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smoochkooks · 3 years

Text

—chapter four: white lies

this is a part of my an ode to a broken heart drabble series.

pairing: jeon jungkook/reader

genre: unrequited love, best friends to (?), heavy angst, future smut

word count: 1.5k

summary: it came easy to you to lie. but with every untold truth, you were hurting more on the inside.

previous || next

one year and 6 months ago

April was exceptionally moody that year.

Every day you woke up to either heavy rainfall or a beautiful, cloudless sky. Alternatively, it could also snow for a couple of hours just to have it all vanish once the sun reappeared. As much as you loved Spring, you hated the capricious weather with passion.

It was a normal, peaceful, Saturday afternoon. Saturday meant no classes to attend, no work to do on the side. It was just you in your small, cozy apartment, tucked underneath the blanket and binge-watching Attack On Titan.

You were never an anime enthusiast per se, but you happened to befriend a doe-eyed weeb all those years ago. Your current occupation was just a part of the aftermath. It wasn’t like Jungkook was obsessed, not at all. He was actually far from it. Now, at the tender age of twenty-three, his old hobby was like a relapse. His love for anime was coming in waves every once in a while, gradually transforming into a two-months-long hyperfixation and then, it was nothing. And the cicle continued.

He was currently in the stage of re-watching Attack On Titan, hence why you had been forced to finally give the damned anime a try as well. Hell, he was even coming over tonight to have a marathon with you.

(He’d said that season three, his favourite, you had to watch alongside him.)

You: eren's annoying little shit

Jungkook: told you so

You: but levi? damn I’d sell my soul for him

Jungkook: for a 5’2 emotionally unavailable man?

You: yep. that’s my type

It was far from truth. As much as you liked Captain Levi, he wasn’t Jungkook. You are my type, you wanted to write instead. There hadn’t been a man in my life who managed to even come close to you. But, as always, you kept those confessions to yourself.

Right when you were about to play another episode, your phone buzzed again.

Jungkook: I have a weird question

You: I’m used to that

You: shoot your shot.

Jungkook: what’s your finger size?

Confused, you read his last message once again. That was indeed a weird fucking question to ask, you thought. You had never really been a fan of rings. You only owed one - a gift from your grandmother she gave you for your sixteenth birthday. Rummaging thorough your drawer, you found it in a separate, black case.

It still fit just right, so you took a ruler, measured the size and googled the results.

You: it’s 7.5 I guess

You: why do you ask tho?

Jungkook: I need you to go somewhere with me before our marathon if that’s okay

You: you didn’t answer my question

You: but okay. what time?

Jungkook: ill pick you up at 5pm

Jungkook: you’ll see

Maybe it was for the better he hadn’t told you where he was taking you. If you had know, you would have backed away last minute. Come up with so lame excuse, blame it all on a headache or period cramps.

If you had known Jungkook was taking you to pick up an engagement ring for Soojin, you would have never come with him.

When you parked in front of one of the most high-ranking jewellery stores dowtown, the solemnity of the situation hit you like a whiplash. You took a deep, shuddering breath. Jungkook was thinking about marrying Soojin. Jungkook was going to propose to her, soon. He was ready to spent the rest of his life with her.

Jeon Jungkook, the love of your life, was about to slip out of your reach for good.

You couldn’t cry. Not in front of him. You clenched your fists so tight the knuckles turned white.

“I figured out you could help me,” Jungkook said, breaking the silence and unbuckled his seatbelt. “I checked Soojin's finger size once when she was showering and then I found out that your’s the same and well, you’re a girl so you obviously know more about jewellery than me and–”

“Jungkook,” you cut him off with a dry chuckle. You didn’t want him to speak. You didn’t want to see him. You wanted to jumped off his car and ran away from that place as far as possible. “You don’t have to explain yourself. I get it.”

You smiled at him with reassurance. It was actually hilarious, how you mastered the art of feigning your real feelings when you were with him. It came easy to you to lie but with every untold truth, you were hurting more on the inside.

“I’m here, so you don’t have to worry about chosing something horrible.”

He grinned and you noticed a dust of pink covering the apples his cheeks. It was hard, so fucking hard seeing him happy because that was all you ever wanted and yet it pained you not to be the main source of it. Jungkook was twenty-three and already so in love he wanted to get married. You were going to see him in a black tux, a prince charming waiting in front of the altar for his princess.

It ached. Why did it ache to see him happy?

The lady who worked at the jewellery store greeted you politely with a bow. “What can I do for you?” she asked.

“We are looking for engagement rings.” Jungkook answered.

You could tell she was a bit astounded but her professional smile never faltered when she responded with, “Oh, that’s still quite unusual to see the couple chosing an engagement ring together.”

You were about to protest but then, Jungkook did something you would never expect him to do.

He grasped your hand.

(It was warm. His touch was soothing. Comforting. Then why did it hurt so bad?)

“My girlfriend wants to chose the ring herself but she doesn’t know when she will get it.”

To make matters worse, he sent you a wink. The store’s clerk cooed at the scene and clasped a hand over her chest. For her it was yet another day at work, yet another pair of adults who had decided to get marry.

“You make a really beautiful couple.” she said.

Even Jungkook’s hand squeezing yours couldn’t ease the sting you felt hearing her speak those words to you. You smiled lightly for good measure. She then pointed at the display and gave you some time and space too look at the options.

Your whole face felt hot. Jungkook was still holding your hand, still playing the role of a perfect boyfriend. He didn’t seem to notice what kind of effect it had on you. He didn’t know how fast your heart was beating, how warm his touch felt on your skin. It was all just a silly joke to him.

He leaned closer to you, so the store's clerk couldn’t hear him. His breath tickled your skin. “You’re blushing.” he whispered.

“Shut up.”

He chuckled and let go of your hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.”

(No matter how much it hurt you on the inside, you already missed his touch.)

“It’s okay. Let’s chose my damned ring, shall we?” you proposed, mustering a nonchalant tone.

Dodging uneasiness with humor always worked out, it seemed.

You felt odd and out of place standing next to him and staring at all those glimmering jewels. In the corner of the eye you saw the lady who worked there glancing at you from time to time and that was when you remembered you were supposed to act like a soon-to-be fiancée.

“They’re all pretty.” you said to Jungkook.

“Which one you like the most then?”

You didn’t have to think long about the answer. The ring with an emerald stone caught your eye from the beginning. It was different than the others, definitely not a standard choice for engagement but something about its peculiarity made you want it to have it shinning on your finger one day.

Except, you weren’t here for yourself. Jungkook wasn’t your boyfriend. You were helping him chose a ring for Soojin. And you knew exactly what she would like.

So you pointed at the number thirty-two. A sparkling, white-gold ring with an oval-shaped diamond.

Jungkook let out a hum. “It’s really pretty, yeah. Excuse me,” he called. “My girlfriend would like to try out this one.”

You ignored the phantom pain you felt as you put the ring on. You flexed your fingers and just for a moment, you pretended it wasn’t a farce your best friend came up with. The diamond shone brightly just like the glimmers of happiness in Jungkook's eyes. He didn’t have to worry about Soojin's answer. He knew it would be thousand times yes.

You were good at pretending. After all, you had been practicing the art of it almost your entire life.

So you drove with Jungkook to your apartment and listened to him babbling about his newest project at work. You made snacks, sat in front of your TV and spent the next couple of hours watching Attack On Titan. You cursed him for spoiling you a few bits of the show and Jungkook, like the petty Virgo he was, reminded you how you accidentally revealed him Little Women's ending because you had read the book years before.

As you laughed and bickered with him, you still remembered about the crimson box tucked in the pocket of his leather jacket, but you didn’t allow yourself to break. Not yet.

It was only when Jungkook fell asleep around 1am that you stepped into the shower and let the tears flow.

And a week later, when the dreaded became real–

Jungkook: she said yes!!!

A white lie was told to avoid hurting someone’s feelings.

You: I’m so happy for you, Jungkook!

After all, the best you could do was give up your happiness for the sake of his own.

#jungkook smut #btswritingcafe #ksmutclub #bangtanarmynet #bangtanhq #jungkook angst #jungkook x reader #jungkook fanfic #jungkook x you #bts smut #my writing #an ode to a broken heart

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johannesviii · 4 years

Text

So I guess I’m hyperfixating on Death Stranding at the moment

And since I’ve finally finished the story after playing it for like 100 hours over the course of seven months or so I guess I have Opinions(tm) about things I didn’t like in the game

They’re eating at my brain so I’m gonna put them all in a single post to get them out of my system once and for all so I can enjoy the rest in peace

Spoilers, obviously

Hi welcome back to ‘Johannes is obsessing over yet another video game with horror elements in it’! I guess!!

Our latest entry in that category was Until Dawn but since UD can be played in like 6/7 hours and I spent 100 hours of my life on DS, as you can guess we’re talking about a full-blown hyperfixation, the kind that physically hurts because I can’t focus on anything else even after having finished the storyline

But it was super gradual. Again, seven months. I barely made any progress from December to May because I was only doing side-deliveries at the beginning of Chapter 3 instead of... you know... advancing the plot. It became an honest-to-god special interest about two months ago, then 6 days ago while playing chapter 10 it reached hyperfixation levels and now I am in PAIN

I hate my brain

Anyhow

At first I wanted to list the good and the bad hings in it but there’s too many good things to list them all in full, excruciatingly long details, so

Very Quick And Very Incomplete List Of Good Things That I Love

It’s a post-apo game based on travel, logistics, and good will, and it straight up goes AGAINST the whole ‘survival of the fittest’ trope that SO MANY post-apo things try to push!! YES

I insist but it’s built on helping each other and keeping everyone alive, seriously that is my shit right there!

The online community is wholesome?? People leave stuff everywhere, you never see anyone but people put little helpful signs and send you likes, and in my game we almost managed to repair all the roads together

There’s so many new & strange allergies and disabilities and phobias in this post-apo world and? nobody is trying to ““fix”“ anyone?? Like Heartman with his padded floor and his little box that brings him back to life constantly. He’s just... living like that. Nobody’s going “hey maybe you should get another heart operation buddy”

The hero and his phobia of being touched. I. Loved. That. The quiet scenes when he was just talking with Fragile, sitting next to her. In any other context this would just be two people sitting next to each other and talking but it always feels so soft and intimate everytime he allows another human being to just. be next to him. I love it. I love them

Everyone crying constantly because of chiral allergy!!

I loved all the important characters bar one (Bridget/Amelie)!

Why is this walking simulator so enjoyable why am I enjoying the fact that holding L2 + R2 while walking feels like holding your backpack and that you have to relax at times just like you’d have to if you were actually holding a backpack

Seriously. Why

The atmosphere was so great, the music was fantastic and the visuals were on point. A E S T H E T I C

The ghosts!! The giant Beached Things!!! Chiral crystals look! like! creepy hands reaching for the SKY!!

THE RAIN DESTROYS THINGS AND KILLS PEOPLE BY ACCELERATING TIME THIS IS SO COOL SHUT UP

Everytime the game got surreal it was electrifying

THE SURREAL WAR SCENES ON CLIFF’S BEACH

Everyone is using emojis

There’s guys addicted to delivering packages in that game and they’re trying to steal our stuff and we’re like “haha they’re dumb” but we’re basically addicted to delivering packages as the player. So yeah that was pretty fun

Terrorists thinking humanity isn’t going extinct fast enough and wanting to just rip the bandaid and speed things up. Simple but effective concept

People ask for SUPER VITAL ITEMS right next to completely trivial stuff and I’m LIVING for it. “Please fetch my toy dinosaur”. I feel you dude

The most isolated characters are like "LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THIS THING I LIKE" in your emails because they haven't had contact with other humans in years, it's super relatable

There’s a farm where people use the fact that Timefall rain accelerates time to grow food super quickly in one (1) Timefall and harvest everything just before it starts to die and I LOVE that detail of worldbuilding so much

YOU’RE FIGHTING BEACHED THINGS WITH YOUR OWN BODILY FLUIDS IT’S SO STUPID BUT ALSO SO COOL?? I love yeet-ing my own blood at eldritch entities

THE T W I S T S

All the fanservice (bar one detail that I’m gonna complain about later) is on dudes. This game reeeeeeally likes to show dudes naked or somewhat naked. Mostly the main character but this mocap also L O V E S Mads Mikkelsen and there’s a shit ton of homoerotic shots in there

I love Sam the antisocial papa wolf delivery man and if someone touches him or his baby again, I will cry

LOU. LOU LOU LOU PRECIOUS BABY I’D DIE FOR YOU. Wait I did

I love Fragile and how brave she is and how she keeps helping people even if most of them wrongly think she’s a terrorist and yes I will eat this cryptobiote thank you

I love soft science boi Heartman who keeps dying again and again and is a bit too much interested in bodily fluids

I love garbage man Higgs and how complex, funny and still somewhat tragic this memelord actually turned out to be in the end

Seriously I want to stop fixating on this character but you can’t give me YET ANOTHER character who wants to die but at the hands of someone else, that is unfair to do that right after my fixation on the new Doctor Who Master

So yeah Higgs is yet another character who makes me want to grab him by the lapels and shake him and yell WHY! ARE! YOU! LIKE! THIS! STOP! BEING! LIKE! THIS!!

Cliff broke all three of my feelings beautifully and in excruciatingly well-acted scenes that transcended the sometimes lackluster dialogue

John made me cry during That Scene

Mama your background was tragic and terrifying and you didn’t deserve any of this shit and I love you

Deadman was more funny than anything, really, but I still liked him even if he had no sense of personal space whatsoever and it clashed horribly with Sam’s phobias

The ending had some sad parts but was mostly positive, thank goodness

Now I’m gonna explain things I dislike and this looks long but it’s actually only 5 main things so I bolded them to avoid confusion

Things I really disliked (and could have been handled wayyyy better)

We all know it but Kojima isn’t a master of subtlety and some parts of the dialogue kept repeating the same informations again and again AND AGAIN and I was like “ok ok I get it”

The dialogue can be so bad at times seriously

Kojima is a bad writer there I said it

It was particularly annoying with Amelie/Bridget and the fact she’s a horrible person trying (and failing) to justify her actions wasn’t helping

Bridges protocols are incredibly intrusive. All of them. I know it’s framed as bad and Sam hates being spied on all the time and in the end he destroys the device that does that, but I wish someone else would openly criticise it in-game

I guess Deadman sort of did but still

Also I know the whole BB technology was Bridget’s idea, and since she’s the actual villain it’s framed as a twisted, evil thing during the ending, but I wish that had been framed like that much earlier ; a lot of Bridges employees just... seem to accept the idea that their employer is using premature babies and their dead mothers as useful, if disturbing, devices. They seem to justify it by “uh we stole that technology from terrorists” to try to cope with the idea but... yeah.

I mean, one of the points being made very early on is that Sam sees his BB as his child who must be protected at all costs instead of a detection device, but I really wish he wasn’t the only one to object to that thing

Again, the game DOES frame "using babies and their dead mothers as tools” as evil and twisted, I just wish it was given a lot more weight and way sooner

Now let’s talk about the Token Straight(tm) in this game

In any other kind of context it would be a joke! But Death Stranding literally has a Token Straight Guy!

I mean, there IS a few hetero couples among the Preppers. Not a lot, mind you. Like, there’s the Montaineer and his wife for instance. But they’re just there and it’s not what their side plot is about

No I’m talking about this piece of shit right there

This f█cking Junk Dealer guy complains the girl he loves is dead because of Bridges and emotionally blackmails us by sending us old holograms of her before her supposed death (somewhat disturbing holograms too because she looks... pretty young in them), then he sends us on what’s essentially a suicide mission in a BT infested zone, THEN when we give him proof she’s still alive and living in another bunker nearby, he won’t go there himself to check??

But SHE’s like “ok, bring me to him, then!”

He doesn’t deserve you, girl

I’ve already seen several people pointing out that carrying a woman as cargo on your back is... debatable at best and sexist at worst, but that part didn’t really bother me to be honest? She asked to be carried to him and it’s her choice. She was talking to us the entire way too, so that made things a lot less awkward. Also Sam has this phobia of being touched by other people so I bet carrying another human being on his back isn’t fun for him. It was also super stressful to do, to be honest.

And then there’s this EXTREMELY AWKWARD scene when they’re reunited and decide to get married, and thankfully Sam finds it just as awkward as we do because he’s standing super far away from the bunker in a “can’t they talk about this later - I’m right there” way. And I’m under the impression it was intended as cringy, in a “yeppp young people in love are Like That” sort of way, so I can accept that, to be honest. If you don’t take that scene seriously, it’s pretty fun in, again, a cringy sort of way

BUT

Then you receive more emails later and this piece of shit guy complains about her and he’s like “ugh WOMEN” or “marriage is the worst” and they end up divorced in record time and she goes back to her bunker

Which isn’t my problem with this subplot either, I promise I’m gonna explain myself eventually but this context is important. It’s okay to have characters who are pieces of shit like this guy who reeks of incel cologne. It’s alright. Not every character has to be a role-model. It’s good to have characters you can hate.

BUT THEN they get back together later to try to patch things up and you learn he was part of a gang who murdered her parents even though he protected her against the rest of the gang and that’s what I hated about that storyline. I guess if you squint it can be read as “this woman is making REALLY BAD life choices” but I read it as “he saved her so she owes him something, he can’t be entirely bad” and y i k e s this left such a bad taste in my mouth, good lord.

But yeah miss Chiral Artist you’re making really bad life choices please get away from this dude as soon as you can, thank you

Also don’t do this ‘sending Likes’ pose ever again, it was hilarious but also you made me use the word “cringy” several times in this paragraph even though I absolutely hate cringe culture, look what you made me do

Now I have to talk about a scene that was intentionally disturbing as hell but ONE (1) detail in it was disturbing for the wrong reasons

To be honest, I really don’t like the Metal Gear Solid games and one of the reasons is the rampant sexism in them so I... was kind of bracing myself for Death Stranding and expecting it to have at least SOME really bad fanservice with a woman at one point or another but to my surprise?? There was none? All the fanservice is on dudes??? Hello? I really liked that (well at some point Fragile takes a shower in our room but we see literally nothing except her shoulder and then Sam looks away)?? What a refreshing change

THAT BEING SAID

And if you played the game you know exactly what I’m about to talk about

Yep this is the part where Johannes complains about how the bomb flashback was shot

Ok so I guess I should also give some context in case someone is reading this but hasn’t played the game, but the deal with this scene is that our friend Fragile was betrayed by her colleague Higgs who used to be a porter but became a terrorist after meeting the “main“ villain of the game. First he secretly put a thermonuclear bomb in one of her deliveries so she’d nuke an entire city without even knowing it, and everyone after that thought she was a terrorist. And then he tried to do that shit A SECOND TIME, but she noticed and decided to toss the second nuke into a bottomless lake of tar. But he caught her just before she reached the lake and he decided to give her a sadistic choice, which was “teleport away and the bomb stays there and nukes the city, or carry it to the lake but only in your underwear under this rain that speeds up time and it will do enormous damage to your health and your body”

And of course being the hero she is, she decides to take the second option

And it’s an incredibly disturbing scene and it’s genuinely hard to watch

But it’s also the ONLY time a woman is in her underwear in this entire game and there’s A COUPLE of shots that were male-gaze-y at the beginning before she started to run and the really horrific part started.

So in a way I guess it could have been worse? way worse, even

But it still tarnishes an otherwise disturbing (and harrowing at times ; seriously I know I’m oversensitive but it was physically painful to watch) scene with unnecessary shots

We know Fragile had a young body before this happened, this isn’t the point of this scene, guys

Whoever decided to keep these shots (probably Kojima let’s face it), that is bad and you should feel bad

Idk how to do a visual transition for that next one because I do not want to screen that memo

So here’s a screenshot with a nice landscape instead

tw: acephobia

Now I have to talk about something I like the GENERAL IDEA of, but not how the IN-GAME MATERIAL ABOUT IT was written

Because I have to talk about that “asexual world” memo

First I have to say that I absolutely love the fact that a mainstream game openly says in-game “this future is full of asexual people" and?? it’s just that, it’s a part of this world. That’s just how things are. It’s normalised. I love it. For crying out loud this memo has the word demisexual in it. I can’t think of any other mainstream game that had this word in it so far.

It should have stopped there and let me enjoy that in peace but it didn’t

THE MEMO ITSELF WAS CLEARLY WRITTEN BY SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO HANDLE THESE CONCEPTS and there’s some really bad stuff there. I’d say it’s accidental acephobia but it’s still there. I’m not the best person to talk about this because I’m bi, but it still rubbed me the wrong way

The words this memo uses near the beginning are “"sexless lifestyle” among young people” and yikes, my dude. “Lifestyle”, uh? Really?

And then it goes on about how these new labels were already more and more common “among young people before the Death Stranding” and it also rubs me the wrong way, in a “wow young people and their weird labels lol” sort of queerphobic way?

However I’ve seen a post pointing out that the line “One theory posits that the Stranding accelerated the proliferation of these sexualities” was maybe a way of saying ‘yo asexuals are causing the end of the world’ but... I don’t see it, tbh? In the context of the game, society is extremely divided and a lot of people live in complete isolation and social norms have heavily shifted and it’s kind of normal that there’s queer people visible everywhere now, aces included obviously, because nobody’s bothering to hide it anymore. It’s a post-apocalyptic world! People are just being themselves! A lot of characters also seem to be bi/pan! They’re just vibing ok

At least that’s how I read that part, I can understand if someone had a problem with that bit but I didn’t

BUT! THAT’S NOT ALL because the memo concludes (I’m paraphrasing) “the birth rate has dropped, which might be a problem, but harassment and assault have also dropped, which is good, so idk it’s 50/50″ and. like. I get the intention. But it’s clumsy as hell and very bad. Please don’t confuse abuse of power and attraction. They don’t go hand in hand. Don’t do that. Please. And you know that aces can have kids if they want to, right. Come on. It’s 2020 my dude. This shit is harmful

Also. Like. It’s the end of the world in this game. People don’t want kids. It... has nothing to do with aces. Reality itself is crashing down. People are reluctant to have kids because reality.exe might f█cking crash down at any given moment!

Or a Beached Thing could VoidOut their city!

Or someone might send them a nuke, not naming names!!

Anyway!!!

It’s really badly written and whoever wrote it should educate themselves and maybe get an ace to re-read their stuff next time??

Again I’m not the right person to talk about acephobia and I bet an actual ace would have plenty more to say about this

Thankfully it’s a memo written in-game by a random Bridges councellor and NOT by any important character that we actually know

"I must preempt myself by admitting that I do not have any empirical data" yeah so, f█ck off maybe

So I’m just gonna call that guy “another piece of shit character” but it still doesn’t excuse the fact that the memo was written by someone who thought it was a good idea to put it in the game

Just let me enjoy my super queer post-apo world in peace and don’t write shit like that in your game thank you and goodbye

Minor stuff I also disliked but it wasn’t as awful

I get that Sam is upset at the end because Lou is dying but the way he said goodbye to Fragile broke my heart. It was abrupt and you KNOW he’s upset and wants to have nothing to do with Bridges anymore and that’s very understandable but it isn’t her fault

Seriously I want them to be friends again

I’m gonna pretend they’re friends again after Lou is saved and that Sam is a freelance porter again and sometimes their paths cross and they just talk together in the middle of nowhere and share cryptobiotes

The pacing is weird, there’s this deluge of plot in the beginning and the end but not much in the middle?

The BT boss fights could have been these epic Shadow of the Colossus showdowns but no, they were relatively standard boss fights. Wasted opportunity

The running on the Beach scene sdfghjhgfdsdfghjhgf that was... dumb

A lot of preppers are interesting in one way or another but some are just boring. Also I wish the design of their bunkers was more varied

Amelie/Bridget’s motivations are all over the place, both creating Bridges AND the Demens is... a lot? I know she both WANTS and DOESN’T want the actual, final end of the world to happen but that is a lot to take in and it’s all very confusing

Who the hell cares about ‘rebuilding America’ I just want to build a network where people can help each other

The ‘likes’ are fun but don’t make much sense

In conclusion

Death Stranding Good

Some stuff Bad

Some stuff Very Bad (but it’s just one memo out of 100+ memos, thank god)

I’m still hyperfixating

Send help

#death stranding #long post #eye contact tw #acephobia tw #from a minor unamed character but still it's there

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