#you also got to read queer readers writing in about these queer characters and the JOY in their words is priceless

[g-kat423]

If Alcina being a lesbian is so important to you why does she have an ex husband in your fic

I’m going to assume this is a genuine question without malicious intent so I will provide a real answer.

This could actually apply to 2 of my fics, but I’m guessing you’re talking about Something Sweet since it’s the one that I update more frequently.

Gonna plop this under a read more since it’s gotten long

Alright, so, the reason for her having an ex husband has been stated throughout the fic. She felt she had to be closeted and to meet certain expectations set for her both by society and by her parents. Sure, people are more accepting now, not that there isn’t still bigotry or pressure to conform, but with the fic taking place in 2022(I started it in 2022 and only a few months have passed in fic time and while I never explicitly stated the year, that’s what everything is based off of, giving Alcina a 1978 birth year and the reader 2001) that means Alcina got married in 2008. Idk if you were around during that time, but homophobia was rampant, being gay was a punchline. It’s not something you would talk about, there’s no way to know if your friends would actually stay your friends and not spread vicious rumors about you. Marriage equality in most states, not a thing. Again, bigots still exist, but it’s generally not this life ruining thing for people to find out you’re queer. Alcina would have come of age in the 90’s which would make that even worse.

That aside, I tend to explore themes of coming out later and families not being being accepting because it’s all I know. I tend to process my trauma through my writing. That and I’m sure it’s no secret that I’ve taken heavy inspiration from Carol only with a sugar baby twist. I also wanted her to have younger, biological children since I felt that would be fitting of a 44 year old divorcee rather than having adopted adult children like she does in canon. Sure, they could have been adopted or older, but there needed to be a reason for her to stay with Kurt for the amount of time that she did. I needed her connected to Karl in someway too. Heisenberg was originally supposed to have a twin brother so I went off of that and now Alcina has her annoying ex brother-in-law(who actually isn’t so bad in this universe, but Alcina won’t hear of it)

As for The Fall of the House of Dimitrescu. I’m sure no one is asking, but in that case Alcina was weak from her hereditary blood disease and didn’t have the energy to be defiant the same way she was as a child. Her father had lost his wife and he had no desire to continue caring for Alcina so he set her up with somebody who she reluctantly went along with. In that case, Alcina wasn’t even aware of her attraction to women yet, she just didn’t understand why she didn’t feel a spark with her soon to be husband. She also assumed it was normal for sex to be an unpleasant “wifely duty.” Once she finally made the connection and had an affair with a woman, turns out she liked sex quite a bit lmao.

Idk, all this aside, I know I’m not the only one who has given Alcina a husband in some context yet still fully believes shes a lesbian. I also have plenty of fics where she’s never had one. The first multichapter fic I wrote she literally left her home and privileged life behind to struggle until she made it as musician rather than marry a man. I don’t think it’s a crime to explore other possibilities. I have so many different headcanons for Alcina and all are universe dependent whether that be modern AU, the canon compliant timeline where she never marries, the canon compliant timeline where she does, and all the other in between stuff that diverges from canon. She’s one of my favorite characters of all time and I love fleshing her out.

#ask #alcina dimitrescu #lady dimitrescu #anon

[radioactive-earthshine]

NGL I have STRONG opinions about digital releases omitting the letters to the editor section of older comics. I feel like the letters are a part of comic history and should be aggressively preserved.

#look i was a weirdo and loved the letters so much #so much #so fucking damn much #i still to this day mourn that we don't have them #sometimes the editors would publish blatant aggressive criticism and promise to do better on some things #it was rare but it did happen in a handful of things involving stereotypes #also there is queer history in them such as in superboy and the ravers where people wrote in about hero #asking WHY he was not interested in women and this editor had to so professionally explain that he was GAY and where they stood on it #you also got to read queer readers writing in about these queer characters and the JOY in their words is priceless #also sorry but geoff's letters are fun and stupid at the same time and are a huge insight to what his hcs were #he LOVED tiny krypto so much it likely inspired him making dex starr bc he loved the idea of a small overly powered animal #not saying that was the main reason why ofc but it is interesting that he created dex after praising that mean little mutt #i say with the most love #my venting #my rambles

[neil-gaiman]

Hello Neil, how are you?

You get a lot of asks about how therapeutic good omens is for the queer community, and I thought you should know there is another therapeutic effect for this show and this fandom. I'm sure I'm not the only one feeling like this and I hope I will be able to explain it in a way that will do justice to the point I'm trying to make (English is not my native language).

So to the point - good omens have helped me significantly with my eating disorders and body image problems. I'm here lurking in fandoms for at least 15 years, most of them fantasy and comics related. And almost always the main characters are young, very fit with perfect bodies, whether in movies and TV or fanfiction. For years I have struggled with not being able to fit my body to the beauty standards of society and western culture. I don't want to trigger anyone so I won't elaborate, but I did everything I could and it never was enough. Therapy was very important and got me to the point I don't hurt myself anymore, but my mind still couldn't believe a person who looks like me can be attractive or romantically lovable. Then I got to know the good omens fandom. Where you chose to show characters that doesn't see food as the enemy or the pleasure from it as ugly or wrong. That can have love and support and being comfortable with themselves regardless of any 'gut' they 'need' to lose. And it continued and magnified in season 2, with your plot and casting choices. But also the fandom of good omens have helped immensely to enable the change in my perspective about myself. The way people talk and write about these characters and their relationships allows me to feel better about myself. It's amazing how reading stories about different types of bodies being accepted and considered as beautiful can make the reader feel more appreciative and even learn to love their own body. I wish I could see more of it on mainstream tv, movies and books.

So thank you neil and thanks to this entire community, for helping me learn how to accept, love and treat myself better.

I'm so very glad.

[normansnt]

As you've likely seen by now, I've been reblogging nearly every Hazbin fic you have, which I apologize if that bothers you at all. I simply see a lack of the x male reader department for this show, which is ironic considering mostly all the characters are queer and so are the creators. So thank you for what you write and how well you write it! I was hoping I could make a request for a part two of a fic I rather liked "(Vox x bar tander!Male reader)" this one specifically. The reader left off having their soul contract bought and offered to be a bartender at the Vee's private bar, and I was wondering what would happen from there?

HIIIIII

THANK YOU FOR THE REQUEST

Im really sorry it took so long😭

Also THANK YOU SO MUCH for the reblogs is doesn't bother me at all IM SO HAPPY YOU LIKE MY WRITING💗💗

I HOPE YOU LIKE IT, I THINK IT TURNED OUT PRETTY GOOD😌

ENJOY READING LOVELY PEOPLE

Warnings: Attempted Rape, violance V@lentino

Habit of saving

as a thank you pt.2

Vox x bartender!male reader

"I just dont fucking understand why the fuck you prefer the company of a lowly bartender over mine"

You hear Valentino's yelling from the other room, again.

This was not uncommon. Since you became the bartender in the Vees manor Vox visited the bar more often than before.

You guys spent hours talking and just because of the drinks either, he barely drunk anything cuz he was busy talking to you.

However, this of course annoyed Valentino. He wanted Vox's attention purely on himself.

"I don't." Said Vox, you know, like a lier.

"Work has just been really stressful lately and I need more drinks than before."

This was all lies. But Vox was not in the mood to be taking Valentino's shit, he would much rather go get a drink with you.

"Bullshit, I know how your work is and you blame everything on it, you dont even want to fuck me anymore are you a fucking moron do you know how many people want to get with ME."

And here he goes again. Vox was a little embarrassed though. It was true that since you arrived he was never in the mood to do it with Val, but he found himself having much more sex dreams with you.

He got red at the thought of that.

"You know what, I don't fucking care, go be happy with your boy toy; but don't you dare forget that you are where you are because of me." Ended the Argument Valentino as he grabbed a bottle from above your head, and walked out of the room.

You were silent during the whole argument. You knew it was not smart to start defending Vox you tried that once and, well, Vox had to stich you up afterwards.

"Care for a drink, sir?" You asked Vox. He was still, just standing in the middle of the room looking at the door.

He felt weird. Well, not weird, happy. But that was strange. Usually he felt guilty or annoyed when Valentino stormed off after a fight, usually he wanted to go after him. But not now. Now he felt...calm. Relieved even. He really wanted to sit down and have that drink with you.

"Yes, I would love a drink, and I've told you multiple times to call me Vox."

"Yeah I know but I didn't want to risk Val still hearing it." You chuckled.

"So, the usual, Vox?"

"Obviously." He answered back.

"Are you ok?" You asked as you poured his drink. You two were close enough for this not to be an awkward question. You were the bartender, you have comforted him after a night of drunken crying and put him to bed multiple times. He always asked you to stay. You never did. You just didn't feel ready yet.

"Getting better by the day, his antics don't affect me as strongly anymore." He commented calmly.

"I'm glad." You gave him his drink and you two continued talking.

And you talked, long into the night. Vox got a bit drunk again.

"All right mister I think it's time to get you to bed." You said smiling softly as you were about to jump from behind the bar and help him to his room.

"I can take care of him." Came a creepy calm voice from the door way. You saw Valentino.

He had a fake smile on his face. You knew this was trouble but he was kind of your boss.

"All right, sir." You just answered quietly, as Val took Vox and started to take him to his room.

"What-no, you-- (Y/N)--I, don't"

Vox mumbled drunken.

When they left the room you had a silent debate with yourself.

Yes Val was your boss. But you knew that taking advantage of someone while they're drunk was not below him.

"Fuck it" you mumbled to yourself as you jumped from behind the bar and tried to quietly run after them.

Thankfully you found them when they were about to enter the room.

When they got in you made sure to put your foot between the door and the frame so it doesn't close.

You peered into the room and you saw Val throw Vox onto the bed.

"You fucking whore, you couldn't keep your hands of the cute bartender boy could you."

He started angrily as he stepped onto Vox's screen, breaking it. You already wanted to barge in there when you saw this but when he started unbuckling his belt, thats when you snapped.

You jumped on Val, literally. And while the man might be powerful he had close to no muscles so he crumbled under you.

You knew you had close to no chance of winning. But you didn't care. You had to save Vox.

You tried to cut off Val's breathing by holding onto his neck for dear life. You might have been physically stronger he was still an overlord. A very powerful one.

You expected to be thrown down onto the floor any minute when the struggling finally stopped.

Your eyes opened widely as you hurriedly got off of Valentino.

You started panicking. What the fuck did you just kill an overlord? No, no there is no way he is so powerful why didn't he stop you.

You kneeled down and checked for a heart beat.

When you felt faint beating a boulder fell off your shoulder.

"Thank fuck" you commented to yourself. He probably just passed out.

But still why didn't he stop you.

You thought about it a but when it hit you. He was probably batshit drunk himself. You saw that when he walked away from the bar he barely managed to walk straight.

You were still panting.

You looked over at Vox and a strong feeling of sadness filled you.

You stepped over Vals passed out form and lifted up Vox.

He was lighter than you thought. You carried him all the way to your room where you knew you had a first aid kit.

Sure you could have just bring the first aid kit to him but you were not going to leave him alone with Valentino jot even for a second. Not even when they're both passed out.

After you put Vox's screen back together and batched him up you laid him down onto your bed.

This gave you time to think things through.

Even you couldn't explain to yourself why you cared about Vox this much.

Its true you have become very close during your time working here.

But there are people who you have known longer yet do not love as much as him.

...love?

You love him?

"(Y/N)"

While you were occupied with your thought you didn't notice the time. It was morning already.

"Yeah, Vox?"

"What the fuck happened?" He asked as he started touching his patched up screen.

You told him everything. You also told him that you will very likely have to leave because once Val wakes up...you don't want to know what he'll do to you.

"He can't do anything your soul is mine you are under my protection." He said firmly. He sat silently after that. Like someone who is contemplating something.

"Can I ask you something?"

He asked after a long silence.

"Of course"

"Why did you save me?"

This surprised you.

"Well, I mean I know what Val is like and...I just did what any normal person would do really-"

"No. You know no one in hell would to that for the demon that owns their soul. Not to mention this was the second time you saved me."

"...I honestly don't know why I did it the first time; I guess I just felt like...I dont know"

"And the second time."

You couldn't answer this. You knew the answer but you didn't want to say it.

"Well, you are a nice boss you treat me with kindness and-"

"No one would attack a powerful overlord just to safe their boss who is just 'nice'; try answering truthfully this time."

Well fuck. You knew Vox was a smart man but that didn't help you in this situation.

"I..." you didn't know what to do. You could come up with another lie but he would detect it no problem.

"I love you" you blurted out before you could stop yourself. The moment the words left your lips you smacked your hands onto your lips.

"I'm sorry sir I will leave-"

Vox took your hand in his when you wanted to stand up and pulled you towards him.

With one swift movement he placed his lips on your in a tender kiss.

You have never kissed a screen before but you were pretty sure it wasn't supposed to be like this.

His lips were soft but cold. It was an amazing kiss.

"Oh, you're not going anywhere." Said Vox while he let out a little chuckle.

"Because I love you too."

#male reader #hazbin x reader #hazbin x you #hazbin hotel x male reader #male y/n #hazbin hotel #hazbin vox #vox x male reader #vox x reader #hazbin hotel vox

[pochapal]

hi there! Since you're currently Homestuck I'm writing in to ask you a favor: could you explain the truth/relevance/essentiality model of native integrity, for someone who has some experience with metafiction but hasn't read the Epilogues? I never got to that part of Homestuck and my attempts to Google explanations has left things very unclear in my head - in particular where each category ends and the other two begin.

okay so! caveat that a lot of this is going off memory and also 4 years of my own interpretation of the terms that may or may not correlate to actual reality, but truth/relevance/essentiality can be explained as follows:

as per the epilogues these things constitute the three pillars of canon - for a piece of fiction to attain canonicity it must be true relevant and essential to that which came before. in some ways this is as simple as if something like a sequel/spinoff passes the "he would not fucking say that" test and sometimes it's less simple.

for ease of understanding, each pillar can be understood as thus:

for something to be true, it must by definition not contradict either the literal or metaphorical truth of the canonical text. what comes after must be congruent with what came before. the easiest way to measure a story's truth value is to see if what is being said is verified as existing in some form within canon - if a character expresses interest in thing A, but this piece of fiction depicts them as both liking B and disliking A without even acknowledging their canonical enjoyment of A, then it loses its truth value.

for something to be relevant, it must have some matter of value or importance within the text itself. an example of something that is true but not relevant would be a side story that doesn't contradict the main canon but also doesn't add or change the core story in any way. inoffensive fluff of no consequence in other words.

for something to be essential, it must be in alignment with the themes and driving theses of the text. to make something essential, it must speak to the "why" of the source text in such a way that it either changes/becomes part of the central message. another understanding of essentiality is through audience impact - is this feature valued enough to stick in a reader's consciousness as a key component when recounting the story's details? in a lot of ways essentiality/relevance do share overlap, but my understanding is relevance = within the text and essentiality = outside of the text.

when thinking about these pillars, the important part is that these terms are also a loose metaphor for adherence to power structures/conformity to hierarchical norms. in homestuck, "canon" is a form of violence inflicted on its characters (the alpha timeline as a concept is the most accessible form of this) and so to adhere to canon is to perform existence in a way that the system views with approval. the pillars of canon are extrinsic validation that represent a total narrativising of reality, and thus the conflicts and hardships of canon continue to perpetuate (in homestuck epilogues terms, this comes in the form of sacrificing "happily ever after" for an intriguing and exciting sequel despite the suffering it will inflict on the characters).

what's interesting about this model is that truth/relevance/essentiality can also be self-generated and self-sustaining. a totally canon-divergent fanfiction will completely undermine the rules of its source to the point where if it were to be moored to canon it would damage the integrity of both texts, but it nonetheless continues to have its own internal consistency/structures. a queer AU means nothing to the source text, but it has meaning to itself and to the audience it exists for (audience response isn't very hashed out in the epilogues model, but i think it's important to consider for a more comprehensive picture - @hms-no-fun's godfeels touches a lot on this angle) and thus an alternative mode of being is formed in response.

the problem with a text that fails to adhere to these pillars is that, while it is afforded a greater structural freedom, it also fails to matter. a fanfiction that is canon-compliant has a greater value in the discourse surrounding its source text than a coffee shop au that only has character names and appearances as a shared commonality - even if this coffee shop au is a groundbreaking and moving piece of narrative, because it lacks any meaningful ties to canon it cannot be used to shape canon.

to give a clear example, a lot of this for me is most easily explored in the concept of june egbert who existed most prominently as a nebulous promise destined for the future of homestuck, but absent in its present. the question driving a lot of the fans with a vested interest in june during the 2019/2020 era was "june egbert is real, but how can june egbert be real? and what does june egbert being real mean?"

you can see this a lot with the two schools of fanworks depicting june egbert. on one hand you have what is loosely dubbed "hairclips june" - a version of june egbert who exists as the platonic ideal of transfeminine fantasy, who inhabits contemporary college aus and perfect femininity and coming out stories filled to the brim with queer coming of age tropes and feelgood trans girl archetypes. she is true and essential and relevant to the transgender experience (and indeed hairclips june *has* helped in cracking people's eggs and thus her validity and importance cannot be denied) but not the homestuck experience. in homestuck, june egbert will never come into being as an early 20's john egbert who realizes her depression is actually unaddressed dysphoria and who spends a great deal of time taking estrogen and wearing skirts and kissing her friends, but that doesn't mean there isn't a great deal of value in these texts existing regardless of their proximity to canon.

on the flipside you have "extant june" (a term i am inventing right now to categorize this character type in absence of official terminology), a version of june egbert focused much more on meaningfully addressing "how can june egbert come to be in a convincing way?", or "what canon and canon-adjacent avenues could june egbert take to come into being?". these june works are more dominated by the messy and heavy and dramatic rules that govern homestuck, and figuring out how to fit june egbert into that pattern. one such instance of this is godfeels, whose june comes about from a mind-meld with a sort of brain ghost vriska after a severe depressive episode and creates the composite "june eg8ert", a manifestation of vriska's influence on john during act 5 brought to its logical extreme. another instance is my own story, omelette route, which has june egbert come into being following her resurrection at the end of the epilogues and the canonical truth that "john egbert is dead"; freed from the narrative obligation of being john egbert, she is able to start examining the true shape of her feelings - this of course is an extension of the questions of selfhood posed over and over again by postcanon homestuck. you can even turn to homestuck^2 itself for what will almost certainly be "canon" june's entrance, through a 40 year old john egbert who, after sleepwalking his way into a miserable life and cruel world, has decided to once again give autonomy a chance.

extant june's stories are, for a better term, characterised in bleak and heavy and thematically dense brushstrokes, because homestuck itself is all of these things and more. to make a plausible june egbert that adheres to the rules of homestuck is to make june egbert compatible with the suffering of homestuck. june will never get a neat and happy coming out, but she might experience post-resurrection ego dissolution, or she might experience a personality-shifting psychic fusion, as these are all extreme character-defining moments common to homestuck's narrative language. yet there remains a controversy in these junes compared to hairclips june - these stories are often too complicated, too messy, too traumatic for an easy and palatable consumption. and yet they feel infinitely more tangible than a story about 21 year old college senior john egbert who is forcefemmed by his transfem roommate rose lalonde and has several feelings awoken as a result.

one version of june strives for truth and relevance and essentiality, and one does not. both junes contain an immense value for their respective audiences. in this way, you don't need the pillars of canon to have a conversation with a story's audience, but you do need them to have a conversation with the story itself. a story can only speak to its own pillars. if you discard those pillars either willingly or unwillingly, then you are distancing yourself from the possibility of dialogue. this is not to say that extant june is more "real" than hairclips june (they are both fanworks after all, and thus unable to ever attain absolute "truth" on their own due to not being canonically-authored texts), but that extant junes are more readily in direct dialogue and conversation with homestuck and thus have a greater potential for influence in this specific way. hairclips june through her essentiality can change your relationship to yourself, while extant june through her essentiality and relevance can change your relationship to homestuck.

i hope this helps in illuminating these concepts in a way that makes more tangible sense!

#cetaceanhandiwork #homestuck epilogues #june egbert #homestuck 2

[nights-at-crystarium]

You know what, I assume that people always read my pinned, or notice the pointer "new reader? start here" in every new Fragments' episode. I might be deluding myself. So hi hello lemme TALK ABOUT MY COMIC.

Before I get too rambly (and I mean RAMBLY), here's a quick intro. Fragments is a comic focused on feels and slice of life, made by a queer guy, aiming to ~character study~ the main cast (Vivi, Raha, Alisaie, Feo Ul) and fill in the gaps in canon (or linger in canon moments that needed more air imo), the tone ranging from angst to fluff to meme. Good punches require a good windup, so please don't expect angst anytime soon :3c

The story's segmented (fragmented, heh) into episodes. Episodes 1-11 take place in ARR, you can enjoy them with no worry about spoilers. Episode 12 onward is ShB, with all the spoilers and lorebending.

My storytelling style assumes you haven't only played through ShB, but know it like the back of your hand, i.e. it's for nerds and thinkers. Of course there's plenty of silly moments that don't require any deep knowledge, but the overarching story does. Often I skip canon events, only hinting that they took place, simply because I don't wanna retell the msq 1:1, I've got plenty of original scenes waiting to be drawn. You're in for a treat if you like obsessing over emotional and moral implications of things. And, yes, this's a story about a morally grey mc. Don't expect to be spoon-fed "and this's why that thing's bad, kids".

Currently I've outlined all the main story beats up until post EW, so it's like, not being winged as I go. Yes I refine things here and there, but I know where I'm going. I'm going ham!!!! With the lorebending post ShB. Initially I didn't plan to, but the more I learned about Vivi and personally grew as a writer, the more courage I got to "divorce" from canon. The general xiv story may still be good wherever it's headed, but it's not suited for an established wolgraha, so I'm making food for myself.

Everyone imagines the lil scenes from their wol's life, I'm taking that a tiiiiiny step further. Fragments tells a cohesive story that's looking to be the longest project at least in our corner. I can and will hyperfixate on this for years.

I started out just like many others, being hit with ShB like a truck, I wanted to put a catboy under a microscope and rotate him forever. Although I'd already been drawing for decades, I didn't have the comic-making skills yet, or eloquence to write the dialogue, so I spent the first half of 2022 self-studying, just because I needed a mouth to be able to scream about my ship.

Vivi didn't exist prior to my obsession with Exarch. He was made for this, he started out as a reagent (or a foil, now that I know fancy writing terms) for a rich and fun chemistry, and keep myself entertained for years, first and foremost.

Me, a fool: okay let's make a guy that falls in love with Exarch in this particular moment, what kinda life must he have led to- Me: ....oh no

The chemistry quickly bubbled up and exploded in my face, involving not only Exarch, but other characters (first as a means to subtly tell about Vivi, then they also demanded their own screentime), and here I am, sitting with a massive script on my hands, drawing my blorbos every day. Thanks for enabling that btw.

I care about characters a lot. I ask a lot of whys and hows. I'm critical-minded and burned on many bad stories that did their characters dirty, and I wanna be an opposing example. What I'm doing is extremely ambitious and risky, yes, but I can only invite you to tag along and see if I stick to my word.

The internet's a cruel and unforgiving place nowadays, and here I am, pitting my passion against what feels like decaying humanity. I'm making this comic to keep myself happy above all else, being sincere and cringe because life's too short to be anything else.

Thanks for reading this, and if you haven't yet, read Fragments here!

#ffxiv #vivien rell #crystal exarch #g'raha tia #wol x g'raha tia #wolgraha #own: next lvl #fragments talk

[justxtalking]

my thoughts on this hxh ABCD mess

Being a Togashi fan is such a roller-coaster of emotions. I think I went through all the stages of grief in only one day.

Half of me believes he's trolling.

To be honest, it's better to just take it with a light heart. Togashi is known for joking around about himself, his health and his own story. (I wasn't in the fandom at that moment, but I wonder how everyone reacted when he said everyone was going to die). I consider ending D to be so uncharacteristically him for so many reasons I could talk for hours about it. I find it ironic how he gave a stereotypical-shonen-like ending when he talked several times (even in this interview) about how he likes to surprise himself (and his readers) when he writes. Some other times he explained he likes to play with these shonen stereotypes and just do something different. I mean, he's been doing it since the beginning of his career.

And I'll be honest, ending D sounds like a mockery of shounen.

(And I feel a bit dumb taking this so seriously if he's joking.)

(Though, this also may be the case of "the boy who cried wolf" and he's actually saying the truth this time.)

The other half of me thinks he's being honest.

If he is actually giving us a back-up ending, I find it incredibly sad. Not only because of his health, but also because he felt pressured enough to give us an ending, no matter its form and no matter if it's an ending he doesn't even consider anymore. He shouldn't have been on that position.

It is important to take into account that this is not an ending he wants or even considers anymore, it is an ending we can take if he's not able to finish HunterXHunter. We need to realize there's a lot of circumstances we don't know about or may not be considering for him to give us this ending as an option at that moment. And what type of ending too.

I seriously want for him to be able to finish Hunter X Hunter the way he truly wants, not worrying about anything else. He's thinking about three plausible scenarios that may see the light of day or not. And no matter what he ends up choosing, he should choose whatever he wants. It's his story, no ours. And it may even be his last story (I know it's sad, I want him to keep on writing forever, but it's true). Honestly, a part of me wants him to choose the A scenario because that's where seems to be less drama, but actually I want him to choose the C scenario. Even if that ending is Gon married to a lizard with beautiful lizard-babies in the Dark Continent. And that's because that ending is what he would actually want to do with the story.

(I really am curious about it, though. I know I wouldn't be able to guess even in a million years, but I'm still curious. And I so want to read the whole interview and see the whole episode, since there were more questions about other things.)

For the shippers

I know this feels like a punch in the gut or something even worst. I felt it too. And it's totally valid to feel like we do and not agreeing with ending D. Even as a non-shipper because what do you mean, Gon did what?

Everyone who follows me knows I'm a proud Killugon and Leopika shipper. And I will keep on being one even if Hunter X Hunter transforms into Boruto and I have to see Grandpa Gon (the more I say it, the more it sounds like a joke).

Honestly, I always considered the gay ships were never going to be explicitly canon.(Kishimoto traumatized me). Not because of lack of material, but because there's a whole context and a lot of external circumstances we sometimes forget about (and Kishimoto traumatized me). There was a reason why Togashi couldn't make his queer manga in the 90s, which, I'm sorry, I don't consider it to be that long ago. And there is a reason why he can't explicitly say that characters like Pouf or Hisoka are gay (despite being totally obvious and them being villains).

I still find it admirable how Togashi included so many queer elements in his stories and got away with it. And he's a mangaka that does shonen. And not just any shonen, a battle manga in Shonen Jump. (He included a trans man in Level E and made him transition. The way Togashi explains some things about this character may be a bit problematic, but Togashi still did this). And those queer elements are still there and are still as canon as when he wrote it the first time. Pouf is as gay as he is dramatic. And Ging and Pariston still have that sexual tension (and I'm 100% sure they fucked or they are going to fuck in the near future or both). And Killua is still the queerest boy I've seen in the longest time.

Sometimes, I think there's a possibility of Killugon being canon. But only because of Togashi's history and tastes. He may feel a bit rebellious and just go with it, he's so unpredictable that I'm always expecting anything and everything from him (I mean, he did what he did with Hisoka and Illumi and so many other things). However, he's an introvert, I'm not sure if he actually wants the attention he would get if he actually goes with it. And that is something we should also respect. (I do think the most plausible option is Killugon to be as ambiguous as they are now.)

In relation to ending D, I don't think we should worry that much. At the end of the day, it is an ending he doesn't consider anymore. (At least we can sleep well knowing that the ending he wants to do doesn't have to do with Grandpa Gon). What's important is what he writes and does in the manga. That is what speaks louder than anything.

Though, I do think it's going to be a pain in the ass interacting with other fans. I'm not looking forward to it. (At least they are going to stop saying that Kurapika will die, I hope!). What I'm looking forward to is the new Killugon content in the fandom.

My personal take

Gon =/= Ging. I could say a lot about this, since one of the things I love the most about Hunter X Hunter is what he did with these two and Gon's arc, but I think this is clear enough.

So!

After saying all of this, I think the only thing we should consider as canon is the manga. If he doesn't write it, it didn't happen.

If he's saying the truth, he may be thinking about how to finish Hunter X Hunter sooner or later. Even though so many fans say that they want an ending, I feel like we are not ready. Not even for Gon marrying a lizard and having beautiful lizard-babies in the Dark Continent.

I hope I was coherent enough. I have no answers, only thoughts and thoughts! I feel like we can only speculate and ending D is so confusing because how did we even get there?

I may be going through all the stages of grief again tomorrow, but I wanted to share my thoughts (at least partially). I may erase it if I feel too uncomfortable, but yeah!

Conclusion: Let's just take it with a light heart and wait to see what happens! (I know it's hard).

#i hope this post doesnt grow old badly lmao #togashi is the only one who actually knows what he wants to do by the end of the day #everything can happen #i find it sadly hilarious how i was traumatized by kishimoto found peace with togashi's work and then savage option D appears lmao #hxh #togashi #hunter x hunter #hunterxhunter #hxh manga #yoshihiro togashi #killugon #justxtalking #btw my mom read ending D and didnt like it either lmao #the dudebros can take ending d if they want it I'll just have my leopika wedding with killugon enganged ending

[sarahreesbrennan]

sorry if you have already answered this, but are we getting any queer rep in Long Live Evil? 💕 i am super excited to see what you've cooked up for us either way!

I came back after I'd gone off on one, seeing the post had struck a chord and being thankful but fearful of my inbox. Let me say with delighted surprise that all the asks are very kind.

Thank you for this one, sweet anon. I am so excited and so nervous about my best beloved, Long Live Evil, and about coming back with a new book of my own after so long, when I believed for a long time it was hopeless.

I'm really grateful to find readers waiting for me. But I know readers are naturally more invested in characters they know: I extremely appreciate you taking an interest in the future.

So, short answer: YEAH you are!

Long answer: Long Live Evil wouldn't exist without its queer narratives.

C.S. Pacat and I were talking in our virtual Brookline Booksmith event recently about our favourite Disney villains. C.S. Pacat picked Maleficent, a fine choice. I picked Snow White's Evil Queen. We agreed we loved most of them.

Here's the relevant excerpt I was quoting in my last post from Carmen Maria Machado's In The Dream House, saying 'I think a lot about queer villains, the problem and pleasure and audacity of them.' Well... me too.

I think many of us have experienced feeling made wrong in some way - for not wanting what society said we should or being what we were expected to be - and that one step along that journey of discovery is going 'Okay, if it's wicked, I'll just BE wicked.' And that's part of why those characters appeal - because they seem free, and free of pain.

But modern storytelling isn't confined to coding, and audiences can now feel free to expect, not the certainty, but the possibility characters who aren't introduced as such still might actually turn out to be LGBT+. The essays I've read about Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Sherlock, Ted Lasso, Fox 9-1-1... I think the latest argued Jaime Lannister was bisexual. (Pretty persuasive.)

I remember reading the Raven Cycle going 'oh? OH.' I remember being at a writing retreat in 2013 and running through the halls screaming about Nico diAngelo. Ten years later we got a Nico diAngelo book co-written by Rick Riordan and the amazing Mark Oshiro. I watched Red, White and Royal Blue with a friend and she said 'honestly I hope the guys get together, but...' and I (having read the book) silenced myself with a herculean effort and watched her hopes come true. I didn't know about The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and almost dropped the book in a swimming pool. But I've also read and watched many things thinking, just maybe... oh, no. Still that hope existing is meaningful, the thought that if the story had gone differently, if this revelation had happened, if this realisation had happened, if, if, if...

Long Live Evil is a story about the story going differently and asking yourself questions about your own nature, and the escape to fiction of those who really need escape. The book is based on that 'if,' and the 'if' itself is joyous, and brings me back to the idea of gleefully transgressing the narrative that much villain love is based on.

It's also an ensemble story with a rogue's gallery of characters and multiple PoVs. (I was much inspired by the Six of Crows ensemble.) So it isn't about any one character's romance, and by the book's nature there exist many possibilities. A critique partner read and said 'I didn't know you were going THERE' and I responded 'Should I?'

I've never been one to confirm where stories are going, and I won't do so now. I'm not talking about any one character or telling you a direction.

I'm just saying yes to rep. It's baked in.

#long live evil #supernatural #teen wolf #fox 911 #lgbt reads #six of crows #evil queen #maleficent #red white and royal blue #the raven cycle #in the dream house #cs pacat #percy jackson

[theharrowing]

Collateral 🗡️ 17 - Making someone cry is a side-effect of being in love, I'm afraid

Your ex-boyfriend gets in over his head working for the local mafia, and Boss Min has come to collect his payment: You.

But was it simply a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or has he always had his sights on you?

PREVIOUS | INDEX | NEXT

🗡️ Yoongi x Female Reader x Namjoon, Jungkook x Female Reader 🗡️ word count: 15.6k 🗡️ mafia au, strangers to lovers, graphic violence, major character injury, poly, smut, angst, fluff, nsfw, explicit 21+ 

🗡️ chapter warnings: excessive drinking to numb/forget; so much fucking tension lolol; Hwasa (yes, that is the warning); new nickname for the bingo card (doll/dollface); Jeongguk is a flirty little shit & he got his eyebrow and lip pierced; mc learns to dance; use of "whore" (not derogatory but also kind of derogatory); smoking weed; mc confessing to "going all ways" (sorry straight readers, but i don't know how to not write a queer mc); mc has some complicated feelings and is doing her best; Jeongguk sometimes says the wrong thing but he is also doing his best; a healthy amount of crying; mention of dead moms; discussion of drug use & addiction; inexplicit discussion of sex (sorry lads, the smut is in the second half. it's worth the wait!!!)

🗡️ note: this chapter spans about three weeks, and there is no clear definition of time in between some scenes because mc is just kind of...dealing with the passage of time in her own way. so if it seems kind of disjointed, that is because it is meant to. also, as you may have seen, this chapter wound up being 30k words, so i have broken it in two parts and beefed up some of the scenes. i intend to post chapter 18 very, very soon. ok i love you, enjoy!

🗡️ beta read by @neoneunnajimin!

🗡️ posted on june 2023 | read on ao3

You love Yoongi; there is no question about it. 

Despite the hurt and confusion and pain, one thing that you are certain about, above all else, is that you love him. 

And that is why you drink. 

You drink to numb the myriad feelings. You drink to pass the time. You drink to forget. With a twinkling haze of intoxication, loud club beats, and bright lights, you drink, and drink, and drink. 

Jimin caves instantly on his insistence to not teach you how to dance, and you realize that he is not only a brilliant dancer, but that he seems to really enjoy having someone around to join him. Behind Paradise is a ballet studio that he owns and rents out to instructors. When he has free time, he goes there to practice in front of the wall of mirrors while some sultry melody plays on an old-fashioned boombox in the corner. 

Sometimes he throws on a hip-hop beat and does experimental moves with his body, contorting his limbs in square, jarring movements. Other times he drifts gracefully through the space to ballet pieces, muttering about Tchaikovski, Prokofiev, and other names of long-dead men that you struggle to pronounce. He is always magnificent—a true artist of his craft. 

It takes no time at all to become a friendly face at Paradise. Within just a few nights, the cocktail waitresses, dancers, bartenders, and regulars all seem happy to greet you. Jimin has introduced you to everyone as dove, a nickname you quickly warm up to, which is what everyone there calls you. 

Everyone, that is, except the new bar manager, Jeon Jeongguk. 

At Paradise, under the flashy red, purple, and fuchsia lights, he calls you dollface, or doll for short. And at first, you fucking hate it; the words stick like bile to your tongue, heavy and tacky. 

But the more he struts over with his black satin shirt unbuttoned just a little too low, hair slicked back, standing too close with his sticky-sweet whiskey breath and muttering shit like, "Looking gorgeous tonight, doll," you begin to warm up to it a little. 

"What happened to buttercup?" you teased the first time he tried the new nickname, and he rolled his eyes, chewing on a piece of pink bubblegum wide-mouthed like an adorable a fucking cow as he said, "That was the old me, dollface; I'm not the same person I was yesterday."

It should come as no surprise that Jeongguk is really beginning to grow on you. Now that he works the bar and you see him a lot more often, his attitude is much softer. He still teases you, and at times, it makes your fucking blood boil, but there is a softness to his gaze, especially when his smile stretches wide, that makes your tummy do a backflip whenever his presence lingers. 

All of this is extra dangerous in your current situation because the last thing you need while on sabbatical from both of the men who you continue to be in some unnamed but deeply romantic relationship with, is Jeon Jeongguk making you feel giddy. Try as you might to convince yourself that your feelings are purely a product of your loneliness, you know that is untrue; your feelings for Jeongguk had already begun to sprout, and, as time goes on, they continue to grow. 

You are also finding yourself charmed by Jeongguk's second-in-command, a wisp of a woman with a wide smile and even wider hips named Ahn Hyejin—stage name Hwasa. Hyejin is tiny, barely standing taller than Jeongguk's shoulder with her sharp stiletto heels on. But she commands a room, voice booming and deep when she needs it to be, making all the dancers do exactly as she says. 

Although you are surrounded by beauty in a place like Paradise, nobody steals your attention like Hyejin. Her beautiful diamond-shaped face is always made up with sharp black eyeliner and bright red lipstick. With wide, dark brown eyes that pierce into your soul, all it takes is one pointed smirk, and you are practically melting to her feet. She is always dressed a little revealing, showing enough skin that your eyes continuously trail back to her, just to get another glance.

You understand why men wage wars over love and lust. Hyejin is living proof of why so many sonnets and classic literature pieces are steeped in maniacal desperation over a woman some lonely man saw at a passing glance one time. 

Hyejin was once a dancer, too, but she worked her way into a management position, and all the family men who come to the bar treat her like a sister, including Jeongguk, who only reluctantly calls her Hyejin-noona because she is two years older than him and likes to insist on the nickname. 

She teases Jimin at times, too, being several months older than he is, and she uses it to her advantage when she wants him to do something for her. Jimin always grumbles, rolling his eyes while fulfilling her requests to make the stages and dress rooms better for the dancers, but he does everything out of love for her, and for his dancers, and he is grateful to have her on his management team, giving him advice on how to improve.

Hyejin is, in a word, amazing.

"I see the way you look at her," Jimin teases you tonight the moment she walks in sporting a red one-piece latex bodysuit with long sleeves and a deep v-collar, putting her thighs on glorious display. She wears matching red thigh-high boots, and her long, dark brown hair falls past her shoulders in waves.

Although you turn your head in the direction of Jimin's voice, your eyes stay on Hyejin as she struts over to the bar where Jeongguk is leaning forward on his elbows, getting his attention by draping herself over him and slamming her hip against his side. 

"Hmm?" you finally ask when seeing the two of them standing side-by-side has your cheeks feeling entirely too warm, though it still takes a few stray seconds to pull your gaze to Jimin. 

He has one perfectly manicured eyebrow raised, and he tongues the inside of his cheek, making you feel even more embarrassed. You are only human…what does he expect from you?

Tonight, Jimin wears silver shimmer on his eyes, with his brown hair styled off his forehead. His black satin button-up is undone to the center of his chest, and it is tucked into very tight, fitted black slacks, styled with black boots. 

Everyone at Paradise is honestly so breathtaking; it is no wonder the place brings in so many high-rollers willing to spend top dollar. Although you are determined to keep Jimin as a friend only—not that he has ever shown signs of wanting more from you—you still find yourself stunned by his beauty.

"Gonna start calling you fawn instead of dove," Jimin teases, and you snicker at the wordplay, unwilling or able to deny you have been fawning over Hyejin since the moment you met her. 

"I need a pet name bingo card," you tease, scrunching your nose to feign annoyance, despite finding it cute. 

You smell a familiar perfume—bright floral and lightly fruity—dance softly in the air before you feel an arm sling around your waist, and you take a fortifying breath before turning to find Hyejin's beaming red smile inches from your face. 

"Hey, dove," she greets in a deep, sultry tone that makes every little hair on your body stand up. 

"Hey, Hyejin," you respond as your cheeks become hot.

"What are you up to tonight?" she asks, giving your waist a squeeze before sliding her arm away but staying just as close. "Practicing any more of your dance moves?"

You giggle and shake your head, feeling nervous about talking to her, of all people, about dancing. Once Jimin let it slip that he was showing you floor moves, both Hyejin and Jeongguk began hounding you for a demonstration. 

"Ahhhh, probably not," you respond, sounding just as awkward as you feel. "I was planning on sitting here tonight and drinking all of Jimin's expensive whiskey for free."

Hyejin pouts and it sends your heart haywire, making you nearly cave. "I want to see your moves," she says in a sweet, baby voice that has you floundering for words—deciding that you would probably do anything to satisfy her. 

"Maybe once I feel more confident," you respond demurely, nibbling on your bottom lip. 

This seems to satisfy her, and she winks as she says, "Looking forward to it," before walking off to the dressing rooms to check on her dancers. 

"Holy shit," you mutter under your breath once she is gone, catching your breath as if you had just run a marathon. 

Jimin scoffs, teasing you as he says, "You are such a whore," and you laugh with him, rubbing your palms over your face. The effect that she has on you must be as obvious to her as it is to everyone else, and the prospect of that makes you nervous.

You have begun to dress a little nicer when you visit Paradise, starting from the first night Hyejn was introduced to you—wearing the more casual designer dresses that Jimin graciously brought from your room at the mansion, and letting him do your hair and makeup. She always gets a little too close when you have your cleavage showing, so you have been displaying it more and more lately.

"She's just so pretty," you complain as if it is an inconvenience, making Jimin laugh anymore. 

"Careful, doll," Jeongguk's voice speaks way too close to your right ear, causing you to gasp and flinch, turning in the direction of the sound. "Keep flirting with her and it might make me jealous."

You scoff and lean away from Jeongguk, who only crowds closer, teasing you with a grin. Recently, Jeongguk has gotten his eyebrow and lip pierced, both on the right side—your left—and he keeps his hair cut short with a sharp, dark undercut. Today, his hair is styled in a swoop over his forehead, and his delicate, floral musky scent is dizzying the closer he gets. 

Since working at Paradise, Jeongguk has begun to dress a little differently, and you find yourself unable to keep from sneaking glances at the slivers of skin he kept hidden behind buttons and t-shirts before. He continues to don his standard all-black attire, but he has also switched to satin, much like Jimin. His shirts are always unbuttoned to the center of his toned chest with no undershirt, and tonight he has several silver chains of various lengths and widths cascading from his neck. 

"I wouldn't dream of it," you tease as you take a step away from Jeongguk and spin on your toes, toward the bar. A sexy R&B song plays loudly, and you swish your hips to the rhythm, knowing without having to glance back that he is watching you. 

And although you tell yourself that you should not enjoy his attention so much—or anyone's attention, for that matter—you revel in the thrill it gives you. Yoongi and Namjoon have both encouraged you to pursue him, anyway…surely they wouldn't mind if you have a little innocent fun. After all, you have no idea when you may see the two of them again.

Nights at Jimin's house are lonely. His mansion is huge and empty, and you prefer not to spend much time there by yourself, which means you tend to be at Paradise from late evening to mid-morning most nights. At first, you thought your sleep schedule would adjust and you would become a night owl just like Jimin and Jeongguk, but as the days wear on, you find yourself exhausted, floating through a realm of half-wakefulness. The drinking likely does not help. 

But what other choice do you have? Despite the deep ache behind your ribs, it feels too soon to return to Namjoon. During a brief phone call shortly after returning from Paris, he mentioned Yoongi was in the countryside at a facility to help him get past the first three weeks of withdrawal. 

From time to time, you find yourself wondering how long it has been since you returned from Paris. It could have been weeks, but it could have been days; you have been disinterested in keeping track, finding the tangible passage of time too painful to confront. You figure the time will come when they are both ready to return to you and not a moment sooner; no use dwelling on it.

On the nights when all you wish to do is let go and forget, you either sit at the center stage and watch the strip shows with a drink in hand, or you head to the upper-level VIP section of the club and dance by the railings. When you are feeling outgoing, you find a group of drunk, friendly women by the back bar to become single-use friends with for the night and dance until bar close. 

Back when you first moved into the mansion, Paradise was apparently a dance club with a brothel beneath, just like Serendipity. But during the weeks leading up to your Paris trip, Jimin had been working on getting the space remodeled—hence why you had not seen him around much, for a while. There still is a dancefloor, but it is rather compact near the back bar; not too many people come to Paradise just to dance. 

The main room now consists of three stages—two smaller ones on either side of the room, and one large stage in the center, all equipped with a spinning poll. Everything is made up of dark wood, black leather, and chrome.

Beneath Paradise, there are still brothel rooms, but it is a very hush-hush affair that not too many patrons seem aware of. A patron can book any of the dancers for a private strip show and lap dance in a back room, but anything explicitly sexual is kept strictly to the lower level, and unless someone knows how to ask for it, they will get removed from the premises in a heartbeat. 

Jimin oversees all Paradise operations, but his main focus is on the activities that take place underground. Jeongguk and Hyejin oversee everything on the main floors, including the strip stages, the back bar and dancefloor, and the VIP bar upstairs, which is more or less just a mezzanine with a bar and booths that cost a pretty penny to use. 

Paradise is your oyster, and you more or less have free reign to do anything you would like.

During the nights when you do not feel like drinking, you go to the dance studio. Sometimes, Jimin goes along to let off some steam, either before he needs to run things at Paradise, or when he has a break in his duties. Other times, you go alone. 

You have been getting a hang of moving your body in ways Jimin has shown you, and in new ways that you are discovering on your own. And although you are nowhere near as flexible or fluid as he is, you are surprised by how your body can bend and move and stretch when you allow it patience and grace to learn how. You get why he, and the other dancers at Paradise, take so much pride in their craft. To the patron, it may just seem like stripping and ass-shaking for some loose notes, but to them, and to you, it truly is an art form.

On nights when you dance, the loneliness is not at all quelled, and you find yourself spacing out often and getting lost in your thoughts. But the more you move and let out all of your pent-up energy, the lighter the loneliness seems to feel. Some nights you are able to relax and feel at peace, rolling and stretching your body without a care in the world. It gives you hope that there truly may be a light at the end of this tunnel, no matter how long it takes for you to reach it.  

"Hey, pretty," a familiar sultry voice purrs, giving you goosebumps. 

It is some unknown night in the middle of the week, and you left a group of bachelorettes by the back bar to step outside and smoke a joint. It is rare that anyone is out here, and you are surprised to find Hyejin, of all people, leaning against the brick wall in this quiet, employees-only escape tucked away in a dark alley. This spot is nestled behind a tall fence, past which is a set of dumpsters and a narrow path out to the main roads.

Hyejin is beautiful as always, wearing a black long-sleeve crop top shirt and high-waisted short shorts, under which black garters stick out and are clipped to black thigh-high socks. Her hair is pulled back into a bun, slicked on the sides, and as she approaches, her mary jane heels clack against the pavement. 

"Hyejin," you mutter, swallowing thickly and abandoning the joint you had forgotten to light, cradling it in your fist. "Didn't realize you would be out here."

Tonight, she wears a nude lipstick rather than the red you have grown accustomed to, and her smile is not quite as warm. As she approaches, you are greeted by her lightly fruity, floral perfume. 

"Stepped out for a breather," she sighs, eyes falling to your hand before they meet your gaze. With a raise of her eyebrows, she adds, "Mind if I help you smoke that?"

Your brain has to reboot before you lift your hand to inspect its contents, and you remember what you came outside for, chuckling as you hold out the joint and lighter to her and say, "Of course. You can hit greens."

Every once in a while, Hyejin will smile shyly. She has a practiced shy smile that she uses on Jimin, Jeongguk, and plenty of her customers—honed to perfection to get just what she wants. But this one is soft and delicate, filling her beautifully golden-tawny-toned cheeks with a deep red blush. 

As she unfurls the soft smile that opens into a toothy grin, she reaches out both slender manicured hands and takes your offering, gently scratching her long, painted-black fingernails against your palms. The sensation sends a shiver through you, and you giggle, squeezing your hands shut before opening them again.

"That tickles," you admit when she looks curiously, laughing softly at you.

"You're easily ticklish, hmm?" she mutters with the joint cradled between her lips, then flicks on the lighter, giving her face a beautiful golden glow while igniting the tip and sucking in. 

Hyejin takes a slow inhale followed by a sharp one, then holds her breath and passes the joint to you. When she lets out an exhale, smoke plumes in front of her, and you take a nice, big hit and hold it in, just the same. 

The smoke is warm in your lungs and licks at your senses. As you breathe it out, you feel a small sense of release, letting your shoulders drop and your body relax. 

When you turn to hand the joint back to Hyejin, she is standing much closer, leaning on the sliver of brick wall between you and the closed back door. You instinctively take a step back but rotate so that you are facing her, with barely any space between you. This time, when she smiles, her eyes have the sparkle that you are used to, but there is still an unmissable hint of sadness swirling in their deep umber depths. 

"You know, you can always talk to me if you need someone," she offers unprompted as she takes a hit and hands the joint back. 

You nod and mull it over, unsure where you would even begin. You have no idea what Hyejin knows about your situation, and although you think you can trust her, there is a part of you that is unsure whether you really want to talk about it, especially right now. 

"Thank you," you say before taking a hit and holding it in. Hyejin turns her head to blow the smoke away from your face, then she reaches out one hand and gently rubs her fingertips over your wrist, snaking them into the sleeve of your black denim jacket and sending a tingling warmth into your bloodstream.

You turn your head to exhale, then hold up the joint, asking, "More?"

"I'm good right now," she responds softly, and you move your hand away from her inviting touch to pinch the lit end off onto the ground. In your pocket is a small plastic tube into which you slide the joint, placing a little plastic cap over the end so that its smell does not stick to your clothing, and then you return your arm to its spot and allow her fingers to resume exploring your wrist and hand.

"I appreciate the offer," you try, hearing the way your voice trembles as the weed settles over you and fills you with a heavy-weightless warmth, buzzing in a deep thrum that tenses and relaxes and relaxes and relaxes. Sheepishly, with a giggle, you add, "I don't…really know where to begin."

Hyejin's hand sides into yours, palm against palm, fingers wrapping and holding on tight. 

"That's okay," she responds with a disarming smile. "I just wanted to offer, just in case. I know you have Jimin and Jeongguk, too."

At this, you laugh and sink further against the brick wall, tilting your head to rest against the scratchy, unwelcoming surface. "I do have them…for better or worse."

Hyejin laughs in understanding, then she rolls her eyes and says, "Jeongguk is so possessive; I thought the two of you were dating when you first started coming around."

"Oh?" you respond, a bit surprised by this news. Admittedly, when you first began coming to Paradise, you thought there was something going on between the two of them. It took a couple nights to realize that the way Hyejin hangs off of and pouts at her manager is all an act. "We're…not…" you begin, trailing off, unsure what to say.

"He clearly has feelings for you, regardless," she adds, and you search her face and fidget in place. Hyejin seems genuine and sweet, but you are so used to women in this line of work having ulterior motives and using kindness as a tool to gain information and an upper hand. But that does not seem to be what she is doing, and you let out the breath that had gotten trapped in your lungs and nod, chuckling lightly. 

"Yeah," you admit, feeling your cheeks warm. "He…certainly does."

"Oh my god," Hyejin teases, squeezing your hand until you look at her wide, beaming smile. "You like him too, don't you?"

Try as you might to shake your head and mutter, "No," she mirrors the movement, laughing and practically shouting, "Yes, you definitely do! You are a terrible liar, dove!" 

"It's…complicated," you mutter, squeezing your eyes shut with embarrassment. 

A sweet giggle flits through the air like a flutter of butterflies, and you open your eyes to find Hyejin regarding you with the sweetest smile. 

"I won't judge you," she assures, giving your hand another squeeze. "I don't know a lot about your relationship, but Jimin has mentioned you are dating two men, which…honestly, sounds like a dream come true."

Your heart seizes a bit around the word dating, and you swallow thickly and nod, unwilling to go down that path. Nothing has ever been established, despite your confessions of love and the huge, expensive fake-engagement ring that sits in your dark, empty bedroom. Sometimes, if you allow yourself to dwell on it, both the distance and time spent away from them make you worry that things may have an end date that is sooner than you expect. 

But none of this is pertinent enough information to share at a time like this, so you smile as convincingly as you can while saying, "It has its perks."

Hyejin returns your smile and closes the already meager space between the two of you to press a kiss against your cheek. Her mouth is soft and warm, and you let your eyes flutter closed, smiling from the smell of bluebells and apple that fills your senses. As she pulls her lips back, she stays close, cradling your chin with her hand while opening her mouth to continue speaking. However, the back door flies open, cutting off what she was going to say.

The sight of Jeongguk looking around the corner makes you gasp and back up, kicking up a flurry of feelings in your chest. Despite nothing happening between you and Hyejn, this feels like too precarious of a position to be caught in suddenly. Daresay, it may appear somewhat intimate. 

Jeongguk's expression is wide and shocked, but it quickly melts to intrigue. He steps outside and approaches, slinging an arm over both your shoulder and Hyejin's. 

"Well, what have we here?" he asks with a tone that is far too gleeful for anyone's good. 

"I was just telling our dove that I am here if she needs anything, and then I gave her a kiss on the cheek," Hyejin says, turning to Jeongguk and standing on her toes to plant her lips against his jaw. 

Jeongguk looks affronted and gasps as she says, "There, now nobody is left out."

"Listen, I'm not here to break up whatever is going on between my favorite girls." Jeongguk says, gaze on you as he raises an eyebrow and adds, "I just didn't know our doll swings both ways."

Feeling indignant and a little claustrophobic, you shrug away from Jeongguk's arm and give his shoulder a shove. 

"For your information, I go…all ways…" you mutter with a grimace, trailing off because you do not owe him an explanation. Labels for sexual orientation may work for some, but they have never been your thing; you like people for people, and it is as simple as that. Defensive, you add, "But she was just giving me a friendly little kiss on the cheek, so it doesn't matter."

Jeongguk grunts unconvincingly, then leans in close to say, "But a kiss between friends can easily spiral into something more, can it not?"

With that, Jeongguk takes a step back, leaving you standing shell-shocked and ready to smack him. Jeongguk winks and says, "Hyejin-noona, when you're ready, I have some things I wanna go over with for tonight," then he walks inside. 

Hyejin holds out her elbow, asking, "Shall we?" and you lift a hand to slide against her soft skin, allowing her to lead the way. 

Once you are back inside, the bachelorette group is still at the back bar, drunker and louder than when you left them, and you wave Hyejin and Jeongguk off as you walk over and allow the women to pull you into their chaotic little group for shots. 

You wake up late in the evening with a hangover after hanging with the bachelorette group the night and morning before, taking shot after shot of overly sweet liquor that was far too strong for its own good. It feels like it has been ages since you have felt so awful, and the thought of having even a drop more of alcohol makes your stomach churn.

So, tonight, rather than go to Paradise, you decide to visit the dance studio to practice the floor moves Jimin has been teaching you. Although you are still certain you have no desire to dance at the club, practicing the moves has been cathartic. And it helps you slow down on drinking. Being a lush for a while has definitely been one way to handle your myriad tumultuous emotions, but the hangovers are too frequent, and after what you felt earlier today, you are eager to change your ways.

Dancing also makes you feel sexy. You enjoy watching the way your body can curve and flex, bending and swaying in ways you had never really attempted before. Tonight you alternate between taking moves slowly on the floor, facing away from the mirrors, before attempting to add speed and flow to them while watching your reflection. 

With the cassette mixtape that Jimin has scribbled Whore Mix onto playing through the boombox, you stretch on a dark purple yoga mat that sits in the center of the floor while a sultry voice sings and raps over a beat that begs your hips to move, with the mirrors to your left and the studio door behind you.  

The approaching click-clack of boots against the wooden floor that greets you does not strike you as odd at first; you have grown accustomed to Jimin and his affinity for boots. So you continue practicing without turning to greet him.

Anchored back on your elbows, sitting on the mat on your left hip, with both legs bent, you stretch your right leg straight and fan it out at an angle lifted in front of you. In the same fluid motion, you lift your left leg, creating a v-shape in the air. Then you curl your legs in, trying to perfect the graceful movement that Jimin is so good at, twisting until you are on your right hip.

Only when clapping echoes through the room do you realize that the boots had stopped moving and that the tell-tale frenetic energy Jimin always brings to the studio is missing. You turn with a gasp and find Jeongguk standing in the center of the room, wearing his standard all-black. His button-up is undone enough to show a dip of his chest, as always, with no shirt underneath, and it is tucked into black slacks that are so fitted, the material strains against his thighs when he shifts from one foot to the other. 

"My, my," Jeongguk teases, approaching before squatting beside you. "What have I walked in on?"

Instinctively, you lean away, feeling warmth flood your cheeks. You sit wearing a tight purple sports bra and very tight, very short black athletic shorts, making you self-conscious to be met with such a hungry stare, especially knowing that he had been watching you, just now. 

"Jeongguk," you mutter, having to clear your throat to get more sound out. "What are you doing here?"

"I was coming to see if Jimin was here. Wanted to run a few things by him."

You nod, feeling like a fish out of water with how your mouth hangs open. Jeongguk's cologne is stronger than usual and a little different tonight—musky and floral with hints of spice—and you find it incredibly intoxicating. 

"But what I found is far more enticing," Jeongguk continues with a smirk.

Silence falls between you, and you feel your hands prickle with sweat. All you can think about is that kiss in Hong Kong and the chemistry you found in his lips—how delicately he asserted control but never pushed or pulled too much, causing you to unravel in moments. You want to feel that again—want to feel him again—so much that it seems like a bad idea for you to be left alone with him, like this. Flirting in the club, with people around, is one thing, but here, alone, seems dangerous.

Jeongguk stands, and you let out a heavy breath, then swallow a lump, feeling relief wash over you at the thought of him leaving. But then he walks over to the corner, to where some black chairs are shoved together, and he grabs one. Anxiety washes over you when he begins to bring the chair over, boot heels echoing loudly against the floor as he places it beside you and has a seat. He spreads his legs and leans forward, resting his wrists against his knees, tattooed hands so close you could reach out to him. 

With his lips tugged into a sharp grin, he says, "Let me see that move again."

You must look as stunned as you feel, blinking up at him, because he chuckles and raises his pierced eyebrow, clearly amused by your lack of response. 

"Come on, dollface," Jeongguk teases, leaning even closer and dropping his voice far too low for comfort. "Don't be shy."

Even as nervous as you are under his piercing stare, you like the attention he gives you. But continuing what was started between you without Yoongi or Namjoon present feels wrong, and it stirs up guilt and shame, starting in your tummy and working its way to your throat. You want to show Jeongguk your moves and crawl to him, grind your hips over his lap until he calls you noona and begs you for more. But not here. Not like this. 

Luckily, the click-clack that actually belongs to Jimin's boots storms down the hallway and into the room, giving you an out. 

"I told you to meet me in my office," Jimin complains, approaching with his hands on his hips, one balled into a fist that holds onto a manilla envelope. "Why did you come here? To bother her?"

"I must have misread the text," Jeongguk responds, eyes still on you while they glimmer mischievously before turning his attention to Jimin. "Office…dance studio…same thing."

Jimin lunges forward and slaps the envelope against the back of Jeongguk's head, saying, "Not the same thing, and you know it!" before shoving the document into his hands. 

You watch somewhat stunned as Jeongguk's mouth falls agape, and he chuckles. Then, as he begins to open and read through the contents of the folder, you take your leave, rolling the yoga mat in your hands as you walk away. Draped over one of the black chairs in the corner is a black hoodie and sweatpants, and you pad over, set the mat onto a chair, and slink into the garments, keeping your hair tucked into the shirt and the hood pulled low over your face.

"Gonna head back to work," Jimin says in a flurry, exiting just as fast as he arrived with the folder in his hand. "Come to the club if you want. Or call me if you need anything."

With a nod, you turn on your toes and begin for the door.

"And just where are you going?" Jeongguk asks, stopping you in your tracks and pushing a sigh from your lungs.

"Home," you say before your lips flounder, and you correct yourself, heavy-blinking. "Jimin's place."

With a hum, Jeongguk stands and says, "I'll drive you," picking up his chair to bring it back to where he got it from. 

Although you have made no plans for a ride, you know that Hoseok was at the club earlier, and you had planned to call and see if he was around. Jeongguk giving you a ride would definitely be convenient, but is that something you want right now?

"You have work to do," you insist, shaking your head and feeling nervous at the thought of being in a vehicle alone with him. 

But Jeongguk sets the chair down, takes you by the back of the arm, and begins to usher you rather forcefully out the door. As your sneaker heels dig into the wooden floor, rubber squeaking with each step he makes you take, you feel petulant, and you are dragged to the dark hallway before you manage to yank yourself out of his grasp and take an uneasy step back.

"What the fuck are you doing?" you ask, feeling anger rise and fighting the urge to slap him. 

"What?" Jeongguk says through a chuckle, looming over you while he steps forward, closing the distance with each step you take backward until you hit the wall. "You're dancing like a whore now, so I figured you wanted to be treated like one, too."

Although you feel anger buzzing through you like a livewire, sending every nerve on high alert, more than anything, you feel deflated. Despite Jimin jokingly using that word to tease you, there is something about the way Jeongguk says it—something almost sardonic and mocking in his tone, met with how forcefully he dragged you out of the room. It settles like bile in your guts and makes you feel extremely uncomfortable. 

But, rather than put up a fight and challenge him, you storm away, shoving past his weak attempt to hold you back as you stomp toward the door. 

"Hey," Jeongguk calls, heavy footsteps trailing behind you. "What's the matter with you?"

Unable to hold in your rage, you spin on your toes, shoving your palms against Jeongguk's chest as you say, "What's the matter with you?"

Jeongguk hardly flinches, and when you step forward to push him again, he grips onto your wrists and holds you still, tugging you close to him but not in a way that is meant to be rough or suggestive. He almost looks worried, brows knit as he studies your face. 

"Hey, hey," he mutters, holding onto you just tight enough that you have no choice but to stop lashing out. 

Somehow it works. Maybe because you are exhausted, or maybe it is the floral, musky scent of his cologne—or a combination of things wrecking your tiny sense of sanity—but you hold still and let Jeongguk softly shush you while rubbing his thumbs over the knobby joints in your wrists.

"I don't like it when you talk about women that way," you say, feeling a swell of sadness fill your chest. You are aware that this is likely a trauma response to the way men have treated you in the past, but you need to at least attempt to establish a boundary. "I know we joke about it at the club, but the way you said it, I—" You close your eyes and shake your head. 

"When have I ever talked about women that way?" Jeongguk asks, voice sounding more defensive than apologetic. "Look, I was joking. I'm sorry."

"Just don't do it, okay?" you insist, yanking your hands away until Jeongguk relents and folding your arms over your chest. "I was a whore before, Jeongguk. Is it so terrible? Do you really need to make it sound so demeaning? Yoongi's mother was a whore, too, you know."

Jeongguk's face pales, and he appears angry for a split moment, but you do not attempt to argue. Perhaps it is out of pocket to bring up Yoongi's dead mother, but you were a part of the honey bees who came after her; you belonged to the same organization, come hell and high water. 

"You're right," he says, taking a step back and sliding his hands into his pockets. "I don't look down on sex workers, and I shouldn't talk as if I do. I'm sorry I offended you. I know that we make jokes, and I guess I got carried away. I didn't consider how even playful actions might bring up bad memories for you, and I get what that's like."

Surprised and unsure what to say, you rock on your feet a little before settling on, "Okay."

"My mother was a whore too," Jeongguk adds, stepping forward slowly. "I never held it against her. Even when it got her killed, I never thought badly about her."

There it is, once more—the taste of guilt.

"Jeongguk," you say, taking a step forward, but he holds up his hand and shakes his head. 

"I offended you. I'm the one apologizing. Let me make it up to you by driving you home?"

You nod, conceding. "Alright."

The walk to Jeongguk's black sports car is quiet in a way that feels charged and awkward, but as you settle in, you begin to relax. Silence continues to hang during most of the drive, and all the while, you think of Yoongi. As you stare out at the city lights that fade the further you get from the city, you wonder how he must be doing and whether he will return home soon. 

"Did you supply the heroin?" you ask without thinking, staring out at the dark roads past the city line. 

As silence stretches, part of you worries that Jeongguk might be offended by your question, and you keep your eyes on the shadowed hints of trees, refusing to acknowledge the expression on his face. 

Finally, Jeongguk mutters a simple, "No," and you allow yourself to regard him. 

Jeongguk's jaw is tense, and he stares ahead at the road, tonguing on the inside of his mouth while both hands tightly grip the steering wheel.

"I didn't think you did," you respond softly, watching as his pierced eyebrow raises. "I don't know why I felt compelled to ask."

Jeongguk's gaze flicks to you, then back on the road. "Because you overheard my conversation with Namjoon that morning outside your bedroom. And because I was the one in charge of the drug operations."

"Yeah," you respond with a shrug. "But I don't think you would be that careless."

With a hum from Jeongguk, silence settles once more. You relax back in your seat, watching the road curve and become a little hilly before evening out. By now, you are familiar with this stretch, anticipating the sight of the property to come into view very soon. 

Whenever you pass the mansion these days, it is dark and quiet. If not for the outdoor security lights, it would be nothing more than a looming shadow—a silhouetted remnant of lives at a standstill. Namjoon must sleep in his own home, and from time to time, you consider walking down the dirt and gravel path to his property to see him.

But everything feels off balance in a way that you struggle to reconcile, and you feel like you need a little more time. You fish your phone from your hoodie pocket and check his Instagram feed, sad to see he has not posted anything to his story. 

Namjoon likes to post his workout routines, what he is listening to, and shots from trips to museums. Lately, though, he barely shares anything, making the lack of his presence feel heavier. You nearly ask Jeongguk to drop you off at his place, but you cannot seem to open your mouth to get the words out.

Instead, you text him. 

You: It's hard to keep tabs on you when you don't post story updates.

The message feels stupid, and you chew on the inside of your mouth once you hit send, staring at the screen and hoping that when he sees it, he does not find it annoying. Is there a chance of him being offended?

Three dots appear and disappear, over and over, making the anxiety in your tummy frantically build and crash like a wave pool that has just been switched on. But then he sends a simple little sentence that stirs both immense joy and deep, profound sadness— 

Namjoon: I miss you too, sweetheart.

—and you stare down at it until your vision blurs with tears.

As you open your mouth to ask to be taken to Namjoon's house, the dots appear and disappear again, and rather than speak, you clear your throat and wait for him to say more. 

"What is it?" Jeongguk asks, and you turn your head to him, confused at first, then realize he may have taken the sound as a feeble attempt at starting a conversation. 

"Oh," you respond, "Uh, nothing."

"Alright," Jeongguk says simply as he begins to turn into Jimin's driveway, waiting as the metal gate opens and allows you entrance.

As you pull into the drive, listening to the gate close behind you, the urge to cry becomes more difficult to tamp down. You swallow thickly, blinking away tears as Jeongguk stalls in front of the door. 

"You good?" Jeongguk asks, and you turn to regard him, but as soon as you open your mouth to tell him you are fine, the sounds die in your throat, and you have to swallow everything back down again. 

"Th-thanks for the ride," you manage to mutter as you get out of the vehicle and run to Jimin's door, punching in an eight-digit code and holding your eyes open as wide as you can manage for the retina scan. 

Once inside the dark, empty mansion, you sink against the cold, wooden door, feeling your chest heave with emotion so deep, you become nauseated. Gripped in your fist, your cell phone vibrates, and you lift the device in a shaking hand, checking the notification—

Namjoon: I miss your voice. And your smile. I hope you're taking care of yourself.

—which sends you crashing over the edge as tears pour and your voice comes out in a loud, terrible sob.

Your heart pounds as you cry, feeling the crushing weight of how deeply you miss Namjoon. Although each breath that enters and exits your lungs is a storm, rattling and shaking you to the core, you sniffle and hold your phone tightly in both hands as you place a call. It is late, but Namjoon is responding to texts, so perhaps he is free to talk. 

Namjoon picks up on the first ring, and when his deep, surprised voice says, "Hey, sweetheart," you sob even harder. How is it that something so tiny could make his absence feel so much heavier?

"Hey," Namjoon says, sweet and alert, "are you alright? Where are you?"

"I'm okay," you cry, punctuated by a sniffle. "I'm at Jimin's. Everything is fine."

"Everything does not sound fine," Namjoon insists, and you smile softly at his concern, taking in a deep breath. "Do you need something? Can I…can I do anything?"

Namjoon still owes you an explanation, and it is not something you will easily let slip. But you are certain that you cannot continue to keep him at a distance, even if it means putting the much-needed conversation on the back burner. Although life with Jimin has been fun and a little exciting, the loneliness you feel from being away from Namjoon and Yoongi has a tendency to become excruciating. 

"Can I see you?" you ask weakly, like a child who is afraid of being scolded. 

The soft chuckle that proceeds, "Of course, you can," warms your heart, and you close your eyes and smile wide, clutching your phone tightly to your ear. "Give me ten minutes? I'll be right there."

With a wet, disgusting sniffle, you say, "Okay," and rub the back of your hand against your nose. 

"I'll be there soon," Namjoon says as he ends the call, and you nod to nobody as you drop your phone down and clench it to your heart. 

It takes effort, but you peel yourself from the floor and kick off your shoes before heading up the stairs to your borrowed bedroom, squinting as you switch on the light. The room is similar to your room in Yoongi's mansion, but the bedding and curtains are pinks and oranges—a permanent sunrise. 

As you cross the room to the walk-in closet, you pull off the joggers and athleticwear from earlier and find a cute, soft pair of pink sleep shorts and a matching, loose pink tee. Then you run into the bathroom to brush your teeth. Even though you did not drink anything tonight, you want to kiss Namjoon until your lips bruise, and you need to be minty fresh. 

By the time you are rinsing your mouth and wiping your chin off, you hear a loud knocking on the front door, surprised that ten minutes could have passed so quickly. You run out of the ensuite and find your phone on the bed to shoot off a message before heading down to let Namjoon in.

You: One minute!

Although the rest of the mansion is dark, Jimin also has security lights on outside, and they shine through the windows enough to cast a silver glow over the small mezzanine and down the steps. You scurry down quickly, feet carrying you light and fast, and when you get to the front door and fling it open, you hardly have a chance to take in the sight of Namjoon before he is crossing the threshold and lifting you into his arms. 

A sob quakes through you as you wrap your arms and legs around him, burying your face into his neck. He smells musky—a bit sweaty—but the bright cologne with gentle floral hints you are used to are present. Namjoon closes the front door, haphazardly steps from his shoes, and makes his way to the stairs, stepping slowly as he holds you tight. If you are not mistaken, it feels like his breathing shutters through him, and you wonder if he may also be crying. 

"I'm sorry," you find yourself muttering when the silence stretches on long and oppressive. 

Namjoon squeezes you harder. 

"No," he says softly, voice trembling, "sweetheart, you have nothing to be sorry for."

"I made you cry," you sob, feeling guilt and sadness fill your lungs until it hurts to breathe.

Namjoon chuckles and sniffles, reaching the top landing of the stairs and turning to the right, toward the only light in the home that is on. He says, "Making someone cry is a side-effect of being in love, I'm afraid," and your heart goes wild behind your ribs, bursting with affection. 

"I've missed you so much," you whimper against Namjoon's skin, and when he leans forward and attempts to put you down onto the bed, you tighten your limbs, clinging to him like a koala.

"Let me set you down so we can get comfortable," Namjoon suggests, and you shake your head, groaning as you hold on tighter. He sighs, and tries, "Come on, I want to see you. I want to kiss you."

Once his attempts are futile, Namjoon gets onto his knees on the bed and bends until you are lying on your back with him towering over you. You finally move your head away from his neck and heavy-blink as you meet his eyes—which are bloodshot and blinking back tears.

"I've missed you too," Namjoon says as he kisses you, soft and sweet and warm. "I'm so sorry for everything that happened. I should have told you about everything, but I was scared to."

Namjoon's kisses are salty and wet, and he trembles above you, gripping the blanket tightly in his fists on either side of your head. Finally, you concede to his need to get comfortable, and you press against his chest, rubbing your fingers over soft black cotton. 

"Hey, lay down," you say softly, pushing a little harder. "You were right, let's get comfortable."

Namjoon sighs through his tears and gets up onto his knees, then crawls over to the pillows and makes a feeble attempt at moving the bright pink and orange floral comforter away. You sit up and help him, then run to the door to close it before adjusting the dimmer switch, lowering the lights just enough so that you can still see him. 

When you turn back to the bed, Namjoon has figured out the comforter, which is bunched up at the end of the against his feet, and he is sitting against the wooden headboard with his hands in his lap, watching you with a soft expression while tear tracks shimmer against his cheeks. He wears a black tee and black joggers, with his legs extended out but one leg bent slightly at the knee, and he is breathtaking—just as you remembered him. Maybe even more so. 

He has gotten a haircut recently, just above his ears, making him look younger. And it is darker; a more natural color. Some time ago—maybe a few days, or maybe a week—Namjoon posted a mirror selfie of the cut, obstructed mostly by his phone, and you are happy to finally see it in person. 

As you get onto the bed, on your knees, Namjoon reaches for you, pulling against the backs of your thighs until you have no choice but to straddle his lap, giggling at his insistence. You settle and drape your wrists over his shoulders to rub your fingertips over the short hairs on his nape while Namjoon's smile oscillates between joy and sadness. 

"I want to tell you I'm sorry," you begin, without giving him a chance to speak. You have been thinking about this every sober waking moment of however much time has passed—and some intoxicated moments, as well—and you feel it is necessary to get it off your chest. Emotions rise as you gather your thoughts, and your next exhale comes out shaky. "I was angry in Paris, but the things I said to you and Yoongi did not come from the heart. I was hurt, and I still am, but…I don't understand addiction. I have no idea what Yoongi must be going through, and I—"

You choke on a sob suddenly as a flash of Yoongi's face comes into view. The hurt way in which he stared ahead, straight through you, while you screamed and cried and demanded to be taken home.

Gently, Namjoon rubs his hands up and down your back, covering you in comforting warmth. His smile is sad, but he does his best to show that he is listening and that he is receptive to what you need to say.

"I just feel so awful," you continue as tears fall. You are so tired of crying and hurting, but it is a necessary step in healing, and you do your best to let it quake through you and settle into your bones. "I love Yoongi. I don't want him to be in pain."

"He knows," Namjoon finally says, but you screw your eyes closed and shake your head. He may have an idea of what you are going through, but he needs to hear from you that you are sorry. You need to tell him, yourself. "Yoongi using again was a bit of a surprise to all of us. Although it is something I always fear may happen again, I really had no idea it would happen like that, especially on vacation."

"When is he coming home?" you ask, feeling hopeful.

"Less than a week," Namjoon responds, smiling sweetly as he lifts his hands to thumb away the tears on your cheeks. "I have cleaned out the mansion, and Jeongguk has made sure the team taking over his responsibilities knows that heroin and other opioids are off limits. Jeongguk was already avoiding selling either in the first place, but he has reiterated that fact, to be on the safe side."

"That day, outside my room, you said there was a package with what looked like heroin," you say, watching as Namjoon's face screws up with worry. You grimace, adding, "I'm sorry I was eavesdropping."

"That…I still don't have all the details ironed out," Namjoon responds sullenly, "but I am certain that Jeongguk had nothing to do with it. Yoongi admitted that he had sent for the package on his own, and it arrived from overseas with a bunch of tailored suits. I don't know how he got a connect in Italy, but I really shouldn't be surprised; Yoongi knows people everywhere."

You nod somewhat listlessly, waiting for the crucial detail where Namjoon tells you he threatened the Italian guy, or found some way to rough him up—whatever the case—in order to keep him from sending Yoongi junk again. But when he does not continue, worry and sadness sink into your tummy like a brick. 

"So…" you begin, heavy-blinking and feeling at a loss for words before settling on, "...how do we make sure he doesn't use again?"

Although Namjoon continues to smile, his eyebrows pinch sympathetically, and he returns to rubbing your back. 

"We just love and support him," he offers, which feels both gigantic and minuscule, all things considered. "We continue to be there for him and…hope that it is enough."

"That's it, huh," you sigh, defeated. 

"Yeah."

Silence hangs, and you let your vision blur, attempting to sort out what you could possibly do. What if loving Yoongi is not enough? What if the pressures of his lifestyle only continue to press and press on him until he sinks another needle into his vein, desperate for relief?

"I wish he could just…not do this anymore," you mutter, blinking Namjoon back into focus. "Maybe having all this power and responsibility is too much."

With a sad chuckle, Namjoon nods. "Yeah, well…the only way out of a life like his is death."

Although that is not the response you want, it is the one you expect, and you lean heavily into Namjoon, accepting it for now. There is not much more to say until Yoongi is back. 

"Can we sleep?" you ask, feeling your body become weighted down with exhaustion and warm with a comfort you have not felt in what has seemed like eons. 

"I would love to sleep," Namjoon responds sweetly, releasing you from his hold as you slide down to the bed and begin to reach for the comforter. 

Namjoon gets out of bed to turn off the light, and for a split moment, in the cold, crushing dark, you begin to feel anxiety rush over you. In the cold, crushing dark, you are alone, alone, alone, isolated and heavy and so terribly scared. But then the bed dips, and warmth slides into place beside you. Limbs settle with a familiar weight, and suddenly, the darkness feels and smells like home.

"I love you," you tell the darkness, gasping when lips graze your cheek, your nose, and finally, your mouth. 

"I love you, too," the darkness tells you sweetly as you begin to drift to sleep.

Tonight, you did not get to kiss Namjoon until your lips bruised, but you feel satisfied with the fact that you were able to lighten the burden of heavy sadness just a little. And, in a matter of days, when you have the same conversation with Yoongi, it may not go the same way, but at least the three of you can continue to take steps in the right direction, and that allows you to sink into sleep with a smile on your face. 

When you wake up alone, your first instinct is to panic. You sit up with a start and check for any sign of Namjoon, but the ensuite door is wide open, and there is no sound coming from inside. The spot where he had slept is cold, and you begin to worry that it was all a dream and that he was never here at all. 

Frantically, you begin to search for your phone, which is not on your bedside table where you usually keep it, feeling the overwhelming urge to cry take over. What happened last night, and why is there no trace of him to be found?

With a deep breath, you close your eyes and run over the events of the night. You came in and changed, then you messaged Namjoon to let him know you were going down to let him in. Vaguely, you remember tossing your phone to the bed, and you begin yanking at your comforter, desperate to find it. 

Your phone must have been wrapped up in the bedding, because after only a moment of tussling and searching, you hear a nice loud thunk against the floor, at the foot of the bed. You let out an exasperated sigh and crawl to the edge, draping your body over the end as you reach and search for the device that has managed to find its way just under the bed frame. 

As soon as it is in your hand, you turn on the screen, eager to find evidence of Namjoon's existence, with your torso suspended in air. As soon as you see a notification from two hours ago, you smile and wiggle backward into a seated position to properly read it.

Namjoon: Hey, sweetheart, I'm so sorry I left while you were still asleep. I tried to wake you, but you were out cold. I'll be visiting Yoongi this afternoon. If you want to come along and you see this before 2 PM, let me know. Otherwise, I hope to talk to you soon. Thank you for letting me in this morning; I slept better than I have in weeks. I love you. 

Although affection blooms brightly in your chest, you feel sadness squeeze you tight, like an old friend. You do want to see Yoongi. You want to see him so badly, it hurts. But you are not sure you want to see him before he comes home. Wherever he is staying, and whatever state he may be in…you are not sure that you are prepared for that. 

It is only 1:45 PM, so you decide to call Namjoon. Not only are you eager to hear his voice once more, but you are not eager to voice what is in your heart over text. 

He picks up on the second ring, sounding a bit winded when he says, "Hey, sweetheart."

"Namjoon," you respond brightly, smiling widely. "Hey, I just woke up and saw your message."

"Ah," he responds, breathing heavily, "what time is it?" After a pause, he shouts, "Oh, shit, Gguk, I gotta go!" 

You laugh as you hear them chatter lowly, then say their goodbyes, imagining how adorable Namjoon becomes when he is frantic—eyes wide and worried while he flails his muscular limbs around somewhat aimlessly. 

"Gguek and I were working out," Namjoon says as you hear the sound of a door open and shut. "Lost track of time."

You smile, nibbling your lip. "Good thing I called."

"Good thing, indeed. So, did you—"

You don't mean to cut Namjoon off, but there is enough of a break between his statements, that you say, "Listen, Namjoon, I'm—" then halt, realizing you had spoken over him.

"Go on," Namjoon urges, and you close your eyes, listening to the sounds of his breathing, of birds singing around him, and of feet walking somewhat frantically down the dirt and gravel path between mansions. 

"I don't think I can go," you finally say, feeling meek and embarrassed as your voice drops and comes out with a tremble. "It's just…I don't know what to expect, and it…it scares me."

Namjoon says nothing for a few moments, and it makes you worry. But then you hear him keying in the passcode to his home and let yourself breathe. He is probably too stressed to be multitasking while in a rush. 

"Can I call you back? Or maybe we can talk about this later?" Namjoon finally asks, and you let out an even deeper sigh in relief. "I don't blame you at all for not wanting to come, but it feels like there is more you need to get off your chest. I have to take the fastest shower of my life, though, so that I can leave soon."

"Yeah, no…yeah. That's…" you stammer, squeezing your eyes closed and allowing yourself to smile while hot tears run from your eyes. Namjoon is so kind and understanding—so caring and giving. Affection burns for him, and you want to hug him so tight and never let him go. "If you want to tell Yoongi that we talked, I think it might make things easier for me later, but do whatever feels right…I don't know."

"I'll tell him what we discussed," Namjoon responds breathily as feet storm up a flight of stairs. "I know it'll make him happy to hear how you are doing, and how you have been handling things. I'm bringing him home in four days, so we can all sit down whenever you feel ready."

Four days is not soon enough, yet it feels like no time at all. Looming and terrifying, yet promising. 

"Okay, sounds good. Thank you, Namjoon."

When Namjoon says, "I love you so much, sweetheart. Thank you for calling," your heart squeezes, and more tears fall, cascading like tiny waterfalls. 

"I love you, Namjoon. Drive safe."

"Will do. Bye."

You mutter, "Bye," but your finger is already pressing the end call button, giving Namjoon all the time and space he needs to get ready. And then you hug your phone tight to your chest and continue to cry. 

Somehow, the happy tears feel thicker and hotter than sad tears—more present and urgent. If Yoongi comes back in four days, that means it has been just over two weeks in Jimin's home. You heavy-blink in an attempt to conceptualize the time, feeling ashamed by how little of it you remember. Briefly, you worry that you may have imposed, but Jimin has never so much as hinted at that fact, so you allow yourself to let the idea go.

It is difficult, at times, to accept the many ways in which you are loved. It feels strange to look back on how you ended up tangled in this web, with these men. Part of you wishes you and Yoongi could start over—meet organically and fall together not because of proximity and a need to cure a deep, aching loneliness that had built over years, but because you simply want to.

But could you simply want to fall in love with the head of a crime syndicate? No, you think. Probably not. 

Still, how do you explain that to someone who asks? I was kidnapped as collateral, but we fell in love feels like a story not too many people would understand. Probably, the average person would ask if you were alright and attempt to help you find refuge. Probably, they would be in their right mind to do so. 

The next three days drag. Knowing that you will see Yoongi and Namjoon again soon has you a little on edge, but not necessarily in a bad way. Your dancing suffers for it, and you find your movements too stiff, too off-beat; your head and your heart are clouded, and you cannot seem to get your body to do anything. Still, you try. Wasting away drinking at Paradise does not feel like the best way to spend your lonely nights, but you want to wait for Yoongi's return before spending too much time with Namjoon. 

Although the three of you have different bonds and dynamics, you almost feel guilty at the thought of hogging Namjoon to yourself while Yoongi is out healing in the countryside. Despite knowing he would tell you not to worry—to be with Namjoon and keep him company. 

And, part of you thinks of this time as getting your last moments in with Jimin before moving out of his space. You have not voiced it, but you have been going out of your way to spend just a little more time with him after work, before the two of you crash for the morning and sleep, curled up on the couch with whichever anime he feels like playing in the background—currently, Chainsaw Man. 

Jimin is phenomenal company, and you have really enjoyed following him around the house while he cooks, practices impromptu dance moves around furniture, and talks about nothing and everything. Even in quiet, still moments eating ice cream in the glow of the television, you feel the bond that has formed quickly and effortlessly, thankful to have a friend and ally on your side.

Despite the budding friendship, Jimin remains a somewhat secretive person. You have learned that his upbringing was privileged and full of wealth, but his parents were not kind about his desire to chase his own dreams instead of taking over the family business, and they quickly cut him off when he went to school for contemporary dance. It took no time at all for Jimin to wind up houseless, using his beauty to sleep with wealthy men and women for a meal and a warm bed. 

When Yoongi's mother found Jimin on the streets, she took him in with the promise of a better life, but how he came to replace her is unknown. How long Jimin spent on the streets, the kinds of things he saw in that time…all of those details, he hides behind a bright, practiced smile, only given away by the sadness that pours from his beautiful, round eyes. 

"I see myself in you, dove," Jimin says often, usually accompanied by a side hug or a kiss on the cheek. 

And at first, it made you feel strange. Jimin has come so far that maybe, you had originally thought, he sees you as a pet project; someone who needs to be fixed and turned into something beautiful. But now, you know that is not true. You know that Jimin sees persistence and survival; he sees someone imperfect but caring who just needs a little push to understand and figure things out, at times. 

Everything he has, he gained with persistence and survival; nothing was handed to him. Yoongi and his men, and possibly Yoongi's mother, taught Jimin the skills he knows today, that make him who he is. None of them became this successful alone; all seven of them play a crucial role. Eight, now, with you. 

You feel sentimental tonight when you lean against the bar cradling a glass of whiskey that you have been nursing for the last hour. Tomorrow, Yoongi returns home, and although it has not been voiced aloud, you can tell that the prospect has Jimin and Jeongguk in a better mood. You even spot Seokjin, Hoseok, and Taehyung coming in and out of Paradise, and they all seem chipper. 

Jimin is done up with pink and silver stage makeup, with his eyes and lips bright and shining. He wears his standard black satin top tucked into tight, leather black jeans, and tonight, he has a thick black rhinestone choker around his neck. 

Jeongguk, on the other hand, is pattern-clashing in a way that is both alluring and confusing. As standalone items, his silk, long-sleeve, plunging neckline leopard print shirt, and tight silver and blue floral lurex pants are solid choices. The shirt's neck falls nearly to his navel, showing beautiful topography of his chest—dips and hills of muscle and golden-tanned skin, accentuated by several mismatched gold necklaces; and the pants shine brightly in every light that dares grace his figure, drawing the eye to his muscular thighs and perky, round ass. But they look so strange and mismatched together, you cannot help but question what on earth he was thinking. 

"You sure have a staring problem, tonight," Jeongguk chides as he walks by, sending an inviting wink that makes you laugh far too boisterously.

"Just trying to figure out what you have going on, here," you respond with an incredulous smirk. "Did you get dressed in the dark, Gguk?"

With a roll of his eyes, Jeongguk responds, "Both items are Dolce and Gabbana, but okay."

And, without missing a beat, you say, "Pretty sure Dolce and Gabbana also produce plain clothes that would match better than this. Your black satin shirts would look really good with those pants, and…well, anything else would look good with that shirt."

"I don't expect you to understand fashion," Jeongguk teases, raking his eyes over your form as he takes a step closer. 

"Black, Jeongguk," you say, chin tilted high. "You have a closet full of black that would look phenomenal with both pieces."

With Jeongguk stepping into your personal space, that damned cologne hits you, and you begin to lose your composure. He really is suitable for smelling like a bouquet of wildflowers, especially with the spicy musk underneath; it is perfectly him. 

"I don't expect someone in boring Vuitton rags to appreciate the nuance," Jeongguk teases, voice dropping lower as he towers before you. 

"This dress costs as much as both that shirt and those pants combined," you bicker more quietly than before. The dress you wear tonight is certainly less flattering or flashy than what he wears—a Louis Vuitton brown and black knit mini dress with glitter thread mottling throughout. It has a square, rolled neckline and thin straps, but it hugs your curves nicely, falling mid-thigh. You raise your eyebrow to add, "Boss Min happens to like the way I look in Vuitton rags."

At the mention of Yoongi, Jeongguk softens, and you know you have won this round. Jeongguk scoffs, then slams back the rest of his drink, spinning on his shiny black leather boots before stomping off to where Hyejin and the dancers are congregated behind the main stage, going over something pertaining to the newly installed dance cages on either side of the bar, judging by how she points to them. 

You watch as Jeongguk walks away, allowing your gaze to linger on how those gaudy, silver-blue pants shimmer when they hug his ass, thanking your lucky stars that his silly fashion sense has, at the very least, provided you with a good show. 

When you turn back to the bar, you drink the rest of your whiskey and ask for another. The night is still young; the club has barely just opened and only a few patrons linger during the hours before the dancers take to the stages, but you have a feeling you are going to need to at least have a steady buzz to handle whatever bullshit Jeongguk is on. 

Two hours into your night, you are proven correct during a very flirty conversation with Hyejin about the dance cages—about how she thinks you should make your Paradise debut in one, asking if you would ever let her handcuff you to the bars—when the bartender informs you that the boss would like to see you in his office. 

Jimin seldom calls you to his office, but he is the only one who properly has one, so you head toward the back of the main room, past a security guard, and into a hallway that leads to Jimin's office, the dressing rooms for the dancers, and a meeting room that Hyejin and Jeongguk use when they need to. 

As you make your way to the door, you can hear the sounds of dancers chattering and laughing coming down the hall, and you assume that Jeongguk must be giving them their nightly pep talk in one of the dressing rooms. You knock twice on the office door, then try the handle. To your surprise, when you enter, the room is empty. 

Jimin has allowed you in his space alone plenty of times, so you make your way to have a seat in the leather armchair just in front of his desk. You decide to check your notifications while you wait and pull your phone from a small black purse that is slung over your shoulder.

The door opens and closes behind you, so you put the phone away before you have a chance to turn the screen on. And, instinctively, you stand to greet Jimin, surprised when you turn to find Jeongguk closing in, fast. 

Before you have a chance to speak, Jeongguk has the armchair shoved away, caging you against Jimin's desk, leaning close and low with both of his hands gripping the wooden surface. You practically sit against the edge, doing your best to lean back and away from Jeongguk, but he is a persistent, towering presence, and he wastes no time dragging his lips over your neck, just below your ear, sending a rush of arousal tingling through you at the touch. The scent of his cologne has your senses simultaneously dulled and on high alert.

"Jeongguk," you gasp, attempting to twist away but finding you do not want him to stop. "We can't—"

"I know," Jeongguk responds, voice deep and silky, lips dipping lower, dragging across your throat and leaving only the faintest hint of a spit trail. "Just want to tease you a little; make you squirm."

"Why?" you breathe, leaning back to create more space. 

When Jeongguk does not move, you lift your hands and press against his chest, attempting to push him back, but your palms slide on the silk shirt, and you wind up rubbing over his nipples, feeling metal under the drag of skin, causing Jeongguk to hiss as you gasp. Arousal builds and builds, and you squeeze your tights together, desperate to stave off the effect he has on you; you are, admittedly, touch-starved and somewhat feral. 

"I know you feel it, too," Jeongguk practically groans, still leaning way too close, voice spoken beside your ear. "We have undeniable chemistry."

"Of course I feel it," you respond, closing your eyes in an attempt to get your bearings while your heart pounds dizzyingly fast. 

Jeongguk asks, "Do you know how fucking hard it is to keep my hands off you?" in a tone that almost seems steeped in pain.

"Yes," you mutter softly, nodding shallowly. "I think I do."

With a sigh, Jeongguk finally takes a step back, but he stays close enough that you have to crane your neck; there is no room for you to stand away from the desk. The two of you stare at one another, and then Jeongguk scoffs and shakes his head. 

"Seeing you around so much has been…god, you drive me insane."

You chuckle, though you feel somewhat awkward being faced with his admission. Although, truth be told, being in Jeongguk's proximity so much during the last few weeks has also made you want to see him more and more; you know that, once you return to your normal life, you will come to miss him a lot. Or, perhaps, you can continue spending time at Paradise; there is nothing saying you cannot. 

"Last night, when I dropped you off," Jeongguk says, reaching up to gently cradle your chin in his hand, surprising you with his shift in demeanor, "were you crying?"

Although you glance away to respond, shyness rises, you nod slightly and say, "Yeah."

"Was it something I said?"

Quickly, you nod and return your gaze to Jeongguk, who looks genuinely concerned. "No. I was crying because I was missing Yoongi and Namjoon."

Jeongguk hums, drops his hand away, and takes a step back. 

Suddenly, the silence feels heavy, and you struggle to identify his reaction. He very clearly knows your involvement with both men, so why tense up at the mention of them?

"What's the matter?" you ask, unwilling to let anything weird hang between you. 

Jeongguk shrugs, but his eyes are on the floor, and it is clear that something is bothering him. 

"Jeongguk," you insist.

He sighs, and, without looking at you, says, "It just sucks that when things become normal again with you guys…I just…it's been nice to see you here."

"Ah," you respond. And you get it; it has been great to be around here and see him, Jimin, and Hyejin regularly. 

"But Yoongi will return and demand all your attention—" Jeongguk practically snarls, and you tut your tongue at him, staring incredulously as he balks at the interruption. 

"Yoongi does not demand anything from me," you say, standing up straight now that there is some space between the two of you. You feel defensive, but you can understand where Jeongguk is coming from; you really have not had any independence since moving into the mansion, but part of that is not having any direction or much desire to venture out, finding comfort and safety behind the familiarity of those walls. "Honestly, I have been loving it here. It's nice to leave the house for no occasion and see other people. I consider Hyejin and Jimin friends, and it has been so great having friends again. I don't want to suddenly stop seeing them. Or you."

"Won't you have your hands full with both of your boyfriends?" Jeongguk teases, and you are glad to see his mood has at least somewhat lightened; his smile has returned, even if his gaze remains sad. 

"Oh they definitely know how to keep my hands full," you respond with a wink, watching as Jeongguk's eyes and mouth widen comically. "But it is also nice having some space. Although I hate how all of this came about, I think taking a step back and allowing myself to really miss them and think about the many facets of our relationship has been important. I needed it."

"So I might actually see you from time to time?" Jeongguk asks, stepping close once more, seeming hopeful. It still amuses you when Jeongguk is all soft edges after so much time spent bickering with one another. 

This time, you step in close and rub your palms over his chest, making sure to drag your hands over his pierced nipples, smiling when he shivers beneath your touch. 

"We still have to finish what we started in Hong Kong," you say, voice dropped low and intentionally sultry. "I just haven't wanted to do anything without the others present…we haven't really discussed that, and I would feel too guilty leaving them out."

"I understand," Jeongguk responds, leaning into your touch and surprising you with a very soft, very chaste kiss on the lips before he mutters, "Taehyung will fucking kill me if we do anything without him."

Warmth floods your cheeks, and you drop your hands while taking a step back. Even after such a tiny taste, the urge to kiss Jeongguk is too great to stay in such close proximity. 

"We're going to have an entire audience, huh?" you ask, feeling more turned on by the prospect than shy.

Jeongguk chuckles and says, "Sounds like we will."

It almost feels surreal to discuss the topic of you and Jeongguk having sex so openly. Although you have had enough whiskey to give you a steady buzz, you are still clear-headed enough to spiral just a little over the thought of his body, and having it all to yourself. That is, unless the others want to play, as well; you really have no idea what to expect, and you are not certain you would deny them if they wanted to.

As you search for a way to end this conversation and return to the main bar before someone begins to notice the two of you are missing, Jimin comes barging in with his brows knit. Although you have done nothing wrong, there is a split moment of panic over how this may look, with the two of you in Jimin's office alone. 

But he simply glances between you and Jeongguk, huffs out a sigh, and says, "Oh, thank god. I was hoping to find you two in here."

"What's up?" Jeongguk asks, and you straighten out, worried that something may be wrong. 

"One of the regulars came in piss drunk and started harassing Hyejin. He groped her ass and when she slapped him, he got in her face. Security was able to intervene, but I need you to take him out back and fuck him up. Let him know shit like that doesn't fly at Boss Min's lovely establishment." 

Anger spikes heavily in your chest, and when Jimin turns to you and adds, "Dove, if you don't mind, I think she could use a friend," you nod, determined to do whatever it takes to make Hyejin feel safe. 

"On it," you say, walking past the men, down the short hallway, and out into the bar. 

Loud R&B music with a quick, enticing trap beat plays, and you stomp in your overpriced patent leather chelsea boots to the beat, storming into the main bar room like you own the joint and scanning the room for your girl. 

Standing at the main bar with her arms pulled tightly over her chest, is Hyejin surrounded by dancers. As soon as you approach, a girl who goes by Lily backs up and opens her arm wide to welcome you into the space. Hyejin is shaking when you drape your arm around her, hugging it loosely across her chest.

"Hey, beautiful," you say, and she turns and melts into you, throwing her arms over your shoulders and letting out a deep sigh. "Want to go out back and have a smoke?"

Hyejin hugs you tight and shakes her head, and you rub your hands over her back, waiting for her response. The dancers begin trickling out, having to get ready to perform, leaving pats on your and Hyejin's backs and soft words of support and encouragement. Once there is more space for her to breathe, Hyejin stands up straight and lets out another deep breath.

She is not crying, though her eyes are red, and when she looks at you with a frown, you gently place your hands at her temples and thumb at the smudged mascara under her eyes before muttering, "Perfect," with a grin. 

"I hate men," Hyejin says with a fake snarl, and you roll your eyes and nod dramatically, making her giggle. 

"Wanna talk about it?" you ask, and Hyejin shakes her head and says, "No. I want to dance."

Sitting on the bar is a half-empty pint of something bright blue, and Hyejin chugs it back, then leaves the empty glass behind and takes your hand, dragging you to one of the dance cages. The floor of the cage is raised about three feet from the ground and is a glowing octagon of rainbow color. Hyejin, wearing only a black satin bodysuit with lace trim and black stiletto heels, walks around to the back of the cage, closest to the nearby wall, and opens a door that blends in with the bars, then she takes a step up and hoists herself onto the platform. 

You follow behind and step up and into the cage, moving to the other side of the space to allow Hyejin to close the door. Although you are no stranger to dancing in sight of others, being in an elevated cage has your nerves spiked, and you wish you had taken a shot or three at the bar before agreeing to follow her. 

Hyejin wastes no time closing in on you with her fists around bars on either side of your head, and she holds on as she drops her hips low and swishes back up, all the while keeping her eyes on you. You sway to the beat with slower movements than the ones you watch Hyejin make, feeling entranced by her beauty and struggling to actually move the way she does. 

"Are you shy?" she asks with a raise of her eyebrow, and you chuckle, letting go of some of your anxiety while you nod and mutter, "A little."

Hyejin spins with her arms still lifted, and wraps them over your shoulders, then dips down again, rubbing her ass against your thighs before standing up straight. You realize too late that you are frozen in place with your arms somewhat bent, like a Barbie doll, and Hyejin turns and immediately starts to laugh, bending and flinging her hair in front of her face. 

"I'm not apologizing for who I am," you whine as you join her in laughing, feeling embarrassed by your inability to act like a normal person around her. 

"I would never dream of asking you to," Hyejin says as she leans back against the bars across from you, swaying her hips with an amused grin. "But it is very cute how flustered you get."

You roll your eyes and smile, glad to at least be considered cute. Flirting and being flirted with is hardly an issue, and you would probably relax more around her if things were not so uncertain at the moment, in your love life. You are sure Yoongi and Namjoon would not mind, but it is a conversation you would like to have before you allow yourself to get carried away. 

Or, perhaps, there is nothing to allow. Probably, there is no way in which things could get carried away, but you are once again spiraling because Jeongguk has gotten under your skin. With a deep inhale, you remind yourself that Hyejin is likely just being friendly and that you are allowed to relax and have fun with her. 

So have fun, you do. The song changes to something with more of a club beat, and Hyejin begins to pump her hands in front of her chest while shaking her ass in overexaggerated movements, gyrating in a chaotic circle. With your hands pulled over your head, you begin doing some wiggle-shake move creating waves all the way down to your legs, laughing as Hyejin throws her hands over her head in an attempt to do the same. 

"What do you call this one?" She shouts over the music, and you shake your head and say, "I don't know! The overcooked noodle?" 

Hyejin practically throws her body against yours with laughter, and you trip backward, catching yourself with a hand on one of the bars to lessen your collision. There are definitely patrons behind you who have a view of whatever it is the two of you are doing, and you try not to feel too embarrassed. 

"Yah," Jeongguk calls, making you attempt to turn around, trapped in place by a hysterical Hyejin. He rounds the platform enough to come into view and grabs onto two of the bars as he teasingly says, "You girls are gonna scare away the customers."

You raise one hand toward him as if threatening to strike him, shouting, "Oh, shut u—" but the word dies as soon as your eyes fall to Jeongguk's knuckles, which are scraped and bloodied. 

"Jeongguk, what the fuck?" you ask, reaching for the nearest hand, which he slides away. 

Hyejin stands alert, then squats to be at eye-level with Jeongguk, and you fully turn, checking to make sure he has no other cuts or bruises, glad that he seems otherwise perfectly fine. 

"Relax," Jeongguk grumbles, tonguing the inside of his mouth while he cracks the knuckles of one fist against his palm, then switches to the other side. "This is nothing; scuff marks. That guy didn't land a single punch before he was lights out."

You sigh but accept that there is nothing you would be able to do to convince Jeongguk not to fuck someone up. It is, after all, something he has likely been trained to do and is celebrated for within the ranks of the family. Still, you hate to see his pretty hands bloodied. 

"Well, you know I don't condone violence," Hyejin says, reaching her hands between two bars, smiling when Jeongguk steps closer and allows her to grab onto his wrists. "But I really appreciate you sticking up for me."

"Of course," Jeongguk grumbles, smiling the soft smile that he does when he is attempting to hide the sweetness that festers inside him, threatening to burst. Cute. 

With a sigh, Hyejin lifts the wrist that Jeongguk wears his watch on, yanking it close while tilting her head to get a look. "I should go tend to the girls," she grumbles, releasing Jeongguk and standing to give you a kiss on the cheek.

You follow Hyejin's movements, watching which bars are part of the door, nervous that they blend in well enough and that you could be trapped in this cage for the rest of eternity, then you turn back to Jeongguk, who has two hands on two bars, and is staring up at you. 

"So," he says, stretching himself tall to speak to you, arching his back and tipping his chin upward. "I was wondering…"

Since you are already in the cage, and Jeongguk had already been a menace to your health and well-being earlier, you decide to take a page out of Hyejin's book and swish your body in an inviting wave as you squat, dragging your hands down the bars but keeping them lifted above your head. 

Jeongguk visibly swallows, losing what he was just in the process of saying, and you watch as his eyes trail to where your short skirt hugs your thighs, undoubtedly giving him a view of the black panties you wear underneath. And although you do not mind letting Jeongguk sneak a peek, you are glad that the lights are fairly dim in the club.

"What was that?" you ask, tilting your head to the side and giving a look that feigns innocence. 

The expression on Jeongguk's face flashes comically from needy to pained to frustrated, and he huffs out a sigh, shaking his head as if trying to rattle his thoughts free.

 "What I was going to say before you so rudely interrupted me, is that we should have dinner soon."

Jeongguk's offer takes a moment to compute, and you stare at him, heavy-blinking, trying to determine whether he is asking you on a date, or if we means more than just the two of you. 

"We, as in…"

"You, me, and our men."

"Ah," you respond; that makes sense. "Yeah, we should. That would be fun."

Jeongguk nods, letting his gaze fall once more to your legs before drifting slowly back to your face. "I'll talk to Taehyungah. Perhaps he can host, and I'll cook."

With an incredulous raise of your brow you ask, "Oh, you cook?" in a mocking tone of sheer disbelief. 

Jeongguk reaches up and holds his hands over yours, gripping firmly while he leans in, head between the bars and close. From here, you smell his cologne; from here you resist the urge to lean in close and kiss him. 

"I happen to be an excellent cook, dollface."

"Is that so?" you ask, voice much less confident than a moment ago.

"That is so," Jeongguk says, then he leans in somehow even closer, making your head spin. "So, it's a date?"

"Yeah," you respond, feeling your heart go wild behind your ribs. "It's a date."

What you did to me made me see the world differently Mis lágrimas se secan solos, solos Pues mírame a los ojos Dime si ves el vacío que deja amor perdido Yo no duermo hasta que mis sueño' están cumplidos Sé que estoy perdiendo, pero el juеgo no ha concluido

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ahhhh!!! how are we feeling??? i presonally really love this chapter. the next one containing the promised smut™ is coming very, very soon!!!! i promise. i was sad to leave Yoongi out of this chapter, and it was not my intention to have a full chapter without him, but it made sense to split the mega chapter this way, and it felt wrong to rush him back without mc taking time to sort her thoughts out and attempt to gain some independence.

thank you for reading!!! 💜💜💜 reblogs and comments make the world go 'round, and likes are nice too!!!

tag list: @acquiescence804 @afangirllikeme-blog @annacroft23114 @angel-121 @artgukk @btsiguess-kpop @bts-ficreviews @che-er-ful @codeinebelle @curryshesus @dasexydevitt13 @giriiboyy @fakedanger @fringe-frank @illnevertrustmyselfagain @jalexad @juju-227592 @kissme-ornot @leanimal90 @likeshatteredrainbowglass @m1sss1mp​ @mayeolorie @mgthecat @mushroom-main @mwitsmejk @openup-yourmind @pamzn @sleepilysworld @stocking221 @spookyminyunki​ @thelilbutifulthings @valhallawhispers @xyahrinx 🗡️ comment or dm to be added!

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Collateral is copyright 2022-2023 theharrowing, all rights reserved.

#yoongi mafia #yoongi x reader #namjoon mafia #namjoon x reader #jungkook mafia #jungkook x reader #yoongi smut #namjoon smut #bts smut #bts angst #bts mafia #bts poly #namgi smut #fic: collateral #Spotify

[ninadove]

watching character ai lukadrien create the most heart wrenching debilitatingly angsty love story to ever love story ever

Hey, I can tell there’s no malice behind your ask, but — don’t do that.

I write fanfiction myself, and a lot goes into it:

1. Unreasonable amounts of ✨ Time and Effort ✨

Just the other day, my WIP kept me up until 2 AM, because I wanted it to be neatly polished before even sending it to my beta readers (@paracosmicfawn and @dragongutsixofficial). The first thing I did the following morning was re-read it again, to correct any typos and inconsistencies my tired brain might have missed the night prior.

2. Research and analysis

For a cute little Lukadrien scene I wrote with my ✨ awesome girlfriend ✨ — something that was never even going to be published — I went through a dozen different sources trying to get a better understanding of what meditation actually is and to capture the philosophy behind it accurately. This does not make me special — all authors do it out of dedication and love for their craft, but it’s energy that could be spent doing literally anything else, especially when you consider how horrifyingly lonely the writing process can be (see point 1).

Also, there’s a reason I spend so much time making analysis posts on Silly Little Blorbos who do not exist! It gets my brain running and allows me to sharpen my understanding of the characters, so I can write them properly in my works.

3. A unique perspective on the characters, the source media, and life in general

Which gives all the flavour to my favourite AO3 works out there.

Like, yes, that extract you sent in your follow-up ask is cute, I guess, but it’s also incredibly generic:

When actual living breathing human (or Senti) beings share their work with you, they’re inviting you to a special part of their brain that they’ve decorated with their own experiences, references and visuals — things that they love and passed onto their favourite characters, so they can hopefully reach you. For instance, Character AI would never have had the genius idea to compare Felix’s eyes to an aurora borealis; this could have only sparked from @wackus-bonkus-maximus’ brain. Similarly, my version of Felix will often reference works of art and literature that left a strong impact on me as a child — an impact I’m sure can also be sensed in my approach to storytelling and even in the way I structure sentences and paragraphs.

Which leads me to my final and most important point:

4. EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE™

Because let’s be real — there’s a reason our brains latch onto certain characters, and said reasons aren’t always sunshine and rainbows. I’ve cried more writing about the Senticousins than over the loss of certain people or relationships in my own life. Long before that, I latched onto Clive and gave him everything I felt was missing from my life as a teenager, so I could live vicariously through him. And of course, I always make my characters some flavour of queer, because for a long time this was the only outlet I got for my own feelings and identity.

It takes a lot of vulnerability to put all of this on the Internet for others to read and judge, and it’s very disheartening to see that people would rather ask a machine to spit out some easily digestible but impersonal interactions than give your work a chance.

I can guarantee there are beautiful pieces of fanwork out there that will cater to your tastes and haunt you for years in a way Character AI or Chat GPT never could. And the good news is — if you don’t find anything, it means it’s time to write it yourself!

And of course, I cannot end this post without encouraging everyone to read about the writers’ and actors’ strike currently unfolding in the US.

#miraculous ladybug #adrien agreste #luka couffaine #lukadrien #felix graham de vanily #senticousins #kagami tsurugi #feligami #professor layton #clive dove #writing #fanfiction #fanfic #writers’ strike #actors’ strike #anon asks #random ramblings

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #10 – The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

I read A Deadly Education last year and quite enjoyed it (and Novik’s unrelated Spinning Silver is just one of my favourite low fantasy books full stop so she has quite a bit of my trust), so I finally got around to putting in a hold request for the sequel. Broadening your horizons and reading outside your comfort zone means swimming through 400 pages of YA a couple times a year, right? Anyway, despite only barely remembering who anyone but El and Orion were when I went into this, was a fun read!

The book picks up more or less directly where A Deadly Education stops – with the horrible murderous monster-infested extradimensional wizard high school’s cleansing machinery repaired for the first time in generations, and the place therefor incredibly less monster-infested than previously. El, prophesied future dark lady of the apocalypse with a savant’s talent for specifically the sort of magic you cast after cackling and before someone puts a sword in you, doesn’t get to enjoy that much – her senior year seems destined to be spent being the target of just about every monster that’s left. Eventually you really have to wonder if the school is trying to kill you – and that question is where the plot really starts to go off.

So I said it before, but this is very much YA. I don’t mean that as an insult, or even a marker of quality, just that it’s a book from the perspective of a 17 year old looking down the end of high school and clearly written to provide a relatable emotional reality for an assumed audience of the same. So El sometimes acts like a cartoon character, and is pathologically incapable of expressing her emotions coherently or expressing affection for the guy she likes in any sane manner, and is far more blase about murder attempts and soul-eating monsters than emotionally awkward conversations – but honestly all that just rings as pretty true to life. Deeply aggravating at times, and her internal monologue and all its snark and doublethink does occasionally grate a bit, but overall it really works. She’s just a fun character to spend time in the head of, (and far less irritating in basically every way than she was in the last book. So hey, maturity!).

The emotional beats were all pretty simple and clearly telegraphed, and it isn’t exactly a book that requires you to sit down and ponder deep symbolism or metaphor to comprehend, but the pacing is tight and it’s very readable. The prose isn’t really anything to write home about – especially knowing what Novik can do when she decides to get fancy and show off a bit – but it very clear and just dripping with El’s personality on every page. I read this at the same time as I was picking through an incredibly dense and citation-heavy historical reader, and the contrast made me very appreciative of those virtues.

Character-wise – well, there’s El, and Orion (love interest, single-minded and near divinely-ordained monster hunter, golden boy of the most powerful enclave in the world), and there’s El’s few close friends, and then there’s a cast of dozens of students with maybe one memorable character trait who kind of drift in and out of the narrative as required. The amount of nuance and exploration someone gets drops off dramatically with each step down the list you go. Most of the cast shows up precisely when required and is more or less forgotten about directly afterwards – which does sell this being a school with over a thousand students in it! But the number of characters who really feel real drops off pretty rapidly.

(Also like, I assume it just comes down to social progress in the 2010s coming at you fast, but you really get the sense that at some point between the books getting written the publishers sent down a memo that you were allowed to say queer people existed now.)

Even more than Deadly Education, this is a book without any sort of singular villain, or even really any consistent antagonists. Some of the other students are assholes, sure, but the book’s whole thesis is that no one is that murderous or awful for the sake of it – they are because they’re rats in a cage, convinced that amoral self-interest and husbanding and acquiring every resource they can is the only hope they have of maybe living to see their families again. Offered a chance to do good, to actually change things for the better and help everyone without getting themselves killed in the process, just about everyone takes it. Even the semi-intelligent school itself gets in on it by the end, pressing the senior class to figure something out and make it obsolete – and the whole conflict of the final act is how and whether everyone will.

El and Orion can both kill basically arbitrarily large numbers of monsters (or people), so the monster-killing is never really where the book finds its drama either. I mean, both do a lot of it through the climax, but the actual tension mostly comes down to crowd management and logistics and whether everyone else is as committed to this as the two of them are.

As for what they’re struggling against – so like, this isn’t Divergent, by the standards of the YA I read in high school, the social commentary is both subtle and nuanced. But I mean, it’s also a story where highschool is four years or murder-hell-prison and justified only because it’s barely the lesser of two evils, and also a story where the poor and marginalized are only kept around more-or-less explicitly as ablative bodies for the kids the powers that be care about, with their only hope of good life being so impressive and useful to those kids that they try to bring them along when they ascend back up to the gilded paradise that is their birthright. So like, not that subtle.

As far as teenage romances go (which, for me, really isn’t very fair at all), El and Orion’s was surprisingly tolerable. It helps that they’re both actually deeply profoundly weird about it, and also that the book didn’t try to milk any drama out of will-they/won’t-they stuff or a love triangle. The ‘and they have sex for the first time the night before the final climactic struggle where one or both of them could very well die’ did feel right out of an old bioware game, though. (Also I’m just a sucker for tragedy and ironic mirroring/repetition, so the ending was great for me).

Look forward to finishing the series whenever I get around to it sometime in the fall.

#book review #the last graduate #the scholomance #sff #ya #urban fantasy

[amaiguri]

The WIP Questionaire

Thanks so so much from @verba-writing for the tag! I had such a fun time reading your answers too and I'm very excited for paranormal romance 😍

I feel like I wanna flag that a lot of my answers are very anime/gaming-sphere oriented and I hope I'm not totally alienating my mutuals by revealing just HOW MUCH I'm not a book person lololol But this is with what we're working:

The Questions are:

1. What was the first part of your wip that you created?

The very first thing I made was the high premise: It was synthesized from the Overly Sarcastic Productions question "What if all the Kings Under the Mountain came back...?" and then I added the context "...in a Nuclear Crisis to discuss piece?" And in my head, it was this HBO-style modern fantasy Game of Thrones meets West Wing type deal. But then... I didn't want to write the modern piece. (The modern piece should be written by people in countries from all over Europe about what it means to be a hero in various cultures.)

So I set it in 1800s fantasy world instead!

2. If your story was a TV show, what would the theme song/intro be?

The first arc would be Dance in the Game by Zaq

The second arc would be Lacrimosa by Kalafina

The Gods' Arc would be Paper Boquet by Mili

3. Who are your favourite characters you've made? Why?

Is it to cliché to be like "my current self-insert protagonist is my favorite character I've ever made"? Her and my antagonist are just THE BEST and I love them.

4. What other pieces of media do you think would share a fan base for your story?

Mmm, I think Untitled Yssaia Game's story would appeal to queer Game of Thrones fans who could FEEL the straightness in GoT, especially if they also like anime. I would hope I could get general anime fans as well as Arcane and Genshin Impact fans, but I feel like those are too mainstream and Yssaia is not. Realistically, I think I'm gonna get the Wadanohara people and the Ib people and, if I get really lucky, the To the Moon people.

5. What has been your biggest struggle with your wip?

Marketing lol -- explaining what it is to people in a way that they realize they want it.

6. Are there any animals in your story? Talk about them!

Fuafua 🥺🥺🥺

Look at her! She is a six-legged, six-eyed slug cat called a Maret. Marets fill the same role as ocelots in Yssaia, except they're more semi-aquatic like otters and their skin has a stressball-like texture.

7. How do your characters get around? (ex: trains, horses, cars, dragons, etc.)

They walk or ride Rumateurs (which are alpaca-like beings with ossicones) or take ships or airships or trains. I don't like writing about travel that much though so it is a background element.

8. What part of your wip are you working on rn?

I am pre-editing the first arc for my alpha readers and the third arc has another 50k to 100k words to draft. We're at like 250k words total right now and it is so unwieldy 😭😭😭

9. What aspects (tropes, maybe?) of your wip do you think will draw people in?

Oh, I have a convenient graphic for this. Hang on...

10. What are your hopes for your wip?

I was just diatribing about this earlier but the DREAM is to turn it into an RPGmaker adventure game and have it go viral and make a million bucks off it. I'd love to be the next Undertale but it'll never happen because I am not positioned to be the next Undertale, you know?

So yeah, that's what's what! Thanks again for the ask! This was so fun! I'm gonna pass this to @maiemorrae, @moonfeatherblue, @zebee-nyx, @winterandwords, @modernwritercraft, @words-after-midnight, @spideronthesun, @theprissythumbelina, @thepanplate, @thetruearchmagos, @maskedemerald, @moondust-bard, @pluttskutt and @emelkae 😍😍😍 I actually internalized Verba's WIP so well from this tag and I wanna make sure I'm updated on what all you cool people are working on! Open tag to any of my other moots too! 🥳

IMPORTANTTTTT⚠️

I will edit this to have a blank easily copy-and-pasteable question section when I get back to my computer. If I forget, @ me!

#writeblr #wip questionnaire #writing #indie game dev #interactive fiction #indie gaming #fantasy writing #dark fantasy #game dev #game writing #gamedev #yssaia #amaiguri

[leebrontide]

Writeblr re-intro!

I'm just gonna make these periodically so that new people joining the community might see it.

Hi, I'm Lee Brontide (any pronouns but "it"). I'm queer, middle aged, midwestern (in the US), and have a variety of disabilities. I'm also a therapist, but I'm pretty specific in how I allow that to show up in online spaces. (please don't ask for therapy in my DMs).

I have a once a month newsletter called Shed Letters.

I'm on tumblr to dink around, meet other writers, find readers, share my animation attempts, and show off my cats.

I read pretty much anything scifi or fantasy, but am especially interested in finding more scifi writeblrs. Especially YA scifi writers. There must be others, right?

My work is about

queerness

trauma

medical trauma especially

disability

interpersonal dynamics

systems/power

disaster teens trying really hard

And taking genre conventions far too seriously

I've got one book out now called Secondhand Origin Stories, which is character-driven, low-neon, near-future cyberpunk scifi with a superhero twist. My WIP, Names in Their Blood, is in edits now and will be going to beta reading soon!

Which means I'm also going to get to work on the as yet untitled novella that goes between book 1 and book 2 in the series soon. It's from the point of view of an AI building management/security system/medical information database, who decides that they want a more portable body so they can follow their family on the next family trip, and explores the process of choosing a new physical form.

I am ask and tag game friendly, and for now at least, my DMs are open! But I work on a major delay because life.

I'm looking for writeblrs who write any or all of:

queer stuff

character driven scifi

psychological exploration

found family

messy family

YA or NA

Things that remind me of: DS9, tlt, murderbot, Leverage, The Disasters, or AtLA

Let me know if that's you!

#writeblr #writeblr intros #writeblr reintro #writing #writing scifi #scifi writing #second sentinels #superheros #scifibooks

[charmwasjess]

Hi!!! I just recently started reading your fics(5 days to murder Sifo-Dyas was AMAZING) and I was wondering what got you started shipping dooku and Sifo-Dyas?? And also do you have any unshared headcannons about either of them?

Hello!!!! And what?! ❤️Thank you so much!! That makes my night! Five Days was my first ship fic; I'm really touched you started there.

I did not actually ever decide to ship Sifo-Dyas and Dooku, it just kind of happened without my will, evolving in stories where I didn't intend to put it. Dooku is not a character who always fits comfortably inside a pairing, and that's before you get into his... uh, canon eventualities. But before I started shipping them, I wrote this sparring scene with Dooku and Sifo-Dyas in a fic where they're not together, but I couldn't figure out why it was so... intimate? Risky? Bare? Almost romantic? Why it felt so much like writing a sex scene, when there wasn't anything sexual about it?

I'm not the instinctive type of writer who is like "well, the characters did whatever they wanted and I just wrote it down." I wish I was one of those writers, I'd probably write better stuff! But I'm usually a planner. In this case, these two kept doing that to me, and eventually I just wanted to see where it would go. Since then, it's been about six fics that I've written just exploring them, and I love it?!

At first, I was worried I'd lose readers about it, but mostly everyone has been fantastic. And not to get too real, but it's been great for me as a person: I grew up as a closeted queer person in a deeply religious environment, so on some level, it's incredibly freeing to just get to write a gay love story.

Headcanons!!! - I got 'em. I really love Dooku as this excruciatingly serious, driven, eyes-on-the-prize person who truly enjoys the company of more relaxed goofballs like Sifo-Dyas. What is intimacy if not the ability to share some part of yourself with someone you trust? That's not to say Dooku is ever silly, but I think that there's a lot more warmth and vulnerability squeezed out when he's in the company of someone more in touch with that side, willing to draw him out.

And for Sifo-Dyas, I see him as a person who can genuinely relate to Dooku on a meaningful level. He isn't just this sweet, adorable guy who comes in and heals the would-be monster with the power of love. This isn't Beauty and the Beast. He has a battle with darkness of his own, these unsettling, sometimes crushing abilities, a danger to him, and a durability. If Dooku didn't think Sifo-Dyas needed him as much as Dooku needed Sifo-Dyas, the pairing wouldn't have the same compulsiveness.

Anyway, I'm going on too long because this is so fun. :D Sifo-Dyas leaves dishes in the sink. Dooku cleans them up and complains about it. They both get something out of this routine.

#thank you so much!!! I'm so happy you like the fic #syku #sifo dyas #my fics #answered asks

[problemswithbooks]

With the tentative and rough translations out, i have to say, yeah, Hori really doesn't get what he's actually writing and if he was trying to make Toga's entire deal a metaphor for queerness, he's ended up being quite offensive.

Like first off it seems he has Toga say she falls in love easily with boy and girls and...animals. Which, I always felt the bird thing as a kid could have negative connotations, but wrote it off as 'she was a little kid and this was before her desire for blood was wrapped up in her romantic feelings' type things. So having Hori reinstate that yes, she does still love animals to the point of blood drinking desire--a desire Hori coded as sexual/romantic is not a good look.

It also just makes me question if she could ever own a pet or if she'd end up killing it because she loved it to much and she needed to drink it's blood.

Also getting her perspective on the boy she attacked isn't great either. The translation is rough and basic so it could change, but I don't think there's any translation that could make the situation not read poorly.

In the rough translations she says something along the lines of "I didn't ask to drink his blood because I was afraid he'd hate me and think I was a decent monster."

I could see an alternative translation being "I asked for his blood and he called me a deviant monster, and I sucked his blood."

Again if Hori is trying to make a queer metaphor with Toga, this is a huge issue. Her attacking the boy was always a big problem, but if he didn't bring it up again I think a lot of casual readers would have forgotten it. But now it's front and center again and brings back bad connotations for Toga and a queer reading of her character.

Because again if we read her blood drinking as queerness, and Hori has already coded it in the past as lust while just last chapter confirming that Toga sees it as kissing in the very least we get two equally bad reads.

A) Due to fear of rejection Toga did not ask for consent and decided she'd just make sexual advances toward someone she had a crush regardless.

or B) She got rejected and told no, and then made the sexual advance anyway.

With a queer reading this only becomes worse because it pays into the really negative and even dangerous idea that same sex attracted people will go after anyone regardless of consent or the other persons orientation. It continues to perpetuate the idea that queer people are sexual predators, who target straight people or in the very least do not care about consent, or are unable to control themselves long enough to get it.

But even without a queer reading what Toga did is wrong. It sucks that people don't get her way of showing love, but consent is still needed regardless. You can't just do what you want to someone because you were to afraid to ask them out. You can't just do what you want with someone after they tell you no. Even if the boy had called her a monster that would not make it ok for Toga to, essentially sexually assault him (yes, kissing someone against their will is sexual assault, which is what Toga sees her blood drinking as).

And I think that's why Toga's character is really hard to get behind for some people--because at the end of the day she's literally just saying "I can't help but sexually assault people (and animals apparently)', and the solution to this is to give her exactly what she wants and apologize for not seeing how much pain she was in when she was actively trying to sexually assault people.

#bnha critical #anti toga #anti himiko #bnha spoilers #bnha 394 #this isn't me saying all queer stories or romances have to pure #but it's not framed as toxic or negative and Toga is the only openly queer character we have that's still alive #(Tiger was confirmed trans in a character blurb not in the text. Any one who only reads the magazine wouldn't know he's trans) #it's also just hard to get behind because the way Hori draws and frames them it feels more that he does it because he thinks it's hot #like the way naked toga is hugging ochako with her legs spread is bad #I mean he could have drawn it with ochako in front to hide toga's body or have toga with her legs closed #or he could have not had Toga's power remove her clothes to begin with #it also doesn't help that we don't get much build up for these characters #like i don't believe either of these girls actually understand or genuinely care about each other #like there was an opening with Twices death for Ochako to start to care about Toga and feel genuinely bad for her #but instead she just kind of decided to care for toga and her smile because Hori said so #like she thinks of her during the speech #but wouldn't it have been better and made more sense if she saw dabi's vlog and heard Twice died and then she understands why Toga was sad #not just randomly think 'man i want that girl who tried to murder me with a smile to smile again' #it also would have helped wrap up the twices death better too

[its-elioo]

As someone who is long-time fan of Mlp EG and who has just finished watching TFP, your fic is true delight. I read it 5 times at least and it is still awesome. You perfectly matched girls with their autobots partners just as well as you did with decepticons as their evil counterpart. For example Twilight/Shockwave - both have high inteligence, but while one uses it for greater good and to help the others, the other abuses it to gain power and hurt the others; Fluttershy/Soundwave - even thought they are both animal lovers and quiet types, FS is just very shy girl while SW is calculating sadist; Rainbow/Starscream - Apart from being queer icons (If you can look at these two without the word gay constantly entering your mind, congrats, you´re legit cishet) they´re actually pretty similliar in function and personallity wise. They´re both eccentric, aroggant showoffs and are also fastest on their team. But it´s their differences that are making them great foils. RD is impaitent hothead, who jumps straight into action without the second thought, while SC is great schemer, who has his plans planed out. RD is literally element of loyalty, while SC is mostly loyal to himself and etc. I can´t wait to see all their interactions in the future. If you´re interested in some writting advice, there is one minor thing that can be fixed : your description of characters feelings and thought. You start explaining how and why they feel that way instead of giving readers benefit of the doubt. The best term I can think of is that you are describing a picture. Like you want us to see, hear and understand everything at once. It creates unnecessary sentences or whole paragraphs without which some emotional moments would have sounded better. For example if paragraph in Ch.2 with sentence "She was too stuborn." it would have sounded so much better. Or sentences like "She was too precious." are also kind of waste of space since they don´t tell anything new.It´s not worst type of description,but it can create a feeling that you don´t trust youre readers to read from emotions characters alone. Many new writers and comic artists are often doing this. It can be solved 2 ways : by improving their writing or start drawing comics. I´m sorry if I confussed you in some way. I tried my best to explain it, but english is not my primary language. If you don´t mind, I would recommend fics from @whatwooshkai to see what I am talking about ( it´s mostly TF shipping stuff, but man, the writting is so good that I can´t stop reading even if I wanted to). Overall great story and art, just writting needs a little improvment.

I want to finish this already long post with few questions:

1.What is group dynamic with eachother? I mean in and outside of their decided pairings. I can see Sideswipe and Rainbow´s relationship as chaos siblings and that Rainbow is definitely driving Ratchet insane, but what about the others? I´m courious to know.

2.Did you already started writting the next book? If not, do you have planned when you will start?

3.Do you consider draw this as a full time comic or at least draw some parts of it? Or drawing some strips of your incorrect quotes?It´s just that you´re artstyle is so pretty and redesigns of the autobots and girls are great. It´s shame to see so little of them.

4. Did you thought about getting your comics dubbed on youtube?

5. Do you draw ideas from the asks from your followers on Tambrlane or you take commissions only? Like if they had a idea for a comic/sketch and they post it to you, would you draw it? If not, could they draw it with your redesignes?

6. What gave you idea for this crossover? My best guess is that comic from Hasbro.

Holy- I never thought I would get such a long ask.

*rolls up sleeves and rubs hands*

Okay, let’s do this!

First, I want to thank you so much for the kind words, the fact that there are people who got really interested in my fic makes my heart flutter. <3

And I really love it when readers point out small details that I haven’t thought about that much while writing! Thank you a lot for the advice and recommendations, I really appreciate it! I will keep that in mind!

Now, to answer your questions:

1. You are absolutely correct about Sideswipe and Rainbow’s relationship, in my opinion, they will be the best chaos siblings (I am 100% sure that most of the members will go insane because of their pranks) I could write more detailed headcanons for them and the others too.

2. The next book is nearly finished, I will make sure to post it at the beginning of January.

3. I will drop more art soon, promise! Sorry for the lack of content, I’ve been pretty busy for the past few months. But now I’m finally free and I will certainly start drawing again! I also have several ideas in mind for some parts of the next book.

4. I don’t mind my comics being dubbed as long as I’m credited and they’ve asked for permission.

5. Again, if I’m credited and asked for permission, there will be no problem for other artists to draw my redesigns. I don’t usually take requests and it really depends on my free time and motivation, but if I really like the idea that has been suggested, I would (probably) draw it.

6. Good guess! But actually no. I was really into this crossover way before Hasbro decided to make a comic of it. I’ve been into a lot of fandoms and reading crossover fanfics basically became like a hobby to me. I got a lot of inspiration after I accidentally stumbled upon some pretty good written Tf/Mlp fics, but it took me a lot of time to finally get enough courage and start writing my own. I’m more than thankful for the support and love that I was given through the years! It really motivated me to keep on going!

#ask #crossover stuff #robots and magic #thank you for the questions!