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devandahlcourte-work-in-progress · 2 years

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Section 5. eight chapters ending with chapter 26

I am reposting these first eighty-two chapters (in 22 sections) plus the prologue and the preface.

These posts will be the updated versions from my DeviantArt account, and since Tumblr may not display all the text correctly (it destroys anything I had in italics or underlined) I would still recommend reading everything there, on DeviantArt. They will also include internal links that navigate between the chapters on DeviantArt and will take the reader off Tumblr if clicked.

This came about because I noticed search engines were finding random sections of my book and displaying them along with some other people’s blog posts.

Okay, so that’s why I installed those internal links in each one… so that if anyone gets to a random section by way of a search engine and would like to read the story from the beginning, they can.

Only then did I realize that it wasn’t getting it’s search results from DeviantArt, but from old Tumblr.

There’s another problem at work here besides unrefined searches…

There is a new species of virus on the internet that likes to eat ancient Tumblr posts and barf them back up infested with adware - spyware - malware etc. The virus goes by names like TumGIR, TumBIG, TumPIK, or Tum(anything else but ‘blr’). The caps were added by me for emphasis so that maybe you can double check in case you’re not looking at an actual Tumblr post right now but one of these so-called “mirror” sites.

If you’re looking at this text through one of the counterfeit Tumblrs that I mentioned, then no link you click (assuming it even copies it with my links intact) will take you out; it will redirect you and show you all of the spam ads it wants to. So read carefully what url is showing on your browser right now.

If it is one of the untrustworthy ones I would suggest closing your browser window and doing whatever else you normally would in order to reset settings.

As far as my science fiction novel entitled “If And Only If,” the safest way to find it is by going to my Instagram:

@michelle.de.vandahlcourte

From there you can click on the link in my bio. It will take you to the beginning of the story on DeviantArt… the safe one! No malware.

P.S. None of this is Tumblr’s fault! It’s the malware/adware/spyware developers who are stealing people’s tumblr posts.

The actual content of this page appears below here👇

Section 5. eight chapters ending with chapter 26

↩️return to previous section, section 4

↩️↩️…and if you arrived here because of a search engine and you would like to read this story from the beginning, click here.

Brenda

“You don’t get to meet him, ever.”

Brenda could tell her new friend was a drama queen and maybe had traces of histrionic personality. So, real meaning: he’s a dude; he’s young; if he’s in the mood to talk to a girl irl instead of just online, I will meet him, when and where the two of us choose, and what you just said is completely meaningless. But humoring her right now would cost nothing.

So: “I understand and will comply,” was Brenda’s reply, plus: “it’s too big of a security risk. Furthermore, the less information we know, the less we can spill in an interrogation if we’re ever captured.” This had her friend Madhvi at ease. Brenda at first made the mistake of considering her to be very “Americanized.”

“Agent one” had in fact misunderstood “agent two.” Madhvi had been born here. It was her parents, each of them, who immigrated here with their families from Tamil Nadu and somewhere else in Madras(?) when they were both roughly preschool age. They had met here, while in college. Madhvi was as American as Brenda or Irving… agent 003. For some reason, she had never met any American-born ethnic Indian people in San Antonio. Austin was too distant a memory right now – that was middle school. The ones she knew of were all immigrants, at universities on student visas, or otherwise resident aliens born in India.

Austin was a slightly different social climate, she’d always been told and vaguely remembered but now noticed it, as she was finally back. You could see it in parts of S.A. You could see it at La Sardiña and Mud Hutter‘s and in the SAC area. But in Austin, it was everywhere. And that included seeing it at the Ligustrum Café location on South Congress near her old neighborhood. It was an indescribable energy vibe that she hadn’t really noticed when they left after her twelfth birthday because her life here had been more sheltered than she realized.

Anyway, back to her insight that was based on lengthy discussions with Renaldo. It sounded like a good idea at first: communicating like it was pre-telegraph 1800s. No electronic signals whatsoever. Only snail-mail and only physical meetings. Written documents only. Okay, the three of them had cheated a bit and used their disconnected phones, in airplane mode, to photograph each other’s written documents.

Irving had suggested photocopying them. They agreed that in the future, that would be the procedure. But for the first meeting, it was just too much information to spend a couple of hours driving around and then making copies. The documents would be printed when they returned home, and the original photos wiped.

Luckily, all three of them had shown up to their meeting in possession of their old, deactivated phones as well as their real phones. It seems like everyone has an old one gathering dust somewhere. But in airplane mode and with WiFi off, this couldn’t really be counted as online. Right? But it was electronic. Only now, the plan was to go online. With the help of Madhvi’s genius hacker friend known only as “Cryptomancer.” A great idea, if he wasn’t an NSA agent. Now admittedly, she was being somewhat dramatic.

Supposedly, large files would be sent both encrypted and then steganographically hidden in video files. Each of us liked our own particular kind of anime. The videos would

be some scenes from Made in Abyss, perhaps an interlude with Inuyasha and Kagome, Chunibyo... mixed up with some of the recent Ancient Magus’ Bride, and maybe even some old Ah! My Goddess! So pretty much anything we like, set to music that we selected – in other words AMV. Except before sending them to each other, we would apply a program to them that would imbed the encrypted files into the video file. Anyone observing our activities would merely see some people exchanging their AMV creations. To add to the realism, we would use our existing YouTube channels to upload them, but the YouTube versions wouldn’t have any data hidden in them if someone were to download.

If this oddball Cryptomancer wasn’t some kind of government plant, it would be an excellent alternative to all the pussyfooting around like it was 1839. But in truth that had been Brenda’s idea, inspired by Renaldo, to thwart the electronics spooks by going low tech.

It was those nights that she had first spoken to Wheeler and Renaldo. On the one after Wheeler’s mom couldn’t remember and after an hour of sleep, then another hour of tossing and turning, Brenda remembered Intergalactic by the Beastie Boys and went to the garage! That silly vid of their dad that she and Rosa had thought was such a riot all those years ago: it triggered the memories again and plunged her immediately back into full consciousness sitting up in bed.

Her older sister was home from college. Right. All the way home from UT. Brenda had wondered why she bothered living there in a dorm when she could’ve just saved money and lived at home and commuted... that was when she was still 17 and a high school senior and didn’t get it yet. She’d graduated and actually did get it now. Anyhow, Rosalinda still had laundry going out there in the machine. It reminded her of stuff Renaldo said about using some ideal white-noise-to-pink-noise ratio to hinder maser or laser window attacks. His voice droned on in her head, like an audio Tetris effect.

In a hermetically sealed – or at least plastered with packing tape – dollhouse box that was never unpacked since their last move over four years earlier, were papers: artwork, sketchbooks, some class notes, doodlings… And hopefully the Stalko-Taco writers’ guide!

Weird Shapes

It was Eileen, before the humans had captured her and held her in a psychiatric facility, who had coached them on using ceilings. Since gravity didn’t really have to matter to them, they could hang out while plastered to a ceiling just as easily as they could blend in with wallpaper, paneling, stucco, or whatever else on a wall. It worked superbly if there were no lighting fixtures on the ceiling. Brenda’s parents’ garage had been perfect.

She did not see them at all that night and had no idea they were watching her every move. It wasn’t until later meeting an actual Superhero from the future who could fly, stay under water as long as whales could, and heal wounds like a “Whitelighter” from Charmed... that she was fitted with a type of implanted device that not only allowed her to see their every move, but also make herself invisible to them.

But on this night they were free to observe Brenda as much as they wanted. Not that it mattered too much; they were basically just relieved to learn that things were going exactly the way they were hoping for.

Back to Brenda

It was at a five-day long creative writing “camp” one summer, enough years ago that she still felt a morbid fascination with Creepypastas. A few other kids there also wanted to choose a CP as their topic, so she had to participate in a drawing, and the character whose name she pulled out of the basket was none other than Stalko-Taco.

She was to produce a writer’s guide: set of conditions that open source writers could use when creating Stalko-Taco stories. For example, an old Star Trek writer’s guide would contain basic information: there’s a Federation, the Klingons, the Romulans, etc. It would prevent an amateur writer from committing a faux pas such as having a captain violate the prime directive – one who wasn’t Kirk, anyway – or using a cloaking device on a stardate that was before encountering Romulans in Balance of Terror, and so on.

Brenda got about as far as “It was a dark and stormy night.” Maybe not quite that bad. But after one line and five minutes of staring at paper, a boy named Travis offered to switch with her and let her do Zalgo. She and Travis exchanged photocopies of everything they produced by the end of the day. In addition to his most excellent storyline in which he went above and beyond the assignment to give an example of an actual story that might have been written by someone using the cannon restraints of his writer’s guide, for reference, he had just stapled on a printout of the original creepypasta story on Stalko-Taco.

If any of the packet she’d received from Travis was still there, it would prove that Stalko-Taco existed. Not that the real one existed of course, but at least that there was once a creepypasta story by that name, and that she wasn’t just losing her goddamn mind!

Electrified by the moment, she cleared away other papers from her hand and found that she was holding it. Brenda silently gave thanks that there were some old fashioned teachers remaining in the world who still insisted on primarily using paper. If there was an organized covert operation to erase Stalko-Taco from existence, it had just been foiled by a bunch of stuff printed on paper and assembled by a brainy middle school kid.

It was as she remembered. A bit silly; not something that she found to be very entertaining. At this point the most fascinating thing about it was that someone had bothered to attempt erasing it from existence. Oh, and the fact that they had all but succeeded. Three Days of the Condor, anyone? The obscure book getting translated into too many languages… was she the condor here and she stumbled onto a plot? Was this original Stalko-Taco story a book to be used for some kind of book code, as Renaldo had suggested? And as the forgetful Wheeler had pointed out, the story was not even very scary. Stalko-Taco was a gentle giant who didn’t seem capable of hurting anyone.

Lucy

So “Stalko-Taco” was a cop killer! No longer just the hilarious vision that Keith had told everyone about. They were all still in shock I guess. My mind raced with a bunch of thoughts in different directions. One small cul-de-sac it went down was: how am I going to get these wrist ties off? As soon as I thought it, they broke free somehow. The strong plastic ties that cops sometimes used so they didn’t have to carry around a dozen pair of handcuffs each, were nowhere to be found in the vicinity around me.

Did they disappear the same way as the cops? The cops! Yeah, back to that. The far more serious matter than my wrist ties. You lay low for a while when you have warrants. But for a cop killing… and a quadruple cop killing no less? They would never stop. There was no state that wouldn’t extradite back to California. We might have to leave the country, permanently. And no, the ties hadn’t vanished in the same way as the cops, I was now pretty sure, because the melted plastic would’ve burned my wrists. All four cops simultaneously went white hot before they were vaporized/disintegrated, whatever. They had vanished in less than a second.

Weird Shapes

Out at the edge, in the trees amongst the shadows they moved freely. Though they had been working on their concealment a bit more since the parking garage rave, they were still not as well-camouflaged as the predator had been in the movie with Arnold that many humans had enjoyed. If any of the skaters or the cops would have looked over and seen them? They might’ve registered simply as people wearing dark clothing milling about within the bushes. It would’ve led the cops on an exhausting goose chase if they had seen them and decided they wanted to pursue.

It would’ve been about like pursuing a cartoon; they could simply disappear back into their own dimension or some pocket realm as fast as Stalko-Taco could morph back-and-forth between a taco and a boulder. Had they understood the physics of this universe better, they could’ve simply dispatched some drones to observe the event they were so interested in.

These people in the mid 1990s most likely wouldn’t have even understood what a drone was and thought they were weird insects like big dragonflies, or bats or something. So their plan B was just to run away if approached. Under no circumstances did they want to interact with humans in this time. Everything was a delicate balance and up until now it seemed they were forestalled at every turn by the Chronopolitans, including their newest edition whom Marco had nicknamed “Timecop Girl.”

Back to Lucy

Lucycat wondered if they felt any pain. But only wondering in a detached sort of way. After her father plus everything in her own life, she had no love for the police. Of course her dad was a criminal. He had said out loud: “the only good cop is a dead cop.” A hippie from the late 60s, occasional commune-dweller, and participant in an SFSU takeover... in the early 70s he and his merry band had caused all kinds of chaos. They reunited in the 80s to address a witty retort to those shoot pool bumper stickers. Their new bumper stickers read: shoot cops, not people. Then they paid kids in different neighborhoods to run around and stick them on bumpers – of cop cars, naturally. No one ever figured out what happened and traced the prank back to them. Thinking about her deceased father calmed her a bit; he was atypical for a hippie. Most of them had animosity towards the cops for sure, but they didn’t think the cops were war criminals who deserved to die. So she supposed this would’ve been a pretty good day for him and his radical friends.

Batgirl had not done anything to deserve her awful treatment. But awful as it may have been for her, it was probably not serious enough to warrant the deaths of four officers. Their suffering was obviously way out of proportion to Batgirl’s suffering. Still, they had tried to reason. Since her sexual assault and rape by multiple men in one night, the so-called gang rape, the one they called Batgirl had become what you might call a “touch freak.”

She couldn’t stand to be touched by anyone, even casually. The fact that they had her tied up during the rape did not help. So of course she couldn’t tolerate being in handcuffs. The other girls desperately tried to explain this to the one female officer: that she was a rape survivor and that being touched at all, let alone restrained, could freak her out. They blithely chose to ignore this and tried to handle her anyway. Batgirl’s psychological and physiological response to all this was to simply “go limp.” She just completely fainted from the stress. So the bonehead – and soon to be ghost – cops cuffed her hands behind her back anyway and loaded her unconscious body into the back of one of their cars; still thinking perhaps that she was faking?

Lucy couldn’t recall her actual name, but it was okay; she liked being called Batgirl. They were only putting Keith and Batgirl in the backs of cars. That is, the two people in their group who were “holding.” And they were also the ones who got the actual handcuffs. The four pigs only had two patrol cars, so that worked out well for them she guessed. Everything was relatively peaceful until Batgirl sort of regained consciousness.

Then she was batshit crazy girl. Emerging back into reality to find her hands restrained behind her back, in the back of a car, was too much. Screaming! Thrashing! Kicking! At first the taco remained a boulder. It stressed Lucy out because she knew what was happening to the poor girl. Her still stoned and somewhat clueless boyfriend, Keith quietly sat handcuffed in the back of the other car, still looking around to see where the ruckus was coming from. He finally managed to scoot around and look over his left shoulder.

She could see the look of realization sweep over his face, and then the stress too. It was Keith’s stress that triggered the taco. It was indeed reading minds… his. Now that she replayed it in her head it made sense. At his moment of frustration over what Batgirl was going through, the boulder shape-shifted back into Stalko-Taco, recovered from its prostate yoga pose, leaped through the air a distance of about 60 feet like a monster from a Godzilla movie, landed between the two parked cruisers with a thud that reverberated through the ground and through Lucy like the ‘89 quake, then punched in the metal roof on the front passenger side.

Weird Shapes

If anyone from this universe could have understood their psychological make-up, they would have noted the creature-shapes were experiencing something close to awe as they saw the taco leap into action. Their translation of the phrase they used for Stalko-Taco would have been close to “the progenitor of the universe.”

They were badly in need of an interpreter in this universe. About all they had been able to do so far was scare the shit out of normal people or make stoned ones think they were having wild hallucinations. The physics of this universe was so foreign to them that they couldn’t really tell which humans were or were not stoned.

One that was mildly intoxicated that night – the one who currently went by Batgirl – had long been a target of their investigation. It was on this night that they realized she wasn’t really the one they wanted. They needed one of her old craft teachers. A woman who, in Wicca, went by the name Omneris Araxes. She wasn’t present that night (couldn’t skate or dance at raves, among other things) and Batgirl had written her off months ago as untrustworthy, a con-artist, and a cult-leader wannabe. Batgirl wouldn’t have acknowledged her craft name, but when she warned others about her she used it – also using the woman’s real name: Eileen Canales-Villanueva.

The shapes were however, able to read enough in Batgirl’s troubled mind to know how to make contact with Eileen and how to entice her into working for them, willingly and enthusiastically.

Back to Lucy

The sequence took place in a fraction of a second, from thud to punch, with all four of the cops’ backs turned. The thud startled everyone, but I guess some of our group were looking up right before the thud... at the giant leaping taco, no doubt. So many of the cops’ eyes turned to the sky just briefly, as if to scan for thunder or an explosion up there. The first one to figure it out was also evidently the quick-draw artist of the group. He spun around in time to see the roof of the car getting peeled off like a sardine lid.

Would shooting it have done anything? It was either demonic supernatural or some kind of alien technology. We’ll never know it seems, since he got vaporized before he got off a shot or even yelled anything with his suddenly-gaping mouth. The other three instantly moved their gun hands to cover their sidearms and were vaporized as well. Looking back, it was nearly simultaneous; the first one had not finished disappearing yet when the others started glowing. But close enough. I didn’t actually see the taco pick up Batgirl and move her, but at some point she was on her left side, reclined, and slightly in a fetal position – hands unbound, of course. The taco went ahead and ripped open the roof to the patrol car Keith was in and he very rapidly ended up about twenty feet from Batgirl.

While all of this was still sinking in, Stalko Taco scampered back over to its rock position, crouched down, and morphed back into its boulder form. Keith was looking at his hands like I had been; only the indentation marks on his wrists were there to prove they had been bound. Castadiva went over to help Batgirl up and I ran to Keith. Some of the other guys, I noticed were actually applauding Keith and cheering him on. I was pleased to find out that he thought more like I did.

Instead of cheering on the deaths of four cops, his first words to me were about how much trouble we could be in if we were implicated as cop killers or even accomplices. I asked him if he knew anything about a mind link with the taco and if he could tell whether their cars had the new dashboard cameras. He knew what I meant. Rather dramatically for Keith, he placed two fingers over his temple and spoke out loud: “I want these police cars gone… and never to be found again.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Both cars vanished instantly, with the same kind of flash as the cops. The last phrase had ensured that Stalko-Taco transported the cars into an active volcano, on Io. The taco had used its own discretion in dealing with the police.

Continue on to next section…

If And Only If

by Michelle Viviénne de Vandahlcourte

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

First Edition. © December 16, 2015.

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motownfiction · 2 years

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🙋‍♀️⛔🛠🎶🎃

🎶 do you listen to music while you write? what song have you been playing on loop lately?

i have to, obviously, it's integral to what this universe even is. but lately i've been listening to "bicycle race" since it's such a sam song, and i just finished writing his collection in the first of may series.

🛠 what tools/programs/apps do you use to write?

for motownfiction specifically, i use google docs. i had so much stuff in the google doc i'd been using since spring 2021 that i had to start a new one. it literally would not update anymore. i had 600 pages in it, lol, which ...... honestly doesn't seem like that much? admittedly, it had some stuff that wasn't motownfiction, and i took a lot of notes in it, but that's still what happened to the first doc, lol.

⛔ do you have a fic you started, but scrapped?

on this blog, no. i have stuff that i've tabled (like i don't feel like writing in ball of confusion right now, but i know i will again), but everything you see here is something i've started and seen through. on other sites at other points in my life? yeah, there were like four unfinished/scrapped things. but that was then.

🙋‍♀️ do any irl people know you write fanfic?

when i wrote fic, my best friend knew. as for this blog, yeah, there are a number of people who know about it. my sister follows this blog, though she's not an active tumblr user. it's original work, so i feel more comfortable sharing it, lmao.

🎃 do you write fics for certain holidays? which is your favorite holiday inspired fic?

yes, i do, but i don't usually write them on those holidays. the original 16-page story that kicked this universe off is about christmas eve, and i did write it at christmastime in 2021 (i started it right after i wrote my prelim exam, which is just like me). i also think i'm really good at writing the more minor holidays, like memorial day and the fourth of july. i think my first unofficial mini series on this blog is about memorial day, 1983. this is probably the funniest vignette from that collection. but yeah, since holidays are a big part of people's lives (much of the time), i tend to cover them. christmas is a hard one because of sam, but i do it, anyway. it's important.

#asks #areiphilos #thank you!

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kinktae · 4 years

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beyond the story: bitchin’

Hi friends! I hope you are all staying safe and healthy during these tough times! I really wanted to put something out there as a thank you to just how much support Bitchin’ got. You guys really are incredible. So, although this story has come to an end, I wanted to properly close the Bitchin’ chapter by giving you all a behind the scenes look at Bitchin’ and everything that went into writing it. This includes hidden easter eggs, backstories, alternative plot-lines, and a short drabble of the Bitchin’ cast 10 years after the story’s end.

Without further ado, please enjoy and thank you again for all your love. You have all of mine.

CHAPTER ONE – PARTNERS

Ah, yes, the start of this whole wild ride. I’ve always loved the whole nerd/popular person trope in fanfics, so it was only a matter of time before I tried my hand at it too. One thing I was adamant about was not making this a “popular person turns nerd hot/confident/better” fic as its kind of one of my least favorite cliches. With that in mind, and knowing that I was going to allude to TATBILB’s contract, I decided that I wanted Y/N to gain as much from the deal as Jungkook did. No blackmail, no just agreeing for the hell of it – Y/N was going to further herself and her dreams given the opportunity.

The beginning of the chapter is where the two are most separated and dissimilar throughout the whole story. It wasn’t that they were fundamentally different, it was that they approached life differently. Y/N was frustrated at how superficial Jungkook seemed, because she believes there is much more to life than just kicking your feet up and cracking jokes.

On the other hand, Jungkook didn’t understand why Y/N was so tense and on guard. To him, life was meant to enjoy and not take so seriously. Which makes sense, given that he grew up with minimal rules and minimal worries (bare minimum partners wassup !)

“So, do we have a deal? Partners?” There was mischievous timber to his words, the kind that made you feel as if this would all later come back to bite you in the ass.

Pushing that pestering thought away, you took his hand into yours, holding his eyes as you gave it a firm shake.

“Partners.”

God, this bit. I knew from the minute I wrote it that I was writing the ending of bitchin’ along with it. I knew this was exactly how I was going to end this story, bc the word partners has multiple means right? In chapter 1, this meant business partners, but in the final chapter… it means life partners. Idk, I’m just still really happy with this writing decision :D

CHAPTER TWO – THE CONTRACT

Dearest Yara. We meet her in chapter two don’t we? Yara is completely based off of my irl best friend Yara who is a writer and who helped me A LOT with this story. She was my biggest supporter throughout figuring out this crazy plot. It was initially only about seven parts, but with her help I managed to bump it up to 10! Everybody say thank you Yaraaaa.

You were angry, that much was evident to her. Yara was sat in your shared dorm’s living room, a thick blanket engulfing her small frame. You briefly glanced towards the TV, it was tuned into MTV, the familiar music video of Every Breath You Take by The Police playing, before directing your glare back onto the copper-haired girl.

The song reference is a direct allusion to writer Yara’s fic, which is one of my favorite fics by her. She was actively writing it around the start of our friendship so it only felt right to pay respects to her. The introduction of her character felt necessary imo bc I wanted to make sure Y/N had a life outside Jungkook. Plus, I got to use the scenes between the two girls as a way to reference the music and culture scene. Yara is especially a fan of the powerful women in the music industry at the time, i.e., Madonna, Annie Lennox, Cyndi Laupner, etc.) Yara is a raging feminist and believer in sexual freedom and libery for women, we do in fact have to stan.

“How old do you think your sister is?”

“Hey, don’t sass me. For your information, Lyanna still has all her Care Bear tapes. She threw a hissy fit when my mom tried to give them away last Christmas.” Yara recalled.

Lyanna is one of writer Yara’s past pseudonyms. She always used to joke about how whenever she read it, it was confusing because there was Y/N, Yara and Lyanna, which were technically all her lolol.

FUNNY STORY ABOUT THE CONTRACT I INSERTED INTO THIS PICTURE… Twitter found it and made it into somewhat of a meme because no one knew it came from a fic rip. I was actually rly embarrassed and even wrote some posts about how much twitter scared me on my blog LMAO. but THEN weirdly enough, I actually stumbled upon a small community on twitter who actually found my fic and would TWEET ABOUT IT!!! LIKE REACTIONS TO EACH UPDATE!!! I wish I could go back in time and remember how giddy I was the first time I found a tweet about my fic. The fanfic community on twitter gave me a new love for the site (which I had previously had removed myself from because of its toxicity) and I have met so many wonderful people because of it. People even made themselves a little twitter group chat to talk about my fics, and now we are all friends! I miss posting a chapter of bitchin’ and refreshing my twitter feed as all my mutuals would post memes and live tweet their reactions. God that made me so fucking happy.

CHAPTER THREE – THE ROLLERSKATING DATE

I love the bickering in this chapter, because unlike the bickering in the first chapter, it’s actually less hostile and more playful. Y/N is slowly letting her guard down to the very persistently charming Jungkook.

“Woah. Family of six, huh? So you have siblings then.” He noted.

“Yep. Three.”

“Tell me about them.”

Looking up from where you were slipping on your second skate, you met Jungkook’s eyes, surprised to see genuine interest in them.

I actually originally had Y/N brush him off here. I was going to wait until the drunk party scene for Y/N to open up about her family and relationship with her sisters. But then I kind of thought to myself… Why? Y/N made peace with it and doesn’t hold onto those insecurities anymore. And objectively, Jungkook hasn’t proven himself to be a bad person so… I let Y/N open herself up to him.

“Then there’s the twins, Rosa and Lia.”

“Hold on. Twins? Wait… did they go to our high school?” Jungkook asked, his interest in this conversation doubled.

“Yep. They were two grades above us.” You confirmed.

“Oh shit, yeah, I remember your sisters, they were mad hot.” Jungkook let out a low whistle, before stiffening, flashing you an apologetic look. “Uh, in a totally non-meathead way.”

You offered the scared-looking boy a small smile, shaking your head.

Some of y’all notice but, Rosa and Lia are a blatant homage to my name: Roselia. ACTUALLY some form of my name can be found in every one of the rewind series fics, including upcoming ones. I’ll give a cookie to whoever can find every single mention hehe.

“I told you it was dumb.” You laughed nervously.

It wasn’t that you cared much about what Jungkook thought but you had a feeling a guy like him, who was popular and carefree, wouldn’t be able to sympathize in the way you would like him to.

“No, I’m just… surprised, that’s all.”

Jungkook certainly was surprised. You had built up quite the impression on him from the very moment you two met. It was hard to imagine that the girl who was so unapologetically herself was ever unsure or insecure.

Somehow, the idea tugged at his heart, as if he understood you more if only just a little.

From the get go, Jungkook was extremely drawn to just how confident and secure Y/N was in herself. I knew I wanted Y/N to be unapologetically sure of herself and in her abilities. Something I didn’t want, however, was for frat boy!jungkook’s only personality traits to be liking sex and being a cocky bastard (although I am a big consumer of that trope heh). Jungkook is actually canonly incredibly insecure. He lacks a real sense of self, which is why he is so desperate for Kiri back. His relationship with Kiri at that time was a big part of what he thought was himself. He has somewhat of low self esteem tbh which is why he’ll go back to a woman who treated him unfairly. That’s why he comes off the way he does in the first chapter and why Y/N thinks he has a big ego... he’s overcompensating. He finds it so endlessly fascinating that Y/N, in all her confident glory, was actually once super insecure. He admires her all the more once she opens up about her past.

“Oh, Rosa is an intern for our hometown’s newspaper but between you and me those assholes don’t even let her write. She does coffee and burger runs for men in charge. And Lia sells ice cream at the mall.”

“What about your brother?” Jungkook asked.

“He’s training to be a cop just like my dad.”

“And your mom?”

“She works at a convenience store.”

All their careers resemble people in the latest Stranger Things season (Nancy, Steve, Hopper, and Joyce). Fun Cameo there.

“What’s wrong?” You wondered, following his eyes.

“October 16th, 1985. 6:48PM.”

“Yes. That’s today’s date and time. What about it?” You pressed, growing confused.

“Remember it.” He warned.

“Why?”

“It’s when I fell in love with you.”

This iconic line I actually got from the real Jeon Jungkook himself. While Jungkook wasn’t actually in love with Y/N here, it certainly was a cute way for him to express his admiration for her.

OH HERE’S A FUN FACT: the hickey scene at the end of this chapter where JK and Y/N kiss for the first time was actually supposed to be Yara giving Y/N the hickey like the best friend she is. Ultimately I went with JK giving it for... smut purposes... ≖‿≖

CHAPTER FOUR – THE HALLOWEEN PARTY

The decision for Y/N to be Freddie Krueger came from me planning to be him for Halloween. And I was! JK as Glen Lantz just followed naturally. I’ve seen some great edits of him as the character. Truly chef’s kiss.

I really liked that Jungkook came over to the girl’s dorm to get ready. I didn’t want a scene where Y/N was thrown into a situation she was uncomfortable with which is how much Nerd At A Party Scene go so made sure Jungkook stayed by her side throughout the part, going out of his way to introducing her to the people he cared about.

Tae’s character came in when I realized I needed a way to actually put Y/N’s event in motion. He was the missing link and BOY did you guys eat his character right up huh. Love that for me.

Another thing, the confrontation with Kiri was so hard to write guys, I reeaaaally struggle with girl conflict. GIRLS SHOULD SUPPORT GIRLS. However, not everyone gets along in real life so I went with Kiri being more along the lines of petty rather than outwardly a cunt to Y/N. Realistically, Kiri is popular and well liked among the greek life so being unkind to someone she hardly knows wouldn’t make sense. There’s definitely tension between these two but I tried my best to steer away from the typical cat fight/revenge porn/public humiliation trope most movies seem to follow.

CHAPTER FIVE – THE FIRST TIME

Introduction to Erik!!!! It was really important to me that Y/N had a life before Jungkook. That's why I wrote in Y/N having a fiancé. She’s not opposed to love, she just has reshifted her focus. She knows what she wants and is choosing to focus on that, which why when she realizes she’s falling for Kookie she’s so hesitant to admit it because she’s fallen down that road before. Even though Jungkook treats her with respect and acknowledges the parts of her she’s most proud of, she just isn’t willing to possibly give up her passions for love. Which is why she doesn’t immediately confess to him, even once she’s sure she loves him.

“I’m serious, nerd. You’re like… um… the sun!” Jungkook marveled, eyes growing full as the realization dawned on him.

“The sun?” You laughed.

“Yeah, like… you’re this bright, beautiful thing that seems like it’s here in front of me but is really light-years away.”

Jungkook was drunk, and although you were sure he was making more sense in his head, you couldn’t help but feel your face grow hot, unsure of how to react to his drunk analogy.

“You’re the sun, Y/N. You make the world turn for you. Never orbit for anyone else.”

And suddenly, you were kissing him, for no other reason other than you wanted to and that it felt like the right thing to do.

No real commentary here. Just love this bit. It’s probably my favorite interaction between them two ‧⁺◟( ᵒ̴̶̷̥́ ·̫ ᵒ̴̶̷̣̥̀ )

“Also… She’s, uh, currently dating Eunwoo.” You told Yara.

Your best friend blinked, silence falling over her.

“Yara?”

“Good for her.” She perked up almost forcibly. “Let her put up with his annoying ass.”

Yara could see the way your expression had turned dubious as if you didn’t believe her nonchalant act.

Yara turned up her nose defensively, “What?”

Ugh yes, some character development from Yara.... the flavor ! Yara (much like Y/N and JK) also struggles with love. She has a real fear of commitment and if far more comfortable with casual sex than relationships. She did develop actual feelings for Eunwoo, she just wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment so she cut him off. Fleed the scene if you will. Typical gemini smh my head.

"I don’t think the contract mentioned orgasms.” Jungkook smirked as you released his thumb.

“I say we let it slide.” You shrugged, leaning into him casually.

“You think?”

“Totally. Think of it as… a bonding activity.” You joked, resting your chin on his shoulder, peering up through your lashes.

“Damn, we’re really committed to this fake dating thing, huh.”

You laughed in the way that you hated, but Jungkook loved; it was loud and abrupt, but it genuine, and it was you.

“What can I say, I’m a method actor.” You sighed dramatically, causing Jungkook to grin before pressing a kiss to your nose, simply because he liked the way it always seemed to make you smile.

GOD THEY’RE SO WHIPPED FOR EACH OTHER ITS DISGUSTING!!!!!! I’m really happy I decided not to make sleeping together a big deal and I got a lot of feedback from you guys agreeing! I had a lot of fun with these two’s sex scenes knowing they could do it whenever they wanted.

CHAPTER SIX – THE STEM EVENT

I started the scene with smut BUT I wanted to point out that much of their time spent together is at Y/N dorm, Jungkook either napping, hanging out or doing work as Y/N would study like she always did. I liked the idea that Jungkook would get bored and would want attention from Y/N because she was so focused. Idk, I just wanted to write a love story about two people spending time together and figuring out how they fit in each other’s lives as opposed to some dramatic I mEeT HiM aNd mY LiFe bEcAmE cRaZy. There’s nothing wrong with that plot line, I just didn’t want that for these two dorks. I wanted Y/N to interact with JK’s scene and crowd but not give up her own which is why most days JK and her just lounged around in her dorm studying.

Also, I don’t know how the teacher/student roleplay made it into the smut, it just did, no further questions (ʃ⌣́_⌣́ƪ).

Then the event scene.

“You’re whipped, dude! Seriously.”

Jungkook felt his face go red, “Shut up, no, I’m not.”

“Hey, I’m not judging. I get it. That’s your girl.” Taehyung shrugged. Jungkook placed a hand on the fold up table in front of him, staring down at the information pamphlet you had worked so hard on.

“She’s just… so fucking driven and passionate about everything she does. Sometimes I look at her, and I’m just like… holy shit, what am I doing with a girl like her? I feel like she’s totally out of my league and being with me is holding her back but— I dunno, man. I just… really like her.” Jungkook revealed, voice growing small.

An unexpected wave of tenderness fell over the two boys, Taehyung throwing an arm over his little brother’s shoulder.

“I’m happy for you, bro.”

Jungkook didn’t know it just yet but dude was talking from the heart and, is in fact, totally whipped :’c

I loved the confrontation scene between the boys and Eunwoo because the boys standing up for Yara really did make everyone feel like a friend group, not just some character who happen to exist at the same time. It wasn’t just Y/N and Yara and one side and the boys on the other. They would all become friends, which is ideal to me. A boyfriend who likes your best friend and considers her a friend so you can all hang out??? Yes please.

Initially, irl Yara and I had noooo clue if Yara would end up with Eunwoo or not. That was actually the original goal actually. But after this chapter four, you guys made it ABUNDANTLY clear that you guys wanted to see Taeyara, despite the two never even meeting! Honestly, it wasn’t until this chapter was written that we decided for sure that Eunwoo was out of the picture for Yara. Part of me really wanted to keep Yara single, but irl Yara insisted on dick and frankly, she’s right. Bitchin’ Yara deserved a shot at love. She definitely has her own story outside of Bitchin’ and will experience a lot of growth in the future.

“God, I know. I do not miss that temper of his.” She chuckled, her words piquing your interest.

“Temper?”

“Oh, yeah. Have you seriously not experienced it yet? He’s got some gnarly anger issues. Not to mention all the lying…” Kiri paused suddenly, straightening up as she flashed you an apologetic look. “Yikes, I’m sorry. I totally should not be telling you this. I’m not trying to be that gross girl that shit talks her ex to his current girlfriend.”

Miss Kiri, Miss Kiri. She really acted up this chapter didn’t she. There was a lot of discussion about whether or not those things she said about Jungkook were true. Which was exactly what I wanted hehe. We come to find out that Kiri had definitely stretched the truth. She really is good at manipulation and understanding how people think and it’s why she is in the role that she is in. Messy queen.

CHAPTER SEVEN – THE ROOFTOP DATE

This entire chapter was inspired by High School Musical with Troy and Gabriella’s rooftop garden scenes. This was my shortest chapter and honestly, probably not my strongest. I definitely went into writing this with zero concept of what I actually wanted to happen. Usually when I write my chapters I have a 4k long outline of it beforehand that I go off of. Not this one though. I really just winged it and I tried my best to write a chapter that really showed off (dialogue wise) just how this couple bounces off each other. I do really like some of the banter they have in this chapter.

You had taken note a little wooden popsicle stick poking up from the soil of the yellow flowers. Acacias, they were marked. Pulling your knees up to your chest, you considered his words.

Yellow acacias stands the value of true friendship and can indicate a secret love! I thought that was very appropriate given these dummies' relationship.

“So, you probably know why I brought you here.”

You nodded.

“You’re proposing, right?”

“Yeah, I– oh, shut up.” He laughed, the serious mood shattering as you joined him.

Even though I knew they were going to have a semi serious talk, what with Y/N asking about what Kiri had told her, these two dufuses realistically are just too comfortable with each other to stay serious for too long.

“Hey, I said that out of frustration, I didn’t really mean it. I’m sure she’ll come crawling back soon.” You attempted to comfort him, hoping to sound sincere.

“Even if that’s true, I’m not entirely sure I want that anymore.”

“What?” You blinked. Jungkook shrugged.

“What about us?” He met your eyes, causing your breath to hitch.

“What about us?”

Jungkook stared at you for a moment, noting the way the timber in your voice had become higher pitched as if panicked.

MORE FUN FACTS LMFAO: I typically do this thing with unplanned chapters where I just go for it and write and usually it works out. But when I wrote this down I remember stopping and being like ??? WHY DID I JUST WRITE THAT ??? I don’t like deleting my writing so I had a serious think to myself about whether this was going to be the moment Jungkook confessed or not.

Canonly, I decided that Jungkook did in fact mean ‘us’ in a romantic sense, but because of the way you perceivably panicked at that possible meaning, he decided against taking the conversation in that direction, instead speaking about ‘us’ in a platonic sense. Poor kookie :(

“Stop. Listen to me, Jungkook, you’re a fucking great guy, okay? You’re charismatic and funny and care about your friends… sure, you almost ruined my event, but it was mostly to defend my best friend when Eunwoo got too pushy, right? You’re a good guy, meathead. I know I joke about your ego, but I really believe you’re capable of more than you think you are. Seriously, Kiri is so lucky to be the object of your affection.”

Jungkook watched the way the sun’s orange light kissed your face, a bittersweet feeling growing in his chest as he contemplated the object of his affection. Just a couple of months ago, he would have had no doubt about who held his heart, but as you held his stare, he found himself unsure and yet, entirely sure all the same.

“Jungkook? You okay?” You frowned, catching in the sadness in his eyes.

“Hm? Yeah, yeah. I just… realized something.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“…It doesn’t matter.” He smiled, the gesture hardly reaching his eyes.

It’s in this moment that Jungkook decides that there is no way you hold the same affection towards him that he does to you. He mistakes your words of comfort as you pushing him away. You are so kind and encouraging and Jungkook loves you so much that hearing you insist about him ending back up with Kiri hurts him so bad.

But you are still unsure about your feelings and genuinely believe that's still what Jungkook wants. You’re just being a supportive friend!! :( It isn’t until the end of this chapter when Y/N has her talk with Yara that she realizes, oh man, she’s in deep.

CHAPTER EIGHT – THE MISTAKE

BLAH. This chapter is so BLAH, you know? Having to write this chapter was SO HARD. I texted irl Yara complaining about how much I hated having to put my characters through this and that I wanted to just end the story on chapter 7 and keep them happy forever. BUT ALAS! I had planned for this to happen from the start.

You tasted like the mint of your favorite brand of toothpaste. He imagined if he had caught you any later then the mint would have been accompanied by the taste of coffee, knowing the way you rarely started a day without a cup.

God, he had missed the taste of you.

What you guys didn’t see is Jungkook spending the night with Kiri, and immediately kicking her out, freaking out as the weight of guilt washed over him. He knew he had done nothing wrong, that you weren’t his real girlfriend, and that getting back together with Kiri was exactly what he had signed up for. It was what he should’ve wanted. But it wasn't… because you were what he wanted. And that was exactly what he was going to tell you as he marched over to your apartment.

But he panicked. His mind already decided that your answer to him would be no– that you didn’t feel the same. So he kissed you. He had you in the only way he was allowed to. He was selfish and impulsive and so incredibly scared that he ended up hurting the person he loved the most.

Initially though, I had Jungkook get back together with Kiri, not that he slept with her right before sleeping with Y/N. But I decided TEEHEE let me just make everything erupt into flames. However, I didn’t realize just how angry with Jungkook you guys would get. I remember thinking DAMMIT WAS THAT TOO SCANDALOUS?? I knew I was going to have to work hard for Jungkook to redeem himself to my readers.

“She wants to get back together.” Jungkook swallowed dryly, eyes wavering between yours as if to gauge your reaction.

“…Oh.”

You shook your head.

“I mean, wow! That’s… That’s great!” You smiled, something tearing apart inside you as the words left your lips.

“Y/N–”

“Seriously! This means it worked, right? This is exactly what you wanted to happen.” You enthused, turning your head so that he couldn’t see the way your eyes had welled up.

Jungkook’s heart was pounding in his ears, fighting the urge to wrap his arms around you.

“Yeah… yeah, no, you’re right. We did it.” He replied monotonously.

GOD THIS PART IS SO UNBELIEVABLY FRUSTRATING! JUST ADMIT YOU LOVE EACH OTHER YOU MORONS! This entire situation is so convoluted because there's so much information missing and not being expressed, I seriously want to ring my own neck rereading this bit.

“Are you mad?” He called out cautiously, a heavy feeling falling onto his chest.

“Why would I be mad?” You quipped back sharply, causing Jungkook to flinch. He shifted in his seat uncomfortably.

“I just thought… I mean we’ve been fooling around a lot lately, so I didn’t know if—”

“If what? I had feelings for you?” You scoffed. “Please, as if I’d ever fall for you.”

And there it was— everything Jungkook already knew but had been so afraid to hear. Of course, you didn’t feel for him what he felt for you. How could he have expected anything different?

IDIOTS!!! THEY'RE BOTH IDIOTS!!! I don't know how y'all put up with this for so long. Forgive me.

CHAPTER NINE – THE BREAK

Okay I actually love this chapter. And for many reasons. Let me break down the three scenes for you guys.

Scene one: Kiri confrontation

Kiri is definitely an opposing antagonist. She is constantly working against Y/N because of their interests directly conflicting. BUT. I would argue that the biggest antagonist to this story is the inner ones – Y/N and Jungkook's lack of ability to admit their feelings constantly holding them both back from their happy ending. That being said, a confrontation scene between Y/N and Kiri was MUCH needed. While I suppose I can understand why Kiri doesn't like Y/N, that doesn't change the fact that she has been disrespectful and catty. So miss Y/N had to put Miss Kiri in her place (•̀ᴗ•́)

Scene two: Yara and Tae at the library

Fanservice. That is all. LMFAOOO y'all reallllyyy wanted it to happen and who am I to deny my people what they want. It was really fun getting to explore my side characters and develop them through interactions outside the two main characters. IRL Yara also mentioned giving bitchin’ Yara and Tae their own chapter as a joke and I was like LOL BET. I fully was going to but then I got the idea for the next scene and was like ahh ok maybe not the whole chapter.

Scene three: Meeting with Erik

So. This was a SUPER last minute decision. Like, it wasn’t until I was writing this chapter that I planned on Erik making an appearance. I saw a tweet with someone saying their bitchin theories and they mentioned Erik appearing out of nowhere and I was like,,, HOLD ON!!!! That could be kind of spicy ≖‿≖

I knew for a fact JK was NOT going to be forgiven in this chapter; I needed a way to lay the situation out between the two dorks without trying to seem like I was trying to sway my audience in a way that didn't make sense to the story. Y/N was rightfully angry. But she wasn't only angry about the timing of the sex. She was angry that Jungkook went back to Kiri at all and there was no way she was going to admit that. So who better to lay it all out than calculated, unbiased third party Erik. He deserved some character development after all.

I also liked the idea that Y/N had, in theory, “romantic options.” Losing Jungkook didn’t mean the end of her life. Having my female lead stand on her own was very important to me.

CHAPTER TEN – THE END

RIGHT OF THE BAT I needed Jungkook to suffer. So that whole scene where he tries to interact with his old group only for his presence to make everything awkward MMMM yes, sweet revenge on my part.

You were surprised. His hair was no longer shaggy and long like you remembered it. Instead, it had been freshly cut, looking healthy and neatly styled for the first time since you met Jungkook.

THE WAY SO MANY PEOPLE COMMENTED ON THIS LINE “but Y/N liked it long?!?” IS SO FUNNNYyyyy. So let me clarify a thing. Jungkook had always wanted to cut his hair right. The only reason he didn’t was because Y/N told him not to. With Y/N no longer in the picture to convince him out of it, he cut his hair. That’s really all there is to it skfjsjf.

You know, I had written this part around the time I had just finished up the third ch believe it or not. And it was COMPLETELY different. I had it planned that Yara and Y/N ignored him throughout class and Yara had gone back after the bell rang to go verbally assault JK. And as the two hashed it out, only then was that when Jungkook would realize that he liked Y/N after Yara literally spelled it out for him.

“You like her, dumbass!” Was what I had written Yara saying. I really had written him in denial for ten chapters, I was a whole sociopath (╥﹏╥). But ultimately, I decided that Jungkook came to that conclusion on his own and the decision to apologize to Y/N would have been made over winter break.

“You said Kiri came over asking for you back, yet you still came over and slept with me the next day. Even though the two of you had sex the night before. Do you understand how that makes me feel?”

“I’m—”

“Like garbage!" You emphasized, the white paint of the door somehow irritating you further. "I felt like I was something you threw away and picked back up whenever you felt like getting your dick wet.”

Your chest was rising and falling rapidly, and you tried your hardest to not let your emotions get the best of you.

“Not to mention to everyone else, it looks like you cheated on me. Which makes me look like a fucking idiot." You scoffed.

Jungkook said nothing in reply, which somehow made it easier to say all you should have said that day in your room.

“It just sucks to realize that someone you once cared about sees you as nothing more than a toy. It fucking sucks.”

Man :( writing this hurt my heart. I really, really, love bitchin!y/n and writing her hurting freaking stinks. But she had to speak her mind. She deserves the chance to get everything off her chest with the way Jungkook hurt her.

Your heart and mind were in constant paradox, torn between wanting him back and wanting him to know just how much he had hurt you. Your mind ultimately won the battle, of course, but as Jungkook stood just a few inches of drywood apart pouring his heart out, it was hard to say which major organ was responsible for your next words.

The creak of the door being pushed open sent Jungkook's eyes wide, revealing your hesitant form. You had your arms crossed over your chest as if to guard the contents inside of it.

You looked like an angel underneath the bathroom's blue fluorescent lights, beautiful and lovely, a stark contrast from your next crushing sentence.

“I slept with Erik.”

Hehe. Ofc my girl Y/N had to have a rebound!!! She knows that life goes on. However, as I wrote in, she definitely regretted it. It was kind of the same situation that Jungkook was in where he pursued something just because it was familiar and a distraction and not because he really wanted it. Both Y/N and Jungkook are flawed characters but that’s okay! If anything, Y/N’s mistake of sleeping with Erik is what allows her to forgive Jungkook. Knowing first hand how complicated their entire relationship really was.

“I don’t need you… but I don’t think I want a life without you.” You finished shyly.

Your eyes were locked with his when suddenly a small noise escaped him, eyes pulling away from yours as his head moved to attempt to hide the way his eyes had grown wet.

I got this line from one of my best friends after her ex broke up with her. It made me physically sad and really sympathize with her so I quickly wrote it down into my notes app to save for later LMAOOOO. Knowing that you are your own person and life will inevitably go on after losing someone, but that your heart still wants and is pleading for the one person you can’t have. SO SAD. I’m happy I got to use this line in one of my fics.

The note Jungkook wrote Y/N,,, imagine him not being able to sleep one night over winter break so he just writes down everything he should have told Y/N while he still had the chance…. I’ll for real cry dude, he’s so cute. Also, the line about him buying you fluffy Halloween socks for Christmas went over people’s heads I think but HECK I THOUGHT THAT WAS SO FUNNY AND SWEET (because Y/N bought Christmas socks when it was Halloween teehee).

"Are you two dorks done crying?" Yara’s voice rang out suddenly, causing both of you to jump apart.

"Yara, you creep! Privacy, dude! Ever try knocking?" You sniffed, wiping at your face hurriedly.

"What? Like you were peeing with Jungkook in the bathroom? Please." She waved you off, walking back into the living room to give you two some privacy. She did say Jungkook had 15 minutes before she’d have to come back in after all. "Anyway, Tae will be over in 10 minutes for the Saved By The Bell marathon that’s on so you guys are more than welcomed to join." She called out from her newly seated position on the couch.

I included this scene with Yara because things were getting too serious for my liking ngl. Plus the idea that the four of them would all come together at the end for a much needed reunion made my happy bitchin heart soar.

Jungkook let out a laugh, his palm finding your cheek, eyes locked on your lips. You were preening for his kiss, mouth parting slightly as you anticipated it.

“Partners?”

The question took you by surprise, eyes widening at your not so pretend lover.

Idiot.

“Partners.” You smiled softly, eyes shiny and brimming with tears as he kissed you for what must have been the millionth time, but still somehow felt like the first.

UGH I LOVE THEM I REALLY DO. I was so happy with how this final scene came out :( They’re partners, they really are I miss these boneheads.

AND NOW, I PRESENT THE CANON FUTURE OF THE BITCHIN UNIVERSE...

10 YEARS LATER

Let’s be honest, Jungkook popped the question the day of graduation, he can’t imagine a life in which you wouldn’t be beside him

You said yes (shocker)

Cue Jungkook being the most wonderful partner and respecting your wish to finish your residency program before having the wedding

You absolutely kick ass at being a neonatal surgeon

Also, Jungkook started a film company! It’s small but he loves what he does and works with colleges and helps out the film majors with resources and equipment <3

SO IT'S THE DAY OF YOUR WEDDING RIGHT

Yara and your sisters are helping you get ready, with your best friend as the ever so reassuring maid of honor

And by that I mean you’re as calm as a cucumber and Yara is one wrong move away from having a stroke

“Y/N… Don’t freak out....The catering company put in two orders of shrimp instead of chicken and steak.”

“Yara, it’s okay.”

“NO ITS NOT???? THIS IS YOUR WEDDING DAY AND YOU’RE GETTING CRUSTACEANS.”

Y/N making Yara take a seat and practice some breathing exercises so she doesn’t upset the baby

Oh yeah, Yara is 10 weeks pregnant

Taehyung is the dad lol

Yara and Taehyung have been together ever since that day at the library hehe <3

They moved in together and adopted a cat and everything (sweet boy Tae wanted a dog but Yara’s afraid of dogs and Tae would do anything for that woman so Yeontan the cat it is)

Yara refuses to put a label on their relationship even after all this time, and Tae doesn’t ask for one. They’re happy and dedicated to each other and don’t feel the need to put pressure on something that’s already so perfect

Yara is actually violently in love with Tae but still scoffs when Y/N tries to bring it up

“Oh my god, you’re so in love with him”

“Huh??? you must be sick or something. Get well soon, damn :/”

Yara likes to come up with different labels for Taehyung every time she has to introduce him. Among her favorites are roommate, rent sharer, baby daddy and penis lender

Speaking of Taehyung, he’d have a hand on Jungkook’s shoulder as he tries to calm down the panicking groom to be

“JK, breathe.”

“What if she doesn’t show up? What if she doesn’t want to marry me? What if I pressured her into this and— and I’ve freaked her out and now she hates me?”

“Dude, you guys have been engaged for eight years. She’s had her opportunity to run. She’ll show up.”

Taehyung scruffing up the younger man’s hair reassuringly, which only flusters him more because DAMMIT he wants to look perfect for you and now his hair is messed up >:(

(You like him no matter what his hair looks like though)

Jungkook literally swallowing down a sob as you walk down the aisle and he lays his eyes on you for the first time

You having a dumb smile on your face the entire walk over because your husband to be is crying and you haven’t even exchanged vows yet

The entire audience going all sobby when you finally do exchange vows because they’re so beautiful and real

The ten years together has not been easy— from financial struggles as you tried to support yourself through med school, to personal conflicts when Jungkook wanted to start a family already

But you guys figured it out

You always do

He’s your person. And you are his.

Y/N’s sisters Rosa and Lia are a WRECK— even your dad is tearing up

Your family loves Jungkook and have been counting down the days until you guys married, let’s be honest

“You may now kiss the bride.”

Jungkook punching the air with a “FINALLY!” before kissing the hell out of you

The cutting of the cake inevitably turning into a food fight

The shrimp entrees turning out to be pretty damn good

Yara catching the bouquet and wagging her brows at Taehyung suggestively

Jungkook pulling you aside to take photos of you outside the venue because you look so so pretty and he loves the way you smile when he’s the one behind the camera

The party is in full session, your siblings tearing up the dance floor like the extroverts they are

You and Jungkook are sat at the head of the room, hands intertwined underneath the table as you watch a tired and painfully sober Yara swing her bare feet onto Taehyung’s lap, requesting a foot rub

Watching your pregnant best friend and her lover together, you turned towards your own, smile impossibly wide

“What?”

“Let’s have a baby.” You’d grin, so stupid happy

Jungkook’s eyes going round and immediately jumping up from his seat because god that’s all he’s ever wanted

Being tugged out the room by a giddy Jungkook, one of your heels flinging off somewhere behind you.

“What’s happening? Where are we going?!”

The two of you find yourself in a storage room somewhere on the hotel floor

“Jeon Jungkook, what the hell—“

His mouth find yourself, kissing you in a way that couldn’t at the altar

You kissed him back without questions, arms wrapping around the man you now called your husband

“I love you.” He’d sigh into your neck, his hot breath causing you to shiver

“I love you too.”

“Let’s make a baby.”

“Yeah let’s— wait, right here? Right now?!”

Jungkook merely nodding as his mouth found the exposed skin of your chest

“Meathead, we can’t just ditch our wedding to have sex!”

“Why not? We did our marital duties. Now it’s our guests' job to get embarrassingly drunk and make a fool of themselves on the dance floor. No one will even miss us.”

“Isn’t baby making what our honeymoon is for?”

“Screw that. I’ve done my waiting. Let’s start our family, nerd.”

Jungkook kissing your protests silent before you inevitably give in and let him take you right there and then, your wedding dress hung around your hips

Husband and wife coming together with shaky breaths and hushed moans as they promise the rest of their lives to each other, making every argument, struggle or moment of uncertainty leading up to now totally worth it

Walk of shame back into the party with nervous hair fixing from you and a proud grin from Jungkook

Yara figuring out exactly why you two had sneaked off to, flashing the newly weds a knowing smirk

The night of your wedding, Jungkook surprises you with a present

You unwrap it in confusion, only to see that it’s a glass frame and inside of it is the wrinkled and worn out lined paper the two of you had scribbled on many many years ago

Jungkook hangs up the contract right above your bed as per your request, smiling as he does and jumping on him the moment he puts down the hammer bc dammit it you’re too heckin excited to make love with your sentimental loser of a husband

And yes, by the next month, you are pregnant and incredibly happy

And of course, your daughter and Yara’s son grow up to be best friends, not a family holiday passing by where they aren’t told the story of the totally bitchin’ way both set of their parents got together

#beyond the story #bts smut #Jungkook smut #bts jungkook #bts #bts imagines #bts preferences #Jungkook x reader #jeon jungkook

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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Here's a quandary I've suddenly found myself in: where do you stand on writers deleting their own works, fanfiction or otherwise? I've had this happen to me on more than one occasion - I go to look for an old favorite and find it's since been deleted from whatever site I read it on.

On the one hand, I'm inclined to think that, "Sure. The author wrote it, it's their call. I don't own the work - I certainly didn't pay for it. It's their decision, even if it's disappointing."

But at the same time I can't help but consider the alternative - if I believe in death of the author (and I do), that an author's work fundamentally isn't solely theirs once it's been published, posted, etc., then it also seems wrong to have a work deleted. Stories aren't the sole property of their creator, after all.

But then I circle back. D'you think there are different obligations between authors and readers and the works being made in fandom space? I know if I had bought a book and the author decided they wanted it back, I would feel pretty comfortable telling them no, given I'd paid for it and whatnot. But that's a different world from fanfic and fandom space generally.

So. You're insightful Clyde, I'm curious as to what you'll have to say here (and to all y'all thinking about it, don't flame me. I haven't decided where I stand here yet - haven't heard a good nail-in-the-coffin argument for or against yet).

Val are you a mind reader now? I’ve been thinking about this exact conundrum the last few days!

(And yeah, as a general disclaimer: no flaming. Not allowed. Any asks of the sort will be deleted on sight and with great satisfaction.)

Honestly, I’m not sure there is a “nail-in-the-coffin argument” for this, just because—as you lay out—there are really good points for keeping works around and really good points for allowing authors to have control over their work, especially when fanworks have no payment/legal obligations attached. In mainstream entertainment, your stories reflect a collaborative effort (publisher, editor, cover artists, etc.) so even if it were possible to delete the physical books out of everyone’s home and library (and we're ignoring the censorship angle for the moment), that’s no longer solely the author’s call, even if they have done the lion’s share of the creative work. Though fanworks can also, obviously, be collaborative, they’re usually not collaborative in the same way (more “This fic idea came about from discord conversations, a couple tumblr posts, and that one headcanon on reddit”) and they certainly don’t have the same monetary, legal, and professional strings attached. I wrote this fic as a hobby in my free time. Don’t I have the right to delete it like I also have the right to tear apart the blankets I knit?

Well yes… but also no? I personally view fanworks as akin to gifts—the academic term for our communities is literally “gift economy”—so if we view it like that, suddenly that discomfort with getting rid of works is more pronounced. If I not only knit a blanket, but then gift it to a friend, it would indeed feel outside of my rights to randomly knock on their door one day and go, “I actually decided I hate that? Please give it back so I can tear it to shreds, thanks :)” That’s so rude! And any real friend would try to talk me out of it, explaining both why they love the blanket and, even if it’s not technically the best in terms of craftsmanship, it holds significant emotional value to them. Save it for that reason alone, at least. Fanworks carry that same meaning—“I don’t care if it’s full of typos, super cliché, and using some outdated, uncomfortable tropes. This story meant so much to me as a teenager and I’ll always love it”—but the difference in medium and relationships means it’s easier to ignore all that. I’m not going up to someone’s house and asking face-to-face to destroy something I gave them (which is awkward as hell. That alone deters us), I’m just pressing a button on my computer. I’m not asking this of a personal friend that is involved in my IRL experiences, I’m (mostly) doing this to online peers I know little, if anything, about. It’s easy to distance ourselves from both the impact of our creative work and the act of getting rid of it while online. On the flip-side though, it’s also easier to demean that work and forget that the author is a real person who put a lot of effort into this creation. If someone didn’t like my knitted blanket I gave them as a gift, they’re unlikely to tell me that. They recognize that it’s impolite and that the act of creating something for them is more important than the construction’s craftsmanship. For fanworks though, with everyone spread around the world and using made up identities, people have fewer filters, happily tearing authors to shreds in the comments, sending anon hate, and the like. The fact that we’re both prefacing this conversation with, “Please don’t flame” emphasizes that. So if I wrote a fic with some iffy tropes, “cringy” dialogue, numerous typos, whatever and enough people decided to drag me for it… I don’t know whether I’d resist the urge to just delete the fic, hopefully ending those interactions. There’s a reason why we’re constantly reminding others to express when they enjoy someone else’s work: the ratio of praise to criticism in fandom (or simply praise to seeming indifference because there was no public reaction at all), is horribly skewed.

So I personally can’t blame anyone for deleting. I’d like to hope that more people realize the importance of keeping fanworks around, that everything you put out there is loved by someone… but I’m well aware that the reality is far more complicated. It’s hard to keep that in mind. It’s hard to keep something around that you personally no longer like. Harder still to keep up a work you might be harassed over, that someone IRL discovered, that you’re disgusted with because you didn’t know better back then… there are lots of reasons why people delete and I ultimately can’t fault them for that. I think the reasons why people delete stem more from problems in fandom culture at large—trolling, legal issues, lack of positive feedback, cancel culture, etc.—than anything the author has or has not personally done, and since such work is meant to be a part of an enjoyable hobby… I can’t rightly tell anyone to shoulder those problems, problems they can’t solve themselves, just for the sake of mine or others’ enjoyment. The reason I’ve been thinking about this lately is because I was discussing Attack on Titan and how much I dislike the source material now, resulting in a very uncomfortable relationship with the fics I wrote a few years back. I’ve personally decided to keep them up and that’s largely because some have received fantastic feedback and I’m aware of how it will hurt those still in the fandom if I take them down. So if a positive experience is the cornerstone of me keeping fics up, I can only assume that negative experiences would likewise been the cornerstone of taking them down. And if getting rid of that fic helps your mental health, or solves a bullying problem, or just makes you happier… that, to me, is always more important than the fic itself.

But, of course, it’s still devastating for everyone who loses the work, which is why my compromise-y answer is to embrace options like AO3’s phenomenal orphaning policy. That’s a fantastic middle ground between saving fanworks and allowing authors to distances themselves from them. I’ve also gotten a lot more proactive about saving the works I want to have around in the future. Regardless of whether we agree with deleting works or not, the reality is we do live in a world where it happens, so best to take action on our own to save what we want to keep around. Though I respect an author’s right to delete, I also respect the reader’s right to maintain access to the work, once published, in whatever way they can. That's probably my real answer here: authors have their rights, but readers have their rights too, so if you decide to publish in the first place, be aware that these rights might, at some point, clash. I download all my favorite fics to Calibre and, when I’m earning more money (lol) I hope to print and bind many for my personal library. I’m also willing to re-share fic if others are looking for them, in order to celebrate the author’s work even if they no longer want anything to do with it. Not fanfiction in this case, but one of my fondest memories was being really into Phantom of the Opera as a kid and wanting, oh so desperately, to read Susan Kay’s Phantom. Problem was, it was out of print at the time, not available at my library, and this was before the age of popping online and finding a used copy. For all intents and purposes, based on my personal situation, this was a case of a book just disappearing from the world. So when an old fandom mom on the message boards I frequented offered to type her copy up chapter by chapter and share it with me, you can only imagine how overjoyed I was. Idk what her own situation was that something like scanning wouldn’t work, but the point is she spent months helping a fandom kid she barely knew simply because a story had resonated with her and she wanted to share it. That shit is powerful!

So if someone wants to delete—if that’s something they need right now—I believe that is, ultimately, their decision… but please try your hardest to remember that the art you put out into the world is having an impact and people will absolutely miss it when it’s gone. Often to the point of doing everything they can to put it back out into the world even if you decide to take it out. Hold onto that feeling. The love you have for your favorite fic, fanart, meta, whatever it is? Someone else has that for your work too. I guarantee it.

So take things down as needed, but for the love of everything keep copies for yourself. You may very well want to give it back to the world someday.

#fandom #fic things #mymetas #never any easy questions on this blog huh? lol

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senotsuri · 3 years

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Way back when, I posted an image of an OC, who fairly recently got a full name (she only had a surname back then.) So, with Eliza’s name finally figured out, I realised I hadn’t actually given my overview of the game that spawned her; Champions of Vestroia.

Time to lose my mind, I guess.

Some fore-knowledge before we get into this.

I am, by all means, a legacy bakugan fan, not a reboot fan. I’ve only seen one double episode (the become-smaller-child episode, which was cute, and Outer Demons, which has a super good premise, but the execution is. something.) By all accounts, CoV is essentially my introduction to the world of the reboot, and I’ll come to this later.

I played both the first game (Bakugan Battle Brawlers, specifically the Wii edition), and the... third game (Defenders of the Core, shortened to DOTC, also for the Wii. The second game, for anyone curious, is Battle Trainer, a DS exclusive.) This will come up later, of course, but I want to point out these two as they’re basically my control group for the quality here (not for the battles though; different battle system and all.)

I am incredibly stay-at-home. A lot of people I know irl I don’t have contact with, and most of them don’t live in my city. This is only important when it comes to the protagonist and literally no one else in the game, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.

So the game begins with the character creator. This is pretty standard stuff, honestly. My one issue with it is just-- this is probably my fashion sense speaking, but the fashion in the game is very... for lack of a better term, naff. There aren’t many options that look good, personally speaking. This is ignoring the issues where the protagonist loses their name, mid conversation, or is referred to as if I chose the male option instead of the female option. These issues are likely just oversights, by all accounts, but talk about jarring.

The first time you see your character is where 3. comes in. The protagonist, no matter what you chose (I have two save files, in case there was a difference. There isn’t), will always be a football/soccer player. Are you one of many, many people who isn’t sporty, who is trying to play as themselves? Sorry, your character is sporty, and you can’t do anything about it.

In the legacy games, this was never really a problem; your character was never seen doing anything other than brawling and interacting with other characters. Whether they played sports, or stayed indoors and wrote fanfic, the game let you decide on that for your character, by not having them do either of those things: your character only battled, or snuck around in DOTC’s case.

Once you stop playing football, you get to run to your best friends, and I guarantee you, you won’t immediately guess who they are unless you somehow already knew.

I mentioned BBB and DOTC being my control group on quality. Bringing the character creator back into this, the NPCs are laughable in quality. Any character who has the same model as you (older child. There are only two other model types: adult, and younger child) will look like a remixed version of your character. Had it not been for some characters having special eye shapes, you could practically cosplay any character in the game, because they were made the same way you made your character.

This includes your two best friends.

You could easily make the same character (minus clothes) as one of your best friend characters, without knowing it until you saw them.

While, yes, BBB and DOTC had the characters from the legacy anime in them, the fact that your best friends are nigh indistinguishable from any other character in the area, because you could easily make any of them in the character creator, isn’t... great.

Speaking of that. Characterisation is questionable, to say the least. Whatever bakugan you have in your first slot will answer to you the same as any other bakugan you have in your first slot. If you started off with Howlkor in the front of your party, and you replaced him with, say, Barbetra, Barbetra will act the exact same as Howlkor did, and it’s really something.

There’s only (?) Armoured Alliance bakugan in the game, other than Dragonoid, Pegatrix, Trox, Hydorous, Nillious, and the afforementioned Howlkor. That’s a small roster, by all accounts, so having varied dialogue depending on the bakugan would make sense.

The characterisation of the other characters is also a little funky in places. Your best friends don’t brawl, and I honestly forgot about them for a portion of the game. The tournament brawlers are practically as faceless as the villain minions, and the villains- oh the villains...

Preston. I don’t like Preston, at all. He’s a villain from the moment you see him, and the whole “try to find Preston” section in Helena Heights makes me want to punch someone. When you fight him in the Parasol HQ, his dad being the CEO, it’s fairly clear that Preston is little more than a tool for him. Sometime later, you fight Preston again, this time as the final tournament’s final battle, and he’s laughably weak compared to the other challengers. Remember, this kid fights you with Leonidas.

You’d think Leo would be good, but I’ll get into the butchering that happened to my death dragon later.

Anyhow, he fights you, assuming his dad will enjoy him defeating you. With the power of you’re the player character, you beat him, he hands all of his bakugan to you, and gives up on brawling for good. Kinda.

The next time you see him... hoo boy. In Old Town, on the way to defeat dear detestable dad, you come across Preston. He offers you help, and when player character is understandably suspicious, Preston complains that... one of his toys was taken away because you beat him, and now he wants Revenge On Dad.

I wish I was joking. His revenge, by helping you defeat his dad, isn’t because he’s obviously neglected by his dad (company taking priority over him, the CEO’s son), and then is used as a minion to try and get rid of you. It’s not out of bitter feelings because his dad doesn’t care about him, no, it’s because his dad took his ball away.

What’s worse is how player character reacts: “Oh! :) You’ve learned that bakugan aren’t just tools! :) Yes you can help me, despite the fact that you learning this sounds less than genuine and definitely not last minute! :)”

This is a level of stupidity I’ve only seen in DOTC Mira when Spectra tricks her into giving him Drago. He’s literally sulking and moping about over his ball, and then he sees the player character, immediately being manipulative so that player character can take down his dad for him.

Leonidas also forgives him, and has the same reaction as the player character.

Speaking of Leonidas! I think everyone’s been excited for Leonidas in general - we all love a shark headed death dragon, and we wanted one in the reboot for ages.

I refuse to call reboot Leonidas Leonidas. This is like the Shun Kazami debacle, but one I’m substantially more angry about.

Leonidas, in BBB, was untrusting of everything, wanted to throw down with everything in sight, had no fear of anything because “I don’t fear weak [humans]”, and literally came from hell. He eventually grew to trust you and others, to calm down and enjoy himself at his own pace, and was willing to have help from others, showing anyone around him that his origins aren’t the be all and end all about him.

Leonidas, in CoV, is immediately trusting of the first human who showed a hint of kindness, has a weakness to all attacks in the game, comes from Vestroia (not the Doom Dimension), and forgives the human who threw him away when he didn’t win the battle against you for him.

Ignoring the fact that Leonidas just doesn’t look good in CoV, I’d say he got bastardised. That’s not Leonidas, it’s just a dragon with the same name.

The main villain is the CEO of Parasol, an energy company that, assumedly, used to use solar power. Upon finding out that bakugan battles give off incredible levels of power, they turned to using bakugan, forced to battle, to generate power. These guys literally dug into someone’s house to try and get Leonidas. They’re evil.

On the topic of the battling for power generation; this has a decay effect on Vestroia, as it happens, as battling energy would usually go back into Vestroia, which would be recycled and reused.

The CEO doesn’t bend the knee to you until you break him, which is undoubtedly nice for a villain; I was honestly expecting him to give up, but he doesn’t. You beat him into a corner.

But as my introduction to the world of BP, through CoV, is lackluster at best. Obviously the game is meant for those who have seen the reboot, and don’t mind being completely disconnected from the story, because CoV is self contained, and Dan only shows up to be the tutorial giver (as a jpg, no less).

From what the game tells me about the setting; bakugan are often exploited by adults, bakugan do not like adults because of this, but can’t tell when a human child is manipulating them, unless another child removes them from that situation (the lack of agency here is somehow worse than in the legacy series, who knew).

Despite bakugan being around for 18 years in the setting, no one seems to be aware that they’re living beings, other than the main charcter, as if BP humans are equivalent to Legacy’s Vestals. I was already aware of Vestroia and Earth sharing a location in space, but the fact that drilling deep enough causes bakugan to appear on Earth seems... really weird? Schrödinger’s Bakugan Summoning Pit, but they exist on every digging site possible. Bonus points to all bakugan being able to speak, and they do speak a lot, but only to the player and whoever is around the player in a cutscene.

I’m missing a lot of things, such as battle items being the worst sometimes, I’m aware, but at this point I’m tired of rambling, so let me end off in a comparison.

CoV has, in my opinion, the same replayability levels as Pokemon Shield; I couldn’t replay either game to the end, and I wouldn’t recommend either to anyone unless they were desperate for a new game to play, and had nothing else to chose.

#Bakugan #CoV #Bakugan Champions of vestroia #I had Feelings today #I give CoV a 4/10. personally #I think me being a legacy fan doesn't help it. but I don't think any of those biases actually held the game back?#Shoutout to the one kid in Oldtown who says something about the state of the economy. and makes the player character enter a mild panic #the kid is like. 6. the player character is maybe twice their age #The kid says it with a smug face too I wish I was making this up #I think his name is Rusty? I could be wrong #Bonus: I don't think Player Character has a house #There isn't a single house you can enter. not even one labelled as yours. all you have is your hideout. which has a clothes rack??#I'm almost convinced that's exactly where they live and that's it #Extra bonus to the ventus centipod you find when picking a flower. a flower that gets a guy to quit his job on the spot without a care.#sir. sir where is your sense of responsibility. sir--#Also it's like. half one in the morning--

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honexjams · 3 years

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just was watching an ftm tiktok compilation that featured kalvin garrah and it got me heated, i have a LOT to say about him and his influence but i will condense it to this:

all trans people have an era of discovery and experimentation, for some that includes experimenting with pronouns online to see what theyre comfortable with. the rise in people IDing with they/them or they/she or they/he is infinitely more to do with more trans kids feeling comfortable to experiment than it is with unconcerned cis people wanting clout. (i know some cis people do ID as lgbt for attention, i grew up in a very depressed/depressing and drug-laden small town where its not unheard of for people, especially young people, to go to strange lengths for relief, comfort, and entertainment. this small amount does not tend to go through the worst of the treatment i had as a young, binary trans person in this parish, which alone will garuntee those folks didnt ID this way 'for funzies' very long)

writing off all of these young people as simply wanting attention is harmful to both nonbinary people directly and binary trans people who are young and trying to figure out what theyre comfortable with.

i can say for myself personally, that i am very sensitive so if the trans online sphere was as critical in 2012 as it is today, it probably wouldve thrown a wrench in my personal process of understanding my feelings and realizing the transphobic responses i got from coming out were just that and not the absolute truth. which wouldve in turn left me IDing as non-binary or nothing at all online for a longer time because i wouldve been more concerned with my fear of seeming like i wanted attention online than actually trying to nut up and come out at school or do anything i needed to do irl for my comfort.

i first listed my pronouns on a writing site thats mostly barren last i checked, and what i put was "he/him/they/them" because i was at a place where i was caught between what i felt was true about myself, and having just come out to my mother as an 11-year-old and her not believing me.

demonizing non binary pronouns and identities will 100% effect this generation of trans kids because for those with no support, they will turn to the internet. when both their real life and the online spaces they go to are highly critical and unaccepting of nonbinary identities, any kid less than 100% sure theyre a binary trans person will suffer at the very least an extended period of confusion and denial, and at worst never fully come to grips with who they are.

ive always felt really strongly about this but i feel as i hit the 10 year mark of knowing i was trans (and still being pretty young at 20yo) its a good time to express these feelings a little more formally than i tend to. especially because i fit into the like, Ideal Trans Experience of knowing i was a boy at a young age (i mentioned finding trans people at 11 but i have Very early memories of telling other kids on the playground that 'i was born a boy who looked like a girl so my parents raised me as a girl' which is dummy accurate to a trans experience often shown in media yk).

(this next paragraph is all personal anecdotes which are important to my point but if you dont care feel free to skip over it)

I do very much believe and accept nonbinary people as truth because i can understand how someone can feel like something that isnt understandable to the society they grew up in because that was my experience as an lgbt person in the deep south. I remember hearing my mom at a local parade (a Very Community-Focused thing where i grew up), see two teen girls holding hands walking down the street and saying "theyre a little young for that, huh?" to a friend, I remember asking her what 'gay' meant as a kid bc ofc i heard it at school and just wanted padding for if i ever said it out loud because as i knew it, wasnt a curse word but it was Bad Word (bc i knew from hearing it around school that it was a Bad Word)i wanted to know what it meant, she said "some boys date boys, its not really a Good lifestyle, but sometimes they do it". Ive heard many transmedicalists say 'how can you have dysphoria for nothing?' as in how can someone be agender. I am a binary trans man in a committed relationship with another man and I am frankly bewildered as to how a binary trans person can believe such a thing as 'the only genders that exist are ones i know about, even after discovering my own queerness' because I can perfectly understand the correlation between binary and nonbinary trans people. For me, growing up as a teenager in the south in the 2010s, gays were vaguely accepted but still ostrisized, and in school i had a classmate who i knew is a binary trans man because i still know him now, and I, my insecure, weak, self concious self emailed my teachers about my pronouns and name while he was still being called his birthname in class and my cousin, who sat in front of me next to him (thats how small a fown this is) was the only person who called him his chosen name, which was how i figured he was like me.

I personally dont want bottom surgery even tho i Fully identify as a binary male, I simply came to the understanding that a 'cis penis' is not something I will ever have so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ may aswell get used to the things i can tolerate, unlike my chest and 'feminine' features that T has changed.

Long story short if You are a binary trans person who doesn't get what the whole nonbinary thing is all about, simply try describing your own trans experience as if you were really not a boy or girl. As if you really, through your deepest soul-searching, came up with the fact that you simply dont identify with neither male nor female.

Back to the original point of binary trans people in a self descovery phase, if You are a binary trans person? try to remember the first time you felt really invalidated in a way that truly struck you as like, a direct attack on how you feel (like how those depressing 'relatable posts' do), did you ever feel like if that was something you experienced in a crucial part of your discovery period that it wouldve hurt a lot? maybe even to the point where it surpressed how you felt about yourself? All i want from the trans community is to not let anyone else feel that way. I truly do fear for young trans people and how this exclusive environment stunts them.

#talkin.555 #trans #ftm #if anybody has anything to say about anything i brought up lmk id be happy to address it fr #and also fyi i am a binary trans man #i Found trans people and was like woah wtf thats a thing 👀👀👀 when i was 11 in 2012 for context of what im tallembout when i say the trans #spaces online have gotten more critical since ive been involved #this prolly #isnt thst comprehensible because i started trxting my dad for the first time in a year partway thru #im #bout to jusy #b scrolling degular now because that was a lot but i just want the brst for #other trans kids #whomped tags

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astrarche-x · 3 years

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I read “Fangirl” by Rainbow Rowell after I finished 2 books I got for Christmas. It was staring at me from my sister’s shelf and I’ve heard something good about this book, Rowell is also quite famous YA author, so I decided to give it a try.

It certainly didn’t match my expectations; in fact, my disappointment grew with every page and I grew tired of the heroine, Cath - an introverted first year college student and fanfic writer- and other characters.

Why so?

- At first, I thought that snippets of Cath’s fanfics are a cool addition to the book, because it’s such a crucial part of this character, and I also thought that they will be somehow related to the events happening in-universe. But they weren’t! They didn’t help me as a reader to understand Cath, didn’t expand my understanding of the events of the plot, didn’t really give me any “story within a story” because they were so fragmented (I know there is a whole book about Simon Snow, but that’s not relevant now, is it?) and I already felt like I knew Cath’s writing style after like 3 examples, so idk why there were so many.

- I felt like the characters don’t develop at all. And what’s the point of the story if it’s not character development? In the end of the book, the only thing different from the starting point is the fact that the heroine has a boyfriend. She isn’t more open, she’s still talking to like 2-3 people (and writing is not like a movie, adding a character doesn’t cost you money, right?) and it’s not like those relationships change a lot. Cath and her roommate Reagan? They form a bond in the middle part of the book and it stays the same. Wren, Cath’s twin sister? They lose contact during the plot and Wren has a new friend to prove she’s a separate person, but eventually they make amends and sisters are together again. The other friend disappears. No big talk about being separate people but still needing each other, no reflecting on that in any way; they make amends and then Wren is just there, spending a lot of time with Cath like her own life never happened. Relationship with dad and mum? Stays the same, even though they were written in a way that suggests big plot points.

- Levi, Cath’s boyfriend. He doesn’t have an inner life. He’s just a smiling, nice guy with learning difficulties. But Cath can always feel safe with him and count on him; honestly, how is he different from her ex? Also some can say that Cath and Levi were cute tohether and they kind of were, but for me it was too much sugar and when their relationship became the focal point of the plot I couldn’t take it anymore. How many times a writer can describe the same physical features with exactly the same words? Like yeah, we get it, the character is in love, change the subject.

(Also his attempts at unneccessary chivalry... ugh. Not cute).

- Nick from the library. He was actually the guy I was shipping Cath with (and myself as well, if I had the chance). They had so much chemistry! But it was also strongly hinted at that he won’t be the endgame; in fact, I don’t really see the point of his existence as a character. He’s Cath’s crush, but after he stops playing this role, he’s mentioned only twice and then dropped completely. But the point of him being the crush and the writing buddy/rival is not even relevant! It’s not reflected in Cath in any way except that she’s a bit sad.

- Cath doesn’t develop as a writer. Actually, after reading a few sentences about how writing is so important for Cath etc, I thought that I would see more of her as a writer, but mostly it looks like “...and she wrote 5000 words that night”. No description of creative process. Talk about how her life influences her writing: 2 times (at the end of the book). Pressure from readers who? I don’t know her. Also I was really surprised that she said “I only ever want to write fanfiction, I want nothing of my own!” - like... who would say that? Sure, they are people who just write fanfiction as a hobby, but there are others who start with fanfic and then create their own stories, so if Cath is an established fanfic writer and went on to study English lit and take creative writing class, then having her say something like this sounds super fake.

- Cath herself was a boring protagonist. And I’m not saying this because she was an introvert. Lots of introverts make interesting protagonists; take, for example, Offred from The Handmaid’s tale. Cath is boring not only because she literally sits in her room and cries for like half of the book (giving me Rodion Raskolnikov vibes and he annoyed me like hell), but also because so little of her inner life is described in detail. Like, c’mon, I’ve opened this book, I want to know what’s going on in her head. But instead of paragraphs of her thoughts, we are only given a sentence, maybe two or three. And one of them sounds often like “she thought about all the reasons she had to dislike their mother” but then none of said reasons is listed, making this sentence effectively worthless. Very often Cath’s remarks about other people are repeated; I don’t even want to count how many times she noticed that Levi smiled a lot. And then she noticed noticing it; and then she noticed him smiling even more times. Seriously that’s his only feature? (That and his hair). Because this makes the heroine very unobservant; I don’t want to look at the world through her eyes, because it’s nothing there to see.

- Cath as a (titular) fangirl: she doesn’t really interact with the fandom during the course of the actions in other way than writing and that’s... unusual? Who limits themselves to only one form of fan content? I know she had merch and fanart, but she doesn’t interact with other fans (except for her sister and a random stranger). She also mentions having internet friends at the very beginning, which I assume would be very likely for a fanfic author of her status. Then her roommate says “internet friends are not real” (yes. literally.) and Cath’s internet friends are not mentioned again, because, you know, internet friends are irrelevant to your real life. Generally this book makes it look like belonging to a fandom was about the merch you own and maybe writing your fanfic, if that’s what you use as a coping mechanism for real life. No talk of reading other fanfics, visiting sites like Tumblr or other blogs, no interaction with other fans, no conventions, stuff like this. It made fandom look like something for sad and lonely people, and while it kind of is, it’s also a source of joy and satisfacton for many; in Cath’s case, I only saw it as a straw to which a drowning man clutches.

(Also I found it kinda weird that sex in this book is like Schrodinger’s cat: existent and nonexistent at the same time. Does Cath write erotic scenes? I guess. Is it adressed? Yes. And then immediately dismissed in order not to talk about it. She also wants it and doesn’t want it at the same time, which is fine irl, but confusing in a book, especially when she doesn’t reflect at that confusion much).

I thought I will see in Cath a glimpse of myself - first year of uni was also stressful for me (even though I’m certainly not an internet-famous writer). But she was almost extremely unrelatable. And then I started comparing “Fangirl” with “Loveless” by Alice Oseman, which has very similar setting - first year, loneliness, outgoing roommate, introverted protagonist having trouble opening up, breaking of a sisterly bond, fanfiction (even though Georgia, the protagonist, only reads it). I’d recommend “Loveless” a lot more. You won’t get much talk of the writing process, but hey, you weren’t getting it anyway. You will be given queer characters instead.

My final thought was that I’m probably just too old for “Fangirl”. That it was written for 17-year-olds who are anxious about going to college. But my sister is 17-year-old who is anxious about going to university and she didn’t like this book either (this post is brought to you by our displeased brainstorming last night), so it’s probably just bad, shallow writing.

#fangirl rainbow rowell #rainbow rowell #fangirl book review #well... sort of #loveless #book ramblings #follow up to that angry post from earlier

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illnessfaker · 3 years

Text

[ cw: f-slur, rape mention ]

no reblogs pls. this is a long vent.

haha not to be a hysterical faggot crippled shut-in freak or anything but the way ppl talk abt the defensiveness around the f-slur that some gay/bi male users (and some transfem users) on here as if it's some kind superiority pissing contest thing and not primarily about...respecting the boundaries and experiences of those gay/bi male (and transfem) users. like...being on this site as a fag-adjacent person (i say that half-jokingly because it sounds silly on one hand but on the other that's the most accurate descriptor of my gender identity, lol) is becoming increasingly draining and upsetting with how "progressive" homophobia against gay/bi men is apparently becoming, like, a meme among lgbtq people and that's acceptable somehow bc lgbtq people aren't cishets or because it's "only online" and therefore doesn't matter.

like idgaf abt ppl who aren't gay/bi men (or transfem) using the f-slur in every single context possible. if they're affectionately referring to their gay/bi male (or transfem) friends with that word (so long as said friends are comfortable with it) that's one thing. who cares. i even rb'd something where a cis butch (iirc) lesbian was talking about a gay man she knew who she was affectionatly calling a faggot and the things she said warmed my heart. if they're throwing it around at every opportunity or using it as an edgy insult against random strangers on the internet, that's another. the users on here who do the latter also regularly display behavior that like...shows a pretty clear disdain for gay/bi men (or transfem ppl) not apart of their online or "irl" circlejerks and echo chambers, and that is in no way disconnected from their love of using the f-slur, lol.

the "it's only online and so it's unimportant uwu go outside" thing also really feels like such a spit in the face as someone who both lives in a rural area full of cishet white men with guns that might try to kill me if i walked out of the house in drag (not to mention i live with my bf and his family and his parents are homophobes themselves i'm sure), and is also someone with health issues that usually keep me at home and in bed when i'm not working. i didn't always live here but even in my hometown the only "lgbtq space" i had was the high school GSA which didn't do shit other than the day of silence and was attended by people i did not feel safe around (e.g. my ex-friend who was very emotionally manipulative and ended up raping someone.) i don't have any other lgbtq spaces to go to other than online ones. if i never joined tumblr i might still be a self-hating cishet girl, or i might be dead, who knows. like, i've accepted at this point that personhood isn't something i'm allowed in (outside of my whiteness) so fuck me i guess if we need to but the idea that other young, impressionable, and/or traumatized lgbtq people who only can meet other lgbtq people and learn about lgbtq things online for whatever reason don't deserve to have us make an effort on cultivating internet spaces that are as accessible and safe for them as possible, or that their experiences and feelings are somehow unimportant is just...vile. like ofc not everyone needs to "pander" to "logged on" disabled fags like myself maybe but if you have any kind of large following on social media maybe consider that the things you say and do on said social media have like...an actual effect on other people instead of pretending that it's "just online" and therefore consequences for your actions either don't matter enough (to you personally) or somehow don't exist.

but going back to the fag thing, most popular lgbtq tumblr users on my dash i see nowadays just...simply do not give a shit whatsoever about gay/bi men, to the point they're normalizing "progressive" and "acceptable" homphobia against us bc they've convinced themselves due to the bigotry some gay/bi men (often cis, white, and wealthy mind you) exhibit we are "the cishets of the lgbtq community," despite horrific violence still being committed against us every day and despite other lgbtq people being capable of engaging in that violence themselves. ppl make thinly veiled jokes and memes where the punchline is men having sex with each other or effeminacy as if those things aren't primary avenues for gay/bi men being abused, assaulted, and killed (including acts of abuse and assault of a sexually-driven nature), as if said jokes and memes don't serve to normalize the mentalities that drive homophobic hate crimes. it's not like...a coincidence that most lgbtq people who makes these jokes aren't gay/bi men (or transfem). this doesn't even get into how things like homophobia and anti-effeminacy can pretty much boot certain gay/bi men from manhood...or womanhood...or any place in gender altogether.

call me exlusionary if you want but i think it's fair to say that the chances of people who aren't gay/bi men (or transfem*) facing the repurcussions of those mentalities in any meaningful way, the chances of these people actually having lived as or going to live as "faggots" is any meaningful sense is slim to none, and that's why they're so comfortable participating in this shit, and that's why i'm triggered(tm) by them "reclaiming" faggot (which doesn't really involve reclamation bc calling random strangers on the internet or gay/bi men you hate a slur isn't reclamation you morons), because frankly if you're not apart of either of those groups, you're just not a fucking faggot. it's not your word just because some rando on overwatch called you it for picking hanzo in comp. period. end of story. it's also just extremely absurd to try and claim faggotry as something you experience while...readily and happily engaging in homophobia and fag-hate (which isn't synonymous with the former term but i'm talking abt ppl who probably seldom ever engage which discussions and theory surrounding how homophobia instrumentates itself in society - or at least that which doesn't conform to their worldview). within the gay/bi male community there's plentu of masc "straight-acting" gays who weaponize this shit against fem gays and they (should) get held accountable in the same way. you're not special.

and god, being told my gendered experiences as a fag-adjacent person where (white) cafab women are fully capable of engaging in social forms of "oppression" against me and other fags in undeniably gendered ways is somehow an outlier and therefore not reflective of broader social by (white) masc urbanite tbros with definitively more social standing than i'll ever have in my life, as if i somehow developed this understanding of gendered violence just based off my own life and not...the reported and sometimes even recorded experiences of countless other fags who get mocked and silenced because anything that deviates from a watered down, shoddy cis feminist take on gender is fake news(tm) or bordering on saying misandry exists (like no it doesn't exist but acting as if homophobic shit like anti-sodomy laws, for example, has zero to do with gay/bi men's manhood is just nonsensical). convos on here abt gender being mostly dominated by (white) cafab women or sometimes (white) masc trans guys is such a mistake lmao.

anyway i'm tired and stressed and pretty done with having "acceptable" homophobic shit shoved in my face on a daily basis both online and offline but nevertheless i must persist because i'm not lucky enough to have anywhere else to go, really. just...think critically abt ur actions regarding gay/bi male sexuality and gender-stuff pretty please. please.

( *disclaimer just in case that i definitely don't see transfems as some "type" of gay/bi men. there are transfems who identify with gay/bi manhood and/or faggotry. there are transfems who don't. that's entirely up to them. thank u. )

#op #🌙#homophobia #gender #site culture #no reblogs -

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creativitycache · 4 years

Note

ngl asking for people who self-identify as "antis" is already biasing your results because the term originated from fans being defensive over getting called out (eg the types who sincerely think fandom culture is ""puritan""). fair number of people started to use the term ironically and it might be evening out but overall the post calling for responses on the survey still comes off as something written in bad faith?

I wrote a rather long and involved response and then tumblr ate it. Goshdarn.

Fair warning, this is a hyperfixation and I’m coming off of a migraine so this may not be very cogent. Please read this in the over excited tones of someone infodumping about emulsifiers, with no animosity intended.

So, tl;dr and with a lot fewer links, I’m incredibly interested by your perspective that “anti” originated as a derogatory term.

As far as I am aware, the etymological history of the word “anti” being used pejoratively is coming from some very new debates.

I’m also noting that you had no feedback regarding the content of the questions themselves, which I would be interested in hearing as I am genuinely coming from a place without censure.

The term “anti” actually is a self-descriptor that arose in the Livejournal days, where you’d tag something as “Anti ___” for other like minded people to find. (For example, my cursory google search pulled up 10 Anti Amy Lee communities on LJ).

I’m a self-confessed old. I was back in fandom before Livejournal, aaaall the way back in the Angelfire days. Webrings children! We had webrings! And guest books for you to sign!

I’m going to take a swing for the fences here Anon, so if I’m wrong please let me know, but I’m going to guess you became active as a fan in the past 5-8 years based of your use of the term puritan.

There’s actually a HUGELY new debate in fandom spaces! Previously, it was assumed that:

a) All fandom spaces are created and used by adults only.

b) If you were seeing something, it’s because you dug for it.

These assumptions were predicated upon what spaces fandoms grew in. First you had Star Trek TOS fandom, which grew in 1970s housewives kitchens. They were all friends irl, and everyone was an adult, and you actively had to reach out to other adults to talk about things. (By the way- a woman lost custody of her children in the divorce when her ex husband brought up to the judge she kept a Kirk/Spock zine under her bed. The judge ruled this as obvious signs of moral deficiency. That was in the 80s! Everyone is still alive and the parents are younger than my coworkers!)

Time: 1967-1980s. Is Anti a term? No. Who is the term used by? N/A Is fandom space considered Puritanical? No.

Then, when the internet came about, it was almost exclusively used by adults until The Eternal September. 1993 was the year that changed the internet for good, but even years after that the internet was a majority adult space. Most kids and teens didn’t have unlimited access if their parents even had a home computer in the 90s.

This is the rise of Angelfire, which were fansites all connected to each other in “rings”. You had to hunt for content. If you found something you didn’t like, well, you clicked out and went on with your day because you’d never see it again unless you really dug. This was truly the wild west, tagging did not exist and you could go from fluff to vore in the blink of an eye with nothing warning you before hand. All fannish spaces were marked “here be dragons” and attempts were made to at least adopt the “R/NC-17″ ratings on works to some limited success, depending on webmaster.

Time: 1990-1999. Is Anti a term? No. Who is the term used by? N/A Is fandom space considered Puritanical? No.

In 1999 LiveJournal arose like a leviathan, and here is where the term Anti emerges as a self descriptor. Larger communities began to form, and with them, divisions. Now, you could reach so many fans you could reach a critical mass of them for enough of them to dislike a ship. The phrase “Anti” became a self-used tag, as people tagged their works, communities, and blogs with “anti” (NB: this is at far, far smaller rates than today). Anti was first and foremost a tagging tool used and created by the people who were vehemently against something.

You could find content more easily than in the past, but you still had to put some serious elbow grease into it.

In 2007, Livejournal bans users for art "depicting minors in explicit sexual situations”. The Livejournal community explodes in anger- towards Livejournal staff. The account holders/fans view this as corporate puritanical meddling. The outrage continues as it is revealed these bans were part of a pre-sale operation to SUP Services. SUP Services, upon taking over Livejournal in 2008, proceeds to filter the topics “bisexuality, depression, faeries, girls, boys, and fanfiction”.

The Great LiveJournal Migration begins, as fans leave the site in droves.

Time: 1999-2009. Is Anti a term? Yes. Who is the term used by? People self describing, seeking to create communities based off a dislike of something. Is fandom space considered Puritanical? No.

Where do fans go? Well, in the last decade, they migrated to Tumblr and Twitter (sorry Pillowfort- you gave it a good try!)

What’s different about all of these sites? Individuals are able to create and access content streams. These are hugely impactful in how communities are formed! Because now:

a) finding content is easier

b) finding content you dislike by accident is easier

c) content you dislike requires active curation to avoid

d) truly anonymous outreach is possible and easy (for example, you anon! Isn’t it much easier to go on anon to bring up awkward or sensitive topics? I’m happy you did by the way, and that’s why I keep my anons open. It’s an important contextual tool in the online communications world!)

Now the term Anti gets sprightly. Previously, if you didn’t like content, there was nothing you could really do about it. For example, I, at the tender age of way-too-young, opened up a page of my favorite Star Trek Deep Space 9 fansite and pixel by pixel with all the loading speed of a stoned turtle a very anatomically incorrect orgy appeared.

I backed out.

1. Who could I contact? There was no “message me here” button, no way to summon any mods on Angelfire sites.

2. If I did manage to find a contact button, I would have had to admit I went onto a site that wasn’t designed to keep me safe. I knew this was a site for adults, I knew there wasn’t a way to stop it from showing something. There was no such thing as tags. I knew all of this before going in. So the assumption was, it was on me for looking. (Some may have argued it was on my parents for not supervising me- all I can say is thank GOD no one else was in the living room and my mom was around the corner in the kitchen.)

But now? On Tumblr? On Twitter? In a decade in which tagging is so easy and ubiquitous it’s expected?

Now people who describe themselves as antis start to have actual tools and social conventions to utilize.

Which leads to immediate backlash! Content creators are confused and upset- fandom spaces have been the wild west for decades, and there’s still no sherriff in town. So the immediate go-to argument is that these people who are messaging them are “puritans”.

And that’s actually an interesting argument! A huge factor in shaping the internet’s social mores in the latest decades is cleanliness for stockbrokers. Websites can become toxic to investors and to sales if they contain sexual content. Over time, corporations perfected a mechanism for “cleaning” a site for sale.

Please note there is no personal opinion or judgement in this next list, it is simply a description of corporate strategies you can read during the minute meetings of shareholders for Tumblr, Twitter, Paypal, Venmo, Facebook, Myspace, Yahoo Answers, and Livejournal.

1. Remove sex workers. Ban any sex work of any kind, deplatform, keep any money you may have been holding.

2. Remove pedophilia. This is where the jump begins between content depicting real people vs content depicting fictional characters begins.

3. Remove all sexual image content, including artwork of fictional characters.

4. Remove all sexual content, including written works. If needed, loop back to step 2 as a justification, and claim you do not have the moderators to prevent written works depicting children.

I would like to reiterate these are actual gameplans, so much so that they’ve made their way into business textbooks. (Or at least they did for my Modern Marketing & App Design classes back in the early 2010s. Venmo, of course, wasn’t mentioned, but I did read the shareholder’s speeches when they banned sex workers from the platform so I added them in the list above because it seems they’re following the same pattern.)

So you have two groups who are actively seeking to remove NSFW content from the site.

A) Corporate shareholders

B) People are upset they’re seeing NSFW content they didn’t seek out and squicks them

Now, why does this matter for the debates using the term “puritan” as an insult?

Because the reasons corporate shareholders hate NSFW material is founded in American puritanism. It’s a really interesting conflation of private sector values! And if Wall Street were in another cultural context, it would be a completely different discussion which I find fascinating!

But here’s the rub- that second group? They're not doing this for money. If there are any puritanical drives, it’s personal, not a widespread cohesive ideology driving them. HOWEVER! The section of that group that spent the early 2010s on tumblr did pick up some of the same rhetoric as puritanical talking points (which is an entirely separate discussion involving radfems, 4chan raids, fourth wave feminism, and a huge very nuanced set of influences I would love to talk about at a later time!)

These are largely fans who have “grown up” in the modern sites- no matter how old they actually are, their fandom habits and expectations have been shaped by the algorithms of these modern sites.

Now HERE‘s the fascinating bit that’s new to me! This is the interpretation of the data I’m getting, and so I’m out on a limb but I think this is a valid premise!

The major conflict in fandom at this time is a struggle over personal space online.

Content creators are getting messages telling them to stop, degrading them, following them from platform to platform.

They say “Hey! What gives- we were here first. The cardinal rule of fandom is don’t like, don’t read. Fandom space has always been understood to be adult- it’s been this way for decades! To find our content, you had to come to us! This is our space! This is my space, this is my blog! If you don’t like it, you’re not obligated to look!”

Meanwhile, at the exact same time, antis are saying “Hey! What gives- this content is appearing on my screen! That’s my space! I didn’t agree to this, I don’t like this! I want it to be as far away from me as possible! I will actively drive it away.”

This is a major cultural shift! This is a huge change and a huge source of friction! And I directly credit it to the concept of “content stream” and algorithms driving similar-content to users despite them not wanting it!

Curating your online space used to be much simpler, because there wasn’t much of it! Now with millions of users spread out over a wide age range, all feeding in to the same 4-5 websites, we are seeing people be cramped in a technically limitless space!

Now people feel that they have to go on the offense to defend themselves against content they don’t like, which is predicated upon not only the algorithms of modern websites but ALSO talking points fed from the top down of what is and what is not acceptable on various platforms.

Time: 2010-2020. Is Anti a term? Yes. Who is the term used by? People self describing,and people using it to describe others. Is fandom space considered Puritanical? Depends!

So I, a fandom ancient, a creaky thing of old HTML codes and broken tags, am watching this transformation and am wildly curious for data.

Also...I uh....I can’t believe this is the short version. My ADHD is how you say “buckwild” tonight.

Anyways...um...if anyone has read to the bottom, give me data?

#Asks&Answers #fandom #anti #fandom discourse #gosh I've been on the internet a long time...#started at the 90s now we hear #I still sometimes think about the dudes who were HELLA salty about the eternal september #they talk about it like it was a war...you bring up Usenet and they go #I was THERE Gandalf

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yuthoe · 4 years

Text

Schedule Changes (PENTAGON: Adachi Yuto)

HELLO, IT’S 12:48AM AND I COULDN’T HELP MYSELF.

I had to churn this out because it won’t leave my head. I’d like to thank my irl friend @shiiiiiiiiinwun for inspiring me to write this collection (yes, I’m gonna be doing one for all of ot9). And for someone who’s been watching anime since she figured out how to use the internet, you’d think I could’ve come up with better names, and faster.

EDIT (06/29/20): Hi! it’s my first time making an edit like this, so i’m kinda insecure abt it lol, i hope it’s okay. this is the 2nd yuto version i did, so it’s slightly better than the first one. tumblr rlly doesn’t want us to go overboard on image size huh

WARNINGS: n/a; some angst, maybe? who’s proofreading idk her. WORD COUNT: 3,314 it’s so fucking long.

---

Minister Sakaguchi,

Unfortunately, Her Majesty will not be available for your meeting today at 3PM; urgent matters have arisen that need her immediate attention. If you would like to reschedule with her, please reply to this email.

Thank you very much for understanding.

Regards,

Y/N L/N

Secretary to the Queen

You sigh, wondering if the email you’ve typed is in the appropriate tone that won’t offend Minister Sakaguchi; in all the years you’ve been working for the royal family it doesn’t get easier writing and replying to the emails of government officials, invitations to interview Her Majesty for magazine features, requests to attend public functions like galas and balls. The ridiculous amount of mail she gets, that are automatically forwarded to you, is mind-boggling, in anyone else’s eyes. It doesn’t surprise you anymore, though.

The queen as a monarch takes the backseat to running the kingdom, to any foreigner that decides to take a look at articles from international news sources. Her name isn’t mentioned as much as the king’s when it comes to referencing big developments in the state. Rather, the local newspapers and online sites have her name and face on some article at least once a week. The queen takes care of the little things, smaller projects that delve more into social welfare than her husband’s institutional programs. She is a strong advocate for women’s and children’s rights, as well as a figure in health outreach programs for the poorer sectors of society. Her compassion and dedication to her job is what made you want to work for her; she was like a role model to you, along with her husband.

It was a stroke of pure luck that got you this job; your first day as the secretary for Minister Yamazaki turned into you being his substitute with only a day’s notice. He had gotten sick with the flu and you were immediately thrust into a role you knew almost nothing about. So you took all the files related to the subject of the meeting and studied up on them the night before, turning up the next day and pulling out opinions as if you yourself spearheaded the project. The queen, upon finding out that you were new, was so impressed and had talked to Minister Yamazaki (who was still in his sickbed) over the phone about enlisting you under her employ.

It’s been five years since then. Five fast-paced, fulfilling, exciting years working closely with the royal family. At this point, your relationship with the queen is more of a friendship than strictly professional, and you’re grateful for it. The people you interact with on a daily basis are mostly considerably older than you--ministers, program leaders, the palace staff--and the talk is all business. So you’re grateful for your weekend teatime with the queen, sometimes with her children joining you, who are some of the only people your age you talk to on a regular basis, apart from the younger maids and kitchen staff. The afternoons out in the garden are the queen’s time to unwind and review everything that happened the previous week, as well as scheduling the succeeding weeks. The stress of planning therefore comes to a head on Saturdays so the week can sail by calmly.

Today is one of those Saturdays. Minister Sakaguchi had scheduled a dinner meeting with the queen yesterday--something about the upcoming fair for disenfranchised women, although you suspect Minister Sakiguchi will try to sneak in pitches for other programs she has in mind. The queen had agreed, so you penciled in the meeting into your schedule. However, the queen seemed under the weather when she came out earlier, that you had advised her to cancel it, assuring her that Minister Sakiguchi would understand.

The queen takes a sip of her favorite rosehip and lemon tea, fingers delicate on the porcelain, and you send the email, huffing out a sigh. You place your phone facedown on the glass table and take a sugar cookie from the plate. “Just sent the email, Your Majesty,” you say. “Now you can just focus on resting tonight.” You smile as you take a bite.

Your boss smiles as she replaces the teacup on its saucer. “Thank you,” she says, relaxing against the lounge chair. “To be honest, I didn’t think Minister Sakiguchi would talk so much about the fair anyway. She probably suggested a meeting to tell me more of her ideas for the women’s sector.” You smile. Bingo. “Is anything else scheduled for tomorrow?”

You glance at your open laptop, as well as the printed-out spreadsheet on your lap. It’s an organized mess of colors and times and places and people. “Just the charity gala tomorrow night. I’ve coordinated with Subaru and she said the king will be late by an hour. Will you go alone?”

She tilts her head in thought and hums. “I don’t want to be late. Is there anyone available?”

You click through the several pinned tabs on your laptop to the tab for the royal family’s shared schedule. “It seems Princess Akari is free, as well as Prince Yuto,” you say after a moment.

“Ah, Akari will be busy designing something for the fair, I think, so maybe she won’t want to go,” the queen muses.

“So you’ll just take the prince, then? I’ll contact Daiki and ask him to notify the prince.”

“No need,” a deep, disembodied voice comes in from somewhere in the hedges before Prince Yuto pops his head into view. He walks towards the table as you clear up a space for him, closing your binder and putting that on top of the clipboard among other printouts on one of the spare chairs between you and the queen.

The prince strides across the grass in his black dress pants and long-sleeved shirt, to greet his mother. He places his hands softly on her shoulders and leans down to give her a kiss on the cheek. The queen smiles and accepts the kiss, patting a hand over one of his; her mood instantly lifts, and her posture relaxes further. As the youngest son, she dotes on him a lot; he in turn always keeps his mother company and can rarely be seen in public not by her side or his father’s. You think their relationship is sweet, and so do the many news articles posted online about it.

Prince Yuto takes a seat on the only empty chair and fixes himself a cup of tea while saying, “What’s the gala for?”

“The orphanages in the farther provinces,” the queen says as she takes a saucer and stacks it high with dark chocolate-coated cookies, pushing the small plate at her son’s direction. “Some dignitaries from other kingdoms as well as celebrities will be attending. And I will announce the new scholarship program for our state schools. There’s a chance your father won’t make it, so I’d like a companion.”

“Of course I’ll go with you, Mother,” Prince Yuto says after swallowing a bite of cookie. He turns to you. “What time is it?”

“Call time for the royals and major government officials is 7PM, and the program starts at 7:30. I’ll contact Daiki with the details as well,” you say.

The prince shakes his head, but there’s a smile on his face as he turns to the queen. “It’s such a shame, I thought you two were talking about Y/N transferring to my office,” he jokes. It’s a bit that he’s brought up many times before, and both you and the queen take it as a joke since you figure he just wants someone closer to his age with more experience than Daiki, who is about four years older and has only been working with him for two years.

The queen lets out a laugh and takes her teacup again. “What’s the matter with Daiki? He seems to be doing a good job.” Her eyes meet yours as she takes another sip, glinting in amusement.

Prince Yuto is smiling his bright, beautiful smile that the camera loves as he looks fondly at his mother. He probably got wind of her feeling run-down and hurried here to try to distract her. You know the queen is the most important person to him, and the queen may not know it, but it’s obvious to everyone else. “Well, as you know, Y/N is better,” he continues, “and Daiki-san is a stick-in-the-mud.” The teasing makes you huff out a laugh, immediately raising a hand to cover your mouth; Daiki is truly a stick-in-the-mud, even more than you are.

The queen laughs boisterously, throwing her head back. “Oh, you’re such a jokester, Yuto.” She sighs, fully relieved, and you’re thankful he decided to stop by. The queen finishes her tea and says, “Well, this was a fun teatime. I have some paperwork I have to sign, so Y/N, you may go.” She turns to her son. “It’s so nice of you to stop by, sweetheart,” she says, and leans down to drop a kiss on the crown of his head. “I’ll be seeing you both.” The queen glides away, and you briefly wonder how she can walk that gracefully in heels over damp, unpaved grass--but then you remember she’s the queen and has been doing this for years. She turns around the corner of the hedge and disappears.

You sigh and shut down your laptop, gathering your stuff as you message Daiki about the charity gala. You slide the laptop in your bag, and put all the printouts in order into a folder, before slipping everything else inside. You’re just about to get up to leave before Prince Yuto’s voice stops you.

“You sure you won’t consider transferring to my office?” you hear the prince suddenly ask. He’s looking at you, piercing eyes that make everyone in the kingdom, young and old, swoon. And if you didn’t talk to him everyday and your self-control had been any less, you would probably give in to whatever he wanted.

So you try to mask your rapidly beating heart behind a fond, teasing smile. “Well, I don’t really have a say in it. Don’t think the queen wants to let me go, anyway,” you say, taking a proffered dark chocolate-covered cookie from the prince and biting into it. The rich, slightly bitter punch of the chocolate explodes on your tongue.

The prince looks at you with a small smile. “I was serious, you know,” he says simply. “I mean, you won’t be as busy so you’ll have more free time, and the stuff I do is just small, as a minister for cultural arts. I split it with another person.”

You’re already shaking your head. “I like my job. I love working for the queen and seeing the results of what she’s done. You know she’s been my role model since I was a teenager, so this is a dream for me. And as much as I want a break sometimes, I can’t let this opportunity go.” You sigh, heart heavy now, and stand. “I’m sorry, Your Highness.”

He stands with you. “I know I’ve told you to call me just ‘Yuto’ before, didn’t I?”

“But decorum--,”

“Yeah, fine, practice etiquette in public, but when we’re alone you can just call me by my name.” You don’t answer, and hesitantly purse your lips. And then the prince begins to pout. “Come on, if you don’t wanna work for me, at least call me Yuto.” He presses the tips of his index fingers together and says, “I miss you,” so cutely, with his big puppy dog eyes and hilariously deep voice that’s sorely out of place for the cutesy thing he’s trying to do.

You have to laugh, bending down at the waist and steadying yourself with the table as you cackle. “Fine, fine,” you relent. “I’ll call you Yuto in private from now on.” You heave your heavy bag up onto your shoulder with a smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

***

“You look beautiful tonight,” someone says behind you. You turn carefully, eyes meeting Yuto, in another black ensemble: turtleneck under an overcoat with black dress pants and boots. His hair is slicked back artfully, apart from the stray locks of hair that insist on falling over his eyes. Simple, but very handsome; the paparazzi and journalists must be having a field day with that outfit.

And you look down at yourself: standard black satin-and-chiffon off-shoulder gown that you usually wear to these types of stuff. Your shoes are your everyday pair, and you’re thankful that the dress comes all the way to the floor because they are getting scuffed at the tip. Your hair is wavy, the result of sleeping in a braid through twelve hours, but you manage to tame it into a loose bun that’s mostly out of your face. The only accessory you have is the necklace you’ve worn since your mother passed down to you six or seven years ago. Makeup is minimal because you are here to assist, not be the center of attention. Everything you put into your appearance tonight is just to make sure you look clean and professional. And invisible.

You roll your eyes at the prince. “Your Highness, I look like this everytime the queen needs to go somewhere fancy. I don’t think ‘beautiful’ is the right word.” You know he means well, but you’re just plain, from your shoes to your face to your position in society, you’re just simple, unremarkable.

The prince furrows his brows and takes his place standing beside you. “You are, though. You may not see it, but I do.” He casts you a quick glance before turning his focus to the stage, where a popular singer is performing one of her new songs onstage as an opening act. “And those photographers over there see it, too.”

You whip your head at him before scanning the event hall for any cameras pointed at you, heart pounding hard in your chest. You don’t spot any, but you still say, “I think you had better take your seat, Your Highness. I bet those people just want to make a scandal out of nothing.” Prince Yuto may be the youngest out of the royal children, but that does not mean he is risk-free. He is being trained for the position of Minister of Culture and the Arts; he has a large following of young people who look up to him as a leader and as a person; he is one of the most important people in your life, and you can’t bear for anything bad to happen to him.

The work tablet you brought is getting crushed in your folded arms from how tight you’re clutching it. “I’m going to find Daiki--,” you say softly, making to leave, but getting stopped once again by the prince.

He’s holding one of your arms gently, but strong enough to pull you back beside him. “It’s okay,” he says. “Let them. It’s fine.”

You pull your arm away. “Your Highness, it’s not fine. You can’t risk a scandal blowing up on you right now. Everyone has eyes on you, even if you don’t think so.” You’re worried. The last thing you want is for him to get in trouble because of you.

The prince sighs. “Y/N, there’s not gonna be a scandal if we’re actually together.”

You take a moment to think. “What? You want us to pretend to be a couple? I don’t think it’s a good idea; people might get the misconception that you’re slacking off, or--,”

“No, I mean--,” he sighs frustrated, more at himself than at you, but he keeps his composure and his face remains stoic; you both are still in public, after all. “I’ve wanted to tell you this for a while now, but I just didn’t know how to say it, and I certainly didn’t plan on telling you at a charity event where hundreds of people could hear.” He’s rambling--a sign that he’s nervous, unprepared.

Prince Yuto takes a calming breath before fully facing you. “I like you, Y/N,” he says softly, aware of the number of ears that are possibly listening in. “I’ve liked you since the day you started working for my mom, and I liked you even more the longer you stayed. You’re a hard worker, you’re dedicated to your job, you genuinely care for the queen and the things she does for the people. And I’m thankful that I got close to you as much as I have because you do mean a lot to me. I know I don’t show it, because I’m not sure how to show it, and I don’t know how you would react to it. But I do like you. Very much.” He releases a breath and looks you in the eye. “So will you try? To be with me?”

All this you take in with wide eyes and a shocked-open mouth. You know the prince is not the most outgoing person; he’s most relaxed when he is with people he knows, which are limited to his family and their secretaries, along with some of the senior palace staff. You’ve never seen him in a pickle of trying to get someone’s attention, but you do remember him offering to carry your heavy work back once or twice and you insisting on carrying yourself; him telling you that you look beautiful even if you wear the same plain things all the time; him giving you a box of (really expensive) chocolate for Valentine’s Day on the excuse of “I gave all the royal family’s employees chocolates”; him giving you a piece of his favorite chocolate cookies, even though you’ve never seen him offer them to anyone else.

All this time he’s been telling you how he feels and you’ve never noticed. And you yourself can’t even tell him the same because you don’t want to risk the prince getting hurt, you getting hurt, the queen getting hurt because of your selfishness. Your work is important to you, and you can’t jeopardize it for your happiness.

But here he is, Prince Yuto. Being brave enough to know the uncertainty of what lies ahead and being prepared to face it, if you answer him; if you push aside your fear of messing up and tell him you like him back; if, for once, you look to your heart instead of thinking of your work.

He stands tall beside you, an imposing figure of grace and compassion. A man people look up to. A leader who is innovative, yet respects traditions. A role model for young people who are inspired by his music, his acts of service to everyone. A son that is loved by his parents, a brother that is loved by his siblings. A friend who listens and is always there, but always pushes you out of your comfort zone.

How can you not fall for him?

How can you say no, when everything around you points to yes?

You’re nodding your head before you know it, still too shocked to properly process the last five minutes. “Yes. Yes, I’ll try being with you.”

The blinding smile is back, and you can’t help but return it. The prince nods, unable to suppress the grin on his face and gestures to the audience, milling about finding their tables. “I’ll be on my way, then. Find my mother.” He clears his throat, fidgets about with his coat and pockets. “Good luck for the rest of the night,” he says with a nod, before leaving.

You just curtsy, still beaming and your heart is drumming in your chest like crazy, but it feels light. Like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders and you can take flight at any moment, straight into his arms.

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