#i get my critiques elsewhere lmao
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Why do you always defend China like that? I mean I get the the world tries to do the red scare, but aren't you defending a nation state when you brush off every criticism? Or does the criticism like target things that hamper capitalists and the actual criticisms regarding China lie elsewhere?
"Always?" All I said India is worse than China on a reblog about censorship on the Monkey Man lmao. There's stuff on my blog this year critiquing: Chinese uselessness on Palestine, involvement in Congo and critiquing workers rights in China through the lens of Foxconn factories trying to replicate their model in India.
I'm getting accused of campism for saying that India's blood and soil fascism is way worse, more dangerous than Chinese high surveillance 'socialism with Chinese characteristics.' India is formenting religious pogroms. The average Chinese citizen is not lynching their neighbours and burning down their homes on suspicion of eating the wrong thing. For Netflix to distort and kowtow to rabid fascists when the United States is strengthening ties with India (for anti China reasons) is really dangerous, given how much influence organisations like the Hindu American Foundation have in US politics. The average Westerner hates China plenty. Liberals do however cluelessly support Indian origin politicians who are funded by the Sangh.
Look man. I'm Indian. India has, since the BJP came to power gotten worse on hunger indexes every year. For countries not at war, we have the highest rate of child hunger in the world: 1 in 5 children are wasting despite the economy growing 6% every year. Journalists are routinely jailed and die in there. Kashmir is still under curfew and internet blackouts. Whatever hysterical story you want to tell about China is reality in India too. Without any kind of economic prosperity.
Why do these lives not matter to you? Why does the fact that Indian govt is passing laws that would enable India to strip muslims of citizenship not seem urgent to you? Is it because you maybe only think that the lives of people only matter in so far as they can be weaponised in some kind of story aligning with american state department?
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omg you’re in creative writing?? thats what i want to major in after i do my basics here in my home town!!
what’s it like?? idk anyone who’s been in a creative writing class (i’m the only one in my family that likes to write for fun lmao) so i have no one to go to for questions!
is it super hard and like,,,very demanding?? if that makes sense?? do you get to write some of your own stuff or do you have to follow a certain prompt/story line..?
feel free to ignore if you don’t want to answer! no hard feelings :))
I love it, but it was definitely nervewracking for me at first!
My school doesn't offer creative writing as a major but we do have a certificate program, which is four classes that start with like "intro to creative writing" and get a bit more specific as you go along. They've all been structured sort of the same way, which is that for the first few weeks of the semester we read published stories and discuss them in class to analyze them for craft, and then we start workshopping. For most of my classes there's been two rounds of workshops, so you submit a story, your workshop class comes around, you get about a half hour or so of everyone in class discussing what did/didn't work for them in your story, and ofc you do the same for everyone else. Then I've usually had a few weeks before my other story was due. I'm not sure if this is the same as what crw classes are like elsewhere.
For me, workshops have been a fairly stressful experience, but for the most part that's had more to do with me being anxious about sharing my writing than anything actually justifiable haha. There's a shared vulnerability that comes with reading everyone's work and knowing they're reading yours, and most everyone in my workshops has been super kind about their feedback and critiques always go beyond "I don't like this" into something a lot more workable and constructive. I have had one bad prof who had a very narrow view of writing (he thought Hemmingway was the only good writer and that's what we should all strive for) and he sort of ruined that class for me, so I will say that if you're signing up for creative writing classes, looking into the professors is a must! Finding someone who's style might line up with yours or even who other students just say is open-minded will make your experience so much better.
This also def depends on the professor, but I haven't found them very demanding! Usually I have a few weeks to write a story about whatever I want (unless I want to just submit one I've already written), and for me they've never been longer than 5k words. Ofc in between that you're reading other stories written by your peers and published authors, and I suppose it depends on the workload you're accustomed to but I've always found crw classes to be my lightest ones (also because the reading is usually so fun!)
My workshops have definitely helped me grow a bit more backbone when it comes to absorbing criticism and also just accepting the vulnerability that comes with sharing your work, but overall my favorite part has been making friends with other writers. There were a few people who I had multiple classes with throughout a few semesters, and we'd sometimes meet to work on our projects, and just getting to chat about writing with people who think similarly is so fun! Like you said, it can be hard to find people who really get it sometimes, so of all the ways that my crw classes have been great for me, those discussions have been my favorite part :)
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Licensing fuckery that flies way over pat's head, continued:
Disney bought Hensen (Company) but did not buy Sesame Street characters. Sesame Workshop remains the owner.
Hensen (Individual) also did not sell rights to shows made by Creatureshop like Farscape or Fraggle Rock. Disney doesn't own Farscape or Fraggle Rock. Hensen (Individual) still does.
Westworld (Warner Bros. TV/HBO co-production; Again, HBO usually avoids these, but in this case it is at least under the same corporate overlord.)
The Larry Sanders Show (HBO/Sony Pictures TV co-production; this is why when Gary Shandling passed away, the show wasn’t available for streaming on HBO, because Sony had likely driven too hard of a bargain. It’s now back on HBO.)
Jack Ryan (Amazon/Skydance/Paramount co-production; sometimes you can even do these as a three way. If the underlying IP is valuable enough, it can demand its own separate pot of profit money.) The Tick, Good Girls Revolt and Sneaky Pete (Sony co-productions).
House of Cards (Media Rights Capital co-production). Orange is the New Black. (Lionsgate co-production) Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. (Warner Bros co-production). Lost in Space: 2018 Series. (Legendary co-production) Marvel Series (Marvel/Disney co-production)
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. (NBC-Universal co-production.) BoJack Horseman. (The Tornante Company co-production)
Each side brings something to the table in a co-productions. The TV producers have all the talent so they demand some sort of backend profit participation. The network is paying money, so they get some sort of participation too.
Then, after the initial agreed upon windows or run is complete, the rights revert back to the TV production company [CM]. (Historically, networks used to not pay for 100% of the costs of a co-production, but with fewer revenue streams, that is becoming the norm.)
This is what the WB/CM arrangement and deal is. While it operates on licensure, it is not a fully licensed product, but rather is allowed to use licensed material while creating new material.
A "licensed" show is just a show that a streamer for example doesn't have a financial stake or downstream revenue in. Like, Nexstar is talking about licensing content from other places than CBS and WB to put on the air. It would benefit from the airtime but does not own that content. Nexstar owns the airtime
The use of licensed CHARACTERS is a funny metaphor of this. If Nexstar owns the airspace, Chaos Machine owns the dev space. WB content is then put inside of it, but it is not only WB content.
This is why the pilot script had these three:
For example, despite nominal Producer credits listed, CBS has no actual stake on this property, draft, or materials. The only thing they own is Jared Padalecki's ass.
CW pays money to host a show that Jensen made and may or may not have some demands and requests about what content it will air can look like, and WB might have critique on how to use old-SPN characters, but it has no stake over new Winchesters characters, for example.
(I say "the right to" critique. Pointing at my bits on Zaslav and Roth elsewhere, that's really not something I'm foreseeing us having to deal with much from WB)
CW generally folds to WB anyway. Like
lmao
Jensen owns a good chunk, and what he doesn't, I must reinforce, there's nobody to stop him from doing what he wants with the rest anyway
and it's so, so funny to see who quickly shows their asses in their desperation for that to not be true.
At the end of the day the actual like aired, wrapped, distributed product will be owned by WB due to the various ways this bounces around. But like. Story ownership. Character ownership is. Another thing. That's basically going to be a blender.
like genuinely who the fuck do these people think is getting paid when Chaos Machine releases an episode?
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My oc’s aka too long of a gd post
The “BL” Crew (does not stand for boys love I’m just a moron who made that abbreviation before knowing what it stands for). My main crew and main series, a lot is a big WIP right now as I’m slowly redoing the first book and all the lore. Why? I love torture. Book is fantasy type but I won’t specify what.
Lacie, the protagonist. God tier idiot, bisexual bipolar depressed MESS, insomniac, former theater kid, doesn’t know what she wants out of life but currently it is not This(plot of book). Hot headed, impulsive, crude, rude, Mommy IssuesTM, would rather be taking a nap right now, rules are made to be broken, absolutely fucking FERAL, more bags under her eyes than the airport lost and found. 5’5, 130lbs, Aries, age 18, white as shit like literally the whitest human you have ever seen, strawberry blonde hair in a 2011 Hayley Willaims haircut with long bangs, the darkest brown eyes you’ve ever seen that stare directly into your soul. Lanky, no curves, body of a 12 year old boy but works out so she can and will kick your ass and thats a threat. Not human?
Josh. Soft boy, smart, Lacie’s cousin and only friend for like the first 18 years of her life, autistic anxious mess who’s special interest is anchient egyptian history, is in honors classes, despises math, passes out when his girlfriend looks too cute, just needs a hug. Can eat a whole carton of easy mac if left alone, whole wardobe is the same outfit just different colors/hoodies, sensory issues, seriously can someone give this guy a hug. 5’9, 150lbs, Pisces, age 18, mixed (half whatever flavor of white Lacie’s family is [they don’t even know its just some scandanavian shit and irish], and half mexican on his mom’s side), medium olive skin with freckles and moles, dark chocolate brown hair that’s a bit of a 2009 Beiber cut, warm brown eyes, not beefy, a lil thicc and self concious about it but squishy boys are GOOD. Gets bit by a werewolf so now he is one his mood on it is “thats a lot to unpack but let’s just throw the whole suitcase away”.
Zander. There is not one braincell in this man, himbo KING, pansexual dumbass with undiagnosed ADHD, no impulse control, head empty and full at the same time, PTSD, his fashion sense should be an actual crime, gets in fights to feel something, basic requirements for him to be attracted to you: kick his ass. Drinks his respect women juice, sees a folding table and must immediately launch himself on it, chaotic, cannot drive a car and will not, food aggression and eats enough for 3 people but never gains weight which is ILLEGAL, him and Lacie may be a couple.....but in this house we stan slow burn, he talks in caps and every sentence either ends with a question mark or exclaimation point, likes romcoms. 6’2, 190lbs, Sagittarius, age 19, austrailian roots and has the accent but is from [REDACTED FOR STORY REASONS], white, dorito shaped with long legs, blueish black hair that’s long and messy, dark navy eyes that match his hair, bigass neck scar from [REDACTED]. Not human
Peter. Gay dad friend who is TIRED of having to be in charge of a bunch of teenagers, only one with full functioning braincells, lowkey a genius who loves engineering, mixes magical technology with human technology because he likes to play god, is he ever sober? No one knows, will kill for a bottle of single malt, his fashion sense? Tastefully expensive suits perfectly tailored. Likes building his own weapons that no one else knows how to even use, generally non-threatening but can get scary if needed. 6’4, 140lbs string bean man, Scorpio, age 179 but looks early 30s, I know I said Lacie is the whitest human but he’s even paler like a literal sheet of paper with scandanavian roots/ancestors were vikings or some shit, blonde hair styled like 2013 Brendon Urie lmfao, light crystal blue eyes. He’s a vampire and was born one.
Danielle. Tiny, sweet, queen of girls supporting girls, comments on all her friends instagram posts with 20 emojis, LOVES fashion and has a wardrobe that would make anyone jealous, oozes feminine energy, only child and parents are in love still, gets exactly 8 hours of sleep each night and wakes up looking like a disney princess. Just because she is small and cute doesn’t mean you should underestimate her she WILL fuck your shit up. Quiet when angey which is terrifying. Josh is her bf and she loves him so much but also loves teashing the shit out of him. Legally cannot cuss, polite, used her high heels as a weapon once, speaks like 5 languages because studying them is her hobby, gardens, hugs everyone. 5’0, 110, Taurus, age 18, mixed (half french-american, half Korean-american), glowy skin always, PETITE frame aka the friend everyone can pick up when they hug, long past her waist curly brown hair, bright green eyes. She’s not fully human as she has fae blood in her and this gives her the ability to talk to and control plants. Flower crowns for everyone
Becca. Theater kid who would die to sing in Wicked and has the vocal range to do so, cannot wait to graduate and go to her dream college which she got into and a scholarship, closeted lesbian bc her whole giant family is extremely catholic and she feels like not dealing with it, “no boys allowed in bedroom” rule is her favorite joke, chill, middle child of 5 siblings and just wants some peace and quiet for ONCE. Her fashion sense is “I’m dropping subtle hints I’m gay but only to other gays”, has a black belt and took self defense classes. 5’6, 145lbs, Virgo, age 18, Latina (cuban and mexican mix), darker brown skin with light freckles over her nose, athletic build, eyebrows on POINT, bright caramel eyes, short light brown hair cut in a bob, has a tiny nose stud, always wears a blue friendship bracelet her gf made her. Human
Anika. Calling her a bitch/slut is a compliment, bisexual, a bit of a mean girl but she grows out of it give her time!!! Is always Too Much, the horny friend, favorite color is red so thats almost all of her outfits, loves to show off her body as much as she can because she’s hot and knows it and thrives in her own confidence. Her mom is literally like Regina George’s mom from Mean Girls but married a rich man 20 years older than her, Anika doesn’t know her bio dad but thats fine neither does her mom and her step dad is nice and does his best to be a dad. Becca’s gf, always hanging out at her home so Becca can get some quiet because Anika’s an only child and has a pool. 5’9, 135lbs, Gemini, age 18, white, long layered dark reddish brown hair, teal-blue eyes, swimmers body type (I normally do not mention bust size but she would want the internet to know she was blessed with big bahoogles so there you go), can sprint in heels. Half mermaid (boy was that a surprise considering her mom doesn’t know who her father is LOL)
Rex. Nb uses they/them he/him pronouns but honestly will respond to any, goth lite, only attracted to men and ace, can read minds so knows all your secrets, mischevious little shit, great friends with Zander and enjoys his dumbass thoughts and that he’s basically a human version of Jackass, wears too many rings, goth boots for kicking and fashion babey, always has the freshest memes and will not hesitate to roast in the group chat, hangs with the girls most of the time. Chaos god who loves making art, be gay do crime, skateboard and spraypaint. 5’8”, 165lbs, Leo, age 18, Native American, masculine frame, dark brown skin, blue eyes, firetruck red shoulder length hair that’s usually in a ponytail, knock-off gucci sunglasses just for judging their friends. Has magic in their blood so not entirely human and can cast spells and shit (don’t roast me its a wip and I’m doing my research)
Sam. Boho goddess, aromantic, makeup and nails are always instagram worthy, quiet and stoic type but losens up around close friends, Rex is her best friend, has some trauma and doesn’t want to talk about it, emotionally numbed out a bit and wants to purely vibe. Has seen some of the worst parts of humanity and wishes she hadn’t, finds no point in being bitter or resentful though because that won’t change anything, loves cats and once she moves out shes adopting one or three. Has wine aunt energy. 5’4, 200lbs PLUS SIZE QUEEN, Scorpio, age 18, Filipino (her parents are immigrants fun fact!), really olive skin sometimes has a grey/green tinge to it, dark brown almost black shoulder length hair, gold-hazel eyes. Sam’s the victim of a family curse that requires her to consume human hearts to survive, she can transform into a pretty scary looking being and uses this curse to hunt down pedoph*les, r*pists, murderers, and abusers. The less often she feeds the less human she looks, hence the constant grey/green tinge to her skin. 
Andy. Baby of the group, must be protected at all costs, 100% didn’t sign up to be in a friendgroup of 90% monsters but highkey loves it, trans, bi, anxiety MAXED, just wants to draw comics and cosplay spiderman, has to babysit his two younger sisters a lot because his parents are....not great, and as a result now knows all the lines to Tangled and The Little Mermaid. Big nerd energy, has to draw on everything including homework, gets inspiration for comics from his friends, awkward and socially anxious, drinks way too much tea and will accidentally steal your pens. Fears include: crowds, thunder, tall angry men, tiny spaces. Just trying his best. 5’2, 100lbs BEANPOLE BOY, Leo, age 16, white (irish and scottish roots), freckles absolutely EVERYWHERE, orangey red hair thats in desperate need of a haircut, chocolate brown eyes, braces, chronic nail biter. Human and kinda wishes he wasn’t.
That’s it for now if you read all this bless u thank u here is my whole heart. Please no discourse, literally these are fictional people I’ll never publish the books they go to.
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ELLADINE SARABI
IG info/bio: @/ellasardineabi | 18.5k followers | Artist | i was born with glass bones and paper skin♡
25 years old
Born & raised in Cardiff, Wales 🏴
Father was in the n*vy and moved his family around a few times until he and his wife came to a agreement that it would be best for the family to grow up in one solid place
whereas he would leave for months at a time living elsewhere
Which was hard on the family at times since he is viewed as the rock of the family
He eventually left the n*vy after serving 20 years & was so thankful to, he hated it and how it messed with him mentally
He’s also of Iranian heritage
Her mother is of German heritage
Has her own restaurant that serves authentic German food
Both of her parents instilled hard work, discipline, generosity, and how to be practical in their children
Elladine is the middle child
Has a brother that is ten years older than her and then a younger sister who is seven years behind her
Canon: there is currently a discussion going on if they are going to bring their (maternal) nan/mam-gu home since the nursing home isn’t providing the proper care their nan needs
Her mother has a rocky relationship with her mother that she doesn’t like to discuss with her children but her husband knows all about it
Her nan has Alzheimer's and is becoming violent
it has become difficult seeing her most days
Elladine came into glassblowing after being involved in many classes in secondary such as workshop class
which became her fav since she was able to manipulate many materials such as metal, wood, and glass
She also took a auto body class which was interesting but she wasn’t too thrilled about it. Got away with a B- but knew she could do better if she really wanted to but she didn’t need the class to graduate so allow it
Currently works in a glass studio where her work is displayed/sold and she’s one of the main ones that makes great profit
has bought her own space for her own studio and is slowly making it to her liking with her assistant, yes she’s got one!
Hopes to be in that space within the next 6 months...it would have been a little sooner if we weren’t dealing with a global p*ndemic!!! but ya know life f*cking sucks sometimes!!!1!!:) especially if people don’t gaf
Moved back in with her parents so that she could not only help with her nan but get her studio ready, her parents approved since she was working towards something and realized her talent
I definitely see elladine going through a grunge phase and it probably still slips out every now and then lol
Her childhood room is still in shades of raspberry, gray, and a deep purple
always been plus-sized/fuller than the rest but it’s literally hereditary since her mom is built the same way who got it from her dad
Her family never made her feel ashamed as they shouldn’t and none of her true friends made her feel different since they were all of different sizes!!! besides who’s really friends with someone because of their bodies? Ur really ugly if that’s how u roll js
Always a respectful student and not too afraid to spark up a convo with you but can be a little nervous if the person is more of a “I have to warm up to you first” since she’ll feel like she’s annoying you if she carries the convo at first
Takes her time in relationships because she’s scared of getting hurt, cause breakups are not fun! Especially if theyre your friend on top of that
Although Friendship breakups are much worse let’s be honest here!!!
Has noticed that a few of her exes like to bring up that she’s controlling or too bossy in relationships and that makes her a little insecure since she doesn’t view it that way??
She knows what she wants and likes things a certain way, and she can see how it can kinda come off that way based on how she approaches/says things and tries to be better at toning it down and not being offensive to her significant others
Always has a plan and likes to follow it, she definitely keeps to-do lists on a daily
Takes trips to see Nicky often and vice-versa, every moment they spend together feels like it’s meant to be, even when it’s them just simply chilling in each other’s spaces, he’s truly one of her best friends and he feels like the missing part of her life
He offered for her to move in with him but elladine didn’t accept it since she wanted to be there to help with her nan and in fact—she wanted to be the one to ask HIM to move in with her
but if they make it long enough, they’ll go house hunting together...maybe
I get Shawn/Angela relationship vibes from them (boy meets world for those who aren’t aware of this couple and I’m not just saying this because they’re interracial as well lol) did I say this already about someone else? Brain fart lol
everyone relationship has their flaws so when they hit a bump in the road...elladine immediately wants to fix it but it comes off as more critiquing, moodiness/blaming the other
while Nicky can be defensive/argumentive/a little condescending on his end
To get through it, they normally go on a walk together in complete silence until they’re ready to speak again or they take a break from each other
I think words of affirmation is her love language
Taurus sun + Virgo moon + Capricorn rising?
“The girl on the motorcycle” is one of her fav films — no this is not metaphoric to her love life
Loves watching things with captions on since she always finds herself doing something else while watching anything (which irks Nicky a little bit but that’s just the way elladine is and he loves her so he deals with it)
Will rewind something if she missed it too
Canon: never had morning sex before
but can now say she has ;) & understands the pros people say about it and it outweighs the cons in her book
Will start the whole song over too if she missed her fav part in it
She also enjoys billiards since her brother used to work in a pool hall and when he had to watch her because she was “too young” in her words to stay home by herself he would take her there even tho technically she wasn’t supposed to be there but he was screwing his boss’s daughter so it was quite fine
her sister has a crush on Gary & ships elladine with him, which they joke about every now and then + he doesn’t follow her back, which is okay! Not a big deal but her sister keeps sliding in his dms (he’s now single)
She NEVER thought she would be on THE love island and wasn’t that confident that she’d find a real love that carried on outside of the show but Nicky has proven her wrong 🥲
She’s 5’5–5’6
Probably shops at Zara & top shop and has no issue picking pieces that flatter her “pear” figure, she loves all that is of her body: the pudge, love handles, cellulite and all (she’s very confident and won’t let anyone see her moments of doubt when it comes to her frame)
Loves mythology but will tell bill stfu if he comes near her trying to argue about anything in that subject
Very competitive and will rush through certain things, leaving one to think that she’ll fail somewhere but rarely does
If she’s not near or away from the mountains or the sea for long period of time she gets very moody!!! Guess that’s the Welsh in her huh?
Loves fireplaces, they’re super cozy and very romantic if you catch ella’s drift 😏
Probably smells like jasmine & pink pepper idk
Wants to travel to Iceland one day
Knows her way around a car but dreads having to get it fixed or fixing it herself?
Loves driving until her road rage kicks in? Oh you’re gonna go around her to get in front of her? Never that. She’ll always be in front of you and will break check you if you try her “Drewgi” she mutters
Early riser and goes to bed early too lol
She’s the crying drunk lmao
Automatically vieve has become one of her best friends from the villa but it deff didn’t feel forced like it normally would have just because their bfs have a podcast together, they talk about everything together. EVERYTHING! It feels like she’s the big sister she never had, yet they’re only a year apart lol
They have ft sleepovers and man is it fun!
Forgave lily but at the same time can’t fully see herself being friends with her like vieve tried to encourage before they went on the yacht...sorry everything can’t be Kumbaya over here sis
It sucks to say but it was easier? She doesn’t know if that’s the right term or not... for her to forgive rafi than it was lily and it’s fucked up but that’s the way it is. It’s not like she contacts him on seperate messages or anything like that! She’ll talk to him via group chat and that’s pretty much it. She knows it was all part of the show and production’s bs for ratings but that doesn’t mean it still didn’t hurt
Wishes him success on his shows/movies but doesn’t engage/watch them
What does she post? I feel like she posts maybe three times a month and a lot are outfit pics but tends to go live more so to chat with the people! She’ll also show all what glassblowing entails while chatting away! She loves that part and is pretty open about things but knows how to keep some things private
Personally wasn’t the biggest fan of season 1 but admits she wishes she had mc’s balls in terms of what she would have done if she was in elladine’s place when lily picked Nicky, “ugh! I wish I had her strength rising through my veins in that moment. Absolute riot. Adore her.”
‘“Licky” is a ugly ass ship name anyways so who’s really winning here?!’
Celeb crushes? Iwan Rheon, Henry Zaga, Anthony Welsh, jason derulo, & LaRoyce Hawkins
Listens to: soleima, Marisa Maino, Ava Max, poppy, Caroline polachek, Donny Hathaway, Phil Good, & SAINt JHN
Anthem — M.I.A. “Bad Girls”
#litg#litg3#litg s3#litg elladine#litg Nicky#litg genevieve#litg oc#litg mc#litg headcanon#litg headcanons#litg rafi#litg boat party#litg lily#litg moodboard#I like elladine and I’m in love with her design#wish they did more with her and many of the other characters too!#I hope this was sorta satisfactory lol!#can you tell I’m running out of artists and celebs/well known ppl lol!
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After a solid business week off (even tho I started on saturday lmao), I'm back to terrorize people with my horrible sense of humor and art. ❤
NOT a pjo blog, going to make that clear. Just going to be posting whatever I want, as usual, including critiques on authors and including calling out their bullshit portrayals. If you don't like it, don't follow.
Any crap in my inbox: immediately going to block and delete, or publically body you, THEN block and delete lmao. 😌 If you want to argue about pjo in particular, again, please go elsewhere. I refuse to talk to pjo stans. Go follow an annabelle chasseuse fan elsewhere 🥰. Only pjo members I adore are my mutuals/people I follow because they're not out of their minds. Only in the good way lol.
I opened anon asks a while ago, but feel free to send me fun stuff! I like talking to most of y'all. You guys are funny lol. Send me model names too if you want fanart of a certain character!! Models for characters of color xx. I've been trying to find good models for atla characters esp. recently, so if you get any high quality pics lmk.
Dropping artwork soon. 😈 Yes, it's realism. Yes it's of a person of color bc I want more rep. Prepare yourselves: I was extra gay while making it. (And I have commission details coming soon too, so keep an eye out. I will be commissioning realism as well bc ik that was popular and probably for half the price of pro artists bc I'm in high school 👁👄👁)
Here's the clean line art wip version from a couple days ago.
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Rambling about Sekiro (spoilers below read me):
- Evolution of "i'm scared to block, i like Souls rolling" to "okay i'll block and sort of deflect but only basic attacks i know" to "okay I don't even need to dash except for perilous attacks!" to "okay now i can actually flip between defense and offense on the fly and this is SUPER fun!!"
- Basically, I've never in my life played a game where offense and defense mesh so well together, where blocking is FUN and viable, and seeing your attacks get deflected is actually GOOD and not just infuriating, because you're making progress in the fight.
- People've said Dark Souls is a little like a hard, combat focused Zelda but really, THIS is what that's like, and I'm in love. From did it.
- The upgrade system is neat and I appreciate it for rewarding exploration but also allowing you to challenge yourself by refusing to use them. Also it just works out really well for speedrun balancing and I can’t wait to see the evolution of speedruns in this game because there’s a good balance between wanting more power, posture, and HP and wanting to go as fast as possible.
SPOILERS UNDER CUT, DON’T DO IT UNLESS YOU ARE ALREADY AT /END/ GAME OR DO NOT EVER INTEND TO BUY SEKIRO
---!!!SPOILER ZONE (I'm serious do not read if you intend to play or are still playing)!!!---
(long space for people who might see this on the blog first as opposed to via the dashboard)
- I absolutely adore the weird scientific/medicinal/supernatural macabre shit in this game. The red lump item gave me chills picking it up the first time. Same thing with seeing the first undying monk thing, I couldn't even burn it (but then I finally did it with THAT ITEM... more below)
- haha hand in a jar! haha that guy that flies at you... haha, monkey :) haha ninja dog...... hell even the headless... I love From's mix of disturbing humor (or just flat out being funny despite the bleak setting). Their version of mimics in Souls sum this up best but there's plenty of things here too that are just flat out hilarious and I love it.
- Oh Christ, speaking of, I did the Doctor questline and oh god it gave me some of that Bloodborne dread.
- "IS THAT A FUCKING DARK SOULS?" also lmao when he falls
- "IS THAT THE FUCKING CHAOS BLADE!??" oooh fuck oh fuck *pushes up glasses* remember the cut content with Shiva in Dark Souls???
- Sekiro/Wolf having the "defy your father, break the code" moment was SO good and I love that whole archetype. Simple but I just... <3 Oh god and When Owl is basically just like "that's my boy" when you kill him... I... u_u
- giving Lord Kuro rice was SO cute and just furthered my love for Wolf because this child is teaching him part of how to be himself and to also enjoy things (basically chill the fuck out you freaking murder machine, you are more than that) through compassion, friendship, and a reminder of his own childhood and I don't really get emotional over stuff like this often but awww..! ;_;
- The sake dialogue moments are so good. A very simple concept but I love the nature of sharing part of one's past through a friendly offering, it felt like a really good balance between clear concise mechanics (sake) fitting neatly with narrative elements. It's basically just a dialogue item but it didn't FEEL that way. I felt genuine excitement upon finding new drinks knowing I'd get a chance to share it.
- OH MY GOD ENFEEBLED IS SUCH A GOOD ASS STATUS EFFECT??? THE ANIMATIONS!!! He just hobbles around like a dude who just suddenly became an old man (’cuz that’s literally what it is) with his sword as a cane??? I LOVE FROMSOFT! That shit is so wonderfully expressive but also fits perfectly with that style of horror humor (and I lied before. Mimics are beaten by THIS status effect. New number one spot for my fave moment like this in a From game)
- Oh also speaking of animation, those fucking boss kills!!! *deep inhale* BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- While not my favorite boss mechanically, SPECIFICALLY that kill animation on the Giant Ape... DUDE HOLY FUUUCK! and then the fake out!?!?!? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! SO good!
- Lady Butterfly was a fun main boss and O'Rin of the Water was a fun mini boss. Plenty of others were fantastic but those stood out. Like, two of my friends so far have expressed the same feelings on Butterfly! Good Fight!
- I even liked the gimmick fights! They did it! Gimmick fights that are actually well designed! They're more about exploring mechanics outside of pure combat without punishing you super fucking hard at a random point just because they can. (Bed of Chaos, Micolash) Strangely a little bit of a breather, which is fitting because it’s a perfect counter balance to the stress of finding yourself in a unique situation. They actually give you time to analyze, think, and breathe it all in!
- I'm currently stuck on an end game "secret"/optional boss with some classic From Lore Implications *ok hand* and it's brutal af. I am excited to learn how to master this.
--- SLIGHT CRITICISM (basically the “i love it so much i can’t help but see small flaws but I’d still give it a 10/10 anyway” part) ---
- I like that even when they repeat mid bosses they usually put them in a new arena to change things up. I think a FEW were a little overdone though and could have benefited from maybe... I dunno, a couple new ones in their place or at LEAST alternate movesets to change things up a bit more than just location BUT the combat is engaging enough that I don't mind, I just found it a LITTLE weird how despite the rest of the polish there was a tad bit of copy-paste (but far FAR less egregious than DS1)
- Idk how replayable this game is gonna be but I can definitely see myself finishing NG+ and doing two more playthroughs for all endings. It's replayable more in the Metroid or Legend of Zelda sense and less in the Dark Souls character build sense. "I wanna try a new route first and beat bosses more effectively this time. I wanna be as stealthy as possible this run" etc. and not "I wanna make an int build" (less a critique and more an observation on how it differs from Souls replayability)
- Dragonrot is like, the only actual flaw in this game imo. It doesn't have enough depth. I was thinking it would have more end game narrative significance but it's just something tied to the sort of useless unseen aid mechanic which fails to really incentivize risky play. If anything it just encourages you to grind before bosses to cap the current exp bar and save/store/spend sen by spending 10 minutes fucking around elsewhere until you're ready so that you have nothing to lose. I feel like it should have done some world state changes and something more intense, like ACTUALLY having npcs die and having a healthier world state and an unhealthier world state where some enemies get weaker or stronger based on which extreme your world is on etc. etc. basically ANYTHING more than it is now. But this is super minor relative to how good everything else is. It just felt underwhelming considering all it was hyped up to be. It’s one of those things I just ignore as if it wasn’t there and it’s just as good because it has little effect on the parts that I DO like the game for.
---FINAL NOTE---
- To end on a positive note though, Sekiro managed to be a game that iterated on the Souls formula by defying part of what it became (dodge heavy, block averse play, slow, parrying primarily for one-shotting) yet still providing the same feelings of starting one of those games fresh. Part of what makes it FEEL Souls-y is precisely what separates it from those games, and it's all too good to really put into words at the moment. Like sure it's got Estus, bonfires, and a kick-your-ass "you're going to get stuck and frustrated and that's how it is" attitude and it's got a similar enough control scheme, but beyond that, there's just so much more combat and movement depth that it's a whole new beast, and I love it so much.
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guess who started watching the anime again (since i never finished it last time~)
here are my thoughts on episode 10 and 11.
thoughts on episode 10:
– oh, fukujun, i’ve missed your voice. ♥ that’s seriously the perfect voice for ren: low, clear, steady.
– really loved the tense tete-a-tete between ren and goro at the tv station. their “performances” (ren as cool and composed, goro as cheerful and speculative) were tense and interesting to watch, especially with how ren was entirely in the dark/shadows while goro was in the bright spotlight.
– goro not acting clueless when he asks if the trio are gonna go get pancakes was just another reminder of how goro feels like he *knows* so much more than he’s letting on–like how he’s in NG+ and the rest of the crew are still in NG.
– the crew at the karaoke club having a meeting was really cool! i wish they’d done more things like that in game to really give you the sense of tokyo and its districts. for some reason, p5 felt so empty despite it being in some of the most highly populated, busy neighborhoods in tokyo.
– ryuji getting accosted in shinjuku was terrible and another reminder of the many… many reasons i cannot stand this game/story.
– LALA-CHAN IS STILL THE BEST ADULT IN THE GAME. seriously it blows my mind that they can get lala-chan right and yet do the most tonedeaf nonsense elsewhere.
thoughts on episode 11:
– goro effortlessly and cheerfully insulting makoto by calling her a pushover good girl type is more hilarious than it should be. sorry, makoto. you still best girl, but he had your number and called it.
– i love how sparse and muted everything feels in the niijima’s apartment. you really get the feeling that so much between the sisters is suffocated and held back (which it is, at this point). and them sitting facing each other at opposite ends of the table (instead of just across it) was clearly deliberate, too.
– makoto taking a moment to look at the ad for a motorcycle (“take a step toward freedom!”), and muttering: as if it were that easy was really nice foreshadowing to how her persona is a motorcycle lmao
– i forgot how FAST this anime is paced. knowing what i know of p5r at this point (lots of speculating and good posts on resetera), it seems like they just wanted to get the bare essentials of p5’s story out, and not the smaller specifics.
– i fucking love makoto just being like ‘the FUCK are you all doing’ when she watches them listen to/talk back to a cat. that is in fact the most rational reaction to have to that situation.
– also love that makoto’s persona-berserker button is constantly being told to “be a good girl” and endure it.
– lord i forgot how intense and ugly (in a good way!) the awakening moments are. that’s some body horror shit.
– “i was just doing whatever the adults told me to do.” hmmm. you know, that just made me realize one of the things that i think got lost entirely in p5’s original story: how this is a coming of age tale for teenagers whose awakening into the 'real, adult’ world is through PAIN. really severe, awful pain–physically, emotionally, mentally damaging pain.
and i say it got lost because so much of p5 was a mass effect: andromeda-esque example of “have your cake and eat it too.” p5 WANTED to be like atlus’ other SMT/persona work of cutting social critique, subverting tropes and expectations, and dabbling here and there in fan service (but not at the expense of actual in story themes/development). but it also leaned so hard on fan service and pandering to the lowest common denominator (the kindest way i can say fucking idiot shitlords lmao but oh look, i said it) while also not actually rocking the boat when it comes to rebelling against a corrupt society.
that’s honestly why i don’t even like the game. i’m really hoping p5r does something to turn my feelings around on it, but there’s several glaring issues i take with the story trying to be a ballsy, badass tale of rebellion–but also being like “as long as it doesn’t change the status quo!!” see fucking also: futaba’s friend’s parents selling her off to pedophiles.
anyway, onto episode 12~14.
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Dissonance Chapter Fourteen (END)
Description: After spending a year studying abroad in America, Y/N returns to Seoul hoping to greet the familiar city as a new girl. But what will she do when she’s met with old friends she’d rather forget? It seems the strings of fate are determined to test her resolve…and her willpower.
Genre: Fluff and Angst
Pairing: Taehyung x (f) Reader
Word Count: 11.2k
Tags: Badboy!Taehyung, Non-Idol!Au, Rockband BTS!Au, Bassist Taehyung!Au
Warnings: Swearing and mentions of alcohol, although infrequently
A/N: Hello my loves! Thank you for giving this story so much love and support. It’s truly meant the world to me to be able to share this journey with you and I can’t wait for many more to come! I hope I can continue improving and giving you guys stories you’ll enjoy. I’m really glad you guys have stayed with me through this story. I love you all endlessly. If you’re looking for something to read in the meantime during my break, please give my friend @musicandmusing a look! She’s working on a really wonderful Namjoon fic called Metanoia and I think you guys will really like it! That said, please feel free to shoot me a message! I’ll respond to all asks I receive within a day of receiving them. And as always, please send feedback, critique, criticism, or questions my way so I can address them!
ALSO!! Very important 1.0:
The next fic I will be posting is a Jimin fic! I thought about opening a poll like I did for this one, but the idea I’m working on for this story is something I’d had in my head and on paper for a long time. I realized it worked WAY better as a fanfiction than a public story, and Jimin fit the main male character I had in mind pretty perfectly. That said, I’ll post some introduction to the story soon! I should be back to a regular posting schedule pretty soon after I get back from Korea, since I’ll be working on the new story while I’m there! Anyway, let me know if you guys like the idea of a Jimin fic and keep in touch!
Very Important 2.0:
As I kind of mentioned above, I will be in South Korea from July 7th until July 17th! I plan on taking loads of videos and photos and I’ll post all of them, but if you guys have anything you really want to see first-hand, send me a message and I’ll try to get a video or picture! I can’t promise I’ll be able to do it all, but I’d love to sort of…idk, take you guys along with me? I really love video editing and do it as a hobby in my free time (lmao Golden Closet who?) so I’ll be working on a few nicely edited videos to post once I come back. But in the meantime, I’ll post some raw photos and videos here while I edit the big ones! Also I’ll have wifi the entire time as well as data so I’ll be in contact the whole trip.
- Mercury
Previous Chapter – Next Chapter
Masterlist
I sat between my mother and father on a warm trolley as it tumbled down the street, all three of us silent in the back. I remembered this day being a bad one. I stared down at my lap, at the way the pretty lilac dress my mother had bought me was stained with grass and mud. I ran a small finger over the stains and sighed. My father crossed his arms truffle at my left as my mother sat silently, reading a magazine she’d picked up along the way. It was the first time I’d ever been out of the country. San Francisco whizzed past me out the window of the trolley and in the distance I could see the bright blue of the ocean glittering in the sunlight. It was a beautiful summer day, and the wind felt soft against my cheeks and hair as it slipped in through the open sides of the trolley. I’d never seen anything like it.
Eagerly, I tapped my mother’s arm and pointed at a man in a black wetsuit, carrying a surfboard towards the beach. “Mom, look,” I said.
She glanced up for a brief moment before sighing and returning to her magazine. She adjusted the sunhat on her head. In my excitement, I’d forgotten for a moment that I was in trouble. I stared down at those stains on my dress, wondering if washing them out might make my parents happy with me again. Of course, even as a child I knew better. They weren’t mad about the dress after all.
I traced my fingertips along the bruise forming on my knee, then the ones slowly showing on my exposed forearms. I winced a little as I touched them, and began to fret. If the bruises stayed, a constant, physical reminder of my mistake, then my parents might still be mad. Every time they saw them for as long as they lasted on my skin, they’d remember what I did. Suddenly, I no longer wanted to erase the evidence from my dress, but my body entirely.
“You’re so irresponsible!” screamed my mother an hour earlier as she found me crying on the grass near the hotel pool.
I rubbed my eyes and shook my head. “He was mean to me!” I wailed, tears marching down my young, flushed face.
She was fuming, glaring down at me with a mixture of frustration and worry. “When someone is mean to you do you have to be mean back?” she asked.
I sniffled and shook my head, suddenly bashful. “No,” I said quietly.
She nodded and crouched in front of me, brows set low. “If someone pushes you, do you have to push back?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Then why in the world would you tackle that boy?!” she shouted, gripping her nose between her fingers. Above her head, the tops of palm trees swayed as they got caught up in the breeze. I wondered if I could get caught up too, carried away.
I opened my mouth to speak, but instead of words only more sobs emerged and I had to clamp a hand over my lips to stop them. My mother glanced around the pool anxiously as parents and children paused to stare at us. I caught sight of the boy I’d tackled as he cried into his mother’s arms. His mother continued to shoot glared our way, but when our eyes met she quickly looked away and returned to soothing her son.
I stared up at my own mother as her eyes scanned the area and my sobs quieted down. I just watched her for a while, how preoccupied she was with the way the families looked at us. The misbehaved daughter. The angry mother. The crying victim. I saw it all somehow like a dumb movie.
She leaned down close to me and, without moving her jaw, she spoke. “Y/N, you are in so much trouble,” she whispered. “You know that right?”
I nodded and sniffled, taking one last look at the little boy as his mother rubbed circles into his back. I glanced back at my own mother whose eyes only fleetingly met mine before she took my hand and pulled me behind her back into the hotel. Her grip on my hand slipped to my wrist and I tried not to recoil against it, as the skin was still tender from that boy grabbing me there. She walked briskly back into the elevator, all the while rattling off scoldings rapid-fire while I struggled to match her pace.
When we emerged in the spacious hotel room, my father was buttoning up his shirt and only spared us a short look. When his eyes came upon me, his expression fell and he sighed. “What happened?” he asked.
“She got in a fight,” mumbled my mother as she released me. “A pretty bad one. By the time I got there, she had the boy pinned.”
“A boy?” asked my dad with a chuckle that lacked all humor. His gaze returned to the long mirror he stood in front of, adjusting his collar. “That dress was expensive.”
I glanced down at it and noticed the stains on the front from where my knees had dug into the ground as I sat on top of the boy’s chest. Horrified, I began patting at it, hoping the smudges would wear off. My mother grabbed my hand again to seize me, but I was desperate to fix the stains.
“Enough!” she shouted, shaking my arm slightly. “We expect better behavior from you, Y/N. This is absolutely embarrassing,” she said.
I glanced up at her with fresh tears welling in my eyes and shook my head. “Mommy,” I whined, one of the only times I’d called her that.
She simply sighed. “You’re wearing that dress all day today whether it’s dirty or not. I’m not buying you something else to wear.”
It wasn’t about that. I slipped my hand free and rushed to the bathroom, standing on my tiptoes to see the damage I’d caused to the dress. I sighed and wiped my eyes. It wasn’t something that would come out that easily.
“And if you think we’re taking photos of you in that you’re wrong,” called my mother through the door.
She had so much to say after the event, but now all she could do was stare at her magazine, flipping page after glossy page with only the delicate tips of her painted fingers. She could barely look at me. My father too. After yelling so much, it seemed they had nothing more to say. Now, I was met with only silence for punishment.
That night after a quiet day walking around the city and eating nice food, I resolved to pack my things and go. I couldn’t remember a time in my life prior to that day when I’d wanted to run away, and that age marked a significant change in the way my parents treated me. And the way I treated them…
I dragged my small suitcase out the door into the lobby as my parents stood watching and shaking their heads. I’d expected them to perhaps stop me when I’d announced that evening after washing up that I planned to run away. Instead they simply shrugged and turned their attention elsewhere, saying that of course I should give it a go. See how much they did for me and return a more grateful, thoughtful daughter.
I walked into the lobby and past the front desk. The employee gave me a funny look that at that age I interpreted to mean respect. I may have been a ten-year-old in monkey pajamas dragging a suitcase that was busting at the seams and wearing sandals that slipped off my feet, but I was going somewhere. She let me go too.
Slowly I walked out into the sunset air. I looped around the back of the hotel until the beach lay splayed out before me and I felt like I could breathe. I rested my suitcase on its side and sat atop it, kicking off my sandals and digging my toes into the warm sand. I smiled as I saw them wiggling. They looked like little dancing crabs. Across the beach from me I saw two kids playing by the water, chasing the waves as they receded and being chased by those same waves as they advanced. I saw their parents sitting watchfully behind them and felt a pang of lonesomeness. Running away felt like a good decision as I sat there, but I remembered suddenly that I had nowhere to go.
What could a ten-year-old do alone in San Francisco?
I shook my head and worked my hands under the sand too, letting the warm grains settle against my cool skin. I shut my eyes and listened to the ocean for a while, the waves lapping against the shore. I felt the sunlight on my cheek as it began to descend in the sky somewhere. Being alone wasn’t so bad. Being lonesome wasn’t so bad.
A sense of peace washed over me with the sound of the waves and I wondered if running away always felt like this. Calm. Like the problems that haunted me moments before were too fleeting to think about anymore. Like the sadness was gone for a moment. I wanted to live like that forever: clear head, clear heart. I opened my eyes and the family was gone, probably back to wherever they’d come from.
Where could I go back to? Where did I want to go back to?
I wanted to tell my parents why I fought that boy.
No.
I wanted them to ask.
I knew my parents expected me to come back eventually. They knew I didn’t have the fortitude, especially at my age, to spend a night out alone. They knew I would come back to the hotel, tail between my legs, and silently unpack my clothes again, organize them neatly again, climb into bed and wordlessly fall asleep. Deep down, I knew it too. And when I did it, somehow it felt like I’d betrayed that girl who’d sat steadfastly atop her luggage in the middle of the beach alone, eyes shut, heart content. I felt like she only existed if I ran to her, ran away from me.
The boy had said my dress looked cheap and ugly.
I’d told him my mom picked it out especially for me and he’d laughed, saying she must hate me.
Perhaps that was the day I learned that running away was also running forward towards something. Perhaps that was the day I learned the profound peace of leaving my pain behind and starting new somewhere else, as someone else. On that beach, I wasn’t the girl in the lilac dress who tackled a boy for being cruel. I also wasn’t the girl who was scolded for an hour and then ignored for eight. I was just a girl, sitting on her suitcase in monkey pajamas. I was someone new.
But I came back, like my parents knew I would.
Perhaps that was why, when I left for America and resolved to never return to them, they didn’t run after me. And perhaps they realized that this time was vastly, infinitely, irrevocably different.
Perhaps that was why they finally came out and found me.
“What are you guys doing here?” I asked, my voice rattling as I shook my head and jogged towards them.
My mother was dressed in a thick knit sweater, and her familiar eyes looked tired. She looked at me like the chill from outside was biting her skin, like it pained her a little to see me. My father stood at her side, brows knit as his gaze fell from my face and scanned the whole of me. Had I lost weight? Was I wearing something funny? I felt insecure under his scrutinizing eyes, as if I’d done something wrong.
I supposed I had.
“You weren’t returning our texts,” said my mother with a long exhale. I could see the exhaustion in her posture.
I shook my head. “I…I was going to. This weekend actually. I was gonna call you and-,”
“And what?” asked my father, his voice soft and weak like he didn’t have the strength to raise it. Had I made my parents become this way?
“And…,” I began, then glanced over my shoulder at the rest of the group who all stared at the scene between my family with similarly wide eyes. I locked gazes with Hyerim who offered a small, almost pitying smile. “I wanted to talk things out properly,” I said, finding my strength.
My father nodded slowly. “And now? Can we…can we talk now?” he asked.
I flushed and stared between him and my mother. Something guttural, primal, inside of me lurched forward with words of rejection. I wanted to tell them no. But seeing them before me, messier than they’d ever been, out in a strange concert venue in the middle of the night…
It was like they’d crossed the tightrope to find me on the other side. And I didn’t need to take a single step in return. All I had to do was not run further backwards. Run to a place where they couldn’t reach me.
I swallowed the nerves that rose in my throat and glanced back at my friends, a mixed-up, banged-up, ragtag assortment of people who under normal circumstances would never have come together. And yet, here we were. All the parallel lines that we traversed had intersected, right here.
“Guys?” I said to the team as they continued to watch with bated breath. “I’m gonna go…deal with some stuff. Go on and grab food without me.”
Taehyung gave me a soft smile and nodded. “Take your time,” he said.
I returned it. “Okay.”
“Want us to save you something? I know you like the lettuce at that barbecue place,” said Jimin, pouting a little as his eyes flitted between me and my parents.
I chuckled. “No. That’s okay. Just…go have fun. I’ll call you guys later.”
I walked back towards the group and grabbed my backpack, slinging it over my right shoulder. As I stood upright once more, Hyerim placed a hand on my back and met my eyes. She seemed to be reading me for a moment. I simply smiled and removed her hand from my body, giving it a squeeze before turning on my heel to meet my parents.
“Not a lot of places are open right now,” I said, staring at the concrete floor. “But I know a twenty-four hour convenience store. We can eat some ramen.”
Thirty minutes later the three of us sat at a booth outside, bundled up in our jackets and waiting for our cups of ramen to finish cooking. My parents weren’t familiar with how to properly cook it, so I helped them wordlessly. I waited one minute more before grabbing mine and removing the chopsticks from the rounded edge of the cup, letting the lid flip open. I watched the steam escape into the night air and waited for my parents to follow suit.
Cautiously, they each did. I took a large bite and slid it between my teeth, letting the hot noodles sooth my bundled nerves. “Y/N-,” began my father.
“Hold on,” I said, still slurping noodles. I pulled my legs up to my chest to conserve my body heat as I began to chew. “I wanna talk on my terms.”
My father was quiet, nodding as he took a bite too. My mother joined, but all the while her eyes were trained on me. “This is good,” she commented.
I nodded. “I used to eat this freshman year whenever I had finals,” I said, then laughed. “I stopped in America because their convenience stores don’t work the same.”
“That’s right,” said my father with a chuckle. “We wanted to use some hot water in San Francisco but they didn’t have any.”
“Ah,” my mother said, her tone reminiscent. “I had to drink my tea cold. It never seeped properly.”
I glanced between them. They conversed in a way that, to an outsider, might appear casual. But I saw something else. They were tense, on edge. They were just waiting for me to give them the okay to speak freely. Part of me was pushing it off as long as I could. That same part of me was terrified of what they’d have to say.
“How did you guys know where to find me?” I asked quietly.
My mother met my eyes with her wide ones and smiled almost bashfully. “Ah, I talked to Mrs. Park after you went to Busan and asked how it went. She mentioned that the boys started this band and we kind of just…hoped,” she said. I felt butterflies fluttering in my stomach from the nerves. I knew I had to face it sometime, and that old urge to brush it away and run returned.
But as the steam from my ramen warmed my cheeks, I finally cleared my throat and nodded. “Let’s talk now,” I said, setting it aside.
“Okay!” said my father, smiling. He seemed so eager.
“I…I’ve been trying…for a while now, I’ve been trying,” I began, chuckling to myself, “to stop hating you.”
I stared at the cool black surface of our outdoor table. “Sweetheart, I need you to know that we’re sorry,” said my mother, reaching for my hand.
I pulled it away and looked at her, brows furrowed. “What are you sorry for specifically?”
She looked at my father with a helpless expression and he nodded, leaning towards me. “All of it,” he said. “From the beginning, Y/N.”
“Specifically…,” I urged, voice low.
“I’m sorry for firing Dongmin,” said my father.
I nodded. “Okay.”
He blinked and set his lips thin. “And I’m sorry about the donation,” he said.
“And?”
“And Kim Taehyung,” said my mother, nodding vigorously. “I’m sorry we asked him to stay away.”
“Alright,” I said, twirling my chopstick around in my ramen. I’d lost my appetite.
“All of it, Y/N,” said my father, eyes misty. “We’re sorry for all of it.”
“Why?” I asked.
His eyes went wide. “Because…doing those things for the reason we did them was wrong,” he said easily.
I hummed and continued swirling my chopstick. “I don’t know if I can accept that.”
My mother shook her head. “Sweetie, we’re being sincere. We know we made mistakes with you.”
“What you’ve apologized are just the result of the one thing I need you to apologize for, Mom,” I said.
She stared at me with wide eyes. “What?”
I sniffled in the cold air. “I don’t need an apology for the shitty things you did,” I said. “I need an apology for the way you see me.”
“The way we…what?” asked my father.
I met his eyes. “You didn’t raise me like a person,” I said. “And that fucked me up.”
He shook his head. “Y/N, please don’t curse,” he said, tone even.
I scoffed. “You’ve lost the right to scold me,” I said. “And if I wanna curse I’m gonna do it.” I felt myself becoming defensive, cold, stubborn. I knew this me was unreasonable. But I was sitting across from my biggest demons, the ones that plagued me the most. “You’re treating the symptoms, not the cause.”
“What do you mean?” asked my mother. “Please, Y/N. We’re trying to understand you.”
I nodded. “I don’t want to spell it out,” I said, sighing. “I want you guys to see how what you did was damaging and apologize for it.”
“Are you upset with the way you were raised?” asked my father. Normally, such a pointed question would have struck me as argumentative and accusatory, but my father only sounded sad. I felt myself cool down a little.
“No,” I said. “I…have you ever thought about how your actions would weigh on my conscience?” I asked, to which the pair stayed silent. “Did you think I would like it if you guys got my best friend kicked out of the school? Did you think I wouldn’t feel guilty for the things you said to Taehyung during his hardest time? And that you did it all for me?”
They were quiet. “I never…,” began my mother, touching her lips.
“I don’t want to carry guilt over something I didn’t do and something I didn’t choose,” I said, then sighed. “I know you two wanted to do these things for me because you thought it was right. Because you thought I would benefit,” I said. “But in doing what you felt was best for me you put the full weight of your choices on my back.”
My father nodded. “I had no idea you felt this way. Your mother and I,” he began, taking my mother’s hand. “We love you. And we want the best things for you.”
“But you never let me decide what that was,” I said.
“We were misguided,” said my mother with a nod, sniffling into her napkin. I didn’t want to make her cry…
My father swallowed. “I think…in trying to get the best, we forgot about what it might be doing to you,” he said, then met my eyes with a quivering lip. “Y/N, did you ever feel burdened by us?”
I stiffened and felt my chest constrict. I would cry soon. “I…”
He nodded. “You don’t need to answer,” he said, then cursed under his breath. “I knew I should have gone easier on you.”
“What?” I asked.
He smiled my way. “You know my father was tough on me. He made me work hard, organized meetings for us about my grades. He expected a lot from me,” he said. “And I…I remember feeling so burdened by him.”
I shook my head. “It’s not…,” I began, but I couldn’t finish. Any rebuke would be a lie.
He chuckled and held my mother’s hand tighter. “I guess when I had a child to raise myself I forgot how horrible that was. I only saw ways to better you, because you had so much potential. I wanted you to do only good things in life, and for you to be…surrounded by only good things.”
“Dad…”
“But I was one of the bad things that surrounded you,” he said, shaking his head. My mother rubbed his back. “I was one of the clouds that hung around you all your life. I…I never wanted to be that kind of person to you.”
“I understand,” I said softly. My parents looked up at me seriously, each of them sporting expressions unguarded by composure. “I…I know you didn’t have bad intentions.”
“But the result is the same,” said my mother, nodding slowly as she stared at her ramen. “We hurt you. Because we wanted so much for you…we forgot about your happiness.”
I sniffled and dabbed away a stray tear as it crested over my lower eyelid. “You thought you were doing the thing that would help me,” I said. “You always did.”
“But we were wrong,” said my father, meeting my eyes. “We were so wrong.”
I nodded. “Really?”
He smiled and again my mother reached for my hand. This time I let her take it. “We realized when you were away…we’d rather have a daughter who does what makes her happy than a daughter who does what makes her unhappy for our sake,” he said. “We’d rather have a daughter who’s in our lives than a daughter who hates us.”
I wiped my eyes again and sniffed, gazing into the steam as it seeped off my noodles. “I understand,” I repeated.
“And we are so sorry,” said my mother, her fingers tight around my hand. “We are so sorry for always choosing for you and for choosing wrong. We’re sorry for being so caught up in our expectations that we couldn’t recognize that you were hurting.”
I flushed and nodded, still minding my tears. “And we’re sorry that we were the cause of that hurt,” said my father delicately.
“I accept your apology,” I said. “And I forgive you.”
My father exhaled loudly and I glanced up to see him slouched over his ramen, a tear falling from his chin into the soup. “Thank God,” he whispered.
“We thought we’d lost you for good this time,” said my mother, her voice cracking.
I nodded. “I thought so too,” I said. “But…for you and for myself, I need to forgive you.”
“And…well, if it’s not too much,” began my father, meeting my eyes with a broken smile. “We’d love to be able to see you more.”
I blinked and stiffened in my seat. “It…it might take some time,” I said. “I need some time before things can be normal.”
“We’re willing to wait,” said my mother, nodding.
I met her eyes and swallowed. “I can’t promise that the old pain won’t come up again.”
“We don’t expect that,” said my father.
I nodded. “I’m…I’m willing to try again,” I said, then chuckled as I stirred my ramen and took another big bite. “Slowly.”
I rolled over in bed on Saturday morning, head foggy from the night out with everyone. I’d had one too many drinks at Jungkook and Hoseok’s demand and my body seemed not to take it very well. Groggily, I stumbled out of bed and with eyes squinted felt my way to the door. My finger slid over the frame of my painting, the only one I had hung up: A Pair of Shoes. I opened one eye and, though it strained against the vibrant morning sun, I saw the outline of the painting perfectly well and a smile spread across my lips slowly. I opened the door and slipped into the living room where Haewon was already lying on her back, limbs splayed out in all directions, on the couch.
She glanced at me and smiled. “She awakens,” she said.
I laughed and nodded, but the motion caused my head to pound and I winced. “She wishes she didn’t.”
Haewon chuckled and pointed vaguely towards the kitchen. “Yuna left for work earlier but she left out a bottle of that nasty herbal stuff you guys like for hangovers. She also made you toast, but it’s cold now.”
I smiled and slid into the kitchen. I grabbed the bottle Yuna had left for me, the ‘nasty herbal stuff’ that actually worked wonders if I hadn’t gone too far, and snapped the top open. I poured it down my throat while plugging my nose, cringing against the bitter taste, before tossing the empty bottle into the trash and popping the piece of toast left on the counter between my teeth.
I walked back out into the living room and smirked at Haewon. “Do I look like those cute anime girls? The ones that run with toast in their mouths?”
She scrunched up her face and rolled her eyes. “Pretty sure no cute anime girl has ever ran with toast while dead hungover.”
I laughed and shrugged, sitting on the ground beside her head. “It’s a fair point.”
She tilted her face towards mine and scanned my eyes, narrowing her own. “You seem giddy. What gives?”
“Nothing!” I exclaimed, then squeezed my eyes shut against the pounding in my head. “Nothing,” I repeated, this time making sure my tone was more measured.
“One of three things happened,” she said, nodding and staring at the ceiling. “Option one: something good with Hyerim.”
I laughed. “Not particularly.”
“Okay. Two: something good with your parents,” she said.
I smiled at my half-eaten toast. “I mean…we finally talked last night so I guess.”
“Option three: something good with Taehyung,” she said.
My body went hot and I cleared my throat, fanning my face with my hand. “No, uh…nothing of the sort,” I said. “It’s kinda hot in here.”
She laughed a little too loudly and clapped my shoulder, sitting upright. “Something did happen! Girl, I knew it,” she said. “Did you two finally,” she said, but stopped to instead wiggle her eyebrows at me.
I gasped. “No!” I shouted. “It’s not that,” I said. “He just kept…I don’t know, calling me his girlfriend and stuff.”
She settled down and groaned. “God, that’s all it takes to make you this happy?”
I shrugged. “I am a simple girl.”
“Well lemme tell you, that boy has been waiting twenty years to do the Devil’s Tango with you. I don’t think he’s as simple as you are,” she said with a laugh.
I glanced at her. The way she smiled at her phone as she scrolled through it made me wonder what she knew. “Suspicious,” I said, angling myself towards her. “You have info.”
She shrugged. “At the right price I do.”
I sighed. “Give me a hint so I know if it’s worth it,” I said.
She winked at me. “Has to do with your man and his…ahem,” she paused to make a show of clearing her throat, “urges.”
“Ew, okay I’m not interested anymore,” I said, laughing and turning back to the TV as it droned on.
She smacked my shoulder. “You should be! It has to do with you anyway.”
Slowly, I returned my gaze to her and cocked a brow. “My interest is once again piqued.”
She smiled wide in the way that made me nervous. “What will you give me?”
“I’ll do your laundry for a week,” I said.
“A month.”
“Two weeks.”
“Make it two and a half and throw in Yoongi’s number and you’ve got yourself a deal,” she said, holding out her hand for me to shake.
I smirked. “Yoongi?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I never noticed him before because I was all caught up in the silver-haired demon, but now that Taehyung is brunette and also dating my best friend, I started to kind of…let my eyes wander, you know?”
I laughed. “Shameless!”
“I prefer terms like go-getter and initiative-haver,” she said, nodding.
“Okay, okay. Deal,” I said, taking her outstretched hand and offering a firm shake. “So what’s this insider information? I’m riveted.”
She laughed and leaned down close to my ear. “He’s not as cool as he pretends to be, okay? So only use this when you really wanna tease him.”
“Why are we doing this?”
“It’s a date.”
“It’s weird.”
“The only reason it’s weird is because you’re being weird,” said Taehyung with a long sigh as he continued to focus on the claw machine in front of him.
I crossed my arms and watched him as he fixated on a particular plush of Gudetama. “These things are made so you fail,” I said, resting a hip against the machine.
He continued to stare into the lighted box, eyes stuck on that plush toy. “I’m gonna get it,” he said.
I nodded. “Fine, fine. Manly man Kim Taehyung has decided on something and he’ll get it through sheer willpower. Against the overwhelming odds. Against the very laws of physics. He will venture to-,”
Before I could finish, his lips were pressed against mine, fingers threaded through my hair for a brief moment before he pulled away and returned his undivided attention to the game. My face felt hot and the cool air did little to soothe it as we stood outside a busy shop, cars whizzing by behind us and people walking by quickly. Some of them paused to watch Taehyung and puzzle over the scene of a grown man bent over the glass front of a claw machine, a beet red girl at his side, burying her nose in her scarf.
“What was that about?” I asked.
He stuck out his tongue as he focused and sent the claw down once more. “To quiet you down,” he said. “I need to focus if I wanna get this thing.”
He’s not as cool as he pretends to be. I scoffed as I remembered the secret Haewon had shared with me. I nodded and allowed him his moment of performance, settling instead for just watching with raised brows as the claw clamped down around Gudetama’s yolk-yellow head. I gasped as the machine drew the toy upward into the sky and carried it through the air, above all the other unlucky plushes, towards the drop box. A little more and it might really make it.
Eagerly, I gave Taehyung’s shoulders a few smacks, then clapped my hands together. “It’s gonna work!” I exclaimed.
He glanced at me out the corner of his eye and winked. “Of course it is,” he said. “I told you I was gonna get it.”
I beamed at the machine and watched with bated breath as the thing hovered in the air. But slowly, the plush began to sag down with the force of gravity, leaning down towards the rest of its brethren and away from the claw which promised it a new home. Before the claw could deliver Taehyung his toy, Gudetama slipped from its grasp and landed in a heap on top of a plush of Moomin and a blank-faced Ryan. I sighed as Gudetama’s expression remained unchanged, still set in a lazy frown.
“When you try your best but you don’t succeed,” I sang quietly.
He turned to me with wide eyes. “Don’t patronize me!”
I laughed and gave his cheek a light pat, taking his hand and wheeling him back around down the street. I laced our fingers as he protested, insisting we return to the claw game to reclaim his toy and his dignity. “I will not let you blow your life’s savings on a five-dollar plush,” I said. “Let’s keep going. Didn’t you say you had something nice planned?”
This seized his attention as he nodded and gripped my hand tighter. “Ah, yes! I have something really cool to show you,” he said.
I smiled up at him. “Can I know what it is or is it a surprise?” I asked.
He smirked and leaned away from me. “It’s a surprise and you won’t seduce me into telling you.”
I gaped. “I wasn’t trying to!”
“Yes you were,” he said, narrowing his eyes at me. “You knew what you were doing when you smiled like that.”
“How did I smile?” I asked through laughter.
He pursed his lips and shrugged. “I dunno,” he said, pouting. “Like you liked me or something.”
I continued laughing for a long moment as we meandered down the street. “Kim Taehyung, why in the world would I not smile at you that way?” I asked. “You’re my boyfriend. Of course I like you.”
He shrugged and swung our hands a little. “You seemed annoyed with me at the claw machine,” he said, voice low, almost cute.
I scoffed. “If you think I’d stop liking you just because you annoy me then why would I have liked you for twenty years?” I asked. “Do you know how much of those twenty years you spent annoying me?”
He gave me a glare before chuckling. “Fine,” he said. “Ah! Over here,” he said, turning a sharp left turn down an alleyway.
I walked by his side, hand-in-hand, as he led the way through the narrow brick alleyway. After a few feet of walking he paused in front of a stairwell and began scaling them up the side of the building. At the first landing, a wooden sign hung swaying in the breeze and he opened the door, letting me inside first.
The first thing I noticed was the scent of old paper. As my eyes adjusted to the low light, I began to see the outlines of massive, tall bookshelves, lining the walls and leading deep into dark corners. In each of the many windows stood potted plants, some of whom had begun to climb up the brick walls. Outside the front windows I caught sight of buses and cars flying by and rainclouds gathering overhead. The gloomy atmosphere, the temperature, the soft music bumping from speakers I couldn’t see: all of it made the place feel…oddly homey.
“Ah! Taehyung,” said the woman behind the counter. She maneuvered around toe side of the register to greet us, the only two people in the whole place.
She pushed her graying hair out of her face and smiled softly. “Hi Jiyeon,” he said as the small woman swept him up in her arms.
I raised my brows and glanced between them. “Oh! This must be Y/N,” she said warmly, reaching out her arms for me.
I blushed and held her close in a hug. “Nice to meet you,” I said, then backed away and turned a puzzled expression on Taehyung. “But…how do you know this place?”
He grinned and crossed his arms. “Once I moved in with Jimin I started working here. That was before Bangtan took off,” he said.
“Oh!” I said, turning to Jiyeon with a grin. “So you’re his former boss!” I smirked and leaned closer to her. “He’s a bad employee, right?”
She giggled and nodded. “On sunny days he would sit in the back by the windows and nap like a cat,” she said.
I gaped. “No!”
“Not just like a cat,” said Taehyung, crouching down beside the register and motioning with his fingers towards something I couldn’t see. A small tabby stretched her legs and wandered towards his outstretched hands and rubbed her small head against his fingers. “But with the cat.”
I laughed and joined him crouching. The tabby took to me quickly, abandoning Taehyung in lieu of rubbing her whole self on my hands. I smiled. “What’s her name?” I asked, glancing at Jiyeon over my shoulder.
She smiled and hummed. “It used to be Whiskers but Taehyung renamed her Venus,” she said, watching the cat snake around my ankles fondly.
“Why Venus?” I asked.
Taehyung chuckled and picked her up, standing with the cat resting against his hip. “See the orange in her fur?” he asked, pointing to a patch of amber.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Like Botticelli,” he said.
“Ah!” I exclaimed with a nod. The russet-haired goddess that was hanging in print in his bedroom. The Birth of Venus by Botticelli. “That’s a good name.”
“I preferred Whiskers,” said Jiyeon with a laugh. “But our Tae is too smart for a name like that.”
I grinned and nodded, petting Venus’ tiny head before turning back to Jiyeon. “But what exactly is this place?” I asked, gazing back into the rows of books, begging to be explored.
She guided me by the shoulder towards the stacks. “It’s a used book store, dear,” she said. “We take old books for free and sell them at half the price of most secondhand stores.”
“Wow,” I said, gaping into the dark aisle, books on either side, nearly touching the high ceiling. “These were all donations? How did you get so many?” I asked.
She grinned and tapped her forehead. “Hard work,” she said. “When you care for a plant, you use the best soil. You buy fertilizer and you weed it nicely. You trim it when the leaves begin to die. You water it nicely. Sometimes you feel discouraged and you wonder if it will ever grow. But in time all of your efforts are reflected in the wonderful results,” she said. “Life is like that.”
I blinked at her before smiling slowly and nodding. “I see.”
“If you give it your all, you can do a whole lot,” she said, sighing as she gazed upon the fruits of her labor.
“Y/N, why don’t we explore a little?” asked Taehyung, leaving Venus behind to groom herself on the counter and resting a hand on my hip.
I smiled. “Sure,” I said, then turned to Jiyeon and met her eyes. “Thank you,” I said.
She nodded. “Make yourselves at home,” she said. “We’ll open in an hour.”
“Huh?” I asked as she turned back to the register and Taehyung ushered me down the aisle. “Wait, it’s not open yet?”
He chuckled and patted my head, guiding me through the labyrinth of bookshelves. “Of course not. Why else would nobody be here?” he asked.
“You asked her to let us in early?” I asked.
He glanced at me, wide-eyed, before shaking his head. “No,” he said. “Every now and then on Saturday mornings I like to come here early and help her move things around. Sometimes he has new books that are too high to shelf. Sometimes the plants need work.”
“But you don’t even work here,” I said, furrowing my brow.
He smiled. “She’s the kind of person you don’t stop seeing just because you don’t have an excuse to see her,” he said. “You felt it too right? Like you just…wanted to be around her?”
I nodded. “I did actually,” I said, smiling as I ran my finger across the spines of the books.
“It’s kind of like…brand loyalty or something. That’s how she’s grown so much. She just…created this community for herself,” he said.
I exhaled slowly. “She reminds me of someone,” I said slowly, carefully. I eyed him, gauging his reaction.
His lips parted in a small smile and he nodded, focused on a book as he pulled it from the shelf and fingered through it. “Me too,” he said. “When I first started working here…I really felt like I was with her again.” He glanced up at me and nodded. “My grandma.”
I smiled. “They’re both wonderful.”
“Maybe someday, when you’re a big journalist or screenwriter or something, you can do a talk here,” he said, chuckling.
I nodded. “I’d like that,” I said. “And when you become a famous lyricist you can come with me.”
He laughed. “I’d like that.”
Unconsciously, we’d moved slightly closer to one another. In his hand, the book lay open, face-up. But slowly, his other hand drifted to the small of my back and settled there. I furrowed my brow at him as he leaned down closer and met my eyes. A playful smile was resting beautifully on his lips as he tilted his head to the side.
“Are you trying to seduce me now?” I asked, laughing as my hands lifted to touch his chest.
He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could Jiyeon called from the front of the store, “Oh no! Taehyung, can you help me unload this box please?”
Taehyung chuckled and shut the book, placing it back on the shelf and turning on his heel. “I’ll be back as soon as I’m done,” he said, waving over his shoulder before jogging out of the dim aisle.
I smiled and glanced around at the titles of the books in front of me. I hadn’t noticed it before, but we’d wandered into the arts section. I smiled at the books as they stood before me: books on Michelangelo, Georgia O’Keeffe, Vermeer, Munch, even some newer books on Frida Kahlo. But one struck me and caught my eye, as it was still slightly crooked after Taehyung had replaced it. A complete collection of the paintings at the Louvre. My heart raced. I grabbed for it and flipped it onto its front, glancing at the price tag. For something with over 3,000 paintings in it, the massive thing was shockingly cheap. I cleared my throat and wandered carefully out of the bookshelves and towards the front where Jiyeon stood behind the register, petting Venus’ head.
I looked around, careful to mind any noises that might be Taehyung and quickly approached, sliding the book across the desk towards her. “May I buy this?” I asked.
She glanced down at it and smiled. “Ah,” she said. “I’m glad you came by this morning. That book only came in yesterday and as soon as I shelved it I had a couple try to haggle with me for the price.”
I gaped. “It’s already so cheap,” I commented.
She nodded. “Nonetheless, if they came back today they would have worn me down,” she said. “I’ll give you a discount though. Family and friends,” she said with a laugh.
I joined her and nodded. “Oh, and could you maybe…um, put it in a brown bag or something? So Tae won’t see?”
She grinned. “I’ll do you one better,” she said, pulling out a roll of hunter green wrapping paper.
Swiftly, she wrapped the thing and taped the sides, sliding it into a large paper bag and handing it back to me. In exchange, I passed her my debit card and waited with bated breath for her to finish the transaction. She handed it back and, without a second to spare, Taehyung returned, slightly breathless from working, and smiled at me.
“Found something already?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yep!” I said, just a little too quickly.
Taehyung and I parted ways at noon so I could dedicate the day to revising my essay. I’d half-figured I would simply begin the work on it today and give finishing it a go tomorrow, but as I sat down to write I couldn’t really stop the steamrolling flow of words that fled my fingertips. Before I knew it, hours had passed and the essay was nearly completely finished save for touchups and minor edits. I stared down at it as my computer’s glow cast an eerie shadow all around my dark room. There it was.
“Don’t we need to go soon?” asked Yuna from outside my door, giving it a few knocks.
I startled to my feet and cursed under my breath. “Shit, yeah! Thanks for reminding me!” I said, shoving my laptop into a satchel along with Tae’s book and a few concert essentials.
Quickly, I turned on a light and applied my makeup messily. I looked a bit frazzled, but as I dressed and took a quick glance at my vanity mirror I could see a bit of confidence that wasn’t there before. I couldn't ponder it long, because I was out the door and rushing with Haewon and Yuna out into the hallway and towards the elevator.
We arrived at the venue a few minutes past eight: forty minutes past when I promised I’d be there to finish setup. I yanked open the heavy door and smiled at the familiar scene before me. This was the very same Hongdae venue where everything had started after all. It looked the same, but somehow felt vastly different. The boys stood on stage, adjusting their instruments. They were mostly ready and it seemed, for once, I was the unprepared, late one.
I rushed in with the girls in tow and approached Sunny with chagrin. “I’m sorry I’m late,” I said quietly into her ear.
Without a word, she simply gestured to the seats beside hers and I took one graciously. The girls sat beside me and we all watched in relative silence as the boys ran through a few songs.
After a few songs, Sunny leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Not having you here reminded me of what it was like before you came,” she began, then met my eyes severely. “Don’t make me remember that again.”
I laughed. “What?”
She raised her brows. “Don’t you know? Ah, you should talk to Joon. He’ll explain it better.”
Puzzled, I stared at her for a long moment before the boys finished and abandoned their instruments onstage, hopping down to join us. I caught a glimmer of a smile from Yoongi as he approached and followed his gaze straight to Haewon. I stifled a laugh and turned to the rest of the boys.
“Joon, weren’t you supposed to tell her?” asked Sunny, standing and causing me to follow suit.
Namjoon glanced at me and smiled, rubbing his neck. “Ah, yeah. That’s right,” he said.
I smiled. “Go ahead.”
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair before meeting my eyes again. “Well, uh…the thing is…,” he said, then slumped his shoulders. “You’ve paid off your debt. You don’t have to work for us anymore.”
“I’ve…really?” I asked.
He nodded. “And we all talked about it and, collectively, we understand if you don’t wanna do it anymore,” he said.
“But!” called Jimin, raising a finger and shutting his eyes with a smile. “If you do still want to work with us, we can pay you.”
“What?” I asked.
He nodded. “Handsomely,” he said.
“Not as handsome as me,” said Jin with a smile, to which Yoongi simply gave him a sharp smack in the gut.
I rolled my eyes and refocused my attention on Jimin. “We’d want you around more though,” said Hoseok, smiling.
I returned it. “Why?”
“Well,” said Sunny, turning towards me with a grin. “We would want you to be the full-time concert manager so I can work on getting their name out there and making connections in the music scene.”
I raised my brows. “Excuse me?”
“I can’t really do both,” she said, laughing. “Not enough time in the day.”
I blinked at my hands and thought a long moment. Hyerim approached from backstage followed by Mijin, both of whom stared at me with a mixture of concern and expectation in their eyes. Of course, I was tempted to stay. But with work at the cafe and school, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it all. And besides, I didn’t want to be a manager forever. I wanted to-
“Write with me,” said Taehyung.
I flushed and turned to him with wide eyes. “E…excuse me?” I asked.
He nodded. “Write lyrics for Bangtan with me.”
My lips parted in a gape as the offer sat stagnant in the air. I blinked, unable to process what he’d said. Of course, I’d toyed with the idea of songwriting. But I wasn’t sure I had what it took. “I…I don’t know.”
“Think about it,” said Namjoon with a smile. “You don’t have to answer right away.”
I nodded. “I will,” I said, but truthfully I’d already been thinking about it hard enough to work up a headache.
The concert went by smoothly, and no malfunctions occurred, leaving Sunny and me a moment to breathe a sigh of relief. As I watched the boys performing their hearts out, a part of me felt oddly guilty. Here they were, performing at the same mid-sized venue they had been in the beginning. They weren’t growing as rapidly as they could be. And what was holding them back was…well, me.
Taehyung wrapped an arm around my shoulders once the venue had cleared out and gave me a smile. “Wanna come back to the dorm with me?” he asked.
I raised my brows. “Oh, yeah,” I said, tightening my satchel over my shoulder.
“Are you still worrying about the offer?” he asked, meeting my eyes as the others began talking boisterously.
I chewed on my lip and nodded. “A little bit.”
He took my hand in his and smiled. “Don’t,” he said. “You’ll make the right choice for you.”
I sighed and nodded. “I hope so,” I said.
We walked with laced fingers back to the group as they discussed where to eat late dinner. “You guys down for lamb skewers?” asked Jungkook with a grin.
I shook my head and pinched the bridge of my nose. “After my monster hangover this morning, I think I’ll pass,” I said.
“Besides,” said Taehyung with a smirk. “We have a date.”
“Oh God!” exclaimed Jungkook, pointing at us. “You guys? In the dorm? Alone?” he said, gagging.
Hoseok rolled his eyes and clamped a hand over Jungkook’s lips. “Go have fun,” he said, meeting my eyes with a smile. A real one.
I smiled in return and nodded. “See you guys later,” I said, waving over my shoulder as everyone continued their talks of food.
I sat on Taehyung’s bed as he read over my essay at his desk, brows set low as his eyes scanned the screen. I watched him anxiously, eager to know what his thoughts were. It had become something entirely different from what it was in the beginning. Perhaps that was the point, really.
He shut the laptop and stared ahead, blinking. “Well?” I asked.
He turned to me and, slowly, a wide, proud smile spread across his face. He shook his head and scoffed. “You really did this today?” he asked.
I nodded. “I mean, I’ve been working on the revision for about a week, but in terms of the bulk of it-,”
“Jesus, Y/N,” he said, laughing. “If your professor doesn’t like this he’s a madman.”
“It’s not about him liking it,” I said with a chuckle. I remembered his sage words from before. “It’s about making something I can be proud of.”
He smiled. “And? What’s the verdict?”
“I’m proud,” I said.
He clapped his hands together. “That’s my girl,” he said.
I laughed, rolling my eyes as I reached for my heavy satchel. I pulled the book from inside and turned to him. He eyed me carefully as I stood to my feet. “I have something for you,” I said.
He laughed. “Wait, I have something for you,” he said, rushing to his closet and throwing it open. He pulled out a bag and held it in front of him. “On three we switch, okay?” he asked.
I grinned and nodded. “Deal. Ready?” I began.
“One,” he said.
“Two,” I responded.
“Three!” we called at once, handing each other the gifts.
Immediately, I tore into mine and pulled from the depths of the tissue paper something soft and plush. With a gasp, I yanked the thing out the rest of the way and saw Gudetama’s blank face staring at me. With wide eyes, I smoothed my hands over the toy and smiled at Taehyung who by then was already looking at me with a grin.
“Tae!” I shouted, smacking him with the toy. “You went back?”
He nodded and scratched his arm. “I know you like Gudetama,” he said.
I laughed. “You’re crazy.”
“You’re crazier!” he defended, waving the book around. “I can’t believe you got me this. I wasn’t gonna buy it since it was kind of pricey.”
I gaped. “Pricey? Do you know how much that retails for?” I asked.
“No?” he asked.
I pouted and crossed my arms. “Probably a lot.”
He laughed and approached. “Anyway,” he said, “thank you.” He wrapped his arms around my waist and smiled down at me.
I returned his smile and placed the plush on his bed. “Thank you too.”
He inhaled sharply and pulled me closer by the hips. I felt his chest rise and fall against mine. “You know your essay is amazing, right?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Come on.”
He rested his head on my shoulder, letting his lips touch the skin of my neck and sending shivers up and down my spine. “It is. And if you can write essays like that…what’s stopping you from trying lyrics?”
I flushed and held him tighter. “I don’t know.”
“You’ve got enough trauma to be a good songwriter,” he joked. “That’s why I make good lyrics.”
I laughed. “A tortured artist?” I asked.
He smiled against my skin and I felt hot. “Hm,” he hummed. “I think you’d be great.”
“I think you’re great,” I said. “I never properly thanked you for the song.”
He chuckled and pulled away, meeting my eyes. “Why would you thank me for writing a song about your worst day?” he asked.
I smiled. “Because…you made it something beautiful,” I said. “You took pain and made…art.”
He grinned and swayed us back and forth. “You think?”
“Mhm,” I said. “To be able to face your hurt…face my hurt, and give it meaning like that,” I started, then shook my head. “It’s amazing.”
“If you think that, why don’t you give it a try?” he asked.
I stared up at him and saw nothing but sincerity in his eyes. “I mean…,” I trailed off.
“You believe in me,” he said. “And I believe in you. I believe you can do this.”
I pursed my lips. “But the cafe-,”
“Quit,” he said.
I stared at him wide-eyed. “What?”
He smiled. “You don’t like it anyway,” he said. “Spend time doing the things you love.”
“And I love being a manager?” I asked. “And a…a songwriter?”
He laughed. “I think you do.”
I thought about it for a long moment before sighing and resting my forehead against his chest. “You guys would pay me right?”
He laughed and it vibrated against my forehead. He shook my shoulders a little. “Of course, you lunatic! Unpaid labor is against the law.”
“Haven’t I been doing that this whole time?” I asked, puzzled as I pulled away.
He set his lips thin before clearing his throat. “Anyway,” he said, leaning down so our eyes were level. I saw so many warm memories in the dark brown of his eyes. “Is that a yes?”
I held in a laugh and nodded once. “Yes.”
He smiled and, without warning, pressed his lips against mine. The kiss began chaste, really just a peck. But I moved my hands to his hair, raking my fingers through the soft locks, and as I did a low groan escaped him that made my stomach flip. Before I realized what I was doing, I was backing up against the bed, shoving Gudetama onto the floor. Taehyung hovered above me and began leaving a trail of kisses down my neck, lingering on my collarbone and shoulders. I gasped as his teeth nipped my skin and he only gave me a laugh. Slowly, I edged my fingers towards the hem of his shirt and, without a second’s pause, he pulled the thing over his head and tossed it to the side. I blushed as I stared at him and met his smoldering eyes.
He kissed me once more, this time more passionately, but as he broke away I began to laugh. A memory surfaced that I couldn’t shove down and as he continued kissing my jaw, I became a mess of giggles.
He pulled back and glared at me. “What’s funny?” he asked.
I laughed and shook my head. “Nothing,” I said with a nod. “Just…Haewon told me something really funny today.”
He returned to kissing any skin he could find, but I was already too far gone. I continued to laugh like a madman as his lips found every sweet spot on my neck. “Wanna know what she said?” I asked.
“Not really right now,” he said.
I sputtered a laugh and shook my head. “No, I really think right now is the best time.”
He sighed and continued kissing me. “It’s not normal to make conversation while you’re making out with your boyfriend,” he mumbled. “But go on.”
I smirked. “She told me about the time you hooked up.”
“Ugh,” he said, pausing to break away and stare down at me. “Why would you bring that up now?”
I laughed as I stared at him. God, did he look cool. “She said you moaned someone’s name.”
His eyes went wide. “I…”
“She told me it was not her’s,” I said.
He shook his head. “Listen-,”
“She told me,” I said, placing a hand on his neck and pulling him down to look at him closely, “it was my name.”
He groaned and fell on top of me, throwing his limbs out on either side. “God!” he exclaimed.
I laughed, shaking both of us with the force of it, and patted his bare back. “Don’t worry. I think it’s adorable.”
“I can’t believe she told you,” he said with a sigh.
I nodded, shutting my eyes to hold back the tears my laughter had produced. “Mhm.”
“Are you still laughing?”
I shook my head. “Of course not. What kind of person do you think I am to keep poking fun at you like this?” I asked, but my voice broke.
He sat upright and met my eyes sharply. I could see a playful edge to his gaze that I wanted more of. “You’re teasing me.”
I shook my head and bit down on my bottom lip, suppressing the laughter with all my might. “Nope.”
He smirked and narrowed his eyes. “Yes you are.”
“No!” I said, but the moment I opened my mouth too wide, laughter came bubbling forth like a waterfall and I couldn’t stop the hysterics.
He kissed me hard enough to make my head spin and as he pulled away, I was left still smiling. “I’m gonna get you back,” he said.
I laughed and pressed a kiss to his lips before pulling back down. “Try me.”
An Essay on Change
Change. What a jarring word, and an even more jarring concept. What does it mean to change anyway? As a transitive verb, Merriam-Webster defines change as ‘to make radically different.’ My whole life, I always liked the idea of becoming different. Perhaps if I was different, my life might become different too. The second definition this dictionary offers is ‘to replace with another.’ I only realized after leaving and coming back that what I loved, what I valued about change was its power to replace something with another. Replace pain with joy. Replace hardship with fun. What I wanted was not to become different, but to be replaced by someone better. I wanted to abandon all the things that defined me as I was and become something new.
With this mindset, I left for America. I figured, if nothing else, I may return a new person. A better person. I thought, after seeing so much and experiencing so much, I might gain some distance from the haunts of my past: the people who’d slighted me and whom I had slighted, the hurt I’d felt and the ways I’d hurt others, the plague of arrogance and the illness of insecurity. I thought that perhaps by reinventing what it meant to be me, I could look at myself and feel okay.
But that didn’t happen.
And I struggled to understand why. All my life, running from my parents, running from my friends, running from myself: it yielded a sense of peace. Anonymity and steadiness. In my day-to-day life I felt much like a shabby wooden lifeboat struggling not to capsize on choppy, stormy water. And from the beginning, paddling hard with all my might made those choppy waters feel calmer somehow. Like perhaps I could outrun the storm. Perhaps I was faster.
America was beautiful. I saw the Golden Gate Bridge, something I hadn’t seen since I was a child and the memory of which was always accompanied by a painful slew of childhood memories that made it difficult to look at it right away. I sat on the beach in the middle of October and didn’t feel cold. I joined a Beyonce Fan Club and learned that, of course, she is and forever will be Queen Bey. I went to New York during the wintertime and cried on a bench in Central Park. I traveled north and saw the very first Starbucks. Disappointingly, the drinks were just the same as they were anywhere else. I even saw a bald eagle.
Why then, after all of this, did I still feel so empty?
My lifeboat had holes in it. It always had. And while paddling fast made the boat sail over the choppy waves, I was still taking on water at an alarming rate. It was filling up, seeping through those holes into the boat, rotting the wood away and creating new holes. Those holes…I figured by ignoring them I might convince myself they weren’t there. Was I denying a crisis or was I simply scared of admitting it at all?
This essay isn’t about my trip to America. It isn’t about Starbucks or the Met Museum or that bald eagle up north. It is about change. And when I came home, I thought I’d finally done it. I’d finally glimpsed into the eternal heart of me and wrenched it out. I’d finally replaced it with something wiser, something stronger. But my tiny lifeboat was swaying once again on water too wicked to weather with so many holes. The waves were writhing, coiling around the sides of my boat and beckoning me into them. It took me a long time to realize what I had to do to survive.
For a long time, I thought that I could outrun the storm. I realized along the way that I can’t. That’s life isn’t it? There will always be a storm. Just when one ends, another crests over the horizon, ready to flip you over. And while it might be easier to simply paddle as hard as you can in the hopes of finding safety somewhere, perhaps an island where you can find a new boat, but the faster you paddle, the faster you take on water. Your boat becomes flooded and you drown.
I was drowning when I left for America. I was gasping for air and my boat was sinking to the bottom of the ocean. I left my unresolved traumas at home and thought that I’d change if I could only shake them off for good. But running from them only makes them bigger. When I came home I learned that. And when I came home, I learned that despite my sincerest efforts, I hadn’t changed at all from the person I’d been before. I was still bitter, naive, heartbroken, and insecure. I was still me.
That’s when I realized that change doesn’t have to mean replacement. It can mean to make yourself different, to make yourself better. It can mean acknowledging that even though your boat has holes, you can still fix it. You don’t need to throw it away and find a new boat. It can mean looking into the ugliness in yourself and knowing that everyone carries ugliness too. Even someone who seems like the brightest star in the sky. Even someone who smiles everyday. Even someone who has given you love all their life. We are all flawed. Human nature makes it that way. And it is in facing these flaws, facing these traumas, facing these holes in your lifeboat, that you can truly begin to change for the better.
I began to patch the holes when I came home. Instead of wasting my energy trying to outrun the storm, I learned to instead try to prepare for it. I rebuilt my lifeboat, made it better. But at the end of the day, it is still the same lifeboat. It is still me. I couldn’t replace it after all. Now I can look at my lifeboat and I can see the patches I’ve created. I can see the gathering storm clouds and face them with a smile. Because it is me. It is me, only stronger.
I didn’t change in America. I pretended I did by acting like I wasn’t hurt anymore, but all I learned was how to put on a more convincing mask. I was still the same, broken lifeboat I’d been when I left. It was only when I returned to the beginning, when I stopped sprinting as fast as I could, that I could finally make myself radically different. I became strong when I faced the things that left me with holes.
I could only change when I stood still and fixed myself.
I could only change when I learned how to come back.
#bts#bts fanfiction#bts imagines#bts scenarios#bts au#btsrockband!au#taehyung fanfic#bts v#bts taehyung#taehyung fluff#taehyung angst#bts reader insert
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All the even numbers!!
omg
2 : What genre do you write?
already answered
4 : Which do you prefer–line-editing or plot-revisions?
already answered
6 : What would be the biggest compliment you could hope to receive on your current WIP?
already answered
8 : What author would you be most excited to be compared to?
already answered
10 : Do you brain-storm story ideas alone or with others?
usually alone, but a large part of troublemaker was brainstormed through discussion with a friend
12 : Is your writing space clean or cluttered?
i don’t have a designated writing space
14 : Do you have a favorite writing-related quote?
currently this one
16 : Would your story work better as a movie or tv show? Why?
tv show, i think, because it’s so… intricate
18 : If you could assign your story one song, what would it be?
for aec? everybody wants to rule the world — lorde
20 : What book would you love to see adapted for the big or small screen?
i am so excited for the grishaverse series. and i wish percy jackson was done well
22 : Has your own writing ever made you cry?
yes
24 : When did you start considering yourself a writer?
when i was about 8 or 9, i think? i was writing the original elsewhere series
26 : What would you like to see more of in your genre?
already answered
28 : On a scale of 1-10, how much do you stress about choosing character names?
ehh. about 6?
30 : Does writing calm you down or stress you out?
both lol
32 : Do you give your side-characters extensive backstories?
lmao yes and i think i’m starting to grow a reputation for it
34 : Describe your old writing in one word.
amusing
36 : Do you write with a black and white sense of morality?
absolutely not
38 : What’s one piece of writing advice you try–but fail–to follow?
write as if no one will read it
40 : What would you ask your favorite author if given one question?
… i can’t think of anything at all
42 : Do critiques motivate or discourage you?
already answered
44 : How do you decide what story idea to work on?
whatever makes either my brain or my heart go !! is what’s getting the most attention
46 : What Hogwarts house would your protagonist(s) be in?
i think almost all of them are slytherins and ravenclaws
48 : Would you ever co-write?
already answered
50 : Would you rather be remembered for your fantastic world-building or your lifelike characters?
already answered
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So, I haven't been posting on here as often lately. Part of this is due to the last bit of my first year of grad school (I survived!) and part of it is because I've been posting more on Twitter (not much more though—my username is 'cthulhucene' if anyone wishes to follow).
More than either of those reasons, though, I haven't been posting because sharing and working through theory on here feels increasingly useless. Most of my theory posts get no engagements beyond a reblog, which makes the whole act worthless, tbh. This isn't a problem, really—it's just what the case happens to be.
If anyone is wondering, though, I'm starting to work through what a critical phenomenology might actually look like. My university has a journal dedicated to 'critical phenomenology' but no one that runs the journal really knows what that term means. In my experience (with works like Oksala's "Feminist Experiences," which was terrible) the term just means that these theorists wish to do phenomenology while still loving Foucault. (Which is also fine, but it doesn't make that phenomenology 'critical' in any standard sense.) Either that, or they critique the 'transcendental subject' of traditional phenomenology by...re-inscribing that transcendental subject (but now it's gendered!). Both of these acts are mostly useless and don't accomplish anything worthwhile.
I think the problem is that all of these attempts try to keep within a framework that ties the appearance of the 'things themselves' within a given world (up to the appearance of the 'worldhood of the world') to subjective intentionality. By sticking to intentionality (even if it's problematized), these authors are bound to subjective experiences—they can't account for objective appearances in a given world.
In contrast to this, I'd like to work through Badiou's "objective phenomenology" (presented in Logics of Worlds and elsewhere) to see what an actual 'critical phenomenology' (that is, a phenomenology grounded in the critical tradition) might look like. I'm just starting through all this stuff though, so I can't say all that much.
That's what I'm up to, though, lmao.
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I sometimes have dreams of being an accomplice of murder. Don’t know what that says about me, but in my dreams I’m very quiet when killing someone, and typically get away with it.
tbh there’s only like three steps to getting away with it. 1. do it alone. 2. hide the body (and if there’s a murder weapon hide/destroy that elsewhere along with any clothing that might have been spattered). 3. tell no one. done. law enforcement has no witnesses, no confession, and nothing to tie you to the crime physically. if you’re very lucky the body is never found and a homicide investigation never opened.
honestly if it’s really a first degree murder you should have thought this through beforehand, if you premeditate and get caught that shits on you. have a plan. execute it. execute it… lol that’s punny okay moving on!
not that… i think it’s okay to kill people… just that people who kill people get caught for very stupid reasons sometimes and— lmao wow i am really critiquing murder techniques here huh? anyways it sounds like dream you has a handle on it. quiet is good. quiet is ideal. people will literally get drunk and brag about killing someone like you DUMB FUCK you had this life sentence coming my guy. for the murder and for being an IDIOT.
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