#while people are being dickheads in the notes of my posts

[tittyinfinity]

$niceworkbonedaddy

[formulaonecrumbs]

Hi :) I don’t know if this is the kind of thing you usually write, but could you make an angst where Lando has a secret girlfriend!reader and doesn’t plan on going public with her for now, but he’s always seen with another girl (I’m inspired by Magui, but you can change the name if you want) and everyone online thinks they’re dating. Reader starts feeling uncomfortable with it, but he keeps saying there’s nothing between them and that the reader is the only one in his life even though he keeps going out with the other girl while hiding the reader?

almost (never) yours

Lando Norris x secret girlfriend!reader

summary: lando has a secret girlfriend but won’t go public with her. meanwhile, he’s constantly seen with a model, amelie, and the internet thinks they’re dating.

warnings: pure angst. dickhead lando. implied cheating. implied breakup. emotional neglect. no comfort. no fluff.

A/N: thank u for the request, anon :)!!! as much as i feel i suck at writing angst, i love it 🤗🤗 i need a good cry, i’ll open this app and find the saddest, most angstiest fucking fic ever. anyways, i hope this is what u wanted, i tried. i got a little into (i didn’t even plan on making it pure angst) but i just kept writing and writing. also yes, i did feel a lil weird using Magui’s name cause idk it feels like im using that situation for my own personal gain (idk if that makes sense, i just wanna respect lando 😭) but i have no problem using papp pics of them from pinterest OOP also guys pls send in requests u have for ANY driver. cause i’m so in writers block when it comes to new ideas. need something to stimulate my brain. sorry for the ridiculously long note IM DONE NOW, ENJOY!! love u ❤️❤️

୨ৎ ୨ৎ ୨ৎ ୨ৎ

lando always said he wasn’t ready.

“just for now,” he whispered into your hair at 3 a.m., his voice thick with sleep, arms wrapped around you under hotel sheets that still smelled like his cologne. “i like having something that’s only mine.”

you didn’t question it back then. it felt intimate. sacred. like a shared secret too delicate for the world to touch. like the love between you existed in its own little universe where no one could ruin it.

but lately, it didn’t feel romantic anymore. it felt like erasure.

because while you were a secret, she was everywhere.

amelie.

you knew her name before he ever said it. the internet made sure of that. tagged in every photo. every story. always beside him. model-perfect with eyes that sparkled and smiles that made people fall in love instantly. the kind of girl people expected to see with someone like him.

and everyone online loved them together.

“look at them. literal endgame.”

“can she just soft-launch him already?”

“i didn’t know i needed lando and amelie until now.”

you read the comments. not just once, but over and over, even though every time felt like a dagger.

you tried to brush it off. at first.

“she’s just part of the group,” lando said the first time you brought her up, his hand resting lazily on your thigh as he scrolled through tiktoks beside you. “she’s around a lot, yeah, but it’s nothing like that.”

you wanted to believe him.

but he didn’t post you. never even hinted you existed. and meanwhile, she was in frame in every group picture. she was on his story at dinners. at parties. in the background laughing during his livestreams. and his friends — max, oscar, carlos — they all seemed to know her. joke with her. tag her.

you felt like a shadow. a hidden chapter in his life no one else was allowed to read.

“i just don’t want people in our business,” he said one night as you lay beside him, both of you staring at the ceiling in silence. “they’ll twist it. they’ll ruin us.”

but it was already being ruined. and not by strangers online.

by him.

because it was always her.

every day, another comment. another rumor. another clip from a fan account showing her brushing his arm, whispering something that made him laugh like she was the only one in the room. and he never corrected it. never once said, “no, i’m with someone.”

you started to wonder if he was embarrassed of you. or if you were just something to come back to when he was done being adored by the rest of the world.

then came the photo.

someone had snapped it at a bar — blurry and dimly lit but clear enough. lando with his arm around amelie’s waist. her head tilted toward his. close. too close. her smile soft. his eyes focused only on her.

and the caption?

“if this isn’t confirmation, idk what is.”

your heart stopped. your phone slipped from your hands and hit the bed with a soft thud. you just stared at the screen, waiting for him to post something. say something. tell people it wasn’t what it looked like.

but nothing came.

just silence.

for two days.

you didn’t text him. didn’t answer when he called. you couldn’t. you didn’t even know what you’d say.

when he finally messaged you — “are you okay?” — it felt so small. so weak. like he was trying to put a band-aid on a bullet wound.

he called after. three times. you picked up on the fourth.

“hey,” he said, and his voice was gentle, like he already knew he’d fucked up.

you didn’t say anything. you just listened to the static on the line, and your own heartbeat in your ears.

“you saw the picture,” he said.

you could hear him shifting. maybe pacing.

��i wasn’t kissing her. i was just—fuck—it was loud. i had to lean in.”

you stayed quiet.

“it didn’t mean anything.”

you finally spoke, voice flat. “your arm was around her.”

he sighed. “i know how it looks. but it wasn’t like that.”

“wasn’t it?”

“come on, you know me.”

“do i?”

your voice cracked, and you hated how fragile it sounded.

because god, you did know him. or at least you thought you did. the version of him who held your hand under the covers, who kissed your forehead when you fell asleep on long flights, who sent you stupid memes at 2 a.m. when he couldn’t sleep. you loved that version of him.

but the version the world saw? the one who laughed and smiled and stood beside a girl who wasn’t you?

you didn’t know him at all.

“i love you,” he said. quiet. urgent. “you’re the only one i care about.”

you swallowed the lump in your throat.

“then why does it feel like i’m the one you’re hiding?”

he didn’t answer.

“everyone thinks you’re with her,” you whispered. “and you let them.”

“because it’s easier!” he snapped suddenly. and then, softer: “i just want to protect this. protect us. once people know, they’ll make it ugly. they’ll pick it apart.”

you laughed, hollow. “they already have. and you stood there and let them.”

he was breathing heavily now, like he wanted to say more but didn’t know how.

“you don’t protect someone by pretending they don’t exist,” you said. “you don’t love someone in the dark.”

there was a beat. then another.

“i’m sorry,” he said finally.

but it was too late.

sorry didn’t change the fact that you were a secret.

sorry didn’t take her out of the photo. or erase the comments. or make your heart stop breaking every time someone called them “perfect.”

sorry didn’t mean anything anymore.

so you hung up.

and this time, he didn’t call back.

not that night. not the next day. not even when fans started speculating that he and amelie were actually together now.

you waited. you told yourself he just needed time. that he’d show up at your door like he always did, with soft eyes and quiet apologies.

but days turned into weeks. and the silence stretched so long it stopped hurting and started feeling normal.

you never got closure. no goodbye. no explanation.

just a soft fade-out — like you were never part of the story at all.

and when he finally did go public… it wasn’t with you.

it was probably never going to be with you.

THE END :>

part two.

[zaynesdesimc]

Feel free to ignore this, but I saw you want Miguel requests soooo.

Platonic Miguel x teen spider reader. Preferably gn. And like, he sees his daughter in the reader or smth, idk how to explain it, but I think it would be cute to see it

ONGOSH THANK YOU I absolutely love this<33 I wrote this on my phone but Im honestly so hyped up I love father figure!miguel. I hope you don’t mind but I’m doing this in the form of headcanons.

Miguel O’Hara x teen!spider!Reader

-okay so your obviously one of the only people Miguel loves tolerates.

-your universe isn’t “home” to you, Miguel is. He’s like the father you never had and at first, the both of you absolutely detested one and other. In fact, Jessica was the one who convinced him to recruit you, way before Gwen or even Peter came into the picture.

-at first, he was stand-offish and a total dickhead to you, but slowly warmed up and began to humour you. He’d smirk at your horrible jokes and pretend to roll his eyes when you teased him.

-in fact, when you first laughed your ass off at one of his remarks, something in him knew that he’d do anything to protect you.

-he already lost one daughter, he wasn’t losing you.

-In all honesty, your relationship is very similar to Joel and Ellie from the Last of Us.

-you have inside jokes that even Lyla doesn’t understand, and she’s an AI.

-It takes all his strength to not snort when you make faces behind someone’s back, he knows you do it to make him laugh.

-he gives you tips on how to take care of yourself.

-a whole bottle of baby powder suddenly appears in your room in spider society. He says he knows nothing.

-lyla shows you the camera footage of him placing it on your bedside table.

-he’s close to tears when you specially make him empanadas. He’d been in a bad mood and when he went to his desk, there was a plate of empanadas with a post it note from you.

- “dont waste them I spent like two hoursmaking them for you”

-he scarfs them down of course.

-like all fathers, he can be strict sometimes, especially because you’re a kid. He doesn’t want you getting hurt. If you’re hurt he helps patch you up himself.

-“you fucking crazy? What were you thinking, trying to catch a car instead of dodging it?”

-your arguments are shushed by him shoving a spoon of soup into your mouth.

-“don’t waste it.” He says, “I spent some time making it while you were asleep.”

-he can’t pinpoint an exact moment from when he started seeing you as his daughter, but it’s probably from the time he got super protective around hobie.

-ain’t no kid coming near his daughter.

-almost snarls when hobie jokingly flirts with you.

-he subtly pushes hobie away when the guy walks behind you.

-you’re the only person other than lyla who can snark him and get away with it without an insult being jabbed at you.

-he’s hugged you a total of two times.

-the first was when you almost died, the second was when he almost died and you freaked out.

-you’d already lost your family, you could not lose him too.

“Miguel, get up.” You tearfully say to his sleeping form, “I can’t do this without you.”

-when he’d stirred, the first thing he saw was your shocked face and then you tackled him.

-he loves you. Like, a whole lot.

-he smiles at you when you walk around in his office, rambling about random stuff. He’s glad that you’re comfortable enough around him to stop masking your personality.

-his jokes are LAME. Like dad jokes are his jam and they’re just so bad.

-“why do sharks live in salt water? because pepper water makes them sneeze.” “Miguel PLEASE-”

-did I mention he’d probably die for you? Like fuck the universe(s) he’s not losing his baby daughter again.

-OOO IMAGINE THE BOTH OF YOU AS DRACULA AND MAVIS

-it’s weird but it’s funny.

-Gwen loses her shit when she sees you sitting next to him with your head on his shoulder.

[revolutionsingingintherainnn]

thank you for the tag @singaporehelmet and @blairdii !

Rules: make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous and tag as many people as you have WIPs. People send an ask with the title that most intrigues them, then you post a snippet or tell them something about it!

i've got 19 of them. dee knows all of those.

mafia!ln and lawyer!wife one (reader is a lawyer and married to super powerful mafia lord, lando. one day, a dickhead is being a dick to lawyer wife, so lando tortures him)

MERCH PRICES (official merch is really expensive in india, so a little self indulgent fic where i get to rant about how expensive it is, and lando slowly falls in love with me. i mean, the reader.)

the baby crying on the flight (reader makes sure lando never ends up being a deadbeat father)

the stickers one (i like stickers. i like lando. i like lando who will let me put stickers on him.)

the 12 grapes one 😭 (reader eats 12 grapes under the table, someone bumps into her, trying to do the same. who is it? duh duh duh, its lando)

lando x exwife!reader who doesn't want kids (oh this is going to be angst. i will make sure everyone cries. also, its kinda self explanatory)

the one where the reader goes to the pub and encounters a silly lando anti (ha! its basically what i would do if i encounter a silly lando anti while lando was my husband)

THE YUKI ORANGE PEEL IDEA!! (ugh, my fav. reader hates cutting onions. yuki likes reader too much.)

new year, new me, new bf (i saw it on instagram, and i made it a lando x yn story)

ex gf giving reader food with beef (another one of my favs. this is just revenge. and it has tsunorris)

lando being able to distinguish who made the parathas (it means he's family, okay!)

the one where magui is a part of their friend group (this is not me being in denial. and its a similar thing as who knows the other better video that lando and max did)

lando buys a sari (another self indulgent fic. someone buy me saris.)

adrenaline junkie!reader (i just wanna give lando some heart attacks)

max f giving his best man speech (i have bad humour, yall)

p and all of lando's gfs (p wants to marry lando when she's older. max told me. but yeah, this one is gonna be really cute)

lando, relationships, obligations (another angsty fic. prepare to cry. it will have hea tho)

whatsapp voice notes!! (this is cute. reader leaves voice notes for lando because reading texts sometimes gives him a headache)

the gin and champagne one (i don't like champagne. i like gin. and im delusional)

no pressure tags: @itsprashimusic @partiallyderived @linnygirl09

[valjeancrazylover2]

So... Who's Gérard?

Thinking about his stupid ass so I'm making a post LOLLL

If you saw my post about Marius' friends, you'll have read about the infamous Gérard Ambroise - hes a bit mysterious, a bit of a dickhead, but sticks around regardless. So.... who is he exactly , you might be asking?

Pre-note.... shoutout to @24601orwhatever as per usual for helping me develop all of this and being the one to suggest gérard be canonised in the first place! he wouldn't be alive without you! most of what you will read below in the byronverse section will probably have been suggested or , like. "yes, and"-ed by him. THANKYOUUUU!

Let's begin ! (this is going to be a bit long, sorry.)

FROM THE META ANGLE:

For those who are not part of the like, 5 people worldwide who are In The Know (or maybe there are actually people who pay attention to my deranged rants on my main blog, i dunno), Gérard is, technically, an actual character in Les Mis. Officially he is an unnamed student, and has some iconic lines such as Our world! and Marius, sit down!. You may also spot him at the start of the ABC café scene seemingly arguing with enjolras centre stage.

The character who runs that track is not called gérard of course, though i call every actor who covers or plays the role in previous productions "Fake Gérard"s. Gérard is ONLY Gérard when played by Jordan Simon Pollard, on the West End. He's even in the programme, twice!

Here's some more pictures, with his iconic glasses. (Didn't have em in the programme for some reason.)

The surname Ambroise is completely invented by me. The name Gérard however, the man himself told me, for which I am eternally grateful Thanku hero

And thats basically all there is to know about the "canon" character, other than funny little details i spot. Keep an eye out for him. His track runs usually further offstage so you might miss some of the drama (or him completely if you're watching a bootleg) but if you're like me you probably prefer to watch whatever the fuck the ensemble are doing instead of the leads (sorry, enjolras).

SO IT'S PROBABLY IMPORTANT TO MENTION that the Gérard in the show and the Gérard in my head are two different guys. The interpretation I have of his character comes from my insane mind flanderising little interactions into oblivion until he became this man with a personality like sandpaper. The interpretation that Jordan Simon Pollard himself has on the character is most definitely entirely different. If he somehow sees this, sorry promise i'm normal.

That brings us to...

THE BYRONVERSE ANGLE:

In the brick, i think its mentioned that 5 students escaped, disguised as national guardsmen? well... regardless...... somehow Gérard survived, a slightly meta inside joke about the fact that the first time i was actually paying attention to him in a show, i lost track of where he was on the barricade and he seemingly just vanished and therefore theoretically could have survived the barricade. However the last time i saw him he did indeed take a bullet to the face (while screaming insults, might i add). My canon doesn't follow brick canon word for word anyway, as i like some details of other adaptations better and they work better with my characterisation - whatever. not important right now ,, kinda ,,,

anyway, gérard was one of les amis d'ABC, obviously. A law student, like marius, but cared more about activism, politics and debate than he did his degree, hence joining the revolution. he locked horns with enjolras a fair bit, but was not all that outspoken or loud, usually preferring to keep his head down and judge the rowdy students from afar, shaking his head in silent disapproval.

During the rebellion, suddenly he was faced with the reality that he may very well die, but was still determined for the cause and fought hard, gaining himself a nasty scar to the jaw and a few injuries here and there , yknow, the normal stuff. (another slightly meta note here, in the show, i dont know whether it's jordan not being able to act firing a musket or what, but i first interpreted his shooting during the Attacks to be him looking away from where he was shooting before he fired. this was probably me misinterpreting a very quick glimpse i saw, but whatever, #adoptingintomybeliefsystem.

He got out alive, laid low for a bit, continued his habit of wall-hugging everywhere he went, returned to his studies as a student. His injuries were not so grave like marius' that he took significant time in bed, plus he's a stubborn bastard so would've been up and about anyway if he didn't have anyone to play dramatics around for sympathy.

Emotional scarring however WAS there, of course, and caused him to become a lot more withdrawn and bitter. He became highly defensive and generally abrasive. If he was not a people person before, he certainly was not now. I suppose that's his way of trying to keep his identity low to avoid, yknow.. getting arrested for being an insurgent. just glower at everybody so they leave you alone.

He met marius completely by coincidence - if you read my last post, and as you'll find out if you read the fic when it releases, he was drawn in kind of against his will by Marius' friend René (another law student who dngaf about the law, just wanted to meet people and get the gossip) who saw his Mysterious Aura and got chatting. Gérard noticed something familiar about Marius and vice versa, and found them strangely drawn to each other.

They find each other utterly annoying. They cannot be left in the same room or marius will feel so awkward he will literally fold up and gérard will burst a blood vessel. Gérard will not shut up about politics, which reminds Marius of Enjolras, which brings back memories, which- its just a whole mess. but they have a warriors bond nobody else understands.

and thats the gist, i guess?

so its time for my favourite part ...

INCONSEQUENTIAL CHARACTER DETAILS THAT I THINK ARE FUNNY

He's an absolute train wreck of a guy, as i'm sure you've already gathered. he's rude, unpleasant, a repressed homosexual and an outspoken radical.

Another little meta joke - there's another ensemble character Jordan Simon Pollard plays in les mis. another unnamed character, but he in fact gets TWO lines, in the intro to Master of the House - "Landlord, over here!" and "God, this place has gone to hell!". He told me this character is called Willy Wonka, so we'll call him wonka for now, because previously i was calling him Tall Jean or Jean 3, and willy wonka i fear is more insane and also the OFFICIAL name from the guy himself so who's to argue.

anyway my point - Gérard has a brother. i'm sure you guessed it's wonka. we did indeed canonise that connection, for a laugh .

Yes the only official photo of him has luke's arm in the way. Oh well! You know it's wonka because of the red coat and brown hat. yknow... like willy wonka...

Anyway. his deal. sometimes in the show he will pull out some perfume and spray himself, so let's assume he's a) gay b) into perfume. He seems to be a much more amiable guy than his brother, chatting with other patrons at thenardier's inn (and even sometimes flirting with other men. saw him sit on a dude's lap once. most recently a guy came up to him while he was stood in the doorway gayly and the guy dragged a finger down wonka's stomach seductively. sometimes he dances with the ladies too, so he's either a gay for the girlies or bisexual, you choose) and even dancing around and joining the festivities, overall having a GREAT time , GOD he is SO fun to watch onstage i can HIGHLY recommend. he's tall, dressed in red, camp, and always smiling, he's hard not to miss.

Him and gérard don't really talk. He won't come up much in future, but he's here and he's queer!

(there has been some discussion of other JSP ensemble characters being relatives of Gérard, such as the wedding guest in Beggars at the Feast - who thenardier flirted with and nearly kissed last time i saw the show - but none of it has been wholly funny enough to be canonised at all. From a byronverse standpoint, Marius did not know Gérard at the time of his wedding, PROBABLY? timeline is still, uh, nonexistent?)

(the timeline issue also struggles with wonka's age in relation to Gérard's, becuase obviously Master of the House is 15ish years before the ABC café, so should wonka be significantly older than his brother....? yes. probably. but i don't think about it too hard. he's just......... older than gérard by a nondescript amount of time.. it's not really important and i can tweak stuff to make it work, WHATEVERR)

AND LASTLY, the funniest shit ever, the Gérard Ambroise situationships.

When jordan was on with milan valjean, they'd talk and interact during drink with me off to the side. I'll let you make your own assumptions there.

As mentioned, he's a repressed homosexual. he is in close quarterd with the aforementioned (some time ago) René Gignac, who is VERY camp, very effeminate, participates in the homosexual underground of Paris, the WORKS. Gérard has very conflicting feelings about this man, because on one hand René just LOVES to rile him up by saying purposefully stupid things whenever Gérard makes a political comment. and he can't just back down.

he assumes the hotness he feels in his body is to do with the anger, surely nothing more.

Anyway they at some point get together, its weird, its uncomfortable and awkward, they break up. and get together. and break up. and get together. and this repeats, like, a thousand times throughout the time they know each other. literally the WORST couple ever, to the point where everyone kind of loses track of whether they're together or not, because it's really hard to discern when they are, becuase Gérard is a bit ashamed and René is purposefully trying to piss him off.

René this whole time also has a crush on one of the other members of the friend group, Albéric, but this is mostly superficial and he just thinks he's hot . Albéric is not interested and René knows and respects this, however this does not stop him from pretending Gérard is Albéric whenever they kiss.

There's not much to it. it's textbook toxic yaoi .

it does get funnier however when René does, one day, meet Gérard's brother WHO you will remember is also effeminate and likes perfume - just like René. Needless to say they get on SWIMMINGLY, wonka probably sells rené a perfume or two, and ultimately get together. René does not tell Gérard this. he does however find out because René is wearing Gérard's older brother's perfumes, and Gérard is furious . you can imagine the kind of argument that'd follow.

Whether rené and wonka end up happy i DON'T know. havent thought that far but it was the funniest outcome to me after the disaster that was rené and gérard's "relationship".

ANYWAY! thats all i have to say on this freak. hope this was at all comprehensible. here's an audio clip of one of his wonderful lines in Red & Black.

[asterekmess]

Hi

I don't like Jackson Whittemore but I know you do so i just wondering what about him you like

Hmm, that's a hard question to answer, I think.

See, first thing to know is that I don't like Jackson as in I agree with his behavior or see him as the victim/the one in the right, etc. I like Jackson as in I like the potential he had, and the possible layers that could be applied to him, whether the writers intended it or not.

Jackson is indubitably an asshole. Straight up. He's the stereotypical jock bully. The equivalent of a quarterback, dating the queen bee in school, stepping on everyone around him to get what he wants.

But he isn't just an asshole.

There's more to what he does and how he behaves, be they reasons for that behavior, or things that change the perspective on what exactly is happening. I'mma pop in a read more to save people's eyes.

God forbid I manage to make a post that doesn't need an anti-scott tag, so we'll start with the way Jackson's behavior is framed and perceived. I personally ascribe to the implication given at the end of the show that everything we see is part of a story that Scott is explaining to a new Beta that he's trying to recruit into working for him/helping him. This means that everything we see is at least a little tainted by Scott's perspective. His biases, his preferences, and what he finds important.

This is important because of the purpose behind Jackson's character. He is written to be Scott's goal. Not his hero or his foil even. But his goal. Jackson is what Scott wants to be. He has what Scott wants. Every frame of Jackson's introduction is made to show this off. The girl (Scott falls for the new girl but can't bring himself to talk to her, while Jackson's in a happy, long-term relationship with the most popular girl in school) The game (Scott can't get on the field because of his health issues, and Jackson's team captain) The car (Scott shows up to school in a bike, and right next to him, Jackson shows up in a Porsche) The clothes (Scott's in hoodies and long-sleeves and t-shirts. He has to have his fucking tux mended the night of the dance. Jackson wears fashion show outfits.)

Key Note: Scott isn't jealous of Jackson. He doesn't want the same things Jackson has. He's envious of him. He wants what Jackson has. He wants to take it away from Jackson, and he doesn't want to share. He's not satisfied when he gets made team captain, because he's co-captain. But he is satisfied when he makes out with Lydia, not because he got a girl, but because he got Jackson's girl. When the show starts, Scott the human wants everything Jackson has, and in order to facilitate that and get the viewer to root for his cause, he views everything Jackson has as undeserved. (Stiles does the same in regards to wanting Lydia) His reasoning is that Jackson's a jerk, so why should he be team captain? Why should he get to date the pretty girl? Why should he get to be popular? He's mean, so he obviously doesn't deserve it.

He's not taking care of what he has, doesn't appreciate it, so he shouldn't get to have it. Scot is clearly in the right for wanting to take it away from him.

Everything we see Jackson do anywhere Scott can see him is pretty much coated in "I'm a dickhead" energy to further exemplify this. Every line is smarmy and self-serving, every action is selfish and has underhanded motives. And it's always to do with Scott for some reason. o.O He only made friends with Allison to get to Scott. He screws up Scott's chances on the field by getting the rest of the team to gang up on him. He screws up the molotov that was supposed to protect Scott. He rats Scott out to hunters. On and on and on.

But when I started watching the show again a while back with my husband, the scenes with Jackson started looking different to me. Knowing the scenes were being skewed and slanted, that the narrator isn't reliable, I tried to peel that filter back from the camera and tried to focus on what happened rather than how it looked.

For example; the scene in the cafeteria where Jackson shows up to his table and kicks another guy out of 'his' spot. The guy complains that Jackson never asks Danny to move, and Jackson looks totally unfeeling as he sits down. He's being a dick, right? Except that Danny responds to the complaint by pointing out that when this other guy sits next to Lydia, he does nothing but stare at her boobs. Yes, jackson's an asshole for kicking someone out of a seat. But I can't say i don't understand why he'd do it, if the guy was ogling Lydia enough for the rest of the table to notice. Jackson is protective of the few people he cares about, i.e Lydia and Danny. Another example I've mentioned on this blog is the bowling alley situation. Allison and Lydia are trying to come up with something to do for a double date, and Lydia brings up bowling. Jackson isn't into it because he apparently prefers to bowl competitively and doesn't think Scott or Allison are going to be good enough to interest him. Scott proceeds to claim he's Awesome at bowling.

Fast forward to the actual bowling, and Scott fucking sucks. Immediately, Jackson starts making fun of him and is a general dickhead. Then, when Scott gets better later on, Jackson becomes even more of a jerk. What a fuckhead, right? Except Jackson's teasing is based on the fact that Scott lied to his fucking face, and he wants people to know Scott is a liar. And when Scott starts getting really good, it's out of nowhere. THere is no Reason for his improvement. Spending half the game biffing every roll and the other half getting nothing but strikes is Not Normal. Jackson is already suspicious of Scott's improvement (i.e. cheating) on the field, so seeing the same shit happen here has to got to be infuriating. Scott can't even help himself from cheating at bowling. Jackson's complaints about Scott are only ever saying Very True things about him.

Right down to how Jackson and Lydia's behavior with one another is lewd and uncomfortable for everyone, until Scott's not looking at them anymore. How Lydia implies that she's constantly putting herself down and being smothered for Jackson's sake, because he wants her to. All pointing to Jackson not Deserving her.

This theme kind of continues through most of Jackson's scenes involving Scott. He's doing something that makes him look like a royal jerk, but then when you kind of pick it apart and focus on What is happening, instead of how it's being framed by the camera, things are a lot different than they first appear. Jackson's constant anger is often Very Reasonable considering the situations he's being put in.

When he's in scenes by himself or in ones that have nothing to do with Scott, he acts totally different. He's soft with Lydia, kind to Allison, he's emotional and a hard worker and he doesn't want to hurt people! But the moment scott gets involved, he snaps back to being a monster.

That isn't to say he's not a dick, or that he responds to his anger well, or that he isn't doing bad things. It's just to say that there's more layers to it than we might initially consider.

Like, look even the scene where Derek shows up at the school and asks Jackson where Scott is. Jackson's a fuckface and assumes Derek is on drugs and is Scott's dealer.

This is because for weeks he's been trying to figure out how Scott is cheating on the field. Sure, part of that is because he wants Scott taken down a few pegs so he can go back to being the best on the team, but there's more to it! Werewolves aren't an accepted or known about thing. Drugs is literally the only way that Scott would be able to get that good at lacrosse that fast. Jackson is team captain. If someone on Jackson's team is doing drugs, he will get in trouble. The whole team will be penalized and tested and scrutinized. He's trying to protect his team and his own reputation. He wants the cheater gone. I can't blame Jackson for being royally pissed by Scott not only doing drugs and endangering their entire season and team, but also having his drug dealer show up at school visibly messed up on something and asking around for him without even trying to hide what was going on. It's just rubbing all of this in Jackson's face.

I think Jackson had so much potential in a lot of ways. He was the ideal Beta for Derek, so much like Erica and Isaac and Boyd that it hurts. If the kanima hadn't messed him up, I really think he would've been a great member of their pack. When he goes to ask for the bite, he asks to be "one of you." Not to be a werewolf, not to be powerful. To be one of you. Part of the group. And despite ratting Scott out to the hunters at the end of season 1, whom literally everyone is fucking terrified of and he genuinely thinks is going to kill him if he refuses, he still makes a goddamn bomb with Stiles and goes with him into the woods to murder the exact werewolf who might've been able to give him the bite he wanted. He had no way of knowing Derek would become the Alpha afterward, and every reason to think that he was giving up any chance at getting the bite for the sake of stopping Peter. He did it anyway.

So, yeah, I have some interest in Jackson, in what he could've been, had the actor not left (i can't even remember if he was the one who left or if he got booted bc they wrote him out). Even the stuff that happens in season 3a, the way that the Alpha twins behave, so much of it implies that Jackson was supposed to be filling that slot that they gave Scott. The twins went after Lydia and Danny, they're perfect examples of what Jackson always wanted to be, and they have the ability to offer him even more power. It makes way more sense to me for them to have been intended to go after Jackson and try to lure him toward the Alphas, than for them to think that getting close to Lydia and Danny was going to matter even a little to Scott. Scott barely knows either of them! He has no reason to care, and it's weird the way the show suddenly makes him obsessed with their safety and friendship. Not to mention the whole Lydia thing of her being upset she always goes for 'bad guys'. Can you imagine the angst potential of Jackson being so easily duped by these cool guys who show up and join his friend group and offer him power and strength and friendship. And then realizing that they've got their claws in the two people he cares about more than anything, and that he doesn't have a choice anymore. They would own him, and he'd do whatever they wanted to keep Lydia and Danny safe. They might've even tried to get him to kill Derek, to steal his Alpha's spark the way they had, hoping that he'd get the full-shift ability along with it and be easier to control than Derek would. Or maybe they were after him because they thought (or knew about some secret way) they could bring the kanima back somehow and use him as their killing machine.

There's just so much that could've been, and so much that was that we couldn't even see. Jackson was a jerk, but he earned everything he had. All the captain spots and team leader positions, he got them because he worked his ass off. We see that in the show. There's a whole scene about it, about how he works too hard, demands too much of himself. Is desperate and scared and trying so hard to be the best because then he'll stop feeling so weak. The things he got handed to him are useless. A fancy car, a cool house and nice clothes. He'll brag about them, but they do nothing for him. Everything that matters, he got for himself through hard work and talent. He even refuses to get the steroids Lydia tries to coerce him into, because he wants to win the game on his own merit. If I were him, I'd hate Scott too, for getting everything handed to him on a lycanthropic platter. Working and working and tearing myself apart to be the best and watching it all go down the drain because someone who never did anything to deserve it got given a gift at random and proceeded to abuse it liberally to get everything he wanted and take it all away from Jackson. Right down to his fucking girlfriend. And the whole time, Scott complains about how much he's suffering and refuses to share the gift with anyone else. Hell, I'd even hate Stiles a bit. I mean, I haven't mentioned him in any of this, but Stiles also goes against Jackson's entire ethics system. Stiles is painfully intelligent with zero effort, and he isn't afraid to hold it over other people's heads. He didn't earn it, he barely studies. But he still gets to be the smartest person in the room. Meanwhile Jackson grabs the wrong chemical and almost gets someone killed. He's got his own kind of intelligence, but it's implied that he's not booksmart, and that must burn for Jackson.

It's probably why Lydia always acts stupid at the beginning. For his sake, because she knows that it hurts him to see other people just get things. Just have them without working for it. It's not about making Jackson look better, it's about not making him feel worse.

According to the show, Jackson's traumatized by his parent's death because he feels like he has no past. He has no identity. So he makes his own, building skills he chooses and getting titles he's earned. And he hates when other people don't have to do that. When they can just go "I was born like this" or "I'm the sheriff's son" and know who they are and how they belong in the world.

There aren't good excuses for why Jackson does the shitty things he does, or says the shitty things he says. But a lot of the time, there are reasons. I don't have to agree with him, but I can at least understand him.

[deep-hisui]

Use of the Monster Trope in the Fic

This is a supplementary post to We’re Not the Monsters of Your Dreams addressing the use of the monster trope in a fic about a fictional indigenous group.

I started writing this fic in 2023. The original idea for the fic was just sort of what if there were vampires which led to what if the Galaxy team was struggling to survive in a region of monsters then I almost immediately realized that is literally just colonial racism and did not write that.

But, the idea stuck around in my head and I decided to just give it a shot. I didn’t have to post it if I didn’t like it. Right after I finished writing Masking (my Hisuian Zoroark Ingo fic), I wanted to write a short fic with similar fics to keep my reader base while I took a break before writing Destructive Interference (spin-off to Masking). So, I wrote the outline for a 10 chapter fic based on this idea but only got to chapter 6 before abandoning it and writing Immortality Is Hard on the Mind (immortal Volo fic) instead.

I didn’t like the ending I originally had planned. In the first draft, Ingo, Melli, Akari, and Rei returned to Nimbasa City and just sort of ran loose around the city until the police captured some of them and Emmet found out what happened to his brother. But there wasn’t really a good conclusion there and I still felt kind of icky about the monster themes.

There were two main things that gave me the breakthrough to keep writing. The first was just a fuckton of research. I picked the fic back up in 2024, which was the same year I really committed to a nonfiction book project that I was working on (which is published under my real name so I am not name dropping it). Parts of what I wrote for that book were focused on colonial racism’s impact on relationships today and queer reclamation of dehumanization. I did a lot of reading and interviews about the topic which made me feel a little better about this fic but that still didn’t excuse the main problem.

The solution came in The Deep Forest, a post-colonial weird fantasy. Using the game to write the fic just sort of clicked in my head one day. The Deep Forest is a worldbuilding game about a group of different species of monsters rebuilding their home after driving off a group of human colonizers. It’s not a perfect solution but I felt inspired by the notes Avery Alder Mcdaldno and Mark Diaz Truman, the creators of The Deep Forest, put at the end of The Deep Forest about their own experiences and reasons for creating the game.

Again, it’s not a perfect solution. There are definitely problems with writing a story about a group of indigenous people being portrayed as monsters. But, it’s a story I wanted to write so I did. I tried to center it around reclaiming dehumanization, understanding how we define humanity, and reflect what I learned about real-world people realizing they’re not really about the whole being human thing.

Anyway, if you don’t like, don’t read. If you like but don’t vibe with it, totally okay too. I am definitely open to hearing there is a problem with something in my stories as long as you’re not a dickhead about it.

[voesneroeiz]

so a couple people (2) asked me to elaborate on this post so i guess i may as well make a fool out of myself (/joking) and share my thoughts. this is my yiik crackship essay (not really). keep in mind that most of it is based around tales from the borderlands as that’s what the au these stem from is based on (alongside yiik) but there is one i don’t think people will see coming. peep it under the cut

alex/rhys (tales from the borderlands)

You’ve probably seen @333near ‘s really delightful art of this pairing in the YIIK tag if you go there regularly. If not, go look at it now. It’s cutes. My biggest reason for this pairing is the fact that I think they are very similar. They’re both all swagger, no substance. (Taking this straight from TFTBL but it very much applies to Alex too.) They're both very privileged people who don't really realize that at first and they both are very selfish dickheads that can get better as time goes on. I think they enable each other in this selfishness sometimes (kinda like that meme where it's like “me calling the worst person i know to tell me that what i just did wasn’t horrible”) but I also think seeing that kind of behavior in each other brings them to a realization and helps them start knocking it off.

I think they do clash sometimes because Rhys loves being a little worker bee and Alex likes doing fuckall but I think it’d be REALLY really funny if it evolved into like a businessman/housewife situation. Ideal situation for them both I think. Kind of on a different note I also think kind of in the same way Vella, Sammy, and Essentia 2K share a soul, Rhys is also part of that, which brings him and Alex closer together. My justification for the whole soul thing is that Essentia is very largely tied to mechanical stuff and so is Rhys (prosthetic arm/eye/the whole Hyperion thing) which would make him a very likely candidate to be an alternate self. (I know factually the soul thing isn’t true but shh. Let me reach.)

claudio/vaughn (tales from the borderlands)

So this one is a little less solid and more headcanon-y but I think these guys would looooove nerding out together. Claudio also has a specific way with people (as stated in-game by Chondra) that I think Vaughn would be drawn to, especially since he can be pretty awkward. I don’t think Vaughn really had time for any nerdy stuff like anime (if they even have it) back on Helios so when Claudio starts talking about anime he gets VERY interested and I bet you he’d think that shit is the coolest ever. Vaughn is probably one of the first people Claudio’s met in real life (this is the 90’s after all) that shares the same level of his passion for anime and I think he’d really appreciate that. Vaughn, as an accountant, would think it’s soooo hot that Claudio runs a franchise. Don’t ask me how I know, I just know it.

I don’t think Vaughn would really know what to say in regards to Aaron (if he didn’t think Claudio’s obsession was kinda creepy) but I DO 100% think he’d help him try to take his mind off of it, or at the very least hear him out, especially on days when it gets bad. I don’t think Claudio would let something like that go unnoticed. I also think they have, like, gay little ocs (Vaughn’s is a bandit and Claudio’s is a ronin) that they larp as. It gets kind of (very) homoerotic.

rory/herb cookie (cookie run) (this one is insane but hear me out)

“Ned, are you shipping this blond boy with a baked good?” Yes. I think the idea is really funny and I like it a lot. Don’t know how it would work while keeping it canon-compliant to both series. But, in the AU that Max and I have crafted, Herb Cookie is a human named Harvey that’s known Rory (and Carrie) for a long time and is probably the only other person outside of Rory’s immediate family that cares that she’s gone. I won’t go too far into it though because that’s not the point here.

As a general rule, though, I think Herb’s sort of calm cheerfulness provides a really cute, interesting contrast to Rory’s depressive, irritable nature. They’re both pacifists (as we can infer from Herb’s general nature and his status as a healer, not a fighter in Kingdom) and they would both definitely share the same concerns about the Earth. (Again, inferring this based off of Herb’s personality and his whole thing going on. It’s arguable how much Rory genuinely cares/knows about stuff like that based off of some of his Protest lines but for the sake of argument I’m assuming it’s a “he’s a little confused but he’s got the spirit” kind of situation.) Herb is definitely the kind of guy to be like “okay buddy let’s go out and touch some grass :)” which is definitely something I think Rory needs. Definitely a lot of giving on Herb’s end but I think after so long, Rory would start giving back as well– After all, he’s not a dick to the people he really cares about, if how much he loved Carrie is any indication at all. I really think having a positive force in his life would do him good and Herb fits the bill pretty perfectly.

yar those are basically my thoughts. hopefully the justification is enough to tide people over but i don’t mind answering questions if people have them. so much of this has also been thought out with @333near (my beautiful wife) so shout-outs to him also. i have other pairings in mind (namely ones with chondra and vella) but i have to flesh them out a little more before i feel good about posting them. if you made it this far god bless you

[dreamwatch]

Thank you to @greenlikethesea for the tag! I LOVE BEING TAGGED!

It’s WIP WednesdaySaturday Tuesday Friday. Time for a little accountability, sharing your work, and getting a kick in the pants.

Here’s how it works: In a reblog of this post (so people can find you in the notes) or new thread (w/ rules attached) if you want to play on your own, post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names. Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to play!

After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can't share from (for example, an event or gift fic), write 3 sentences on it anyway, and then 3 more on another to share. That’s it! You can invite others to join in, or just post. I’ll be searching the reblogs to find people to send asks to!

If you’re reading this, you’re invited! If you see someone posting a WIP Wednesday Game snippet, send them an ask! Make them write.

File Names:

Like A Stone

Dustin & Eddie

Eddie Hands One Shot

Steve & Eddie 90s

Prison Fic

Snippet from Like A Stone Below:

****

“Hey dickhead I brought you a gift,” Steve grabs Eddie by the shoulders steering him over to Dustin and Eddie’s not sure if that’s for support or to stop him running away.

Mike looks genuinely excited to see him and gives him a crushing hug. It’s not like they haven’t seen each other lately, but it’s usually at Eddie’s place and saying he’s been low energy would be an understatement. They come to the trailer for him more than themselves, as if they think bringing him video rentals will somehow bring him to life again.  He wishes it was that easy. 

He pats Mike on the back to break the hug before making his way over to Dustin.

“Happy birthday, Henderson.”

Dustin manages to muster up an unconvincing smile, and Eddie will give him a few points for effort. “Thanks, Eddie.”

They hug awkwardly before Steve steps in to save him. “You want your present? Unless you’ve already stolen it from my room.”

“Of course I haven’t!” Dustin rounds on him. “I have manners, Steve. My beautiful mother raised me well.” Eddie watches as Dustin beams at his mom, blowing her a kiss, and she beams right back and catches it in her hand, puts it in her pocket. It’s incredibly sweet and a younger version of himself would be too bitter and jealous to appreciate such a sickly display of affection, but this Eddie is older and has seen some shit so he smiles at Dustin despite the pang of longing in his chest.

He hands over the bag while Steve heads off to get his. 

“Uh, you don’t have to open it now, or anything, you know. Just. Like, whenever.” He shoves his hands into his pockets, feeling awkward. His eyes are darting around the room, half looking for exits and half looking to see if he’s being stared at. There are a couple of kids trying to get a glimpse without looking too obvious, and a couple of adults in the kitchen giving him the stink eye. He’s getting increasingly itchy to leave.

Before he can think about that further Steve wanders back to save him. And isn’t that a weird fucking thing to be thinking right now? That Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington is the person he’s coming to see as a beacon in a dark sea. Jesus.

He watches Dustin rifle through the gift bag.

“My Little Pony, Steve? I’m sixteen you asshole!”

“That’s just the paper, dickhead, I didn’t actually buy you a doll.”

Eddie smiles. “How do you feel about the Care Bears?”

“Jesus Christ,” Dustin shakes his head as if he’s talking to children. 

Eddie grabs a coke and heads into the backyard. The Henderson’s living room isn’t exactly huge and it’s stifling and honestly just being here and showing up is a big deal, right? So he heads off into the yard hoping to find a space to breathe.

It all feels very weird. He was barely out of the hospital this time last year and he had bigger concerns than Dustin’s birthday. It must be hard for Dustin, with half the party missing, along with the extra additions they bring with them - Erica, Nancy, Jonathan. Eddie knows how that feels. He misses the band, more than he will admit to anyone else. And he misses Hellfire, and the huge hole it left behind. The guys, yeah of course, but the sticking up for the guys. The lunch time rabble rousing. God it was fun. 

He misses having fun. He misses feeling light, unburdened. He misses not being frightened.

He misses his life.

He finds a ratty lawn chair that looks like it should take his weight  and lowers himself into it. There’s a couple of women out here he doesn’t recognise, likely friends of Mrs Henderson, and a few more kids. Eddie can’t fathom having this many friends anymore. Did he ever?

“Eddie?”

Fuck. 

“Hey man,” Eddie says, moving to stand up, and… what? Shake his hand? Who is he that he can’t interact with his friends anymore? (Are they even still friends?)

Gareth waves him off, “Sit down, dude. Dustin said your leg is still fucked, you don’t need to stand.”

Right. Was it naive to think they wouldn’t be talking about him? Probably.

The atmosphere is fucking thick with unsaid words and unhealed wounds. He hasn’t seen Gareth in months. It’s been bad enough trying to fight his way through with Dustin and Mike, but Gareth is a different ballgame. They have history. 

****

As always, no pressure, I know some of you guys aren't writing right now, but have a friendly boop on the nose from me. (also, genuinely - if I tag you and you really never want to hear from me again, like cease and desist and shit, please say and I will start keeping a list, because my old fart brain just never remembers!).

@farahsamboolents @cchapsticck @devilyouwere @thisapplepielife @hbyrde36 @cuips-not-cute @occasionaloverboy

And opposite applies, if you're thinking 'bitch never tags me' please let me know and I will legit make a list. I'm always worried about annoying people and they ⬆️ haven't told me to fuck off yet so I keep tagging them. 🤣

[thewolfofthestars]

Y'know, I wrote this post 6 years ago now. Y'all remember 6 years ago? I know it's hard to think back, but together we can try.

6 years ago was right at the cusp of when Jowling Kowling was revealing just how much of an awful person she was. 6 years ago she was mostly known for making cringe HP lore tweets about wizards shitting their pants, and this was right when she went really mask-off with the TERFery. I wrote this post as a way of processing that, that this series I'd so beloved as a child was written by such a cruddy person--and not only that, a cruddy person who hated me specifically and in particular for being trans. It was mourning, really, grief over the loss of this part of my childhood. But a mourning I saw was necessary; I saw a lot of people refusing to engage with the problem, making the whole "Hatsune Miku made this" joke to elide any issue with it, and it frustrated me enough to point it out.

A lot has happened since then. JKR only got more rabid about her transphobia over time; instead of passively being a stinking asshole, she's decided to spew her rancid shit all over the UK government and pushed her transphobic influence worldwide. And unfortunately, she has a significant amount of influence.

And I've grown as a person. I've had more time to process all of this. I've borne witness to all of this happening. And I still see this post getting notes, every now and again, and it kind of makes me cringe now every time I see it. I could leave it to languish as a relic of the past, sure--I have, for a couple years--but never let it be said the internet lets anything truly die. I think an update is necessary.

I still stand by the first part; you cannot erase or ignore the problematic elements of Harry Potter. They've been there since the beginning, they are embedded into its foundation.

And I also think that, if you didn't see that at the time, that doesn't necessarily make you a bad person. Most of us were, y'know, 9 years old when we were originally reading this series. I don't think you're to blame for not being perfectly #Woke about it. And even if you were old enough to know better then, at least you know better now.

But I do think that it has long, long since become time to leave Harry Potter in the past. This series was an important part of my childhood, yes, and that's where it belongs. We can leave it there, appreciate it for what it was to us at the time, and put it away in the attic alongside the box of sidewalk chalk and the favorite stuffed animal.

Rowling is not just a case of "the author is a dickhead" anymore. She is actively throwing the money and influence she has, as the author of this series, behind transphobic movements, legislation, etc. Engaging with Harry Potter in the present day means you are giving more money and influence to the person doing this. It's not just a case of "oh, the author said some shitty stuff a few times, but that doesn't have anything to do with the books." She has MADE it have to do with the books, she has forcibly intertwined her bigotry and her IP. You cannot offer your support for one without supporting the other.

Your nostalgia is not more important than the lives and well-being of trans people in the present day. It's time to leave Harry Potter behind. It's BEEN time, for a long, long while. It's time to stop buying books and merch etc., but it's also time to stop talking about it, stop writing fanfic about it, stop letting it be relevant, both in public culture and in the privacy of your own mind. Because the more relevant it is, the more influence JKR has to throw behind the next bit of legislation trying to define trans people out of existence. Let her turn into a washed-up, has-been asshole in the public eye, instead of an author of a beloved children's series. Let people hear her name and think not "oh, I loved Harry Potter as a kid!" but "jeez, that lady needs to cool it with the conspiracy theories." You don't need Harry Potter anymore.

I have to wonder, what it is that drives people to stay so attached to Harry Potter specifically as an aspect of their childhoods, as opposed to anything else. When was the last time you drew with sidewalk chalk? Decades ago? Maybe you could start doing that again, instead of feeding the TERF.

You know what? No. No, Hatsune Miku did not write Harry Potter.

J. K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter. And we need to accept that.

Harry Potter isn’t some pure unproblematic beacon of perfection that we can just choose to erase the scummy author from and enjoy without guilt. Harry Potter is very much rooted in Rowling’s view of the world. The blatant antisemitism in the portrayal of the goblins, the entire race of slave creatures that actually really like being slaves and Hermione’s attempts to free them are largely played off as a joke, the almost complete dearth of canon characters of color (and then when she does put canonical characters of color in, they’re… Nagini…), the complete lack of respect for other cultures (the Japanese wizarding school literally translates to “Magic Place” in Japanese, Cho Chang is not even remotely a proper Chinese name, don’t get me started on her usage of Native American folklore), the almost complete lack of LGBTQ+ characters, the “Dumbledore is gay!” baiting, the lycanthropy-as-HIV metaphor that involves one of the werewolves intentionally infecting as many people as he can, with a preference for targeting children, no less…

These are all very much present in Harry Potter. They’re not things you can just ignore. And they’re there because Rowling wrote them in.

I know you read Harry Potter as a kid and loved it. I know when you read Harry Potter as a kid you probably didn’t even notice how shitty all this stuff was. I certainly didn’t. But you can’t go back to that time. You can’t go back to when you were 10, when you were consuming this media and loving it uncritically without notice or regard for its more problematic elements. You can’t go back to being a kid again.

And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re required to wholeheartedly condemn this important part of your childhood. You can still enjoy these books while acknowledging that they’ve got some really shitty things in them. You can enjoy Harry Potter as a mature adult. You don’t have to be a kid again to like it. And you’re perfectly allowed to hate on Rowling for her shittiness, past and present, while still loving Harry Potter.

So don’t say Harry Potter was written by Hatsune Miku. It wasn’t. It was written by J. K. Rowling, warts and all.

[kaiju420]

very cool that you need to have coherent posts and shit, i'll tag tye ones i manage to get out, got a couple notes on the reblog where i started defending my fictional dickhead and typed in 4-5 edits i later got rid of.

right, i keep forgetting i Do talk about weird shit here. and talking weird shit comes so naturally... i've never pretended to want people to follow me for content... i've never actually wanted to be a Voice in fandom or whatever...

make people Realise? have you seen sj's shitty ass behaviour?

if he was real he'd get upset at me for defending him. bitchass.

prolly gonna do it anyway bc he's not the boss of me and i don't actually like fic where good things/things they want to happen happen to my fave charas..

i want it happening to them while they fight it kicking and screaming...

and like. u dont Need to read source material or have familiarity with trope or setting or setting it's referencing but seeing so many opinionated takes where they clearly do not have the first clue/don't actually give a rat's ass is like.

damn. why are you here.

i know a couple probable reasons and you are. you're kinda.

losing the point of being obsessed to slight/probable extra madness with a piece of media.

if u enjoy it recreationally.. can u ... not take over the way chara perceived by most folk with shit takes you defend with life and dignity and call-out posts.

'keep bitching about people in dms'

no, either face-off pvp style or shut the fuck up about it.

[kwaggysshardmindemporium]

A complaint I've had recently with MtG is not only does the price keep spiking upwards with seemingly no reasoning, but also at least in my area any increase in cost the LGS has is passed along double or triple to the customer. I'm in favor of supporting local business especially when it's providing a play space, but I'm not going to do so when their business model is to straight up price gouge my desire to support them.

So I've been discussing with some IRL MtG player friends and this idea has come up. I'm genuinely unsure of how good an idea this is and wouldn't mind some critique. I think it's solid but there's almost certainly issues I haven't foreseen. Long ass post below the cut:

- As a group with other people looking to buy some packs for their own enjoyment, form an LLC or similar extant legal entity. On paper, this LLC is an online MtG seller. This step isn't like, strictly necessary but you should for the safety of you and your friends.

- Get in touch with your local distributor(s) who sell to LGS locations AS a seller

- Buy either the minimum amount of MtG product that still gets you any kind of bulk rate, OR an amount that gets everyone in your LLC the amount of product they want. Whichever is higher.

- Everyone pays the LLC at the cost per box or pack or precon or whatever for the stuff they wanted, receiving in return the thing they wanted.

- If you had to order more product than people strictly wanted in order to get a distributor to sell to you, take the excess and just offload it on TCGPlayer or similar, only marking it up by the cut TCG takes on the sale and the cost of shipping.

- Whoever put up the extra money to get those extra boxes to meet distributor minimums gets their money payed back to them.

TL;DR, the idea is to function as a kind of janky MtG player union that reduces the number of middlemen between the players and the thing they want. You want to get the best bulk rate you can for your group's relative demand, and then by selling any excess you had to buy in order to get that rate at cost, you pass along the savings to whoever happens to buy that off you, creating a potential "rising tide lifts all ships" situation where people trying to raise prices have to compete with someone selling at cost and kind of can't.

On that note, obvious downsides:

- There is some abuse potential at several layers. Whoever is placing the orders can just walk off with the money if they're a monster, or the person listing excess could be upselling them. You need to be sure you can trust the people you're doing this with or build guardrails into your system, ideally both.

- If your entire LGS crowd starts doing this instead of buying from that LGS, your communal playspace might fold from this very lucrative thing suddenly not selling at all. (This assumes an LGS for which MtG sales are a load bearing part of the business, which is some stores but certainly not all.)

- This all assumes the distributor WILL sell to some private rando whose business model is apparently turn around and sell that shit on TCGPlayer, which I'm sure some will but also most likely some won't.

- You need to FIND these distributors and while that's not a huge hurdle compared to the others, these aren't exactly organizations any average person has ever heard of.

- It requires you and your friends having enough money to buy whatever excess gets you the bulk rate you're looking for. Huge if, especially as prices on MtG rise and times get harder all around.

- Scalper dickheads can buy the excess you're offloading and resell it at their prices, negating the larger communal benefit you're hoping to achieve.

On that second point in particular, I'd argue if your LGS's prices have gotten so insane that making a legal entity with your friends to bargain directly with distributors seems like a genuinely better alternative, TOUGH SHIT FOR THAT LGS. Their role in this is to be a reasonably priced and convenient way to get these products, and if I'm being charged like +75% over their cost or some horse shit that's clearly an abuse of this relationship.

[babymorte]

Haha well what else is there to do at night other than game and scroll on here?🤷‍♂️🥲 and i have noticed a few of your posts about bo6 tbh, I haven't played it much yet myself, I don't even think I've prestieged yet tbh🤷‍♂️😅 and yeah, sleep problems are always super fun🙃😂

That's actually a very good point to be fair, nobody can use anything against you if everybody already knows everything haha, that's shit that you can't just keep stuff to yourself and not have to worry about people using stuff against you though!

It's good to build up walls for your own protection so that you can't get hurt emotionally or in other ways, but building walls is no good if you don't build a door too, you've got to allow yourself to be open and let your walls down with those that you trust enough to share with, being stuck behind the walls you've built with no way out won't help things get better (I'm pretty baked, so I hope that makes sense🤷‍♂️😂).

Yeah im the exact same way tbh, plus I find a lot of people hard to talk to and make conversation with, but some people are just so much easier to talk to than others, like some people just dont put any effort into convos and it ends up boring and one sided, you know?😅 I hooe im not bothering you with the anons btw, I get that you most likely have a lot of them.

I can get that, it takes a lot for me to open up too, it does help though when you find people that you can open up to and trust.

That actually sounds pretty cool tbh! There's bags where I live too, but i only every see a couple at night flying around, I do love the bat cave in the zoo just outside of the town where I live though👀😅

Ah okay, thats fair enough, in that case I can understand why you dont really dm with people! I just thought I'd send an anon when you turned them on because you're one of my favourite blogs and i nkticed you in my notes just as much as im probably in yours, I don't expect us to dm, but i am always open to talking if you ever want to😊 also, you shouldn't have to put up with bullies and dickheads messaging you! Nobody should have to deal with that kinda thing!

-🦇

honestly as of quite recently not much 😅 whaaaaa?? that’s such a shame im having so much fun 🤩 it’s the first cod i actually got really into outside of zombies cuz im really not all that good at fps like i played through the first few halos for the first time before i started getting better at fps and if you’ve ever seen the memes of like a couple playing cod together where the guy is real good and the girl is just happy to be there running around like a lost puppy yea that was me the entire time like the entirety of halo i think 2 there’s like that mission you’re on a giant ferry and enemies are jumping on it i was doing zero of the work and just admiring the scenery 😂😂😂 i need to go back finish those honestly 🤔 but i ended up playing the bo6 beta and had a blast and ever since its literally been my life like i even started watching the cdl 🤩 BUT i went from getting maybe 10 kills a game and like 60 deaths to 40-60 kills and 10-20 deaths in a few months n im nearly max prestige 🥳 im actually gonna hit 10p my next game and im hoping to hit max by the weekend im actually really excited. I might even try ranked when they make it so you can turn crossplay off 😅 you should totally give it a go though 😌 especially zombies it’s so much fun i like just going into directed and getting to level 15 and just chillen, mindlessly murdering shit 😂 i really think you should give it another go~ oh absolutely it also probably doesn’t help that i have a tendency to blast music and hype myself up while i play games so my adrenaline just keeps me awake 😭

ah nah it’s cool ive just told people i thought i was friends with super personal stuff and they posted it online to bully me or just told mass amounts of people as like a ha-ha moment so like i guess it’s a defence mechanism but im so jaded i don’t give a shit who knows what about me anymore but i still am a very private person despite it all like i overshare sure but it’s always calculated like im not dumb you know 😅

yeaaa about that door 😂 im extremely selective with who i let in, who i let get close. it’s just literally every time i do im lied to manipulated used and played for a fool so im just about ready to weld that door shut and everyone can try and rapunzel their way into my little silo ive made for myself 😅 n you’re totally good im very well versed in stoner 🤣

no yea totally. i mean the people who reach out to me on here are always so chill and are super engaging but i think it’s cuz i only respond to asks that seem like they’re gonna be engaging if that makes sense? like im honoured when people hype me up but i dont know as someone who has a hard time upholding convos and not wanting to disappoint people i try to keep convos about things i know i can ramble on about if that makes sense 😅 that kinda makes me sound cunty though but that’s not my intent i just know how awful i am in 99% of my interactions so it’s better if i just keep to myself. i mean hell this last literal year nearly to the day was the most/longest i talked to a single person n legit couldn’t tell you the last time i was that happy cuz 100% once you find someone easy to talk to and you just click the convo just flows so easily 🤩 oh my gosh not a bother at all~! im enjoying the convo honestly 🤍 i hope im not annoying you with my rambling and long as fuck responses i just don’t know how to be concise 😂🙏🏻

yes!! that’s seriously so true~ unfortunately for me i have gullible tattooed on my forehead and i have a tendency to be manipulated into trusting people i shouldn’t 😅 but im also very quick to realise when im being manipulated because im real good at pattern recognition 😂. but i just have a general rule of dont trust anyone even if they seem trustworthy until they start SHOWING that they can be trustworthy you know? especially online like ive never told anyone anything in private i wouldnt post myself. i just always try and keep it 100 😅

wait you have bats too that’s so dope 🤩 im so jealous you have a bat cave too 😭 that has to be so cool to go and see 🤩 theres an amusement part that has a zoo like 2hrs from me and every halloween they let you in the zoo after dark when all the nocturnals are out and its so frickin cool i went as a kid and got to hold a bat and a tarantula (which is how i started to love both)

ah yes i mean i do have one or two people i dm but they also know how shit i am at replies and they’re special circumstances 😂 but hey im not totally opposed to dmming~ i just always forget to check them here since it’s permanently at 99 and the only notifications i have properly turned on my phone are for snapchat 😅 n that’s definitely true but im just a fuckhead magnet of all sorts n i try to stay away from them as much as humanly possible 😂

[lilyliveredlittlerichboy]

This post has been making the rounds on jumblr and I've had a few different reactions so I just wanna weigh into some things here.

First up:

Jews I love you and I'm so glad that this little thoughtramble I wrote a month ago resonated with so many of you. I hope it helps with educating some people on just how widespread and insidious antisemitism is.

Secondly: I'm a gentile so I'm by no means an authority on these things. But a couple fellow gentiles in the notes are saying stuff along the lines of, "but can't we criticise billionnaires?"

To which I say, watch where you step, cus you're on thin ice. I've learned a litte the past few years and here's my conclusions:

Of course a lot of stuff a lot of billionnaires do is reprehensible. On the left we should absolutely be criticising them! The best way to do this while avoiding antisemitism is to be specific about who you're criticising, and what for.

E.g. "The people running Exxon, Shell and BP have been sweeping climate change under the rug for decades while actively contributing it, they think their profits are more important than sustaining life on earth and that's abhorrent. We need better laws and processes to stop them from poisoning the planet."

E.g. "Elon Musk is a ridiculous manchild who's ruining Twitter and endangering people with his self driving cars and stupid ideas. He's an entitled dickhead and his wealth is mostly derived from colonial exploitation that his parents did. He does not pay enough taxes on what he earns. We need better inheritance laws and to close tax loopholes that allow him and people like him to hoard wealth."

E.g. "Jeff Bezos exploits his workers and has an unfair monopoly over online shopping and other convenience services. He needs to pay his taxes and pay his workers more and we need better monopoly laws to stop businesses from being able to control the market like this."

Also, please consider your motives:

Are you trying to make a positive difference for, e.g. Amazon workers? Go ahead, raise awareness of their plight and push for unionisation.

Are you just trying to find a group that is acceptable to hate? Stop right there and reconsider. No matter how privileged or powerful that supposed group, you're wayyyyyy too close to bigoted talking points.

Are you just making sweeping statements in order to rile up emotions and get people on your side? That's fascist tactics. Please don't.

And especially,

If you find yourself wanting to say, "I'm not antisemitic, but--" Please just don't say whatever you were going to say. If you have to make that qualification, there is an extremely high probability that what you're about to say is, in fact, very antisemitic. Compare to "I'm not racist but-" or "I'm not transphobic but-" followed by the most vile bigotry you've ever heard. Don't be that person.

Lastly I want to highlight these as well:

Absolutely correct. The amount of times I've come across online bigots who are like "George Soros is funding BLM!" or "LGBTs are elites trying to plunge this country into immorality!" This is all antisemitism. In general just be wary of anyone wanting to blame "elites" or "rich people" (yeah even that one cus historically Jews are stereotyped to have money!!! and also not all rich ppl are inherently evil!!!!) or "shadow government" or "globalists" or "lizard people" or really, literally anything that seems to imply that a small, select group of people is secretly running the world: That's antisemitism baby. It's all antisemitism. It's disgustingly common.

By all means, criticise billionnaires. But be specific. It's one of the best ways to make sure it's not veering into antisemitism. We know who these billionnaires are, for the most part; we know their names and we know their crimes. Talk about them specifically.

It doesn't help if you just swap out "elites" with "billionnaires" or "the 1%" if the rest of your rhetoric remains the same. It sounds exactly the same to antisemites, and they will feel empowered. In truth, it is much more complicated than "billionnaires are running the world and fucking us all over"; some billionnaires are using their fortune for good, and they don't directly cause our problems - they may exploit a system that was set up long before they were born, sure, but your problems are also caused by Sue from accounting and your neighbour ratting you out to the authorities and that kid across the road yelling slurs at you. Your problems exist because society lets them exist, and that includes everyone. The system makes it hard to fight this, and sure, most billionnaires don't help the issue. But again if you're just looking for someone to hate on, it's very likely you're actually reinforcing oppression rather than "punching up".

Sweeping statements are dangerous and a lot of your talking points have been used to justify genocide in the past. Just cus the world's been a lil less overt about its antisemitism post-Holocaust, does not mean antisemitism has disappeared, far from it. And it's being revived at an alarming rate just now so please, Gentiles, pay attention to what the dogwhistles look like and don't reinforce harmful stereotypes.

Thank you.

PS: A few blogs that have helped me unlearn and unpack antisemitism are @spacelazarwolf, @hadeantaiga and @gehe-lihiyot-androgynos-varda with a special shout out to @softness-and-shattering for being very patient with me rambling about jewish/antisemitism related stuff in dms. Youre all soooo great n I appreciate you soooo much <3

There's also lots of Jewish ppl in the notes of this post, I'm sure a lot of them have lovely blogs to follow.

There's some reading recs in the notes as well:

Jews Don't Count by David Baddiel,

People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn,

The Holocaust: A New History by Laurence Rees

I haven't read these books myself, I've read a preview of Jews Don't Count and it's on my list of books to order when I have more money, but basically, go look at what actual Jewish folks have written on the subject, I'm just a random Gentile who doesn't like bigotry so don't take it just from me.

me a few years ago: its so weird how right wingers always wanna blame the "elite" given that alot of them are in the global 1% of wealth and therefore almost by definition the same "elite" they claim to hate. weird right? lol right wing logic makes no sense

me now: oh my god they mean Jewish people. its always been Jewish people. and the insistence of online leftists to use words like "elite" and "cabal" (to refer to a handful of ultra rich people who dictate a lot of how our lives are run) kinda makes them sound like antisemites too. maybe this whole idea that the world is run by a select few is a gross oversimplification which only serves to reinforce antisemitic stereotypes... oh no. maybe i have a lot of shit to unlearn. maybe i need to start vocally defending Jewish ppl. also local community building is the only way out of this

[yunacoeur]

yellow tulips - sung hanbin

a/n: while i’m not hanbin biased, no one else felt right for this concept. also the day i stop doing college aus is the day i die so i’m sorry!! thank u for being here <33

word count: 4k

zb1 | sung hanbin, fluff, then angst, then fluffy ending, college au, bet au (‘i bet you can’t make him fall in love with you’ kinda concept), reader is a meanie, hanbin did nothing wrong, tw: calculus 

–

it’s weird to use the term ‘heartbreaker’ post-high school because it felt like such a childish term. a heartbreaker is normally some 16-year-old who doesn’t know how to treat others and cheats on their partners, acting like it’s cool to be a dickhead. in the best case scenarios, people grow out of being players and move on with their lives. 

this wasn’t the best case scenario. “something about him just makes me so mad, you know?” you whine to your friends. you say, “he’s so arrogant and full of himself. he thinks he’s all that. he’s such a narcissist.” you think about all the little things that set you off about sung hanbin. his attitude. his audacity. his stupidly attractive voice. everything about him just pisses you off, but he’s just so naturally likable that no one else seems to share your opinion. 

and that’s what sucks. sung hanbin is a heartbreaker. the amount of people who have their horror stories of falling for hanbin, him leading them on for a few weeks, and being cruelly rejected is astonishing. 

that leads you to tonight. a couple of buddies and a couple of drinks later and your friends think it’s the idea of the century to play truth or dare. you pick truth a couple of times, spill some inner secrets you don’t actually care about, but then your friends say you can only pick truth so many times before you have to pick dare. so you pick dare. and your friends give you something dumb and easy. text an ex that you miss them. 

but you’re a bit more daring than that, asking for something bigger and harder. maybe even a challenge. it’s probably the alcohol, but maybe it's also the competitive streak you can’t let go of. a friend suggests that you text hanbin, the sung hanbin, that you miss him, as if you guys knew each other (you’ve never talked to this man in your life).

another says that might not be enough to satisfy your requirements for ‘harder’, so they bump it up to ‘ask hanbin out on a date’. and the first one says, ‘well why stop there, might as well challenge them to make hanbin fall in love for real’. and they both look at you, you shrug (again the confidence probably being from the alcohol), and you tell them. 

“fine. lay out the conditions.”

“you have two months. no- one month. so until june 1st to get hanbin to confess his feelings for you,” one says, “and no trying to get him to go along with your challenge. he has to genuinely be confessing his feelings.”

“what’s my prize if i can do it?” you ask. might as well get something out of a task so difficult if you can pull it off.

“...bragging rights?” they say, and you suppose there’s no greater prize. 

your mission: make sung hanbin fall in love with you.

rules:

1. don’t fall in love with him.

2. once he admits to having feelings, immediately leave. don’t continue the mission any longer.

3. you have one month to do the impossible.

—

“i didn’t even know i had hanbin’s number in my phone if i’m real with you,” you tell your friend, “oh my god i have texted him before. and it was for calculus notes. what do i even say to him?”

your friend thinks for a second, “well, try to like subtly reintroduce yourself and ask him if he can help you study.”

“study what? calculus?” you raise an eyebrow. you had a nearly perfect grade in calc, and playing dumb did not seem like the move you wanted to make. 

“sure! say you haven’t gotten the last couple sets of notes and are really lost. he’ll take pity on you and help you! then you can be like ‘well i have to repay you for helping me so let me take you out for coffee’! it’s foolproof!” you friend comes up with excitedly. as dumb as the plan sounds, it might just work. it’s, at the very least, a way to get your foot in the door. 

you text him and ask him for help. he doesn’t respond right away, maybe 20 minutes later. he says sure, anything for a friend, with a smiley face. at least it won’t be insufferable to play dumb. besides, he already considers you a friend, so that’s a good start.

—

“can you tell me which sets of notes you missed?” he asks as you sit down in the library at one open table. 

“yeah, it must have been 4.4 and 4.5. i was in class today when we were doing 4.6 and i just feel so lost,” you say. you had to rip your previous notes out of your notebook and not take very good notes today, pretending to be lost even though it was very clear what was going on.

“that's okay! here, look at my notes, and i’ll walk you through some problems!” he says with a smile. despite his reputation, he’s really pleasant to talk to and interact with.

he helps you through the practice problems and basically reteaches you everything you already know. he’s very thorough in how he explains every little thing, and his manniserisms when teaching stick out cutely. he gets really excited when you (pretend to) finally get a concept and he makes cute and dramatic little faces at random points. even though all the content already made sense before, the way he explained it could have made sense to a toddler. that’s how knowledgable he presents himself. 

as you get through all the work, and it’s been about an hour and a half, it feels wrong to hold him here any longer, so you proceed with the line you had practiced in the bathroom mirror.

“hey, thank you so much again for helping me,” you tell him as he looks up at you. he makes the perfect amount of eye contact, too, not too much but enough to make you feel like you have all his attention. no wonder so many people fall for him.

he grins sweetly, “you don’t have to thank me!”

“but i really do want to pay you back for being so kind to me and helping me out. are you free to get coffee tomorrow? it’s on me,” you say, smiling back at him. he looks a little surprised, almost shocked for a second, before regaining his composure. 

“you don’t have to do that-”

“but i want to!”

“okay, okay! if you’re so insistent…” he chuckles, “i guess i can’t say no. but i will be ordering the most obnoxiously expensive drink on the menu.”

you laugh back at him, if not because he’s so clearly going to order the cheapest thing he can find. you bet he won’t have it in him to even ask for a medium, “my wallet can handle it,” you say.

he shakes his head fondly, “okay, moneybags. i’ll see you tomorrow then.”

—

“i think i just want a small iced americano,” he asks you as you’re the next ones up in line. you internally giggle because of course you were right. 

“really? thats the ‘obnoxiously expensive’ drink you were talking about?” you joke with him. all he does is laugh light-heartedly, like his soul is full of good intentions. there’s a little thought forming in the back of your head wondering if that’s really true, or if his reputation is only thus so because he was so good at fooling people. 

“i don’t really want anything else,” he says as he looks at the menu board. you decide not to fight him on it.

as you two go up to order, his iced americano and your drink as well, you get into a conversation with the barista about something small. something about the weather changing so fast and how hot it already is. before you even know it, the barista is telling you to have a good day and stay safe in the heat. you look down at the card reader to see it just says ‘welcome’ and you haven’t even paid yet. you look over at hanbin as he’s putting his wallet away, and it dawns on you.

“why did you do that? i was supposed to pay! for yesterday, remember?” you tell him, and he laughs in the most endearing way.

“i wanted to, is that so wrong?” he asks, and you scramble to tell him no, of course it’s not wrong, persay, but you wanted to as well, “well, if you want to pay next time, you have to beat me.”

next time, huh?

as you two wait for your coffees, and even after you get them, you just sit there, chatting with him about anything and everything. you tell him about your hobbies and passions, and he tells you about his love for dancing, showing you videos in his studio. he is an incredible dancer. he tells you his major and his carrer goals, and you tell him about your current job and where you’re trying to go in life. he tells you he wears glasses sometimes and you tell him your favorite flowers are yellow tulips.

and suddenly it felt like you knew sung hanbin. it was weird to see him in such a different light.

—

next time ended up turning into almost daily dates. coffee, tea, walks in the park, getting lunch, seeing movies, studying for calculus (you did better than him on the test, but you lied anyway), and going shopping. anything you wanted or needed to do, he was there to accompany you for. it was like having a buddy for anything life threw at you. weeks went by. you saw him, at the very least, every other day.

and somewhere along the line, at some unspecified point, or maybe just gradually, you forgot the mission was to make him fall in love with you. it was so much easier to just let him make you fall in love. 

which was the unintended, but foreseeable consequence of this kind of bet. looking back on it now, how you ever thought you could get him to have feelings for you without developing feelings for him was beyond dumb. he was nothing like his reputation, and you should have taken that as the red flag it was and escaped. 

he’s pretty and charming and polite and kind and nothing like the narcissist you thought he was. 

somewhere along the line, you fell for sung hanbin.

—

“hey, could we talk after class today?” he says, over the phone. he didn’t mean to call you so suddenly, but he knew there would be no way he didn’t chicken out if he didn’t call. 

“yeah, for sure. do you wanna meet up?” you ask him.

“yeah, in-person is better. thank you,” he says, “can you do 4? i’ll meet you outside the cafe if that’s good with you.”

“got it. i’ll see you then, bin,” you say, slipping in a nickname, knowing that makes his knees weak. it was so easy to make him flustered. you'd bet his ears were turning red at that moment.

—

when you meet up, he has flowers. the same flowers you told him you liked when you got coffee that first time. he remembered. maybe that day was the real first date, and he just didn’t really think about it like that until now. 

he looks at you like you’re the prettiest person in the world, beyond the beauty of anyone else. his eyes are sparkling and he’s smiling that same endearing smile and it’s like he’s a teenager in love again. he still feels so giddy. 

he starts, holding the flowers close to him, like he’s giving you a piece of his soul, “i just wanted to say that it’s been really nice getting to know you these past few weeks. i know that feels like such little time, but we’ve already spent so much time together that i feel like i already know you so well. i’m so endeared by all your little habits and your personality and everything about you.

“i… have feelings for you. and it’s okay if you’re not ready because it’s only been a short amount of time, or if you’re not into me at all, that’s also totally okay! i just wanted to tell you and, if you want, i’d like something serious with you.

“and these are for you,” he says as he holds the flowers, “they’re yellow tulips, just like what you told me you liked. they’re so pretty, just like you. and so delicate and beautiful and- sorry, i’m just rambling at this point,” he laughs at himself, “i know a lot of people think a certain way about me, and that’s okay. i’m not going around breaking hearts, i just… no one makes me feel like you do.”

it’s hard to respond in the moment, but it’s safe to say you forget the bet, the intentions, everything, and only think about your feelings.

so he responds for you, “oh my god, i just can’t stop talking about it, i just like you so much. it’s so nice to have off my chest,” he smiles, before looking at you with precious eyes, handing off the flowers to be in your care, “do you... feel something similar for me?” he asks, a little more confident before as you fondly gaze at him, it’s like reassurance.

and you just laugh, holding the yellow tulips, “yeah, i have something i want to say to you,” you smile as he smiles at what you say, and for just a second you’re two young lovers smiling happily with flowers and the sunset in the background. it’s so scenic.

“i like you too, hanbin.”

and, for one, brief moment, everything is perfect. 

—

and then it all comes crashing down. it’s the next day. you had hours of perfect happiness before someone had to open their mouth. 

“your friend told me,” he calls out to you in the hall, and you turn around to look at him, confused. your smile upon hearing his lovely voice fades. his face doesn’t have that usual brightness to it, like something was weighing on him. 

“hanbin? what’s wrong?”

“your friend, taerae, told me about me and you, that night that you played truth or dare,” he says. he doesn’t sound like rage, he sounds like suspicion. like he’s still debating in his head whether or not he wants to believe taerae. of course it had to be taerae to let it slip. the guilt would eat him alive. 

you didn’t even tell the rest of the friend group that he had confessed. you had only told taerae, and it was because you were excited about mutual feelings between you and hanbin, forgetting the bet for a second. taerae probably didn’t even do it intentionally, it must have just slipped. 

“what did he tell you?”

“no, don’t try to- just tell me… what happened that night. why did you text me? why did you ask me to get coffee? what was the reason for all of it?”

so you told him. he had the right to know. even if it ruined everything so fast. it had been merely hours, not even a full 24, before it came crashing down. it only hits you when you say it out loud how cruel of a bet it really was. 

“so you just-” he trails off, this incredulous look on his face. there’s so much tension in the air as it all hits him what’s been happening this whole time, “you manipulated me and tried to get close to me just so i’d get feelings for you? you’re telling me this was intentional?” his voice is getting shaky, and his hands are starting to tremble.

“yes, hanbin…i wanted to make you fall in love with me,” you say back, trying hard to remain calm. he’s searching your eyes for something you don’t know for sure is in there, “at the time, i didn’t have feelings for you. and, yes, i did it intentionally.”

“i don’t understand, even if i wronged you in some way, what would be the point?” he asks. it’s sad because hanbin had never wronged you. and he assumed he had.

“i-” you start, but he cuts you off. if this was a normal conversation, you’d be surprised that hanbin was doing something ‘rude’ like cutting someone off when speaking.

“was it a prank or something?” he asks, now you can really hear it in his voice. you can see it in his eyes now. he’s containing his feelings well giving the situation, but little flames of anger are poking through, “was that all i was?”

and then it hits you just how wrong it all was. hanbin was never out to get you, he was never rude, never condescending or narcissistic like you thought. his reputation as a player and a heartbreaker was a lie, a facade he never chose to maintain. all those people he rejected came onto him and he never once led them on. 

“that’s not how it is anymore, but if that's what you want me to admit to, then yes. it was a bet. i told my friends i could make you fall in love with me.”

he scoffs because it’s so unbelievable, but is silent a moment before speaking, “what does ‘anymore’ mean?” he asks.

and there it is. you might as well come clean, “i didn’t like you… back then,” you admit. it takes him a second to realize, “yeah. and so i stopped actively trying to make you fall in love. i just wanted to spend time with you.” there’s so many thoughts left out. i wanted to fall in love with you because you felt so safe. i wanted to fall in love with you because you never wanted anything from me, never asked me for anything but my time. i wanted to fall in love with you because i knew you were falling for the real, genuine me. not some act. something like that.

“ah, i see,” he says awkwardly. even in all the confusion and intense emotions, he’s still himself, “i think… i’ll need some time to think this all over. i hope you can understand.”

you nod, “yeah, of course. just… let me know when you’re ready. and i’m sorry, if it means anything. i didn’t mean for this to happen.”

and you have to let him walk away.

–

hanbin steps into the cafe with his friends right in front of him, them conversing about a new drama on netflix or the new music they’re liking lately. he’s answering when spoken to, but not adding much input of his own, kind of lost in his own world. 

he orders a small iced americano. part of him gears up to say the name of another drink, but he doesn’t even like that drink. he doesn’t know why it’s still on the tip of his tongue, like it’s muscle memory to say it.

he sits at the table with his friends, letting them drive the conversation while he stares out the window of the passenger seat. he has this revelation for the first time that, even as an extrovert, sometimes you can be the lonliest you’ve ever been while surrounded by people you love and care about. he normally feels good in the company of his friends, but there’s still that one person on his mind. he doesn’t give mind to the conversation his friends are having, excitedly chatting.

instead, he finds comfort in replaying the conversations he had with that person in his head. he thinks about all the pretty moments, like when he confessed. at least he can be grateful that moment wasn't ruined until later. he’d never been that happy in his entire life like when he heard them say they liked him too. 

and even though his brain still wants to harbor all this anger and sadness, his heart keeps going back to the yellow tulips, to the beautiful person that made his heart jump out of his chest.

and when there’s no one else to call, of course he came running back to you.

—

 it’s 2am, and he knew if anyone would come running, it would be you.

“i’m still really upset at you,” he murmurs, shivering as he takes a bite out of the gas station snack he picked out. maybe he was just lonely and it was 2am and he wouldn’t feel bad about using you to make himself feel better when you used him as a trophy. still, it doesn’t feel like he’s doing it just to solve his existential loneliness. you were his first thought, and the only person he asked. he thinks it always had to be you.

he’s apologetic for having woken you up, especially when he sees how tired you look. if it would have consoled you at all, he would tell you how cute you looked right now, tiredly holding the drink (that he paid for. you haven’t even gotten one chance to pay this whole time you had gotten close to him, just too slow, he says). he doesn’t feel like it’s a good time, but you’ve never been this cute to him, and he’s starting to think he can get over what happened if you stay this cute a little while longer.

“i know. it’s okay, you should be,” you say back to him, sipping your slushee with a frown, “i missed you, bin.”

and that’s when he cracks. he missed you too.

“can you come here?” he asks, and you perk your head up, coming closer to him, assuming maybe he wants to tell you something in private (but away from the poor 7/11 worker? who else is around?).

he has nothing to say, though. instead, he pulls you closer and holds you against him, hugging you tightly. your head rests on his shoulder as he adjusts his grip, “i’m still mad.” he says again. you tug on his jacket as your arms wrap around his waist.

because it’s not like you were still faking it. you know it, and he can tell. your smiles are honest and your laughs are genuine. he’s sure that you have genuine feelings for him. so maybe he can look past being played if you’re always this cute. 

“i’m sorry,” you say. he thinks you’re doing it on purpose, acting cute so he’ll forgive you quickly. it might be working.

he chuckles, and you feel the vibrations from his chest, “i know. just give me some time to get over it. i still like you, whether or not you’re a meanie.”

—

and somewhere out there, taerae is blowing up your phone, frantically apologizing for letting the truth slip to hanbin. scratch whatever happened before, that guilt would have eaten taerae alive. you’ll tell him it’s okay in the morning.

it was supposed to happen anyway, it’s not like you were gonna hold in the truth forever. maybe you should have just offered to text your ex that you miss them that one night with your friends, but then you never would have met hanbin. 

not literally, you met him months ago. you would see him in class and pass by him on campus, you’d give him a polite smile and he’d do the same, and you’d remember his existence even after you graduated as the ‘heartbreaker’, but you never would have gotten the chance to really see him. to watch the way his cheek dimples came out when he laughed, or to understand just how giving and selfless he was.

you never would have had the chance to see his soul laid out amongst the yellow tulips just for you.

[meadowscarlet]

is there someone else? ━━━ steve harrington.

pairings: steve harrington × fem!cheerleader!reader.

summary: steve knew there was a sudden shift in your relationship after what happened previously, but it didn't stop him from thinking about you and wanting things to return to normal until he saw you with a random guy and assumed you'd already replaced him.

warnings: cursing, steve overthinking and jumping through conclusions, jealous!steve and miscommunication.

author’s note: a reposted fic. do not copy, post on another site, translate or claim any of my works as your own or you will be reported! nav.

Steve had the perception that you were slipping away from him. Or maybe he was just being theatrical; Dustin liked to point this out and tease him about it, but Steve was filled with apprehension. It seemed like a prickling needle poked him till scars sprouted, as if there was a crippling disquiet inside of him, growing and blooming every day.

He tried to ignore the strange feeling that was whirling around inside him by watching movies with Robin or spending some time with Dustin. If his distractions fail, his mind always returns to you, occupying himself with thoughts of you rather than doing what he meant to do—stop thinking about you. But, unfortunately for him, thinking about you was his greatest attribute, and it appears that, despite the strange thoughts about you and him, he still thinks of you.

Hawkins was the beginning. With a scoff, Steve would think, It always started at that stupid town. He could not really believe a girl had weird superpowers and bled through her nose, let alone that monsters were invading the town. Second, he wouldn't believe that he'd be a part of all the craziness that's going on, but he did meet you in Hawkins.

To be fair, when you first met, he was a complete dickhead. It was his “King Steve” era, or as others in his age referred to him, when Steve was famous. He remembered how much he treasured being lauded and appreciated in the past, but he had luckily matured into that perspective and was now just like everyone else. Normal. When Steve remembered how much you despised him at the time, he winced.

“Why don’t you go fuck yourself, Harrington?” you had remarked one time when he approached you after a basketball game, all sweaty and fatigued, as he mentioned how your cheerleading skirt distracts him in the game.

He didn't even want to recall what he said in response; all he knew was that he got a big, loud slap in the face.

But before, he was a jackass and you were the sweet angelic cheerleader, but suddenly you were both so much more. Steve would have laughed at the idea if he had known you were both in a relationship, but feelings got muddled up when you were also a part of the craziness. But he didn't question it because you were friends with Max Mayfield and the new girl before somehow became part of Dustin's crazy crew.

Steve was smitten with you from the start, long before there was a strange girl with abilities and the entire town was flipped upside down. Even when you despised his guts, he liked everything about you, and it was exciting to have your attention, even if it was just a simple roll of the eyes or shoving up your dainty middle finger in front of him. He fell for you because of those simple things, and he never questioned it.

People would probably make fun of him for being infatuated with a girl who didn't give him the time of day when he could have anyone—and they did, but he won't admit it. Others found it amusing that he was often rejected, which injured his ego, but Steve seemed to be stubborn and persistent. But, while all of his hard work to finally win you has paid off, Steve now has his own doubts.

He had the impression that something was troubling your relationship. Steve wouldn't admit it to anyone—not even Robin or Dustin—but he was growing uneasy about your relationship's abrupt change. But then again, maybe he was overthinking it all because of what occurred last year, and you were distant. He recalled your heartbroken expression as you took Max in your arms, weeping for her brother's death.

Steve could never blame you, but it crushed him to think that you had cut yourself off from him. He started to believe that this relationship, whatever it was, was one-sided, and that your assurances weren't helping. You were slipping away from him; everytime he wanted to hang out, you'd make some excuse like cheer practices, which he dismissed as bullshit. He was curious as to why you were avoiding him.

You never avoided Steve, well not when you both were in a relationship anyways.

“Y/N?”

Hearing Robin's voice near him, Steve snapped out of his thoughts. He didn't turn to face her, instead looking at the store's door with a hopeful expression, but when no one entered, he became dejected. He expected it to be you, dressed in your cheerleading uniform and smiling brightly, but he was staring at nothing. He slowly turned to Robin, who seemed to be laughing.

His brows furrowed at her. “What the hell is funny?”

“Shit, you've got it bad,” Robin said, her voice muffled by the popcorn she was munching. “You were thinking about her, yeah?”

“Thinking of who?”

Robin gave him a hard stare. “Don't play dumb with me. When I said her name, you snapped out of whatever thoughts you were having, and I'm guessing it was also about her.”

As he gazed at her with a tight smile playing on his lips, Steve silently cursed Robin in his head. Steve tried to distract his mind by taking a popcorn from the popcorn box Robin was holding and plopping one into his mouth, ignoring his friend's scrutinizing gaze. He couldn't blame her, though; even though you were usually gone, he must have looked like a wounded puppy.

“She’s ignoring me,” Steve began, his attention fixed on the movie playing rather than the knowing look in Robin's eyes.

“And instead of going to her and talking about it, you're sitting here moping?” With a tiny shrug, Robin asked.

Steve locked his gaze on her. “Didn't you hear me say she's ignoring me—“

Steve didn't like the coy grin on Robin's lips as she raised her hands in defeat. “Geez, calm down, it was just a suggestion,”

“A stupid one,” Steve scoffed.

Robin sniggered and said, “If I were you, I'd talk to her. I wouldn't let her escape if I were you; have you seen her?”

In irritation, he flung a piece of popcorn at her. “Can you not? You idiot, she's still my girlfriend, and don't you have Vickie?”

Robin only glared at him.

Steve would have punched himself if he hadn't listened to Robin's suggestion, but he was desperate, and because he was stubborn and tenacious, why not make use of his best qualities? When the Hawkins High School came into view, he parked his car and waited for a bit before summoning the bravery to walk out of his car. He ran a hand through his hair before he started walking.

As he passed by, he gave a tight-lipped smile to those who greeted him, but once he spotted you, he slowed down. You were always gorgeous in your Hawkins cheerleading uniform, and Steve felt as if he was seeing you for the first time ever. Your hair was tied back with a few dangling in the front, but your face was disturbed and exhausted. Steve's brow furrowed; he didn't like seeing you in this state.

He only noticed someone alongside you before he could call you. Steve narrowed his eyes at the guy, who was dressed in a basketball jersey and was tall, blonde, and had this aura that appeared to have a lot of ladies at his feet. You were only half-listening to what the guy was saying, but a slight smile played across your exquisite lips, which Steve hadn't kissed in a long time.

Steve stood there watching as the guy said something that made you chuckle softly before waving farewell and walking away. Inside his gut, there was the same unease; Steve had no idea what he'd just seen, but hoped it was just his eyes playing tricks on him. He tightened his jaw as he marched straight to you, his sudden rage boiling inside him like molten lava.

Steve was met by a closer look at your gorgeous face as you heard his footsteps and looked up. “Steve,” you exclaimed, startled. “What—what are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” he repeated with a scoff as he grabbed your wrist, making sure it wasn't too tight but making sure you'd follow him as he led you both to his car. “I've come to pick you up because, um, I'm your boyfriend?” The last word was sarcastic.

Once you both entered his car, you turned to face him. “What’s up with you?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” As he sat comfortably in the driver's seat, Steve made a straining and jaded chuckle. “Who was that guy?”

He watched as you sighed and briefly closed your eyes. “What do you mean, Steve?”

Steve gave you a look of clear disbelief. “Do you love me?”

When he looked at your face closely, trying to see the gleam of adoration in it, he was met with surprise, indignation, and betrayal—all of those conflicting emotions were mixing in your face, and Steve swallowed a lump in his throat, suddenly feeling like his question was downright stupid, selfish, and insecure, but he had been dying in his own doubts, you were tense with him, why can't he be like that to you too?

“Y/N,” Steve trailed off hesitantly. “Baby…?”

Your eyes shifted away from him as you faced the front, your fingers playing with the hems of your skirt, and Steve refrained from putting his palm on top of it. “I don't understand,” you murmured, your voice tense with something chevalier. “What exactly are you implying?”

Steve, evidently agitated, ran his fingers through his hair. “I don't know.” he made a hand gesture like swatting a fly and said, “You've been distant and it feels like you're ignoring me, and I just saw a random dude whispering crap in my girl's ear today. So sorry if I came out as paranoid.”

Your eyes flashed with a conflicting emotion, but it vanished before Steve could describe what it was. He clenched both hands on his lap as he realized he wouldn't be able to start the car anytime soon. The space between you was snug and familiar, yet Steve thought you were a bit far away even though you were only an arm's length away. Steve reached up and, before he could stop himself, tucked the fallen curl of hair on your ear, all the while managing to keep an eye on you and your side profile.

“Talk to me,” he begged, the foreign sound in his ears bothering him not at all. Steve let his hand slip from your hair, trailing down your arm then to your hands, which were resting on your lap. His huge hand engulfed yours and remained there for some time. “Don’t shut me out. Not this time.”

When you gazed up at him, your lips quivered, and Steve quickly cupped your cheek and stared at you with a concerned expression. “Everything makes me uneasy, especially Max. She's not doing well lately, and I'm worried about her… I'm also terrified. Fearful that the shits from before will return. Steve, I can't lose any more people.”

Steve stroked your cheek with his thumb. “I felt like I'd lost you at this point. I didn't want you to be away from me Y/N, and for a short moment I was afraid you'd found someone else and shit—I don't blame you at all, but—“

“Steve,” you say abruptly, your tone unusually sharp. “In the midst of everything, you kept me sane. I can't like anyone else because I love you so much.”

“But the guy—“

“Is just a friend of mine,” you said, a timid smile on your face. “He's the boyfriend of one of my cheer teammates, and that's it.”

His shoulders slumped in relief. “Good thing you haven’t replaced me yet.”

You fixed your gaze on him, yet a slight smile appeared on your pretty face. “I'd never do that.”

Steve kissed you passionately as he brought your face closer to his. As he deepened the kiss, his thumb caressed your cheeks; the curvature of your lips and the softness of it drove Steve insane. Both of your mouths shared a spark of affection, and it was all too familiar and completely missed. Steve was well aware that he could never have enough of you.