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starkcanvas · 1 year

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Right so I got a tad distracted and ended up typing this up a bit later than I originally intended, but here we go! More Sunny Coma Au Fluff!

This is after the good ending btw

So the first time Mari and Sunny go shopping for new clothes for him they end up going with mostly darker colours, with one exception, a white T-shirt with rainbow cats on it.

Because he was already really short for his age due to parental neglect, and the fact he's barely grown from being in a coma for years he's very small and gets mistaken for a kid much younger than he is (He's roughly 15 in this AU)

(I don't actually know if coma patients grow normally or not, So lets assume the Staff wasn't doing their jobs properly and he was basically kept alive, not exactly growing.)

Him being very small, and having tall friends *Cough*Hero & Kel*Cough* means that if they're all outside and he's getting left behind because short legs or he's worn out from the lack of exercise that they can just pick him up and give him a piggy back ride. They all can, but he likes to be tall.

Because he's somehow charmed the entire town and no-one bothered to correct people on his age, he sometimes gets free sweets when they're shopping. Due to him being a total sweetheart though he tries to share with his friends.

Sometimes he'll either write or draw about his adventures in Headspace and when people ask he tells them about his 'dreams' when he was in a Coma. Mari saw one of these and got a bit freaked out because "How does Sunny know what was happening in my Headspace?!?". He doesn't show them to Mari anymore, Not wanting to cause a panic attack.

When in a coma his friends would sometimes play some of their favorite music and when he's spacing out he sometimes hums those songs.

Despite everything he's quite perceptive to everyone's needs, but he's not very attentive to his own. Leading to situations where he forgets he's meant to be hungry, or unaware he's tired. So he'll sometimes just pass out on his friends and they try super hard to not wake him up because "It's adorable and he needs sleep"

Mari upon realizing that Sunny never tells her when he's hungry has decided to set up a strict food schedule, This has had the unintentional effect of also making Mari eat regularly and healthily because Sunny would try to share with her, So she ended up making herself food with his.

Whenever Mari and Sunny go out of the house she has a small bag she carries with her. Inside are juice boxes, water bottles, and healthy snacks.

When Sunny first comes out of the hospital his parent's aren't willing to pay for PT to regain his muscle mass, so he ends up in a wheelchair for a few months while he regains his strength. One of the nurses took pity on him though and gave Mari a pamphlet on different types of exercises someone could do to regain lost muscle mass.

While Mari can cook, she's rusty as she's only really cooked super simple means for herself. So Hero decides to help and offers to supervise her while she practices some simple meals to regain her skills. Sunny insists on watching because he wants to help one day.

Mari with the help of the gang end up moving both of their beds down into the music room which has been unused for years (Maybe her parents sold the Piano because she wasn't actively using it.)

Sunny is a little scared when he finds out how much time has passed and how much his friends have changed. But he quickly gets over it because he still loves them.

At one point, Hero and Kel brought Sally over to meet Sunny and he quickly became her new favorite person, much to the slight jealously of the brothers.

Everyone in the group introduce Sunny to people as "Sunny, My Little Brother". He just accepts his fate, and they are his family so it's not unwelcome.

He never spoke much before the accident, and speaks even less after. But one thing that became more common is his laughter and it always brightens everyone's day when they hear it. Kel is the best at bringing it out just by being his goofy self.

He ends up becoming sick a lot more frequently, but luckily he has his friends to take care of him! They each have their own ways of helping when he's sick.

Mari cooks soup and primarily takes care of him in this scenario, but sometimes she's busy.

Hero also cooks soup, and the soup Mari cooks is one of his recipes, but he also brings over one of his weighted blankets to keep him comfy.

Basil will bring over various plants to help liven up the atmosphere, as well as some various plants that he's grown that can help with illnesses.

Kel has many VHS tapes of various Movies and TV-shows that he brings over and sets up to help keep Sunny entertained and stop him from becoming super bored while bedridden.

Aubrey brings various bits of bread from the Bread Twins, but she also reads out loud whatever book she's reading at the moment.

When he finally gets out of the wheelchair, the first thing he does is give Mari a big hug.

More often that not he ends up sleeping in Mari's bed both due to Mari missing being able to do it with him, and that Sunny never has nightmares when he's there.

He doesn't end up going back to school for a few reasons, the biggest two being that he's missed 4 years of school, and that he's tiny so he gets tutored with the same tutor Mari had before she turned 19.

Sometimes he'll go to the school with Mari if one of the other kids have forgotten something. But he's always there whenever there's some sort of event that family can join in on.

While Mari never ended up going to College, she did get a job at Othermart so sometimes Sunny comes with her and helps out with simple things. (He also gets paid for this, don't worry)

Kel still takes up Basketball, But Aubrey takes up Baseball. Basil is also the head of the Gardening club in the school, Don't ask how this happened, because not even he knows.

Mewo is still alive and healthy in this AU, so she spends a lot of time with Sunny.

Sunny ends up befriending the entire cat population of Faraway and they actually bring him things sometimes.

Aubrey swears that he's some sort of Disney princess.

He regularly wears various accessories that his friends have given him.

Basil gave him a hair clip, similar to himself.

Aubrey gave him a cat keychain.

Kel gave him a Captain Spaceboy Pin.

Hero gave him a cat novelty watch.

Right hoo boy. This took a while to write. Oh well, it was nice to write again. Here you go! Lots of fluff with a teeny bit of angst sprinkled in if you squint, I hope this makes you happy when you finally get to look at this. It might be a while before I'm able to do more with this AU because I'm pretty sure I used up all my creative juices to do this.

Gotta recharge, but it was worth it!

Ohh yes.~ All of the fluff, thank you.~ This will be good fuel for me when coming up with both wholesome and angsty Clear out AU scenarios >:3

#omori #omori game #omori spoilers #omori aubrey #omori basil #omori hero #omori kel #omori mari #omori mewo #omori sunny #omori au #omori: sunny coma #text post #text response #ask response

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theageofsims · 10 months

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Perks of having a simblr: it's a sideblog -- I don't see all the drama.

I signed up for Twitter a couple of years ago and forgot my password, but also deleted the email I had it under so I can't get back in...

Yes I am everything... Except smart. 😂

Anyway, I created a new one and thought it'd be the perfect place to post about any speed builds I put on my YouTube channel (which I still think it is)... But my god it is exhausting on there.

I'm an introvert so I thought maybe this is why I feel like this, but then I realized -- it ain't me.

Since my account is just for Sims there's no filter and I see posts from anyone tagging anything about the game whether I follow them or not and it's like a bunch of people keep getting up on the wrong side of the bed.

I saw someone once say that Tumblr was so nice compared to Twitter and all I could think was well don't bring your moody ass over here and ruin it -- we just fine here, thanks! 😂

But the truth is I'm sure there's drama here as well, and other forms of social media -- but as I said at the top of my post, having my Sims blog as a side blog makes it so I don't see all that's going on -- Thank you sweet baby Jesus.

There's so much calling out and policing every single thing. It's not just Sims, it's any "community" and I'm just left wondering like so... Are we not supposed to be our own person or have individuality?

I understand some viewpoints of these arguments, but I also don't have time in my day to be going bat shit over a damn video game. 🤷🏽‍♀️

I remember during my Sims 2 days it was like paddling up shits creek to get help with the game from other simmers. If you dared to ask for help people would lash out at you and demand you to tell them when and where you decided to figure out the answers yourself by searching the internet.

It was like sorry yahoo! Search ain't helping me find a damn thing, but yes Master and Mistress -- I shall continue my search and bring back the gold even if I lose a limb in the process. 😂 I mean people were Grinch-y as fuck.

I was actually shocked to find people were helping others in the community when I made this blog. Never did I think I could ask a question and have people willing to help -- and still, I see simmers all the time state their wcif's aren't open or aren't welcome and I think... They the offspring of the ones from back in them early Sims days, aren't they? 😂

But things have gotten nuts now. New generation, new topics of the world. A new demand. Entitlement everywhere. It's just full on rage for so many people and I often think... How long is this going to go on until some people are left screaming in the void because the truth of the reality is they're never going to be happy no matter what they're served.

I get it. There are people who actively try to enlighten people so they can have them change their opinions or as I sometimes call it, luring them to the dark side...😂... But what's the need? I swear I will never know.

I'm not one of those people who can't see that EA is milking the shit out of us, but I also know there's nothing I can do to stop it.

I was fortunate enough to have parents who could afford to buy me the games in my Sims 1 and 2 days, but by Sims 3 and Sims 4 -- it's been up to me.

Packs are even becoming free now which is amazing because I have NEVER experienced that in my 23 years of Simming. Does it suck that I had to pay for them? I guess. I mean would I have wanted them free if given the chance? Of course, but they weren't free when I wanted them so... I had to pay.

And one truth still remains... You don't like it? Then you don't buy it.

You don't attack people who like what you don't. You don't put the blame on them you don't target them to the point they think you're gonna meet up with them in the sandbox after preschool -- because that's just what this shit truly is.

It's preschool and some people just need a nap.

Also calling out other gamers and making sure to alert everyone who follows them how they need to unfollow them. 😒 Why are we doing this? Why are we not letting people think for themselves and decide for themselves?

It's this hivemind mentality where things are supposed to be wholesome and warm and comforting... But it's not.

No one can force another person to think like them. You want to call out gamers for being anti-gay or anti-trans or racist or x,y,z... What's it going to prove to the person who feels this way? It's like that Bonnie Raitt song, "I can't make you love me if you don't..."

I'm not saying these people are right or that they haven't got problems, but let's be honest -- how is their way of playing bothering our way of playing? Why do we care? What gives us the right to control what they do or how they do it?

This is literally call-out culture -- for sure, but for a video game? I don't see how anything someone is doing in their game is harming others in that if you don't like it or you're triggered -- you remove yourself from the situation.

Your responsibility is not to be responsible for others. If they want to do shit in poor taste, let them. Let them turn others off to their content and so on. Most of the time the more attention you give the more they continue because they're attention seekers.

I wasn't raised with call out culture. I mean if a cat was stuck up a tree you usually alerted someone's parents, but Sims didn't exist until I was 12 and the only frustrations anyone had was the roaches and the infestation of flies and your kid failing school and getting taken away to to military school.

Not at all THIS that we have now.

I don't know whether to say get a grip or take a chill pill -- but those sayings are outdated and that's facts. 😂

#blurb #lordt #lordt jesus... help meh please! 😂

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miekasa · 3 years

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any dad!levi hcs for father’s day today🥺🤲🏽

Absolutely!! I’ll do this I guess using the kids I have for him in my parent au? If you’ve read that, you know about Holden, but there are two more so prepare to meet them :’) happy father’s day to Levi <33

To begin with, you guys would plan to have your kids (to the best of your abilities; you were intentionally trying to have kids at a time when you both knew you were ready for them.

Although accidents to do happen, and Levi would welcome an unplanned child all the same; that being said, if you’re both want a family, you would have discussed it beforehand (which is to a degree, is a lot about mental preparation for himself).

In his perfect world, he’d have two daughters. They’d be equal parts him and you, and they’d be quiet and curious and lovely and life would be good. He’d spend his days with you and his two tiny daughters, raising his little family and doing all he could for his favorite girls.

So, naturally, he does get two daughters, but also a son in between; and the latter two kids are far from easy in their own unique ways lmfao

You might have already met Holden, and she’s the oldest in my dad Levi au, and the most like him. Levi’s dark hair, his grey eyes, his overall unimpressed visage, his knack for cleanliness and organization—down to the way she holds her sippy cups, she’s damn near Levi’s doppleganger.

Holden is somewhere between 3.5-4 years old before you have your second kid, and in that time is when Levi confirms he thinks he was cut out to be a certified Girl Dad.

Both Levi and Holden take quality father-daughter time very seriously. It’s impossible to change plans once they’re set: “Daddy, you promised we would go to the famer’s market on Sunday. You pinky promised.” And Levi wouldn’t dare break a pinky promise, so he makes time for it.

Levi doesn’t play favorites with his kids, but there is something special about Holden as his first born. He’s constantly in awe of just how much she resembles him. Four years into raising her and it’s still hard to wrap his head around.

Much to his chagrin, Hange and Eren are Holden’s favorite adults. Maybe Levi understands the admiration for Hange, but Eren... come on, Holden, you’re breaking his heart at that point.

It’s almost out of character for your daughter to be so openly affectionate about someone outside of your immediate family, but she really loves having Eren as a babysitter; and you know she’s playing favorites, because she remains neutral on Armin, even though he and Eren always babysit as a duo.

She doesn’t have a favorite grandparent, but Kenny spoils her the most. Levi tells him he shouldn’t, but when has Kenny ever listened to Levi. The man isn’t a fan of kids, but he thinks yours and Levi’s are pretty cool, and Holden is about the coolest 4 year old he could ever meet.

When she was learning to walk, Levi’s favorite thing was holding her little hand and guiding her around. Even now, when she can stand perfectly fine on her own two feet, Levi loves it when she reaches for his hand; Holden is a pretty independent kid, even at 4 years old, so Levi never takes affection from her for granted.

They’re best friends and Holden goes everywhere with him. Their favorite father-daughter activity is going to the grocery store, and Levi lets Holden point to and assess her favorite fruits and veggies while she sits happily in the shopping cart.

Sometimes there are other parents struggling with a kid throwing a temper tantrum. Levi simply clicks his teeth, while Holden shakes her little head. “That’s pretty embarassing, daddy,” she says, looking at the poor parent with an unamused glare that rivals Levi’s. He nods and pushes the cart past the scene, “Tell me about it, kid.”

Your second kid is a boy, and he looks more like you than Levi, but manages to have Levi’s signature hair color and pout when things aren’t going his way.

He comes as a shock to both you and Levi, because after your ultrasound, you were told you were having another girl. Turns out, they’d accidentally mixed up your files, and you were having a boy instead, which you do not find out until your mid-term check up a few months later. Cue Levi buffering like an old computer.

Kiaan is welcomed all the same, even tho Levi is still in disbelief; he was mentally preparing to have another daughter on his hands. He puts more pressure on himself with his son; not that he wasn’t trying his best to be a parent to Holden, but any insecurities he might have about being a good come out when your son is born, because Levi has no “man of the house” example to follow from.

You reassure him that your son will turn out to be just fine, and raising him the way you raised Holden, and would have raised another daughter is perfectly acceptable. Of course Levi rises to the occasion after the initial shock; he’s determined to be the dad to his son that he never had.

Where Holden is more reserved, Kiaan likes to talk and babble about anything whenever and wherever he can, to whoever is around. It’s not uncommon for you or Levi to find your son completely entertained by telling a story out loud to himself while playing with his toys.

Loves to rope Levi into making his toys interact and have “conversations” with each other, and Kiaan genuinely thinks his dad is hilarious, even if he doesn’t completely understand what he’s saying. It always makes Levi smile to hear Kiaan try and copy the bass and tone of his voice when he’s mocking him.

Kiaan loves messing with his dad, and Levi’s all talk, so of course he lets him. He’ll be on a Zoom meeting for work, and Kiaan will be sat in his lap, running little toy cars across the desk in front of him, or tugging on Levi’s hair, and Levi just lets him. It makes quite the cute sight, and Hange has definitely taken a few screen recordings.

That being said, your son is more of a mama’s boy than anything. Kiaan loves messing with Levi, but if you’re in the room, there’s a 95% chance he’ll be on your lap or at your side shadowing whatever you’re doing.

Kiaan is a universal copycat tho, so whatever you, Levi, or Holden say or do, he tries for himself. This makes him especially susceptible to repeating Levi’s foul language and bad habits than Holden. (“Kiaan, you can’t sleep on the chair, it’s not good for your back.” “But daddy sleeps on the chairs sometimes!” “...Alright kid, you got me there.”)

He’s a very loving kid with his words, too, always thanking people and proclaiming his love, so he doesn’t exactly have a “favorite” adult or babysitter, but he does get particularly excited when Erwin or Farlan come around. He feels especially tall when Erwin lets him sit on his shoulders, and Farlan always entertains his story-telling.

He’s a sucker for his grandma though, and gives Kuchel a million kisses whenever she comes around. Does not let go over her for the entire time she’s over at your house, and will sit on her lap throughout dinner.

The most affectionate child, so where Holden only likes holding hands, Kiaan loves cuddling with you and Levi, and likes to be held whenever possible. Levi spoils him a little too much, and more often than not, if you’re walking outside for more than two hours, Kiaan will end up on Levi’s shoulders or in your arms.

Your last kid is another girl, and, yeah she’s just a baby no older than a few months, but Levi can’t help but think she’s especially tiny, and he can’t help but to look at her and hold her whenever possible. Your baby girl also leaves Levi a little dumbstruck because she manages to look like a combination of you and his mother.

As she grows, it becomes apparent that you’ve got another daddy’s girl on your hands. Doesn’t matter if you’re literally breast feeding her, Aria will throw a tantrum if she’s separated from Levi for more than an hour.

The good news is, her sleep cycle is as irregular as Levi’s, so he’s got someone to keep him company when everyone else has gone to bed for the evening. Unfortunately, this also means Aria naps a lot during the day, which leaves Levi a little bored since Holden is old enough to be in school full-time, and Kiaan is gone for at least a portion of the day.

So, he would never tell you, but sometimes he wakes Aria up from her naps just a little bit early to spend more time with her (and cure his boredom). Having an infant trying to grab at his hair with her ravioli sized baby fists while he tries to cook lunch certainly makes the task more difficult, but it also adds welcomed color to his day.

You and Levi have to hold Aria constantly when she’s awake or else she’ll cry (although, if you leave her in the arms of her siblings, she does settle down, too); that, or she’ll find her tiny baby hands somewhere they shouldn’t be. Like dipped in a jar of strawberry jam. Or peanut butter. Or both.

Levi talks to his kids like he would any other adult, so it’s not uncommon to find him brewing tea with a baby strapped to his chest, narrating the steps to good tea-making out loud to her for her to hear. He swears she can understand him, and he attributes Holden and Kiaan’s growing vocabularies, and the early ages at which they started speaking to this.

Aria will be in her little chest strap thing while Levi’s cooking dinner, and he’ll look down at her like, “Alright, we’re gonna julienne your carrots today. Yesterday we cubed them, but you’ve got grabby hands, so this will give you more room to work with.”

Kiaan loves holding Aria and honestly just being around her, and you and Levi think it’s adorable how he loves to play with her, and how he knows to be gentle with her. He shares a room with her, and loves sharing his bedtime story times, so you or Levi will read them to sleep together.

Holden isn’t crazy about babies, but she’s a good older sister, and Aria seems to be obsessed with her. She crawls and scoots towards her if given the opportunity, and Holden will always look to you or Levi before attempting to hold or lift her up, as if asking permission. She’ll pat Aria’s head to get her to stop crying, or let her play with her hands.

Levi thinks one of the best parts about being a dad is seeing the different dynamics and relationships between your kids. Holden isn’t most physically or verbally affectionate, but she’s still compassionate, and Kiaan looks up to her; and Kiaan is the perfect middle ground, knowing when it’s appropriate to bother (affectionate) Holden, and when to give her space, and curiously hovers around his baby sister, too.

#anonymous #dad levi dad levi dad levi dad levi!!!!!!!!#levi x reader #levi fluff #aot x reader #levi ackerman x reader #levi smut #aot imagines

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jaskiers-sweetkiss · 3 years

Text

Coffee Shop Kisses

Pairing: Yelena Belova x Female!Reader

Word Count: 1.5K

Request: something soft with Yelena from @bright-molina

Summary: After moving back to her small Ohio hometown, the reader bumps into an old friend at her favorite coffee shop.

Warnings: none ?

A/N: Happy incredibly belated Birthday Bianca!!! Sorry this took so long for me to write but I really hope you like it!! This fic has everything: the gays, some light pinning, and chai lattes !

Masterlist

___

You couldn’t believe you were back in your small Ohio hometown. When you moved away after high school it was never your intention to come back but clearly, fate didn’t have the same plans as you drove through your childhood neighborhood.

It was nostalgic, driving through the familiar streets despite the changes in the neighborhood since your childhood. While the houses had mostly remained the same, you knew many of their occupants had changed. The Browns no longer lived in the house two doors down from yours, having retired to Florida not long after their children had moved out, and many other family’s you’d known growing up had followed suit. Others had downsized to smaller houses in other parts of the city, no longer needing the extra space. Now the neighborhood was filled with new families, young parents taking advantage of the location to raise their children.

Still, the atmosphere was largely the same, and if you let yourself you could almost imagine that the kids playing in the front yards and the street or biking through the neighborhood, calling out to friends as they passed, were the kids you’d grown up with.

It was strange, being back home. It felt stranger still to call it “home.”

It didn’t take long for you to fall back into a routine, despite the lingering nostalgia. You woke up every morning with just enough time to get ready and drive downtown to work, if you were lucky you’d end up with a few extra minutes to stop into your favorite coffee shop from your teenage years, which was conveniently located a couple doors down from your office. It was simple, sure, but it worked for you.

On the weekends you always made a point to walk to that downtown coffee shop with a book or some other activity, preferring the ambiance and the subtle noise of the building and its other patrons over the still silence of your house. Plus they had amazing drinks so you really couldn’t lose.

Normally you enjoyed taking in the hustle and bustle of the small town around you as people completed their weekly errands, but that day you were lost in your head as you walked along the sidewalk. It wasn’t as if you were thinking about anything in particular (when reflecting back later you’d merely blame it on having had a long week at work), but rather than enjoy the people watching as you normally would, you let them all pass you by without a single glance, all the way down the street and into the line at your coffee shop. You ordered your usual without much fanfare, still having the presence of mind to drop your change into the tip jar on the counter. It wasn’t until you had gotten your drink that you were thrust out of your thoughts, quite literally.

You had only just turned around from the counter, about to start scanning the cafe for a seat when you were knocked to the ground, your drink spilling in your hands.

“Oh my god, are you alright?” Disoriented and still in a haze, the thick Russian accent of the woman who had spoken caught your attention.

A hand reached down into your line of sight and you took it gratefully, managing to keep the pitiful drops of unspilled chai latte in your cup as you were pulled to your feet.

“Let me buy you a new drink,” she offered though you barely heard her.

Now that you were back on your feet you got a better look at the woman who had bumped into you. She was of average height and had her blonde hair pulled into a double ponytail. You didn’t know any Russians but you could’ve sworn you’d met before.

“Do I know you?” You blurted out before you could think and the other woman blinked at you in surprise, brows lifting slightly.

“Perhaps,” she shrugged, “I used to live around here when I was younger.”

You narrowed your eyes at that, certain you would’ve remembered growing up alongside a Russian family, everyone you remembered was as American as they come. It was a small town in Ohio, after all.

“So did I,” you spoke slowly, still trying to ponder it out in your head. “Over on Brown.”

Her eyes narrowed at that, now scrutinizing you as well.

“I grew up on State Street.”

That’s when it clicked for you. You remembered them; family of four, two daughters. Natasha used to ride her bike down your street all the time which meant the woman in front of you must be…

“Yelena?”

“You remember me?”

“Yeah, holy shit! Your sister rode her bike through my mom’s flowers one time by accident, pissed her off for the whole summer. Plus, we went to preschool together.”

“Wait, Y/N Y/L/N?”

“In the flesh,” you replied, spreading your arms out dramatically.

Yelena took that as an invitation to really study you then, eyes flitting up and down as she fully took you in.

“You grew up quite nicely,” she spoke, tone appreciative and you found yourself blushing.

“I- I could say the same thing about you,” you stumbled over your words, feeling flustered. “I don’t remember you being Russian.”

You mentally cursed yourself for once again blurting something out before you could even think about it.

Yelena laughed at that and you couldn’t help but find yourself smiling at the sound. She had a cute laugh. It was fitting.

“Yes, well, my ‘family' and I were actually part of a Russian spy organization, sent to infiltrate a nearby SHIELD facility for some information, so,” she shrugged and you laughed at first, assuming she was joking before you realized she wasn’t laughing along.

“Wait, seriously?”

“Why would I lie?”

You fumbled around with your words at that, unable to come up with a proper response but feeling as though you needed to say something anyway.

“How about I buy you a drink and you tell me about it?” You finally settled on saying and Yelena’s brows lifted again in surprise.

“Sure, but I’m buying the drinks. I owe you for spilling your first one.”

You nodded in agreement, somehow having forgotten all about your spilled drink in the excitement of reconnecting with an old friend. An old friend who was very attractive, if you were being fully honest with yourself.

With new drinks ordered and retrieved, the two of you made your way to a small table by the front window of the cafe. True to your agreement, Yelena explained to you that her “family” when she’d lived in Ohio wasn’t actually her family at all, the entire thing fabricated for their mission, and that after their success she continued to work for the organization before finally getting out as an adult. She skimmed on a lot of the details but you got the sense that the entire ordeal was traumatic for her so you didn’t press. Though, you were quite amazed that the woman across from you (and the tiny blonde girl you’d played dolls with as a kid) was a former spy and assassin. In comparison, your own life story was much less exciting, though you guessed it also held much less trauma as well. Still, Yelena asked and she listened intently as you explained how you’d wound up back in your hometown all these years later.

After that, the conversation seemed to flow seamlessly from one topic to another, and it was so nice to talk to a friend and catch up that you didn’t even realize how much time had passed until you went to take a sip from your long-forgotten chai and found it ice cold. You checked your phone and were surprised to see that nearly two hours had passed and while you were planning on spending much longer at the cafe anyway, it still caught you off guard.

“Oh, I’m sorry, am I keeping you from something?” Yelena asked, having noticed you checking the time.

“No!” You rushed to reassure her before flushing slightly at the knee-jerk reaction. “No, I just hadn’t realized how much time has passed. It’s been really nice to see you.”

“It’s been nice to see you too, perhaps we can do this again sometime?”

“I’d like that a lot.” You tried to fight the heat that you felt rushing to your cheeks once more. You weren’t sure if she meant it the same way you did.

“Me too,” she replied softly, ducking her head so that her face was out of view. “I actually do have to get going but maybe we can meet here again next week?”

“Absolutely!” You nodded, trying not to seem too eager and failing miserably. “It’s a date.”

Once again the words slipped out on their own accord and you were left scrambling to do damage control.

“I- I mean like, y’know-”

“A date is good,” Yelena cut you off with a smirk, though you could’ve sworn you could see your own nerves reflected in her eyes.

“A date then,” you agreed, flashing a nervous smile.

“Goodbye, Y/N.” She stood from her chair with a smile, pausing on her way to the door to press a quick peck to your cheek, and then she was gone.

You sat there, still as a statue, for quite some time afterward, your fingertips lightly grazing over where Yelena’s lips had been moments before. You really loved this coffee shop.

#yelena belova #yelena x reader #yelena belova x reader #yelena belova fic #black widow #mcu #mcu fic #black widow movie #erin takes requests #bianca my love #erin writes

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ladylynse · 3 years

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Dimensional Displacement [FFN | AO3]: Danny has a love-hate relationship with the Fenton Booo-merang. This time, it didn’t do him any favours. This time, it knocked him through a portal—and from what he can glean from the Water Tribe siblings he meets, odds are, there’s a reason for that.

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For @geronimo-alonzi as a thank you for donating to my ko-fi. (Yes, they won my fic giveaway, but I finished this one first.) Loosely based on this three sentence fic.

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Danny had been clobbered in the head by the Fenton Booo-merang more often than he’d like to admit, let alone count, but this was the first time it had knocked him through a portal.

That wouldn’t have been a particularly bad thing if the portal hadn’t immediately closed behind him.

One minute, he’d been minding his own business in the Ghost Zone, coming back from a visit with Frostbite that Jazz must have forgotten about if she’d sent the Booo-merang after him. (Sam was stuck with her parents at some fancy dinner party thing somewhere and Tucker was working on designing a computer game for his comp sci assignment, a class neither Sam nor Danny was in, so it had to have been Jazz.)

The next minute, Danny was…. He didn’t even know where he was. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere. He’d caught the Booo-merang before either he or it had hit the ground, but once he’d righted himself to look around, there was no familiar skyline or something equally useful to him. There were only trees and rocks and dirt roads as far as the eye could see, even from a considerable distance up in the air.

Well.

That wasn’t quite fair. He could see a silver river cutting through the trees in a path roughly parallel to the road, but in terms of helpful things, he was coming up empty.

He didn’t even know which direction he’d need to fly to get to a city. It was too light out to see any distant glow of city lights against the scattered clouds, and all he could smell when he breathed in was fresh air and pine needles and something else—moss? The general mix that was pretty much mulch on the forest floor?—that was decidedly natural, not the signs of human activity he’d been hoping for. Sure, following the road or even the river would get him somewhere sooner or later, but what was he supposed to do, pick a random direction or go eenie meenie minie moe?

Danny did another loop above the trees, looking for some sign of anything, and came up with nothing.

“Come on!” Danny yelled at the patch of blue sky where the portal had closed. He spun in a circle, the Booo-merang clutched tightly in his fist, but it didn’t pull in any direction, and he didn’t catch so much as a glimmer of the familiar green of the Ghost Zone. “Just open up again already!” It was as effective as he’d expected it to be, which was not at all, but screaming out his frustrations made him feel a bit better. “Now! Please?”

Unsurprisingly, the portal didn’t listen.

Out of appealing options, Danny threw the Booo-merang. Logically, he knew it wasn’t the Infi-Map. Logically, he knew that the universe did not often do what was convenient for him, even if he sometimes got incredibly lucky in a fight. Logically, he knew that the chances of the Booo-merang deciding to reprogram itself to find portals just because it had done it this one time (likely coincidentally) were slim to none.

Illogically, he didn’t expect the stupid thing to circle around and hit him in the back of the head again.

Danny cursed and landed to retrieve the fallen Booo-mang from the roadway, muttering under his breath about how much he’d like to just dismantle the thing and hide the pieces. He wouldn’t, of course. It worked too well to risk Sam, Tucker, and Jazz losing the ability to find him if they really needed to. It had been dicey enough the few times his parents had decided to try to ‘fix’ it, only for disaster (Vlad) to strike in the meantime.

That didn’t mean Danny couldn’t fantasize about bashing it against a rock, though. There were plenty of those around.

“That’s a weird looking boomerang,” someone said from behind him, and Danny nearly jumped into the air right there.

He didn’t, mostly because he was getting used to Sam and Tucker trying to surprise him, but it was a near thing.

He wasn’t used to people sneaking up on him. His ghost sense was reliable, Dash made more noise walking around than even Jack Fenton, and, well, most of the people who hunted him couldn’t be subtle if they tried, especially since a good chunk of them liked hearing their own voice. He’d only ever really had to worry about Jazz, and self-preservation in the face of tickle attacks had given him the ability to be extra sensitive to her presence whenever she was in a certain mood.

The two who’d caught him by surprise now must have come from the trees on the other side of the road, and he hoped that meant they hadn’t seen him do anything particularly ghostly. Granted, neither of them was screaming, so he should be safe. They didn’t look terrified, either. Wary, maybe, but not scared.

Danny guessed that they were both somewhere around his age. Siblings, by the looks of them, but probably not twins even if they’d both decided to leave the house wearing oddly styled blue clothes today, at least compared to the usual jeans and T-shirt combo Danny was used to seeing. Unless he wasn’t anywhere near the States anymore? Or unless he’d been flung through to a different time. But the boy had spoken English, and it hadn’t sounded funny to Danny’s ears, no lilt of a foreign accent or strange phrasing that he associated with Shakespeare or something.

The girl was his height, the boy a bit taller, and they were both staring at him.

They probably thought he was the one who was dressed strangely.

The boy pointed. “Your boomerang,” he repeated. “It looks weird.”

The girl elbowed him in the gut—none too gently, judging by his immediate wheeze—and hissed, “Sokka!”

Yeah, those two were definitely siblings. And even if the girl wasn’t older, she definitely had the annoying (and annoyed) sister tone down pat. Danny had heard (and been on the receiving end of) the same from similar exchanges with Jazz more than once.

“Sokka’s going to apologize, right, Sokka?”

The boy frowned and then threw up his hands. “Right. I apologize for saying your boomerang looks weird. It looks interesting.”

The girl stepped on his foot, and he yelped. “What was that for?”

“You know what that was for!”

“It’s fine,” Danny said. He still wasn’t entirely sure what was going on. Maybe the portal had dumped him out in the middle of some historical re-enactment thing. Granted, there should really be more people around if that were the case—or at least hidden cameras. He was better at spotting them now. Vlad and his creepy spy tendencies aside, Danny had gotten good at noticing (and avoiding) cameras so he didn’t let his secret get caught on tape. (There were a surprising number of places in Amity Park not under video surveillance, or at least not under real video surveillance even if they had fake cameras out; he could practically transform in the middle of the street sometimes.)

Still, nothing about this felt staged. It didn’t even feel like one of his enemy’s tricks, some giant setup that was meant to trap him or whatever. That’s not to say Danny was wholly convinced this meeting, whatever it was, was merely chance—he didn’t particularly trust Clockwork not to arrange things as he saw fit without warning anyone—but it didn’t feel overly contrived, either. There was just….

Something felt off, and he couldn’t explain what it was.

“It’s fine,” Danny repeated, since the two were looking at him dubiously, but the familiar phrase felt strange on his tongue, almost like—

Wait.

“Okay, this is going to sound like a weird question, but where are we?”

The boy, Sokka, blinked. “Did you hit your head or something? We’re in the Earth Kingdom. Or, wait, do you mean where in the Earth Kingdom? Look, if you need new supplies, there’s not much in the last few villages, but we’re about a day from—”

The girl elbowed him again, and he fell silent. Danny could see the growing suspicion on her face for what it was, could see suspicion settling on the boy’s face as well, but he wasn’t sure if it was because he’d asked the wrong question or because he’d asked something at all. He’d been paying attention this time, watching Sokka’s lips, and Danny didn’t have to be a good lip reader to know that he hadn’t been saying the words Danny had heard.

Well.

More accurately, he hadn’t been saying them in English.

And Danny, in answering, had somehow not been speaking English.

That was not, as far as Danny was aware, something Clockwork could do to him.

He didn’t know a ghost who had power over language, though, unless the Ghostwriter had something else up his sleeve and this mess was it. Nocturne would be able to pull anything in a dream, but Danny couldn’t see why he’d bother including something that would be an obvious tell like this, so it shouldn’t be him even if he had decided to come back. More likely, it was someone he hadn’t fought before, someone who had targeted him, seen an opportunity when the Booo-merang had hit him and seized upon it to throw him…here.

Wherever here was.

The Earth Kingdom, apparently.

“Um.” The girl still looked like she expected him to start fighting, and her stance…. Danny didn’t recognize it, but he did know that she looked ready to move at any moment. Her brother had taken her cue and, while Danny hadn’t been paying attention, pulled out a boomerang of his own. That couldn’t be good. “Look. I know how this sounds.” How he sounded, more like. If he had some accent he couldn’t hear because he wasn’t speaking their language properly, whatever it was, this had to be a setup after all.

Someone had sent him here to be dealt with. By this world, this dimension or construct or whatever it was, if not necessarily by these two people.

Granted, Danny wasn’t sure why someone would go to the trouble of letting him understand and be understood in the first place if that were the case, since he could get in just as much trouble without speaking the native language.

Surely he wasn’t actually supposed to help someone here, right? This wasn’t even his world. Or the Ghost Zone. Whatever was going on here was most definitely not his business.

Except now he was in the middle of it, so if there was something going on, it would be beneficial to find out what it was sooner rather than later.

This wasn’t some Jumanji kind of thing where he’d been tossed into a game and had to do whatever it was to get out again, was it? It didn’t feel like the time he’d gone into Doomed, but that had been intentional, and this….

Okay, no, he didn’t have enough information to speculate, which meant he needed to get some information out of these two in order to get somewhere. “I just…. I was kidnapped and dumped here for some reason, and I’m trying to find my way home.” That was close enough to the truth that it shouldn’t raise any red flags. Hopefully. “My name is Danny.” Introducing himself as Phantom, even in ghost mode, wasn’t something he wanted to do when he had no idea how these people felt about ghosts. Besides, it wasn’t like they’d ever see him as Fenton. He just needed to stick to the ground and pretend to be a normal human being, which he could most definitely do—at least when the sun was bright enough that his slight glow was basically nonexistent. He doubted it would be terribly noticeable even under the cover of trees.

“Danny,” the girl repeated, not relaxing her stance. “That’s an unusual name.”

Sokka just cocked his head at Danny. “Why would anyone kidnap you?”

It was spoken like it was an innocent, thoughtless question, something that could be brushed away with a laugh, but Danny could read an underlying tension in each of their faces. Sokka was waiting on his answer, and so was his sister. Danny’s response might very well determine what happened next.

Consequently, Danny didn’t miss the fact that Sokka didn’t offer up any potential explanations that he could jump on.

Another lie wasn’t going to do him any favours, not when he knew so little. “I don’t know.” He could guess, but he didn’t know. From the looks of it, though, these two wouldn’t be satisfied with that. Chances were good they wouldn’t be particularly satisfied with his suspicions, either, which was that someone wanted him out of the way for whatever they were planning—or maybe that someone had decided they wanted to have a little fun with him at his expense, if world domination wasn’t on the table. “My parents are inventors. Maybe that’s why?”

“That doesn’t explain why whoever took you would leave you here,” Sokka pointed out, and Danny wished these two weren’t so smart. “If you were taken because you were valuable, you wouldn’t have been left behind unguarded.”

“So maybe they kidnapped the wrong person and realized that I wasn’t who they wanted?”

Sokka exchanged glances with his sister before murmuring, “We can ask Toph. I mean, it’s possible they found us, but if he is really a Fire Nation plant picked solely for his eye colour, they’d have at least dyed his hair and given him some normal clothes.”

Danny decided not to ask who the heck picked people for something based on eye colour and not skill or merit or experience or something normal like that. Aside from derailing the conversation from anything potentially useful, Danny was pretty sure Sokka hadn’t realized he’d been overheard, and it wouldn’t be in Danny’s best interests to let them know how good his hearing was.

Still, he took the opportunity to tuck away the Booo-merang before they could ask any questions about it that he wasn’t up to answering. Maybe it would make him seem like less of a threat if they didn’t think he was ready to use it as a weapon—not that he knew how to use a boomerang as a weapon, but he was pretty sure Sokka hadn’t pulled his out to see which of them could throw it farther or throw it properly—and maybe then they’d trust him enough to answer his questions. Hopefully. He was perfectly willing to meet this Toph if it meant figuring out where he was and how to get home, especially since it would be easy enough for him to cut and run later.

The movement was enough to draw the attention of the siblings, though, and both pairs of eyebrows rose. Had they not expected him to make what he hoped would be taken as a gesture of trust or were they wondering how the heck he’d gotten it into his pocket? Maybe they thought he was trying to hide it, which wouldn’t help matters at all. Then again, if they thought that he thought it had been a subtle move, then maybe—

No.

He had to stop doing this. He didn’t know enough about these two to try to guess their thoughts, let alone what actions they might take against him.

Danny shifted on his feet, glad they hadn’t jumped to attacking and that they weren’t even asking questions about the Booo-merang, since practically anything about it would be difficult to answer. At least they hadn’t seen him flying. Even for people familiar with ghosts, unknown ones tended to be cause for concern until their threat level was assessed, and Danny didn’t want to invite trouble and immediately find out what this world had that messed with ghosts. Sure, he wanted to know what could hurt him here, but finding out while it wasn’t actively being used against him was infinitely preferable.

“Where did you say you were from?” the girl asked after a beat, even though they all knew he’d never said anything about that.

“Nowhere you would know,” he hedged, which was true enough.

“We travel a lot,” the girl said, and her brother snorted.

“What Katara means is, try us. If we can help you get back to your family, what do you have to lose?” Sokka offered Danny a grin, and his stance had visibly relaxed, even if he hadn’t put his boomerang away. It might be just for show, especially since he still had a weapon out, but at least the girl hadn’t drawn any knives or something like that. “Look, from one guy to another, you don’t need to make up some crazy story if you’re a runaway or something like that. We’re basically runaways.”

“We’re running towards something, not away from it.”

“We were almost runaways.” To Danny, Sokka added, “Gran caught us, but she let us go.”

Katara rolled her eyes, and Danny looked between the two of them as Sokka continued talking. It was obvious that they’d changed tack for some reason, no doubt trying to get him to trust them, but the blatant switch made him uneasy. Did they not realize how obvious that was or was this just their usual dynamic?

“I’m from Amity,” Danny eventually interrupted. He knew from the way that they were looking at him that neither of them had forgotten he had yet to answer the question. He’d already told them they wouldn’t know the place, so technically he could’ve said Amity Park, but for all he knew, these two had been sent to get information out of him, and the less he told a potential enemy, the better.

Come to think of it, maybe he shouldn’t have told them his real name, and maybe he should’ve just made up a village name rather than dropping heavy hints about his hometown.

“Which is near—?”

Danny ignored Sokka’s prompt. He didn’t even have a good enough idea of the geography of this place to make that up, especially when there was a chance they knew the area, runaways or no. “Do you know where I could get some water? I haven’t found any since I woke up.” That wasn’t true, but they wouldn’t know that unless they were getting some more intel about him from someone unseen.

The siblings looked at each other again, and then Katara faced him and said, “We’re headed to the river. Come with us. You can get your water, and we can share our catch if we get anything.”

“Wait, I didn’t agree to share my meat!” Sokka exclaimed. Katara’s only answer was a dirty look, but it was enough to have Sokka subsiding into grumbles.

“I’m not hungry yet,” Danny said, which also strictly wasn’t true, but he knew he didn’t need to eat much.

“You might be hungry by the time we’re finished,” Katara said over Sokka’s griping.

Danny hesitated, trying to figure out how weird it would be if he made up some excuse not to go with them. What were the chances that this was a trap when he’d brought up the river—or at least water—before they had? It wasn’t that he thought they’d be able to take him out if it came to that, even if Jazz had more experience fighting normally than he did, since he typically relied a lot on his powers when he could.

These two might be better fighters than him—there were almost certainly better hunters, given how silently they could walk—but he’d always have something like intangibility in his back pocket if it came to it, and they wouldn’t. Still, when it came down to it, he wasn’t used to fighting humans. What if he didn’t pull his punches enough and seriously hurt one of them?

“You can tell us about Amity,” Katara added. “We’ve never been there.”

Danny really hoped that was true and that there wasn’t a place in this world called Amity that they knew well. Still, when they started walking, spreading out so he was always in sight and they never had their backs to him, even when they hit the trees on the other side of the road, he kept pace with them. “It’s pretty much like you’d expect.” Except for the ghosts. At least his ghost sense hadn’t gone off here. Yet. “This is probably the farthest I’ve ever travelled from home.” He couldn’t get much farther away than a completely different dimension that (probably) wasn’t as connected to his world as it was to the Ghost Zone, anyway—unless he counted when he’d time travelled, but he wasn’t about to bring that up.

Katara opened her mouth to ask another question, maybe to press him for details, so Danny cut her off. “What about you two?”

They looked at each other again. How many times were they going to do that? Hadn’t they already decided how far to trust him? Danny knew it wasn’t very far, but they’d clearly decided he wasn’t going to straight up attack them at this precise moment, so even if they didn’t tell him the whole truth—

Sokka gestured at their clothes. “We’re Water Tribe.”

He said it like it was obvious, like Danny should’ve known already, but of course it explained absolutely nothing.

“Southern Water Tribe,” Katara added unhelpfully, despite Sokka’s frown. “We wanted to see the world, and now we are.”

As cover stories went, it was better than Danny’s. Barely. “Right,” he said, wondering again why he’d been dumped in the path of these two. “It’s a nice world to see.”

Somehow, that was the wrong thing to say, because they were both looking at him like they’d expected him to say anything but that. “What?”

“There’s a war on, you’re supposedly kidnapped and dropped off somewhere in occupied territory without any of the proper paperwork, and the best you can come up with is it’s a nice world to see?” Sokka turned his incredulous look from Danny to Katara. “He cannot be Fire Nation. This kid is more sheltered than Toph was supposed to be.”

Danny, who had stumbled at the word war, kept walking and hoped they hadn’t noticed. If they had, maybe they’d think he’d tripped over a tree root or fallen branch or hole or something. They weren’t following a trail, so that was a perfectly reasonable explanation, right?

“It’s all right,” Katara said as she reached out to touch his arm, and, okay, from that gentle tone, which was a complete change from anything earlier, it must mean she had noticed, knew he hadn’t tripped over anything in the terrain, and—from how she was looking at him now—thought it wasn’t surprise that had tripped Danny up, either. “Trust me, I know what it’s like to be a little naïve until you have a chance to leave home for the first time, but unless you’re got a camp around here, you’re not prepared at all.”

Sokka finally put his boomerang away and smirked at Danny. “We at least left home with supplies.”

“Did you have to run without any warning?” Katara asked, giving her brother a pointed look.

“Oh, uh, kinda.” Danny winced, knowing that had to sound like a lie. “I…I didn’t really plan on leaving when I did. This just…happened.”

Sokka raised an eyebrow, but Katara said, “You don’t have to worry. We’re the last people who would turn you in to the Fire Nation.”

Right. So the Fire Nation were the bad guys, at least according to the Water Tribe and, if he was putting things together correctly, the Earth Kingdom, where they were. Meaning the Fire Nation had invaded the Earth Kingdom if this was occupied territory. Danny thought about asking why these two had come into occupied territory themselves and then decided he didn’t want to risk getting into a discussion that would show off how little he knew. If they had decided he was a runaway who knew practically nothing about the world, well, that worked in his favour.

“Thanks.” Danny wasn’t sure what else to say. “Why are you helping me, though? Won’t that put you in danger?” That had to be a fair question in this situation.

“We can’t help everyone,” Katara said quietly, “but we can help some people, even if it’s just a tiny bit. Sometimes, that has to be enough.”

Danny really didn’t know what to say to that, because she certainly wouldn’t understand if he said he knew the feeling, so he smiled weakly in thanks and let the conversation drop.

They were still watching him, but they were more subtle about it now, and it didn’t look like they were watching him more closely than they were watching everything else.

Being downgraded from a threat was a win, though. Danny hoped he didn’t do anything to mess it up.

“There’s no shame in being a refugee,” Sokka said after a moment. “Being from a richer family might’ve bought you an isolated childhood, but it wouldn’t guarantee your safety.”

“We won’t try to hold you for ransom if you tell us where you’re really from,” added Katara.

Danny glanced at her. “I said I was from Amity.”

“I could say I have a platypus bear as a pet,” Sokka interjected. “That doesn’t make it true.”

“We know what it’s like, thinking you understand the way things are and then realizing how little you know,” Katara said quietly. “It can be overwhelming.”

“And it would explain why you’re in your nightclothes,” Sokka said. He’d come in range of Katara’s fist, but he danced out of the way as she swung in his direction. He hadn’t even needed to look at her to know it was coming. “You didn’t know enough to keep your valuables hidden and got robbed your first night on your own, didn’t you?”

“I—” Danny knew it was an excuse for his ignorance being handed to him on a silver platter, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep up with a lie like that when he knew so little. “These aren’t my pajamas,” he said instead. Let them believe what they wanted to believe; that would make his life easier. Even if it blew up in his face somehow, he could truthfully say he’d never said they were right.

They might be suspicious that he hadn’t outright denied it, but then again, he’d already told them something a lot closer to the truth.

“Uh huh.” Sokka glanced at Katara again, and she gave a slight shake her head that Danny didn’t understand.

“Let’s get you some food and water first,” Katara said. “Then we can see about finding you other supplies.”

Danny decided not to point out that they’d already told him it was slim pickings for supplies around here. Not that he had the money to pay for anything, but Sokka had already guessed that. Besides, they thought he was running around in his pjs.

Judging by the sour look on Sokka’s face, he’d evidently translated his sister’s words to mean that she wanted to give him some of their supplies, something Sokka clearly wasn’t sure he approved of.

Katara must have had similar thoughts on Sokka’s expression, since she murmured, “It’s this or bring him with us, and you know what’s safer.”

Katara might not have minded that Danny could overhear her last words, but Sokka closed the distance between them, pulling his sister farther away from Danny before hissing, “It’s not the only option, and you know it. We can’t afford to give away any of our supplies, and just because Toph can make sure he’s not coming in with the intention of stabbing us in the back, doesn’t mean he wouldn’t blab to anyone once he figures out who we’re travelling with. You know as well as I do that that wouldn’t take very long.”

“He’s just kid.”

“Technically, like Aang keeps reminding us, we’re just kids. Who very much cannot afford to so much as drop him off in the next village. Show him the river and teach him how to catch and cook his meals? Fine. Picking him up as a stray when he’s not bringing anything to the table? Not fine.”

“He’s lost.”

“So? He’s not hurt. He’s already in a better position than some refugees. He’ll survive until he can walk to the nearest settlement. Then he can try to get help from people who can actually give it.”

Katara bit her lip and slowed to a stop. “There’s something else.”

“What?”

Danny very much wanted to know the answer to that—what had Katara figured out?—but he tried not to react so they didn’t know he’d been listening in. He deliberately turned away and stared around the trees instead, a mix of deciduous and evergreen. He couldn’t pick out any specific types of trees—nothing distinctive like oak leaves that he could see—and, as far as he could tell, the woods were utterly devoid of critters. He had no idea if that was because this world wasn’t real or if it was simply because all the animals in the region had had warning of their coming and hidden accordingly.

Danny knew his disinterest wouldn’t be very convincing, but if he was lucky, they’d think he’d given up on trying to eavesdrop.

“There’s something…off about him. Not necessarily something wrong, but something different. I can’t…. When he asked about water, I wanted to make sure he wasn’t hiding any on him or nearby in case it was a trap, and— He didn’t feel the same as you or me. I can’t explain it. Toph might have a better idea than I do. Or…or Aang.” The last word was a barely audible whisper.

“You think this might be a spirit thing?” Sokka’s response was closer to a suppressed shriek than anything else, and Danny winced.

“I think he might be spirit touched,” Katara answered, and Sokka’s sharp inhalation was painfully audible. “I wasn’t good enough back then to notice anything about Yue, but—”

“Fine.” Sokka’s voice had gone flat. “I don’t want to shun someone and accidentally anger the spirits. I’ll teach him to fish. You go back and interrupt advanced earthbending practice and pick a meeting place, but make sure everyone’s packed in case this doesn’t go the way you think it’ll go.”

“I know to be careful.”

“We all know to be careful. Some of us just need more reminding than others.”

Katara didn’t say anything else, but she must have nodded or done something similar because Danny heard Sokka stalk back over to him. “Katara’s going back to talk to the rest of our group about what we might be able to spare,” he said as Danny turned back to face him, “and I’ll show you how to fish in the meantime. If you don’t catch anything, I’ll give you one of mine.”

Danny wasn’t about to admit that he’d overheard their entire conversation, so he smiled and said, “That sounds great, thanks.” It didn’t stop the uneasiness from settling in his gut, though. Sure, now he knew these people believed in ghosts, and Sokka’s response made it clear he didn’t want to get on their bad side, but Danny had no idea what being spirit touched meant. He didn’t know if that was seen as a good thing or a bad thing.

More to the point, if it was a bad thing, he didn’t know if these people had something suitable with which to attack spirit touched people, since if they did, chances were good that it would work on him.

He was not lucky enough to get a free pass here.

Still, the odds were good that he’d be able to escape if they did attack since he’d know to be on watch for something, and he wasn’t about to turn down an offer of food. He had no idea when a portal would open and he’d be able to go home. Until then, the best he could do was survive.

He’d survived this much, and his life had hardly been a walk in the park since the accident, let alone before. He wasn’t about to let some ghost fling him into an unknown world and succeed in taking him down. He needed to get out of this to kick their butt and prove to them that they couldn’t get rid of him that easily.

Assuming this wasn’t all a series of genuine coincidences and not the result of the careful manipulation of events.

Danny didn’t want to think about that, though.

He had a much better chance of getting home if there was someone he could beat, and he was going to get home.

Somehow.

(see more fics)

#danny phantom #atla #avatar the last airbender #danny fenton #sokka #katara #crossover #fanfiction #dp fanfiction #atla fanfiction #my writing #ladylynse #snippets #crossover snippet #geronimo-alonzi

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stickynotestoletters · 3 years

Note

may i ask for some poly relationship w larry & sal x male reader hcs?

Ah! Of course! :) Sorry I've been taking so long school is getting to me cause of finals;-;

Warnings: Noncannon compliant (their parents aren't together, no one dies, etc), NSFW (implied teen NSFW otherwise they're out of highschool), no weird cult stuff but they still ghost hunt, more modernish (?) phones and stuff

Sal x Male Reader x Larry hcs

highschool

I think that Sal and Larry would have gotten together before you got there

Like, I say gotten together but the way they started it was literally best friends that were super hornknee and decided to have sex together

They started then developing romantic feelings for each other though

And although the sex dynamic wasn't perfect (refer to my Sal x reader NSFW fic) it was good and they loved each other

It became an on and off thing until they actually worked it out

they talked about it and decided that it was better that they stay friends until they can sort out their own sexual desires and endeavors

Sal didn't even know he could do both as a switch and verse so he wanted to just re-examine his sexual self

And Larry was okay with that

So they decided to date but just without sex for a while

Then you moved to Nockfell their sophomore year

and god were you cool

Sal was the first one to see you in the hallway

It wasn't love at first sight really

He thought you were cool and he wanted to talk to you

Then that same day he told Larry about you during lunch

"I want to talk to him I just don't know how to approach him"

"Oh, well who is it?"

Ngl Larry was kinda jealous about how flustered Sal was getting at the prospect of a new friend but then Sal pointed at you and Larry was like "Oh, okay, I get it."

So Larry just approaches you

It was kinda to tease Sal about how shy he was being

Also kinda because you looked rad as fuck

So Larry approaches you sitting at a table alone

You were actually quite chill

You were happy since no one was approaching you

You guys hit it off and ended up becoming really good friends!

So for the duration of your sophomore year and the summer of your junior year, you guys were really good pals and hung out a lot

Then Larry started developing feelings first

And he was super confused since he knew he still liked Sal, no doubt about it

So he was just super confused and conflicted because he didn’t want to break up with Sal

So during, about the first half, of all of your junior year he kept this to himself and tried to keep himself from feeling for you

Sal on the other hand already accepted his feelings, he realized it later than Larry

And he read yp on what being polygamous meant

So although there was a lot of confusion at first he figured it's no different from people in love triangles

He realizes it a couple weeks after Larry and decides to bring this up to Larry during winter break

The conversation pretty much just went like Sal explaining polyamory to Larry for an hour

They end up deciding to just wait a bit and try to flirt with you individually

you know,

because they don't remember that you don't know they're attracted to you at this point

So basically you think that they're both trying to cheat on each other for the week they're flirting with you

At the end of that week, you tell them to meet you together

And they don't know any better than to meet you

And then you come to them, don't let them explain, and cry because you don't want two of your best friends to cheat on each other like this even though you like them

And then they realize why you're saying this

So although this was not the time they expected to confess to you they told you what they were trying to do

So you just sat there

With these two idiots

and told them "No guys, cause I was literally having a breakdown about losing my two best friends."

And they confess to you

and everything is emotional and raw and you accept

Your guys' dynamic doesn't change because you’re dating now

The only difference is you guys make out together and show lots more pda

although you always bring up what they did when they were trying to give you hints

"We just really wanted to flirt with you okay??? Is it such a crime to want your crush to fall for you???"

"When you guys don't explain you're looking to expand your relationship, yes. Yes, it is Larry."

"He's kind of right babe-"

"SAL-"

Y'all spend a lot of time communicating with each other on stuff like that now

Your senior year goes without any bumps between all of you and you then graduate

College Dynamic

so you and the gang (except Ash, she moves to the city of course) goes and makes a college house

once you all move in together there it's a new routine

You all agreed and talked about the move together and what it would entail

And then you all finally realized how different it was from a monogamous relationship it was

But you all had your learning curves within the relationship

You find out more about their dynamic as a couple

For example, Larry and Sal never liked to fall asleep without you anymore

They had trouble sleeping without you beforehand and the first time you all slept in the same bed together it was just... so... peaceful

They'll spoon and cuddle without you individually (Sal is always the big spoon with Larry)

but they just love falling asleep next to you

They also refuse to do homework without you there

Even if it's just the simplest this they're just gonna need to have you in the room to finish it

Sal likes to make songs about you guys

He records them and edits some but he never lets you two listen to them

"It's just embarrassing if you two were to listen to it. It's like confessing my love for you guys all over again except I can't hide behind the mask."

So until he decides to release his songs online or plays those at gigs he's never going to let you listen to them

Larry likes to paint you guys

His paintings of you before the "disaster confession" were okay, it just looked like he was making a painting of a friend, except for the occasional rose

But now he paints you and draws you two whenever he can

He finds it funny how flustered you and Sal get whenever he makes suggestive paintings or sketches of you two

One time he painted a whole sex portrait of you and Sal together (A 12 by 28 specifically) hung it upright in front of the door to your rooms and didn't tell anyone

So after you and Sal got home that day you were welcomed with Larry lounging on your bed with the giant picture of you fucking Sal next to him

It was definitely beautiful though, even if it's hard to call your nudes beautiful

"Larry Johnson, this painting, as always, masterful. Beautiful craftsmanship but please-" "-we mean this in the most loving way possible Larry-" "-STOP PAINTING OUR NUDES BABE"

He put it away to be hung up in your apartment for when you all move out

Non-College Life

Once you all finish college you guys move into an apartment outside of Nockfell

The minute after you and Sal leave to get food Larry puts up all his private paintings of you guys

It's funny to him

I imagine you guys moving to a really populated city

Somewhere where it's a good place for people wanting to have creative jobs but still close to Nockfell

Maybe not back to New Jersey but probably not as far as New York or LA

you guys do all the cute stuff you never got to in Nockfell together

It's not like the majority of Nockfell was homophobic, mostly just the people who went to the church

But a lot more of them didn't think that polyamory was possible

So now it's easier

It's not like you never experience any polyphobia anymore but it's easier because you're in a more open-minded place

Sal's favorite thing is to go to concerts now

And pride

He also likes coffee house dates too

Larry gets hit on a lot though whenever you guys go out anywhere though

He finds it funny how jealous you both get

Sometimes if he wants Sal to get really mad he'll play along

But most of the time he shuts it down before it begins

Sal gets hit on a lot at concerts the most though

He gets kind of awkward about it, he's not going to edge them on but he gets uncomfortable enough to just not know how to shut them down

Usually, you and Larry will just appear behind him and whisk him away

Larry likes to use it as teasing leverage for a good rough one that night but you usually make sure he's okay with it before Larry does anything

You get hit on the most casually

Here and there but there aren't really specific places

It just sort of happens

You mostly shut them down alone

But occasionally you'll have to go to Sal and Larry if they're persistent

And they'll be mean too

One of the first times you saw Sal and Larry ever legitimately get that mean was when you got hit on in a club and they both just pulled you behind them and absolutely ripped the person a new one

You guys really like to stay at home if you guys have dates though that way everyone feels included

But when you all do go around together it's always specifically for three people you never tell anyone it's a date for dinner reservations, you always make sure you go on rides everyone wants to go on at amusement parks, and hey if worse comes to worst smoking is a group activity (if you have asthma or any other breathing condition Larry makes you edibles if you really wanna do edibles with them)

Starting jobs there are tough and all but you make it off your feet

Sal ends up booking a lot of gigs and Larry's commission request skyrocket when he moves to the city and makes a blog about his art

You all get an apartment with affordable rent and one that allows Gizmo

I hc that Gizmo is an esp but I don't know if that's real

So regardless you'll still be able to have room for him

Sal proposes to both of you

You guys talked about marriage and decided that it would be easier legally to just not get married through a court

So you guys have a friends wedding and Gizmo is the ring bearer

You guys don't get a fancy venue or anything

You guys all just have a city wedding

NSFW

So, the first time you all decide to hook up it's mostly just very communicative rules beforehand

Sal is more comfortable with being fucked than fucking someone else at most times but "It's not like I never want to stick my dick in you two" as he puts it

He also likes background music on most of the time

It's kinda weird if there isn't just a little bit of music

It isn't really bothersome, you guys keep it below 20 at most times

Sal's also super submissive

He liked it rough, make him cry out for you two

A bit of a pillow prince

Especially enjoys being tied up by you two

gags and blindfolds are on the table

Although whenever he does feel up to fucking you and Larry he'll usually end up having you two ride him because he gets to be such a mess with you two unless he's jealous or upset

Usually, when he's upset he's gonna lift you two up and fuck you against the headboard or wherever you two are if he's impatient enough

One time you were chilling with Larry in your bedroom and he was painting over his easel

Sal burst through the door where it slammed back on itself and closed itself

He then tracks his eyes on you

immediately asks you "Can I please fuck you right now"

and as soon as your safe word and consent comes out of your mouth he's holding you down on the bed and fucking into you so hard you can barely breath

Larry doesn't mind it and just continues painting with you moaning and being so pathetic in the background of his music

He kinda finds it funny because before you all got together and he and Larry would angry fuck it never worked out

Sal was just being a brat most of the time because Larry still wouldn't let him fuck him submissively

Speaking of which, Larry's more comfortable with being dominant, he'll bottom but only if he can still be dominant otherwise forget it

Larry's just a rough fucker anyway

He really likes pushing and holding you two up against walls when he fucks you guys

He likes showing off the muscles he got helping his mom with handy work and stuff like that

The first time he did this was to Sal when you were studying in your guy's room

You said you didn't really wanna participate today so they fucked like they would without you

And so they're talking back and forth, teasing each other

and Larry corners him

And just

lifts him up

It looked like he was just lifting a bag of sugar up

Sal seemed weightless as Larry just rocks into him

It was one of the hottest things you'd seen at the time so you joined them

You do that a couple more times but then it just becomes normal and you decide you need to start finishing all those assignments

Larry does that to you one on one as well without Sal but it happens to Sal a lot more spontaneously

Larry though is kinkier than Sal in some respects

He'll try anything at least once "Lisa didn't raise no bitch-"

He's really into breeding and long fucking sessions though

Like, lowkey he has omegaverse fantasies

Not because of the weird stuff just because a lot of the time..... they have breeding written in

He'll never admit to reading any of it but you know he has at least once

Super into dirty talk

And he's really good at it

He also had a praise kink and a degradation kin

He likes degrading you and you telling him thank you and how good he's treating a filthy little brat like you

"What're my filthy little brats good for other than sucking my dick so well. Taking me so well like the dirty little whores you are?"

"Yes sir-" "-we're made for your big cock-" "-thank you for fucking us like this-"

He especially likes breeding you and having Sal suck you off while he does it, he finds your crying cute

And an added bonus is rewarding Sal after for it

You guys talk about long-term consent and all that and decide that it's a good idea, you all trust and love each other so there isn't a problem

lol this kinda went to shit at the end but I still like it enough! Thanks for the Sally Face request I really like this game and the dynamic between a poly reader hc :)

-Laika

#poly reader #poly Sallarry #sallarry #sallarry x reader #sallarry x male reader #sally face #sally face x Larry #sal x larry #larry x reader #sal x reader #sal x larry x reader #noncannon compliant #sally face smut #sallarry smut #sal x larry x male reader smut

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nerdygaymormon · 2 years

Text

Figuring out our queer identity

Sometimes I post, or reblog from others, about how things used to be worse in this country and across the world for queer people. Us older folks will talk about how bad things were when we were coming up and the progress that has been made.

We also look at the current generation and are so hopeful for them, they’re coming out at younger ages, they figure out their sh*t earlier than we did, they don’t have government actively oppressing them. They have online & in-person resources that didn’t used to exist.

I’m afraid that can come across as being dismissive of the struggles of queer people today.

The essence of figuring out you might be queer is still just as hard and messy as it ever was. This is a journey largely taken alone and in silence. Most of us are still raised by parents who assume we’re cishet and speak to us of cishet dreams and goals. Our identity is as a cishet person and a big part of coming to terms with the idea that I’m trans or bi or ace or gay or queer is it doesn’t fit the identity I was raised with.

Suddenly I don’t know who I am, it disrupts everything I’ve been taught, it can be frightening and definitely is very bewildering. I no longer fit into the nice and neat package that was presented to me. I don’t know what my life can look like.

Will I become like the stereotypes of queer people I see in the media, and should I become like that? If I don’t tell others, can I remain on the cishet path, it’s the only path that was ever presented to me and I don’t know anything else. I was taught it is the one and only way to happiness and accepting I’m queer feels like choosing to step off that path for something else unknown. If I come out will my parents look at me differently, will they be disappointed? Will I lose my friends, my community? All I see is loss and isolation, it’s a scary thing to go through alone.

Fortunately, most of us find a richer life once we can accept ourselves, we find wider possibilities, we learn to examine critically the things we used to accept. Our parents probably have to go on a journey of their own and we can’t predict where they’ll wind up, but hopefully their love for us will guide them. We may lose some of the community we were raised in, but we find there’s other communities of loving people waiting to accept and affirm us, communities we used to not know about or were told to be frightened of. We learn the wider world isn’t as scary as we had thought.

Coming out is probably the biggest risk we’ll ever take in life, it requires so much courage, and after going through that, we often show boldness in trying new things and meeting new people. We learn to figure out what we want in life, what will make us happy is a question worth exploring.

These good things, they come after that existential crisis, a crisis we largely go through silently alone. Life after coming out might be better than it was in the past, but that doesn’t change how hard it is to get to that point.

We older queers, sometimes we forget the big internal struggle, or more likely we don’t enjoy talking about that part of our journey because it was emotionally rough and not fun to revisit and relive. We understand, we’ve been there, we have lived that. We are rooting for you, we want you to enjoy the better world that exists, but like a baby chick figuring out it’s in a shell it no longer belongs in, you have the unenviable task of figuring out you no longer fit in the identity presented to you and have to fight your way to accepting yourself. Once you emerge, we’re here and part of a community ready to receive you.

#LGBTQIA+#queer #coming out

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warcraft-lore-archives · 3 years

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The Folk & Fairy Tales of Azeroth Lore Facts

Editor’s Note: “Some of the tales you’ll encounter here may be rooted in canon, or they may be another traveler just telling a tall tale.”

Eyes of the Earth Mother

Though the Earth Mother heard the whispers of the Old Gods, she could not be swayed by them (13).

Pregnant, the Earth Mother sought a place away from the Old Gods’ corruptive influence to give birth to her children. Unable to find such a place, however, she decided to shape the world and, in doing so, create her own safe haven (14).

All of Azeroth’s lands, waters, and even the elements themselves came forth at this moment. They were suffused with enough of the Earth Mother’s essence so soon after their inception that they kept the Old Gods’ powers at bay (14).

The Earth Mother gave birth to twins: first An’she, a beacon of life and warmth, then came Mu’sha, who was to bring rest, tranquility, and healing. The elements called them the “sun” and the “moon” (15).

Eventually, both An’she and Mu’sha developed connections with the elements. An’she found himself able to wield the light and warmth of fire while Mu’sha maintained some control over the tides and winds (15-16).

The twins even went so far as to use the elements to create weapons to spar with. Mu’sha opted for a bow and arrow, whereas An’she’s weapon of choice was a set of blades (16).

To keep her children safe from the Old Gods’ ever-present influence while she slept, the Earth Mother took both An’she and Mu’sha up into her eyes. Their power was so great that she had to keep one eye open at all times (16).

This, however, meant that Azeroth no longer received An’she’s warmth or Mu’sha’s guidance of the wind while the Earth Mother rested. Cold slowly spread across the land and blizzards raged until she finally woke again (18).

The Earth Mother’s cycle between periods of sleep and awakening would come to form the basis of the seasons as we know them, with her time of work the summer and her time of rest the winter (18).

As the twins grew in power, they developed the ability to bring on the change of seasons at will, though they took care to do it slowly and give the world time to adjust. As the Earth Mother rested, An’she and Mu’sha continued to tend to Azeroth from behind her eyes (19).

After waking at one point, the Earth Mother found that there was new life walking the earth. Plucking wheat from the plains to sprinkle over them, the Earth Mother called them “Shu’halo,” - the tauren (19).

Just as the Earth Mother taught her children, both An’she and Mu’sha taught the Shu’halo in the ways of the elements and caring for the land (20).

When the Earth Mother next slept, however, the Old Gods extended their influence to the tauren, causing them to grow violent and turn on their own kind (20).

Saddened to see the tauren fall to such corruption, the Earth Mother shed a single tear. She realized that the land was no longer able to hold the Old Gods’ power at bay, meaning anything it touched could be corrupted (21).

Knowing that she was not safe for her children anymore because of her own connection to the land, the Earth Mother removed An’she and Mu’sha from her eyes and laid down in despair (21-22).

The single tear that the Earth Mother had shed became a blue baby, later named “Lo’sho,” or the Blue Child (22, 24).

Seeking to put an end to the Old Gods after what they had done to the tauren and the despair they instilled in their mother, An’she and Mu’sha fought against some of the eldritch beings’ manifestations. During the battle, An’she was wounded grievously. Though Mu’sha sought to heal him with wind and water, he continued to bleed (24).

The Earth Mother, stirred by her distant children’s dismay, eventually found her way to them. She urged them to take Lo’sho and go to the heavens so they could protect Azeroth from above, while the Earth Mother chose to root herself in the earth and prevent the Old Gods from ever claiming her children (26-27).

Mu’sha, the moon, continues to follow An’she closely across the sky so she can keep tending to his wounds (26).

One Small Tuskarr

The tuskarr etch their clan and family symbols into their tusks. Though this is customary, some do engrave other symbols - such as marks indicating deeds of great distinction - into their tusks as well (32, 36).

The catch master, who weighs the tuskarr’s catches, has a counting staff adorned with cords in the colors of each of the clan’s active fishermen. In accordance with how big a tuskarr’s haul of fish is, the catch master ties a single knot or more into their respective cord. These knots can be traded for tools, weapons, and coins, among other things (32-33).

A single knot is customary for those who meet basic requirements, while additional knots are allotted to those who catch more (33).

One can also earn knots from other tasks, such as fine embroidery, though they do so at a much slower rate than those who fish (38).

Food is shared equally among the tuskarr (33).

The tuskarr perform nomadic journeys that take them to various kalu’ak towns. While the fishers take their own boats, most of the mothers, adolescents, and children trek across the ice (34).

Fishing practices are passed down from parent to child. Though it is unclear if that is “law,” some of the tuskarr refuse to teach others to fish if they are not their own blood, going so far as to withhold information about the currents and places fish gather (36).

Tuskarr sometimes dye their moustaches (36).

It never gets fully dark in Northrend (38).

Oacha’noa is the tuskarr’s deity of both the sea and wisdom. Her symbol is that of a kraken (39).

The spearhead on most tuskarr weapons is made of sharpened bone (42).

A type of manta ray known as the stargazer can be found in Northrend’s waters (44).

The tuskarr can survive in water so cold it would kill other races native to Azeroth in mere minutes (45).

The tuskarr typically fly kites for fun, though they have been known to use them to send signals to others at great distances (48).

Lay Down My Bones

According to Vulpera beliefs, the first of their kind was born from the magic of the desert. Though they are a nomadic people, an old tale about an artifact called the Wailing Bone claims the desert calls their bodies back to where they began when they die. To ensure they find their way back, the vulpera follow the Wailing Bone (55-56).

Once one of their own has passed, it is customary for the next of kin to carry the bone at the head of the caravan while the vulpera wander in search of the proper place to bury them. The journey may take anywhere from days to weeks, but when the Wailing Bone begins to cry, the vulpera know they have found their loved one’s final resting place (56, 61).

A poem is carved into the Wailing Bone: “Wander, roam; bring me home, / Down paths at my behest; / Among the stones, lay down my bones, / So I, at last, may rest”. Few can read the script it is written in, but most all vulpera can recite it from heart (54).

Two vulpera, frustrated at their inability to find their elder’s final resting place, neglected their duty and left his corpse in a river in the hopes that it would bring him there for them. Refusing to obey the Wailing Bone caused it to crack. From that night on, the vulpera of the caravan found themselves cursed for failing to heed the Wailing Bone (62, 65).

Cracking under the pressure of the curse, the two negligent vulpera ultimately died gruesome deaths at each other’s hands. One of their bones was made into the next Wailing Bone (65).

A caravan always needs a Wailing Bone (65).

The Uninvited Guest

One goblin adage goes like so: “Every great goblin invention was born from necessity, bubble gum, or an accident” (69).

The goblins have a nursery rhyme: “In the dark of night and bright of day, / Keep in your hand a tossaway. / Guard your fortune, mind your greed, / Or else the Uninvited Guest will feed” (70).

The Uninvited Guest is a goblin boogeyman of sorts who is attracted by greed so egregious it offends even the dead. It is incorporeal, invisible, and has the ability to move through walls (76).

The Uninvited Guest feeds off of greed, but it can never be satisfied. It will latch onto its host like an invisible parasite to feed, inciting strange charitable behavior in them until they have given away all of their earthly possessions (76-79).

A “tossaway” is a shiny gold-painted coin stamped with the face of the very first trade prince. These fake coins get their name from the way goblins quite literally toss them away in a symbolically superstitious act to protect themselves and their fortunes from the Uninvited Guest (70, 74).

Tossaways were invented by Slixi Boompowder, the wife of one of the former trade princes of the Steamwheedle Cartel, after her own run-in with the Uninvited Guest. She only escaped from it because she distracted it with actual gold galleons, which inspired her to create the tossaways (83).

Legend has it that the Uninvited Guest still roams Azeroth to this day, looking to feed off of hapless greedy goblins (84).

Klaxz Boompowder was one of the former trade princes of the Steamwheedle Cartel. His rival was Rikter Hogsnozzle, the trade prince of the Bilgewater Cartel (70-71).

Tradition dictates that goblins are buried with their most valuable possessions so they can enjoy them at the Everlasting Party, the goblin afterlife. They are then given burial gifts by other goblins from their own riches, though most goblins are too greedy to truly part with anything important (73).

Once the coffin is sealed, goblins dance on top of it to usher the deceased on to the Everlasting Party (75).

Prominent goblins typically serve as pallbearers while goblins contractually obligated to serve as pack mules carry the rear (75).

The goblins used to employ golden galleons as their form of currency, but it fell out of fashion. Nowadays, they are incredibly rare and expensive (74-75).

Trolls have a tale about an invisible evil that sucks the souls from living beings and leaves them mad. It can only be seen in the light of a full moon (80).

Sister is Another Word For Always

Vereesa felt Sylvanas’ death at the hands of Arthas the moment it happened (89-90).

Sylvanas’ eyes were gray as a high elf (91).

In the midst of her sorrow at her sister’s death, Vereesa sought many escapes. At first she tried to sleep, but when rest and forgetfulness would not come, she embarked on a journey across deserts and forests with little in the way of proper food or nourishment except that which she found (90, 93).

It is very possible Vereesa perished at some point on this journey, for she came across a spirit healer, though she was told it was not yet her time. The spirit healer offered Vereesa a deal: if she could bring her the willing soul of Sylvanas without ever touching her, the spirit healer would restore her to life (96-97).

When Sylvanas first died at the hands of Arthas, it seems as though the Arbiter sent her to Ardenweald (98-99).

After she struggles to locate her sister in Ardenweald, Vereesa is inadvertently pulled into the Maw. There, she still has difficulty finding her, and is told by the Jailer that Sylvanas is not there - at least, not yet. He then urges her to leave, telling her she does not belong there (99, 102-103).

Eventually, Vereesa spots a silver glimmer she knows to be Sylvanas, though it is only a fragment of her soul (103-104).

Before she can escape with the soul of her sister, the Jailer stops Vereesa and inadvertently tricks her into touching Sylvanas, rendering her deal with the spirit healer null and void (106).

At the end of this journey, Vereesa awakes at the foot of a statue, her memory of the experience hazy (109).

The Paladin’s Beast

Uther is originally from Stratholme (117).

Introduced as a fable beloved by the princelings and princesses of Lordaeron, the Paladin’s Beast is a tale that follows a young Uther as he finds himself in a mysterious and unfamiliar land. Determined to prove himself and bring back a prize to his fellow paladins, Uther joins a tournament put on by a foreign kingdom despite the protests of its princess. Though he is a strong warrior, she insists the beast of the tournament kills every knight who challenges it. Still, Uther refuses to back down, confident that his faith in the Light will give him the strength he needs to prevail. However, the princess’ words hold true, as every knight who goes to fight the beast before him perishes. When it is his turn, Uther decides to stay his hammer rather than fight, remembering the princess’ words. The beast withdraws, defeated by his act of compassion. It is revealed afterward as Uther goes for his prize that the princess actually was the beast all along, cursed to fight in the tournament for disobeying her father and breaking the royal lineage. She casts a spell on Uther, making it so that when he returns to Lordaeron, he will not remember anything of who she was or his experience there until the day he finds himself in a fiery field. Though the fable ends there, it is said that Uther dreamt of the silver kingdom and its princess for many years to come. It was not until his final moments, trying to fell a beast with weapons rather than compassion, that he would fully remember the princess and her story (111-127).

For Lies and Liberty

Most undead do not get all of their memories back immediately once they are raised (or given free will). It takes time and encouragement (133-134).

On the long-standing issue of whether or not undead have ichor or blood running through their veins, it appears one Jeremiah Pall still has blood in his body, though it has stopped moving on account of his still heart (134).

The story of the “Fearless Flyer” - a man known as Captain Whitney - is famous among some of the Alliance forces. According to the man himself, Whitney and his outfit had been fighting orcs for months to no avail when he hatched a bold plan to launch himself by catapult into their camp and take them by surprise, hence the nickname the “Fearless Flyer”. This story, unfortunately, turned out to be nothing but hyperbole. As it stands, a drunk Whitney accidentally got tangled up in nets, fell in the catapult, and was unceremoniously flung into the orcish camp. Believing themselves to be under attack, the orcs retaliated and killed most of the unsuspecting humans while Captain Whitney hid (136, 142).

Stones, Moss, and Tears

Though female elves traditionally mark their faces after they have achieved a rite of passage, they can continue to add embellishments to commemorate any further deeds (155).

At least one kaldorei lorekeeper was charged with knowing the name of every Sentinel and recording details of their more noteworthy battles (156).

The Bloomblade druids were one of the oldest, unbroken lines of night elf druids (158).

A species of insect known as glowmoths migrate through Mount Hyjal every autumn (164).

The Embrace

The White Lady and the Sun were charged with keeping watch over Azeroth as it dreamed (171, 176).

Though she loved the people of Azeroth dearly, the White Lady found herself growing lonely and in want of a family (173).

The moon cycles are thought to be the White Lady turning away and hiding her face in her sorrow, though she would always look back upon Azeroth to watch over it (174).

It is said that the White Lady loved Azeroth and its denizens so much that a child - the Blue Child - was born of that love (174-175).

The Blue Child, ever curious, began asking the White Lady questions about the mortals that weighed on her heart, as she could not answer (176).

One night the White Lady woke up to find the Blue Child gone. Unable to find her, she swore off her charge until the Blue Child was returned to her (177-178).

Without her guidance, the planet sped up and the tides ceased. The White Lady was only convinced to return to her duty after the Sun urged her, telling her the Blue Child might return if she had the moonlight to guide her (178).

The White Lady began to glow even more brightly over time in the hopes that her child would see, her light quickly growing to rival that of the Sun’s. This, too, caused problems, for crops burned and navigators could not see the stars to travel by (179).

Upon seeing the terrible effect this was having on Azeroth’s denizens, the White Lady dimmed her light and retreated (181).

The Blue Child ultimately returned from her long travels to her mother. They embraced in the sky, creating a beautiful eclipse (182).

Ever curious, the Blue Child was bound to grow restless again and leave for the stars, but the White Lady knew she would always return (183).

When the moon turns red, it is a sign of her anger (177).

Why the Mermaids Left Boralus

Back when Kul Tiras was still a Gilnean colony, Boralus had hardly any walls or structures protecting it from the wind or sea. More often than not, when the Great Sea churned at the city’s edge, it took houses, ships, and even men down into its depths. So many would drown in these incidents that those remaining covered them with weighted nets, causing them to sink to the seafloor (187-188, 190).

Many of the roads out of Boralus flooded during great storms, making it deadly to try to leave the city on foot or by ship (198).

The Kul Tirans declined to build a seawall for fear that it would have done nothing and also because repairing it after a storm would have been just as dangerous as the storms themselves (188).

Most of Boralus’ early inhabitants were seamen of some sort, whether fishers, sea priests, sailors, or pearl-divers (188).

During storms, the tidesages would act as a makeshift seawall and use their power to cut the waves before they made it deeper into the harbor (199).

Mermaids appeared quite openly near Boralus in its early days. Though they lived much deeper than most could naturally dive, they liked to sit on the rocks and watch ships go by, among other things. Most lived in temples beneath the sea that belonged to Kul Tiras’ former inhabitants (189, 191).

According to superstition, sighting a mermaid was bad luck and presaged many inauspicious things including a doomed voyage, a brutal winter, and poor fishing. They were also seen as the harbingers of storms (189-190).

Tidesages were (and still are) always the first and last to disembark from a ship. As a result, they usually went down with their ships (191).

The tidesages’ unrivaled dedication, combined with the frequency of drownings and shipwrecks, often meant they died young (191).

Mermaids are spawned from eggs and leave no corpses when they die (191, 203).

The mermaids had very little understanding of the Kul Tirans’ mistrust towards them (191).

Mermaids have some power over the rocks and water - granted to them by the Tidemother from birth -, but they use it sparingly because it is finite. Once a mermaid runs out of magic, they die. As a result, mermaids can live up to five hundred years (192).

Mermaids consider sirens lazy and murlocs deplorable (192).

According to legend, the bubble seaweed in Boralus Harbor is actually discarded pearls. A mermaid by the name of Halia fell in love with a tidesage and kept secretly gifting them to her as a token of her affection. The tidesage, Ery, was far too pragmatic for such a gift and dumped the pearls back in the water every time (195).

The mermaids believe that the Tidemother will give tails to those who slit their feet from toes to heels and walk into the harbor at dawn (197).

According to legend, Boralus’ great stone seawall was formed through the combined efforts of dozens of mermaids and one lone tidesage. A virulent tempest had come upon Boralus one day, taking men and ships alike with it. Though the city’s tidesages gathered to push back the waves, all but one were lost to the storm over the course of five long days. The last remaining tidesage, Ery, persisted despite her exhaustion while the mermaid Halia, too afraid to watch her lover perish, began using her own magic to craft a seawall. Though the storm repeatedly broke it down, her fellow mermaids joined her, ultimately expending their magic and sacrificing themselves to raise a wall so grand it towered over even the mightiest of ships and waves. Ery herself nearly died after this, though Halia saved her by invoking the Tidemother. She cut Ery’s feet from toes to heels and dragged her into the harbor, performing the ritual necessary for her transformation into a mermaid (198-203).

All but one of the mermaids - Ery notwithstanding - perished to save Boralus, which is why none are seen there today (204-205).

As a result, the sailors of Boralus now see mermaids as a symbol of the highest honor, good luck, and sacrifice (205).

During calm sunsets when the red of the sky is reflected in the harbor, sailors refer to it as “Ery’s blood,” after the tidesage who fought the storm so valiantly. Ery’s blood is a sign of good weather to come (205).

The Courageous Kobold and the Wickless Candle

Kobolds tell a sleep-time story (209).

Kobold families live together in caves. They have their own nests, but congregate in common areas for stories, among other things (210).

Some time ago, the Whiskersnoot kobold tunnels crumbled, submerging the Whiskersnoots in total darkness. They lived like that for generations, having decided it was no longer safe to dig higher after the cave-in. This spawned a saying: “Never pick above your snout, else the darkness snuff you out!” (210-211).

Granny Whiskersnoot, however, dug just a little bit upward every day until one day she broke through to a light above. She intended to lead the other kobolds to it, but could never find her way back through the tunnels again. It wasn’t until her granddaughter persisted in finding it that they made their way back above ground (211, 222).

The kobolds think of the sun as a “Wickless Candle” (211).

Visage Day

On a dragon’s Visage Day, they choose what mortal form they will take. This is significant, as it shows the Aspects trust them to adopt the guise of one of the mortal races and walk among them. It is the dragons’ hope that through choosing a form to embody and relate to mortals, the more mortals can understand dragons in turn (228, 234).

Onyxia, on the other hand, maintains dragons choose visages that allow them to control the mortals (241).

In accordance with tradition, the Visage Day ceremony occurs on the uppermost level of Wyrmrest Temple. Each of the Aspects are usually present for members of their own dragonflight, though Alexstrasza herself has been known to officiate on occasion. It is also customary for each flight to send emissaries (243).

During the ceremony, all attendant dragons take their own mortal forms in honor of the dragon whose Visage Day it is (245).

Before they publicly choose their form, the dragon in question traditionally makes a proclamation (245).

The Visage Day ceremony can be delayed (244).

Nozdormu has helped many bronze dragons prepare for their own Visage Day (230).

When Nozdormu sits in the sands at the heart of the Bronze Dragonshine, intricate patterns form around him (233).

Both Kalecgos and Chromie performed a short incantation to assume their mortal forms, though Nozdormu did not appear to need to (234, 236, 246).

Kalecgos says that he chose a half-elf form - which he calls a “blend of mortal worlds” - in order to symbolize his own attempt to blend together the dragon and human worlds (237).

Onyxia, on the other hand, opted to take the form of a beautiful human woman to better manipulate mortals (241).

The dragons often go by nicknames in their mortal forms because they find their full names sound too formal to humans (238).

The drakonid were fashioned by the dragons to be helpful and loyal (238).

The black dragonflight practices how best to inflict pain (239).

182 notes · View notes

immacaria · 3 years

Text

Prologue

Hello! How are you? I hope all of you are alright! So, this for Beetober 2021 and since @bloody-bee-tea said we can write for it too, I wrote this little thing. This fic is based on this prompt of @mingcheng-prompts and I hope that you enjoy it! It has no ship, though one of the prompts I based myself in had this intent, but it can be read as pre-relationship sangcheng or pre relationship mingcheng. Anyways, the word count is 2746 words and I hope you enjoy this a lot! Have a good day!

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When the news reached him, Nie Mingjue couldn’t say that it really impacted him though he was surprised by it and mourned the young life lost. Jiang Wanyin was a good kid and his brother’s friend and his death did shock him because he seemed like a promising young cultivator and a pretty strong kid even if he was so young. So, he paid his condolences to the family and moved on with his life, after all, he had a sect to conduct and a younger brother to control.

Months passed and people still talked about the young Jiang heir and his short life. Some said that he had taken his own life because of his mother’s constant demands and his father’s disinterest on him, others that it was his own father that arranged his death to guarantee that his first disciple would become his heir after his daughter married into the Jins and there was who believed in the official report that said that Jiang Wanyin had died in a night hunt. Not that Nie Mingjue had any motives to suspect what the Jiang clan said that happened.

But he couldn’t say with certainty that he held no doubts against their reports as he stared at the sword pointing at his neck. At first, he thought he was seeing a ghost, a young boy with pale robes and a bloodied sword by his side, and stayed back to see what he was going to do. And then he blinked and the boy disappeared from before his eyes, only to appear behind him with his sword pointed to his heart.

Nie Mingjue drew Baxia out on instinct and they fought for a good while, sometimes with him having the upper hand and sometimes with the boy. He was about to get it back when the boy ducked and swept his feet off the ground, falling over him and pressing a knee against his chest and the sword against his neck. He was wearing a mask that showed only his eyes and held half of his hair up by a pale and simple purple ribbon that matched his robes in color and discretion. It was just then that he recognized who he had been fighting against. Oh, gods, Huaisang is going to kill me., he thought as he said. “Jiang Wanyin?”

“Nie-zongzhu?” Jiang Wanyin said, eyebrows furrowing lightly before his eyes widened and he jumped back, bowing in apology but not sheathing his sword back. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same. Shouldn’t you be dead?” Slowly, he got up and if he wasn’t looking so closely, he would have missed the way that his eyes trembled slightly before they narrowed angrily at him.

“I’ll ask you one more time. What are you doing here?” He brought his sword up, assuming a defensive stance even though he moved Baxia back to his back.

“Near Qinghe? I don’t know, making the rounds, maybe.” And escaping my elders., he added mentally. Not that he was going to tell him that, anyways.

“Oh. Oh!” He brought his sword down again and Mingjue resisted the urge to smile at the cute way he opened his mouth minutely, as if finally realizing that he was near Qinghe. “I’m just passing, sorry for trespassing.” He bowed again, bringing his hands up after he put his sword back in its sheath. “Please, don’t tell anyone you saw me.”

“No that anyone would ever believe me. You are dead, after all.” He said, watching as the younger boy kneeled near a tree and started pulling some plants before pressing them together until a plaster was formed. “Are you hurt?”

“No. I’m doing this for fun.” He moved his head to the sides quickly, his voice reaching a false and too happy tone before going back to his usual tone and this time he didn’t resist the urge to snort. “Shouldn’t you keep going? You never know what kind of creatures are waiting in the shadows while you are here with a minor ghost like me.”

“I don’t think you would be a minor ghost if you were really dead.” He stepped closer to him in time to see a gushing wound on his calf. “What happened?”

“I cut myself. Nothing more.” And it was just then that he noticed how pale Jiang Wanyin looked and how his hands were trembling as he applied the plaster over the black-rimmed wound. Nie Mingjue tried to remember what could do a wound like that as he bandaged it tightly. “Bye, Nie-zongzhu. Have a good day.”

“Wait, Young Master Jiang.” He grabbed his wrist, forcing him to stop. “You should have a look at that, a professional look. It looks bad.”

“Ghosts don’t need healers, Sect Leader Nie.” He pulled his arm back, trying to get him to let go. “And don’t call me that. Young Master Jiang is dead, haven't you heard?”

“Then who are you?” They stared at each other for some time before he sighed and motioned for him to lead the way.

“Go on, let’s end this soon.” He stepped aside, stopping fighting against his hold.

“Alright, but what should I call you?” He pressed, letting go of his wrist and taking a step back.

“Ghos-...” He stated, before his eyes rolled back and he fell down to the ground, only missing hitting his head because Mingjue held him in time. Without thinking, he jumped on Baxia and fled back to Qinghe with the boy, who shouldn’t be as alive as he was, in his arms and paleing at every second that passed. His healers looked at him suspiciously and tried to fuss over him too, but nodded when he said he was fine and asked for discretion and no comments before he went to fetch his brother.

After he explained everything, Nie Huaisang only nodded and told him to go on with his day, that he would make sure that his friend was okay. It was well after lunch when he appeared again with a fierce look on his face and a plan at the tip of his tongue. Apparently, Jiang Wanyin wasn't going anywhere anytime soon because the wound was poisoned and the plaster had the contrary effect of what he thought it would, quickening the poisoning and because Nie Huaisang himself wasn’t letting him go anywhere.

“For all the effects, he is our cousin and his courtesy name is Nie Qinghua, he uses a mask because it’s tradition on that branch of the family and his passing time with us for better education.” Nie Huaisang said, opening his fan with a flick of his wrist and staring at him with what seemed a challenge. “He is not coming back, Da-ge.”

“Alright. And I really doubt he would like to, with the way he was insisting he was dead.” Nie Mingjue said, putting the letter of the Sect Leader Yao down and his chin on his palm. “Does he agree with this? Or did you just take a half-coherent noise as agreement and follow through with your plan?”

“Of course he agreed with this.” His fan quickened in speed and he raised an eyebrow. “Fine, I’ll ask him again when he’s more awake.”

“Good.” He smirked, getting back to the letter. “What is his given name?”

“The same as before. But nobody from before is getting close enough of him to call him by his given name.” His brother got up, closing his fan with a snap before pointing it at him. “He is not going back to them, Da-ge. He is not.” The challenge was still on his eyes as he walked away from the throne room and Nie Mingjue thought that everyone who ever said that he was weak and unfit for the Nie clan had never truly seen where Huaisang’s strength really stood.

Two days later, Jiang Wanyin - for the outsider world, Nie Qinghua now - was up and actively agreeing with Huaisang’s plan. He explained that no, he did not die or faked his death but rather got lost after a night hunt and slightly disoriented after a particularly strong hit - At this, his cheek got adorably red and Nie Mingjue smiled at that. When he finally managed to get back home, he heard the rumors that he was dead and then he left, starting to wander around as a rogue cultivator. The gushing wound was apparently the night hunt’s fault too.

And just like that, Wanyin started to live with them and, at some point, he became Nie Mingjue’s first adviser and Nie Huaisang’s unwilling model to everything. Slowly, he wriggled his way into Qinghe’s lifestyle, starting to advise him over his shoulder and his acid humor while join the disciples every day on their training to learn the Nie style of fighting even if both Nie Huaisang and Nie Mingjue said that he didn’t need to. After he recovered fully, both of them started to spare everyday, early in the morning, finishing their exercise right before Nie Huaisang woke up and claimed him fully until he was needed in a meeting or something.

Despite his young age, Jiang Wanyin was really smart and had good ideas to help the clan, though some did have that eager hope that everyone was better than they seemed. He liked to discuss everything about the leadership of a clan and involved himself truly with the disciple’s training, supervisioning it every time he could and always wanting to know more about everything and everyone. He was strict, though, stricter than Nie Mingjue sometimes and more times than now they would be in a situation where they would be playing the strict and relaxed parents while his disciples tried to hide their amused laughs and grins behind their sleeves and each other’s shoulders.

When the cultivation meeting’s happened, Jiang Wanyin always sat between him and Nie Huaisang, wearing the mask that they ordered especially for him and combined with his new robes. At first, the other Sect Leaders were suspicious of him, especially Jin Guangshan and Jin Guangyao, who had been recently officialized after he proved his value. They tried to discover more about his past, but they weren’t capable of passing Nie Huaisang’s schemes and the Qinghe people’s loyalty to their new second in command that somehow managed to be even more hard-headed than their Sect Leader.

Even though they were suspicious, none of them suspected who Nie Qinghua really was and it was obvious it got to Jiang Wanyin when he introduced himself to his shije and shige again and none of them recognized him, simply smiling politely and introducing themselves back before leaving. He tried to make it look like it didn’t affect him as much as it did, but by that time Nie Mingjue knew him a little bit better and, not for the first, he wished he could declare war against the Jiangs for making this special and sweet boy so self-conscious and afraid of love. For the looks of it, his people agreed with him.

Eight years passed without further incidents and Jiang Wanyin had grown up a lot since he became Nie Qinghua. He learned a lot of the Nie’s style and some of the disciples, the younger ones especially, started to pick up on some of the Jiang’s style and Nie Mingjue couldn’t say he was really angry or offended at it. Not when it not only saved some of them, but made Wanyin’s eyes light up when he noticed that they were imitating.

But, nothing lasts forever and though their time together wasn’t free of worries and fights, Nie Mingjue couldn’t really say that he had a bad time with him by his side. It was some months before Wanyin’s twenty-four years birthday when his first qi deviation happened and he didn’t want to think why it took longer than it should. He stayed bedridden for only four days before he was up and working again, against both Wanyin and Huaisang’s protests, right in time for the last cultivation conference that unfortunately was being held at Qinghe.

“Mingjue, really, you should call this off. You are in no condition to head a meeting like this.” Jiang Wanyin said, crossing his arms as Nie Mingjue finished the last of his braids.

“Exactly, Da-ge! If you won’t listen to me, listen to A-Cheng!” Nie Huaisang said, passing his guan to him and hitting his shoulder weakly with his fan. “Just thought about all the bragging that Sect Leader Yao is going to do and how Sect Leader Jin is going to do whatever pleases him and nitpick everything!” He pleaded and Nie Mingjue rolled his eyes at them as he stood up.

“I did and if the Healer Zhao says I am good to go, then I’m good to go.” He tightened his belt and turned to both of them with a raised eyebrow. “I’m fine, I’m going to be fine and if Sect Leader Yao starts to talk too much bullshit, I will simply throw Baxia at him and keep going.”

“Da-ge, do not throw Baxia at Sect Leader Yao!” Nie Huaisang said, following after him before stopping on his track with a questioning look. “Though it would be hilarious to see it and, probably, very effective. Alright, Da-ge, you can throw Baxia at Sect Leader Yao but only enough to scare him.” He nodded and Jiang Wanyin chuckled beside, his arms still crossed as he followed them a few steps behind.

“He would jump so high!” He chuckled, trying to hold back his smile as Nie Mingjue looked at him over his shoulder.

“And what about the scream he would let out?” He asked, very pleased with himself when both him and his brother started snickering like crazies. Really, he raised two monsters, he really did. “Ok, ok, control yourselves, we are here.” Two minutes passed before he stepped into the conference room and greeted all the other Sect Leaders there, sitting on his chair and trying to not let any anger settle in. It was all going fine and smooth until Jin Guangshan made an unfortunate comment and Jiang Wanyin responded it with sarcasm out of instinct.

“What was that, Nie-guwen?” Jin Guangshan said and Nie Mingjue immediately zoomed back in the conversation when he noticed it was to Wanyin he was talking with.

“Nothing, just agreeing that it's a very intelligent idea to go on with that marriage agreement when both parties are so interested in it.” He shrugged and Mingjue leaned towards Nie Huaisang with an inquisitive look.

“They are talking about Jiang-guniang and Jin-gongzi's marriage, Da-ge. Really, weren’t you listening?” He rolled his eyes, holding his fan higher as Jin Guangshan pointed at Wanyin and asked what the Nie clan had to do with the agreement between the clans Jin and Jiang.

“Nothing, Sect Leader Jin. But my cousin was only stating what everyone thinks about it and you asked him what he thought about it too, after all.” Nie Mingjue intervened when Wanyin’s shoulders tensed up. “He merely answered.”

“Sect Leader Nie, I know that you and your brother are very protective of your cousin, but you should really leave him to talk for himself. He is your advisor, after all.” Jiang Fengmian interjected and he saw Nie Huaisang’s fingers tightening against the fan. “I know he must be very intelligent or he wouldn’t have become your first advisor, after all.”

“And doesn’t show his face.” Sect Leader Yao muttered, probably thinking that nobody could hear him when it was exactly the contrary.

“I am, Sect Leader Jiang, but it would be very unkind to my cousin if I spoke over him every time.” Jiang Wanyin said, crossing his arms. “And I don’t show my face because of a tradition on my side of the family, Sect Leader Yao, but if my face will give you more trust in my opinions…” He lifted one of his hands, moving to remove his mask. “Then I will gladly remove it for you, Sect Leader Yao.”

“Wait, A-Hua.” Both Nie Huaisang and Nie Mingjue moved to stop him, but it was too late and he had already removed it.

“See? Happy now?” He waved the piece of cloth to the side as Jiang Fengmian stared at him with wide eyes.

“Wanyin?” Fengmian said, getting up from his seat.

“Hi, A-Die. How are you?”

69 notes · View notes

five-rivers · 3 years

Text

Face Your Dreams

Almost forgot to post this here as well! @anthropwashere

Phic Phight 2021

Prompt from Anthrop: Any flavor of the Reverse AUs that strike your fancy. Who gets the ghost powers? Who becomes the ghost hunter? Who gets ghost magick'd into the villain of the week?

Danny’s phone was dead. Which was just typical, really. His parents were brilliant, wealthy inventors that played with the fabric of reality on a daily basis and had managed to turn, not one, but two of Danny’s best friends into half ghosts, but they couldn’t be bothered to get Danny a phone that was actually reliable. Although they hadn’t intended to do the half ghost thing and didn’t know about it.

Probably.

Maybe.

(Honestly, Danny didn’t know. His parents were weird. And Danny suspected they were keeping secrets.)

Back on topic. Phone. Not working. Which was a problem because Danny was something like ninety-percent sure a ghost had been following him for the last block or so and he couldn’t call for help.

Correction, he could call for help all he wanted, he just wouldn’t get any that would be any good against a ghost. If he got any at all. It was the middle of the night.

He should have taken up Sam’s offer of a flight home. Or Tucker’s. But, no, he had to be sulky about how both of them were developing yet more really, incredibly cool powers and Danny was still just…

Himself.

Faceless, boring Fenton. Only notable for the number of bullies he attracted and the people he was related to. No special skillset, no dreams he had any hope of achieving, no triumphs. Nothing to contribute. Not in and of himself. Only useful to enemies that wanted a hostage.

He was about to be murdered by a ghost and he was still sulking. God, he was pathetic.

(Not all ghosts were evil – Sam and Tucker’s stories had taught him that much, on an intellectual basis. Was it too much to hope that he could reach home without the ghost attacking? Too much to hope that it was just watching?)

White noise tugged at Danny’s ears. It reminded him of the sleep CD Jazz played when Mom and Dad were being loud.

… and, also, oddly, of a video he’d once watched about what stars might sound like, based on how they vibrated.

Danny shuddered, his heartbeat redoubling as he picked up speed, reaching a run. If he could get home, he could turn on the ghost shield and call Sam and Tucker from his home phone. They’d be annoyed that he was bothering about a ghost so long after a patrol, but he was freaked out enough to not really care about their teasing.

(He’d been freaked out enough for the past two blocks.)

His breath began to catch in his lungs, his side burning. He splashed through a puddle, dark, oily liquid sticking to his right sneaker and pant leg. It glittered in the light of the waning crescent moon.

Wait –

It hadn’t rained for weeks.

He slipped and fell, skinning hands, knees, and chin on the sidewalk. Something wet, sticky, and smooth as silk spread over the pavement beneath him. It bubbled like a tar pit, and captive stars shone from within.

Danny tried to push himself up, but the liquid held on to him, pulled him back down.

He was sinking.

He flailed for the sidewalk, reaching, trying to stay afloat. It didn’t work. His elbows were below the level of the sidewalk, and inky, glittery black dripped from his front. It seemed to be eating through his clothes.

Forget useful help. He’d take any help. He screamed.

And he fell.

“You have such lovely dreams,” said the masked man, his horns curling into galaxies. “Impossible dreams.”

Danny couldn’t breathe. He was in freefall. A vacuum. No ground in sight, only the cold, heartless stars, perfect in their beauty.

(And his eyes. Oh, god, was this really a ghost?)

It was his dream, to be an astronaut. With this little twist, it became a nightmare, and yet—

Yet.

“You feel faceless,” continued the masked man. “But there’s freedom in that, is there not?”

Danny shouldn’t be able to hear him. There shouldn’t be any sound in space, and there wasn’t. Not except for his voice.

“Freedom,” said the man, “to follow your wildest dreams, unshackled from responsibility, from reality, from reasonability. No longer dependent on those that call themselves your friends, who claim to be your family, who walk over your dreams for the sake of theirs.”

Suddenly, Danny hit the sidewalk, and he could breathe again. Something thick dripped from his nose, his mouth, his eyes. He pushed himself to his hands and knees. His clothing was gone. His limbs were painted with the night sky in all its glory. He froze, staring.

From Danny’s shadow, the masked man rose, towering over Danny until he felt like little more than a shadow. “Don’t you want to have the chance to see your dreams come true, child?”

Danny blinked. It was hard to force his eyes back open. They seemed to want to stick closed.

“Who are you?” Danny asked, words garbled by the dripping stars trying to force their way past his lips.

“I am Nocturne,” the ghost said, leaning closer.

“You’re like,” Danny choked, “like Desiree. I don’t want—”

Nocturne scoffed. “Desiree. A creature of wishes, of momentary things. I do not care for what you wish for. What matters is that you dream.”

There was something in Nocturne’s hand, round and white and moonlike. It looked small, held between two of his fingers, but it had to be the size of Danny’s face.

“Don’t you dream of flying?” purred Nocturne. “Of being among the stars? Don’t you dream of a peaceful world, where your friends are safe, and the accident never happened? Where you’re a friend, not a weapon supply, a sidekick, or a damsel in distress?”

Danny had been thinking something so close just minutes ago and he couldn’t—

“There, there, my child. No need to cry.” He brought the round thing closer.

Danny could see, now, that it was a mask. Just his size.

“Close your eyes,” said Nocturne, gently, cupping Danny’s trembling shoulders with his other hand. “Close your eyes and dream. Let your face go, for a little while.”

(Danny did as he was told.)

“Hi, Sam,” said Mrs. Fenton, her voice crackling slightly through the phone speaker. “Have you seen Danny today?”

“I haven’t seen him since last n—Since yesterday,” said Sam, correcting herself halfway though. Mrs. Fenton didn’t know about their nightly escapades, and for good reason. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Maddie. “He just… I haven’t seen him either. He usually says goodbye before he leaves.”

He didn’t, but Maddie didn’t need to know that.

“Have you checked with Tucker yet? Sometimes they hang out without me. Guy things.” This… was also not entirely true. Danny and Tucker hadn’t had a ‘guy thing’ for ages. They’d been smoothly replaced with ‘ghost things’ like most everything else in their lives.

Sam… might have felt a little bad about that. All of their normal friend activities being replaced by ghost things, that is. Often ghost things that Danny couldn’t really participate in, because Danny couldn’t fly or shoot lasers from his hands.

He did do a good job of setting up obstacle courses and covering for her and Tucker’s—

Wait, no, not the point.

“He hasn’t seen him, either. Jazz doesn’t know where he is. I don’t—” She broke off, sighing. “Call me if you see him. Or tell him to call me.”

“I will,” said Sam, opening the window and preparing to take off.

“Thank you,” said Maddie. She hung up.

Sam went ghost with a burst of green fire. She floated up and out of the window, fading out of visibility as she dialed Tucker’s number.

“Starboy’s missing,” she said.

“Yeah, I’m already searching for him,” said Tucker, the microphone crackling with static but otherwise clear. Tucker’s powers both did and didn’t mesh well with technology.

“Any luck?”

“No,” said Tucker. “This is one of those times when I wish he did have friends other than us. Then we could ask them about where he is.”

“Do you think he’s been taken by a ghost?” asked Sam.

“I mean, maybe? There was that whole thing with Desiree…”

“And the second thing with Desiree,” added Sam.

“And Skulker.”

“And the second thing with Skulker.”

“And Spectra.”

“And the second thing with Spectra.”

“Not to mention Vlad.”

“What a freak,” said Sam.

“Are you picking up a pattern here?”

“Yeah, maybe. Who’s only kidnapped Danny once?”

“I’m not sure… Maybe it’s a new guy? We do get new guys now and again.”

Sam sighed. “Never mind that,” she said. “Where have you looked so far?”

“Not too many places. Do you want to meet up, or…?”

“No, we’ll have more luck going separately. I’ll check in with you in a bit.”

A whole day passed without any sign of Danny. They did, however, find a lot of ghosts with stitched-shut eyes, which they decided was probably related and also incredibly creepy.

By that time, the police got involved. Danny was officially a missing person.

But they were distracted. Didn’t have the manpower to search for just one missing person.

Why?

The sudden surge in coma patients.

“I don’t get it,” said Tucker. “Is that more of a, you know,” he lowered his voice, “doctor thing? Like, if it’s a bunch of people, don’t you think it’s a disease or something?”

“The police think that someone poisoned ‘em,” said Sam.

“How do you know that?”

“How do you think I know that?”

“Dude. You have to stop eavesdropping on the police. I’m, like, ninety percent sure that’s illegal.”

“Not for ghosts, it isn’t.”

“Okay, I’m one hundred percent sure it is. You’ve read the anti-ecto acts, haven’t you? I’m not the only one who did that, right?”

“It was, like, fifty pages thick. And stupid. The only reason I’d read it would be if I wanted to break the laws more efficiently.”

“Seriously?”

An alien world spread out below Danny, a place to explore to his heart’s content, the sky twinkling above him. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there, in the nameless, infinite way you knew things when you were dreaming.

He was an astronaut. An adventurer. An explorer.

He was doing everything he had ever dreamed of.

The only thing missing were the people. His friends. His family.

But… He could bring them here. He knew that, too, in the same way.

He just had to reach out and touch them. Feel them. Take them.

(A bit of black and starlight in their eyes, a touch of the gift given to him.)

(Nocturne whispered in his ears. A song only for him.)

They found the ghost responsible for the comas. And maybe they should have realized a ghost was causing them, but Danny was the one who usually put the pieces together, and he wasn’t there. Which was the problem.

(What Sam wouldn’t give for some kind of reliable ghost-detecting power. Or even technology.)

(No, the Fenton Finder didn’t count.)

It was small, human proportions, human skin tone, where it wasn’t covered with some kind of ghostly paint that mimicked the night sky. Its hair was colored the same way, and a blank mask covered its face. Seemed to be directing the green stitched-eye ghosts somehow, despite not saying a word. So. All in all, typical ghost, if somewhat more annoying due to his lack of witty banter.

Then he shrugged off the thermos beam like it was nothing. Almost like he was human.

Then Tucker froze.

The ghost was carried away from the fight by its minions, faster than Sam or Tucker could go.

“Tucker! What was that?”

“Birthmark,” gasped Tucker.

“What?” asked Sam.

“That was Danny’s birthmark.”

“Oh my god,” said Sam. “Did he really get himself transformed into a ghost again?”

“This seems different than Desiree,” said Tucker. “I don’t… Were we really fighting him?”

Sam rolled her eyes. “Let’s go get the Ghost Catcher.”

The Ghost Catcher was not in evidence in the Fenton basement.

“What now?” asked Tucker.

“Beat it out of him?” suggested Sam.

“That is a terrible plan. No, I can’t even call it a plan. It’s just bad.”

“Do you have anything better?”

(Tucker did not have anything better.)

(And Danny still couldn’t find his friends, to show them this dream come true.)

When about one in ten people in Amity Park was in a coma, things managed to get even worse. The people who were asleep began to sleepwalk. And sleep attack people.

Sam and Tucker were used to fighting ghosts. Not humans. They didn’t want to hurt anyone.

Especially Danny who was especially vicious. And also seemed to be targeting them.

Danny was so close. So close he could almost touch them. He could feel them, electricity and green things and dreams of power and justice. He could feel them, feel them, feel them, and he was so, so close to inviting them into the dream and he needed it, needed them. Wanted them.

His dream, the dream, his dream, it just wouldn’t be complete without them at his side, wouldn’t be right.

He reached for them, reached for Sam, brushed her sleeve and—

A meteor shower threw them apart.

Tucker dragged Sam away from Danny’s hand and the sleep-inducing liquid it was coated in.

“We have to go,” he gasped, looking out at the veritable horde of ghosts and sleepwalking humans.

“Yeah,” said Sam. “Yeah, we have to – Have to regroup.”

They retreated to the Ghost Zone, and, predictably, were separated.

The ghost’s name was Undergrowth, and he was interested in Sam. Interested enough to offer to teach her.

His power was the same as hers. Nature. Plants.

His rage against humans was… much greater. Overwhelming. Too much, too far, to extreme. She was glad he didn’t see her as human, didn’t seem to know that she wanted to protect humans.

(That she wanted to save Danny.)

Tucker already knew Technus. Had met him, fought him, beat him. More than once, even.

So, he had to ask why Technus was suddenly helping him.

The ghost fixed Tucker with a look that managed to be both incredulous and flat.

“Ghost child,” warbled Technus, “I, Technus, Master of All Things Electronic and Beeping, know what being electrocuted feels like! By the very power we both now wield!”

“Oh,” said Tucker. “Yeah, that makes sense. You were saying?”

Sam and Tucker stood in front of the portal, side by side.

“Ready to be a wake-up call?” asked Tucker.

“You’d better believe it,” said Sam.

Danny was caught, trapped in Sam’s vines.

“This isn’t working,” said Tucker, lightly shocking Danny once again. The ectoblast didn’t help, either. “Usually, this’d zap the ghost out of him, but…”

“Maybe we could try to overshadow him?” asked Sam, dubiously.

“Ugh,” said Tucker. “My least favorite power.”

“It could be the only way to find the ghost actually responsible.”

“Let’s do this.”

Danny was thrilled! He’d finally found his friends. True, he couldn’t move, but—

The stars shuddered. Shifted. Blinked.

Nocturne was angry.

Sam was knocked out of the sky at full speed, making a crater in the dark ground. People were gathered nearby. Amity Park people.

This couldn’t just be the inside of Danny’s mind (overshadowing had never worked this way before, but, well, it wasn’t like they experimented with it a whole lot), it had to be some kind of shared dream. A special power of the ghost, perhaps?

Sam fired up her powers, reaching for the nearby plants. They didn’t respond.

Crud.

This was a dream. They just looked like plants.

Then Tucker lit up the sky like a dying star, electrocuting everyone in range.

Danny woke up, throwing Sam and Tucker out of his body, something metallic clanging against sidewalk pavement. Out of his mind, out of his dream. Out of that dream, the one Nocturne had made for him.

Oh, god. He’d just spent the last week—Had it been a week, or longer? —out of his mind, in that dream, reality at one remove, if that. He’d been blind and—

He reached up to his face, to that mask and he pulled. It stuck. He pulled harder, and felt the goo sticking it on give, the mask coming away while dripping thick strands of ooze. He gasped. And it felt like the first breath he’d taken in—

How long had it been?

He opened his eyes just in time to see Nocturne rise out of his shadow.

Both Sam and Tucker had more of an advantage out here in the real world, without having to worry about hurting people. Well, without having to worry about hurting people more than usual. Wrecking buildings and missing with ectoblasts were still concerns.

“Draw him towards the park?” called Tucker, once they got close enough to confer with each other.

“You grab Danny?”

“I don’t—” started Tucker. He dodged a swipe from the large, starry ghost. “He might be safer, if—”

A column of blue light strobed into the sky, and Nocturne was pulled into the Fenton Thermos. The Fenton Thermos held by Danny Fenton. He coughed, black liquid dripping down his chin.

“Hey,” said Danny. “Thanks.”

“I’ve got to stop losing that thing,” groaned Tucker.

“I think the more important thing here is getting Danny some clothes,” said Sam, shielding her eyes.

“Yes, please,” said Danny.

“Glad to have you back, man,” said Danny, landing next to Danny and transforming. “Honestly, without you, we kind of suck at the whole investigation angle.”

“What?” asked Danny, taking the sweater Tucker offered him.

“We missed you,” clarified Sam. “A lot. We kind of… don’t do to well at anything about ghost fighting. Or life.”

“Yeah, our social life sucked even more than usual.”

“Oh,” said Danny, wrapping the sweater around his waist. “That’s cool.” He spit some of the black liquid out onto the sidewalk. “I need a shower.”

“Yep. Hugs are going to be deferred until then.”

“I’m okay with that,” said Danny. “I kind of… don’t want to be touched, for a while.”

“Ah,” said Tucker. “Well. I’m depressed again.”

“Just. Until the shower,” said Danny.

Sam reached out as if to pat Danny on the shoulder, then drew back. “Do you want a flight back home? Or to, uh, Tucker’s house? To shower. And get some clothes.”

“How is that different from a hug? You’ll still have to carry me.”

“It just is,” said Sam.

“It really is,” said Tucker.

There was a long pause.

“I lied, I want a hug so bad,” said Danny.

His friends practically flung themselves at him.

#Danny Phantom #phic phight #danny fenton #sam manson #tucker foley #nocturne #reverse trio #void!danny

161 notes · View notes

yuta-nakamots · 3 years

Text

perfect - z.cl

Pairing - Chenle x Fem!Reader

Genre - fluff, angst, university!au, friends to lovers!au

Warnings - alcohol consumption, mention of drunkeness, lots of arguments, heavy making out, breakups, contains an aged up chenle (26-ish) towards the end

Summary - He’s definitely not your knight in shining armor, he may not be the one you bring home to mother, but he’ll be the one to give you flowers. Chenle is not the right one for you, but he is for right now.

Word Count - 5.2k

A/N - Bolded phrases are song lyrics taken from One Direction’s song ‘Perfect’ and inspired from the lyrics along with all the vlives where Chenle and the members have started yelling out the lyrics.This was supposed to come out back in January but school held it up and now Ana is gone hhhhh. I know she’s still on Tumblr but under a new url so if anyone wants to send this to her, to let her know that I did finish it, that would be nice.

Taglist - @astroboy-lele @in-my-neofeelings || fill out this form if you’d like to join my general taglist ^^

Written for the Sometimes Letting Go… Collab originally hosted by @sunryu who unfortunately deactivated.

When I first saw you from across the room, I could tell you were curious

The mutual attraction between you and Chenle was undeniable. Ever since the two of you first met as freshmen in an econ class, you knew he was your twin flame and he was yours. That initial meeting was almost comical, the way the professor said to pair up and talk to someone next to them for a bit and it seemed like everyone had turned away from you except for the boy sitting next to you.

It seems you both had the same realization as your heads turned and eyes met. “Well I guess you’re my friend for today,” he began, “hi, my name is Chenle. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Y/n,” you told him, “the pleasure is all mine.”

“So, why are you in this class?” He asked, tapping his pen on his leather-bound planner.

You hesitated for a second as you thought about how much to tell him. “I’m majoring in business and this was just one of the mandatory classes in my plan.”

“Hm, same here,” Chenle shared, seeming the slightest bit amused at your similarity, “would you also happen to be in calculus this semester?”

“Section 3 at 10:30?” You counter.

Chenle broke into a smile, “that’s the one.”

“How about freshman seminar?” You asked.

“1:15 in the world language building?” Chenle offered, copying your answer from before.

“Wow,” your eyebrows were raised in actual disbelief, “did you steal my schedule or something?”

“No, but I do believe in fate,” the boy next to you confessed, “would you like to get lunch sometime before freshmen seminar?”

You nodded, “I’d like that,” you stopped mid-sentence when you remembered that you told your friends you’d eat with them, “I am gonna be eating with my friends though so I could introduce you to them if you’d like.”

“Want to bet that we have the same friends too?”

“No way, that would be too coincidental.”

And coincidental it was. Somehow your friends knew some of Chenle’s friends whether it be from high school activities, childhood friends, or even having just met in their own classes. Your small group of five had immediately doubled in size.

Of course, with such a large group of friends, there was much fun to be had and many memories to be made. During midterms is when you were thankful you were majoring in business and not something like biology or chemistry. You could still go out and have fun on weekends with Chenle and the majority of your friends, meanwhile a few poor souls had to stay back to study their ‘reaction mechanisms’ or whatever the heck those things were called.

You quickly found that you weren’t one for parties though you loved to hang out with your friends and have small little parties of your own in the dorms. Every single time, as you all got progressively drunker and started to clock out for the night, it was always you and Chenle left being the two most sober with no other choice but to take care of your friends over hushed conversations.

“How much vodka did Hannah even drink?” Chenle asked while you both worked on cleaning up the mess of solo cups and napkins surrounding your friend who had, unfortunately, drank over half of the bottle. You picked it up, waving it at Chenle to show him. “She’s gonna have a nasty hangover…or at least wake up super dehydrated.”

As you worked on laying a blanket across her, passed out on the floor, Chenle had managed to stuff all the napkins inside the cups he had collected and was busy aiming at the trash can across the room. Right as he was about to shoot, “miss!” you called out. The little stack of cups hit the rim of the plastic trash bin and fell to the floor. Chenle turned to you, sticking out his tongue and imitating the way you caused him to mess up before going to properly dispose of the rubbish.

Instead of simply placing it in the waste, he once again returned to where he stood before, with one eye shut, aiming for the bin. You let out a scoff, ready to disturb him once more. He shot you a glance, knowing what you were planning from the way you just stood watching him. But regardless, he tried again. “Airball” you sang as he released the short stack of cups, sending them flying to the foot of the bin.

Chenle let out a growl, childishly stomping his way over to you while you tried to quietly escape from his grasps through the mess of food and other miscellaneous items on the floor. From the hushed giggles and name-calling from the two of you as you both stumbled around the room, to the whispered late-night thoughts and affirmations spoken from your positions on the floor with your heads resting on the edge of a bed, you barely even noticed how fast time was passing.

“Are you going home for the holidays?” You asked him.

He shook his head, “it’s my first time getting to live away from my parents and whenever I do go back, they’ll probably be expecting me to bring some girl with me.”

You turned to look at him, “why would they expect that?”

“They’re both getting old and want to retire soon,” Chenle started, “so the faster I get married and take over the company, the faster they’ll get to live out the rest of their lives,” he explained.

“Well that’s not very nice of them,” you commented, “what kind of parents would place such high responsibility on their child like that?”

“Mine I guess,” Chenle sighed.

After a moment of silence, you sat up, unsure what to make of the next words to come out of your mouth. “If you want, I could go with you.” Chenle looked at you with his eyebrows furrowed. “Like, I could be your fake girlfriend or something so that they don’t bother you so much about finding one.”

“That’s…an idea,” he started, biting on the corner of his lip as he played out possible scenarios in his head. “I think that would only make it worse though since we’d both have to make up stories and tell the same information.”

“True. But we could at least make it look believable, don’t you think?” You reached over to pet Chenle’s head the same way you’ve seen him do to his friends. “Oh, Chenle, you’re so cute,” you cooed, “I can’t wait to marry you and be with you for the rest of our lives.”

He grabbed your wrist and put it in your lap, not very keen on the show of affection. “Yeah, I think we’d look like a pretty convincing couple.”

“Do we look good together though?” You pondered. “If we were to show up to an event or something, would we make people stop and stare at us?”

“Anyone can do that if they wear something weird or do something out of the ordinary-“

“Okay but that’s not what I’m asking,” you interrupted, “I’m asking, would we look good together as a couple?”

Chenle shrugged apprehensively, “sure.” Your eyes bore into him as if forcing a more legit answer out of him. “Yes, I think we would look good as a couple.”

It was as if you and Chenle were made for each other. Whatever one did, the other was never too far behind. It was absolutely no surprise to your friends when you told them Chenle had asked you out and you became official. While your college careers continued and friends came and went, Chenle was always with you. He was your solid island in the middle of a tumultuous sea, your oasis in a dried desert. You didn’t need anyone else around to have fun, just him, just the two of you.

But if you like causing trouble up in hotel rooms and if you like having secret little rendezvous

Being with Chenle was as wild as things could get. It meant impulsive plans and bad decisions. Weekend nights normally consisted of one of you driving with no destination in mind until someone got hungry. Even at that point, the night didn’t end.

Sometimes the two of you would stay out past midnight, not wanting to leave each other’s company just yet. The feeling of the wind whipping past you as Chenle drove or the thrill of gassing it down the freeway was almost dreamlike. One would think that at this point, you’d return home, but for you, your home was wherever Chenle was. If it meant staying in a small hotel room for the night drinking cheap wine out of paper cups then so be it, that was home.

“Baby, you already drank almost half of the bottle, leave some for me,” Chenle teased, his eyes glimmering under the low lighting. The brightness of the small lamp on the desk failed to reach where he was sitting, the cozy armchair too far in the corner for it to be illuminated.

“Come here and get some then,” you suggested, lazily winking at him before downing another shot-sized gulp and enjoying the burn from the liquid running down your throat. The bed you were sitting on wasn’t all that soft but you had already warmed up a little spot of it and gotten too comfortable to move.

Chenle raised an eyebrow at you, a smirk tugging at his lips. “I don’t think you want me to do that.”

“Why not?” Your expression mirroring his.

“You wanna find out?

“Maybe I do.”

He let out a scoff and within a second he was on the bed, climbing up and settling over you. His warm breath fanned your neck, the scent of alcohol filling your senses. “Are you sure about that?”

“Fuck around and find out, handsome,” you taunted.

You had barely even finished your sentence before Chenle’s lips were on yours, his usual soft and pillowy lips became hot and heavy against yours under the guide of the fifteen-dollar wine. You were sure that you were definitely getting tipsy but Chenle’s love and passion were even more overwhelming. It was moments like this when you felt that you were drunk off of his love and it was absolutely intoxicating in the best way.

If you like to do the things you know that we shouldn’t do, then baby I’m perfect

It was drunk weekends like this that led to a rocky start of the following week. It’s not that you and Chenle were bad students, it’s just that when you become totally infatuated with the person you love, you start to devote yourself to them instead of what actually needs to get done.

As sophomores in college, one would think that you’d have a little more self-control but with Chenle, you just couldn’t help it. He was worse than any drug you could ever take, to the point where your friends would have to intervene and keep you in your rooms until a substantial amount of work was done.

You called them annoying but really you should’ve been thankful to them for caring so much about you back then, and you are thankful, looking back on it. They always told you ‘distance makes the heart grow fonder’ and you wish you had listened to them. Maybe if you did, you wouldn’t have lost a relationship that you thought was practically flawless.

Perfect for you

In junior year, that is when your beautiful illusion finally began crumbling down. Your workloads grew heavier and your hours of sleep decreased. Chenle would often leave you on read, having opened your message in the middle of studying then forgotten to reply to it. Even when you childishly got upset at him for that, he’d always give you the same apology or buy you something cute as if money could shut you up.

With little to no distance between the two of you, it was easy for boundaries to be crossed and for problems to go unaddressed. You can feel like you know someone so well, that they’ll always understand what you mean and they can read your words like a book, but it didn’t seem that way anymore with Chenle.

He’d make fun of the way you always made him say ‘I love you’ at least once a day or some of your other pet peeves, including the way you had a Hello Kitty mouse pad that was ‘too childish for a college student to be using.’ It may have been out of love but it sure didn’t seem that way.

I might never be the hands you put your heart in or the arms that hold you any time you want them

Soon, the little pricks in your relationship spread past closed doors and into your schoolwork. Sharing a major and classes with your significant other was not exactly ideal, especially when they had different values and beliefs from you and had to argue for their reasoning.

“That just isn’t sustainable in the long run though,” you commented as you read through Chenle’s senior research report while seated opposite of him inside a library study room.

He ran a hand through his hair, leaning back into his seat, about to repeat himself for the fourth time. “It’s not about sustainability, it’s about the profit margin that’s being made. What don’t you get?”

“It’s not good for the environment, it’s not good for the people working in the factories,” you point out, “I don’t get how you can subject these things onto people.”

“Y/n, we’re business majors,” he stated plainly, “we study money, the economy, sales, company relationships, we’re not here to be environmentalists. Things don’t have to last very long, so much as they make a profit.”

“But we should think about the impact of our future businesses and their longevity in the world-”

“You should think about passing this class and stop being so prissy and uptight about saving trees or whatever the fuck you’re going on about.”

You were absolutely shocked at the words that had just come out of his mouth. This wasn’t the first time he had seemingly degraded you in this manner, but when it came to school and your own work, you were deeply offended at what he had said, especially since both of you had spent many hours on your respective projects.

“Chenle,” you began softly, “tell me you didn’t mean that.”

He refused to meet your gaze, “If I told you that then I would be a liar.”

“Look, you can’t just spew whatever bullshit you want and just expect that people won’t get hurt,” you criticized, only to be cut off once more.

“Then maybe you should learn to not take everything so seriously,” he snapped back.

“I...I think we need a break.”

“Agreed.”

“No, from each other.” Chenle’s head whipped up to look at you, his eyes went wide when he realized what you were insinuating.

“Baby no, you know it’s not like that,” he started, but it was already too late. You blocked his voice out of your head as you packed your belongings, just wanting to get out of this room, wanting to get away from him.

This wasn’t the first time you had fought with him in this way but it felt like you had finally lost all your patience. You were tired of always being told you were wrong and having your thoughts and ideas invalidated. As you stormed away from the library, you realized that maybe you needed to let go of things that no longer brought you joy.

Sometimes letting go...is a new start

After that incident, you did indeed have a fresh start. You slowly removed Chenle from your life and just in time for graduation. Whenever he tried to approach you on campus, you always turned the other way even if it meant being late to class. Luckily, you didn’t have many shared classes with him anymore and you were all the more grateful for it right now.

You’d come back to your campus apartment with the occasional flower or sticky note left on your doorstep asking you to give him another chance but you simply didn’t have enough time or energy to care anymore. Commencement was approaching and you still had yet to hear back from any of the companies you had applied to for internships.

But that don’t mean that we can’t live here in the moment

One of your friends had mentioned that Chenle had already received news that he was accepted into his family’s business, a large company in China, and you wished you could’ve been there when he had read the email. You could practically hear his yell of delight, his laugh when he’d turn to hug you, even if it was practically guaranteed that he’d get in, you missed it all so much but there was no turning back now.

It wasn’t until after commencement did you receive your own letter of acceptance from one of the largest foreign trade companies in the area after you saw Chenle for the last time. “Zhong Chenle, Bachelor of Arts in business management.” You remembered the immense pride and pain you felt in your chest, watching him walk across the stage to claim his diploma as you sat clothed in the same cap and gown only a few rows away. You wished you could share your emotions with him, but you had to remind yourself that he was no longer yours, he was no longer the man you first fell in love with.

‘Cause I can be the one you love from time to time

Four years have passed since that moment at commencement. In those four years, you’ve climbed your way up in the company, taking a hold of a directing position in project development and management. With all your success though, there was always one failure that kept floating through your mind. The number of sleepless nights and wandering moments you’ve spent thinking about all the ‘what ifs’ and the changes you should’ve made in your relationship have all decreased with time, but sometimes it all comes crashing back. You miss the memories you made with him and you miss being so young and naive.

Sometimes you managed to hear a thing or two about the company he worked for but you never paid much attention to it, always falling back into a spiral of guilt and calling yourself the sole reason why your relationship fell apart. Chenle would even pop into your mind at the weirdest times when you’d be thinking of anything but him.

Like the other day as you were staring out the window of your office, watching people and cars pass by, your memory of Chenle speeding down the empty highway suddenly resurfaced. The adrenaline you felt from the buildings and signs whizzing by, the slight buzz of alcohol you felt in your system, the cool air coming in from Chenle’s window, the warmth of his hand in yours. You couldn’t help but smile at it fondly yet it turned sour when you thought of the last time he ever drove you somewhere. You had argued with him about something dumb, you couldn’t even remember it at this point, and you even slammed the door before storming off to who knows where.

Or some months ago, you were interviewing possible new hires for the company and met someone from Puerto Rico. Once you finished the interview with them, you sat at the wooden desk while remembering the way you teased Chenle because he didn’t know how to pronounce Puerto Rico. You thought it was cute and even told him that, but it ended up in another fight because you may have spent a little too long dwelling on the topic.

But oftentimes when you find yourself thinking about him, you’d wonder how he’s doing. Is he happy where he is right now? What kinds of things is he doing for his job? Has he found a new girlfriend? What if he dated many other people after me? What if he’s married? Would he have children by now? Or most importantly, ‘does he still love me?’

And if you like midnight driving with the windows down, and if you like going places we can’t even pronounce

Regardless, you’d shake off all these thoughts and continue about your day, completing the tasks assigned to you. The majority of your time was spent conducting interviews and deliberating with the directors about who to hire for what position. It was quite fun, really. You got to meet all of the new hires before they came into the company and you felt empowered by the fact that you would be indirectly responsible for the future of the company in this sort of way.

On one particular day, everything felt like it was going just a little too well. Your hair was done just the right way, traffic was light, your coworkers seemed to all be in a good mood, but most importantly, there were no fat folders sitting on your desk, waiting for you to go through. Just a single sheet of paper with the list of the new hires coming in for their briefings along with the notes you were required to go over.

You didn’t bother checking it, seeing as how you had exactly two minutes left before the scheduled meet time, which was exactly the amount of time you needed to head downstairs to the conference room. You really should have checked the list though. It would have prepared you for the shock of seeing a certain someone sitting at the table in a suit that looked all too good on him.

“Zhong Chenle?” You audibly gasped, pausing in your tracks the moment you entered the conference room.

His eyes were already on you as if he knew you’d be the person to walk through that doorway at that exact moment. “That would be me.”

The other new hires looked around at each other sharing all types of glances. Worried, suspicious, surprised, questioning, nothing really all that positive. “Sorry, he’s just an old friend that I was surprised to see,” you quickly explained, trying to pull yourself back together.

Throughout your whole presentation, it was like all the attention in the world was directed at you. Never had you felt this nervous before doing something that was supposed to be so familiar. Every time your eyes glanced over in Chenle’s direction, his gaze managed to catch yours as if he was trying to speak to you without any words.

By the time you adjourned the meeting and sent the new hires off to their respective departments, it felt like you had run a marathon. Your palms were clammy, your legs shaky, your mind racing, and your heart was pounding.

Chenle was the only one left in the conference hall while you pushed in all the chairs and turned off the lights. “Looks like these years have done you well.” He commented, finally able to take in the sight of you now that there was no one else around.

“I could say the same for you.” His shoulder had gotten broader and any childlike features had left his face. He truly looked like he had grown into a man. The dark gray suit he was wearing fit the lines of his body so well, it made you think he could’ve been a model instead of simply becoming an office worker. “So how have you been?”

He did a classic Chenle shrug, “nothing much really. I started off being just a marketing employee, did some work, and got myself to be chief marketing officer. It seems you’ve gotten much further than I have, though. Project development and management?”

“Oh, it’s not anything huge. I just help with planning things out and doing all the paperwork for its execution. I only do interviews and help with hiring when we’re in season, which would be why I’m here right now,” you explained, motioning for him to follow you out of the room. “Your new supervisor is probably wondering where you are. I sent the rest of the newbies a few minutes ago already. I’ll just tell him that you had a few questions about our operations.”

“Wow, cheating the system? That’s not the way I remember you,” Chenle said with mock disapproval. You led him to the elevators, pleasantly surprised to find one still on your floor after you hit the ‘up’ button. Your eyes met with his while you gestured for him to go in. “Ladies first,” he had a cat-like grin on his face as you rolled your eyes and stepped into the elevator.

“So why did you decide to leave your company? Weren’t you going to take it over someday?” You ask over the squeaking of the doors closing.

Chenle leaned against the cold metal wall of the elevator, “I still plan to but I felt like they were just kind of babying me or treating me differently because they knew of my background,” he explained. You could only nod to acknowledge the fact that you were listening. “I told my parents that I wanted to get experience outside of the company and they didn’t really understand at first until I showed them my point of view and how it’s a little worrisome to perhaps, learn how to cook when you always have chefs around you giving you instructions down to the tiniest things.”

The elevator came to a stop and the heavy doors opened onto the floor Chenle would be working on. “But why this company? We’re not even closely related to yours?” You led him down the hallway in the direction of his supervisor's office.

“My parents were the ones who recommended it, actually. It would be a little risky to go to a neighboring one in the case of it being viewed as a betrayal or like some kind of inside mission so they said I should just come back here since I’d probably have a high chance of acceptance-“ you put a hand up to stop him from talking, seeing how many of the other employees had started to look at him due to his volume.

“Chenle, must I remind you that this is an office?” You gritted out, embarrassed in front of your colleagues.

He shook his head before turning to the mass of them, bowing politely then continuing in the same direction as before. Once both of you reached the head office at the end of the hallway, Chenle spoke up once more. “By any chance, are you free tonight?”

“That depends,” you began, “what are you hinting at?”

“Just seeing if you’d like to go out to dinner so we can properly catch up, I guess,” he proposed bashfully.

You hummed in thought, “mmm, put in a good word for me with your supervisor and you’ve got a deal.”

“Deal,” he agreed.

“Meet me in the lobby at 5:30, don’t be late,” you told him before knocking on the wooden door in front of you and allowing Chenle in.

If you like to do whatever you’ve been dreaming about, then baby you’re perfect

You thought Chenle’s wine phase in college would be just that, a phase, but it really wasn’t. He had ordered an expensive bottle of merlot even with all your insistence that you wouldn’t be drinking and even made him promise that he’d be sober enough to drive himself back to wherever his accommodations were.

He made a face of fake dismissal before picking up your last conversation. “So anyway, as I was saying earlier, my parents suggested that I come back here, especially since I got my degree from the university so I’m bound to get in.”

You were about to open your mouth to say something like “getting in is not a guarantee” especially coming from your experience in doing interviews and having to decide which applicants to turn down, but you decided against it.

“Initially, I was a little against it since I didn’t want to come back to somewhere I’ve already stayed at for some time,” he confessed, “but after I did some research on the company and found out that you’re one of the associates, I was a little more open to the idea.”

There was a break of silence while you started to link your thoughts together. “So you came here because you found out that I work here?”

“Yes, but also no,” Chenle stated, blurting the second part out rather quickly when he saw the shift in your expression. “It is true that I wanted to see you and how you were doing but it’s not just that. I figured that if you worked here and had such a high position, it must be a good place to work.”

“But what I’m hearing is…you came here because of me,” you state bluntly though your heart couldn’t help but let out a cheer of delight.

Chenle redirected his gaze at the neighboring tables. “You could say that, sure.”

“Chenle, what do you want out of this? What do you want out of me specifically?” You contended. His eyes continued to flit around the lowly lit space, not daring to meet yours unlike earlier in the conference hall. “What? Did you come back just expecting me to run into your arms? Did you think we would just pick up where we left off?”

Now he looked down at the white tablecloth, as if in shame. “Would it be wrong of me to ask for a second chance?”

You too joined him in staring at the table, wishing that he had answered ‘no’ to your previous questions. “It wouldn’t exactly be wrong, but it’s not right either. I’d be willing to give you a second chance if we agree to not call it that, but rather a promise.”

He finally looked up at you again, his dark pupils catching the dim golden lights above him. “A promise?”

You nodded. “We’re older now, we’re fully grown adults with jobs to do and taxes to pay. We’re no longer the same carefree college students we used to be.”

“Well yeah, obviously-“

“No, listen,” you interject, cutting him off, “we can’t just recklessly play with each other’s minds and feelings like we used to. No more games and no more ‘next times.’ If we try again, I want this to be a promise that we’ll both do better because we can and we want to.”

“If it’s a promise that you want then,” Chenle held out his hand with his pinky finger extended, “it’s a promise I’m willing to make.”

You linked your pinky with his before bringing your thumbs together and sealing the promise. Matching smiles appeared across both of your faces as you stepped into a new chapter of life with Chenle by your side once more.

Sometimes letting go is…perfect. So let’s start right now

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skaylanphear · 3 years

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Hi there! Do you have any advice on improving traction towards a fanwork/fic? I love writing—and it's not for notoriety by any means—but having validation and feedback also feels nice (I hope that's not conceited). What would you recommend to someone without a large audience/follower base? I do "advertise" on tumblr when my work is written/updated on AO3. How did your journey start? Thank you!

This is an interesting question and I doubt most people are going to like the answers, but here we go:

So, first and foremost, you need to be realistic about why you're creating in the first place. If you're doing work in a fandom that is older, where content has stopped coming out, or that is simply smaller, you're not going to get much engagement, period. There will, of course, be activity in these fandoms, but it will be far less and the people involved—while they may view your work—will be less likely to comment/spread it around simply because there's not much going on. So if you're creating in that sort of environment (which can be a really good environment if you're looking for something chill with no pressure), then you have to be prepared for low engagement, even if the people you do meet and who are willing to talk about your work are more regularly in your sphere. You can probably make better/closer friends in these sorts of fandoms, if you're willing to try.

But, on the other end of this, if you're coming into a huge fandom late, it's also going to be harder to wade through the massive following to get your stuff out there. For example, in both the Miraculous and Sk8 fandom, I started work pretty early on, when the shows were still gaining traction, and so my "name" as a creator gained traction parallel to that growth, as opposed to when I started writing in the Voltron fandom. With Voltron, I came in super late and so what few fics I had that did gain traction took a lot longer to get there because people already had their fav content creators in the fandom, etc. It's not impossible to get popular in this situation—far from it—but it does take longer.

You'll also benefit from having finished works early on in a fandom's lifespan, at least with writing. This is because there's less competition for views and so more people will be filtered to your work, initially. This means that you have a better chance of getting those comments and kudos. Having a finished work increases this engagement because people look for finished works before works in progress. Generally, the length of a fic doesn't matter much for popularity, so long as it's DONE. When I was writing in the ML fandom, quite a few of my earlier fics were shorter, and they compete in popularity with my longer fics, because people care more about having a finished story, not a long story. That's why when it came to Only Practice Makes Perfect in the Sk8 fandom, I worked hard to get that shit done, because it was the most popular story I had in the fandom and I decided—like an idiot—to make it a long fic. Which, yeah, means people probably love it/remember it more in the long run, but if I hadn't finished it in 2 to 3 months, I'd have lost considerable traction as far as making a name within the fandom.

This leads into one of the most important points, if not THE MOST IMPORTANT point in gaining an audience—consistency. If you do want to be a successful creator, you Have To Be Consistent. This is the most difficult hurdle for all creators, and it is oftentimes impossible to make happen. If you want to aim for professionalism, which a lot of fandom creators don't care about (which is fine), then consistency is how you get there. Nobody wants to read a fic or follow an artist who doesn't stick to creating what they start (RIP all my unfinished works and the people who left me as a result, LOL). Using my most recent works as an example, I very, very, very consistently updated Only Practice Makes Perfect multiple times a week. To the point where people got comfortable expecting it, which is the key variable here. When people become comfortable that you will regularly create content, they not only stick around, but will be more interactive with you and your work. Nobody likes the disappointment of getting involved with a work only for that work to rarely get updates. Most people don't have the attention span to care. I'll admit, if I read a fic that's not finished and the writer takes one week to update, then one week, then THREE weeks, I probably will, like, forget about it. That's just life.

The best thing you can do is schedule. And again, this is the HARDEST thing to do, because it holds the creator to a deadline. Most people who create in fandoms don't want that kind of pressure—and that's fine. I go back and forth on when I have scheduled releases and when I don't, depending on what I'm aiming to do. But if you to retain your audience, telling them that you will update a work regularly on such and such a day and such and such a time, it creates something for them to remember. If they're invested in your work, they will think, "oh, it's Friday, that means such and such is coming out with something new." But, with that in mind, you also have to commit to a schedule that people will remain invested in. Which basically means you can't put things out more than a week away from each other, unless you're really, really famous, lol. If I told people I was going to go on a two week update schedule, I would lose most of my audience. But a week is long enough for people to both still remember and anticipate. That's just how the scheduling of the world works. And if you're an artist that's working on a big project, then you have to share progress, or pieces of what you're doing on a regular basis. That's what generates "buzz" and keeps you relevant. And, yeah, that's a really hard schedule to commit to, because it's a lot of work. BUT this consistency is where you see people being successful. Popular youtubers may not have gained their popularity by being consistent, but most sure do retain it that way. And again, there are outlying exceptions, but they generally ARE exceptions.

Speaking of hard work, here's probably the second hardest thing to accomplish—you have to be prolific. Especially as a writer. You have to write A LOT if you want to gain an audience. And yeah, that means you have to work, a lot. I love my work, so I enjoy that "grind," and I also have developed a lot of strategies to work around writer's block and every other obstacle that tends to catch people up. I work in a very professional manner—I do outlines, and drafts, and plan. I do a lot of stuff that people who do this kind of thing for fun can't be bothered with (and that's fine), but that's because I find it to be what works best in creating an efficient environment. I'm also very, very NOT lazy, lol. I was raised in an environment where you have to work for everything that you want. My parents didn't buy me my first computer, or snowboard, or what have you. We were tight on money and if I wanted something, they couldn't help me—I had to get that shit on my own. And I also grew up on a farm, where hard work was a staple of how you did things. You did things the right way, even if it was the hard way. You can't cut corners and it's the same with this. If you want it, you have to actually do the work, that's it. Some people get lucky with popularity, most don't. Most famous actors didn't become well-known off their first efforts, they had to keep trying and keep working and then they have to continue to do that to stay relevant. So if that doesn't sound great to you, then you might want to not focus on your audience and just create because you enjoy it, lol. Sometimes that's what I do too, when I don't wanna deal with the pressure.

Moving on, here's another point that nobody is going to like. Simply put, you also have to be good at what you do. I think some people don't realize that I've been writing fic for over fifteen years. I currently have nearly 2 millions words worth of fics on AO3 and that doesn't include a majority of the stuff I've ever written. I practice A LOT. I write every day. And I'll tell ya, when I started out in middle school, my stuff was not good. But I worked hard, I ignored the hate, and I kept going. That is the only way you will ever get better at anything. There's no quick way to become a better writer, or artist. And a vast majority of people are only going to pay attention to your stuff if it's quality work. Getting to that point is a process, on top of then creating stuff that fits into popular molds. Not only am I good at what I do (and I don't care how arrogant that sounds—I've worked my ass off), but when it comes to fandoms, I rarely write "rare pairs" and "crack ships." Generally, if it's popular, that's where I am. That makes a big difference and I honestly don't have sympathy for people who write rare pairs and such and then complain about lack of engagement. You knew what you were getting into (it's mostly the Miraculous fandom that gave me this bitterness). If you're not writing what people WANT to read, then your audience is simply going to be smaller. And that audience doesn't owe you their attention, no matter how frustrating it is or how good your work is. I could be the best writer in the world, but if I'm writing RekixCherry fic, I have nobody to blame but myself when nobody reads it. BUT if that's your passion, and writing a certain unpopular thing makes you happy, then, again, you need to not be concerned with traction and your audience.

The last point I'll make is that it matters HOW you present yourself online. A good chunk of the well-known creators in any fandom are, simply put, older people. And those that aren't, and are able to connect with those older creators, have generally created a bubble around themselves of maturity and, like, of being nice, lol. A lot of creators are skittish these days, and if you're an asshole (anti) or fight a lot over stupid shit, you may get a bigger audience, but you will isolate yourself from other creators. And this is important because oftentimes it is your exposure to other creators that will get your work circulating. The reason I got popular in the ML fandom? I wrote a short angst fic and a really popular artist shared it/talked about it and the rest was history. But if I'd had a habit of being an asshole, probably wouldn't have happened. And, granted, I'm not saying don't voice your opinions, but if you're loud all the time, it does turn people off. Especially creators because they are oftentimes the ones being attacked. They don't want to pull more of that negative bullshit into their lives. I'll admit, when I was in the ML fandom, I was down for a fight, but then that's what people came to expect, and it probably did turn others off, and then when I didn't fight, or didn't think the way my audience thought I should, it, again, turned people off. It's really not worth it unless being that type of person IS your platform.

So, that's all the advice I can give, I suppose. And even if you do all this stuff, that still doesn't mean you're going to be popular. At the end of the day, the thing that I stick to is this—I do what I want, I love what I do, and I work hard. If I'm in a position to worry about all that other stuff, then sure, I do, but otherwise… There's no easy way to become popular and, quite frankly, it's better to just "live" working hard and being a decent person than it is to focus on all this bullshit. I've created a working environment where I function within these "points" quite naturally, so it's not something I think about (except for schedules, lol). Sometimes I get popular in fandoms, sometimes I don't. At the end of the day, it comes down to how much work you're willing to do, because you will always be giving more than you are getting back, so you have to at least enjoy what you're doing.

Seriously, just do it because you love it. And if the pressure of everything above is something you don't love (I like a good, high pressure situation, lol), then don't do it that way—it's not worth the grief.

#skaylanphear replies #anonymous

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defdaily · 3 years

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THE STAR Magazine April 2021 Issue featuring JAY B

Translated by defdaily.

GOT7’s eternally sincere leader JAY B. A friendly interview where you can feel his warm-heartedness.

*This interview was done in informal language to give off the feeling of two friends chatting*

It has been a while since we last met for GOT7’s feature in 2017.

Right, hi. I’m JAY B. Nice to meet you. Have you eaten?

JAY B has been chosen to be on the cover of THE STAR’s 8th anniversary issue.

Dobby is free now. (Laughs). I’m a freelancer now but I still can’t believe the fact that I was chosen to be on the cover of THE STAR’s anniversary issue. I’m so thankful to THE STAR for choosing me to be on the cover so I worked extra hard during the shoot.

How are you doing these days? We’re curious to know what you have been up to.

A freelancer’s daily life is always similar. I work when there is work and rest when there isn’t. I was busy recently organising this and that to release GOT7’s digital single ENCORE. I took the lead and there were many things I needed to figure out such as paperwork. So I was very proud. The members have all joined agencies but I want to take a little more time and think about it carefully before choosing. I’m still a freelancer.

Does the freelancing life suit you?

I don’t know if it suits me but it’s fun. Now work-related calls come to me directly, so I would be asleep then receive a call. I’d go “Ah I fell asleep for a moment, sorry. What is this about?” (Laughs). Since I do even these kinds of small communications myself, it’s nice and fascinating to realise the value of work and opportunities. If I didn’t have this time and experience, I think I might have not realised the value of work as much. I used to be on edge at times when the managers used to tell me things in the past. But now that I’ve learnt how much processing has been done before the information reached me, I feel sorry. Now I have a heart full of gratitude for opportunities.

I don’t know if it’s because you’re a freelancer now, but you seem much brighter than before.

Dobby is free now. (Laughs) I’m joking. Of course it was very helpful having a company. But now that I do everything myself, I feel more satisfied. I enjoy it.

The GOT7 members have all started solo activities. It must not have been easy for everyone, how did you come to your decision?

Right. It definitely was not easy. The seven of us researched a lot so that we can continue as GOT7 together. But then we thought that we should broaden our view so each of us could end up in a better situation. In the process, what we each wanted changed a little and, there is a future that each person dreams of right? The company said we did everything we could do on our part and that they will cheer us on in the future, that made me feel proud. We are also very thankful to the company. I felt that we received a lot of protection under a large umbrella. After all, the company is like the mother that gave birth to GOT7, so I’m thankful to them and respect them. I also thought a lot and looked into a lot of things about how to continue as GOT7. I also went to the president and asked him for advice, and I greeted and thanked Jinyoungie hyung for everything.

While preparing for new activities, what was the thing most discussed amongst the members?

“So what is it that you want to do?” “So what do you want to do?” We asked that a lot. So everyone said “We have to do it" So I asked again “No, not 'I have to', but do you want to do this? Or do you not want to do this?” If you are going to do something, you should do it properly, right? If you are not going to do something with an active attitude, I think it’s better to not do it. So we all came together and decided to give it a try.

It’s clear that you are GOT7’s leader.

One advice the company president told me was that my talent and effort as a leader starts now. Personally handling matters related to our recent digital single, I felt this “Taking the lead as a leader, I need to really work hard.” There was a lot of pressure, but if I don’t do it, who would. It pushed me to work hard.

You mentioned very clearly in your social media livestream that “GOT7 did not disband.” I felt your affection towards the team, what does GOT7 mean to JAY B?

One extremely important thing in my life. Actually, it’s an indispensable part. I’m thankful for the fact that our team exists. You have to know that because GOT7 existed, we individually exist too. It wouldn't matter if my beginning was as a solo, but my beginning was as GOT7. That's what made me who I am now.

How is Lim Jaebeom different as JAY B within GOT7, JJ Project, Jus2 and ØFFSHORE?

Comprehensively they’re all sides of me but if I have to split them, they would be a novel vibe versus an essay vibe. ØFFSHORE and Def. are all about music I like, regardless of genres, and honest stories I want to tell. As for GOT7, JJ Project and Jus2, we would have a particular concept and make it a bit more fancy.

Most of the songs you have shown on SoundCloud are R&B genres with a groovy feel. Have you ever had a conflict between music you want to do and music you have to do?

I felt that I needed to work harder to prove [myself] to do what I wanted to do. I can’t always be spoon-fed. To prove [myself] I made more GOT7 tracks and sent around 15~20 demos. Later on Jinyoung hyung and the president acknowledged me and said “Jaebeom will take care of the musical aspect. You can trust him with that.” I felt really proud hearing that. I don’t really feel a sense of conflict between the musical differences. From pop and R&B to folk and modern rock, I don't want to draw lines between genres and make music that sounds good.

We are curious about the music JAY B will show alone and what you’ll pursue. What stories do you want to tell?

I want to do a variety of things. Alone, I think I will try mixing genres and do things that are fun and experimental. I can also do R&B pop or Urban genres which I’ve originally liked. But that might change later on.

Is there an artist you’d like to collaborate with in the future?

Someone with a pleasant tone to listen to. Even now, when I listen to music and I like the artist’s tone, I send them a DM asking if they’d like to collaborate. And Korea's top hip hop artist, IU-nim. Do you think it's possible? (Laughs).

Then would you like to send a message to IU?

Suddenly? Um… I will work very hard. If by chance you think my song is alright, I would love for you to add your nice voice to them. (Laughs)

An appearance that may seem cold with a tsundere charm. But what do you think your real personality is like?

I’m the type that is quiet and calm, but people close to me tell me I’m a weird person. When I cry reading a book or watching a movie, or when I get emotional they say “It’s so weird, it doesn’t suit you.”

Are you the tender type?

I think I just often get hit by waves of emotions.

We’re curious about the lifestyle you seek and your values.

To live each day without any regrets.

Is there a place you’d like to visit after COVID-19 ends?

Kyoto, Japan. It’s a place where there is a lot of Japanese heritage and it’s also pretty.

Recently you have combined your two Instagram accounts @jaybnow.hr and @def.cnvs, what was the reason?

I’m the one doing everything after all, it is just the musical name that was different. I can’t split my body into two. I realised I could combine them into one account and just show the difference within it. And as I get older, it’s hard to manage two accounts. (Laughs). Was I too honest? Now I'm confused about what's what.

Was there any other moment that made you feel old?

I don’t do much and my whole body aches. In the past, my body wouldn’t get affected by the weather. Now when the weather is gloomy my back hurts and my knees go numb. (Laughs).

I can see that you’re interested in artistic aspects such as photography, painting and fashion etc. Do these things influence your music?

Of course. They affect the way you live in itself. I’m a person who wants to express and leave behind what I feel. Calling myself an artist feels somehow cocky.

What are you interested in recently?

It’s not art but I’m interested in moving around. Living as a freelancer, I spent more time lying down at home, but now I need a fast-paced daily life. I try to wake up in the morning to eat breakfast and nutritional supplements then go outside to photosynthesize and soak in the world. Everyone has to keep moving. (Laughs).

Are you interested in fashion and lifestyle curation and design etc?

I don’t think I’m a person who dresses up exceptionally well, but if someone asks I’d be willing to help.

What would you introduce as JAY B’s preference?

Freedom. Regarding fashion too, I liked vintage and grunge styles but recently I’m interested in work look and amecage styles. My preference keeps changing. I can't define myself clearly either, but I like the sense of being free.

What inspires you?

Many situations and people, my experiences as well as indirect experiences.

How do you have an indirect experience?

Watching movies and reading books. Nowadays I read song lyrics and unfold the scenes in my head. I try to think of various points of view in these one-act plays.

To JAY B, love is?

Nonexistent. A moment. I don’t know. As you live life, I think falling in love is a momentary emotion. If it lasts long, I think it’s affection not love. I'm a person who has to talk about love, but sometimes I wonder if it’s okay to feel this way. There are also many different forms of love. The love that my parents give me and the love that my fans send me. I’m thankful for everything.

While promoting for 10 years, what was the happiest moment and most lacking point?

I feel like every moment until now has been somehow lacking. Whenever you look back you end up thinking “I should’ve done better back then.” I think everyone feels that way. But I never regret those times I’ve spent. The happiest instance was when I spotted my parents at a fanmeeting and ran to them and held them while singing. It felt like I was boasting to my fans “These people are my father and mother,” and it also felt like I was showing my parents how I was receiving that many fans’ love and support. I'm thankful that the fans looked at my family happily at that moment.

Have you ever had a slump?

I don't think about something if I think I'm going to fall into something serious, but I'm the type who gets stressed out to do something new.

You are loved not only in Korea but also abroad, have you ever thought about why your fans like you so much?

A lot. I just don't understand. I'm not even popular among my friends... Why on earth?

Think of at least one thing.

Maybe it’s because I worked hard steadily? To be honest, during the past 10 years I have never not tried my best on stage. I can say this with confidence. I’m thankful to be able to do what I like as a job. I have told the members about this previously, I’m sorry for not being affectionate to fans onstage. It’s my nature so I can’t help it. But I have never been indifferent as a singer onstage, that is a fact.

Your bucket list that you surely want to achieve this year?

Being healthy mentally and physically. Since the members have started their solo activities this year, I think I should release an album as well.

Any words for the readers?

Everyone, I’m not saying this as a formal greeting but I really want to say thank you. Hmm… How should I put this? Don’t worry since we are not disbanding. That’s why I tried hard to release the digital single. Continuing on I’m going to try my best to do as much as I can. You might feel disappointed at times along the way, and I apologize in advance for that. But what I can promise is that I’m going to do my best. Thank you so much for supporting me for 10 years. You all know this already, but I’m not so good at things like sending hearts and saying thanks affectionately. I just want to speak sincerely. Thank you so much. I hope everyone will be more happy, not just because you like and support us… I could sound arrogant saying it like this but... I hope our fans are sturdy people who will find their own small sources of happiness in their daily lives even if that isn’t us. And I hope everyone is happy. I’m so thankful and I want to ask you to trust me.

Lastly let us know your future plans.

We will try our best to match our times and do GOT7, JJ Project and Jus2 etc. no matter what. Even if our times don’t match somehow, we’ll try our best to gather even 4 or 5 people and return, so don’t worry. And Dobby is free now. (Laughs). I will do my best in everything. I've made a lot of songs and I'm diligently working on songs right now too, so look forward to it. You’ll be able to listen to it soon. Thank you. This has been GOT7 JAY B. Please give lots of love to The Star’s April issue!

Translated by defdaily.

#jay b #jb #jaebeom #def #defsoul #got7 #got7 jb #got7 jaebeom

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jaesqueso · 3 years

Text

The Bachelorette: NCT Edition - Meet the candidates

The season of love is finally here! An interactive series where you’ll get to choose who goes home each week and ultimately who Y/N chooses in the end!

VOTE!!!

Use the above link to vote for your favorite candidate for that final rose and who should be the first five going home! You can vote for the first episode until next friday (11/06) and the episode will come out on sunday (13/06).

taglist: @skrtbabe @yutahoes @mel-yjh

If you’d like to be included in the taglist for the series do let me know ❤︎

☽ ・・・・・ ☾

The bachelorette

Hi, my name is Y/N and I’m looking for my prince charming!

I never had much luck with love so I decided to focus on work instead but my friends are all getting married and keep telling me to find someone too, so here I am!

I’m looking for someone nice who makes me laugh. Someone who cares about me and shows me a good time. Physically I’m not picky but I do appreciate a warm smile and kind eyes.

Hopefully this experience will help me find the person who I’ll get to spend the rest of my life with!

Moon Taeil

My name is Taeil and I’m a gemini.

I’m a relaxed guy who wants to live life peacefully and hopefully meet a girl to share my life with!

*winks*

I like to listen to music and watch movies, not very into physical activities because I don’t like when my muscles are in pain.

*laughs*

I usually notice someone’s eyes first, that’s enough to captivate me. Also I like cute girls.

Fighting!

John Suh

My name is John but everybody calls me Johnny. I’m an Aquarius.

I’m a nice guy who gets along with everyone and my motto is just to have fun! My friends may say I’m clumsy but I think things just get in my way!

*flips hair laughing*

I love reading, watching videos and taking photos. Who knows I may find my new photographic muse.

*winks*

I love cute things, and that includes girls too. I also love girls who smile a lot because I’m always smiling too.

Hopefully I’ll find someone to make my days even brighter!

Lee Taeyong

My name is Taeyong and I’m a Cancer.

People sometimes think I’m cold from the way I look but I promise I’m a kind and caring guy! I have amazing eyes and as you can tell I’m very confident.

*winks*

I don’t like dust and germs so I’ll make sure everybody keeps things clean around here. I’m a perfectionist so I might nag a lot, sorry!

*laughs*

I’m looking for someone who I can learn from and that makes up for my flaws.

Finger crossed I’ll meet someone good for me!

Nakamoto Yuta

My name is Yuta and I’m a Scorpio.

I’m a happy guy who cares a lot about everyone. One thing I can promise is that everybody has a good time around me!

*laughs*

I love to play football and working out, I don’t like sitting around doing nothing! If we can do things in the moment why wait?

*shrugs shoulders*

I like someone who has empathy towards others and doesn’t feel the need to “act pretty”, someone who’s real and humble.

Let’s go!

Qian Kun

My name is Kun and I’m a Capricorn.

I’m a very friendly guy and I’m always there for my friends. I love to cook and make my way into people’s hearts through food.

*winks*

I’m an intelligent guy and I love to do magic tricks so I think if I play my cards right I have a chance to get that final rose.

*wiggles eyebrows*

I’m usually attracted to more feminine women who are innocent.

Abracadabra pick me!

Kim Doyoung

My name is Doyoung and I’m an Aquarius.

I’m a very reliable guy, you can check with my friends! I don’t really like to go out, I’d rather stay in sleeping or eating so I’m looking for someone who’s ok with chilling and cuddling.

*winks*

I’m afraid of animals so hopefully we won’t have to do any interaction with any or I might go back home and take a nap.

*laughs*

I want someone polite that knows how to present themselves and that I can take home to meet the parents!

I’ll make sure she falls in love with me!

Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul

My name is Chittaphon but you can call me Ten because I’m 10/10! I’m a Pisces.

I’m the sweetest guy you’ll ever meet and I know how to make someone feel comfortable. Honestly I can’t see what’s not to like about me!

*shrugs shoulders*

I love sports, drawing and playing with animals. Throw me a cat and I’ll be happy!

*laughs*

I don’t really have an ideal type, but I like to get to know someone before love starts to develop.

I’m excited!

Jung Yoonoh

My name is Yoonoh but most people still call me Jaehyun which was my birth name. I’m an Aquarius.

I’m a happy and cute guy, but I also have a sensitive side. What can I say, I’m the perfect guy to take home to the parents!

*winks*

I’m very into sports and I’m a black belt in taekwondo so you know I’ll take down all the competition!

*laughs*

I like someone who is kind, calm and cute. Someone I can easily communicate with and who I can depend on. Extra points if they’re into sports too!

I’m not saying I’m competitive but I’m here to win this!

Dong Sicheng

My name is Sicheng but you can call me Winwin because if I receive that final rose it will be a win-win situation! I’m a Scorpio.

I’m usually a shy guy specially in front of the camera so I apologise for probably not talking much.

“scratches the back of his head”

I like swimming, watching movies and going on vacation, even though I have a fear of heights but I’m good as long as we stay on the ground! I don’t really like being touched but I can make an exception for a nice girl.

*winks*

I like someone who’s more quiet, like me, and also innocent. I want someone who I can laugh with.

Let’s Winwin!

Kim Jungwoo

My name is Jungwoo and I’m a Pisces.

I’m a sweet guy but I’m also funny, just let me entertain you with my on point impressions, you won’t be able to tell who’s me or the original person!

*laughs*

I like to watch and play soccer and I eat a lot of course to restore my energy!

*winks*

I like a bold girl who’ll take the first step. Someone who is determined, knows hat she wants and does everything to get it.

So come and get me!

Huang Xuxi

My name is Xuxi but I like to go by Lucas. I’m an Aquarius.

I’m a very outgoing guy and I always provide a good time in every sense of the word.

*wiggles eyebrows*

I love spicy food! I have a strong digestive system so I’ll eat a lot but maintain my figure because I also exercise much as you can tell.

*shows off his biceps*

I’m usually attracted to someone sweet, shy and innocent.

My lady c’mon!

Mark Lee

My name is Mark and you can mark me in your heart! I’m a Leo.

I’m a simple guy who likes to hang out with friends and play my guitar, that I obviously brought with me. Who knows, I might serenade someone special.

*winks*

I like to think I’m funny but it seems like others don’t get my jokes… Anyway! I am not great in the kitchen so like maybe it’s safer for everyone if other people take care of the cooking.

*laughs*

I want someone who’s honest and loyal, plain and simple.

Time to shine!

Xiao Dejun

My name is Dejun but you can call me Xiaojun. I’m a Leo.

I’m a more reserved guy, I like to be alone but I have a space saved in my life for a special lady.

*winks*

I like to read, watch movies and write songs. I can play several instruments too so I can write something special in several styles, there’s no way I can get that wrong.

*wiggles eyebrows*

Honesty can get you far with me because I believe that being humble brings more benefits. I also like a girl who can communicate well.

Let’s do this!

Wong Kunhang

My name is Kunhang but my friends call me Hendery so you can too. I’m a Libra.

I’m a very friendly and funny guy, everybody loves me, so I know this girl will too!

*shrugs shoulders*

I love to just take a walk and listen to music. Also I might start dancing when I talk so please don’t be surprised!

*laughs*

I like kind people who’ll help others in need. Also someone independent and family oriented.

Let’s enjoy this experience!

Huang Renjun

My name is Renjun and I’m an Aries.

I may seem like a soft guy but I know when to be cold and firm. I believe that you have to love yourself first to be able to love someone else and we need to love someone for who they are and not try to change them.

*smiles*

I appreciate arts. I like to dance and also to draw. I think I might draw us two together so she can see how good we’ll look and choose me!

*winks*

I like a witty girl who won’t be too sensitive to what I say because I like to be honest.

Let’s love ourselves and each other!

Lee Jeno

My name is Jeno and I’m a Taurus.

I’m an easy going guy that gets along with about everyone. Sometimes I may seem quiet and distant but in some situations I’d rather observe than participate.

*shrugs shoulders*

I like to think I’m funny, even if others say I’m not, I just hope at least I can make this girl laugh!

*laughs*

I’m interested in someone like me, easy going and with a good sense of humour! Also someone who can cook.

For love!

Lee DongHyuck

My name is Donghyuck but that’s the sane me, you can call me Haechan instead! I’m a Gemini.

I have a very bright personality and I can definitely cheer everybody up! I am also very affectionate so don’t mind me giving out free hugs and kisses!

*wiggles eyebrows*

I like tasty food, football and anything related to music. I love to dance and make up my own unique moves so please join me, I’ll teach you.

*winks*

I’m not very picky but I like a girl with good vocals and an easy to listen voice.

Ok cut!

Na Jaemin

My name is Jaemin and I’m a Leo.

I am a very bubbly guy and I might get a bit loud but it’s all in good fashion!

*laughs*

I like to dance and to play the piano. My favorite movie genre is horror but it’s ok if she doesn’t like that, she can always hold on to me if she’s scared.

*wiggles eyebrows*

I want someone who’s humble and that puts peoples needs first. It needs to be someone who I can share my heart with.

Wow, so sexy!

Liu Yangyang

My name is Yangyang, yes it’s not a nickname! I’m a Libra.

I’m an energetic and sweet guy. You can trust me with anything and I can give you a good laugh.

*smiles*

When I was a kid I wanted to be a racer, but now I just want to race my way into this girl’s heart.

*laughs*

I like an adventurous girl who’s affectionate and honest and will have fun with me.

I’m very happy to be here!

Osaki Shotaro

My name is Shotaro and I’m a Sagittarius.

I’m a cheerful and sincere guy, happiness is my middle name! I’m curious, impulsive and adventurous so hopefully I’ll find someone who can keep up!

*winks*

I like to watch mukbangs and to play football, but my favorite thing to do is dance so let’s dance together!

*smiles*

I don’t have an ideal type, I like everybody!

Let’s start the adventure!

Jung Sungchan

My name is Sungchan and I’m a Virgo.

I’m a serene and reliable guy, but I’m also a perfectionist and it’s difficult to convince me of things.

*shrugs shoulders*

I like to exercise and play games. I enjoy sunny days the best and maybe I can find some company to enjoy them with me.

*winks*

I’m just looking for someone that matches well with me.

I’m ready!

Zhong Chenle

My name is Chenle and I’m a Scorpio.

I’m a friendly, cheerful and confident guy, even if people get startled by my laugh.

*laughs in dolphin*

I like to play football, play the piano and cook. I am afraid of spiders so unfortunately it would have to be the girl saving me from them!

*scratches the back of his head*

I don’t have an ideal type.

Ok, let’s do it!

Park Jisung

My name is Jisung and I’m an Aquarius.

I may come up as an awkward guy but I promise I’m nice and funny once you get to know me!

*winks*

I have a good hunch so I’m very good at making decisions. I like to play soccer and video games, but not scary ones because I get startled easily!

*laughs*

The perfect girl for me is someone who I can be friends with first.

Let’s live this moment!

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