#i have just turned in an essay. a discussion post. and an EXAM in the span of an hour. sir. sir Please.

[yeosangs-horizon]

One Call Away

Genre: Fluff | Friends -> Lovers | Pairing: Rei x Reader Word Count: 5.4k Content Warning(s): Mention of abusive parent Author’s Note: There may be a part 2 to this coming out soon!

You let out a sigh as you put on your gaming headphones, glancing to the side of the massive pile of papers and textbooks next to you that you knew you had to burn into your mind before your final exams. A bit of a break wouldn’t hurt right? You switched your status to online and hovered your mouse over you friend Rei’s profile.

You were deprived of human contact besides your roommate but you hadn’t seen them in awhile either as the two of you were busy gearing up for your finals, thankfully the last time you would have to do them as you would be done with university by the end of the month.

‘Wanna race?’ you typed to Rei. His instant response to you didn’t surprise you at this time of night, he would go on benders sometimes, gaming for nights in a row. He was someone who you could talk to online, although you had never met him you didn’t feel as if he had malicious intent and therefore trusted him. He wasn’t much of a talker, but he would listen to you ramble to no end. You had met him through an online forum that you would post your gaming highlight reels on and he seemed to interact with your posts every time, despite having a vast following you had noticed his interactions.

You messaged him and the two of you started chatting. It was mainly about Morio Kart, sharing techniques and talking about your favourite builds. It branched into other games the two of you shared in common too and one thing led to another and the two of you would play games together. You hadn’t spoken to him for awhile though with your busy schedule and his, as far as you knew he told you that he and his roommate were private investigators but kept pretty quiet about the specifics about his job. Nonetheless you missed him, you loved late night discussions with him, even if it was one sided. 

‘Sure.’ he simply replied. ‘Call or nah? I have a lot I wanna catch you up on’ you typed, hoping that you could get him onto a call. The two of you called a couple times in the past, you always initiated first as you picked up that he was pretty reserved. His voice took you by surprise at first, you knew that Rei was a man, but wasn’t expecting his voice to be so deep and… attractive. You hadn’t seen his face yet, but you already found him pretty attractive with his personality and voice. 

Rei looked around his surroundings, the reason why he had been so preoccupied recently and hadn’t been calling with you was because of Miri. The incident where Kazuki took in a little girl of the father that they had to kill during a mission took up most of his time. With finding a suitable daycare to buying supplies, and almost rendering the two of them broke, he had to cut back on gaming. Things were slowly going back to normal though, as normal as things could be with raising their new daughter that they had taken in. She was passed out on the couch next to him, but he usually didn’t talk that loudly anyway and Kazuki was taking a nap, why not? He turned his mic on in his headphones and pressed the button on your profile to call you. 

“What’s up Rei?” you chimed as you connected to the call. “Exhausted. Finally have some time for myself though…” he mumbled, trying not to be too loud. You had to turn up his volume. “Gah yeah, tell me about it. I’ve been so swamped with essays and studying for my finals. What’s been on your plate?” “I have a daughter now,” he bluntly spewed out. “What?” That was something you were not expecting from him, not in a million years. You had always known him as an isolated being, just wanting a kitty to accompany him but had to live with a rowdy couch crasher but took care of him. Was he seeing someone this entire time? Was it his? “You mean a cat right? You finally adopted one?” you asked lightheartedly, hoping that your previous thoughts weren’t true. “No. A little girl.” 

Damn, so it was true. The few months of getting to know him and developing bits and pieces of feelings for him shattered immediately, or so you hoped as you felt a pang in your chest.”With who?” your voice cracked a bit, hoping it wouldn’t be heard on Rei’s end. “Um during our work we ran into a little girl who was convinced that Kazuki was her papa. He looked similar to the guy in the photo she was holding to find her papa so he took her in. Now I’m kinda… forced to be a father too.” He sugar coated the fact that he had shot her actual father and now they are dealing with the consequences of their line of work. “Oh haha! So you weren’t seeing anybody and accidentally had a kid?” “(Y/N) you know how much I despise children… I wouldn’t do that, but Miri is ok… you’d like her.” You let out an invisible sigh of relief, knowing that he wasn’t seeing anyone as far as you knew. 

“That’s adorable Rei. You’ll be an amazing father! Let me know if you need me to babysit sometime, I’m surprisingly good with kids,” you joked around. You hadn’t even met him in person yet, but was this an opportunity amidst your joking manner? “(Y/N) I know you said you’re in the area, but maybe… in the future… you could?” Rei and Kazuki were exhausted by parenthood, they were looking into getting her a babysitter for the times when they would have to go scope or execute their missions in the middle of the night. “Wait actually?” “Yeah… maybe.” He was eager to lessen the load for their roommate and contribute something for once, and have a chance to meet you. Rei’s face flushed a light tint of pink, thinking about the idea of meeting you after so long. 

“Rei Papa, who are you talking to?” The sound of a little girl suddenly chimed in your headphones. You smiled a bit, Miri called him papa, how adorable. You heard him groan on the other side. “Miri go upstairs and tell Kazuki to put you to bed.” “But papa I’m not tired! I just slept! I wanna play Morio Kart!” She started to throw a tantrum. “(Y/N) I’ll message you later. I need to deal with Miri.” You chuckled, hearing him go into ‘parent mode’. “Sure, I’ll talk to you later Rei.” With that he hung up, and you grinned to yourself. He’s so adorable. Now that the highlight of your night was over, you rubbed your eyes and shifted your head towards the textbooks and papers again. You could only procrastinate for so long. You groaned as you grabbed your psychology textbook, getting back to it trying to shove Rei to the back of your mind.

You groaned as you felt your back crack, lifting yourself up from your desk. What time was it? It wasn’t the first time you had fallen asleep like that studying at your desk. Your back ached though from your posture, when had you even fallen asleep? You heard a ‘ding’ from your phone as you picked it up. It was already noon? You usually didn’t even sleep in this late. You swiped up to see your messages, two of them from Rei. ‘Sorry ‘bout last night. Do you think we could meet?’ ‘Miri wants to meet you, and we need a babysitter.’ Your heart skipped a beat, Rei was asking to meet you? You trusted that he wasn’t some creepy old man with bad intentions, you heard Miri last night too, you had to trust him that his situation was real with how much time you’ve spend with him.

You replied back, ‘Sure, what are are you located in? We can meet in public first, but I trust you.’ He sent a location at a nearby mall in the city, that was only a couple miles away from you. ‘No way that’s so close! We could meet there, when were you thinking?’ you texted back eagerly. ‘Today. If you can, at 3?.’ you started to feel giddy, you always loved meeting friends you got close to online and Rei wouldn’t be the first. Your heart started to race a bit, wondering what he looked like and if he would be the same as he was online. ‘Absolutely.’ you replied, rushing to get changed into a nicer outfit. 

Rei looked down in his phone, feeling a bit nervous now knowing that he was going to meet you in person. He had never initiated any plans with anybody else besides Kazuki before. This was foreign to him. You meant a lot to him, somebody that he could sit in silence with sometimes and he enjoyed listening to you ramble, even if he knew that he wasn’t the one to give the best advice. Through the months that the two of you had gotten closer, he also developed some sort of feelings for you although he did not know how to put it into words. He had told Kazuki the night before about your offer to babysit Miri to lessen the load for their missions and he was ecstatic. He picked out a nice suit to wear, trying to look nice for you.

He put his hair back, sideburns showing as he would usually do on his missions. He walked out of the room, tie in hand, knowing that he had to ask Kazuki to help him as he always did before their missions. “Kazuki…” he called out in routine. The blonde turned his head and gazed at him all dressed up. “Rei what’s all this for, I thought we were just meeting your friend at the mall, not going on a mission.” Rei had realized that too and started to blush as he averted his eyes from Kazuki’s direction. He caught on pretty quick. Grabbing the tie in his hand he gently put it around Rei to help him out. “Oh Rei, trying to impress them I see?” he said with a smug smile. “No…” Rei muttered. “You usually don’t give any effort in what you wear when we take Miri out to go shopping, you like em don’tcha?” he giggled. “I don’t know…” Rei answered dryly, still looking away from Kazuki with a blush. “Well in that case, I should dress up to par with you too, don’t wanna be looking like the housewife or anything and maybe I’ll impress em too!” he teased. Rei shot him a glare. “Alright I’m not some partner stealer don’t worry.” “It’s not like that,” he grumbled. Kazuki stepped back after helping Rei with his tie. He shot him a smirk. “Yet.” 

You spritz on a spray of your favourite scent. Looking in the mirror, you had a modest fashionable outfit on, trying to look your best for Rei. You picked up your phone and realized that it was already 2:45 PM. You were going to be late. You grabbed your keys and exited your shared apartment.  Your roommate caught a whiff of your strong vanilla scent that you put on and turned their head. “Headin’ out on a date?” you heard them remark. “Uh, something like that!” you shrugged whilst rushing to put on your shoes and head out the door. “Stay safe! Call me if you need an excuse to leave!” You smiled to yourself, heart racing as the time ticked down to the moment you were going to meet Rei. Surely it wouldn’t be that bad, you enjoyed his company online, even the silences became comforting at this point instead of being awkward.

You rushed towards the meeting spot, checking the time every once in awhile knowing that you still had a ways to walk. By the time you got to the entrance of the mall that Rei had texted you that they were at, you were out of breath. Hiding behind a corner, you decide to straighten yourself up and wipe the beads of sweat away from your forehead before approaching them. You took a deep breath and hoped that you didn’t smell gross from the exercise you had done to get there. You peered your head around the corner and looked down to see a little girl at your feet. “Are you (Y/N)?” she beamed. 

That must be Miri, you thought. You nodded and stammered, “Yes I am! Are you Miri?” You glanced your head up to see a blonde and a darker haired male standing not too far away looking in your direction. That must be them! You wondered which one Rei was, you had a feeling that he was the one in the suit and slicked back hair. You giggled, he’s cute. You stepped out from the shadows. “My papas wanted me to meet you!” She exclaimed with joy. She really was a bundle of happiness if you’d ever seen one. You glanced up at Rei whose eyes were widened now after noticing you and held up a hand in a slow wave. You ran towards him, time stopping a bit as you crashed into him with a hug.

You felt one arm around you patting your back awkwardly as you pulled away, a bit embarrassed as you were normally pretty touchy with the people close to you. “Sorry Rei, uh, it’s wonderful to finally meet you!” His cheeks tinted pink as he gave you a half smile. “(Y/N)... I don’t mind… this is Kazuki and Miri.” He began, mumbling the first part. “(Y/N)! Don’t I get an introductory hug too?” Kazuki joked, opening his arms up. Rei shot him a glance. You shrugged and accepted it, he patted you on the back with the embrace. He was shooting daggers at Kazuki. “Miri too!” You heard the brown haired girl exclaim. You smiled, kneeling down to pick her up as she giggled. “She seems to take a liking to you already,” Kazuki cheered. You smiled and nodded. “So (Y/N), down to be our babysitter? I’m sure Rei has already told you lots about our situation,” he grinned. “Of course! When do you need me?” He looked at Rei. “Tomorrow if you’re not busy um… but if you wanna see our apartment and familiar with things we can right now… or if you want to game,” he added the last part with a hush. “I’d love to Rei.”

The four of you walked back from the mall entrance to Rei’s flat. You and Rei trailed behind, walking in silence as Miri begged Kazuki for an ice cream cone as she noticed a stand with colourful decor. You stood next to Rei, appreciating your time with him. “You look really nice, the suit fits you.” You commented, feeling a bit shy now.” His expression softened as he glanced at you. “You’re really pretty…” he mumbled. You felt your lips tug into a smile as you blushed. “You’re sweet. I’m glad you’re just like how you are online and not some creepy human trafficker.” You joked trying to feel less shy. “Hate those kinds of creeps,” he mumbled. “Me too.” You leaned back against the wall as you watched Miri choose her ice cream flavours and Kazuki chat up the lady at the stand. You went to stretch your back as you heard a crack and lost your footing, falling into Rei who was also leaning against the wall.

Instinctively, he reached out and caught you before you smashed your head on the wall and grasped your arm. His loose strand of dark brown hanging down brushed against your face as you shifted your orbs to meet his. He’s beautiful. Realizing the predicament you were in, you hoisted yourself back up. “Sorry ah, I had a long night of studying and fell asleep at my desk!” You exclaimed, noticing his hand still having a hold on your arm. “I don’t mind…” he blushed as he slowly let go of your arm, the two of you not wanting to break contact. You looked towards the distance and saw Kazuki and Miri walking back with an ice cream in hand. You turned towards to Rei who was still flustered. “Let’s go.” 

The group arrived at the apartment and you stepped in, gazing at the luxury. I guess that was how two private investigators spent their money. “C’mon (Y/N) let me give you a tour so you know where things are for tomorrow!” Kazuki beamed. Miri followed behind closely, wanting to talk to you more. “I’ll have food prepared so it’ll be in the fridge on the top shelf, just reheat it and it’ll be good to go!” He whispered the next part. “And the pudding is in this box. Rei and Miri love pudding.” Miri’s ears perked up. “Pudding! I want pudding!” Rei turned his head too as he was messing with his consoles to prepare for you. Kazuki shook his hands frantically and hopped away. “Quickly uh, over here is where the emergency first aid is kept, never know when you might need it, and Miri’s bedroom is upstairs with the flowers on the door!” You peered down as you felt a tug on your pants. “I want to take a nap. Sleepy…” Miri mumbled. You looked at Kazuki. He sighed as he bent down to scoop her up. “Guess I’ll put her to bed now.”

You stepped away as you looked towards Rei, already sitting on the couch and gestures for you to come. You sat next to him and looked on the screen. He had already set up Morio Kart for the two of you to mess around in. He handed you a controller as you smiled. “Never thought we would be able to race together in person.” “I’ll beat you…” he said with enthusiasm in his tone. After a while of racing, you won more races against him fair and square as he sulked at your gloating. “I lost on purpose for you…” he mumbled, a half true statement. You giggled and leaned towards Rei, resting your head on his shoulder as your leg touched his. “I’m glad I could finally meet you y’know.” He hummed in agreement as he set his controller down. Kazuki hadn’t come down in awhile, assuming he had put Miri to nap and also fell asleep there himself.

The room was dark at this point as the two of you had been playing for awhile. The only light was illuminated from the TV screen, giving light to his facial features as you looked up to admire him. You felt his hand shift from his lap to gently touch yours. Your fingers mindlessly danced around his as they found their way in between his. It felt right. You relaxed against his comfort as he stiffened up, not used to this touch and physical contact. “Am I making you uncomfortable?” You asked with worry. He shook his head. “Just never had this…” you knew a bit about his past, about how rough his father treated him but not in detail and he wasn’t one to socialize around and be touchy. But he felt your hand in his and it felt comforting to him, he liked it.

Your phone lit up with a notification as you noticed the time. It was already 8 PM and you had an essay due that night. You jolted away from your position, startling Rei. “Shit sorry, I just have an essay due soon. After playing with you last night I tried to study and just passed out I’m sorry!” You apologized, knowing you had to get back and it was a walk away. “Wait (Y/N), let me drive you.” He was so thoughtful but you didn’t want to inconvenience him. “Are you sure?” He nodded firmly as he stood up to grab the keys to the car. 

You sat in the passenger seat and looked out at the window at the illuminating lights that made your face glow. You didn’t notice but Rei was staring at you at the red light. You were stunning to him, and he knew that he had fully fallen, the butterflies churning in his tummy was a dead giveaway. He had never felt anything like this before. “Sleep after you finish your work… in your bed ok?” He asked with a soft tone. You hummed. “I’ll try. What time did you want me at your place?” “Around 5. You can bring your work too if it’s too much. We’ll pay you too for your trouble…” Rei offered. You shook your head. “No need. Just take me on a date…” you mumbled the last part. “Hm?” He asked, hoping you’d repeat the last part. You lost your sudden confidence, fearful that he would not reciprocate. “Nothing, just thanks for the ride! I’ll see you tomorrow!” You beamed whilst exiting the vehicle. He watched as your figure disappeared into the darkness of your apartment complex. He couldn’t wait to see you again. And for the record he did want to take you on that date. 

You ran inside to get started on your essay with an hour or two to complete it. Trying to push Rei out of your mind for the time was difficult, the day went so well. You thoroughly enjoyed his company and had fallen for him harder than before. He checked all of your boxes in a potential partner and not to mention that he had an adorable daughter and was so thoughtful. You would have been able to fully focus if you hadn’t received a text an hour into your focused mindset from Rei that said ‘sleep well’ with a kitty blowing a kiss emoji at you. 

The following day you were exhausted. You had managed to turn in your essay on time and spent some more time studying for your finals that were coming up in about two weeks. Groaning, you knew you had to get out of bed as you had chores to do, it was your turn to clean the apartment this week and pack your things to head to Rei’s place later to babysit Miri. Shoving your textbooks and laptop into your bag, you hear a notification from your desktop and saw that it was from Rei. Your face automatically lit up as you clicked to open his message. “Need a ride?” As much as you wanted to be with him as soon as possible again, you decided that the walk was needed to get some fresh air before committing to more work again. ‘I’ll walk to destress a bit, but I can’t wait to see you again!’

As you walked out of your room to vacuum the apartment, you seemed in a happier mood than usual as your roommate noticed you from the kitchen table. “Date went well yesterday?” they asked grinning at you. “Uh yeah! Gonna babysit his kid today,” you remarked. “Damn (Y/N), getting it on with a dad?” they smirked. “Nah it’s not like that, just a special circumstance.” “Well just make sure he’s not a player or a liar.” “He’s not like that, just an extreme introvert who loves to play games,” you smiled. 

Rei stared at himself in the closet, knowing that had to wear stealth clothes to blend in with the public, meaning just his regular attire and not a suit. He wanted to impress you again, a bit fearful that you wouldn’t find him attractive with his hair down. Kazuki caught onto his tension and made his way over. “Relax, I have a feeling that (Y/N) likes you for you, don’t worry about it too much.” He tensed up with embarrassment, not knowing that he could give away his emotions that easily. “How do you know?” “Just trust me Rei,” he grinned. Just as you were on the topic of their conversation, they heard you knocking on the door and an excited squeal from Miri as she came running from her bedroom.

Rei was the one to quickly rush to the door to greet you. “Nice to see you again Rei. Missed you,” you added with a giggle. He felt his heart race a bit as you flirted with him. “You too,” he stuttered out. Miri ran between the two of you and wrapped her small arms around your legs. “(Y/N)! Papa Rei, do I get to spend time with them tonight when you’re gone?” Your gaze softened at Rei after hearing Miri call him papa. The more time you spent with him, the more qualities you saw in him to be a good father, even if he was distant and didn’t act like an adult at times. “Yes Miri, we’re going to be out for awhile. Don’t give (Y/N) a hard time.” She nodded with enthusiasm. He gazed at you again, taking in your comfortable sweater that you had on you and your sweats. You didn’t bother dressing up today as you were focused on chores and your homework. You caught on his gaze and chuckled, “I got busy this morning, sorry for not looking my best,” you excused.

He shook his head, “No you look… stunning,” he confessed. You noticed how casual he looked too and imagined that he would be looking like that when talking to you. “So are you,” you smiled. The moment was interrupted by Kazuki swinging his arm around Rei’s neck. “Watch it…’ Rei mumbled. “Let’s go or else we’ll miss the check-in time!” Kazuki exclaimed enthusiastically. You assumed that they were doing some private investigative work tonight. “Oh hey (Y/N) have fun with Miri tonight we’ll be out for awhile!” You waved at him as they walked out the door. “Good luck!” you called out, now turning your gaze towards Miri. “Papa told you where the pudding is! Gimmie!” 

Spoonfuls of pudding later, you put on her favourite TV show for her to watch as you got started on an assignment. You were in the zone before you heard a ‘ding’ from your phone, a notification from Rei. ‘Hope Miri isn’t giving you a hard time.’ It wrote. You smiled and looked at her and replied. ‘Not at all, she’s watching her show and I’m just catching up on some assignments. I miss playing games with you on the couch though :(‘ Miri noticed your preoccupation with your phone. “(Y/N) you’re done with your homework already? Can we play Morio Kart?” You glanced down at her and sighed. “Not yet Miri. Unfortunately I was just got distracted with your papa texting me.” ‘Ding.’ Another notification. “Me too. It’s so boring here at this festival with Kazuki. I wish I could have brought you.’

You smiled at his text, imagining yourself on a date with him there. ‘Me too Rei. I’ll put Miri to bed soon and wait for you to come back. Stay safe ok?’ You put down your phone as Miri was looking at you with widened eyes. “What did my papas say?” she asked curiously. You smiled and shook your head. “Nothing too important, Rei just said that he was bored doing his job. I can imagine that takes a lot of time and patience.” She nodded and turned towards the kitchen. “I’m hungry (Y/N).” You glanced down at your half finished assignment and the kitchen. You suppose dinner couldn’t hurt your progress. 

You served Miri dinner and had some yourself. Kazuki made pad thai, something you really liked and the flavors hit just right. You didn’t know how he knew, but you guessed Miri liked it just as much as you. The only person you’d told that to as of recently was Rei, perhaps he had spilled the beans to Kazuki about your favourite food, how sweet. You took initiative and washed the dishes for them, knowing that it must be tiring coming back from work to doing more chores. Soon after you tucked Miri into bed and read her one of her favourite bedtime stories. Closing the door behind you, you made your way down into the living room to finish your assignment again. Putting in some of your favourite tunes on the TV, you got to work but not before texting Rei that Miri was tucked away in bed and you were going to try to get your assignments done. He left you smiling by writing to you, ‘Be back soon. Things are going well.’ and reacting to your message with a heart. 

You knocked out two assignments before midnight. You wondered when Rei and Kazuki were going to be home, and by this time your eyelids felt heavy and you were quickly losing concentration in your textbooks. You weren’t sure when you passed out but you were softly snoring on the couch when the duo walked inside the flat. Rei’s eyes instantly fell upon you, looking at how the moonlit illuminated your skin and your peaceful expression. Kazuki noticed and whispered to Rei, “I’ll leave it up to you. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” He got a slight smack on the shoulder from Rei. 

Rei quietly made his way next to you, but not before grabbing a blanket from the extra closet they had. He sat down slowly, hoping to not disturb your sleeping state. He draped the soft blanket over you whilst placing a hand on your cheek. He knew that he was in love with you. You made his life so much easier and was there to support him and trusted him enough to babysit his kid and come over to his house on the first day of meeting him. He felt himself smile and let go the angst that he had. He ran his fingers through your locks whilst leaning down and placing a small kiss on your forehead. He didn’t want to leave your side. He wanted to feel your palm in his again and your touch. You stirred in your sleep, making him a bit startled but still caressing your cheek. “Rei…” you mumbled half coherent about what was going on. His gaze softened whilst staring at you, letting himself admire you against the moonlight. He was definitely going to take you on that date to make up for your hard work today.

You shifted as the morning sunlight hit your eyes. Moving around, you felt your back hit against a warm wall and slowly, you realized that there was someone behind you. You gazed down and saw an arm that was draped over you and the sound of quiet breathing behind you. You took it to be Rei instantly. You looked at your mess of papers around the coffee table and realized that you had probably passed out a bit after midnight in their house. You felt a bit guilty for staying over without asking and unintentionally, but you couldn’t help feel a bit flushed in the cheeks as your heartbeat started to race after realizing that Rei was cuddling you.

You saw the blanket over you and realized that he had probably come home to find you passed out on his couch and didn’t want to leave you to freeze in the middle of the night. You smiled, gazing at his mouth half open and messy brown locks that splayed across the couch and his face. Letting yourself feel comfortable in his embrace, you felt him shift and bury his face in the crook of your neck. “Good morning to you too Rei,” you mused. He opened his eyes and found his limbs with yours. He jolted up a bit, startling you. “Ah shit, I thought I was dreaming. Sorry for… that,” he sheepishly stated. You stared at him, realizing that he may have feelings for you too. Fuck it. You closed the distance between the two of you and captured his lips in yours.

You felt his hand cup your jaw and pull you in closer. After a heartwarming kiss, you pulled away and giggled. “I like you a lot Rei, I didn’t mind waking up to you cuddling me this morning. It was so adorable.” He looked down and replied in a hush, “Me too (Y/N), does this make us…” he trailed off. “I’d love to be yours. I’ve had feelings for you for awhile y’know.” He pulled you into another kiss, wrapping his arms around you and embraced your warmth. 

“I’ll take you out on that date, thank you for taking care of Miri and loving me.” 

#buddy daddies x reader #rei x reader #rei suwa #rei suwa x reader #buddy daddy #buddy daddies imagine #rei suwa fluff #rei suwa imagine #buddy daddies x you #rei suwa x you #kazuki kurusu #anime x reader #anime x you #anime x gender neutral reader #anime fluff #kal writes #ghoulpixels #i want rei to be my gamer bf fr

[cheeriecherrymain]

What about Viktor with a reader who seems like a total airhead/bimbo but is actually incredibly intelligent and witty?

Please pardon any mistakes, I'm typing this on my phone lol

-So you guys probably meet in one of your classes, when you're both still pretty young.

-He's initially drawn to you because of your...interesting...questions during class discussions.

-He admittedly jumps to conclusions.

-Your questions aren't necessarily stupid, but they lack common sense. Anyone in the course should have been able to answer your problems without issue, yet there you were. Asking anyways.

-He assumes you're not paying attention during the lessons...but then how do you do so well on exams? Were you cheating off someone? Paying someone to write your essays for you?

-It boggles his mind, how you could barely know what you're talking about in class, but then turn around and have the second highest marks in the class.

-It all comes to a head when the midterm results are posted outside the classroom. Viktor expects his name to be in the top spot, as it usually is, but when he looks...

- "There must be a mistake," he mutters, growing agitated. No one pays him any mind though, checking their own marks and wandering off to find their seats.

-Instead of following suit, he walks up to the Professor's desk.

- "I think there is an error in the grades that have been assigned," he says quietly, trying not to make a scene.

- "No worries, my dear boy. I assure you that I have triple checked my work - something you might want to try, in the future."

-A couple people snicker to themselves, and Viktor's impatience rises.

- "How could there possibly not be a mistake?" he hisses. "According to the marks posted, Y/N had the highest grade - that's just not possible!"

-Out of the corner of his eye, he notices you perk up at the mention of your name. Now, with you listening in, his confidence in the matter plummets.

-The professor asks him why it wouldn't be possible for you to have a good grade.

-"Because she's an idiot!" he says, much louder than intended - loud enough for most of the class to hear, yourself included.

-He doesn't miss the way that your shoulders fall slightly, nor the way your demeanor grows somber and your gaze casts downward.

-He's immediately hit with a wave of guilt, which only worsens when the professor send him to his seat and he gets a better look at you as he passes.

-You're silent in class for the following week. You don't ask your usual absurd questions, and you don't participate in group discussions - you don't say anything, actually.

-Even when you're paired up for your final projects, and find yourselves in a group, you're eerily quiet.

-It's awkward, in his opinion, but he's not going to try andbforce you to say anything. Instead he draws up a plan for what you should create, explaining it to you in extreme detail as he goes.

-You continue in silence as the semester progresses, watching Viktor work diligently while he goes over ever aspect of his creation.

-He had delegated the task of writing down test results to you, so you'd still be able to get marks for participating. Test results which had been repeating, as of late.

-"I just do not understand where I'm going wrong," he sighs one afternoon. "The barrel is straight, the nose is aerodynamic, the power source is adequate! I only have four days to figure out what's going on - we'll get a failing grade, otherwise."

-At first, you say nothing, keeping your gaze firmly locked on the paper attached to your clipboard.

-But then, all at once, fury curls into your features, and you scowl at him.

"There's too much pressure being released from the fuel tank," you say, finally. "Which you would have known, if you weren't so obsessed with making the damn thing look nice."

-"It's efficient," he tries to say, but you cut him off.

-"It's stupid to work on the aesthetics before the function! The wiring is also faulty, and it's either going to cause a fire, or screw up your design when we have our presentation."

-The two of you stare at each other for several moments, the air between you tense enough to feel.

-"How can you be so certain?" he grumbles.

-"Because despite your opinion of me, I'm far from stupid, Viktor. I've earned my grades, even if you think I didn't. God forbid someone be better than you at something."

-"You are not better than me," he argues. "You, and people like you, look down on me - you always have! You're pretentious and opinionated-"

-"The only one who is pretentious and opinionated is you!" you hiss back, poking him hard on the chest. "I looked up to you! And I can't believe I wasted so much time thinking so highly of you. You're an ass!"

-The two of you fall into silence for a couple of beats, before you continue, "and for the record, I ask stupid questions because the girl who sits beside me is mute - she writes them down, and I read them. And she's pretty damn smart, too "

-After that, you're quick to pack up your things and leave, whisking past Viktor in a flurry of frustration and hurt.

-His guilt returns to him. Had he really been so presumptuous? True, in the past, you'd never done anything to hurt him - never spoken out against him, or made any accusations.

-But unlike his earlier guilt, the feeling doesn't dissipate this time. He was wrong about you, and he knows it. He just needs to find a way to make it up to you.

#viktor x reader #arcane x reader #viktor arcane x reader #viktor headcanons #arcane reader insert #probably might make a part 2 #eventually

[shut-up-rabert]

I posted 263 times in 2022

That's 263 more posts than 2021!

139 posts created (53%)

124 posts reblogged (47%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@pulihora

@suvarnarekha

@navaratna

@ramayantika

@shanti-ashant-hai

I tagged 256 of my posts in 2022

Only 3% of my posts had no tags

#desiblr - 173 posts

#hindublr - 21 posts

#hinduphobia - 10 posts

#hinduism - 8 posts

#kashmir - 7 posts

#jammu and kashmir - 6 posts

#kashmiri hindus - 5 posts

#kashmir genocide - 5 posts

#kanhaiya lal - 5 posts

#pakistan - 5 posts

Longest Tag: 123 characters

#won’t even be surprised if kashmir genocide is represented as “a dark time when young kashmiri girls couldn’t go to school”

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Movie concept: students from pan India living together in a hostel but instead we get less represented states like 7 sisters(+sikkim), Odisha, Karnataka, MP, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Goa in lead along with correct representation of states like Haryana, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Kerela, Andhra, Bihar, J&K&Ladakh in the background

46 notes - Posted November 20, 2022

#4

Just read a comic where UK and Canada were referred to as North Punjab and West Punjab and I haven’t been okay since

49 notes - Posted September 21, 2022

#3

Why isn’t mass media more neutral?

Disclaimer: I’m not taking any sides here, nor am I provoking any of you to say it, but this has been on my mind quite a bit and I feel like saying it now: Honestly saying, I’ve always felt like the media favours Palestine over Israel way to much even tho media is supposed to be neutral.

Essays in exams, front pages of newspaper, stars on social media always talk about Palestine but seem to be painting a rather black and white “Palestine good Israel bad” picture but never seem to be willing to dwell deeper into the topic, and when they they go somewhat below the surface it’s always from Palestine’s perispective only, nothing explaining Israel’s side of story as passionately even if at all. Even in India vs Pakistan wars, you’ll find motives and aggressions from both sides easily enough if you looked.

“Stars” like Bela Hadid raise slogans demanding Israel’s dissolve under the ruse of Palestine’s independence and no one bats an eye. The founder of Human rights watch left the organisation saying that it was being biased towards Palestine and has forgotten its original purpose. A lot of funding of these pro palestine news channels comes from Pro Islamic nations organisations, most of the said countries being Palestine supporters.

Palestine is suffering, yes, but it’s not just Israel that’s making it suffer. Hamas has a major role to play too. It kills its own civilians more than Israel does. Palestine has seen some serious bloodshed since Hamas came into power but no one seems to focus on that. There’s little to no discussion about how Palestine is bleeding internally due to hamas, but only the stuff that can be used against Israel.

You’ll hear about how Israel “attacked” Gaza and most of the times it turns out to be some retaliation. We always hear about civilian deaths whose names are never revealed but no one ever wonders what civilians were doing around militant bases. We talk about how palestinians are being thrown out of Israel to show them as big aggressors and it turns out that the land was originally Israel’s territory to begin with.

I’m not being pro-Israel here, And I very well admit that it can have its fair share of violations, such as killing of the one Al-Jazeera reporter , accident or not (look, I fucking hate that platform but that doesn’t mean I condone killing of someone who didn’t do anything) but this is something that has always made me curious. It can’t be as simple as “Israel evil”, can it?

53 notes - Posted August 29, 2022

#2

Hassi to ye sochkar aati h ki mera hone waala abhi kisi aur ke saath jeeney-marne ki kasme kha rha hoga

62 notes - Posted August 5, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

What you see:

What Desi kids see:

156 notes - Posted November 11, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #The tags casually reminding me that this was supposed to be a political blog :’)

[demonboyhalo]

i open the tubbo space on twitter. velvet is a speaker, and he is radicalizing tuberculosis underscore with based leftists takes. i close the tubbo space on twitter.

#mcyt #tubbo #red velvet #velvetiscake #encounter: demon #i love velvet with my entire heart and am also a leftist but PLZ fight for class consciousness at a better time 💀 #i have just turned in an essay. a discussion post. and an EXAM in the span of an hour. sir. sir Please. #its actually a really interesting topic i just. yknow. died and had my heart restarted and for some reason thought the tubbo space titled #'chil late night chats with music' would be (inexplicably) ....chill #yknow what this is actually for the best. it's midnight and i have class tmrw gn yall 😪 #((this is code for i am going to write technoblade hcs))

[stxrvel]

bittersweet feelings (1)

summary: you have to deal with the harsh truth after Bucky arrives from one of his missions.

pairing: bucky barnes x avenger!reader

warnings: nothing i think, just you know English is not my native language so sorry for any mistakes!

words: +2.5k

note: hi! I've been feeling physically unwell since I last posted and have been in bed, but today I was finally able to get a moment of calm and lucidity, so, enjoy and hope you like it!

also, i've been working on a series that I want to publish soon, but I don't know why I always find it difficult to do all that planning. anyway, I really hope I can bring it to you soon! thank u for all the support!

part 2

part 3

Admiring Bucky Barnes from afar has become too much of a challenge in recent days. Before, you were wrapped up in papers, essays, final exams and projects due, locking yourself in your room at a time or living in your university library, simply too busy to wander your eyes over the sprawling figure of Bucky strolling around the Complex. Ironically, he always spent more time there when you weren't there.

But now, completely free of academic responsibilities and banned from going on missions at Fury's whim, you had a lot more time to wander the halls of the Complex, especially in the gym where the man with the metal arm used to spend most of his time. Many times (if not all the time) you felt like a lousy attempt of a stalker, and you was almost 100% sure that he realised what you were doing but preferred not to say anything so as not to embarrass you. And that was much more embarrassing.

But did that stop you? Absolutely not.

He'd cut his hair a few days ago, and although you loved the way his hair looked on his shoulders and the way it blew in the wind every time he walked, as if he were a model on a bloody photo shoot, you shamelessly admitted that you had quickly grown to love his new style. Because, honestly, did something look bad on Bucky?

Your hands moved indiscreetly across the table, crumpling the paper between your fingers that you had previously been reading, as you watched the aforementioned man's shoulders shake after hearing Sam Wilson say something about Scott's card game. You moved your eyes scanning his entire face, trying to memorise the expression on his face as he smiled so openly, as he almost never did in public.

“Am I interrupting your crazy stalker moment?”

Tony's voice startled you, and you turned your head so sharply to look at something other than Bucky that a slight twinge of pain made its way from the back of your neck to your right shoulder. You grimaced and watched the millionaire sit down next to you on one of the black chairs that were spread out in the first floor cafeteria. Ahead of you, a large glass door separated you from one of the side exits of the Complex, where Bucky and Sam had stopped to talk and, surely at first, discuss the mission Bucky had just returned from.

“I'm not a crazy stalker,” you told him dismissively, but your nerves were eating you up inside. Even though you knew you weren't entirely discreet, you still weren't ready for someone to tell you that you were too obvious for him not to know anymore.

“Yeah, sure, whatever you say,” Tony commented sarcastically and you felt a quick pang of fear inside your chest, “I was just coming to tell you that Fury made the decision to send you to Milan with Steve the other week.”

Your gaze finally shifted away from Bucky's figure, closer and closer to where you stood, to Tony and you frowned at him in extreme confusion.

“What? So soon?”

“Isn't that what you wanted? To go back to the camp?”

“Well, yes, but I thought his tantrum was going to last much longer.”

Tony let out a laugh and proceeded to open the packet of peanuts in his pocket, “If he hears you say that, consider yourself fired, kiddo.”

“Then it's a relief that no one heard me say it,” you smiled innocently at Tony, who only gave you a tight-mouthed smile in return.

“It's just a recon mission. Steve thinks there's an empty HYDRA base you can investigate, and you're pretty nimble with that non-digitized document review stuff.”

“You mean I'm good at reading physical documents?”

“You know what I mean, eagle eyes. There's nothing you're missing.”

“Ow,” you croon with a smile, “Thanks for the compliment, Stark.”

“You're welcome. Now, don't go freaking out. Barnes is walking this way.”

He then stood up and planted himself in front of you, as your heart did a wild flip and you felt him pause for a second, before resuming his march at an unnatural pace. You didn't even know if it was possible for a heart to beat that fast. You felt sweat beading on your hands and started to breathe through your mouth as you felt the nervousness take over your whole body.

“What?” you exclaimed, staring at him, sitting uncomfortably in the chair across the table they had shared.

“I told you not to freak out, you're only going to make it worse.”

You narrowed your eyes at him with a frown. Next, you took about three deep breaths to try and calm your frantic heartbeat, before Sam's figure - and consequently Bucky's - appeared in your field of view to the side of Stark's body. The man gave you a look with an arched eyebrow, as if to ask you to behave yourself, which was an exaggeration.

That was an exaggeration. You spent a lot of time with Bucky! Even when you two were alone you didn't feel as nervous as you did at moments like this.

When your gazes met, you could barely return the smile he gave you before you turned your eyes to Sam, who had just spoken but you hadn't gotten to hear everything he'd said because your head was in the clouds.

“...and that you're going back to the camp with Steve. How long since you've been out? Almost four months? You must be anxious.”

You just nodded, looking at him through tight lips.

Tony rubbed his eyes in an exasperated gesture.

“I could ask Fury to let me tag along,” Bucky's voice reached your ears like a forbidden delicacy. It had been several days since you'd last heard it and it was like a gift from the gods, “Lest he bore you with his awkward silences.”

“We don't have awkward silences,” you grumbled quickly, not knowing exactly why you were getting defensive. Tony raised his eyebrows at you and you shrugged in place, “I mean, we talk about a lot of things.”

“Oh yeah?” Bucky's jocular tone didn't do much for your nerves and sanity, “Name a topic you've been talking about for more than three minutes.”

You pursed your lips and stared at his perfect face, uninjured by the mission, as you conjured up memories of your conversations with Steve. Your almost non-existent conversations.

Your cheeks flushed as you realised he was right, but you weren't going to let him win you over this time.

“One time, we talked all night about a movie.”

“If you're going to say you talked about Lord of the Rings, that doesn't count,” Sam spoke with a half smile on his face.

“Why not?” you grumbled quickly, watching the grimace in his face.

“He talks to everyone about those movies. It doesn't even feel like a conversation anymore, it's like a monologue.”

“Careful, Sam,” Tony spoke up after several seconds, “She likes those movies too.”

“Hey! They're good movies.”

“Good for a nap,” Sam let out a laugh.

You watched Bucky pursed his lips and looked down at the floor, holding back a chuckle.

“They're entertaining,” you muttered with a frown.

Sam pointed at you, his eyebrows arched and his corners raised in a playful grin.

“Well, that's it,” Bucky interrupted whatever Sam was going to say, “You know what they say, to each his own.”

“I'm with Barnes on this one,” Tony spoke up, resting one of his hands on Barnes' shoulder and giving it a little squeeze. Bucky watched his hand and then the millionaire's face with an arched eyebrow, but Tony quickly turned his attention away from Bucky to Sam, “Speaking of Steve, he asked me to tell you to look for him in the main room. He said something about a pending conversation.”

Tony put his arm around Sam's shoulders, leaning part of his body to lead him to walk with him out of the cafeteria. They promptly struck up a conversation on their way out of the cafeteria, and you felt your hands shake once you realized you were alone with Bucky after a couple of weeks of not being able to talk properly with him.

You turned your head away from where the two people who had accompanied you a few seconds before were leaving, hearing the creak of a chair being dragged in front of you. You watched Bucky move his body into a sitting position, settling his forearms on the table and his eyes fixed on yours. Settling into the chair, you gave him a tight-lipped, tense smile. Act normal.

“So the boss finally gave in,” the black-haired man said, his lips curling as he interlocked his hands.

You nodded your head slightly, “It was quicker than I thought. I thought he'd never let me back in the field.”

“And can you blame him? You sure scared the soul out of his body,” Bucky arched his eyebrows, and the mere memory of what happened gave you a feeling of irritability.

You grimaced, “Oh, it wasn't a big deal.”

“It wasn't a big deal? Honey, you threw yourself at those people all by yourself.”

You stared at him for a few seconds, like you did every time he called you names when you were alone. He never did it in public, and it was something you didn't try to think about very often.

“So what? This was all unnecessarily dramatic,” you tried to say in the most neutral tone of voice possible as you crossed your legs under the table.

“There were twenty men,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“Do you think me incapable, Barnes?” you arched an eyebrow, speaking with courage.

“No, of course not,” he quickly replied, his gaze softening, “But you disobeyed a direct order from Natasha and put your life at risk. You know how Fury is with you, he cares too much about you.”

You rolled your eyes, letting your back fall against the back of the chair, “But I'm not made of porcelain. I'm as good as Nat, she trained me herself!”

“But Fury didn't see her grow up.”

Well, he had a point and rightly so. You had grown up with the boss, who had practically adopted you, which was one of the reasons he used to be overprotective or refuse you to do some things because he thought it was for the best. And that fact had also helped you form fraternal bonds with all the Avengers until you were old enough and capable enough to be a part of them.

Well, you saw everyone as a nice family except Bucky. And that was a big problem.

You watched him through your eyelashes with an almost imperceptible pout.

Bucky gave you a beautiful smile, the kind that could light up an entire city, “Honey, I understand that it bothers you, but the position you put Fury in at the time, or everyone for that matter, made it hard for him not to make the decision he did. Maybe he overstepped, I'm not denying that, but he was scared.”

“There were other ways...” you started to renege again.

“And would you really have listened to him?” he inquired without wiping away his smile. It amazed you how lenient he could be with you, when with the rest of the world he was a hermit and sulky most of the time.

You sighed. Yep, you could be pretty stubborn when you put your mind to it.

“Well, the important thing is that he finally realised his mistake,” you blurted out with an amused grin. Bucky frowned and pointed the index finger of his metal arm at you.

“I think you missed the point of our little debate.”

“No, no... I understand, Bucky, I do. But Fury have to trust my skills a little more. I could against all of them! It was a spectacle.”

“But you're not always going to come out on top, sweetheart. At some point someone can catch you off guard, and that's what Fury's afraid of.”

“Well, it'll have to happen at some point. Unfortunately, I'm not invincible,” you agreed and admitted what he had said, because he was certainly right, with a tight-lipped smile.

You thought Bucky would be amused, or at least agree with you, but he merely bowed his head, frowned and tensed noticeably. You noticed that his expression suddenly hardened, and it frightened you that you had said something that would have angered him.

“What?” you asked fearfully.

He looked up from the table to look at you again, waking up. He gave you a smile, but a stiffer, harder and committed one. Your chest tightened, “It's not.... It's nothing. Just try to be careful next time, more cautious if necessary. You know, strategist.”

“Yeah, I know, I don't risk it if I don't think it's necessary.”

“That's my girl.”

You froze for a few seconds, just watching him, before your face heated up into an all too violent blush. He'd never said anything like that to you before... but you certainly didn't balk at the possibility that he might again.

“Thank you, Bucky,” you smiled shyly at him.

The sound of the cafeteria doors swinging open distracted the man in front of you, but you kept staring at his profile, gawking and surely with heart-shaped eyes. How was it possible that you liked him so much? Even though it had been a while since you last spoke, it seemed that your feelings for him had only grown three times his size.

Then, you heard it:

“Bucky!”

A woman's voice in the distance.

Confused, you turned your gaze in the direction of the voice, which came from the same place Bucky had been watching for several seconds. She was the one who had opened the doors so frantically, then. You frowned at her from a distance, unable to recognise her figure or features; it wasn't usually easy for you to forget the faces of people you knew, and you certainly didn't know this woman.

However, when you turned to ask Bucky, the half-smile on his face gave you the answer without words. Your chest tightened and you clenched your hands so as not to show the abrupt change of mood you had just gone through when he turned his face and fixed his eyes on yours. All without erasing that smile.

That smile he had on his face for her.

“I guess you'll have to go with Steve to schedule everything about the mission.”

You nodded, uncomfortably, not looking away.

“Fine. In the meantime, I'll go on my date,” he crooned, and the burning you felt intensified so much that it felt like you couldn't pass saliva without straining. But you smiled at him, your lips curving awkwardly and your face reluctant to show a feeling you didn't experience.

“Wow, I thought I'd never hear you say something like that.”

“Life is full of surprises, honey,” he said smiling as he stood up, “Do you want me to walk you to the living room?”

“No, don't worry. I'll be there in a minute,” you replied quickly. It was the first time since you had met him that you wanted him to leave you alone for once.

“All right. Good luck with the old man.”

“Thanks. Good luck with your- your- your date.”

You hated the way your voice betrayed you, but Bucky didn't seem to pay too much attention to it as he waved goodbye to you and started walking in the direction of the woman waiting for him outside the cafeteria doors. You felt your chest tighten as you sighed deeply and a couple of tears welled up in your eyes.

Damn it, at what point had all that happened?

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #bucky x y/n #bucky x you #bucky fic #bucky fluff #bucky fanfic #bucky imagine #winter solider #james buchanan barnes #seb stan #sebastian stan #marvel #mcu #avengers #the avengers #tony stark #sam wilson

[wisteria-lodge]

lion primary (bird model) + slightly burnt lion secondary

Hi there! I’m a fan of your sorting posts, and of your kind and insightful way of supporting people in finding out more about themselves. So naturally I’d be very interested in your take about my own sorting, if you’re game! :)

I won’t talk much about my Secondary, because now that I’m starting to unburn my Lion seems very clear to me, even when my explosion-prone Badger model still tries to get in the way of that clarity sometimes. The more interesting riddle is my Primary. So far I’m operating under the working theory that I am a Lion with a very strong Bird model - or is it the other way ‘round?

The supposed dichotomy between “thinking” and “feeling” in many of the more binary personality models has always bugged me, so it’s no wonder this is the area where whenever I feel like I’ve decided on who I am (for now) a new question mark pops up (so much fun!).

If ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ doesn’t work for you as terminology, it might help to think of Lion as leading with subconscious reasoning, and Bird as leading with conscious reasoning.

Instead of trying to formulate a cohesive text, which would have gotten even longer, I’m putting together an associative list of thoughts and stories that kept turning up while I was trying to figure out my Primary.

A very Lion primary way to solve a problem, not gonna lie ;)

- I think I got my Bird model from my father, who made quite an effort to teach me to look at things from all angles. As a child, whenever I got in a fight with this friend I had, he would sit me down and ask me to put myself in my friend’s shoes. It was hard, because a lot of the time my friend was being unfair to me and I actually could have used some support, someone to tell me that it was not okay to treat me this way. But I’m still immeasurably grateful for my father’s lessons, through which I’ve learned to understand peoples’ motivations and gained an understanding for the complexities of every conflict. He also taught me to doubt, to look closer, to not just believe the first thing I see, or want to see. To this day I still consider my ability to pin down the relevant factors of a situation before I make judgments one of my strengths.

That definitely sounds like a very strong, beloved Bird model.

- Whenever I had to write an essay at school or uni, I first had to come up with some aspect about the subject that I really cared about, even could be passionate about. (I am passionate about many things, so it was usually possible to find some connection to that.) Then I would use the essay to discuss this aspect in great detail, ending with a polemic flourish. I had the time of my life doing that; meanwhile the text would structure itself magically in relation to the issue I had chosen to focus on. Whenever I tried to write without such a focus, I’d get bored, stressed and the text would be of a much lower quality.

- Something similar happened in oral exams at uni: Only when I got the opportunity to bring a discussion paper (a few pointed statements regarding the exam topic) which I could then debate, I was able to recollect all the important details I needed for that. If I just had to report on the topic or answer questions, I often got confused, to the point of drawing a complete blank.

Linking things to emotion and passion - thinking with emotion and passion, basically - is a Lion primary thing. Especially if doing that makes you feel safe & comfortable & effective & happy.

- Even as a teenager I was very interested in philosophy, ethics and moral decision making.

I love teaching philosophy to teenagers. It’s the perfect time for it, they are so into it, and if it were up to me I would absolutely make it a required class.

I picked up certain philosophical ideas and concepts that I liked and integrated them in my belief system (yes, I know how very Bird that sounds).

I had my mind blown by Genealogy of Morals in high school, and I still won’t shut about Eichmann in Jerusalem. But what was so staggering to me in high school was… here are these ways of thinking that are possible and allowed. The fact that here they are in words in front of me made me a great deal more expansive.

Now that I think about it — I don’t remember adjusting my beliefs as in any way traumatic back then. The shift from a belief in the Christian God to Mother Goddess to my very own brand of agnostic paganism was smooth, natural.

Now that I think about it… I would describe myself as a mythic relativist (which is a term I just made up.) Systems of belief are metaphors, and they’re metaphors trying to describe and say something large and beautiful about what it means to be human, and what it means to live a good life. And since we are all human, they are all attempting to describe the same central, indescribable thing in different ways.

I feel this very deeply, but it took me a long while to be able to articulate it.

I constantly reevaluate, and I adapt.

You stop reevaluating and adapting, might as well be dead.

Still, there are some basics I’ve kept with me that just make too much sense to me to give up, and some that perhaps I keep because I just really like them and I’m kind of attached to them.

… somebody’s thinking with Pathos :)

- I’m a constructivist at heart, so that makes it much easier to tweak the content of my beliefs while staying true to the principle that we (socially) construct our reality, and (my take on this): that I choose what kind of world I want to live in, and according to that I make choices which are the most likely to create that world.

- At uni I attended a seminar about the development of moral judgment and action. What I remember most clearly about it is how much it bugged me that the other students didn’t seem to understand that morality always depends on the perspective. Even though I had definite moral convictions that I was ready to fight for, at the same time it seemed obvious to me that theoretically there could be a justification for every kind of moral guideline; it depended on your principles and the world you wanted to live in.

A human after my own heart.

I wanted to understand these different perspectives, not talk about empty categories like “right and wrong” or “good and evil” that meant nothing to me. I still feel that way.

Absolutely. I don’t use alignments when I DM Dungeons & Dragons. I mean, I can list evil *things* but that’s not the same thing as defining *being evil.* I want to know WHY these people did these evil things.

It just seems so impractical and complicated to base a conversation on those broad categories that don’t have any definition people can agree on instead of referring either to defined principles (in order to explain what good/ bad is *for you*) or consequences of certain actions, and whether you want them/ accept them/ don’t want them.

Oh that’s a fun discussion. Asking a highschooler to define “evil.”

(and then they have to figure out what moral systems Jigsaw, Pinhead, the Joker, and Bane all subscribe to.)

- Between “the Revolutionary” and “the Grail Knight”, I would love to be the former, but I’m clearly the latter. I’m someone who questions, not someone who knows.

Take my archetypes with a grain of salt, they are supposed to describe characters. (Who are different from people - but still useful, because they are attempts to describe us.) I actually want to write more about the differences I see between the way fictional secondaries are written and the way real-life secondaries work.

And just “knowing”... is dangerous. That’s how Exploded Lions happen. 

There are a lot of causes I find worthy to fight for, but I haven’t committed to any one, which so far I’ve attributed to my Burned Secondary (How do I do things?).

Sounds about right.

If I’m honest, though, it feels a bit strange to really, really fight for anything. I’d rather contribute to the cause by keeping an eye on whether we stay aligned to our values on every level of the fight, not by storming sightlessly in front of some army. (I got polemic again, didn’t I? ;))

So after all this Bird talk, why do I think that I’m a Lion?

… that was the Bird segment?

- I trust my intuition. It has never steered me wrong, with one exception: My Primary burned for a time when I first understood the concept of privilege and internalized bias, which was coincidentally at a time when I also went through a lot of changes in my personal life. Like many people unaware of their own privilege, I had thought of myself as “one of the good ones”. I learned that even with the best intentions I could cause great harm without even noticing it. This then also happened to me in a relationship, when I was already confused, hurt and more than a bit burned. It seemed like I couldn’t trust my intuition anymore, but I also couldn’t figure out intellectually what to believe, because I felt mentally overwhelmed by all those new concepts, all of which put my previous convictions into question. Which Primary burned then?

Been there, done that, it’s brutal. It sounds to me like a Lion dramatically changing direction - that’s what I mean when I say that it *hurts* when a Lion changes their mind. Birds see their past selves that thought wrong as almost different people. “I wasn’t aware of my privilege then, now I am, and can take steps doing forward.” But if you’re a lion it’s like… I *should* have been aware, and the fact that I wasn’t says something terrible about my moral/emotional calibration, and THAT has to be put right.

- I felt like everything I had learned about the world and myself didn’t count anymore. My concepts and my strategies didn’t serve me anymore. So I started to rebuild everything from scratch, this time with less pride and more practicality.

Yeah. That’s some Lion recalibration. With a Bird Model, to help.

- Anyway, I trust my intuition. It contains my experiences, instinct and all my accumulated unconscious observations of the situation, and it’s very reliable. Usually I use it as an important source of information which I try to back up with data/ understanding, but when push came to shove and the apparent facts would contradict what my intuition told me, I would be unable to set my gut feeling aside. I wouldn’t follow it blindly, of course. But I would never just go against it either. If the voices of my unconscious and conscious mind don’t align, I keep poking at the issue until they do. If I absolutely cannot come to a satisfying conclusion, I go with my gut. Since I know it usually knows what it’s doing, I’ll find out the reasons for my feelings later. (Weird, says my inner bird who is busy compiling these examples.)

I’LL FIND THE REASON FOR MY FEELINGS LATER. What a perfect way of articulating what is perhaps the central experience of being a Lion primary.

- Probably I’m just both, you know. Some interesting lion/bird-chimaera. I like it.

I read you as a pretty clear Lion Primary, Bird primary model. But as always, the decision is very personal.

- I have a weird way of processing information: I read/ hear it, work to understand it, work to connect it to existing knowledge in my mind, then my beliefs, my existing knowledge and my feelings about it all wind around each other, grow into each other, some dissolve together, becoming a swamp which then nourishes the plants of new ideas and connections that grow from it.

You grok it. And that’s not weird.

I often can’t remember where certain knowledge came from. I can’t take it out of a memory shelf and tell you about it. I usually remember that I’ve read a certain book and whether I liked it / it influenced me, but I won’t exactly remember what was in it, even if it was important to me. Because all that information is already processed/ digested/ transformed into something new. It’s much easier to access my memory swamp intuitively than consciously.

and you seriously had like… any doubt that you were a Lion.

In intellectual discussions I tend to get stuck because I just can’t remember enough of the details (for my satisfaction), just my conclusions about the topic and how I feel about it.

I’m inclined to think that not accessing the details is either a secondary thing, or an entirely unrelated processing thing.

What do you make of all this? I’m very curious!

:)

[On an unrelated note, I’d like to specify the compliment I made at the beginning of this post. I’m really impressed with your ability to pick up on what people need, not just what they say they want. As a counselor this is a skill I try to hone, so I know how difficult it is to not get too distracted by the story people tell and miss the more subtle cues. You have a powerful combination of perceptiveness, insight and so much kindness, which you use to effectively support people who have questions, are in distress or confused. You don’t generalize. You don’t judge. You see the people who talk to you.  I love that you’re a teacher, because I can see you’re using the influence that gives you in a way that contributes to making the world a better place. Fellow Idealist, I’d like to give you a High Five for that, if I may. :)))]

I’m not sure I’ve ever been given a better compliment. Thank you.

#submission #sortinghatchats #lion primary #lionpri #bird primary vs lion primary #philosophy stuff

[annapogorilayas]

LoD season 4 rewatch Thoughts

there is surprisingly little complaining about the trajectory of the writing in this one lmao. this season was fun! the kate vs steve stuff has its own section at the end

jason watkins is such an underrated actor and it's a shame we only got him for one episode :(

everything about kate vs buckells is hilarious in light of recent events

i don't think it's ever made clear why tim tried to get hana to visit his flat/why he went to her flat to have sex with her? i think that's the only red herring this season that didn't quite make sense

kate worked with buckells and hilton at the same time back in S1, and yet she isn't worried at all about hilton recognising her when he walks into the office in 4x02... even though they had a whole conversation in 1x01 where he addresses her by name! there's no way he doesn't remember the woman who threw a fire extinguisher through a DCI's door?

again, the whole "buckells is a blundering fool" angle had not quite taken off yet. he's a bit flustered when ted confronts him in the alley, and he's clearly ~one of the lads~ but other than that there's nothing to suggest he's an idiot.

buckells clearly didn't get the memo about michael farmer being balaclava man. i'm not against show writers making it up as they go along (this essay makes a good case for not planning too far ahead), and i do think he was the one who left roz the "someone is watching you" note, but if hilton appointed him SIO of trapdoor to keep the investigation on michael farmer he doesn't do the best job - he keeps pointing out evidence that supports michael farmer's innocence!

steve and kate take a backseat in 4x04 and yet it's my favourite post-S3 episode! the scene where roz turns the interview on ted is one of my favourite interview scenes and definitely my favourite post-S3.

the nerve of ted and kate to drag buckells into his office for "blowing kate's undercover" when she's clearly just... bad at keeping her cover

i think the roz-tim murder plotline could've been more interesting if we hadn't seen their fight. like maybe if we'd just seen roz walking into tim's flat? then again i could be biased because i thought the ending to 4x01 was ridiculous

this season had its silly moments, and it was the start of the H storyline which i think was the downfall of the show, but overall it holds up better than i remember? almost all of the red herrings actually go somewhere/make sense in hindsight (except for the tim/hana thing). this was also the last season before the dialogue, particularly ted's, slid into self-parody. that being said, i think jamie's character could've been better developed.

the kate vs steve subplot

kate and steve spend the first two and a half episodes bickering. steve seems to have a problem with her promotion (why tho?), and she makes a jab at him about lindsay (fair enough, but it sort of came out of nowhere). it goes as far as steve accusing kate of colluding in the framing of michael farmer! it seems like it's heading somewhere, when i first watched i thought it would culminate in a massive come-to-jesus fight... and then kate brings him a lamb madras and suddenly they're fine, with no acknowledgement of why they were fighting or what the problem was?

i'm not sure if J*d wanted us to make a link between the sexism subplot and the bickering; did he want us to think that kate thinks steve is sexist? or that steve actually is sexist and can't handle his female partner being of equal rank to him, even though in the previous three seasons steve never pulls rank on kate and they treat each other like equals? in fact, if you watched S1-3 without knowing what ranks they are you probably wouldn't know that steve was kate's superior. and when he finds out she passed her inspector's exam, he is genuinely happy for her?

the scene where ted and steve meet in the pub to discuss his promotion (an opportunity he denied kate) reminded me of S1, where tony gates decides whether kate is fit to be on his team based on how well she fits in at a drink with the lads. (i don't think ted was wrong to not want to have a drink with kate - he does have a point about what people might think - but it was a dick move to then go with steve)

who deserved the promotion? on one hand, steve had much more experience as a sergeant than kate, who had probably only been sergeant for ~1 year; that's a perfectly legit reason to pick steve. i also don't think that identifying the caddy should make kate a slam dunk - solving one case doesn't necessarily make someone better leadership material. however, steve has done something to earn a bollocking off ted about once a season at this point (going rogue in S1, the nurse in S2, lindsay in S3) while as far as ted knows, kate is always on her best behaviour (he doesn't know about rich akers).

this line from the script made me chuckle. you and me both, steve.

#line of duty #kate fleming #steve arnott #ted hastings #lod critique

[onyourzeus]

it just is | pjh

ykcyj ➝ arskyh

title: it just is pairing: park jaehyung (jae of day6) & you genre: angst with a happy ending words: 4.2k

author’s note: this took a few days to write because i wanted to approach it with sensitivity, and some realism from personal experiences. as i get to know jae as an artist, a day6 member, and a person even more, i feel so grateful for his music and his vulnerability that oftentimes is met with differing opinions from other people. i wanted to express that in this fic, and i hope i did the genre justice. 

content warning: discussions of online hate, criticism, feelings of worthlessness, coping through them

any requests? check my pinned post if i’m accepting any at the moment, thanks!

You don’t get it— or maybe you do. You’ve been given criticism before; on a powerpoint presentation, college-level essays, exams with written solutions needed, even for work performances. It has its benefits, having other qualified people observe you through their own lenses. It makes you notice the errors in your answers, mispronunciations, and flaws in your work ethic you wouldn’t have been able to catch if you were tasked to evaluate yourself. 

There’s a difference however, in the ways that you’ve experienced being given criticism and the way Jae has. 

He gets criticized. Instead of firm and blunt observations that he needs to take into consideration, and adjust when necessary, he isn’t given a room for improvement. He just receives these words with a punch to the gut, a slap on his face, and it stings. A whole damn lot. 

You think about the unfair times you were given criticism for work or a task that you originally thought was executed decently enough, at least for your standards. But that’s the point of being handed blunt feedback, is to let you realize that you can reach higher than this, go beyond what you previously had shown to others or even to yourself. 

Criticism given to you over the years had always spared space for you to reflect, and grow with it. It was always supposed to be a weapon for you to take into your own hands, and wield it yourself. It was never meant to attack you full force, and leave you bleeding with no help in sight. 

So maybe you do get it, but also you never really will when it comes to Jae. 

Either way, you’d be lying if you said you wouldn’t pick up the phone at a time when everyone in the city should be fast, fast asleep. When people have already drifted off into a deep slumber that enables them to dream beautiful things. 

You’d be lying to yourself if you said you wouldn’t ride your bicycle so late at night which you absolutely abhor. The cold air hitting your face as you speed up against its current is rarely a welcomed feeling, but that was the least of your concerns as you turned the corner to his apartment. 

When it comes to Jae, your mind hums a low beep, static noise to blaring fire alarms and resounding thoughts in an instant. 

You don't think much of it, however. He's just another friend, one who is in need. 

You never truly believed he could be alright by himself, but you wanted to give him a chance. Now, hearing his voice crack through your phone followed by the connection breaking apart, you struggle to forgive yourself for letting him be. Even for just a little bit. 

There wasn’t a need to knock, but you’re worried Jae may have forgotten he even called you in hesitation in the first place. In order to avoid spooking him, you make your presence known more clearly in the darkness. 

“Jae, it’s me. I’m coming into your room.” 

The door squeaks lightly, but the view isn’t any different. It remains dark, and lifeless in here. Stepping inside, the air just got a little bit heavier, and Jae’s breathing sounds more difficult that you began feeling aware of your own heart rate speeding up.

Retracing your steps from the multiples times you’ve been here, you get to the small lamp he barely uses on his desk. You turn it on the lowest brightness setting, giving the room a bit more dimension. It gives you a better view of Jae laying down on his bed, eyes staring into the ceiling. His hands support the weight of his head, lifting it up from the sheets. 

He sniffles for a split second, and your heart thuds like a mic stand dropping on the floor at an empty stadium. 

“Hey,” you approach him, careful not to be too loud with your movements. 

The mattress dips from the weight of your body, and Jae slightly shuffles to the side to give you room. The side of your lips twitch in response as you make yourself comfortable laying down next to him.

For the next few minutes, no one talked. 

Not even a hello back from him, and that’s new. 

It’s… concerning, to say the least. Even in his most stressful days, you’d stop by his place knowing it’d annoy him but the sight of you and the smell of homemade spam musubi never fails to brighten up his mood. 

He doesn’t forget to tell you that, and it makes you feel needed. 

Taking in a deep breath, you look at him in the corner of your eye. He’s not asleep, although his eyes flutter back and forth from keeping it trained to the ceiling and drooping it ever so slightly. You squint further, noticing dried streaks of tears blurring onto his skin. 

Your voice shakes. "Tell me where it hurts, Jae.”

You will yourself to resist your own choked out sobs. You’re not even sure what the issue was today. It’s always different, as if they have a giant wheel reserved just for him that someone gets to spin for their own pleasure. 

Sometimes it lands on the same, debunked misunderstanding. Other times, you’ve become shell-shocked at how quick they fill in the blanks with made-up accusations for the sole purpose of hurting him even more.

None of it makes sense, and what angers you the most is the fact that Jae made you promise not to interfere. You hate that he used that word with you, promise me, please? because both of you know the importance behind them, especially when said between the two of you.

Did he change his mind tonight? Did it suddenly become too much to bear that breaking the very promise he asked of you was his last resort for help? 

“Tell me,” you repeat with more determination now than overwhelmed nerves. 

“You wouldn’t understand,” Jae answers, cold and empty. 

Any other day that you pester him with a makeshift therapy session, you’d take that as a challenge. But tonight, his words linger in the air and you can’t shake off the goosebumps on your skin. 

Maybe he’s right; at this point, shouldn’t you be more irritated than concerned? If he’s not willing to at least describe how inflicting the pain must be with every word online stabbed into him, why do you bother cleaning up the mess? 

“How do you know that?” 

“Because you’re not me. They say those things because it’s me. I’m the problem.”

“Jae—" 

You have the script memorized, the tirade of counterpoints to every blame shifted upon himself, but tonight you stop the words spilling from your mouth. 

You turn your body towards him, hands folded underneath your cheek, a lone tear falling from your right eye.

“Do you believe them?” You ask, and the pause in Jae’s staring doesn’t go unnoticed. 

He finally looks at you directly, ever since laying down beside him on his bed. With his body still laying flat, he turns his head to face you, his lips pressed together roughly. 

You elicit a tsk sound, ignoring the amount of time that has passed since your question. Your fingers meet the cracked skin on his lips as you gently pry them off of each other. It’s wet, and the bright ring of blood doesn’t surprise you. Instead, you wipe it away, pulling your hand back to smear it off your shirt. 

At some point, Jae mouths you a sorry but you don’t acknowledge him. Just as he’s obviously avoiding your own query.

“You’re not sleeping well,” it was more a fact than another question thrown at him. You reckon he’d be more cooperative with you if you say it how it is without him denying openly obvious things. 

“You’re only drinking dubious cups of coffee in a day with one meal in between, at the most.”

“I haven’t had an appetite recently.”

“But you’d cater to your growing caffeine addiction more so than bring your appetite back?” 

You don’t want to sound mean, but the stress lines forming on your forehead aren’t helping with your attempt to ease into the conversation more slowly. 

Jae sighs, and it’s one of his many signs that entails he wants to move on, talk about something that is less targeting his questionable behavior and more mundane shit that doesn’t fit into the mood of the room at all. 

“I didn’t think you’d come.”

Unexpectedly, you look back at him and answer with a hint of surprise, “You think so low of me.”

Jae laughs, and for a moment the room became brighter. Just a little bit. 

“Dude, do you know what time it is?” 

“Yes, do you?” It was a rhetorical question, but you’re sort of glad he’s not just staying silent anymore. “I don’t have class in the morning. Even if I did, I’d still be here. Just cursing you out more for making me bike in the cold.” 

“It’s because you don’t wear enough layers, dummy,” Jae points out, pointing at the lack of thick clothing covering your upper body. 

Your first instinct is to flick his forehead, nudge him by the shoulder, and call him a fool. How can you even think of yourself that way when you receive a call from someone whose voice was on the verge of tears? 

But you let it go for now, it’s not like he’ll believe you. It’s not like it matters. 

“I still haven’t gotten my From Friends merch, Jae,” you taunt him and he laughs once more. Slowly, you feel his mood change from dreary to a few degrees warmer as he sits up on the bed. 

You follow his lead, keeping your knees close, chin resting atop them. You’ll humor him for right now, it’s probably best that you don’t force his feelings out in the open as unwanted as they may be. He might not allow you in the future if you do.

“You can have one of mine. They gave me a ton from the first test batches,” he offers, leaning into you as if to convince you even more. 

“I’m seriously gonna hold you onto that. I’m not leaving your apartment tonight without a sweater or two,” you respond, darting your tongue out. Normally, Jae would reciprocate, and if he’s feeling even riskier, inch his face towards yours for shock value. 

Tonight, he’s definitely acting differently than normal. Especially with what he says right after is not something you’d expect from Jae. 

“Don’t leave tonight.” 

“I—” 

“Just for tonight?” Jae pleads, gaze fully on yours now. “I’m sorry for being selfish, but… I’m really, really glad you came. I wouldn’t know what… I’m just.. lost and I don’t know what else to think. I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t be. I’ll stay,” you reassure him, not entirely sure what this entails. 

This doesn’t feel like those nights you’d be here for sleepovers countless of times before. Those nights were planned, prepared, and eventually ends up with Jae sleeping on the couch and you hogging his bed, as per your request (yet he willingly lends you his blanket). 

Maybe two, three hours at best— this was the amount of time you believed you’d stay. You’ll listen to him vent, or just sink into the silence with him. Either way, you knew your presence can only soothe his pain temporarily, and he won’t say it out loud so you show yourself out the door voluntarily. 

He wouldn’t protest, just hug you goodbye and ask that you text him when you get home. 

You awkwardly stretch out your legs, placing your hands on your thighs. Swallowing a nervous breath, you let out, “So, um, do you want to talk about it, pal… or…” 

All of a sudden you can’t comprehend a single word you’re saying, while Jae just stares at you amusingly, his lips in a tight smile waiting to burst out in giggles. 

“I’m trying to comfort you here!” you whine, pouting at the way he’s making fun of you. “When you suddenly ask me to stay just like that, it makes it… weird!”

“I’m sorry,” Jae chuckles airily, carding a hand through his ruffled dark brown locks. “It’s fun for me when I’m not the butt of the joke,” he continues on, tone spiraling to that of seriousness again. 

“Is it something incredibly absurd again? What was it? What happened?” 

Jae shakes his head. “The words don’t matter.” 

You argue back, “Yes, they do. It’s what hurts the most.” 

You’ve seen the tweets, sometimes even the hashtags and you wish there was a way to mass report the whole app altogether, and throw it all away in the trash. But Jae reprimands you for overreacting, even if you catch him smiling at the suggestion. 

“Debatable,” he sighs outwardly, clasping his hands together and resting them in between the wall and the nape of his neck. “A lot of them are just empty words, sure, but the pain they inflict is something else entirely.” 

There’s something about the way Jae speaks about criticism thrown at him that makes you frustrated. 

It’s not a secret that there isn’t an ounce of defensive vein in you when you’re at the receiving end of people finding faults in your work, your character. You believe humans are overprotective of who they think they are, they’ve become, as much as they like to hide it. 

But with Jae, he sounds way too calm and composed for your liking. Ironically so, since he mentions pain. Perhaps this is his coping mechanism, take them as they are, unembellished and oftentimes hurtful. 

But it doesn’t have to be that way, because the more he speaks of them so nonchalantly, the less his eyes sparkle and show his true feelings. 

Your eyebrows crease even further, examining Jae’s facial features that remain still and unmoving, giving attention to anything else in his line of sight but you. 

“A lot of them are false accusations, you don’t have to accept what you think is false.”

“Are they, though? To an extent, I think it shows what others perceive of me on a daily basis.” 

“So you’re saying you do believe what they say about you?” 

“At this point,” Jae starts off, stretching his arms upwards before crossing them against his chest languidly. He looks tired. “What else do I believe in? You know when the negativity becomes so loud in your head, I can’t explain it, but the words that tell me to keep going get muddled and overpowered by everything that screams I’m not enough?” 

You’re not sure whether to respond. 

It doesn’t seem like anything you say can add value to his confession. You look down on your hands, not knowing what to do with them so you keep them intertwined. It’s sweaty, yet the buzzing of his air conditioner fills the air. For some reason, you can’t stop your heart from pounding heavily inside you either. 

In a way, it’s possibly because of the realization that all you can offer Jae is an ear to listen to. All you can offer him is your body warmth hopefully exuding onto him, having the presence of another person in his space just to ensure that someone is listening to what he has to say. When no one else seems to let him do so online.

But you want to be more, you have wanted to be so much more. You wish your hands can extend themselves to his, pull him closer so he can hear your heart beating desperately for him. If it had a morse code of its own, it would have confessed the love you feel for him all this time. 

It’s gone quiet again, so you slowly lift your head to sneak a peek at him. His eyes are closed, and you wonder if he’s fallen asleep with unwanted thoughts fogging his brain. 

Great, the guilt makes it way on your shoulders, weighing you down with it. He asks you to stay, you don’t believe his sincerity, and when he’s opened up so much in one night, you lack the response he needed to hear. 

“If it means anything, I don’t believe them. You have your share of dumb moments, sure, but who hasn’t? If they figured out how much stupid shit I have said or done in my lifetime, I don’t think I’ll have a career ever again,” you mutter, mostly to yourself now. 

Your mind wanders back to those times that you’ve made yourself look like a fool in front of Jae, and he still holds you against them to this day. 

“Remember when I said owls were the cutest animals ever? And then I saw a tumblr post of what their legs looked like underneath all of those feathers? I felt so betrayed,” you recall out loud, snickering at times the group chat you shared with Jae and your mutual friends consisted solely of those creepy baby owl pictures that have surfaced on the internet-- seemingly their only purpose was to torment you with the truth.

You had posted your intense distaste of the animal on your Twitter, rather proudly even. It was a good thing your account was private, but the shame you felt was too intense to keep it on your profile for too long so you ended up deleting it, anyway. 

But imagine if someone had somehow saved that tweet and called you out for being cruel towards unsuspecting birds? 

“Or the time I got so drunk, I basically roasted all of your solo songs, calling them the national anthem of a hopeless romantic who will never find the love they’ve been praying for?” This was before It Just Is with Seori, and it was a dare that Younghyun had given you as payback for making him act out a lovey-dovey manhwa scene with Dowoon. 

You think, if their supporters heard that out of context, you’re most likely toast. 

Understandably, these are all a stretch, and at the end of the day, you’re not as famous as Jae. And if anything, the “roast” you had blurted out was completely inaccurate of what you actually think of his solo projects. 

A projection, if you will, of your own feelings. If anyone in your circle of friends wears the title of a hopeless romantic, the crown has been glued to your head since meeting Jae. 

“I’m not making any sense,” you say, rubbing your cheeks for comfort while watching Jae just doze off into the night. You weren’t sure if he still needed you to stay, but you’d feel it would be amiss if you left. 

You begin to shuffle your way off the bed to give yourself more space to think about your next move until you feel Jae’s hand reach for yours, and squeeze it tight. 

“I didn’t say you can go,” he mumbles sleepily, eyes still fluttered close. Yet his lips are smiling, almost as if he’s dreaming lightly. If that were the case, you humor him, and let his hand fall into yours. You like it that way, too. 

“Did you hear what I just said two minutes ago?”

“No,” he lies. 

“Mhm,” you hum, slowly making your way on the bed again. This time, you sit next to him, his sweatpants clad thigh leaning against your leggings. Your hands still held together, albeit loosely, he lifts it up as if to examine it with droopy eyes. 

“Thanks, though. Oddly enough, that made me feel a little better,” he admits. “Except for that time you said hated my songs. I don’t think I’m letting that go easily.”

“I was apologetic, and it was a dare! I offered you food for a week,” you protest, shaking his hand off but he doesn’t budge. He keeps it in his palms, and you don’t know what to do with yourself. 

A blush escapes on your cheeks, pink and warm, and most definitely as a result of your nerves getting the best of you. 

“True,” he recalls, and tilts his head to the side inquisitively, “but it sounded like you really meant it…”

“Jae, you know that’s not true. I literally stream them on soundcloud almost every day,” you say a matter-of-factly, but regret it since it wasn’t something that he had no knowledge about before tonight. He pulls your hand closer to his chest, and excitedly beams at you. 

“No way?” He exclaims, and you have no choice but to confirm, a helpless pout on your face. “Yeah, I listened to it on the way here.” 

“My number one fan, huh,” he coos, tracing the lines on your palm. You gulp hard, knowing how much sweat your hands had accumulated since meeting his touch. You really don’t want him to notice, but the soothing caress of his fingers felt better than not anything else in the world. 

“Whatever floats your boat, dude,” you try to brush it off, and Jae nods animatedly. 

You try your best not to appear sleepy as a yawn finds its way out your lips. Jae notices this, and sadly lets go. Then, he taps on his shoulder, the one right next to you. 

“Sleep, my child.” 

“Never call me that. Ever again.”

“Don’t be dramatic, and just lean in,” he insists, cradling your head until you plop down on him. 

It feels awkward, angled a bit on the uncomfortable side. But he adjusts for you, and you feel your body giving in to the source of support for your weary mind. 

“I can sleep on the couch—”

“Shh, no more talking.” 

Silently, you roll your eyes and say nothing more. Your fingers fiddle with each other once again, remembering how much of Jae’s skin slid next to yours, and now your cheek is pressed down on his frame. 

Again, this isn’t the first time it’s happened, but the events leading up to this particular night is all new to you. You allow your body to get comfortable, used to this feeling, even if it’s just tonight. 

Your original plan was to be Jae’s shoulder to lean on, but the roles seem to have reversed. 

Softly, Jae calls your name. For a second, you’re too immersed in the synchronized breathing the two of you share. When he brings your hand into his, your senses perk up but you refuse to look into his eyes; afraid of what he might see in yours. 

“What? You said no more talking.” 

“I’m happy you’re here,” he tells you, even softer than before as your hands melt together, filling the spaces between. You don’t know whether to let this happen, not understanding the meaning behind his actions. 

It’s.. weird, unknown, foreign, but addicting. His touch is addictive, and you know you’re going to crave for more if you’re not careful with the dosage. 

Biting your lip, you struggle to reply. He might mean it in a friendly way, but the invitation to relax right onto his shoulder, lacing your fingers as if they’re meant to be locked in place that way, it’s all too much for your brain to process— and definitely your heart. 

Face hot, heart heavy with emotions, you say shakily, “I’m happy you asked me to.”

“Hm?”

“I.. want to be the person you call first when you’re feeling like shit. If possible, I want to be the only person.” There was no going back, no swallowing words you’ve let go in the open. 

As you speak, Jae’s fingers tighten its grasp around yours. You feel weak, but you appreciate him supporting you this way as you keep going. 

“I probably will never understand what it is you feel when certain words pierce through you too deep, like you said. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to. I want to know how you’re feeling, from good to bad. From the best and the worst of it all. I want to be there.”

“Who said you aren’t?” Jae’s low voice interrupts your stream of emotions, and it compels you to finally see his eyes. They’re shining, teary, and smiling at the same time. 

You feel your cheeks soaking wet, and a hiccup arises out of your lips. With your free hand, you hide half of your face in embarrassment. Two idiots, crying together, hands never letting go of each other. 

It didn’t seem long until you fell asleep on his bed. The only difference this time, from all the other times you’ve been here, Jae was sleeping beside you. 

Arms over your frame, his long fingers finding their permanent place within yours. The two of you have exhausted your emotions enough that night, and there was plenty of time in the day to talk it all through. 

You dream of what seems to be a possible future for you and Jae. Moments when he’d fuck up, when you’d say something out of pocket, but it was met with a healthy discussion between you. 

And even if there are days when people online couldn’t understand the growth happening in his life, you see it. You see him, and you don’t hesitate to forgive, and give him space to grow. As he does with you.

#day6 imagines #day6 scenarios #day6 x reader #day6 au #park jaehyung imagines #park jaehyung scenarios #park jaehyung x reader #park jaehyung au #day6 fic #by:jiae

[haosvteen]

Betcha | lee chan

a/n: i drew a little bit of inspiration for this from ‘betcha’ by baekhyun, so that explains the title!! this is one of my favorite things i’ve written in a long time :) i hope you like it!! <3

college!chan x female!reader

~ - fluff

word count: 2.8k

masterlist

A warm burst of air greets you as you swing open the door of the stone building, looking down at your watch to see how much time was left before your class started. Since there were five minutes until your professor would begin rambling on about motifs in classic literature, you decided to walk down the hall a bit to grab a drink from the vending machine. Your shoes squeaked on the glossy tile floor due to the freshly melting snow you obtained on your walk from your apartment, causing a few students leaning against the walls waiting for their classes to look up at you. Ignoring their looks, you approach the vending machine and swipe your card. Prepared to make a selection, you hear loud laughter coming down the hall on your right. 

Turning your head, you’re met with the image of a group of rambunctious boys joking down the hallway towards you. They were laughing and shouting so loudly that everyone in the building probably heard them. In the center of it all was Lee Chan. Gosh, the way all of his friends were doting over him and hanging onto his every word was enough to make you scoff and shift your focus back onto what drink you’d be choosing from the vending machine. 

You heard several girls whispering to each other saying things like “What I’d do for Lee Chan to just look at me” and “One time he held the door for me at the library, I haven’t stopped thinking about it since”. Hearing them talk like that made you physically ill. He’s just a person, a human being...and he isn’t that special anyway. You’ll admit that he’s attractive, you’d be lying if you said anything other than that. He also is quite intelligent, always earning A’s on his essays in the class you share.  But his personality is just...yuck. The way he never pays attention in class, constantly on his phone texting whatever girl he is baiting that week with no reprimand from the professor. The constant offers from all girls on campus to perform every task and errand for him. The general lack of care for anyone, but himself...he’s not really your favorite individual on campus to say the least. 

Not to mention the way he always tries to one-up you in class. You’ll proudly own up to the fact that you’re a good student, amazing even. You pay attention, never miss a class, and raise your hand almost always to answer any question the professor throws your way. But every time, Chan just has to go and say the exact same answer as you, just in a better way. Of course, causing him to receive all the praise from your professor and earning an adoring gaze from the girls in the class. There are no words to describe how much this infuriates you. Especially the cocky smirk he throws your way after the professor says, “Great answer, Chan, I couldn’t have said it better myself!”. 

As the frustration due to your thoughts grew, you were ripped away as someone leaned up against the vending machine, mere inches from where you were standing. Speak of the devil. 

“Hey, Y/N, ready for class today?” Chan asks you, with that same cocky smirk on his face that you’ve, unfortunately, grown so used to seeing. As if the sight of his lips raising is a trigger for you, a fire starts deep within you, annoyance, and frustration growing every second you’re in his presence. Rolling your eyes, you ignore him and raise your hand to press the button on the machine and finally make your selection. Before you had the chance for your finger to collide with the plastic, Chan beat you to it and pressed the glowing white button for mint tea.

Speechless, you simply scoffed and looked at him with wide eyes, not believing he just did that. Who does that?! “Take it easy, babe. Don’t act so offended, you know you were going to get mint tea anyway. You get it almost every day before class,” Chan says casually, leaning his head back against the machine, chewing the gum in his mouth with a smile.

As much as you hate to admit it to yourself, he was right. You were going to get the mint tea, it’s your favorite...and it’s a little weird that he knew that. Just to spite him, you respond, “Actually, I was going to get strawberry milk today, but I guess I’ll have to settle for this instead since you took it upon yourself to decide for me”. The annoyance in your voice was evident, but if Chan noticed, he didn’t let it show on his face. He leans down and grabs the bottle of tea out of the machine, not breaking eye contact with you the whole time. The tension could be cut with a knife and you knew his group of friends standing several feet away and the group of girls gawking at you both could feel it as well.

Standing up, he extends the bottle towards you saying, “Then let me make it up to you then” with yet another cocky smirk, paired his eyes trailing your body up and down. Your face twists into a look that says ‘That was the cringiest thing I’ve ever heard, also I am incredibly grossed out’. 

“Uh, no thanks,” you say, grabbing the mint tea from his hand and walking down the hallway, hearing his friends teasing him by saying, “Oooo” and no doubt giving him joking punches on the shoulder. 

Your mind was a scrambled mess from the interaction you just had. Who does he think he is? Does he think every girl on this campus is begging for his attention?! In all honesty, you wish he would just ignore you so you wouldn’t have to deal with his antics and casual flirtation. It infuriates you to no end and quite honestly keeps you up at night thinking about how he believes he runs this campus. 

Making your way into the classroom, you quickly slide into your unassigned-assigned seat in the front row, trying to pull out your notebook and pen all while attempting to organize your thoughts and irritation about whatever that conversation was you just had. You let out a large sigh as you flip to the next open page in your notebook and the professor begins class, giving you a scolding look for the huff of air you let out to express your exasperation. As you begin to jot down some general notes about what the prof is saying, you notice he who must not be named enters the classroom.

 “Oh, Chan! I’m glad you could make it,” your professor cheerily says as Chan saunters in.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Chan responds, flashing a bright smile. This causes yet another heavy breath to leave you as you shake your head at your professor’s naivety and how simple it is for him to be charmed. You realize Chan is making his way over to pass you in order to find his own seat. Looking down at your notebook to continue taking writing and ignoring the close proximity of your least favorite person, you notice something is slid onto your desk as he walks by.

Strawberry milk.

You couldn’t help the blush that crept up your face. You quickly grab it, tossing it into your backpack, hoping no one saw. Confusion and shock flood your head as you simply stare at the board in front of you. What was his goal with that? Probably another one of his flirtation tactics, no doubt. Did that actually work on other girls?! The bar is so low, apparently. You turn around to hopefully catch Chan’s gaze and give him a confused and weirded out expression, but when you turn around he’s simply leaned back in his chair, listening to the professor, seemingly bored out of his mind. You know he knows you’re looking at him and is just refusing to meet your eyes. Narrowing your eyes at him, you whip your head back around to focus on the lecture. There is no way you were going to let Lee Chan of all people distract you.

As the class was drawing to a close, your professor announced, “I’m trying something new for the final this semester. Instead of taking an exam, as students have done in the past, I’m going to be placing you into groups to complete a presentation”. He was met with groans from students like you who would just prefer to study on their own and get it over with by taking a test, but there were also silent celebrations from students who think that a group project means less work for them. However, only one thought was racing through your mind:

Do not put me with Lee Chan.

“I will go ahead and read off who your partners are, then you will be dismissed. The directions for this assignment will be posted on our class website later tonight and we’ll discuss it more next time we meet. Well, I won’t keep you waiting”, he explains and begins to read off the names. It’s embarrassing to admit but you were literally hiding your hands in your sleeves and crossing your fingers that you wouldn’t be paired with Chan. It might seem dramatic and a drastic measure to take. He can’t be that bad, right? Wrong. You’d heard rumors about his poor work ethic in group projects. That combined with his overall playboy aura is not a good match for you. 

“Lee Chan and Y/N Y/L/N,” your professor says. It’s like your mind is frozen. Of course, this would happen to you. Just your luck. You didn’t even pay attention to the final words your professor had to say before wrapping up class because you were dreading having to do an entire project all by yourself.

As you closed your notebook and began to pack away your things, you felt someone standing near you. With a sigh, you look up knowing exactly who it is.

There he was, standing with his hands in his jean pockets and that cocky smirk making yet another appearance. Rolling your eyes, you sling your backpack over your shoulder and stand up, grabbing your phone.

“What’s your number?” you bluntly ask, not so much as a question and more of a demand.

“Oh, how the tables have turned,” Chan says with a laugh, grabbing your phone to enter his number in. His fingertips grazed your hand as he gently took it from your grasp. You’d never admit that it made your heart skip a beat or two, though.

He finishes typing in his number and as he is handing your phone back, he suggests, “Let’s get lunch or something to talk about the project”. You started walking away from him halfway through his sentence, causing him to trail off at the end. 

“No,” you call out as you walk out of the classroom. “I’ll text you.”

Not going to lie, you kind of felt like a badass. Chan deserved a taste of his own medicine and you’re just the lucky person who gets to give it to him. 

You make your way to a local coffee shop a little way down the road, mentally preparing to deal with customers and make beverages until the late hours of the night. Entering the backroom to set your things down and tie your apron on, making your way out to behind the counter to begin your workday.

The hours dragged on and on, filled with heating up pastries and making cappuccinos until it was 10:30pm and there were only thirty minutes left until close. There were a few people in the shop, working on their laptops, or having a chat with a friend. It was around this time of night, you started to clean up behind the counter and prepare everything for those who open the store the next morning.

You bent down to grab a square bucket from under the counter and a damp rag, heading over to clear off several tables from customers who had recently left. As you’re placing some plates into the bucket, you hear the doorbell jingle, signaling that someone has entered.

“One moment, I’ll be with you in-” you begin, but look up to see Chan. You suck in a sharp breath of air as he walks toward you with that damn smirk on his face. You continue to gather the dishes from the table, hoping that maybe he would just go wait by the register. Wishful thinking on your part as he comes over puts a hand on the table, leaning on it and tilting his head to get a better look at you.

“What do you want, Chan?” you monotonously say, not drifting your attention from clearing the table.

“Well, I tried texting you, but you didn’t respond,” he explains.

“Uh, yeah because I’m working,” you respond matter-of-factly. You finish wiping down the table and lift up the bucket to go over to the next table. Chan takes the bucket from your hands and you look at him with the most confused expression, but he just motions for you to go on to the next table. You shake your head in more confusion, but accept it and go on with him trailing behind you, hauling the heavy bucket of dishes.

“Yeah, that’s why I came here,” he continues the conversation as he sets the bucket down on the next table. You stop cleaning and look at him with yet another confused expression. How does he even know you work here? He must have been able to tell what you were thinking by the look on your face because he says, “I like coming here and I see you here, so”. 

No matter how weirded out or confused you were, you carried on, “Why did you even need to talk to me in the first place?”

“Oh, I already have our presentation outlined and in a PowerPoint. We just have to do some research and put it all together,” he casually says. You don’t know who said that he has a poor work ethic in group projects, but apparently, they were wrong. 

“Thanks,” you respond simply and head back behind the counter, with Chan following you yet again. 

“We’re meeting on Thursday at 4:00 to finish it,” he says as he lifts the glass cake stand and grabs a blueberry muffin, starting to dig in. 

Rolling your eyes, you reply, “Thursday doesn’t work for me. I also hope you’re planning on playing for that”.

“Oh, no, I figured it was on the house,” he sarcastically teases. You give him a stern gaze and he continues, “Of course I’m going to pay for it, I don’t want to get you in trouble or anything”. You don’t know why, but that made you kind of...blush. And you hoped he didn’t see.

“Anyway, why can’t you do Thursday?” he casually says, still picking chunks off of the muffin and eating them.

“I have plans, Chan. News flash: the world doesn’t revolve around you,” you retort as you begin to clean the coffee machines.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s your world, I’m just living in it,” he says as if it didn’t mean anything. What did it mean? It’s not like people just say that casually. At least you’ve never heard people say that about people casually. You barely had any time to think more about it when you heard him say a little quieter, “Do you have a date or something on Thursday?”

Your heart began to race...and what for?? Was he...jealous? Why would he be asking if you had a date? Why would he care? “No, I don’t have a date,” you respond. At that, you see Chan’s head perk up.

“Okay, well how about Wednesday, then? I could do like...5:00?” he says.

“Yeah, that works,” you reply, looking towards him and giving him a small smile. A facial expression you never thought you’d be giving Lee Chan. There was just something about the way his eyes lit up...and that damn smirk…

“Alright, then,” he says while reaching into his pocket and pulling out a bill, placing it on the counter to pay for the muffin he took. Making his way to the front of the shop to exit, he turned around to say, “It’s a date”. 

And there you are, left a blushing mess behind the counter. Waiting for Wednesday at 5:00.

#caratwritersclub #seventeen #svt #chan #lee chan #dino #seventeen chan #chan seventeen #chan svt #svt chan #dino svt #svt dino #seventeen dino #dino seventeen #chan imagines #dino imagines #seventeen imagines #chan scenarios #dino scenarios #seventeen scenarios #chan drabbles #dino drabbles #seventeen drabbles #boyfriend!chan #boyfriend!dino #boyfriend!seventeen #chan fics #dino fics #seventeen fics #seventeen masterlist

[beyondconfessor]

Principle Decisions [1/24]

Rating: Explicit

Pairing: Lilith/Zelda Spellman

Summary: Zelda couldn’t look away from the words as she touched over the embossed typography.

Lilith

Dominatrix

N.B.: Also posted on AO3. This is pure fantasy, please suspend your disbelief. 

She fingered the card, drawing her nail over its edges. It had an entirely over the top design, with a bright red background and black lettering. Despite how over-the-top she felt the graphic design was, Zelda couldn’t look away from the words as she touched over the embossed typography.

Lilith

Dominatrix

As if it had burned her, she dropped the card on her desk. On its back, the card presented the phone number and email address of the woman. Terribly gauche: [email protected].

The business card––if you could even call it that––had been slipped out of the jacket of a new book she’d purchased, and since her discovery of it, Zelda’s eyes had been drawn to it, a strange temptation pulling at her.

She’d only bought the book as a way to offer an olive branch to Hilda. If her sister weren’t so terribly awkward around any mention of sex, she would have wondered if she had been the one to slip the card into the book. No, likely the so-called dominatrix had wandered through the shop and decided that the newest bestseller would be an excellent place to advertise her business.

The sheer gall of the woman.

It had been some time since she’d engaged in any sexual relationship. Since Edward’s passing, Zelda’s world had been entirely taken up with raising Sabrina. Hilda had helped, of course, given that she was the original caretaker of Ambrose––but the bulk of Sabrina’s raising rested on her shoulders. Between that and balancing her work at the Academy, Zelda had little time to date.

And in the few times, she did date she would inevitably end up exhausted by the need to care for someone’s emotional needs on top of her family and usually wound up requesting that they never see each other again.

At least if she engaged with a sex worker, she wouldn’t have that issue.

A knock came at the door of her office, pulling her from her thoughts.

“One moment,” Zelda said, before taking the card and hastily set in the drawer of her desk. She should throw it away into the wastepaper bin, tear it up into pieces, and yet she found herself pushing the drawer shut, feeling a strange temptation dim but not entirely die away. “Come in,” she called.

The door pushed open, and her niece stood in the doorframe, bag slung over her shoulder as she stepped into the room. “How was work?”

“Busy,” Zelda sighed, rising from her chair. “How was school?”

“Fine.”

“Nothing happened, today?” Zelda inquired.

“Well,” Sabrina began, bouncing on the heels of her shoes. “Principle Wardwell did go on a warpath against Coach Craven. That was pretty cool.”

“Wardwell? Isn’t Hawthorne the principle there?”

“No, he left over Summer. It was in the news bulletin.”

Zelda rolled her eyes as if she cared to read that. The PTA and Parent-Teacher nights had always been Hilda’s realm of experience. There were limited choices of schooling in the area, and Baxter High had more students going off college than Riverdale. And like hell, she was sending Sabrina off to some boarding school as her parents had done with her, Edward and Hilda.

Collecting her day planner and unmarked essays, she began sliding them into her bag as she asked, “so why did your new Principle go on an alleged war party?”

“Craven said that Theo couldn’t join the men’s football team. So Roz and I complained to Wardwell, and she stormed off and immediately told him off in the middle of try-outs. It was…pretty awesome actually.”

“It’s definitely a way to make enemies,” Zelda said. “Take it from me, Sabrina. Public humiliation may force someone to obey for the moment, but they’ll look for any opportunity to enact their revenge.”

Sabrina’s lips pressed shut, her excitement dying. “I thought it was pretty great, actually. He should be called out for his actions.”

“And the best place to do that is in a formal setting,” Zelda said as she switched off the office light. Stepping into the hall, she drew the door shut and locked the door. “In a position of leadership, especially one so newly forged, it’s better to think about the long term effects of a stable work environment. Sowing discord will only turn the other teachers against her.”

“Well, the students love her,” Sabrina pointed out defiantly, missing the point.

With a sigh, Zelda drew up and rolled her shoulders. Her niece was sixteen, thinking the whole world revolved around her. Students came and went, but the teachers would remain, and if Principle Wardwell wanted to keep her job, it would be in her interest to make friends with the staff.

“How did your classes go?” she asked, deferring to a safe topic as they walked out of the university’s grounds to the parking lot. Sabrina began babbling beside her, discussing her recent marks in English and History, the study group she’d formed and then quietly toeing away from discussion of one particular class.

“Didn’t you have an exam for French today?”

Sabrina flushed, fiddling with her bag. “I…passed.”

Zelda paused, turning to look at her niece directly. “Define a pass.”

“C plus?”

Zelda bit back the flared anger as she pressed her lips together, watching as Sabrina squirmed under her scrutiny. “Perhaps I should switch to speaking French at home, then?”

“No, I hate it when you do that. Look, it barely makes up my grade, I’ll fix it up with the essay at the end of the month, and then I’ll be back to being an A-minus student.”

“Yes, well, unless you want your allowance to drop—“

“Come on! That’s hardly fair. It’s not like we live in France. I don’t even see the point in why I have to take this stupid class. ”

“Language is important, Sabrina. When you travel, you can’t just go around assuming everyone speaks English. By your age, I already spoke Italian and French fluently. By my twenties, I’d learnt Mandarin, German and Latin. Now, there are few languages that I don’t speak in one dialect or another.”

“I know, but…I don’t even know if I want to travel.”

“Of course you do,” Zelda said. “Everyone travels, or you’ll end up like your Aunt Hilda, working in a bookshop with no idea of how the world works.”

Sabrina went quiet as they arrived at the car. She climbed into the passenger seat, drawing her bag into her lap and buckled her seatbelt with a stony face.

Zelda drew in a breath, setting her own bag on the backseat before sitting down into the driver’s seat. Sabrina had always been soft for Hilda, defending her against Zelda any time she made a sniping comment towards her.

Perhaps the comment had been a little harsh. Only last night had the three of them broke out in an argument after Hilda advised that she would be permanently working at Cerberus Books and not just ‘helping out’ as she initially advised. Honestly, a retail assistant? Hilda had as fine an education as she had, and now Zelda was an academic, teaching at Greendale University, and Hilda…worked in a bookshop.

Not to mention the sudden talks of her moving out. Ambrose was still at university, in his final year of his masters, and Sabrina still had another year and a half before she was off, flying around the world before she settled on a college.

Leave? Unlikely. It was an empty threat Hilda proposed to hurt her.

They drove home in silence, with Sabrina’s growing bad mood taking up the space of the car. By the time that they arrived home. Sabrina didn’t even wait for the engine to switch off before she was unbuckling her seatbelt and running up the steps of the house.

Zelda paused, watching her niece push open the front door, likely to remain hidden in her room until summoned for dinner. She considered following up the stairs to Sabrina’s room and advising of how unacceptable her actions were, and yet the day felt heavy on her shoulders. She didn’t want another argument with Sabrina.

She didn’t want another argument. If Hilda would stop being so selfish, they could actually take the time to raise the children.

Stepping out of the car, she pulled out her bag from the backseat and then locked the doors behind her––not that it really mattered, they were so far out from any neighbours that there was a more pressing concern for a bear to get into the car, rather than a burglar.

She passed Ambrose sitting on the veranda, a book of poetry in grip and a glass of wine sitting next to him (in a tumbler, which she did take offence to, they owned perfectly suitable wine glasses).

“Auntie,” he greeted, looking up from the book. “How fairs the undergrads?”

“Fine,” she remarked. “I had the pleasure of seeing Prudence today.”

“Oh?” he remarked casually. “I had thought she’d have dropped out by now.”

“She asked about you.”

Ambrose seemed to pause, biting on the inside of his cheek before he gave a strained smile. “And should I go running into her arms again because she inquired as to how I was going?”

Zelda stared at him and watched as his face flushed with embarrassment.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.”

“Don’t apologise when you don’t mean it, or learn to lie better.” She paused, watching guilt wash over his face. “You should speak to her. At the very least it might bring you the much-needed closure you require to move on.” Before he could say anything further, she brushed past him, entering into the foyer of the home.

A door slammed upstairs, signalling her niece’s growing foul mood. But unlike Ambrose, who often drowned the house with music to signal his moods, a stillness followed the slammed door.

Her eyes drew up to the stairs, a part of her wanted to seek out Sabrina and apologise before she snuffed out the very desire to do so. Instead, she drew to her home office and set her bag down, drawing out her computer and essays, preparing herself for evening work to be completed after dinner.

Drawing into the kitchen, she noticed that Hilda was already at the stove, stirring around what looked to be onion and mince. At the same time, she had an assortment of diced vegetables running on another element beside it.

“Evening, sister.”

“Oh! Zelds. I thought it was you.”

“Who else would it be?” she asked, going to the cupboards to pull out the dishes. Usually, it was Sabrina’s job to set the table for dinner, but she could wash up and dry the dishes after dinner, given her impetuous mood.

“Oh, well…” Hilda spluttered, before turning to look over her shoulder. “So, what did you think of Doctor Cee’s little shop? Quite the business, hm? And the café has been busy of late!”

Zelda bit her tongue to stop the first thoughts she had from coming out. She set down the plates before looking at her sister and catching the hesitation.

“It’s…good that you’re happy,” she said, feeling other words rise in the back of her throat. She swallowed them back and smiled at her sister, hoping it came across genuine enough.

Hilda returned the smile, and it was enough to unknot the growing anxiety in her chest. Perhaps they could make it through dinner without another argument.  “And have you given the book a look, yet? It’s flying out of the store lately. A real page-turner.”

Zelda gave a small nod. She’d got as far as the first page before the card had slid out onto her desk.

Swallowing, she tucked a wayward curl behind her ear, trying to not think of the words.

Dominatrix. She shivered, remembering what it was like to feel rope twist around her hands.

In her early twenties, she’d engaged in an assortment of different forms of BDSM with different partners, both on the receiving and giving end. And yet something about that embossed lettering brought a flicker to a long lost flame inside of her.

It had been…a long time—at least two years since she’d engaged in anything other than masturbation. The dating pool in Greendale and Riverdale was small enough that, inevitably, everyone knew everyone––and given her position, casual sex would only lead to complications. The last thing she needed was another man at her office, begging for a date.

Or a woman leading insistent voicemails on the landline.

But a dominatrix would be discreet. And it would just be an itch, after all.

A part of her worried. It could be a student she’d taught, trying to make extra money to pay for their education. Or it could be a number of acquaintances––someone from the board?

It could be Shirley. That thought sent a cold feeling down her spine.

“Zelds?”

She looked up, realising her sister had asked her a question. “Pardon?”

“I was just asking if you started the book.”

“Oh, just the first few pages. I’ll get to it on the weekend.”

Hilda squinted at her before stepping forward. “You’re looking a little flushed. You’re not coming down with the flu, are you? You’re always working yourself sick.”

“I’m fine,” she said, stepping away from her sister. “I’ll go tell Ambrose and Sabrina to wash-up, shall I?”

“Oh, yes, I suppose dinner will be made in a moment.”

____________

#zelda spellman #lilith #zelith #madam spellman #caos fanfic #morgan writes #morgans fics

[thepancakedetective]

University Life

Akira is fidgeting with the end of his hoodie string. Akechi looks up from his university level criminal law homework and shoots him an annoyed look.

Akechi: Some of us are trying to get somewhere with our lives, I suggest you do the same. 

Ann rests her head on Shiho’s lap as she poses for a new Instagram post. Shiho is busy watching her latest soccer match and analyzing places for improvement. 

Ann: Speak for yourself Mr. Future Prosecutor. I’ve already established my future —as the next cover girl model for Vogue! 

Akechi sighs and shakes his head.

Akechi: I wasn’t talking to you. 

Futaba glances up from her laptop which displays an incomplete code for a client. 

Futaba: I don’t understand why you’re so hard on your boyfriend for choosing not to go to university. 

Akechi opens his mouth ready to retort before being interrupted by Makoto. Makoto is working on the same homework essay as Akechi.

Makoto: It’s only natural to be concerned. Four months have passed since graduation and Akira hasn’t shown any career interest outside of his numerous part time jobs. 

Ryuji: I think you guys just need to chill. Give a man sometime to figure themselves out! Look after months of searching, I’ve finally landed a job as a personal trainer at that fancy smancy gym down in Shinjuku. The benefits and pay are awesome. Plus, I get to work out for free. 

Akechi: Exactly why I’m concerned. If Ryuji has already landed a good paying job, what does that say?

Ryuji: Hey, what do you mean by that?! 

Yusuke is in deep thought staring at his unfinished painting. 

Yusuke: Maybe the answer lies, in where it does not speak.  

Everyone sends him a quizzical look. Haru puts down her tea cup and gently pets the sleeping cat in her lap.

Haru: I think what he means to say is, why don’t you all give Akira a chance to talk? I’m sure it must be unpleasant to not be included in a conversation which is centered around yourself. 

Everyone turns to look at Akira who has frayed the ends of his hoodie string ties. His eyes are hidden behind the glare of his glasses. 

Akira: I’ve come to a decision. 

Akechi: Well, please don’t keep us waiting. 

Akechi gives Akira one of his forced Detective Prince smiles. Akira pauses before opening his mouth as if to gather his thoughts.

Akira: I want to open a private investigation firm. 

A few eyes widen at this sudden statement, predominantly Akechi’s whose mouth hangs open a few centimeters. 

Akechi: You what? I understand the adrenaline rush of what we all did in highschool to expose that filthy conspiracy ring must have hit you the hardest as our former leader, but I didn’t expect it to go to your head so much. 

Haru shoots Akechi a warning look.

Haru: Give him a chance to explain himself. 

Akechi frowns are resigns himself farther down in his seat. 

Akira smiles at Haru and nods his head.

Akira: I’m not asking to reinstate the Phantom Thieves. I just want to offer that same platform of help again to the people who need us.

Akechi opens his mouth but is cut off by Akira.

Akira: Outside the law. We’ve all seen what happens when the legal system fails. Even with amazing people like your sister Makoto, that corruption still lies there. By the time you and Akechi get into the legal system to clean it up, there may be countless lives which fall through the cracks. That’s why I want to do this. I hope you all can support my decision. 

The room is silent. Ryuji is the first one to talk.

Ryuji: If my man wants to become a private investigator, of course I’ll support him. Maybe I can even assist in catching the perp! 

Futaba smiles and pulls down her headphones.

Futaba: Likewise. If you ever need assistance accessing police records or other resources, I’ve got your back. I still owe you for helping solve my mother’s death. 

Akechi and Makoto exchange looks. 

Makoto: I don’t see why I wouldn’t support your decision. I can see it took you a great deal of courage to come to it. I’ll be here to support you with whatever legal knowledge I know. Of course, my sister would probably be more of a help than me at this point. I can contact her to get the steps of establishing a reputable private investigation firm. 

Ann wraps her arms around Shiho.

Ann: You’ve already got my vote, chief. I can always use my celebrity and industry connections to assist in cases if needed. Also if you need a hot undercover detective, you can count on me!

Yusuke nods his head at the painting.

Yusuke: I can see it now. Truly a wonderful sight. If my artistic expertise and skill can be of use, I would be happy to present them. 

Haru: It looks like we’ve come to a decision. As everyone has already noted, I as well am willing to help in whatever way I can. My...father has left me with many financial resources at hand. If you need an initial investment, I would be happy to provide. 

Akechi looks at all of them in disbelief.

Akechi: You all can’t be serious. Just accepting things so easily like this. Truly naive.  

Akechi gets up from his seat and grabs his things, haphazardly shoving them into his backpack. Ann gets up to follow him as he pushes past to move down the attic stairs. 

Ann: Akechi! Wait—

Makoto stops her and shakes her head.

Makoto: Leave him. He just needs time to process things. 

Akira: I should go. 

Before waiting for the other’s reply. Akira is down the stairs and out of the cafe door scanning for any signs of the upset brunet. He is nowhere in sight. But Akira has a feeling he knows where to find him. He arrives at Inokashira Park finding Akechi shortly, sitting hunched over at a lone bench. His hands cover his face.

Akira: Akechi... 

Akechi just shakes his head silently. Akira takes a seat next to him.

Akira: I’m...sorry. 

Akechi looks up sharply, redness outlining the rims of his eyes. Anger bubbles in his next words. 

Akechi: What could you possibly be sorry about?

Akira: You would have preferred I discussed this with you prior.

Akechi laughs without humor.

Akechi: Akira. I’m just upset that you didn’t ask for my help. It’s petty I know. But this. This is one thing in your life I could have helped you with. You know I’ve been somewhat of a private detective myself. I want to help you so much Akira. But you never give me the chance. That’s why I’m upset.

Akira’s eyes are downcast towards his losely interlocked fingers. 

Akira: All my life I’ve been going with the flow of events and letting others do the talking for me. This time I wanted to choose my own decision independently. I hope you can understand. 

Akechi sighs and leans his head tiredly against Akira’s shoulder.

Akechi: I can understand even though it still makes me upset. But it’s my own ego that’s causing me to feel like that. Honestly, I’m happy that you’ve come to a decision. It’s fitting for you. I just wish I could have been a better support as your boyfriend. 

Akira’s fingers laced together with Akechi’s.

Akira: You already are. 

Akechi turns and raises his eyebrow.

Akechi: How?

Akira watches the ducks mill around in the distance near the lake. The tip of Akira’s ears become red as he mutters,

Akira: I kind of wanted to become a cool boyfriend like you.

Akechi’s eyes widen and a small smile traces his face. His eyes are full of warmth. Akechi wraps his arm around Akira’s back.

Akechi: Does that mean I can still convince you to go into law with me?

Akira: No way in hell. I don’t want to take those crazy entrance exams.

Akechi presses against Akira. 

Akechi: I’m sure with me as your tutor, you’ll get in with flying colors. 

Akira: Mmh, maybe. 

Akechi: Imagine the excitement. Law student by morning, private investigator by night. Fighting the system along side your cool boyfriend. You’d like that sort of life right?

Akira: Now you’re just teasing me. 

Akechi purses his lips.

Akechi: I may be. But I’m also a 100% serious. What do you say? Will you give it a try?

Akira laughs.

Akira: I can’t win with you, can I? Okay, I’ll do it. 

Akechi: Good. I can think of a few ways we can celebrate the occasion. 

He presses his lips against Akira.

Akechi: I love you Akira. I’m proud of you. 

Akira kisses back.

Akira: I love you too Akechi. Can’t wait to start my next chapter with you.

Akechi smiles.

Akechi: Likewise. 

Part 2: [Link]

#persona5 #university au #persona universe did not exist #akeshu #shuake #goro akechi #ryuji sakamoto #ann takamaki #futaba sakura #haru okumura #makoto niijima #yusuke kitagawa #vandyfics

[pochapal]

rank every year of the 2010s from best to worst i want some pochapal lore

[warning for discussion of my fucked up mental health and my myriad traumas. we’re really opening the pandora’s box here gang]

ok time for me to overshare on the internet again! super long post because i can’t shut up and you asked for it. anyway, by objective ranking: 

#1: 2012 - halcyon era, my personal peak. spent the whole year writing hunger games oc fics with my deviantart fanfiction besties whom i still think about all the time and always hope are having the best possible day. if you were here for this era understand i still hold you so closely and dearly in my heart <3. 

#2: 2013 - god i was such a good example of a human being back then. was the year my writing like actually took off and i had a healthy balance between creative stuff and a social life (said social life consisting of spending lunchtimes at school breaking into classrooms and discussing fandom shit with five other people. reading homestuck updates in the music room on one person’s really shaky mobile data...legendary). highlight of the year and maybe my life was in the april of 2013 when i got out of failing to submit a hard deadline essay by telling my english teacher i wrote a whole novel over the two week break and then producing said novel. god i wish i had that level of like. fucking confidence back me back then knew what i wanted and how to get it. 

#3: 2010 - the last year of childhood. i was 12 and played pokemon all the time with my friends and went places and had a moderately successful youtube channel and it didn’t matter that i was bullied so badly at school because i was basically high off life. summer of 2010 was so good specifically. i’d used to get the bus with a friend and go see movies and break into historical sites and get into normal childhood mayhem and maxed out my pokewalkers twice a month and i was buzzed because i had two (2) whole friendship groups to choose from and that was such a huge deal to me the terminal social outcast. it was so simple and carefree and even though everything and everyone involved in this era grew up to suck except for one specific person i kinda really miss it.

#4: 2018 - this was the first year i wasn’t depressed to the point of nonfunctioning. it was 20gayteen, i was on antidepressants, i was as close to thriving as i got at uni (going into town with people once a week, attending art and culture events, getting good grades across the board), i started to write for fun again, i got my cat whom i love dearly, i was exhibited in my uni’s city’s literature festival, GOD i actually nearly attended a pride event that year can you imagine. this year was basically my life’s second peak. miss getting the 8am train and daintily sipping on a cherry coke to keep me from passing out. wish this time could have lasted longer.

#5: 2019 - kinda absolute middle of the road year not for lack of anything happening but because the overwhelming amount of good and bad things cancelled each other out. so like there’s the fact that i was at the top of my uni game this year, was basically making the first steps into a professional writing career (covid i will never forgive you for killing all that dead </3), finally saved up enough to buy myself a gaming pc, and the summer after the homestuck epilogues, but equally 2019 was the start of the Pochapal Gender Fiasco which is by far the most horrible thing i am still currently undergoing and i burnt myself out mentally about halfway through the year (being stuck overnight in a hospital for a panic attack absolutely horrible horrible irredeemable) and then got like super death plague flu that i was sick with for three months (literally recovered less than a month before rona hit. god’s cruel karma.). so like...it kind of averaged out? the good shit was good but not as great as other years and the bad shit was awful but nowhere near as terrible as it could have been. gotta give a shoutout to 90% of my current mutual cohort for following me in 2019...omelette route gang make some noise !!

#6: 2014 - oof. this year essentially marked the start of a four year long downward mental health spiral because everything fell into awful alignment. i’d just turned 16, finished secondary school, had all my friends up and ditch me at once, was home alone for a whole summer, and was hit with Sudden Intense Body Image Issues that i couldn’t explain until uh. after very recent developments lmao. this one goes out to the me of july 2014 who did nothing but lay in bed and listen to the same two marina albums on a loop because fuck i’m attracted to men and also my facial and body hair are really starting to come in and if i think about this for too long i will literally kill myself because oh god i can’t handle getting older which is clearly and definitely the issue going on here. my brain fucking broke super hardcore and it’s a miracle that an overeating disorder was like the worst thing i walked away with. 

#7: 2015 - downward spiral year two!! i was so volatile this year it was such a mess. i was totally socially isolated after a brief stint of falling in with a group of people at the start of my first year of sixth form until january where in quick succession a) it turned out every single one of these people was friends with the person who sexually assaulted me whom i obviously had a lot of complicated feelings towards and b) baby’s first crush came out as bisexual but in the “women and also trans women” kind of way which tore me up so terribly in ways i couldn’t begin to understand. no words for the experience of seeing a girl kiss a boy and crying so hard at night you threw up because you could never be her no matter how much you wanted it. actually kinda get the sense what was going on there was bigger than just some crush lmao. then after that i was so mentally ill i basically attended school less than half the time and it was the only year in my life i failed my exams. i ended up having to resit my entire set of first year a level exams because jesus christ was i in such a bad way it was a miracle i even showed up to them. all i did was either have anxiety attacks or enter bedbound depressive slumps for weeks at a time. but it’s okay because it gets worse.

#8: 2016 - downward spiral act iii: the spiralling. prefacing this by saying that i actually had two whole good months (april - may) in that i was functioning enough to do my exams and finish school with decent grades. the rest was super extra mega terrible. my school attendance for year 13 dipped below 65% and literally the only thing that kept me from being kicked out was the fact that i was naturally smart at the subjects i took and also because the school would have a lot to answer for after letting me get to that state despite having a hefty file on how damaged i was. keep in mind every single part of this was fully untreated btw - i was just floundering around and letting it all fester. i spent three solid weeks going to school but locking myself in the bathroom all day every day and having mental health episodes then going home like nothing else happened only to continue the breakdown that night. then things got kicked into fucked up overdrive when i moved out to uni and was cut off from what little support structures i did have. it was so bad all i did was cry all the time and never went anywhere to the point where three separate sources recommended me to the wellbeing and crisis counselling service that i stopped going to after two sessions because i was fucked up in ways cbt techniques could not even touch. at least i tried to make an effort for the first two months of uni which like. good for me?

#9: 2017 - what lieth at the base of the spiral. helltrench year. i was at literal rock bottom. i stopped going to class, i didn’t hand in a single piece of work. i lied to my parents and would book trains each day only to go back to my student flat and sit there and contemplate suicide. like i would just slump on the floor in a catatonic state and vividly contemplate one of four or so ways i could end my own life. i only didn’t because i wanted to wait until the summer to collect my last student loan and transfer it to my parents as an apology for my death which obviously didn’t end up happening. honestly i can’t remember much of the first half of 2017 that’s how bad it was. i remember taking a gender studies class and the teacher made it Weird that i was the Only Male Student in the room and then she sent me a scolding email after i walked out halfway through a class and never returned. apparently i got into a lot of online discourse in this year but i don’t remember anything other than being put on a blocklist by the milkfic author over ace discourse which is funny if you have the context. mostly i just baited terfs and weirdo freaks to get them to say horrible things to me as what i guess amounts to some kind of digital self harm. anyway breaking point came in late august when i got kicked out of university and then nobody could ignore it any more so there was no choice left but for me to seek out help and recover enough to function which luckily i did. i really Do Not remember 2017. you could tell me anything about that year and i’d probably believe you.

#10: 2011 - extra circle of hell for this little fucked up gem of a year. on the surface it wasn’t actually that terrible, until the Summer 2011 Domino Effect Of Bad Shit. up until like may/june it was a pretty all right year! i was 13 and had a surprisingly successful youtube channel uploading pokemon soundfont remixes to an audience of i think ~350-400 subscribers at my peak? anyway then i got hit with the early summer triple combo of childhood friends moving away, cute and quirky sexual assault at the hands of a person in my friend group, and then having some Really Great and Super Appropriate interactions with adults on deviantart. like obviously there’s the actual ptsd-inducing event which totally disrupted and killed the person i was right up until that moment and reshaped every facet of my life for better or worse (there’s an alternate timeline where that didn’t happen and i got into electronic music and/or coding instead) but really it’s the events that followed in its wake which were kind of more fucked up. so like all of a sudden i was super aware of my body and me growing my hair out and being mistaken for a girl in class suddenly became this Less Innocent thing and i ended up spending hours overnight going to transgender questioning forums and looking up hrt timeline videos and having the wikipedia article on tracheal shaving saved because it was a life raft to me whose voice was imminently gonna deepen and i was simultaneously reeling with constant trauma flashbacks and the whole thing was so so fucked up. then i was on deviantart and i don’t remember exactly how but a small group of furry guys ten to fifteen years older than me started messaging me and encouraging and requesting me to produce nonsexual fetish stuff for them and talking to me about stuff like if i’d ever thought about growing up to be gay and i didn’t think anything of it for a long while because they called me a very talented writer and it felt so good to have someone be nice to me after being so alone and isolated for months on end. anyway the only reason i got out of that before it got bad was because they invited me to one of the big furry sites and i was weirded out because i thought it was a porn site and thinking about sexual stuff was a huge trauma trigger so i just ended up blocking them all and pretending like it didn’t happen. at the time half this shit didn’t bother me but in retrospect holy fuck 2011 was such a damaging year. to think if like three events didn’t happen i wouldn’t be the fucked up mess you see before you today.

god fuck this turned out super long but i’m not apologising because this was a therapeutic exercise for me and also constitutes as one of the biggest pochapal lore dumps of all time. come get your food or whatever.

#Anonymous #long post #read all of this if you have vested interest in knowing intimate details about my life or whatever

[liu-lang]

I took a few sips of my boyfriend’s coffee this morning and I’ve been jittery with a headache for the past 5 hours.

A big factor in my panic today is that the semester starts tmrw ! I’m taking 16 units (3 classes). Calculus is 5 units, python (computer science) is 4 units and linguistics is 3 units. Only python is synchronous as this is the first time they’re offering it ! Calc and ling are async and don’t have mandatory live class meetings. I looked at the syllabi for all my classes and know that as long as I am organised and disciplined I can handle this on top of my full-time job. Last semester I took precalc and data structures and the semester before tt I took Java and databases. So, so far I’ve been okay with 2 classes.

I really miss linguistics and this intro linguistics class is meant to be a refresher. I even used the same textbook in undergrad - an older edition though. Everything in the syllabus is familiar to me.

The python class has set class times Monday and Wednesday from 18h to 20h10. This is the same as my precalc class. Last semester, having live precalc class and a professor who concurrently was a full-time high school teacher was really good for my learning. The live lectures gave me an opportunity to ask questions and since he also had a full-time job outside of teaching us, he had very flexible deadlines for homework (just turn it in by the end of the semester). I was able turn my hw in on time every week until about November 2020 (so the last month of the semester) bc covid cases soared at work, my new boss was hired and I had to stay past 17h more often.

My data structures class was a struggle. It was asynchronous. It was the first time the prof was teaching this subject. She was very disorganised and didn’t publish or mark homework and quizzes on time. We went from 40 students to like 15 by the end of it. The syllabi was basically null where we would have multiple chapters overlap even though it was supposed to be 1 chapter per week bc she would publish things midweek. The keys to her exams were wrong and we would have to write her and justify why we should receive points for questions marked incorrectly. The only reason I survived was bc of the discord my classmates created.

I am afraid that I am taking on too much not because my job is intellectually difficult but that it is very tiring and the hours can vary. I wish I could use the bulk of my waking hours and energy on school instead. The part of me that has very high expectations for myself wants to do the best in all my classes and work and I know I can’t do that.

My calc class has optional live lecture on Mondays from 13h to 14h but I absolutely cannot stealthy participate. If I had a set lunch hour and a private place maybe I could. But I don’t have those, I pretty much work through my lunch and sit in an open shared area and I don’t want my employer to know I’m in school for something unrelated to my job. Everything will be recorded and viewable later. I wrote to the prof and asked about exam protocol. Luckily there is no live exam tt will be invigilated over zoom. We just have to turn the exam in before midnight on Friday. I am debating if I should I use my floating hours to maybe leave work 1 hour early on exam days ? The past semester I only took time off for the final exams.

If I wasn’t such an overachiever, I would be able to settle for just python and calculus. That seems like a more doable balance. I’m trying to convince myself tt my ling class will be an “easy” class but there are readings and discussion posts and essays tt you have to write. Another reason I’m piling these classes on now is that this may be the last semester tt is fully remote / online. Bc of my job I otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend these classes if they were offered in the day time.

I’m already panicking a bit and tempted to just drop all my classes and focus on work. I know all these choices are in my power. I get to choose what I want to do. I am in a privileged position where I have a full-time job and with this money I earn I can attend community college on top of already having my BA. But I also think about people who have the luxury and financial means to not work and just focus on school. I think about ppl who are born into generational wealth and they don’t have to be as pragmatic about what they do, they can ~follow their dreams~, they don’t have to think about supporting their family members or sending money back home or wonder about how/if their parents will be able to retire.

Every time I think about just working and not doing school at the same I’m reminded that I’m an immigrant and my mum did not bring me here for me not to try my best, for me not to make the most of the one life I have.

#personal #work

[gayregis]

I've listened to the part where Geralt talks with a very ill Cahir about Ciri and vengeance... it was one of the most emotional parts of the book by itself but also thanks to your take about the lost innocence of Ciri ! I felt it thrice hard in the feelings! Also, do you have thoughts on the declared love of Cahir for Ciri? Personally I see it as disturbingly romantic, let's say. Thank you for your commitment to the books and sorry to bother you

omg thank you for the ask. first of all i have to say you’re not bothering me!! tbh i have been loving getting asks because it gives me an opportunity to like bring more discussion to the witcher community... 

i feel like although reblogging pretty gifs of characters/landscapes from tw3 and any good fanart i can find is nice, my FAVORITE thing to do is write or read a really long textpost about the witcher books, i really like the discussion aspect of fandoms where people post their reactions and opinions to the content they like, because you get a bunch of shared reactions and differing opinions.

so no this is NOT a bother at all, and its nice especially to get asks about topics that i have strong feelings about but have not made posts about yet, like this one

ok, as for the actual topic: i hate forced heterosexuality, so you KNOW i hate that canon cahiri! it was out of line from sapkowski and imo, it came out of absolutely nowhere in tower of the swallow, it wasn’t something built up to or foreshadowed at all, so it felt not only weird in context but weird for sapkowski as an author.

my main problem with canon cahiri: i think it’s super creepy!

first of all, let’s discuss the age difference. cahir in baptism of fire is estimated to be “not over 25,” which i see as putting him around 20 to 25 years old, and i usually take the median of this which is around 23. while this “not over 25″ comment is said in the context of the hansa to remark upon how young cahir is (i believe it’s thought of by either geralt or dandelion, and geralt is around 60 years old and as a witcher he looks 45, and dandelion is 38 in tower of the swallow), and how cahir is described as a young man in time of contempt to illustrate that he has a sense of innocence to him as ciri cuts him down, his age gap with ciri is super innappropriate for anything to occur between them, since she is 10 or 11 during the massacre of cintra (as stated by geralt in something more), so she would be around 14 at thanedd, and 15-16 during baptism of fire to lady of the lake. so sapkowski deemed it fit to pair a 23 year old man with a 16 year old girl. this isn’t the first time he’s done something like this, what with essi being “not over 18″ and shani also bein around 18 / college age, and yennefer canonically looking around 20. listen, the man has some messed up values when it comes to women’s ages. we have to take it upon ourselves as people who like the not-weird parts of canon to understand how worldviews and personal biases affect one’s writing, and change it for ourselves to make it right so we can continue interacting with it, if we so choose (tldr: retcon some shit when it’s fucked up in canon).

now, before someone argues that “it’s fantasy medieval world, medieval relationships between men and women were just like that,” believe me, i am aware. i study ancient greece/rome and men who were in their 30s were most often paired with women in their teens as part of their arranged marriages. that is how their ancient societies functioned more than 2000 years ago. the issue is that this is a fantasy world, in which societal norms and laws do not have to conform to real-life earth history, and this is the work of a modern writer writing in the 1990s. it’s not “just how the times were,” it’s deliberately choosing to include an age gap like that to be something canonically acceptable by their society/ies.

also, one could argue that the age gap would be fine once they are older, like, when ciri becomes an adult she is already medievally-style betrothed to cahir so they start dating when she’s like 20 and he’s like 27. eh... that’s still an uncomfortable age gap, at least for when they’re in their 20s. people in their older 20s have more life experience than people in their younger 20s. but at least it wouldn’t land cahir in modern-day jail.

it’s still just an uncomfortably large age gap, and if you think about it, it’s even creepier considering that cahir met ciri when she was a helpless child around 10 - 11 and it just makes the bathing scene excruciatingly creepy too if you put it in the context that he eventually would fall in love with her. it even begins to not be about strictly age, but about life experience, development, and power imbalance within the relationship. i mean, he did literally kidnap her.

cahir in tos calls ciri a “woman” when she is like, 15 or 16 (with the rose tattoo) (to anyone reading, please don’t come at me with that “the age of consent is 15 in poland, just because it’s 18 in the US doesn’t mean your laws and culture apply to everyone” ... please do not try and justify this with laws, legality is not morality. only saying this because i’ve seen it in other posts). like.... hm! don’t like that! she is a teenager... he is in his 20s... this should not be occuring.

sorry for the loooong explanation, but every time someone brings up the subject of age gaps on tumblr it turns into crazy discourse with everyone trying to justify it.

but yeah, CANONICALLY cahir would have been 16-21 (median 18) when he met ciri at 10-11, and 20-25 (median 23) when he declares his love for her at 15-16. that’s ... not good ... to put it more into perspective, these are their ages on a traditional school system path: a 18 year old is a high school senior, an 11 year old is a 6th grader. a 23 year old has been out of college for 2 years, a 16 year old is a high school sophomore. ITS NOT GOOD

my other problem with canon cahiri: it’s boring and contradicts sapkowski at his own game.

all of the witcher is about taking fantasy tropes and inverting them, like you can’t have some random peasant kill a dragon, you’d need a professional, and also guess what, the dragon isn’t evil but a dad trying to protect his wife and child.

all of the characters in the hansa (as well as the four main characters of geralt, yennefer, ciri, and dandelion) are inversions of the tropes they represent. for some examples, milva’s trope is something like the hot action girl who only exists to be the only girl in the company and to be sexy eye candy. instead of falling into this, she is actually an action girl, not bothering with sexiness and appeal to the gaze of a male audience but a “get shit done” type, who also dresses and acts “like a man.” regis’ trope is all vampire tropes ever. he/vampires in the witcher doesn’t/don’t fall into any of the traditional european vampire myths like burning in sunlight, needing to drink blood to stay alive, being disdainful of humanity, having aversions to garlic, belonging to a super-secret orderful society that lurks in the shadows and controls everything like puppetmasters, etc... instead, he is the epitome of redemption arcs and overall “goody-goodiness,” understands humanity perfectly and does things out of his good nature. i already talk about regis too much, so i’ll quit it. 

cahir is an inversion of every knight trope ever, particularly the evil knight. he scars ciri’s memory as a night terror, but actually is not ... a bad person. he’s just some guy, pressured by his family and his society to do what he saw as an assignment like a college kid might see their final essay assignment posted on canvas. except you know. the final exam was to kidnap a girl. and he got an F on that and failed the course (ie got thrown in prison). ANYWAYS, cahir is meant to be this inversion of the knight tropes, so WHY, WHY, WHY make him become the knight trope of being the one to romance and to save a hapless princess? if we’ve learned anything about ciri, it’s that she’s the inversion of the princess trope! she KILLS PEOPLE. she ALMOST KILLED CAHIR. she can defend herself and kill for herself, she doesn’t need the knight trope going to protect her! 

heterosexual romance as the Big Reason and Motivation behind all of a character’s actions is tiring, annoying, boring, and not well-thought out. it’s so base and not unique, it doesn’t fit in with everything else about the witcher.

how i would fix it: not make them fall in love.

cahir already HAS a motivation to find ciri and to help her. he needs to APOLOGIZE. he needs to say, hey, i’m sorry i kidnapped you and ruined your life, i made peace with your dad, he doesn’t wanna kill me anymore, i can only hope that you can forgive me too after i SET THINGS RIGHT. 

as opposed to regis’s arc (i swear i am not playing favorites with regis, i just tend to compare and contrast regis and cahir’s redemptions because they are quite different yet they join the hansa side by side so they’re bound to be compared), cahir actually can find the one (not many) people he wronged, and set things right on his own accord, not go forth with a larger mission to assist all humanity, or whatever.

i think cahir also had this WONDERFULLY UNDERUTILIZED anti-imperialist message as part of his character that pains me to see being swept under the rug for some cheap lame romance story. sapkowski already created some anti-war sentiments with the battle of the bridge in baptism of fire, and he tried to create anti-racism sentiments throughout the book/at the end of lady of the lake. anti-imperialism fits with the rest of the saga as a message.

the fact that cahir was instructed by his family to hate the northern kingdoms, despite the fact that they were related to northerners, is really profound as something to happen to a character, and holds a lot of meaning in today’s society. the fact that he broke, finally, after he lost ciri, just completely lost his mind and had to be restrained because he was wailing so hard, because of the pressure that this society put him under to succeed and achieve pride for his family, is such a great example of the tragedies of society. then he speaks out against his leader and is jailed... and yet, after this, he gets to learn from his mistakes and redeem himself as a good person, and his character has developed SO much. he is not doing what his country wants him to do, he is not doing what his family wants him to do. he is doing what he wants to do because it is the RIGHT thing to do. that already is such a powerful message, he doesn’t need anymore character motivation!

so yep that’s my thoughts on why cahir is a good character asides from all that forced romance biz

#ask #cahir #ciri #master-dellamorte

[hqprotectionsquad]

Sunlight (Kunimi x Reader)

Title: Sunlight Ship: Kunimi x Reader Word Count: 1,568 Summary: Kunimi takes you home after he is dragged on a double date with Oikawa and his crush.  A/N: cross posted from my Wattpad!

Kunimi leans into the desk chair, scanning the classroom. Deep breath in, deep breath out. No need for anyone to see that he is having an internal breakdown. His face is stone-cold, with his eyes as dull as usual, but his head is clattered with memories and thoughts, and most importantly, a realization that shook his form in the first place: he developed feelings for you.

For him, this is huge. He hasn't had a crush since junior high, and even then, he found the idea of a prospering relationship too much to handle. Now, while his perspective toward romance has matured, he wants his feelings to be like milk, spoiled once exposed to the elements. He just needs a few reasons to create a barrier between his brain and his heart. Maybe you have a bad habit of dog-earring your pages or you chew too loud or you tend to speak on the sarcastic side. Something. Anything.

Volleyball practice arrives and Kunimi pinpoints the original source of the "problem," as he wants to call this thing that's taken over his mind. This man with perfectly styled hair is ultimately the reason why you and your best friend even come to the volleyball games and while it isn't as hard to talk to Ritsuko, you are a little more difficult, only because Kunimi can't look at you in the eyes. Oikawa approaches Kunimi at the end of practice, glowing and glistening instead of appearing sweaty like everyone else. "Kunimi-chan, will you be meeting up with me, (L/N)-chan, and Ri-chan after we finish here today? I could use a friend to help me seal the deal with Ri-chan and she'll only come if (L/N)-chan comes."

Kunimi slings the towel around the crook of his elbow but all he really wants to do with the sweat-sopped thing is throw it into Oikawa's face. Is he really indirectly pushing the limits to his brain? Oikawa wouldn't know anything about it but Kunimi has nothing to do today and his mom is always nagging him to spend time with his friends instead of reading inside or peppering a volleyball by himself. Kunimi replies coolly, "Sure. What are we doing?"

"Cafe study date, of course!" Oikawa sips from his water bottle, but the corner of his lips form a grin. "I hope we do more talking than studying but you never know. Ri-chan and (Y/N)-chan are so studious sometimes."

"I see." Kunimi nods and gathers his things. "I'll meet you in twenty."

"Okay!" Oikawa's thumb and index finger meet to make a circle. "Say hi to them if you see them before I do! They'll be stopping by the gym. See you!"

Once Kunimi gets into the shower, he does everything he can to prevent himself from banging his head against the tiled wall. The water from the shower head rolls onto his body, then off into the drain. Why did he even agree to this? He is just going to shut off, like the robot everyone says he is. This is a mistake.

"Do you understand what they're talking about?" You lean over to whisper in Kunimi's ear. He shakes his head with a frown in response.

Across the table, your best friend and Oikawa are discussing what seems to be school but also flirting with every other word. You didn't think that was possible up until that moment. Ri-chan always goes for the studious kind, which is kind of the reason why you were so skeptical when she asked you to accompany her to this study session. Oikawa never struck you as the smart guy, but here you were, proven wrong, apparently. Kunimi, on the other hand, is quiet, but it appears that he cares a lot about his grades because he actually is studying for an exam he has next week, according to him.

"What are you working on?" You nudge Kunimi's elbow with yours and at first, it looks like he's about to lash out at you. You scoot into the back of your chair, folding your arms. He doesn't seem invested in his work and he sets his pencil to the side.

"A math assignment." His voice is everything but a murmur. "What are you working on, (L/N)-chan?" Your name doesn't roll off as easy as you thought it would, and you can't help but to wonder if his would sound weird in your mouth too.

"An essay for Japanese literature. I don't really understand it though." Your lips form a thin line before you force yourself to take a sip from your latte. If you were going to spend nearly 600 yen on a drink, you needed to finish it.

"I see." Kunimi nodded and looked outside the window, no longer paying attention to you. You know that he's not an outgoing person, but with Ri-chan and Oikawa doing all sorts of things across the table, you wish you had a more receptive person to the left of you.

Ri-chan pushes herself out of the table with her eyes wide open. "Ah! I need to go pick up Haru-kun!" Her brother, only five, gets picked up. You remember meeting him for the first time and you understand why Ri-chan goes out of her way for her sibling. He is one of the shiest things on this earth.

"Let me come with you, Ri-chan! So that you won't have to go alone." Oikawa suggests with his million-yen smile and she graciously accepts.

"I apologize, Kunimi-san and (Y/N)," Ri-chan's words come out fast and muddled. They bow to the both of you before taking their leave. The bell at the top of the door resounds in your ears over and over. Did that just really happen? You ask yourself. You glance over to Kunimi's expression and it seems that he reacted similarly.

"Er, I suppose I should take you home then." Kunimi offers after noticing your cup drew empty a while ago.

"Yeah, there isn't much point to staying after they've left anyway." You shrug, placing your notebook and pencils back into your school bag. After zipping up and thanking the server for the food and beverages, you motion for him to lead the way out.

He does and he barely looks at you before heading off into a direction. "Kunimi, my house is the other way," you pant after needing to run after him. He isn't necessarily fast, but he is persistent.

"Oh. Okay." To you, it looks like Kunimi is one to only work, but you know from watching him over the year you've known of him that he doesn't even work sometimes. What is the turmoil behind his eyes? What is he thinking about?

This time, you lead the way but you make sure you stand next to him. Now that you're side by side, you need to roll your eyes up to your eyebrows to properly have a look at him. Soft threads of hair, a fit and capable body, but saddest of all, his eyes evoke stirring into your heart. When was the last time someone really got to know him?

"Kunimi-san, if you don't mind me asking," you begin as your scenery changes from the hustle of the city center to the suburbs where most people live. "Do you have friends from outside of the volleyball team?"

"Not really," he replies.

"Why not?"

"I don't go out of my way to make new friends." It is simple and the truth, but it stings your eyes.

"Right." You nod, pushing down the stone in your throat. "Have you ever wanted to become friends with other people?"

"I guess," he mutters as you turn a corner and he follows suit, shoving his hands in his front pockets. "It doesn't really matter to me whether or not I have friends."

"Isn't it a little lonely though?" You prod more, seeing if he'll say anything or do anything. You can't really imagine yourself going further out of your current friend group either, but your group is diverse in all the activities you do. No one person shares all the same ones, which makes conversations exciting.

"Sometimes."

His words trail into a deafening silence. You walk for what you believe is hours and you continue toward your home. The next time he looks at you is when you arrive at the gate of your family home. It is modest, but it is perfect for a family like yours.

"Thank you for bringing me home." You smile as you fish for your keys in your bag, holding out the strap with one hand.

"You're welcome, (L/N)-san." His grin is a ghost, only seen for a second, but you catch it.

"You have a nice smile," you comment softly and shake your head. He isn't looking for new friends, you remind yourself. Your voice raises in dynamics when you say, "So! How far away do you live from here?"

"Maybe...20 minutes." He scratches his head with one of his fingers.

"You should've told me! Your house is far from here!" You go as far as slapping him lightly on the arm, but he doesn't really react.

"It's okay. I wanted to." His small smile returns. The sun streams through the tree on the sidewalk and when it hits Kunimi, it washes over his features with a soft glow. No longer does he look dull, he shines brighter than ever.

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