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#my first year being like an active in the fandom is over

probadbatch · 21 hours

Text

A few thoughts as we head into this finale...

Star Wars was my first love and it's the love that's never left me. From the moment I saw those twin suns set over Tatooine, I was a goner. There have been times when it's been on the back burner, so to speak, but it's always been there and always will be. It's special to me like nothing else.

The Bad Batch is special to me even beyond that.

I've been here since their first appearance in the Clone Wars and I never could have predicted how much the Bad Batch would come to mean to me. This show has been so much more than I ever imagined. It's been joy, it's been heartbreak, it's been intrigue, and it's been hope. These boys and everyone I've met in this corner of fandom have woven their way into my heart in a way I couldn't undo even if I wanted.

I have no intention of packing it up and moving on as soon as the finale is finished. I'm not ready yet. But I imagine there will eventually come a day when even the Bad Batch moves to that back burner in my brain and one day this blog may not appear very active. I promise you I will still be lurking somewhere on tumblr and the Bad Batch is still very much on my mind somewhere.

If you find this post in a year or five or ten, please know that I am always ready to dive right back into peak fangirl mode with you. I will never think it's weird if you reach out and want to talk Star Wars or Bad Batch. Whether you are an old fan like me or just discovering this show for the first time years from now, I already consider us best friends and I will be thrilled to join you in whatever stage of fandom you find yourself in.

I've been a Star Wars fan since I was ten years old. Back then, there were only six movies and I was too young to appreciate that as far as anyone really knew, Star Wars had just closed its final chapter. If there's anything I've learned since then, it's that the story lives on in all of us - and who knows? Maybe one day it will return to the screen too.

Just because this show is wrapping up doesn't mean our love for it will end. Things will begin to look different after tomorrow and that is a little sad to think about but it can still be something we love just as much. Bittersweet as it is, I am looking forward to stepping into that new phase with all of you.

I don't know what's going to happen in the finale. What I do know is that the last few years have been a wonderful gift and I am more grateful than I can ever say. I will cherish this show and the memories it's given me for the rest of my life.

So as this chapter closes and we prepare to move on to the next one, I just want to thank you all for being such an incredible part of this experience for me.

I love you all.

#tbb #the bad batch #star wars #clone force 99 #love letter to the show and fandom

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ultrainfinitepit · 13 hours

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Hello!! I return with more pin making questions :]

In my first ask you mentioned that you'd be willing to go into detail about your favorite social medias, and as I have basically only used Tumblr that would be super useful!

It would also be wonderful if you'd be willing to talk about your experiences with the different shopfronts that you've used, but I understand if you can't due to partnership stuff.

And the last question for now, Newsletters! How did you go about setting one up/what program you use/how long does it take to write an update/etc.

Thank you so much!! You're awesome!!!

Hi again :)) sure I can answer this, this is going to be a very long post so I'll put my answers under the cut.

Same disclaimer as last time that all this is just what has worked for me or what I've personally observed, that doesn't mean this is all objectively correct or factual. Others will have different mileage or find other things that work even better.

Social Media

The three platforms I prefer the most are Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter.

General recommendations:

Respond to people's comments, even with something as simple as a "thank you" for a compliment. This will help build engagement and foster a good relationship with your audience.

Take nice product photos: keep your pin in focus with a nice background and good lighting. Often you only get one chance for your product to leave a good impression!

Pick only a few social media profiles to manage. Don't stretch yourself too thin such that you can't engage with your audience on all your social media.

Tumblr

Posts have a long but sporadic lifespan thanks to the queue (sporadic means, they will exhibit random bursts of activity). And you can post large image sets and long text posts with links, for this reason it is my favorite platform.

Getting a following on Tumblr is largely luck-based. Users rebel against posts being pushed into their feed by the recommendation algorithm or boosts. Users find posts via other users and not so much the tags, although the tagging system is leagues better than Instagram's (which no longer shows most recent posts and only shows popular posts).

On Tumblr I get the most traffic from:

Responses to user submissions - for example, drawing people's angel requests.

Tag yourself posts

Silly or cute doodles and comics - especially if people can overlay their fandom darlings onto these posts.

Compilations of Pride-related designs, particularly of popular flags

I have noticed over the years, people do not reblog as much as in the past, so it's harder to get your posts noticed.

Instagram

In my opinion this is the easiest platform to grow an audience on. Instagram has a very predictable set of criteria for showing your posts to other users, through personal experience it is something like this:

Post once a day.

Post one Reel a day.

No more than three Story shares.

If you deviate from this for too long, or post too many times in a day, Instagram will deprioritize showing your posts to other users. This schedule can be a lot, so if possible I recommend having a buffer of saved up posts and Reels.

Instagram users are pickier about what they like to see. I recommend keeping your profile looking neat and professional; WIPs don't seem to do well there. Instagram users like illustrations and heavily-visual posts; they do not respond well to slides with text on them unless it is a tutorial or tag-yourself post.

Some users like to put memes or other silly images at the end of their posts. I personally don't do this, but I've been told the reason for it is: people share the silly images and that gains more traffic for the post even if they are not sharing the main content.

On Instagram I get the most traffic from:

Fanart of recently popular characters

Tag yourself posts

Pride-related art for popular flags

Cute, colorful illustrated creatures

Anything that asks for audience feedback in the comments. More comments means more engagement, which means it's bumped up in the algorithm.

Hosting monthly art challenges such as Angeltober

Bare chested men

And I have noticed DTIYS challenges are popular and a great way for people to find your profile, although I haven't hosted one of these yet.

Tags on Instagram appear to matter less than in the past, but I still think they are worth using. Try to tag for the content in your post (such as "#biblically accurate angel") instead of using tags for artists or small businesses (such as "#smallbusinessstrong"). Everyone else is using these tags so you have lots of competition, but no one is trawling through those tags so you have less engagement from them. Users are looking for specifically the content they like, they don't care who is posting it.

Twitter

The most arcane out of these three platforms. Getting noticed on Twitter seems to be largely luck-based as well. I had my Twitter profile for a while with little traffic on it until I started posting the new Pride Angels, then it blew up. Hashtags are pretty useless on Twitter and I didn't have many followers before then so I'm not sure why those got popular at that time.

On Twitter I get the most traffic from:

Pride-related art for popular flags

Other relatable art such as for astrological signs

Dishonorable Mention: TikTok

I have a TikTok but I just use it to crosspost my Instagram Reels. I do not have many followers on TikTok, I do not put effort into it, and I dislike the interface. That being said, I have heard from other creators it is way easier than Instagram to grow on if you are willing to make videos and post every day.

A note on blacklisted words

On Twitter, Instagram, and possibly Tumblr too: words like "shop" "link" "commission" etc. may cause your post to be deprioritized. This is because social media platforms do not want you going off of them to some other site to spend money elsewhere. That's why you'll notice people censoring these words ("shop" to "sh0p").

Personally I dislike doing this, it just makes me feel silly, so I don't bother. But I will admit, it hurts my posts. So this is something to keep in mind if you want to do shop promotion on social media.

Shops

The shops I run are, in the order of making them:

Redbubble

The lowest possible barrier to entry for a merch artist: they literally do everything from production to shipping for you, and all you do is provide the artwork. The trade-off is that it's very hard to make any significant money from Redbubble (I make maybe a few cents at most from each sale), and you have no control over the quality of the products.

Etsy

My referral link here.

While Etsy can be imposing at first, it is probably the easiest out of all the marketplaces to start out on. There is a lot of information to fill out to get started, so take it slow so you don't get overwhelmed. It does get easier after the first listing. Once you make one listing you can just keep duplicating and changing it a little so you don't have to keep making listings from scratch.

Etsy claims you need ten listings in your shop before you open it, but you can ignore that.

Once you've gotten started, there's lots of little tricks to learn such as letter mail shipping, all about VAT, improving listings, sections, and so on that I could go into more detail on if anyone is interested. For now I'll just focus on the platform itself.

I like that Etsy has a marketplace search, as a customer it is really nice to use. I like that it has one big cart for all the items I am looking at, and that it has a favorites system. I also like as a customer how each shop is uniform; I know exactly how to search through each shop and what format to expect. I do enjoy artists' custom shops but, sometimes their interfaces are tough to navigate.

Etsy is reasonably good at showing your items to people, which is the number one reason I recommend it for beginners. Just make sure to put effort into your listings such as tagging them, adding nice photos, and videos.

They have protection features built-in such as covering refunds if an item is delivered but the customer claims to not have received it. Etsy also enables international shipping with VAT which is great for EU/UK customers. My biggest gripe with Etsy is the fees, which I've already complained about.

Gumroad

Not much to say about Gumroad really. I only use it to list digital items such as PDFs of my lineart. I think it's saved me a few inquiries from people looking for my art for tattoos. Since all that art is for free on social media anyway, I don't charge for purchases on Gumroad. That's just a personal choice though.

Mercari

Not much to say about Mercari either. I use it to list pins from my personal collection, though I've seen a handful of pin makers use it for the pins they've created. I think the Mercari listing creation is atrocious: they like to recommend titles for your items when you upload new images, and will overwrite existing titles.

I've been considering moving away from Mercari, they recently switched their fee model so now buyers pay fees instead of sellers. This means while sellers can lower their prices, buyers get sticker shock and then ask for discounts on top of already-discounted items. I'm only on there because it's the most popular place for second-hand pin selling.

Shopify

So far I've really enjoyed Shopify. The setup was nightmarishly hard, not to turn anyone off of it but it took me literal months. You can import your listings from Etsy to Shopify but then you have to redo all the SKUs, link up photos to variants, and so on. If you have a ton of listings like me it takes a while. If you only have a few it is more worth it or, might even be worth starting out on if you can do sufficient promotion.

The major advantage of Etsy over Shopify is the marketplace feature: if you don't need the help of Etsy to promote your items then Shopify might be the better option to start out on.

I like that Shopify has significantly lower fees vs. Etsy. However, they do payouts differently and in a way I dislike. Etsy will deduct your shipping fees before calculating your payout balance, while Shopify will payout your balance and then charge you for shipping as part of your monthly bill. So you need to make sure to set aside some of your funds always to cover the Shopify shipping charge.

Additionally, to enable certain integrations or features you will need to pay for them monthly, which can add up. To sync my inventory between Shopify, Etsy, and Faire I use Trunk Inventory, which charges me a monthly $60 fee. That's in addition to the monthly Shopify fee.

Faire

I actually hate Faire despite using it. I was going to use Tundra but Faire drove them out of business (lawsuit pending). Now Faire is the only game in town for wholesale so I'm forced to use them, not that it's done me much good since I haven't had any sales there.

I can rant for ages about Faire's horrendous fees and outdated product import. But if you're a beginner you don't have to worry about wholesale selling, so I'll leave that discussion for another time. If anyone wants to hear more from me about Faire they can send another ask.

My stockists

It's quite hard to give honest reviews of my stockists here, since they might see them so, I'll just share my Linktree for them and you all can investigate on your own and inquire privately.

Newsletter

I used to use Tinyletter but it shut down, so now I use Email Octopus. Here's a referral link, and you can check out my newsletter sign up page here.

Email Octopus doesn't have a newsletter archive, and the interface is more complicated than Tinyletter's, which I dislike; but I like it better than Tinyletter's replacement Mailchimp.

You can try these out for yourself and see which you like better, it really is personal preference. All newsletter services are essentially the same: all you need is a sign up page, a way to store emails, and an ability to send a newsletter to them.

To get people to sign up for your newsletter, I personally recommend always offering it as a choice. For example, if you run a pin campaign, send an update where you share a link to your newsletter to your backers so they have the option to sign up. Do not export their emails and add them to your newsletter without a choice. I have been on the receiving end of this as a backer/customer and it makes me feel bad: it's extra emails in my inbox I didn't agree to and it feels like the creator misusing my information even if technically they are not. As a fellow creator I totally get why others might do this, it's an effective way to get lots of new newsletter signups at once. I just don't personally like it.

Shopify has a built-in newsletter feature you can use as well if you make a Shopify storefront. From your dashboard you can go to Marketing > Create campaign.

I like to send out a shortened newsletter via Shopify. Usually what I do is copy my full newsletter from Email Octopus to Shopify, and remove any bits not directly related to my Shopify, such as news on crowdfunding campaigns.

Writing your newsletter

Writing a newsletter doesn't take much time, and I think it should be a low effort task. In fact, if you make it too long people will not read it.

Throughout the month leading up to a shop update I will update my newsletter with whatever new items are ready, taking only a few minutes here and there. I include a few photos and I make sure to link to the items once they are listed (truncated example below).

I will also alert people to any sales or other special offers, news about stockists, and crowdfunding campaigns: anything a potential buyer would be interested in.

I have seen other artists share much longer newsletters with impressive graphics, sections on their art process, personal updates - but for myself I usually skip over that stuff in my inbox, so I don't do it as a creator. For others it might be worth the effort!

Final Thoughts

If you read all this, thank you! I know this was a very long post. I hope it helps at least one of you. I won't keep you much longer: you can find links to everything I mentioned in my Linktree and if you have more questions you can send an ask.

One day I'd like to make a tutorial series for making and selling merch, so this was useful as a draft for that. I would also include manufacturer reviews. If that's something you'd like to see someday you can let me know.

#ask #tutorial

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hyperfixating-rn-brb · 5 months

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The Good Omens Fandom has had a lot of fun recently with the knowledge of Aziraphale and Crowley holding hands on the bus at the end of season 1.

Soo here's everything that went through my head as I learned of it for the first time.

For that entire scene, Aziraphale is really far gone. He's dissociating so hard he can't even realize he's been sitting on a sword. Crowley is probably the only thing keeping him grounded.

They just narrowly stopped Armageddon after a showdown with literally Satan, and still can't let their guard down. For the first time ever, they're completely on their own side. Now they have to orchestrate a body swap to save both of them. They wouldn't just be killed, they'd be completely destroyed. Everything must go exactly according to plan, but how often does that actually happen?

And on top of that, his bookshop, his home, his safe place with the demon he has to pretend not to love is burned and gone.

Crowley is so incredibly gentle and reassuring this entire scene. He's been through so much trauma himself and has spent a lot of his existence shielding the angel from it, hoping to protect some of his innocence and naivete. Crowley is absolutely familiar with every symptom of PTSD and anxiety.

Now he has to see his sweet angel see such a small bit of the horrors of heaven and hell and start to crumble inside. He's going to do his dam best to try and help Aziraphale through it. Speaking softly, ("the bookshop burned down... remember?) slowly and carefully, gradually helping to pull the angel back to reality, reminding him that he's there and will help ground him.

They get on the bus, and sit next to each other. 11 years ago, they sat nearby but separated while Crowley begs Aziraphale to help him prevent the Apocalypse. Now they are sitting together. Both an act of reassurance and unity.

Crowley sits first, Aziraphale could so easily just sit across from him, behind or in front. But he chooses to sit right next to him. And hold his hand. Aziraphale desperately needs to be near to the *former* demon he loves, to hold him, to make sure they won't be separated.

In the book, their famous lines of "none of this would have worked out if you weren't, deep down, just a bit of a good person" and "just enough of a b*stard to be worth liking" came as Satan rose from the earth, as a goodbye in case they were destroyed.

Luckily, that didn't happen and they survived. Armaggedon was stopped. But the angel is still so anxious of losing Crowley. So he chooses to reach out, to anchor himself and reassure himself that Crowley is still there beside him and that they are okay, at least for a few minutes.

And Crowley let him. He knows how badly Aziraphale needs him, he needs the angel just as much. He knows how badly he craved an anchor and support system as he was first abused and traumatized by his Fall, then further by Hell. So he's going to continue being there for Aziraphale, doing everything he can to make his angel feel safe and comfortable.

Over the next few years, Aziraphale would become so much more comfortable reaching out and touching Crowley. Leaning into him, resting a hand on his shoulder or briefly touching his chest. Somehow both reassuring himself that the former demon was still there, and reminding Crowley that he's still there for him at the same time.

Then Crowley becomes more comfortable with the touch, leaning into the angel by himself. No longer flinching at a sudden graze of a hand or reassuring squeeze.

That one moment of the two holding hands on the bus cemented so much of their relationship. "The last few years, not really..." all started on that bus the moment Aziraphale chose to sit down next to Crowley.

edited: at first this said "new knowledge" because I just found out about this all the other day, and wrote this up at 3 AM, and didn't really fact check when this knowledge became well known. I've only really been a GO fan since maybe 2021, and only really started being active in the fandom during the last few months, so a lot of info that is fairly well known is still generally new to me. soo yeah this was edited :)

source for anyone asking for it!

#good omens spoilers #crowley #aziracrow #ineffable husbands #aziraphale #good omens #go2 #bus scene #they like holding hands #neil gaiman #david tennant #michael sheen

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 8 months

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I (26, NB) dropped a long-term friend (23, not disclosing gender, I'll call them X) for being a proshipper, and now they're trying to get in the way of my other friendships.

A little more than a month ago, an old friend from when I was an itty bitty teen on the internet (we met when they were 12 and I was 15 or so) messaged me on twitter asking if we could share discord since they're more active on that platform, and they missed hanging out. Ok, no prob!! I missed talking to X and life was going kinda icky for me at the time. We exchanged discords and started talking more frequently, before we would talk through twitter dms maybe one day every few months, and we went from almost no contact to talking every single day. It was like being a teenager again; we still shared similar interests and we really fast clicked over old and new fandoms we were in. We talked about college and how they're starting to get the hang of their new job but needed support, talked about our family lives, etc., and in general I felt really comfortable and happy to be chatting again with someone I've known for so long. We were inseparable for weeks.

However... of course, as adults, and having known each other for YEARS, we started talking about fandom ships and fics we enjoyed. We didn't have the same taste in pairings, but that was okay. Until it wasn't anymore.

I shared my NSFW twitter with them, and they followed me. A few minutes later X told me, "I see you have "proship DNI in your bio, I just want to let you know that I am a pro-ship and enjoy some things in fandom that you might think is gross. I hope that's okay."

I was kind of weirded out, and told them that as long as they didn't like anything that would be criminal in real life, that's fine. They told me they *did* enjoy things in fiction that they "wouldn't condone in reality" and even though they "don't talk about it publicly" they still wanted me to know. For some reason. ?? Even though they KNOW that I have an irl history of abuse as a kid, they still told me this.

I was so fucking uncomfortable and really, really sad, and honestly I felt betrayed? I stepped away from my account for like, an hour before messaging them back and saying I didn't want to continue talking to them anymore. That I didn't know they were that kind of person and I'm not comfortable being their friend. I didn't read their response to me because I soft-blocked them.

While I was getting over that and trying to move on, a few days later I was talking to another mutual friend of ours when they asked if I was still friends with X. I got chills remembering how I broke off with them, and said no, we weren't talking anymore. That they were the kind of person that made me really uneasy and uncomfortable to be around. The mutual friend, I'll call R, said that X was "feeling kind of down about losing a friend recently" and talked about it in a discord server they share. X didn't mention my name but R wondered if it was me who dropped them since I was really touchy about boundaries online. I freaked out a little thinking about them talking about me, and asked what else they said, and R told me "not much, just that they felt sad but it was your choice in the end because you two were different" and I don't know why but it left a bad taste in my mouth. Were they trying to make people seem like I was the bad guy or something?? Idk.

I told R the reason why I stopped talking to X, and that X is a proshipper who likes things like inc*st and rape, and R wasn't as supportive as I thought he would be, saying that he understood how I felt but if X was being honest and open about their interests, it probably meant they trusted me and didn't want to "lie" to me. I don't understand how that's even relevant if X is a fucking proshipper. I don't want their trust in the first place if that's who they really are, and I felt betrayed that someone I knew for so long was hiding that for me until we were bonding again. R basically dropped it there and said "idk then" and I told him I was going to shut off my notifs for a bit. I really don't want to talk with him again right now especially since he didn't seem THAT bothered by X being a proshipper who's into really criminal shit.

Since then, friends of mine who are also friends with R (because he's a friend of X still, for some reason), haven't been replying to me as much anymore and I'm super sensitive to noticing these things, at first I told myself it was nothing, but there's an obvious decrease in our interactions. I can't help but think that X actually said bad stuff about me, and R didn't want me to know, or maybe X convinced R that I was a terrible person or something. I still haven't read X's reply to me because I genuinely do not want to interact with them ever again, but for the past few days I've been so angry and hurt by my other friend's actions that I can't help but want to blame them, since this all started when I left them.

AITA for dropping a friend because their interests made me SEVERELY uncomfortable? I don't know what to do.

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole #ship discourse

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doufudanshi · 26 days

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ON GHOSTS AND DEMONS: Wei Wuxian's "demonic" cultivation?

There are a few big misconceptions I have repeatedly seen in English-speaking fandom about things that are fundamental to the story of MDZS. One of them is this—

Wei Wuxian is not a demonic cultivator.

To prove this, let's take a deep dive into the original Chinese text of MDZS.

(Adapted from my original gdoc posted on Twitter on May 27, 2022. All translations my own unless otherwise stated.)

Demon vs. ghost

Let's start from the very basics. In addition to orthodox cultivation using spiritual energy and a golden core, there are two other forms of cultivation that are mentioned in the novel:

魔道 (mó dào), or “demon cultivation/path.”

鬼道 (guǐ dào), or “ghost cultivation/path.”

To be clear, 魔 mo "demons" and 鬼 gui "ghosts" (and thus their respective cultivation/paths) are not interchangeable because of the in-universe worldbuilding within MDZS. Using the characters in the term 妖魔鬼怪 "monsters," MXTX created four distinct categories of beings, each of which has a strict definition in the novel. From chapter 4 (jjwxc ch 13):

妖者非人之活物所化; 魔者生人所化; 鬼者死者所化; 怪者非人之死物所化。 Yāo (妖) are transformed from non-human living beings; mó (魔) are transformed from living people; guǐ (鬼) are transformed from the deceased; guài (怪) are transformed from non-human dead beings.

And of course, WWX hoards all the ghost-type pokemon monsters at the Phoenix Mountain tournament, and he only exerts control over corpses, spirits, and the like (aka people who have already died). (As opposed to Xue Yang, who appears to have been actively trying to make 魔 "demons" out of living people with those "living corpses" of his, perhaps.) (And, ironically, in order to avoid showing necromancy / zombies on screen, CQL technically does show WWX practicing demon cultivation because everyone is "supposedly alive" even when they're corpses? Which is, funnily enough, far worse morally in the MDZS universe, lol.)

So, intuitively at least, we know that WWX must be practicing ghost cultivation—now let's look at some concrete examples from the book.

Running the numbers

1) 魔道 (mó dào) means “demon cultivation.” As such, it must use living humans.

魔道 appears one (1) time in the novel.

Yes, once. The only time it appears is in the term 魔道祖师 modao zushi, or the namesake of the novel, in chapter 2. This is a title the general public has given him through rumors:

魏无羡好歹也被人叫了这么多年无上邪尊啦、魔道祖师啦之类的称号，这种一看就知道不是什么好东西的阵法，他自然了如指掌。 Wei Wuxian wasn’t called titles like “The Evil Overlord,” “The Founder of Demon Cultivation,” and so on over the years by others for nothing—he knew these sorts of obviously shady formations like the back of his hand.

2) 鬼道 (guǐ dào) means “ghost cultivation.” As such, it must use dead humans.

鬼道 appears 12 times in the novel.

Here is the first instance that 鬼道 appears, which I believe is the first time Wei Wuxian's method of cultivation is properly introduced. From chapter 3 (jjwxc ch 8):

蓝忘机 […] 对魏无羡修鬼道一事极不认可。 Lan Wangji […] had never approved of the fact that Wei Wuxian practiced ghost cultivation.

Here's another quote from chapter 15 (jjwxc ch 71) for funsies:

蓝忘机看着他，似乎一眼就看出他只是随口敷衍，吸了一口气，道：“魏婴。” Lan Wangji looked at him as if he saw through his half-hearted bluff. He took in a breath, then said, “Wei Ying.” 他执拗地道：“鬼道损身，损心性。” He stubbornly continued, “Ghost cultivation harms one’s body, and harms one’s nature.”

3) 邪魔歪道 (xiemowaidao) means heretical path/immoral methods/evil practices/underhanded means/etc—e.g., lying, cheating, stealing, bribery, and so on.

It appears ~24 times in the novel.

I mention this last term because it is often used to refer to Wei Wuxian's cultivation, but as a pejorative. Every instance of 邪魔歪道 is said by or to quote someone looking down upon Wei Wuxian’s cultivation (Jin Zixun, Jin Ling, etc.) and referring to it derogatorily, whereas every instance of 鬼道 guidao/ghost dao is said by someone discussing it neutrally and/or factually (Lan Jingyi, Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian himself, random cultivators at discussion conferences, the narration, etc.). Here is a pertinent example with Jin Ling (derogatory) and Lan Jingyi (neutral) in chapter 9 (jjwxc ch 43):

金凌怒道：“是在谈论薛洋，我说的不对吗？薛洋干了什么？他是个禽兽不如的人渣，魏婴比他更让人恶心！什么叫‘不能一概而论’？这种邪魔歪道留在世上就是祸害，就是该统统都杀光，死光，灭绝！” “We are discussing Xue Yang,” Jin Ling said angrily. “Am I wrong? What did Xue Yang do? He’s scum that’s lower than a beast, and Wei Ying is even more disgusting than him! What do you mean ‘don’t make sweeping generalizations?’ As long as those practicing this kind of demoniac, heretical path are alive, they’ll continue to bring disaster. We should slaughter all of them, kill all of them, annihilate them once and for all!” 温宁动了动，魏无羡摆手示意他静止。只听蓝景仪也加入了，嚷道：“你发这么大火干什么？思追又没说魏无羡不该杀，他只是说修鬼道的也不一定全都是薛洋这种人，你有必要乱摔东西吗？那个我还没吃呢……” Wen Ning shuffled around. Wei Wuxian gestured at him to stay still, only to hear Lan Jingyi also cut in loudly, “Why are you getting so riled up? It’s not like Sizhui said Wei Wuxian shouldn’t have been killed. All he said was that people who practice ghost cultivation aren’t necessarily all like Xue Yang. Do you have to go around breaking things? I didn’t even get to eat any of that yet…”

Tl;dr—Wei Wuxian does not 修魔道 practice demon cultivation. When Wei Wuxian’s craft is discussed in a neutral and factual manner, it is referred to as 鬼道 ghost dao.

In fact, Wei Wuxian’s imitators are also referred to explicitly as 鬼道修士 ghost cultivators.

魏无羡早就听说过，这些年来江澄到处抓疑似夺舍重生的鬼道修士，把这些人通通押回莲花坞严刑拷打。 Wei Wuxian had heard a while back that over the past few years, Jiang Cheng had gone around snatching any ghost cultivator suspected of being possessed or reborn, detaining them in Lotus Pier to interrogate them using torture.

So why the confusion?

Of course, there is the matter of the novel's title, which I will get into in a second. But the real issue is a matter of translation.

The idea that WWX uses "demonic cultivation" is a misconception in English-speaking fandom due to issues with the translation of terminology. Of note, EXR actually did translate 鬼道 guidao as "ghostly path" most of the time, though there were at least 3 instances of "demonic" and 1 instance of "dark," especially regarding the first few.

However, this misconception was perpetuated (and arguably worsened) by 7S's official translation, which not only mistranslated additional terms as "demonic cultivation/path" (at least in book 1), but also consistently mistranslated every instance of 鬼道 as "demonic cultivation/path."

So why is this book called 魔道祖师, commonly translated as "Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation?"

One possibility is one posed in Chinese-language meta online, which often cites that WWX himself is a sort of 魔 demon. While this may be true—after all, he can hear the voices of the dead—it doesn't quite explain the fact that the title sets him up to be the 祖师 or "founder."

My take is that this novel is very much concerned with hearsay vs. truth. This is one of the many monikers WWX is given by the public, who collectively view him as evil. (Also of note is that the non-cultivator public is not aware of all the nuances that cultivators learn re: distinctions between the 妖魔鬼怪 monsters.) In the quote from earlier, note that the first title we're given is actually 无上邪尊 “The Evil Overlord,” then 魔道祖师 "The Founder of Demon Cultivation." Like, what can that be other than MXTX telling us, "please take both of these with a HUGE grain of salt, lol."

(And not only the title, but the very first line—"魏无羡死了。" / "Wei Wuxian is dead."—is a lie.)

I think the title is genius, honestly. It intentionally makes readers come into the novel with preconceived notions that Wei Wuxian practices 魔道 demon cultivation and evil techniques—just like the public in the novel. What better way to tell a story warning about the dangers of how easy it is to fall for misinformation and jump to incorrect conclusions?

(Though, in our case, perhaps it worked a little too well.)

#魔道祖师 #mdzs #mdzs meta #mdzs translation #wei wuxian #wwx #demonic cultivation #ghost cultivation #mine #doufudanshi translation #crossposted from twitter #(sort of)

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moonlinos · 3 months

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Invisible string (pt. I)

♡ Pairing: Lee Minho × fem!reader / Hwang Hyunjin × fem!reader

♡ Synopsis: With your terrible history of boyfriends during high school, you swore off love and vowed to get through university without a relationship. Things are great: you’re in your junior year, in an uncomplicated arrangement with a friend with benefits, and living in a nice sharehouse with two amazing roommates. But things begin to change once you meet Lee Minho, a student in your new class who vows to change your perspective on love.

♡ Genre: A ‘lite version’ of a soulmate AU, fluff, eventual smut, light angst, pining, jealousy, strangers to friends to lovers, friends with benefits

♡ CW: Swearing, sexual themes and discussions, mentions of anxiety/panic attacks, alcohol consumption, mentions of smoking

♡ Word count: 16.4k

♡ A/N: This is a three-part story because I can’t shut up. The second part will be posted sometime next week, and I’ll link it here. I’ve been writing all my life and have written for maaaany fandoms, but being on Tumblr as an active reader of SKZ fics made me want to write for them. So, yeah, guess this is what I’m doing now.

part II →

You are woken up by Hyunjin shifting beside you on the bed. He groans, arm reaching to mess with your already closed curtains. You chuckle.

“You know, the curtains won’t close any more than that.”

“I keep telling you your bed is in a terrible position,” He grumbles as you turn to face him with a smile. “Who thought placing a bed right under a window would be a good idea? Mornings are fucking hell here.”

You shrug. “Well, it’s not my house so I didn’t exactly have a say in that matter.”

“I told you a million times I could help you move it.”

“And I told you a million times Mrs. Choi doesn’t like for us to mess with her furniture,” You explain, turning under the sheets so you could face him before bringing your fingers up to pinch his cheek. Hyunjin scrunches his nose. “Speaking of which, you need to leave. You know her rule: no—”

“No boyfriends spending more than two days at the house,” He interrupted you with an eye roll. “I’m not your boyfriend, though, so that rule shouldn’t apply.” He shrugs.

Hyunjin has been one of your best friends since you first met over two years ago. It was Hyunjin’s first college party and one of the many times your housemates had dragged you along on a night out. His friends had dared him to try and chat you up, arguing it would be hilarious to see him get turned down by an older girl. What they hadn’t expected, however, was for Hyunjin’s clumsy attempt at flirting to be so endearing to you; his pink cheeks and bowl-cut hair made him look like a helpless kid despite his height towering over you. Before you knew it, you had spent the entirety of the party talking to him about everything and anything, only stopping once your housemate Eunha emerged from inside the house to drag you home with her as she desperately tried to dodge a rather insistent guy’s advances. After that day, you and Hyunjin became almost inseparable.

You can’t quite pinpoint when you began hooking up. It was meaningless in the best sense of the word. It was simply something that had happened. All you can remember is that Jisung had recently bleached Hyunjin’s hair after yet another dare from his friend. It had started with cuddles, which turned to kisses, which turned to touches, until you eventually slept together for the first time sometime last year after an excruciatingly stressful exam period. It had never once gotten weird between the two of you; the line was always clear: you were just friends who hooked up due to convenience. Everybody had needs and stress and shit complicating their lives, and fucking your best friend was far more practical and safe than going out to look for a random hook-up whenever you needed it.

You find yourself smiling at Hyunjin once again. His now long black hair fell in his eyes as he stretched his arms over his head.

“Yes, you’re not my boyfriend, but how am I supposed to explain what we are to a little old lady?”

“Doesn’t she always say she’s super modern?” Hyunjin raises his eyebrows at you with a chuckle. “Maybe she’d like a situationship of her own and you’re depriving her of that by keeping this knowledge to yourself.”

You roll your eyes at his words, attempting to push him off your bed. “Why did you sleep here, anyway?”

Hyunjin sits up on the bed, a pout on his full lips. “I had a shitty date. I was sad and lonely. Glad to know you were paying attention to my story.”

“Hyune,” You sigh, ‘When you tell me said story while fucking me, can I really be blamed for not remembering anything?”

Hyunjin flicks your forehead lightly. “Yes, you can. At this point, it’s like our thing to vent about bad dates during sex,” He argues before getting up from your bed, finding his shirt, which had somehow been thrown over your study desk.

“You mean it’s your thing,” Correcting him, you get up as well, turning to fix up your sheets. “I don’t even go on dates and you know that. The only thing I vent to you about is how awful academic life is.”

Once you turned to face him again, Hyunjin was busy messily tying his hair. His brows promptly furrowed as he took in your words. “Remind me why you literally never leave the house again?”

“Just don’t want to get distracted. Getting my degree is more important than getting a boyfriend.” You lie with a shrug.

Your history with relationships was something you kept secret from everyone you met after high school. You feel embarrassed, as if it was all somehow your fault. After five failed relationships where you had been the one to be broken up with or cheated on, you began to accept that maybe the problem really was you. Maybe something about you makes men want to yell at and cheat on you. Perhaps you are just bound to be a distraction until they find someone better.

Which is why you don’t date.

Would anyone go through the hassle of reading a long, tedious book if they already knew about the bad ending?

Hyunjin rolls his eyes at your answer, crossing his arms over his chest. “Your degree isn’t going to keep you company when you’re eighty and alone.”

“Well, my degree isn’t going to wake up one day and suddenly decide to leave me either,” you refute, earning an annoyed groan from your friend as you walk past him to leave your room.

“You literally never have fun, though. All you do is go to class, work, and study. You should at least pick up a new hobby,” Hyunjin insists as he follows you, walking into the kitchen-living room area. “Go out more, stop avoiding college parties like the plague before it’s too late to experience the joys of watching your friend throw up on some random person’s couch.”

You make a face at the offers, grabbing your mug from the cupboard. “Why would I want to see that? Besides, I have hobbies.”

“I meant a social hobby. Sitting in your room watching fucking iceberg videos isn’t sociable,” He explains, and you let out an aggrieved gasp. Your iceberg videos were educational and entertaining, thank you very much. Behind you, your housemate’s bedroom door opens, and you turn to watch as she stumbles out of her room, looking half-awake. “Soojung, don’t you think she should get a new hobby?” Hyunjin addresses the blonde girl, who stares daggers at him.

“If I say yes, will you two stop speaking so loud?”

Hyunjin slams one hand on the kitchen counter, his other pointing a finger at you. “See, she said yes. You’re outnumbered, now you have to stop spending all your free time holed up inside your room.”

Soojung groans, stepping into the kitchen and shoving Hyunjin to the side. “He’s annoying, but he is kind of right,” she mumbles.

Truthfully, you did feel bad about having essentially wasted three years at university by actively avoiding parties and invitations any chance you got. The only parties you did attend, however, only served as an irritating reminder as to why you shouldn’t put yourself in those situations. Parties and bars only meant desperate college boys. Desperate for sex, for attention, for a potential relationship. For someone’s heart to break. You had met Hyunjin at a party, for fuck’s sake. Who knows just how south things between you two could’ve gone if he had become interested in you romantically?

But, as much as you hate to admit it, Hyunjin is right. Your life is essentially an endless loop of studying and working. You only socialize when your roommates are home, when your few friends come over, and when you and Hyunjin hook up. But you aren’t ready to step out of your comfortable bubble of avoidance, so you settle for the best thing you can think of.

As Hyunjin rummages through your fridge like he lived there and Soojung stirs her coffee blankly, you loudly set your mug down on the counter. “An elective course,” you announce.

The both of them turn to face you with the same puzzled expression.

“The fuck?” Hyunjin questions, and you roll your eyes.

“I’ll take an elective,” you explain matter-of-factly, “The university offers a lot of great courses in things I’m actually interested in. It’ll be a way for me to get out of the house without having to watch a friend of mine puke on a couch or whatever atrocity it is that you said.”

Hyunjin slams the fridge door closed, earning a scolding scream from Soojung, and walks over to where you’re standing. He pulls you into a tight embrace, and you can hear the smile in his voice as he says, “You’re such a fucking nerd, what the fuck, but I’m so glad your hermit life is coming to an end.”

The elective course you choose is Japanese. It’s a language you’ve always been interested in learning, and while you know the class is merely introductory, you figure it will be fun to learn some phrases and expressions. You might even find yourself wanting to learn more in the future, and you’ll undoubtedly be glad you took this class during university.

Even if that means having to endure Hyunjin calling you a weeb.

You are able to begin attending classes a week after signing up; the lessons lining up with your work schedule to a T. The professor explained that, since you had joined the course late, you would likely need some guidance with phrases and words the class had already been taught. You didn’t mind, actually feeling excited in the morning despite your boring routine classes since you knew you would be doing something new you enjoyed in the afternoon instead of simply killing time around your house until it was time for you to work.

You walk into your first class ten minutes late, mentally cursing Eunha for being so good at telling stories about her weirdly entertaining life that it made it physically difficult for you to drag yourself away from her. You mouth a brief apology to your professor before scanning the room and scurrying over to the only available seat.

You sit down in haste so as to not disrupt the class any further, swinging your bag over your chair and accidentally knocking over your seatmate’s water bottle all over his side of the desk. Luckily, the bottle lands on the soft surface of his notebook, barely making any noise. Unluckily, said bottle had been filled with coffee, staining his notes a faded brown color. You silently gasp, instinctively reaching out your hands to fruitlessly try and dry the pages that are now sticking to each other.

“I am so sorry, what the fuck,” you mutter under your breath as you continue to inspect his notebook frantically. “I’ll buy you a new notebook and another cup of coffee as soon as class ends, I promise,” You whisper to him, your eyes boring holes into the stained pages as you watch the bitter liquid slowly dissolve some of the black ink. At this point, you’re rambling out of nervousness, but you can’t seem to stop, adding, “Hell, I’m so angry at myself for what I did I’d bind you a new notebook and brew you some fresh coffee myself.”

You mentally berate yourself for your word vomit. It was just your luck that you would make someone hate your guts on the first day you attended a class.

After what feels like minutes of silence from him, you are prepared for the imminent burst of rage bound to come your way, the guy’s wrath more than likely stirring inside him as he sits beside you and watches as you foolishly shake the piece of paper, hoping it will miraculously return to its untainted state.

However, what you aren’t prepared for is the small burst of laughter that leaves your seatmate’s lips; it’s quiet, but you’re close enough to him to be able to hear it.

You furrow your brows, finally mustering the courage to look up at him for the first time.

“Did you…” You trail off. You feel a strange sensation inside your chest as your eyes meet his. It was something you had never felt before, a small burst of a fluttering that briskly washed over you before disappearing just as quickly. Like a pinwheel was placed inside of you and a strong wind had suddenly started blowing. You shake your head, returning to the matter at hand. You are probably just experiencing some anxiety due to what has happened, you argue mentally. “Did you just laugh at me?”

As you finally take him in properly, the guy before you looks as dazed as you felt just now, courtesy of your minor panic attack; his lips agape and his round eyes blinking while his dark pupils are fixed on you. You two remain that way for a few seconds in an impromptu staring contest that causes the peculiar feeling to bloom inside your chest once again.

When he finally speaks, his voice is soft. “You… offered to bind a notebook for a stranger,” His lips twitch into a grin. “It was a little funny.”

You open your mouth but promptly close it, unable to come up with an answer that wouldn’t make you appear like more of an idiot than you already do. You sigh. “Sorry,” you mumble, your voice low as well. “I say stupid shit when I’m nervous.”

He waves his hand dismissively. “It’s okay. I’m—”

“You two, on the back,” your professor calls out in a louder voice, however still keeping her calm demeanor. You and your seatmate turn to look at her. “I’m going to teach a few new phrases useful for traveling now. How about you two talk after class? This is actually quite perfect. Minho is one of my best students, so he could help you catch up to where we are.” She offers the two of you a small smile, and you feel your cheeks burn.

This class wasn’t mandatory, and you didn’t need it to get your degree. It is still a class, nonetheless. Ever since high school, you’ve always hated people who disrespect their professors by brazenly talking or sleeping during class.

“I’m sorry, professor,” You muttered. Beside you, your seatmate — Minho, as he was just called — scoots closer to you and whispers something you don’t understand under his breath. You look at him, confused. He chuckles, and you feel his breath on your cheek. It makes the odd fluttering return.

“Gomenasai,” He repeats more clearly, his voice louder, “It’s ‘I’m sorry’ in Japanese.” He offers you a smile, and you soak in just how good-looking he is. Ever since you first raised your head to look at him — when the pinwheel inside your chest rapidly spun and unexplainedly made you feel nervous — you knew he was a handsome guy, but his soft smile and calm eyes made him look even more annoyingly pretty.

Before you’re able to do it yourself, your professor speaks again and pulls you out of your trance.

“In this case, Sumimasen would be a bit more appropriate,” she corrects Minho, who clicks his tongue and mutters something under his breath. The woman chuckles at his reaction. “It’s okay. This is also something you can explain to Y/N after class.”

As the class went on, you couldn’t help but notice how Minho didn’t take any notes. Your mind latched onto how you ruined his notebook and how it was your fault that he couldn’t properly study during today’s class, so you couldn’t find the courage to offer him some paper so he could take notes.

After almost an hour of unrelenting guilt swallowing you up slowly, you place your hand on Minho’s shoulder as soon as the professor announces class is over after assigning the students a small written assignment.

“We could talk outside? If you want,” you offer him, feeling the now-familiar nervousness come back, making your mouth speak faster than your brain can even think to rationalize, “There’s a bench I really like outside this building. It’s a good spot. There’s a nice shade, and it’s secluded enough that people don’t bother me when I’m studying. Or googling how to bind a notebook.”

Minho lets out a brief chuckle. “Okay. I would love to talk on your favorite bench.”

You blink at him. “I don’t have a favorite bench.”

“Hm, it sure sounded like it. You listed some good attributes of that bench,” He argues, a grin etched onto his lips.

“I told you I say stupid shit when I’m nervous.”

He raises an eyebrow at your words. “You’re nervous?”

“Of course I am. I never bound a notebook before.”

Minho lets out a hearty laugh this time, his head thrown back and his eyes turning into crescent moons before he shakes his head. He picks his notebook off the table, showing you the crinkly light brown-tinted pages. “It’s dry now. I actually kind of like it, gave the pages a sort of vintage vibe. You don’t have to bind me a new notebook,” He reassures you, placing the small book into his bag. “As much as I would love to see how that would turn out.”

And just like that, your nervousness fades away. You smile at Minho, asking that he follow you over to your favorite bench.

The two of you talked for almost two hours. During that time, Minho helped you catch up with the vocabulary and phrases you had missed in class. When you asked him how he was able to know so much off the top of his head, his lips curled into a crooked grin as he sheepishly told you that he had been taking Japanese lessons since he was in high school. He explained that because he procrastinated signing up for an elective course, the advanced class was full by the time he got to it, so he decided to go for the introductory one instead. You chuckled and questioned why he would choose to spend his time on a course when he already knew everything being taught. He shrugged and explained that it was nice to have at least one class in which he didn’t have to try and that the fact that it made him feel smart also helped.

Not even your shift at work was able to make your conversation stop flowing, as Minho offered to walk with you to the coffee shop upon realizing it was near his apartment.

That was one of the many coincidences and things in common you found to have with each other that day.

It started with ordinary things like the fact that Minho had three cats back home just like you and how he had been collecting plushies since he was a child, while you had started your own collection as soon as you had access to money of your own. Or how your favorite authors were Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë — Minho swore you would die if you saw the special edition books he had back at home.

Then, it became a bit more amusing as you found out that Minho had worked at a convenience store chain when he first finished high school, and it was the same one you worked at for your first job after starting university. And you both had worked there for exactly a year and two months before quitting. You then told him about how you ended up attending this university after your top three choices turned you down, and his choices were the same as yours. And just like you, he also got rejected by his top three options, which led him to attend the same university as you.

You two couldn’t hide your bewilderment, eyes widening and lips bursting into laughter as these linked facts kept spilling out during your conversation. It was strange, you thought, but in a comforting way. It was almost as if you two had been living weirdly similar lives, all while having no clue about the other’s existence.

The two of you approach the small coffee shop while talking about your degrees. You try your best not to bore Minho with your ‘existential crisis-inducing psychology talks,’ as Hyunjin always put it, and you mostly listen to him as he talks about programming. He tells you that his dream is to develop cozy games that people can jump into without much thought, simply to relax. He says he knows how stressful life is and that people sometimes need something they can mindlessly do to get their minds off of shit. You resonate with it more than you care to admit, as cozy idle games are one of your favorite things to do while locked inside your room.

“So I do these freelancing gigs to make money but I’m actually set to start my first quote-unquote real job in two weeks,” he beams as you two stop in front of the coffee shop. Minho’s eyes lit up the moment he started speaking about his degree, and although you didn’t understand most of the terms he used, it is always endearing to watch someone talk about something they’re so passionate about. “There’s this guy who’s graduating soon who recruited me and a friend for a project he’s working on, so it’s not technically a job and we’ll work in his living room. I’ll still get some money and the chance to actually develop something, though, so it’s better than nothing.”

You smile at him. “If you like programming as much as your words led me to believe, I’m sure it won’t even feel like a job.”

Minho’s ears turned a faint shade of pink, and he scratched his head. “Sorry, I talked your ear off about shit you don’t even understand.”

“I think everybody likes to hear people talk about things they like,” you assure him, “It was a good talk. I still can’t believe we have so many things in common. It was kind of funny how they kept coming up.”

Minho chuckles, bouncing on the heels of his feet. “Guess the universe is giving us signs that we should be friends.”

“It seems like it.”

That day, you work with a persistent smile engraved on your lips. You can’t remember the last time you felt so good about meeting someone new. Despite your awkward first encounter, you found that talking to Minho was as easy as talking to an old childhood friend. It felt refreshing. The last friend you made was Hyunjin — whom you were so grateful to now for pushing you out of your comfort zone — and after that, you had unknowingly closed yourself off.

Minho had managed to open up your mind to the idea of letting someone in almost comically fast. And you loved that.

It’s been a month since you’ve been attending Japanese classes, and your studying sessions with Minho — which always turned into long conversations on what now had really become your favorite bench — were a weekly appointment, much like having him walk with you to work twice a week.

Today, however, Minho stopped you with a hand on your shoulder as you made your way toward your usual spot. When he asked you if you would like to study at his favorite bakery today instead, his eyes rapidly blinking as he looked at you through his bangs which had grown to slightly cover his eyes since you met him, you just couldn’t say no. He stammered as he promised that the place was even closer than the one where you worked, so you wouldn’t be late for your shift.

You smiled at his apparent nervousness, finding it endearing. You knew all too well how stressed you felt when offering something new or initiating plans with a new friend, and Minho seemed to be the same.

“Good thing you made this offer today, on my day off,” you bumped shoulders with him. “It’s almost like you knew.”

You begin walking, and Minho gently pushes you to the side so that he’s the one walking on the edge of the side of the sidewalk. You shoot him a questioning look, and he blinks at you again.

“Sorry, force of habit,” he chuckles, “My mom taught me a guy shouldn’t let a girl walk on the street side. I know it’s old-fashioned and probably made me seem like an ancient guy who wouldn’t let his wife work or something. Sorry.”

You shake your head. “No, it’s kind of sweet. I never had anyone do that with me.”

You feel the pinwheel twirl inside your chest again.

The two of you approach a familiar building together. You furrow your eyebrows as you take in the floral curtains on the windows and the pretty font adorning the store sign of your favorite bakery. You think about how it would be nice if you two came here on another day. Maybe you could use that opportunity to finally introduce Minho to your other friends.

You only realize Minho has stopped walking when he calls out your name. When you turn around, he’s standing in front of the bakery with a smile.

“This is the place.” He points toward the white door with a nod as you return to where he’s standing.

No fucking way.

“This is your favorite bakery?” You ask, although it is a stupid question. Minho nods. You play with the strap of your bag. “Okay, this is starting to sound ridiculous, but I swear I’m not lying. This is my favorite bakery, too.”

Minho’s eyes widen at your words, and his lips curl into a smile again. “Shut the fuck up.”

“I will not,” You chuckle.

Minho opens the door and the two of you walk inside, the familiar smell of freshly brewed coffee and baked goods bringing back great memories you made in this place. You often come here with your two roommates; it’s close enough to both your house and university that you can skip out on taking the bus, the atmosphere is always relaxing and comforting, not to mention the delicious cakes they sell. You smile to yourself as you remember Eunha scuffing down far too many slices of their chocolate cake after a nasty breakup a couple of months ago, tears streaming down her face so violently that the poor little old man who owns the shop appeared to check up on her.

“Their lemon cake is my favorite.”

“The lemon cake is what made me—”

You and Minho speak concurrently, with you unable to even finish your sentence before you both freeze for a couple of seconds in front of the only small table available at the crowded shop.

He’s the first one to move, pulling out his chair a bit awkwardly. “We should…” He trails off before clearing his throat as you sit down before him. “Should really make a written list of things we weirdly have in common.”

“At this point, I think it’d be easier if we made one of what we don’t have in common.”

You two settle for the obvious choice of two pieces of lemon cake with a cup of coffee for him and a glass of cola for you. Minho almost looked offended when you informed him that you hate coffee, wondering out loud why you even worked at a coffee shop before ensuring he could change your mind with just the five amazing facts about coffee he thought about off the top of his head. You shrugged him off with a grin. You couldn’t deny the irony of being a barista and having to make endless cups of a drink you despised daily, but you were sure Minho could never change your mind about coffee.

You two talked about your improvement in Japanese in the last month until the waiter returned with your order. Minho insists you’re a natural and could be on his level in a couple of years if you tried, but you roll your eyes at his compliments. You’ve never been naturally good at anything. That wasn’t about to change now.

“You know,” Minho begins once the waiter steps away from your table, looking around the coffee shop. People slowly started to leave as it got later in the day; the place was now much quieter, and the atmosphere even more cozy. “I used to think I would meet somebody in a place like this.”

“Like, in a romantic sense?”

Minho hums, still looking out to his side. You notice his side profile is really pretty, and you have to hide your smile by sipping your drink.

When he returns his gaze to you, he’s the one smiling. “Yes, in a romantic sense. Like being destined to meet someone.”

“Look at you, a hopeless romantic,” You roll your eyes with a chuckle. You never thought of Minho as someone like that. He seemed rather methodical, always following a routine and too engrossed in his codes to be preoccupied with something like love.

Minho furrowed his brows. “Why the eye roll?”

“I just don’t believe in that stuff,” you shrug with a small smile, “Stuff like destiny, soulmates, love…” You trail off, taking your spoon and poking the slice of cake in front of you. “Love has the awful tendency of being bad.”

Of course, you once believed all those things. Doesn’t everybody? But love has shown you time and time again that those are things reserved only for some people. And, clearly, you are not one of them. So why believe in it?

“It’s the most amazing thing in life,” Minho’s voice almost startled you as you were so deeply entranced in your thoughts.

You don’t lift your head to answer him, instead drawing mindless shapes on the icing on top of your cake.

“What is?”

“Love,” He replies in a soft voice. When you finally look at him, you’re surprised to find Minho’s deep eyes already looking at you, a small smile adorning his lips. “Love is the most amazing thing in life.”

You freeze.

You tear your eyes away from him, gaze focusing on the plate in front of you again.

You were careful with your rules. No parties, no bars, no talking to your male co-workers unless absolutely necessary, and no male friends unless they were in a relationship or proved beyond a reasonable doubt to only be interested in you platonically — which was what Minho was. So, why did him bringing up love make you feel so nervous?

Under the table, you unwittingly bounce your leg. This was stupid. Minho has been your friend for a month now; you see each other twice a week, and you talk for hours, always so comfortable around each other in a way that is still so new to you. He has never flirted with you or treated you in any way that led you to believe that he wanted anything more than to be your friend. You will not let your foolish trauma ruin what was proving to be an amazing friendship. He was simply sharing his thoughts on a topic. That’s all love was: a conversation topic.

You force out a chuckle as you snap yourself out of your senseless panic and look up at Minho once more. “We can just agree to disagree?”

He’s quiet for a few seconds, something you can’t quite pinpoint swimming in his deep eyes as he looks at you. Instead of breaking the silence, he scoops up a piece of cake with his spoon and raises it like a glass. You shake your head with a giggle as you realize what he’s doing, toasting your spoons together at the center of the table before you both eat your spoonfuls of cake.

“You know,” He speaks as soon as he’s done eating, his eyes having never left yours. “Love can never be bad. I don’t think so, at least. It never makes anything worse. It can only ever make things better.”

You hum and shift in your seat, lowering your gaze toward the table. The truth is, you hate talking about love. That — coupled with your shame regarding your past relationships — is the reason why you never indulge in this type of conversation, even with your own mother. But years of swallowing down your thoughts and opinions whenever the subject was brought up only caused a buildup of emotions in your throat. So much so that you only realized you were talking once you were midway through a sentence.

“Love can make so many things worse,” you affirmed, your eyes following the polka-dot pattern on the tablecloth, “Losing someone is bad enough, but put love into that equation, and it just worsens tenfold.”

Minho nods. “By that logic, you can say that having someone by your side is always good, but if it’s someone you love, it makes it better tenfold, right?”

You let out a chuckle as you realize you two could go back and forth about that subject for ages.

But it felt good to finally speak out your feelings on the matter, so you continue, “Love can’t be that great if people can so easily fall out of it and for so many different but equally stupid reasons. You’re suddenly not attractive to them anymore, or you have different opinions, or they love picking fights but hate it when it’s the other way around…” You trail off, swallowing down a lump in your throat as you speak out of experience. But Minho didn’t need to know that. You lift your eyes. “Not to mention falling in love with a new person all while supposedly already being in love with someone.”

“That’s not genuine love,” Minho shakes his head with furrowed eyebrows, as if it was his first time hearing of such things happening. “Real love is unconditional and understanding. Real love makes the person you love beautiful simply because they’re them. Real love doesn’t allow you to hurt the person you love because it feels like you’re hurting yourself as well.” His expression softens, and his eyes lock onto yours. “And real love makes it so that you can only see the one you love. You can’t possibly fall in love with someone else if you’re truly already in love.”

You gnaw on your bottom lip, nodding slowly. You hate the fact that part of you is desperate to believe that what Minho said was true. And you hate it even more that an even bigger part has already dismissed every single word that left his lips.

Desperate to shift the subject from Reasons Why My Exes Left Me — which only leaves you feeling sad and pathetic — back to Love Is Amazing, you decide to try and lighten the mood.

“Okay, but then explain to me how love is so great when you can just have sex with anyone, and it feels the same either way?” You question him with a teasing grin on your face. Minho shakes his head with a smile and eats another bite of his cake. You continue, “Be it a stranger at a party you met ten minutes ago or the love of your life, sex will always be sex. Therefore, you’re wrong, mister Love-Makes-Everything-Better.”

Minho chuckles around his mug, eyes closing as he almost spits out his coffee. His eyes are like crescent moons when he looks at you again, clearly amused by your words. “Well, yeah, of course, sex will always feel good no matter who you’re doing it with. It’s sex, and sex feels good,” He shrugs dismissively. “But sex with love is different. You aren’t just fucking, just fulfilling your own desires selfishly. Love makes sex better because you feel good simply by making the person who’s so important to you feel good. It makes you want to melt into the other person and become one with them because close isn’t close enough when you’re in love.

“Touching them feels like a gift, like heaven. Tasting them feels like heaven. Hearing their voice in their most blissful state feels like heaven. The trust and connection you feel in that moment is heaven, and that’s only possible through love. You can have sex with anyone, but you can only make love to someone you love, and those are two different things. That’s how love makes sex better. Therefore, I’m not wrong.”

As you take in Minho’s words, spoken so casually, like it was common knowledge, they leave you speechless. You watch him as he smiles triumphantly when he realizes you aren’t going to refute him — because you can’t refute him.

You berate yourself mentally as you notice the familiar feeling of arousal wash over you as you repeat his words inside your head. Not because it was Minho who said those things, but simply because that kind of sex sounded so good. Good in a way you had never once experienced before. Like heaven, as he had put it.

Your experience with sex has always been simply about fulfilling desires. You thought that was all there was to it.

Until now.

And even so, with your ex-boyfriends, it was always unbalanced. Ninety percent about their pleasure and only ten percent about yours. The first time you had a guy go down on you was the first time you had sex with Hyunjin, and by that point, you had already had five boyfriends. It felt weird when it happened, and you remember Hyunjin whining about how you didn’t have to ask him every five minutes if he was really okay with doing that. It had always been different with him, the good kind of different. He had never been selfish during sex; if anything, Hyunjin was too much of a giver, sometimes forgetting about his own pleasure in order to focus on yours. You thought that was the best sex you could ever have.

Until now.

Because, even with Hyunjin, there was never a genuine connection. It never felt like a gift to touch him and have him touch you. It was never anything more than sex, more than something you both did because it felt good and it was easy. He slept in your bed, and he cuddled you until morning came, but it had never once felt anything close to what Minho described.

You can’t help but wonder if Minho has ever experienced that. You desperately want to ask him, but you two aren’t close enough for that yet.

You also can’t help but wonder why you spend the rest of the evening raging a war against yourself as your mind is consumed with thoughts of what it would be like to experience that kind of sex with him.

It’s late in the night on the following Saturday, and your phone incessantly vibrating under your pillow rudely demands your attention just as you’re about to fall asleep. You squint your eyes as you type in your password. You sigh as you see Hyunjin’s name on your screen because of course it’s him.

Hyune: I’m outside open the door Hyune: please open the door? quick? Hyune: mrs. choi is gonna kill me if I use the intercom pls I don’t wanna die Hyune: I’m in my pajamas do you know how humiliating this is

Hyune: and I’m highkey pissed off Hyune: I WILL sleep on the bench outside your house if you don’t let me in and then I’ll die and who’s gonna live with the guilt? Hyune: you Hyune: OPENM TEH DOOR

You roll your eyes at his dramatic texts, stepping out of the comfort of your bed and padding across the floor as quietly as possible so as not to wake up your roommates. You open your front door and speed past the hallway and Mrs. Choi’s home, reaching the outside door in record time. It’s something you’ve done more times than you care to admit in order to let Hyunjin into your house. Your tenant was a sweet woman, insistent that she was modern and understanding of ‘young people’, but she despised people coming into your home any later than midnight.

You step outside, finding Hyunjin pacing back and forth like a creep in front of your house. True to his words, he stood in his checkered pajama pants and a black t-shirt. His hair was in a ponytail, the strands messily sticking out everywhere like he had tossed and turned in bed before coming here.

“You look like shit,” you speak up, causing him to jump and let out a gasp. You chuckle as he scowls at you, climbing the few steps to reach the door.

“I had a fight with Mingyu,” he grumbles as you two walk toward your front door. “He told me I spilled paint on his favorite shirt, which is fucking impossible since I don’t even paint anywhere near his shit.”

“I mean, you are a messy painter.”

Hyunjin shoots you a look as you close your front door behind you. You take off your shoes and walk toward your bedroom in silence. This was routine. Hyunjin knew the rules: no knocking on the outside door, no buzzing the intercom, no shouting from outside, keep your voice down in the hallway, no talking until you reach your bedroom. It was all automatic at this point.

His voice is louder when he speaks again inside your locked bedroom. “First of all, I am not a messy painter. The paint is messy, not me. Second of all, if Mingyu wasn’t a fucking idiot, maybe he wouldn’t leave his favorite shirt on the floor of the living room right by my art corner,” Hyunjin huffs and crosses his arms over his chest, “If that’s how he treats his favorite shirt, I feel bad for his girlfriend.”

You let out a chuckle, which is cut short by him pulling you into his arms. “Hyunjin, that analogy makes no sense.”

“Yes, it does. You treat your favorite shirt like shit, you treat your girlfriend like shit,” he states matter-of-factly before pulling you into a kiss.

This was routine. It was all automatic at this point.

Hyunjin kisses you like he’s angry. Because he is, and that’s one of the reasons why you two do this. You let out your frustrations during sex. You complain, and you let off steam until you both feel okay again. It’s been this way for a year and some months now, and you never once thought anything of it. It was beneficial for you both, so why change or question it?

But that was before your talk with Minho. Before you were awoken to the truth that you’d been having meaningless sex your whole life.

When you’re pulled away from your thoughts, you’re already laid in your bed with Hyunjin hovering over you. His lips and hands wander through your body as he mumbles things you can’t quite understand; you can only make out your name and Mingyu’s mixed with curses. You try to bring yourself back to the moment, bringing your legs to wrap around Hyunjin’s waist and bring him closer to you.

He stops kissing your neck and yanks his shirt over his head, his hair untying in the process and falling on his face like a curtain. You giggle and try to fix it with your fingers. Hyunjin pouts.

“Don’t you think I’m right?”

You frown and hope he can’t see your confused expression in the dim lighting. You truly weren’t paying any attention to what he had been saying, too engrossed in your thoughts and too busy feeling sorry for yourself. Hyunjin’s tendency to tell you about his frustrations during sex always left you a bit puzzled, but it was also oddly sweet. It was like he trusted you so deeply as a friend that he believed he could share anything with you, no matter the time.

So you nod, lightly pulling at his hair. “Of course you’re right.”

He hums and buries his head on your chest, grinding his hips into your clothed core. “Of course I’m right,” he mumbles under his breath.

Everything is a blur after that, your mind insistent on repeating Minho’s words like an annoying echo. When Hyunjin’s tongue fucked you hastily, and he murmured something about you tasting so good, all you could hear was Minho’s voice telling you how tasting the person you love feels like heaven. When Hyunjin pushed his cock into you, his hands gripping your thighs and head buried in your neck, all you could think about was how this sex paled in comparison to what you could’ve been having — what you could have already had — if only you weren’t so damn unlovable.

You knew that Minho didn’t intend to make you feel bad with his words. They weren’t targeted at you. But that didn’t stop your mind from sabotaging and putting yourself down. It was one of your biggest talents, after all.

Your body was present and responsive the entire time; you moaned because it felt good, and you kissed Hyunjin because you wanted to. But you were mentally somewhere else.

And the worst thing is, you’re a hundred percent sure Hyunjin doesn’t even notice it.

Because this wasn’t love. This was only sex.

And this was all you had ever known.

Time flies by faster than your brain can comprehend; before you know it, another month goes by. You only managed to go to your favorite bakery with Minho one more time before your work hours were changed, your shift now starting a mere thirty minutes after your Japanese class ends. He still walked you to work twice a week, but you would be lying if you said it didn’t upset you to have to let go of your weekly talks.

Minho also became busier due to his own job. With so little time to see each other face to face outside of class, most of your talks took place over text. He talked about his job with so much adoration it made you a little jealous; his partners were now simply friends he worked with, and his joy over finally being able to create a cozy game made it so that he pushed himself over his limit, often sleeping on his friend’s couch after working until four a.m. and getting through the next day on excessive amounts of coffee.

That was how you two came up with the idea of Minho dropping by the café where you work to pick up coffee for him and his friends. He would drop by at least twice every day, his friend’s house — which also served as their office — only one bus stop away.

The first time Minho came by, he had his wallet and phone in one hand, a sharpie and a block of sticky notes in the other. You eyed him curiously as he scribbled on the piece of paper while your co-worker prepared his coffee. When he was done, he stuck the note to the monitor in front of you on the counter. You furrowed your brows as your eyes shifted from the Japanese words on the bright yellow note back to Minho’s smug face. You were certainly grateful he at least had the courtesy of including the romanization of whatever he had written down. Not that it helped you in any way.

“Since our studying sessions after class were rudely taken from us, this is your extra homework. It’s all words we already learned. You just gotta think a little bit, and you’ll figure it out. You’re smart, I know you can do it,” He assured you.

Expect you weren’t that smart and ended up giving up by the time you got home that night. The piece of paper was no longer sticky on the border due to you carrying it around all day, boring holes into it as if that would magically give you the answer. You snapped a picture of it as you got ready for bed and sent it to Minho, begging him to put you out of your misery and simply give you the answer. ‘I want to drink coffee,’ he replied. You slapped your hand over your forehead with so much force you were sure the entire house had heard you. He was right; you did learn that in class. Curse the Japanese language for being so difficult.

After that, it became a routine. You waited expectantly for Minho’s visits daily, but you are extra excited today. It’s a Friday, and your birthday is tomorrow. After much pestering from Eunha, you agreed to have a small gathering at your house. It only made sense to invite Minho; he’s become one of your closest friends in the two months you’ve known him, after all.

As he walks into the coffee shop, sticky notes and sharpie in hand, you chuckle to yourself. You two chat about the development of his game, with Minho kindly using layman’s terms when explaining it to you. He also tells you about how one of his friends got so frustrated with a code that he threw his phone at a wall before immediately regretting it and crying on the floor next to Minho’s desk. Before you can get worried, he assures you that it’s just an ordinary day at the office, and the three of them end up laughing everything off at the end of the day.

After taking his order, you watch as he begins writing down your homework for the day on the small piece of paper in his hand. As you look around the coffee shop, most tables are empty, and the sun is starting to set outside the glass doors.

“You wanna come over this Saturday?” You ask Minho, who looks up at you before adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose. That was one thing you learned about Minho since he began coming over: he wears glasses. Not every day, but enough times for you to notice how good he looks with them. But friends find each other attractive all the time, you justify it. “You never came over to my house, and my roommates really want to meet you. Plus, it’s my birthday tomorrow.”

Minho’s eyes widen. “Your birthday? And you save that information to the end?”

“It’s not a big deal. I usually never even celebrate.” You shrug lightly. You’ve never been big on birthdays, as you just don’t see the reason why it’s supposed to feel different from any other day of the year. “But my roommate pestered me to do something this year, so I agreed to have a party.”

Minho shifts on his feet. “I… really hate parties…” He trails off.

“It’s not a party party. I promise!” You hold up your pinky finger. “It’s more of a get-together, just my roommates and my only two other friends. And, you…” You trail off, “If you come.”

Minho blinks his eyes a couple of times before tearing the piece of paper he was writing on from the pad and crumpling it in his hand. He quickly jots down something new and sticks it to your forehead.

“Minho!” You scold him, to which he laughs, his nose scrunching and eyes crinkling. You advert your gaze from him as your persistent thoughts regarding how unfairly pretty Minho is begin to flood your brain once again. You take the note and analyze it:

はい (Hai)

You smile as you understand the word, looking up at him.

“I’d love to come to your birthday party,” He beams. “Thank you for inviting me.”

To say Minho is nervous would be an understatement.

He gets out of his car twice, ready to march back inside his friend’s apartment like a coward and pretend that nothing happened both times. Only when he thinks back to how you smiled at him when he agreed to your invitation does he find the courage to start the car and drive to your house. He’d noticed for a while now how much he likes you. But it was when he agreed with the idea of going to the café you worked at to pick up coffee that it truly dawned on him that he really liked you. Minho hated taking the bus, he hated doing anything other than zoning out on the couch during his breaks, he hated bustling shops, and he hated how his co-workers both managed to have such intricate coffee orders.

Yet he agreed to that idea, even suggesting he drop by two times a day.

He noticed he’d felt a familiar small whirlpool inside his chest whenever he was with you, when he heard you talk about something you liked or saw you smile. He’s also noticed that this tiny whirlpool has been growing bigger and bigger the more he’s been around you.

But that doesn’t scare him. Minho loves love. He loves to be in love, to love someone, and to make that person feel loved. It’s his favorite thing about life. If he was honest, he missed it so much he didn’t know how he was able to live without it.

Just down the block from your house, he parks his car and gathers his phone and his present for you — clearly clumsily wrapped, even with his co-workers’ help. He feels another wave of nervousness wash over him as he approaches the house; he’s an hour late and needs to mentally prepare to socialize with people he’s never met before. Minho chuckles as he realizes a silly party makes him more nervous than the prospect of possibly falling in love.

You open the door almost as soon as he rings the intercom, and he walks down the hallway into your house door; the crooked box he’s been holding makes his hands sweat. The first thing he notices as you open the door is your styled hair with a big white bow on the back, looking much prettier than the ugly bow he and his friends managed to stick on top of his present. He smiles at the sight and scratches his ear in a futile attempt to stop them from turning red.

God, he really liked you, didn’t he?

“Thank you for coming,” you tell him with a smile. Minho notices the quiet music playing inside the house, the simple decorations, and the cake on top of the kitchen counter. He mentally sighs in relief. This truly wasn’t anything like a big party. “You’re wearing your glasses again,” you point out as Minho walks inside and removes his shoes. He subconsciously reaches his left hand to touch his wire-rimmed glasses that sit on his nose bridge. He grimaces and curses at his friend for making him stay later than he was supposed to today.

“I had no time to go home and change,” He apologizes, fingers now toying with the stupid bow on top of the box. “I usually wear contacts, but they make my eyes dry if I stare at the computer for too long, so I just… wear my glasses at work…” Minho trails off, suddenly feeling stupid, his eyes looking anywhere but toward you.

You chuckle, lightly touching his glasses for a second before moving away again. “You always come to the coffee shop wearing them, and I think you look really good,” you assured him. His eyes quickly met yours, only for you to advert your gaze this time. “You should wear them more often.”

Minho only hums, lightly nodding his head. He feels stupid all over again as the image of himself throwing his contact lenses down the drain crosses his mind.

Clearing his throat, he finally hands you your gift. You giggle at the mismatched wrapping paper and poor excuse of a bow, which makes Minho let out a chuckle and murmur an apology. You open the box, and your eyes light up when you spot the stuffed bunny you have been raving about since you two met. It was the only animal missing from your collection, but you couldn’t find the right time to save up money to buy it. Minho didn’t need to ask if you liked it as he watched your smile grow bigger as you looked at the brown bunny.

“Come, I gotta put him in my bed now,” you beamed and took Minho’s hand in yours, leading him to the living room. There, five people sat on the couch and on the floor. Minho furrows his brows as he takes in a head of light brown hair covered by a familiar beanie. “These are my friends. Eunha’s the girl with short hair on the floor, and Soojung’s the one with blonde hair next to her. They’re also my roommates,” You point at them as you speak. “That’s Jisung sitting next to Soojung; he’s also her boyfriend. And then Hyunjin, with the long hair, sitting next to Chan on the couch. Everyone, this is Minho from my Japanese class.”

With that, you pad off to your room with your bunny in tow. As Chan finally turns to look at Minho, his shocked expression mirrors his. They stare at each other for a while before Chan finally breaks the silence.

“What the fuck, that’s my co-worker.”

Minho narrows his eyes. “So this is why you had to leave an hour earlier today?”

As you come out of your room, you chuckle. “Chan is your co-worker?” You ask Minho, “I can’t believe this. He’s been our friend for longer than I’ve known you. He came like a package deal when Jisung began dating Soojung.”

“Damn, dude, you hate me so much you never talked about me to your friend?” Chan gasped, a hand over his heart. “I’m hurt.”

Minho rolls his eyes but is unable to stop a small grin from forming on his lips as the entire living room erupts in laughter. “Of course I talked about you. I talked about you and Seungmin all the time. It’s just I…” Minho shifts on his feet, shrugging. “I never said your names.”

More laughter seeps out of the group of people, including Chan, and Minho finds himself laughing along this time, shaking his head at his own stupidity.

He sits beside Chan on the couch while Hyunjin heads to the kitchen with you. He quickly asks him how he came to be friends with you in the first place. Chan explains that he’s been in a class with Jisung for almost two years, and the boy had always pestered him about ‘old people’ needing to hang out with people their age. That’s how he ended up meeting Soojung as soon as she became Jisung’s girlfriend. You and Eunha were an inevitable addition, seeing as you were not only roommates but also great friends.

You offer Minho a beer, which he declines. As much as he wanted to, no beer was worth having to take the bus back home. He silently sips his cola as he watches your group of friends chat. You end up sitting beside him on the couch, your friend Hyunjin to your right.

Minho finds that he missed getting together with people like this and didn’t even realize it. His only friends were left behind back at home, and although they were less than an hour away by bus, their busy lives prevented them from meeting in person. Minho’s favorite memories from his teenage years were having his friends over and just doing nothing for hours, talking about stupid shit until their stomachs hurt from laughing. Eating takeout on the couch with Chan and Seungmin after work came close, but they were always too tired and too stressed to entertain the idea of making jokes. Those were times when Minho realized he had really become an adult.

Jisung’s loud voice suddenly booms through the living room and startles an already drunk-looking Eunha, who murmurs something about the younger boy giving her a heart attack one day.

“I’m bored,” he grumbles, draping his body over Soojung. “Let’s play spin the bottle.”

Soojung rolls her eyes at him, flicking his forehead. “Are you a teenager?”

Jisung pouts, sitting up straight once more. “We’re in university. University students play this fucking game all the time,” he states matter-of-factly. “Don’t make me regret falling for an older woman.”

“Jisung, I’m only three years older than you, I’m not—”

“Don’t make me call you noona.”

Soojung inhales deeply before turning to face the people sitting on the couch, placing one of the empty beer bottles scattered around her feet on top of the coffee table. “Let’s play spin the bottle. But let’s do dares instead of kissing, that’s too boring.”

Jisung beams, cuddling close to her like a needy child. Minho chuckles at the sight.

Eunha scoots closer to the couple so the group is seated in a circle around the coffee table, half of them on the couch and half on the floor. Minho never had the chance to play spin the bottle, which seemed to be such a staple game of one’s teenage years. By the time his friends were off sneaking into clubs and drinking behind their parents’ backs, he was already in a committed relationship and well aware of the fact that he didn’t enjoy parties.

It seems silly, but he’s glad he won’t live past his youth without experiencing such a trivial thing.

Soojung spins the bottle, and the neck stops facing Chan while the bottom faces Jisung.

“Take your shirt off,” Jisung waves a finger at Chan, who looks somewhat disoriented. Minho chuckles under his breath just as you do the same. You two face each other and let out a hearty laugh, your arm coming to rest on his bicep before retrieving back to your lap faster than Minho hoped it would.

Soojung squishes Jisung’s cheeks and places a small kiss on his lips. “You’re such a fucking chaotic bisexual,” she giggles, “Y’know, Chan, Jisung has had the biggest crush on you since you two first met.”

Chan shakes his head with a stifled laugh and proceeds to remove his shirt, neatly placing it on his lap.

Jisung is next to spin the bottle, this time landing on Soojung, who you dare to show her most embarrassing text. After showing the group a string of texts showing raunchy screenshots of a manhwa she’d been reading at that time, all sent to one of her class group chats which included some professors, she lets out a heavy sigh and orders Eunha to spin the bottle before any questions can be asked.

This time, the neck faces you while the bottom faces Eunha herself. With a smile, the short-haired girl dares you to kiss Minho.

He feels his smile drop at the very second the words leave her lips. This was not what he had in mind for tonight.

“What?” You sputter, “Why?”

Eunha shrugs, adjusting herself so she’s seated upright and staring right at you. “Well, he’s the only one here who would be actually fun to see you kiss. Jisung and Soojung are okay with each other hooking up with other people, so that’s no fun,” she explains, using her fingers to list her reasons, “I’m not into girls, so that’s no fun for me. Hyunjin is too obvious. We all already know Chan, so it would also be boring. Minho is like fresh meat. That is fun.”

Minho’s brain begins finding a suitable excuse for why you two can’t kiss, because he’s certain you have no interest in doing it. Not only are you friends, but your reaction didn’t exactly exude excitement at the prospect of kissing him. Just as he’s ready to lie through his teeth, you turn to him and place your hand on his shoulder, a touch so soft he’s barely able to feel it through the fabric of his shirt.

“Is this okay with you?” You ask him, the tone of your voice so sweet Minho feels like it melts his every thought until his brain is nothing but a sugary pool filled with only you. So he nods because god, yes, this is okay with him.

You gingerly place your right hand on his cheek, bringing your faces closer until your lips press together. The whirlpool inside his chest spins fast, like a vortex dragging every sense of his body toward you and only you.

You remain still for a few seconds, Minho’s eyes opening slightly to search for any sign of regret on your face. Before he can even properly look at you, your lips begin to move against his — gently and carefully, like you’re not sure if this is what he wants. Minho deepens the kiss and hesitates three times before committing to placing his left hand on your waist. The giggles around the two of you nothing but a muffled murmur to him. He presses another kiss to your lips, his body shifting until he is all but caging you against the back of the couch. But just as he swipes his tongue across your bottom lip, you push him back with a smile, Minho chasing after your lips.

He blinks a couple of times, eyes zoning into your smudged red lipstick. He subconsciously bites his own bottom lip, wondering if any of the color transferred to him. The surrounding murmurs bring Minho back to the moment this time, awkwardly clearing his throat before lifting himself off of you and sitting upright on the couch. He tunes out every comment regarding the kiss to the best of his abilities, focusing his energy on slowing down his heart rate. When he catches you giggling while looking at him, your arm touching his bicep yet again, he nods, grabbing his cola bottle from the floor and taking a sip.

Minho can’t remember the last time kissing someone got him so worked up. He entered a long-term relationship at such a young age that he’s only now realizing how unaccustomed he is to kissing someone new, to the rush that comes with having your lips pressing against the ones of someone you like. It was exhilarating and a bit terrifying all at the same time. He was awkward, unsure where to put his hands, uncertain if you were enjoying yourself. He was also greedy, wanting the moment to last for much longer than it had.

This had cemented the fact that he does, in fact, really like you.

After kissing you, the whirlpool living in his heart had now fully transformed into a tiny hurricane — with great chances of growing even bigger.

Minho only notices the game has continued upon hearing your voice complaining beside him. He watches as Soojung shrugs.

“It’s the only thing I could think of, sorry.”

“But why?” Hyunjin asks, placing his cup on the coffee table. “It’s a stupid dare.”

The blonde girl scoffs. “No, it’s not. I’ve had to basically live with you two for the past year, and it’s common knowledge how easily you get a boner for her.”

“Not true,” Hyunjin retorts, although it sounds more like a question than an affirmation.

Eunha blurts out, “You once got a boner watching her stir a cake mix.”

Hyunjin opens and closes his mouth before groaning, pulling you into his lap by the waist. You apologize to him quietly, to which Hyunjin shakes his head with a small smile.

Minho feels as if he’s intruding on something private.

You sit on Hyunjin’s knees, almost falling off his lap as you clearly try to keep some distance between the two of you. Hyunjin clicks his tongue and pulls you closer to him until your back is pressed up against his chest. He whispers something in your ear, to which you lightly slap his arm as his lips upturn into a grin.

Minho is definitely intruding on something private.

At some point, you turn so you’re sitting across Hyunjin’s lap, your body now facing Minho. He can’t help but watch with dark eyes as the younger boy’s hands wander through your body; playing with the buttons on your blouse, squeezing your thighs, and caressing your skin a little too close to the hem of your skirt. He furrows his brows as he tries to understand your relationship with Hyunjin, seeing as you’re obviously not put off by his hands on your body.

Minho is so transfixed by the sight and his racing thoughts that he only realizes the game has ended when someone taps his shoulder from behind the couch. When he looks back, Chan is holding a cigarette and motioning towards the stairs that lead to the house’s terrace.

In the chilly open space above the house, they sit on a bench behind a tall vertical planter. Minho wonders who tends to the garden as he observes the various flowers, as well as some vegetables and herbs scattered around him. The terrace is small; the garden taking up all the space, an old wooden railing that overlooks the quiet street the only other thing in his sight.

He and Chan chat about school and work, as they often do nowadays. After Chan recently broke up with his girlfriend, Minho found that his friend had become much more closed off, so the list of subjects they would talk about became minimal. Chan bites his thumb before taking a long drag of his cigarette. He chuckles when he mentions being scared of graduating next year. Minho bumps his shoulder with him, arguing that being in his situation is worse. He admits that he regrets starting university late and that being in his first year when he should already be in his third is discouraging. Chan dismisses his worries, reminding him of how Minho is often the one to fix broken codes and come up with ideas for their game whenever Seungmin gets stuck.

“A degree is just a piece of paper,” Chan says, throwing his cigarette butt at a nearby trashcan. “You’re already a fantastic programmer, Minho.”

“You’re just saying that because I saved your ass today.”

Chan shrugs. “You’ve saved my ass basically every day since we started working together.” After a beat of silence, he asks, “Why did you start uni so late, anyway? You never told me.”

Minho hums, digging his brain for a way to sum up the entire story. “It’s complicated—”

He’s interrupted by footsteps on the stairs leading to the terrace. A loud giggle echoes through the open space before you and Hyunjin step into their field of vision. The long-haired boy holds you from behind, and you two stagger toward the railing.

“Wish everyone would go home already so I could just fuck you,” Hyunjin whines as he turns your body around so you’re facing him. Minho almost chokes on nothing at those words, and Chan stifles a laugh with his hand. He curses the small space as they’re able to so clearly hear everything you’re saying.

You playfully kick Hyunjin’s shin. “Don’t say it like that, Hyune, what the fuck.”

“It’s true, though,” Hyunjin continues, pressing you against the railing. He towers over you, so the only thing Minho can see from where he’s seated is your white skirt floating in the wind behind the tall boy. “I had a stressful, terrible, awful, dreadful week. All I kept thinking about was coming over and relaxing with you.”

“See, when you put it like that, it doesn’t sound so awful.”

Hyunjin clicks his tongue. “There’s nothing awful about fucking. I know how much you like it, don’t act so coy.”

Minho watches as your hands clench around Hyunjin’s gray shirt, pulling him closer and kissing him softly, much like you had done to him a few moments before.

Minho presses his lips into a thin line. He connects every dot available to him inside his head and suddenly feels pathetic.

Hyunjin being too obvious of a choice for you to kiss, his hands all over your body, his words about fucking you, the way you kissed him like it was a habit.

If you had a boyfriend, why did you agree to kiss him?

The words swarm Minho’s brain. He vaguely recalls you and Hyunjin eventually walking out of the terrace. Chan starts a one-sided conversation about one of his classes, with Minho humming after every couple of sentences to appear like he’d been listening when his head is too busy wondering how to feel about everything.

Minho recalls Eunha walking up the stairs and shouting for the two of them to come downstairs to sing you happy birthday. He recalls Hyunjin’s hands wandering through your body throughout the song, his lips pressing small kisses on your face and lips as you smiled. He recalls feeling confused, stressed, jealous, and pathetic.

Minho is only truly back to the present moment once Chan’s voice bids him a loud goodbye, and the door slamming behind him makes his senses finally return to him. As he looks around, he notices that the only people left in the living room are Jisung, Hyunjin, and you. Beside him on the couch, Hyunjin stretches with a loud groan.

“I’m gonna take a shower. D’you have any of my clothes in your room?”

You sigh from where you’re sitting on the floor, resting against the television stand. “Of course, I do. You’re always living shit behind, you’re like our third roommate at this point.”

Hyunjin chuckles, walking over to give you a small peck on the lips before disappearing into your room. Minho gnaws on his bottom lip with a bitter smile as he realizes Hyunjin will sleep over at your house. The ugly feelings return as he remembers his thoughts about you these past few weeks when he unknowingly cultivated too big of a crush on you. Even on his way here tonight, when he had chuckled to himself at his lack of nervousness in the face of potential love.

Love.

Minho can’t help but wonder why your view of love is so negative when you’re in a relationship. And, at the same time, he doesn’t dare to think about it for too long, fully aware that his foolish affection-filled brain will come up with a myriad of reasons — all where your boyfriend is the sole culprit for your distaste — and Minho knows better than to let those thoughts linger for too long inside his mind. He knows himself all too well, knows only awful shit would come out of assuming things about your relationship; the urge to beat Hyunjin senseless for being a shitty boyfriend and making you think that way about love being the worst of them.

“I’m too drunk to go back to my dorm,” Jisung suddenly speaks, his eyes glazed over as he stares ahead. “Gonna crash here tonight, too.”

Minho takes that as his cue to leave.

You walk him outside, a small smile on your face the entire time. He feels guilty not being able to reciprocate the gesture. As you tell him goodbye, thanking him for coming, you pull him into a hug. You hadn’t hugged much since you met, and Minho foolishly wants to draw you closer to him, to feel your body pressed against his just as it was pressed against Hyunjin most of the night. But he can’t do that.

“Are you okay to walk back by yourself?” You ask him as you pull away.

Minho nods, forcing out a small smile. “My car is parked just down the block.”

“That’s why you didn’t drink!” You exclaim with a giggle, “I forget that most people our age already drive. My anxiety didn’t allow me the chance to even try and get a license, so I just accepted my fate of taking the bus.”

“I could drive you…” Minho trails off. There he goes again, being pathetic. “If I have the time… You can give me a call and I’d be happy to drive you anywhere.”

You smile at him, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him into another embrace. Minho smiles genuinely as he buries his head in your hair.

The drive back home has Minho feeling stupid all over again as he thinks about how you’re probably in bed with Hyunjin by now. The whirlpool is back inside his chest, but it isn’t good or welcome this time. It’s agonizing and painful.

Love had never been painful. Love had never been bad.

But he had never experienced love toward someone who already loved somebody else. Although you brazenly state that you don’t believe in it, you must feel some type of love toward Hyunjin if you’re willing to be his girlfriend.

As he silently drives home, Minho finds himself agreeing with you.

Maybe love can be bad, after all.

Minho feels stupid.

This has become a constant in his life.

He had always thought of himself as a logical person. Programming had taught him that everything is predictable and fixable if you work on it hard enough. A broken code? It may take him six hours of staring at the computer to figure out it was nothing but a missing semicolon, but he will get there in the end. It was annoying and frustrating, but it was always something easily fixed.

He thought love was like that. It had always been like that with him.

Until he fell for you.

Minho was coming to terms with the fact that maybe love and programming were nothing alike. Love isn’t predictable. Loving someone who is already in love with someone else isn’t easily fixed. He can’t backspace and delete your boyfriend from the equation.

It’s been a little over six months since you two first met. Minho has consistently gone to the café you work at every day, and you two still had endless talks over text messages. You talk about everything and anything, from silly things like sharing pictures of both your growing plushie collections or your love of that particular coffee shop’s lemon cake to more serious topics like how Minho learned how to cook when he was twelve so his mom wouldn’t have to do it by herself, and now his roommates take advantage of that, or how sad you are that next year you will have to leave the house you’ve grown to love so much.

But, whether it is in person or through text, you still avoid the topic of love. You don’t ever bring up Hyunjin unless he’s part of a story you were already telling, and Minho feels his heart heavy as he slowly allows himself to imagine what it could be that led you to hate love so much.

He desperately wants to ask you, know your reasons, and make sure you’re happy with your boyfriend. But he doesn’t want to overstep any boundaries and doesn’t know how to go about it without scaring you. So he never does anything, like a coward.

Minho finds himself coming over to your sharehouse on most weekends since summer break ended. Your countless get-togethers at that house have become a hard-to-break habit. Hyunjin, Jisung, and your roommates are always assured to be there, with Chan joining whenever he isn’t overwhelmed with work or school, which was rare.

Minho had always been a hopeless romantic, always doing things for love that people repeatedly warned would result in regret. This time, it was forgoing visiting his parents and friends back home just to spend most of his summer with you. Despite not being able to pursue you in the way he truly wanted to, Minho still wanted to be your friend. You were still a fantastic person he loved to have around; that didn’t change simply because you had a boyfriend. Although he could feel a bit of his heart cracking every time he had to see you, all while knowing he couldn’t do anything about his feelings for you.

He couldn’t change your perspective of love if he weren’t allowed to love you.

In all the time he spent at your house during summer break, he ended up becoming good friends with Jisung, as you tended to stick next to Hyunjin most of the time. Minho didn’t mind it; he is your boyfriend, after all. At least, that’s what he repeats to himself every night he comes over like a mantra as he almost masochistically forces himself to watch how Hyunjin kisses your lips and caresses your skin or how you play with his hair and snuggle with him on the couch. He also endures the countless nights he’s left your house knowing all too well that Hyunjin would be spending the night with you in a way that Minho can only ever dream about.

Tonight, in particular, Hyunjin seemed to be all over you like bees on honey, buzzing around you everywhere you went, his hands never leaving your body as he pulled you closer to him every time you even slightly pulled away. Because god forbid your bodies not be touching in some way for even a split second. Before he knows it, Minho is downing his third bottle of beer of the night.

From where he’s sitting on the couch, Minho rolls his eyes as discreetly as he can while he watches Hyunjin pull you to sit on his lap on the floor as you all get ready to play a game of cards. He gnaws on his lower lip because he knows he’s being petty and borderline childish. You’re Hyunjin’s girlfriend. Of course he’s all over you, of course he wants to be close to you, of course he wants you on his lap. Minho concludes with a bitter chuckle that he is, indeed, pathetic when it comes to you.

He gulps down more of the awful-tasting cheap beer.

The night comes to a close after far too many rounds of Cards Against Humanity, with Jisung winning more than half of them. His ethics and morals fly out the window the moment the cards are handed to him, as he manages to create the most absurdly offensive phrases known to men every single time. Minho found himself groaning and yelling at the younger boy as the alcohol took over his system. He doesn’t know how much of it was simply his annoyance at Hyunjin clinging to you like a koala throughout the entire game disguised as competitiveness.

He doesn’t think he’d like to know either.

Like every night he comes over, Minho is the last person to go home. He has to call an Uber, far too buzzed to want to sit at a bus stop all alone at this time of night. He hadn’t even noticed how he kept downing his drinks until he felt the familiar buzz of inebriation wash over his body a while before the game ended. Although slamming his fist into the coffee table with a whine about how he had only been given lame cards should’ve been a sign.

As he waits outside your house by the fence, he suddenly hears the door shut behind him and your voice calling out to him. He smiles at the faint slur of your speech and the way you drag out the last syllable of his name like you always did when you were a bit drunk.

“I told you to wait for me!” You reprimand, opening the gate to stand next to him. “Look how lonely you look here all by yourself.”

Minho just shrugs with a smile, shaking his head. He did wait. He waited almost half an hour after announcing he should leave as you disappeared into your room with Hyunjin. He was still waiting, in fact, only mindlessly scrolling on his phone for the past ten minutes instead of finding a ride as he hoped you would come outside when you saw he wasn’t in the living room anymore.

You poke his shoulder, bringing his attention away from his phone to your smiling face.

“Tonight was fun, wasn’t it? Especially that last round when Hyunjin won after being tied with Jisung for the whole game,” you grinned, “Seeing Jisung make a whole damn case about how much better his card was really made my night. Think that’s the first time I’ve seen him act like a law student since I met him.”

Minho chuckles, bringing his attention back to his phone. Seeing your smile and how your eyes light up while you talk about something you like brought back the whirlpool inside his chest, which wasn’t a pleasant feeling any longer. It made him glum to think how a once beautiful feeling had turned into nothing but discomfort simply because he was lovelorn.

He hums. “You must be proud to have your boyfriend put an end to Jisung’s annoying winning streak.”

“What do you mean?”

Minho looks up from his phone, eyes wandering through your puzzled face. He furrows his brows for a second. Maybe you’re both drunker than he’d thought.

“I mean, it must’ve been nice to see Hyunjin win after Jisung basically made us all want to quit the game,” he explains, watching as your expression turns from confusion into shock before you let out a loud laugh.

Minho’s eyes widen, worried your laughter might wake up your neighbors. He gently shushes you, his arm grabbing your shoulder, but your smiling face only makes his lips stretch out into a grin. He suppresses a giggle as you catch your breath, shaking your head.

Minho smiles at you so fondly he’s certain he looks like an idiot. “What’s so funny?”

“Hyunjin isn’t my boyfriend,” you explain like it’s obvious. “We’re just friends. I thought you knew that.”

Minho only then realizes he had never once heard you refer to Hyunjin as a boyfriend, nor had any of the people around you. But his assumptions weren’t so ill-judged, either. You two acted like a couple. It wasn’t so absurd to assume that you were one.

He finds himself staring at your amused face for a few seconds before forcing himself to turn his attention back to his phone.

You acted like a couple, but you were just friends. Minho groaned mentally.

“So, you’re like friends with benefits?”

“Yeah… I don’t particularly believe in love anymore, Minho. I thought you knew that from our talk a while ago,” You chuckle, shifting on your feet. “Hyunjin is one of my best friends. We just hook up ‘cause it’s convenient.”

Minho hums, his fingers ghosting over his phone screen. “Sounds like you’re running away from love.”

He blinks a couple of times as he takes in his own words. He would have never said such a thing if it hadn’t been for the liquid courage flowing through his veins.

You shrug, moving to sit on the white bench just outside the house. “Well, yeah, that is what I’m doing. Love hasn’t been kind to me at all. I have no interest in going after it, only to be hurt again. It’s a movie I’ve watched before and I hated the ending every time.”

Minho bites the inside of his cheek, finally clicking the button to find a ride, his thumb pressing on his phone screen more forcefully than he intended. He felt angry. You didn’t deserve to settle for a friend with benefits due to convenience. Had you wanted to be in that situation, it was your every right to do so, but you were in it out of fear of being hurt.

He felt sad. He wished you didn’t equate your past experiences with love to everything it could be. Bad experiences in love were possible for everyone — even for him, who used to believe unwaveringly that love could never be hurtful — but that didn’t mean it was all there was to it. Minho desperately wanted to show you that. The good side of love, the side that made him put it above everything else in his life on so many occasions, the side that made him crave it even now when it hurt more than it felt good.

And, strangely, Minho felt relieved. It was a small percentage of the chart of current emotions he was experiencing, but prevalent nonetheless. He would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that he felt happy Hyunjin wasn’t your boyfriend and, most importantly, that you weren’t stuck in an unhappy or toxic relationship, as he had so often feared.

His ride arrives, and he’s overcome with a wave of courage. Minho would much rather live with regret than with a constant ‘what if’.

Shoving his phone inside his pocket, he offers his hand to you, who looks up at him curiously from where you’re sitting on the bench before taking his hand. Minho pulls you to your feet and hugs you. With his hand on your waist, he pulls your body closer to him, finally holding you tightly the way he’s always wanted to do. He presses a kiss to your head, bringing his lips to your ear and whispering, “I’m gonna change your mind.”

He feels your body shake with a chuckle, but he only tightens his hold on you.

“What?”

“About love, I’m gonna change your mind,” He answers matter-of-factly, “You deserve to feel love without being afraid.”

Minho pulls back from the embrace just enough to see your face, and he’s surprised to find you smiling up at him. He smiles back.

“I will change your mind.”

Minho had just dropped you off at your house, ready to drive around aimlessly until he absolutely had to go back to his dorm, when Seungmin texted him.

Kim Seungmin: hey my sister’s engagement dinner is tonight Kim Seungmin: and i might have fucked up something in the code i was working on so now there’s a chance that you fish 100 rare fish at once 🤪 Kim Seungmin: pls pls do me a solid and fix it before chan sees it and kills me? Kim Seungmin: love you hyung 💚

Minho initially groaned at the messages, thinking of the many ways in which he could murder Seungmin and get away with it. But, ultimately, he didn’t want to go back to his dorm anyway, so he gladly turned his car around. If he was lucky, this would take hours and he would have a valid excuse to crash in Chan’s cramped living room.

He punches the code to the front door and his friend greets him with a puzzled expression.

“I forgot to do the, uh, troubleshooting for this week,” Minho blurts out. It’s the first lie he can come up with, and he hopes it’s convincing enough. Chan nods slowly. Seungmin might have saved him from having to endure his roommates on a Saturday night, but he still owes him.

“It’s all good,” Chan says with a sigh, “I’m most likely gonna pull an all-nighter designing these new characters. Anyway, how did you waste your time today?”

Minho has been taking you on what he likes to call Subtle Dates for a month now.

Chan affectionately calls them Waste of Time Dates.

Minho rolls his eyes, sitting down on his own desk. “We went to Han River and walked around till sundown, then watched the Banpo Bridge water show.”

Days like today were rare, so Minho was happy. Most weekends, it seemed as if the whole world was conspiring against anything he planned with you.

“Oh, how romantic of you,” Chan gasps, feigning amazement. “Did you at least kiss her this time?”

“You know I can’t just kiss her like that. I know she’d freak out if I tried to do anything romantic with her,” Minho taps his fingers on his desk, knowing he sounds ridiculous. But he has a plan. He just hopes this plan actually works out soon. “I don’t mind being patient.”

He hears Chan scoff. “So, you took her on another one-sided date and then drove her home so Hyunjin can fuck her?”

Minho’s fingers stop tapping on his desk, his hand coming down to slam on it before he can stop himself. He lets out a heavy sigh, and Chan mumbles an apology. But, the truth is, he knows his friend is right. Just last weekend, Minho dropped you off straight into Hyunjin’s arms, the younger boy waiting for you to come back in front of your house.

And Hyunjin wasn’t the only inconvenience that rendered it almost impossible for the two of you to spend time together. Minho had to cut most of your dates short due to Chan calling him about something urgent that only he could fix at work, or you canceled altogether because your roommate was upset and you didn’t have the heart to leave her alone like that. There were also times when Minho was too tired to even go out at all, like on the day of his birthday, which resulted in you coming over to Chan’s apartment and eating cheap takeout food with him and his two friends.

Minho found himself dealing with countless bumps in the road when it came to finding a way into your heart.

“I didn’t mean to say it like that,” Chan says hesitantly, “You clearly like her a lot.”

Minho repeatedly opens and closes the code he’s supposed to fix. He sighs. “I like her more than a lot, and I don’t even know when that happened.”

“I don’t want to see you get hurt,” His friend explains, his face disappearing behind his own computer screen. “I just can’t see what will change if you go on dates with her when she doesn’t even know they’re dates and if she’s just gonna go home and have sex with someone else. I don’t get it. What difference does it make?”

He can hear Chan scoffing, although he tries to disguise it by clearing his throat. Minho shakes his head.

“It makes all the difference because that’s not love. I wanna show her what love is, and that it isn’t always bad. I promised her that I would.”

Chan sighs, sliding his chair toward the mini-fridge by the couch. “Agree to disagree?” He asks, grabbing a bottle of water and tossing it in Minho’s direction. He grabs it mid-air, just before it hits him in the face, and clicks his tongue.

“Agree to disagree.”

Minho plugs his headphones into the computer, drowning out the noise of Chan’s pen sliding across his iPad with his brown noise playlist. But he can’t drown out the obstinate thought ringing inside his head, screaming at him that Chan is right.

Taking you out on dates — which you don’t even know are dates — doesn’t really make a difference if you’re just going to go back to your convenience with Hyunjin at the end of the day. If you think you’re just friends going out together, and you go back home at night to the comfort of sex without the love you’ve been running away from for so long, what Minho is doing truly is useless.

It’s just like when he argues with Seungmin through their codes, screaming at the younger boy in all caps about something that’s broken, even though he knows he’s going to be the one who will end up having to fix it.

Minho’s fingers come to a halt on the keyboard.

Closing his work, he opens up Google and finds the first flight he can to Japan. Almost as if he’s on autopilot, and his brain is completely shut off. He books the flight and the cheapest hotel he can find, using almost all the money he’s saved up to move out of his hell of a dorm. It might be the most idiotic thing he has ever done in his life, but he’s so in love it hurts him. And he loves love, and love with you — the thought of that alone has his heart beating at his throat. He doesn’t want to keep on with these futile attempts at trying to make you see that love is good and that, maybe, love can be good with him.

The truth is, he feels scared. Maybe even more scared than you do. He is terrified of knowing the answer, of finding out that maybe he could change your mind about love but that it would simply lead you to someone else’s arms and he would have to endure the pain of unrequited love until it inevitably faded away with time.

Minho would gladly live with that pain if it meant you were happy.

But he needed to know.

He adjusted his glasses — a childhood nervous habit that returned after he started wearing them more often since you complimented him months ago — and retrieved his phone from his backpack.

He typed and deleted more times than he’d like to admit.

Me: Hey, it’s late sorry Me: Just wanted to know if you’d be up for a trip to Japan? Me: In two weeks Me: For study purposes Me: We’d finally have the chance to use what we learned in class lol Me: Chan was supposed to go with me but he has a family thing so he can’t anymore Me: Everything’s already paid for and he said he doesn’t mind if you go in his place Me: Lmk what you think

Minho’s fingers typed as his brain came up with excuses and lies, sending more messages than he needed to. He couldn’t tell you he booked a whole damn trip with you just to see if maybe, possibly, you have feelings for him too.

He all but throws his phone across his table after turning on Do Not Disturb. He’ll need to muster up the courage before reading your answer, and having his phone buzz for anything that wasn’t your reply would just be torturous. He felt stupid, would feel even more so if you turned down his invitation. He almost doesn’t want you to answer, wants to pretend he never even sent anything.

Because it was stupid.

But love is stupid, and he is in love.

Worst-case scenario, he’s stuck with Chan in Japan for a weekend while he laughs at him.

Best-case scenario, he spends a weekend with you in Japan. No letting you go back to another man at the end of the day, no more hiding that he is taking you out on dates, no more distractions, no more inconveniences of your daily lives.

Minho opens the code he was working on again, quickly typing out:

// NOTE: Minho will fix this.

869 notes · View notes

matan4il · 3 months

Note

I saw your post about Noah and it just but a bee in my bonnet about how people in all sorts of fandoms have been doing similar things to Jewish actors (but it’s not as well known cause they’re obviously not as high profile as stranger things). I follow you from the 911 fandom, and I also watch 911 Lone Star and both Ronen Rubinstein (who plays TK) and Lisa Edelstein (who guest starred so isn’t a regular anymore but is iconic in her own right) have gotten hate. Ronen removed his twitter after people started calling him a Zionist and harassing him. Lisa turned comments off on some of her ig posts and specifically said it was so she wouldn’t get attacked. The only things those two have said are in regards to getting the hostages home safe or in reaction to the immediate events of Oct 7. Yet they’re being called supporters of genocide. The antisemitism disguised as “antizionism” is so fucking obvious and it’s sad how it’s infiltrated even the smaller fandoms if actors involved dare to be Jewish and express concern for fellow Jews.

Hi Nonnie!

First of all, yes. Sadly, there is not a single fandom I have been active in, that has been a safe space for Jews in general, and they've all become worse since Oct 7. So I'll talk a bit about the 911 fandom, but let's be clear that this fandom isn't the issue, it really is a symptom of a much bigger problem, which is very prevalent in online spaces, not just online fandoms. What I'll talk about is obviously not true for every single person, but it IS true for enough people, and especially for some very vocal ones, who shape what the "allowed" discourse is.

I have not been following what the 911 fandom does and says about Ronen Rubinstein for at least 2 years, but I can't say I'm surprised by what you told me.

I've written more than once about the fact that Jews are not white, not even the white passing ones. Also, I'm hardly the only Jew raising their voice about this, and yet I've noticed that the 911 fandom, which raged when half-white Eddie Diaz was not recognized as a POC by one fan, the fandom which has accepted Christopher Diaz as a POC (even though he's canonically only 25% Mexican, and is played by an actor who actually IS white, which means there's no arguing over the fact that Chris looks white), is also the fandom which has repeatedly conceptualized Ronen as a white guy, same for his character TK (even though he's canonically only half white), and with that view in mind there's been hostility towards Ronen that I've come across not long after 911LS just started. Ronen's family is from an area where Jews had been repeatedly slaughtered, including during the Holocaust for NOT being white less than one hundred years ago. TK looks white (you know, exactly like Chris), so that's enough to ignore Jewish identity, history, being native to the Middle East, and anti-Jewish persecution. Ronen gets conceptualized as a white oppressor. And as such, he's a fair target, even an encouraged one.

Gavin, whose character Chris is recognized as a POC, even though he himself is completely white.

Ronen, whose character TK is not recognized as a POC, even though the actor is fully Jewish.

Natacha, whose character Marjan is recognized as a POC, even though the actress herself is half white. She's also half Lebanese, Marjan is fully so, and whatever Arabs are, Jews are the exact same, because both groups are native to South West Asia (similarly, both groups come in a variety of skin tones).

So I'm not surprised that Ronen is being mistreated. Jews are mis-conceptualized as white, and the Israeli-Arab conflict gets mis-conceptualized by applying to it a race-based model imported from the US, in which Israelis are white Jews (even though 21% of our population is Arab, a part of our leadership is Arab and has been since the first Knesset was elected, over 70 years ago, and even though many of the Israeli soldiers fighting to protect us are Arabs... when the conflict is explained, they're all erased, and Israelis are only understood as - and blamed as - white Jews), who are evil oppressors of brown Arabs (even though some Arabs are just as white looking, or even whiter than some Jews). Then, this conflict is used to vilify and justify harassing Jewish actors, whether Noah in Stranger Things, Timothee Chalamet, or Ronen and Lisa.

Here are some white looking Palestinians, who always get ignored by the people conceptualizing the conflict as white vs brown people:

Two pics of Israeli soldiers killed, each pic from just one day in this war in Gaza, and you can see the diversity of skin tones...

Like I said, I haven't been following Ronen, but I did happen across a post that claimed he needs to be canceled for the crime of blocking people who the poster said were pro-Palestine. But in my experience, even when you're a Jew who is not being hateful towards Palestinians, you're just pro both groups, because you recognize they're both humans, the fact that you have the "audacity" to stand up for Jewish people and Jewish rights, and against the mis-representation of Jews in Israel, is enough for antisemitic bullies to use that to come after you with antisemitic abuse under the guise of being pro-Palestinian (here's just one example. I wonder how many Palestinians have been liberated by harassing Jews online. Pretty sure the answer is zero. I also always love how this crowd never actually stands up for Palestinians when they're wronged by fellow Arabs, in Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon or Syria. It's only the Jews who bother these "pro-Palestinians," not the actual well being of Palestinians). I'm sure that if we could see who Ronen was blocking, it would be the same kind of people who have been sending me these very caring, human rights-oriented messages:

^ This ask was specifically a response to my reply to an anon telling me I lost my claim to humanity when I became an Israeli (and me answering that that was at the age of 5 months, and that my parents' decision to bring me to Israel actually saved my life).

^ Just a small collection, nowhere near what I actually got, but I kept them 'coz I wanted to show people at some point what Jews who dare to not want Israel destroyed are subjected to. And Ronen probably got similar ones, he blocked them, and for saying he was blocking them, he got further hate... At what point are people going to wake up and see that this is how an antisemitic misinformation campaign works? Lots of Germans genuinely believed in the narrative that Jews backstabbed them during WWI. If you were to ask them in the 1930's whether they hate Jews simply for being Jews, they'd say no, that they hated Jews, because Jews deserved to be hated due to their actions. In the exact same way, now support of the existence of the Jewish state, not even of its specific policies, is being spun as justification to hate on Jews.

I'll say this again. This reply isn't about Ronen. It isn't about Noah. It isn't about Lisa. This isn't about a specific fandom. This is a call for people to wake up and smell the antisemitic coffee, the legitimization of Jews being harassed. Please don't be a part of it, and if you can, please speak up when you see others being a part of it. I KNOW that online, and def on Tumblr, the majority of posts you see justify the vilifaction of anyone who is pro Israel's existence, even while also being critical of its leadership. And it's easy, and it feels right, to go with what everyone else in your echo chamber says. But you can be that one guy in 1930's Germany who didn't do the heil Hitler. If you will be, it may not be easy, but I very much doubt you'd ever regret it.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

#israel #antisemitism #israeli #hamas #antisemitic #antisemites #jews #jew #judaism #jumblr #frumblr #jewish #ask #911 lone star #ronen rubinstein #jr #anon ask #resources #911 abc #noah schnapp

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ponett · 3 months

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really really enjoyed your article on hazbin hotel. have been hearing about it for years, but did my active best to learn literally nothing substantial–until your article. even all the incredible bigotry aside, it's shocking to me just how...messy the show seems to be? i've never, EVER heard of a show where you're expected to have fandom and pilot knowledge ahead of time. that's nuts. cannot fathom how it all got approved with such a massive budget & cast given how Clearly Haphazardly put together it is. anyway. great article, spread it to a few friends, your writing was really engaging and drew me in 👍

I ended up not talking about this in the piece because it was already more than long enough, but I do wonder if the messy writing could partially be a result of A24 being a bad match for the project. Because, you know. A24 is not an animation distributor. This was the first animation project they funded.

Obviously I wasn't a fly on the wall at Spindlehorse and this is pure speculation, but based on the show itself it does feel like A24 looked at the millions and millions of views the pilot had on YouTube and went "Well, you guys clearly know what you're doing! We'll stay out of your way." When in reality, like I said in the review, what I think the show really needed was just an experienced cartoon showrunner on hand who could gently nudge things in the right direction and help them nail down basic TV writing stuff. Not calling the shots, but just looking over Vivzie's shoulder with feedback like "Does this episode have a satisfying three-act structure?" or "Could you explain this worldbuilding detail a little more clearly?" or "This episode doesn't have a clear enough focus on its central emotional arc." I have to wonder if a studio with an actual history making cartoons could have more easily hooked Hazbin up with someone like that.

(Some of the work on Hazbin was also done by Bento Box Entertainment, who've worked on a bunch of adult cartoons like Bob's Burgers, but I'm not sure how much creative input they actually had.)

Without that outsider perspective, I can see how it's extremely easy to get lost in the weeds and just write for the audience that's already there. Of course dedicating an entire three-minute musical number to Vox in the second episode seems like a good idea when you're surrounded by excited fans who've spent the last five years asking what's up with the TV head guy teased in the pilot. Of course you take for granted how much people already know about the characters and world when you've been talking about them online for years, and also producing a bunch of supplemental material like a whole spinoff show. It takes a lot of effort to not fall into that mindset and put yourself in the shoes of someone who's going in blind.

Again, this is all speculation. But these are easy traps for independent creators, especially ones coming from the world of webcomics, to fall into.

#astralcities #ask

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olderthannetfic · 6 months

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You've encountered site changes over time as a fan elder, what do you make of Tumblr potentially being put out to pasture? Tumblr was my coming of age fan site, and im looking for advice to transition to the next thing with grace and less bitterness than I feel now.

Ahaha. God, you should have heard the howling about LJ. "Fandom is over!" "Never again shall we dwell in fandom's True Home!" etc.

Hell, this endless "only LJ was good" crap turns up in replies here on posts where I as OP have very clearly laid out why that's rose colored glasses nonsense and you can so make friends on tumblr, have a conversation on tumblr, etc.

I had my crabby phase about this during the transition from Yahoo Groups to LJ. A lot of the real olds had it over paper zines and the transition to the internet.

I don't know if reading these hilariously samey old posts would help. It does give perspective, I think.

As for what you should do, do what I did with Tumblr:

Look around to identify the Next Thing fandom is going to camp out on.

It may take a few guesses and some time to figure this out. You will likely not be an early adopter. Fandom was well established here by the time I joined at the end of 2010. Of course, by now, all those 2009 and before accounts are long gone, but at the time, I was a n00b joining other people's space despite having been in fandom for ages.

Don't expect to enjoy it

I didn't join tumblr because I liked it. In fact, I despised it. I kept right on despising it until a brief stint in Sherlock fandom, a fandom that was so active here at the time that I was able to finally see the good aspects of the site's structure and features.

This is the mistake a lot of people make. They give things a cursory try, don't enjoy them, and go "not for me", forgetting that the last site also had a steep learning curve that was either difficult or that they didn't notice because they were in a different phase of their life.

Bitterness and grief are, frankly, an inherent part of the process. You can try not to be a debbie downer in your public comments, but you can't just not feel those things during the awkward part of the transition. Sometimes, acting positive and cutting off excessively negative thoughts can make you feel less negative overall, but it doesn't happen immediately.

Accept that feeling cranky and old is both a you problem and a state of mind, not a property of the new site

Relatedly, the way we remember fandom platform X feeling usually has more to do with us being in college with fandom friends down the hall or having discovered Our People for the first time or some other time when we had a lot of energy and positive emotions. Often, we were in the throes of a first or new fandom love too, probably for some megafandom that other people also cared about at the same time.

When fandom is leaving some site, there's a grieving process anyway, but we're also often in a worse part of our lives for starting new things. We're busy. We're tired. We're between fandoms. We feel like we already paid our dues to build up our community. Why should we have to start again?

But let me tell you, you always need to start again eventually. I go to a weekly vidders' zoom chat, and a lot of the people in there are old as balls, including Kandy, the person who invented vidding back in the 70s. She's a lot of decades and a few cancers in, and she had to relearn how to vid on a computer after transitioning from slideshows to VCR vidding back in the day. If bad health, platform changes, and dead friends were going to stop her, she'd be long gone.

It's like sharks: you stop swimming, you die.

This isn't just about fandom, obviously. It's about avoiding a midlife crisis and, later, about avoiding feeling emotionally geriatric even when your body is falling apart.

Change gets us all, but being mentally old is a choice. The real reason I gave tumblr such a try was that I had been so resistant to getting on LJ. I was 20. Even a year later, it was fucking embarrassing to have been a crotchety old hag as a college student. I promised myself I'd soldier through the next change instead of dragging my feet about it. And it totally worked in the end! But boy did it not make the transition any less unpleasant emotionally!

Find your joy

As is obvious from the above, the vast majority of the problem is just emotions. Fandom has been on a million broken sites with shitty features. We go where the people are, regardless of whether it has the technological aspects we liked at the last place. The actual shape of that platform is largely irrelevant.

What does matter is whether we as an individual fan are still excited and happy about something. I was between fandoms recently and went looking around for BL series I hadn't watched yet. People kept suggesting things set in the present day with too-cheesy production values and too many banal schoolboys in modern day settings without even anything spicy going on. I realized that the BL/danmei scene wasn't really cutting it for me and I should go for production values and genre and non-canon ships. You probably scrolled annoyedly past the picspams that resulted.

(Of course, hilariously, someone has now shown me the trailer of Red Peafowl, so someone may be making BL that feels like it's for me after all. Look at all that badwrong and very dark color grading.)

When you're in a good place emotionally, it's a hell of a lot easier to weather any change, and when you have a new fandom, it's a lot easier to connect with other fans.

A lot of people wait around for lightning to strike twice. They found their first fandom by accident, and they expect it to happen seamlessly again. For me, it's far more productive to brute force it: collect up a big list of what's popular or what's new and go through it till you find things you might like, then try them all.

And part of this, obviously, is not waiting for other fans to make the party happen. The more you need to join something other people are already doing, the less choice you'll have in fandoms or in platforms. If you aren't picky and just go where the tropey longfic is, that can work, but even then, favorite authors disappear or go to fandoms you hate and former megafandoms dry up. If you're the one bringing the party, it's a lot easier to find a new fandom or platform or community to have fun in.

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demonslayedher · 11 months

Text

Low-Key Married AU fluff

Kochou said that I was disliked, so I asked her if she disliked me too. For someone so quick to have a smiling response to everything, she struggled to reply. She was the one who proposed marriage and swayed me, so I had thought that meant she had feelings for me. There would be no other way to read it. However, with as unbothered as she is by my absence, I have to wonder.

It’s been ten days since I had last contact with her. I went home to the Butterfly Mansion, but she had just departed for a mission, so I didn’t stay long so as not to trouble the girls. It may still be a few days before I can return again, but it’s always likely she’ll be busy. She’s incredible in that way, taking on all the care of our injured Corp members in addition to her Pillar missions. It must be in her personality to keep adding to what keeps her busy, like taking me in as though I looked like I needed the care. Although the times we’ve spent together have been nice, I don’t require it. My duties call for me to always be ready for battle, and I’ve always kept my heart steady.

So has she. We are Pillars first, and no amount of affection can sway us—whether an abundance or a lack.

I’m not bothered by lacking something I didn’t deserve in the first place.

Last night again, I was too late to prevent a family from being slaughtered. There were no survivors this time, aside from the eldest child who was still ravenous with a recent transformation. Having to chase him down and keep him from harming anyone else kept me off the trail of the progenitor of demons, who had to have been close by. For centuries, he’s evaded us this way over and over, sacrificing entire families to throw us off his trail. If I were to chide myself over every failure, I would have lost the ability to do anything ages ago. Each time, the anger is something I carry with me, to push myself harder the next time, and the next. Any extent more that I can push myself may be the difference to someone’s survival, no one can afford to lose their life over any of my own lost confidence.

“CAW!! TOMIOKA GIYUUUU! NEWS FOR TOMIOKA GIYUUUU!”

Each time it's a crow I think I recognize, my stomach drops. My mind is already playing the words I dread to hear, as though trying to protect my mind once I someday hear them.

"Kochou Shinobu has died."

Even if I hear them, I'm a Pillar first. That was what we promised each other. I'll always do as I must.

The crow says nothing as it delivers a letter.

YES, YES, I KNOW, THIS FANDOM HAS TURNED ME INTO SHIPPER TRASH. For this pairing, it was more specifically my own joke AU which later bit me in the back and made me start really, really enjoying GiyuShino (which, for the record, I do not consider canon). Was throwing ideas back and forth with @reicchel again the other day and so here we are with ship content!

Part of the reason I love the Low-Key Married AU (in which it's mostly canon as usual, except that Shinobu and Giyuu have been married for over a year or so, and it's not a secret but they make such little deal about it that many people don't even know they're married) is that it's a frame through which to see every interaction and either make it really, really funny, or very, very, sad. Everything was supposed to be funny, but it keeps hurting, hahaha... aaahhhh.

For instance, in a regular romcom situation, it should be funny that Kanzaburo doesn't deliver all of Giyuu's letters. Knowing these two, who might had started this whole "well, we'll be a couple when we have time" thing by actively writing regular letters, this could had simply given the impression that the other person wasn't writing as much, so they both naturally decreased frequency to match. It's a little lonely, but neither one is going to push the other for more attention.

No!! I refuse to let this post end with angst! Time for omake!!!

#I spent a few days enjoying high-brow Noh and now I'm back to shipper trash #giyushino #giyuu x shinobu #tomioka giyuu #tomioka giyu #kocho shinobu #kochou shinobu #my art #too bad for you Tanjiro your karma in this AU had to even out somehow #also that is the happiest Giyuu I have ever drawn and it's adorable #GiyuShino Low Key Married AU

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littlerosette · 4 months

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Rereading the books always blows my mind because Peeta is literally a flirty cocky little shit to Katniss and then switches to sweet, “I was too shy to speak to you for years”. And Katniss is just here being turned on by both personalities

the first book is honestly such a treat because i don’t think you can come away with it without noticing how big of a crush katniss has on peeta (that she’s totally oblivious to). she spends So much of the book noticing how handsome he is, how strong he is, how dazzling he is, how charming he is. there are several points where he makes her smile and laugh and she has to actively remind herself that she’s not supposed to like him. the scene where she finds him by the lake in the games is, i think, a part of the book where she laughs more with him in one interaction than she does with gale in the entire series, which is fun to think about LMAO.

and peeta’s personality is so fun. he has this wonderfully inherent sweetness to him, but he’s funny as fuck and not afraid to be an asshole when he thinks he needs to be. the knife-mahogany scene is iconic, but haymitch was impressed with them BOTH during that argument. katniss even threw it because peeta already got violent with haymitch. she was encouraged by his show of strength, and this ends up working in both of their favors. idk. i love to think about the fact that peeta is amazing. he’s sweet, and kind, and empathetic, and sensitive, and he’s not demanding with katniss’s feelings. however, katniss’s idolization of him was totally absorbed by the fandom. katniss talks about him like he’s the second coming of jesus christ so now we ALL talk about him like that too. but peeta can be snappy and ill-tempered and violent, and katniss kind of glosses over those traits until directly confronted with them in mockingjay (magnified though they may be) because she perceives peeta as being the paragon of goodness on earth. he’s not, even if he is pretty damn close.

#asks #i can talk about peeta and katniss for hours god they are such good characters #peeta literally is just a nice teenage boy but to katniss he is a god #her idolization of him is so extreme that when confronted with his negative traits in mj #she’d rather perceive him as dead #it’s incredible honestly #everlark #katniss #peeta

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 5 months

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AITA for telling someone that they didn’t actually care about me when they sent a message checking to make sure I was okay?

I want to preface this with: I am probably TA in this situation but I want to know if I am justified or overreacting

So i was in this discord server for a guild in an mmorpg and while it was fine at first, over time i started noticing that when I would say anything (not even just when talking about the game) the conversation nine times out of ten would either skip over everything i said or just die until a few hours or days later when someone else would say something.

The most active people in the server were friends with someone who has me blocked on everything despite never having interacted with each other (based on what i know about the person, they likely blocked me during some fandom drama where a man who had been harassing me for almost two years straight was picking new targets and I called him out on being a creep)- this normally wouldn’t be a problem, except that someone did a gift art of one of that person’s ocs and it spawned a roughly 3 hour conversation about how cool the person is.

Because I wasn’t in a great place mentally, I took that as a sign that I should stop bothering people who don’t want me to be there, deleted all my messages from the server as I left it, took all of my characters out of the guild, and carried on as usual.

Here’s where it gets tricky:

The guild leader messaged me about 5 days after i left the server asking me if I was alright and if they could help. I responded that I left because I didn’t want to start any drama and they clearly preferred someone who didn’t like me, and I didn’t want to intrude where I wasn’t really wanted. They responded back a few hours later saying that they valued my friendship and that they would send me another invite back to the guild if i wanted it. I responded to them by telling them basically that since nobody really wanted to talk to me anyway and they all clearly preferred the other person, that their concern didn’t read as sincere and the conversation went quiet from there.

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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