#the advisors were also like this feels like the end of an era

[mrskywalkers-chanelboots]

i think i accidentally started a small grogu plushie collection? i keep receiving them as gifts and i’m loving it now i have a few little guys! how far will it grow?

the left is my first one i got for easter from my family, which i know for a fact was probably purchased at a cvs since that’s where i saw it a few days before it was gifted to me and i seriously considered buying it myself, and the right i just got tonight as a senior send-off gift from the advisors of my school’s queer advocacy group since i’ve been president for a few years. they both have their own little stories and i love it!!! requesting more grogu plushies for future holidays and congratulatory gifts 💚

#the advisors were also like this feels like the end of an era #and one of them who is also a star wars fan said it’s like star wars with the prequels the og trilogy and the new ones #i like to believe i’m the original trilogy #since that is my favorite #i was like y’all are in your mandalorian era now or book of boba fett #the inbetween of the ot and the rey movies #it just made me so happy #im gonna miss it so much #personal post #grogu #the mandalorian #din grogu #the child #star wars

[hoshologies]

ALL GREEK LOVE, LEE H.

synopsis — you spent the entire summer telling your family that you weren't going to join a sorority. now not only are you an initiated member of delta eta sigma, but you've been elected to the social chair position for you chapter. that's all well and good until heeseung lee, the newly elected social chairman for lambda rho and well-known in the greek community, reaches out to you to start planning runouts between your respective chapters. and now you're spending a lot more time with the cutest boy you've ever met.

genres &&. warnings — romance, fluff, meet-cute, smut, strangers to friends to lovers!au, college!au, greek life!au &&. underage drinking, afab!reader, tipsy sex, dry humping, oral (f!receiving), fingering, overstimulation.

word count — 15.7k.

from the author — not to be totally sorority girl, but the way i see greek life depicted in college au fics is CRAZY. now that i'm back hardcore into my kpop stan era, i rewatched the drunk-dazed mv and was like hmm... so the ultimate plan here was to write heeseung filth but also portray greek life a little more accurately because even if i'm not a huge fan, one thing about me is i'm gonna make sure y'all KNOW that greek life isn't just parties every weekend.

jokes aside, i really hope you enjoy this fic and my first real return to writing. likes, reblogs, and feedback are always welcome. and honestly, if you have any questions about greek life that you just have to know the answer to, i'm an open book.

if you enjoyed it, feel free to buy me a ko-fi!

the entire summer before starting your freshman year of college, you had told your family that you weren’t going to join a sorority. in your mind, there was a specific mold that one needed to fit into to join a sorority and quite frankly, you checked none of the boxes of those stereotypes. 

yet here you sit, months later, in your sorority’s chapter meeting. and you’ve just been elected to the social chair position of the chi nu chapter of delta eta sigma. 

truthfully, you’re not quite sure how you ended up here. you hadn’t formally rushed the week before school, but a couple of drunk girls at a frat party at the beginning of the semester had told you that you should rush their sorority. maybe you’d been a little desperate to branch out or maybe you were just a little curious of what rushing looked like, but a few days later at the student organization fair, you’d found the booth for the sorority the girls had told you they belonged to, delta eta sigma, and signed up for their informal rush.

by the end of october, you had been extended a bid, assigned a big, and promptly initiated into the chapter in what you jokingly referred to as a cult ritual (how could you describe it any other way? all white outfit? candles? promises to not divulge secrets about rituals that happen behind closed doors?).

and now, just three weeks after officially joining the chapter, you’ve ended up on the programming board somehow. you’d gotten a call from the selection board while sitting in the drive-thru of mcdonalds, waiting impatiently for your order of fries and a sprite as a treat for doing well on your gen psych quiz. the girl who’d called you said you’d made “quite the impression” on the sorority since accepting the bid and that they (including the chapter advisor) thought you’d be the perfect fit for the social chair.

“it’s a solo position, so you won’t have a co-chair like community service does, but given your grades so far this semester and the impact you’ve made on the chapter already, we would really love to see what you can do in this position! would you be interested?”

so really, how could you say anything but yes? you still don’t think you fit all that perfectly into the chapter, but they were giving you an opportunity to get involved and to make yourself fit. your name is announced for the social chair, one of your senior pictures pasted up on the powerpoint, and the girls around you smile and snap their fingers. from the executive board seats up front, your big smiles at you, eyes sparkling with something akin to pride.

a few days later, as you’re getting lunch at the student union, your phone screen lights up with a notification from groupme. a name you vaguely recognize is paired with a message that gets cut off after a few words.

heeseung lee: hey! this is heeseung from lambda rho and…

as you sit down with your salad and dr. pepper, you click the notification and read it in full. at the very top of the new message thread is heeseung’s picture and it clicks where you recognize him from. he’s friends with your big and he’s involved in a few of the bigger student organizations on campus, namely the activities board, so you’ve seen him in the student union fairly often.

[1:36 pm] heeseung lee: hey! this is heeseung from lambda rho! i’m friends with liv and she told me that you just got elected as the new social chair for your sorority. i just got slated into the same position for my frat.

[1:36 pm] heeseung lee: i know we won’t start running things until next semester, but i just wanted to reach out and touch base with you. i’m really looking forward to planning runouts with you next year :]

[1:37 pm] heeseung lee: sorry. i hope that wasn’t too weird. i guess i’m just a little too excited and want to get a bit of a headstart on things. have a good day!

you laugh to yourself, shaking your head as you set the phone down to take a bite of salad. before getting involved in greek life, you always assumed sorority girls and frat guys were airheaded and mean, people who peaked in high school, trying desperately to drag those glory days out. obviously since then, you’ve come to realize that while it is true in some occasions, most times, greek life members are the opposite.

heeseung, who you’ve never spoken to before, is proving that.

[1:42 pm] hi heeseung! not weird at all, i promise. and i’m really excited to plan events with you next semester too :]

by the beginning of february, you haven’t done much with your position. granted, the semester has only really been in full swing for about a week and a half and you have two full semesters to do plenty of things, but you’re itching to start planning. the binder you were given after the officer transition ritual has so many good ideas, everything from runouts with frats and sororities to both formal and semiformal.

while you’re brainstorming ideas for potential social events late on a tuesday night, your phone lights up from its spot on your nightstand, the short bell sound ringing out. you reach for it absentmindedly as you finish writing down the idea you had (rent out skating rink??? check budget). since the beginning of the school year, you’ve become desensitized to the groupme icon when it appears in your notifications, so much so that you barely register heeseung’s name upon first glance. it takes a second look for you to realize who’s texted you.

[9:12 pm] heeseung lee: sorry for texting so late. i just wanted to see if you wanted to meet up some time and start on some ideas for a runout?

[9:12 pm] heeseung lee: obviously not now!! but if you’re free some time this week, we could meet somewhere and talk. i spent all of winter break brainstorming stuff, so i’d really like to run it by you if that’s ok.

[9:14 pm] hi again heeseung. i was actually planning on getting lunch tomorrow at the student union after i’m done with class at 11 if you’re free then?

the second you press send, you immediately start second guessing yourself. does it come off like you’re asking him to have lunch with you? because that wasn’t your intention. really, you just meant that you’re going to be on campus proper for a little bit and wanted to offer to meet before you got lunch. not that it would be a bad thing if he asked if you could get lunch together; liv likes heeseung well enough and you’ve seen him around, and he really does seem nothing but nice, so lunch really couldn’t hurt— okay, take a breath. it is not that serious.

you take a deep breath and then let your muscles go lax as you exhale. better. 

it feels like ages pass before he texts back. you’re worried you’ve scared him off, but it really shouldn’t be that stressful. it’s just a text and he’s the one who wanted to meet up in the first place anyways; you just offered a time and location. but finally, your phone dings again and his name lights up your screen.

[9:21 pm] heeseung lee: actually that works perfect!! i get out of class at the same time and usually grab lunch at the u before heading to the activities board office. wanna meet by the dining area next to the office?

[9:21 pm] sounds like a plan!! i’ll see you then!

heeseung, you realize as you set your phone down and put away your binder for the night, is the only social chair of any of the greek organizations who has reached out to you to start getting the ball rolling. he seems to be just as anxious as you are about doing this job well, which makes you feel at least a little validated. nervous and jittery though you may be about meeting him for the first time tomorrow after only having chatted with him over text twice, the idea of him feeling the same as you brings a strange form of comfort. with enough of it, you actually start looking forward to seeing him tomorrow as you lay down to sleep, mind running a mile a minute with what it’ll be like to meet him after all of the things you’ve heard about him from liv. by the time you slip into the embrace of sleep, anxiety has boiled down into anticipation.

at 11:02 the next morning, heeseung nearly scares the hell out of you when he shows up at the designated meeting spot. you’re so invested in your twitter scroll that you don’t notice when he walks up. it’s not until he says a soft “hi” that you jump and almost drop your phone in the process. when you look up, there’s a worried look on his face.

“sorry! i didn��t mean to scare you!” 

after a moment to catch your breath, you shake your head and wave his worry off, though the gesture doesn’t do much to make that worried look on his (undeniably pretty) face. “it’s okay, heeseung. really.”

to really seal the deal, you shoot him a gentle smile, trying to prove that your heart isn’t about ready to give out anymore. you feel blessed when he returns it, all quirked up at the corners and smile lines and soft, plush cheeks. silence falls, the two of you smiling and staring at each other like idiots until heeseung shakes himself out of his stupor.

“anyways…” he clears his throat and moves his gaze towards the food court. “what did you want to get to eat? my treat.”

you look up at him, at the way he’s pointedly not looking at you and instead examining the restaurants just beyond the dining areas. you know, the restaurants that have been the same for the last five years probably and will be here for another five, the ones he’s grabbed food from at least a couple of times since the semester started and even more since the beginning of the school year. 

“you don’t have to buy me lunch, heeseung. it’s-”

he finally turns to look at you again, that same easy smile still pulling his features into a soft form of happiness. “it’s no problem, really. just an act of good faith. all greek love and whatnot, you know?”

you laugh a little at that, conceding but allowing him to choose where he wants to get lunch from since he’s the one paying and you don’t really have a preference. by the time you’re sat opposite each other at a table with meals from the burger stall, your stomach is rumbling. you’re about half of the way through your burger when heeseung looks up from his fries, clearing his throat to get your attention.

“so…” he starts. it’s clear he hadn’t planned what he wanted to say before catching your focus, so an awkward silence settles over him, eyes on you but focused somewhere off behind you like he’s looking through you instead. you tilt your head, lean in close, which snaps him out of the trance and he restarts. “right, ideas for events. i have a binder from the last social chair of my frat with a bunch of things he did during his time.”

“oh! i do, too!” you interject. “there’s a bunch of stuff that the last girl did and then things some of the girls before her did too.”

heeseung’s grin breaks back across his face, bright and warm; you swear, a smile from this boy alone could break up the threatening winter storm currently hanging over campus. “there’s a bunch of good ideas in mine. but i’m not quite sure how well they’d work right now because of the weather.”

“are most of the ideas outside?” you inquire, taking a sip of your soda while he confirms your suspicions. when you put the cup back down, you wave off his concern. “no worries then. almost all of mine are ones that can be inside, so we could go through those if you want!”

heeseung nods and smiles that morning sunlight smile of his, and you can’t move quick enough to pull the thin pink binder out of your tote bag. he clears away some of the trash from the table so you can lay out the binder, intro page on full display. for the next five minutes, the pair of you pore over the pages upon pages of ideas, sleek white cut through with black ink that lists the idea, the locations, how much it costs. 

you’re so invested in going over everything with him that you hardly acknowledge when heeseung stands and moves into the open seat beside you so neither one of you is craning your neck. you simply adjust the binder so you can read through the pages comfortably. it isn’t until heeseung points one out excitedly and you look up in startle that you finally notice that he isn’t a foot away but inches, noses just centimeters apart.

right now, this is the most compromising position you could possibly be in with a boy you hardly know and you find yourself praying that nobody from either of your chapters decides to walk by. of course, neither of you have anything to hide – this is a simple brainstorming session, of course, absolutely nothing more – but liv and your small group of friends would never let you live this down if they saw it.

heeseung clears his throat after seconds that stretch into years and you break your gaze from his painfully (how can you be blamed for staring? he’s that soft kind of pretty that hypnotizes). “um… so i think rollerskating could be fun…”

it is a good event that your sorority has done with the other frats and sororities in the past, one that you were playing around with as a potential plan to pitch to him. the fact that he picked it out on his own accord makes you bristle with something akin to pride, a feeling so warm and comforting it has you leaning just a little closer to him.

let the girls see me, you think as your sweater-clad shoulder brushes against his own. there are worse things they could catch me doing.

“actually… this was one of the ones i was going to suggest if you didn’t find any that you were really interested in…” you say quietly, voice nearly lost in the din of the dining area of the student union.

heeseung looks at you, blinking slow and round and soft, as if each flutter of his eyelids is a moment of his brain processing your words. “really… maybe it’s a sign…?”

his voice is just as soft, matching your energy in one swift go. you wonder if he’s thinking the same thing as you, if he’s feeling that it seems like you’ve known one another forever despite only knowing each other for fifteen minutes max; it seems like your souls themselves are in complete synergy, so why would it be so farfetched to wonder if maybe you knew each other in a different life to have caused that synchrony?

you laugh a little and shrug, shoulder brushing against his softly; the movement is short and sweet, but your heart rises in you like the high tide, washing through your veins with foam and salt and the kind of breeze only the ocean can bring, chill and warm all at once. “maybe so.”

silence settles over the table like sand stirred on the ocean floor, the both of you lost in your own worlds. heeseung has dragged his soda to this side of the table and sips absentmindedly, gaze focused miles beyond the horizon of the hallway. he’s completely checked out when your consciousness wanders back into your body and you take the moment to study him a little: the even slope of his nose, high cheekbones paired with plush skin, long eyelashes that brush the apex of his cheeks when he blinks, a flutter of dark against light. 

there are worse boys you could be caught staring at.

you’re still thinking about your lunch with heeseung hours later, even when you’re out getting your weekly tuesday night ice cream with your big. liv is going on about how her professor for her linguistics class pissed her off during lecture today, but you’re not absorbing a single word of any of it. you remember vaguely that he openly disagreed with her during the lecture and they got into a debate in front of the whole class, but beyond that, you don’t know much else.

“god, he’s just the worst. i can’t believe– alright, you’re in the stratosphere right now. what’s going on?”

you snap back to reality, eyes wide and goosebumps prickling up under the sleeves of your sweater. you shake your head, trying to brush away the conversation she’s trying to prompt, even though it’ll be futile because liv can’t let things go for the life of her. “nothing! everything’s fine, i swear.”

liv’s eyes narrow and a single dark eyebrow quirks up. “yeah, i’m not buying it.”

you glare playfully at her, eating a spoonful of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. when you swallow, you answer with a pointed, “when do you buy anything i say? really, liv. it’s nothing.”

“did someone say something to you? i’m part of panhellenic and on the all-greek council. if someone did something, i can handle it.”

you shake your head earnestly and wave a hand for extra emphasis. “olivia. seriously. nothing happened.”

your big is silent for a few moments, studying you intently. her shady blue eyes, usually wistful and giving the impression of being miles away herself, cut right down to your very bone, as if she’ll find the answer she’s looking for written into your skin or soul, carved into your heart. eventually, she sighs and slumps back against the booth.

“alright, fine. i’ll believe you this time,” she says in a voice that hints at disappointment. “but you’d tell me if someone did say something to you, right? i’m serious about getting things taken care of if someone does something like that to you.”

you smile, reach across the table, rest your hand over her. “yes, liv. i would tell you if somebody treated me badly. you’re the only friend i have who would be willing to go to jail if needed. but i promise the situation doesn’t call for that right now.”

she perks up a little at your words and takes a deep breath, nodding. she’s back to her bubbly self, resuming her rant about her asshole linguistics professor who definitely shouldn’t have tenure. the whiplash her behavior gives you definitely just secured her an award for “most melodramatic” at formal in april (which, fuck you have to start planning that soon too).

you remain checked into liv’s rant, assenting when she asks you for your opinions on this professor who you’ve never met and never plan on meeting, and offering advice when she wants it. but you still find yourself wandering off at times, mind focused on heeseung.

you’re not sure why you don’t want to tell her about meeting with the boy earlier; she’s one of his friends and she’s always spoken so highly about him, so you shouldn’t feel embarrassed. in fact, she’s mentioned in passing a couple of times (mostly when she’s undeniably hammered) that she thinks you and heeseung would make a cute couple, even though she’s never seen the two of you interact, let alone exist in the same room.

but there’s something special about the thirty minutes you shared with heeseung. you met in a public place, sure, but something about it felt and still feels so sacred to you. it’s something you want to keep a secret for at least a little while. that soft sunshine smile and the low tide brushes of shoulders are things that, for now, belong solely to you and heeseung. it won’t kill liv to be left out of the loop for a while.

“do you think we should have it closer to midterms?” heeseung’s voice is pure static, like he’s going through a tunnel, even though there’s only half a campus worth of distance between you.

the two of you have graduated from groupme dms to phone calls over the course of three days. heeseung is saved affectionately in your phone as sseung with the deer emoji, one that you picked out as he sat across from you after you’d exchanged numbers; he doesn’t know about it, but he reminds you often of a deer caught in headlights with the way he stares at you all wide-eyed when you try to catch his attention.

“maybe? but people have to study. i’m not sure how often your guys are in the library, but i see at least thirty girls at the library every single night, so i’m not sure how willing they’d be to give up a night of studying, even if it is only for an hour, that close to midterms.”

heeseung’s small, thoughtful hmm is audible over the speaker and you smile to yourself over a basket of clean laundry. you’ve spent maybe three hours max with him over the last couple of days and already you have a pretty decent grasp on his personality and habits. right now, you can picture the way he likely looks up from his phone or planner and stares off past the beige cinderblock wall of his dorm room, turning possibilities over in his head.

“no, you’re right about that. i didn’t even consider it.”

you shrug as though he can see you, folding a pair of sweats and setting them to the side. “i’d definitely like for it to be soonish though. it doesn’t have to be planned super far in advance, you know what i mean? we’ve still got… what? a month until midterms?”

“i think so, yeah.”

you nod to yourself, hanging up one of your shirts. “okay, so what about two weeks from now? that lands us right in between now and midterms, so it’d be a happy medium.”

he’s silent on the other end of the line and you pause in your hanging of another shirt, worried that he’s thinking you’re stupid. of course, heeseung would never think anything like that about anyone because he’s the sweetheart to end all sweethearts. still, you worry because what this boy thinks of you is ridiculously imperative to your day to day functions.

three days, you remind yourself. you’ve known him for three days. there’s no reason for his opinions to hold this much weight.

you wonder if heeseung knows just how easy it is to like him, to be around him; if he knows just how much you want to see him all the time because he’s completely taken over your every waking thought. liv’s comments about him made in passing never could have truly captured just how amazing he is, nice and caring and so so pretty. you’re almost embarrassed to be this head over heels for him, but when he laughs over the phone or focuses all of his attention on you over a table in the food court, that mortification burns away into something soft and sweet and slow.

“i think that’s a great idea. not too soon, so we can make sure our chapters know it’s happening, but not too late that it disrupts any midterm studying.”

you breathe a sigh of relief and smile to yourself, resting your hands against the lip of the laundry basket. the rational part of your brain knew he was going to agree, but the part of you that so desperately craves his approval was disgustingly terrified that you wouldn’t receive it. now that you have, though, a heat rushes through you, pride warm and bright because you offered a good solution to the minuscule obstacle.

“yeah, exactly!”

you can just imagine the grin on heeseung’s face right now, delicate like freshly fallen snow. the image fills you with the giddiness of a high school girl, glad to be the one to have caused such a beautiful sight. “okay, cool. i’ll talk about it with the executive board, get it approved and whatnot, but i think we should be set, besides who’s paying for what.”

“what do you mean?” you question, brows furrowing as you finish up the last of your laundry.

“what do you mean?” there’s a playful, teasing edge in his voice. “someone has to pay to book the rink and the shoes, and don’t you think there should be snacks?”

“oh… yeah, i guess so.”

“so i was thinking we’d cover the booking and you could cover the food… but only if you’re cool with that! obviously, it’s not a big deal or anything, but i figured we should get that in order too so we can a specific date set and everything.”

“no, no! that works fine for me! i honestly hadn’t thought that far ahead, so it’s a good thing you did.” the line falls silent for a few moments, static crackling softly between you. there’s just something about the idea that you’re so close yet so far from each other, physically distant but holding each other close like this over a quiet cellphone line. it’s comforting to have him like this, you find.

“but yeah…” you break the stillness with your voice soft so as to not completely shatter the tranquility you’ve cultivated here. “that’s… that’s good thinking, heeseung.”

“hanks…” his own words mimic the same volume, nearly lost in the haze of the phone. “so… i’ll run it by the exec board and let you know?”

you hum a quick mhmm and tell him that you’ll do the same. there should be no reason that you’ll be denied, but the fact that liv, seeing as she’s vice president of programming, is part of the exec board and will find out that you’ve been, at the very least, talking to heeseung on a semi-regular basis (see: every day this week since tuesday afternoon) is a little nerve wracking, mostly because you’re ninety-nine percent sure she’s been hinting at trying to set the two of you up.

and when you say hinting, you mean pointing him out on campus or at parties and saying something like “really, i think you two would get along so well! you should go and talk to him.”

she was right about that, but the last thing you need right now is her finding out that you are catching feelings, all without her meddling. but you’ll make peace with the fact because you have to.

liv sidles up to you two weeks later on a thursday night, knit-clad arms crossed over her chest. you don’t even have to look at her to know she’s wearing a smug expression right now. “so…”

you don’t even physically react to her presence, instead choosing to gaze out over the rollerskating rink in your little college town. “so… what, liv?”

she nudges you with her shoulder and leans with her back against the wall separating the rink floor from the carpet of the sitting area. “you and heeseung, huh? i’ve been telling you for ages that the two of you would get along!”

you scoff playfully and roll your eyes, finally turning your head to look at her. “can you not start sentences like that?”

“like what?” she asks innocently.

“like heeseung and i have something going on. all we did was plan one runout together. we’ve only met, like, one time in person.”

you regret the words almost as soon as they leave the tip of your tongue because the second she hears the phrase “in person,” she’s already causing a scene. even though her voice is somewhat drowned out by the music blasting over the speakers, the absolute tenacity with which she gestures with her entire body draws more attention than it should. melodramatic as per usual.

“in person? when was this? and why was i not informed?” the questions liv asks a million times come out more like exclamations than anything else, too caught up in melodramatic distress to adjust the tone of her voice correctly.

you shrug absently, turning your head back towards the rink. heeseung is standing on the opposite side, talking to a few of the guys from his frat. he looks nice in his blue and green sweater and loose jeans, brown hair tousled from the winter breeze outside. “a couple weeks ago. and i didn’t tell you because it just wasn’t that important. we literally only had lunch just to talk about ideas for this.”

liv whines your name and stomps a foot like a child throwing a tantrum. “yeah, but i’m your big. i wanna know these things! and i’ve also been trying to set you two up forever! you didn’t think i’d want to know that you’d finally met him, even if it wasn’t because of anything i’d plan? my feelings are hurt.”

“first, this is exactly why one of the awards for formal this semester is going to be most over dramatic and exactly why you’re going to win,” you start, shaking your head and rolling your eyes. “second, i knew you would want to know, but i also knew this is how you’d react. i didn’t think you’d want to know about us setting up an event together, like… there’s no tea to spill or whatever. it’s just boring stuff. i don’t even know him that well.”

a bold-faced lie if you’ve ever told one; you know heeseung down to the cologne he puts on every morning. and maybe there was a little more to the event planning sessions. at least five times over the past two weeks, heeseung has approached you either in the food court or at the library, and taken the seat opposite of you to chat and study a bit. not to mention, you’ve texted every single day since the two of you officially met for the first time.

but again: nothing liv needs to know. heeseung, for now, is just your little secret. the conversations you’ve shared, the little details you know about him, the sweater he’d given you a few days ago when you’d gotten cold at the library and your own sweater had gotten soaking wet due to rain and your lack of an umbrella, those are your things, special and personal and entirely yours.

“ugh. the two of you are so boring,” liv moans dramatically, tipping her head back. “i hope you hang out more after this, but only if you tell me about it.”

you shrug and glance back across the rink. heeseung has shifted positions, his arms crossed over the railing and by some stroke of luck, he’s looking at you, looking otherworldly under the shifting blue and purple lights. he smiles softly, just a quick phantom of a grin, and the only think you can do is return it with that same gentleness and warmth.

“maybe,” you say, glancing over at liv and then back at heeseung. “i guess we’ll just have to see.”

a week later, you’re sitting in your dorm room on a friday night, finalizing edits for a midterm paper, when there’s a banging at your door fifteen minutes before ten.

“heyyy! let me innn!” liv’s voice is airy and slurred through the door, so you can already guess what she’s here for.

with a heavy sigh, you stand and make your way to the door, opening it and finding your big leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the hallway. she’s dressed in her usual party attire: ripped jeans, black tank top, dirty shoes reserved specifically for the sticky basement floors of frat houses. she’s holding a metal water bottle in her hands; you can only guess what she’s mixed in it tonight.

“what’s up, liv?” you ask, leaning your shoulder against the doorframe, even though you don’t need an answer. you hadn’t anticipated her being here, so you’re already decked out in your comfy night clothes, prepared for a night in only. 

“lambda is throwing a party and you’re going with me,” she says peppily, practically jumping up and throwing herself into your room.

“liv-“

she whips around on her heels to face you, eyes glowing in the soft gold of your fairy lights. “no fighting me on this. you’ve been working hard and you need a break. so you’re going to dress like the hot bitch you are and then we’re going to lambda.”

liv is rooted to the spot, though she sways a little on her feet, and makes it known without words that she is not moving until you get ready for this dumb frat party. eager to get her drunken glare off of you, you sigh and nod, closing the door behind you, shutting off your desk light, and moving towards your wardrobe, rifling through the hangers to find a proper outfit.

you’ve been to lambda rho’s house before and it is nothing to write home about… unless, of course, you’re talking about how absolutely filthy the basement is; they have the best sized basement out of all of the frats on campus, but you swear they have never done anything to clean the floor. the first time you went, you’d been having a great time drinking well-mixed jungle juice and dancing to the best songs of the 2010s when you noticed that every step you took sounded like velcro. the floor was so sticky that you were literally having to put pressure behind pulling your shoes from the concrete. it totally killed the vibe.

but the jungle juice and occasional jello shots are great, so you persevere. besides, lambda throws the best parties on campus and you’re clearly the person to trust on party hot takes since you only go back to frats you have a good time at (sorry, sigma pi).

plus, heeseung is in lambda rho and he has to be there since he’s the social chair and all, so… you note that out of the maybe five parties you’ve been to there since the beginning of the school year, you’ve never once seen him. granted, he’s only required to be at any parties hosted while he’s the social chairman, so maybe he just didn’t go to any last semester. or maybe he’s a wallflower like you, choosing to stand on the outskirts instead of in the center of attention.

lost in your haze of heeseung thoughts, you don’t really register that you’ve finished dressing and that liv has sat you down at your desk to fix your hair. somehow, while very much drunk, your big has an easy time styling it. she’s focused intensely on the task at hand, but also manages to carry on a one-sided conversation, not realizing that you’re not responding to her. but when she moves her hands from your head and sets them on the back of your chair, you’re amazed; she’s always been good at styling and fashion (hence why she’s been in charge of the homecoming student org dance and cheer competition every fall for the last two years), but you weren’t expecting her skills to be up to par while buzzed to hell and back.

“there we go, ready to wow heeseung,” liv says matter-of-factly, a proud look on her face. when you glare at her through the mirror, she smiles and shrugs lazily, reaching to grab her water bottle and phone from your desk. “what? he’ll be there tonight and i’ve heard through the grape vine that he might have a little crush on you, so…”

you whip around at her words, hands braced against the back of your chair. something like liquid anxiety prickles under your skin, sending goosebumps across your arms. liv is friends with just about everyone in greek life, so “the grape vine” could quite literally mean anybody, but who did she find that out from anyways? when did heeseung say anything like that? did he even actually say that or is she just deadset on shipping the two of you together until it either happens or falls through?

“what?”

she looks back at you over her shoulder, one hand resting on the doorknob and your dorm keys in the other. there’s a mischievous glint in her dark eyes and your heart drops; how did you get such a schemer as a big? “oh, yeah. i was hanging out at the lambda house the other night with yeonjun. you know? heeseung’s big? and he maybe mentioned something about it. why do you wanna know?”

she sidles back up to you, pulling you out of the chair by your shoulders. “do you maybe… i don’t know… like him back? why are you so nervous?”

you shake your head, trying to will the goosebumps on your arms and lightning in your veins away. you’ve claimed a million times over the last few weeks that there is nothing more going on between you and that boy, no matter how pretty or sweet you might think he is. heeseung is just a friend, someone you just so happened to click really well with and just so happened to plan a really fun event with. there’s nothing else to say about it or the way you get excited when his name shows up on your phone or how your day immediately gets better when he walks up to you at the library without texting you first, your favorite snack and coffee in hand and a smile on his face.

there’s nothing there to unpack. you think.

“i’m not nervous. and i bet yeonjun just misheard heeseung. the two of us are just friends. i’ve told you that a million times and i’m sure he’s said the same thing.”

liv just laughs and ushers you towards the door. “okay, okay… sure, sweetheart. let’s get over there before they run out of alcohol.”

jay, the self-appointed dj for every lambda rho party, is blasting year 3000 by the jonas brothers when you and liv arrive in the basement. there’s already a large group of bodies on the dance floor, but the bar area is still pretty crowded and getting worse. liv links her arm with yours so that you won’t get separated, even though there’s no chance of you getting lost or anything.

the two of you make your way towards the bar where yeonjun is “bartending,” a term he insists on using despite the fact that all he does is pour cups of vibrant red jungle juice. blonde hair hangs over his forehead and his skin is glistening with sweat already, looking weirdly ethereal under the colorful lights that fill the room. when he sets eyes on you and liv, he smiles brightly and leans against the bartop.

“hey, you two! glad you finally showed up!” he shouts over the music. “jungle juice?”

liv nods enthusiastically, mimicking his posture and crossing her arms on top of the counter. “yes please! any chances you have jello shots tonight too?”

the boy looks around before he leans in closer to answer. “don’t tell anyone else, but i made some just for you two since you’re my favorite customers.”

liv rolls her eyes and swats at his bicep, but she’s smiling anyways. “we’re not customers, jun. you’re not even getting paid to do this. when are you gonna stop acting like you’re a real bartender, huh?”

he clenches his hand over his heart and stumbles backwards, feigning pain. “you wound me so, liv. i did something nice for you and this is how you repay me. i can’t believe this!”

but in the midst of his monologue, he bends over to open a mini fridge behind the bar and returns with a couple of jello shots. he tells you to take them here while he gets your drinks and hide them the best you can so nobody gets up in arms that he’s providing something outside of the night’s menu. he’s always been especially nice to you, mostly because of liv and his undying love for her (though platonic or romantic, you’ve never been exactly sure about), so it’s all you can do to thank him and listen to his pleads for secrecy regarding the contraband jello shots. when he’s back above bar, you switch off, him discreetly tossing the small cups in the trash.

liv, finally armed with her precious red solo cup, turns to talk to some other friends, leaving you and yeonjun alone. the music is so loud you can hardly keep your thoughts straight, which is great for keeping your mind off of what liv said earlier, but doesn’t last long when yeonjun leans in ever closer, his cologne enveloping you entirely.

“you should thank heeseung for the jello shots, by the way. i honestly hadn’t even thought to make some for you and liv because i was busy with other stuff, but he asked about making some since he knows they’re your favorite.”

your heart clenches a little at the idea that heeseung wanted to make sure that you had things you liked at his frat’s party. it’s nice to have someone looking out for small things like that, even if it means breaking a rule or two. yeonjun rests his hand on top of your head and pats gently, a knowing look in his eyes.

“listen, i know that you swear up and down the wall that you and him are just friends, but for what it’s worth, he likes you a lot. he just won’t say it. you know him. he’s kinda bad with words. it’s not really my place to make his confession for him, but just… you know. give him a chance.”

you nod dumbly and give him a half-baked smile when he pulls his hand off your head. a few girls walk up, vying for their own drinks, so you take that as your cue to walk away, red solo cup cradled in your hands. any hope of not thinking about heeseung lee has been completely undone by both liv and yeonjun. 

suddenly, you are far too sober.

two hours later, you’re five drinks in, only kept track of by the cups you have in your hand, and you’re feeling pleasantly buzzed. the lights are a little brighter, the music a little louder, liv’s arm hot and grounding around your shoulders. she’s completely gone, despite the fact that she’s only had three cups of jungle juice. she’s serenading you with dancing queen by abba, somehow getting every single word wrong. 

“fuck, i’m way too drunk for this,” she says, breaking off a line in the middle of the second verse. “i’ll sing for you next time. promise.”

you laugh and lean against her, shaking your head. “okay, livvie. sounds good.” you’re content to end your sentence there, but you have an increasing awareness of how hot it’s gotten. the amount of people packed into the basement, especially in the center of the dancefloor like this, has contributed greatly to the heat and you need some time to cool down before it makes you sick. “listen, ‘m gonna get some air. ‘t’s getting really hot.”

liv nods and hugs you to her, voice chipper but slurred heavily. “‘kay! i’ll see you in a few.” she lets you go and breaks out into the next song, somehow worse than dancing queen.

you slip out of the crowd, already feeling a little cooler now that you’ve escaped from the hot press of bodies. standing on the outskirts of the dancefloor, you consider your options. there’s the open window that a cool breeze passes through or the door by yeonjun’s bar, which you know leads directly outside with a staircase up to the back deck. while you initially planned to be within arm’s reach for liv’s sake, your ears are starting to ring from the loud music and the choice is made for you.

you wave to yeonjun as you make your way towards the door. he pauses and leans over to ask you if you’re leaving, looking a little concerned, but you shake your head and tell him what you told liv. and then you tack on the information that she’s incredibly drunk, so he should watch out for her because knowing her, she’ll be tapping out sooner rather than later. he nods in understanding and lets you go, turning back to the two frat guys, jake and chan, that are standing at the bar.

the temperature difference between the basement and outside right now is jarring, but welcomed nonetheless. you carefully traverse the stairs, not quite confident in yourself to take them confidently, seeing as your sight is currently swimming a little and your head is light. getting to the top is a feat and you feel immediately better once you’re on the back deck.

you’re so out of it that you don’t realize you aren’t alone as you lean against the railing, reveling in the way the wood digs into your forearms and the chill bites at you through the sheer long sleeves of your black shirt. you’re still very much buzzed, but you feel a little more clear-headed now that you can hear yourself think.

the sound of your name startles you and you swear you jump ten feet in the air before you whip around, hand against your heart. heeseung is halfway out the back door, a cup in his hand and that deer caught in the headlights expression you’ve come to know well over the last month or so. 

“jesus, heeseung. you scared the shit out of me!” you say, catching your breath and leaning back against the railing.

“i’m sorry! i didn’t mean to!” he finishes stepping out of the house and onto the deck with you, the door swinging shut behind him. he’s so earnest in his apology that you can’t help but smile, dropping your hand and instead taking a sip from your drink that you carried out here with you.

“you have a habit of sneaking up on me, huh?”

he joins you at the railing, leaning against it the way you are, and raises his own cup to his lips (perfect and plush and pink… enough of that). he shrugs as he drinks, wincing when it goes down rougher than he expected. the liquid that sloshes against the side is not the same color as yours, so you can only assume that one of the guys gave him something a little stronger than whatever they threw together for the jungle juice.

“i guess so,” he says through a small cough. “i don’t mean to, if that makes it any better.”

you laugh a little, nudging him with your shoulder. “it’s not a big deal, if that makes you feel better. i think it’s kinda funny.”

heeseung smiles at that and nods, keeping his eyes trained on the drink in his cup. it’s only when you’re committing his side profile to drunken memory that you realize the blush that’s crept up the back of his neck onto his cheeks and the tip of his ears. except, that sober voice inside your head argues it could just be from the cold. 

but neither of you have been out long enough for that to be the case. it’s not even that cold out here, just a little bit chilly. drunk you is having sneaking suspicions, ones that sober you would never entertain, and this is the first time you’re seeing heeseung at one of his frat’s parties, so you might as well take advantage of it all as much as you can.

“yeonjun told me what you did… the jello shots for me and liv, i mean,” you clarify the second you realize how the first sentence sounds without context. “thanks. i didn’t think you were really paying attention to that kind of stuff.”

heeseung turns his head to look at you, eyes a little wide but that soft, perfect smile offsets it nicely. he looks a little surprised that you found out about it, but not upset that yeonjun mentioned it.

“well… i mean, of course i do. that’s kinda… what i do, you know?”

he’s beating around the bush. yeonjun was right; heeseung never talks about his feelings and he sure as hell won’t offer you the words you’re waiting to hear right now. so, drunk you reasons, why is the only way to confess through words? he’s shown you how much he cares, he’s been doing it for weeks now. maybe you were suppressing your own feelings to keep liv off your back about it all, but in doing so, you’ve been diminishing heeseung’s own attempts at telling you. 

this whole thing with him has never been simply friends. love at first sight feels a little much, but you certainly have something between you and you have for weeks on end at this point. maybe it’s time to reward this beautiful boy for being so patient with you.

just as he’s beginning to turn his head away to look back towards the house, you set your cup on the railing and capture his face in your hands. there’s no moment for either of you to process what’s happening, just that one minute there’s a platonic amount of distance between you and the next, your lips are on his and it is warm and unpracticed and still unbelievably perfect. heeseung goes pliant and soft under your touch, his free hand resting gently on the small of your back. his fingers curl gently into your shirt, tethering himself to you. his other hand is still grasping his solo cup and you find yourself wishing he’d just drop the damn thing, even if it means the both of your shoes get soaked in whatever he’d been served (whiskey, you’d guess, from the smokey taste on his tongue).

he’s the first to pull away, eyes still closed for moments after. his breaths come shallow and his cheeks have gone impossibly red, his hand still against your back. you study him from this angle, closer than you’ve ever been, and somehow, you’re finding him prettier than ever before. maybe it’s the alcohol talking or the sudden lovesickness for him, but you don’t care because you finally kissed heeseung lee and left him breathless.

“what- um… what was that for?” he asks quietly, eyes fluttering open. his pupils are blown wide and awestruck (you think that’s the right word in your jungle juice induced haze).

you shrug, inching yourself a little closer towards him. he turns to meet you so your bodies run parallel to each other and finally sets his offending cup on the railing next to yours. “got tired waiting for you t’make a move.”

he makes a sound in the back of his throat and turns his head to look elsewhere, as if looking at you might make him drop dead. any doubt you had from earlier in the night that he’d told yeonjun that he liked you is swept away in a single moment; he can deny it all he wants now, but you already know the truth, so what’s the point?

“liv told me that she heard through the grape vine that you liked me…” you say softly, voice trailing off into the muffled sounds of a kesha song blasting in the basement. “is that… true?”

you watch as he draws a deep breath, squeezes his eyes closed, steels himself for whatever answer he’s about to give. with all your liquid courage now, confessing might not have been a big deal, but you know that if you’d been sober, it would be just as hard as this. but you swear you saw him drinking jungle juice down in the basement an hour and a half ago, and now he’s drinking something stronger, so he must be so naturally shy that not even alcohol can wipe it out.

finally, he lets his breath out and focuses his attention on you again, his eyes soft and pleading. don’t break my heart. please.

“yeah… yeah, i got a little drunk last weekend and told yeonjun that i thought i had feelings for you when he got me back to my dorm. i’m sorry if that makes you uncomfortable or if it ruins our friendship. i j–”

you kiss him again, hot and heavy and full of longing and words you don’t dare voice because you’ve liked him for a long time too; you were just too afraid to admit it to yourself. but now he’s spilling his heart out and you’d rather walk barefoot through broken glass before you let him go on thinking for a second longer that his feelings aren’t reciprocated tenfold.

you step impossibly closer, your bodies pressed tight and heavy, the seam unbreakable. heeseung’s hands (both thank god) rest on your waist, holding you close. he bristles under your touch as you leave one hand on his shoulder and the other sneaks around to the nape of his neck, fingers curling into the fine, soft hair there. your nails scratch lightly against his scalp and his chest shudders against yours, some small, refined gasp of approval passing from his mouth to yours as he takes his turn to kiss the breath out of you.

it’s a tiny noise, barely noticeable, barely passing as a soft breathy moan. but you hear it and it’s embarrassingly enough to have your knees going a little weak. well, it’s not just that minuscule noise; it’s everything, it’s the way heeseung’s lips move against your own with an uncharacteristic amount of surety, the way his fingers have slipped under your shimmery black top (a “donation” from liv’s closet last homecoming), the way you can feel his body coming alive under your attention. if this is going where you think it’s going, the dreams you’ve been having about him at least once a week since you first met are about to come true.

heeseung is the first to break away again, but he looks less nervous than the first time. no, this time he looks flushed and tousled and so attractive it should be illegal. when he shifts his weight from his left to right foot, his body brushes against you and the heat of him is unmistakable. even if you couldn’t feel it, you can see the way his eyelids flutter and feel the way his chest shudders against yours. you can’t help yourself; you need him.

“come back to my dorm,” you whisper breathlessly, words manifesting physically in a cloud of fog. “please.”

the boy squeezes his eyes shut again, looks up towards the sky, draws that deep breath he’s so fond of right now. you almost back out, almost say it was a joke; he just confessed his feelings and you kissed twice, so maybe it’s all a little much for him. you really like him and you don’t want to scare him off; besides, what you’re feeling right now is nothing you can’t take care of on your own back in your dorm room. just as you’re about to tell him that he can say no, he’s seemingly talked himself up enough because he looks down at you, smiles, kisses you on his own accord, and then takes your hand.

“lead the way,” he says.

you and heeseung stop at least five times on the way back to your dorm room to makeout, giggling into each other’s mouths as he presses you against a tree on the greens or as you pull him into the pools of darkness between streetlamps. every moment has him growing more confident, more certain that this isn’t just a hookup or a dream.

somewhere along the way, you text liv and tell her that you’re heading home because you’re not feeling well. it’s not farfetched, seeing as you’d broken away from her in the first place because you were feeling too hot. what happened between your departure and when the text is sent is entirely irrelevant right now. what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her and she’ll hear about it sooner rather than later anyways. 

it takes you maybe a full twenty minutes to reach your building, a feat considering how drunk you are and how obsessed you’ve been with heeseung for the last half hour. you fully expected it to take longer, but now, you stand under the golden glow of the entry to your dorm building, heeseung unlocking the door for you because you’re a little too gone right now and unwilling to take your hands off him,standing next to him, your arms hugging his free one while you lean your cheek against his shoulder. he fumbles with the key, muttering about how they should change to a keycard system instead, but he gets it eventually and you’re in.

after that, it’s practically a mad dash up to your dorm room on the third floor. your hand is twined tight around heeseung’s as you lead him up the stairs, too impatient to take the elevator right now. somewhere in the back of your mind, you’re glad that you took the time to clean your room today after class; heeseung will see a polished side of you, one that puts laundry away as soon as they’re out of the dryer, one that has glowing golden fairy lights above the window that gild your room in warmth, one that leaves books and binders stacked neatly in the shelf on your desk. not that he’ll be paying attention to any of it anyways, what with the way you can feel his cock pressing incessantly against you as you unlock your bedroom door, hot and straining.

agonizing seconds stretch into what feels like even more agonizing hours, but eventually, you get the door unlocked and guide him inside, stepping into the glow of your string lights that you’d left on before you left. you don’t even have to turn yourself around to look at him because he does it for you, turning you by your waist, pressing you fast against the back of the now-closed door.

his mouth is on yours in an instant, tongue swiping over your bottom lip, no doubt tasting the fruit punch yeonjun had added to tonight’s jungle juice recipe concoction. his hands are on your waist, curling hot into your skin, black mesh of your shirt scratching against you. it’s nice, how respectful he’s being right now, still ever the gentleman he’s been for the last month, but you don’t want nice and respectful right now. you’ve had literal dreams about this since you met him, driving your attraction to him higher with every one; you want mean and messy and rough, and that’s what you’ll get if it’s the last thing you do.

so in a bid to urge him towards where you’re really hoping this night goes, you grab at one of his wrists and drag his hand up to your chest, pressing his palm against your breast. you can feel his breath hitch against you and you smile into the kiss because how can he still be so shy when he’s kissed the breath out of you at least five times in the last forty-five minutes? either way, he gives a tentative squeeze and it feels mind blowingly good; you’ve never been one to really care much about attention focused on your tits, but heeseung makes it feel like maybe you should.

you get lost in the feeling of his lips on yours, one of his hands kneading at your chest, the other slowly slipping under your top, rough fingertips drawing up and down the skin of your stomach, so far gone that you don’t notice the thigh he’s slotted between your legs until he grinds it up against you. it’s sudden and so well-earned, some much needed friction that you’ve been craving since that second kiss on the deck in lambda rho’s backyard. he does it a second time, the hard plane of his thigh coming up hard against your clit, and your knees buckle a little, dropping you further onto him. you moan sweetly into his mouth, tilting your head back against the door as the hand on your waist works your hips against him with a scary but uncharacteristic practiced certainty. he takes the absence of your mouth against his to trail kisses on your neck, his teeth dragging along the sensitive skin, nipping and leaving love bites in his wake.

a well aimed grind of your hips, guided singularly by the boy in front of you, has you falling forward against his chest, your forehead pressed into the junction between his shoulder and neck. you keen against him in frustration, the crest rising but not breaking, no matter how hard to try to get it to.

“seung,” you cry against his skin, fingers curling tight into his sweater. “need more please.”

you almost sob in relief when you feel him nod against your neck, more so when you notice his own hips are stuttering against your leg that is bracketed by his. it’s enough to make you moan, the idea of him needing it just as much as you that he’s trying to hold himself back from getting off on your thigh too.

pressing your palms flat against his chest, you guide heeseung backwards in the direction of your bed (which you’re very suddenly glad you haven’t lofted). when the back of his knees hit the edge of the mattress, he makes quick work of kicking his shoes off and then scrambling up so that his back rests against the wall. you follow suit, toeing off your party shoes and crawling onto his lap where he’s waiting patiently, his eyes wide and the browns of his eyes drowned out by his pupils. he’s breathing hard, chest heaving.

he looks up at you as you situate yourself, his hands coming to rest on your waist again. the expression on his face is nothing short of worshipful, like you’re a deity here to wrench your well-earned respect from his hands. and he is clearly ready to hand it over without a single fight. he guides you down onto him and you follow his hands willingly, your thighs straddling his and your clothed cunt just barely grazing against his hard-on until you settle down completely in his lap, not a centimeter of distance between you. the friction and pressure have both of you gasping wordlessly and heeseung tugs desperately at your hips. you fall into him, arms around his neck and pulling him to meet you halfway, lips locked once more. you give a tentative roll of your hips and heeseung moans into your mouth, just the reaction you were anticipating.

“fuck,” he moans the second time you do it. “you’re so good.”

you’re already hot, seared through to the bone, but you feel yourself go even warmer under heeseung’s praise. you’ve imagined this a million times over the last few weeks, but nothing could ever compare to the real thing. you kiss him harder, breathe him in deep to prove to yourself that this is real, that heeseung lee is under you right now, bucking his hips up into you and matching your movements, about to make you come just from a little bit of dry humping. it would be embarrassing if you weren’t both half-gone and ridiculously desperate.

you continue to rut against him, panting hot and heavy into his mouth as he swallows every single moan and whimper you let out just to return them tenfold, his hands working you over him with a rushed ease. every roll of your hips is met with his own presses upwards. he’s working you higher and higher with each move, closer to the precipice, and while you’ve never before thought you’d find yourself in a position like this, if heeseung makes you come without taking a single item of clothing off either of you, then so be it.

as if he’s read your thoughts, he presses you back and away from him. you open your eyes for the first time in minutes and take him in: messy hair, flushed cheeks, bruised lips. no wet dream could have ever prepared you for how beautiful he looks right now.

but no matter how pretty you think he is in this moment, the sudden absence of friction has you whining loudly, pitched high and tight. when you speak, your voice trembles out of frustration. “heeseung, why’d you stop?”

he sucks in a breath and moves to push at your shoulders some more. “don’t- fuck- don’t wanna come yet, not like this.”

if you weren’t already so fucked out, you would have giggled, but right now, you just feel exasperated. he’s right; you don’t want to come like this either, but you’d also come to terms with it because it would mean that you would at least be getting the release you’re so desperately craving. and that’s been ripped away from you, at least for the moment. but when he looks up at you again, his eyebrows furrowed and eyes still wide with need, you fold immediately.

“tell me what you want.” he’s practically begging you and it sends a thrill through you, liquid lightning straight to your heart. “please.”

and how can you deny him when he’s asked you so sweetly or when you’re just as needy as he is? at this point, whatever he’d offer, you would take gladly. he’s gazing at you now, waiting anxiously for an answer, not that you have a set one; you want him in any way he wants you, nothing else matters more than that. but you take in his swollen lips and lithe fingers and your mind is off to the races.

“i-” you start, but stumble over your words. you’d been incredibly forward when you’d kissed him first, but you’ve lost all of that fire now. you can’t bring yourself to ask for what you want, even though you’re certain he’d do anything you’d ask of him.

“c’mon,” he coaxes, fingers kneading into your shoulders to ground you. “whatever you want.”

the sound of his voice is earnest, nothing short of honest, and it makes you want to trust him more than anything. so you do. you draw in a steadying breath and curl your hands into his sweater as you work yourself up to it.

“will you-” another breath. “would you eat me ou-”

“yes,” he immediately answers. you don’t even get a chance to finish the question. “fuck. i thought you’d never ask.”

he moves his hands to cup your face and pulls you into him, kissing you sweetly, his nose bumping against yours. the minuscule break in sexual tension, while in most situations would be a mood killer, is nice because it just further cements that this isn’t some random one night stand; you want to see him every day for the rest of your life after this, if he’ll let you.

somewhere between the kiss and when he breaks away from you, he’s maneuvered you so that you’re laying back against your pillows. you’ve also managed to discard your shirt (thank god, the glitter and mesh combo was starting to irritate your skin something fierce) and he’s working to get your pants off, fingers fumbling with the button; it’s as frustrating as it is adorable and he swats your hands out of the way when you reach down to help him, deadset on doing it himself, which he does manage (eventually, after a few incredibly long moments). you help him shimmy down your jeans and panties by lifting your hips a little and then you are inarguably bare in front of him, a position you’d never imagined you would be in.

and maybe heeseung is a little wonderstruck too because for a few long seconds, he sits there and stares at you in all your naked glory (or nearly naked glory, seeing as you haven’t taken your bra off yet, but he doesn’t seem to mind). you’re starting to get a little bashful and have to nudge him with a bent knee to pull him out of his stupor. he’s impossibly red at the tips of his ears as he murmurs a sweet apology that comes accompanied by a “you’re just so pretty.”

before you can muster a reply, he’s situating himself between your legs, hands pressing softly against your inner thighs to draw them apart, set eyes on his real destination. you lift your head just a little bit, watching as his eyes widen as he takes all of you in, his breath hot against your folds. his fingers curl tight into the soft skin of your thighs and you whimper at the sting, equally painful as it is exhilarating. he makes an indistinguishable groan in the back of his throat before he’s completely devouring you.

plenty of your wet dreams about the boy between your legs right now have included this very scenario: his nose bumping carelessly against your clit, a suddenly confident tongue making a show of licking up all of your arousal, your thighs already trembling. but they never could have prepared you for the actual thing because he’s giving you what is quite possibly the best head you’ve ever had.

heeseung is eating you out like a man starved, it’s absolutely obscene. his tongue works you up fast, every little moan he lets out only contributing. somewhere in the midst, he says something that sounds like “you taste s’good,” but his words are drowned out by your own moans and the sound of his mouth working you over. every pass of his tongue over your folds is as close as you’ve ever gotten to heaven, but you’re lacking something to really shove you over that precipice; and now you know heeseung is so whipped he’ll do anything you ask him to.

“seung,” you gasp out breathlessly, untangling one hand from your comforter so you can wind your fingers into his hair. he looks up at you, doe eyes big and wide and glimmering with his eyebrows drawn together, a questioning look without pulling away to speak. you’re about to ask him when his nose bumps hard against your terribly sensitive clit and your word breaks off before the first syllable can even leave your lips. “fuck— seung, can you— can you add your fingers?”

you’re not quite used to asking for what you want, at least verbally; maybe it’s because any previous partners weren’t keen on getting you to verbalize, maybe it’s because they never particularly cared and just did what they thought was good. but heeseung is pliant and willing to please in any way he can, so you feel less embarrassed this time around because he’s made it entirely clear that your pleasure is his main priority.

he doesn’t nod, doesn’t say anything, just closes his eyes again and goes back to work. you almost think he either didn’t hear you or is straight up ignoring you before you feel it. he pulls his hand from your right thigh slowly, letting his fingertips drag lightly against your skin; the menace is teasing you, where did that come from? but you don’t even have much time to internally complain about him holding out on you because he’s suddenly slipping two fingers into you, long, deft limbs that expertly seek out that spot inside you. he presses against it once, twice, three times, each one drawing out a whine from you.

it’s just what you need, the extra friction pushing you up that incline, closer and closer to the dropoff. when your back arches off the bed and your thighs close around his head, boxing him in against your pussy, heeseung knows he’s got you right where you want to be and then he doesn’t let up. it’s an onslaught of pressure, four different points of sensation, and you’re on the verge of tears. he’s making a complete mess of you, utilizing all he can to get you over that edge. you’re whining his name like it’s the only word you know, “yes” and “fuck” and “oh my god” getting lost in your slurred speech; he’d be evil incarnate if he denied you what you’re so beautifully begging for.

he presses incessantly at that spongy place inside you, nose bumping against your little bundle of nerves, moans growing more frequent, all while his tongue tries to catch every single drop of arousal. and then there you go, ecstasy taking over like liquid heat in your veins. his name sounds like pure euphoria on your tongue, mixed with your moans and whines. he thinks he could come just from this alone, your cum in his mouth and your thighs pressed tight around him, but he holds off because there’s only one place he wants to leave his release (if you’ll let him, that is).

“shit.” 

you sound fucked out, completely gone and heeseung swears he’s never heard anything sexier. you tug at his hair a little bit, feeling completely overstimulated but still so good, a shock to your system as he pulls his fingers out of you and lets his tongue work over you just a little bit longer (to make sure you’re clean, he reasons to himself). 

eventually, he does pull away and you have to fight the urge to whine again. his eyes are unfocused and glossed over, his chin practically dripping in your arousal. hell, his tongue darts out to get the last little bit of your cum at the corner of his lips and you nearly orgasm all over again.

“was it good?” he asks softly and you barely hold yourself back from laughing. he just made you come harder than any previous partner ever has, given you the best head in the world, and he’s asking you if it was good? he’s insane for thinking it was anything short of perfect.

but you don’t say that. you reach for his sweater, fingers curling tight into the cotton and tugging him down towards you. he catches himself by his hands, his arms bracketing you easily, before he completely crashes into you. there’s a long moment where he just stares down at you, lovestruck and pretty, before he lowers himself to kiss you. you can taste yourself on his lips, on his tongue, and you moan a little bit, feeling a little embarrassed, but one of his hands moves from its place on the mattress to cradle your cheek and that alone drives it away. 

one of your arms sneaks over his shoulder, your fingers tangling into the damp hair at the nape of his neck, while the other sneaks under his sweater, the shirt he wears underneath until the tips of your fingers brush the soft, pliant skin of his stomach. you can feel the gentle ridges of abs and a small piece of you shivers with giddiness. regardless, you enjoy a few seconds of running your fingers over his stomach before you push a little more incessantly at the offending pieces of material. he takes it for what it is: a plea to get rid of the clothes. after all, it’s not fair that you’re almost entirely undressed and he hasn’t taken a single article off.

you watch dazedly as heeseung sits back onto his heels, your eyes following his arms as he crosses them over himself, grasps at the hems, pulling them over his torso, his arms, his head before they land haphazardly on the floor next to your bed. every inch revealed to you makes your mouth water, his skin taut and soft and glowing in your fairy lights. you can’t help but remind yourself that dreams and an overactive imagination could never live up to the real thing because he’s very much the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen.

you’re entirely prepared to continue your makeout session, but heeseung seems to have other ideas because once his tops are discarded, he begins making work of his jeans. you make a soft noise in the back of your throat when you realize what he’s doing and he looks up at you, fingers stilling at his belt, his eyes wide.

“is something wrong?”

he sounds so sincere, it kind of makes you want to cry. but you shake your head earnestly, propping yourself up on your elbows so you can look at him better. “no, no! everything is fine. i guess i just wasn’t expecting you to take your pants off so soon.”

he quirks an eyebrow at you and dons that pretty little smile of his, teasing but not really. “well, you’re almost completely undressed. figured it was only right that i do the same, y’know?”

and you laugh a little because it’s true and because he’s just so cute, he laughs too, soft and quiet. you generally think sleeping with someone is fun, but you’ve never had as much fun as you are right now. maybe it’s because it’s with heeseung and you like him so much already, so the playfulness comes easy; it doesn’t feel tense the way it has with others.

so you watch him handle his belt, the button on his jeans, the zipper. you watch, mouth watering once more, as he slips out of them, leaving his boxers, which have a dark wet patch on them. the sight alone would make you groan, but you can see the outline of his cock and you almost lose it completely. so you decide to resume the impatient act because you are still very much so; as cute as the playful routine is, you haven’t forgotten the exhilarating rush of trying to get to your dorm as fast as possible and the unpracticed fumbling that’s followed since then.

you reach for him and he doesn’t hesitate, letting you pull him on top of you by his shoulders, fitting your mouths together in a messy kiss, all teeth and tongues. your hands are in his hair again, his own slide underneath you to make work of your bra, unclasping it and then pulling the straps away from your shoulders, down your arms, making you let go of him for a quick few seconds so that he can pull it off completely and toss it god knows where in your room.

you’re distantly aware that you’re entirely bare to him now, but his mouth is working at your throat, dragging his teeth along the sensitive skin of your neck (he is strangely good at distracting you, you’re learning), so you don’t feel as shy as you did just a handful of minutes ago. either way, he’s sucking hickies into your shoulders, your collarbones, any skin that has a little bit of give to it that lets him leave love bites in his wake. so lost in the haze, you realize a little too late that he’s working his way towards your chest, but it doesn’t even matter, not when he has one hand kneading at one and his mouth at the other, tracing lines over your skin to quell the sting of each pinch, each little nip of teeth. your nipples pebble under his attention and while this never usually does much for you, you still find yourself getting antsy because it’s heeseung. everything he’s done for weeks has gotten you worked up, why would that stop now?

it doesn’t help that he’s grinding against you, his hips canting against your own for any semblance of friction. your arousal is no doubt contributing to the wet patch on his boxers and the idea of it almost has your eyes rolling into the back of your head. his cock feels hot and heavy against your folds, the head bumping against your clit, and all of it feels so delicious that you let out a crisp, high whine, twining your fingers into heeseung’s soft hair and tugging gently.

he pulls himself away from your chest and when you look at him, you almost moan. his lips are swollen, slick with spit, and his gaze has gone misty. he looks at you expectantly, blinking slow and lips pouted as he waits. you’re not even sure what you want from him right now, at least nothing specific because you want everything from him. you’re about to tell him to go back to doing what he was originally because it did feel good, but then he lands a particularly well-timed grind against you and you’re gasping.

“fuck,” you whimper, tossing your head back a little. your fingers tighten in his hair and from somewhere south of you, he laughs a little, light and easy and airy.

“that what you want from me?” he questions, pulling himself up over you, catching your chin between his thumb and pointer finger. in any other situation, it might come off as intimidating and teasing, but heeseung is all doe-eyed and halfway to heaven right now, so it comes off more desperate to please than anything. either way, you nod. “all you had to do was ask. you know that.”

you nod and pull him down to kiss you by the fingers you have twisted in his hair. he groans against you, moving his hand from your chin to your jaw, angling you just so. somewhere in the kiss, you murmur a soft, “seung, i want you,” and he groans a little, nodding against you. he pulls away and you chase after him, but he’s sitting up, moving lightning quick to get his boxers off, abandoned somewhere on the linoleum floor with everything else.

and then it hits you that you’re both completely bare. you lean back on your elbows, looking him over once more, though your focus lingers mostly on the skin newly revealed to you. his thighs are toned and sturdy, the skin plush, and while you’d love to stare at them a little bit more, your attention is quickly drawn to his dick. it’s big, the head an agitated red and leaking precum, and your mouth is watering at the thought of getting him in your position and giving him the best head of his life.

you actually start to move to do so, but heeseung anticipates it and moves quick, pressing you back into your mattress. his dark doe eyes are drowning in desire and you shudder under his gaze. he’s on you again instead, hips melded to yours in your nth kiss tonight. he’s got his weight rested on one elbow beside your head while his other arm is free to move around, his hand tracing from your shoulder, your chest, smoothing across your stomach. 

his fingers eventually land on your thigh, curling into the soft inner flesh, and he hikes it up around his waist before dropping his hand to his cock. his lips trail from your lips to your neck and shoulders, nipping at the skin as he jerks himself off. you toss your head back against your pillows, whimpering at every little graze of his teeth against your skin. 

but what’s really driving you crazy is the heat of him against you. the head of his cock bumps against your clit, this time with no fabric barrier separating them, and you’re not sure if heeseung is even meaning for the touch, but it has you feeling hot all over again, slick leaking out of you again. you’re getting impatient, heel pressing hard into his lower back and your fingernails biting into the flesh of his biceps.

“heeseung,” you whine out, canting your hips up against his; you hear him suck in a breath through clenched teeth, a hiss of air. “need you.”

he shivers against you, a teary whimper of “need you too” granted in return as he pulls his face from your neck so that he can watch you as he finally gets to what you’ve wanted since this whole thing started. on a short teasing streak, he taps the head of his cock against your clit and you whine, turning your head into your pillow and curling your fingers into his arms, which earns a laugh.

“stop playing,” you tell him, rolling your hips upwards and into him.

he hisses again and bites at his bottom lip, nodding. he slips from your clit to your entrance and even just the little shred of pressure you get has you wanting to moan out for him. but then he starts pressing in all the way, slipping into your cunt with ease and you are not prepared for just how full you feel. your back arches and he lets off a tempered moan, stifled through a lip bite. when he bottoms out, his hips flush with your own, you release a breath as you adjust to the size of him, which doesn’t take long.

“seung,” you drawl, grabbing his attention. “move please.”

and he does as you bid, pulling out before he thrusts back in. it takes a few moments for him to find a pace that works, but when he does, it’s perfect. his hips roll against yours delectably, the sounds of skin meeting skin and your shared moans filling the small dorm room. he’s shored up over you, one elbow pressed deep into the thin mattress holding him up, and when your eyes aren’t squeezed tight in ecstasy, you watch the way he bites his lip, furrows his eyebrows, shudders as you clench around him.

“god, you’re s’tight. feels so good,” he whimpers at one point, his head hanging over your own as he tries to keep a steady pace. his words are shattered, breaking off in the middle or slurred together, a verbal manifestation of how you physically feel.

one thrust hits that just right spot inside you and you can’t hold but moan loudly, back arching off the mattress and your head pressing into your pillows. heeseung inhales sharply above you as you clench tight around him and then, with you still keening, you feel him sit up, taking his warmth with him. his hands are on your hips seconds later and he’s angling you, doing everything in his power to replicate it again and again.

“fuck, i’ve wanted this for so long,” he says, one hand on your thigh and the other working deft fingers on your clit. he’s a quick learner it seems because all of it is coming together to whisk your orgasm closer, a wave of white heat washing over you. “saw you at my frat’s halloween party ‘nd thought you were so pretty. woulda come up t’you that night if i knew you felt this good.”

your breath hitches more than it has all night and you cant your hips upwards in an attempt to meet his thrusts. somewhere in the midst of your pleasure, you tell him you’re going to come and he nods fast, fingers going into overtime to get you there. that knot inside you winds up tight and then snaps like a rubber band stretched too thin, hot and fast. your pussy locks around his cock and then he’s there above you, bracing himself with his hand, to swallow the particularly sharp whine of his name you let out and any stray too-loud moans that might slip away and wake the neighbors (as if you haven’t already).

when your vision finally clears and your thighs stop trembling, his hips are still snapping into yours to seek his own release, pushing you into the territory of overstimulation, but any pain you have bleeds into pleasure until you can’t tell which is which; the only thoughts you can manage are that heeseung feels heavenly inside you that it’s almost blinding and you don’t know if you even really want him to stop. 

but his hips begin to stutter, his cock twitching against your fluttering walls, and you faintly register that he’s about to pull out of you. blindly, your hand searches for any part of him to pull him back over you, legs locking around his waist. he protests, some flurry of words about how he doesn’t want to make you uncomfortable (not a single one intelligible), while you whine and pull him towards you by his shoulder.

“wanna feel you, seung,” you say, a limp arm winding around him and inching him closer until your noses are brushing and you can feel his breath fanning across you, still smelling faintly of his alcohol from earlier. “don’t worry about it, ‘kay? y’said you’d do anything, so please. i wanna feel you s’bad.”

that seems to be enough to egg him on because he nods and you catch him in a messy kiss before he groans against your lips as he finally comes. he lands a few more sharp thrusts that have you whining, fucking his cum into you, before he finally falls still. his breath is hot on your shoulder as he recovers.

usually, once you’re done, your select partner of the night pulls out, maybe cleans you up, and then leaves. it’s been a while since you’ve had someone who wants to stay (at least, you hope heeseung wants to stay) and you’re not quite sure where to go from here. there hadn’t really been much discussion about where your relationship was going to lead after this, even with all of the lingering glances on campus and your impromptu study sessions at the library, so you’re worrying a little about what comes after.

stuck in your own head, you don’t even notice that heeseung has pulled his head from your shoulder and is looking at you until his thumb works your bottom lip out from beneath your teeth and then wipes away some of the sweat at your hairline. the furrow of his eyebrows carve deep lines into the space between them as he studies you, looking like an angel with the way the fairy lights strung up above him give him a faint golden halo.

“what’re you thinking about?” he asks softly, brushing his fingers across your cheek. it’s a wholly different energy than just a few minutes ago, but the change isn’t unwelcome.

you shrug, blinking up at him and reaching to push some of his hair out of his eyes, the strands matted to his forehead with sweat. “just wondering what we do now, i guess.”

heeseung’s eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles a little, his shoulders shaking with a breathy little laugh. you almost punch at his shoulder for laughing at you when he cranes his head down to kiss you gently, the first that isn’t rushed in some way. he nudges your nose with his when he pulls back just a little bit.

“can we worry about all the big stuff later?” he questions; you feel the words as much as you hear them, his lips barely brushing your own as he says them. “for now, how about we clean up first and then… i’m hungry. are you?”

it’s your turn to laugh, but you nod. you’re still a little drunk, your however many cups of jungle juice compared to his measly one whiskey.

“so we clean up and then go get taco bell? it’s, like, the only fast food place still open at this hour.”

“you do know that the line is gonna be insane, right? like, half of campus goes there after getting drunk.”

heeseung lets another quiet laugh loose and sits up, pulling you up with him and then into his lap, his dick still snug inside you. the feel of it doesn’t wind you up again like you thought it might, but it’s a nice reminder that he’s here, that this all actually happened. he rests a hand on your thigh and lets his thumb trace lines into the skin there absently.

“then i guess we’ll have time to talk about what you wanna do now,” he says sincerely, the smile on his face soft.

you have so many words you want to say, a million sentences tornadoing in your head right now, all jumbled up and lacking any sense of coherency. so instead, you cup his cheeks in your hands and return the kiss from just a few moments ago. he meets you halfway, all soft and pliant and giving, everything you could have dreamed up.

“wanna shower?” you ask when you pull away, giggling when he chases after you for another kiss. “feel like it might be a little more effective than a rag.”

the boy raises an eyebrow and eyes you suspiciously. “you tryin’ to go for a round two? because that’s what it sounds like right now.”

you push at his shoulders and laugh when he catches your wrists in his hands, pulling you into a third kiss. “wasn’t my intention, but i won’t turn down the idea.”

“i’ll think about it,” he responds as he taps at your hips and lifts you off of him. his seed starts to leak out with his cock no longer there to hold it in and you feel incomplete without him, but when he stands and offers you a hand to help you out of bed, suddenly the feeling of emptiness isn’t as oppressive.

you teeter across your room, opening the wardrobe to pull out the two towels you have and your shower caddy. heeseung accepts the towel you extend to him graciously, wrapping it around his waist. when you’re done securing your own towel, he’s already waiting for you by the door, one hand on the knob and the other reaching out towards you once you get close enough to him. and then you’re two people walking down the hall hand in hand, wrapped in matching pink towels towards the unisex bathroom. it’s a little unconventional, maybe, but you don’t think you’d have it any other way.

liv probably would though, but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. heeseung’s your little secret after all.

© hoshologies 2023. do not translate, copy, or repost my work on any site.

#heeseung x reader #lee heeseung smut #heeseung smut #enhypen smut #kpop smut #writing.fic #smut.fic #stories.fic #heeseung.fic #enha.fic

[dangermousie]

My favorite non-danmei web novels

Since some of you were interested, I decided to make this list. It’s in an alphabetical order since to figure out which I like more than the other is too hard. I have either finished all of these or enough to have an opinion. 

1000 Miles of Bright Moonlight - one of my ultimate favorites, this would make such an epic drama! A smart as hell heroine, a hero who is a monk and a warrior (but also terminally?) ill and such a vivid world and amazing secondary characters (heroine’s brother is possibly my favorite supporting character of all time) and so much angst and happy ending. This has an amazing romance but it’s not romance-centric if it makes sense - ML doesn’t appear for a while. But once he does, it’s worth it!

Apocalypse Arrival - Gong Xinwen’s novels are made just for me. Her heroines are always powerful as fuck and rescue abused MLs. In this novel, our heroine who lives in the post-apocalyptic world, wakes up right before that apocalypse happens. She forms a survival crew and also rescues ML who has miraculous blood and has been drained of it and is now hunted after the rescue for it. SO GOOD!!!

The Blue Whisper - the drama was so-so, but the novel is a bona fide angst masterpiece, which really delves into what it feels like to be imprisoned or to love.

Black Moonlight Holds the BE Script - so fucked up, so good, with monster hero who learns to love and be human and heroine who learns to love and be human (but from the other side, her tower of perfection.) Much better than the drama.

Chang’an’s Greatest Beauty - a starkly realistic look at what happens to a beautiful period woman with no options. She becomes an outside mistress of a powerful aristocrat who she loathes. The delight is when ML, who barely thinks of others as human, falls in love with her and realizes she does not care about him and descends into regret and despair.

Chang Feng Du - reading it right now. Amazing ML and FL who grow together, clever plot, arranged marriage to love etc etc. Oh, and one point he feeds her his blood to keep her alive, what’s not to love?

Dandere General and His Lord - hi there, Gong Xinwen! God, I love this one. Heroine transmigrates from modern world into a brutal slaveholding world at war (think something like Warring States era.) Our heroine transmigrates into the body of a noblewoman who just hung herself. When she comes to, she discovers that woman’s twin brother was the ruler of a city poisoned by a rival claimant and the besieging army of said claimant is about to take the city and original occupant of the body and the rest of the family chose suicide as a way to avoid dishonor. Our heroine refuses, schemes with advisors to pass as the brother and rally the troops. Once the invaders are defeated, she keeps on the masquerade and rides off to one of the never-ending wars “she” is summoned to. Our hero couldn’t be farther from this. A slave and a son of a slave, he’s escaped a horrific, starving childhood during which he narrowly avoided being murdered or raped, and ended up in the army. When the story opens, he distinguished himself in battle and as a reward, he and a few of his fellow slave warriors are invited to a banquet, where they are given some alcohol and to be playthings of any nobles who want them. One of them does not survive this but ML is lucky - heroine feels terrible and so “claims” him for herself. Instead she just tends to his wounds and sends him back. She does not fancy him or anything, she is just a human being with a conscience. And the story goes from there.

Doomed to Be Cannon Fodder - I hesitated to put this one on the list because by the end I was not keen on how misogynistic novel got to original female lead but it was one of my earliest novels and I loved it for 90% and it’s fucking hilarious at times. Heroine transmigrates as bit villainess into a novel, all she wants is not to die, but her new attitude of “pls stay away” catches the attention of her terrifying general husband. Honestly, imo still worth it.

Dreamer in the Spring Boudoir - my n1 novel on this list, smart and fierce and don’t really read this for romance because it does not start until really late, but ice cold heroine x ice cold hero both of equal brains and ruthlessness is everything. I went from loathing the ML to finding him fascinating to adoring him (and yet he softened around the edges only for FL, he never became “nice”) and loved FL throughout; secondaries are epic. If you read only one non-danmei web novel, make it this one.

The Emperor’s Beloved Ugly Girl - my n2 novel on this list. Our heroine is the unlucky laundry maid A’Chou. She is a di daughter of an upperclass family but her family got destroyed in one of the political upheavals of the time and A’Chou, only a small child at the time, was the only survivor and was made an enslaved laundry maid. Due to various events, at the start of the novel she is a laundry maid in a minister’s household and the minister’s beloved daughter is having a fit because she’s supposed to marry the former Crown Prince which may have been great a few years back but Crown Prince had since been deposed, tortured, imprisoned and now is living in the middle of nowhere under conditions that are too meager to be called house arrest. And he’s seriously crippled too. Understandably, the young lady doesn’t want to marry him! She’d rather kill herself and so she does. And so, a desperate plan is hatched - why don’t we pretend the laundry maid is the di daughter of the minister’s household and send her off? And so A’Chu is sent as the bride. She arrives to discover a broke, seriously injured man on the verge of death...and we go from there. This is so gorgeous and tender and slow in just the right way and like AAAAAA! Secondary OTPs (one of which is MM) are also epic.

Futu Tower - the drama was terrible but the novel is such a lovely, dark exploration of coming back to life, for the ML from his dark revenge-strewn path and for heroine from not being allowed wishes of her own. She is a tribute bride, he’s a (fake) eunuch, they are both servants who use themselves to achieve goals and find peace and happiness together.

Heroine Saves a Gentleman - Gong Xinwen novel so we have a tough martial artist lady saving a very upper class scholar and it goes from there.

Husband Be a Gentleman - schemer meet schemer. He’s an idle prince she’s perfect daughter, in reality both are wolves out for blood. Mmmm.

I’ll Be the Male Lead’s Sister in Law - one of my all time favorite novels. Heroine is made to marry a disabled nephew of the emperor. He used to be a victorious god of war but went mad and now is basically locked away and kept as a beast. GOD I LOVE THIS NOVEL SO MUCHHHHH! So much hurt/comfort and awesome OTP and after he eventually recovers, all he wants to do is to fight and murder things and dote on wifey. MMM. He’s honestly one of my fave MLs.

I Married a Disabled Tyrant After Transmigrating - if you have a Florence Nightingale complex, this is for you. Heroine wakes up as tribute bride to an almost dead dragon lord and slowly nurses him back to life as his rivals try to murder him. They are both utter adorable babies!

Joy of Life - there is NO romance in this one (ML is polygamous) but this is such a smart, snarky delight.

Let the Villain Go - another Gong Xinwen novel, this and Apocalypse Arrivals are AUs of each other. Heroine is surviving in the apocalypse, ML is the “bugbear” of the world but in reality just reacting to all abuse and torture and after she accidentally saves him, devotes himself. Fun fun fun!

Love In Another Life: My Gentle Tyrant - so so fucked up in the best way! ML cannot live with OR without heroine. It opens on them banging in jail night before her execution (ordered by him) with corpses of men he killed for trying to defile her cooling nearby. If you want healthy relationships with respectful boundaries, gentle and considerate male leads who are modern men in period clothes, OP heroines who have everyone help them and are OP to the max, fluff and wholesomeness, that is about the worst book for you.If you want complexity, dysfunction, darkness, pain and an absolutely lyrical even if fucked up story, come right IN!!!!I am so fucking in love with the melancholy heroine, with ruthless psycho hero and the endless regret and devotion and paaaaain!

Nightfall (Ever Night) - so long but also so smart and unusual and bloody and tho it’s not primarily a romance, you will never see another ML who loves his FL as much as Ning Que does his Sang Sang. 

Princess Agents - dark as fuck, with the best slow burn and heroine who kicks metric tons of ass.

The Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage - this is probably the one “typical” novel on this list, heroine is reborn as her youngest self and gets revenge on those who wronged her last time around. It is really really well-written and heroine is competent, hero is doting and powerful etc. It’s not a trope I tend to love but I do when it’s done THIS well.

Rebirth of the Tyrant’s Pet: Regent Prince is Too Fierce: Borgias cnovel style! Our heroine was empress in last life and put her husband on the throne tho he did not love her. However, he had her executed and had his half-brother carry out the orders and heroine died horrifically. She opens her eyes and she’s a little girl again. The OTP this time around is heroine and half-brother executioner. Why do I love it? Heroine is smart and tough but also this is a rare rebirth novel where heroine does NOT decide to seek revenge for past life wrongs because they haven’t happened yet! In fact, she sees ML abused and stands up for him because he’s a kid and no kid should be mistreated and this go around he hasn’t done anything wrong. She also gets and likes her former life husband. Anyway, this is fakecest galore because she’s supposed to be their half-sister and while she knows (from past life) she is not, they do not and fall for her anyway. ML is especially gonzo, at one point carving chunks of his flesh to save her. He’s feral and unhinged and she’s the one person he worships because she protected him and like - it’s all awesome. (I love secondary ML too.)

Reborn to Love Lord Qiansui - yes, this is a eunuch novel! If you like gender tropes reversals, this one is for you. Heroine is a tough martial artist, hero is a smart as hell and powerful eunuch. A real eunuch. Heroine finds out she owes him her life and decides to protect him. This is a total delight and an awesome love story between two really scarred people. And yes, there is sex - heroine literally reads manuals on pegging :P

Return of the Swallow - so freaking long! But really good. Heroine is neither transmigrator nor reincarnator, just a smart period woman. She is a lost family daughter taken back in. Her father is a minister in a dying empire (father-daughter relationship is one of the best things in this novel), her OTP is enemy general, and the smartness and the awesomeness of this all knows no bounds.

Revenge of the Cannon Fodder Chambermaid - I remember starting this and loving the realistic feel and the heroine and wanting to stab the hero and @mercipourleslivres telling me to be patient. She was right, by the end I was on board with both the hero (who was abused and is rather autistic-coded) and the OTP. Anyway, heroine is a servant who was a concubine in the last life and got killed as part of a rich family’s harem intrigues. In this life, she just wants to keep her head down but her life gets derailed anyway. She gets sold away and eventually made a servant in the household of an exiled prince who takes a fancy to her and she endures it because what choice does she have? All she wanted was to serve out her term and become a small time merchant. This is quite realistic about lack of options for women, especially lower class women or upper class male attitudes (ML is never vicious or mean to FL but it does not initially occur to him to wonder if she fancies him or enjoys being his concubine or w/e.) It is a DELIGHTFUL slow burn tho as they grow to love each other and grow together and become one of the most wholesome cnovel couples out there.

To Be a Virtuous Wife - some people prefer 8 treasures trousseau but I never warmed up to that one. This one is so good, with smart people (who actually enjoy sex, a ratity) and a perfect mix of plot and romance.

Transmigrator Meets Reincarnator - my very first web novel. A lot lighter than a lot of the ones on this list but a total delight. Heroine transmigrates into a novel as the heroine; she has no interest in drama or chasing true love, she just wants to live a nice life with her nice husband. Too bad for her, her husband has reincarnated into his younger self and remembers how she betrayed him, so is not interested. This one is funny and light and romance doesn’t start till late on but a total delight!

The Yandere Came During the Night - a bit of fluff that’s oddly delightful. Heroine is reborn as a (fake) sister of ML, she hurts her legs saving him and the “siblings” form a bond that ends up in fakecest delight. They are both smart and efficient and he becomes a sexy marquis etc.

#cnovel #the yandere came during the night #to be a virtuous wife #transmigrator meets reincarnator #so I married a disabled tyrant after transmigrating #chang feng du #the emperor's beloved ugly girl #ever night #nightfall #joy of life #Revenge of the Cannon Fodder Chambermaid #Reborn to Love Lord Qiansui #return of the swallow #doomed to be cannon fodder #i'll be the male lead's sister in law #Rebirth of the Tyrant’s Pet: Regent Prince is Too Fierce #The Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage #princess agents #Love In Another Life: My Gentle Tyrant #let the villain go #apocalypse arrival #husband be a gentleman #heroine saves a gentleman #futu tower #Dreamer in the Spring Boudoir #dangere general and his lord #Chang’an’s Greatest Beauty #black moonlight holds the be script #the blue whisper #1000 miles of bright moonlight

[honey-minded-hivemind]

For the Creed of the Diamonds AU, let's figure out which Diamonds the ferals are:

Sabretooth: Tawny Diamond

Wolverine: Black Diamond

Beast: Blue Diamond

Laura/X-23: Brown Diamond

Reader: Yellow Diamond

They made up the Great Diamond Authority, where each one ruled a part of the gem empire and ran a certain aspect of its society. The oldest three were Tawny Diamond, Black Diamond, amd Blue Diamond, who were also the largest of the Diamonds... And then there were the two youngest, and smallest, Diamonds, Brown Diamond and Yellow Diamond...

Tawny Diamond was in charge of punishments and one half of the gem army, focusing on strong soldiers and ruthless warriors, and would collect the shards of the gems he had shattered as trophies or for experiments...

Black Diamond was in charge of rewards and one half of the gem army, focusing on strategists and common soldiers, and was known to have liked colonies closer to Homeworld...

Blue Diamond was in charge of laws and experiments, helping build up Homeworld and make many weapons, rejuvenators, and injectors for the armies, as well as run courts on Homeworld for disputes among gems...

Brown Diamond was in charge of reports and fleets, finding new galaxies and planets to conquer, and sending soldiers amd scouts to clear out any organic life forms, and had a liking for water planets...

And Yellow Diamond was in charge of rewards and celebrations on Homeworld, being known to make extravagant gifts and throw lavish balls, and had a knack for making other gems feel important and special...

When Yellow Diamond finally received their first colony, a resource rich planet called Earth, it was the beginning of the end of Era One. With Earth came a rebellion, a gem who called themselves Citrine, who defied Homeworld and sought to rip Earth from Yellow Diamond's clutches-! Yet Yellow Diamond put up a fight, even calling the other Diamonds of this dastardly gem. But they did not care, and told the youngest Diamond to finish what they started.

It would be the worst mistake they ever made, and it would cost all of Homeworld dearly...

For the horrible Citrine... SHATTERED Yellow Diamond!

It was the worst event the Empire had ever known. The armies of Yellow Diamond wept, their servants poofed in despair and pain, their loyal advisors and guards could only scream as the remains lay in the dirt, bright yellow and faded, like the dying embers of a star...

And the Diamonds?

They, for once, regretted their choices. If only they had been there to advise their fellow Diamond... if only they had sent their own soldiers... if only they had told them how strong strong were... if only they'd been kinder, more caring to them...

If only they'd actually cared.

In their grief-filled rage, the called back all of Homeworld's forces from Earth, and swore vengeance on Citrine! With their combined powers, they blasted the planet, sealing its fate, and leaving a curse buried under the surface... One day, they hoped it would destroy the defective Citrine, and bring justice for Yellow Diamond...

And thus began Era Two, an era filled with mourning, new laws, and the worst punishments the empire wouod face, without the bright Yellow Diamond to help guide them...

(Imahine a random gem who was once from Yellow Diamond's court wrote this. It could be from maybe Kurt or Kitty, who I imagine were Reader's two friends back on Homeworld in their court, and who miss Diamond Creed Reader dearly... Or it could be from another gem from a different court entirely... Or even from Yellow or Gold Pearl Creed Reader...)

#honeycomb thoughts #platonic yandere marvel #yandere platonic marvel #platonic yandere xmen #yandere x-men #platonic yandere marvel x reader #platonic yandere xmen evolution #platonic yandere xmen evolution au #♦️creed of the diamonds💠 au #💎x men gem au #Diamond Creed Reader #creed!reader

[cock-holliday]

Yknow when I was in high school I, along with the only out lesbian and only out gay man in our year, helped form our school’s first GSA. I thought I was cishet at the time and just an ally, and then knew I was bi and was in a “gay relationship” with someone who did not go to school with us, so I was closeted to anyone besides my friends. All of the rest of the membership was “straight” as far as we knew.

Our advisor was also straight but enthusiastic. She meant well but she would pick out people she thought might join the group and thought to pull them from class to ask and we had to explain why that was a terrible idea. We all got shit for being in the club. The out gay kids got it so much worse.

Then on the flip side, a good friend of mine seemed very gay. I was out to my circle and was selfishly proud of my gaydar for being able to pick up that he was queer. We three tried to nudge him to come out. It was like we had found him out and of course we wouldn’t judge, so we prodded and poked and “your secret is safe with us.” It was hypocritical of me to try to get the answer I was looking for privately, while also being closeted publicly. He didn’t owe me anything and yet being In with the queers made me feel like I should get him to confirm he was One Of Us.

Then suddenly he stopped replying jokingly with our prods and grew very uncomfortable and quiet instead. We backed off with the change, but really shouldn’t have been so forward to begin with.

He was one of the first people I came out to as trans years later, and he confided in me that he WAS queer, but a friend he disclosed to outed him to his parents and it forced him so deeply back into the closet. My trio would never have outed him to his family, but we were hardly any better with pressuring him. Hints he was welcome to share was one thing, badgering him was another. Then someone wore him down and betrayed his trust, making it impossible for him to come out before moving away for college.

We wanted more community in our tiny town, we wanted him to be part of that secret inner circle, and we all knew how miserable it was to be closeted. We had good intentions and yet still had no right to try to force someone to adhere to our timeline. And because he trusted someone to share his identity before he was ready, he ended up in a much worse place than if he just continued at his own pace!

I graduated high school 10 years ago. This isn’t ancient history.

My county never instilled protections for LGBT folks and friends of mine got told to their face they got fired for being gay. Matthew Shepard was killed in a hate crime in the early 2000s and for my entire growing up his name was wielded like a threat. People were afraid to “end up like matt shepard.”

Friends of mine still had to elope to another state to marry when we were adults because marriage equality wasn’t a thing in our state. Marriage equality nationally has only been a thing since 2015!

The risks and danger are not some bygone era now since 2015–it is real and tangible and still an issue! And that’s “just” being a gay man. Outing people can be life-ruining. It can be deadly. “Gay-bashing” is still a thing! We have no right to force someone to come out, not publicly, and still not privately!

It is not our choice no matter how progressively you spin it!

#LJsm

[mihrsuri]

So @boleynecklace asked what Elizabeth (1998) and The White Princess might look like in the Tudors OT3 universe and okay, THOUGHTS (please bear in mind I haven’t actually seen The White Princess or read it but I have vibes from gifs)

So the White Princess is kind of completely flipped on it’s head because I don’t know if this universes PGreggs can hate The Tudors so much here (although I don’t know, she might manage it! I think her Anne Boleyn hate might be transferred to Bessie Blount?) just because uh, yeah.

But also women in Philippa Gregory novels cannot be friends ever so unfortunately the Ultimate Evil is still Margaret Beaufort :sighs: because she manipulated and murdered when EOY/Henry VII/Richard III were in a very happy triad and she actually murdered her grandchildren! And also got Richard killed because she wanted to be the Power Behind The Throne. But it’s okay because it turns out Elizabeth Woodville and EOY saved Richard with their magic powers and so actually, Henry was a pure beautiful York Child and unfortunately Arthur died because Cursed Tudor Blood or something.

(Also Anne Neville is obviously an evil bitch as well).

Elizabeth (1998) is such a different movie though. I think it might start with Elizabeth being appointed as her brothers advisor (official) after her fathers unofficial abdication in 1556 - at this point she and Robert are married and have a four year old daughter Anne (Nanette).

Francis Walsingham, determined to make England Protestant and Mary of Guise who is determined to make sure her daughter marries Prince Thomas both agree that assassinating Princess Mihrimah is the best idea and Walsingham persuades Robert of this. (This did not happen in universe historically Robert Dudley is screaming from the afterlife at this movie).

This attempt does not work. Robert, frustrated at not having a son and feeling as though he should have more power, throws himself into an attempt to undermine Elizabeth and get her removed from the privy council (this is also wrong because Robert was also on the privy council and also I AM SUPPORTING MY WIFE he yells). It does not work and the movie ends with Elizabeth telling Robert that he will never see their children or her again when she presents him with their twin sons (we will ignore that they have two more children)

The general consensus is that the chemistry is incredible/the performances are amazing but we are ignoring the second half of the movie.

Send me a piece of Tudor Era Media (or Period Drama in general) (TV show/book/movie)) and I’ll talk about what I think it might be like in The Tudors OT3 verse

#meme #ot3: political power trio #lil and her ridiculous aus #tudors ot3 verse reference #i was like no i need to make it as bananas as the originals #so uh here we go #fic

[bonesandthebees]

So Roses. First of all I love me some royalty au’s. Especially, with succession struggles. So when you do get around to writing it, it will eat that shit up. That’s also what instantly hooked me on Stars royalty + space.

Anyway, you are once again creating an speaking story simply by flipping the overdone dynamics around. I can’t speak for Techno or Tommy, but so far none of SBI are royalty. It’s very fun to see Phil as the royal advisor (who definitely has his own agenda with all the secret messages). I do think he has a lot more power than you would think. He got his way very easily with Sam. Like he basically got permission to make the decision.

I’m gonna be honest, I was expecting Phil to try and push Wilbur as a potential heir, but I think he’s more trying to set up a puppet king situation. Like he wants Quackity at the palace because if he does become heir he’s more likely to take Wilbur as his advisor if he already knows him. Also I feel like the tnt duo is going to be off the charts in this story. It feels like it’s going to be childhood friends/rivals maybe both.

And then there’s Sam. Sam who doesn’t want to get married because he has Ponk, even if he could get married and keep him. I do think that’s very sweet, but that action has consequences. We’ll enjoy the fallout.

-🌲

YEAHHH ngl spruce I was excited to post this partially bc i knew you were gonna be so game for it lmao

oh yeah phil's definitely got way more power than you'd think he would. the inspo for sandduo in this au came from house of the dragon actually, and while this won't make sense if you haven't seen it, at one point I was like "man what if Otto Hightower wasn't a total dick to Alicent and she was actually into his scheming and the two worked together when she was younger they'd be a very powerful father daughter duo" and then the idea of 'advisor to the king phil who has so many schemes of his own going on + wilbur his son working with him and learning from him' popped into my head. (that's where the inspo ends tho bc like. there aren't gonna be any marriage manipulation plots in this fic lol)

sam is not really a... forceful king to be honest. he relies a lot on phil for his advice, and the Consil's role also includes taking over for the king if he's sick or unavailable at a certain time. so the Consil is essentially the second most powerful person in the kingdom. also related to what you said at the end, he doesn't want to get married because he has ponk yes, but it's going to cause a lot of fallout. he doesn't really care though. when it comes to running the kingdom, he's more than happy to let phil do the hard stuff for him. but he has one line and he's gonna draw it there, succession crisis be damned

the thing is, wilbur as a potential heir would never work. because this is based (albeit loosely) off medieval royalty politics, which were all about blood. wilbur and phil don't have any blood ties to the royal family. wilbur could never be an heir because he's not blood-related to sam, unlike niki who is sam's cousin, and quackity who is his nephew. so yeah, that's off the table so what's phil gonna go for instead? second best option :)

ohhhh the tntduo is gonna be so fun in this fic. the main wilbur relationships I think I'm gonna focus on are (in no particular order): rainduo, crimeboys, tntduo, and sandduo (with a healthy dose of sweaterduo too)

you guys have no idea how much I've been brainrotting this I spent a ridiculous amount of time the other day figuring out what historical fashion trends are gonna be present in this hand wavy alternate universe medieval but not medieval era. I'm in DEEP

#ask #spruce anon #the roses of childhood

[blorem-bipsum]

Endel

Full name: Endel Meri

Pronunciation: as it looks...End-el

Specs: 33, enby, he/him, bisexual, 6′7

General Description: Acts as a sort of advisor/impromptu therapist/friend to Mila. On paper seems like a complete mary sue - nice, courteous, chill, funny, powerful, attractive, smart, social butterfly, (almost) everyone likes him, confident, gigantic dick energy, noble, polite, etc etc. He was the first to befriend Ardev when they were young, and the two have subsequently been a secret couple for the last decade or so. 

His faults and secrets start coming into play as things move along. As the survivor of child abuse and domestic abuse, he is a people-pleaser who is noble to a fault. He’s addicted to sex and starts losing control of things the more he feels the need to go out and have one-night-stands. He can fake it, but is completely incapable of relinquishing control and opening up to anybody but Ardev, and even with him Endel has to be the one in charge. Can’t admit defeat or back down from a fight. Slowly starts to accept the fact that he’s not just a feminine guy, he’s nb.

He also has harm OCD, specifically in regards to sexual assault. Gets near constant intrusive thoughts about assaulting others and subsequently thinks he’s a horrible person who is lying to everyone. 

Author’s note: I gotta say, Endel is without question my favorite character I have. I really wanted to explore the concept of internal vs external self conflicting with each other, and the idea of just a Good Guy who has horrible intrusive thoughts in the era of ‘thoughtcrime is a real thing’ was Compelling. I feel like he’s also one of the most multi-faceted characters I have, and acts completely differently based on situation and who he’s talking to, which makes it super funny that a vague description of him ends up as mary sue mc mary sue. He’s also super fun to draw so I draw him a lot. 

#endel #ymg

[supernoondles]

2022

With all the gratitude: in the end, it was a good year. 

Here’s the narrative I’m telling myself. There were three main developments this year. Around May, I fell in love. This gave me enough strength to finally end (amicably, I would like to imagine) meeting with one of my advisors in August. Lastly—and this one took me by surprise—I accepted a tenure track job at a liberal arts college in December.

Love

Unfortunately for me, I have only ever dated my colleagues (i.e., other PhD students in my discipline) as I have never loved someone whom I wasn’t friends with first. Towards the aspiration of “being in my ho era,” and thanks to my now-partner booking a motel an hour away from the convention center, we hooked up…at the first in-person academic conference since the pandemic, in a room in a Airbnb shared with the rest of my lab mates.

It was less than a month later, I think, did they tell me they loved me while I was leaving their apartment for the night. Three months later, I traveled for 12 hours to attend their wedding in rural Ontario. While walking through downtown Toronto a few days later, they told me that it was so wonderful we could fall in love in so many different places this year.

I’ve never felt more alive and desired. I’ve also never been more horny. I had every desire indulged, every wish granted. This relationship was also crucial for taking off my rose-colored glasses towards my last relationship, to the delight of my friends. As both this tweet and Maggie Nelson (in On Freedom) say, a lot of energy—certainly mine—is spent chasing love. Because I was so fulfilled in my relationship, I found myself growing in wanting more.

Support

Last year I conceded and started working on a Bad Project my advisor said I should do to make my thesis. I kept on doing it through the start of this year, and among many therapy sessions and mental breakdowns, I did make some progress. Around the end of last year, I was also increasingly interested in greater teaching responsibility careers. I taught my first course as the instructor on record during the spring quarter, which was vastly fun and rewarding compared to the emotional damage I took every time I sat down to work on the project.

In July, I had to submit a written thesis summary as I was applying to a doctoral symposium. In my heart I knew it wouldn’t be about the project I was doing at all, and I ended up writing a different framing with the past projects I had done. I was shocked that I didn’t hate what I had produced. Suddenly a path to graduation that didn’t involve doing the project didn’t feel so unobtainable. Riding the newfound confidence bestowed by my relationship, I talked with my other advisor (a good egg) and committee member to strategize pivoting my thesis direction and stopping work on this project in late August. This took a while as folks were in and out of summertime travel, but was less scary than I thought and ended in me dropping both the projects and my meetings with my advisor.

It was wild how transformative this sequence of events was for me. Escaping the power dynamic of my advisor took a year of mental preparation and trying to appease his ways, and five years of miserable collaboration. It’s also certainly not over: he is still my advisor on paper (for logistical reasons) and needs to approve the final steps I’m taking towards graduation. And nothing really changed—he’s still awful to his other students. I don’t think he’s a bad person at heart, but I do think he lacks the skills to be helpful in any way in a mentorship capacity.

Only when I had left him—once I wasn’t trapped in the narrow and immediate reality of how much suffering he induces (as my partner, who is also advised by him, still is)—did I realize how supported I am. Particularly supported by women—often queer women and women of color—who wrote me recommendation letters, whose values match mine in an academy that feels so hostile, who treated me to meals and dispensed life advice and have given me opportunities. The job search that marked the end of my year would not have been nearly as…honestly…non-stressful…without them.

Finding a job

If you’re not familiar with getting an academic job, it’s its own ordeal: often a 6 month process from application to signing a contract. This year, the “teaching track” (liberal arts colleges, community colleges, public comprehensives, teaching faculty at research institutions) was expedited and had no overlap with research focused positions at research universities: I sent my first application October and received my first offer in December, before I could interview at any research universities. Thus was my surprise: that I would know where I would be going by the end of the calendar year, and that it wasn’t where I was originally anticipated.

I approached the job search by telling my advisor (the good one, now, and for the rest of this post) my values: to stay in California (as a proxy for being close to community, to family, to a life outside campus), to have free time (as a proxy to not have my labor exploited by an institution while still gaining the privileges and protections of their resources), and to do work aligned with my values (as a proxy for making scholarship also a creative practice). I applied to 10 teaching track jobs and received 5 offers, and 8 research jobs with one scheduled interview that I couldn’t get to because of the timelines.

I thought the process of applying to and interviewing for a job was actually kind of fun. Everyone I met was really nice, though it could come from my own institutional privilege of prestige. I also really like meeting new people! Even writing the statements to pitch myself weren’t so bad as I realized last year one of my long standing goals is to write a book, so when I thought of them as book pitches (I mean, it’s like, a hire me pitch) it was way more bearable. The job search was a full time job, as I had to make a new hour long teaching demonstration for each school I interviewed at. The most stressful part, however, was negotiation and handling exploding offers.

The school that I eventually accepted gave me a week to respond to their initial offer. I got this phone call 10 minutes before joining our holiday party, where I had not felt my blood pressure that high since watching NBC Hannibal and stress felted a frog while crying to faculty for (good!) advice. Initially, I wanted to say no—my first choice school was my undergraduate alma matter, so I could also stay in the bay. But after talking to a current teaching faculty there and learning about many red flags of the department and role (as well as they fact they might have a failed search this year due to bureaucratic lag), and after my advisor had a heartfelt but life changing conversation with me that the offered job was better in many ways than my envisioned dream job, and after getting most things I negotiated for (including a delayed start to Jan 2024), and after remembering that this is just the beginning of my career and that people move all the time, I accepted.

This was probably the most stressful decision I’ve ever made—I constantly told my partner I felt like I was dying, I forced a close friend to quiz me on if this job was worth leaving the bay, I cried a lot, and I’m sure my Twitter friends were tired of reading my Tweets about the matter. I’m not thrilled about moving to suburban southern California again—but I’m so, so excited about everything else. Even though the faculty barely know me they (even ones outside my department) have all been incredibly kind, supportive, and welcoming. I think what is most important to me in a job (besides the values I listed earlier) is being in a work environment that is bigger than myself: where I am in solidarity and camaraderie with my colleagues, where I can serve as a mentor and teacher for students, and give back my dumb luck to the community. As the initial stresses associated with making a major career move tide out, I increasingly feel lucky and in disbelief about it all.

Personal

The other big change that happened this year was that I moved down the block to a much bigger apartment. I now have two rooms—a bedroom and an office—a unique SF luxury that I am grateful for every day. Crucially, this apartment actually gets direct sunlight exposure so on non foggy days I am very happy. This is what I have become: a simple man who just needs direct sunlight and a walk in nature. I love going to the Children’s Garden and sitting on the benches near the east side, as they get direct sunlight, and one of my most joyous days this year was discovering a secret garden/walking path nestled in the redwoods in a random neighborhood in Marin, or going to see wildflowers in the East Bay hills (IMO the most underrated feature of the bay) with my parents and finding a Chase Sapphire card (that I too got this year, anticipating the travel) that belonged to a lecturer at my alma matter. I held my birthday party in SF’s newest park and I ran into my PhD student mentor when I was an undergraduate, who is a professor in Denmark now, and I was truly astounded by those odds. I feel like I really do live in the most beautiful metropolitan area in the US and every day I am so grateful for it.

But back to my house: unfortunately one of my roommates does not know how to clean pans and the other one—despite many conversations—cannot keep the kitchen clean. It increasingly annoys me and I will continue to keep trying, but I think part of me is excited to live by myself (something I’ve never done before! Well, I want two cats) so things I clean will stay clean. Having experienced my most formative years in a 140 person student housing cooperative, I see the loss of living community happening to myself, and feel sad about it. But is it also because our priorities change? For instance, I am now into buying more expensive higher quality clothing (most of my closet came from a “normal” (e.g., Goodwill, Savers) thrift store, Costco, Target, or Uniqlo). I see many of my friends with Silicon Valley wealth trend towards this lifestyle: of buying high quality things second hand, of finding happiness in nice things. This will soon be me with a nicer road bike—but only because while my landlord was replacing our water heater, my reliant white and lavender Fuji (that I got for $200 off some rich guy in the Oakland Hills whose wife didn’t like the bike) mysteriously “disappeared” from our garage. :(

My last rat, my dear old George, passed away in August of this year. He, unlike my other two rats, lived a long (2.5 years!) and full life. He was so sweet and held out for me to come back from two back to back trips to die in my arms. I also think his death was way less traumatic than the other two rats’ so it was a lot easier for me to accept and process. I will love my rats forever, but boy will I not get another pet whose lifespans are so short.

This year I grew out my hair and I don’t entirely hate it. I am always pining to look like I did at the beginning of 2019. I’m having more fun with femme forms of gender expression (not unrelated to my relationship) and, shockingly, wearing more neutrals. Maybe in 2023 I will start taking T?

Art

I started this year by painting tigers with my family. I optimistically set an intention to draw a thing every month which went no where. I did manage to paint a huge griffin that hangs above the dining room table, though.

Perhaps more drawing can happen in the fall of this year, where I chose to become unemployed and a full time artist! (I want to get better at drawing, rendering, all of it—and also make a furry comic about my time in graduate school. We’ll see.)

It felt like I saw no shows this year, but going back through my photos revealed that I saw at least 15 (The SF Symphony, Caribou, Mitski which resulted in me driving to Lake Tahoe for a ski retreat at 4am the next morning, Rina, Sigur Ros, Jbrekkie+Courtney Barnett in which I was behind my advisor the whole time and I think he chose not to see it, Daniel Rossen, Andrew Bird (in which Iron and Wine played way too long of a set), Dudamel conducting Dvorak 9, LCD Soundsystem with a horrible 2 hour DJ soft opener, Avalanches, MCR after 2 years, CRJ, and SF’s wonderful free festivals of Hardly Strictly and Toro y Moi at Stern Grove). Renaissance by far outclassed any release this year which my Best of 2022 playlist reflects. Of note is that I started a very, very deep Harry Styles obsession when I saw his Coachella set livestreamed. I also really enjoyed playing with the Awesome Orchestra, and was flabbergasted when I learned good old Pat sponsored this year’s Flower Piano.

Travel

I traveled quite a lot this year, given a pandemic is still happening! I went to Seattle in February, New Orleans for a conference (the last conference I went to pre-pandemic was, ironically, also there), Canada for a mosquito-ridden wedding, Bend, Oregon for another conference (which I gave my bad advisor a lot of shit about since he helped plan it, until I made friends with someone with a car and went on a gorgeous hike, visited the Last Blockbuster, and walked through snow), a forest lodge in the middle of upstate New York for a grant retreat, Austin for a career workshop, and finally, Los Angeles five times—twice to visit my partner over the summer, and thrice for job interviews.

Resolutions

Let’s revisit the resolutions I made last year.

(1) Stop interacting with my bad advisor, thus to necessarily submit Bad Final Project. → Yes, though I didn’t even have to submit BFP to do so.

(2) Secure what my next adventure will be post PhD. → Yes! I’m really excited about it. The end, finally, is in sight. I think many people experience a bell curve during their PhD (if it was a measure of how bad it is) with the beginning and end being less bad than the middle. I’m honestly thrilled that I never have to write a line of code again unless I want to.

2023 will be my final year of being a student. While at times I felt frustrated with this nebulous status, wanted to leave, wanted to have a real job etc., now that I have one lined up I feel like I am more appreciative of the privileges students have—the privilege to learn and basically be accountable to only yourself.

In 2023 I want to:

(1) Exercise more consistently. I was good about this in 2022 and then the job stuff happened and I stopped, but it’s about time to start again.

(2) Get better at academic reading, note taking, and synthesis. The only things that lie between me and my degree are one more hot takes paper and a thesis. Both of these are mainly rhetorical projects (no more building for me!) that require consuming, understanding, and organizing large amount of text. I feel like I’ve approached literature reviews relatively haphazardly in the past, so here’s a perfect excuse to develop and iterate on methods I’m sure I’ll be using a lot going forward!

(3) Enjoy my final year in the bay area! I made a bucket list. I love this place so much, and am always grappling with my relationship to Silicon Valley and its various institutions, the influence of Randian libertarianism and California Exceptionalism, the housing crisis, as well as my position as a non-binary Asian American who did not grow up here but whose parents now live here. I also think about my friends and peers whom I’ve met (mainly through undergrad) who have, for the most part, stayed, and how their lives are being shaped by these forces 5+ years after graduation.

The end of undergraduate was a great time in my life filled with travels and new experiences. Similarly, for the end of graduate school, I hope to manifest 2017 energy into my 2023. I write this post on a day of a bomb cyclone sending widespread rain and wind across the region. I’ve spent most of the day waiting anxiously if my partner’s flight would land safely. It did, and they are here, and we are safe.

#noon's shitty end of the year summary posts

[nighthaunting]

Hiiii, uhm...I just finished no sway over the damned and I adore the fic, it gives a better perspective to the dk legion campaign and its just refreshing

When I saw that post about you actually planning to continue it I literally screeched of joy, because I really love the fic. Its also the reason why I ended up pairing up Thoras and Darion...it simply calls to me

Could you share some ideas about the possible sequel? Some romantic hc for the couple? Thank you!

Hello! Thank you so much! I'm glad you liked it!

Back when I was initially working on and plotting No Sway, I ended up writing a little blurb about what I imagined for the sequel:

Better Creatures Could Love You  Between proving his love and overcoming the trials set in his path by overprotective lieutenants, Thoras Trollbane finds growing accustomed to life in the future complicated by the Legion’s invasion; being magically bound to his meddling co-workers; and the impending consequences of the Horsemen’s rise. Will the Ebon Blade ever trust him with their Highlord’s heart? Will the Lich King’s plans put Acherus on the wrong side of a renewed crusade against the Scourge? Will Alexandros Mograine’s ghost ever stop ruining people’s lives? All Thoras knows is that he’s a man out-of-time, and out of his mind for Darion Mograine.

With the main points that I'd decided upon having more Thoras POV and focused on the actual development of their serious relationship, and what at the time were my ideas for post-Legion consequences of the Ebon Blade's actions in Legion. Of course. Then BFA and SL and now DF have all come out, and those consequences never materialized beyond some incredibly disappointing missed opportunities in SL.

My general romantic headcanons for them, at the start of their relationship, are that they kind of go at it backwards: they get into personal trust and physical intimacy a long time before they're really gotten themselves fully together romantically. Thoras catches feelings first and is the one to make the overtures that advance their relationship to that point, but Darion is going though so much nonsense both due to circumstances and also due to his various issues and history that it takes them time to get anywhere serious. Thoras understands and is okay with this, but at the same time he's now put in a serious bid for a real relationship with Darion and Darion's friends/staff/advisors/lieutenants/all-of-the-above are definitely going to hassle him about it. Especially since, in the continuity of No Sway at least, the relationship that Darion considers his last """"serious""" relationship was with Arthas during his Hot Scourge Summer era (and i want to work in flashbacks to scourge Darion, because he's my most horrid little guy) which ended, obviously, with Arthas betraying Darion to Light's Hope (2) and Darion responding to this by forging Shadowmourne and cutting Arthas' head off.

And now as Fourth Horseman he's psychically connected to the shade of his ex-boyfriend.

Also everyone is very mad about the Ebon Blade attacking Light's Hope (3) again.

Also Alexandros' ghost continues to cause problems, because I was mortally fucking offended by the way the Legion Corrupted Ashbringer skin questline went and am going to fix that.

So really a less-than-ideal time to be getting romanced, but also perhaps the last opportunity they'll ever have!

#world of warcraft #darion mograine #thoras trollbane #no sway over the damned

[mariemarieohcontrary]

What I've figured out about Diwa's backstory:

She's from the Philippines (all my MCs are)

Her mother is descended from the babaylans/katalonan (precolonial shamans/kinda priestesses)

The trip to New Orleans was meant to be a vacation she saved up for cause she always wanted to see the world for a bit

Is teaching in a private school and Low-key causes chaos cause she questions a lot of things and encourages her students to do the same. (They can't fire her cause the grades of her students shoot up quickly)

Definitely fought the terror math teacher for humiliating one of her homeroom students (making her a class advisor was a regret for the school but its a chance for her to protect the kids from power-tripping teachers so she took it)

She has an albularyo stepfather (an albularyo is kinda like the babaylan but came into existence during the Spanish colonial era or smth somehow its approved of because its now tied to Catholicism)

She has a younger half-brother who likes going against the norm like she does. (He's eighteen and studying fine arts cause he likes v old paintings with its many meanings in flowers, fruits, etc)

She and her brother read tarot cards with their mom as a way to bond (Diwa also collects tarot cards as long as she feels pulled to them)

Ends up gentle parenting her students that her mom jokingly called her students her first grandkids with how close they were to Diwa.

Polyamorous and out to her family. Dated a bit during her school days but stopped when she graduated because she wanted to focus on handling her life first

Accidentally flirted with one of the Philippine elven races while on a hiking trip for the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts where she's a supervisor.

Met Kristin in UP Diliman and became roomies (Kristin knows about her being pagan not so much about her family's ties to the supernatural)

I think that's all I got but I feel there's more about her but for now that's all haha

#nb: diwa #nightbound #playchoices #play choices #choices game #choices fandom

[ugakei]

Monthly web magazine review-talking on 23rd March was uploaded. (Recorded on 16th Feb hasn't been uploded…still waiting…(Was it lost?) ) For the reason of the anniversary activity expired without SIDE:GOLD updating, this was the final talking on Twitter Space.

*Regular Speaker: Tatsuki Miyazawa (Red), Suzuki Suzu (Orange), Kohei Azano (Green)

In this time talking, we had the additional information about the event on 13th May, it will be held as the anniversary of KRK novel issued, however they will have a plan to talk not only about KRK, also trough the whole series and characters.

Recent state with Mr. Nakanishi of KING RECORD was also shared, they exchanged the opinion of going on their collaboration even K series as in the past, or coming "AYAKA", and from now on what they would be going to create. So Miyazawa-san asked fans to keep watching what GoRA would work about if you should still have an interest for us, since we have already had the connection trough "K". (Not forced to do so, but they feel happy to be as it.)

Review for the stories updated last time;

KOY 12 It was planned its plot by Miyazawa-san(Red), but he asked Rairaku-san(Pink) to polish up the end of this story because he believed she would write a good ending better then him. Actually Rairaku-san picked up short episode like as Tamaki, summarized and connected their future, Miyazawa-san satisfied of it. Regarding the core theme of KOY, everybody have a question "What they and the world are going after the slate destroyed", so after discussing in GoRA and it was aggregated into like as episode 12. On the other, Miyazawa-san personally asked Rairaku-san to insert the episode that Shattenreich moored to Mihashira Tower then after released, he thought it would be a good symbolism for a linkage of the airship (and Shiro) on the ground in the end. Azano-san(Green) felt fun in the episode of Samukawa who became the most outstanding one without expectation, also Anna's setting became abundance like as junior high school girl with mysterious atmosphere and was visited as advisor from the secretary of the Agency of Supernatural Powers who was guarded SP. Also Miyazawa-san satisfied Munakata's own decision of leading the world same as Shiro, expected Yukari and Sukuna would play some active parts in the world.

SIDE:GOLD 03 Azano-san told the point of interesting that there were no discomfort setting otherwise in the different era and characters of Red and Blue kings, resemble pattern of collision were still (but they were first generation) between them. About Red king, Yutaka was not gloomy but had a suicidal destruction idea from Kamikaze survivor's regret deeply inside of him, for this thoughtful setting which Takahashi-san(Black) made was really convincing. About Ootono Benji, Azano-san was impressed with that move of none extraordinal appearance setting of "Gray" king itself. Most of authors have a tendency that "king" will set with outstanding figure or character, but in this case, Takahashi-san didn't do that. Azano-san pointed it was quite interesting and looking forward to. Instead of the series name of "SIDE:GOLD", no turn of Kokujoji is curious matter, he added the comment.

Regarding SIDE:GOLD itself, Takahashi-san shared the outline of the story to the other members, however it haven't been finished writing of those details. Nobody knows how much its progress as of section 03 (lol). Azano-san and Suzuki-san(Orange) guess maybe it is still on early stage. As like this, they can't see the future (lol), Takahasi-san also afraid of being forsaken from K fans, according to Suzuki-san reported. So they will be happy and welcome of fans impression or thoughts message posting through on Twitter or ODAIBAKO. Azano-san continued as follows. "This one year, the reason of that 10th anniversary project has been able to continue is the fans expectation and requests, their reply with joy. You fans' responses gave us will allow to continue this activity. We also have the idea of stories in mind (nobody expected), but it is not all for our motive. Especially K series, the fans react quite powerful (lol), we also become greedy! We thanks to all K fans."

From Miyazawa-san, the information of K series would be announced continuously on Note.com and Twitter. And we would be able to meet you on the event in May, asked to be looking forward it.

~~ memo ~~~~~~~~ When you will post SIDE:GOLD thinking on Twitter, using the tag #サイドゴールド to be reached GoRA official checking.

#k project #k anime #gora #k side gold #k one year later

[gerudospiriit]

***Basically going to use this post here to slap down just some general information/ideas about my take on Nabooru and some pertinent info for verses/rping***

☀ Post the events of Ocarina of Time, Nabooru returns to a Gerudo tribe in turmoil (no the sages didn't die, shut up). For all intents and purposes, their king is now dead and their future is uncertain. As second in command, Nabooru is next in line for the position of chief. However, both to clear her conscience and inform the confused tribe about what took place, from her brainwashing seven years prior to her role as a Sage in sealing Ganondorf in the Sacred Realm, admitting to treason. Though Gerudo law punishes treason with death--and many were pushing for her to face execution--the Elite voted to allow her a chance to survive and reclaim her rank among them: complete the Kavi Dorova (AKA the Cave of Ordeals from TP), a task only one person ever lived to complete. Nabooru managed to do so, nearly perishing in the process, and returns to become the chief of the Gerudo where she faces unrest on both the home front with some Gerudo finding it difficult to trust her and would rather see her dead as well as abroad in greater Hyrule, where the sting of the former king's crimes are still fresh and it's easy to try and push the blame on his entire tribe. Thus, Nabooru uses her time to work with Hyrule's new monarchy, now headed by Zelda, as well as making strides in all sorts of areas to better the lives of her people like she always wanted. All this one top of her duties as a sage.

☀ For other timelines/games/whatever at this point, it's either a reincarnation thing, where she is simply reborn into that timeline. OR because she's a sage and a demigod cough, she just...takes on her physical form in other eras for funsies. Or maybe she has a mission of some kind, personal or otherwise. I really haven't gotten to do a WHOLE lot with either of these, but what I have done has been fun and interesting like it being her that kinda leads Link and Zelda to reawaken Ganondorf because she knows the only way this ends is to break the cycle and she highkey wants a second chance to maybe, MAYBE get and keep Ganondorf on a path that doesn't get him killed and/or sealed away all the time and see the leader he could REALLY be because she feels like SHE failed him back in the day. As an example. But also just because it would be fun for her to interact in other eras. Seeing what's changed and what hasn't, to aid the Gerudo in some lowkey ways like acting as an advisor or something. Basically, just a very flexible formula so I can roleplay with characters across the spectrum of this series.

#info tag tbd #headcanon tag tbd

[shortguyswag]

I posted 14,165 times in 2022

271 posts created (2%)

13,894 posts reblogged (98%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@astronomical-bagel

@transiconlink

@count-woe-laf

@dustbringermoash

@crookedpickleoperatormug

I tagged 1,540 of my posts in 2022

#save - 63 posts

#mecore - 13 posts

#orion is writin - 11 posts

#era does art - 9 posts

#unreality - 7 posts

#hyrule library for the supernatural - 7 posts

#goncharov - 6 posts

#as a pun enthusiast i am obligated to rb this - 6 posts

#:d - 5 posts

#sam attempts poetry - 5 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#i dunno there's some line about one being deciet two may be conspiracy and there being the number i trust so i think it needs to happen mor

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

[Id: a traditional drawing of gerry keay from the magnus archives from the back. The drawing is done in grayscale except for a pile of books in front of him on fire, which are drawn in bright oranges and reds, and a flame from a lighter he is holding. He is sitting by the fire and looking up at the smoke that rises from it. End id]

Burning books

22 notes - Posted October 25, 2022

#4

I smear paint on something resembling canvas and hope it will mean something eventually (it's the closest I've been to a god)

The paint stains my hands and arms, and it feels messy but true (cleanliness is not godliness)

I paint and I paint and I paint and I can't help but beg for something out there to tell me how I fit into this mess, this canvas painted over with broken warriors and stubborn fools (somehow I don't think anything can hear me)

(hello?)

(is anyone out there?)

(if the void is perceived does it become something else?)

(does that make me a god of this emptiness?)

the sunflowers come together slowly (I don't know if I brought them to life, or if the were always there, just waiting for me to find them)

24 notes - Posted October 8, 2022

#3

Reblog to punch a transphobe

34 notes - Posted February 7, 2022

#2

I'm playing botw and you know what's hilarious? Link having no idea what his and miphas relationship was actually.

basically "okay, I have exactly one memory of her, where it kinda seems like she's asking me out on a date? Ok, that tracks with what sidon's been saying, she was in love with me, but wait, the zora tunic is made for the person the zora princess is going to marry, and she clearly would have had to have some sign that her feelings were reciprocated for her to make them for me, so... Wait. WAS I ENGAGED??? No no that can't be right, if we were actually engaged surely the king at least would know and would tell his advisors in order to get them to chill, wait, WE'RE WE DATING AND WAS SHE PLANNING TO PROPOSE??? no, no, once again, someone would have known. I've known myself all of 2 weeks and I can say I probably would've been so clingy, so someone probably would have noticed. BUT WHAT IF EITHER OF THOSE THINGS WERE THE CASE??? IT WOULD EXPLAIN HOW SHE GOT MY MEASUREMENTS CAUSE THIS THING FITS LIKE A GLOVE!! AAAA I DON'T KNOW!!!"

and then talking to mipha in the divine beast to TRY and figure /something/ out and she is no help whatsoever

71 notes - Posted July 15, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I genuinely love doing this again! by dirtbag boyband bears in trees because it feels like a song you'd make up to sing to yourself but at the same time it's got some serious moments "every morning I wake up and I drink my silly little oat milk coffee and text my silly texts" silly little lines to sing as you drive. "I hope to be happy I hope to be calm I hope to be somewhat content, every morning I wake up and think to myself 'oh God we're doing this again'" mood, serious statement about repetition of every day and how exhausting it can get.

Also you can sing the chorus to reverberate to the "every sunrise every street sign etc etc" bit and I think that's neat

305 notes - Posted November 1, 2022

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#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

[thesketchyheartist]

04/19

Shin Sekai no Yori (EP 15, 21, 24, 25)

This show ended so peacefully considering how dramatic it was. I think the toughest part of digesting it now is really being satisfied with the future because when their current society was made, perhaps the founders thought it would finally rest their problems in peace, but obviously it didn't. Now, we expect things to be better, but we only hear Saki's post-war narratives, not actual post-war generations' recalls.

And after watching these episodes now, it confirms pre-EP 15 (I don't remember) of watching the queerats get killed that they are in fact, humans. I think the most horrifying revelation was that Saki and Satoru found out after Satoru illegally researched after the revolution ended when it should've been a peaceful post-war revival of society, but instead, they continued to learn the horrors of their ancestor's history. In that sense of how the queerats were created, it reminded me greatly of how enslaved Africans and their descendants were treated in colonial and post-colonial America. Even after Civil War era was over, it is still shocking how little modern American actually knew how they were treated. Even when we learn about the past, many details are still omitted to not "taint" the pride and ideals of the average life. However, as seen in Squealer's revolution, unless we properly make amends with the past, one way or another, it will come back and hurt everyone. The "new world" that arised from the untamed psychics might have found a way to tame the untamable, but the people were stuck in the crossfires end up becoming enslaved to incompetent founders.

The worst part is knowing the government probably knew all along what happened, but they chose to not worry about external issues and focus on just making the "perfect society." In fact, I'm sure there were intelligent kids like Shun who would be that perfect leader and advisor to come up with new solutions that society will benefit from, but because they could not control their powers and the adults won't find ways to help them control their powers, it was easier to kill them and have mediocre kids who become mediocre adults that rule their new world.

I remember Satoru telling Saki how after seeing the concrete building in the queerat colonies, he said he gets the "sick feeling that the queerats are tryign to become humans" especially because he knew that not even their villages had concrete buildings. I don't know how they knew what concrete was if they don't have a concrete building, but the foreshadowing was scarily uncanny when Satoru was also the one to study their genome.

Fun fact: the Human Genome Project was conducted in 1990s and lasted about 10 years which revolutionized modern genetics because scientists were able to study the human genome (as in every piece of human DNA) to find out their sequencing and what each set of sequence correlates to what gene and what each gene does. I looked it up, Shin Sekai no Yori was published as a manga in 2008, so I think it makes sense that after the project and its findings were released, that was probably when the mangaka began writing this manga. Though, the queerat's origins reveal was in the alst volume, given how it was revelaed in the last episode, I think the inspiration to create a human subspecies probably came from this. The HGP is imprtant today because what once took scientsits years to study the genome, takes us much shorter time and more efficient when we want to study a specific gene.

I was also kind of right about Saki becoming the "Giver". While I don't know if most citizens became aware of their hsitory, the fact that Saki retaining her memories (and by association) Satoru probably started remembering his hidden past, she is able to make informed decisions while keeping her humanity throughout hte show. I think her strongest ability in the group is to persevere no matter the trauma she goes through since her childhood. We see how when she is put in terrifying situations, her eyes are filled with shcok and her body and mind seem to be frozen in time, but after the shock is processed, she is able to get back into action. I think it showed how integral she was in Group 1's dynamic with everyone excelling in their categories , but it truly is a shame that because society wanted people to conform to them, the group lost its team network when they took out its members one by one.

Satoru's development was quite surprising. We see he is more rowdy as a kid and while he is quick to assume and believes what he is told, I think when he grew up and also started to learn the truth both from Saki telling him and from seeking the truth on his own, he is more reserved and logical. Like when hearing from the false minoshiro, he wanted to be ignorant of the truth but as we see now, denial only caused pain when society began to collapse from the revolution.

I think Group 1 was probably the #1 group in their generation/grade/school hence the number. And I think if they all reached adulthood, each of them could've been a leader who could change their village for the greater good while resolving issues that caused the problems in their adolescence/adulthood. Shun is definitely the wisest. Mamoru might be soft-spoken but understanding and empathetic of the weak and below average. Not sure about Maria, but she seems in touch with her feminine side that could appeal to the women of their society. We already know what Satoru and Saki are capable of. Maybe Squealer upon learning his species' origins would still revolt because even if the humans were to make it right with the queerats they might still have unresolved anger, but society would have been stronger and made another new world that focused on equality rather than stability. Much like how today's world no longer has any living enslaved Africans and very few living post-Holocaust Jewish people, just because they are gone now doesn't mean their descendants are immediately forgiving the oppressors. Likewise, though, the oppressors and their descendants are not immediately forgiven just because it was their ancestors and not them who are the perpetrators, but that doesn't mean they should sit and do nothing now that was is not here. The whole point of a new world is not just to prevent the old world we wanted to run away from, but to learn from the mistakes and ways of the old and grow into the new world we always wanted that the old could not have.

-04/18/24

[secondpest]

Doctor who is so over its crazy: a brief rant.

I just watched the 4th Christmas special, and I really, really tried to like it. It's terrible for so many reasons.

Episodes 2 and 3 were actually kinda good. I liked that these old characters came back and were written like they used to be. I like that we finally got characters with consistent personalities who can have complex feelings and ideas and conflicts.

I really liked in the first Christmas special when they revealed the alien ship and it was obviously made to look like earlier seasons of Dr Who when the VFX department was made of 6 people working with no budget to smash together some overly composited, high contrast, stainless steel object that looked oddly appealing. One positive about the show, in my opinion, is they have exceptional compositing. The colors just look right, and aliens feel like they are there and they are real.

However, episode 4 is the first episode where they stopped conforming to old episodes and the show's old style, and its where my praise ends.

I think we missed a key fact: the fact that in the Chibnall era, Dr Who's budget expanded dramatically. No longer were they on a shoe-string budget. And I think at that moment, Dr Who became corporate.

All the characters seem so nice now. Nobody, not the Doctor or Ruby, have any bite to them. Not to mention, the music has gotten leagues less interesting or enjoyable. The magic of the music is gone, instead filled with generic music or 2 minutes of overly auto-tuned goblin pop. The sound effects, overly cheesy, yet lacking personality, layered in places that make no sense. The shot composition has gotten weird too, with an over-reliance of wide lenses, and a lack of over the shoulder shots. The framing of the camera makes the show feel almost impersonal, in stark contrast to Russel T. Davies' writing style. And for his writing style, I don't know about the reality of this, but he clearly misses the support of additional writers and editors.

Russel T. Davies is excellent at writing characters and dialogue, but him, or whoever else is on the current writing team, desperately lack the ability to tell Good sci-fi. Good sci-fi builds worlds, explains technology, establishes patterns and connections. And in contrast, we have wooden ships of creatures who live in the sky and eat children, because magic? We have an entity from outside the universe who can control reality... because magic. This might be fine in some contexts, but for me personally, the world-building of the show was one of my favorite parts. And while old Dr Who was guilty of this type of writing too, it rarely was this bad. Davies also seems to struggle with the concept of "Chekhov's gun." In other words: you have to establish plot elements BEFORE those elements come into play, or else your story starts to feel like it just decides to go in that direction. When the scientific advisor uses her wheelchair to shoot rockets and blow open a wall for Donna Noble's family, that is unearned because there is no setup for that. In a scenario where we had known that this was possible earlier, even if it seemed cheesy or outlandish, it would still have been satisfying to the viewer, who could have guessed this. Being able to predict the story before it happens is an indicator of a coherent story. A good story is both unique and predictable.

This might just be me, but I also feel like this episode in particular reeks of "corporate quirkiness." Not just being unique or wacky, or not even being cringe, but rather the false pretenses of being quirky, while not being quirky at all. The doctor desperately wants you to know he's weird, but instead of saying things in french or talking about astrophysics, he says "LMAO" out loud. This might just me not growing up with this version of The Doctor, but he emanates unearned "I'm not like other girls" energy.

Talking of vibes: The new doctor seems a lot more sexual than old doctors. To me, and to a lot of other people, the doctor is an asexual icon. He often recoils at advances, and even if occasionally he can develop romances with people, he often keeps distance. In contrast, this Doctor is flirty, he is sexual. And characters like this are fine, and it's also fine to have sexual queer characters in media. it just feels kinda sad to me, because in a way this is so oppositional to what this character has been defined as, that I can just no longer define the new Doctor as the same character.

And so, all in all: I don't think Dr Who is back. The things which made the older seasons of the show good are now gone, and I don't think there's anything that could really fix this. Even if there was, the direction the show is going in is just not the show I'm here to watch. Maybe I'm wrong, and actually the next season is amazing, but I don't think I'll tune in for quite a while to find out for myself.

#doctor who #dr who