#as we check off each aspiration :p | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

1111jenx · 3 years

Note

What are some Venus and Moon placements you love to see in synastry?

Hey baddie!🤍

This is so cute tbh I cant-😭 Where do i even start-

Favourite Venus/Moon

🦋synastry placements🦋

for more posts like this, check my masterlist I and masterlist II luvs🤍

Venus in 5H

More than anyone else, when it comes to relationship I've always been a big fan of fixed house synastry/composite. Venus in 5H however has its own story.

One of the most powerful combinations for romantic and sexual attraction. Marriage would be for the sake of love, not for the sake of money or prestige. Think Romeo and Juliet.This placement brings a great deal of contentment and romantic fulfilment. While the aspects to Venus in this contrast are complicated, it does not lessen the romantic tendency displayed.

Venus is passionate, daring and everything the 5H person desires. The 5H person feels so tempted by Venus and Venus also feels the same way.

At first, depending on other placements, it could be possible that the Venus was more flirtatious towards the 5H but it is the 5H person that really starts to put in the work. 5H feels drawn to Venus, aroused by them yet initially, 5H was more detached in terms of emotions. However, after some time, 5H person may start to feel an urge to chase&conquer..

One another's best-kept secret, knows things about each other that others wouldn't. As this couple's fingers intertwined and their lips locked, everything is possible. The kind of couple that would do the most spontaneous things with each other. Play fights. Kisses along one's body. The dynamic feels hot and heavy. Sexual experiences is often very exciting and fun.

Opens one another up to experiences they wouldn't dare to. Crossing one another's bucket list goals. Could even be a one night stand type but would always fall for each other every-time they meet up. Friendly warning that when this synastry goes wrong, it will go so so wrong. But at the end, there will always be an unspoken links between these two🤍

Moon in 11H

Love always come in hand with friendship. Some people often say that we date people who we're supposed to be friends with and stay friends with people who we supposed to date. Moon in 11H can be perfectly described based off that one sentence.

Electric and never platonic. When the couple has this placement in their synastry chart, I can already tell they have potentials to go with one another very far down in life. They care for each other so much yet its more than what casual friends would. They would always have gut feelings about one another. The type of people to finish one another's sentences.

The Moon person is soft and understanding, they are 11H's home and 11H wants to show them off to the world. Pretty public and may stay together for a very long time due the dynamic of a fixed house. Spaces spent without the others are greatly appreciated since the bring them even closer. 11H person is the Moon's ideal type or wishes that come true. 11H feels well taken care of and confide a lot on the Moon person.

In front of each other they don't feel the need to pretend anymore. Their masks are taken down and its the world vs them two. Forehead kisses, playful banters that turn serious. They share their dreams, aspirations and desire to the other person.

While they're inherently such different people, this couple feels like one another's last missing puzzle.

Venus in 7H

"Who am I without you?" Venus in the 7H in synastry will always have a tension between them that will eventually push them towards each other.

Another aspect that can be pretty big on marriage, the 7H of partnership guarantees the couple to be together for the long haul, esp true if there are even more indicators.

Being in a relationship with each other teach the two a lot about their love nature. Venus is very considerate about their partner's desires and adamant about pleasing them. 7H partner is also trying to satisfy Venus by making the relationship as harmonious, caring, and peaceful as possible. As a result, when the two of them are together, friction is greatly reduced.

7H person feels so drawn to Venus, they can't stop staring. Venus is exciting and everything thats beautiful to them and 7H tends to get so so wholesome next to Venus:") Venus adores their nature and would return with perhaps even more affection.

They actually share very similar love languages and they understand each other's body language pretty well. Conflicts tend to be avoided yet can sometimes become too safe and comfy.

Moon in 1H

"No words needed. I understand exactly what you mean".

The type of couple that suddenly come together but people will say "finally". The two people that everyone adores and support. Holding hands and walking through forests and trees. They love each other's comfort and yearn for each other's warmth.

One of the rare synastry placements I've seem these days but is very fulfilling. The house person don't just love Moon's sensitivity and emotions, they also love their helpful and profound nature.

Moon person can sometimes feel left out and ignored, will do anything to get their attentions back.

There are so much securities and emotions felt on both sides. Never ending love story. Hard to not get attach. Moon just opens up casually to the 1H person. as they don't feel judged ever.

Moon in 8H

To love someone is to love their flaws, their worst moments, their ugliest and all. Moon in 8H couples are private people yet also are very passionate towards one another.

Sex bonds them.They share and keep one another secrets so well. 8H sees Moon as their home, with so much depth to them. i'd say that sex between these two can be so life changing. 8H knows the effect they have on Moon so so well and they can't help it but lure Moon in further.

One of the dynamics I'd chuckle if I see apparent in synastry's chart. Their thirst for each other's energy and emotions are crazy.

Either overshare everything or hold back completely. The Moon feel the need to learn&study and truly understand the 8H person. No small talk here. They can either fear each others emotions or take it all in so well.

While I do love the intensity and passion present here, I'm fearful of the jealousy and possessiveness of this placement. 8H will be stubborn to open up at first yet the second they do, the Moon person is theirs and theirs only. Crazy adventures but crazier fights.

Moon in 4H

The theme of home life and security is always present. They can understand what the others want to say simply by looking at each other and smile. Truest modern romance.

The couple that felt the need to stay friends for some time before they jump into a relationship since they value the others sincerity so much. Brings each other joy, comfort and absolute trust.

Its us versus them. Indeed, may choose to isolate themselves from the rest of the world in order to be alone together in a safe space. Can be surprisingly public with affections yet very secretive about the nature of their romance. Reminds me of that old couple that hold hands in the park while being comfortably silent .

Extremely binding, the two of you will find it extremely difficult to separate. Emotions runs high here and the two must be wary not to become too dependent on one another.

If they can learn to trust and give, the relationship can go for years and years🤍

Trying something new today:) Thank you for asking such a great question baddie🥳

love,

saint jenx🪐

#astrojenx #astrology observations #astro notes #astrology #astrology notes #synastry #8th house synastry #synastry overlay #synastry overlays series #pluto synastry #synastry series #astrotips #venus in 5th house

3K notes · View notes

paroxysmal-distaste · 3 years

Text

proximity. || ch1, busy

◬ Chapter 1 - Busy ◬ ◬ Pairing: Bill Cipher x Fem! Reader ◬ Date Published: 25/09/2017◬ ◬ Word Count: 2k ◬

A - X - O - L - O - T - L

M Y T I M E H A S C O M E TO B U R N

I I N V O K E T H E A N C I E N T P O W E R

T H A T I M A Y R E T U R N I N T H I S U N I V E R -

...

Your head shot up from your desk in alert, with your sleep-induced eyes almost immediately drooping. A string of drool embarrassingly clung to your cheek and the table in front of you, and you smacked your tongue against the roof of your tongue to rid of its taste. Just a few glances around you and absent blinks made you aware that you had fallen asleep at your work station.

Again.

You stretched your arms up and let out a squeak, wiggling your fingers and toes as your racked your mind for a thought you felt had been hidden.

Seems like you had a dream. That's what that lingering feeling was. It was one of those times where the memories of something recent and familiar lingered in your mind, but the thoughts were quite foggy. The more you tried to remember, the more you forgot. Similar to the dreams you had where you woke up in the middle of the night, telling yourself you'll write it down in the morning but never do, this was frustratedly one that left an impression on you.

Grabbing your phone, you checked the time. It was 3:26 in the afternoon. There was an obvious wince in your features, since oversleeping was one of the ways your body was telling you that you had been working far too much for it to handle.

Aspirated, you glared through the pieces of paper in front of you, almost as it was responsible for the lack of sleep. It kind of was. The scribbles on them were only decipherable by you, and feeling the corners of the pages as you skimmed them just brought you back to the fact that you had barely made any progress on the portal.

At least, not enough you would consider productive for the times you set aside each day to further advance in its production. A classic workaholic.

"Dammit." You ran a hand through your hair in frustration, letting it flop to your side in annoyance. What a way to start your day. Late awakening, and more than a little behind on your schedule. Glancing at your paperwork again, you lifted a hand and flipped off the half-built portal behind you, an action that was uncharacteristic of you, but only drawn out from your drained composure.

The offensive action attracted one of the portal's small screws to unravel and fly towards your hand.

You exhaled heavily.

The flip of your hand to stare at the back of it caused the screw to fall onto the floor with a clang, and you bent down (with a strain) to pick it up gingerly, rolling it between your fingers.

"I need to get out more," you murmured after hearing your back crack when you straightened up. You tucked the screw into your pocket.

Over half the day had already passed and you needed to think about what you could spend your time doing with the hours left. You stuck your tongue out in concentration as you carefully read your notes, only to shove them away, unsatisfied with what was written. The phone settled on your desk was beginning to look more and more tempting, but as you reached for it, a small zap of electricity ran from your wrist to the tip of your finger, causing the phone screen to go black.

"God!" You threw both your hands up, completely fed up with the first few minutes of your day, grumbling, "Here we go again."

You really needed to control that.

Work was almost impossible when your abilities acted up.

Sighing, you looked at the pile of scrunched up pieces of paper, before squinting at the portal.

The portal had a few things missing. It needed the rim where the actual entrance would be, while the entrance itself was a circle with a giant square around it to reinforce it. All the wiring had been done, but other supplies were needed in order to cover it up. Without the proper support, the entire portal might collapse on itself.

That was the problem - some parts would be illegal to even obtain, so you were going to have to make do with what could be found. But! You weren't giving up just yet. You've been driving around different areas for hours yesterday trying to find some old shop or something. The portal's power source was also a problem you were close to solving, but many test trials needed to be done to confirm that.

Shaking your head, you left your basement and went outside. It wasn't exactly a basement, more like a massive bunker beneath your cabin, but to-may-to / to-mah-to. You trudged your way over to your car, the tension in your legs evident from your recent waking.

With a quick positioning into the driver's seat, you moved to put on your seatbelt, only to jolt at the sudden vibration and ring of your phone. With such little energy, any minor inconvenience was only worsening your mood. Your phone was working again, fortunately for you, and right on time too.

Removing your phone from your coat pocket, you answered with a small 'hello' with little interest, too drowsy to check the caller ID.

"Hi (N/N)! How are you doing? Work doing well so far?" Your mother spoke in a happy tone. You dulled at this, more than before if possible. Anything involvement with interest in your work was exciting for you. To many others, it wasn't as interesting as you made it seem, but there was always something fascinating in the discussion of astrophysics. Work had consumed the majority of your life, so small breaks to talk with family were always initiated by the other party.

The only issue was that your family thought you were a doctor.

"Hey Mom, I'm fine. There's still so much to do... with my... scrubs."

Yo didn't know anything about being a surgeon, but neither did she.

"Good to hear! Your dad is still coaching the boys at the moment."

Your dad was a soccer coach. Generally a really normal hobby for any normal person. You bit your lip at the contrast.

"Ah, ok. Tell them that my job's been interesting and that I hope they're doing well. I have... patients to attend to.. Mom, but I'll call you tomorrow?"

"One more thing-" her voice dropped to a whisper. "How are you controlling your, uh, you know?"

You shifted your leg, leaning forward over the car edge door, huffing and smiling slightly, forgetting she couldn't see it, "You can say the word 'power'. It's not going to offend me you know."

"Alright alright, I don't know, it still seems like a sensitive topic."

You tried to stifle a laugh, since you knew she was more proud than embarrassed of what you were capable of.

"It's fine. It hasn't been... that much of an issue recently." Your mind drifted to the bolt that removed itself in your presence earlier, "I really need to go now, I'll call you."

"Sure (N/N), if you don't remember then I'll call. And don't get into any trouble."

"Ok, see you. I'll visit soon."

"Aha ok, bye sweetie."

After the conversation, you thought about what your mother said. Being born with abilities was not something you told anyone that asked, but it wasn't a topic you had trouble speaking about with people you were already comfortable with. However, your mother still thought it was a touchy subject no matter how many times you told her it was no big deal. Her cautious nature could be quite endearing at times, but it could also be overwhelming.

Confiding in literally anyone else wasn't an option either. It was dangerous to tell anyone- you could be seen as a lunatic.

Back when you lived with your parents, they had thought you were some sort of problem child, messing with the cables of the house. But when you poked at the power cords and accidentally shut down the entire power across the entirety of your town, they were terrified, to say the least. It wasn't long before they understood that you weren't a problem child, but a gifted one. You were bright beyond your years, and these abilities were no exception.

For some reason unbeknownst to your family, you developed another 2 powers distinct from your first.

As of now, the count was at 3. Despite your extensive interest and research in technicalities, you were not too bothered about the 'official' titles given to these powers, only discovering them on a superhero wiki. They happened to be the ability to control metals, and the ability to control the current of electricity. Both of these definitions were used quite vaguely, considering you could barely control, but more, attract each element.

The bad news was, you haven't done a very good job of practicing any of these abilities. The most that could be done was conjure electricity on to your hands, but you can't control how much. Whenever your thoughts went there, you simply shook your head, smiled and returned to your work as a distraction.

The good news was, your family supported you - hell, they praised you for it more than your brains sometimes - and not to mention, you got some pretty snazzy powers. Your family thought it was best to keep it a secret though. Everyone knows how society works. Not exactly the most accepting. And when something is beyond their comprehension, they panic and blame it all on one thing so only their small human brains could understand.

You frowned, passing another place. This was taking a lot of your sweet precious time, but you kept on driving, as there could be a possible junkyard nearby. It would have been smart to take off your coat, since sweat was beginning to form on your forehead from the sunset, but you were far too comfortable nestled in your little car seat of yours.

A few minutes passed before you finally slowed your vehicle, parking your car off the road onto the grass and stared at the large sign ahead.

Never been here before, you thought. It was more than peculiar to you because you were used driving around for hours, and you had never encountered this before. The slow of your car signalled you to check your GPS, something that others considered quite outdated, but you considered functional and separate to entertainment devices such as your phone.

"The hell?" You spoke aloud, smacking the GPS in an attempt for it to correct itself. Glaring at the large sign ahead of you, you glanced back at the GPS and wondered why its title wasn't labelled on the map. What's weirder was that it was saying you were only 8 minutes away from your little cabin in the woods, despite driving around for hours the 9th time this month.

As you car came to a stop to the front of the sign, you felt a fuzzy wave wash of nostalgia flow over you and you froze.

A frown spread across your lips, shivering from the weird vibration that had coursed through you. You shook your head- not relevant. Storing this feeling for another day to worry about.

The sign looked quite worn out, with its wooden border chipped, molding and stained in irregular spots. Two of the four lights hovered over it to keep it alight were visibly broken, and the lettering in a billboard fashion was peeling and paled.

Overall, it was still legible, enough to greet whatever guest was unlucky enough to come across it. It read;

'Welcome to Gravity Falls!'

#bill cipher x reader #bill cipher #x reader #gravity falls #gravity falls x reader #bill x reader #proximity

147 notes · View notes

achaoticeternal · 4 years

Text

Asset Protection

Ransom Drysdale x Reader request from capshoney: Ransom with 31 and 39?

Summary: Ransom is oddly kind to you, but you always brush it off because of your closeness with his mother. Word Count: 2.4k

31) “If we’re going to keep ending up in life-or-death situations, trust that I will save you every single time.” 39) “Wait, are you saying you want to move in with me?”

“(Y/N),” You heard your name spoken with calmness, yet with authority from the black office phone that sat to the right of your Mac Desk Top. Everything was finely put in place, perfectly organized so that you could complete any task at a moment’s notice.

Currently, your eyes were fixated on the screen of the desktop, checking over the calendar for Mrs. Drysdale and various appointments she or her husband previously set so that you could coordinate a time for her to meet with a fairly new client. Your job was supposed to be centered around organizing Mrs.Drysdale’s emails, clients, and setting her calendar. Yet, your job description originally didn’t include practically becoming her personal assistant in both her workplace and life.

“(Y/N),” Mrs. Drysdale’s voice called again with just a touch of impatience.

Quickly, you picked up the phone and opened her full calendar for the month, along with opening both her husbands’ and sons’ schedules in minimized tabs.

“What can I do for you, Mrs. Linda?”

“Father’s will reading shall be taking place on Saturday at 3 pm,” She promptly stopped and you quickly began typing away into Mr. and Mrs. Drysdale’s calendar.

“Aare there any arrangements you would like particularly made? Dry-cleaning? Have to cook set up a lunch or appetizers?”

“I need two items. First of all, have my pink suit pressed and dry-cleaned please,” You quickly scribbled down her request onto a post-it note, “and secondly, if you could stop by son’s little bachelor pad and ask if he plans to attend that would be phenomenal. And make sure his maid is still coming and that he hasn’t managed to scare her off yet. You can do that after your lunch break.”

“Yes ma’am, anything else?”

“Actually, if you could go now, you could pick up some lunch for him. I doubt he’s had anything besides a protein shake and who knows what else. Charge it to the VISA”

“Of course, ma’am. Have a wonderful afternoon.”

“Thank you, sweetie.”

After five years, 2 years as an intern and 3 as an actual employee, you had come to know and be known by Mrs. Drysdale’s full family. They were an interesting mix of hard workers with rich kid mentalities. Well, most of them. And they were ever a loud crowd. But quite recently, her father had died from a supposed suicide. Of course, that truly wasn’t any of your own business, you just coordinated the funeral date, the invitations, the catering, and anything which the family didn’t want to settle themselves. At the end of it all, you weren’t permitted to attend the funeral which in all honesty made a fair amount of sense.

You didn’t know Harlan at all personally, but he was always kind to you and asked his daughter and her family to treat you with kindness. But two factors didn’t make sense about the funeral. Why they didn’t allow Harlan’s sweet nurse, Marta, to attend… and why Ransom Drysdale didn’t make an appearance at his beloved grandfather’s funeral?

- - -

The little doorbell camera rang as you balanced a paper sack and drink tray in one arm, and your purse and phone in the other. You waved at the camera, knowing he got humor out of watching people wait for him through his recently upgraded phone.

“Afternoon, Ransom. You know I would usually let myself in with the key above the door frame, but as you’ll notice,” you attempted to show off full your hands were, ”My hands are quite full. If you could kindly-”

The large wood door swung open into Ransom’s modern house before you could finish your sentence. And there stood Ransom in a pair of black jeans, a creme shirt, and a burgundy cardigan which you gave him for Christmas two years ago. If he had a scarf and boots on, you would’ve suspected that he just returned home from an outing.

“-open the door,” you stepped inside and made your way promptly to the kitchen, “Glad to see that you're fully awake and you didn’t leave any trash for me to pick up. How sweet. That makes what? Three months?”

“Well, it’s been four months since I brought home a pretty little thing for any bar or club,” Ransom took a seat on a stool and watched you unload your items onto the kitchen island. From the brown paper sack, you pulled two clear to-go containers; one containing Ransom’s favorite turkey and rye sandwich and a side of fruit salad, and in the other, your preferred lunch meal of choice. He threw you his signature smirk as you handed him his container, his hand soft grazing yours, “Are you proud of me, (Y/N)?”

Both his words and his actions caused your cheeks to fluster a bit. You understood how unprofessional your encounters with Mrs. Drysdale’s son were, but either she made it a point to notice or she simply didn’t care. Linda had only taken comfort in you a few times, but her frequent concern was Ransom and his future.

“Of course I am,” You smiled at him kindly, before returning back to business reaching into the bag again to obtain napkins and cutlery, “Now, your mother will pester me about this if I don’t get an answer to her in the next twenty-four hours. Do you...”

Ransom’s gaze shifted down to the pile on the counter where he noticed a napkin with black spots.

“...Do you plan to attend the reading of the will? I mean, after his birthday and not attending the funeral, I’m not sure what your p-”

“Yeah, I’ll be there, but (Y/N),” sipping your drink, you turned around to see what had captivated him, “who wrong this note?”

On the napkin was inscribed:

Does sleeping with him get you extra money from his mommy? X.

“Wh-what? I need a drink, that doesn’t even make sense. I haven’t even spent the night here, well except for when your mother left me here for four hours the night before our business trip but I’ve never even entered your room with you in there. This is just some small... little...” but the world seemed to fade quickly.

- - -

“Does she have any family?”

“Her mother and sister live in Vermont, but no one in the state. We treat her like part of our family”

The two female voices continued their conversation as you opened your eyes but quickly covered them to adjust yourself to the light. You saw Ransom sitting in one of the chairs while Linda answered any medical or personal questions.

“Where are we? Ransom- what happened?”

“Well, what’s the last thing you remember?”Ransom asked.

Telling you how proud I am of you.

“Asking about your schedule for the weekend?” From there on, things were blurry, but shapes and colors would stand. Things you might remember later.

“From your report, it seems you were drugged. Nothing heavy, but quite fast-acting. At least, you weren’t behind the wheel when this happened,” The nurse responded, “You’re free to leave, thanks to Mrs. Drysdale here.”

Linda gave the nurse the same smile she gives to every client after a sale, “Thank you, now let’s get to my car. Hugh, your father is probably waiting at the house with dinner. And you better behave, because Ms. (Y/L/N) will be our guest tonight”

- - -

The dinner table inside the Thrombey House was on the quiet side, even though the full family was in attendance. It wasn’t your first time attending such an event, but it wasn’t one you made frequent. The youth spent most of the meal on their phones while the adults chattered about various topics, and even asked you a few questions about future aspirations or opinions on the current state of something you probably couldn’t care less about tonight. Everyone tried to engage themselves in something, except for Ransom who picked at his food and made a few crass comments under his breath. You took the slight lull to speak up.

“Thank you for allowing me to stay for the evening. My car is stranded at Ransom’s and getting an Uber this late in the evening is-”

“(Y/N), you’re my go-to girl, my secretary, practically my personal assistant. I couldn’t allow for anything bad to happen to you. You’re far too... valuable to be lost,” Linda never spoke like this, unless she needs to boast about her own self-made business and image.

“In fact,” it was now Richard’s turn to begin boasting about how you were so helpful to the entire Drysdale family and coordinating the funeral and this and that and you just couldn’t comprehend why such a family always had to one-up each other. It simply had to be exhausting.

Fran then entered into the dining area and began clearing plates. You offered to assist her, but she mustered up a smile that said she could handle it by herself. When she came around to take your plate, a neatly folded piece of paper sat right underneath it. Quickly, you snatched it from its’ position, hoping to one saw the paper or your sly movements.

You thought you could get away with it until you felt a foot connect with your shin. Blue eyes met your own and you knew Ransom saw everything. He just seemed to always pay close attention to you, maybe a sign of concern or endearment. And you could tell exactly what his eyes were saying.

“Well, thank you, all of you with providing me dinner and a room for the night,” You quietly slid your chair back and stood.

“Of course, dear. Hugh,” Ransom peered to his mother as if surprised by her attention, “Please show, (Y/N), our guest room before you make your own exit for the evening.”

Ransom lead you easily up the oak staircase to the second floor where he pushed you inside what seemed to be a supply closet. A large supply closet mainly filled with old board games but still a simple closet.

“What was that paper you were so quick to hide?”

You tugged it out of your pocket and unfolded it, smoothing the creases so you could read the context better.

Asset protection is important for any and every company. X.

“This one doesn’t even make sense! How do you go from a direct attack on me to this- this load of shit!”

“Well, in my eyes a person who won’t make a better effort to threaten you or do it in a more accurate way is a piece of shit,” Ransom’s eyes skimmed over the paper, “But this time, it’s remarkably true. My parents admire your hard work for them, so you are an asset in a way.”

You felt fear knot up in your stomach, you couldn’t understand what someone could have against you. In every aspect, you were an honorable citizen who made a fair living. It just didn’t add up, “Where’s the guest room? I need to sleep.”

“Right, but I’m going to show you a different way into the guest room,” He grabbed your hand before leading you across the hall into another bedroom. The pair of you crept into the closet and Ransom kicked a panel in the wall. A door quickly slid open and the pair of you made your way up a little staircase, “Harlon just loved his hiding places”

“Ransom. If I’m in potential danger? What do I do? I don’t have to first clue in-

“Well, first of all, don’t be so damn trusting. It makes you an easier target. Second of all, find somewhere or someone you can stay with that you could seek comfort and safety in, at least until you feel safe.”

Both of you came to a stop as you made it to a small door. But a little idea popped into your head, “Well, could I stay in that big house of yours? I don’t have any family here and I refuse to go bankrupt in a motel room because of a potential stalker. I know it might be strange given our past flirtations, but I-”

“Wait, are you saying you want to move in with me?”

“Not really, move in. That would mean something completely different and- and completely out of the question because of my position in your moth-”

“It’s okay, sweetheart. You can stay with me. It’ll be nice to have a welcomed guest around,” Ransom pushed open the door and emerged into the guest which felt like a victorian guest suite set up, “and that’s why we came in through the back”

In the front of the door was tripwire for a possible trap unseen, but just the thought stirred you in unpleasant ways. Ransom searched the room before finding three darts ready to fire at any notice, “I’m really looking like a good guy, stopping any threats before they happen.”

“Yeah, it’s almost out of character,” You grabbed the glass of water by the nightstand.

Quickly, Ransom snatched the water from your hand, leaving you shaking, “Niether of us brought a glass up with us and I’m not going to have a repeated visit to the hospital to be asked if I gave you a date rape drug.”

He entered the attached bathroom and poured its’ contents in the sink while you sat yourself upon the bed. Thinking of the events from today. Shakily, you looked up to Ransom, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I haven’t done anything. I-”

“Maybe someone is trying to get your attention,” He sat beside you and took your left hand into his right, using his thumb to caress the gentle skin, “And you still have me, though this is too far outside my comfort zone with any woman. If we’re going to keep ending up in life-or-death situations, trust that I will save you every single time.”

“Thank you, Ransom. For offering your assistance. For making sure I don’t get myself hurt. For not being a huge dick to me also,” you laughed.

“Well, what’s my mother’s is mine, and I happen to like her little personal assist,” before he stood from the bed, he gave your knuckles a strangely gentle kiss, “good night, (Y/N). I’ll see you at Breakfast”

Everything blurred, including Ransom’s exit, as you feel into a soft slumber.

:———————————————————————:

let me know if you think this deserves a part 2 or anything!

#knives out #ransom drysdale #ransom drysdale x reader #ransom thrombey x reader #ransom thrombrey #ransom thrombey smut #chris evans #chris evans x reader #chris evans in a sweater

2K notes · View notes

elizabethrobertajones · 3 years

Note

Saw you've been sucked into the MMO life in the form of FFXIV and I was wondering if you had any input into the debate I've been having about what class archetypes tfw would play. I think Sam would be most likely to tank because it requires a reasonable amount of leadership and is also more of a quiet, backbone type role compared to dps. Dean seems more the type to be singularly focused on the big damage hits tbh. He also tends to take more of the charging in and fighting role in their normal life with Sam being the one reading up on everything more carefully and being his backup. Which leaves Cas as healer which may just be me projecting because I play healer/support at every opportunity but literal angel healing aside I think that sorta fits too, he cares a lot for them and tries to keep them safe and shield them as best he can in their adventures? Idk half formed thoughts please completely contradict me if you want I'm genuinely curious about other people's opinions here

Heyooo :D It is less sucked into and more like I’ve returned to the warm cushiony nest of MMOs lol

If you’d asked me back when I was a WoW player I’d have fully agreed because you could only have one class per character and these are definitely the snap decisions that the fam would make when on the character screen. Dean would grab the sexiest DPS, Sam the stoutest tank especially as he’s the one who has read into the classes and strats beforehand, and Cas would ask what to do and be given the healer role because the other two in this scenario would know better about the game and sort of lump it onto him like, oh, we need a healer and you can do this.

(In my own gaming journey, this is what my friends and brother did to me, as they needed a healer to round out their party... I took druid because it was spoopy, and discovered in WoW that while you can’t change classes you can pay gold to respec your character’s role within that class... Promptly re-specced to a melee dps/tank feral druid instead of the healer one, and had a lot more fun :D)

In FFXIV you can take all the classes on your character (which I have done, natch) and it’s a much more interesting levelling approach, especially seeing how my friends playing the game have gone when it comes to taking classes as they level and why they claim to have tried and then rejected others. It’s an enormous personality test, even for peeps like me and my brother who have all the classes up at max level, which ones we prioritised and which ones we sort of struggled with or found a bit meh.

Hm so in the scenario that Charlie comes bursting into the Bunker demanding that she needs some friends for dungeons and raids and they’re all sitting on their asses scrolling the internet between a case, they can bloody well play final fantasy with her for a bit, let’s go for some headcanons :D Long because FFXIV has become my current obsession and I have the same in-depth feels about it as I do about SPN but I just never get to write about them with anyone...

First off, Sam of course has deep nerdery about it and will ask Charlie a ton of questions about what the right class to play is and do the same thing as we’ve already discussed and go for Paladin (which starts as gladiator), and also take all the crafting and gathering side classes because he’s a nerd and you learn nonsense lore while doing it. He’s also in the same starting zone as Thaumaturge which transitions to Black Mage and I BET he’d be tempted to have a little safe witch!Sam emotional release on the most un-Sam class. It’s the big unwieldy spell caster whose literal class quests and stuff make fun of how you’re small and squishy and will be standing in a very bad spot debating whether to finish a long-cast spell and get hit or stop DPS and run for safety. I think he could do with the perspective and learning to be selfish either way to blow off steam from tanking and also learn to prioritise himself IRL :’D Also the paladin quest is WEIRDLY pro-cop from 30 onwards for some reason until the writers saw sense and just. stopped. doing paladin stuff and went back to the Gladiator storyline for the class quests, so idk if he’d enjoy that or start to question other things. Whatever it is he’s getting challenged XD

At 60 he grabs Gunbreaker because it sounds more cool and is thankfully way less emotionally stressful tanking as it’s entirely about being a badass bodyguard and sick flips. This is far more aspirational for Sam, especially as he could just tie a knife to a sawn off shotgun and do these moves for real in his day job. He won’t, but like with black mage, the thought that he COULD is very emotionally satisfying to him.

He might also have decided to check out scholar to see how healing is but idk if he would be able to handle Dean teasing him for having a fairy follow him around so he’d only dabble with the nerd class on the side :P

Now, Dean can’t take ninja until level 10 or machinist (gun shooty DPS class) until 50, so his start point as DPS would either be pugilist (eeeey brass knuckle class!) or the other DPS classes to start with are Thaumaturge/Black Mage, Arcanist/Summoner, Archer or Lancer. Now. He’d probably think the first two are sissy because magic is for girls/arcanists literally only have a book as a weapon. Archer becomes bard and I think is ultimately a place he’d be very happy as it is a very supportive class to the whole party and basically the mom friend class. But I would love if he went lancer/dragoon because the level 50 class weapon is (folklore inspired name) “Gae Bolg” and every time I equip it I can’t help giggling at the name even though I know it’s a real thing and I shouldn’t. But. Like. It’s the class about waving enormous lances around. It’s got Implications, and Dean is drawn to those.

He’d probably, however, take rogue/ninja as soon as he could because stabbing things with knives, and the class trainer is the kinda guy who’d have wild gay tension with him while they both try to boast about women to each other, were they to meet irl. Ironically, the rogue trainer (a womanising charmer) and the ninja trainer (an intense, honourable guy bad at social cues even among his own people who ends up falling from grace and choosing to stay in the vicinity of said rogue trainer) are an interesting pair of NPCs to teach Dean about where to stick knives. :)

He’d go back and power-level dragoon once he starts Heavensward though, because Aymeric is also super intense with messy dark hair and big blue eyes that see right through you. :D He’s getting that gae bolg for him, you know?

If they’re going to bully Cas to be their healer, he’d probably get really dedicated to the discipline especially as he can stay up all night to play and doesn’t need to take breaks to pee so he’d probably level conjurer/white mage (nature healing) and scholar (ancient book lore with a class quest which mixes ancient curses on a whole people, family drama and a bit of interspeciesish love) and then also pick up astrologian, which is good because it’s spooky star and making your own fate magic. The storyline for that is garbage in the sense that it’s really weakly written, but my favourite character randomly picks up AST in the latest expansion, and has an absolutely fucking wild subtextual romance with another character, including SPN level adopting of a random child who matches Jack in many respects, with said character. And in many respects emotionally they’re Cas and Dean but without any of the personal baggage between them specifically so they really are just chill and married, whatever else they’re stressed about (I say, dreading the next patch is going to finally bring up some questions about what is going on with them as it’s getting weirdly conspicuous while still utterly unsaid). So I would hope if Cas started projecting onto an astrologian character it would be him :P

Cas also would get into summoner as the other branch of scholar because honestly those two classes are about as close to the random sigil drawing and reading things from books etc analogy to his own occult magic, except you can summon cool dragons and elementals to fight for you.

they’d buy Jack a boost to 60 and he’d pick up dark knight and white mage probably just to subtly fuck with Dean

(I am still not over Dean trying to test him to see if he was evil or not by whether he chose devil or angel cake)

#Asks #ffxiv #pfft #I'm sorry #I'm like #in the rabbit hole #I'm so in deep in the rabbit hole I've memorised all the lore #I did every quest #I am as forensic about it as I am about SPN but it's all just in my head!!#AAAH why is the fandom for this game small and uninterested in talking about subtext!#[edit to add: if you know where the fandom I'm seeking is and it's on reddit #I'm not going there and you can't pay me to for all the thancred headcanons in eorzea]

12 notes · View notes

genesisrose74 · 4 years

Text

Hinata Shoyo x Reader: Good Unexpected

Hello there! This is the first time I’ve ever posted any of my writing, so I hope you enjoy reading! I had a really fun time writing about my favorite ray of sunshine and may or may not have gotten carried away with the word count whoops :P Constructive feedback or just comments in general are welcome~

Word count: 6600

Warning(s): None

Another close win for Karasuno’s male volleyball team had a crowd on their feet and a roar echoing throughout the building. There were five volleyball courts in the structure, but none had a more rambunctious crowd in that moment than the once Flightless Crows. The match wasn’t an all too significant one, but it claimed the boys another opportunity to play in this charity tournament, and that’s all they needed to keep their drive going. In the chaos of cheering students, players on break, family members, and those who had simply been enraptured by the match, a duo of young females ushered out muffled apologies of ‘sorry’ and ‘excuse me’ more times than they could count as they edged their way through. A short blonde stuck closely beside her fellow classmate in the sea of people, letting out a breath of relief upon seeing a gap to a less crowded section of the stadium.

“Yachi, could you text Kiyoko and tell her we’re on our way? Takinoue and Shimada said they’d take care of the banner since the next match is tomorrow,” you instructed.

“Sure thing,” Yachi replied with a small nod, fishing her phone from her back pocket.

You both continued your move down a set of stairs, searching for the main entrance to court three, on which Karasuno had just played.

“Hey, I think I see Tsukishima by the water fountain over there! The rest of the boys must be close by.” Yachi gestured to the slim middle blocker, donning the unmistakable Karasuno High VBC sweatshirt each player was given at the beginning of the season.

“Yeah, that’s him for sure! Good eye, Yachi!” you acknowledged.

Jogging over to the towering blonde, you flashed him a warm smile in greeting. Tsukishima replied with a brief nod, his usual hello.

“Hey, Tsukki! Where’s the rest of the boys?” you inquired, now used to Tsukishima’s little expressed enthusiasm, even after a victory.

“Daichi, Sugawara and Ennoshita are checking out the standings for who we’ll face off against tomorrow, Yamaguchi is in the bathroom, and the dumbasses who share one brain cell went to check if the snack bar was open. I have no clue where the rest of them ended up,” Tsukishima listed, scrolling through his phone.

Yachi giggled at his last description of what you could only assume to be Tanaka, Nishinoya, Hinata, and likely Kageyama. Those boys had a way of getting into the stupidest situations, and their immense distaste for anything school related made their title quite fitting, although it was safe to say that you had a soft spot for the knuckleheads - especially one in particular.

“Speak of the devil,” Tsukishima stated as he looked up from his device. Sure enough, two of said boys had returned from their little food run with bags of snacks in hand. Tanaka had already ripped open a package of beef jerky, two of the sticks stuffed in his mouth as he spoke incoherent words to his fellow second year teammate, Nishinoya.

“Hey boys!” you waved enthusiastically. “Nice win today!”

Upon seeing you, Nishinoya and Tanaka gasped simultaneously, the remaining jerky in the latter’s mouth falling onto the floor. You could see a grossed out Tsukishima cringe in your peripheral vision, but you didn’t really mind the duo’s antics at this point.

As everyone knows, Kiyoko was the team manager, an absolute goddess to all, and the master of avoiding the flirty nature of any guy she came across. It was evident that she had a huge effect on the rambunctious second years, two of them in particular melting any time they were given the slightest bit of attention (affectionate or otherwise) - and she could even pull a reaction out of the calmest of boys, including the ever respectful and reserved Karasuno captain from time to time.

However, despite a deep infatuation for the beautiful third year female, the team had been introduced to a new kind of character in the past year that had thrown Nishinoya and Tanaka into a frenzy: a competitive yet kindhearted first year student who just so happened to be a volleyball player herself: you.

You had arrived in the boy’s gymnasium one afternoon, on the day of the week that the Karasuno girl’s team had practice off. You were hoping to find some tasks or drills to help out with, just to keep yourself active during your free time after school. Since Coach Ukai always appreciated an extra set of hands, especially some that held experience, you began appearing as a regular during Wednesday practices, and the team took a quick liking to you.

Despite your focus and intensity whenever you were on the court, you were almost always there with an encouraging word or bright smile if the Karasuno boys ever needed, and your consistent sweetness caused many players to view you in a similar manner as Kiyoko. While the more reserved Kiyoko Shimizu was more or less dismissive of the constant attention she would get from boys, you were always happy to jump in and boost the team with your enthusiastic words and actions.

Nishinoya briefly brought up that he likes when girls compliment his hair? You make a little mention of how good it looks at the end of practice that day. Tanaka isn’t feeling particularly happy with his spikes? You’re sure to compliment him extra when he gets a shot off that he likes. Yamaguchi gets frustrated with his jump floaters? You offer up a few words of encouragement to keep him going. Even after practice is over and it’s just a normal day that you can spend time with the team, you happily accepted the compliments and the affection you received from the boys - specifically Nishinoya and Tanaka. Of course, you never lead them on or anything of the sort; you’re all just very close friends.

It was an interesting dynamic to say the least, but the differing personalities of you and the team manager Shimizu had two second year boys going wild to get your attention.

But, the two troublemakers had discovered who you had your sights set on pretty quickly.

“N/n! I didn’t realize you came to watch today!” Nishinoya grinned, quickly making his way over and wrapping his arms around your midsection. You laughed and placed a hand on the libero’s head, patting his hair gently.

“Hi, Nishi,” you smiled. “Of course I came to see you all. I couldn’t miss watching my favorite libero in action, now could I?”

“How did you think we did? Wasn’t that an awesome last set?” Tanaka joined in the conversation, giving you a side hug in greeting.

“Yeah, it was pretty exciting to watch!” you agreed. “I’m all for the heart pounding matches, so long as you boys keep winning at the end of them.”

“You know we will!” Nishinoya smiled up at you.

“I do know that,” you affirmed before looking around the space. “Tsukishima mentioned something about you and some of the other boys getting snacks, but right now it’s just you two. Where’s the rest of your little group of mischief-makers at?”

“Kageyama stopped by a vending machine to buy some milk. He said it was cheaper than the prices at the snack bar.” Tanaka clarified.

“Hinata decided to stick with him to talk about the team we’re likely playing tomorrow, but they shouldn’t be far behind us.” Nishinoya concluded, a small grin playing at his lips. “Speaking of which, didn’t Hinata do pretty great, N/n? You should tell him how good he looked doing those quick attacks out on the floor today.”

You stuck your tongue out at the boy who still had his arms secured around you.

“Very funny, Nishi.” you pouted. “At this point you’re not even trying to be discreet.”

Nishinoya was the first player on the team to pick up on your attraction to Karasuno’s prized decoy. You had nearly walked into the wall of the school gymnasium while shagging volleyballs during a hitting drill, watching intently as Hinata did his approach before jumping and slamming the ball onto the other side of the court with ease. It would have been incredibly embarrassing if anyone else had witnessed your distracted movements, but fortunately Nishinoya was the only one to see, and had prevented you from smacking straight into the side of the building.

Initially, the libero thought the mishap was merely because you didn’t want to get nailed by Kageyama and Hinata’s quick attacks, but then he watched you nearly choke on your water when Hinata tossed his practice shirt off the same night, leaving the you to gape in silent astonishment as the middle blocker searched for a less sweaty replacement. Since Nishinoya was already quite close to you at the time, he was quick to corner you about the instance and declared himself an unofficial wing-man when you admitted you had feelings for the ginger.

He may or may not have let the secret slip to Tanaka one night when the three of you were walking home - and then profusely apologized to the point where tears visibly brimmed in his eyes - but Tanaka promised that he wouldn’t say anything to Hinata. Besides, even if he did make a not-so-subtle mention about you to the aspiring ace, you doubted that the dense boy would even understand Tanaka’s implications.

Little did you know, you were just as oblivious as Hinata when it came to people crushing on you. And the two second years beside you knew much more than you did.

“Awe, you look so cute when you get all pouty,” Nishinoya chuckled, reaching up to tap you on the nose.

“Oh, hush. Don’t make me bring up the time when you went completely rigid after Kiyoko-senpai gave you a high five at the scrimmage against Nekoma last month,” you countered.

“Don’t you mean the greatest moment of my entire life?”

“Wow, I’m hurt that she gets a higher placement than me in that regard.”

Despite being quite a bit shorter than you, Nishinoya easily hoisted you a few inches in the air and spun around, eliciting a surprised yelp on your part.

“Nishi, put me down!” you squealed, albeit laughing while doing so.

“You know how much I love you. Kiyoko might be my queen, but you’re definitely an angel sent to grace us with your presence!” he declared playfully.

The libero gently placed his friend back on the floor, a lopsided grin on his face as she ruffled his hair fondly.

“I know, and I love you too, little Guardian Deity.” you conceded. “Now, show me what kind of snacks you bought. I forgot to grab money before I left the house, so I could use some food.”

“You got it!” Tanaka opened up his backpack filled with goodies and offered it out to you. “Take your pick. We stocked up on a lot of food to munch on for the team meeting later today.”

“Speaking of which, you should come and sit in on that! I’m sure the rest of the guys would like to see you,” Nishinoya added.

“Actually I was already planning on going,” you mentioned while acquiring a bag of pretzels from Tanaka’s stash. “I texted Kiyoko that I was going to be here today, and she said that if you boys got another win that I should come to the meeting.”

“Sweet!” Tanaka exclaimed. “Since it’s not all that late, some of us were thinking about having a small practice in the gym after. If you had the time, it would be fun to have you stick around and maybe play if you wanted.”

“That sounds like fun!” you smiled, “just make sure you all don’t tire yourselves out completely before tomorrow’s game.”

Tanaka gasped dramatically, “We wouldn’t dream of it.”

“-I’m just saying that you have a serious obsession with milk, Kageyama. It’s almost unhealthy.”

“Milk is a good source of calcium, you dumbass. So what if I drink a lot of it?”

“If you had the chance to marry a carton of milk, you absolutely would.”

“Would you shut up already?”

Two voices bickered back and forth as they approached the area near your little group. To anyone even barely associated with Karasuno’s volleyball team, these two arguing idiots would be easy to recognize from a mile away, and sure enough, a head of fluffy orange hair rounded the corner, quarreling with his dark haired teammate.

“Are they seriously having an argument about Kageyama and his milk?” Tanaka questioned.

“I’m honestly not even surprised at this point,” you sighed.

“Hey, morons!” Tanaka yelled at the two boys, who snapped their heads in the direction of their senpai’s distinct voice. “Quit fighting with each other and get the hell over here!”

You could feel your stomach flip involuntarily. Despite seeing the aspiring Karasuno ace many times during Wednesday practices and around school, it was always a sight to behold whenever he was suited up in the official team uniform. Hinata always got into these moments of intense focus during matches, which you deeply admired, and you affiliated such occasions with the jersey he always donned during each game. The look quickly became one of your favorites, but that piece of information was never shared with the boys. Only Kiyoko and Yachi knew about that secret preference, which they had promised to never bring up near any of the Karasuno team.

You were thrown out of your stupor when Nishinoya nudged you knowingly, a single eyebrow raised in a playful challenge. You only scoffed and shook your head, giving the libero a little nudge in return.

“Such a schemer, Nishi.” you murmured.

“You’re such a scaredy-cat.” he muttered in response. “Go compliment him about the game or something, you do it all the time with me and Tanaka.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Excuses, excuses~”

You huffed in exasperation, sparing another look at the little ray of sunshine with which you were so enamored. At this distance, the boy was close enough to recognize you, and you felt a gentle smile grow on your face when warm brown eyes met your own. You offered him a small wave in greeting, as you both were still a ways away from each other.

Hinata was quick to close that distance upon seeing you from across the hallway, making a beeline for the familiar girl that he had grown to love seeing walk through the gymnasium doors every week. He was glad to see you whenever he got the chance; you were always there to help him and Kageyama practice a few more quick attacks after practice concluded, always ready to try a few serves of your own when the boys wanted to get in some extra receives, always happy to help the young decoy with his studies when a particularly difficult exam was near. Not to mention, he found you to be the prettiest person out of his entire class of first years, so that was a plus.

The whole team may or may not know about Hinata’s very obvious affections, despite the boy not telling a single soul about the way his heart goes bwah!! whenever he thinks about you. Tanaka and Nishinoya found the entire ordeal utterly agonizing, being the only two boys on the team knowledgeable of your own feelings, and being sworn to secrecy about that fact. The Karasuno manager and the manager-in-training also knew the irony of the situation, but they didn’t dare meddle in your love life.

If your friends were all being honest with themselves, as torturous as it was to watch you two timid first years dance around each other’s feelings all the time, it was also incredibly adorable to watch your interactions. The usually loud and energetic middle blocker would lose all sense of function every time you would praise his game play, to the point where Kageyama had to kick his teammate from behind to get him to focus again. Hinata swore he nearly ascended when you had launched into his arms after beating Shiratorizawa in the Spring High Finals.

Yet, despite these moments of mutually lingering gazes and light blushes that often dusted both of your faces, the ginger rationalized that you acted this way towards every player on the team, and brushed such encounters with you off as nothing but platonic. He didn’t mind simply being friends, if that's all he could be. He was content so long as he got to be near you.

“Hey, Y/n! I didn’t know you were coming to watch the game today,” Hinata addressed you with a smile that put a blazing summer sun to shame.

“I wanted it to be a surprise! The student council meeting ended up being shorter than expected, so I called Kiyoko and let her know that I was on my way,” you explained. You then turned to Kageyama, who had eventually made his way over to the small group. “Nice game today, Kags. That one set you sent to Asahi in the second match from behind the attack line was insane.”

Karasuno’s starting setter nodded in acknowledgement of the commendation. “Thank you.”

Tanaka and Nishinoya, now standing next to their two teammates, aggressively attempted to gesture to Hinata with their eyes; a silent urge to get you to say something to the boy.

“And I think that one super fast quick attack you guys pulled off in the final set was really cool,” you tagged on. “It’s always fun to see the other team’s reactions whenever that happens.”

The two second years shot you a deadpan look. That’s not exactly what they meant, but they could see you struggling to string together any coherent sentence to your crush and decided not to press any further. You just couldn’t help it! You wanted to tell the present ray of sunshine that he played a great game, that he always played amazingly, despite his occasionally awkward receives or missed serves. He always gave each match 110%, and you wanted to express to him just how phenomenal he was, but just couldn’t find the right words without the fear of sounding completely obsessive and embarrassing. Nishinoya and Tanaka both glanced at each other, a silent agreement occurring between them in a matter of seconds.

Unlike Yachi and Kiyoko, the two boys weren’t opposed to a little meddling.

“Y/n is going to come to the meeting and maybe stay for that extra practice time we have planned,” Nishinoya mentioned, saving you from trying (and failing) to say anything else.

Hinata’s eyes lit up at the news. “For real? That’s great!”

The middle blocker enjoyed your presence at the Wednesday practices you’d attend, especially since it was where he got to witness your competitive and athletic side. So, getting to see more of that was welcomed any time.

You nodded in affirmation and popped a miniature pretzel in your mouth. “And since I was just dropped off at the complex and kind of need a ride, Kiyoko said that there was plenty of room for me to go back on the bus.”

“Hell yeah there is!” Tanaka grinned, slinging an arm around your shoulders. “You can sit with me and Nishinoya, duh.”

You smiled up at him. “Well obviously. Who else would I sit with?”

Nishinoya cheered, picking his game bag off the floor and gently grasping your hand. “Well let’s go find the others, then! Coach Ukai is probably getting impatient waiting for us at this point,” the libero insisted, pulling you towards the doorway of the building with Tanaka in tow.

“Alright, alright! Don’t make me drop my pretzels, Nishi,” you warned, letting yourself get dragged by the excited teen.

Hinata, Kageyama, and Tsukishima also started to gather their things to get on the bus, Yamaguchi doing the same after exiting the bathroom not long before the previous trio ran off to claim their seats. Tsukishima looked over at Hinata, who still had his eyes glued to the door from which his friends had just left, and seized the opportunity to try to get under Hinata’s skin just a little.

“Nishinoya and her are pretty close, don’t you think?” he mentioned briefly, before turning on his heel towards the doorway with Yamaguchi beside him. The pinch server spared a glance back at Hinata as he fell into step with his childhood friend. “Tsukki…”

Now Nishinoya was clearly a close friend to Hinata, as both of the boys were big balls of energy all the time, and as they both shared an immense love for volleyball. Hinata acknowledged his teammate’s tight knit relationship with you, and he was totally okay with that fact. But occasionally, the middle blocker would get a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach that he had never really experienced before as he watched you interact with some of the boys on the team. It wasn’t an excessive amount of instances, but that feeling would bubble up from time to time - most notably when you would spend time with Karasuno’s libero. And whatever that feeling was, Hinata didn’t like it in the slightest.

“Oi, you coming, dumbass?” Kageyama questioned, snapping the ginger out of his thoughts.

“Yeah, I’m coming, Bakeyama,” the middle blocker replied, readjusting his backpack and following Kageyama to the door.

******

The team was glad to see that you had come to watch them play, and you were quick to praise the boys on their well fought match. The ride back to school was relatively quiet, as many of the players wanted to either relax and listen to music or take a quick nap after their tiring game. As the bus continued on its route to Karasuno High School, it was evident that the energy and adrenaline felt earlier in the complex had calmed down, the boys given a chance to rest from the day’s events.

You, Nishinoya and Tanaka were seated near the back of the bus, with Hinata and Kageyama in the adjacent row. Tanaka was out like a light, his face pressed against the cool window next to him, while Nishinoya was struggling to get situated in the spot beside his teammate. From the corner of his eye, the libero could see Hinata sneaking subtle glances at you, as you unsuspectingly gazed at the passing scenery. With a mischievous smile playing at the corners of his lips, Nishinoya decided to kill two birds with one stone: try to help out with his friends’ crushes, and try to get himself a more comfortable napping spot.

“Hey, would you mind doing me a favor?” Nishinoya asked you in a soft tone, but just loud enough for the boy on the other side of the aisle to hear. You turned your attention to the libero, tilting your head to the side. “Sure thing, Nishi. What do you need?”

“Could I maybe lie down on you? It’s been a little difficult to find a decent position to get comfortable in,” he asked sheepishly. “If not, I totally get it.”

You smiled at the light pink that dusted his cheeks, and you patted your lap. “It’s alright, go ahead. You deserve to get some rest.”

Nishinoya offered you a smile of his own. He placed his legs over Tanaka’s snoozing form, knowing that his friend wouldn’t mind as they had been in similar positions on previous team bus rides. He then placed his head gently in your lap, gazing up at you before speaking up once more. “Thank you. You’re seriously the best.”

“It’s not a problem at all,” you waved it off.

The libero closed his eyes, sighing contentedly when he felt your hand brush through his hair. You absentmindedly hummed the soothing melody to a lullaby as you let your fingers carefully undo any tangles on his head. You paid special attention to the blonde streaks of hair that you always told the second year you adored, twirling the strands between your fingers and letting them fall back into place.

You were completely ignorant to the fact that the boy on the other end of the aisle felt a burning envy in his stomach as he witnessed the display from his peripheral vision. Your voice, which would have mesmerized Hinata under any other circumstance, did nothing to ease the emotions licking at his insides like unpleasant tendrils of flame. He desperately wanted to be able to sidle up next to you, wanted to feel your hands weave gently through his messy ginger hair. The fact that it wasn’t him made Hinata feel nauseous - worse than how he felt before a big game.

Because although Hinata was absolutely fine with you being close to the boys on his team, it didn’t mean he couldn’t get jealous.

Seated beside the middle blocker, Kageyama took note of his friend’s clenched fists and slightly tightened jaw, a stark contrast to Hinata’s usual happy-go-lucky enthusiasm. One look at the opposite side of the bus blatantly explained why. Kageyama was confused, though; Nishinoya knew just as much as the rest of the team that the decoy had his sights set on you, so why was he disregarding that fact right in front of him? The libero either didn’t realize what he was doing would upset his friend, or he knew exactly what he was up to. Was the whole thing intentional?

*****

Ohhh, it absolutely was. Kageyama figured that much out as soon as the team meeting started.

Nishinoya had been occasionally looking at Hinata to gauge the boy’s reaction, being careful not to overstep his boundaries, but pushing it just enough to see if the ginger would step in and make a move on you. From what Kageyama could tell, Tanaka was also in on this plan, but the wing spiker let his fellow second year handle most of the interactions with the brunette.

You were settled next to Kiyoko on the gymnasium floor, sitting with your legs stretched out as you listened in on the meeting. Nishinoya had his head resting on your shoulder the entire time, only shifting from his spot to steal more snacks from Tanaka’s backpack. If it weren’t for what Hinata had witnessed in the bus earlier that evening, he likely would have thought nothing of the second year’s actions. But now it was all he could think about, barely even focusing on the words coming out of Coach Ukai’s mouth. That feeling in his gut still hadn’t left him alone.

His discomfort was even more apparent when a number of the boys stayed behind after the meeting for some extra practice. Sugawara, who was the only third year who decided to postpone his walk home (mostly to keep an eye on his rambunctious children juniors), helped divide the group of six players into teams. Kageyama, Nishinoya, and Tanaka were on one team of three, while Suga, Hinata, and you were on the other. Despite the fact that he was on the same team as you, the middle blocker was still in a distant mood, and this showed when he completely botched the first two sets Suga tossed to him.

“Are you alright, Hinata? You seem a bit off at the moment,” you spoke softly behind him. When the ginger didn’t answer, she frowned slightly. “Shoyo…”

His first name coming from you had Hinata’s face heating up, not just because he loved the way his first name sounded on your lips, but because he was embarrassed. His bitter emotions had completely messed up his game, and caused him to practically ignore your concerned inquiry.

“Yeah, I’m alright. Just a little tired is all,” he brushed it off. “I‘ll be good to go now that I’ve warmed up a bit.”

“Oh, okay. Tell me if you need some water or anything, your face looks hot.” You instantly flushed at the choice of words. “I mean, it looks warm! Like a red - you know what I mean.”

Tanaka snickered at your stammering, and you shot him a glare of annoyance before turning on your heel to retrieve the volleyball that had rolled away from the group.

After that, the three-on-three game went pretty smoothly. Hinata was in a better mood, working well together with his two partners. You even got a few good spikes in during the match (although a majority of them were thwarted by Karasuno’s Guardian Deity). Before you all realized it, the moon was shining brightly in the sky, and Suga instructed everyone to go home and get rest in preparation for tomorrow’s first game. After putting back the equipment the group had borrowed from the storage room, you were on your way out the gym doors, until the voices of Tanaka and Nishinoya stopped you midway.

“Wait up, Y/n!” The libero called out to her. You turned her attention towards him, a soft smile resting on your face after the impromptu practice.

“There’s no way you’re walking home all by yourself at this time of night.” Tanaka declared firmly, and Nishinoya nodded his head vigorously.

“I’ll be fine, you guys. Besides, neither of you live all that close to me, so it would be unreasonable of you to walk me home,” you told them.

“Well, doesn’t Hinata live in the same area as you do? Why doesn’t he walk you home?” Nishinoya suggested.

On the other end of the gym, Hinata had caught wind of the conversation. The ginger’s head perked up at the idea of accompanying you home, and standing beside him, Kageyama finally realized what the two second years had been up to the whole day. You narrowed your eyes at the boys in suspicion, but you couldn’t deny that it was a good idea to have someone else with you at this hour. You gazed over at your fellow first years, finding that Hinata was already looking your way, and a light shade of pink dusted your face.

“I mean, if he wouldn’t mind it, I suppose it would probably be smart,” you shrugged.

“It’s not a problem at all,” he uttered out.

Tanaka and Nishinoya shared a sly grin. This was the most that the two could do for their two dense kohais, so the rest was up to you both.

“If you’re uh, ready to go, my bike is just outside,” Hinata sputtered.

“Oh! Yeah, I’m good to go,” you responded with an awkward thumbs up that you mentally smacked yourself for.

“Don’t go having too much fun now,” Tanaka smirked. “He’s still gotta play tomorrow.”

His raised eyebrows and overall suggestive expression were met with a playful smack on the arm.

“Shut up, you big weirdo,” you scoffed, and before any more comments could be made by your two dorks of friends, you rushed out the gym door after Hinata.

Seeing the boy waiting outside for you, his fiery orange hair illuminated by the glimmering starlight like a cliche movie scene, you nearly tripped on the staircase by the school’s entrance. When he turned to you with an easy smile, your heart practically busted out of your chest. Damn him and his cute face.

You approached him at the gate and readjusted the bag on your shoulders, trying to remain calm at the realization that you were going to be alone with her favorite ray of sunshine. Beginning on the path up the hill, Hinata decides to push his bike alongside him in order to stay closer to you.

“I didn’t realize you lived that close to me until Noya said something tonight,” the middle blocker mentioned.

You raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Really? I’m surprised you haven’t been over before.”

“Maybe I should come visit sometime.” Hinata’s eyes widened at the implication and quickly added, “Like, with the rest of the team!”

You laughed softly. “That sounds like fun.”

You both walked in a slightly uncomfortable silence for a moment, before Hinata spoke up.

“So, does that mean Nishinoya has been over to your place before?” he asked.

“Yeah, he’s been over a few times now,” you confirmed.

“Oh, that's cool.”

Your eyebrows furrowed at his response, his voice laced with what you could only recognize as disappointment.

“Why do you ask?” you inquired.

“Well, you both just seemed really close is all.” The first year ran a hand through his hair. “Even Tsukishima noticed.”

“Well, Nishi and I are really good friends, and we know a lot about each other, so I guess that’s an accurate description.”

Hinata glanced at you and titled his head a fraction, which you thought made him look like an adorable little puppy.

“Really good...friends?” he murmured.

You nodded affirmatively. “Yeah, he’s like an older brother. Did you think we were dating or something?” you laughed. You meant it as a joke, but when the boy didn’t reply, your eyes widened a fraction and you stopped walking.

“You thought me and Nishi were, like, together together?” you gaped.

At this point Hinata was burning red. He nodded bashfully, and you fell into fits of giggles, placing your hands on your knees for support.

“H-hey! It was a justified question!” Hinata defended himself. “He fell asleep on you in the bus today and it looked like a normal thing for you two, so I just figured!”

You stood straight and composed yourself, a teasing smile playing on your lips as you started walking again.

“As much as I love Nishinoya, we’re definitely not dating,” you explained. “It’s a platonic relationship, nothing more.”

Hinata mentally celebrated at the confirmation that there was nothing going on between you and the libero, although he was embarrassed beyond words at this point in the conversation.

“I’m super sorry!! I just thought- I shouldn’t have assumed,” he apologized, scratching the back of his head.

“Awe, it’s okay, Shoyo. I guess we do act a bit like a couple sometimes, but...I’m not actually seeing anyone at the moment.” You added on without a second thought, “Nishi knows who I really like, though.”

Hinata frowned a bit at the latter sentence, but he remained in a better mood than before.

“So…do I know this person?” he inquired, feeling quite courageous himself.

You hummed, a blush creeping up your neck. “So what if you do?”

“Is it someone on the team?”

“Are we playing twenty questions or something now?” you laughed nervously.

Stupid! Why did I even mention anything in the first place? you mentally cursed yourself.

The ginger felt his heart rate pick up. Out of hope or anxiety, he wasn’t exactly sure.

“What’s he like?” Hinata heard himself asking.

You couldn’t help but smile fondly at the ironic inquiry, and decided to answer his question.

“He’s probably the most energetic person I’ve ever met, but in a good way. He’s really kind to everyone, even though he can get very competitive. While he’s not the most studious, I can tell he tries his hardest to do his best in everything he does. Not to mention he’s incredibly cute.” You chanced a glance at the intently staring first year for a brief moment before focusing your attention back on the sidewalk, thankful for the dim lights of the street. “Sometimes I find it just…so difficult to not mess with his hair, too. It’s so overwhelmingly fluffy.

Hinata let out a small sigh. He didn’t think there was any way he could compete with the special someone that you had described so fondly.

“Well, it sounds like you really like him,” he said simply, a halfhearted smile on his face. “He’s a really lucky guy, whoever he is.”

At his genuine tone, you raised her head to lock eyes with Hinata, who was looking at you with such an honest expression that your breath hitched in your throat. You slowed down in the middle of the empty walkway.

“It’s you, ya big dummy,” you admitted quietly, fiddling nervously with your sweatshirt sleeves.

Hinata heard it. You could tell that much from the way his eyes widened as he stopped dead in his tracks.

“It’s me?” he echoed.

You nodded once, not able to speak as you evaluated his reaction. Hinata clumsily pushed the kickstand of his bike down with wide eyes, maneuvering around it to step closer to you and examine your face, trying to determine if this was real or all in his head.

“I like you too. Like a lot,” he managed to confess, a delighted grin gracing his features.

You felt like you were dreaming and about to wake up at any moment, the urge to pinch yourself just for confirmation that this was all real itching at the back of your mind. But your train of coherent thought quickly dissipated when Hinata gingerly moved a hand up to your flushed cheek, brushing your jaw with his thumb and looking up with warm brown eyes.

“Could I kiss you?” he asked gently, voice barely above a whisper.

“Please do,” you conceded.

Hinata brushed his lips with yours, in a brief but sweet exchange. He did so the second time in the same manner to experiment, and again, just to confirm that this moment was actually happening, before all but backing you into the bike behind them as you tugged at the collar of his shirt. His lips were softer than expected, and you tasted the fruity flavor of what you assumed to be lip balm lingering on them. You could feel the boy grinning into the kiss, this one longer and firmer than their predecessors, and you eagerly tangled your fingers in his fluffy orange hair that was impossibly softer than imagined. His own hands found themselves planted firmly on your waist to secure you from losing balance, drawing small circles into your sides with his thumbs. Your entire body was buzzing with excitement, practically melting when Hinata traced your bottom lip with his tongue.

Hinata pulled away briefly to catch his breath, a fire blazing in his eyes that had you shying away from his gaze. He took a hand off of your waist and tilted your face back towards him with his index finger, a newfound confidence radiating off of the first year in droves that had you flushing darker than you thought possible.

“Shoyo,” you spoke his name softly, pulling a bit at the fiery strands of hair still twirled between your fingers. The little hum elicited from Hinata’s throat was one of your new favorite sounds.

“Please use my first name more often,” the boy breathed out, and you couldn’t help but laugh airily at the request, Hinata unable to suppress the satisfied smile that bloomed across his flushed face at the sound.

“That was… unexpected,” you murmured.

“Good unexpected?” the ginger inquired playfully.

“Very good unexpected,” you joked lightly.

Hinata wrapped you in a warm hug, snuggling his face into the crook of your neck. You reciprocated the action, arms encircling around his figure, taking in everything that had happened with an enormous smile.

You might just have to thank Nishinoya later.

#hinata shoyo x you #hinata shoyo #haikyuu!!#haikyuu fanfiction #haikyuu anime #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu oneshot #hinata fluff #hinata #hinata imagine #hinata x reader #hinata shoyo x reader #hinata shoyuo #hinata shouyo x reader #fluff

160 notes · View notes

wefoundloveunderthelight · 3 years

Photo

Wonderland by GleefullyCaptainSwan

Read on AO3: Chapter 1

Or on FF

Tagging: @kmomof4 @lfh1226-linda

Notes: I hope to add a new aesthetic for each chapter because...well work sucks and I need a way to unwind. :)

Substance abuse is a serious issue. If you need help with an addiction, please call The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHS) National Helpline – 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: Killian Jones

2 weeks ago

The hotel room was littered with empty bottles of rum and beer, it smelled of smoke, leather, and sex. The naked girl strung out on the expensive leather couch had passed out hours previously from too much drink.

“Lass, do share!” Killian tipped his glass back, the sting from the alcohol had been dulled six drinks previously.

The brunette gyrated on top of his lap, rubbing her center against his naked form. She passed the $100 bill to him and then began slithering a trail of wetness against his skin with her tongue. He pushed her out of his way to lean forward, rolling the bill and inhaling the white powder into his nose, his head fell back against the chair. His eyes closed, letting the feeling wash over him.

The girl continued her duty, eagerly sucking his cock while her hands caressed his chest. Her fingers trailed the flesh on his left arm, and he reached out with his right hand, grabbing a fist full of her hair and yanking her away from him. She stared at him wide eyed. “No, you can touch me anywhere but there.” He growled, shoving her back down to his groin.

He closed his eyes again, getting lost in the swirls of her tongue and the euphoric sensations of her mouth gloriously working his cock. “Mm, Milah.” He groaned.

“Who the hell is Milah?” The girl stopped her eager work.

His eyes blew open, looking down at the dark-haired girl who was staring at him angrily. “Mary?” He said warily. “Nancy?” He pressed his fingers to his head and squeezed his eyes shut trying to remember the damn woman’s name. “Janice?” he said snapping his fingers.

“It’s Abby.”

“Who cares.”

The girl got up from his lap and walked toward her friend who was passed out on the couch. “Fuck you.”

“I already did that, twice, and I don’t seem to remember any complaints, darling.” He leaned over and took another snort. His vision distorting slightly. “Get back over here, it’s not going to suck itself.” The girl reluctantly walked back toward him. “Abby love, please.” He added.

He took another shot of rum as the girl reluctantly returned to continue her task of pleasuring him. “You’re damn good at that love, my heart is absolutely racing.” He groaned, sweat pouring off his forehead.

She stopped her task, “You sure you’re ok, Mr. Jones?”

“What are you bloody stopping for?” He yelled, grabbing the bottle next to him, and tipping it into his mouth. His hand slid onto his erect member, tugging himself to try and reach the release he so desperately needed. “Do I have to do this for you?”

His heart really was racing. The girl stepped back from him, retreating to the couch to try again and wake her friend.”

“Who needs you.” He growled angrily. “I’ll do it my damn self.”

He closed his eyes. Dark hair invading his thoughts. Images racing across his lids.

“I love you Milah.” The scenes played out like a movie on fast forward in his brain. “Why would you do this?” Blurring, bright lights, his headache was blinding him. “Killian, you shouldn’t…” His heart was pounding out of his chest. “Oh God what have I done?” Red lights and rain?

Wait. Was it raining in his room?

Darkness was threatening to swallow him, he was screaming into the night.

“Killian, wake up.”

He could faintly hear someone speaking to him. He tried to respond; words didn’t come.

“Call 911.”

Present Day

Killian watched the land come into view, a bright patch of green over a sea of blue. It was a beautiful sight that he would surely have welcomed if he were here for pleasure.

“At least you’ll have a gorgeous view during your stay.”

Killian glared at the man sitting across from him, gripping the leather handle on his seat. “Yeah, I’m sure sightseeing is the first thing they sign you up for, right after racquetball and cricket.” He grumbled sarcastically.

“I know you’re upset with everyone, KJ, but you know we had no other choice, right?”

Killian looked away, glancing out the window again to focus on the ground as the wheels touched down.

He stood when the plane came to a stop and walked toward the exit. Robin got up and followed him. When he got to the steps he turned around and faced the man. “I think I can turn myself in Dad.”

Robin rolled his eyes. “I’m just trying to be here for you.”

“I think you’ve done enough Rob. Go home.” Killian turned and bounded down the steps, grabbing his bag from the pilot, and storming toward the car waiting for him.

“Killian Jones?” The man asked.

“Yup, I’m the lucky bloke!” He said mockingly and climbed into the backseat.

“Welcome to Wonderland.”

“Wonderland? You can’t be serious. What a bloody stupid name.” He mused but the man simply shut the door behind him.

The trip from the small airport only took five minutes, Killian watched the beauty of the island zoom past through the darkened windows of the limo. He slammed back against the headrest and squeezed his eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Killian, this has to stop, you almost died this time. Do you think this is what mom would have wanted for you?” “And yet I’m still here.” “Is that what you want? To not be here? Because I can’t decide if this is a death wish or you are just fucking stupid.”

The car came to a sudden halt, he let out a long groan and peered through his eyes. The door opened and he stepped out into the sunlight.

“Welcome to Wonderland Rehabilitation Center, Mr. Jones.” The moment he left the car, he was greeted by a man in a security uniform. “Names Graham, Pleasure to meet you. I happened to hear the call that you were arriving and wanted to greet you personally. Can I just say how much I loved “Seasick”? That song changed my life, man.”

“Oh good, a fan. Splendid.” He said sarcastically as he brushed past the man and up the walkway to the entrance.

He heard the guard’s footsteps behind him. “I checked you in, but you’ll need to meet with Regina.”

“Well point me in the way of this Regina then and let’s get on with it.”

“You’ve found her.” A dark-haired woman was standing at the front desk, her dark suit and heels told him that this was a woman who liked to be in charge. “Regina Mills. I’m the Manager here at WRC.”

“I suppose this is where you read me the rules and tell me how its going to be, scared straight or something, right?”

“Something like that.” She grinned and gestured for him to follow her.

“So, you’ve met Graham, he’s my head of security, so if you step out of line, break any of my rules, I’ll know about it.” She opened the door to her office and sat at her desk, waving her hand to the chair across from her.

“Just tell me what I need to do to get out of here.”

“Ready to leave so soon?” She mused.

“No, just eager to get back to my life.”

“Ah yes, Killian Jones, Mother died when you were four. You lived with your father, Brennan and brother, Liam until you were 17, dropped out of high school when your dad died and started a band with your high school buddy Robin Locksley at 18.” She turned the page in his file. “How am I doing so far?”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m not here for a history lesson.”

“I wasn’t finished.” She cut him off. “Let’s see, got your lucky break playing in a bar when you were 22, signed to a 1-year contract with Capitol Records. What’s the name of your little band?”

“The Sea Dogs and it’s not exactly little.”

“Ah that’s right. Your 1-year contract turned into a multi record deal, didn’t it?”

“Aye, we won a Grammy, actually.”

“Never really understood your band honestly, the sea doesn’t have dogs. Never the matter, where did I leave off, ah your aspiring acting career. Three picture deal, isn’t that correct?”

He nodded. “Yes, the last film starts production in 6 months. Hence my need to finish this up.”

“You can’t rush recovery, Mr. Jones.”

“Then does this little story have a point, or should we continue wasting my time?”

“The point is, I don’t care who you are. You’re not here on vacation, this isn’t a spa. If you want to leave WRC, I expect you to work for it. You’ll find that we have many special people here. Movie stars, musicians, billionaires, the fact of the matter is, I don’t give a damn who you are. You’re all the same here.” She tossed his file onto the desk. “Addicts.”

His jaw was tense.

“The sooner you realize that’s who you are, that’s when your recovery can start and not a second sooner. Until then you’re just another rich guy hiding from his problems on my island.”

“Well, this was uplifting. Are all the sessions going to be this inspirational because I want to make sure I get my money’s worth.”

“You’ll have individual therapy sessions 3 times a week and group session once a week with Dr. Hopper. There is a cafeteria where you will have all your meals, any medication will be provided to you by Dr. Whale. I understand you are still in the process of physical therapy since the…”

“That is correct, I assume my physical therapy will continue with Dr. Whale also?”

“Yes. There is a gym where you can work out on your down time, as well as yoga classes that are hosted by our recreational therapist and dietician Zelena West.”

“Yoga sounds most interesting.” He mused sarcastically.

“Lights out is at 10pm. No sex of any kind.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“No sex. I would assume that is self-explanatory, Jones or do I need to provide you the rules in a book with pictures?”

“No Ma’am. But 10pm? Honestly, I’m going to miss Big Brother After Dark, and who doesn’t love a good reality show with drama, am I right?”

“I think you’ll find that the sooner you take things seriously, Mr. Jones, the better your stay here will go for you.” She glared at him. “Now if I can just get you to sign some paperwork for me and turn in your cell phone and any personal items into this bag. I will have it locked up so you can gather them when you leave.” He pulled his phone from his pocket, tossing it into the bag.

“Did you need to check your messages or send any before you turn it over?”

“Nope, don’t have anyone I care to communicate with.”

“Well, if you change your mind, you are permitted to make your first phone call after completing 14 days of treatment. After that you will have access to the phone in the lounge during the hours of 9am to 9pm.”

“Am I scheduled for restroom breaks as well or am I allowed to take those as necessary?”

She stared a hole through him. “Dr. Hopper is going to have a field day with you.” She chuckled dryly.

There was a knock on the door and a fair skinned man in a white coat poked his head into the room.

“Did you call me for a patient meet and greet?”

“Ah yes, Dr. Whale, may I introduce you to Killian Jones.”

The man stepped into the room and extended his hand, withdrawing quickly when he looked down at his missing limb and swapping the hand he extended. “Nice to meet you. How long has it been?” He asked, pointing to his lack of appendage.

“Long enough to not want to talk about it.” Regina cleared her throat and Killian internally groaned. “Three months.”

“I got the notes from your previous physical therapist so we will continue strength exercises three days a week starting tomorrow.”

“I can hardly contain my glee.”

Dr. Whale exchanged a glance with Regina. “Oh, Dr. Hopper is going to love him.” She nodded with a smirk on her face. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He remarked before turning and leaving him alone with the abrasive woman on the other side of the desk.

“So, when do I get to go to my room to sit and reflect on my life.”

“Ah yes, let me take you to your room now.” She stood, depositing his items in her desk drawer, and locking it behind her. “This way.”

He followed her down the corridor, noting all the windows lining the hallway with views of the ocean. He wished again that he were here for a different reason. “Here you go Mr. Jones.”

He stopped before entering the room. “Jones is fine, Mr. Jones is my father, and he’s no longer among the living.”

“Alright Jones, home sweet home.”

He stepped into the room, more windows looking out onto the island. His eyes settled on the two beds in the room. “Um, I’m pretty sure this is costing me a hefty penny, but care to explain why I need two beds?”

“You must be the new guy.” A man pushed past him into the room.

“This is your roommate, August.”

“Roommate? I thought this place allowed privacy and solidarity.”

“Did I forget that rule, sorry about that. For the first 2 weeks, all patients are paired with someone who has already completed their first 14 days.”

“I don’t need a bloody babysitter.” Lowering his voice and turning toward Regina.

“Think of him more as a buddy.” She appeared to be taking joy in his discomfort and anger.

“I don’t need one of those either.” He growled.

She turned on her heels and started off down the hallway. “Dr. Hopper will see you in 20 minutes. Don’t be late. Your buddy can help you find your way there.”

He clinched his fist, watching the woman click her heels on the tile until she turned the corner and disappeared. He spun around and stepped into the room.

“It goes by quickly.” His new babysitter was sitting on one of the beds reading a book.

“Not quick enough.” He tossed his bag on the empty bed.

“You’re that guy, aren’t you?” He stood up and pretended to look off into the distance. “Ahoy Matey there’s land ahead.” Killian groaned and tossed his clothes into the empty dresser. “Sorry, but you’re pretty recognizable.”

“Fantastic.”

“Secrets safe with me. No one cares who anyone is here anyway.”

“How long have you been here?”

“24 days. You get used to the way things work around here after the first week.”

“Not bloody likely.” He grumbled.

“Hey, don’t fight it, trust me, the first guy I stayed with when I got here has been here 6 months and still keeps breaking the rules, at this rate, he’s never leaving.” Killian thought about his situation. He knew the more he resisted the longer he would be stuck on this island and he wanted nothing more than to leave this place and get back to set.

“Perhaps you have a point. If you would be so kind as to show me to Dr. Hopper’s office, I would much like to get a start on getting the hell out of here.”

He followed the man down the hallways, a maze of rights and lefts until they exited the building and crossed a lush green lawn to a small building on the other side of the complex. “First door on your right.” August pointed toward the building. “Good luck.”

He stepped through the doors and was greeted by a friendly, curly haired man, “You must be Mr. Jones, I’m Dr. Hopper, but you can call me Archie.”

“Killian will be fine, Archie.”

“Alright, Killian, please join me in my office.”

Killian walked into the room, not at all surprised to see the long couch and leather chair. He nervously took a seat on the couch and looked around. “So, uh how does this work, do I lie down, or can we skip that part?”

The man laughed. “None of that is necessary, unless that makes you comfortable. Our sessions will happen three times a week, sometimes I may ask you questions, other times you may feel like sharing, but really, the most important part at WRC is that we make sure you don’t ignore the mental part of your recovery.” Killian shifted uncomfortably on the couch. He had no idea how he was supposed to sit here and share anything with this man, a man he had just met. “What exactly are we supposed to talk about?”

“How about we talk about what brought you here.”

Killian looked at the ceiling. “My bandmate, Robin brought me.”

“Not who, but what was the reason you chose to come to Wonderland?”

Killian laughed loudly. “Chose, that’s an interesting way to put it.”

“And how would you put it?”

“Forced, not given much choice, ordered to come, your pick I guess.”

“And yet you’re here.”

“Yeah, did you know that there’s a moral clause in contracts?” He clicked his tongue in his mouth in annoyance. “Guess I should have read the fine print.”

“So, you’re here because your behavior was deemed to be in breach of contract?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“And do you think your behavior was acceptable?”

“I think my behavior was no one’s business but my own.”

He nodded and then wrote a few sentences in his notebook.

“What? Was that the wrong answer?” Killian said dryly.

“I’m just taking notes, it doesn’t mean that I agree or disagree with anything you have said. I’m merely here to observe your response.” He put down his pencil and looked back at Killian. “Tell me about the night of the accident.”

Killian’s jaw clenched and he formed a fist with his right hand. “I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”

“Interesting response. You had attended a premiere for your first movie, is that correct?”

“What were you doing talking to him?” “We were just talking, Killy. He’s your co-star.” “Bullshit. Don’t lie to me.” “Killian, would you stop acting like this.” “I’ll stop acting like this when you start telling the goddamn truth.” “I’m not going to talk to you while you’re drunk.” “No but you’ll fuck him when he’s drunk, isn’t that right Milah?” “Fuck you.”

Killian flinched when he heard the man sit forward in his seat. “This is fucking pointless.” He growled.

“Neverland? That was the name of the movie, right?”

Killian stood up suddenly and began pacing. “How much longer do we need to talk about this today?”

The man shut his notebook. “This is your time, if this is too overwhelming for you on your first day, we can pick this back up in our next session.”

“Thrilling, I can’t wait.” Killian raced out the door, almost sprinting across the lawn before he found a spot against the wall underneath a tree and paused. He leaned against the building trying to calm his breathing. He said he would come here after his detox in order to satisfy his director, but he would be damned if he was going to spend his days baring his soul to a stranger about things he hadn’t even shared with his brother.

He agreed to lay off the drugs, he begrudgingly swore off rum to make everyone happy, but this went too far.

He was going to have to find a way around this therapist BS if he was going to get out of here.

He shoved off the wall and walked back toward his room, pausing as he passed the front desk. Blonde hair and gorgeous legs capturing his attention. “Name, please.”

The blonde rolled her eyes. “Emma.” She glared at Graham. “Swan.”

“Say’s Nolan in my logbook.”

“Listen asshole, it’s Emma Swan. Update your damn records.”

He licked his lips, working his eyes down to the curve of the woman’s ass. Maybe this place wouldn’t be so terrible after all.

Notes:

Here we go again... I will try and post an update once a week. This one will be longer than my last fic and requires a lot more research, so it may take a bit longer to update than MHFLB did.

#wonderland #wonderland fic #stacy's fics #captainswan #captain swan #captain swan au #captain swan fics #captain swan modern au #emma x killian #killian jones #emma x hook #emma swan

12 notes · View notes

arcticdementor · 3 years

Link

By now, the spectacle that is South Africa’s insurrection has been dominating the attentions of just about every political junkie on twitter, drawing the best minds from every corner of the world to bear witness to the fall of the rainbow nation into a predictable quagmire of irresolvable chaos. At home, the pessimism comes in many flavours, and the denialism in many, many more.

The brute facts are now well-known. After dodging prosecution for extreme corruption for over a decade, the former president Jacob Zuma was finally arrested for the relatively minor charge of contempt of court, for not appearing when summoned. While he held out for several days as his supporters (who comprise about half the ruling party including several senior cabinet ministers) picketed outside his palatial compound (bought with the UK foreign aid budget of 2017) and blocked police from entering, he eventually handed himself in. So concluded a long factional battle between Ramaphosa and Zuma that claimed hundreds of lives in burned freight trucks, assassinated councillors, and billions of Rands in legal fees, patronage and PR. Or so it appeared.

On the 8th of July, the president disbanded the Umkhonto weSizwe Veterans Association, essentially the continuation of the old military wing of the ANC, and fiercely loyal to Jacob Zuma. The next day, together with assistance from elements within state intel and security, they deployed to major transport routes, food depots, retail outlets, police stations, power stations, water treatment plants, and ports, to shut down and burn what they could, crippling the Johannesburg-Durban trade artery that carries 65% of our trade volume and half our economic capacity.

After encouraging looting targeting white-owned businesses or “white monopoly capital”, the MK vets could watch as riots burst out to take advantage of the chaos and everything was stripped to the bone by opportunistic looters. In the shadows, organised and disorganised elements blurred together, as even the wealthiest elements of black society got in on the fun of looting, packing luxury sportscars with groceries and appliances before watching the flames tear down the shops and factories.

The police and the military did nothing, and the president was silent, paralysed. Soon the violence spread to the suburbs, and residents cobbled together militia to guard their homes. Proof of address was required to buy groceries. This received wails of agony from the press class and black social media. Slogans calling for the slaughter of Indians (who form a large minority in Durban) and whites became common, and soon the newspapers were joining in on the scapegoating, accusing the citizens’ militia of racism.

…

Everyone here saw this coming, but for decades now, it has been an unacceptable thing to do, to remark upon the inevitable future we find ourselves in. Why it came to all this, and why it matters to Americans and Europeans, is the point of this essay. It will be uneasy to stomach, but it must be swallowed. We live on the brink of barbarism, and the West is following us every step of the way.

A nation may have a lot of ruin in it, but a poor nation has less ruin in it than a wealthy one. When a state collapses or undergoes revolution in the distant reaches of Africa or Asia, there is a certain social distance which prevents Westerners directly apprehending the significance of the social dynamics, the closeness of the dangers, the universality of the lessons, the pain and the tragedy of the loss.

But South Africa is different. South Africa is at once Western and alien to Westerners. Our constitution is Western. Our revolutionaries and our reactionaries and our racial cosmology is Western. Our highest aspiration is that of the West at large – a universal state which recognises no difference of class, race, or creed. And that is why when we observe South Africa, we stare into the abyss of Western civilisation and its global future. Each Westerner sees himself reflected in that void, from the national-socialist, to the anarcho-communist, to the black-nationalist and the bleeding-heart liberal.

And they are right to.

…

Watching any graph of any indicator in South Africa sees every resource drying up, every indicator of health taking a nosedive, and the population booming beyond control, kept in check only by the enormous and perennial pandemic of AIDS and tuberculosis that take many times the number of victims supposedly taken by the SARS-CoV2 virus, every year. We are the rape capital of the world, have seen over half a million homicides since 1994, and the state has not replaced any of the infrastructure built by the Afrikaner nationalist government. The graphs just spell doom in their trend lines, and have for years now, as the Centre for Risk Analysis’s I-told-you-so’s often repeat.

When they came to power, the ruling party was a coalition of communists, black nationalists, organised criminals and common thugs. However, their patrons in the Soviet Union were disbanded, and the Western state apparatus was still composed of law-abiding institutions and competent civil servants. So they purged the minorities, and placed party members at all key posts throughout, to ensure ideological and partisan loyalty – this was called cadre deployment. This crippled the institutions. When the last of the old guard experts were ushered into the wilderness in 1998, they made several systematic departmental reports, which declared the need for replacing infrastructure immediately, to cope with the increased dependent population. This was ignored, largely because the experts were white.

…

While many see the doom as setting in after 1994, it in fact began much sooner. The means by which the ANC gained power was not through civil disobedience, but through a long and sustained campaign of totalitarian violence called the Peoples War, which raged from 1979 until 1993. Black wage increases increased faster than white until this period (51.3% vs 3.8% since 1970), economic growth was over 5%, inequality was falling and blacks enjoyed the highest standard of living of any black population on the continent.

The addiction to cheap black labour meant that industry was irritated with state policies, and in the end, it was the local plutocrats like Harry Oppenheimer and the old secret societies like the Afrikaner Broederbond who opened secret negotiation to end apartheid. And while SA may have had a robust economy once, nothing survived the People’s War. It aimed to “make the country ungovernable”, and largely succeeded. Controlling migration from the black homelands became impossible, and maintaining law and order as the bodies piled up became harder and harder.

…

But the liberal establishment could not bring themselves to believe there were systemic reasons for this state of affairs beyond “corruption” or “inequality”, and the struggle to blame the status quo on the previous regime became ever harder. So they blamed Zuma. The lost decade, they called it. So when Cyril Ramaphosa, a man largely blamed for the Marikana massacre, finally took the party leadership in 2017, after a long, expensive battle of assassination, bribery and skulduggery, he billed himself as a liberal reformer and anti-corruption campaigner, and the international community fell for it hook line and sinker, and local liberals worshipped him like the coming of a new Mandela. He promised the 4th Industrial Revolution. He promised the reigning in of BEE. The Economist endorsed him over the liberal DA.

But he was lying.

…

There are only three sources for non-socialist print media coverage of politics in South Africa. Politicsweb, where all the old senior analysts go when they become persona non grata, the Institute of Race Relations (a venerable old classic-liberal institute with a daily paper, the Daily Friend, and a consulting business, Centre for Risk Analysis), and Maroela Media, an Afrikaans-language publication run by Afriforum, the civil rights activist organisation which sprung from the Afrikaner-national Solidariteit movement.

Aside from this, every other publication leans further to the left than a man with his left leg blown off, and due to a hangover of apartheid-era Cold War politics, “left and right”, terms only applicable among the educated classes, roughly align with a black-vs-white friend-enemy distinction. The Mail & Guardian, for instance (indirectly owned by the Open Society Foundation), has refused to cover any rural homicide committed against a white victim in nearly a decade, despite a global magnifying glass being placed on the barbaric torture and murder spree that has slowly been smouldering across our rural hinterlands. When a white person commits a crime, it is milked dry every day until the journalists get carpal tunnel. But against the ocean of violent depravity committed by the racial majority, which has taken half a million lives since the fall of apartheid, we receive virtual silence. Swaziland, seeing the same kind of violent uprising as KwaZulu Natal is, is treated as a democratic revolution against a tyrannical absolute monarch, despite the opposition being mainly violent communists receiving support from South African parties like the EFF.

…

I was a communist when I was at university. I was delivered a faithful belief in progressivism, nonracialism, revolution and universal democracy, through the national curriculum in South Africa. I was introduced to Marx and Mill as an A Level student in the UK, and when I returned to my native country, I was exposed once more to the poverty and desperation and racial tensions. I assumed all the positions one would expect. More democracy, more repudiation of Christianity and white people, more redistribution, more socialism. But the political waters were calm in those days, and this was mere posturing. Then in 2015 my friends began a campaign to topple the statue of Cecil Rhodes overlooking Cape Town from the university his will founded.

#RhodesMustFall mushroomed rapidly, and became the romantic darling of not only us horny little revolutionaries, but leftists worldwide, who exported the new iconoclasm to Oxford and South Carolina. It is now remembered as #FeesMustFall, a campaign to make tertiary education free (for blacks). But I watched it grow from the inside, and partook in the occupation of admin buildings, touring other college protests in the Cape out of solidarity. But it became clear that it was first and foremost about racial hatred and the purging of Western influence, under their holy trinity of Steve Biko, Franz Fanon and Kimberlé Crenshaw – segregation, national-socialism and a metaphysical racial hierarchy, in new nation called Azania, synonymous with the basketcase fictional nation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel Black Mischief.

This movement, while it began as nonracialist, soon became openly genocidal. Student leaders who called for genocide went unpunished, even praised by the VC of the University of Cape Town. This movement spread to every single university in the country, and despite prominent student leaders praising Adolf Hitler and calling for whites to be swept into the sea, singing genocidal songs at every protest, white students still offered themselves as human shields before police. Dining halls were segregated, classes were violently shut down, nonparticipants in some universities were beaten in their dormitories, staff were chased with buckwhips, buses were burned, paintings were burned, even security guards were burned, and more recently, so was the continent’s largest library. But no big newspaper offered moral criticism, just worries about whether the tactics were effective.

These young people defined a new era, and a new consensus – all struggles are one, and all are about black vs white, and whites must hand over everything and beg for their lives. The only lecturer in the entire country who stood up in public against this cultural revolution was the antinatalist philosopher David Benatar. All others kept their heads down, dithered, or joined the fray, calling for the heads of their less enthusiastic colleagues. Now the Fallists’ ideology is the official pedagogy of the entire university system. But this agitation had been the nature of political life at the poorer “bush colleges” for years now, just without the presence of minority students to trigger resentment or the ideas to build ideology: shut down every exam season to extract more lenient standards and increases in student grants.

And much like the explosion of violence seen at the national level today, South Africa’s poorer areas have been an unremitting hell for all those living in it below a certain class divide. 15% of all women are prostitutes, and the homicide rate is among the highest in the world, and some areas experience permanent civil war level violence. The old apartheid era town planning meant that black areas and minority areas were clearly separated, and this has meant a geographical buffer, where violent protest, which is again among the highest in the world, has largely left the middle classes out of it, even while it occasionally diverts traffic. Protests flare up constantly, as rival factions of the ANC, hamstrung by a corrupt internal promotions process and forbidden from dragging out dirty laundry in public, instead mobilise violent protests to contest wards and civil service posts, often burning down public infrastructure while the mob on the ground chants for “service delivery”.

…

Whatever else Nick Land writes, the lasting impact he had on me was in the very first essay at the opening of Fanged Noumena. He wrote it in 1989, when nobody beneath the highest reaches and darkest recesses of the Atlantic power structure had any awareness that South Africa was about to change forever.

Apartheid still seemed undefeatable to outsiders. The NP had recently smashed the heart of the ANC’s military campaign, creating a bloody hurting stalemate that observers at the time had no expectation would result in any pleasant outcome. Tens of thousands had already been massacred in the Peoples War to give the ANC a monopoly over the black liberation movements, but they seemed to be running out of steam. And so did Pretoria – influx from the Bantustans was unstaunchable, dependence on black labour was firm, and confidence in local cultural hegemony collapsed in 1976.

Nick Land, watching this, noticed something peculiar.

For the purposes of understanding the complex network of race, gender, and class oppressions that constitute our global modernity it is very rewarding to attend to the evolution of the apartheid policies of the South African regime, since apartheid is directed towards the construction of a microcosm of the neo-colonial order; a recapitulation of the world in miniature. The most basic aspiration of the Boer state is the dissociation of politics from economic relations, so that by means of 'Bantustans' or 'homelands' the black African population can be suspended in a condition of simultaneous political distance and economic proximity vis-a-vis the white metropolis. […] My contention in this paper is that the Third World as a whole is the product of a successful - although piecemeal and largely unconscious - 'Bantustan' policy on the part of the global Kapital metropolis.

…

When the British seized the Boer republics in 1900, they drew up the limits of control of the native African tribes where they already lived, and displaced a few thousand of them to tidy up the borders. These eventually became the Bantustans. Immediately, a long slow trickle of immigration was encouraged, not just from the Bantustans, but from British possessions in Asia. The migrant labour created a dense network of diffident ethnicities who demanded fences between them and their neighbours, while attempting to pursue economic exchange.

Black men, who could achieve far greater material wealth from working in the white economy than raising cattle and sorghum in the homelands, flowed steadily into white farmland areas and mining towns. In 1922, the South African Communist Party launched a general strike to demand the enforcement of a colour bar – “CPSA for a white South Africa!”. They were put down in a hail of gunfire by Jan Smuts, the architect of the unitary constitution, which allowed no devolved powers for regional self-governance.

Smuts was a member of Cecil Rhodes’s Round Table club, and shared Rhodes’s ambition to create a grand state where all literate English-speaking men and women south of the Zambezi would have the vote regardless of colour, and all the resources would belong to one grand cartel controlled by a British-American elite of enlightened natural aristocrats. Rhodes used money from his diamond empire and loans from Nathan Rothschild to fund the Jameson Raid and other means to instigate war with the Boer republics, which eventually resulted in the second Boer War and the creation of the Union of South Africa.

…

Smuts, architect of the Union of South Africa, also had a grand philosophy not unlike Nick Land’s – Land treats all matter and life as being ontologically the same, driven by “machinic desires” – all tendencies to motion and behaviour, whether in living or non-living material being fundamentally the same. All matter seeks more complex and integrated forms over time as a result of the force of entropy. Smuts’s grand philosophy, of which he wrote at length in Holism and Evolution, envisaged a means of looking at the world in which all of nature and society could be apprehended and governed as a single holistic system – all organisms, all cultures, all individuals, were destined to evolve into a greater whole, in which each part had its natural place, and that the common teleology of all matter and spirit was the global state, embodied in the League of Nations, the constitution of which he penned himself. Together with his extensive biological knowledge, Smuts and his London interlocutor Arthur Tansley gave birth to the modern systems theory of ecology, and hoped to see a central global technocracy overseeing a holistic ecological management system.

The aims of the United States since the Second World War have some remarkable similarities in approach. The post-war order saw the US employing a philosophy of “defence in depth,” controlling a defensive frontier from the China Sea in the East to the very edge of the Warsaw Pact countries, to ensure freedom of trade throughout this entire region. But this extended beyond military control. The use of embedded CIA operatives meant that those democratic representatives who resisted the grand plans of Atlanticism were swiftly dealt with under insidious operations like Gladio.

…

As these ideas bled into the old left, who were increasingly disillusioned from the failures of the Soviet Union. They turned, as Laclou and Mouffe did, to the notion of using sectional grievances to deconstruct the nation state, leading to the birth of intersectionalism under Kimberlé Crenshaw. The very foundations of nationhood and capitalist Christian civilisation could be toppled if only we united our struggles by leveraging our historical grievances, creating acrimonious divisions in the body politic on the basis of sex, sexuality, race and religion. Thus, the universal loyalties of the nation state that supposedly upheld capitalism would fall, and revolution would arise. This fell right into the plans of the American ruling class.

However, when the social morality of the postwar American colonial project in Europe met the plans of the military and the Malthusian tendencies of the RAND corporation, everything took on a far more ambitious character, with the help of a concept called “environmental security”. The first reference to ES in the sense of protecting the natural environment comes from the US EPA Technical Committee in 1971, as part of an ambitious attempt to quantitatively measure total social wellbeing. This EPA committee was the first to make environmental regulation part of a comprehensive plan for social wellbeing, driven by Holism and cybernetic ecology. They were exceeded in scope by the UN’s 1972 Stockholm Conference, where the idea of “comprehensive” (today, “human”) security emerged, and further, the Palme, Brundtland and Brandt Reports.

…

Under these new umbrella concepts came “human security” and environmental security, the Social Sciences Department of UNESCO and the SSRC found the unifying principles and programs they had sought since the 1950s, and pushed a proselytising program grounded in cross-discipline application of avant-garde ideas to seek “new ways of knowing”, promoting not scientific objectivity, but a synthesis of diverse perspectives. A wholesale transformation of the rules and discipline of social sciences followed, in service of global governance (see the works of Perrin Selcer).

UNESCO even deliberately set about creating a new world religion, in the words of its founder Julian Huxley, and formed the United Religions Initiative, to mould the world’s spiritual beliefs in line with international Anglo progressivism. Feminism and sexual libertinism formed a crowbar against the community cohesion that couldn’t be attacked by means of anti-nationalism, and into this soup of value inversions (erosion of disciplinary distinction, inter-subjectivity [i.e., truth-by-consensus over objectivity], and utopian welfare ideals like “freedom from fear”; “freedom from want”), dropped three wonder pills: Poststructuralism, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Global Warming. Now the great power-narratives of the Atlantic empire were consolidated – Malthus-by-proxy, anti-traditionalism, international diversity-and-inclusion, and the free-trade, open-borders paradigm of the 90’s.

In the same moment as de Klerk gave up on apartheid, the West gave up on the nation state, and handed control to the internationalists, under hegemony of the Atlantic community. A new empire was being consolidated from the territories captured by the Allies in WWII. Thirty years later it is becoming transparent – the new centralised global tax regime has cemented it. Just as the ANC funds the influx of black voters into urban minority areas to build shacks on squatted land, the West welcomes mass migration from the third world, total open-borders, to transform the electoral system against the interests of the native population who might have their own desires, against the grain of global empire. Every corporation and state in the Western world discriminated against whites in hiring. The CIA peddles Critical Race Theory and actively recruits sexual minorities. Colour revolutions can be spotted whenever the rainbow flag or black fist makes an appearance.

Today, the Democratic Party in the US openly looks to South Africa for inspiration in dealing with what Yarvin called the “outer party” – all conservatives are being purged from every institution, in a vast cadre deployment program to ensure the core of the establishment becomes forever untouchable. On the streets they have even begun to use the same tactics for control – deploying huge mobs to destabilise cities when election season is approaching.

Minimum wage rises funnel employment into companies in public-private partnerships with the state, like Amazon, who is part of the Enduring Security Framework partnership of the CIA (which includes Facebook and Google). The analogies between their experimental management strategies and collectivised central-planning are no accident – any company that aims for a total retail monopoly through state-subsidised negative-profit growth is merely another route to total control.

And as the nation and the state are decoupled, the liberal-democratic institutions are being geared toward the concentration of power and wealth, and a strategy of divide-and-rule, to create a cannibal economy. Only a few, like Denmark, have realised what they have gotten themselves into.

…

Much as Aristotle said, a democracy can only function beneficially when steered by the middle class, as it was in Rhodesia and the old Cape, which restricted the vote to property-owners of all races. The middle class’s needs are the core of the productive community, and as Marx observed, they are loyal to the requirements of productive industry and local trade. With the combination of the proliferation of the welfare state and globalisation, the middle class has been whittled away in the West, just as it has here in southern Africa.

Reliance on the state for services means they can’t be sacrificed – in the UK, the NHS has become essentially a religious cult, feeding the civil service, medical contractors, immigrants and the poor alike, in a financially unsustainable way, for decreasing returns. As Philip Bagus observed, the democratic pressures to maintain institutional support via this sort of patronage forces modern western states to take on ever more debt and expand taxation to the limits. This then must be offset by QE, which must be guaranteed by the central state at a rate that benefits the most fragile provinces of any empire so that the whole system does not collapse.

…

What Robert Mugabe did was pursue the universal extension of a first-world welfare state to every peasant in the hinterland, praised by the global left. This required taking on an enormous amount of national debt. Once the IMF tried to impose austerity, Mugabe found this politically unsustainable – his support depended on the handouts, corrupt and legitimate, that he was delivering. So he had to switch to printing money to pay the debts. When inflation became too much to handle, they replaced the core of the economy with dollars, and only elites could survive, much like Venezuela today. As the national treasury ran dry, the military and the civil service became restless. To placate them, they were fed the farms and businesses of the remaining white minority, as well as many areas formerly occupied by black peasants. The state had to cannibalise itself to sustain the predatory ruling class.

During this time, Mugabe attempted to control every aspect of the environment and economy through price and capital controls, suffocating every aspect of social life with red tape. It only accelerated the process. While the vast global network of UN subsidiaries extract compliance from the US client states

In South Africa today, the state coffers are empty. Even the ruling party is feeling it, as their headquarters Luthuli House was attached by the court to pay for a crooked PR contract they refused to deliver on. We have since taken out an IMF bailout, which is being poured into infrastructure, mostly Durban’s port, which is now choked by smoke and looting. Our president’s advisors are pushing for land reform, and remarkably, one of them, Ruth Hall, was advising Robert Mugabe how to liquidate his pale kulaks back in 2002. Other advisors, like Thembeka Ngcukaitobi, call for the fulfilment of the genocidal prophecy of Makhanda, and have whites deprived of all land and all moveable and liquid assets. This is deliberate Zimbabwefication.

The same economic dynamics are present in the world at large – the share of GDP spent on welfare keep increasing, as does the debt-GDP ratio. Capital formation has been falling for decades, and chronic inflation is treated as a static phenomenon, which nobody dares reign in, because the entire system is dependent on low interest rates to keep the constant corrosive consolidation of the global market going full steam ahead. This arrangement results in the inflation of property prices as along term hedge against inflation which, when the plebs followed suit resulted in the 2008 bubble, when they tried to play the elites’ asset accumulation game with borrowed money.

…

What has America been doing these past 18 months? It has been printing money so fast that it has kept pace with the plummenting Rand, and allowed Cyril Ramaphosa to tell investors that his economy is relatively strong – the Rand has “stabilised”. Error of parallax. Nor is it even just America printing money. While they certainly can afford to, as the holders of the world’s reserve currency, China is attempting to do the same, only they are directly funnelling the cash into commodities, rather than spreading it around a financial elite over which they have minimal control.

And yet their leverage is far worse than America’s – Kyle Bass, who has been shorting the Chinese market for years now, insists that the historically unprecedented levels of leverage in the Chinese economy are unsustainable, and that they cannot, even under miracle conditions, correct their shrinking population trends sufficiently to turn this ship around. But what many forsee in dreams of revolution and revolt, the breakups of massive crumbling empires, is not going to happen as they hope.

Instead, the state will protect the stability of the ruling class and its control over the levers of power at the core, bleeding everyone dry and terrorising them into submission. What happened to Zimbabwe is a warning, but it only happened the way it did because half the population could leave and send home remittances. The iron fist of a “democratic” government capable of rigging its elections and gagging the press and the courts is only as tyrannical as the cost of a bus ticket to the next country. After 900-member Zoom calls and election “fortification”, I shouldn’t need to gild the lily any more.

As many observers of China remark, an economic collapse of a country of its nature will not result in a breakup or a massive reform, but in the shrink-wrap tyranny of North Korea, an eternal sclerotic stagnation, fed by government dependency, held in place by state security. The West is losing control of its ability to provide the kind of total state security required for this however, and has been reaching for a far more sinister method of control – the financial system.

And this is where all analogies break down, because what is about to happen here is unprecedented. The international Bank of Settlements has recently announced that they intend to use Central Bank Digital Currency to control the spending of all global citizens, and have the tech and the power to control each and every expenditure, and to shut anybody out of the ability to feed themselves if they so choose. But this movement to kick away the ladder and consolidate total control follows the same logic as Zimbabwe’s – the poor can only be fed for so long, but the ruling elite must be fed forever, or else the whole house comes down.

…

The twin systems of China and Atlantis are both attempting to consolidate total control over their economic and social environment. And in order to achieve the kind of reforms that he wishes to, Ramaphosa has reached for the help of both power blocs. China has colonised our northernmost province, and receives special treatment from law enforcement that must learn Mandarin. Chinese are registered as black, to benefit from the racial privileges blacks enjoy under Black Economic Empowerment. While the government’s reports usually look like a dog’s breakfast, their reports on the UN sustainable development goals are always crisp, professional, and detailed. SDG 10 justifies the expropriation of property, according to their logic.

…

The erosion of the middle class, the working class, the institutions of law and order and even the substance of the informal economy was dry tinder to the Zuma-faction’s firebrands. To fulfil his mandate to end corruption, Ramaphosa had begun prosecutions proceedings into the Zuma faction – tentatively of course, since any too-wide-ranging investigation would unearth the corruption of all. But lawfare isn’t enough. They were cut out of party patronage systems as big figures like Ace Magashule were expelled from the party. Judges ruled that the state would not cover their defence costs anymore.

When the Umkhonto we Sizwe veterans association was disbanded and cut off from “pension” money, they finally put into action something that they would have had up their sleeve for months. Police armaments caches had been going missing for months. Firearms training for youths had been going on at the local branches for years. Every storage depot and major highway was targeted, petrol stations, power stations, water treatment plants were hit. They needed to make the country ungovernable, and they did. But this time they didn’t have the support of the Swedish, the Russians or anybody else.

Complicit elements are even inside the SSA, our central intelligence agency. What it will take for Ramaphosa to clear the state and party of seditious elements will give him the power of a modern dictator, cheered on my the press and everybody else, who despises Zuma and his people for what they’ve wreaked upon us. But with three months left of military deployment, all of the military capacity in one province, and the president fearing wielding lethal force on black mobs for fear of his Marikana ghosts coming back to haunt him, the rebels have three months to decide whether to act.

That leaves three months to see whether we become a black-nationalist disctatorship, or a new Yugoslavia. The Zulu, who form the backbone of the rebellion, have cheered for Zulu independence before, though their forces are split – the Zulu nationalist/traditionalist party the IFP have stood firmly against this chaos. Zuma’s people are still pushing black identity over tribal. Zuma may have been a traditionalist, a defender of the Swazi royal house when in crisis, an expander of chieftains’ rights, but his time in head of the ANC death squads in Zululand in the 1990s makes Zulu solidarity impossible.

So chaos it is.

#robert duigan #substack #read the whole thing #south africa

2 notes · View notes

tuffduff · 4 years

Text

Life After You (Duff McKagan x Reader)

Pairing: angsty/fluffy Duff x Reader

Words: 4,733

A/N: Hey loves! This one actually isn’t a request, I was inspired by Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” and actually didn’t intend for this to be so long, but it just came out.

P A R T T W O

Seattle had never been your home. You were not a born and raised native, never quite got used to the torrential downpours and overcast skies. In fact, you always waited for the day you would eventually move, figuring the setting to be just a minor stepping stone in your ultimate life story.

Until you met him.

It started in autumn, with falling leaves and brisk air. You had barely entered your twenties and the existential dread hadn’t yet set in; you were itching to find your niche and sense of belonging. Maybe that’s why you agreed to go with friends to some punk house to see a local band. The guys playing were interesting for lack of a better word, and you found yourself staring at the bassist. He was the tallest of the bunch with shaggy blonde hair and wandering eyes that kept finding their way back to you. You brushed it off though, thinking you were imagining it, until your friend leaned over and whispered, “the tall blonde one is checking you out.”

After the show, when the band began mingling with the small crowd, you wondered if he was going to come and introduce himself. That’s when someone hollered a warning for the cops and everyone scattered. You split out one of the backdoors, thankful that you lived just down the block.

“Hey! Wait up!” You slowed down in the alley, watching your breath in the air as the tall blonde ran to catch up to you. He had something in his hand; the scarf you had worn out and already forgotten about. It must have slipped off when you ran.

“Oh...thank you! You didn’t have to do that,” you replied, accepting the garment back. He shrugged a little, trying to keep eye contact but slightly faltering.

“I’ve never seen you around before.” He noted.

“Do you recognize every face around here?” You asked, unable to stop the smile from forming on your face. He smiled back.

“Only the pretty ones.” You weren’t expecting that. Nor the blush that crept to your cheeks. “I’d known if I had seen you before.”

“This is my first show. You were really great, by the way...?”

“Duff.” He replied, sticking his hand out. You took it with a smile.

“Y/N.”

“Do you live far?” He asked. For some reason, it wasn’t threatening. Some wall had already been broken from the beginning, when you both couldn’t stop staring.

“Down the block, thankfully. I should be able to make it home in about five minutes if I walk fast.” You replied.

“How about I walk you and we make it in 10?” He offered. You tilted your head.

“Why 10?”

“We’ll walk slow.”

That was exactly what happened. Ten minutes turned quickly to 15, and then 20, with the both of you talking outside your residence, both of you seemingly unwilling to let the night end. You were freezing beneath your coat but didn’t notice; Duff however was without a jacket and had his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans.

“Can I see you again?” He asked bluntly. You smiled.

“You know where to find me.” He smiled back.

“Cool. Okay. Have a goodnight, Y/N—” he had turned to start walking away, but you had grabbed onto his shoulder to stop him. Gently, you draped the scarf around his neck.

“I think you need this more than I do. Take good care of it, you hear?” You told him with feigned seriousness. His returning smile was one you would never get out of your mind. Even to this day.

And so it went you discovered real love. Maybe with other people, they didn’t quite realize it at the time, but with Duff, you just knew. He was your first love, and with him came a new stage in your life. There was life before Duff and now life with Duff.

Back then, you had been blissfully unaware that there would be life after too.

Days quickly turned to a weeks. Months passed; holidays were celebrated in a new fashion, always together. Him not having quite enough money for a Christmas present, so he wrote you a song and gifted you a necklace that had once belonged to his grandmother. There were never any arguments, the both of you couldn’t get enough of each other. You figured, in the back of your head, that it was infatuation and it would wear off soon, but for those months, neither of you could get your fill.

Somehow a year had flown by and you found yourself back in autumn again, a year under your belts as a couple without possibly being able to imagine being more in love. And yet, you found new ways to fall in love with him just about every day. The two of you moved in together, Duff working at a bakery and you doing your best juggling school and working at a record shop, where Duff would spent his free time.

He had a broad assortment of family members and friends and you had taken a spot amongst them. They all knew you too, they were now your friends. Duff’s mom had you over every other weekend and would bake pies with you, telling stories of growing up during the depression and what Duff was like as a child. The charming youngest, always creative and eager to perform his duty as a man, trying his best to look after his mom. “He’ll always do his best at taking care of you and succeeding, but I’m just glad he’s found someone to take care of his heart.” She would tell you.

Duff knew he could make real money moving up at the bakery he was at. After-all, he was a hard worker and his bosses appreciated that, and really, it wasn’t bad work. But he always talked about music; the both of you would stay up at night staring at the darkened ceiling sharing your hopes, your dreams, your past, your futures. Sometimes the ceiling would grow light as you stayed up talking. Your fears would come into conversation too, but those moments were fleeting; you were both young and ambitious and fueled by love, what in this life couldn’t be accomplished when you had that?

He talked too, in disdain and grief, about the state of his hometown, of the dangerous heroin use spiraling out of control, vowing he would never turn out like them. He said he was ready to get out, like you had always said.

But then you were offered a chance of a lifetime, an internship at the local radio station for your journalism degree. You couldn’t leave now, but Duff was already decided. It left you both at a fork in the road.

“I would never stop you. You’re right. The only way you’re gonna know if you can make it is away from here. I’ll be right behind you; I’m sure I can easily find work in LA after my internship.” You put on a strong face and decided to be his rock. You had to take care of his heart. After all, your love was the strongest thing you had ever experienced. If you were meant to be, it always would and you had no doubts whatsoever, even if it meant time apart.

“I love you, Y/N. I’ll call you every day. You’ll have to visit when you have the chance, okay?” He took your scarf amongst the bare minimum of things packed away in his old car, and you waved goodbye with a smile and weird sense of displacement, but ultimately, you were hopeful.

Time somehow went faster and slower after he left. He did in fact call you every day, telling you about his new job working at the same restaurant with his brother. The shitty apartment he found and how he slept with cockroaches. “You wouldn’t last a day here, baby.” He teased you over the phone when you lamented your disgust. “Every night there’s helicopter lights outside my window. If you don’t hear from me tomorrow…” He kept your spirits high with his humor, even miles and miles away.

He told you all about meeting Slash and Steven, who were looking for a bass player for their band. He called you with a heavy heart often because he missed you, he called to hear your voice when he doubted himself. The excited phone calls were your favorite. His happiness was yours and it was beginning to sound like he might just have a chance in LA—not that you ever doubted it.

You answered every call at first, but as your semester went on, it got harder. Your phone calls grew scarce, but he still kept you updated. He mailed flowers to your house when you had your finals, somehow scrounging up money he had made from gigs with his new band, Guns ‘N Roses.

“The guys can’t wait to meet you, Y/N.” He told you over the phone and you would laugh listening to the group of guys yelling their hellos in the background. You had chatted with all of them at one point. They called you hotshot affectionately, impressed by the fact that you were actually obtaining a college degree.

Graduation came, but Duff didn’t. He had a gig the same night. But it wasn’t a big deal to you, his mom and sisters came. Duff called you as soon as the gig finished, and though you stayed on the phone for over an hour, you still cried yourself to sleep.

Aspiring for LA right out of the gates had been a naïve pipedream on your part. Duff had done it, but it was different for you. Turned out, it wasn’t the place where dreams came true, at least not for you. Work sent you across the country, all the way to Spartanburg, South Carolina, where you found work as a reporter.

“Someday when we’re actually making money, you won’t have to work anymore.” Duff would try to reassure you. To his credit, he helped you move despite his busy schedule that was only growing more demanding. “I’m gonna give you the life you deserve.”

“I don’t mind the work, if it weren’t here.” You told him, smiling. “Gotta get something out of this piece of paper though, right? I just…miss you.” You never knew missing someone could cause physically heartache.

“Believe me, babe, I miss you more. The guys are tired of hearing about it. But we’re gonna be together again soon, just wait. You can stick out here and you’re going to do amazing and soon, we’ll both be living in some nice place in LA.”

This was the point in your life where you were so busy you couldn’t keep your eyes open when you made it home at night. You had long hours, early hours, and it seemed your schedule and Duff’s schedule, or, lack thereof, never matched up. If he called, it was usually after midnight when you were sleeping. If you called back, it was early morning, when he was sleeping. Communication was exchanged more through voicemail than an actual call. You saved every one that he left you.

Guns N’ Roses gigs were now selling out all the local clubs. There was a record deal for his band, and then an album. You were climbing your own ladder too, and just when you finally had the opportunity to work out of LA for a promising up-and-coming music magazine, Duff was about to be taken away, on tour. You only had about a week together in LA when you made it. But what a week it was.

“Every day you weren’t here, I would wake up and the sun would be out and the first thing I would think is ‘Y/N is gonna love it here.’” He told you as you drove down Sunset Boulevard. He had an actual car now to his name and new clothes and you had never been attracted to him more in your life. The both of you spent at least a day marveling over one another’s new appearances.

“God, I can’t believe I get to call you mine. You just look different,” he told you while stopped at a stoplight. He couldn’t take his eyes away from you, traveling up and down in disbelief, shaking his head slightly. “How is it possible that you’ve gotten more beautiful?” His smiled, you told yourself to remember the moment, to take in the warm glow of the sun and crowds of people on the street, Guns N’ Roses on the radio as you drove, palm trees over your head. You were in bliss. At least, most of the time.

Love was just as you had remembered it. That reunited week was like heaven for your tired soul; you had grown used to an empty bed and now you still couldn’t catch up on sleep, the two of you wasting each night tangled in limbs and sheets, still unable to get enough of each other. He showed you his favorite parts of the Sunset nightlife, some of which you didn’t have the heart to tell him you disliked; the shady Mexican restaurant where patrons were getting blowjobs under the table, or the various clubs they had played and conquered, where bar-goers puked outside the doors and went back in for more.

The rest of Guns N’ Roses were as authentic as Duff and they were easy to appreciate and get along with. They never made you feel like an outsider, even when that was plainly obvious—you didn’t dress like the girls on the strip and you never let it bother you, you were simply being you and that was enough.

Though you and Duff still had endless conversation to share, you couldn’t help but notice a difference, one glaringly obvious one; he drank more than he ever had before. It would start with vodka out of the gates and never seemed to stop. You were the only one left to carry him home, sober and still living in the real world.

“Baby, maybe you should slow down on the drinking.” You tried to tell him before he left for tour.

“Hey—don’t worry about me, okay, beautiful?” He breezed off your words with a kiss goodbye and a smile. “Take care of yourself and don’t miss me too much.”

This time, time went even faster. The magazine was in high-demand and you had several assignments seemingly all at the same time, ever moment of every day. You even had the pleasure of covering Guns N’ Roses as they became one of the hottest bands in the world. It seemed everywhere you went, all you ever saw were guys dressed like Duff, or Duff’s face on the cover of a magazine. On MTV, sometimes the news. Now, everything felt surreal.

This is where things get blurry; you don’t spend too much time in this period of your memories. Why would you? The drunk phone calls. Lonely nights in LA. The nasty rumors. Any time you were reunited, all you could smell was liquor. To this day, the smell made your stomach drop.

“Duff, I’m serous. I’m not asking you anymore, I’m telling you; you drink too much.” You were forced to put your foot down during a rare time of being reunited.

“Y/N, ease up. It’s not that big of deal, that’s what we do.”

“Since when?” You questioned. “How many times did we talk about old friends back home, how many of them took it too far?”

“I’m not like them.” He snapped back. “I don’t depend on drinking, or coke, or anything—I’ve only done heroin one time!” This was the first of many times his addiction finally began cracking away at your heart. You couldn’t fathom that he didn’t see an issue in his words.

“Duff, you said you never would.”

“So what, it was one time, Y/N! It’s not like I’m addicted, get off my back.” No, these were not the conversations you spent your time thinking of.

It began a long battle in your relationship that you were both destined to lose, and also became an internal battle to yourself. Maybe you had it all wrong, after-all, it wasn’t as if you didn’t indulge in drinking every now and then too, the both of you were young, it was LA—what was the harm? You tried desperately to see it from his point, he was a Rockstar, he did have an image to maintain…but that never held up in your head rationally; this wasn’t your Duff. He didn’t give a fuck about an image. But was it your place to police him? Often times, you just felt like the lame girlfriend. You started keeping your mouth shut despite your growing alarm and aching heart.

Too quickly, it turned to recklessness, then even quicker to hopelessness. To the rest of the world, Guns was still the band that was gonna take over the 90s. They were on one of the longest rock tours in history, they had a double album out, but you knew better. They had already lost members; you had written the articles about Steven and then Izzy’s departures. You sometimes wondered at night if Duff would be next.

He hadn’t even been there to help you move into the new house the two of you bought together. It felt as empty as your relationship and you wondered why you stayed, only to have the question answered every time you looked back into his eyes. Would you ever not love this man?

“I’m gonna fix it, I swear. I just—there’s nothing I can do. Axl’s always late and so we just—we drink. And, I can’t help it, Y/N, you know those panic attacks I always used to get? It’s not like you’re with me anymore and I just get them all the fucking time. I can’t fly without drinking; it just sets me off. I can’t take all the shit, when we’re late to the stage all you can hear is the crowd getting angry...” you knew all about that; you had written an article about the Riverport Riot. At this point you were tired of writing about the latest of the controversial rumors and incidents.

It wasn’t as if his words didn’t break your heart. You were at a complete loss. Rationally, you knew he had a disease that you had to fight together, but it only resulted in the both of you screaming at each other. Duff wasn’t at a place where he wanted to change, that was what made it hard.

At first, you avoided the realization, you tried running from it. When friends asked, you always said your relationship was better than ever. But the worse his issues got, the more you were pushed to confront them. It was just drinking anymore, it was pills and cocaine and whatever else just happened to be in the room, whatever someone slipped him.

Ultimatums weren’t your thing; you were never going to beg someone to prove you were important. Plus, you had seen addictions cripple people. Duff was in its vice grip and had already slipped away from you, it was very obvious what you had to do. But how? How could you, he was your soulmate. This was still the boy who had walked you home that autumn night—he was all you knew. How do you unravel yourself from someone tied so intricately to every detail of your life?

You couldn’t tell him at first, you just packed up and left. You ran. It was a while before he called you, demanding to know what was going on. To date, it’s still your most humiliating phone call. It’s not a memory you revisit, ever, and you’re not sure if it’s because of the pain of it or the embarrassment—you had cried so hard you couldn’t work the next day.

For a while, you felt empty. Lost. You would cry at stoplights. You would cry at lunch, in the grocery store passing by his favorite chips. The radio was much too risky to ever bother with, if it wasn’t one of their songs coming through the speaker, it was his favorite Prince song, or a song tied to a memory.

The youth of your twenties faded that day and you were pushed into the next period of your life reluctantly, your steps sluggish and uncertain. It was autumn again, cozy months where people spent their time with loved ones. You spent it crying over the idea of Thanksgiving alone, unable to pull out any Christmas decorations or pretend to care about any semblance of a normal life; all of this was new again and still littered with the broken promises of something you thought you would never lose. How were you ever going to decorate a tree again when he wasn’t there to put you on top of his shoulders to place the star? Who was going to make snickerdoodle and gingerbread cookies by your side? His jackets and shirts made up half your wardrobe, his fingerprint on your life was almost entirely irreversible.

It wasn’t as though he gave up on you. Sometimes he would call. At first you always answered, frantic and hopeful.

“I stopped drinking,” he told you, but had a slurred speech.

“Then why are you drunk?” You questioned, already on the verge of tears.

“I’m not drunk,” he denied your words. “I haven’t drank vodka in a week.”

“Then what are you drinking?” You were aware of how stupid you sounded, playing along, but couldn’t stop the hope you felt.

“Wine. It’s not bad,” he insisted. “I stopped drinking for you, why aren’t you happy? Y/N…C’mon, please, I promise I’m better now, I just miss you—” You hung up. That night was a bad one.

Looking back, maybe there were more bad memories than good. It wasn’t as if you were unbiased. But maybe the good outweighed the bad by importance. Duff had shaped your life, the foundation of who you were. When you thought of love, you thought of him, and gave up the concept.

Now, just barely entering your thirties, you found yourself surprised to be back in Seattle. Maybe deep down you were still chasing after the best time of your life. It probably wasn’t healthy to let your mind wander backwards, but it did, every time you took certain roads. Sometimes you avoided them, but most of the time, you drove down the tree-lined roads, remembering when it had been the two of you. Back to a time when you thought you hated the rain and couldn’t wait to get out of it; now rain brought you peace.

Life was much more peaceful now. You worked as a freelance writer and genuinely enjoyed the topics you wrote about, thankful not to have to write another Guns N’ Roses article. It wasn’t like there was much to write about anyways in that category; there were rumors the band was on the brink of breaking up. It was still lonely, but the pain had subsided. You were okay with being alone and you were smart enough to fill your time with meaningful activities.

You never lost contact with Duff’s family. His mom finally stopped trying to apologize. You did your best not to consume your waking hours following the band, trying your best to force yourself into moving on entirely. Duff had released a solo album, and though your heart still swelled with pride, you couldn’t listen to it. There were rumors a lot of the songs were about you.

Nowadays, the reminders of him were scarce. He looked to be in rough shape, but you did your best not to let it bother you; that wasn’t your battle. You stopped crying and you had developed your own routine. Routine was important. Your house was decorated the way you wanted it and you had a dog, an affectionate brown Labrador. Now, you considered this place home and had favorite spots and local shops you spent time at, and yes, some of them were places the two of you had once frequented, but the reminder didn’t hurt anymore. The hurt was still there, if you pulled everything back and looked down within, but mainly, there was an appreciation for what once had been. At least, that’s what you told yourself.

It was clear that wasn’t the case when you left your favorite coffee shop one Sunday afternoon and spotted a familiar face across the parking lot. At first, you thought your eyes were deceiving you—his hair had been long for years. This man no longer looked puffy and fatigued like you had seen in pictures, he was leaner and had short spiky hair. More importantly though, his eyes were clear. That was when you were sure you must have been dreaming.

“Y/N?” He said, his voice unsteady, but somehow still sounded the same. Your coffee tumbled to the ground and he reached out too late. “Shit. Sorry, I...” he trailed off helplessly; you hadn’t even looked down at the spill once yet.

“Duff?” You asked, waiting for wake up from this weird dream. He stood a little bit back from you.

“You still come here, huh?” He asked after a moment, trying to smile. When you didn’t reply, he cleared his throat uncomfortably. “I heard you moved back. I didn’t really believe it at first, but I guess...I bought a house here too.” you didn’t reply still, no words could come out. He shoved his hands into his pockets and you could feel your eyes watering. “How have you been?”

“Good. Fine, yeah.” You replied quietly, somehow able to keep the moisture in your eyes. “I’m surprised your home and not on the road for your album.” Maybe you had paid more attention than you realized. He looked down.

“...Yeah. Um,” he chuckled uncomfortably. “I actually canceled a lot of the days earlier this year, I was exhausted. I thought maybe coming back home would be better for me...I...” he paused before he shook his head a little and let out a breath. “It’s been...a real eye opening few months.”

For a second, your heart pounded hopefully and you wondered desperately what that meant, before you told yourself to stop.

“To be honest, I’m in a hurry, so...I should probably get going.” Your tone was suddenly curt, sharp and brisk as the autumn air; the falling leaves behind you threatened to break your composed façade; it was all taking you back to a different time and you knew you needed to leave. Duff suddenly looked apologetic.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry, uh...” he shrugged. “Um...I just. I know you’re busy and everything, but...maybe, just...” every time he met your eyes, he looked away again. You bit your lip hard.

“Yeah, I don’t have a lot of free time nowadays. I’m sure you get it.” You forced out. He nodded, looking down and backing away from your car.

“...Yeah. Well...take care.” He ended lamely. The longer you looked, the more it was apparent his eyes were actually clear. “And I just…I hope you know I’m sorry.” You swallowed hard and turned away without another word to get into your car and seal yourself away. Inside, you could finally let yourself crumble, feeling the mixture of a pounding heart and butterflies quickly crumbling and falling in your stomach, your hands shaking as you tried to get the key into the ignition.

Realizing in panic maybe you had made a mistake, you quickly turned your head to find him again, but only caught a brief glance of him before he entered the shop, and that’s when it caught your eye.

The red fabric around his neck, nestled into the leather jacket he had on.

Your old scarf, still there, the lasting image of you on him.

You weren’t the only one struggling with accepting the loss of the only real thing you had ever felt in your life, but it wasn’t enough to move you from your car. So you sat, engine idling, until finally tears that had started as a stream turned to just a few stray drops. But it took you longer than 5 minutes, longer than 10, to finally drive away.

#duff mckagan #duff mckagan imagine #duff mckagan fanfiction #duff mckagan x reader #duff mckagan fanfic #guns n roses #guns n roses imagine #guns n roses fanfic #80s imagines #gnr #gnr fanfiction

158 notes · View notes

thethousandyearwitch · 4 years

Text

The Show Must Go On! - A Youtuber AU you didn’t want and didn’t need

Hisoka Morrow, italian Makeup Youtuber, enjoys his life in the comfort and occasional drama of his profession. But nothing brings more drama into his life than the eldest son of the Zoldyck fashion magazine empire.

Meanwhile, aspiring australian Twitch Streamer Gon Freecs forms a special bond to a Speedrunner commonly going by "Kil".

Chapter 1

FF.net link - AO3 link

Beep Beep. beep Beep. Click

8:00 am. Hisoka rolled over in his queen-sized bed, groaning at the interruption of his beauty sleep. Setting an early alarm after editing until 2 am was a horrible idea.

He grabbed his phone from his nightstand and rolls onto his back, following his ritual of checking all his notifications in the morning. The video he had uploaded after editing was well received, many comments about how he should try more looks with purple eyeshadow. About 3 years ago he had started his channel “Bubblegumbitch Makeup” as more of a throwaway joke after someone insulted his makeup on Instagram. However, an audience grew quite quickly, and Hisoka had to admit that he enjoyed the attention and luxury of it all. Making money by sitting in front of a camera and applying Makeup while people tell you how good looking you are is a great ego boost.

Half-heartedly he scrolled through his subscription feed, just to see what his competition was up to, though barely anyone had really uploaded during the night. Amateurs and their 'healthy' sleep schedules. A true influencer knows that an audience never sleeps.

He disregarded his phone somewhere into the pile of pillows that make up his bed and made his way into the bathroom. His morning showers are more functional than enjoyable, quickly rinsing on whatever spirits of sleep may linger on him.

After that, the Makeup artist applied his usual morning creams, body lotion, towel dries his hair, and threw on a pair of grey low-waist sweats and a comfortable white razor-back shirt. Need. Coffee.

Hisokas flat was a quaint little thing just outside of Rieti. An open imitation marble kitchen, facing the living room equipped with a black leather couch and wall mounted flat screen TV, opening to a relatively small balcony housing a few plants.

Exiting his bedroom, he grabbed the TV remote and switched unto a random morning news show, just needing background noise while he waits for his coffee to brew.

"And preparations are running wild for the annual Fashion Week in Rome. This year the line-up features many new promising designers from all over the globe. Tune in at 10 for more-"

The fashion week! Hisoka grinned, having nearly forgotten about this important event that he had always followed closely. Though rarely attending himself, he had been requested on multiple occasions as a make-up artist for certain models. But there was something more important connected to that special week. He grabbed his fresh cappuccino and strolled back to his room, fishing his phone from the depths of pillow mountain.

"Hisoka: Gooooood Morning! Roma's Fashion Week is coming up, are you going to stop on by? ~"

It didn’t take long before his phone chimed with the familiar Ping of a private Message.

“Bellissimo <3: I will be going to the Show for 4 days. If it proves convenient, I’d drop by for a short collaboration.”

“Hisoka: I’ll be keeping my bed warm~♥️”

“Bellissimo<3: Gross and unnecessary. I will book a room in my usual hotel in Rome. I’ll drop by for the Collaboration on Monday afternoon, and leave after.”

“Bellissimo<3: I will send you some sample pieces later, please come up with a look for one of them, and don’t just ‘wing it’ like last time.”

Hisoka giggled before disregarding his phone again. Illumi Zoldyck, breakthrough Fashion Designer from England, and eldest son of Zoldyck fashion magazine empire, who often uploaded videos of his artistic process on his channel “I. Zoldyck Fashion”. They had met 2 years ago, at a smaller Paris fashion show, the first one Hisoka ever attended. A model had requested Hisoka as her makeup artist, while Illumi had been working on a dress for her, and the two of them ended up working closely together to properly coordinate colours with each other. And though Illumi expressed great annoyance with Hisoka, they exchanged numbers, and started to make collab videos whenever they fell into the same place. Something about working together with Illumi got Hisokas heart racing. Seeing the camera-shy man get increasingly more frustrated with his antics was a joy that could hardly be topped.

But he didn’t have time to dwell in good memories and spine-tingling anticipation. He had work to do. And so once again he chucked his phone back into the pillow-cave system and made his way into his recording room.

It was a small office space, on one side an office Desk with a Desktop Computer, a couple of small succulent plants framing it, and a comfy black office chair. On the other side a set-up to record videos, with a white-pink gradient wall, a stainless white desk with a small mirror standing on it, and a less-comfy stool to sit on. In a smooth motion, Hisoka downed the rest of his coffee, set the cup aside, and started the camera. The night before he had laid out everything for his next video, a review for a new eyeshadow palette released by another Beauty Youtuber, still trying to get into the game. How Cute.

Hisoka clapped his hands together, putting on his best camera smile. “Hey, Scum! ~ Today I have a very special treat for you all. I got my hands on the new Togari Palette ‘Hunting for Your Dreams’, his first release.” He held up the shimmering silver case and opened it up for the camera to reveal 6 eyeshadows in various shades of orange and red. About half an hour and a couple try hard glamour shots later, Hisoka dropped the Palette with a grin, staring directly into the Camera. In addition to his signature Star and Teardrop under his eyes, he had attempted to imitate a flame-inspired eyeshadow look. “Well, this has been an absolute disaster. I feel like I’m losing clumps of eyeshadow every time I blink, and it feels sandy and irritating on my skin. But you have got to give it to Togari: I have never seen a Palette that features colours that are eye-biting and yet completely bland before. Though the surprise gift of a long, brown hair inside the sealed Palette wasn’t for me. But you know, if you see these Palettes in your local bargain bin, I’d say go for it.” He gave a cheeky wink, before rattling off his usual goodbyes, like and subscribe, yadda yadda.

Click.

Hisoka took the camera and set it by his computer. Before he could even think about editing, he must wipe away whatever the hell was in that shabby palette. Of course it wasn’t the worst make-up he had ever worn; it probably wouldn’t even make it in the bottom 10, he wasn’t here to make friends and spoon-feed his competition compliments. If a creator dares to churn out a subpar product, they have to deal with the consequences.

After practically subjecting himself to water torture via make-up remover towels, the man grabbed another whiteclaw from the fridge, and settled into his office chair. Digging through business emails was a boring, repetitive task, deleting promo-email after promo-email, practically begging him to promote some skin-care vitamins or boring phone app. Clicking the nails of his free hand against his desk, he tapped away at the delete button in a rhythm only known to him.

Finally reaching the bottom of his inbox, he switched to his private Inbox with a satisfied smile, an expected email already waiting for him. “From: I. Zoldyck: Roma Fashion Week Promos”. To my private Email, dear Illumi? How shockingly Intimate~ Hisoka mocked in his head while opening the mail.

“Hisoka.

Attached are 3 Designs I plan to show off at the show. Chose one for the collaboration and let me know in time.

Sincerely,

Illumi Zoldyck.”

Under his signature, 3 files were lined up, boringly titled “Design Roma 1/2/3”. Hisoka opened the first file and is greeted by a 2-piece suit with a light pink base colour, and blue-green flower highlights that frame the pockets and seams of the jacket, and the belt of the pants. Not bad, not bad.

The second file contained another 2-piece suit, this time with a black base colour, and a repeating roman-vase pattern in eye-catching blues, pinks, and oranges. Lovely pattern, and what a revealing jacket cut~. He was sure he had found his favourite, already planning a matching make-up look. But it wouldn’t hurt looking at the last design for pity, right?

Hisoka audibly gasped in a mixture of shock and flattery and laid a hand over his heart to complete the star performance. Staring back at him was a beautiful white-jeans design, patterned with colourful card-suits dotting the jacket and pants. The pattern was ever so slightly washed out, faking a vintage look. This is it. Mine. His heart was beating through his chest, and for the first time in a while he was truly speechless.

He had 3 more weeks until the show, but his mind was already bursting with inspiration, and when he later laid in bed, he couldn’t contain his grin as he texted.

“Hisoka: You already know which one im choosing~♥️♥️♥️”

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

Gon had been streaming for a good hour or so, talking excitedly to his chat about the new Season of Fortnite, admiring new skins that he was definitely going to try and get. Every new pass just meant a new challenge for him to prove himself, and it was undeniable that it was satisfying to work and game hard to get what he wanted. Just as he was about to ask chat if he should go another row, or change games for the night, a discord message drew his attention away.

“Kil: Yo, wanna team up? :p”

Filled with even more excitement, Gon returned his attention back to his stream. “Everyone, today we are going to feature a special guest!”

#Hisoillu #killugon #Hunter X Hunter #fanfiction #hxh fanfic

40 notes · View notes

tattletale2020 · 3 years

Text

My Pet Theory of Perceived Value Chapter 2 the Sequel:

As a corollary to the previous article Crowded House here’s ….Empty House:

So What creates Value:

Perception, Presentation, Maintenance

And What is Value to you:

Quality Product for a Good Price

But more often:

The Best Quality you can Afford

Because:

Best Quality or High End doesn’t come cheap.

Not only that but:

You usually get what you pay for.

Aaaand then:

There’s that whole refinement vs durability misconception.

I learned a cool thing from my most recent boss in the high-end furniture business:

Just ‘cause you paid a lot of money for something, doesn’t make it last longer.

And not only do you have to baby it, but it actually takes more work to take care of it.

Think Maserati vs GMC.

You wouldn’t take your Maserati off-roading and expect it to survive. The same goes for a Boss Suit, Prada Shoes, and Natuzzi Sofa. Ok, Maybe the new Hummer checks all the boxes.

Sooo, why do people buy these things?

Branding!!!!! Ok, not just Branding.

These are things that most of us cannot afford and therefore we aspire to own.

We tend to want what we can’t have.

The Unattainable becomes Sparkly, Seductive, and Redolent with God Light. AAAaaaaahhhhhh!

Which brings us to our current situation….

Empty House.

From Vaccines to Chevy Trucks, we know they’re out there, but they’re not available in ready supply. Even online shopping has slowed down to a chug. Especially from outside of Canada. Read the USA. Where most of our Pie in the Sky, Shiny Unicorn Wishlists come from.

We are in a situation where good things come to those who wait. And we are not used to waiting.

So, doesn’t that make us want it even more?

Increasing its Perceived Value. Unh Hunh.

Take the new GMC Hummer. So Cool. Especially the Crabwalk.

You gotta see this… https://www.instagram.com/p/CNkwJ35hfBW/

Order it now and it’ll take 2 years to get one. But it’s made especially for you and no one else will have the same one.

My Partner works at the local Chevy Dealership and right now there are almost no trucks to be had. Anywhere. So. If you get one, wouldn’t it make you feel like Top Dog.

Retailers can take a lesson from this.

And Yes! Waiting and Scarcity create Value. But hopefully not Insanity.

Cabbage Patch, Buzz Lightyear, Jingle All the Way.’ Oh My.

There’s a certain amount of Sales Savvy in making people wait:

Increased Desirability and Prestige. Don’t forget Prestige. Exclusivity is still a powerful thing. Prestige Cosmetics do this every week. Presell is a huge money maker.

The Art of the Launch

The Teaser.

The GWP! Gift with Purchase, if you’re not a Cosmetic Addict.

And Yes, Waiting and Scarcity create value. But not Ideally!

You really do want to have product to show people, even if you have to order their size.

In comes Online Shopping. You can see it here and we can order it for you online. Without those pesky Shipping Charges.

Symbiotic and Fabulous. Add a discount and you’re golden.

Will Brick & Mortar move more towards being a pick-up/showroom than a place to have a browse and take it home today?

I hope not, because I’m not the only one who enjoys a good Offline Shopping Experience.

True Story:

So, I was buying Shoes last Wednesday……

And you may ask: Why was I out doing that during a pandemic.

Well, from years of wearing heels and working on concrete floors, my knees are shot and I can’t wear any of my shoes anymore. Do you know how hard it is to find Size 11 right now in a sexy flat. Anywhere. Did you know that Amazon’s idea of a Size 11 is a 9.5? So many disappointments and gruelling returns. And I don’t leave the house unless I’m dressed. Well-dressed and Super-Cute. You can tell a lot about a person by their footwear.

Anyhoo, I also insist on shopping local so I had the most awesome community experience at Sole to Sole in Airdrie: Myself, the Store Associate, and one other delightful older customer. At a distance, briefly, fully sanitized, and masked we talked shoes and celebrated each other’s purchases. I left smiling and happy. You could even tell through my mask. Not that I didn’t get an equally professional and satisfying interaction at Walkin’ Around, they just didn’t currently have any Size 11’s.

Don’t let anyone tell you that Shopping Therapy is not a Real Thing.

But, for the time being, Empty House is becoming more and more of a reality.

Delayed Product Deliveries

Incomplete Orders

Narrowing Product Ranges

Are forcing retailers to sell in a different way.

And those that weather this change, will be not be the ones who say: No, sorry we don’t have that in stock right now. But the ones who say: Yes! I can get that for you, what colour would you like me to order?

No one has it in Purple yet. It’ll only take 3 weeks.

Or....We can’t get Purple this season, but it looks soooo good in Orange.

It's on its way. Only 10 Business Days.

And really, Doesn't the Antici..........pation make the Experience even more Pleasurable.

It’s all in how you perceeeeeive it. How you present it. And how badly you want to maintain/retain your customer base.

And Yes, Scarcity and Waiting Time create Urgency and Increase the Perceived Value of Everything. Even Toilet Paper!

Need to retrain your sales/marketing/merchandising/website staff for the current, we-can-get-that-for-you, attitude. Contact me I have enthusiasm and inspiration to spare. [email protected]

Images:

https://www.pfhub.com/canadian-retail-sales-nose-dive-2-in-december-1658/

https://gmauthority.com/blog/2021/03/gmc-hummer-ev-showing-off-crabwalk-mode-video/

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-survival-of-the-unicorns-as-the-economy-skidded-so-did-startups-now/ ILLUSTRATION BY ALEXIA KHRUSCHEVA

https://www.trendhunter.com/trends/the-empty-shop

https://www.grandforksherald.com/business/6545811-Clothing-store-Eddie-Bauer-evicted-from-Columbia-Mall

#shoplocal #media #marketing #merchandising #change #perceived value #salespeople #small business marketing #online marketing #branding #anticipation #wait for it #out of stock #small business

4 notes · View notes

jinruihokankeikaku · 4 years

Note

Oops, My bad! I didn’t see that you already did an analysis on the Prince of Life, I should’ve checked :P. I do have one question, how did you figure out what your classpect was and do you have any advice for people trying to figure it out? Thanks for your amazing blog btw!

Hey, I’m so glad you’vve 8een enjoyin the 8log!! This post wwound up 8ein a 8it more long-wwinded than I had initially intended, 8ut I hope you find it useful nonetheless!! ^^^^v^^^^

The Big Classpect Essay {Part 1 of ???}

(A/N: You kneww this wwas 8ound to happen evventually ::::p)

Introduction

Hey, I meant to get to this ask sooner cos I think it’s a really interesting one. Back when I first got into this stuff, as a brand-new Homestuck fan in two thousand and fourteen, there was a lot less in the way of canon information on the Aspects, and so most of the available quizzes - with all due respect to their creators - were rather off-base in one or more respects. In all honesty, I don’t think quizzes are ideal for this kind of thing, because they will be a) influenced by the unconscious bias of the person who created them and b) lack on account of their medium the archetypal-unconscious element that is so crucial to both classes and Aspects. That said, I will be linking to an Aspect quiz that attempts to extend the canonical one to increase the accuracy of results without altering the canonical content, because I think that’s a great goal and it’s pretty much the best Aspect quiz out there.

With that said, I want to first get into what I conceive of the Classes and Aspects as, through the lens of the Game as a creation myth. “Classpects” is a shorthand for Mythological Roles, which carries with it both the implication that your Class and Aspect are Roles to be fulfilled, and that those Roles exist on a level of reality beyond that which you currently inhabit. To borrow the “Pataphysical Sandwich” model from certain SCP Foundation stories, the Roles exist on the layer above you - the meta-textual layer. The Roles are more real than the Players bound to them - they are ultimately metanarrative concepts mapped onto in-narrative people. Before this tangent turns into a proper ramble, I’ll use my metanarrative authorial agency to cut it short by saying this: in order to determine your Mythological Role, you must first conceive of your life as a narrative. The Classes and Aspects will mean little to naught if you don’t.

Part 1a: Dialectics, babeyyyyyyyy

Dualism. Homestuck is full of it. If you look closely, you’ll find it everywhere in the story. You’ll also find plenty of it in real life - adherents of the dialectical method tend to conceive of any “thing” - thing here meaning “physical artefact, concept, fundamental force, person, &c&c. - as a unity of two conflicting opposites. As it just so happens, the Classes and Aspects are about exactly that. For example, the Aspects (on the meta level) can be paired off like so -

{Hope and Rage = Belief and disbelief &

Heart and Mind = Essence and existence (or intention and consequence if you prefer)} = Conclusions and conceptions [from whence we draw them]

{Space and Time = Inception and culmination &

Light and Void = Perception and oblivion} = Reality and perception [thereof]

{Life and Doom = Growth and decay &

Blood and Breath = Attachment and detachment} = Relation and position [in the relationship]

- and the Classes like so –

{Rogue & Thief} and {Page & Knight} = Distribution and application (who has the Aspect and how are they applying it?)

{Bard & Prince} and {Sylph & Maid} = Destruction and creation (should more or less of the Aspect exist)

{Heir & Witch} and {Seer and Mage} = Manipulation and comprehension (what is the Aspect like, and will it remain so?)

(we’re going to set aside the Active-Passive deal, which is a dialectic in its own right, for the moment.)

The important thing to note here is that each component of an opposed pair/quartet of Classes and Aspects is both opposed to and dependent upon its counterpart(s). One cannot believe a things without disbelieving another thing, nor can you disbelieve a thing without believing another; likewise, one cannot manipulate a thing without first understanding it to a degree, and cannot understand a thing without to some degree manipulating it (and so on).

Part 1b: Knowing Your Role

I think the best way to determine your Role is to determine your Aspect first, then to determine your Class Function based on how you interact with your Aspect. Finally, you’ll determine whether you play an Active Role or a Passive one (which I’ll cover in greater depth in a moment, but which ultimately boils down to

To determine your own Aspect, as I see it, you need to think about the following things, in roughly the following order (though the order isn’t all that strict) –

· Do you feel most drawn to the dialectic of belief and conception, of reality and perception, or of relation and position? (These correspond to the Personal, Actual, and Cyclical Aspect Sources from my 3x4 Aspect Theory)

· Within that Source, do you feel most drawn to the former or the latter concept?

· Within that concept, do you feel most drawn to the former or latter Aspect?

For example, if one felt most drawn to the dialectic of Relation and Position, one would then compare their relationship to those two concepts. If one were to decide that they felt most drawn to the process of interrelation as a whole, rather than to their own position within that process, one would then compare the two given processes of interrelation, Doom and Life, growth and decay. Because these last two notions are so directly opposed to one another, it shouldn’t be difficult to choose between them. Your Aspect represents the most salient repeated pattern in your life’s narrative, while your Class represents the way in which you, as the protagonist of the narrative, aspire to interact with that pattern. So, suppose our hypothetical Role-seeker were to settle on decay (Doom) as the most consistent pattern in their life – perhaps they’ve literally suffered material losses, or perhaps they’re just attracted to the aesthetic of Doom and decay as it manifests in their lives. Either of those “callings” is equally valid, and equally likely to suggest that one is (for example) Doom-bound. If this process seems overly loose, open-ended, and chaotic, that’s because it is; Classpecting is an art, not a science.

Now suppose our Doom-bound player wants to find their Class. They’d go through a rather similar process – first, they’ll select which question / functional dialectic comes closest to encompassing their aspirations, their designs, on their Aspect. Do they care most about the Aspect’s position/purpose, its existence/nonexistence, or its nature/potential for change? Perhaps they’re most interested in the nature of Doom, rather than how much of it is present or what is being done with it. They’d then decide whether they want to understand that nature, or alter that nature, which should leave them with a single Active-Passive pair – the Mage and the Seer.

In order to determine whether one aspires to play an Active or a Passive role, there are many questions that one might ask oneself. In general, however, the following principles tend to preside –

· Active Heroes tend to interact with their Aspect for their own benefit, rather than the benefit of the Aspect or of other individuals; they will likely consider the Aspect to serve them, rather than considering themselves to serve the Aspect; and they will be most adept at interacting with their Aspect in particularly intense or unique ways. They may be considered to induce or provoke activity of a particular kind in their Aspect. They tend to have more precise control over their Aspect, at the expense of raw potential.

· Passive Heroes tend to interact with their Aspect for the benefit of the Aspect, or for the benefit of those close to them; they will likely consider themselves to serve the Aspect, rather than vice versa; and they will be most adept at interacting with their Aspect in intuitive or natural ways. They may be considered to invite or allow activity of a particular kind in their Aspect. They tend to have more raw potential within their Aspect’s domains than they have control over how that potential manifests.

So, to finish our hypothetical example Classpect investigation, our Doom-bound Comprehension-player may decide they are more interested in forcing their way towards a precise personal understanding of Doom than they are inclined to inviting contemplation of Doom’s mysteries. This would suggest that they’re an Active player, and with that final piece of information, they can conclude that they’re a Mage of Doom!! Note that it’s normal to be pulled in both directions when contemplating this question – the key is to remember that your Class is a representation of who you aspire to be, not who you are right now. The Game is a coming-of-age story, and heroes don’t go into it without a long and winding road ahead of them.

And that’s it for part one!! There will no doubt be More to Come, but I hope you found this basic outline of my Classpecting system at least somewhat helpful. Thanks for the ask!!

~ P L U R ~

#Classpecting #Classpect #Classpect analysis #Homestuck #Classpect Theory #Class #Aspect #Mythological Role #anon #ask

26 notes · View notes