#but it is generally true that i like all the movies they chose and pretty much like all the characters...i am boring :')

[egophiliac]

Hi!

What's your favourite Disney movie? And does your preference for the dorms have any influence on their movies and vice versa? Like I know you love Diasomnia so is Sleeping Beauty high up there for you?

I'm just asking because Snow White is actually my favourite Disney Princess and her movie is my favourite yet Pomefiore is my least favourite dorm (but Lion King and Savanaclaw are both in my top two) and I was wondering if it's similar for you?

yessss someone else whose favorite princess is Snow! ❄️

that said, it's hard to say what my favorite movie is, because I'm one of those annoying people who's like "well it depends" (on different aspects, on my mood, on the phase of the moon, etc). though out of the ones represented in Twst, I think it probably is Sleeping Beauty! I think it's really pretty and just a delightful movie! it hits a nice sweet spot for me of being kind of...gently grounded while still having that floaty-fairytale feeling, if that makes sense also I might have had a huge villaincrush on Maleficent that is being massively projected onto Meleanor, shh

although I actually sort of hated Diasomnia at first (l-look, they didn't have cards at first and all we had to go on were the website descriptions that make everyone sound horrible). so I dunno, maybe the influence helped win me over to them! or maybe just because, like everything else in Twst, they were unexpectedly enjoyable in practice?

(I don't think there are any that had a negative influence either, because I am also one of those annoying people who's like "well I don't have a least favorite, I like everybody!") (sob. it's true though.) (I just, I just love characters so much --)

#twisted wonderland #joseimuke games are serious business #i was also OBSESSED with 101 dalmations as a child and it's possible some of my crewel affection may be because of that #or maybe just because he's a silly man who loves his dogs and his fashion and his shouting random english at dumb teenagers #look when i say this game is aimed at me specifically... #admittedly this is a blog for largely shitposty fanart and not nuanced media opinions #but it is generally true that i like all the movies they chose and pretty much like all the characters...i am boring :') #boring and maybe a little too entertained by fictional idiots having emotional problems

[ttoddii]

"supportive"

pairing(s): bada lee x f!idol!reader

cw: FLUFF, no mention of y/n, lowercase intended, bad grammar (i'm sorry)

summary: your new song release is not doing well and bada help you out with it like a great girlfriend she is.

wc: 1.7k

a/n: i got too hyped up at the idea so now it's 2:51 am and i just finished it. but enjoy, ilyg 🥹🫶

ever since you were a kid, you had always look up to kpop idols, from girls generation, super juniors, 2NE1, you name it. you always want to stand under the lime light, you crave the feeling of being loved by many, you love to perform and you show your talent for it even at a young age.

you can sing well, dance well, you can even play a few instruments. it was like a sure thing for you to get into the industry. and you did. you debuted under SM entertainment as a soloist. at first, you were chose to be in a girl group, but then an incident happened, and your manager said that they decided to let you go solo.

being an artist under SM has it perks, like how you know your girlfriend through the company. bada lee is a well known choreographer, especially for SM artists. she had choreographed for so many artists under SM, to work with her was like a blessing to you at that time. she was chose to choreographed for your debut single, and she was also the one to teach you all the moves.

it would be an understatement to say you're attracted to her at that time. you were head over heels for bada. she is everything you dream of, the talent, the hard work, the way bada is always so caring towards others. bada is the definition of perfect for you. and like everyone else, you swoons over her in a heartbeat.

you just love how her fringes stick to her forehead when she dance, you love how she hug you so tightly when you did something good or to encourage you. and you so so love the way she smells.

so when you confessed to bada about your feelings. not expecting for her to even care about it. and she said yes.

oh it was like a dream come true.

of course you two have to keep it a secret. you being an idol and her being your choreographer (and also your teacher) is not a very great combo for people to find out.

but it's always fun to leave subtle hints.

like how you would post on instagram about your vacay in jeju island, and then a few days later bada would post about her being at the island too, wearing a scarf that you crocheted for her.

or like how you would be on live and she would just casually request to join in with you. and of course you accept it.

but as much as bada and you leave hints, your fans would always just brush it off, thinking that you guys are just very close friends.

you sometimes laugh about it with bada, your body would be engulf in her arms as you sit on her lap and you scroll on your phone to look at what people said about you guys.

but that day, the day after your comeback, when you guys are hanging out at bada's place and you were scrolling on your phone while bada hold you and search up a movie for the both of you to watch.

you stumble upon a post.

don't you guys think the new song of that one SM soloist is kind of bad?

curiously, you straighten up your back, knowing damn well the post is talking about you, because there was no other SM artist who had a comeback this month other than you.

your sudden tense figure doesn't go unnoticed by bada as she hug you from behind and pull you in so you can relax again. her head peak through from behind your shoulder to see what you're looking at.

"gosh these people", you mumble, your hand still scroll through the comments. and bada kiss your hair softly so you can keep your composure.

yea, definitely, i was really hoping to see her shine in this comeback, but honestly what is that? lolol

it's so hard to like the song, there's nothing good about it. and her voice? just...no

maybe she just doesn't have the talent, all she got is that pretty face of her.

and that is the last straw for you to turn off your phone and slump back to bada's embrace.

"why are they so mean?", you ask, your voice is obviously irritate, but this is an honest question. you don't get why people have to shame you over it, you don't get a say to what your company give you. and you definitely tried your best.

bada rest her head on your shoulder from behind, she give you a kiss on the crook of your neck as she said slowly "sometimes people just have different opinions" and you know that, you know fully well about that. being an idol means you have to accept criticism, and there would be many people who would just not like it even when you tried your hardest.

you turn around to face bada, you pout and get all work up like you're about to break a leg.

"but they don't have to be so mean! i did try my best!" you said, your hands cupping bada's face as she chuckle. you furrow your brows, clearly not loving the situation at hand.

of course she knows you tried your best, being your girlfriend and the one to help you out with your dancing skill. bada is the one who would know, because even when everyone turn their backs to you, bada will still protect you no matter what. she knows how hard you work, how passionate you are about what you do.

"i know princess" she said softly as she takes your hand in hers and give it a light kiss. but that wasn't enough for you to stop thinking about all the comments from the post. all the things they said creeping up your nerves.

"they said i'm just a pretty face and don't have any talents" you scoff. and bada once again pat your head to give you comfort. she knows you just want her to comfort you right now rather than to give you any more criticism.

"it's not like everyday they could have the priveledge to look at your pretty face like me" bada said, her face getting closer to yours and she give you a kiss on your left cheek. it was sweet, how she comfort you, always so soft and gentle, always make sure to get all touchy with you so you would feel like you're loved.

"you don't get it! they said i'm just a pretty girl, and i can't sing at all? what about all the hard work i put into this comeback? and all the voice training i have to do?" you pout, crossing your arms as bada hug you tightly. it's really irritating for you, you don't just work your ass off everyday for people to give all the credits to your face. as if you didn't try to be better every comeback.

"alright alright, you shouldn't be stressing about it, everyone have different opinions, i think that your comeback song is great!" she cheer you up (or at least an attempt to cheer you up), and you sigh, decide not to pester into it anymore, after all it would not do you any good if you think about it too much.

you still got a whole week of promotion for the song, all the shows you have to attend in an attempt for your song to be well known. and so you decide to just relax into bada's arm, letting her comfort engulf you as you guys watch a movie to keep your mind occupy.

after the incident, you basically doubt that your song would have the love of everyone. so it was very suprising for you to see how everyone listen to the song and repost it. of course, the first person you rush to share the new is none other than your girlfriend. you jump at the sight of bada. basically cling to her as you wrap your arms around her neck.

"baby baby, do you see this? it went viral!" you exclaim excitingly as you give a whole lot of kisses to bada's face. not really caring that you guys are at SM and not at your houses. but to your defense, it was an empty hallway and you were excited, so who even have the heart to just cut off your fun when your eyes shine so brightly.

"yea yea i see" bada laugh as she put you down. shuffling your hair as you shriek in happiness. your eyes again radiating how happy you are, and the sight of that make bada so relieved as you had been in a bad mood for the whole promotion week.

"i really wonder why it got viral though, they were hating on it just a few days ago", you state, not that you hate it, you just wonder why. seeing you deep in thought make bada chuckle a bit, she likes you when you're furrowing your brows trying to figure out something.

she finds it endearing when you do it, thinking you're too cute when you try to think hard on something. and then she would just comfortably slide in a comment that may or may not give you an answer to your question.

"maybe someone used your song and it got viral", bada said, chuckling and shuffling your hair. she likes your hair, it's soft and always smell so good. she lean down to kiss on top of your head and then exclaim "i got to go, have to start on a new dance project, i'll see you soon", and she winks at you after saying that.

you nod and wave at her, bada's words still screw into your mind.

'someone used your song and got viral'

you ponder upon the idea for a bit before you search up your song's name on social media. and of course the first thing you see is bada dancing to it with a twist of her own choreography. the views are 2 millions and of course there are many reposts.

a lot of people like her choreography and use the song to make it like a challenge, some even use the song to create their own choreography.

just looking at your phone screen make you smile brightly. your girlfriend really did go through great length just to make you happy huh?

"god, the woman you are, bada." you breath out softly and giggle.

#bada lee x reader #bada lee #bada lee x y/n #swf2 x reader #bada fluff #bada x reader #fluff #⟢ tod's chaos

[sacchxrine05]

Yuumori Characters as Disney Princesses (cus I’m bored :))

I’m gonna preface this by saying that some of these you’re just gonna have to trust me on cus I chose them just from pure vibes alone and went from there. I also haven’t re-read/watched Yuumori in a while nor have I watched any Disney movies as of late so again, just trust me bro lmao. I came up with most of these at 2am so sorry in advance.

Also, if someone has already done this, I’m sorry and I hope my choices aren’t just the same lmao.

Liam - Aurora/Sleeping Beauty

So this one is mostly just cus they both ended up sleeping for a long ass time lmao. Liam was in a coma after the fall for x months and Aurora was cursed to an eternal sleep unless her true love kissed her awake (we won’t talk about the horrors of the original fairytale, I’ve tried to blank that out of my memory tyvm). They’re also both blondes…uh huh. Aurora doesn’t have much personality that I can remember other than being an animal lover and a good singer so…that’s just all I have lmao. I also just think Liam would make a very cute Sleeping Beauty lmao.

Albert - Jasmine

I did consider giving Albert Rapunzel cus of the whole locked away in a tower thing, but outside of that and having shitty mothers (Mother Gothel wasn’t even Rapunzel’s real mother but still) there isn’t much similarity personality wise? Idk. I picked Jasmine just cus they both come from rich families yet have no patience for other rich people. Jasmine also disguised herself and went into the town/city to pretend she was a normal person and that feels kinda Albert-ish? They’re also both smart and sarcastic so Y’know.

Louis - Cinderella

This one feels kinda obvious lmao. Both were raised by awful rich people who treated them like a servant, both were orphans and both tended to the upkeep of their homes. I do think Louis has more of a backbone than Cinderella, especially towards the end of Part 1 of the manga. Also again: both are blondes lmao.

Moran - Merida

So…this one is mostly vibes but also not. I think Moran has a similar wild streak to Merida and accidentally turning a loved one into a bear because he didn’t watch his wording when asking a witch for a spell sounds like something Moran might do? Bear (hah) in mind I haven’t re-read Yuumori in a while so I may be wrong on that. Also I guess bows and arrows were the guns before guns were invented so…so there’s that lmao.

Bonde - Mulan

Feels like another obvious one? They both disguised their genders to achieve a goal (although I did interpret James to be a trans man whereas Mulan wasn’t rly? Cus she went back to presenting as female after the war so idk). They’re also both pretty outspoken and don’t care for the roles society has put them in as women and actively break that stigma (Mulan by going to war and James by often dressing as men even before he transitioned). Idk I just like this one lmao.

Fred - Snow White

Again, this is mostly vibes. I’m pretty sure Snow White is the youngest of the Disney Princesses at 14 (Don’t quote me on that cus I could be wrong), so I feel like that parallels Fred being the youngest of the Crime Gang. Snow White also has a connection to animals which can also connect to Fred’s love of cats and nature in general as he does most (all?) of the gardening. I think they’re both pretty quiet and shy and that’s all I really have lmao.

Mycroft - Megara

Okay, okay, relax, I know Megara isn’t an official Disney Princess (she SHOULD be, but whatever), but she’s the only one I could really see as being similar to Mycroft? Ya’ll are really just gonna have to trust me on this one lmao. I just think they’re both pretty independent and cynical and sarcastic and just…I really don’t know the vibes just fit, I can’t explain it.

Sherlock - Ariel

OKAY👏HEAR👏ME👏OUT. This is the only one I’m 100% confident on BSJDNKFS. They both have a niche obsession that they collect items from, Ariel with humans and Sherlock with Mysteries/Crime. They both make massive life changes for the man they love (a man which, by the way, they barely knew lmao), Ariel in becoming human and Sherlock by leaving his life, family & friends behind to live with Liam in New York. They also almost died to achieve this, Sherl from leaping off a goddamn bridge to save Liam and Ariel by her deal with Ursula. IT WORKS, I’M TELLING YOU.

That’s all I have, I was gonna do other characters but I just hit a brick wall with it lmao. (I considered John to be either Tiana or Belle, but I’ll leave that up to you 👀)

If you made it this far thank you for listening to my bullshit lmao.

#moriarty the patriot #yuukoku no moriarty #sherlock holmes #william james moriarty #albert james moriarty #louis james moriarty #sebastian moran #james bonde #fred porlock #mycroft holmes #sherliam

[madame-fear]

HIII

HELLO, I love your blog, your stories make me smile. um um feel free to ignore but i wanted to ask gotham! jonathan and DK! Jonathan, cheering on his partner on his birthday POSTSCRIPT: Yesterday was my birthday XD, another thing, English is not my native language, SO I'M SORRY FOR THE SPELLING MISTAKES

— a/n : hello love !! Happy late Birthday darling!! 🥳❤ AHJDJDK no worries for English cause it's not my native tongue as well! hope u enjoy this ♡

♡ Gotham! Jonathan : ♡

• Our boy will literally immerse you with love. His arms would be tightly wrapped around your waist, and would kiss you happily all over your face.

• The second you wake up on your birthday, he will already be leaving you breathless as he tightly hugs you, and showers you in love; plus, gives you tons of jolly birthday wishes.

• Will literally bring breakfast to bed and will also show up with a bouquet of roses he had brought for you the day before and kept hidden so you wouldn't spoil one of his surprises!

• Probably will let the J Squad and/or the Legion know about your birthday so they can celebrate it with you, if you wish. Or simply, give you gifts... or even help him with gifting ideas. Honestly it's probably that he would call the J Squad + the Legion only so they can give him ideas for your birthday. 🥲

• Will literally take you ANYWHERE you wish. Out for a walk in the park, out for a coffee birthday date, to the shopping mall, etc. And also, will spoil you to no end by buying you whatever thing he sees fit for you, and thinks you'll like! No 'buts' allowed.

“babe, what do you think about this? Do you like it?” “yeah, it seems pretty ni–” “SAY NO MORE. I'll buy it for you!”

• After you come home from nearly being all day out exploring the city for your birthday, he will run a warm, bubbly bath while he sets everything up for a perfect birthday night.

• Jonathan will even prepare your favourite food for you! Which is unusual, since he prefers having you cooking – but oh well, it's your special day.

• ^ Also, he'd prepare your favourite dessert, and will prepare some comfy clothing on top of your bed so you can change into that. Plus, he will prepare some good movie nights for both of you!

• After dinner and shortly before dessert, he will take out every hidden gift he had for you! Each one has a special little note for you, and he will be clinging by your side with a glint of excitement to see how you'll react to it.

• Pretty much will have you spoiled all day long, and will treat you like an absolute ✨ Queen ✨

♡ DK! Jonathan : ♡

• Unlike Gotham! Crane, he's not as expressive or clingy with his love. But, of course, that doesn't mean he doesn't have his ways of showing his beloved that he loves you!

• Even if he's a busy man, he will have someone replace him on his work only to spend more time with you. Literally.

• The first thing you'll see, is a little note with a bunch of hearts surrounding it, greeting you a good morning and a joyful birthday, and that he's on the kitchen preparing breakfast for both of you.

• When you go downstairs to the kitchen, you'll find the whole house set up for your birthday; with balloons of your favourite colours, a bouquet of flowers, general birthday decorations, and all the gifts on top of the living table.

“happy birthday, my love. i hope all your wishes come true, and that you have a joyful birthday, sweet darling.”

• DK! Crane will make you open all the gifts he proudly chose for you all for himself, based on all the knowledge he has on your likings. And, even if he won't show it... he lives for your happiness and the way you praise him when he does/gives you something you absolutely ADORE.

• It may be books, dresses, jewellery... whatever you most desire, he got it! And you're satisfied! (and so he is at your overjoyed reaction).

• Our man will also make you use your best clothing, as he reserved a special spot on your favourite place as to take you out for your birthday, and spend the evening there, together.

• And after you go back home, he will proudly keep spoiling by making a hot chocolate for you, plus he would bring you a small birthday cake of your favourite flavour while he sings "Happy Birthday".

• CUDDLING NIGHT WITH HIM WHILE YOU SHARE CAKE AND HOT CHOCOLATES!!!

• Our Jonathan will make sure he gives you the most special day ever, pampered, and happy. ♡

#jonathan crane x reader #jonathan crane x you #jonathan crane headcanon #jonathan crane imagine #gotham! jonathan crane x reader #dk jonathan crane x reader #scarecrow headcanons #scarecrow x you #scarecrow x reader #scarecrow imagine #gotham x you #gotham x reader #gotham jonathan crane x you #gotham jonathan crane imagine #gotham jonathan crane x reader #gotham jonathan crane headcanons #gotham scarecrow x reader #gotham scarecrow x you #gotham scarecrow imagine #batman villains x reader #batman villains headcanons

[visualtaehyun]

Rules: List 10 of your comfort shows, then tag 10 people

Thanks for tagging me y'all @sorry-bonebag @twig-tea @rocketturtle4 ✨

My criteria for a comfort show are gonna be 1) any piece of media 2) that I've watched more than once and 3) that I will keep reaching for. That's it. I can't even explain what the common denominator is tbh?? It's just- the kinda movie or show that I need on DVD to easily put on again and quell the brain worms (yes, I physically own all but #4-#6).

1. My School President: What can I say, this show took me entirely by surprise! I started watching a few days before episode 4 aired - aka the pinky touch ✨ the conversation in the stairwell ✨ and the origin of Gem4th's fanclub name being Khun Nuu ✨ - and fell right in love with it. I love musical storytelling, I love coming of age stories, I love a good romance, and I love found family/friend group dynamics so this really hit the spot for me. I guess these apply to a bunch of my choices for this tag though haha

2. Cutie Pie: I've talked about this show in another tag game (as "A show people find bad but you will defend") and all of that still holds true so I won't repeat it here. I'll just add that this show introduced me to Nunew who's my favorite artist these days. :)

3. Love In The Air (Love Storm): Yup! The show that most people on here seem to recall as that extra horny one lol It's one of the first Thai QLs I watched along with as it aired, maybe even the first one. I started watching when episode 2 came out, I think? And I just loved the D/s-dynamic, lovable brat Rain, and these rookie actors so much that I not only went looking for the bts, cast reactions, and interviews but I even started following Twitter translators for the show and cast. This show (and ZeeNunew lol) was basically my introduction to how the Y industry works, what Thai fanclubs are like, and got me well and truly interested in learning Thai. I think I've seen it enough times to speak along by now cause I also used my familiarity with it to study Thai. And now that BossNoeul are finally getting a new show, I'm really looking forward to seeing them in new roles!

4. Not Me: It's simply brilliant. And it's so grounded! You know how lots of tops in Thai QLs are rich, a CEO, drive a supercar, and live in a gorgeous modern home with huge windows (and death stairs lmao)? I love that Not Me starts in a place of privilege but has White leave that behind pretty early on. Bangkok really is a city where you can constantly see the divide between rich and poor. So I appreciate this show even more after having been to Bangkok. Not Me's characters look unfiltered and real and that's how the entire show feels as well. I just love what P'Nuchy has given us here! Oh and +1 for White narrating his entire story, I just kinda love that in general (also enjoyed Kawi narrating Be My Favorite). The next two kinda fall into one category: shows I loved as a kid, remembered - found - rewatched as a teen, and still fondly remember.

5. Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne: This is a magical girl anime that I first would have seen on TV in 2001. In hindsight, this show's religious themes may have influenced me in my love for fictional faith and devotion. Just a thought, haha, totally don't have more than one dnd character who is majorly connected to divinity, faith, and devotion, even though I personally am agnostic...

6. The Weekenders: I routinely cite this as my favorite cartoon (and I watched- just- So Many as a kid omg). Since I watched this on German TV, I only know the German dub which was honestly really fun. If any Germans read this and have seen that show: Wirsing! The rest is movies all the way down!

7. Timeline: A 2003 movie with a bunch of well-known actors that arguably qualifies as a B movie because it flopped so hard at the box office. It's my trash though. I chose it at the video store, brought it home, loved it, and then proceeded to rent it like once a year lol! It's basically a bunch of archeologists and history nerds travelling back in time to the Hundred Years War to save their professor. It has my preferred time travel dynamic of Everything is fixed and whatever traces in time you leave were already there to begin with.

8. Inception: There's several Christopher Nolan movies I love but this one is just so grand and fun and maybe I also had a bit of a crush on Elliott Page back then 👉👈 I'm a born nerd so naturally teen-me used "Non je ne regrette rien" as my alarm for years lmao This category is basically just Disney & co. musicals lol

9. Mulan (1998): If you asked me to choose my favorite from the entire classic Disney musical line-up, it would always be this one. It's the queerest, of course I'd always choose it!

10. Anastasia: You know, I looked at my shelf full of cartoon musicals- no wait, High School Musical and Pitch Perfect are next to them, hm, wELL- at my movie musicals shelf and it came down to choosing between this one and The Swan Princess (1994). And this one just kinda won out because "Once Upon A December" is impeccable! And now I've got it stuck in my head 👍

Since it took me a few days to get back to it, this has clearly made the rounds already. Who to tag?? Uh-- @pharawee @airenyah @telomeke and whoever sees this and wants to do it of course!

#tag game #msp #cutie pie the series #lita #not me the series #ql musings #thai bl #bella and the blorbos

[risingoflights]

twitter is...

like. artists have been protesting artstation’s allowance of AI generated art by posting a ‘NO AI’ image right - now if you go to Artstation’s main page it’s mostly those images.

cool!

techbro makes a post MOCKING the protest by AI-generating an image that’s made up of those protest images like ‘oh no my AI art is ruined because this is what I get when entering the ‘trending on artstation’ prompt now!’. The post aims to point out artists don’t know how AI tech works.

Bleh.

ARTISTS takes the techbro’s post as GENUINE, and post screencaps of it celebrating the fact the protest is working. The artists’ posts gets a lot of attention, and are still up despite people pointing out the techbro’s intention was to MOCK artists.

techbros are now seeing this and gleefully announcing how stupid and gullible artists are!

i have screenshots of all the above because apparently i want to remember this moment of feeling both very angry and very frustrated by a number of things this scenario demonstrates about being an artist online and social media, but posting those would increase the chances of THIS post going outside my usual circle which I don’t want.

so, friends, my own takeaway from this so far is,

a. no matter how much techbros would say otherwise, AI art generation depends on having real art to feed into the machines. the fact that techbros are SO HOSTILE to artists - the very people they depend on! - bewilders me, but there’s that pretty common sense of entitlement that people have toward things found online. have myself been told multiple times that if i didn’t want an artwork reposted, repurposed, etc, i shouldn’t have posted it in the first place. ‘found on google/pinterest/buzzfeed’ and ‘credit to the artist’ is a common caption. this is now that sentiment amplified. techbros probably also think there’s no way their well of stolen material will dry up... because artists depend on posting to survive and are not all going to collectively stop.

b. misinformation doesn’t help the cause!

c. waiting, optimistically, for the techbro’s mocking post to actually become true - that artists will flood the well with unusable images that will make AI generation too hard, or at least much harder.

d. waiting for tech to defeat the tech to come along, waiting for more regulations... Feeling, though, as a self-employed artist in this capitalist hellscape that ultimately money will win

e. seeing a bunch of ARTISTS lamenting the ‘no AI’ images on artstation because it’s inconveniencing their usual use of it!

f. artstation’s statement about the protest basically amounts to ‘well we respect artists’ copyright but we won’t ban AI art because we don’t want to gatekeep’. Gatekeep? That’s the wording they chose to use??

g. as a side-note, you know that scene in The Incredibles movie where Syndrome says ‘when everyone’s a super, no one will be’ and like. when everyone’s an artist i guess no one will be? and in The Incredibles 2 where Evelyn says ‘I think people will choose ease over quality every time’ - god isn’t that so applicable?

this is all very stupid and very tiring, but it just feels like something we’ll be dealing with now, i guess, on top of everything else. so that’s cool!

may well delete this later. i wrote this in an uncharacteristic rage! was so happy not checking twitter obsessively last few weeks because i’ve been so busy and this is what i come back to today, christ!

[chocolatemilk139]

the do or die part

reader x mingyu

summary: There are only a few things Actor Kim Mingyu really has to worry about: 1. Making sure Soonyoung doesn’t murder the writer with a set prop 2. Making sure his manager doesn’t murder HIM with a set prop 3. Making sure a serial killer doesn’t murder them all. Seungcheol would argue it’s highly unlikely he’ll ever cross a serial killer, ever, but the FBI’s crime stats would beg to differ. He could prove it with the right book research. He’s definitely going to the bookstore every day instead of memorizing lines for research purposes only and NOT because he wants to kiss the owner. Definitely not that.

genre: fluff, barely-there-angst, actor au, non idol au, bookstores, mingyu being great at acting but terrible at flirting

warnings: no actual serial killer, tiny angst?, mingyu probably needs a therapist (but he’s okay guys), fear of heights

word count: 16.2k

a/n: hi! Accidentally found this sitting in my docs half-finished and decided to gift it to my bff for her birthday! Told from Mingyu’s perspective because it was a little too fun to write that way. Anyways I hope you enjoy reading this mess <3

——————

don’t read the last page (i want your midnights)

Of all the places to film a romcom they chose the one seaside town without a consistent weather pattern, right next to the sea but not the beach, and filled with those small town personalities that despise anything that causes a disturbance to their generations of peace and quiet. What else could be more of a disturbance than having a 300 person crew park their lives in your town for a whole month of filming and take up the one usable paved road for 12 hours of filming what would only be about 30 minutes of usable footage. Mingyu would hate himself if the roles were reversed. It’s why he doesn’t do anything but smile and apologize again (in that really small voice he shrinks into frequently) when the barista gives him nothing but a glare of murderous intent after he knocks over the tip jar in an attempt to take his latte. He wonders if she would appreciate him handing her a list of tips to get away with his murder (complete with his hotel room number for easy access). He’s listened to enough CrimeJunkies to be confident he could come up with a pretty foolproof plan. Seungcheol would say something like that is just another side effect of the Self-Sacrificing Kim Mingyu Need to Throw Himself Off a Cliff to Get People to Like Him. What’s wrong with seeking approval, hyung? He’s an actor for a reason, for God’s sake.

“And you probably only became an actor for that reason,” Soonyoung points out. Mingyu throws the straw wrapper (paper straw, because he’s not some monster) at his face because even if it’s mostly true, he doesn’t need his lifelong leech of a best friend to point it out.

“All I want is to be in a movie with some crime and a serial killer,” Mingyu sighs (half of what Soonyoung says doesn’t deign a proper response), “Is that too much to ask?”

“Apparently,” Soonyoung snorts. “Why don’t you plan something useful like how to murder Mr. Jeon?”

“It’s not his fault really,” Mingyu says, immediately on the defensive, “he’s just the writer, he doesn’t have a huge say on who they hire for the movie.” It’s not entirely true, but he knew that sucking up to Wonwoo maybe wasn’t the best shot at getting cast for his new (CRIME!) piece he’s working on. Wonwoo is still nice though, buys Mingyu’s morning coffee to replace the original one he inevitably spills and/or loses, and he’s still working on something he’s written. A Korean-American romcom, of course, painfully devoid of serial killers. He should be thankful to be the second male lead, he can finally add in another donation.

Soonyoung lets out a long, exasperated sigh (as he’s wont to do with any mention of Jeon Wonwoo, Wonwoo Jeon whatsoever). “Fine, fine, if you want to defend that scumbag of a man I won’t stop you. But if he even speaks to me after living off your cooking for two months and still not giving you that role I promise to take a knife–”

Mingyu immediately shoves the bagel into Soonyoung’s mouth. “If you say any more I no longer have deniability in court.”

In between coughing and glaring at Mingyu he rolls his eyes.

. . .

They wind up back at set, inevitably, because there is no such thing as a real break. Unless you are Jeonghan. He finds him sleeping in a foldable chair behind one of the food trucks that Leigh ordered. His female co-star is in the middle of some familial drama scene between her and her mother (he can hear the shouting across the street which he assumes is the goal). If anything this is less a romcom than an exploration of the Korean American woman’s identity from the point of view of an aspiring lawyer in a small town. But it’s easier to say romcom.

Mingyu shoves Jeonghan’s shoulder lightly to wake him and is faced with the groggy glare of his manager.

“Is someone dying?” he asks gruffly. Mingyu merely smiles.

“No, but the director said I have to be ready to go in thirty minutes for the next scene,” he says lightly.

“Did you read your lines?” Jeonghan asks, eyes already fluttering shut. Mingyu hums. “Okay, well, you are a big boy, you can find your way to the makeup and hair trailer,” he replies, patting Mingyu’s knee softly before leaning back further into his chair. Mingyu huffs but leaves him be. Logically he could hire a more…enthusiastic manager, but at this point it would be a waste. And he can’t exactly say he doesn’t mind someone not controlling every aspect of his life. Jeonghan said he used to work for a kpop group in Seoul before they disbanded and it was the worst, most stressful six months of his life. Somehow that translated to him becoming the most lackadaisical manager Mingyu had ever met. Still, he gets the contracts signed and somewhere underneath his disinterested persona, Mingyu knows he genuinely cares. Somehow.

Dokyeom and Minghao are already in the trailer with brushes in their hands when Mingyu knocks. Minghao pulls him into the chair with a “You’re late,” and Dokyeom moves over to the clothes rack, shifting through the shirts.

“Nice to see you guys too,” Mingyu sing-songs.

“Hi,” Minghao scowls. “DK, hand me the one with 43 on the side.”

“What’s this scene, again?” Dokyeom asks even as he hands one of the palettes to Minghao.

“Taking Lee and her grandma out for lunch,” Mingyu offers with a grin.

Minghao snorts. “You’re lucky you are supposed to look like a borderline farmhand half the time. Does your character even have a solid job?”

“Uh, resident handyman?”

“Anything that gives him an excuse to take off his shirt,” Minghao says, then, “Get him the blue flannel.”

Dokyeom holds it up from the rack and Mingyu catches a glimpse in the mirror. “Oo, can I–”

Minghao cuts him off with a brush to his throat. “If you don’t hand that to me within thirty seconds after the director ends scene I will skewer you.”

Mingyu merely grins and nods, compliant as always. Dokyeom laments the great fall of the cashmere sweater of ’21 to Mingyu’s turkey sandwich. When he’s free to go (when they can hear Director Han screaming his name across set) he manages to knock over the bucket of brushes on one of the counters and bends to help them pick it up. Minghao waves him and his apologies off with a reassuring smile and a snide remark about how he can’t let Mingyu get yelled at again, even if Director Han still loves him. He does memorize his lines the best.

. . .

have i known you 20 seconds (or 20 years?)

The next day he is off because, according to Director Han, Leigh wasn’t Tiffany Lee enough in the previous day’s footage and they needed to reshoot most of the family interactions. Needless to say, Leigh looked ready to murder someone over breakfast so Mingyu steered in the opposite direction to let Seungkwan (the actual male lead, the one Tiffany will end up with when the credits roll) handle that. Leigh seemed to like Seungkwan more than him anyways. He finds Soonyoung at the coffee shop again, sans most of the crew at this hour of the day. It didn’t stop the barista from sending death glares again.

Soonyoung already has a latte waiting for him and is ready to pounce before Mingyu manages to properly sit down.

“In the many hours I have had to myself, alone, as a stunt director in a movie that literally doesn’t have any stunts, I have stumbled upon a treasure trove–”

“Please don’t tell me you robbed a bank because you were bored.”

“--That holds all you may ever desire. Mainly books on really randomly specific topics.”

“Please don’t tell me they have a tiger section.”

Soonyoung’s grin turns practically feral. “Oh but they do!” he giggles. Then he pauses for a minute to add, “But they also have a whole section for true crime psychopath stuff you have an unnatural obsession with.”

Mingyu already has his wallet in his hands when he grabs Soonyoung’s arm to drag him out of the cafe. “Let’s go.”

. . .

Soonyoung babbles as he leads them down a few side streets that are too close for anything besides pedestrian traffic, and largely devoid of pedestrians at this time of day. The townspeople seem to really be leaning into this “avoiding outsiders as much as possible” gig. Or maybe they don’t have many errands to run at 10:40 on a Tuesday at a…hardware store…a fish place?...and a bookstore.

He only knows it’s a bookstore because 1. Soonyoung stops abruptly and spreads his arms out proudly declaring “This is the bookstore!” and 2. The small glimpse he gets of the front windows only shows even, carefully stacked and lined colorful book spines. It makes him practically giddy, with this little anticipation tingling the bottom of his feet and he hasn’t even stepped inside yet. The sign above it reads 105 North Tower and he’s sure it’s one of those insignificant literary references that Seungcheol would berate him for not catching. He should take him here sometime.

“It’s so quaint,” he hears himself gush. He means it as the highest compliment.

Soonyoung rolls his eyes and drags him through the front door (it has a goddamned bell!) and Mingyu is so distracted practically swirling around, looking at all the shelves, with their variations in color. There’s a system here, and most shelves have pretty little calligraphy signs of different topics. It’s not chaotic like most small bookstores–there’s a meticulous air to everything–but Mingyu absolutely adores it.

“You’re back,” an unfamiliar voice says and Mingyu startledly swings to see someone behind the counter. They are the only one in the shop–apparently the owner (they are always the owners in this small of a town). They don’t have the customer service smile, in fact, they look pretty unapproachable (like most people in this town) but not entirely unkind. They are pretty, shorter than him (but so is everyone else) and have this baseball cap on and gray cardigan and the same meticulous put-togetherness of the rest of the shop.

“Yeah, I brought my friend here,” Soonyoung says cheerily. If Mingyu knows him he probably spent all of yesterday chatting up the owner-bookkeeper, establishing some sort of friendship even if it was one-sided. The bookkeeper hums, glances at Mingyu (who tried to give his friendliest smile) and returns to the book with some level of disinterest. “Let me know if you need anything,” they say, looking back down. Mingyu mentally runs through the list of things Seungcheol liked to drill into him, like how it probably had nothing to do with them disliking Mingyu personally after seeing him for 2.5 seconds, and you should always read the best possible interpretation of someone’s actions. He swears Seungcheol learned that from some teaching module, but it works so he sticks to it.

“Don’t break anything,” Soonyoung says, already tugging him through the aisles again. (Just who do his friends think he is? Some sort of robot dog on wheels they can drag anywhere they like? A short montage burst of every time he lets them get away with it flashes through his mind as the answer.)

“I’m not gonna break anything,” he protests, trying to read the signs they pass as they go further to the back of the store. The calligraphy is gorgeous, and the font is altered on each one slightly to match the topic. It’s obvious they were done by hand in the “this is too meticulous and careful to have been done by anything but a full, feeling human heart” kind of way. Gardening has flowers blooming between the open spaces of the loops. Mystery’s letters are blockish with empty spaces contrasting with the black background. Caring for Dogs has its own section (“As it should,” Mingyu mutters) and the A and O have been turned into paw prints. Soonyoung drags them to the tiger section first and he admires the stripes the letters turn into with little orange accents. Soonyoung has already started pulling out a book that looks like just a bunch of Bengal tiger photos before he even bothers pointing Mingyu in the direction of those alleged books of interest.

The True Crime placard is stylized like the familiar TOP SECRET font complete with a little magnifying glass by the last E and it makes Mingyu laugh so much he snaps a picture. This section is far enough in the back corner to not have to mind how affronted the owner might seem at something like this. He wasn’t even really sure if the bookkeeper had made them herself or got someone else to. She didn’t seem like the type.

There were the staples of Ted Bundy and the Zodiac Killer (to be expected) but also some on the Hillside Strangler, the Austin Yogurt Shop Killer, and a whole series on the Green River Killer.

But there’s also Last Call by Elon Green and a whole shelf just on missing persons cases. It’s this one he settles on, and thumbs the spines until pulling out a couple to check the blurbs. He accumulates a stack and finally when his knees hurt he sees the bean bag against the wall. He carries his books and finally plops down, opening the first book on Alissa Turney. Distantly, he sets a mental reminder to call Devin and see how he’s doing these days.

Time seems sluggish in the way that in this corner it’s hard to tell if it’s moving or not. The twilight of not having anything to do and about to be called back to set. It passes, somehow, because eventually Soonyoung comes to find him and let him know he has to go back and approve some stunt equipment they are using for a night scene and (in his words) “make sure they don’t impale themselves on something metal.” Mingyu waves goodbye without looking up (they are already discussing possible perpetrators, he should have brought his notebook to trace out connections) before he remembers that he should probably thank his friend. He’s already gone by then.

A text from Jeonghan saying he bought dinner is what finally pulls him from the chair and up to the front desk, still clutching his stack of books. The bookkeeper is still there, except this time they’re busy clacking away at their desk computer. They still don’t look up until Mingyu sets the books down on the counter and clears his throat. Bookkeeper finally looks up with a borderline scowl. This close, Mingyu sees the way their short hair is tucked behind their ears and under the cap and when Bookkeeper raises an eyebrow, clearly disturbed, he can’t help but find them a bit cute. Mingyu must be going insane from the seawater.

“Hi,” he begins, almost squeakily. “I actually wanted to ask you a question. Or a favor really.”

Bookkeeper surveys him once again and lets out a barely imperceptible sigh. “Believe it or not the ‘I forgot my wallet’ excuse has been used before and it won’t work on me.”

Mingyu blinks at them once, twice, before it clicks and he practically guffaws. “Oh no, I have money! I usually forget my wallet but then Soonyoung started stealing it so I had to be more careful about that.” Bookkeeper looks unimpressed but Mingyu feels himself pressing onward. Or at least the words shoveling to the front of his mouth without a filter like basic human interaction protocol. He scrambles to pull out his wallet for proof. “But anyways,” he chuckles, “I was actually just thinking about if it might be possible for you to like, keep these books here? At the store? After I pay for them of course.”

“Like, hold them for you?” Bookkeeper offers skeptically.

“Yeah, you see,” Mingyu begins, “my manager kinda put me on a ban from reading—“

For once it seems to crack something like a smile on Bookkeeper’s face and there’s amusement in her voice when they repeat “A ban on reading?”

Mingyu is already blushing, he can feel it in the heat in his neck, because obviously there isn’t a moment of peace when he’s not embarrassing himself. “He thinks I get distracted easily with my true crime hobbies and I can’t be ‘in the right mindset’ for a romcom if I’m reading too much serial killer stuff, whatever that means.”

The silence falls between them again and it’s easy to slip back into overthinking, watching the way Bookkeeper taps their fingers on the edge of the counter silently thinking. The way they finally pauses and huffs out some air upwards with resignation and it’s so—

“I’ll keep them behind the counter,” they say in an even quieter voice and it makes Mingyu’s heart do weird things like beat irregularly (and he’s not even freaking out at the edge of a second floor balcony!) Bookkeeper is already picking up the first book and scanning it.

“Thank you so much,” Mingyu breathes out, “I honestly don’t know how to repay you. Except by, you know, paying for the books but also if you wanted to charge me for keeping them in your space you probably could and I wouldn’t really mind—“ The look the bookkeeper gives him shuts him up immediately and he grins before blurting out, “I’m Mingyu by the way!“

Bookkeeper (now he swears that’s not the correct title) looks up at him warily (or wearily, the expression was a toss up) and gives the slightest sigh. “Yn,” they say. Finally. Mingyu knows he’s beaming.

“Pretty,” he blurts out before realizing what he said and wanting to die. He has enough experience in this field to know how to cover though and immediately points to the one of the nearest bookshelf placards. “All the calligraphy signs and everything are really pretty, I mean. They look handmade. Did you do them?”

When he turns back there is something close to pink on Bookkeeper’s face and they clear their throat. “My brother did,” they say. Yn opens a drawer and pulls out some twine thread and Mingyu watches in adoration when they use it to tie around the stack of books, crossed on both sides and tied up at the top in a ribbon like a gift box. “It saves plastic bags,” Bookkeeper–Yn—says when they sees Mingyu staring. Mingyu merely nods. He can hear Soonyoung snorting in his head. Wow, is environmental consciousness hot now? Yes, quite frankly, Soonyoung. You wouldn’t know since you practically live off plastic utensils like a heathen.

There’s a beat of silence while Mingyu racks his head for whatever he was supposed to be doing. It’s slipped his mind completely.

“Don’t you have to be on set?” Yn asks, amusement slipping into their voice.

“How’d you know I worked on set?”

Yn laughs then, something loud and honest and God, I thought it couldn’t get worse but it just does. “You’re an idiot,” they say simply, but for some reason it doesn’t sting. It helps that he’s called that all the time. “Are you some random side character or what?”

Mingyu has an initial urge to lie and just go along with that before having a vivid flashforward montage of a series of misunderstandings that would lead to Yn inexplicably hating him. He opts for sheepish, rubbing his neck as he admits. “I’m actually one of the leads. Second lead. Not lead-lead.”

Yn snorts. “Makes sense.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Yn rolls their eyes and then nods to the phone in his hands. “Think you got a call there.”

Indeed, Jeonghan’s caller ID is glaring back up at him and he scrambles to pick it up. He’s already outside the door (the bell rang again!) before he remembers and opens the door again to stick his head through and yell a little unnecessarily, “Thank you so much, Yn!”

The Bookkeeper looks startled for a minute but before Mingyu turns around he catches a glimpse through the glass door of an amused smile even as she shakes her head. Mingyu counts it as a win.

“Yn? Who the heck is Yn?”

“Oh, Jeonghan hyung, I forgot you were there.”

“Why do you sound suspicious? What were you doing that you sound guilty for?”

Mingyu sends silent thanks that Jeonghan can’t see the red in his face now and channels every acting lesson into calming his voice. It’s excellent practice trying to deceive his manager, and nearly impossible. “Guilty?” he laughs, “I was just at a store, lounging around you know.”

“Uh huh, sure sure,” Jeonghan drawls on the other end of the line, “You better get back to this hotel room in less than three minutes. That’s the time limit on my self-restraint for not eating all this food myself. And also the time limit for when your brother will inevitably call and question how terrible I’m doing on a job he volunteered me for.”

“I’ll be right there!” Mingyu replies cheerfully, always heading down the little shortcut between buildings he had discovered in the town that purposefully goes around the current filming site. The one key to keeping a day off a day off was to make sure Director Han never saw your face. The “hotel” is more of an old mansion repurposed into some sort of pseudo hostel and most of the actors and directors from various sections fill up all the available rooms. The rest of the crew has to drive twenty minutes to and from the nearest Hilton each work day.

He greets Joshua and Jun, the owners at the front desk (who are kinder than most, but he assumes since they are also sleeping here every night they want to furnish hospitable relations), and then heads up the wide staircase to find his room. He has to open it with an actual key, not just a card, but he always insists that’s part of the character of the place.

Jeonghan has two pimple patches on his chin and a fork midway to his mouth when Mingyu opens the door. A quick scan assures him his manager has only made a slight dent, and there’s still enough for him to eat without being famished.

“Cheol’s on the line,” he huffs, motioning to the phone on the coffee table before continuing to shove his face with linguini.

“Hyung!” Mingyu greets cheerfully, plopping onto the couch beside Jeonghan. “How are you? How are your kids?”

“Still evil and devious little creatures,” Seungcheol laughs. “But they seem to be liking Hamlet, surprisingly. How is the filming? Is Jeonghan taking care of you?”

Jeonghan, at the mention of his name, grabs a slice of garlic bread and shoves it into Mingyu’s open mouth. Mingyu tries not to choke but assures his brother everything is fine when he catches his breath. “He’s the best manager in the whole world,” Mingyu says through a mouthful of the pasta, “absolutely nothing to worry about.”

“Good,” Seungcheol replies. “I’m going to try to visit one of these weekends since your set is only thirty minutes away. One of the weekends I’m not drowning in grades to submit.”

“Aw, you really don’t have to!”

Jeonghan snorts beside him. “It’s not for you. He found out that his favorite cinematographer is on this project.”

“Hey!”

“I’ll tell her you said hi,” Mingyu snickers.

“Hey! Mingyu!”

He hangs up the phone before his brother can say anything, and it earns a sound of amusement from Jeonghan.

“Ugh, why does filming take so long?” he groans, leaning back further into the couch.

“You’re not even the one doing the acting. All you do is sleep all day.”

Jeonghan ignores him. “Come be a manager for my little brother, he said. It will be fun, he said.”

“You could always quit and become a florist.”

Jeonghan makes a choking noise. “So who’s Yn?” he asks suddenly.

Mingyu brushes him off. “Just someone in town I was talking to.”

“Like ‘talking to’ or talking to?”

“Like they literally own a store and are legally required to speak to me so I can pay them money.”

“Aw. You should get out and date more, go find yourself a nice girl or guy. Let the paparazzi trail you,” Jeonghan says, “Your career is so squeaky clean and devoid of controversies it’s almost sickening.”

“Hyung, are you telling me to like, purposefully go out and have a scandal?” Mingyu sputters, “Aren’t you supposed to be telling me the opposite? As my manager?”

Jeonghan shrugs. “I was promised fun with this job. Nothing is fun right now.”

Mingyu rolls his eyes once more before getting up to throw away the trash. Jeonghan still hands him the script for tomorrow’s scenes (complete with highlights and notes) but is already under the covers of his own bed before Mingyu can get sappy and thank him. Drats, he knows him too well. Mingyu lets it go though, and turns off most of the lights before settling in his twin bed that smells like sea salt (the hotel went the full seaside-beach theme). He uses a small reading light shaped like a leaf that Soonyoung gave him for his birthday and in between memorizing formulates a little schedule of when he can escape the set to go visit the bookstore again. It’s for the actual books, he falls asleep telling himself.

. . .

the only thing we share (is this small town)

When he finally gets a chance to escape (he has to bribe Seungkwan with a bakery smuggle later that night if he swears he never saw him leave behind the trailers), he goes to the bookstore. Logically. He still paid for those books, it’s not too early to go back. There’s a moment he considers getting Soonyoung but he sees him on the verge of yelling in the Director’s face about safety protocol for this one scene where Tiffany climbs a tree. It’s better to abandon him than get caught up in a mess like that again.

The bell over the door is like a soundtrack to the slow motion movie that his life has become when Mingyu makes it to 105 North Tower just to have the breath knocked out of him. It must be the early morning light from the windows framing Yn’s face in just the right way, making them glow even though Yn probably would have still been pretty in a pitch black room (he needs to work on that metaphor). Or maybe it’s the fact that Yn has a large box in hand and they’re standing on a step stool unloading books because they’re too short to reach the top shelves. When Yn turns they throw a twisted type of unsure grin at Mingyu like they weren’t expecting him but are already thinking of a million ways to make fun of him. Or torture him. All of this is a bit convoluted for his heart’s health. The scowl Yn quickly recovers isn’t enough to hide the fact that they were smiling when they first spotted Mingyu. Mingyu should know; he has 20/20 vision.

“Hi Yn,” he finally says, easy publicity smile plastered on his face.

“Hi,” Yn replies. They are stacking the books neatly onto the top shelf of new arrivals. “You came back.”

Mingyu nods. “For the books.”

Yn smirks like they know he’s lying but Mingyu is probably projecting, again. “Give me a sec.”

Mingyu says “Of course” and then tries to seem like he’s interested in the shelf of Western fantasy novels because he’s not sure what he’s really supposed to do with his hands or how to not actively stare at the Bookkeeper (It’s been one day!). He hears when Yn gets off the stepstool and tosses the empty cardboard box to the side, and turns around when he thinks she’s behind the counter. There’s rustling around and then Yn sets the stack of books on the counter and pushes them towards him.

“Is it weird to stay in here and read?”

Yn shrugs. “Customers like to. There’s a reason there are chairs everywhere.”

“Ah,” Mingyu nods, “thank you.” Because he’s not sure what else to add. He makes it back to the True Crime corner and its purple bean bag again. It’s comfortable and every so often he can hear Yn shifting around, arranging shelves and unboxing shipments. It’s still muted, like they’re trying to be more quiet knowing that someone else is here. Mingyu smiles to himself, and tries to actually read. Which is what he came to do.

It’s at least an hour or two later when his back is sore enough that he figures he should get up and leave. A text from Soonyoung comes asking where he is, followed by the assurance that he would meet him there and yes, Mingyu can use his backpack to smuggle the contraband books back onto set without Jeonghan noticing. It’s a deal, so Mingyu picks up two more titles to buy at the counter. Soonyoung needs the workout anyway.

Yn is typing away at their computer, again, and pretends not to notice Mingyu until he sets the books on the counter again, one stack for those already bought (the twine tied into a poor imitation of the bow it was yesterday, he’s not good at tying bows, okay) and one for the new ones. Yn reads the titles and then looks back at him with an eyebrow raised.

“Do you only read about murder and serial killers and missing persons?”

“Well, it’s like a main interest of mine. I like reading about real cases. Cold cases especially. The serial killers and just kinda a part of that.”

“You know it makes you look more and more like a serial killer yourself.”

Mingyu sputters. “What? No, I like, actually like to help on cold cases. You know, like, I’m friends with this detective, okay? And there’s a lot you can do as a regular person just scouring databases and really boring online stuff that’s really helpful to the cases but, once again, very boring to most people.”

“Hm, some killers actually like to associate themselves with law enforcement in order to make them less of a suspect, or maybe just to get the thrill of being close to being caught but never being suspected.”

“Aw come on! Just let me explain how I got into this…topic in the first place, okay?” Mingyu insists, still laughing.

Yn eyes him suspiciously but there’s a playfulness there. “Hm, yes, please tell me exactly how you aren’t a serial killer by sounding exactly like how a serial killer would try to explain himself.”

“Oh my gosh,” Mingyu groans. “I took forensic science in high school, okay? And we had a detective come in and talk to us about his job and he showed us some really gross pictures–”

“And that was when you realized you actually wanted to kill someone.”

“--What? No!”

Yn giggles then but waves him on. “Continue, Mr. Serial Killer.”

Mingyu rolls his eyes but presses forward. “He was a cold case detective and so he talked to us for a while about this one specific case he has been working on for years and they were close to finding the perpetrator, hopefully, through some of that online DNA tracing. You know, like the ancestry.com databases and stuff? Well, I became kinda invested in it and bugged him until he let me help. It’s a lot of volunteer work, actually. Just diving into online archives and tracing matches. I was helping him when they cracked that case actually,” he adds, suddenly feeling shy. He looks anywhere but at Yn who is finally not teasing him anymore, but that only lasts for so long, and when he looks back the bookkeeper has their head tilted and they’re giving Mingyu this unreadable look.

“So when you are not making millions of dollars being a top-billed actor,” Yn finally says, “you are actually a helpless nerd who scours internet databases for DNA matches for cold cases.”

“I’m not famous, I’m like a B-list actor,” Mingyu protests feebly. He doesn’t even make that much. He can feel his own skin on his face heating up to melting point and he’s not sure the color is any less incriminating.

“So how’d you get into reading?”

Yn laughs something a little bitter then, but worn down, like they’re settled in the distaste. “I used to hate it actually, but there’s not much better to do when you are stuck with a full leg cast for nine weeks. I thought I’d go insane with nothing to do so I read. Anything that was in my mom’s library actually, which meant a ton of Austen and Dickens and Dumas. Old dead English people.”

Mingyu laughs along with them, even though it feels like he’s stumbled on something still sore. He doesn’t ask more about the broken leg, it seems like a can of worms he doesn’t even have the right to approach as a perfect stranger.

“Why do you have a whole section for true crime if you think it’s weird then?” True crime is familiar, a safe topic to steer back to.

Yn lets out a deep exhale, their cheeks puffing in thought. They look at Mingyu somberly. “Actually, there’s a reason for that, you know.”

Mingyu immediately lets his teasing topple away into something more serious. “What’s that?” he asks, in a bit of reverent quiet voice.

Yn sighs and looks out the window and then back at Mingyu like they’re debating something. Then they leans forward across the counter. Mingyu has to channel all his thinking off the way Yn’s face is suddenly so close to his and their eyes have this drowning effect if you look directly in them for too long, in favor of how serious Yn says the next words. “There was actually a string of murders about eight years ago,” Yn finally breathes out.

Mingyu pulls back–from shock at the words, not an internal fear that’s he going to suddenly lean forward and kiss her without warning. “Seriously?” he breathes out.

Yn nods. “Everyone said there’s a serial killer but he’s never been caught.”

“Oh my God.”

They sigh again, looking back down at the desk. “It’s really scary actually. I think there was a murder a few years ago the police can’t explain and everyone thinks he’s still out there, looking for his next victim.”

Mingyu inhales a sharp breath. “Is he—oh my God, like, there’s really a killer in this town? And the victims—and the police and—oh my God.”

Then Mingyu sees it: the amusement in Yn’s face that’s not anywhere near their lips but practically glimmering in their eyes. He can feel the scowl coming. “You—” He hears Yn break before he sees them, cackling laughter and chuckles that they can’t hold back.

Mingyu pushes away from the counter to stalk off back to his corner away from Yn’s excessive amusement at how gullible he is. His intention is petty and a bit childish but at least it would prove some point, but he doesn’t get far enough to execute it. Somewhere between walking and turning around his shoulder rams into the end display of one of the shelves where a stack of copies of someone’s self-help book had been arranged neatly in order. Mingyu manages to destroy that in three seconds. Loudly.

There’s silence for the pass of a heartbeat before Mingyu even dares to look up and meet Yn’s eyes, wide and so amused, if not a bit shocked.

“That wasn’t the plan.”

That does it for Yn, and they have to lean against the counter with one hand while the other holds their stomach and they laugh. Directly in Mingyu’s face. So loudly and openly their eyes shut and–is Yn crying?

Mingyu huffs out a few times but the smile is unavoidable, especially when Yn’s laugh sounds like this. Yes he can feel the spines of several books digging into his ankles where they fell but he can’t stop staring and smiling. Like someone stole a sample from a heaven soundtrack and put it on loop and–oh. He might be crushing on someone he’s only known for two days. Soonyoung would lose it over this. You always fall way too easily. He doesn’t care though, not now. Instead, he crosses his arms and tries to appear bitter (it’s not working when all Yn does is continue to laugh at him).

He lets Yn continue to laugh even when he huffs and bends down to start picking up the books. He hears the laughter taper down a little bit when Yn finally comes around the counter to help him.

“You’re extremely talented,” they say (gosh, when did their voice get so close and how much longer can he keep staring at the ground to avoid looking up at them in a daze?) “much more in entertainment than acting.”

Mingyu scoffs at that and stands up straight. “Is that just from my horrible first, second and third impressions or have you actually seen anything I’ve acted in?”

Yn stands up straight and maybe he’s a little obsessed with the way they barely reach his shoulders. Yn navigates around him to set the books on the stool and then to fix the shelf itself. “I haven’t seen anything with you in it yet, but you do attract a certain amount of attention.”

“Haha,” Mingyu says blandly. Except when Yn looks back at him their smile is just so sweet. His mind starts spiraling reflexively. “Wait, you’re not going to ban me from coming to your store ever again for destroying property, right? I can pay compensation for it if you really need me too—“

“Mingyu,” Yn laughs, “It’s fine. No permanent harm done. I feel like if I ban you from here I might be held liable for the deterioration of your mental health.”

He doesn’t know how to explain how happy that makes him. The fact that a cute Bookkeeper in a seaside town is letting him come back again. The fact that he wants to make a million excuses to keep coming back.

. . .

the rest of the world was black and white (we were in screaming color)

Soonyoung insists on coming with him, presumably because he’s physically close to murdering Director Han with his bare hands if he doesn’t get a mental break. Seungkwan handed him a note through one of their side characters (Tiffany’s little brother), asking for a specific book and of course Mingyu cheerfully takes it as a God-given burden [excuse] to talk to Yn again.

“You seem to be frequenting this establishment frequently,” Soonyoung says not-so-slyly.

“Don’t say a word.” Mingyu glares. Because they are like two feet away from 105 North Tower and there are plenty of other, more appropriate times to embarrass him to death. Probably as far away from Yn and their pretty eyes as he can get.

Soonyoung pulls a dramatic shoulder shrug. “I see nothing, say nothing. Nihil agio.”

Mingyu scrunches his nose. “I don’t think that’s the right Latin.” Except even if he’s bickering with his best friend he’s still nice enough to hold the door open for him and let him step in first. He regrets it when he steps in afterwards and almost topples over Soonyoung because he freezes within two steps, unmoving.

“What are you—“

“Jeon,” Soonyoung says lowly.

Mingyu glances over his friend’s shoulder to see Wonwoo sitting at the counter with a cup of coffee, apparently comfortably conversing with Bookkeeper. He ignores murderous Soonyoung and waves. “Hi Wonwoo!”

“Hi Mingyu,” Wonwoo says cheerfully, waving back, “Hi Soonyoung!”

Soonyoung groans. “Jeon,” he says, “I see you are ruining local air quality in my one place of respite as well. Also, hi Yn.”

Wonwoo’s eyebrows scrunch in confusion while Yn pulls an amused face.

“I’ll be with my soulmate,” Soonyoung says, looking pointedly at Mingyu before stalking through the shelves.

“Bye Soonyoung,” Wonwoo says cheerfully. Soonyoung doesn’t have to turn around to throw up his middle finger. Wonwoo’s face turns confused to Mingyu. “Do you get the feeling that Soonyoung doesn’t like me that much?”

Mingyu chokes on a bit of air before composing himself and giving a consoling smile (coupled with a pat on Wonwoo’s shoulder). “I’m sure he doesn’t hate you,” he says, “you should go try to make him like you a bit more though. Maybe try to share some interests to strengthen your friendship?”

Wonwoo nods like he’s just been granted some divine instruction. “Sharing interests,” he repeats quietly. The wheels are visibly grinding inside his head.

“He’s in the tiger section,” Mingyu offers with a smile. Wonwoo immediately thanks him and disappears off to find his future best friend.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Yn snickers from behind the counter.

Mingyu shrugs with a smirk. “If Soonyoung hasn’t murdered him yet, I’m sure Wonwoo can survive.”

“That’s not very reassuring for my carpet.”

He laughs. Then he thinks. Finally, blurts out, (with nothing like nonchalance) “How do you know Wonwoo though?”

When Yn looks up at him over her up cup of coffee he’s only a tad distracted by how lovely their eyelashes are, the way they frame their chocolate eyes. “We grew up together,” Yn says, an amused tilt to their voice, “he used to live here, you know.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Yn laughs, but it doesn’t sound unkind, “did you come here for more serial killer books or with the goal of trying to convince me you are not a serial killer?”

He scrambles for the slip of paper he definitely put in one of these jacket pockets (somehow what makes the jean jacket a designer is how many false and real pockets it can fit). “Aha! I actually came to find this. For a friend.”

Yn takes the slip of paper and reads the title. Then Yn clicks on their computer, chewing their lips in contemplation. “I don’t have it in the store but I can get it in just a couple days, would that be okay?”

“That’d be perfect!” He says. Because that’s another perfectly valid excuse to return again, to strengthen their friendship of course. He desperately wants to be friends with them.

They clack some more on their keyboard, presumably placing the order, and when they blink back up at Mingyu they look hesitant for the first time. Or maybe concerned. “The order is placed,” Yn says carefully, “and it should be here around Thursday or Friday. It might be easier to let you know if I had your number.” Their cheeks are really red too, it must be the heat getting to them. “So you can know as soon as it’s delivered.”

“Oh, yeah sure!” Mingyu says, quickly fumbling for his phone to hold it out for them. Yn takes it and their hands brush. There’s no electric shock but there might as well be from how Mingyu freezes. It’s the onslaught of thoughts about how soft their hands are and how he might want to hold them and never let go. It takes two seconds for Yn to input their contact and call their own phone.

“What are you saving my contact as?” He asks, seeing a glimpse of the screen. The grin YN gives him is a bit mischievous as they tap away and then turn the phone towards him. He only gets a second to read, “Definitely Not a Serial Killer Mingyu.”

He huffs out a frustrated breath of air. “Glad to see you enjoy messing with me just as much as everyone else.”

“It’s fun, you’re easy to mess with.”

Mingyu hums and taps on their simple contact name “Yn” to edit it to “Bookkeeper” before showing it to them.

“That’s definitely not my job title but okay,” Yn laughs.

“I thought you usually sent order information through email,” Wonwoo says, appearing from nowhere. A partial question, a partial way to make Yn turn a shade redder.

“I don’t use my email,” Mingyu blurts. Not a perfect lie, but he really doesn’t. Jeonghan reads and sends all his emails.

Wonwoo shrugs. Soonyoung is calling him from the door, complaining loudly about the decrepit status of their society’s morals. He really needs to stop by the coffee shop and get him one of those special edition smoothies to cool off before they get back on set.

Still, it doesn’t stop him from turning around at the door and giving Yn an unrestrained, beaming smile. “See you later, Yn!”

Their grin is a little crooked, shy, but it’s there and that’s enough for now.

. . .

no body (no crime)

Is it flirting if he texts them every chance he’s free on set? Is it the content or the frequency that matters in these situations? Because Yn’s talking about this neighborhood cat that lives around the business street and everyone takes turns feeding and it’s not exactly flirting but they’ve also been consistently messaging back and forth for a couple days. He kind of wants to pull out his phone and text them now, except that he’s at an actual cast dinner and it’s late enough in the night that it would cross some unsaid line they’ve set up.

He’s drawn out of his thoughts by the sound of someone else yelling drunkenly, another exhortation to drink as much as they can. Mingyu frowns down at the beer in front of his plate. The food is good. The fact that his director is breathing down his neck insisting they all get ridiculously drunk when he would rather do anything else is not.

He would prefer Jeonghan to be here, but unfortunately his manager was stuck with the rest of the crew eating whatever fast food they could order en masse to the hotel. No, this was for the “main cast” and directors. Which basically meant that Director Han was being a hierarchical jerk, which Mingyu did not like at all.

He’s squished in between Seungkwan and Dino, their head cinematographer (super young but he already had a ton of movies on his resume so people worshipped him like a prodigy, in general he was also pleasant to hang out with so Mingyu also worshipped him, mostly for social reasons). Soonyoung is MIA, though from the texts Mingyu had glanced at earlier, he was invited but feigned sickness to stay as far away from the Director and Jeon as much as possible. Wonwoo was all the way on the other end of the table where the director and Leigh were sitting.

“If he gives another toast just to make us all drink together one more time, I swear,” Seungkwan mutters beside him, making a face at the alcohol Director Han is dumping into Leigh’s cup on the other end of the table. Wonwoo gently dissuades him to stop and hands Leigh a cup of water.

Mingyu barely touched his alcohol and he was no longer hungry for anything on the table, but he chews extra slowly on the fries just so he has something keeping him occupied and out of too much attention.

One of the senior actors, Harold, played a kindhearted small business owner who helped Leigh with timely and sage advice in her time of need. In real life, Harold was bitter most of the time and snobbish to most of the actors on set, including Mingyu. Which he didn’t quite understand because they barely had two scenes together and he had avoided him most other times. Still, Mingyu must have been doing something wrong because Harold is sitting directly across from him and the one time he laughs a little too loudly at a joke Dino makes about Minghao, he feels the full force of the old man’s wrath.

“Can’t they get more mature actors to fulfill the parts these days?” He remarks too loudly, overtly scornful. “I swear they just pick anybody with a nice body these days and no talent.”

Maybe Mingyu could have brushed it off and cried about it later if the whole table hadn’t stopped, if Director Han hadn’t heard and laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “You know we appreciate Mingyu for his wonderful appearance on camera, but he also knows his lines, so I have to forgive him for other inadequacies.”

“Anybody can memorize a couple lines,” Harold scoffs. “Talent is what’s missing from the kids these days.”

“Hey,” Seungkwan snaps. He looks about ready to pop and maybe start screaming at a senior actor for something that doesn’t really matter and really shouldn’t be made into a big deal, so Mingyu grabs his arm and shakes his rapidly.

“It’s fine, just leave it,” Mingyu says quietly.

Seungkwan glares at him. “But they—“

“Come on, Mingyu! Lighten up the mood and take a shot!” Director Han yells, reaching over the table. Mingyu tries to hide his grimace, but his cheeks are hot with shame and he wants to be anywhere but here. Leigh is looking at him, overly concerned and Wonwoo looks ready to protest but Mingyu’s already been too much of an inconvenience for everyone. So he reaches for the glass and throws the shot back without hesitation, hating the burn in his throat and eyes and the way he just wants to get out.

Director Han cackles and makes most of the table cheer loudly. Mingyu sits back down, counts to seven, leans over to Seungkwan and tells him he’s gonna slip out back to the hotel.

“Are you okay?” Seungkwan asks at the same time Dino leans to ask the same thing. He’s an actor for goodness sake, no matter how untalented, so of course he throws his best smile and assures them that he’s just a little tired and Jeonghan is picking him up, a pitiful lie.

Thankfully, they let him go after he promises to text Seungkwan when he gets back, and he slips out the restaurant front door trying to ignore old man Harold’s glares. It’s only when he stands out on the empty street that he remembers he left his jacket inside. Well, walking—wandering—is the best option to preserve body heat. Unless there are really serial killers roaming about here. Then again, he thinks he’ll be safe enough with his ridiculous height and unhelpful arms.

He should have expected his feet to betray him in this way and lead him exactly here. Except he barely has time to connect how he ended up at the bookstore before Yn looks up from where they have a key in the lock of the front door. Yn stops, looks up at him, surprised.

“Mingyu?”

He scrambles for some excuse because he barely had enough time to put on his actor smile and he’s sure he looks absolutely miserable right now (since that’s how he feels) and he really doesn’t want Yn to see him miserable for a stupid reason like people saying things at a work dinner and he showed up when they’re already closing and probably doesn’t even want to see him right now. “Oh sorry,” he says eventually. “I thought you were open later.”

Yn stops, their hand still on the door and gives him this look like they’re trying to measure all of Mingyu in teaspoons. Yn pockets the keys and shakes their head. “I’m not closing for the night,” they reply, “I was just stepping out to get a bite from the corner store. Do you want to come with me? I can come back and unlock the doors.”

It’s an olive branch of sorts, probably the most open Yn has ever been to him and all he can find to do is nod and let Yn lead him down the street. He has an internal panic of trying to remember how to walk next to someone he has the tiniest crush on without being weird and settles for trying to hunch his shoulders with his hands in his pockets. Yn doesn’t seem that bothered and walks easily, familiarly down the street.

“My friend owns the shop,” they say eventually, breaking the silence. Awkwardly. Which Mingyu realizes is weird because in their few interactions he’s never been the quiet one and now Yn is here trying to make up for that, talk because they know he doesn’t really want to. It’s melted-candy sweet.

“Oh really?” He manages out.

They nod and point to the one store lit up on the corner. “His family ran it and he took it over and now he’s trying to do something with it because he wants to do music full time.” Yn holds the door open for him once they get there, and maybe he forgets it’s weird to stare at an acquaintance because their smile is small but glowing in this weird convenience store light. He almost stumbles inside but catches himself and ignores how Yn laughs lightly behind him.

“Hey Jihoon,” Yn says. That’s when Mingyu notices the guy behind the counter, with his laptop up and headphones, who barely looks up when Yn greets him but does a double take when he sees Mingyu.

“Who’s this?” He asks, squinting at Mingyu, and maybe now he can see why the two of them are friends. Or maybe that’s the brisk blunt attitude of everyone in this town.

“A friend,” Yn replies, “Mingyu this is Jihoon.”

“You’re working on the movie?” Jihoon asks, but he doesn’t seem antagonistic, maybe a little curious. So Mingyu tries a smile and nods. “Cool,” Jihoon says and apparently that’s all because he goes back to his computer immediately.

“Do you want anything?” Yn asks him, already wandering through the aisles. He spots the top of their head over a shelf of chips.

“I ate just a little bit ago.”

“Pick out something to drink then,” Yn says. “And don’t say no, just say you’ll owe me a favor later.”

For some weird reason that’s the thing that makes him crack a smile, a real one, for the first time in hours. He just heads over to the refrigerated section and pulls out a lemonade before Yn can change their mind. He sets it on the counter with the rest of their scavenging and Jihoon scans all the items before he frowns at Yn. “Aren’t you going home?”

Yn stops for a second, eyes darting to Mingyu and then back at Jihoon. “No,” they say, “I’m going back to open back up the shop. Like usual.”

Jihoon blinks at them for a second, hums and then pushes the card reader towards them as a sign to pay. He waits until he hands back the receipt to say, “Have fun,” so seriously it sounds like a threat. Mingyu doesn’t try to read into it much, childhood friends have weird ways of communication all time. (He should know, Soonyoung has been stuck around him for too long.)

Yn turns on most of the soft yellow lights when they get back, but not all of them, and pulls a high stool from one of the aisles to the front of the counter. Yn goes back around and sits in their usual spot, then gives Mingyu a look until he realizes the first chair was for him and sits down. It’s a bottle of convenience store lemonade and a bag of gummy worms, not a date.

It doesn’t make him any less nervous. It may have to do with the fact that Yn looks really pretty and wears baseball caps all the time. They open a drawer and pull out a deck of cards with a red swirl design.

“Do you know how to play anything?” Yn asks, already shuffling them with a practiced ease. It’s a little mesmerizing seeing them fold the cards together, form a bridge and split the deck to do it again.

“Go fish?”

Yn snorts at him. “Here. I’ll show you how to play butterfingers. It’s fast paced.”

Mingyu just nods while they start to set down the cards. Five down, one up, one up five more down. Then Yn splits the rest of the cards between the two of them. “Okay,” they point to the large deck face down on Mingyu’s side, “these are your cards and you have to get rid of them as quickly as possible.”

“As quickly as possible?”

“Yep. You can only have seven cards in hand at one point though, and you have to put them down in one of these piles in ascending or descending order and…”

He doesn’t quite catch all the rules until they are actually playing, and by then it’s a flurry of fingers, and once Yn starts giggling in between telling him all the things he can’t do, they can’t stop. He doesn’t want them to.

Yn wins the first round, unsurprisingly, and Mingyu still has at least twenty cards in his deck. The second and third time they play, he gets into it enough to get close to them, both of them yelling in frustration when they only have a few cards left. He only wins the fourth time, and with that Yn insists they have had enough and he lets them take the cards back only a little disappointed.

“I used to do boxing,” Yn says apropos of nothing. Mingyu almost chokes on his drink. Now he’s thinking about Yn punching someone and is ashamed to say it’s kind of hot. (Soonyoung would take this moment to scream in Mingyu’s ear that he’s screwed.)

“Oh really?” Mingyu says, wide-eyed (except he doesn’t want to seem too surprised and offend them or not surprised at all and thus not interested—maybe Jeonghan is right when he says he should interact with people more outside of filming scenes.)

They nod though. “I went to college on a scholarship for it and was going to all these championships—you know nothing about boxing do you?”

Mingyu ducks his head, laughing, “I know nothing about sports in general, you know. Forensic science detective nerd.”

Yn clicks their tongue in fake disappointment. “Nerd indeed. For your simpleton mind to understand, I was really good at it, and I really liked to do it. Jihoon used to do it too, but he wasn’t as good as me,” they say, adding a wink.

“Wow, so humble,” Mingyu jokes.

“I was good, and I loved it and I thought that’s all I ever wanted to do. And then…”

And Mingyu waits because he thinks he knows where this story goes, and Yn has the same distant look in their eyes as the other day talking about reading books in lieu of being able to do anything else.

Yn exhales and taps the counter. “And then,” they start again lightly, “I got in a wreck and totally messed up my left leg and my arm and I went through rehab but by then I would hurt myself more if I kept up boxing so I had to give it up.” They flourish jazz hands, “Now I’m here with a tiny bookstore and a dude who probably should be asleep right now.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

They flush. “Because you looked all…sad and I’m not good at cheering up people.”

“So you tried to cheer me up by telling me your tragic life story.”

“Yes,” they deadpan, “so you could see how miserable I am and realize you are fine compared to me.”

Mingyu chokes on his laughter. Yn throws a gummy worm at him.

“But seriously,” they say after a moment, “I was trying to tell you that it’s going to be okay.” Yn waves their hands around for a second, grasping for the words. “Whatever has got you down, you can come back from it.”

Mingyu stares down at his drink, fiddling with the loose label. “Did you ever have people doubt if you were actually talented and then feel like you have to do something to prove yourself but you’ve already been working so hard you don’t know what else you can do to prove you can do it?” Which, objectively is a lot to say to a somewhat-acquaintance, somewhat-friend who you find cute, but for once Mingyu is just glad to have it off his chest. Glad because Yn doesn’t seem weirded out and merely leans back in their chair, thoughtful for a moment.

“I think that…” Yn finally begins, “whoever told you that is an idiot.”

It’s hard not to laugh at that, the way they say it so bluntly and seriously and simply. He can’t stop laughing actually, leaning against the counter to catch his breath because his stomach hurts so much and Yn is laughing with him, all their teeth showing and it’s so cute he doesn’t really know what to do and he’s struck by the fact that it’s been less than a week and—dang. He really likes them.

. . .

i don't wanna think of anything else (now that i thought of you)

Logically, the next step in realizing your crush is turning into something more substantial like liking them, would be to ask them out. Except Mingyu never thinks of things like this simply.

For one, Yn owns a bookstore that they work at all day, and going on a date would probably be really inconvenient for their schedule and thus instead of something nice, Mingyu would just be an obstruction to their daily life. Maybe they’d only go out with him because they seem to be really nice like that (opposed to their cold, disinterested exterior, which—God—is another reason he really likes them.)

For another, he’s Mingyu. He’s broken their bookshelf and intruded in their life and he’s technically a part of the huge obnoxious film crew that has invaded their pleasant hometown. He also almost cried in front of them (he’s pretty sure Yn could tell). Overall, he doesn't have a lot going for him when it comes to someone who has been nothing but cool. And cute. And really a lot more out together than him.

And maybe he’s overthinking too much, staring at his cup of coffee intensely enough to garner concern because someone clears their throat above him and he finds Jun, hotel owner #2 there, looking vaguely concerned. It’s offset by his bright pink apron and pig-shaped oven mitt on one hand. He was obviously the one serving breakfast this morning except it’s 12:32pm and most people have already gone. Except for Mingyu (apparently.)

“Hey, do you want any extra English muffins?” Jun asks, smiling eagerly.

“Um, do I have to pay extra?” He asks hesitantly.

“Nah, I have a lot of brunch leftovers,” Jun says. And then he turns around and disappears into the kitchen before Mingyu can formulate a response. He comes back a few minutes later with a plate of toasted English muffins, carefully topped with butter and raspberry jelly. He sets the plate down and then claims the seat across from Mingyu without asking. Which he doesn’t mind, it was nice enough to give him free toast.

“This is really good,” Mingyu says through a mouthful.

Jun’s eyes sparkle. “Thank you. I made them myself.”

Mingyu hums and takes another bite, trying to figure out if Jun wants to talk to him or just stare at him while he eats.

He’s saved by Jun pulling out his phone and tapping rapidly before turning the screen to him. “Do you want to see my new baby?” He asks, even though he’s already shoving the phone in Mingyu’s face.

There’s a cute close up photo of a calico cat on screen black patch of fur over the left eye and orange over the right. Mingyu coos immediately. Jun practically beams.

“Her name is Bohemian Rhapsody,” Jun says. “Or just Rhapsody. Joshua is fighting me about it.”

“She’s so cute,” Mingyu says still smiling while Jun scrolls through more photos.

“She’s a rescue actually. I drove like two hours to the shelter after I saw a video of her and I just wanted her to like me so bad.”

“But she did, didn’t she?”

Jun’s smile grows impossibly warmer. “She did. I almost didn’t go see her though.”

“Why not?” Mingyu asks. (He’s almost abandoned his toast now.)

Jun shrugs. “I guess I was scared, because what if I drove all that way with all the love in my heart and the cat didn’t even like me enough? Then I wouldn’t even know how to start to adopt her. It was impulsive too. We’d have to figure out how to keep a cat around the hotel and dealing with customers and everything.”

Mingyu hums in understanding. “What made you decide to go in the end?”

“Joshua told me to,” Jun snorts, laughing. “But also I told myself if it’s something real, we can work out everything, but I shouldn’t ever let myself regret letting someone go before I even get to find out.”

Mingyu nods slowly as the words sink it. Ironically, he can’t tell if they are talking about a cat anymore. Jun looks curiously at him before finally getting up from the table.

“You seem happier now,” he decides, “I’ll bring Rhapsody around sometime if you’d like to see her.”

“Thanks, I’d love that,” Mingyu says genuinely.

And maybe he thinks about Jun’s weird words of wisdom for too long, through several scenes he has to shoot and all the way up until he’s back in the hotel room eating take out with Jeonghan and Dino.

“I’m gonna go ask them out,” he declares. Jeonghan barely looks up from his burger.

“Finally,” he mutters.

Dino blinks owlishly. “Who?”

“Yn,” Mingyu grins, “I’m gonna ask them out.”

“Ah,” Dino nods slowly. Then he stops again. “Wait who?”

“His bookstore lover,” Jeonghan says through his mouthful of food.

“I don’t remember telling you that.”

“You didn’t have to,” Jeonghan says, “Soonyoung wouldn’t shut up. He keeps more tabs on you than I have the energy to.”

Dino snorts. “That sounds kind of excessive. Anyways, how are you going to ask them out?”

Mingyu opens his mouth before he realizes that he has no clue. He can’t exactly waltz up to the bookstore and declare his love for them, then Yn might actually be convinced he’s a serial killer/stalker. He has to be smooth but romantic, neither of which come naturally to him. He has to do something they’ll like but he’s not even fully sure what they like besides boxing and books, but isn’t that the point of asking them out in the first place? Hey, I’d like to get dinner with you to get to know you better, with the hopes of knowing you enough to know if you’ll kiss back if I kiss you? When did dating become so complex (he has a non answer for that, except Soonyoung snarkily replying that he’s never even properly dated anyone before.)

Dino pats his shoulder consolingly. Apparently his inner turmoil is outwardly obvious again. “Take your time there, bud.”

. . .

something gave you the nerve (to touch my hand)

“Didn’t you buy this book before?” Yn begins tentatively. When Mingyu twirls around to face them they’re holding up a book on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. Crap. There goes his attempt at nonchalance and smoothness.

“I actually don’t need to buy any of those books,” he blurts out.

Yn smirks and looks down at the stack. “Sense and Sensibility, How to Raise Your Pet Turtle, The Ultimate Collection of Ted Bundy Articles, and Crime and Punishment,” they read off, “yeah I think I could tell you picked up some random choices.”

He’s already blushing but this is good. This makes him commit to his choices. “I actually came here for something else…”

Yn raises one eyebrow. “Did you come to just give me more books to put back on the shelves or because I have such an enthralling personality?” They joke.

“I came to see you,” he says. But of course, he’s doing this all wrong, because Yn freezes head-to-toe, staring down at the counter. Like Cheol always says, at this point it’s all or nothing. He takes a deep breath. “Which is weird because it hasn’t been that long since we’ve known each other but I think I really like you and I want to go on a date with you and get to know you more, and I don’t really do that with anyone. I haven’t wanted to as much as I have since I met you.”

There’s this terribly awkward silence in the store for a minute that leaves Mingyu regretting every life choice that ever led him to this point, starting from when he first dropped out of college because of a casting call.

“Will it scare you away if I say I know I like you?”

Yn bites back a smile. “Not exactly. Does that mean you want to go on a date or something?”

“One date at first,” Mingyu says, “and then as many as you’ll agree to go on with me after that.”

Yn spins in their chair back to their computer, tapping away at their keyboard but Mingyu can tell they’re nervous by the way they keep messing up and hitting the backspace like they can’t type anything right. In their defense, he’s pretty sure he can’t even read words properly in this state.

“Okay,” Yn finally says.

Mingyu inhales sharply. “Okay? Like yes? That easily?”

Yn laughs at him. “What’d you think I was going to say?”

“I thought you’d at least make me clean the whole store to earn your affection or something,” Mingyu says. “I kind of have been panicking over this for enough hours that my brain came up with plenty of terrible scenarios.”

Yn rolls their eyes at him, but their smile is so pretty it’s distracting. “Where are you taking me on the first date?”

“I will admit I didn’t think that far ahead. But I have tonight off. Unless you are busy. Then we could do it some other time. Or never if you change your mind.”

“Tonight is good, Mingyu,” Yn says, “I’ll pick the place. You pick me up here at seven.”

It’s perfect, he can feel his excitement betraying him in the way he’s grinning like an idiot. “Seven is good. Seven is great. I’m perfectly free at seven.”

Maybe he has to leave and maybe Yn’s laugh is a soundtrack on repeat in his head for the rest of the afternoon until he sees them again.

He is dangerous close to showing up in a tuxedo before Jeonghan and Soonyoung talk him down from it. Somehow Minghao shows up to their hotel room an hour before he’s supposed to meet Yn with a suitcase and a frown that says he knows all the horrible fashion decisions Mingyu would make on his own.

“I was called for an emergency situation,” he says solemnly.

“It was getting desperate,” Jeonghan says from the couch, “he was trying to put on zebra print.”

Minghao looks physically sick for a moment before gathering himself. “Okay, who are you trying to impress? What are they like?”

“Short,” Mingyu blurts out, before hurriedly adding, “super sweet but acts like they’re mean but also they’re kind of nerdy and they used to do boxing and they wears baseball caps all the time.”

“I can…manage with that,” Minghao says carefully, already unzipping his case and sorting through some of the clothes. It doesn’t take him to wind up with an outfit that looks just the right mix of fancy and casual to not send Yn running. Which, at this point he’s still confused as to why they haven’t run away yet (his brain unhelpfully supplies that there’s still time for that to happen.)

“You should get going,” Jeonghan says, “don’t do anything stupid, but if you do make sure it’s on camera.”

“Always so encouraging and heartwarming,” Mingyu calls back to him. Minghao actually manages a decently comforting smile at the door.

Soonyoung tackles him into a hug and gives him a genuine grin. “Relax and have some fun, Mingyu,” he says, “you deserve it.”

He gives him a tight-lipped smile because he’s starting to get paranoid about time and nonexistent traffic. “I’ll try.” God, he already feels sick from nerves.

The nerves slush around in a toxic mess inside his stomach all the way through his brisk walk (not running because if he shows up to their door sweating like a dog there’s no way this date won’t go wrong). But Yn must have some magic in them, because the moment he sees them, leaning against their storefront in a green cardigan and floral pants, the nerves dissolve away.

(He jogs the rest of the way to them, because they are running late already and not because he’s that excited to see them.)

“Hi Yn,” he breathes out when he stops in front of them. Yn lost the baseball cap for the occasion and their bangs are out across their forehead when they smiles back up at him.

“Hi Mingyu,” Yn says, trying to sound bored. They push off of the glass door and start walking, “you like fish don’t you?”

He’d like to know if Yn knew he actually loved fish or if they were just saying it because of the coastal town setting. Still he follows after them and says he does. Then he can’t help but start to tell Yn how his older brother Seungcheol hates fish and once he pranked him by putting sardines in his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Which, Yn insists sounds terrible, but then they tell him about their brother Vernon and how they once gave him a cup of iced soy sauce instead of an Americano.

Yn takes him to a smaller restaurant down the street where the owner welcomes them familiarly (and throws intrigued glances at Mingyu.) Yn doesn’t pay attention, and tells Mingyu to tell them more about how he started acting while they order some dishes he doesn’t catch the name of.

It’s not a very interesting story, he finds himself saying each time before he starts another long narrative he gets too caught up in the retelling of. But Yn just smiles each time and listens to him. He gets them to talk too (when his cheeks overheat from how much they just…stare at him) and is rewarded with several tales of Wonwoo and Jihoon’s high school antics.

Maybe they sit there for two hours and don’t notice it. Maybe Mingyu wants to kiss them even more.

“Can we do this again?” He blurts out, after the owner comes back with the third refill of their drinks.

Yn immediately glances down and Mingyu is forced to think that he’s done it again—went and ruined a perfectly good thing. But then Yn looks up again, serious, and doesn’t give him a chance to overthink when they look at him like that. Like they see him.

“I’m scared, you know,” Yn says quietly, “because I don’t want to like you this much if you are going to leave in a few weeks and never come back. I don’t want a summer love or anything like that, but I don’t want to be the one who holds you back from your movie star dreams.” They say it with a bit of weak sarcasm but the genuine fear leaks through, Mingyu can tell.

Impulsiveness be damned, he reaches across the table and gently takes Yn’s hand into his own.

“I’m scared too,” he admits, “but I don’t want to give up on something before it starts because of that. If we…if we like each other than we can figure things out. I don’t have to give up on my dreams, but I also don’t have to stay in the same place.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” he begins, “that we should just keep going on dates, and figure it out as we go. Is that too stupid?”

Yn squeezes his hand back once before they smile. “It sounds nice.”

. . .

call my bluff (call you babe)

There’s a fair that comes to the town in the middle of fall, and happens to coincide with their filming schedule perfectly enough that Director Han already decided long ago they need to get some key scenes there. Mingyu is only scheduled for a scene the first half of the first day and the rest are scenes between Seungkwan and Leigh’s characters, finally starting to come to terms with their obvious romantic feelings. So of course he mentions this to Yn, oh-so-inconspicuously, and they take it with a grin and a bored question of “Do you want to hang out there after you are finished filming?” And of course, Mingyu eagerly agrees (it’s a wonderful idea, he should have thought of it himself.) “I haven’t been on the Ferris wheel in forever,” Yn mentions casually, which Mingyu already understands is the closest they’ll get to admitting that they really want to ride the Ferris wheel. Well, Mingyu can figure out how to grant that wish.

If only he weren’t dreadfully scared of heights.

Jeonghan, for the first time in the three years Mingyu has known him, looks furious. Like, borderline about to throw someone out the window furious. It makes Mingyu take a step back even though he’s not even the point of this anger.

“Him going on the Ferris Wheel was never part of the script,” he says sternly, “in fact, from my own recollections, one of the stipulations in the contract was that he not be forced to perform any extensive height stunts. And you want him to film a scene on the top of a 212 foot ferris wheel that you just threw into the script last minute? The answer is no.”

Han is red in the face, puffing out his cheeks as he spits out his next words. “Things change during filming all the time, and right now it is the best opinion to capture the emotion and feeling of the scene. Are we supposed to throw art to the wall because one actor cannot suck it up for a single, essential scene?”

Mingyu’s brain flips to white noise, blocking out whatever Jeonghan starts snapping back, about to bite or attack Director Han with his bare hands. The rest of the crew is standing around, unable to even continue their jobs because Mingyu is deathly terrified of going on one of the most harmless rides in existence. Leigh even looks frustrated with him, standing to the side with her arms crossed and glaring at Director Han. It really is all his fault. He’s once again managed to become the most annoying, bothersome person on set just because he can’t suck it up like the director said.

What’s worse: if he can’t do it now, he won’t be able to do it later for Yn either.

He grabs Jeonghan’s arm to stop him and his manager swings to look at him. “I’ll do it,” he barely manages out. His throat suddenly feels so dry. “I’ll do the scene, it’s fine.”

Jeonghan’s face contorts through several emotions, all of them in the range of unrestrained fury. “No, Mingyu you don’t have to—“

Director Han practically cheers. “He said he could do it! Since your actor agreed we can actually get to work. Everyone get to their places!”

Jeonghan opens his mouth to yell again but Mingyu grips his arm and shakes his head again. “It’s fine.”

He stares down Mingyu for a heartbeat. Two. “Fine,” he says, shaking off Mingyu’s grip and walking away. Somehow, that makes him feel the most empty and desperate.

He has to do it now.

He is instructed to get into one of the carts with Leigh and two cameramen while a kid who probably isn’t more than seventeen operates the whole machine that could snap and crush them to death. Maybe he could still get out if he just—except now Leigh is sitting beside him and the older cameramen was helping the kid close their little gate and lock it shut. A thin metal gate is all that’s standing between him and certain death. At this point he’d take his chances with a serial killer.

He tries to stare at the bottom of their little cart, but that doesn’t do any good when the bottom is grated metal and he can see through it, down to the rapidly distancing ground. And it shakes. Nothing is stable and he’s going to die in less than four minutes. Logically, he knows people ride this everyday and don’t die. Mingyu-ly he can’t think straight when the panic is crawling up his throat with each second they get higher into the air.

“You should just try to channel that fear into nervous jitters for the date,” Leigh offers, with genuinely the best intent, but all Mingyu does is give a tight-lipped smile because that advice genuinely sucks.

They are halfway up in the air (Mingyu assumes) when his idiot brain decides to revolt against him and convinces him it’s a good idea to look over the edge of the cart. In the distance (barely a few inches away from him) Leigh is going over their lines and how to run the scene but Mingyu can’t think. His knuckles are white, gripping the edge of their bench, and the only thing he can consciously feel is the cool metal digging into his palms and his stomach being twisted, chewed up and strung out on repeat.

He looks over the edge and his vision goes blurry. There’s not even enough oxygen up here to breathe and he’s underwater he’s—

Perfectly screwed the moment he has enough sense to comprehend his vision is blurring in, black creeping in from the edges.

He wakes up still in the cart, which immediately scratches off the possibility of him waking up from a dream. It only takes him a few seconds to realize what happened, but by then Jeonghan is beside him, patting his face softly and more than a little panicked, asking if he’s okay.

Mingyu’s throat is a little dry, but he nods. “I’m good.”

“You are so not good, Mingyu, you idiot!” Okay, that voice doesn’t make sense because why would Seungcheol be here? Yet when he turns his head, his brother is there, looking more ticked than usual. Great.

That’s when he hears someone else yelling on set and possibly Director Han freaking out in response (“I didn’t think he’d almost die!”).

“The ambulance is coming,” Jeonghan tells him, “we are taking you to the hospital.”

“Oh my God, Mingyu, are you okay?” Leigh asks. It’s already starting to get annoying the amount of times he’s being asked this.

He sits up, slowly because he feels lightheaded and hot and freezing cold at the same time. “Hospital? I’m fine,” he says quickly. His head is throbbing but honestly if it gets them to stop he doesn’t need to mention it.

“For the love of God shut up and let the EMTs take you to the emergency or so help me I will murder you myself, Kim Mingyu,” Seungcheol threatens.

Mingyu nods quickly and leans back into the cart bench. At least they are on solid ground again.

The EMTs come, someone waves a flashlight in his eyes, and Jeonghan threatens him until he gets on the stretcher to be wheeled into the ambulance. Right before the doors close him in with his fuming older brother and manager, he catches sight of Soonyoung still yelling at Director Han, and just a little bit away, Wonwoo standing next to Yn and—crap, he had to wind up fainting in front of literally everyone in his entire life he cares about, all at once.

“How’d you even get here?” He asks Seungcheol carefully.

“I was coming to give you a surprise visit,” Seungcheol says, “not to have a heart attack seeing you almost die.”

“I didn’t almost die,” Mingyu attempts.

“Not a word, Mingyu,” Jeonghan threatens. “I’m going to sue that idiot Han so far into the ground he won’t even be able to breathe the same air as us humans anymore.” The EMT worker casually taking Mingyu’s blood looked a bit concerned at those words and Mingyu smiles apologetically.

“Yn saw me, didn’t they?” Mingyu asks in a small voice.

Jeonghan sighs. “Hang on.” He pulls out his phone and starts calling someone. “Soonyoung? Get Yn to the hospital no matter what you do…yes he’s still alive, it’s literally five minutes away.”

Mingyu groans and leans back into the stretcher. “This is already in the top three most embarrassing days of my life.”

Seungcheol pats his knee finally, his only sign of comfort.

. . .

when i fold (you see the best in me)

They take his blood, run tests, ask him a dozen questions and finally decide that he’s perfectly fine, except for some slight bruising on the side of his head where he banged it against the cart when passing out. Still not hard enough to give permanent damage, apparently.

Seungcheol takes advantage of the fact that Mingyu is stuck in an emergency room bed for the next few hours to pester him about Yn, since the only news he’s heard is whatever Jeonghan has heard from Soonyoung (which are really inconsistent and hardly accurate exaggerations). So he tells him, a little bit too much, about how Yn has the prettiest smile and eyes and they give him these warm fuzzy feelings inside but the absolute worst part of it is that he thinks he might have ruined it all because he didn’t think.

“You didn’t ruin anything, Mingyu,” Seungcheol says, “you made everyone terrified because you have a bunch of people who care about you. Maybe they need a little time to gather their thoughts, but if they stop seeing you because of something like this then…I would have to think they’re not good enough for you. But don’t jump to conclusions first.”

And he can’t really argue with that logic (which is infuriating because he’s 88% sure Cheol was using his “comforting teacher” voice on him and it worked) so he just says okay.

Soonyoung shows up a little later, already in tears, which isn’t surprising. What is surprising is that Wonwoo also comes into the room showing no signs of physical harm.

“We are friends now,” Wonwoo explains, after Soonyoung is assured for the fifth time that Mingyu is alive and not facing terminal illness.

“I threatened him to call Yn and tell them the hospital room number,” Soonyoung says, “now we are on a truce.”

Wonwoo blinks. “He threatened to let a set prop collapse on me and make it look like an accident if I didn’t call them. But I also drove him here.”

That makes Mingyu laugh for the first time of the day. “Do you still think Wonwoo is evil?” He asks Soonyoung.

He glares at Wonwoo. “He is not supposed to be nice to me, it’s ruining my strong bitter well-established hatred of him and everything he stands for. He won’t even let you get cast in his stupid crime movie when that’s all you want.”

Wonwoo twists his eyebrows together, looking back at Mingyu (who is actively trying to shrink down into invisibility). “You want to be in that movie?”

Mingyu opens his mouth to explain, or maybe make up some fumbling excuse, but Soonyoung swings his head to Wonwoo, mouth gaping open and snapping shut a few times before he manages to get the words out, “Yes? That’s why he’s been sucking up to you? Why he kept baking you stuff and talking about death and crime scenes and everything for months?”

“Oh,” Wonwoo hums, “I didn’t know you wanted to be in the movie. You never said anything. If you had asked I would have put you on. You’re a good actor, I just thought you’d be too busy with your romcom stuff.”

Mingyu bites his cheek at the compliment and tries not to break down because something he really had dreamed about for years was within his reach the whole time.

Soonyoung beats him to it, immediately bursting into tears, gross and snotty. “You’re so stupid, Mingyu!” He says through his sobs. “You are so stupidly nice and don’t know how to say no to people!”

“I’m sorry,” Mingyu mumbles, patting Soonyoung’s back.

“Stop saying sorry! Just stand up for yourself!”

Sure, his brother and best friend have said those words several times before in a few variations. Including, but not limited to: “don’t let people run over you,” “stay kind but don’t let them take advantage of it,” and “say no when you want to.” He’s said he’s listened to them, but if fainting on a Ferris wheel is anything to go by, he really hasn’t. The trouble with Kim Mingyu in one step: being too much of a pushover for his own good.

From what Jeonghan tells him later, Director Han insisted on him being admitted for at least one night, likely to cover up the workman’s comp issues that will inevitably ensue. Seungcheol tries to sleep there with him, but Mingyu pulls several cards to get Jeonghan to drag him back to the hotel, if only to have some time to himself. He definitely use the time alone to slip into paranoid thoughts about how Yn didn’t come at all the first day.

That’s probably why he’s convinced it’s just a dream when he wakes up past eleven and visiting hours have already started because Yn is sitting in the one chair in the room with their knees pulled up to their chest, nose in a book.

They glance over the page and almost drops the book in shock when they meet Mingyu’s eyes, cursing. He can’t stop from laughing at them, just a little bit. (Side effect of the giddy satisfaction of seeing them in person.)

Yn exhales in exasperation. “You drool in your sleep.”

He panics when he wipes his mouth—then glares at them again when they laugh because nothing is there. “You’re here,” he says intelligently.

Yn just sets their book on the bedside table (Northanger Abbey) and pulls a large reusable grocery bag from where it was leaning against their chair. Yn hands him a teddy bear from the top, and then maneuvers a brown box carefully out of the bottom. “I didn’t come yesterday,” they say quietly, “because 1. I kind of freaked out and 2. I went to my brother’s to get his help to bake you a cake and then greatly miscalculated the time it would take me and missed visiting hours.”

When Un opens the box on the table, there’s a small orange icing cake with white lettering saying Get Well Soon, Mingyu! with a cute Ferris wheel drawing on the bottom he wants to laugh at but he’s already getting choked up. Because they came, they wanted to come, and they spent their time actually baking him something silly and sweet. If not morbidly hilarious.

“You made that for me?” He asks quietly.

“No, for the other cute guy who bothers me at my shop for dates and then makes me worried sick about him because he fainted while filming named Mingyu.”

He laughs, finally, a little wetly. “I’m sorry,” he says quickly, “that was really embarrassing. I didn’t mean to worry everyone so much. I knew I was terrified of heights and that it wouldn’t end well but…you said you wanted to go on it for our date and I figured I could try to get over my fear before then but…you saw how that ended up.”

When he looks back up at them, their lips are pressed together and they stare at him for a few uncomfortable minutes before asking. “You wanted to conquer your debilitating fear of heights just because I mentioned in passing that I wanted to ride the Ferris wheel?”

“No?” He tries hesitantly, “Maybe? Yes?”

Yn sighs, exasperated. He shuts his eyes for a minute, but then feels them sitting down on the edge of the bed. His eyes jerk open the moment they tangle their hand with his.

“You’re really sweet, it’s honestly scary,” they admit softly, “and I know I already like you. A lot. Irreparably so. So I’d appreciate it if you want to be my boyfriend, that you try to avoid scaring me to death on our dates from now on.”

His head is swirling from a single, weighty word and he can’t stop his face from making a happy, grinning expression. He still tries to joke to cover up how unbelievably happy he is right now. “So you’re saying I can scare you to death when we are not on a date.”

“I’ll genuinely murder you, Kim Mingyu,” Yn says (threat offset by their soft smile.)

Later, after Yn forces him to try the cake (it’s carrot cake, entirely too delicious just to eat one slice of), Yn pauses and gives him this look that he’s beginning to recognize as a sign they’re about to be dramatically serious. “Mingyu, I want you to know even if you break my heart, I trust you.”

Gut-punch. It’s simple and yet he kind of wants to get on one knee and offer to buy them a house or at least as many books as they want but none of that is as immediate as the blood-burning urge to lean forward that he finally gives into. Slow, so that she can back away if she wants to, but Yn has the prettiest eyes and they just get closer and she’s the one who puts a hand on the back of his neck to pull him closer for that final, universe-shattering collision.

Simply: it’s sweet. Not just because of the cake, but because he’s never felt this happy being kissed by someone in his life.

He’s embarrassingly breathless when he speaks again. “Yn,” he says, “I promise you that I can’t promise not to break your heart, but I will stay with you. I’ll be there for you as much as I can and I’ll love you with everything I have. I’ll trust you and you’ll trust me and we will talk about things and most of all, I’ll do everything I can so we can be happy. Together.”

Yn smirks. “Good. If you promised not to break my heart I was gonna just break up with you right here.”

. . .

my time, my wine, my spirit, my trust (trying to find a part of me you didn’t take up)

“Are you…nervous right now?”

Mingyu stops momentarily rocking back and forth on his feet to grin back at Yn, frozen with their key in the door handle. “Meeting the fish is the most important step in a relationship, you know?”

Yn scoffs at him, loudly. “You literally meet up with my brother every weekend.”

“Vernon is a better best friend than my actual best friend,” he says, “but you’ll break up with me if your fish don’t like me, won’t you?”

Yn punches his arm for that but they open the door and let him inside, shoes off by the door. With the lights on, the apartment looks pretty much the same as their bookstore, if not with more photos stuck to every open vertical surface. Yn tells him to make himself at home and he can’t help but smile when he spots the jacket he bought them laying on the back of her couch, a picture of their pizza dinner taped above a light switch, and it’s weird how he feels welcomed in a place because there are some pieces of familiarity slipping into it already.

“They are here,” Yn says, standing over by a small table on the other side of the room. The fish tank takes up the whole table and glows green from the back light. They wait until he has his face practically pressed to the glass to point to the two black moor goldfish. “That’s Blue and that’s Red. You forget which one is which and—“

“And I kiss you to make up for it because that’s an impossible challenge,” he supplies. Yn laughs (a win for now).

He invites himself into their kitchen to cook dinner, and it’s sweet until Mingyu trips on thin air and pulls Yn down with him.

“I was breaking your fall,” he manages out.

Yn looks thoroughly unimpressed from where they’re lying on top of his chest, but they don’t make a move to push off his arms wrapped securely around them. They just…stay there and cross their arms so their chin is resting on them, looking down at Mingyu with this ridiculous grin on their face.

“You going to move?” Mingyu asks, amused.

“Nah,” Yn huffs, “I’m settled here.”

Two fish, three more free months until he’s supposed to start filming for Wonwoo’s crime movie as a detective no one believes, four thousand ways he can think about Yn in one single day. It’s simple because they are still figuring things out but the constant is that they like spending time with one another (the kissing is just a mutual benefit, Yn insists). All Mingyu knows is that they read too many books and like to make jokes about his height, and maybe…

Maybe this is a dream he can get used to letting himself live.

#reader x mingyu #seventeen #svt x reader #seventeen x y/n #mingyu #kim mingyu #seventeen fluff

[marjorierose]

I did finally see the Barbie movie. I watched it on a flight from London to New York; it was December 23 and we spent it above the clouds heading westward, so I had hours of extra sunlight on one of the shortest, greyest days of the year. Upgrading to first class was relatively cheap so my dad and I did that, and almost no one else did, and it was quiet in the cabin apart from the family of five who took over about twelve seats' worth of space plus one of the bathrooms. During the weeks previous to this I visited three countries including two I'd never seen before, so the Barbie movie was really a pretty minor event in my December in general; final verdict was more or less that it was funny and also had about seven climaxes and seemed to be interested in talking about Womanhood with a capital W along axes that don't mean a whole lot to me. I dunno, questions of what women "have to" be like (and how motherly or submissive or whatever), to use the words of the big climactic speech, just have a whole lot less to do with where my mind is at on feminism these days than questions about bodily autonomy and work and care, none of which affects the plastic dolls in Barbieland very much. We passed over Greenland at some point in the middle of it, and they gave us some boxed snacks and then a meal immediately after that; I still have the boxed snack leftovers in my fridge but I should probably throw them out at this point. After Barbie I went on to watch The Duke, which I had heard nothing about when it came out even though it stars Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren with Anna Maxwell Martin in a small role; it was charming and unexpected, based on a true story. Eventually we got to New York and took a long, rather unpleasant cab ride to Grand Central Station and caught a train to Connecticut, which was so busy (bunch of people who had gotten out of Broadway matinees, bunch of Rangers fans) that we had to stand half of the way to our destination. The pair next to me, who seemed like maybe a mother and adult daughter, chose to sit on the floor and they talked to each other in a language I would cautiously identify as Russian, except when they dipped into English for phrases I assume they were quoting and laughed at them together; these all seemed memorable at the time but the only one I remember now was "I'm a stripper from South Africa." The day went on for hours yet after that.

#barbie #marjorie prose

[auxiliarydetective]

Evie's OC Nursery

... aka a list of all the OCs I haven't introduced or fully fleshed out yet. Feel free to bully me into fleshing one of them out if you feel like it.

Included in this list are OCs for...

The Legend of Zelda

Splatoon

Lord of the Rings

One Piece (shocking, I know...)

Encanto

The Barbie movie

Disney's Alice in Wonderland / Descendants

Undertale

More Descendants (curse you, Dolly)

Also, revamps/AU versions of...

Jelena (Die Drei ??? / The Three Investigators)

Vicky (Hogan's Heroes)

Evelynn (Vocalization)

Celine (Who Killed Markiplier / Markiplier Egos)

You can find all the avatar makers etc. I used at azaleasdolls.com - pictures that are not meikers were made by me :)

The Guardian of the Deku Tree (The Legend of Zelda Series)

I came up with her when Tears of the Kingdom came out. Because of the whole time travel scheme in the game, I felt like creating an OC that would be there across all time to connect Zelda in the past and Link in the present. A timeless creature, if you will. Also, I fell in love with the concept of the Zonai. She isn't really a Zonai, but still. I then got obsessed with a YouTuber who was playing an Ocarina of Time randomizer, and so I got the idea of making her the Guardian/Sage/Spirit of the Deku Tree, because the Deku Tree is pretty much one of the most eternal things in the series. And also... Wood elves and dryads my beloveds...

The Weapons and Intel Expert of the New Squidbeak Splatoon (Splatoon Series)

This is just my love for Octolings and Splatoon in general and my obsession with Splatoon 3 combined. I freaking love the music, too, my gosh... She's there from the very start in Splatoon 1 because I have a very special connection with the first game. I know it doesn't full make sense but I believe in the principles of Shrödinger's Canon. In Splatoon 2 she definitely uses dualies, but in Splatoon 1 it's still a modified octoshot.

The True Halfling (The Lord of the Rings)

Half hobbit, half elf, this is a true halfling. With her being half elf, she got the choice of immortality and she chose to be immortal. She spends her days travelling and learning about different cultures, specifically their songs and music. Legend has it that she's the last creature still alive who can harness the magic of old.

The Feral Lynx (One Piece)

He actually has a name! His name is Lux Jirou! While he's still with the Black Cat Pirates, he goes by his first name Jirou, but once he deserts from them, he goes by his last name Lux. My boy has a very funky lynx devil fruit that lets him do cartoon logic style things because One Piece is One Piece and, judging by the one canon lynx in the series and other animal devil fruits, Oda couldn't care less about biological accuracy, so... Funky lynx boi. In the live action, he's Kaya's bodyguard and, one time when Klahadore finds Kaya crying to fluffy big cat Jirou, Kaya lies and says that this his her pet lynx named... Bowie! Yes, this is a David Bowie reference. Also, he's a Zoro ship. And he joins the Heart Pirates later :)

The Lonely Daughter (Encanto)

Behold! It's Bruno's daughter. You probably already know what that entails, she develops some issues after her father leaves. Her name is Soledad which means "loneliness" but Pepa thought that name was cruel after Bruno left, so everyone calls her Soles now, which means "suns". Wanna know what her power is? Water. With a hint of clairvoyance/scrying. But we don't talk about that :)

This Barbie is...

still in development. Brought to you by me feeling bad for Ken. Someone get this man a girlfriend because he's a lonely boi. I am someone, I am getting him a girlfriend. Tis her. This picture isn't actually from Azaleasdolls but a picrew that you can find here.

The Princess of Hearts (Disney's Alice in Wonderland / Descendants)

What can I say - I love the animated Alice in Wonderland a normal amount. I created her for a Roleplay like, I dunno, six years ago? Over six years? She's the daughter of the Queen of Hearts and her King and she's a Wonderland citizen through and through. Delightfully whacky and fun but also a little creepy. And she loves her tea, spends a lot of time with the Mad Hatter and his friends at his tea party. I tried to import her to the Descendants universe once or twice but I just never found a faceclaim that fit. Her name was originally Alice, but I don't know if the Queen would really call her daughter Alice or if she even knows the name of the girl who caused a ruckus at her court, and also that doesn't fit the Descendants naming scheme :)

The Botanic Monster (Undertale)

Well, I had a hyperfixation on Undertale when I was young. Like. Really young. And I kinda got hit in the feels about it again. Sans ship, probably. Dryad-adjacent thingy. Lives in Snowdin and is constantly cold. That's it for now. Look at my girl :) Well, my first draft of her anyway. Kinda feeling like making her anthro because what else is new. We create cat girls here sir. Dryad/cat hybrid? Maybe some sort of panther or other tree-adjacent cat?

The Cheshire Kitty (Disney's Descendants)

Curse you, Dolly, why did you have to enable me? So yeah, Cheshire Cat's daughter. Queen of Hearts' daughter's bestie, maybe? Absolute menace. This is also a picrew, you can find it here!

Redux/AU: Jelena, the Auxiliary Detective

The bitch is back. The original bitch. Bitch here being short for boss bitch because that's what she is. What if Jelena were a default part of the Investigators? She and Justus would constantly bicker and I am here for it. Is she an OC? No. Has she gained the title of honorary OC? Absolutely. What a queen.

AU: Vicky, the Resistance Spy

What if Vicky's mum and dad had gotten divorced and her mother had taken her back to Germany? What if Vicky had grown up there, never joined the WAAF and never joined the SOE. And what if she met Newkirk on a night out in Hammelburg, accidentally stumbling into the Heroes' organization and putting her life as a civilian on the line for the love of her life, for as much as he lied to her?

Redux/AU: Evelynn, the Not-So-Human Singer

First concept for Evelynn's non-human form! She obviously wouldn't walk around like this in day-to-day life, but in the magic-ish realm, this is what she looks like. She's a fairy! Picrew can be found here!

Redux/AU: Celine, the Glitch in the System

After watching Who Killed Markiplier, in my YouTube-obsessed mindset, I thought to myself: "Hey, what if Celine had been dragged into Mark's mind along with Darkiplier?" And so, Ego!Celine was born. I don't really know how I'm gonna redo her but I wanna redo her. Or at the very least I wanna revive her.

So, that's it for now! This list is probably gonna get longer, honestly...

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄✼▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

Taglist: @starcrossedjedis @oneirataxia-girl @daughter-of-melpomene - let me know if you’d like to be added or removed!

#oc concept #loz oc #the legend of zelda oc #splatoon oc #one piece oc #opla oc #oc: lux jirou #encanto oc #oc: soledad madrigal #barbie oc #descendants oc #undertale oc #oc: jelena charkova #hogan's heroes oc #oc: vicky brandt #oc: evelynn carter

[queefinginmybasement]

In defense of Mal

Everyone in the Descendants fandom LOVES to shit on Mal 24/7 and although I understand part of where they are coming from, they turn a blind eye to the possible reasons behind most of her actions. Here are a list of things people like to criticize her for and my take on them:

(Potential TW? Slight mentions of abuse, being taken advantage of, drugged, being killed)

She's a bully

Now yes, in the first movie and in the first book Mal is a little bitch, but she has reason. Mal is Maleficent's daughter, (AKA the worst villain in the land) , do you think she was brought up surrounded by kindness? Obviously not. Mal was raised to be evil so obviously she's going to do "evil" things.

Even if we put the fact that she's Maleficent's daughter aside, she was also raised on the Isle, a place where any sort of kindness was scene as a weakness and could possibly get you killed.

Do you think that someone who spent 16 years in an environment where they were taught to be vicious and cruel is going to drop all that knowledge just because they spent 5 minutes in Auradon? No.

She ran away from her issues with Ben instead of talking to him about them

As previously stated Mal is the daughter of Maleficent who was born and raised on the Isle. Do you think she was taught how to communicate her feelings? No. If anything she was probably faced with some sort of abused (verbal or physical) if she tried to oppose Maleficent.

It's pretty evident that the villains aren't the best parents (Cruella for example is canonically a child abuser). And although there was no mention of Maleficent being abusive in the movies, (unless you count in D1 when Mal briefly describes Maleficent getting extremely angry as a hint towards some type of abuse) , we can only assume based on what we know of her character and the little we know of her as a mother that she wasn't the greatest (also Mal was seen flinching more than once throughout the films which could be hinting towards something).

So you take an potentially abused 16 year old girl and throw her into a relationship with THE KING OF AURADON where she is obviously going to feel pressured to live up to some sort of expectation and expect her to have 10/10 communication skills? Yeah ok.

Mal drugged Ben

While yes, this is technically true, the way people write out the situation is sorta extra. I've seen multiple people say that mal was using Ben, that she continued to give him love potion cookies after the enchanted lake, Ben doesn't really love Mal, etc. Which if you payed any attention to the movies you would see is false.

Ben knew Mal spelled him yet willingly chose to be with her. He had multiple opportunities to get rid of Mal if he wanted to but he didn't because he loves her and vice versa. Yes, at the beginning she was using him to get to the wand, but those of us who payed attention to the movie watched her fall in love with him and realize that being evil wasn't what she wanted.

l've also seen a lot of people say that "Mal never told Ben the real reason she spelled him". How do we know that? We don't know everything that went on between films so how can we assume she never told him. Mind you, in D3 Audrey knew the truth seeing as she used it to taunt Mal meaning that it is a known fact. Unless Audrey somehow secretly found out that information and was using it against Mal (which I HIGHLY doubt) then that must mean that her true intentions behind spelling Ben are known to the general public.

Some people even go to the lengths of accusing Mal of taking advantage of Ben which is insane because as we saw, she refused to even kiss him while he was spelled when she had multiple opportunities.

These are only some of my many opinions on the many things people like to say about her. Maybe I'll do a part 2 if I'm up for it we'll see lol.

#descendants #mal descendants #mal is the love of my life and i will defend her till the day i die #mal bertha

[audreydoeskaren]

Hi I LOVE your blog!!!

Idk if this is a personal question but I was curious as to why you decided to focus on Ming/Qing/early-mid 20th century fashion. Ik that specializing in specific periods instead of like, everything, is a more effective way of studying/researching stuff. I was just curious why you chose those specific periods to study! (Sorry for any bad english,,,)

Hi and thank you! No worries your English is fine. Um there are multiple reasons for this and my interest for each era developed one after another, sorry that this turned out pretty long.

When I discovered the hanfu community, I was only really interested in Ming Dynasty fashion and not anything else because I’ve only had previous exposure to Ming history. Maybe this is purely personal and I can’t pinpoint an exact reason why, but I was never interested in Chinese history prior to the Ming, like, at all. It’s not that I think it’s bad or boring or anything, it just doesn’t speak to me. This was extended to fashion history as well. To me at the time, Ming fashion looked visibly different to stereotypical expectations of historical Chinese dress fostered by period dramas and such, so I found it very refreshing (obviously the other eras also look nothing like stereotypical guzhuang, but to the untrained eye the Ming is just so wildly different it can’t be missed). I’m also generally a big fan of brocade fabrics and the drape of Ming clothes. At the time I was so obsessed with Ming style hanfu content because it looked so gorgeous and posh and not like anything historic Chinese I’ve seen before, it was novel and exciting.

I got into Republican era fashion a bit later. I forgot the exact reason why, but it was probably just me seeing those iconic 1930s advertisement posters with cheongsam wearing women and deciding to look into it further because why not, it’s connected to my existing interest. I’m generally more well versed with late 19th and early 20th century history since that’s most of what I learned in school and uni, so I had a bit more social context to work with. Also, primary sources like artworks, descriptions and physical artifacts are exponentially more abundant the more recent a time period is, and I realized Republican era fashion was a lot easier to research than Ming fashion, so I decided to focus on that for a while. I’m hooked to this era by the avant-garde designs that were inspired by modernist art, since I have a taste for “degenerate” and weird modern art in general, so that was right up my alley. Aside from that, I think 20th century fashion is especially relevant to understanding the state of Chinese fashion and its discourse today, since we’re inevitably more influenced by what transpired in the 20th century than anything prior to that. It’s like I get a better understanding of my place in the world by looking at this era.

Then I became really frustrated with the lack of English language information about Chinese historical fashion and started this blog. I was writing the series of posts on early 20th century fashion and decided to wrap it up at the 1950s and 60s since I wanted to include the iconic Hong Kong style cheongsam of the midcentury, but thought it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t say anything about the mainland of the same time. I had a lot of deep seated misconceptions about fashion in the early PRC like everybody else, but the more research I did for the post the more I came to realize they were not true, and I had to reevaluate my perception of the period. I had so many existential crises writing that series (and in the subsequent maintenance of this blog, and I’m sure there are more to come) because putting every bit of knowledge I had at the time into a cohesive timeline exposed many structural and historiographical issues with discourses around Chinese fashion history i.e. the way it’s usually written, and I had to unpack them one by one. Watching movies from the midcentury that were not period dramas or propagandistic in nature was a really shocking experience for me, since they showed people in such gorgeous and nicely tailored clothes I did not expect to see in the Mao era. There were also many sophisticated designs from the midcentury that combined Chinese silhouettes and elements with contemporary Western tailoring (and I think 1950s Western tailoring is *chef’s kiss* perfection) which would definitely be popular nowadays as historical inspired street wear. It’s just so pretty and to contemporary taste. After reshuffling my worldview I developed an obsession with the 1950s as well.

My interest in the Qing came last, mostly because there are so many colonial and nationalist narratives around it and everybody seems to have a negative perception of it that it’s intimidating to start. At this point I had a vague idea about most fashion styles in the Ming and early 20th century, so now the problem for me became one of filling in the gaps. Like, yes I know what fashion at the end of the Ming looked like, I know what fashion at the beginning of the Republican era looked like, what about the stuff in between? So I begrudgingly started looking at Qing fashion, and after the most preliminary research I realized most information out there about Qing fashion is bullshit and incorrect. The 17th and 18th centuries are so poorly researched if researched at all (and not mislabeled as Ming), and Internet and scholarship alike are completely flooded with stereotypical 19th century dress and early 20th century Manchu fashion (which isn’t even in the Qing but that’s never stopped anybody). It sort of became a rush to unearth the truth.

A part of my interest in these time periods at this point is spite, like, I want to see bigoted narratives obliterated and people appreciating historical fashion without being coerced into feeling certain ways. It’s also highly rewarding after unlearning years of conditioning that gave me internalized racism by unpacking some of the narratives I came across in fashion history. It’s nice to finally be able to look at fashion in these eras without a white male colonizer voice telling me what to think in the back of my head…

#rant #? #personal

[mania-sama]

Hello, can I ask from which author (BSD characters) have you read the books? Hope my question is not confusing.

Also, can I ask your top fav characters and fav moments from BSD?

Thanks 🌻

Hello, thank you so much for sending in this ask! Not confusing at all!!

I have read only a few books from the authors featured in Bungou Stray Dogs, but I plan to read more! I love reading classic literature — I find their verbiage fun to read, even if it may sometimes be a little hard to get through. I also like to read the classics written by the authors in BSD, in case it gives me any insight on what Asagiri was thinking when he made these characters.

I’ll list them author first, then the book I’ve read by them! Most are the ones that their ability is named from (generally speaking, the ability name is based off of their most popular book). Any books that I’ve read a few pages of, or seen a related film of, will be listed separately in an “Extra” section.

Dazai Osamu — No Longer Human (translated by Donald Keene)

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke — Rashōmon (translated by Takashi Kojima)

Edgar Allan Poe — The Fall of the House of Usher ; The Tell-Tale Heart ; Annabel Lee ; The Raven ; The Masque of the Red Death ; The Oval Portrait ; The Oblong Box

Mark Twain — The Celebrated Jumping Frogs of Calaveras County

Fyodor Dostoevsky — Crime and Punishment (translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)

Agatha Christie — And Then There Were None

Adam Frankenstein — Frankenstein (The actual author is Mary Shelley. I don’t know why Asagiri chose to name his character this way.)

Extra: Excerpts from Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi A small bit from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Balloon Hoax A chapter from Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, of which I’ve also seen The Great Gatsby (2013) movie adaptation.

TBR (Only those featured in BSD): Francis Scott Fitzgerald — The Great Gatsby Nathaniel Hawthorne — The Scarlet Letter

As for my favorite characters, I can say that my absolute favorite in BSD is Akutagawa Ryuunosuke, but my second favorite, who just BARELY doesn't make it to first, is Edogawa Ranpo. Interestingly, I used to be pretty neutral about Akutagawa when I first watched and read BSD. Then I watched Wan!, which made me realize just how funny Akutagawa really is, and began my affinity for the character. Beast is the light novel that actually propelled Akutagawa to be my favorite, taking over Ranpo by a very small margin. With concerns to Ranpo, he just carries the series on his back, and I mean it. He must have extreme back pain. I also like that his ability is actually super autism. I find him funny, relatable, and complex. I enjoy every scene he's in.

Other favorites of mine: Nakajima Atsushi, who I'd say is my third favorite. I love his complexity, his development, his backstory, his design, everything. Yosano Akiko, who has my favorite backstory in all of BSD. Also a banger character design. F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I really can't explain this. I just. Yeah. He's so painfully American and I find that incredibly enjoyable. Of course, there are more characters I really love! But these are my favorites!!

EDIT: Hello, I forgot to answer the second portion! My bad!

My favorite moment in all of Bungou Stray Dogs official media is the cafe/sugar scene between Akutagawa and Atsushi from Bungou Stray Dogs: Beast. It's the only hint we have towards the idea that Akutagawa and Atsushi have the potential to be true friends. They can get along. If it weren't DAZAI. Always that man's fault.

Nothing really comes close to that for me. There are others I like, such as the Dazai-Oda bar scene from Beast as well, or Akutagawa's death sequence. Another amazing one is the Tachihara's elder brother's death scene, where Yosano comes across the thousands of scratched "corrects" and the hanging body of the man she's saved countless times. Truly gut-wrenching. This animanga is filled with touching and phenomenal scenes, and if you wanted a full list of all that I have enjoyed, I think we'd be here all day.

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #ask #answered ask #anon ask #favorite characters

[persephoneflouwers]

i truly didn’t believe you when you said that harry would not be going anywhere after this tour ended. there was just no way in mind that after over two years of crazy touring, two movies, an album, the worst stunt of his career (imo), being over exposed by the media, and everything else in between that he wouldn’t want to take a break for at least a year. no way that he’d keep going and possibly have another project up his sleeve (tbd for now but looking more and more likely). no way that he enjoyed all of this so much that he wouldn’t rest and instead, just wanted this same cycle to continue… so, i just wanted to say that you were right, and it’s honestly been difficult to cope with that reality because it does change some things that i thought were true about who he is. and that feels harsh saying because at the end of the day, it’s my fault for creating this image in my head of who i thought he was. but there’s also parts of me that feel a bit led on or maybe even lied to (idk??) just certain things that gave me hope or that i justified but can’t anymore. it’s not his management or label and it’s definitely not because of his closet either. it’s him making these decisions for the purpose of his career and influence and money and i just hate that harrystylesTM is blending with the harry in my mind. and making me question how genuine some of the things he’s said and done actually were. you know if it makes him happy then ok, i get it. if he thinks all of this is justified then ok. but i just can’t bare to see him make these choices and then be miserable while stunting or try to gay/larry code or make music videos where we’re supposed to feel sorry for him. i still will tbh because god, i really do think he needs some better friends, a hug, and some help, but you make your bed and you lay in it. it’s his choice, and he chose the direction that even a week ago, i would’ve never predicted. so all in all, just wanted to say you were correct and it’s definitely made me think about things differently…

Ouch this is a difficult ask to respond to because the risk is to sound like an ‘I told you so’ kinda person (which I absolutely am but don’t want to now).

So mh, I think most people fall for the marketing and brand not just in this fandom, it’s about the current publicity and media distribution, when in reality that thing is full of crap, delivered by smart people whose job is literally selling things to you.

In US consumerism, the lesson n1 is ‘make it sensational’. The minimum most average thing becomes giant, incredible, out of this planet. When they put tickets for the last show last year on sale, they didn’t mention the ‘final show’ thing. This was clearly planned for later on, when there were two big zones in campovolo that weren’t sold out yet, they put on the final show label. It was smart because people bought the tickets in the fear of ‘Harry styles not going on tour again for years’ and for a fandom that is used to consume him like I consume tomatoes everyday even when I have tummy ache, this was unimaginable. I personally spoke with people from Brazil, Miami, Minnesota. They made it an event.

The end of an era, fandom called it. And of course, FOMO is real for this generation lmao

But I also speak always about the power of words, right? I think your brain chooses words automatically to convey a state of emotions and that is something that all the media training in your life can’t hold back. I am still pretty sure Harry knows that power too, since writing songs is his job I would expect he knows the nuance that lays in the difference between every word. And there words that have been said in a peculiar timing that made neurons in my head spike like fireworks. I didn’t rewatch what he said that night and I’m not a forensic language expert lol but there were moments where you could feel like you were living the Truman show experience.

I am sorry you feel like this, though. I know it’s harder here (unbearable on twt) because it seems nobody is matching your feelings, but I hope you will make peace with this.

My two cents is to let it go, let him go.

Another album, another tour who cares? They will feed it down your throat, everyone and their mothers will pretend to like it because that’s the easiest thing that gives you 1M views on tiktok and they will made up new achievements purposely crafted ad hoc for the whole picture.

Trust me, when I say I don’t like being overstimulated too, that’s why I don’t engage with his content and the only things I know is what anons tell me in the inbox and that’s okay. I just know that if I close my phone, none of this matters anymore in my life cause it’s soooo far away from what I do daily. It’s comforting in a way.

The ryan air motto “sit back, relax and enjoy your flight” is what life is about. Take care of yourself.

#casella di posta numero 32 #long post #discourse #tw last show

[sotogalmo]

I hope you don’t mind but I gave some of the movie universes characters middle names and I’d like to share them with you!

For Mike I went with ‘Michael Alexis Schmidt’ for two reasons 1. It doesn’t fit him at all and he seems like the type of person whose name wouldn’t match him and 2. Alexis means Defender/Protecter

For Abby I went with ‘Abigail Charlotte Schmidt’ Mainly because Abby gave me huge Charlie vibes during the ‘they can see you’ scene and it sounds cute

For Garrett I chose ‘Garrett Christopher Schmidt’ to pay tribute to past CC names

For their mom I named her ‘Elodie Marin Schmidt’ I don’t have major reasons for this other then I enjoy it and it has ties to what my Mrs. Emily is named (I am a huge believer in the Schmidt’s being the Emily’s) (my Mrs. Emily is named Evangeline for reference)

I struggled with Vanessa, her game-counter’s middle name in my au is Alison and I didn’t want to reuse it for movie!Vanessa so this is what I landed on: ‘Vanessa Robin Shelly’ It is quite different than Alison but I think it fits! I chose Robin because of general bird symbolism but also because people think robins symbolize new beginnings

Anon. I love you so much

Oughhhh .... Mike with Alexis as his middle name. Soso true.. I see that so well. He does seem like the type of guy with weird names

HELL YEAY!!! ANOTTHER OERSON WHO THUNKS RHAT ABBYS MIDDLE NAME IS CHARLOTTE (<- I've kept this idea in my head solely because of my idea for Garrett's middle name being: Samuel -> Sammy). She rlly is soso Charlie it's kinda crazy....

Yayayyayayayya ... Oughhj that's so sweet... Garrett Christopher Schmidt.. middle name being a tribute to CC's old "canon" name(Chris)... Jrhdhfhdh

Mrs Schmidt... Ough she has such pretty names. What the fuck‼️‼️/pos. I would love to kiss her(or at least hug her).. ouggghh

Vanessa with Robin.. ough. Tbh made me think of like. Robinhood, yk? So honestly In boths ways. ?? I see it so much. Vanessa Robin Afton. I also rlly like how that sounds ... Ough your mind anon. .....<3333

#fnaf #five nights at freddy's #fnaf movie #mike schmidt #abby schmidt #garrett schmidt #mrs schmidt #SCHMIDT EMILY THEORY!!!! WOOWOO!!!!!! #vanessa shelly #vanessa afton #anon #I RLLY ELLY DONT MIND AT ALL!! I LOVE HAVING ASKS!!+ #it uust surprised me so much. that uhm. id be the perosn you would share the middl wnanes with .... (whimsyloveyou)

[fabaceous]

okay i watched the episode i ate some lunch i read some posts and here are my “quick” takes

- i liked the unreliable narration aspect of shauna hallucinating/dreaming that the baby turned out fine bc i love unreliable narration/hallucination and even though it was not hard to guess that it was not real, i dont mind that kind of thing bc im a pretty easygoing tv/movie watcher. BUT i, like many of you, thought it was weird and surprising that she ended up saying(/dreaming/hallucinating) that she loved the baby. if i were to try to explain it away in a way that makes sense to me personally id say maybe she’s subconsciously imagining/hoping that she could love the baby bc she feels like its what she’s supposed to do and she’s afraid she wouldnt be able to when the time comes, but if so, the writing should make that clearer, so instead im forced to assume they really chose to write her as being enamored with this baby immediately which. well... is it too much to ask for her to at LEAST have complicated/conflicted feelings, even if they didnt want to commit to her actually not wanting the baby? it feels like a bit of a wasted opportunity in a show that prides itself on going to dark/twisted/taboo places. and im just generally weary of this idea that, like, every woman just instantly falls in love and magically develops maternal instincts when she has a baby. i dont know. ive never given birth, maybe its true. but it feels like that’s the messaging i’ve gotten from EVERYWHERE, from the world, from my own mother, from mommy bloggers, whatever, and i guess just once i would’ve liked to see something a little more complicated

- personally i thought/hoped that the baby hallucinations were going to go in a very different direction, especially when adult nat took the goldfish out of the water, i thought shauna was going to like, mercy-kill the baby or something bc she’d realized he didnt have a chance if they were all starving and she couldnt even make milk. BUT THATS JUST ME

- akilah and her emotional support mouse... so cute but i cannot be the only one who was dying a little at the thought of her delivering the baby after freshly petting a mouse 😭 like please wash ur hands first pleeease

- congrats to the lottienat girls who just keep winning... must be nice! and the taivan road trip brought me a significant amount of joy i have to say

- i share the concern that it is starting to feel a bit retcon-y and inconsistent. like as soon as they were done with the jackie arc they said “i dont want to play with you anymore” despite setting it up in s1 as THE defining moment of shauna’s time in the wilderness. its the blessing and the curse of multiple timelines...they can be soooo rewarding but you have to be REALLY sure of what happened in each one and you have to stick to it! (dark did this well! i think they had pretty much everything planned out right from s1 so there were certain moments in s1 that you still didn’t fully understand until the end of s3, it was very intricate and most importantly it was internally consistent. but i digress...) i guess it sticks out to me the most with this particular storyline bc it’s the one i was most invested in, but im sure there are some other examples too

i guess the bottom line is that in a well-done dual timeline show, the information you learn about the earlier timeline should enhance and enrich your understanding of the later timeline. and in some of cases it did, but in some cases it’s falling flat...i dont know i could probably rub together a few more brain cells and come up with some more thoughts but other people have already said it pretty well and unless i have a brainwave i dont think i have much to add!

#i thought id feel insane about this ep bc the yj derangement usually hits pretty hard #but i feel sorta like..okay well that was an episode #i did cry at the end bc i did find it sad #but i guess it just didnt hit like the others did #yellowjackets #yellowjackets spoilers

[missmaywemeetagain]

Elvis and Austin!Elvis Ask game:

Thanks for the tags, @aconflagrationofmyown and @mesbouquins !! Let’s start off gently shall we? Because this most definitely devolves into thirsty madness later, you’ve been warned…and also, we are all at various stages in the Elvis fandom, some of us have been suckling the gospel of EP from birth, others just had their sexual awakening with the 2022 movie, and then there’s the ones among us with frickin’ doctorates on the man. All are welcome, it keeps us colorful. Feel free to pick and chose which of these you want to answer

•When and what was your first exposure to Elvis Presley?

His was always around--pretty much listened to oldies, Disney, and musicals only when I was a kid. But my first true memories are from my late teens/early 20s because my dad was a huge fan. We got him the mega set of Elvis CDs and he listened to them like crazy. I remember one time it was literally the middle of the night and he was BLASTING Elvis from the huge stereo in the living room! It was hilarious. Then, the REAL turning point was watching That's The Way It Is with my parents. I'd never seen E perform live and it was quite the life changing experience and then I was HOOKED.

•And what was your first impression?

I've always liked his music! I was NOT into the later 70s schtick that was seemingly everywhere, like with the impersonators and such. But with TTWII, I was like, "Holy hell, this guy is crazy talented and mesmerizing and nuts on stage and REALLY GOOD LOOKING" and I couldn't stop watching.

•Lace shirts or jumpsuits?

Lace shirts! I love that he was doing that in the 50's. I am generally not a jumpsuit fan, save for the white rivulet one from TTWII. The white and black herringbone suits from the first Vegas shows in '69 are really where it's at--Those are my faves! EP just doesn't need all the extra embellishment since he's so stunning as is. The ornate jumpsuits just remind me of how he started to go downhill in the 70's with his health and drug use and such. There are only a couple that I can stand, tbh.

•You can steal one of Elvis/Austin’s outfits, what’s it going to be?

I love the black/pink/white lace shirts/pants combos from the 50's. BUT we all know that I'm living for his scarf era in '69. I'd wear all the scarves!!

•C’mon, we know you’ve been watching/reading old interviews and random footage of the man, so what’s your favorite random Elvis quote?

OMG there are SO MANY that I don't even know where to start. "My boy, my boy" and the "touching body with hands--hands with body" from '68 Special. His monologues from Vegas '69. The '72 Elvis On Tour outtakes when he doesn't realize he's being recorded and talks about how he missed the rocket launch because he was "buried in a beaver" kills me. When he tells the TTWII crowd that he's totally insane. Any time he stutters. His speech from the Jaycees makes me cry. I honestly just love listening to him talk.

•Did you find Austin Butler’s lips distracting despite them being in a movie about the King of plush upper lips? (Be honest now)

They were 1,000% distracting!

•What’s an aspect of Elvis’ character you wish more people appreciated?

A lot of things! I think a lot about how dedicated he was to his fans, family, and friends at the expense of his own health and wellbeing. I WISH more people knew just how sick he was and how much pain he was likely going through every day just to exist (much less perform) and how he rarely showed it. There was a reason he took all those drugs, ya know? The list of conditions he was suffering from is INSANE, and many of them were inherited or from birth (and not drug related). Of course, the drug use spiraled out of control, but I understand why. His sense of humor. His sensitivity. How charitable he was. Not just officially, but in everyday life, too. He helped raise money to start St. Jude's. He'd give away the shirt off his back. Honestly, there were so many charitable things he did.

•You meet Col. Tom Parker for the first time, forewarned with the knowledge of what a scumbag he is, what do you do?: A. nothing, you’re a coward who doesn’t care about abused golden-hearted men B. you give the Colonel a stern telling off C. you encourage Elvis to leave him and break the contract E. you slap a legal document against that fat suit and declare “Mrs. Claus is bringing you a lawsuit” F. you waste no time with formalities, it’s a letter opener to the juggler for that piece of trash

LOL. Welllll, here's the thing. Parker was instrumental in Elvis' rise to fame in the 50s. He had the connections and the carny instincts to get Elvis to the top and I can't help but be glad for that. HOWEVER, I think once E came back from the Army, Parker should have gotten the boot immediately. I would go back to THAT moment, before it all spiraled to try and change things. I would say C and E? I'm not great with confrontation, but with that man, I'd probably want to punch him in the face.

•What was your favorite aspect/scene from the Elvis 2022 movie?

Austin's overall dedication to his performance and to Elvis and his legacy. The music was amazing. And the last scene, ohhhh, that last scene in '77 was masterfully emotional with the mix of Austin!Elvis into Real!Elvis and the real footage. I LOST MY SHIT when I saw it for the first time (having already been an Elvis fan). I'm not sure I've ever been so emotional over a scene like that. I was having a breakdown in the back of the theater.

•You can choose only one song or piece of media to convince someone to become an Elvis fan, what is it going to be?

This is SO HARD because I really think it depends on the person you are trying to get to be a fan! I might choose That's The Way It Is for the mix of his humor, rehearsals, and he is just in PEAK vocal and physical form. It has a little bit of everything that makes him who he is. The If I Can Dream performance would be good, too.

•How many children would you give Elvis Presley from your own -or theoretical- womb? (listen to the beast in ya, your feminism won’t serve you here)

I just...I'm not into babies, man. I can't do it. I'm fine with other people's kids but I want to give them back as soon as it gets dicey. And with EP's Madonna complex, I wouldn't want to cuz then he wouldn't want to have sex with me anymore, soooo...my decision is clear. LOL

•Where are you hanging out with EP, his bedroom with the teddy bears, Club Handy, his private jet or Graceland?

Listen, I'm all for his 50's bedroom BUT the teddy bears in the 50s were creepy! I'd probably say Graceland.

•What is the peak Elvis era? warning, this says an awful lot about you…

I think we ALL know my answer to this! Peak Elvis is '68-70, SPECIFICALLY 1969. Followed closely by post-Army 1960.

•How long have you been an Austin Butler fan (be honest now, God is watching)

Literally had no clue who he was until this movie.

•What kind of Elvis chick are you? -a 1950’s prospective wife material that he’s already sampled, a 1960’s filmset fling or a Vegas torrid backstage affair?

Oh, lord...can I be all three?? I want to be all three! Naw, but based on my personality, I'd probably end up being the 50's wife material.

•Is Austin Butler an honorary southerner now? Answer options: A. hell no, California can keep his sweet cheeks. B. hell yes, he’s practically been possessed by the soul of the King of the South

B. I am convinced he was possessed and therefore deserves honorary Southern status.

•Pick your poison in the fan-fiction realm: angst, fluff, smut, fluffy smut, angsty fluff, angsty smut?…or is reading about Elvis Presley an acknowledged health hazard?

HAHAHAHA I'm sure this is a *shocker* but angsty smut or fluffy smut.

•Spit or swallow for this man? (And if you don’t understand this question move right along)

Look, I am not a swallower. I wish I was. I'm not sure I have it in me. I would try for EP but I might risk vomiting all over him, sooooo...

•Would Gladys approve of you? Take your above answer into consideration

I think so? I can be a bit shy (LOL i know) but I'd also be dedicated to her son.

•Which of Elvis’ cars is your favorite?

Cars don't do it for me. If it runs and has AC, I'm good. The 50's Caddys were pretty, though.

•What are your odds for besting this man at karate?

Zero to none. UNLESS you count stripping all my clothes off as a distraction, in which case, I would win.

•If you could meet Elvis and have enough composure to tell him something, what would it be?

Oh god. this is so hard for me to put into words. Maybe how amazing his legacy is 45 years after he's been gone and how the love he's spread seems to defy space and time and how he's still managing to help people connect to each other because of him.

•What’s a hobby or pastime of yours you wish you could share with Elvis/Austin!Elvis

Musical theater! I just have this feeling he would've gotten a huge kick out of the musical SPECTACULARS that came out of the 80's/90's/early 00's. I mean the flashiness of Phantom alone, come on (capes! costumes! gold chandeliers! pretty girls! LOL). And some of the challenging powerhouse voice roles would have been right up his alley, I think. Also that idea that you could be in a musical in a really dramatic role (not the happy-go-lucky stuff he was doing in the 60s) I think might have appealed to him. I think with a little more training and his ability to sing well in so many genres would have suited him well, too.

•What’s the Elvis 2022 quote you’ve been mumbling to yourself ever since you heard it?

"I'm Elvis Presley, and that's what I do!"

•What are your top 3 go-to Elvis songs?

Ugh. You can't do this to meeee. THERE ARE TOO MANY. It depends on my mood! Fine, okay. FINE. I'll choose. But I reserve the right to change my mind. LOL.

Trying to Get to You (live, '68 Special, second sit down show)

Just Pretend (live, That's The Way It Is, midnight show 1970)

Without Love (There is Nothing) (Elvis Back in Memphis 1969--I'm so upset he never did this one live...)

•If you could spare him one tragedy what would it be?

All his health problems and the fact that they would have killed him early even w/o the drugs. I truly think the drugs would not have been such an issue if he hadn't been suffering so much. Read Elvis: Destined to Die Young by Sally Hoedel. It is incredibly tragic to me how his body failed him and equally tragic how it was so unknown at the time what was wrong and how the sensationalism of the drugs and dying in the bathroom affected his legacy for so long. See my post from the anniversary of his death for more information on this, if you so desire. I will die on this hill of spreading awareness that he wasn't just a burnt out drug addict. I loved the movie, but it's one part that I think really could've been handled better.

•Is there a modern artist that sorta scratches for you the itch that Elvis’ absence leaves?

No. EP was one of a kind. I mean, I love music and many different artists, but no one hits the same as Elvis.

•How did you react at the end of the movie when In the Ghetto started to play A. I got up and fixed a snack because I have no soul, B. I left feeling alarmingly horny, C. I was impressed but didn’t realize how affected I was until days later when it was still with me D. I cried buckets they had to bring in a mop E. I may have appeared emotionless but in fact my soul was leaving my body and I don’t think it’s returned quite yet

D. Literally D and a little of E. The fact that Baz had the audacity to hit us with Unchained Melody and that real!Elvis montage and THEN slam us with In the Ghetto...I had chills. Still do. And I am not exaggerating in the least when I say I was stifling my gut-wrenching sobs so people wouldn't think I was having a breakdown (I was. I was sobbing and unsure if I could actually get in my car and drive home. Then I cried all the way home. And some more when I got home. Don't judge me, I was going through some things LOL)

•If you’ve got a favorite gif or photo insert it here and bless us all

I'm not sure who to tag who hasn't done one already... maybe @fic-over-cannon and @2lekk @ash-omalley @arianatheangel-girl @tiredbuthappy @deke-rivers-1957 @headfullofpresley @dre6ming @kaitaesupremacy or whoever wants to do it, sorry I'm terrible at this part! I want to know about you all!

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