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luvkyu · 15 days

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heart stop ( jung sungchan ) part one

sungchan x male reader

sungchan finally talks to his crush !!

content : 1.9k words, fluff, mentions of nudity/mature themes, uni au, gym bro!sungchan x artist!reader

( a/n ) PART ONE OF THE COLLAB W @jaemmphilia !!! just a heads up - part two is nsfw !! so pls take that into account before you start reading <3

part two

"do you think y/n's into guys?"

"huh??" eunseok sputtered at the sudden question, basically choking on his food.

sungchan stifled a snicker, his ears growing a light shade of red. he stared down at the chopsticks in his hand with a love sick smile. eunseok cleared his throat as he watched the other twirl the utensils between his fingers.

"are we talking about taro's friend from his art class?" eunseok asked.

"yeah. i think i have a small crush on him."

"a crush on who?" shotaro suddenly chimed in as he sat with them in the cafeteria.

"y/n," sungchan answered a bit shyly.

"l/n???" shotaro's brows were raised in shock.

sungchan looked at eunseok, as if for guidance, before turning back to shotaro and saying a quiet "yes".

shotaro thought for a moment, then nodded in approval.

"you two would be cute as fuck together," he said before taking a bite of his lunch.

sungchan smiled at the idea of himself with y/n. he leaned over toward his friend eagerly, "do you know if he's gay?"

"how should i know?.. but i'm about to meet him at the art studio to work together if you wanna come," shotaro offered.

"really??"

"sure, why not. we're just taking some time to work on new oil paintings, it's not an actual class or anything so you can come along."

sungchan nodded happily at the idea.

"what are you gonna do if he's straight?" eunseok asked teasingly.

"cry," sungchan muttered in response.

y/n stared at the canvas in front of him. his creativity was having a hard time flowing today. maybe he was overworking, or maybe it was just an off day. either way, it was annoying. he was supposed to be productive today. instead, a blank canvas was mocking him while his hands fidgeted with a paintbrush.

he sighed and set his brush down against his easel.

"what's wrong, babe?"

y/n looked up to see shotaro strutting into the studio, followed by a taller boy he hadn't met before.

"i told you not to call me that," y/n scolded while rolling his eyes.

"you're right. sorry, honey."

y/n turned in his seat to face his friend better, "that's just worse."

shotaro chuckled. as he sat down at his own easel, he grabbed another seat for the friend he brought along. y/n refused to embarrass himself by looking at the stranger for too long, but the small glance he did get was enough for him to conclude that the male was drop dead gorgeous.

"oh, y/n! this is my friend sungchan. he wanted to tag along cause he has no life outside of classes and the gym. sungchan, this is y/n!"

sungchan glared daggers at shotaro, before looking back to y/n with a wide smile.

"hi! nice to meet you. i've seen you around campus a little," sungchan greeted.

"really? i think i've seen you some too."

sungchan nodded, almost giddy at that answer. silence fell on them as shotaro set up his canvas and y/n looked through his paint colors just to have something to do.

"wow, you guys are great at this," shotaro said sarcastically, mainly to piss off sungchan.

"i'm terrible at talking to people, leave me alone," y/n defended with a small laugh.

sungchan watched y/n lean against his easel, resting his chin against his palm in defeat. he looked so perfect, even when feeling dejected.

"is something wrong?" sungchan asked. y/n looked at him again. he was a little surprised sungchan was even asking.

"ah.. i just feel kinda drained. i'm having a hard time working on this, to be honest."

"take a break," shotaro chimed in.

"but i just started."

"take a longer break. we've had a lot of assignments back to back lately, go rest for the day."

y/n thought about it for a moment. he sighed and nodded at the idea before starting to pack up his supplies.

shotaro turned back to sungchan, gesturing silently toward y/n in hopes that his friend would get the hint. sungchan looked at him in confusion. shotaro, in turn, huffed at his cluelessness. he pulled his phone out and went to his messages.

taro :

BRO, GO.

ask him out, go 'rest' together 🛏️

sungchan rolled his eyes at the texts. he gave the male another stink eye before typing a response.

sung :

I DIDNT WANNA TALK TO HIM JUST TO GET LAID

taro :

but it is part of the reason right

sung :

osaki shotaro istg

taro :

ALRIGHT ALRIGHT BUT STILL ASK HIM OUT, U HAVE THE PERFECT WINDOW RIGHT HERE

sungchan looked up from his phone, biting his lip as anxiety shot through his body.

y/n finished packing up his bag and showed the two of them a tired smile.

"i'll see you guys later. it was nice to meet you, sungchan."

sungchan nodded and smiled back, now watching his crush exit the studio. his smile fell as he turned back around to see shotaro giving him a disappointed frown.

"you're a dumbass, sung."

"sungchan!"

sungchan looked up as he took a drink of his water, seeing eunseok and shotaro walking toward him.

"hey guys," he greeted while getting up from the bench press. he wiped around his face with a small towel as his friends came closer to him.

"did you just finish up?" shotaro asked.

"yeah, i'm gonna head back to the dorm now."

"boo, we could've worked out together."

sungchan rolled his eyes. "it's a good thing you still have each other then," he teased, patting shotaro's shoulder as he slung his gym bag over his back.

"hey, how'd it go with y/n yesterday? you ask him out?" eunseok asked before the other could leave.

"no, i-"

"he chickened out," shotaro teased.

sungchan sighed, but nodded. "i was too nervous."

"well we just saw him sitting outside by the campus arboretum if you wanna go try again," eunseok said.

"really?"

eunseok nodded, "go for it."

sungchan smiled a thanks and grabbed his water bottle before finally departing.

"..i doubt y/n is straight," shotaro mumbled as he and eunseok waved him goodbye.

"oh, me too," eunseok agreed.

sungchan began walking in the direction of the arboretum, looking around for the boy that had been on his mind way too much lately.

finally, he spotted y/n on a bench sketching a few flowers. he took a deep breath and walked over to join him.

"hey y/n!"

y/n looked up from his sketchbook, almost choking on thin air. sungchan's muscle shirt didn't hide a thing, and his slightly messy hair and tall stature worked well in his favor. with the way y/n was staring at him, or practically gawking, sungchan was now pretty certain y/n was attracted to men.

y/n quickly cleared his throat and averted his eyes. he looked down at his sketchbook, then back up strictly to sungchan's face.

"hi," he said quietly, "what're you doing out here?"

"was just on my way home and thought i'd take a walk through here. it's really pretty."

y/n nodded happily and took a look around. "yeah, i love being out here."

"can i sit with you?"

y/n nodded almost instantly. he moved over a bit to give the other more room on the bench. sungchan sat and sighed, actually very much enjoying the fresh air. he leaned back for a moment and let the sun wash over his face. one arm was hanging off the back of the bench, while the other raked a hand through his messy hair.

y/n was in awe, needless to say.

"so what're you drawing?"

"just some flower studies," y/n answered. "i wanted to add some flowers to my next painting so i'm just practicing a little."

"is it okay if i ask to see?" sungchan asked cautiously.

"oh, sure! you can look through the whole sketchbook, i don't mind. it's mostly random sketches."

sungchan nodded eagerly and took the book from y/n's hands, making sure to brush against his fingers just a little bit. he smiled to himself, now knowing the effect he had on y/n.

sungchan flipped through the pages delicately. he was trying not to crinkle or smudge anything, especially the ones done in pencil. y/n was right though - the sketches were pretty random. from people, to small household items, to cloud formations.

it was when sungchan found a more interesting page that he stopped flipping through. the sketches showed a naked man in two different poses, one leaning against what looked like a washroom counter, and the other laying on a bed with a messy sheet draped just over a couple parts of himself. sungchan looked up with wide eyes.

"oh, that's um," y/n didn't know whether to be proud or embarrassed. he was somehow both. "that was just a guy i had a thing with a couple months ago."

"these are amazing, y/n," sungchan praised. he continued flipping through, though his mind was still on the nude sketches.

"thank you," y/n blushed a bit as sungchan finally got to the end of the book.

"i really like the nude ones. you draw people really well," sungchan complimented while closing the book. when he looked up again, his face was closer to y/n's than he thought. his eyes instantly shifted to the male's lips, it was as if there was a magnet between them.

y/n could hear his heartbeat in his ears. sungchan was even more beautiful up close, and he was growing more attracted to him by the second.

sungchan lightly cleared his throat after a moment, trying not to stare at the pair of lips he so desperately wanted to kiss. making y/n uncomfortable was the last thing he wanted.

"are you going to the bonfire party tonight?" sungchan asked.

"i dunno, my friend invited me but i'm not usually into parties."

"well, i think you should go."

y/n met sungchan's eyes again, "hm? why?"

sungchan blushed. he didn't mean to blatantly give away that he wanted y/n there, but he might as well roll with it now.

"cause i'll have a much better time if i get to see you," sungchan answered with entirely pink cheeks. he could tell y/n was a blushing mess as well, despite how confident he tried to seem.

with a sigh, y/n looked up at the clouds. "is this how you pick up all your guys?"

sungchan laughed lightly, "actually no, my heart is pounding more than it ever has, i think." he let out a large exhale with this, which triggered more laughter between the two.

y/n found it endearing how obviously nervous sungchan was. here was this hunk of a man trying to hit on him, but he was so jittery and smitten that it really just made him adorable. y/n smiled as he thought about it. his eyes met the other's again while nodding, "alright, i'll be there."

sungchan's smile quickly grew at his crush's decision. he nodded and started getting up.

"i'll see you in a little while then," he said while giving y/n's head a gentle pat, his hand lingering against his hair. y/n nodded and watched him begin to walk away. he was speechless as he stared after sungchan. let's just say, the view from the back was just as good as the view from the front.

taglist ★! :

@kssyivo @jaemmphilia @vkooksupremacy @haocovr @astrozuya

#kpop x male reader #male reader #riize imagines #riize #riize x reader #riize fluff #riize sungchan #sungchan #jung sungchan #riize x male reader #sungchan x reader #sungchan x male reader #riize fanfic #riize au #riize scenarios

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kingofwickedskulls · 5 months

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I finished Twilight Mirage this week and have been digesting it as I start up the road to Partizan. I had some thoughts about one theme from the season that I was trying to wrap my head around so I wrote a mini essay below the cut in an attempt to organize them.

To start off with, and I'm going to wax a bit poetic here, but Counter/Weight in my head always had the texture and feel of a cloudy winter day. That season was a fantastic ride but to me it's a depressing season nonetheless and the ending, while I think was excellent, was certainly not a cathartic release that one might expect. I don't think it needed to be/should have but it set up Twilight Mirage as a generally warmer and more upbeat season in comparison to me. If C/W was a city street in a Midwest winter where the snow you tramped through was more brown sludge than fine white powder, then Twilight Mirage seemed to be the a field of wildflowers with the hint of a wildfire on the horizon or the first turning leaf of autumn.

I really enjoyed TM but why I'm writing my thoughts out is because, and the cast note this throughout, the pacing was weird which spilled over into the themes for me. I should note that I did not read episode descriptions and I understand that may have cleared some things up, but from an audio only perspective it did feel unbalanced. I won't/can't suggest any changes that would have pulled things together more nicely. One difficulty that the cast note is just how many factions there were and how that bogged things down initially. I can see that, but I appreciated it because it gave the world a very lived in feel and showed how characters were managing and thinking about so many relations that really fleshed them out. Of course, it's not sustainable and these multiple threads that couldn't be neatly tied up leads up to the point I've been thinking most about.

There’s an intro that Austin gives, from the perspective of Keen, where he remarks upon Crystal Palace’s inability to account for non major actors. I understood this to mean your average joe in a sense (though of course, what is "average" in a galaxy lol, it's completely meaningless but I digress). It was refreshing to hear that at that point in the story though, because it showed not only that crystal palace was fallible but that it’s flaws could be exploited by those at the margins. Except. Crystal Palace doesn't make mistakes, it doesn't have flaws.

This isn’t a critique or a failing but just a tension of the show that is not really resolved and maybe can't be. The extent to which systems govern us seem insurmountable, capitalism as an example has the ability to adapt to crises that we might hope destroy it. Revolutions don't necessarily mean an end to the status quo, I think one could even look back to OriCon as an example of this in universe. Crystal Palace is much the same, any crises it has are simply non issues because they become preordained and thus established and overcome by virtue of prophecy.

Keen offers the listener hope in Crystal Palace failing to overcome every accountable crisis. It couldn't account for a singular fisherman saving the day then, right? Except that Austin states that Crystal Palace is actually predicting everything, accurately and wholly, it is only human biases that are diluting the prediction. It will overcome any crisis, time and time again. We understand then that the fisherman was accounted for, most likely as a miniscule chance that somebody disregarded because they let their bias against unlikely odds get the better of them. It’s interesting then to read Keen’s comments as coming from the perspective of someone who wants out but can’t take that step, as shown in other moments with his daughter or literally stated in the chase with signet in the finale arc.

It is hard to make a show about your “average joe” changing galactic level politics and wars. They are at the very least swept up into a higher level from which they can act. I think the closest we have to that in TM is Echo Reverie. All other characters from the start occupied elevated positions in some form and would have had access to a least modicum of influence (whether religiously, militarily, or socially). Echo was the only who was sort of swept up into this high level conflict, but even then the crux of their arc is dealing with their brother getting buddy buddy with fascists. They certainly don't like Advent but they're not 14 15 who literally goes after the leader of the group.

This is all to say that when I listened to Twilight Mirage one of the themes that I think was trying to be communicated was the ability of non-major actors to effect change in the world, but it fell through in my opinion. Crystal Palace demonstrates the ability of everyone having the ability to act upon the world in meaningful ways but as the story is told through characters who aren't everyone it just doesn't click properly.

I hope this rambling makes sense. It's only a select few moment from like 80 hours of content but they stood out to me. I want to reiterate I still loved the season, I mean look, they got me writing almost a thousand words on just a small bit of it lol. There was just something about this particular theme, if you want to call it that, that didn't feel tied together.

#fatt #twilight mirage #my ramblings

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bcomic-blog · 2 years

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WEEKLY WEBCOMIC ROUNDUP

This is an experiment. I’d like this to be a bLog for analyzing and discussing webcomics. One format that might be a way to prompt that conversation is a summing up of the week in webcomics. We’ll see how this goes!

Careful: spoilers may lurk

ORDER OF THE STICK

(By Rich Burlew; www.giantitp.com; updates infrequently; Full Color, Stick-Figure Art; D&D parody, ensemble, longform closed-ended, comedic action-drama; support)

No. YES! Surprisingly, during the writing of this post! (New page here)

The story is in a bit of a lull, with the party inventorying minor assets in the run-up to a major (possibly climactic?) confrontation with Team Evil. On the previous page they accounted for minor skills, this page minor monsters, specifically five Mimics (D&D mosters that lie in wait in dugeons camoflauged as common objects, in this case, two of the five stools)

EL GOONISH SHIVE

(By Dan slash Dana Shive; egscomics.com; updates daily M thru Sat; Grayscale, fully illustrated; suburban fantasy w transgender themes, ensemble, open-ended, time-dilated, mix of SoL, Soap & Adventure; support)

The M-W-F full-page storyline, “Balance,” wrapped up yesterday after 18 months and 198 pages. The final page resolved so many ongoing mysteries, confirming or debunking so many fan theories, that I have already posted a deep dive into that one page!

Before that, Elliot collapsed, probably of exhaustion and had a vision of himself berating themself as “pathetic,” evidently over having worried Tedd:

Meawhile, the T-Th-Sat comic strip (running concurrently and idependently) is smack in the middle of the “Who Is Ellen” storyline, and the impromptu D&D players are revealing their characters to one another. Rich tries shaming George for playing a woman character. This goes poorly:

The M-W-F comic will be on hiatus for 10 days for the Shive to prep for the new arc, but meawhile the T-Th-Sat storyline will continue!

DINOSAUR COMICS

(By Ryan North; www.qwantz.com; updates M-W-F; Color, Simple Pixel Art, every page identical; observational humor and absurdity; support)

Sometimes a comic panel is best with no context at all:

The context

GUNNERKRIGG COURT

(By Tom Siddell; gunnerkrigg.com; updates M-W-F ; Full Color, fully illustrated; magic-school fantasy, longform drama adventure; support)

(No parethetical explanations, they’d each take paragraphs and paragraphs!)

Jerrek wants to see the “Star Ocean” for himself, but as the train pulls closer, he is growing convinced that it would destroy him. Hilariously, his new “girlfriend” seems oblivious of his distress:

But in the most recent page, she seems to finally notice, break through his indecision and pull him off the train before it’s too late!

QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

(By Jeph Jacques; questionablecontent.net; updates Weekdays; Full Color, fully illustrated; Almost real-world setting with some SF elements, open-ended long-running SoL Soap; support)

Claire (recently graduated library scientist) has been offered a weird and possibly too-good-to-be-true opportunity to build and run an IS dept from scratch for oddball research commune, the Cube. She is on a quest to get all the advice she can, and has finally come to talk to her Mom, who suggests she talk to her nice AI friend Yay. Yay is basically Skynet, if Skynet wanted to integrate into society and live a normal life.

However, Claire’s boyfriend has heard about Yay helping out his best friend’s AI girlfriend, which leads to instant acceptance! But also... misunderstandings

I also read Girl Genius, but the current side story... I’m not really feeling it. Also, I’ve gone on long enough. I hope this prompts some conversation or maybe leads someone to discover a new read!

#order of the stick #el goonish shive #dinosaur comics #gunnerkrigg court #questionable content #webcomics #original content

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itsjustascarecrow · 1 month

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lol just so i'm not adding more tags onto that least fave horror genre poll, i'm gonna throw some more thoughts under a readmore b/c i have a lot of feelings about it for some reason, lmao

initially i was just gonna point out that zombies also wasn't on the list, unless op was categorizing them under something else?? but considering all the others i noticed weren't present (folk, spacial, and creature feature; also anthology if you wanna count that, but it's more of a format), i figure it was merely a case of like the limitations of that kind of post like only having so many options. i've also seen people make the argument that zombies isn't really a genre, just a type of creature; same w/ like all these vampire and frankstein themed films we've been getting this past year or so. so idk if universal monsters would be it's own subgenre separate from something like a standard creature feature (i.e. jaws, the godzilla films, any sort of man vs. beast type movie), vs. like. idk, do people consider the predator and alien films slashers??? i think that may be the case w/ like the leprechaun and puppetmaster series, for example; it's not a singular masked killer, but it's someone/thing(s) killing people off until we're left w/ a final girl of some description. alien is sci-fi horror, sure, but most slasher series tend to have at least the one obligatory "in space" installment, so i guess?? one can argue alien just does that from the start and never leaves. and setting goes back and forth w/ predator, but that's even more so a slasher-type set up, so. idk, some of these definitely start to get too muddled where it may just come down to personal interpretation (like i was just posting about re-animator earlier today and just thought to myself it's technically a sci-fi zombie movie, lmao). some may have an objective answer, but part of me wants to play devil's advocate and leave it open.

speaking of, devil/possession films were also absent from the list; i tend to steer away from them mostly b/c of the religious aspect. partly it's overplayed, partly i just don't care for it. when evil lurks was a fantastic break from form by removing that element, but it may be just about the only example i can think of that does possession through infection as opposed to some kind of demon. in any case, would've been interesting to see where that would've placed; my guess would be either very high or very low. given that gothic was the lowest, my assumption is that maybe people just like the aesthetic?? esp when taking a tumblr audience into account, lol.

body horror being second surprised me; maybe people just think it's gross? which tbf was why i almost picked that, but then i had two thoughts about it: 1) it's another blind spot for me (and what little i have seen i liked) so didn't feel like a good enough reason, and 2) as someone who's gnc, picking it would've felt like some sort of betrayal, lmao. like i've not undergone any surgeries or hrt, anything like that, but still lol, felt almost hypocritical (and again esp given that this is a tumblr audience being polled). of course the works of cronenberg are prob what first come to mind for most people, which sure, he's not for everyone; i'll even admit that the ulterior motives and themes he tries to tackle kind of go over my head at first, but i think i just need to take more time w/ it. b/c at a base level, when i finally watched videdrome for the first time a couple weeks ago, i was enthralled by the actual body horror elements when i was actually seeing them instead of just imagining it based on reputation. same w/ og hellraiser; that shit is gnarly, so yeah, if you're at all squeamish, you're not gonna have a good time. but if you're desensitized and willing to explore the why of what's going on, it can be fascinating. or, if nothing else just enjoying the incredible practical effects (here's looking at you, the shunting scene from society).

and i was a lil surprised fantasy wasn't higher up b/c it seems like people who do watch them end up hating it, but it's prob something not a lot even know about or have seen. or, my other speculation is perhaps people just think it's too campy, too childish, too goofy, somewhere in that vein like too close to comedy where it can be really hit or miss. again, i'll mention the leprechaun series b/c while that has supernatural/slasher elements, it's specifically a fantastical creature (or a version of one) at the helm. but realistically, it really is most likely a case of people not having enough experience/examples of it to give it a vote as compared to anything else.

another i almost went with was psychological; person i rb'ed from said they're boring which i can understand. the only real argument i have can honestly be said for any of these but like if it's done well, then they're plenty fun and interesting. but given nowadays most examples tend to fall into "elevated horror," it seems divisive. personally, i just take it on a case-by-case situation; some i like, some i don't. again, same can be said for all these genres. as a side note, i wonder if op of the poll considers giallo under this umbrella; i tend to like most giallo films but, i'm also a sucker for a lot of 70s horror when those were more popular. i recently watched berberian sound studio which was a 2014 sort of homage to 70s giallo, and yes it was slow, not particularly scary/not a lot of big scares or very bloody, and ended somewhat abruptly w/o explaining much. but i fucking loved it; can't pinpoint why exactly, and i could see why a lot of the reviews said they were so bored w/ it. thrillers/psych horror is a weird one b/c they can end up being predictable and/or drag on a bit, so idk, maybe i'm just more forgiving. plus i can see why it's more appealing to those who hate slashers, etc., and how that same reason is why others don't like it.

ultimately, i figure no matter how many subgenres you throw in there, slashers will always end up the least fave. personally, i've enjoyed most of the ones i've bothered to watch (b/c there's plenty i've just not cared to bother with), but i understand it's considered schlock to casual and hardcore fans alike, esp the older stuff when it was way more abundant. and i guess one can argue it technically hasn't gotten much better at its core, like technically the kills (the how and who) are more diverse, but it's the overall setup/plot that people feel is just way too overdone at this point. which is fair. it feels like a staple of horror as a whole, even tho it's not where the genre got its start, but it's clearly given way to stuff like the torture porn years of the 20-oughts that really turned people away from horror as a whole. my first instinct is to say i'm not too familiar w/ neo-slashers to make the comparison, but that could just be a term for any slasher made after a certain year, idk. if anything, i think as much as some may complain it's just the same thing over and over again, clearly the formula still works.

basically all of this to say i can see the arguments for and against for each subgenre and now i would love to see a more in-depth poll (or perhaps multiple, more specified polls) reach a wider horror audience.

#file under why i'm so frustrated w/ being in college b/c i can write fucking dissertations about how i feel about horror on fuckin tumblr #but can't for the life of me write a fucking graded midterm/final paper on the subject/major i've studied for five years #and that you have to be a fucking grad student if you want to write about the shit you actually care about #Anyway. if any of y'all actually took the time to read All Of That i appreciate you so much lmao #random bullshit

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aka-indulgence · 3 years

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Take Me by the Hand

So I wanted to post this on valentines (it’s not exactly valentine-themed, I just wanted to put something out hjdsk), but decided it was better to post now -w- this is a little fluff fic for @yeosin-n!! She has a really cool au called underwaves, and of course she makes just wonderful wonderful stuff and i love them all- and then its an undertale au!!!! in the ocean!!!!! ahdjkshd I kinda instantly fell in love with it... and UW Sans (Naut) as well, so uh!! Here’s a fluffy self-indulgent fanfic!!

Naut (UW!Sans)/Reader :D!!

"heheh, ya look like a big duck, darlin'."

You try not to make a frustrated noise at him (lord knows he's already having WAY too much fun with you) and choose to simply mumble to yourself quietly as you take step by heavy step towards the innocently splashing waves, as if taunting your predicament.

"I'd appreciate some help right about now, I could do without the remarks." You snap (softly) at him as you waddle your way over the sand, your heavy diving equipment jostling a little with every step.

Naut had been helpful enough to put all the weight on you, and you wanted no more than to strangle the grin off the bastard's face.

He's lucky you're dating him and love him too much to do that.

Naut only chuckles for a bit, in your face, and you're about to throw your flippers at him when his laughs finally die down.

"sorry, sorry," Naut lets a few more chuckles out as he wipes the "tears" away from his top set of eyesockets.

You could swear you saw his lower eyelights turned into hearts for a second…

"couldn't help myself. ya sure are a cutie," he says, and you would've made a sound of indignation if you didn't see the flowers happily popping into existence near the hole in his skull, floating down as if a slow waterfall was carrying it.

You're the one with the happy little flowers, you want to tease, but at the same time, you didn’t want him to hide it. It was cute and pretty, you loved seeing him happy and relaxed.

Without realizing what he's trying to do, Naut's already by your side, going behind your back. Before you could ask him what he's doing, you make a "hup-!?" Noise when he hoists your tank up.

"better?"

He was.. helping you carry your equipment.

"Y-yeah!" You startle (you're not sure why, but the fact that he's actually helping you makes you feel.. sentimental).

"ok then, let's keep going,"

With the help of Naut, the journey to the water’s edge wasn’t as painful as it was when you started trudging down the sand, and you eventually got about chest-deep in the water.

Naut let go of your tank, keeping you steady while you fit your dive boots into the open heel flippers. You fit your mask onto your face, and Naut starts drifting into deeper waters, now bobbing in the waves (how do skeletons float…? Of course he came from the ocean but… it’s like he has invisible floaties on!). He snrks a little. You make a face at him (well, as much of a face you could make with a mask covering half your face).

“What?”

“heheh… nothing. ya just… ya kinda look like a fish? with the goggles…” He makes two C-shapes with his phalanges, bringing them up to his sockets. “oh glowing waves above, i just wanna pinch you.”

“H-hey! Stay focused!” you fluster, holding your hands out to him as if he was going to bite you.

Naut chuckles. “yeah, you’re right… i can always pinch ya later.” he teases, and before you could protest more, he gestures with his hand. “ok, check your second stage first, and let’s swim slowly…”

You give the purge button of your second stage a couple of times, before attaching it to your mouth, floating towards your sea-lover. You release the air from your BCD, and Naut takes you by the hand, gently guiding you into the water.

Everything feels different as soon as you are completely submerged, the sounds around you switching from air to water; your surroundings turning blue in an instant. For a few moments, you can only hear the sound of your breathing, the bubbles burbling around you.

“you doing ok?” Naut’s voice snaps you out of your momentary awe, sounding practically as clear as he does outside the water. “don’t forget to equalize the pressure in your ears.”

The sand slopes down, and you tilt your head this way and that, giving Naut the ok signal when you think you’re good.

He’s dropped his teasing and playing around as he slowly brings you away from the surface; you vaguely feel like someone with a blindfold on while someone else’s pulling you somewhere to show you a surprise. He has to keep looking behind him to make sure he doesn’t run into corals or sharks or whatever.

Your world completely changes around you- not that you’ve never seen ocean scapes before, but actually being in it to see it for yourself sure is a special experience. You see your first fish, catching your eye as it darts away from below you. The sandy bottom keeps going down, and down, and down….

… Until eventually, you reach a spot where it stops, turning into a plain of sand.

Naut sits down- just, sits down on the sand, and it's so weird how he just so casually sits, legs apart below you, underwater. He tugs you a bit, pointing to the sand.

You descend, knees hitting the sand with a soft ‘pwsh’... your hands inadvertently fall onto Naut’s ribcage.

You see all four of his eyelights looking down, then lighting up, and you have no idea if he can see you blushing underwater-

But thankfully, Naut knows to set his priorities straight, and right now it’s making sure your diving goes smoothly and safely.

“good?”

For a second, seeing Naut completely at home in this environment, you nod your head without thinking- shaking your head before giving him the ok sign.

His grin grows and he laughs.

Damn. Even underwater he still sounds smooth as hell…

“heheheh… ok, bubbles. let’s get started then, shall we?”

After about a minute of buoyancy practice, Naut kicked off the sand with his slippers (how did they stay on his feet under- you know what? Maybe you shouldn’t question the physics of underwater monsters so much), letting you follow him in your own pace.

Not too far from the water’s edge, corals started sprouting out from the sand, and no longer than that, more sea life appeared. A rainbow of fish were milling about, shrimp and crabs skitter over the ‘living rocks’, and a sea turtle lazily swims by.

Naut easily backpedals towards it, and it circles around him.

Your eyes are taking in the underwater scene all around you with splendor; if you could smile, you would. It was all just so pretty, and your boyfriend’s over there becoming some sort of disney princess, as a few cleaner fish swim towards his skull. You don’t need to hold in your laughter on account of the regulator in your mouth, but your metaphorical smile gets bigger as you watch the tiny striped fish look around his crack while he’s completely unaware… he looks like he’s about to say something when his eyelights go out, as one of them starts nibbling.

He flaps his hand like he’s swatting a fly away, and maybe you’re being tortured right now because you just want to let out a raucous laugh, purposefully shoving it in his face.

“oh, of course, you’re entertained.” Naut lids his sockets a little, feigning annoyance, though the cute little flowers only continue to flow out of his skull.

You want to gesture a “sorry (not sorry)” at him, but without knowing sign language, the most you could do is open your hands for a hug. He’s been wonderfully non-teasing the whole way down, and you think he deserves some credit, especially showing you… all of this.

You’re thinking about how thankful you are to have him with you when you see his eyelights dart somewhere else with his grin turning mischievous. He points to the turtle still swimming nearby and asks “hey, what kind of turtle do you think that green sea turtle is?”

… What.

You blink at him a couple of times, trying to convey your “what kind of question” emotion you’re feeling right now, knowing he’s smart enough to realize what he just said-

“hahahah, i’m joking i’m joking, i know it’s Chelonia mydas. c’mon, i’m no loggerhead.”

…

Loggerhead. Loggerhead sea turtle.

…

You raise your fist at him, and you hope he could hear your internal screaming at him. Looking at the way his sockets crinkle and his grin practically stretching from non-existent ear to ear, you think he can.

The dive was relaxing and pleasant, with Naut completely in his element, giving you the reassurance that you’ll be alright with him. He brought you to different parts of the reef, highlighting some of the animals similarly as to how he addressed the sea turtle.

He brought you swimming closer to the seafloor, showing you clownfish in their stinging friend-homes, and with a straight face he said, “keep your friends close,” he put a ‘friendly’ arm around the carnivorous invertebrate, “keep your anemones closer.”

You swam away from him then, closer to whee the sand starts sloping again. You met a singular jellyfish there, to which Naut poked away from you- it could just fit in your palms. You watch with mild glee as he gently poked it around… you know it’s a living creature… but wow did you want to bounce it and play around with it like a toy. He moved it away from you and sent it bobbing in the direction of the open ocean, and he turned to you to say “are you jelly you didn’t get to play with it?”

You wanted nothing more than to show him a flat face, if you were brave enough to take the regulator off your mouth. You followed him back towards the reef, swimming through a large school of fish that parted as you did.

“how you feeling seastar? i’m feeling fin-tastic.”

He turned around to gesture at the school. “aren’t they like living artwork? so beautiful. i like to consider myself sofishticated, you know.”

You almost couldn’t focus on the reef around you as you were both delighted and desperately trying to hide it from him, that you’re enjoying a diving buddy/instructor that could talk to you as you dive.

You swam leisurely ahead of him, looking for more “landmarks” (sea… marks…?) to look at before you run out of gas, when you heard a rush of water behind you.

You almost let the regulator out of your mouth when you see a huge eel flapping about near you, with Naut holding its tail end and keeping it from coming at you. He reeled it in towards him, holding its head.

“don’t know what got into this guy. maybe your fins surprised him.”

He goes silent for a while.

“but i guess thaaat’s a moray for you.”

Old jokes!!! He’s too much!!!

You wished you could’ve said something to him so you weren’t simply being subjected to his continuous puns, but at that point it looked like you might just get that; when you saw that your pressure gauge showed less than 100.

Naut quickly looked to you when you made a wave at him, giving him a 9-0 signal, trying to convey an “up?” as best you can.

“oh. oh yeah let’s get you up, bubbles.” He said as he swam towards you.

It was like- he had a switch for professional diving instructor and ‘regular Naut’. He quietly guided your ascent, slowly and steadily, making a stop below the surface to decompress, before finally swimming all the way to the surface and inflating your BCD.

“Blah!” you ungracefully spit the regulator out, letting it sink into the water and take the mask off your face. “My teeth always feel weird afterwards…”

“cus’ you’re clenching it all the time.” he floats towards you, putting an arm around you. “how you feeling, gull friend?”

You open your mouth, only to stop when you realized what he said- as if on time, a seagull keows above you.

You give him your best attempt at a seething glare, but you take a breath and smile, putting an arm around him as well. “You know what? That was really nice. I haven’t had this much fun in a while. … or really, I didn’t do that much before I met you. I liked this, Naut. Thanks for taking me out here with you.”

You watch with satisfaction as Naut’s lazy expression and smug-ass grin fade away, his main sockets becoming wide and a light blush colors his cheekbones.

Ha, gottem.

“o-oh. you- yeah. i… you're welcome. anything for you, seastar. i’m glad you liked it.” his eyelights shift away from you.

“Yeah… though not gonna lie, you really were a sun of a beach down there. Punning when you know I can’t say anything to you- it was like, water you doing!”

“ha, yeah i know, it was-” Naut paused. And then he turned to you, seeing how smug and proud you looked of yourself.

You watched how his eyelights dilated in his sockets, sparkling like sun rays dancing in the water.

“heh… heheheh….” he chortled, “oh… don’t be mad now… it’s not a good idea to get too tide down to your emotions.”

“Well- high tide or low tide, I’ll be by your side.”

“better make sure you weren’t pier-pressured into that.”

“Nah. I’m a girl who just wants some sun with my bonefriend!”

He was smiling like a downright lovable idiot right now, eyelights shining like the sun.

“hhhhoooh my god, i want to kiss you.”

You give him a smirk.

“Oh! So you’re feeling… naut-y?”

Your grin weakens a little when Naut stops grinning, and his eyelights shrinking back to their regular sizes, shimmering. For a moment you worry if you said something wrong somehow, but your worry was unfounded- just moments later you watch as cute little hearts start coming out of his skull, with four of his eyelights turning into the same shape.

“i don’t know why kissing’s naut-y, but it’s in my name-ture to be.”

You’re smiling just as wide as him, ignoring how far he had to reach to make that pun. He closes his eyes and you let him lean in towards you, meeting him in the middle. He wraps his arms around you and kisses you while you reciprocate happily; bobbing in the waves under the sun.

#uw #underwaves #uw sans #sansxreader #naut!!!#i love naut!!!#and i love U yeo!!!!!!! ^3^#hope you like this and i wrote your man right heheu

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scrawnytreedemon · 3 years

Text

Shit I’ve Been Winding Up For A Long Time Now But Am Very Aware Will Probably Hold No Relevance Should I Actually Go Into This More--

This is about Bhunivelze.

You know, when I was chilling out, on my bed, that evening on that half term in early June, deciding to check up on ClementJ64′s FF retrospective because-- Hey! It’s been awhile, I wonder if he’s got around to doing the final bit of the FFXIII saga --You know, I was there, chilling, just for a laff. Just a laff.

The rest of that week was spent spiralling into a hyperfixation I absolutely did not anticipate in any way, shape, or form, because the way they introduced that character was “wwhdhfjjhHJDFJKHKJHW H A T??”

That retrospective and a good amount of wiki-scrounging is all I have as a basis for this. This is not a coherent character analysis-- Though I might tag it as that for ease of access. This is not, by any means, the thoughts of someone deeply familiar with FFXIII on the whole beyond plot synopses and overarching themes.

I don’t think I’m brave enough for that.

Reading the vast yet surface-deep lore on those wiki pages on my birthday while in a delirious state of mind was enough to make me somewhat nauseous.

Do you think I’m going to go through all of that in real time?

(Someday, someday.)

Ugh, I don’t know how to begin, but let us, I guess. I’d recommend you read this church-mime-demiurge’s FF Wiki page if you want the same level of base-knowledge I had, and maybe the aformentioned retrospective if you want the experience, because I don’t think I have the wherewithal to get into all of that from the bottom-up.

I am also, so, so fucking sorry for any remaining FFXIII fans in advance. There is like, a good chance I may be butchering the characterisation completely, so bear with me here.

With that... we begin?

Where do we even start with this guy?

How on earth to you begin to explain the absolute monolith you’ve constructed from crumbs of a Guy, some material no doubt spliced in from the Pale King, Sephiroth, y o u r o w n G o d O C and other characters, and the mountains of religious trauma you carry around at all times that is probably the only reason you’ve been able to latch on as hard as you did?

I’m going to try.

What gets me, in summary, about Bhunivelze is how he’s a prime example of how love and concern can become deadly forces if in the wrong hands. His first acquainting with human emotion was by deceiving and possessing Hope, reverting his body to a teenage state, and planning to live among humanity through him. He sees human sorrow and suffering, and decides that, to End This(because it must be ended, you see) he’s going to destroy all the souls of the deceased that make up the Chaos that’s been eating this world for the past five-hundred years so they all forget and Are Happy. :).

Capital G God here hasn’t been present for the vast part of human history because he’s hidden himself away from Everything due to paranoia from killing his own mother and throwing her body into the Cosmic Basement, THEN creating the beings that would come to create humanity and OTHER beings because he didn’t have the keys to the cosmic basement. And also he believes death is a thing because she’d’ve somehow cursed all things to pass(including him) out of Spite.

Which explains why he’s so fucking averse to it and anything to do with it.

Bhunivelze, to put it lightly, is Shit at stepping into others’ shoes and Getting their experiences-- All the FalCie in FFXIII are, but him especially. It’s clear(again, in the f u c k i n g JP--) that he makes attempts to sympathise with them and does what he can to help, but it’s with such a loftiness and a complete inability to Understand why anyone would want grief, The Worst Fucking Experience In Existence, and even less why they’d be willing to Go Up Against Him And HisThe New Perfect World just for it-- And what would it matter, anyway, forgetting their loved ones. It’s not like you can grieve lost memories, right?

Right.

It reminds me of when at the end of the story of Job in the Bible, where, after putting this man through hell on earth, God rewards Job by giving him ten new children to make up for the ones that he lost. I. And that’s fucked! Nothing can replace the sheer uniqueness of each individual person you loved so dearly! But if you were a nigh-omnipotent deity high and mighty, with a cursory, almost mechanical knowledge on the functionings of the human psyche, that would seem adequete; enough.

Bhunivelze is doing that on a cosmic level.

I now want to get onto the romance: that being, his affections for Lightning. I don’t know how much I’m going to say, but it’ll probably be alot. It’s something that hits very close to home.

There is this... thing, within certain branches of Christianity, perhaps even in those of various Abrahamic faiths, where God’s love is posited to be the love-- The ultimate, most-fulfilling, all-encompassing love you could ever imagine --Because, well, he is love, so the story goes, and so often the best way to convey that is through the imagery of...

Marriage.

Giving up yourself so completely, to serve, to be the Bride; to be bound by him for all eternity; and for there to be no higher bliss than this.

This angle is pushed on young girls and women the most; from the mere parallels to the woman’s role in marriage, all the way down to downright-horrifying ultra-Evangelical purity pacts. With men, God is your dad, your best bud and confidant, your boss, your king, your this, your that, and the ‘marriage‘ as it were is relegated to a sort of half-thought; a metaphor.

For me, God was an attempt at all that, and my arranged groom.

(It was almost incestuous; was incestuous, that my own Divine Father would reach for my hand in marriage.)

Bhunivelze experiences Emotions™ for the first time through Hope, experiences Hope’s sheer overwhelming admiration for Lighting(whether there were any baby-crush feelings mixed in, I can’t say), and promptly falls into a nigh-romantic obsession with Lightning, deciding that she will be Etro(his all-but daughter)’s replacement, will be his Goddess of Death to-be-- He even calls her as such, before the final boss-battle--

...In the JP.

What happened in localisation, probably due to a number of factors, all the way back in early 2014, was that everything emotionally challenging about Bhunivelze was scraped off, like it was extra fat, and tossed aside, leaving us with the bland, clichéd shell of a foe-god we’ve seen time and time again. And I mean everything. I mean his very love for humanity; the fact his ploy was, in his eyes, to save them. Because if they’d left that all on, then it would raise the question of even if there was such a seemingly pure, all-knowing, loving being hell-bent on setting things “straight,“ would they truly be unquestionable? Would we have the right to fight for our humanity in the face of the Creator of the Universe?

To reject a love so personal?

That’s what gets me about FFXIII’s tackling of God, no matter how hackneyed and poorly-executed. It’s personal.

It’s from a feminine experience.

I know that terming is... vague, and problematic, but the way Christianity and much of the video game industry handle femininity itself is weird and problematic, so as it stands, I’ll have to simplify it. Apologies.

What sets FFXIII’s Let’s Kill God™ plot aside from most JRPG Let’s Kill God™ plots is that with our protagonist being a woman, and one who is very in touch with her femininity alongside her sheer strength; often, in these stories, God is reduced to Yet Another Foe, expected or unexpected, and you are tasked with taking him down unquestioningly for the Good of Mankind-- You will fight God, because you are right to, and you will go man-to-man-to-however-many-men you decide to bring along for the bloodbath.

And that just, doesn’t speak to me.

Even as an Extian.

Especially as an Extian. And an AFAB one with a deeply complicated experience with my gender, at that.

Leaving Christianity was painful. Questioning God was painful. Coming to terms with the fact that I had been mentally, emotionally, and spiritually traumatised under the guise of All-Encompassing Love was so, so fucking painful. I had been taught since I was five years old to devote myself to him, spent my life desperate to feel something, anything, to stay connected because I just, I never could Feel It on a deeper level, never could Give Up Myself, all I was, couldn’t Die A Spiritual Death And Be Reborn As His Eager Vessel, thus deeming myself to be worthless and a broken vessel for years and years on end... And for all that to have been... Nothing.

Lightning is hollowed out, the shards of her dead sister ripped from her in-stasis, leaving her emotionally numb for the majority of the game, Bhunivelze sweeps it under the rug, pretends he’ll perform a miracle and return Serah to life in exchange for her compliance, then sends her on her way to do his work, all the while knowing he’s going to pull said-rug from under her and elevate her such dizzying heights in the aftermath--

That he’ll deny her humanity.

Sand down all the rough edges that make her her, and polish her up afterwards, gild her as he is gilded, make her a Goddess.

And he’ll do it all because he loves her.

You can’t fight God like you can everything else. To fight It is the fight Existence Itself; FFXIII even conveys that by making Bhunivelze’s model part of the arena; it’s baked into the fabric of the game, no matter how minute.

While Lightning Returns is far from perfect in its execution of this concept, and that in itself makes me wince, not even taking into account the horribly botched excuse for a localisation Bhunivelze endured, it speaks to me more than anything else I’ve seen so far.

And it’s helped uncover some things within me. Helped me untangle them, just a little more.

So, yeah. I have alot of Thoughts on Bhunivelze, I want to share them, and I’m kinda really sad I have no one but my currently-absent friend Vee to share them with. I could get into alot more, like his very Fucked relationship with familial bonds, and how Lightning’s role as saviour so deeply parallels the overwhelming panic and never-ending guilt of Evangelical proselytisation, but I think I’ll leave those for another time.

In short, Bhunivelze is the epitome of Divine Love gone deeply wrong; on all fronts.

And if all of that isn’t enough to intrigue you, then, in Vee’s words, Lightning and Velze are literally canon endgame Sefikura lmaOOOOOOOOOOOOOO--

#ffxiii #lightning returns #bhunivelze #analysis #scrawny speaks #scrawny rambles #this was written on and off over the course of a couple months #i know this will only get two notes #if even that #but fuck it i love this guy and i'm going to puke words for his sake #religion mention

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annzybwrites · 3 years

Text

What Do You Get a Mumrik?

Hello! First, I adore your writing! I first read it on Ao3 but needed to follow you here so I made an account. I would love to read a short Snufmin fanfic with this prompt: Moomin looking for a birthday gift for Snufkin Kudos ❤️❤️

--Submitted by @xanzusx

Annzy: Ahh, thank you so much!! I’m glad you enjoy my writing so much that you made a tumblr account, that’s so flattering ;w; I can’t believe I never thought of a birthday gift fic before, but it’s a fantastic idea!!

~!~!~!~

Birthday celebrations in Moominvalley were usually grand affairs. Moominmamma delighted in baking that person’s favorite cake flavor in the shape of either their face or something that represented them, Moomintroll and his friends had a fantastic time decorating the yard for the party (especially if it was themed), and sometimes Moominpappa would make a piñata or a slide if the party was for someone young. Anyone that wanted to come celebrate was invited, so naturally most of the inhabitants of Moominvalley would come, bringing small gifts that they thought the birthday-haver would like.

There were a few exceptions. They usually didn’t celebrate Stinky’s birthday, if only because the few times they did try to celebrate, Stinky spent the entire night mocking them for their efforts. And they also didn’t make such a big fuss for Snufkin’s birthday, because for the first few years he refused to tell anyone, saying he’d only reveal his birthday if someone guessed the date correctly. He’d always have a big, playful grin on his face whenever the others remembered his little challenge and tried to guess his birthday for an afternoon.

When Snufkin and Moomin had finally started dating, though, Snorkmaiden felt like the game should end.

“You have a boyfriend now, Snufkin!” she berated him while they were all spending a lazy day at the beach. “You have to let at least him celebrate your birthday with you!”

“Is that a rule?” Snufkin was laying on his back next to Moomin, so he turned his head to catch those blue eyes that seemed just as surprised as him.

“I suppose it would be only fair.” Moomin hummed, "Since you’ve celebrated plenty of my birthdays already.”

“Yeah!” Little My perked up, running over to climb on top of Snufkin’s chest to stare at him. “I’d love another day where Mamma makes us cake, anyway.”

“It’s always so delicious!” Sniff agreed, starting to drool from where he lay on his stomach. “Besides, you’d get lots of cool presents, Snufkin!”

“Oh, you know I don’t really care much for material things.” Snufkin chuckled good naturedly, messing with Little My’s hair bun until she swatted his hand away. “But I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to eat a birthday cake with all of you.”

“So you’ll tell us your birthday?” Moomin asked, his heart filling up with hope. He didn’t realize how much he wanted to know until just that moment.

Snufkin turned to smile at him, a mischievous twinkle in his eye as he said, “But I still want you to guess!”

Snorkmaiden groaned and plopped back down onto the sand, crossing her arms. “You’re hopeless.”

“Oh, fine, I’ll give you a hint.” Snufkin picked Little My up, setting her down next to him so he could sit up and stretch. “My birthday is in this month of March. That should narrow things down, don’t you think?”

“I’ll say!” Moomin brightened, sitting up as well so his tail was free to wag a bit. “Hmm... how about --”

“March 8th!” Sniff guessed.

“March 12th!” Little My yelled.

“March 23rd?” Snorkmaiden tried.

“Nope, nope, and nope!” Snufkin chuckled, tilting his hat up to show off his wide grin. “Wow, you all are really bad at this game.”

“March 15th?” Moomin guessed, hands clasped together nervously.

Snufkin straightened in surprise, turning to him with a bright smile. “That’s right, Moomintroll! Congratulations!”

"Really?” Moomin laughter bubbled out of him as he pulled Snufkin in for a hug. He couldn’t believe he got it right!

“What does he win?” Sniff had to ask.

“Well,” Snufkin hummed as he hugged Moomintroll back. “What would you like, my dear?”

“I never thought of that.” Moomin hummed, pulling away from the hug to tap at his chin in thought. “How about a song?”

“Moomin!” Snorkmaiden bemoaned, falling onto her back and covering her eyes dramatically with her hand. “You should have asked for a kiss!”

“Oh!” Moomin felt heat pool into his cheeks as his tail curled around him shyly. Why hadn’t he thought of that? W-well, kisses were meant to be private things, anyway! Not in front of a bunch of people!

Snufkin chuckled, leaning in to nuzzle Moomin’s snout briefly. “A song it is! How about we walk while I play?”

It wasn’t long before the small group was up on their feet and headed back to Moominhouse, Snufkin playing a jaunty little tune on his harmonica. Little My was extremely excited and couldn’t wait to tell Mamma that she’ll have to bake another cake very soon, and it was then that Moomin realized Snufkin’s birthday was only ten days away. And once he realized that, a new question presented itself.

What kind of gift do you get for a mumrik who dislikes material possessions?

~~~

Moomintroll felt like a wreck for the next week. He couldn’t stop thinking about Snufkin’s birthday, and about how he had absolutely no idea what to get him. He knew he wanted to get Snufkin something that he would actually like, preferably something that he’d be happy to take with him during his travels.

Anything store-bought was immediately out. Snufkin would consider it a nice little trinket, but not worth carrying around with him all the time. Moomintroll briefly considered learning to knit and making him a nice scarf, but a long night of getting tangled up in the yarn quickly dashed that idea. He thought of drawing him a very nice picture next, perhaps a collage of some of their favorite flowers, but then he remembered how a paper drawing was bound to get ruined from the snow or dirt and would most likely not last the winter.

Since he was an open-book to everyone that knew him, it didn’t take long for Snufkin to realize why he’d been acting strangely and told him: “You don’t have to get me anything special, Moomintroll. The memories of us together are gift enough for me.”

While it was a very sweet phrase that made Moomin’s heart swell, a strong part of him still longed to find the perfect gift for his boyfriend.

He thought of stringing together some stones into a bracelet next, perhaps some red rocks to represent the comet that brought them together in the first place. But he figured that might be too heavy to carry around all the time, and Snufkin had never been one for too many accessories anyway. Then he considered finding a small, little bottle and filling it with sand and sea water, since Snufkin did love the sea so much. But then he worried about the bottle breaking inside his backpack, and that was the last thing he’d want.

With only three days left till Snufkin’s birthday, Moomintroll lay on his bed after dinner, staring morosely up at the ceiling. He still had no good ideas! And he knew Snufkin wouldn’t love him any less if he didn’t find the perfect gift for him, but he really wanted to show how well he knew his dearest friend in the form of a gift.

Someone knocked on his bedroom door, shocking him out of his thoughts. “Come in!”

“Hello, dear.” Moominmamma greeted with a small smile as she walked inside. She closed the door gently before going to sit at the edge of his bed. “Still haven’t thought of a good gift for Snufkin?”

“No.” Moomin groaned and turned onto his side, curling up a bit as he looked up at his mother. “And anytime I try to ask him questions about what he’d like, he’s intentionally vague or repeats that he only wants memories!”

“Well, why don’t you just plan a nice memory for him to have then?” Moominmamma suggested.

“I thought about that, too,” Moomin admitted with a sigh. “But, I don’t know... I just really, really want to get him something that he can carry around. Something light and unobtrusive, maybe even something that he’ll forget about until he sees it in his backpack again, but he can’t help but smile each time he sees it because it’s just so perfect!”

“Goodness, that’s a tall order.” Moominmamma sighed softly, closing her eyes as she thought. “What if you put down some of his favorite memories into a book for him?”

"Books are heavy, and easy to ruin.”

“Well, maybe it’s not a book, then.”

Moomin’s ear twitched. He sat up, raising a brow at her. “What do you mean?”

“You’re good at wood-carving, aren’t you dear?” Moominmamma had that small smile on her face as she continued, “You could find a light piece of wood, such as some spruce, and carve something into it.”

Moomin stared at his mamma for at least a minute, his mind already bursting with possibilities. “You’re a genius, Mamma!” he exclaimed eventually, hugging her tightly before dashing off towards his desk. “I’ll start drawing an outline of what to carve, and tomorrow I’ll find that wood!”

“Glad I could help.” Moominamma rose to her feet, brushing out her apron and smiling warmly at her son before taking her leave.

~~~

The day finally arrived, March 15th. The others came over in the morning to put up at least a few decorations for Snufkin, such as paper fish and music notes, and Moominmamma was busy preparing a delightful, frosted spice cake in the shape and color of Snufkin’s tent.

Moomin decided he wanted to give Snufkin his gift before the party officially started, so that afternoon he invited Snufkin to accompany him on a hike and picnic by the base of the Lonely Mountains.

“You all really didn’t need to make such a fuss,” Snufkin was saying as they walked. “Really, I don’t need decorations. The cake would’ve been more than enough!”

“Oh, everyone’s just excited to finally celebrate your birthday, Snufkin!” Moomin reminded him. “It’s been a secret for such a long time. Next year we’ll just have a cake, I promise.”

“I suppose I can live with that.” Snufkin resigned, squeezing Moomin’s hand gently. “I’m glad you stopped worrying about getting me anything. I missed your smile at the start of the week.”

“Oh, yes.” Moomin tried not to smile too wide, thinking of the gift he had concealed in the basket on his back. “I’m glad, too.”

They found a nice, little clearing amidst some flowers, and made quirk work of putting down their blanket and retrieving their jam sandwiches. Conversation was easy, as it always was, trading stories (or making up new ones) and sharing ideas. When they finished eating, Moomin decided to reveal his surprise.

“I do have one birthday gift for you, actually.”

“Oh, Moomin.” Snufkin sighed softly, giving a weary smile. “I’ve told you time and time again -- I don’t need anything!”

“I know, I know! But I think you’ll like this one.” Moomin chewed at his lip, trying not to smile too wide as he pulled out his gift. It was wrapped in old newspaper, and it was small enough to easily fit in the palm of Moomin’s hand. He presented it to Snufkin, who stared at the package in slight surprise. “Please, open it?”

Snufkin pursed his lips, picking up the small object and again feeling surprised at how light it was. “What is it?”

“You have to open it to find out, silly.”

Snufkin gave a laugh at that, bumping his shoulder against Moomin’s before unwrapping it. He soon felt the smoothness of treated wood at his fingertips, and when he was finally able to get a good look at it, his breath hitched.

It was a little, rounded heart that was just the right width to grip nicely between his thumb and the length of his forefinger. And all around the outline, Moomin had carved a simple pattern that alternated between a comet, a little fish, and a sunflower. On one side, in the middle, lay their initials surrounded by a thinly carved outline of a heart: “S + M”

“I thought of putting more symbols,” Moomin said after a few moments of Snufkin staring blankly at the heart. “Like falling leaves, and birds, and your harmonica, and, and -- everything that reminded me of you. But, I thought those three would do the trick. And I left one side blank so you could carve into it yourself, if you like. Or, every year for your birthday, I could carve something new into it? If, if you want -- I understand if you don’t really want to keep it for that long--”

“Moomintroll,” Snufkin breathed, holding the wooden heart tightly to his chest as he stared into those loving, baby blue eyes. “It’s beautiful. I’d be honored to carry this with me.”

“Really?” Moomin’s ears perked up again, his own hands clasped tightly together in front of his chest. “You’re not just saying that? I know you don’t like to hold onto many things, so it’s all right if --” He stopped talking when he felt a firm kiss against his snout.

“I love it,” Snufkin whispered, moving closer so he could nuzzle his cheek against Moomin’s. “Almost as much as I love you.”

Moomin felt as if his heart would burst out of his chest at any moment. He wrapped his arms around Snufkin’s waist, bringing him close and relaxing as Snufkin returned the embrace.

“It’s a lovely idea, too,” Snufkin added, squeezing him once. “Carving something new into it every year. I would like that.”

Moomin beamed, his tail wagging loosely as he closed his eyes, enjoying how warm and soft Snufkin felt against him. “Then that’s what I’ll do.”

“Thank you, Moomintroll.” Snufkin pulled away lightly, only to lean in and give Moomin a brief kiss on the lips. He chuckled lightly when Moomin’s eyes started to spin a little. “Now I need to find you something this special for your birthday.”

Moomin shook his head a little to clear it, a small grin coming to his face as he teased, “I only need memories.”

Snufkin snorted and pushed him lightly, laughing loud enough to spook some nearby birds. “All right, I’ll admit I deserved that.”

#snufmin #springdove #moomins #moominvalley #Moomintroll #snufkin #annzy writes #I can't believe I did two snufmin prompts in one day #they're just so cute they write themselves #submission

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palmett-hoes · 4 years

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Hi, I really loved your post with the monsters as Birds of Prey! Was wondering if you had any thoughts on the Foxes as Marvel or Mcu characters? I feel like I could see Dan as Carol Danvers and Andrew for sure is Jessica Jones, idk about the rest.

oh wow old post!!

haha unfortunately i’m not really a comics person so i don’t feel like i can really give the best analysis possible, but i have seen most of the mcu movies and bits and pieces of the netflix show so i’ll try my best. also im using dc characters too bc i want to

1. Dan: I think your instinct with Dan as Captain Marvel is spot-on (at least uhhh,, based on the movie lol sorry comics ppl). Her direct, forceful powers and fighting style are definitely reminiscent of dan’s no-nonsense leadership approach. similarly the themes of overcoming sexism and acceling in a male-dominated industry in the captain marvel movie is pretty much the same as dan’s story establishing herself as the first female exy captain (tho sports is way more valid than the military). plus there’s a lot of emphasis on love and friendship between women that dan is ALL about. also lashana lynch would be a god tier dan wilds fc. Dan could also def have that lawful good Okoye from Black Panther energy. Loyal, disciplined, no-nonsense leader. no powers except discipline. no hair. also danai gurira in 2012 with the dreads and the sword and the cape on TWD was definitely part of my middle school sexual awakening

2. Kevin: Aquaman. this is based pretty much exclusively on the fact that jason momoa is my #1 kevin fc and also that Pasifika kevin is phenomenal and mandatory, actually. otherwise i think he has a decent amount of stick-up-the-ass cyclops energy. or dick grayson nightwing energy but i don’t have any evidence for why. kinda looks like him tho

3. Andrew: andrew gets the most characters bc he’s my favorite. i think ur jessica jones instincts are absolutely correct, both in her storyline (i only watched the first season) and her powers. i’ve seen some powers au and the tendency seems to be giving andrew like,, psychic powers or the like, and i don’t really agree. andrew is a very direct character. he’s pragmatic, he confronts problems head on, and he doesn’t muck about in details. to me this really translates best into physical powers like super strength that help u big punch straight thru all ur problems. also i def think andrew would be not just a solo hero but a mercenary (or a detective) because he’s not altruistic enough to be a standard vigilante. he doesn’t care enough about other people to hang out on rooftops all night waiting for Crime to occur. there’s a price for that. which brings us to the NEXT andrew hero: deadpool. maybe in personality more of a drugged andrew but the superpowered mercenary is really a perfect fit for andrew. also, healing powers have a decidedly tragic poetry to them on andrew. already he’s self-destructive, if he had a healing factor his concern for his own well-being would be so beyond rock bottom it’d be in the earth’s core. even worse when you remember that with a healing factor, as opposed to indestructibility, you still feel all the pain. which brings us to Wolverine and X-23, who have the same thematic points as deadpool but are much more of a personality match and they have knife hands, which i really think andrew would appreciate. ending that sadness train and onto another tho, andrew’s aesthetic and Vibes fit the Winter Soldier just SO well (just that movie tho, not really civil war or anything past that) and a reinterpretation of the captain america story using the twinyards would be incredibly interesting. and finally, one last hero that would work really well for andrew: rogue, only remove the angst around not being able to touch people, andrew would love that. one touch and their comatose? baller. don't fucking touch him.

4. Matt: Shazam. I didn’t see the shazam movie but my dad and brother did and they said it was very funny and all the trailors looked like it had a lot of fun himbo energy and i really think that fits. in terms of matching himbo disaster energy i think i’ve heard good things about comics hawkeye (not mcu). thor?

5. Aaron: Mr. Fantastic. now this might be a stretch but aaron is a character who uses a skin-deep veneer of anger to cover the fact that he’s actually quite pliant and bends to other people’s wills. and he’s a doctor or w/e. he could alse be like,, antman. he’s smart right? hank pym not paul rudd. katelyn can be wasp

6. Seth: Arm Fall Off Boy. no i will not elaborate. ..... ugh fine, but i'm using my favorite piece of superhero media of all time: x-men evolution, the one where they're all teenagers in public high school. seth can be lance alvers/avalanche who’s a bit of a jerk and has a lot of issues with authority and has a rivalry with cyclops very reminiscent of seth with kevin, but still there’s the recurring theme that he’s lashing out because of low self-esteem and a bad situation and he’s a surprisingly sympathetic character who i’m very fond of. his power is earthquakes but i think the name makes that pretty self-explanatory

7. Allison: Iron Man. cocky, bitchy, and rich rich rich. sounds like allison to me. then to elevate it a level higher: emma frost, rich bitch extraordinaire. also if allison had telepathic powers she would be unstoppable. plus one more bitchy, morally-gray blonde (but chaotic this time): Harley Quinn

8. Nicky: Okay so I do wanna give a quick shout-out to Northstar, the first openly gay comicbook superhero, who’s a speedster which I’d actually say fits Nicky pretty well. However, if i had to choose a superhero to represent nicky in presence and powers it would have to be Jubilee from x-men (... from what i’ve heard lol. i’ve never actually consumed any of her Media hahaha anyway) she’s a joyful, energetic presence and her powers are setting off fireworks which i think is a good balance of nicky being a supportive cousin-parent AND a chaotic train wreck garbage trash man. also gonna throw in johnny storm for a cheap 'flaming' joke

9. Renee: Thunder/Blackbird from Black Lightning bc she’s a fufkin lesbian lol. (i don’t watch the show but i do follow nafessa williams’s tag). now the fr ones i’m gonna do together because to me they have the same Vibes so i chose them for the same reasons. Wonder Woman and Storm who to me have the same reserved, impartial, regal energy. honestly ethereal and somewhat otherwordly, and quite literally goddesses. also op as hell. black widow and her “red in my leger” looking for redemption story also fits thematically.

10. Neil: okay lazy answer first: the flash or quicksilver. get it? because they run fast? and neil run too? yea i like to think i've proven myself to be better than such a surface level interpretation but worth the mention ig. so for srs now, mystique and her shape changing powers would be an interesting interpretation of neil's identity issues, but i wanna push it a step further. nightcrawler would actually be possibly the MOST interesting hero to apply to neil 1. because powers still very movement go fast place to place 2. because of the thematic focus on neil's unusual looks and the lengths he goes to hide them, very much in line with the way nightcrawler will use a hologram-projector in order to look human, yet in both cases it's only a surface-level illusion, and 3. his parentage. here, mary would be mystique, which i also think works very well considering mary seemed to be the far more effective chameleon on the run than neil, and also fits with her place as a morally grey character, as mystique herself is often a villain or an antagonist, with her own agenda and shadowy motives. then nathan matches well with nightcrawler's father: azazel, a literal demon, and also where kurt gets his appearance. it's a shockingly coherent narrative between the three of them. then, to also give neil some powers that aren't contingent on his fucked up geneology and rather on his own merit and abilities, Black Canary and her sonic voice parallel the way that neil began to anchor his identity and take ownership over himself through his voice and his sick roasts

and 1 extra, wymack: batman, on account of his altruism, his dedication to second chances, and his many, many adopted children

---

anon, ik it's been a sec since you sent this, so i hope it gets back to you. i had a fun time with it and it prompted like,,, 7 different au s that i'll never write

#Anonymous #txt #the foxes #im talkin #my posts

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knightofameris · 4 years

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jar of stars — peter parker (p. iii)

Setting: After homecoming, but during the sophomore year of high school Gender: Neutral Contains: Flufffffffff, a little bit of angst but honestly not really lol. Word Count: 2.2k

Summary: (Y/n) has a thing for paper stars. They also have a thing for Peter Parker but then an itsy bitsy spider comes ‘round and practically plays matchmaker.

a/n: Let me know if there are any grammar or spelling mistakes or if I accidentally say ‘she/he’ instead of the gender neutral ‘they’.

So, I finished this months after starting this and I’m posting this a few weeks after finishing it. It’s a little rushed towards the end since I kinda lost inspiration. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed this series! I have two more series (6-part and 8-part w/ epilogue coming up but I have no clue when they’ll be finished.

p. i || p. ii || here!

Enjoy! [repost from old account]

❝ the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed that one eyebrow that defied gravity it was like you were falling for him all over again ❞

“You can’t just take someone, swinging through the buildings of Queens, Peter!” Tony yelled, gesturing his entire arm out. Peter walked up towards his mentor in his outfit, his arms out as he tried to explain himself.

“Yeah but Mr. Sta-”

“A bup bup bup!” Tony raised a finger up in the air, effectively shutting Peter up who could only tighten his mouth in a straight line. “I’m talking here. Peter, I know you like this person a lot. (Y/n) right? What was it that you said to me about keeping your identity a secret?”

“To keep my loved ones safe.” They both said at the same time.

“Exactly,” Tony walked up towards Peter and wrapped an arm around the young teen. The two began to walk towards the car set outside the compound, ready to drive Peter home. “Someone could easily snap a picture and (Y/n) would be attached to your alter ego. I know you’re terrified to ask them out as - well - you,” Tony gestured towards Peter’s entire body.

“Wait, what do you mea-”

“But you’re going to have to. And not play around as Spider-Man to do so. Pepper is always in danger because of me. And trust me, I hate it. I’ve pushed her away in the past a few times and all of those who have been close to me because I’m scared of them getting hurt. You don’t need that on your conscience that young, if at all. I really - and I mean it - I really think you should stop talking to them. As Spider-Man, anyways.”

Peter pursed his lips as he took in everything Tony said. Nodding his head, he said, “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll stop talking to them. As Spider-Man.” The two of them finally reached the black car, Happy already in the drivers seat.

Tony reached over to open the door for Peter and then patted his back. “I knew you were a smart kid, Parker.” Peter smiled up at Tony as he got into the car.

“Thanks, Mr. Stark.”

“Uh, how many times do I have to tell you to call me Tony?” Tony quirked a brow and pointed at the boy seated in the car. “Oh, whatever, just get home safe or May will kill me.”

Tony patted the top of the car once the door shut and watched until the car left his line of vision.

Peter looked inside your room, watching as you worked on some stars while binging a show. He probably should knock, since this was kind of creepy, but you just looked so calm. No worries in the world. However, he raised his hand and rapped two knuckles on the window. You jolted a bit in your seat, looking at the window only to smile in relief when you recognized his mask.

You took off your earbuds and got up to open the window. You leaned out of it staring at the whites of his mask.

“It’s late, what are you doing?” You asked, smiling and recalling the earlier events of the day. You couldn’t read the emotions etched on his face, but the way his body shifted side to side and how he moved his head to the side you could sense that something was up. You frowned. “Spider-Man?”

“Sooo, Mr. Stark caught me taking you through Queens.” He scratched the back of his neck, still not meeting your eyes. “He said I shouldn’t do that, or talk to you as Spider-Man. And I think so too. It can put you in serious danger if one of my enemies caught me with you and I don’t want to be the reason you get hurt. I’m really sorry and I hope you understand.” He began to walk away and raised his arm up to head back home but you reached out towards him, grasping onto his arm.

“Wait!” You urged. He glanced back at you. “Just, wait for a second.” You let go of his arm and ran into your room. Digging under your bed, you reached for a certain jar and ran back to the window. You held out the Spider-Man themed jar to him.

“It-It makes sense,” you said, “to stop talking to me. I get it. And as much as it sucks, I’m glad I got to know you. So at the very least, take this. You know, to remember me.” He gingerly took it out of your grasp and adired the spider design on the side.

He looked up into your eyes, “Thank you.”

You choked back a few tears before you said, “Good luck in life. And stay safe.”

Peter smiled. “I will. Thank you, (Y/n). For being a big part of my life. Make sure to tell Peter by the way.”

You nodded your head in response, not trusting your voice, before he jumped off the fire escape and into the night. You sighed, glancing up at the night sky. You weren’t met with the twinkling of stars, for they did not shine that night.

The dark circles under your eyes would not go away, no matter how much concealer you tried to put on. That much was evident to all your friends.

MJ frowned and furrowed her brows as she put an arm around you. “Dude, why do you look like you were up all night studying.”

Not wanting to tell the truth you replied, “Because I was?”

“Dude, (Y/n), you’re going to be fine,” Ned said, nudging you slightly with his elbow. You made sounds of protests in response but then quickly looked over at Peter. He was deathly quiet and usually would rush over to you the moment he knew you were killing yourself over school. But he looked just as tired, he was just lucky he didn’t have dark circles as evident as yours.

No one knew that you were close friends with the hero of Queens. Not even MJ but she knew something was up when you’d stop replying to her texts or wouldn’t hang out with her at night. So it’s not even like you could tell someone how you’ve been feeling since he cut you off.

It sucked. But you knew that it was because of how it could put you in danger. But there was still that voice in the back of your head wondering if he just cut you off because he was tired of you. Insecurities of yours wandered around in your head for the rest of the day.

You sat next to Peter with Ned, Cindy, and a few others, at the lab table in physics. Your head on the desk, looking at Peter’s well defined profile. You were thankful that Mrs. Warren didn’t assign any work after the AP exams; it meant you could sleep. But for some reason, even though you were extremely tired, you just watched Peter play card games with the rest of the group. The way his eyes crinkled when he laughed at something stupid. That one eyebrow that defied gravity. It was like you were falling for him all over again.

Maybe you should follow Spider-Man’s advice. Even if he never spoke to you again, you trusted him.

Your eyes began to close, listening to the voices of your friends and Peter’s laugh lulled you into dreamland.

The annoying sound of your alarm caused you to groan as you rolled over to slam the snooze button on your phone. You closed your eyes again as you drifted off into dreamland but the alarm that was set five minutes after went off causing you to groan again.

Your drowsy eyes slowly opened up as you rubbed your face with your hands. Tossing the blankets to the side, you groggily got up to get ready for school. You really regretted staying up to finish a season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine before the last day of school. Nah, it was so worth it.

It had been about a week and a few days since Spider-Man cut everything off with you. But with how it was the last day of school, you figured you should end it following his advice.

So there you were, standing in front of your jar-shelf trying to pick a confession jar. Which one would Peter like the most?

“It’s Peter, he wouldn’t care which one. Just if he got one,” you thought. And you knew you were right but the other voice kept saying otherwise. It wasn’t until your dad yelled at you saying you were going to be late, again, that you grabbed a random one and ran off to catch the subway.

The last day of school went off without a hitch. Unfortunately, you didn’t see Peter all day or even after school. Block schedule for finals were the worst.

“So you’re finally doing it?” Michelle asked as she walked you to the station.

You nodded your head, “Yeah, I haven’t seen him all day and Ned hasn’t either. So I’ll probably stop by his place since it’s on the way to mine.”

“Alright, doesn’t sound to bad. Tell me how it goes, loser,” Michelle smirked and you rolled your eyes, punching her shoulder lightly as she walked off to her train to take.

“I’ll text you tonight, get home safe, ho bag!” You called out, ignoring the looks from the older adults around you. You smiled to yourself as you got onto the train and shifted around to look for a seat, only to realize you were going to have to stand this time around. Again. Which was fine.

You gripped one of the handles as you pulled out your phone to check your messages. Replying quickly to a few friends, you pulled up Peter’s chat and let him know that you were stopping by. You shoved your phone back into your pocket and took a deep breath for what was to come.

You knocked on Peter’s apartment with two fingers and went back to grasp the straps of your backpack to ease your nerves. You waited for a bit and then heard a ruckus on the other side, only to see May open up holding a rag. She paused and then burst into a smile as she realized it was you.

“(Y/n)! It’s so nice to see you,” she gushed, ushering you into the apartment. You smiled up at her, your eyes flickering over to Peter’s door as you talked.

“Yeah, it’s been a while Mrs. Parker!” You brushed a hand through your hair.

“Oh,” she waved the rag nonchalantly, “just call me May. You’re probably here for Peter, you can just walk in, he just got back from school.” You nodded your head and thanked her before heading over into his room, taking out the jar from your bag.

You knocked a few times before clasping your hand around the doorknob and let yourself in. You suddenly became more aware of the jar that sat in your hands when you made eye contact with Peter who looked up at you from his bed on his phone. He jolted out of his bed and fixed his hair from tossing around in his bed.

“(Y/n), I just got your message,” he breathed out. Smiling as he moved around his room trying to clean up his slight mess. As he shuffled things around on his desk you couldn’t help but notice an oddly familiar jar that sat perched on it. Your face scrunched up in confusion and you tilted your head as you tried to recall the star jar that sat on his desk.

Peter looked up at you, “So, what do you need to-”

“Holy shit.”

The jar in your hand would have shattered if it hit the floor. But Peter reached forward fast enough to catch it before it did.

Peter probably should have realized you’d figure it out, that he was Spider-Man. So when he glanced up at your frozen figure, worry flooded over him.

“Peter?” You asked sternly, your finger pointing at the jar you had given him, or Spider-Man, weeks earlier. He followed your eyes that were looking in the same direction as your finger then back up at you.

“Yeah?”

“Are you Spider-Man?”

“Yes?”

“Oh, okay. Well, that jar’s for you. You should open it.” You walked out of his room, closing his door for a second. Peter stood there watching you leave, his mouth agape. Glancing down at the jar, realizing that you had followed his advice, then up to see your back about to leave his apartment, he set down the jar on his desk and ran after you.

“(Y/n), wait!” Peter called for you, jumping over the couch and setting his hand on your shoulder. You stopped mid-step but didn’t turn around to face him. “I - uh - I don’t know what to say.”

You closed your eyes, unsure of how to feel. “I liked you.”

Peter tilted his head and pulled his hand away from your shoulder. “Liked?”

You chuckled and moved your head down a bit. “I liked you, you know. Spider-Man. And you. God, I don’t even know what I’m feeling. Relieved? That I wasn’t confused on who I liked? Happy? Because it’s you. Or mad? Since you essentially used Spider-Man to get to me. Kind of broke my heart when Spider-Man stopped talking to me and when you got too busy with the Stark Internship to even make time for me or Michelle or Ned!” You brought your arm up to your face, wiping away stray tears.

Peter stood there and pursed his lips. His eyes watering a little bit since he was frustrated at himself for doing this to you.

You opened your mouth, about to tell Peter you were going to leave when you heard him talk.

“I’m sorry.” He shifted his weight on his feet and you turned to face him. “I am so, so, sorry about the distress I put you through.” He looked into your eyes, occasionally glancing elsewhere. “I shouldn’t have to use Spider-Man to get close to you like that. I should have made more time for you as me. I just-uh-I should have told you about Spider-Man. And I’ll make it up to you! Because talking to you again as Spider-Man made me so ecstatic. I thought-I thought you hated me. You never gave me a jar and-and I was always scared. Scared to talk to you as me. So-so-so I thought,” Peter waved his arms around, not really looking at you by the time he got here, “I thought Spider-Man would be easier to talk to you. And it was-”

You wrapped your arms around him into a hug. “You talk wayyy too much Parker. I get it. It still doesn’t make it right though.” Peter smiled and you felt his arms wrap around you.

“I know. I’ll make it up to you.” Peter nuzzled his face into your hair.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Okay,” you slightly moved away from Peter looking up at him. “I trust you.” Peter grinned. “Now, you just gotta fill me in on everything.”

“I will.”

#peter parker x reader #marvel x reader #peter parker x male!reader #peter parker x neutral!reader #peter parker imagine #avengers x raeder #gender neutral #jar of stars series #a.writes

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soobiniebaby · 4 years

Text

Angels & Devils Part XII : See Them Burn in Fire

Tomorrow x Together Fanfiction

~ p a r t s : main post || prologue || part 1 || part 2 || part 3 || part 4 || part 5 || part 6 || part 7 || part 8 || part 9 || part 10 || part 11 || part 12 || part 13 || part 14 || part 15 || part 16 || part 17 ~ p a i r i n g : love triangle involving choi soobin and choi yeonjun ~ g e n r e : high school au | some social media au | some fluff & angst | childhood friends | love triangle ~ l a n g u a g e : English ~ w a r n i n g : contains swearing, alcohol, kissing (?) and may contain mature themes (angst, etc.) ~ a / n : This will be my first fanfic (go easy on me pls) and i’m just writing this as I go along, so bear with me juseyo The setting (place/country) of the story is up to the reader’s interpretation ~ s u m m a r y : What should she choose? Han Baby: the new girl with a troubled past MO Academy: her new high school Choi Soobin: student council president, member of the Ecosave club, volunteer at the Humane Treatment of Animals, member of the Honor Society, a vocalist in the Jazzed club, the school’s all around golden boy Choi Yeonjun: leader of the Dance club, star of the Jazzed club, the school’s it boy with a bad rep 5 best friends, 1 new girl, 1 childhood friendship, 1 epic love triangle? What will this school year bring?

“Ningning, please help me, I’m freaking out.”

It was currently September 9, Wednesday, her third day of being back at MOA, and she was indeed freaking out.

Her first few days being back at MOA felt like a fever dream wherein she was the main character in some cheesy teen romcom who had somehow gained the affections of the school’s it boy, complete with montages of everyone’s eyes following the 2 of them whenever they walked around campus together and scenes of them spotted around campus holding hands (complete with Taehyun constantly reminding them “Physical contact within campus grounds is prohibited!”), staring at each other like the lovesick teenagers that they were, even pulling their face masks down to steal kisses when no one was looking.

She never realized how big of a reaction their dating news would gain until she actually saw it; the stares, the whispers, even the attention that Yeonjun’s tweet got, which garnered over a thousand likes, which was a bit concerning since Yeonjun’s twitter account was fairly new yet not really surprising considering how popular he was.

She didn’t really mind the stares and whispers. It’s not like she hasn’t been the main topic at school before, but now the attention was for something that she was actually happy about, so in a way it felt nice. What she was freaking out about, however, was Beomgyu’s reply to Yeonjun’s tweet.

It was only when she asked Kai about it did she find out that Yeonjun’s birthday was on the 13th of September, which was only 4 days away, and she had no clue what she would give to him as a gift.

“How do you think I can help?” Kai asks, confused. “I’m just his friend, you’re his girlfriend. You’ve always been great at giving gifts anyway, I’m sure that whatever you get him, he’ll love it.” he says matter-of-factly.

B groans. “You’ve known him for longer than I have! And I don’t know what I can put together on such short notice.” she whines, which was true. The fact that their relationship was new made it even more difficult since she didn’t know a lot about what sort of things Yeonjun really liked yet. “Do you guys have any plans for his birthday?”

Kai nods. “We’re all getting individual gifts, but duh we’re throwing him a kick ass party.” he says. “We always have big parties when someone’s birthday comes up. The best part is, by Saturday night I’ll be medically cleared and ready to get wasted.” he says excitedly.

“I could help you guys with the party, but what gift can I get him? What can you give someone who already has everything?” B wonders out loud. It was no secret that Yeonjun was loaded and could have anything he wanted at the snap of his fingers, which only made it harder for B to come up with a meaningful gift.

“Easy, give him something that only you can give him.” Ryujin pipes up. She walked home with B after school to hang out since the guys were busy with their weekly student council meeting, but the truth was, Kai had pleaded with B to invite Ryujin so he could ask for a little bit of help about how he should ask Yuna out, which was the first thing they talked about when Ryujin arrived. She had given Kai good advice and was looking forward seeing how he’d ask their friend out, though Kai said he would wait for the right time to do it, which made Ryujin roll her eyes at him and call him a chicken, which he accepted.

“Something only I can give him? Like what?” B asks desperately.

Ryujin stands up from her spot on the couch, grabs a ribbon from one of the blue rose bouquets that Yeonjun had given to B and stands over her. “Simple. Here, take this.” she says, handing the ribbon to B, which she takes gingerly.

“Then tie it around yourself.” Ryujin instructs her, which she follows cluelessly.

“Now what?” B asks, the bow tied around her torso.

“Strike a pose and tell him ‘Happy birthday Yeonjun, unwrap me.’” she says, smirking.

“Eugh, please don’t.” Kai says, visibly cringing.

Meanwhile, B was visibly blushing, untying the ribbon and tossing it aside. “I—um, as s—special as that sounds, I, uh, don’t think that’s something I can give just yet.” she says, flustered at what Ryujin was suggesting.

Ryujin laughs. “Don’t worry, I was just kidding. You are too precious, B.” she says, ruffling the top of B’s head. “Don’t ever do that unless you’re 100% ready by the way.”

“Okay, that’s already more than I need to hear.” Kai says, covering his ears with his hands. “Anyway, Baba I’m sure you’ll figure something out.” Kai says, trying to change the topic. “If you want my advice, I suggest you get him something heartfelt, maybe something with special meaning to him.”

B sighs. “I guess. Maybe I’ll ask the other guys for help.” she says, whipping her phone out and creating a new group chat.

Soobin sighs as he drops his phone, leaving it atop the conference table, leaning back in his seat at the head of the table as he watches his 3 present members continue with the meeting.

Surprisingly, being the student council president wasn’t as difficult as he thought it would be. His members did their assigned jobs well and took their respective roles seriously, so his job was mostly to oversee things and make final approvals. Taehyun usually led their meetings, and one of Soobin’s main tasks was to make sure that the younger boy could effectively take his place as president once Soobin graduated, which Soobin had no worries about since he saw Taehyun as his right hand man, both in and out of the student council, considering how the younger boy had been especially close to him the past few days.

The past few days haven’t been very easy on Soobin, considering that the girl he found himself falling in love with and the blue haired boy he was best friends with had officially come out as a couple. It was bad enough that he had to see them constantly hold hands and stare at each other with googly eyes whenever they hung out, but news of them dating became one of the hottest topics at school, so even when he wasn’t with them he would still hear the people around him talking about them nonstop. He had no escape.

The only person he could share his true feelings with was Taehyun, his righthand man, who had figured out Soobin’s whole situation and had reached out to him as soon as the news broke out.

Since then, he always felt Taehyun watching him closely, especially when they were all eating lunch at the gazebo or hanging out the Kang’s café after school. For Soobin, it felt nice to know that there was someone by his side who understood what he was going through, so hiding his true feelings didn’t feel as tiring.

Soobin is snapped back into the present as Taehyun says “That concludes this week’s meeting. Next week, we’ll be tackling the annual Fall Ball that will be taking place on October, so you better prepare suggestions for the theme by then.” he says, referring to one of the school’s biggest social events and one of the 3 annual school dances that took place at MOA every year.

As Taehyun puts his things away, the other boys stretch out in their chairs and grab their phones, relieved that the meeting was finally over.

“Hey Tyun, I’ll be stopping by Baby’s place for a little while. My driver’s waiting for me outside, you wanna catch a ride with me?” Yeonjun says suddenly as he stands up, typing away at his phone the whole time.

Taehyun shakes his head even though Yeonjun’s eyes were focused on his phone. “You can go, there are a few additional ideas that I want to run through with our president first so I’ll be staying behind for a bit. Thanks, though.”

Yeonjun looks at him then and nods. “Alright then, see you guys tomorrow.”

The boys greet him goodbye, with Beomgyu going “I’ll walk out with you, my ride’s waiting too.” before the 2 boys disappear out of the room.

Soobin turns to Taehyun, confused. “You have additional ideas you want to run by me? What additional ideas?” he asks.

“Oh, I don’t know, the idea that you want to help the girl you love come up with a birthday gift for her boyfriend, maybe?” Taehyun says pointedly. “You should not be helping B with things like that, given the fact that you’re in love with her.”

“I—no, B is just—” Soobin sputters, caught off guard. “I’m not in love with her!”

“Holy shit! You’re in love with B?” a voice suddenly exclaims, making Taehyun jump in his seat and causing Soobin to yell out in surprise.

“Gyu! What are you doing here?” Soobin asks, shocked to see Beomgyu standing in the doorway. “I—Oh god you scared me! I thought you left with Yeonjun. What—?”

“I left my phone, so I told him to go ahead and I came back here to get it.” Beomgyu explains, and sure enough, the boys catch sight of Beomgyu’s cellphone which he had left on top of the conference table. Taehyun slaps his forehead, frustrated at himself for not noticing it earlier.

“I knew Taehyun said he had extra ideas to talk to you about, but I never could have imagined something like this.” Beomgyu says, his eyes wide. “Is it true? Soobin, are you in love with her?”

“I—no! N—no I’m not, I—I just—” Soobin sputters, his brain malfunctioning as he realizes that his secret was slowly starting to spread.

Taehyun puts a hand on Soobin’s shoulder to calm him down. “Gyu, I don’t know what you heard, but I think Soobin’s going through a lot right now, so it’s best if you pretend that this never happened, alright?” he says.

Beomgyu nods, grabbing his phone from the table before taking a seat beside the 2 boys. “Of course! Just act like I’m not even here. My lips are sealed.” he says, making a zipping motion over his mouth.

“Thanks, Gyu.” Soobin finally manages to say, taking deep breaths to calm himself down. “And to be clear, I am not in love with her. I might have a slight crush on her, but that doesn’t mean anything. She’s my friend, what’s wrong with wanting to help her find a good gift for one of my best friends?”

“Whatever you say.” Taehyun says. “And there’s nothing wrong with it per se, but I don’t think you should put up with their relationship any more than necessary. They are your friends, but I think it would be better if you don’t get involved.” he says, trying to give good advice. “Don’t take it the wrong way, cause it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be supportive of their relationship or anything. I mean, yes you’re their friend, but don’t get yourself involved in anything that has to do with their relationship.”

Soobin nods reluctantly, trying to understand where Taehyun was coming from. “Alright, I’ll keep that in mind, thanks Tyun.” he says. “It wouldn’t hurt to help B come up with a gift for Yeonjun though, right?”

Beomgyu nods. “True, that just means you’re a good friend who wants to be there and help a friend out.”

Taehyun sighs. “You’re an idiot, Gyu. And you’re hopeless, Soobin. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

Soobin chuckles. “Don’t worry, Tyun. I don’t see how it can hurt any more than it already does anyway.”

Taehyun shakes his head. “I didn’t know you were such a masochist.”

“I never said I like the pain! I’m just saying, it can’t get any worse than this.” Soobin says defensively.

Oh, how horribly wrong he was.

•°•

The rest of the weekdays flew by quickly enough. Soobin had taken Taehyun’s advice and had been trying his best to avoid being around Yeonjun and B longer than necessary, making sure that he had a clear boundary between being their friend who was happy for them and being their friend who would go out of his way to involve himself in their relationship.

Meanwhile, now that Beomgyu knew about his secret, Soobin could feel an extra pair of eyes practically burning into his skull every time they hung out. Taehyun was an expert at hiding his feelings and understood that Soobin just wanted things to be as normal as possible, but Beomgyu had started to treat him like he was delicate, often giving him pitiful looks and being extra nice to him, which Soobin could only hope wouldn’t come off as suspicious to the rest of the group.

It turns out that the boys didn’t have to put together a party for Yeonjun since his father had organized one on his own, renting out one of the only night clubs in their town for Saturday night, inviting a few people whom he thought would be beneficial for Yeonjun to mingle with and telling Yeonjun that he was free to invite whomever else he wanted to, which was basically the entire high school population of MO Academy.

“Did your dad really rent out a whole club just so he could throw you a business networking event disguised as a birthday party?” Beomgyu comments as he and the 3 boys stood in front of said club, waiting for the last 2 members of their group to arrive.

Yeonjun shrugs. “It’s still a party, just gonna have to deal with a few ‘unwanted’ guests I guess.” he says. “I’m not sure which pretentious rich kids from the business world my dad invited though, so I’ll have to go back and forth between partying with you guys and entertaining whoever snotty douches he’s invited.”

“And we will try to stay as far away from them as possible. I don’t think I can put up with any more pretentious rich kids.” Taehyun says, crossing his arms over his chest. “I think dealing with you guys everyday is about as much as I can handle.”

“We are not pretentious rich kids!” Beomgyu says defensively, but when he sees Taehyun raise a brow, he backs down. “Right, sorry. Anyway, any word on where B and Hyuka are now? Why didn’t you guys go together again?” he asks Taehyun, knowing that he and B usually came together since they lived in the same building.

“She just said that she and Hyuka were dealing with a crisis and would be running a bit late and that I could go ahead, so I did, but I didn’t know that we’d end up waiting for them to arrive before going into the club.” Taehyun explains.

“It’s a Saturday night, they had the whole day to get ready so there’s no reason why they should be running late.” Beomgyu whines.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll be here soon.” Soobin says.

And right on cue, a car stops in front of the club. The boys wait and watch as the car idles for a few moments before the door flies open and Kai steps out, and the boys realize why the pair had been running late.

Even though he was medically cleared and recovered from chicken pox, Kai’s face was sprinkled with distinct spots all over his cheeks, and although they had been meticulously covered up with makeup, the bumps were still very visible.

Just as Soobin was about to comment on how Kai’s face looked like the back of a Hersheys cookies and cream chocolate bar, Kai extends an arm towards the inside of the vehicle, and a delicate hand appears, taking Kai’s hand in hers as the hand’s owner steps out of the car. Soobin could feel the words die in his throat as B comes into view, wrapping her hand around Kai’s arm before Kai closes the car door behind her.

She was breathtaking. Her long dark hair poured over her shoulders in gentle waves, her skin glowing in contrast to her dark hair and her midnight black dress, which hugged her small frame perfectly, the neckline dipping dangerously low and the slit cutting lethally high up her thigh, the dress reaching just a few inches above her knee. She looked especially tantalizing as she finished the look off with a pair of strappy heels and striking red lipstick, making her look like a movie star from the 1900s.

Soobin couldn’t bring himself to look away, even as he saw her look up and smile, giving a small wave towards their group. He couldn’t even smile back, he was so taken by how beautiful she looked, until Beomgyu spoke up, snapping him out of his trance.

“Stop undressing her with your eyes, Choi! She might catch a cold.” Beomgyu remarks teasingly.

Soobin nearly chokes on his own spit, his eyes automatically looking down at the ground feeling ashamed at the thought of someone catching him staring at B, until Yeonjun laughs and Soobin realizes that the comment was meant for Yeonjun all along.

Why did they have to have the same name?

“Sorry, I can’t help that my girlfriend looks insanely gorgeous, especially in that dress.” Yeonjun laughs, keeping his eyes on B the whole time as he wraps an arm around her shoulders and kisses her cheek. “You clean up really nicely, Baby.”

B smiles at him, a blush creeping up her cheeks. “Speak for yourself, birthday boy. You look particularly handsome tonight.” she comments.

“My birthday’s not until tomorrow though, I hope you have your gift ready.” Yeonjun responds.

“Don’t worry, I have the perfect gift for you.” B says, trailing fingers up his chest before gently tapping his nose. “Hope I won’t disappoint.”

“Baby, you alone are more than enough for me.” Yeonjun says, nuzzling his face in her neck, making her giggle.

“Eugh, that’s enough, you guys make me want to vomit. Let’s just go in already.” Kai groans, making the pair laugh.

“It’s my birthday and I’ll ogle my girlfriend if I want to.” Yeonjun laughs. “But you’re right, let’s go.” he says, leading the group forward as they walk up to the front doors of the club, the bouncer greeting them warmly as he recognizes Yeonjun’s face.

“Happy birthday, Sir Choi. Enjoy your evening.” the bouncer says, ticking their names off the guest list before leading them into the club.

•°•

“Truth or dare!” someone suggests. A small circle had gathered around one of the VIP tables, practically the same people as the ones who were playing Truth or Dare at Kai’s birthday party just a few weeks ago.

“But we already played that last time!” another person objects.

“Fine, um, how about Kiss or Tell? Have any of you heard of it before?”

When no one offers any response, Ryujin explains. “One person spins a bottle and when it lands on someone on their turn, they have to either kiss them or tell everyone a secret about that person.”

Everyone in the circle nods, ready to start the game.

“Alright let’s do this! First up, the birthday boy!” Beomgyu says, clapping his hands and reaching over to pass an empty bottle of Tequila to Yeonjun.

Yeonjun smiles as the circle cheers for him and spins the bottle, the cheering getting louder as the bottle stops.

Kai shrieks in horror as the tip of the bottle points to him, and before he can say a word, Yeonjun stands up and quickly plants a kiss on the younger boy’s forehead, the whole circle ringing with laughter.

Kai looks helplessly at Yuna sitting next to him, a bit horrified as he says “I can’t believe Yeonjun stole my first forehead kiss.”

Yuna laughs and simply says “It’s your turn.” before handing him the bottle, which he hesitantly spins.

The whole circle collectively go “Awww” as the bottle stop in front of Yuna.

Kai turns to her and asks “Have you ever had your forehead kissed before?”

“No, well, just by my parents I think.” she says, causing Kai to smile before planting a light kiss on her forehead, which instantly makes her go red.

“There you go, now your forehead’s been blessed!” Kai says teasingly. Feeling flustered, Yuna clears her throat before spinning the bottle and she watches as it lands on Ryujin.

As soon as Yuna opens her mouth to speak, Ryujin grabs her by the shirt and pulls her towards her, Yuna’s mouth smashing against the side of Ryujin’s face.

“I—uh, can she do that?” Yuna sputters. “I was gonna tell a secret but she kissed me! Is that cheating?”

Ryujin shrugs. “It’s kiss or tell, and you kissed, so now it’s my turn.” she says, wiping traces of Luna’s lip gloss off her cheek before spinning the bottle.

All around the circle, people “Ooh” as the bottle stops in front of Taehyun.

“Oh really? Of all the people here, this guy’s probably the only person I don’t know any secrets about! And he’s the last person in the circle, heck in the whole world, that I would ever consider kissing.” Ryujin whines.

“If you had chosen to say something, anything, any outrageously completely made up rumor I would have gladly gone along with it instead of having you kiss me, but that’s no longer an option thanks to your big mouth, so now neither of us has a choice.” Taehyun says dryly.

B laughs at their interaction. It was odd that 2 of her closest friends seemed to hate each other, but it was always entertaining to watch how snarky they could get when put together.

Ryujin gulps, not even bothering to hide how horrified she looked as she reluctantly made her way towards Taehyun. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you’re right.” she says, Taehyun visibly cringing as Ryujin slowly puts a finger under Taehyun’s chin and lifts it up until his forehead comes in contact with her lips.

The crowd cheers wildly as Ryujin pretends to gag, wiping her mouth as she made her way back to her seat. Meanwhile, Taehyun remained unfazed, mentally putting the whole thing behind him before grabbing the bottle and letting it spin, and he smiles in satisfaction when it lands on Beomgyu.

He rubs his chin with his hand as he contemplates what to say. “Hm, so many secrets, which one should I share about you Gyu?” he wonders, before his eyes light up as a particularly embarrassing memory comes into mind.

Beomgyu looks at Taehyun suspiciously as the boy starts to speak with a mischievous glint in his eye. “Oh, I know! One time, Gyu and I tried out this new Ramen place near the subway, and he—”

Before Taehyun could finish the story, Beomgyu’s eyes widen as he realizes which embarrassing secret his friend was about to reveal. In a state of panic, Beomgyu grabs his friend’s face in both his hands and pulls it towards his, their lips crashing together as people around the circle gasp and squeal in surprise.

Taehyun could feel his eyes, which were wide with surprise, start to close as he absorbs the fact that Beomgyu was kissing him, before Beomgyu pulls away, looking at him confused.

“Tyun, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to plant one on you I—I kinda panicked.” Beomgyu says in a hurry, trying to explain himself.

Taehyun shakes his head, still seemingly unfazed by the whole game. “There’s no need to apologize, Gyu.” he simply says, brushing off the feeling that Beomgyu was staring at him intently and drowning out the catcalls from the circle. “It’s your turn.” he says.

Beomgyu looks at him for a moment longer before he nods, shaking his head before spinning the bottle, watching as it lands on Soobin.

“Oh, Soobinie baby?” Beomgyu says teasingly, smirking when Soobin visibly freezes in place, staring at Beomgyu in horror as he realizes what Beomgyu was implying.

Beomgyu laughs at Soobin’s reaction. “Relax, Binie!” he says, knowing what Soobin was thinking. “I wouldn’t do you dirty like that. Okay, I’m sure some of you here already know this, but our dear President Soobinie…”

Everyone goes quiet, all eyes on Beomgyu as he reveals a secret. “Our dear President Soobinie, whom is known to hate exercising despite being on the basketball team and is notorious for his love for bread and ice cream, is actually very lean and muscular.”

A few girls around the circle sigh as they stare at Soobin with curious eyes, trying to visualize the muscles beneath his jacket, which causes Soobin to blush.

“Gyu, stop it.” he says bashfully. Beomgyu’s confession was true, Soobin really did have a rather fit physique, but the attention he was getting from Beomgyu’s revelation was making him squirm in his seat.

“It’s true! He even has abs!” Beomgyu exclaims, which makes Soobin blush even harder.

Beomgyu laughs, seeing how red his friend had turned. “You’re welcome.” he says, clapping him on the back. “Now it’s your turn.”

Soobin rubs his face in his hands, trying to wipe away the warmth from his cheeks, before grabbing the bottle and letting it spin.

He feels all eyes on him as the bottle stops, pointing at B.

B laughs with ease, unaware of the intense stares that Beomgyu and Taehyun were giving their friend. “Alright, Binnie, let’s get this over with! Kiss or tell?” she says, raising a brow at him.

Soobin found himself stuck. No particular secret about B came to mind, no matter how hard he tried to look back at all their past conversations, and no embarrassing moments had transpired between them either meaning that he had nothing to tell, so he had nothing to share, which meant that he had no choice but to go for the kiss option instead, which he definitely did not think was a good idea. It didn’t help that he could feel Taehyun and Beomgyu’s gazes burning into him either.

He decides to go for the safest option and spits out anything random instead. “I, um, I don’t know if anyone knew this already, but B…really wants a cat.” he finishes lamely.

Everyone stares at him blankly, underwhelmed by what he revealed.

“Well, that is true. I do really want to own a cat as a pet.” B offers, trying to keep the pace of the game going.

“But that’s hardly a secret!” Yuna comments. “Anyone who knows you can tell that you love cats enough to want one anyway.”

“Sorry, I guess I don’t really know any of B’s secrets.” Soobin says sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck.

Ryujin smirks. “You know what that means, then.” she says.

“What?” Soobin asks stupidly, not really understanding what she was implying.

“It’s Kiss or Tell, and since you have nothing to tell, that means that you have to kiss.” Yeonjun says, retracting his arm from B’s shoulders as he leans forward in his seat.

“Ah, um, I already said something though, so—?” Soobin begins, fumbling with his words, not really sure how to handle the situation.

Yeonjun raises his hands in the air. “Soobin, it’s fine, it’s just a game.” he says, lightly laughing. “Just go with it.” he assures.

Soobin nods, taking a deep breath before he stands up and makes his way over to B, being very mindful about the fact that her boyfriend was sitting right next to her.

B laughs upon seeing how nervous Soobin looked. “Soobin, what’s up with you?” she laughs. “Don’t be nervous! Here.” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear as she turns her face to the side, offering him her cheek. “Just a quick peck, don’t worry, it will be over before you know it.” she says teasingly.

Soobin laughs along. “Right. I’m sorry about this by the way.” he says, before leaning down and letting his lips brush softly against her cheek. He stands straight up as he says “There! Done!” before walking back to his seat with his head hanging down to hide his burning red cheeks, Taehyun clapping him on the back as he sits back down.

“And now it’s my turn.” B says, holding her breath as the bottle slows down and letting out a cheerful whoop as she sees who it finally stops on.

“Ha! Ningning, you are so done!” she squeals, laughing maniacally as she rubs her hands together deviously. “Oh my god, I have so many secrets, so much good shit about you, where do I even start?”

Kai jumps up then, catching everyone by surprise as he grabs B’s head and tries to get her lips to touch his face, and she tries her best to keep her lips tight together.

“Don’t you dare say a damn thing Han Baby!” he says desperately, making her laugh.

“Get away from me, ew, what are you doing!” she squeals, trying to shove him away. “Stop trying to make me kiss you! I have so much to tell!”

The sudden spectacle makes everyone in the circle burst out laughing, except Yuna, who was notably staring at the 2 best friends.

Unaware of Yuna’s unease, Kai continues pulling B’s head towards his face, before her lips accidentally make contact with his ear, and he finally lets go, pumping his fists in the air. “Ha! Now you can’t tell them anything!” he says triumphantly before making his way back to his seat and casually wrapping an arm around Yuna’s shoulders.

“Alright, I think that’s where the game ends for tonight!” Yuna exclaims, brushing off Kai’s arm around her shoulders as she stands up. “Now come on, let’s dance!” she says, grabbing Ryujin by the arm and pulling her away.

Everyone in the circle cheers, standing up and rushing to the dance floor.

“What do you say, birthday boy? Wanna dance?” B asks Yeonjun as the circle starts to clear out and go their separate ways.

“There’s actually a few people I have to say hi to, people from the business side of life.” Yeonjun says, checking his phone. “They’re mostly just people I’m obligated to socialize with, like the kids of some of our company’s business partners and stuff. You wanna come with me to meet them? I can introduce you.” he offers.

B thought about it for a moment, though she already knew that she didn’t feel like meeting a bunch of boring business kids and listen to them talk about business that she knew nothing about. Before she could respond, Ryujin swoops in and grabs her arm.

“Sir Choi Yeonjun, if you’re not going to get this hot piece of ass on the dance floor, then let me do the honor.” she says before dragging B to the dance floor.

“I’ll see you later then!” Yeonjun shouts after them, he sees B shrug and nod at him, offering him a smile before Ryujin grabs her and starts dancing around her.

Yeonjun shakes his head with a fond smile on his face, watching his beautiful girlfriend enjoy herself on the dance floor before sighing as he stands up, preparing to turn on his ‘Choi Yeonjun, future CEO of YJ Choi Corporation’ before wandering into the crowd.

•°•

Yeonjun put on a pleased smile as he greeted another batch of party guests that his father had invited. This time it was famously wealthy Kim brothers, Kim Seokjin, Kim Namjoon and Kim Taehyung, notorious for having not only good looks but killer personalities and unmatched talent as well. The Kim brothers came from a long family line of musicians and record producers, and Yeonjun had to admit that they were 3 of the select few people that he genuinely considered as his friends in the business side of his life.

As the 3 boys greeted him and started up small talk that made him genuinely laugh for the first time since he left his friends to start mingling with his father’s choice of party guests, a new batch of people walked into the club which Yeonjun knew he had to welcome. He excused himself from the 2 brothers and made his way towards the newcomers.

This time, he put on his deal-closing smile as he spots the familiar face of Kim Jisoo, successor to the famous Kim Jonghyun, the owner of the biggest Technology Firm in the country. As he approaches Kim Jisoo, he slips back into Choi Yeonjun, future CEO of YJ Choi Corporation, flashing her a charming smile and shaking her hand as he greets her.

“Choi Yeonjun. Happy birthday, dear! It’s always so lovely to see you.” Jisoo says, softly touching his arm as he does so.

“Thank you, Jisoo. The pleasure is all mine, because as always, you look stunning.” he says dashingly. Kim Jisoo was one of the richest eligible bachelorettes in the country, so his father had specifically asked that he maintain in her good graces.

“Hush now, you look quite handsome yourself.” she says, ever so elegantly. “Oh, pardon me, I’ve almost forgotten to introduce you to my companions! I’ve invited a few friends here with me, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course, not at all.” Yeonjun says politely, she could have invited her entire posse for all he cared. He hadn’t even noticed that she wasn’t alone until she stepped aside to reveal the 3 girls whom she had brought along.

“These are my best friends.” Jisoo says, pulling the 3 girls forward. He eyes the girls one by one, plastering on his best polite smile, but he feels his breath catch in his throat as his eyes land on the 3rd girl. “Yeonjun, darling, I’d like you to meet Jennie, Lisa, and—”

“Rose.” He says, the name barely escaping from his lips. Suddenly he didn’t know which Choi Yeonjun he had to present himself as. Standing there in front of her after so long, he didn’t feel like Choi Yeonjun the future CEO of YJ Choi Corporation or Choi Yeonjun the one and only MO Academy It Boy. He felt like the Choi Yeonjun he was 2 years ago, helpless and tongue tied in her presence.

“Yeonjun.” she says, smiling at him then. And there was something about her smile and how her smiling at him made him feel the same way as he did 2 years ago, as if nothing had changed. Before he even knew it, he felt his own smile appear on his face.

“Oh dear, are you 2 acquainted with each other? I had no clue!” Jisoo giggles, looking back and forth between them with curious eyes.

“Well, I didn’t know that it was Yeonjun’s birthday we were attending.” Rose says, her eyes still on him. “He and I go way back.”

“That sounds intriguing.” Jennie comments, and Yeonjun snaps out of it, realizing that he was being rude.

“Sorry, hi, I’m Yeonjun. Nice to meet you.” he says, his charming smile back on as he shakes hands with Jennie. Jennie smiles back at him politely before he moves to shake Lisa’s hand, which she gladly reciprocates.

As he stretches a hand out to Rose for her to shake, she instead shakes her head and holds her arms out to him. He debates whether or not to accept her invitation since it would feel strange to hug his ex again after 2 years, but since Jisoo was there and he didn’t want to seem rude, he decided to allow Rose to hug him.

Hugging her felt nostalgic, and once again he felt as if he had been brought back in time, her rose scented perfume consuming his thoughts and flooding his mind with memories he thought he’d already forgotten. He decides to step back at that moment, not wanting his subconscious to take him back any further.

“Now that that’s settled, why don’t you join us for a few drinks?” Jisoo pipes up again, her eyes gleaming with curiosity. “And Yeonjun darling, I’d love it if you filled me in on your history with my dear friend Rose here.”

Once again, as Choi Yeonjun the future CEO of YJ Choi Corporation, he felt powerless against Kim Jisoo, successor to the famous Kim Jonghyun, and he feels his jaw start to hurt from smiling as he says “I would gladly join you, Jisoo. It would be my pleasure.”

Jisoo squeals and claps her hands with glee as she hooks her arms through Jennie and Lisa, leaving him and Rose to follow.

Yeonjun looks at Rose once again, her long fiery red hair styled in a braid and her slender figure wrapped in a sequined mini dress, as if she hadn’t changed at all over the years.

She smiles at him, looking at him like she always used to. “Come on, we better catch up before we lose sight of them.” she says, referring to her friends.

Yeonjun nods, the strange wave of nostalgia hitting him like a truck, blurring his grasp on the present. “Let’s go.” he says, as she puts a hand on his arm and he lets a hand rest on the small of her back to guide her through the crowd.

Unbeknownst to him, there was a pair of eyes who saw the whole exchange.

Han Baby, who was standing by the bar watching Yeonjun make his way through the room as Ryujin poured shots, suddenly felt a stabbing pain in her chest as she recognized the girl with the fiery red hair and the way Yeonjun had looked at her.

“Alright, here’s one for me and one for you, you better drink up you little shi—B? What’s wrong?” Ryujin says, as she drops the shots on the counter and notices her friend’s sudden dazed state. Ryujin follows B’s gaze and sees Yeonjun with Rose as well.

“Ah shit. Hey B, why don’t we—” she starts to say, but before she knows it, B squeezes her eyes shut and takes off running, bolting so fast that Ryujin barely had time to see which way she went.

“Well fuck.” Ryujin whispers to herself, downing the shots on her own before squeezing her way through the crowd to search for her friend.

•°•

Soobin’s night was not going very well.

After his nerves almost ate him alive during their game of Kiss or Tell, he had been trying his best to distract himself by getting drunk to shake them off, along with his feelings for B.

So what if he had kissed her cheek? It was barely even a kiss, it was just his lips lightly brushing against her skin, so light that he could barely even feel it, and holy shit did his lips really touch her skin?

The whole night, he had been trying his best to avoid both Yeonjun and B, which had been easy enough since he knew Yeonjun had to attend to his father’s chosen attendees and he knew that B would be kept preoccupied by Ryujin. But after having one too many drinks, he found himself in need of some quiet time to stop his head from spinning.

He sees a small closet door near the back of the club and decides to go for it, knowing that at best, it would only have a few cleaning supplies, maybe a mop and broom or 2 inside.

But as he opens the door, he’s surprised not only to see that the closet was much bigger than he thought it would be, but also to see a small figure hunched over on the floor.

“B? Is that you?” Soobin says, squinting his eyes so he could see better. The figure was sitting on the floor with their knees hugged to their chest and their face buried in their arms so he wasn’t sure, but as she looks up, her tear-filled eyes meeting his, he knew without a shadow of doubt that it was her.

“Who is it? Are you Soobin?” she slurs.

“Yes, it’s me, Soobin. B, are you crying? What’s wrong?” he asks, suddenly alarmed. What was she doing hiding in the closet of a nightclub on her the night of her boyfriend’s birthday party, crying her eyes out?

“No, it’s nothing. Soobin, I just want to be alone right now. Can you just forget you ever saw me, Soobin? Please?” she barely manages to say, her words blending together.

Soobin found himself frozen in place, his hand squeezing the doorknob as he contemplates what his next move should be.

Taehyun’s words rang through his head.

“Don’t get involved. Yes, you’re their friend, but don’t get yourself involved in anything that has to do with their relationship.”

But as Soobin looked at B, crouching on the cold floor, her arms wrapped around her legs, her chin resting on her knees, her mascara running down her cheeks, her tear-filled eyes looking at him with heavy sadness, he couldn’t help himself.

Seeing her like that, he couldn’t bear to leave her. He told himself it was just because she was his friend and she needed a friend right at the moment, but he knew he was only fooling himself. He took a deep breath before letting go of the doorknob and carefully making his way to her.

He crouches down on the floor next to her, being mindful to keep enough space between them. The first thing he does is take off his black denim jacket and draping it over her knees, aware that she was wearing a rather short dress and wanting to make sure that she wouldn’t feel violated by him. Next, he asks her “What happened?”

She looks at him then, and his heart aches for her. She looked so lost, as if her mind couldn’t process whatever thoughts she was having. “Yeonjun’s ex girlfriend is here.”

Soobin’s face automatically turns into one of disgust. “Rose?” Everyone hated Rose. “Why is she here? Are you sure?”

B nods, looking like a lost child. “I saw her walk in with some girls earlier, probably some of those business people Yeonjun mentioned. I knew it was her cause I stalked her on Twitter so I know what she looks like. Of course she looks like a fucking model, with her long fiery red hair and her long figure.” she says bitterly, her words slurring slightly. Soobin had a feeling that if she weren’t this drunk, she probably would never say any of this out loud. “See here, I even took screenshots.” she says, pulling out her phone and fumbling with it for a bit before shoving it in Soobin’s face.

Soobin was aware of how Rose looked, having been there back when Yeonjun was still dating her, and he was just as unimpressed now as he was back then. “Oh god, who even invited her? And for the record, she does not look like a model, she looks like a witch.” Soobin says sourly, which causes B to snort.

“Oh, just admit that she’s gorgeous, Binnie. I know she is.” she slurs. “Anyway, I was at the bar with Ryujin when she walked in and then I saw the moment Yeonjun saw her, and oh god the look on his face.” she says, her face contorting, clearly showing her disdain. “He came up to her and greeted her, he hugged her, he smiled at her and started talking to her as if she were special or something.”

“Yeonjun did all that? B, that sounds ridiculous.” Soobin says, trying to ease her worries.

“Are you saying I’m crazy?” B almost shrieks, staring at him as if he were crazy. Whoops, wrong move.

“No, it’s just that I know Yeonjun and I know what he was like when things ended with Rose. He was a huge mess, and I just don’t think he’d be dumb enough to treat her like a friend or to even acknowledge her existence after everything that happened.” Soobin says.

B lets out a wail. “But I’m not crazy, Binnie! I saw it with my own 2 eyes, and Ryujin saw it too, and she tried to distract me but it was too late. At that moment my brain couldn’t process what my eyes were seeing and I just sort of ran away to get some clarity.”

“That’s why you’re hiding here? For some clarity?”

B nods, but then her eyes swell up with tears again. “Yes but I still don’t really understand it. The more I think about it, the more it hurts. I don’t know what to do, Binnie. I just wanted to get away.” she says, moving closer and leaning her head on his shoulder.

Soobin takes a breath, well aware of how close she was and the weight of her against his body and how her usual Lavender scent was just drowned out by the stench of alcohol. He didn’t know how just how drunk she was, but Soobin never thought B could be so vulnerably jealous and insecure. He gingerly raises a hand and holds hers, gently running circles on her skin with his thumb as he thinks over his next words very carefully. “Okay, so what if Rose is here? So what if Yeonjun smiled at her or hugged her or whatever else you saw? None of that stuff matters because B, he has you.”

B laughs bitterly. “He has me? What does that matter?”

“It matters because you are one of the best people to exist in this world at this very moment and he knows that. It matters because you are one of the kindest, smartest, cutest, silliest, and most beautiful people I know. It matters because you are special, and he is so damn lucky that he gets to call you his. It matters because a girl like you is impossible to find, and he would be a complete idiot if he let something as insignificant as his cheater of an ex fuck it up.”

It’s quiet for a moment, the only audible sound coming from B as she tries to stop her tears from falling and slow down her breathing. Until she very quietly, almost inaudibly says “Maybe it should’ve been you, Soobin.”

The thumb tracing circles on her hand freezes and he feels his heart stop beating as her words wash over him. “What did you say?”

“Maybe it should’ve been you.” she sighs. “I’ve been told on more than one occasion that you and I would make a great pair so maybe they were right. Look, you’ve even given me your jacket just now even though I still have one of your hoodies from when we were in your room at Kai’s party! I mean it’s not like I had an option cause you never liked me anyway and Yeonjun did, but maybe if you did, maybe I would’ve chosen you just like everyone said I should’ve or would’ve. Or could’ve? I don’t know.” she slurs, her words heavily blending together yet her message was very clear.

When Soobin remains frozen and silent, B laughs out loud, a few hiccups escaping her as her crying subsides. “Oh god I’m sorry, I’m just so drunk please don’t listen to me. You should go back out there and have fun, don’t waste your time on me. I’m pretty sure I won’t remember this in the morning anyway. And don’t worry, I’ll give you back your hoodie.” she rambles, her words slurring together. And he knew she was right. She was so drunk, he didn’t think he’d ever see her like the wasted mess that she was now.

Soobin looks at her sadly, his heart aching. He couldn’t leave her alone, but he knew that if he stayed with her any longer, especially since she was drunk and spewing out candid thoughts like that, he’d only end up hurting himself. He pulls out his phone and sends a few quick texts before leaning his head back against the wall, waiting.

“You know you always have a choice, right?” Soobin says. “And for the record, it’s not like I never liked you.”

B looks up at him, confused. “What?”

“It’s not like I never liked you, because I did.” Soobin says, praying with all his might that she wouldn’t remember a word of their conversation when she woke up the next morning. “And I still do.”

Before B gets the chance to react, the door flies open, and Taehyun walks in along with Beomgyu, both of them had a slight crazed look in their eyes as if they had run a marathon.

“B! Dear sweet darling, are you okay?” Beomgyu says dramatically as he sweeps into the room and drops himself on the floor in front of her, pulling her into his arms.

“I saw Yeonjun with Rose!” she wails before the tears start to fall from her eyes once again, she crumbles in Beomgyu’s arms, her drunk mind still unable to properly process anything.

“Shhh, there there, you poor miserable thing. It’s alright.” Beomgyu coos, rubbing a hand soothingly along her back. Behind her back, he violently mouths to Soobin and Taehyun “Rose?! What the fuck?!”

Soobin stands and approaches Taehyun, who was standing by the door observing the scene in front of him.

“Thanks for coming, Tyun.” Soobin says. “I can’t–I don’t think I can trust myself around her, not while she’s like this. It’s just–“ he says, struggling with his words as his conversation with B replays in his mind “It hurts too much, I can’t be here for her but I can’t just leave her alone, so thank you.”

Taehyun shakes his head at the older boy. “No problem, Soobin. I told you I’m always here if you need me.” he says, clapping him on the back. “How bad is it?”

“She’s really drunk and she was crying and all upset cause she saw Rose and Yeonjun together.” Soobin explains.

Taehyun nods. “That’s understandable, Rose is a hideous wench just the thought of seeing her makes me want to vomit, much more the thought of her and Yeonjun together. I’m assuming she came with some of Yeonjun’s business friends.” he says. “Anything else?”

“Well…I sort of told her that I like her.” Soobin whispers so that Beomgyu and B wouldn’t hear.

Taehyun’s eyes widen as he hits Soobin’s arm. “What! Soobin! Why would you do that?”

“She was drunk and upset and rambling and saying things and I’m also pretty intoxicated too so it sort of just came out!” Soobin groans. “She’s pretty wasted though so I don’t think she’ll remember anything.”

“You better pray to science and faith that she doesn’t.” Taehyun warns him. “Tell me everything later on, okay? Just go and leave her to us, you look like you could use another drink.”

Soobin nods. “Thanks, Tyun. Fill me in too, how has your night been?” he asks politely.

Taehyun smiles. “I kissed my crush, and my crush kissed me back.”

Soobin’s eyes widen and his mouth drops open in shock. Before he can say anything else, Taehyun laughs and pushes him out of the room before slamming the door in his face.

•°•

Soobin’s night was starting to turn hazy as he kept his alcohol ingestion going, and the more he stumbled through the place the longer the night seemed to drag on.

After his quiet yet disastrous moment with B, he immediately rushed to the bar and started downing shots with a few seniors from their class. Once he felt the alcohol back in his system, he spent some time on the dance floor joining the throng of random sweaty bodies jumping and grinding and bumping against his. At one point, a wasted girl he recognized from his science class pulled him aside and attempted to lock their lips together, which he managed to politely refuse and escape from.

After stumbling his way through the place, he had finally caught sight of a familiar face. Once he spotted the back of Yeonjun’s familiar head of blue hair, he started to make his way towards him, until he saw the head of long fiery red hair that Yeonjun currently had as company.

He stopped in his place, observing his friend as Yeonjun continued to converse with his ex. Soobin could see that they were standing right in front of each other and that they occasionally leaned in close, but he deduced that it was probably just because the music was so loud.

He watches as Rose laughs at something Yeonjun says, laying a hand on his shoulder as she tilts her head back before she leans into him and says something back, which causes Yeonjun’s shoulders to shake with laughter as well.

He watches as Rose pulls him to the dance floor, with Yeonjun initially refusing and trying to keep his feet planted on the floor until the girl pouts at him and manages to pull him along with her, into the middle of the crowd, as they start to jump and shake their bodies along to the beat.

He watches as Rose whips her long red hair over her shoulder as she starts wiggling her body around the blue haired boy, her hands on his shoulders, almost around his neck, as she pulls their bodies flush together and she starts dancing against him.

He watches as she traps Yeonjun’s face in her hands and pulls down until their lips meet, and Soobin’s breath catches in his throat as she does so.

He watches as Yeonjun breaks away and all but shoves her aside, while she looks at him innocently and shrugs. He watches as she attempts to pull him close again, only for Yeonjun to grab her hands and push them away. He watches as Yeonjun finally turns around, their eyes meeting, and he watches Yeonjun freeze as he realizes that Soobin was watching him the whole time.

•°•

Author’s note:

Did someone say... drama? Here’s a lengthy and drama-packed chapter to make up for a delay in the update! I just moved into a new apartment and I’ve been busy with packing and unloading all my stuff so I’m sorry for the delay :c Thank you for all your kind words and your reactions, they really mean so much to me! Let me know what you think!

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danwhobrowses · 3 years

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One Piece Chaper 996: Initial Thoughts

The pace has quickened so much that this came a day early So in the middle of my lunch break I’m doing the review hoping that I have the time XD Spoilers for Chapter 996, also remember to Support the Official Release

A Blackbeard themed cover!? What the hell?

Komachiyo and Tama seem to be helping Nami and Usopp bounce, which is a shame because they won’t get the W but if it means some Ulti/Pay-Pay dynamics where I don’t have to hate them then so be it

Hihimaru has also shown up as we’re about to go full circle, Tama vaguely saying she took an enemy ship - I don’t think Nami and Usopp are aware that she controls all of the Udon SMILE headliners

What happens in 3 minutes though Tama? Is there a bigger plan? Is there maybe a bigger animal coming?

Tama I appreciate your gusto but...yeah Hihimaru’s not gonna last long against Ulti and Pay-Pay alone

Yamato though taking names and cannonfire, until it looks like Sasaki’s about to step in

Excuse me sir but WHAT WAS THAT!? Got some kinda transformation hidden there don’t you Yamato? Sasaki’s face almost hit bricks

Franky prevents us from seeing though, but the Number provides a solid exit for Yamato, Momo and Shinobu, looks like it’s Armor vs Armor

It is kinda humorous that Yamato thinks that’s Franky’s normal body, with how closed off Wano is it’s actually surprising that they identified Franky as one of Luffy’s friends

But Yamato just 1-shotted that Number...so by default Yamato is as strong as a radical beam

Seems that Yamato believes that Momo will bring that dawn, I wonder what that could mean for Yamato’s role in endgame

Finally seeing some Law action, looks like he’s found a new purpose to discover what the Will of D is. Bit of Robin interaction in flashback but he finds a regular Poneglyph anyway. He didn’t bother because it wasn’t red but I do wonder why they showed this one, I feel like Robin may read it another time

Also where’s your buddies Law, looking pretty solo right now!

We also get Kid content with Killer, and Killer is right, you can’t overprepare against a Yonko, especially when there’s actually two (though does Kid know that? I don’t think he does)

Ooof though, Kaido wasting the scabbards one by one, Kin’emon’s down, Denjiro got a stab in but he’s down, Raizo and Kawamatsu are also down

One silhouette could be one of the minks, they did pan to the moon, though Kiku, Izo and the minks were kept from view, the sense of urgency is building

Big Mom’s back in the building, but she’s going straight for Kaido...betrayal or does she want to wait for Luffy up top?

Chopper’s infection has spread to his eye though, he is in Brain Point however so he must be thinking

Luffy’s just getting to the third floor!? He’s not that far from Kid actually, and now that I think about it Law’s in the basement so he’ll have to get through the Ice Oni, all 3 doctors at the bottom?

Sanji, no! I know you can hear ladies but this is not, I repeat, THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO BE A SIMP

So this was again a good chapter We have counted down to 4 and things are speeding up a little Tama, Usopp and Nami are now off for a 3 minute deal, it implies something Tama has brought will influence the tide. I do still hope for Usopp and Nami to get the W they need for this raid though, and Tama really but one of the key parts they can do right now is use Tama’s DF and Usopp’s sniping to their advantage. Yamato, Momo and Shinobu are still being chased but less so by Sasaki’s heavy weaponry. Now that Momo isn’t running from Yamato it’ll be interesting what the plan is - is it to run and hide? I don’t think he would stomach that. King still has a target on his head, that transformation Yamato is hiding will definitely return to play and all the Flying Six have been alerted to it. It’s simply that Sasaki is now dealing with Franky right now that accounts for them. It was good to finally see Law and Kid again. The former gaining a purpose was good to see, especially one that benefits from sticking with Luffy, there have been times many wondered if Law would turn on Luffy but for him to say that he trusts Robin is a big step. I am more worried for Kid though, he and Luffy look like they’ll partner up (Law will probably Shambles up there, maybe even with Zoro) or race up the final floors to the top, the problem however is that Kid is bringing a lot of metal up with him - which is good for his powers but also good for Big Mom, she can turn them into homies. BM exiting for all the ground floor SHs to see is important though, they have to get past Queen and support their captain as he rises to face down now 2 Yonko. This also means that Marco has a clear path to them too. But Kaido is wrecking house, this is why he is the strongest creature, the direness of the Akazaya makes it all the more worrisome that Luffy is only halfway up the tower, and it does indeed look like we’re about to lose Sanji. We all know that with women Sanji’s screwed, especially big seductive women who we expect it to be, but maybe this is a ploy. Sanji’s number is 3 and the next chapter (with no break too) just happens to be 3 away from Chapter 1000...maybe there is something there? Could Sanji finally set aside this part of his pride and lay hands on a woman? We still also have to account for Who’s Who, as well as Caribou, Hiyori, Shadowed Person and BM’s remaining crewmates, I hope Hyou’s okay too they didn’t show him in the chapter, same with Carrot and Wanda but I feel like they could handle Perospero alone You’ve surprised me early but now the wait is longer, I’d bet 999 will be the break leading to an Xmas chapter 1000 release

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abyssmail · 3 years

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Caerul Design Notes,

because I’ve actually put a lot of thought into creating Caerul’s aesthetic and I’m lowkey really proud of it. I won’t get into her actual character concept/personality/backstory/etc. since this got super long, but this is how/why I made the choices I did with regards to her name and visual design!

▶ Caerul’s color scheme started off way bluer (hence the name “Caerul,” from caeruleus/a/um - “blue”/“cerulean”/“azure”/“of the sky/sea” in Latin) and less saturated, but when I gave her a (dead) twin with a red theme, I wanted them to look more alike and made both of their hair purple (although I haven’t actually done more than sketch Roseus before... he’s got purple hair and red eyes). Purple’s my favorite color, and unnatural hair colors don’t seem to be uncommon in Orth, so why not, right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The red elements in Caerul’s design are meant to represent her honoring Roseus!

All of the base colors I use when drawing Caerul! They all end up looking a bit darker once they’re shaded though.

▶ As well as shamelessly using one of my favorite Latin words (I’m a Classics major, okay ;;>~>), I also tried to pick a name that sounded similar to the ones that already exist in-universe. This was actually fairly tricky, since as far as I can tell the names in Made in Abyss have a WIDE variety of influences. Some of them seem passably Japanese-sounding (Riko, Jiruo, Kiyui, Nanachi) disclaimer I bring dishonor to my ancestors and know 0 Japanese so this is just about vibez, others seem Western-ish (Reg, Nat, Lyza, Prushka). Some are fairly whimsical (Shiggy, Maruruk, Mitty) while others are more mysterious and fantastic (Any of the White Whistles besides maybe Lyza). The only common thread I could really settle on was a general fantasy feeling to all of the names. I tried to capture that nebulous vibe with Caerul’s name, although with something so vague and subjective it’s pretty much impossible to say if I was entirely successful. I named her siblings afterward with other Latin color words and ended up with a RGB theme lol.

▸ By the way, “Caerul” is pronounced “KAI-rool.” It rhymes with “Hyrule.” The ae diphthong makes an “eye” sound in Latin #TheMoreYouKnow

▸ “Caducalae” is a portmanteau of “caducae alae,” literally “falling/doomed/futile wings” in Latin (again), playing off how pointless it is to be able to fly when the Curse of the Abyss is a thing. Originally, they weren’t supposed to work at all outside of the Abyss, but I decided that was boring for crossovers/other verses so I scrapped it. I’m not too happy with the name since it doesn’t fit the naming scheme of the canon relics (there is no precedent at all for gratuitous Latin in Made in Abyss, which is a good thing because it’s overused in fantasy, but Latin was the only thing I was good at in high school sooooo... ^^;), but I didn’t like any of my other ideas that much, either. “Wings of Futility” feels more canon, but it’s also kinda depressing :/

▶ I’ve mentioned before that Caerul’s build is based off of mine for art reference purposes (it’s convenient to just look in the mirror while making the pose I want =w=)b), but another reason she’s so short is that I didn’t have to make the caducalae quite as big since she’s smaller, so she can actually go indoors if she’s careful.

▶ Long hair isn’t super practical with mechanical wings with lots of bits for it to get caught in, but Caerul idolizes Lyza, so I left her hair as long as I could reasonably get away with.

▶ I heavily referenced the canon Made in Abyss character designs for Caerul’s clothing so she would fit into the world, but made some alterations to make everything more personal to her and accommodate for her wings. In general, I lightened everything up, since she takes a bunch of short, quick trips rather than lengthy expeditions. Her gloves, for instance, are loosely inspired by the ones we see many delvers wearing in the manga/anime, but are less heavy-duty and are convertible mittens/fingerless gloves for better dexterity with handling letters and such.

The best close up of the gloves I could find was actually a screenshot of the aftermath Reg & Riko’s orb piercer encounter, but I didn’t want to have to tag this for gore, so you get Lyza ^^; There’s a filter over Caerul here so you can see the glove better which is why she looks kinda washed out :/

▶ Her coat is heavily influenced by Jiruo’s, since he’s the only Moon Whistle we’ve seen in canon.

yeah, uhhhh, sorry to yoink your style my dude ^^;

▸ Caerul’s has a different color palette, a simpler lapel border, an extra set of outer pockets, and three separate panels in the back that button around her wings so she can put it on! I haven’t drawn it, but her shirt works similarly.

This is my favorite detail about her design tbh... it’s just really satisfying what a logical solution it is for some reason??? the original doodle is off rotting somewhere in my Modern European History notes, but I tried to recreate it just as sloppily here =w=)b

▶ Caerul’s corset isn’t just a painful fashion choice - it’s actually meant to be a(n admittedly heavily stylized) brace for her back against the weight of her wings.

▶ Since Caerul can’t wear a backpack with the wings, I had to get creative with storage options for her. In addition to an undetermined number of pockets on the inside of her coat, I gave her these two pouches on her thighs to carry more stuff.

I wonder how buff your quads could get carrying a significant amount of weight there...

▸ Messenger bags don’t seem super practical for delving, so I didn’t design a specific one for her to carry all the time, but Caerul does use them on occasion. Even with that, though, she still has far less carrying capacity than the average delver, which is a problem she has to deal with when carrying out her duties!

▶ The wings/caducalae were by far the most difficult part of designing Caerul, and it took several redesigns over 2+ years before I was finally happy with them. Their first design was deliberately far simpler in the interest of having to draw them a zillion times, but they ended up clunky and unwieldy looking:

chonky o~O

▸ The final design is MUCH more of a pain to draw (in fact, a lot of the time I cheat and just copy and paste them from drawings I’ve already done), but I think it looks much sleeker and more “functional”.

I also got better at making my diagrams look slightly more authentic ;0

▸ I knew I wanted jetpack-style thrusters to be a component of the wings to somewhat justify the shit I wanted Caerul to be able to pull with them (especially to eliminate the need for accounting for the damage landing suddenly could do to her ankles), but incorporating them proved to be one of the biggest problems of the design. At one point, they were going to have a whole separate attachment point on her back, but I finally just made them an offshoot of the first “joint,” as you can see in the final design.

A really messy intermediate caducalae sketch. The weird double pentagon shape was meant to be the part of the relic actually fused to Caerul’s back, but I scrapped that too when I scrapped the separate limbs for the thrusters.

▸ Speaking of the joints, they’re all balls so they can rotate all over and I don’t have to fuss too much about how they move. Likewise, the frame is metal, but I treat it like it’s kind of flexible, so Caerul can “flex” the wings open and closed. These wings are hard enough to draw period okay I’m giving myself every excuse to be inconsistent af on purpose.

▸ The caducalae have some “bonus” features that I’ve sketched out, but that Caerul hasn’t unlocked yet, and won’t for a while.

owo what’s this?

▸ For the wings, I think my biggest inspirations were some of the mechier Cardfight!! Vanguard dragon units (although I don’t remember which cards specifically) and the energy wings on the ninth-generation knightmares in Code Geass R2.

I’ve made a lot of OCs, and since I don’t like to use faceclaims, I’ve done a fair amount of character designing. I don’t think I’ve ever spent as much time or had as much fun with any of them as I have with Caerul, though! OCs aren’t always super well accepted in fandom roleplay, but the Made in Abyss community has been super welcoming and I’ve had a blast. Thanks for listening to me gush about Caerul if you got this far, and thank you to everyone who’s interacted with her!

The original sketch of Caerul from back in 2017. How far we’ve come :’D

#miscellaneous info #mun art #appearance #ooc #((no one cares lol))#((but I had fun putting all my thoughts down in writing ^^;))#((also! the full version of the new caerul art from the promo!))

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uta-no-fakku-sama · 4 years

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30 UtaPri Questions

I finally got around to doing this after being tagged so here we go :3

this is supposed to go on my main but i already saved the draft before i could do anything so oh well ;w;

Your Best Boy? Natsuki, but Cecil and Camus are not too far behind.

Your Least Favorite Boy? I don’t really have any; they’re all really nice.

A Character You Never Thought You Would Love as Much as You Do Now? Y-Yamato. . . There’s just something about him that makes me happy ÚwÙ

A Character You Can Relate to in Any Way? Otoya, I guess. I’m not exactly sure on how I should put it, though.

A Character That You Think Deserved More Love? Eiichi, definitely. I know he’s messed up a lot and I don’t agree with what he did, but it’s (not really but it’s there) simple to see he means well. I know what it’s like to do something I thought as good but ended up hurting someone else through it, which in turn hurt me. He had good intentions, but went with them the wrong way. I do understand why people feel so upset and angry towards him; in a way, he has been shown in a bad light. Then again, HEAVENS in general during their very first appearance in Season 2 were depicted to be like the main villains of the series. Then again, that’s probably just me overanalyzing again. Sorry for the rambling ;w:

A Character You Would Want as Your Partner/Lover? Haruka. Just Haruka. Let me smooch.

A Character You Would Want as Your Mentor/Senpai? Reiji! I mean, he’s Reiji. And maybe Cesshi. Or Masato. Maybe Camus if I’m allowed to make fun of him.

Your Favorite Ship? NatsuCam. Such a rare pair. Like, a really fucking rare pair. Most of the content for it is mine. Haha ;w;

A Character You Want to Cosplay/Have Already Cosplayed? I’d like to try Cesshi, but I don’t know if my skin’s dark enough for that so I don’t wanna risk any chances. An alternative may be Natsuki, but then I’d be a short kinda chubby-looking Natsuki. Kira’d be nice too though! But I’m probably a little too expressive for him;;; Nagi’d be a nice fit as well, I dunno :3

Favorite Side Character? I’m not really sure if Satsuki counts as a side character since he really only shows up during Natsuki-centered episodes. If not him, then Tomochika! She. Just she.

Your Favorite Solo Song? I found myself enjoying Cesshi’s solo songs a lot. Destiny Song really brings me in. Brand New Melody has a lil something to it that makes me really happy though. I don’t know what it is, but it gives me a nice feeling inside. I also really like SUKIxSUKI Hanamaru and Hatsukoi o Mata Hajimeyou!! Those are both really nice songs that make me feel really fluffy happy inside >w<! And Melting of Snow. And Hurrayx2 Dreamers. And there’s a lot of solo songs I like. Oops.

Your Favorite Duet Song? North Wind and SunShine. I just really like that song. Like, that was the duet song my mind really stuck onto when I first started playing SL. I got attached.

Your Favorite Trio Song? Kaleidoscope. When I watched the movie in theaters, that was the one I kinda got really hooked on;;;

Your Favorite Group Song? There’s Mirai Chizu and Maj LOVE 2000% and QUARTET NIGHT and Poison KISS and HEAVENS GATE and GIRAx2 SEVEN an—

Your Least Favorite Group Song? FORCE LIVE I guess?? I mean, the chorus is okay and stuff, but the other things in the song are just not really my taste. Like the beginning. The beginning just feels so eeeeehhh to me;;;

Your Favorite Singer? I think they’re all good how do choose favorite help—

Your Favorite Group/Trio/Duo? Favorite group is hard to choose; they all are good. Favorite trio is easily either the Kawaii Group or the White Chocolate Horse/Tea Party Group (Natsuki, Ren, and Camus). Favorite duo is also very easily the Royal Group.

Your Favorite Member of STARISH? Natsuki Shinomiya. Tsuki-chan. Ye. I love he. Cesshi’s also very close behind. He sweet. Beb. I also love he.

Your Favorite Member of QUARTET NIGHT? Camus. Used to be Reiji. Sorry, maracaboo. It all started when I got his My Only Prince UR (the first MOP card I got) which in turn made me go “I guess I’ll change Natsuki for him on my screen and then I tapped him and he go “high butler voice time hewwo mistwess uwu ^-^” and I went “holy shi—

Your Favorite Member of HEAVENS? Yamato!! I love him. I love his appearance. I love his clothing choices. I love his voice. I love his personality. I. Uh. Munscklez. Ha;;;;;;;;

Your Favorite Seiyuu/Voice Actor? Why do I have to choose one? I mean, unrelated but through their seiyuus and stuff I was able to find out Mamoru is in the Japanese dub of The Lorax and that put me through a fucking loop. Thanks, Mamo :3

Favorite Drama CD? Lycoris no Mori. Shit. That was. Made me remember that Vocaloid song The Wolf Who Fell in Love with Little Red Riding Hood. Also Black Hood Cesshi. Evil boi. Just doing evil spirit boi things. Kinda caused people to murder along the way but it’s okay because in the end he’s probably still dancing over their dead bodies in the woods. Also wolf Randolph Toki red-nosed bitch. Randolph sounds really close to Rudolph, don’tcha agree? And Blood Otoya. Or Brad Otoya. Or whatever. Who in their right mind thought Blood was a good name for a boi? Like, I know he has red hair and red eyes and a red hood and red blood an— Victor. Huntsman Ren. Ren with ponytail. H. That is all. H.

Your Favorite Shining Live Card? *slams hands on table* TEA. PARTY. UR. BOIS. Natsuki please come home soon ;-;

Your Favorite Song Beatmap? Any of the ones with slide notes. Like, a lot of them. Also just any really difficult song I somehow manage to FC on the first couple tries. Like I remember there was one song for an event I was playing in only to get more LP where there was like a fuck ton of notes. I forgot if if was 800 or 900, but there were a lot. And I managed to FC it first try. Haha whoops ;w;

Your Least Favorite Song Beatmap? Nothing really comes to mind except for the lower difficulty ones. When you play a lot of Pro songs, the lower ones just kinda get boring.

Black Dejavu or White Gravity? White Gravity definitely. I can’t believe Masato said “lol bye” and joined the Kawaii and Royal Groups. Also, Natsuki’s high notes. They told him to do it twice and he said “okay :D”. I know it has a more uniform(?) singing distribution and order, but that just personally fits me and my ears better :3

UtaPri Merch That You Own/Watch? I have a Prince Cat of Citron!! And a Natsuki face towel that came along with him. I wanna get either Lime or Aqua next, but I can’t choose who. Lime because second best boi, Aqua because third best boi and shipping reasons. Also, you ever follow accounts that have Prince Cats of different sizes and have them act out as if they’re like a lil family? I want that life. Like, there’s one I follow on Twitter with Rosso and Cielo and Iris and Arancia and Verde and a lil Aqua as their child and I adore them. They use emojis to represent who’s talking and the lil Aqua’s emoji is a lollipop it’s just so cute ;-;. . .

How did You Get into UtaPri? Shining Live. I saw that Klab had another idol rhythm game on the app store and went “Why not? I haven’t had one with guydols yet?” and look where we are now;;;

A Set Theme in Shining Live That You Want to See in the Future? I’ve been having a bunch of gacha set and event ideas on a note on my phone. Like street dancer, fairytales, zodiac, zookeeper, cyber, and seven deadly sins/four horsemen as gacha ideas (some I already made art concepts for;;;). And for events, I got carhop, first date kinda thing, and ice/figure skating. In short, I want a lot :3

Why Do You Love Your Best Boy? At first, it was because he adores cute things and I adore cute things and he’s cute so I adore him. After learning more about him, I do see more similarities between the two of us. The feeling of being betrayed and growing defensive because of it, his defense being Satsuki and mine is trying to use words to help me. The need to grow stronger to not be seen as a burden, to try and not rely and depend on others to fight our battles for us. There’s probably more I can dwell upon, but that’s all I can think about for now.

Tagging: I don’t know I’m sorry ;-;. . . Anyone who wants to do this can have the go ahead.

#tagged #uta no prince sama #utapri #long post

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alienoriana · 4 years

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Why Lonely Road is about John

1st Disclaimer: Approaching a Paul song is trickier than a John song IMO. Mainly because Paul seems to enjoy and embrace more the weirdness, the serendipity, the subconscious that can break in and subvert the creative process. John himself described Paul’s lyrics as surreal (maybe in oposition to his own lyrics, which are “real” real. For more insights about it, read this great post from @thecoleopterawithana). This is important because Paul usually prefer to highlight that aspect when he’s talking about one of his songs. That tendency may create the impression that he is more detached from his lyrics, when in fact he is trying to focus on that dimension that he considers to be an indispensable part of his identity as a songwriter. Sometimes its a dream, sometimes its a catchy line, sometimes its a mistake that works, sometimes its a minor event or a random person (or animal), or all these elements together. And thats what Paul will tell us later when ask about the song: that little thing that made the tune go and grow.

But when one tries to understand a song (emotional) motives, this tendency gets in the way -and probably that’s how Paul prefers it: just keep guessing, and more importantly, keep listening to the songs-.

2nd Disclaimer: As much as I believe that John and Paul were (are) soulmates, Im aware of the equal (and different) intensity of the bond they had with their spouses. The fact that I focus on J/P relationship, doesn't mean that I like to place their relationship over the others, as more important than the others. In this case (this song) in particular, I say this in relation to Paul and Linda's relationship. Even if I try to show why I think John's presence is strong in a song, it does not mean that I deny the possibility that Paul actually is alluding to Linda, or even both, sequentially or at the same time. Because the heart is that messy and complex, and big.

I feel that I tried to cover myself too much before I even started, but both issues are usually present almost always in my reflections about his (their) songs (my favorite McLennon topic), and I think this post is a good opportunity to express it.

And now, to the song... [finally, right?]

Lonely Road was included as opening track in the album “Driving Rain”, published in november 2001. The main themes of the album are influenced by the mixed feelings of grief over the recent death of his longtime partner, and of excitement over a new relationship. There’s longing and thankfulness, but also the wish to let go to be able to go on.

Some of the songs were written during a holiday in India, in early 2001, where Paul had not returned since the events of 1968 (!). I think this little fact is esential to read this song. We can ask ourselves: Could Paul have remained indifferent to that place so associated with John and The Beatles, and to the memories it could have awakened?

The lyrics...

I tried to get over you I tried to find something new But all I could ever do Was fill, my time With thoughts, of you

I tried to go somewhere old To search for my pot of gold But all I could ever hold Inside, my mind Were thoughts, of you

I hear your music And it's driving me wild Familiar rhythms In a different style I hear your music And it's driving me wild again

Don't want to let you take me down Don't want to get hurt second time around Don't want to walk that lonely road again

I hear your music And it's driving me wild Familiar rhythms In a different style I hear your music And it's driving me wild again

Don't want to let you take me down Don't want to get hurt second time around Don't want to walk that lonely road again

The analysis of the one who does not want to be analyzed...

When asked about this particular song, Paul was as usual nonchalant about its meaning.

In 2001, he was saying this:

‘Lonely Road’ was also written in Goa, where I was enjoying the beach and the sea and generally chilling out in the new century. Again, I had a few moments in the afternoon, which is always a good time for me, a quiet spell when it’s always cool for me to go off and fondle my guitar. The songs basically wrote itself in about an hour. It is what it is, this song, you can make of it what you want to make of it. To me it’s not particularly about anything other than not wanting to be brought down. It’s a sort of anti-being brought down song, which is for anyone and everyone. It’s ‘don’t want to get brought down again, don’t want to walk that lonely road’, it’s symbolic for anyone who’s been through any sort of problems. It’s a defiant song against loneliness, written in a hotel room in Goa. - Driving Rain Interview, 2001.

“It’s a defiant song against loneliness”, thats a fantastic little definition, which goes well with not only this song but many of Paul’s tunes.

In another quote, published much later, Paul speaks a little about the simple motivation for a certain rhyme:

‘Lonely Road’ was written in India, and that’s a bit… I don’t really know what I’m doing, just blues longing. I say I tried to go somewhere ‘old’, that’s India. ‘To search for my pot of gold’, well I wasn’t, I was on holiday. So it’s half imagination, half reality. If I’m looking for a rhyme for old, and pot of gold comes into my mind, then I don’t resist. ‘I try to go somewhere old cos I no longer need a pot of gold?’ Fuck that. Let’s go somewhere old to search for a pot of gold seems more like a song. - "Conversations With McCartney", by Paul Du Noyer, 2015.

In both quotes, its like he’s saying: “It’s nothing, it’s just this song I made up on a holiday, I didnt want to get brought down, ‘old’ just goes well with ‘gold’, the usual things in a songwriter life. Don’t pay that much attention to it, don’t think too much about it, I certainly didn’t”.

Interestingly, he makes reference in the 2001 interview to another song of the same album, and he once again tries to make it clear that the sources of inspiration were deeply rooted in free asociation.

‘About You’ was written in India, in Goa. We had such a relaxing start to an Indian holiday which was at the beginning of 2001. It was exciting, I hadn’t been back to India since the Mararishi days, which was 25 years or so ago. It was great to look around a bit more; I’d only seen Rishikesh, north of Delhi, before. We started off in Goa, relaxed beach time, and one afternoon I wrote ‘About You’ on a little travel guitar I’ve got which has it’s own amp in it. I picked some words out for the song after seeing a copy of The India Times which was lying around. - Driving Rain Interview, 2001.

“I read the news today, oh boy" kind of feeling... Hmmm... (I wonder what that newspaper was about)

IMO, every time Paul strives to asociate a certain song to something inexplicable, casual and without intermediation, he actually suggests that the motivation is very intimate and subconscious. At the same time, he refuses to analyse it. He wont talk about it, because he cant answer for himself at that moment, that place and time. And he probably believes that if he tries to grasp its meaning and set it in stone, sort to speak, he would kill the song. In this case, I think he tries to say there is no clear intention, but its also a strong feeling he can’t help to express.

And when he alludes to the specific lyrics, he carefully avoids the “middle eight” of the song: “I hear your music and it's driving me wild / Familiar rhythms in a different style / I hear your music and it's driving me wild again”.

“I hear your music"... Whose music?

Ok, Paul, you chose “gold” to rhyme with “old” (and I will not try to relate the “pot of gold” line with the famous twin dreams that John and Paul had after meeting for the first time). Fine.

But who is the person he is talking to throughout the song? Whose memory is the one “taking him down” there in India, in a supposedly happy holiday?

Yes, it can be Linda, but if so, wouldn't Paul say "our music"?. Im inclined to believe that this music he’s hearing (and its driving him “wild”... wild as “young and rebellious”? wild as “angry and mad”?) belongs or relates to someone different.

He sings: “Don't want to let you take me down / Don't want to get hurt second time around / Don't want to walk that lonely road again”.

Oh, this part I love. The reference to “second time” and “again” speak of a first time he was brought down and hurt, of a first time he walked “that lonely road”. Can this have to do only with his recent mourning, to which he’s saying in a way he’s done suffering? Or has to do with another, more distant, first departure, first great hurt? And even more, does this “first time” have something to do with India? (I remember now that Paul has another beautiful song that belongs to this period, maybe a little later, thats simply called “India”).

Why John, then?

The song transpires clearly a youthful rebellious spirit (”Fuck that”), expressing the need to shake off melancholy and nostalgia. And I think that in this way he suggests that he is more guarded in front of a process he already is familiar with. HE’S BEEN THERE. Because he has already gone through that lonely road, and it took him a long time to recover. This time, he feels the urge to recover faster (we'll know later that maybe it was too fast).

I dont know if the first mourning refers to his break-up with John or to John’s passing. Perhaps the proximity to India reinforces the first possibility.

Another thing to take into account is the fact that in the album Paul includes a song directly and explicitly related to Linda, Magic. On the contrary, in the case of Lonely Road, Paul decides to leave it orphan: it´s about noone, and nothing.

Lonely Road comes straight from the subconscious. It has a close, immediate trigger: probably another song that he hears and it makes him wild, and it brings him down, and it reminds him of another time when he was left alone.

And I think that song is a John’s song.

P.S.: Oh, not really related, but you definitely should watch the Lonely Road video.

#i formally submit this to the mclennon symposium #lonely road #i wanted to write about this song for a long time #paul mccartney #mclennon #john lennon #x

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moowcowlol · 4 years

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Photos

A/N: For @rays-of-fire-and-ice !! So sorry this is late, but here's your gift!

(This is actually a side-blog so I can't submit it through this account as far as I know, I hope you don't mind this instead!)

I feel bad for not participating much in HitsuHinaWeek 2019; I found myself swept along the holidays and wound up with far less time than I thought I'd have ;n; But! I hope you enjoy this ray, and hope you all have a happy new year!!

Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach. Bleach belongs to Tite Kubo.

---

She took a breath before calling out to him. "Shiro!"

The young captain jumped in his seat at his desk, too engrossed in his work to have heard her come in. He looks up at her, slight annoyance written all over him, and sighs. "What is it, Hinamori?"

Momo looked away innocently, rocking back and forth on her heels with her hands - and what they were holding - hidden behind her back. "I've got a favor to ask-"

"If this is about that stupid calendar then you should forget it," he says with a flat tone.

She pouted and held the camera she was hiding up to her chest, her motives discovered. "Awww, come on Shiro!"

The Women's Association wants to make a new calendar focusing on one of the captains once again. With this being the ninth year since the war with the Quincy has ended, Toshiro was of course the perfect choice for next year's calendar. It didn't help that his face sold some of the most merchandise and funded the association's budget quite spectacularly.

"I've already done that nonsense before - without my knowledge, might I add," Toshiro says, eyebrow twitching at the memory. "I will not participate in such ridiculousness again, as I'm sure you know by now."

"He keeps catching me!" Rangiku yelled, downing yet another bottle of sake. "It's like he has a radar or somethin'!"

"You might not be that far off," Soi Fon muses. "Even I haven't been able to capture any candid shots, despite him being strangely easy to track recently."

"Maybe he's using his spiritual pressure to locate where we are?" Rukia proposed, finger on her chin.

"I don't care what it is!" Rangiku slammed her hands on the floor. "It's just annoying!"

She whips her head to her. "Momo!"

She jumped. "W-What?"

"Make him do it! Candid is out this time!"

She stopped herself from rolling her eyes at the memory. Yes, she did know full well about his unwillingness. But she was determined. She looked back at him, intent on convincing him. "Shiro, it isn't that bad! You'll just have to let us take some pictures of you!"

"Yes. While I'm unaware," he countered. "I'm sorry, but I don't find that idea appealing whatsoever."

She pouted even harder. He returned the gesture, even if she was sure he thought he was glaring. 'Think, Momo! How can you make him change his mind?'

Then something hit her. Something unexpected.

She smiled at the thought, which made Toshiro quirk an eyebrow. "How about this then? Instead of having the entire Women's Association harass you, it can mainly be just be us two, going to a bunch of places that fit the theme of the month? Other than some holidays that'll need some preparation to take photos for, it can be just you and me."

That gave him pause. His eyebrows shot to his hairline and he looked away, hopefully giving it thought. She quite liked the idea herself. It's been a long time since she and Toshiro went anywhere that was unrelated to work, and this gave them the perfect chance to change that..

(She was sorry to Nanao, but the Association was not, is not, and will never be work in her eyes.)

Toshiro seemed to think something along those lines too. She couldn't think of many other reasons he was thinking so hard on whether he would go along with it. "I have a lot of work to do…" he offers lamely.

She giggled. "The Association will handle that! Come on!"

He sighed, and she knew she got him.

---

Toshiro looked adorable in an apron covered in chocolate.

They stood in the brightly lit kitchen, decorated well for a quick job; light pink wallpaper with a variety of gifts and treats littered about to give it a Valentine's Day feel. While big holidays like New Year's and Halloween were being set up by the rest of the Association members, they decided to go ahead and begin with the other months. It was them and Rangiku acting as photographer there now, starting still-big-but-easier-to-set-up Valentine's and White days. The March holiday will have the same idea, with different gifts and a light blue wallpaper to give the impression they gave more time to the look.

But for now she and Toshiro stood there, actually making chocolates due to her suggestion. She knew what she was doing, but poor Shiro obviously didn't, managing to get chocolate splattered on parts of his face and all over his apron. She laughed as he tried to use the electric mixer on too high a setting again and got some more chocolate on him, this time in his hair.

"Let me handle that Shiro," she finally offers, unable to hold back her smile. He huffs but agrees, glad to be away from the dreaded mixer. She takes it and lowers the power before mixing the batter, making far less of a mess than her partner. An idea struck her, and she smiled coyly. When she was done she took a spoon, scooped out some chocolate, and held it in front of Toshiro.

"Say 'ahhh' Shiro!" She says, waving the spoon in front of his mouth.

He threw a scowl at her. "No."

"Come on, we have to see if it tastes good!"

"Please. As if anything you make could taste bad."

Momo's eyes widened at the sudden compliment. Her face seemed to have made Toshiro realize what he said; a small blush spread across his face. "I meant that you've been baking a long time! You know what you're doing!" He says quickly.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see Rangiku barely contain a squeal.

Momo focused back at Toshiro. "Pleeease? If you're so confident in my baking then you know it'll taste good then! Have some!"

Toshiro looked away, blush still firm on his face. "I can eat some by myself."

She shook her head. "Mm mm mmm! This is a one time offer! It's either this or nothing!"

He snapped his head around to look at her, surprised. "What?!" He groaned out a complaint and stood there. After a moment he closed his eyes tightly and opened his mouth, accepting the offer wordlessly. Momo jumped a bit in joy and slowly put the spoonful of chocolate in his mouth-

"A-choo!"

They both turned to Rangiku, who sniffled at them. "Sorry! You two keep going!" She says innocently, waving the fingers not holding her camera at them to continue.

The rest of the set up was uneventful, the baking of the chocolate going off without a hitch. When it came time to take the actual photos she thought that would change; Toshiro seemed incapable of taking a shot without looking away from the camera.

Oddly enough that wasn't the case. At least, according to Rangiku.

"It's good to show a shy side! Everyone thinks you're so cold, but this can change that perception up quite nicely~"

Toshiro grumbled in protest of the idea but ultimately decided it was easier than any alternatives. This and White Day had similar poses then; one of a bashful Captain Hitsugaya receiving chocolates, and the other giving a small present.

Momo agreed with Rangiku; the shy look was quite nice.

---

They decided to do New Year's next.

Although Toshiro was the only one dressed in traditional robes to celebrate the would-be holiday, the Association thought it wasteful to go through all the trouble of setting up the festivities and not partaking in them. At least, that was the excuse they gave for mochi pounding and playing hanetsuki and drinking.

"We've taken the photo," Toshiro mutters, annoyed that he technically endorsed the women's partying. "I don't see why I'm still here."

"Sound like you just don't want me to beat you in hanetsuki," Momo teases, waving the paddle in the air with a false confidence.

Toshiro bristled, eyebrows pointed downwards at her accusation. "You're being childish," he tells her, though she could see his fingers tapping against his arm. He wants to prove her wrong; just a lil more pushing and she's got him.

"You're right, Shiro. It's really mature of you to admit that you'd lose." She moved the paddle in front of her face to hide her smile. "I've got a lot of catching up to do!"

That did it.

"Where's another paddle at?!" He looks around angrily, kicking off his geta.

Once he found it the game was on. Both of them ran desperately to the shuttlecock, an unspoken rule against using shunpo agreed between them. It made things quite a bit harder for Toshiro with his restrictive clothes, but he made up for it in his determination to win.

In the end Toshiro's clothing was in fact his undoing. A trip stopped him from reaching the shuttlecock in time, and it bounced on the ground in the rhythm of his defeat. He grunted in exasperation as Momo cheered.

"Now you have to treat the winner to a meal!"

"What?! Since when?!"

"Since I just made it up now! Come on, let's get you out of those clothes."

Toshiro held back another protest in his confusion. "We're leaving now?"

Momo nodded. "This is fun, but I want to go to the next photo spot right now!"

Toshiro tilted his head slightly. "Where's that?"

She smiled. "The world of the living."

---

Wow, gigai really were uncomfortable.

She'd forgotten just how off they felt to be in, like clothes that were simultaneously too tight and too loose. She found herself rolling her shoulders again to try and rid of the tension- or try to fit in it more. It didn't work. She sighed.

"Regretting it yet?" She looked to her side and saw Toshiro stare back at her out of the corner of his eyes.

She shook her head, taking a bite of the watermelon he had bought for her. "How can I regret being in the world of the living with you Shiro?"

He huffed and looked away at her words. "Can you think about your words for a second, Hinamori…"

She giggled at him. He was being silly, really; the world of the living was beautiful this time of year. The parks of Karakura Town were a burst of warmth. Reds, yellows, and oranges filled the air around them as autumn settled down within the trees' roots. Coupled with the sunset illuminating the sky the world was like a blanket, embracing those dwelling on it with a warmth that beat the chill in the winds.

Momo so rarely got assigned to the world of the living. She was glad to be able to come during such a gorgeous time, with her lifelong friend.

"Well, at least you look happy…"

Said friend's words brought her out of her musings. She looked down at him, which made him look away again. Not before she noticed the redness of his cheeks at being caught staring.

It was only the widening of her smile that made her realize its existence at all. No, she could never regret coming here, even in the strange gigai.

They soon found a clearing where the leaves were blowing and piling around the edges, a perfect spot for a picture. They took it without issue, and decided to stay there and just…

Talk.

Talk about how their days have been lately. About new art projects and about new ideas for sculptures. Gushing and ranting about recent books they've read, or the few movies they've seen. Complaining about lazy subordinates and captains. Momo found herself relaxing as the minutes quickly turned to hours, and she saw Toshiro do the same, the tension of his shoulders leaving as he bemoaned Rangiku's persistent habit of ditching her work.

When was the last time they spent time together like this? When they could see past their history and talk as though they had no worries? When they could just… be?

"We should come here more often," she says suddenly.

Toshiro stops mid-sentence. "What?"

Momo looked at him, and he looked back.

"I said, we should come here more often. It's been so long since we just hung out. I miss those days a lot, you know…"

His eyes widened at her words, but his gaze remained on her. It softened after a moment of silence. "Yeah. I miss them too."

"We made pretty good progress today with the photos. I think we'll be done the day after tomorrow, at the latest. Do you think, after that, we can still…?"

He smiled, a small but powerful thing. "Of course. I'd like that too."

She giggled... and then noticed the sky.

"Oh no! It's gotten so late! We have to get back, Shiro!" She took his hand and started running back to where Inoue's apartment was.

"H-Hey! Let go of me!" He shouts, but he doesn't try to break free.

---

"Shiro, it's the last one-"

"No."

"But you did all the other ones!"

"No."

"Pleeease? It's only for a few minutes!"

"Not if it's hanging on the walls of hundreds of shinigami all year long!"

She pouted, stomping her foot on the cave floor. She knew this was going to be the hardest one to convince him to do. Rangiku warned her that was going to be the case. But they were so close to being done! This was the last photo that needed to be taken, the one for December. It would be special, however; instead of the usual Christmas theme, they wanted to go with-

"I'm not using Bankai to take a stupid picture!"

"Oh, but you'll use it when Rangiku slacks off!"

"T-That's different! I was just making her do the work she was supposed to be doing, what good is this going to do?!"

"You'll be helping the Women's Association a lot!"

"What do you people even do there?!"

"Hey!"

He crossed his arms. "Why can't we do some Christmas thing or whatever? Isn't that par for the course?"

"Well, yeah but…"

She hid her face behind her camera. "A lot of us still haven't seen what your Bankai does after you mastered it… A lot of people wanna know what it looks like…" She looked away from him, forcing the next words out. "...People like me…"

She could feel the blush rush up her cheeks at the confession. After Rangiku went off about the drastic change Toshiro goes through in his improved Bankai it's been the talk of the Women's Association for years. To this day, Rangiku, Captain Kuchiki, and Captain Zaraki were the only ones to know what it looks like.

That wasn't fair… She wanted to see it too…

Silence sat in the air, the drafts of the cave echoing off the walls.

"...You want to see it?"

Momo didn't dare look at her friend. She just nodded. "I've never seen it before… I can't help but be curious…"

Another pause. Then she heard a sigh.

"Get out for a minute. I'll call you when I'm ready."

She snapped her eyes back onto him, a smile stretching wide across her face. He jumped at the sudden eye contact and looked away. "Go, before I change my mind!"

She nods before using shunpo to exit the cave. She stood near the mouth, bouncing on her feet in anticipation. She was finally going to see it! And she'll be the first in the Association to see it- after Rangiku, but still!

A sudden gust of cold wind interrupted her thoughts. She shielded her face as best she could and waited for it to pass, releasing some of her spiritual pressure to warm herself up. Once it ended she hears a voice, familiar but strangely deeper.

"Alright… I'm ready."

She swallowed and went back inside … and her jaw hung open.

There in the cave was not her shorter childhood friend, but a fully grown man, his clothes barely fitting and tinted at the edges with frost and ice. Familiar features, like the wings and collar of ice, felt foreign with the aged body.

But what got her the most was the familiar pose he was in.

He sat on a chair of ice, one elbow hosting a hand resting on a hand leaning on a leg propped up on the other. She recognized the pose as one he did far in the past, before Aizen had ever betrayed the Soul Society.

Even the blush was the same.

Cocky as the photo had been it had taken much to be rid of the redness spreading across his cheeks. She watched now as he took deep breaths, just as before. Slowly the blush faded, leaving behind a, if not cocky, then not overtly embarrassed man.

He smirked, but his next words betrayed his want for this to be over.

"Hurry up and take the picture."

She did, wordlessly, too shocked to say anything. This was… certainly… happening…

Soon enough he released his Bankai, reverting back to his younger form with clothes only slightly stretched.

"You got the photo?"

She nods.

"So we're done with the photos, yes?"

She nods.

"I'm not doing that again. Ever."

She nods.

He walks past her to the exit. She follows behind him.

…

...She wonders if she can get him to change his mind.

---

Well, it was done. The photos have been given away to be copied and edited, and the decorations have been nearly completely taken down some days later. All that was left to do was wait for months to pass for next year to be here. Momo sighed into her paperwork; that was exhausting. No wonder Toshiro was so reluctant to do it.

"MOMO!"

She jumped at the sudden shout at the door. Rangiku came bounding in, racing to her desk with a speed to be envied.

"Oh Momo, I knew you had the magic touch! The photos were amazing! And gods, that last one is just," she put her index finger and thumb together and kissed them flamboyantly, "perfect. You're a miracle worker!"

Momo blushed at the memory. "Don't mention it, it was nothing…"

"Suuure~" Rangiku teased, throwing a wink at the younger lieutenant. Her face then turned more serious, a warm smile on her face. "Did you two have fun?"

The question surprised her, and made her think back. Making chocolates, playing games, the hours spent in each other's company at the park clearing…

She returned the smile. "Yeah… we did."

Rangiku giggled. "That's good. The Captain really oughta relax more. I'm glad you two had a nice time. And," she dug in her… vault, and pulled out a photo, "this is thank you for convincing him to go along with us. See ya later Momo!"

With that she left, leaving Momo alone in the office. She turned the photo given to her in her hands, curious as to what it could be.

She gasped quietly.

It was her and Toshiro, dressed in aprons- his significantly dirtier than hers. His face was scrunched up adorably, while hers had a big smile as she fed him chocolate batter. Momo laughed; she had never even noticed that Rangiku had taken a photo of the two of them. How sneaky.

She smiled down at the picture, a warm feeling spreading across her chest. She was glad Rangiku did; it felt nice to have something to remember such a nice day with.

She put it in an empty drawer in her desk. She'll have to have it framed soon.

#hitsuhinaweek #hitsuhina week #hitsuhina #HitsuHinaWeek2019 #HitsuHinaWeek 2019 #toshiro hitsugaya #momo hinamori

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