately. His smile fell, too. He nodded at your friend in acknowledgement, but she was too busy eyeing him up and trying to decide if he was a threat to you or the night to know that he was being friendly.

“Bradshaw,” you said, and his frown got deeper when he realized you called him by his last name. He hated that. You weren’t in the Navy and you had been together, you and he always insisted you reserved the rights to using his real name. Not his call sign, not his last name, but the one his parents had given him. “It’s been a while.”

“Bradley,” he corrected gently, almost like he thought you genuinely forgot, or like you threw out his first name from your personal dictionary. As if you could ever forget a detail about him. That was the blessing and the curse that he left you with. “You look-” he stopped talking for a moment, and you could have sworn that you saw an ocean of fondness in his pretty eyes that shouldn’t have still been there. “You’re still so beautiful.”

Your words felt caught in your throat. You wanted to tell him that his tan made him look beautiful. You wanted to say that he had filled out so nicely, and that his scars still fit his face perfectly. You remembered kissing them while laying in the summer sun and you remembered kissing them under the tiny Christmas tree you guys had bought together and plugged in. You were both so broke it only had about ten ornaments on it, but that never mattered. Never to the two of you. “You… still have that mustache.”

“You always liked it,” he said, a small smile coming back into his expression, but you didn’t give one back.

“So you’ve kept it growing in hopes to run into me?”

“Maybe I have,” he answered, and you blinked at him. He had always had a flirty personality.

You just blinked. “Uh, yeah. That’s nice.” Was it? It was opening every old wound you had ever had. Every wound that was partially healed by another person’s fleeting kisses was being torn right back open by one sighting of Bradley Bradshaw.

“It’s- it’s amazing to see you, how have you been?”

You were becoming more and more confused. How in the hell was he being so chipper? Maybe chipper wasn’t the word, he was being polite. Or, maybe it was that he wasn’t falling apart like you were. How? How was he managing politeness when you were hardly breathing? The thought that he would walk away from the conversation like it never happened made you irritable and defensive at the same time. “Why do you care?”

His brows furrowed, and he was looking at you as if you were saying all the wrong things. “Because I care how you’ve been.”

“Why?”

He took a look at your friend, who was still staring him down. “Uh, can we talk for a second?” He asked, and you pursed your lips together.

“No, she’s good right here,” Alexandra said, and you gave her a small smile.

“No, it’s okay, he’s fine. He’s big, but he’s harmless.” You saw his chest puff up in just the slightest at the mention of his physique, and you rolled your eyes. “We can step outside, but I’m not going home with you.”

“Okay!” He said, a little too loud for the setting, and you fought back a smile at how excited he was just to talk. You squashed the fondness down. “Okay, uh, come with me.”

The second your foot hit the gravel outside, his fingers were touching yours. The touch was innocent, but you still yanked your hand away. He backed away understandingly. “Force of habit, sorry.”

And it was. You remembered his little quirks. You were always pretty independent, and he had always been touchy and protective, so the compromise back then was that he would lay off while you were inside of a building, but he would hold your hand and guide you all he wanted to the second you walked outside.

“I- uh, I wanted to talk about us.”

“The past?” You said, crossing your arms.

“We’ve known each other for a long time,” he said slowly, like he was just then realizing he was treading on very thin ice.

“We knew each other,” you corrected, fully aware of your friend piecing the situation together by the expression on her face, and you gave her a look that held promises of filling her in.

“Don’t be like that,” he said, coming a little closer, and you felt your eyes burn when you smelled his familiar scent even more. Your tradition of buying men cologne that matched their personalities had died after Bradley. It was something you didn’t really understand why you did it yourself, but it was fun, and Bradley loved it. He was the fourth guy you had done it with, and he was the last. It just didn’t feel right with anyone else, and it was simply something else you kissed goodbye when you and Bradley went your separate ways.

“I’m not being any certain way.”

“I would definitely say that we know each other,” he said, a short chuckle dying on his lips, and you could hear the hurt in his voice. “We were together nearly every day for two years. We’d sit on the river and on the beach and talk about everything for hours. We road-tripped cross-country. I remember everything you ever told me back home, and I remember the last summer we had together like it was yesterday.”

You looked back up at him with eyes that you knew had to be full of sadness. “That was four summers ago.”

You saw it set in with him how much time really had gone by. You watched his eyes widen and his lips poke outwards as he breathed out. “Wow.”

Had time really not passed for him as slowly as it did to you?

All you could do was swallow and turn your head away from the breeze. “Yeah.”

“Do you have a boyfriend now?”

Part of you was so thrown by his question and his lack of tact, especially because he had been such a good flirt back then. Maybe time had changed him. “I’m married.”

Immediately, he shook his head with a small smile. “You’re not.”

You narrowed your eyes at him, even though you were enjoying the back and forth. It felt so familiar. “How would you know that?”

“That was the first thing I checked before I came over,” he admitted, and you cocked your head at him. “I looked at your finger and saw the ring before you even noticed me. And then I asked Phoenix to go over to you and make sure it was what I thought it was, and I was right.”

You gasped. You should have known that that stupid nickname was a damn callsign, the glaring beacon of a person that meant that they were a pilot. And pilots were… they were hard to love.

“I knew that if I came over to you, there would be no way I could hold my tongue from trying to win you back, so I had to make sure you weren’t married first, at least. But I’m not even sure that would’ve stopped me,” he muttered under his breath, and you rolled your eyes.

You were still a little bitter over him sending one of his friends to talk to you, and how well he knew you. He knew you never would have responded to a random man the same way you did Phoenix. “How do you know I don’t have a boyfriend?”

“I’m praying.” And then he sighed. “I don’t have anyone either.”

You would have laughed in his face if you weren’t so gutted. “I find that hard to believe.”

“What do you mean?”

“Considering you broke it off so you could run around and meet other girls, I would be very shocked if you didn’t have one with a ring on her finger by now.”

His eyes widened to a size that was almost comical. “What?”

You rolled your eyes at him. “Before you deployed. You know, when you broke up with me so that you could go talk freely with other women.”

His facial expression was so shocked that you almost bought it. He looked genuinely thrown in a loop by your words. “I didn’t break up with you to meet other people, Bee.”

You nearly caught whiplash at hearing your old nickname pouring like straight up honey from his mouth. No one called you that in a long time, mostly because ‘Bee’ was reserved for Bradley after a day he met you in freshman year of college, and you did an entire presentation on conservation of bees with passion that none of the other students had in their slideshows. It was what had drawn him to you in the first place.

“That’s what it felt like.” It still felt like that, four years later.

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head slowly. You hated how handsome he looked even when he was confused. But he had no right to look confused. “That’s not what happened at all.”

Your tone said it all for you as you crossed your arms. “Um, that’s what I remember, Bradshaw.”

He ignored what you called him, but you saw it in his eyes that it still bothered him. “I cut it off because I felt awful that you were going to be forced to wait for me,” he said, taking a step closer, and you saw his sad brown eyes begging you to listen. “We were still so young, you were even younger than me. It wasn’t fair for me to ask you to keep waiting for me, especially because I kept going on dangerous deployments.”

His words were bouncing around in your head. You calculated what he was saying, narrowing your eyes and trying to make sense of how it was changing your entire perspective of what happened, second by second.

“Are you fucking stupid?” You blurted, but he wasn’t surprised. In fact, he looked relieved. You never really made a habit of swearing, not even while arguing, but when you rarely let a word slip, it meant that you cared a lot.

Bradley wasn’t quite sure which way you cared and if it was in a good way or a bad way, but he was determined to change the passion to a way that would benefit the both of you.

“If you want me to be,” he rasped, and you narrowed your eyes at him.

“Did you just say you didn’t want me to wait for you?”

He blinked. “Yeah. You were what, twenty three? Your whole life was ahead of you. It wasn’t fair for you to have to wait for me to come home when you… you’re full of so much life. You had just gotten your dream job at the hospital, and you were so happy. If you were to stick it out with me gone, you would just have to decide between your job and me anyway when I got home. I ended up getting stationed somewhere else not too long after I came back home, just like I knew I would.”

“Bradley, I told you I wanted to travel, anyway. That job was not my forever job.”

“But-”

“I was prepared to wait for- for forever.” It was his turn to look shocked. “I really would have, Bradley. You just never even gave me the chance to. You pulled the rug out underneath me. You didn’t even ask me.”

He ran a hand over his face as the weight of the decision he made for the both of you settled heavy on his chest. “Oh, god.”

“I assumed you were deploying and you wanted to meet new people. I mean, I know that a lot of… you guys are cheaters. The stereotypes are true a lot of the time. I just figured you were sparing me from the cheating and cutting it off before it could get to that point.”

“Oh, god, no.” He shook his head. “You- thought I was cheating on you?”

“Well- what else was I supposed to think?”

“I would never,” he said, using his hands to make a broad “no” gesture. “You’ve always been it for me, ever since we met. There couldn’t have been anyone else, and there hasn’t been this whole time.”

You tried to mask the way you were falling into a puddle at his feet. “You’re so dumb.”

“Is it dumb of me to think you’ll hear me out a little more?”

You rolled your eyes at him, but your skin felt like it was on fire being so close to him again. “You’re plenty dumb, Rooster.”

“You never called me Rooster.”

“Well, I don’t know Bradley anymore.”

“I- why are you saying that?” He asked, and his face grew even more distraught. “You do know me. Nothing’s changed. Nothing is different at all besides the time. I still- there’s nothing that has changed about the way I feel for you.”

“What do you want me to say?” You couldn’t confess your love to him again. You loved him, a part of you always would, but you couldn’t handle him coming out of the blue and telling you everything you had secretly been wishing he would say to you for years. He was coming in like a dream. It was far too good to be true. “We got lost in translation four years ago and there's nothing we can do about it. Unless you and your pilot friends have been smart enough to build a time machine.”

“I would build a thousand time machines if it meant that I could change what I did, I was stupid. I was so stupid.” He stepped closer. “But I never stopped loving you. Not even once.”

A tear ran down your face, and that’s when you knew it was time to go find Alexandra again. “I-I gotta go, Bradley.” Before you could even turn around all the way, he took you by your hips and turned you back around, both pairs of your eyes wide mirrors of the other.

“I have been haunted by the thought of you for four years now,” he said, voice as soft and gentle as the breeze, but the grip he had on your hips was so desperate it almost made you sob. “I haven’t even- I’ve tried, but there hasn’t been anyone else. Not emotionally. Not even close, Bee.”

You couldn’t say the exact same. You tried and succeeded for a time, but they were never complete fixes. Just when you thought you were happy with someone else and free of the clutches of Bradley Bradshaw, he snuck right back. He ripped that rug out from under you every time without fail without even being present. That was your problem with each “relationship”, you were looking for a remedy and closure for a relationship that the next person had no idea about and no obligation to make better.

But you had definitely been haunted by the lack of Bradley Bradshaw. He was there all the time with you in your mind, whether you wanted him or not.

“This,” you said, shaking your head, and judging by the look on his face, he knew he was losing you. “This is a lot.”

“Wait, don’t walk away. I just got you back.”

“I’m not back, Bradley.”

“You’re back in front of me,” he said, and you stopped turning away from him. “That’s all I could ask for. Even if you want nothing else to do with me ever again, I just want to stand here and look at you for one more minute. Please.”

You put your hands over your face the second you felt your eyes start to burn and overflow with tears. You could feel his energy before you even felt his true touch, and the second you felt his arms around you, you broke down.

“I thought- I thought you were so nervous a few days before you left because you were going to propose to me.”

You couldn’t believe the words that were leaving your mouth. You had been so humiliated about jumping to conclusions that you hadn’t even told Alexandra about that part. You never planned on telling anyone that was the reason why you were so hurt, especially not the man who caused you all that pain. It had been sitting heavy on your chest, the humiliation and the sadness alike, for all four summers. You never planned on letting it loose.

But you had already said it.

“You boys get married so fast, and honestly, I was ready. I thought you were nervous because you were going to ask me to marry you, not because you were breaking up with me.”

“Oh.”

“It gutted me so bad when you broke it off. I thought it was going to be the opposite- I thought we were going to start our lives together and then you just…” you looked down at the ground as you tried to swallow back down the memory, even though everything was coming back so strong. “It was gone, that fast. And I realized I loved you a lot more than you ever loved me, obviously.”

“That's not even close to being true,” he said, shaking his head rapidly. “You can ask any of the guys I shipped out with. I was fucking miserable the whole time. And I know you don’t know the new guys I’m with, but this new squad even knows that there’s nobody else. You’re the one that got away.”

“You let me go,” you corrected, and he smiled sadly.

“Because I loved you.”

“That’s so fucking dumb,” you said, but you couldn’t stop yourself from getting closer to him. “That’s for fairytales, stupid.”

You felt yourself leaning into him, and he was letting you. His body language was inviting you in. You could see it in his eyes and you could feel his hands trembling as he moved them from your waist to hover over your back, like he was ready to pull you into him the second you gave in. You knew it was only a matter of time before you did give in, and the longer you felt his hands hover over you like you were stained glass, the more you craved his familiar, burning touch. You felt the pull to him like you were magnets. Like he was the sun and you were Icarus. You were the moth to his enticing flame, but he had always seen you as a butterfly. You were terrified to get burned for the second time, and fall from grace all over again.

“That one pilot said he recognized me,” you blurted, and you felt his eyes on you even though you couldn’t look at him. “I’ve never met him before, have I?” You might have. You used to know a lot of his old friends. He shook his head. “How did he know me?”

Without hesitation, his answer came. “I have pictures of you in my cockpit.”

That was what threw you. “What?”

“Most pilots keep photos of important people in their cockpit. It reminds them to fly safer. In the worst cases, it’s so that they can see a glimpse of family before they go down.”

Your heart was soaring so high that it was breaking with the pressure of it. “You have a picture of me in there?”

He had absolutely no shame about it as he nodded his head firmly. “Yeah, I have pictures of you. In my cockpit and in my locker.” Were you his screensaver, too? You didn’t know.

But you were in his locker. It made your heart flutter and it sent you right back to highschool. “More than one?”

“I have so many that my squad recognized you without me even saying anything. Hangman was the one who told me you were here.”

“Oh.”

He kicked the rocks underneath his foot, and then he was squinting back down at you. “You thought- you thought I was going to ask you to marry me?”

Just like that, your soaring, cracking heart plummeted again. “You don’t have to rub it in, Bradley.”

“No, it’s not that at all. I just- you would’ve said yes?”

“Of course I would have said yes, stupid.” You ignored how his eyes lit up and turned your body away with crossed arms. He was always so expressive, even when he didn’t want to be. “But that was a long time ago.”

“Not too long,” he rushed, and you shook your head.

You fought the urge to roll your eyes, especially because it was mostly to get the tears away. “It was a while ago, Bradley.”

“There’s no amount of time apart that would make me not want to be with you, Bee.”

Your head swiveled to him upon hearing your nickname from him again. “It- it doesn’t just work like that, dude.”

“Why not?”

“We were stupid back then. We lived off of blind faith and a whole lot of hopes. It doesn’t work that way anymore.”

“We make our own rules, that’s the glory of being adults.” He took your hands and you faced him, and the hope in his expression nearly floored you. “Who said we can’t pick up where we left off?”

You scoffed, even though you weren’t even close to laughing. “You’re crazy.”

“Crazy about you, but you’ve always known that,” he said with a smile. “You’ve always known how to work with it, too.”

For a moment, you felt a glimmer of hope and you felt the whisper of a smile come onto your face. And then you crashed again, and he must have seen it all over your face because his own smile went away and was replaced by concern. Before he could even ask what happened that fast, you threw your face into his chest and wrapped your arms around him.

He held you back just as quickly, and you knew he had been waiting for you. He smelled like home and he even felt like it, and when you opened your eyes all you could see was that stupid, loud Hawaiian print.

“I-if we do this again you- I can’t handle it if you leave me again. I couldn’t take it. Please, Bradley.”

“Don’t you even worry about that,” he said firmly, holding you so close that it felt like the two of you were physically molding together. “If you give me the chance, I want a shot at forever.”

You pulled your wet face away from his shirt and looked up at him as your heart raced in your chest. “Huh?”

He stared down at you for a moment, and you could see in his ever-expressive eyes that he was thinking about saying something to you that was about to change everything. “I fully intend to become your husband when we’re ready, if you let me. Just the way you wanted, and the way I’ve always dreamed about. I’m not going anywhere.”

The logical part of you knew that he was being ridiculous. Bradley was nothing if not overzealous, nothing if not reaching for goals that were just short of being unattainable. He was the version of Icarus that always managed to get back to earth safely by the skin of his teeth. He always put the cart before the horse, but somehow he always managed to get there.

So, you knew he was being serious. As crazy as he sounded, he was.

“Do you really mean that?” You didn’t have to ask that question. In fact, the words felt like acid on your tongue, but your heart pressed you to ask it anyway.

“Nothing could get me to leave you again, especially not my own stupidity.” He was holding you even tighter. “I promise.”

You were going to hold him to that with the same intensity that he held you with.

*****

oh boy.

so this one i’ve been sitting on forever and i’m tired of looking at it, but i have nothing but love for this fic that is pulling me out of a writing slump. i wrote it out of pure love for rooster though so i felt like i had to share it!! also- this comes from two main things;

two songs (“7 summers” and “ ‘98 braves” by morgan wallen) and then me being dumb enough to get involved with a military man of my own. he’s been gone for a while so i’m manifesting he comes back soon. anyone who is thinking about getting with a person- especially man- in the military (i can only speak for the united states military bc that’s where i’m from), you better be tough. i know they look good. i know they have this energy to them- trust me i’ve been obsessed since i was like 15. way before top gun maverick. but if you’re gonna be stupid, you better be tough 💀💀💀 and if you need any guidance to being stupid, i’m always here!!!

if you’re new here thanks for stopping by and checking it out! if you’re from an old fandom of mine but read it anyways i love you so much, it means a lot. 💕💕💕

#bradley rooster bradshaw x reader #tgm #rooster x reader #my fics #bradley bradshaw x reader #heaven help me why am i writing again #lys’s fics #top gun maverick #top gun fanfiction #bradley bradshaw fluff

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tiya-minuscule · 1 month

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Commission Open !

Hello everyone ! If you want me to draw any character of yours or from any fandom, you can commission me RIGHT NOW ! :DD It would also help me financially :) So here are my prices !

I hope it's alright, I have no idea if it's too much or too low.... I can also do some short animation ! If you want to know more or commission me, please dm me directly ! Also, please share this post, I need money haha !

#commission #open #anything you want #plz share #I need this

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factual-fantasy · 9 months

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24 asksss :}}} ⭐⭐⭐

@ardent-38

You are my favorite person

@wolfie-777

Cassie does not exist in my AU. But hypothetically-

If Roxanne found this lost child she would report it to Vanessa and have her help Cassie. As is the protocol for children that are found on the premises after hours.

If Roxy found her while she had the "bug" in her system? She would have attacked and maybe even killed Cassie :x

Had to google what that was, <XD It looks beautiful! And I image that he has seen it before yeah :)

As for their favorite songs, I'm not sure :0

That's.. actually a really good idea.

For a long time I never went back to the comic because the writing I did was awful. Everyone was acting out of character, it was SUPER dramatic. I wrote Peso's character all wrong. Uhg, awful awful awful.

And then I was kept away from going back because people would not stop asking me to finish it. "Why did you abandon this comic?" "Are you gonna finish it?" "Why did you stop drawing it" "Go back and finish the crab comic" Like, it was so frustrating.

...Buuuuutt,, rewriting it? Hmmm... I'm way too wrapped up with projects to start this anytime soon. But I wont lie this ask really got me thinking about it-

Also thank you so much! I'm glad you like my art!! :DDD

@smilegirl64 (Post in question)

Thank you! I'm so glad you noticed! That was my favorite detail to add XDDDD

@elegysonnet

I dug into the series a bit and took a look around the fanbase. And I decided that it just wasn't really my thing.

Although I did love the character designs and I think they'd be really fun to draw, I didn't think I'd get along with the fandom. I can see myself huddled in my own little corner with all my headcannons and stuff, and I wouldn't really want to interact with anyone else. :/

Also my favorite character is probably Julie or Howdy XDD

I use an XPPen Artist 13.3 Pro. Its a tablet with a screen! :))

As for my drawing program I use FireAlpaca. Its free and really good for beginners and pros! Highly recommend if you're just getting into digital art. Also thank you!! :D

@baokim80

@burningmusicfunnygiant

I disagree actually. The "bug" aside, they are in no way programed to hurt anyone. They are programmed to have full obedience to staff and Managers.

They could try to stop them, and they could physically stand in their way. But you wouldn't see Freddy straight up punching an employee to keep him away from Bonnie.

Now with the bug in their systems? mmm.. Okay yeah they would. BUT ONLY WHEN THEY'RE NOT IN THEIR RIGHT MINDS-

@cudlycorncornsworthcoberson

XDD Offended Bibi noises can be heard in the background

@curiousskelekitty

<XD I'll do my best!

I feel that my responsibility as an artist on this platform is to tag my art appropriately. Tag it for blood, gore, injuries, things like that. So that people who are disturbed by those subjects don't have to stumble upon it and have their day ruined. :(

What is NOT my responsibly is to prevent little kids from seeing my bloody Octonauts artwork. That's the parents job. XD THEY should be keeping an eye on their kids and making sure they're not browsing sites like Tumblr XDD

Tangle and Lolbit are not a part of my AU actually.

But Mangle? Just because she hasn't made an appearance of any kind yet, doesn't mean she wont in the future.. 👀

Thank you! :DD

Thank you! I'll try to not rush through my projects so much <XD

Thank you for respecting that! :D

Also uhg. I hate pinterest. I would rather people just never found out about me then find me through a pinterest post with my stolen artwork.

@whereismycupofcoffee

YEESSS!!! I always love it when people decide to give Octonauts a try :))) Its a really neat show!

THANK YOU SO MUCH!! :DDDD

XD My first thought was Peso or Shellington for some reason. They're just too polite to make a fuss XDDD

@kymbird

Wanna know a good place to start if you genuinely struggle with that? Make 1 character that is based off of you. And then make a second character that is based off of someone in your life that you have 0 romantic interest in what so ever. Like your Mom, or your Dad, siblings, Uncle, dog literally anyone. It should be impossible to twist those 2 characters together because they are modeled after you and ur mom. You should look at them and say "thats me and my mom" or "thats me and my brother" Those 2 should then be characters that are 100% protected from becoming a ship. :0

This actually reminded me of my transformer ocs. I modeled the characters after the drivers/owners. And people wanted to ship them together and I was like "for 1 they are my OCs so thats kind'a odd but 2 those two characters are based off of siblings. They absolutely should not- in ANY universe, be paired together"

Personally not a huge fan of the bright blue color he has. Seeing his Bonnie Bowl artwork everywhere I expected him to be his usual purple..

As for my Bonnie I think he'd get along pretty well with his Glamrock counterpart! But when it comes to the Bowling ally they'd be rivals. >:)

Also thank you! :DD

@trains-of-thought

aaaa thank you so much!! :DD I'm so glad to hear that you've liked my Mario artwork!! And that you read the info aaaa!! I spent a lot of time writing all that so I'm glad to hear that you read it! As for your questions,

1: Yes! My Peach, Daisy, Wario and Waluigi are all the same species, which is not human. They are this incredibly tall elf like species that closely resembles humans and has many biological similarities.. but ultimately they are very different species.

2: Its hard to say.. I've been known to change my mind a lot so maybe? Honestly I hope that someday these feelings towards fanart will vanish and I will be able to engage with my fans more. But for now,, noooo fanworks :(

OH MY GOSH I LOVE THAT FNAF VIDEO XDD Very well animated and funny! Here's the link in case anyone is interested!

I drew it myself! :)

#my response #fnaf security breach #fnaf security breach dlc #fnaf security breach dlc spoilers #octonauts #super mario bros

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pastafossa · 6 months

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I keep having this weird feeling. Like, Netflix DD was/is my favorite series ever. My favorite fandom. My favorite story. It has my favorite characters, arcs, dialogue, cinematography, fight scenes, themes. It's helped me process and heal from a lot of shit, thanks to how I related to Matt. In short: the amount of love I have for it knows no limits. You all know this. Obviously. So when it was abruptly canceled in 2018, I was just gutted. And sure, I joined the SaveDaredevil campaign, but in truth, I kinda thought... that was it. It was over. I remember, viscerally, that sinking feeling. I knew I'd always love it, and I'd continue to follow Charlie through his other works, but after a year or so it just felt like it was clear it wasn't coming back. I either needed to move on, or find a way to allow me to spend more time in that universe even without the show - clearly I chose the latter, ending TRT's hiatus in 2020 when I had more time to write fic. But I cannot understate how I did that with the full knowledge that DD was over.

That went on for years.

Years of nothing.

Years of a tiny fandom on life support, grimly holding onto our love with the barest of fingertips, reblogging and writing for anyone still around, including ourselves.

Years of sweet interviews where the cast would mention DD, little scraps of dopamine and nostalgia that kept us warm.

Years where there wasn't much hope, but we loved it anyway, we did, we still did, even as we understood why people moved on.

What we loved was dead, but we picnicked on its grave anyway.

If you'd told me, at any point then, that one day as we sat on that grave, Matt's hand would come bursting up through the soil right through the center of our memorial devil cookie tray, I'd have given you a whole lotta side eye. Because that's what this feels like. We laid this series to rest, and now Matt's here covered in grave dirt, and he has promptly sat down to eat our memorial cookies with us like we didn't spend years mourning his death.

It's such an odd feeling. Suddenly there are new things to buy! New appearances! New gifs! New interviews and shows and old fans coming back and new fans coming in and new fics being written, and con events and behind the scenes clips, and this whole time I'm floating in this bright haze because this was all gone, it was all dead, you were dead, I wrote for you because I missed you, because I wanted to keep you alive, and now you're here again.

I have no idea what to do with this feeling. But it makes me very, very happy.

#daredevil #pasta thoughts

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drdemonprince · 4 months

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what made you choose a deer for your fursona?

It's a long story that I am all too happy to tell!

I first attended Midwest Furfest in 2018, after years of being curious about it. My boyfriend at the time was a member of the Neo-Futurists Theater, and the Neo's had a longstanding relationship with the MFF community. They perform their flagship show (Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, later rebranded as The Infinite Whale) there every year, and when the theater company's former founder attempted to steal their show name/copyright following his ousting due to sexual assault allegations, MFF really came through to offer considerable moral support.

There was lots of goodhearted joking about the furry community within that theater space, and I'd always been curious about furries and a supporter of them in heart if not in fact, and so I finally decided one year to tag along, see my boyfriend performing there, and walk around the convention floor and visit the dealer's den during my down time.

I absolutely LOVED IT. I was completely blown away by the artistry of the suits and the playful spirit of the suiters. I ran into a few friends there, outing them as furries to me, and we grew closer. I also took notice of some teal, sparkly resin antlers while I was in the Dealer's Den:

I snapped those things up and put them on immediately. Some stranger started to pet me right away (which is technically a convention consent violation, and should *not* be done, but I personally was the opposite of troubled by being treated in this way) and I was hooked.

I had always had a "thing" for antlers and horns since playing the PS2 game Ico back in the early 2000's. The young male protagonists horns representing an unwanted appendage and a visible "curse" was very appealing to me... as a boy who had been saddled with two very unwanted appendages of my own. (trangsender). I also have had many very magical encounters with deer in Ohio and Pennsylvania where I grew up. As a skiddish bottomy freak whose caused a lot of car accidents, a prey animal that also has the power to kill people in vehicles seemed plenty apt. So when I found some antlers to wear, it seemed like a natural enough fit for a potential fursona.

Then my friend @jettvector designed my fursona, using the teal antlers as a jumping off point. (this art has his old watermark on it, but he goes by jettvector now. commission him!):

Now that I had a friend-assigned fursona and was officially a furry, I ran with it, and began commissioning some art that further refined my image of the character:

this is from 9inko on Instagram

this one is from @heresvix, who specializes in deer

and this one is from @murgzt . I am currently having a partial fursuit of this iteration of the character made by Daring Duck Designs!! :0

A few things that I love about my sona's design: I love that his ears are big and really stick out, as my ears do the same, I love that he has a spot reflecting my monroe piercing, I love that deers are spotted in general, which can allow me to recast my own bacne scars in a more positive light, and i love that his greenish teal skin reflects my own olive complection (which I used to get a lot of weird comments about as a kid and felt self conscious about).

I also accumulated some gear in the meantime that allowed me to better embody my deersona, who I now call DD (which stands for Deer Devon, Docile Deer, Devon Dawn, my former DD tits, or any numer of potential things haha)

Hood by Miss Kinky Latex UK, photo by @photopotamus.

I have become a little bit more of a furry with each passing year, and it wouldn't have been possible without the hard work and creativity of so many people within the fandom, many of whom are beloved friends. <3 That's part of what makes it so special. Thanks for asking!

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a-reader-and-a-writer · 7 months

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The One Rule (Part 1)

AI-Less Whumptober 2023: 4. Betrayal, 19. "Why Wasn't I Enough?", 31. Crying, Alt 7. Disowned by Family, Alt 13. Grief Fandom: Top Gun, Top Gun: Maverick, Jake "Hangman" Seresin, f!Reader Summary: Jake has made some bad mistakes in the past, but nothing compared to this. Now he has to go home and face the consequences of his actions. He only hopes you'll be able to forgive him. Word Count: 5616 TW: Spousal Cheating, Arguing, Kicking Out of House, Mention of Divorce, Parents Splitting Up, Punch Thrown, Language Notes: Thank you to @loverhymeswith for beta reading this for me! This is for @ailesswhumptober's event

Part 2 (coming soon)

Jake stood outside the fence and just stared at his house. By this time of morning, you would have already cleaned up the mess from breakfast and would be tidying up around the house as you enjoyed the few hours of alone time you got every Monday. The thought of you carefreely going about with your usual routine, probably dancing or singing to yourself as you always did, made the ache in his chest that much worse.

Last night, he had screwed up. Bad. As in so bad he might have just destroyed his life as he knew it. And while a huge part of him wanted to keep it a secret in the hopes that you would never find out, he knew that telling you was the only way he stood a chance of making this right. Besides, if you ever somehow found out later what he did and that he had lied about it, there would be absolutely no coming back from that.

So, taking a deep breath, he opened the gate and walked towards his house. As he began to climb the steps of his porch, it felt as if he were climbing the gallows to his impending execution— an irony that was in no way lost on him. After all these years of being branded with the name, he really was about to be the hanged man.

He had given his keys to Rooster the night before since he was supposed to be the DD, so Jake fished around in the potted plant next to the door until he found the spare key. He unlocked the front door and braced himself for what came next.

Walking into the house, he didn’t see signs of anyone. However, your car had been parked in the driveway so hesitantly, he called out, “I’m home.”

There was no response for a moment, but then you came walking out of the laundry room balancing a freshly folded basket of towels on your hip. You must not have heard him over whatever you were listening to because you were bopping your head and swaying to music only you could hear from your headphones. You started slightly when you noticed him standing in the living room, but then a bright smile spread across your face.

“Oh hi, honey. You scared me there for a minute. I wasn’t expecting anyone for another few hours.” You slipped off your earphones and laid them in the basket, the music still softly trickling out of them, as you walked over to him. After planting a warm kiss on his cheek, you resumed your walk back towards the linen closet. Over your shoulder, you called, “I got a little nervous when I didn’t hear from you anymore last night after that text saying you made it back to town. But when you didn’t come home, I talked to Bob and he said you all went out for drinks and you were pretty trashed when he left the bar. Did you stay with Javy, Bradley, or Nat this time?”

Jake didn’t know what to say. He just stood there silently opening and closing his mouth as he tried to find the kindest way to break your heart. But of course, there was none.

You finished putting the towels away and came back over to where he was standing. When he just continued to gape at you, your smile dropped into a concerned frown. “You okay, Jakey? You look like you’re going to be sick. And not in your usual hungover way.” You pressed the back of your hand against his forehead. “Did something happen last night?”

It was now or never.

Removing your hand from his head, he gave it one last tight squeeze before he gestured to the nearby couch. “Sweetheart… why don’t you have a seat.”

“Okay…,” you said slowly but did as he asked. Once seated, you looked at him with eager anticipation. “What’s up?”

How could he tell you? How could he blow up both of your lives as you gazed at him so lovingly, oblivious to the bomb he was about to drop on you? But then again, he already set the bomb off last night when he went home with someone else. There was no stopping it or taking it back. All he could do was sit here and watch the destruction unfold.

Taking a deep breath, he walked over to the armchair across from the couch and sank down into it. “Well, we all went to the bar after we made it back stateside last night and we started drinking. I had a few— a lot of shots of some new thing they had and there must have been more alcohol in them than I realized because I got really wasted.”

“Yeah, what else is new?” you scoffed but Jake could hear the nervous edge in your voice. You knew something was wrong and deep down, you probably knew what it was, but you wouldn’t let yourself believe it until Jake said the words. “But like I said, Bob already told me that.”

“Bob wanted to get home so he left early, that I remember. But right after that, I–I blacked out. And I don’t…. I don’t know. I guess the rest of the guys left or didn’t see me or something because they usually stop me–” He snapped his mouth shut as he realized he was probably telling you more than he meant to but he was so afraid of what would happen next that he was rambling a bit.

“So you were blackout drunk, everyone else had left, and you didn’t come home last night,” you said flatly as you leaned back into the couch, your arms crossing over your chest. “Got it. I can connect those dots.”

Jake swallowed, trying to keep down the bile that was burning in his throat. Besides the aftereffects of his drinking last night, the cold, empty veil that had fallen over your eyes as you looked at him made his stomach churn. “I swear, sweetheart, I would never normally do anything like this but I was just so drunk and I didn’t know what I was doing. I mean, one second I’m talking to this girl by the pool table and the next I was waking up in her bed this morning.”

“But you’re sure–”

“Yeah.” Jake nodded, his eyes dropping to focus on the hardwood floor. “A few flashes of the night came back to me on the way home. It was enough to get a pretty good idea of what we did. But I’m so, so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you like this and just the thought of what I did makes me want to be sick. I never imagined those drinks would hit me that hard or I would have stopped after the second or third one. That isn’t an excuse for what I did but maybe an explanation for why it happened? I don’t know. I wish I could take the whole night back and make it so it never happened. I’m just so sorry.”

He slowly lifted his eyes from the floor as he braced himself for the fury of your response. Yet as he waited for you to react in some way, you didn’t say a word. You just continued to stare straight ahead with that same blank indifference as if in a trance, not even really at him but more at the wall just above his head. However, when he reached out to touch your arm, you suddenly stood up and walked calmly into the bedroom, shutting the door softly behind you.

Jake had expected screaming and cursing. He had expected tears and sobs of disbelief. But he had never imagined this total lack of a reaction. Maybe it hadn’t hit you yet. Maybe the words were settling in and the explosion would come later. Part of him wondered if he should follow you into the bedroom to continue to beg for your forgiveness. He went up to the door and pressed his ear against it as he rested his hand on the doorknob. He could hear some slight rustling and moving around, but it didn’t sound like you were crying or yelling or really making any noise at all.

After a moment, Jake decided it was better to leave you alone for now to try and wrap your head around everything he told you. So, he quietly backed away from the door and retreated to the kitchen where he got himself a glass of water and a few aspirin. His massive hangover was the cherry on top of this shit-tastic sundae the last 12 hours had become. He just hoped he was clear-headed enough to face you when you eventually emerged from the bedroom.

That moment finally came about an hour later when the door opened and you walked out carrying his old duffle bag. You strode past him to the front door, opened it wide, and threw the duffle bag out onto the porch before turning back towards him. In a calm, level voice, you said, “Here’s enough stuff to last you for the week. See if Javy or Bradley can help you get the rest of your things this weekend but until then I better not see you in this house.”

As you walked back towards the kitchen, he reached out to grab your arm but you jerked it away. “Sweethear–”

“No, Jake. You knew the rules since our first date.” You had turned back to face him, trapping Jake between you and the still-open front door. “I have never said a word about your cockiness, or your asshole behavior towards others, or your need to always be in control. I accepted the fact you would be gone for months at a time on deployments or missions with little to no contact. And I never once said a word about how late you stay out with your friends or how often they have to carry your drunk ass home. But the one thing I have said from the very beginning is that if you ever cheat on me, we are done. Period.”

“I was drunk. I didn’t–”

“I don’t care. That’s not an excuse and you know it. Now, get out of my house.”

“Our house.”

“My house,” you said firmly yet still void of any emotion. “You gave up the right to it when you climbed into some other woman’s bed.”

Jake retreated into himself a bit at that. “I said, I screwed up. It was one time and it was the worst mistake of my life. I’m not asking for you to be okay with this, but please let’s just talk about it.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. You broke your vows which shows how little our marriage means to you. So, we are done. End of story.” And as if to accentuate your point, you turned your back to him.

Now Jake was getting mad. Yes, he messed up, in a way that was potentially inexcusable, but you weren’t being reasonable or giving him a chance to explain. He had been blackout drunk. There was no way he would have ever done something like that when he was sober and you knew that. Yet you were standing there with your stone-cold gaze and your calm, unemotional tone demanding he leave. Maybe you were the one showing how little this marriage meant if you couldn’t even be bothered to react to this information. If you could shut off your emotions and feelings for him so quickly, maybe they weren’t that strong to begin with.

And while you might be willing to chuck him to the curb without a second thought, there was someone else who would be devastated if he were forced to move out.

“What about Ellie?” he demanded. “You can’t keep me away from my daughter.”

Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say.

“Just watch me,” you hissed as you whirled around and jammed your finger harshly into his chest. The cold indifference you had been showing up to this point was gone and your words dripped with a venomous fury. “It was taking everything in me to remain calm just long enough to watch your sorry ass walk out that door, but how dare you bring her into this! Not when you didn’t give her a second thought before destroying her family.”

The veil had lifted from your eyes and Jake cowered back as he was met with the full force of your maternal outrage. “Do you know she begged me to let her stay up for you last night because you promised you’d be home, but I made her go to bed because I knew the truth. That you’d rather go out drinking than come home to tuck your daughter in after not seeing her for two weeks. Your four-year-old daughter who thinks her daddy hung the moon. If only she knew who you really were. But I am going to make sure you can’t shatter her heart like you just shattered mine. Now… Get. Out.”

As you took another step forward, your finger still firmly on his chest, he stumbled back over the threshold of the front door. He might have caught himself if he hadn’t tripped on the duffle bag you had tossed out moments before. He landed hard on his ass, barely able to soften the fall by throwing his hands out behind him.

He gazed up at you from his awkward heap on the ground as you stood framed in the doorway. For just a second, it wasn’t anger nor indifference Jake saw staring back at him. It was pain. A level of pain and betrayal he had never seen in another person, as if your entire body would shatter if touched with even the slightest of breezes. And it was only then that Jake truly realized how royally he had fucked up.

But then the veil fell over your face once more. In that same indifferent tone, you said, “Don’t you dare come back.” Then you shut the door and he heard the deadbolt slide shut.

Today was Thursday. Thursday meant you needed to take the trash out to the road. It meant Ellie had her appointment at the dentist’s to get her teeth cleaned. It meant the ads changed at the store and that fancy ice cream you loved might finally be on sale.

Today was Thursday. Thursday meant this was the third morning you had woken up alone after your so-called “love of your life” had admitted to the ultimate betrayal and you had thrown him out.

You were used to waking up alone. He was gone so often for work, it seemed like you were alone more than together. But this felt different. Usually, there was that faint aura of fear for his safety mixed with the excitement of counting down the days until he came home. But now, there was only the constant ache in your chest where your heart used to be and the throbbing pain in your head from trying to hold back your tears.

Because it hurt. Oh god, did it hurt. But you didn’t have the luxury of falling apart or feeling sorry for yourself because you weren’t the only other person mixed up in this situation. The one saving grace you were holding on to was that on Monday when everything had gone down, Ellie was with your mom on their weekly playdate. You had no idea what you would have done if she had been there or returned just afterward. How could you have explained why her dad only came home for less than two hours before leaving again, this time with an armful of stuff? Or why you were sobbing in a heap in the middle of the hall?

But her temporary absence didn’t make her return home and immediate questions about where Daddy was any easier. Thankfully, your mom noticed the tears that sprung to your eyes and how your lip instantly began to quiver so she ushered Ellie upstairs to her room as quickly as she could. Then once she had gotten her to lay down for her afternoon nap, she came back down and held you as you told her everything and fell apart in her arms. You knew your parents never really liked your husband, but you doubted even they would have predicted he would do something like this. Then again… maybe they would have.

He was a jackass, through and through. You knew that from the moment you laid eyes on him in a bar just after you graduated college. And yet, he could also be sweet and charming and thoughtful. And he loved you, even now you didn’t doubt that. But he also loved to drink and party and flirt like he was still 24 and single. You just thought he loved you and Ellie more than that but you guess you were wrong. He loved himself more than he loved his family and now you would never let yourself forget that.

About an hour after you had thrown him out, he had tried calling you over and over and over and over. Each time you sent him to voicemail, he left a long, heartfelt message full of love, plans for change, and pleas for forgiveness. And once he finished recording his message, he would immediately call again and repeat the cycle trying to get through to you.

You blocked his number after the seventh call—one for every year the two of you had been together.

Since then, there had been nothing. You had expected a call or at least a text from some of the Daggers, but it had been radio silence from them. By now, most of them had to know what happened but if they did, they made no effort to reach out and see if you and Ellie were alright. There hadn’t even been an attempt to get you to change your mind and take him back.

That was until this afternoon.

As you were scrolling through reviews of divorce lawyers while Ellie napped upstairs, you noticed a familiar jeep pull up outside out of the corner of your eye and you froze. You expected Javy to come by this weekend to help pack up the rest of the stuff that needed to go, but that was still a few days away. You planned on taking Ellie and going to the park and lunch so you both weren’t at the house when they came so this was not part of your plan.

As you saw Javy climbing out, you put your laptop down and hurried over to the front door. You reached it just as you heard footsteps coming up the porch steps. Pressing your cheek against the door, you hollered, “I told him not to come back until the weekend.”

“It’s just me,” Javy’s muffled voice came through the wood. “I promise, I just want to talk and see how you’re doing.”

You leaned heavily against the door as you mulled over what to do. You hadn’t seen anyone but Javy get out of the jeep and while he was your husband’s best friend, the two of you were also close enough that you couldn’t imagine him trying to help anyone sneak into the house against your wishes. So, taking a deep breath, you slid the chain off the door and opened it.

Javy tried to step forward but you shook your head and stepped outside, closing the door behind you. “Ellie’s asleep upstairs and I don’t want to wake her. Whatever you have to say, you can say out here.”

“Fair enough.”Javy took a few steps back to give you a little more space, stopping just on the edge of the porch near the steps. Shifting slightly from foot to foot, he rubbed the back of his neck as he muttered, “I’m sorry about what happened. I still can’t believe it—any of it. You two always seemed so solid.”

You crossed your arms over your chest. “Yeah, we were…. when we were together. But that’s the problem. When I’m not there to hold his leash and remind him he’s already taken, he goes wild. But you already know that, don’t you?” Javy began to squirm even more under your gaze. You scoffed, “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

Taking a few steps forward to shorten the distance between you, you said, “I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to answer me with 100% honesty, no matter how much the answer might hurt me. Do you understand?” Javy slowly nodded, his eyes locked firmly onto yours. “Has he done this before?”

Javy vigorously shook his head. “No, never, I swear. And you know he would tell me if it did.”

“But he’s tried to, hasn’t he? He mentioned something about you guys ‘usually stopping him’ which sure sounds like he would have done this a long time ago if he hadn’t had his friends there for him. But then that makes me wonder, how far has he gone before he was stopped? Has he ever kissed another woman? Gotten to second base? Third?”

“No! He didn’t…I mean, h-he…,” Javy sighed in defeat as he hung his head. Without looking at you, he mumbled, “As far as I know, he never made it that far.”

You nodded softly to yourself as you processed this information. Then you hauled back and punched Javy in the face.

While you weren’t particularly strong, the Naval pilot stumbled back, tripping down the porch steps as he clutched his nose. He looked back up at you, shock and confusion filling his watery eyes. Out of all of the Daggers, Javy knew you the best and had even developed a close friendship with you. Because of that, he was also the only one who knew there was a fierce, unshakable side to you behind your usual laissez-faire, pushover housewife facade. But you bet not even he would have expected you to punch someone, let alone him.

Yet that was just the start of your fury. Shaking out the pain in your hand, you screamed, “You should have told me! I could have eventually gotten over his drunk ass kissing a girl or two, maybe even going a little further. Yeah, it would have hurt like hell and we would have needed time, but we could have gotten past it. Got counseling or–or help or I don’t know! But now he’s gone and ruined everything and you could have done something to stop it!”

Javy tried to explain. “I know. I’m sorry, I tried. But you know how he gets. I thought it was all just harmless flirting. I never imagined he’d go this far. I thought about telling you a hundred times, but I was just trying to protect my friend.”

“And what about me? I thought I was your friend too. Or you know what, screw that! How about protecting your goddaughter, hm?” You pointed at the house where you knew Ellie was up in her room fast asleep and oblivious to the drama raging outside. “That little girl in there who is now asking me every day where her daddy is and when he’s coming home. Who’s protecting her when I have to finally figure out some form of the truth she’ll understand and she… and she hates me because of it.”

Your voice broke on the last part but you swallowed your tears and kept going. “How do I tell her I’m the one not letting him come home when I can’t tell her why not? How do I break my baby’s heart all because he…he—” All the fight went out of you as quickly as it had appeared. With a loud wail, you crumpled to your knees and buried your face in your hands as sobs wracked your body.

It was the real reason you had been putting off telling Ellie that her dad wasn’t coming home. She adored Jake—was a complete daddy’s girl—and you knew this news was going to devastate and confuse her. Your daughter might be advanced for her age, but no four-year-old understands infidelity or cheating no matter how smart they are (and they shouldn’t). Which meant whatever you said would boil down to some form of “Mama won’t let him” and the thought of how that would destroy your relationship with the person you loved most in this world was unbearable. Your husband was the one who broke your family and yet you were going to be the one who was blamed.

As you knelt there on the front porch of the home that was now just a reminder of all the plans and dreams that would never be, sobbing and snotting loudly for the whole neighborhood to see, a pair of strong arms wrapped around you and began to draw you in. You tried weakly to struggle against them, but it was a fruitless effort. Finally, you gave up and threw yourself fully into Javy’s embrace. You buried your face into his chest as his arms held you tight, his hand rubbing soothing circles across your trembling back.

Through the sobs, you managed to choke out, “I-It just hurts so much, Javy. I don’t know how to keep myself from falling a-apart. Even thinking about him or saying his name is like a knife in my heart and every time, a little more of me gets cut out and replaced by more pain. I don’t even know what’s le-left.”

Javy pulled you in tighter, his face pressed against yours so as he whispered, his lips brushed against your ear. “I’m so sorry. I know it hurts, but I know you and you’re strong enough to get through this. And the rest of the Daggers and I will be right here beside you. It’ll be okay. I promise. ”

Maybe it was because it was coming from someone other than your parents, or because of the warm, trustworthy aura that always radiated from Javy, but for the first time in days, you actually believed that might be the case. You had been so afraid all of the Navy aviators would turn against you or take his side instead. It was a fear that had been nagging at the very back of your mind but you had been too afraid to really consider it. Since moving to California, you hadn’t really had a chance to make many friends outside of the Daggers and you didn’t know how to deal with any of this if you lost them too. But if what Javy said was true and they would stick beside you, maybe things weren’t as hopeless as they seemed.

Despite this revelation, it still took another ten or so minutes for you to stop crying. But when you did, you continued to lay curled up in Javy’s arms and mumbled, “I’m sorry I punched you. I know this isn’t your fault. I think I’ve just been looking for someone to hit since he told me and you were the first person I’ve really seen besides my parents and I wasn’t going to punch them.”

You felt Javy chuckle softly beneath you. “It’s okay. You got a mean right hook, but I did deserve it. I should have told you what he was doing a long time ago.” You flinched at yet another confirmation that your marriage had been broken for longer than you wanted to admit. “I just… I didn’t want to believe he would actually take things this far. I really thought he would stop himself even if no one was around to step in and do it for him.”

“I wasn’t blind when I chose to be with him. I knew his faults and I knew what I was agreeing to. That’s why I never once tried to change him or make him stop doing what he wanted. And in return, I asked for one fucking thing and he couldn’t give that to me. I just…. I don’t why I wasn’t enough for him.” You shook your head. “I don’t know. Maybe I was blind after all and I should have just thrown my drink in his face that first night we met and walked away.”

“Maybe you should have… but then you wouldn’t have Ellie and I know you wouldn’t trade her even if it meant avoiding this pain.”

You shook your head again as you buried your face in Javy’s neck. “You’re right. Our little girl is the one thing I don’t regret about our relationship and she makes all the rest of this worth it.”

“See? Just keep holding onto that, okay?” You nodded again as Javy gently took your shoulders and pushed you back so he could look at you at arm’s length. Then brushing the tears from your face, he said, “And I’ll be there to help you tell her about all of this. You didn’t do anything wrong here and you shouldn’t have to do that alone or take the blame for it. We’ll figure something out.”

“Thanks, Jav. And I know you’re still going to be his friend and help him through this.” Javy started to say something but you held up your hand to stop him. “No, it’s alright. He needs someone to lean on right now and it should be you. And I’m not asking you to choose sides. I don’t want you to feel like it’s either him or me and Ellie. You will always be welcome here if you want, along with the rest of the Daggers. But please, don’t try to talk me out of this. Don’t ask me to take him back.”

“No, don’t worry,” Javy promised. “I’m not gonna do that. Maybe someday, but not today. Not until he straightens out, works on himself, and becomes the man you girls deserve…the man I thought he was.”

“I guess we were both wrong about him.” Javy pulled you back into his arms and you closed your eyes.

Maybe Javy was right and he would eventually get help and become the person you and Ellie needed. Or maybe he would realize he liked the single life more than he ever liked being a family man. Or maybe he would just drink himself to death in a bar somewhere. Only time would tell.

But regardless of what he did, you knew you were going to be alright. It would suck for a very long time but eventually, you would find a way to start over again and make the life you wanted— even if it wasn’t the way you had always planned.

Suddenly, the front door opened, and a very sleepy-looking face peered out from inside. You scampered out of Javy’s lap and onto your feet. As you hurried to her side, Ellie rubbed her eyes with one tiny fist as she looked up at you and you asked, “Hey, baby. Is everything okay?”

“I’m thirsty,” she mumbled.

You scooped her up into your arms and balanced her one hip. “Okay, why don’t we get you a glass of water then you can finish your nap?”

She nodded, rubbing her eyes again. But then her little brow furrowed as she stared at you closer. Reaching out, she brushed her hand across your damp face as she asked, “Why are you crying, Mama? Did you get a boo-boo?”

Brushing the hair from her face, you said, “Yeah, baby. I got a boo-boo.”

Without hesitating, Ellie leaned forward and placed a big, exaggerated kiss on both of your cheeks. Then grinning proudly, she said, “There! I kissed it and made it all better!”

You felt the tears welling up in your eyes once more and you squeezed Ellie tightly in an enormous hug. “Thank you, El. You really do make it feel better.”

You held her like that as long as you could, but once she began to squirm in your grasp, you loosened your grip on her so she was just once more lightly balanced on your hip. Booping her nose with your free hand, you asked, “How about instead of your nap, we get you that water and maybe if you ask nicely, Uncle Javy will play dress-up with you. What do you think?”

Her little face lit up with joy. “Yeah!” Turning to Javy, she asked, “Please, Uncle ‘Avy?”

Uncle “Avy” quickly shot you a look that you pretended to look innocent at before he smiled at Ellie. “Okay, but only if I can be the princess this time. It’s not fair I’m always stuck being the fairy.”

Ellie pouted slightly, but she gave a huge sigh and said, “I guess.”

Javy’s grin grew wider and he pumped his fist. “Sweet! Then let’s go! I’ll race you upstairs while your mom gets your drink.”

You put Ellie down as she tried wiggling out of your grasp and she hurried inside and up the stairs as fast as her little legs would carry her. As he followed behind her in a mock run, Javy squeezed your arm as he passed and gave you a quick smile. Then he disappeared inside after Ellie.

Watching them go, you took a deep breath as a wave of peace washed over you. Yes, you might not get the life you had been planning, but you could already start to see making a pretty good life out of what you still had.

And with that, you followed your daughter and your friend inside and shut the door behind you.

I have a potential idea for a Part 2 if anyone is interested (though it may not go the way you are expecting....)

Update, it looks like I'm going to start working on Part 2!

Taglist: @loverhymeswith, @heart-0n-fire, @mayhem24-7forever, @the-untamed-soul, @inglourious-imagines, @airhogger, @piscesvancouverite, @straightforwardly, @bonnieelizabethparker, @srry-itshockeyszn, @flyinlove, @fandomhopped, @sweetheartlizzie07, @yjwnoot, @wanderdreamer, @pansexualwitchwhoneedstherapy,@imjess-themess, @callsign-phoenix, @shanimallina87, @forever-sleepy-sloth, @blue-aconite, @notroosterbradshaw, @dezthegeek, @blessupblessup, @cherrycola27, @phoenix1389, @nicangelinee, @smells-like-perfect-senses, @boringusername3 @petlaufeyson, @cycbaby, @topguncortez, @footprintsinthesxnd, @fantasticcopeaglepasta, @writercole, @onebigfangirlworld, @wkndwlff, @ravenmoore14, @clancycucumber230, @mayhemmanaged, @slightly-psycho-multifan, @kmc1989, @ohtobeleah, @roosterforme, @deppresseddyslexic, @horneybeach1, @mandylove1000

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ventiaoo · 2 years

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;Where to read Enstars! Mainstory/Events/Scouts stories

Because I am a bit bored today and doesn't have the motivation to get back writing, I decided to share this a little information where you can read the Ensemble stars english translations that were taken down due to some copy-right and shit. I am fully aware that some of you must be absolutely devasted as hell, especially the newcomers who is still new to Ensemble stars. You will be grateful for the assistance I am about to give you, saving you the time it would take to search Enstars english translation, Anyhow- shall we get started fellas?

(1) Okay, In order to find the English translations, you must first search "Wayback Machine" this is where you are going to be able to read the translations (You can also read Enstars!! here, however the translations hasn't been finished because it got removed)

(2) Once you are on the website, the next step is you should do is search for "Ensemble stars wiki fandom" the english one okay? not that one from japanese one etc. Ehem- after you've done the search, the next thing you got to do is copy the link

(3) After that, you simply need to paste the link into to the search bar like in the image above. Then, for obvious reasons, you must click "Browse History."

(4) The moment you click it, you will be directed to this. It will display the years, months, and days that the Enstars fans updated the English wiki, along with any translations.

Step Five: Click the year 2021

(5) Scroll down to August, after that. the next thing you have to do click is day 18.

(6) Once you click the day 18, you will see this. then the next thing you have to click again is- 00:33:08. Please click the top option, okay??

(7) Blah, Blah, Blah. Once you've clicked '00:33:08' this will appear on your screen, click story, then click Ensemle stars(!) or Ensemble Strars(!!) Then it will show the mainstory, Event & Scout story and so forth. At that point, you could read the entire english translation of Enstars! with your heart contents, there is no need to struggle and hurriedly seek the translations on Google, pretty neat :DD

It will show you this when you clicked the Main Story

And then it will show you this if you clicked the Event & Scout story, all events and scouts are complete in Ensemble Stars! I think? Oh and btw you can read the Reminiscence event or scout in "Timeline"

(Note): That's all I have for now. I hope this was helpful and that I was able to explain it well. Let me know if you have any more questions. Please feel free to enquire in my blog. Goodbye!

(Edited Note): In all honesty, you don't need to follow all of these steps considering that I've provided the Link, Lmao. How stupid of me~ By the way, when you have a poor wifi connection, Way Back Machine frequently takes a long time to load. therefore I advise you that you need to have a high-speed internet connection.

#ensemble stars x reader #enstars #ensemble stars #rei sakuma #ritsu sakuma #izumi sena #leo tsukinaga #natsume sakasaki #enstars imagines #trickstar #knights #undead #mika kagehira #ensemble stars eichi #ensemble stars x y/n #ensemble stars x you #wayback machine

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stoopid-turtle · 5 months

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the art of being a skeptical turtle

So this is a personal post more about my experience as a turtle. If you just want to get to the fun list of candies I totally buy into regardless of evidence, just skip down to where the asterisks are. (Consider this like a recipe attached to a blog post)

For those interested in the whole nerdery going on here, let me share that I had a lot of trouble coming to terms with bjyxszd. I wrote a whole series of posts about it to get my thoughts in order. Now I'm fully on the turtle train, but I find myself skeptical of some candies.

This is gonna get super-nerdy so hold on to your butts.

I'm a generally skeptical person. I come by it honestly. My parents literally subscribed to Skeptical Inquirer and Skeptics magazines. They (well, my dad mainly) were capital-S Skeptics. My family talked about logical fallacies, perceptual oddness, and the fallibility of memory over the dinner table.

Please don't back away. I know self-identified Skeptics are typically insufferable. I didn't know this as a kiddo, though, so the whole "thinking about things skeptically" became just my default way of processing stuff. Nowadays, I wouldn't call myself a Skeptic in the way that some in a particularly obnoxious subculture do. But I do tend to be a skeptical sort. I just don't...you know...think it makes me smarter/better/cooler than other folks.

(Actually, it makes me way less cool bc I can single-handedly ruin a fun party by expressing skepticism about something. Nobody likes a wet blanket. I know this)

My bestie in high school always called me Scully to his Mulder. He would believe anything he saw or read, whereas I didn't. Usually, I was right. Like when he totally thought that the Blair Witch Project was real found footage (It's not. Nobody thinks it is now, I know, but it was part of the promo at the time). On occasion, he was right. Like when he told me that some gray clouds we had overheard were from wildfires in Mexico. I scoffed bc, really, we weren't that close to Mexico. But he was right and I learned a valuable lesson on large-scale weather phenomenon. (He's still wrong about there being a picture of a light bulb in the pyramids though)

So, yeah, that's just how I process things. It's second-nature for me. But I reached a point with my generally skeptical outlook where I considered 2 things to see whether I really cared if people were buying into something I thought was false.

The stakes. If a person believes X, what does that lead to? If I don't believe Y, even though it's true, what does that lead to?

There's a whole bunch of political stuff that heightens the stakes. To take a ridiculous (and outdated one), when I was growing up, there was a common story that AIDS hopped from apes to humans because a gay man had sex with an ape and then had sex with other humans. Thus, the AIDS epidemic.

The stakes of other people buying into that homophobic nonsense were (and are) life and death. (If you believe that...uh...bye?) It's something that's worth me being the obnoxious Scully if I hear someone buying into it.

The stakes of, say, my high school bestie believing that The Blair Witch Project was real found footage was...nothing. It just made him want to see the movie more. Nobody was hurt. It didn't matter.

I argued with him at the time, but I probably wouldn't anymore.

The stakes for believing that bjyxszd, here in international fandom, are perhaps higher than the Blair Witch thing. But only barely. If somebody believes in a particular rumor/candy that I don't think is real, it affects literally nothing. We're both still turtles. We have a lot more in common than we do difference with regards to YiZhan. Likewise, the effect of me not believing a candy that may be true is nil. Gg and dd are not impacted in any way.

(I think things may be different for c-fans, but that's not at all a thing I'm qualified to delve into. I can only account for myself in my context)

2. The other thing I consider is the context. That is, how likely are we to know the actual truth?

Scientific claims have a method to test them (and claims that can't be tested are just...not something science addresses). Claims about current events can be researched using journalism methods or whatever. For that homophobic AIDS story, there's ways to prove that it's not true. For the Blair Witch thing...well, the actors went on the talk show circuit for promo so, you know, the real footage myth was quickly lifted.

Celebrities exist in a different context. Like most people, they have a private life that is not accessible to people on the outside. If they choose to open up about that life, then cool. But if they don't or can't do so (like is the case with YiZhan), then they'll try to keep their private life out of sight of fans.

It really hit home to me when I was doing the bts thing how little of dd and gg we saw in the Untamed bts. We see even less of them now. I'm at peace with the fact that I just will never know much about these guys (I wrote a whole post about it). But the fact that there's a big mass of the unknown means that the possibilities are endless. We don't know and we'll never know.

So I don't have any more authority on anything gg or dd related than anybody else does. So why would I attempt to question or dismiss candies that other people find compelling? At the end of the day, there is a truth, but it's not accessible to us, so anything we come up with is just extrapolation.

Which is fine. It's fun. I think there's real stuff going on. (If I didn't, I wouldn't be here) But it means there's no real point arguing about the specific candies.

(and to be clear, I don't see turtles doing this, really. so this is all just me reiterating my own approach to things bc I'm a person who processes thoughts through long tumblr posts apparently) (and it's not a reaction to any particular candy. this post has been in my drafts for ages)

I think I'm a hard sell on a lot of candies, and I'm definitely the fuddy-duddy who just squints and asks a bunch of obnoxious questions about things.

But I ask those questions of myself and don't feel the need to annoy other turtles with them because, honestly, we're all in this boat together. Some candies appeal to particular turtles more than others, and I think we all kinda have our personal preferences for which ones resonate with us. I'm not here to rain on anybody's parade, especially as we all have way more in common just bc we all believe in bjyxszd.

This is all a long-winded way to explain how I think about candies, honestly. Or more, how I assess candies that are new-to-me and figure out whether to buy into it or not. With anything involving bjyx, I also leave a lot of room for there just being an unknown and unknowable. Again, the stakes are low, and if I'm wrong about any particular candy (in either direction), then...oh well? It affects literally nothing.

************************************************************************************************************************************************

So here's the fun part! The list of candies that I fully admit don't have a whole lot going for them (by my stupidly exacting standards) but that I totally buy into just because I like them.

Basically all lip-readings, but especially this one

(if you don't want to click thru, this is the moment from the Nanjing farewell concert where dd and gg seem to flirt about photos while on-stage)

Okay, I know, rationally, that lip-readings are always gonna be shaky. I mean, I've seen Medieval Land Fun-Time World. If I'm honest with myself, I know that the lip-readings are basically fluffy candy.

But whatever. I choose to believe them. This moment, especially, I adore (and it does come with dd posting a bare-faced photo after!). I think their big grins while openly flirting with each other on stage just jazzes me enough to pretend.

It's all true. I totally believe it.

Related to this is:

2. Any and all CPN about dd and/or gg seeing turtle signs and smiling or otherwise reacting positively.

I've seen such CSI-worthy analysis of sight-lines to try to establish with precision where dd or gg is looking at the moment they smile/look happy. I have no idea how much any of it holds up, and it's not worth the bother to try to confirm any of it.

But whatever. I like it. I believe it. I'll probably believe it everytime it happens.

3. Advanced Bombology.

So there's some things that aren't in dispute here. We definitely know that gg suddenly cut an Olay commercial ad from a 2 day shoot to a 1 day shoot, and it's a reasonable assumption that he did so to be at the DDU anniversary episode with GG.

The rest is a little fuzzy. The video details dd being kinda grouchy in interviews before the DDU shoot, and it also shares an anon rumor from a person who claimed to overhear dd in a studio restroom arguing on the phone with gg. This rumor came out a year after the event.

The rest of the video is some interpretation of the boys' behavior/mood in the DDU anniversary ep.

So, like, I get that anon rumors a year on maybe aren't the most solid evidence for anything. But whatever, I buy it.

And the interpretation of the boys' mood seems true to me, especially the moment where the interviewer asks gg if they'd discussed his visit ahead of time. Gg def does a sweatdrop, panic pause, look at dd moment and waits for dd's lead to answer. I find a lot of mood interpretation from videos a bit much, but this feels real.

In fact, the whole thing just feels real. Maybe that's why it's easy for me to buy. It feels like a real argument a couple would have.

4. The 5/22 fight during CQL shooting.

I talked about this back when I was doing the bts in order.

In tl;dr, dd gives gg a bit of a brush-off response to something. gg responds by cold shouldering him and then doing some passive aggressive sniping about how dd doesn't want gg to care about him. dd gets upset, then he apologizes, then they go on to watch something on one of their phones.

The basis of this one is some gossip plus a video shot from a distance that requires reading lips. So we know that's already fuzzy, and I know I approached this with some skepticism in my earlier post. That was just to be rational about things so as to be honest with myself.

In truth, I buy it. I buy the argument. I buy the lip-reading. Again, it feels real.

5. GG's card to turtles

This is one of those frustrating ones I'm having trouble refinding. Darn.

The upshot, and I'm going from memory, is that there's a CPN about a card written to turtles ostensibly from gg. This came with some handwriting comparison to try to match the signature to gg's known signature.

This isn't something I'd place bets on, because...seriously, it's so fuzzy.

But in my heart, I believe it for no reason other than that I want to.

6. DD as gg's mystery driver

Okay, there's a couple such incidents. One quite recently. Where gg's driver is mysteriously masked such that you can't see their face.

And, truth, it could be literally anybody under there. But for me, it's dd. No need to give me painstaking comparisons of hands or whatever. I'm fully in on this one.

7. The bone necklace.

Ack, don't hate me for this one!

When I was doing my posts about stuff that had convinced me that gg and dd were still together, I stumbled with the bone necklace. To me, it's the main thing that convinces me, but if I'm honest, it really is kinda a leap of faith thing.

With the ox-head necklace, we have the fancam footage to back it up as being from gg. All we have for the bone necklace is the timing and the precedent of dd having already worn a necklace from gg. That's shaky, really.

In fact, I think I saw some other dd CP claiming the bone necklace as theirs (I saw them also claiming the Leica camera). I think they're wrong, but I don't have any solid proof to say so.

I think the most I can say is that there are much harder evidences that gg and dd are still together. But these typically involve massive privacy violations so I'm not eager to spread them around (I kinda hate that I stumble upon them, tbh). But in any case, it has me convinced, so if I already know gg and dd are a couple, then of course the bone necklace is related.

But on its own, the bone necklace is a leap.

Okay, that all said, since I (finally) had a photo of dd last time I posted, I'm dropping a random gg photo here. Not my favorite, cause pls don't make me choose, but one that hangs out my head throughout the days.

#bjyx #yizhan #considerations of being a turtle #it starts nerdy and then turns into a listicle #no judgment for just skipping to the candies #gratuitous gg photo #they srsly just wrapped him in cables and then that happened #what is his waist yall #and why's there a car driving up his lapel?#still sexy

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a-reader-and-a-writer-for-all · 7 months

Text

The One Rule (Part 1)

Part 2 (Coming Soon)

Walking into the house, he didn’t see signs of anyone. However, your car had been parked in the driveway so hesitantly, he called out, “I’m home.”

Jake didn’t know what to say. He just stood there silently opening and closing his mouth as he tried to find the kindest way to break your heart. But of course, there was none.

It was now or never.

Removing your hand from his head, he gave it one last tight squeeze before he gestured to the nearby couch. “Sweetheart… why don’t you have a seat.”

“Okay…,” you said slowly but did as he asked. Once seated, you looked at him with eager anticipation. “What’s up?”

“But you’re sure–”

As you walked back towards the kitchen, he reached out to grab your arm but you jerked it away. “Sweethear–”

“I was drunk. I didn’t–”

“I don’t care. That’s not an excuse and you know it. Now, get out of my house.”

“Our house.”

“My house,” you said firmly yet still void of any emotion. “You gave up the right to it when you climbed into some other woman’s bed.”

And while you might be willing to chuck him to the curb without a second thought, there was someone else who would be devastated if he were forced to move out.

“What about Ellie?” he demanded. “You can’t keep me away from my daughter.”

Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say.

But then the veil fell over your face once more. In that same indifferent tone, you said, “Don’t you dare come back.” Then you shut the door and he heard the deadbolt slide shut.