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rrxnjun · 1 year

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annoying (derogatory). ldh

pairing: lee donghyuck x fem! reader genre: college au, halloween au | crack(?), fluff wc: 3k (2.920) warnings: too much alcohol, kind of rushed and very stupid a/n: i know its technically not halloween anymore but this idea came to me this morning and i just had to write it. haven't posted anything in a while and i missed writing a lot <3 also thank you @decembermoonskz and @yaesnovels for the help with this fic!

you arrive at a halloween party only to find out your biggest nightmare came true in real life: you accidentally wear matching couple outfits with your biggest enemy. or where annoying (derogatory) turns into annoying (affectionate).

Black skinny jeans, blue jean button-up, black shoes and a tacky black coat. Your eyes meet with none other than your main enemy, a shit-eating grin slowly creeping at his face making you freeze in your spot and arch your back like an angry cat when you realise a fact that is immediately confirmed by the snicker coming from behind your ear.

“Your couple costume is so good guys, didn’t know you were dating-”

“Jeno, shut the fuck up. You know damn well this is not a couple costume,” you mutter, not liking the fact that your friend is feeding into this situation.

“Oh,” Jeno blinks, faking a surprise, “but he’s Edward. And… you’re Bella… isn’t it a couple costume, then?” he asks, pouting, acting lost in thought.

“No, it’s not-”

“Just admit that you planned this all along, Y/N,” Donghyuck grins, “you wanted to match with me, obviously.”

“I did not! I didn’t even know you’re going as Edward. If I knew, I wouldn’t have gone as Bella, for fuck’s sake,” you mourn in agony, hating the Halloween party you were invited to already, solely for the fact that you’re accidentally wearing couple costumes with the guy you hate the most on this earth.

Lee Donghyuck has been on your death wishlist for as long as you’ve known him. His annoying (derogatory) attitude and the confidence he radiates was already a hint for you that you wouldn’t like him when you first met him at university, but it was only solidified on one sunny day when he made fun of your haircut. Yeah, it might have been a bad, terrible haircut– you can even admit that– but he really didn’t have to call you Dora the explorer every time he saw you at campus until your hair didn’t grow back. Yes, this was the exact situation that made you hate the guy more than you hate anything in this world. Some would say you’re petty. You just think you’re being reasonable.

“I talked about it in the groupchat!” Hyuck exclaims, referencing the Whatsapp group chat you’re both in because of mutual friends.

“Well, I have your number blocked so I don’t have to read your annoying messages every morning,” you snap, seeing Donghyuck only smile at your frustrated figure, making you more annoyed.

“I’ll have you know, Ryujin enjoys my good morning texts,” he smugly proclaims, shrugging.

“Yeah,” you nod, “because she lacks common sense,” you add, seeing the man in front of you snicker at your nasty remark, loving the sight of you all worked up and frustrated.

“Don’t be mean,” he says, “I thought that was my job. Or, at least, that’s what you told me when I called you Dora-”

“Oh, shut the fuck up, not this again,” you roll your eyes at him, not wanting to see the look on his face he always has when he teases you. “See? He’s being annoying again-” you turn around, wanting to find comfort in Jeno, only to realise he’s no longer watching over your little quarrel, but is standing in the corner of the room with his friends from class instead, drinking out of a small red cup.

Turning back around to see Donghyuck leaning on the kitchen counter, hands resting at the very top, you try hard to ignore the grin on his face. Catching him eyeing you from head to toe, you furrow your brows and shake your head in disapproval. “Stop staring at me, weirdo.”

“Just wanting to see if you’ve done a better job than me, that’s all.”

“Yeah, sure,” you sigh, walking over to the kitchen counter, looking for a cup that would contain something you’d enjoy drinking– because you can’t even smell vodka without wanting to physically carve your stomach out of your body (you’d call this reflex your bad flashbacks from war)– Donghyuck’s voice lands into your ear once again, possibly the effect of his figure standing so close to yours.

“Chill out already, would you? Let’s dance,” he says, pointing his chin towards the living room, resonating with roaring music and filled with various other people from your university, all dressed in costumes. A rumor has it that Johnny-- the host-- was kicking out everyone that came without one, and with how much this guy loves Halloween, you don't even try to doubt the information.

You huff, laughing at Hyuck's proposal. “I would rather die than to dance with you, Lee Donghyuck.”

Silence– well, to a certain extent, with the loud EDM music playing in the background– overtakes the two of you after your response, your eyes still searching through the sea of alcohol poured in various red cups over on the kitchen counter, eyebrows furrowed in concentration. Do these people really not drink anything other than vodka and cheap beer? Sighing in disappointment, almost reaching for the beer– because everything’s better than vodka– a hand holding a single red cup comes into your rear point of vision, making you look up at your silent companion in confusion.

Taking the cup into your hand and sniffing, your eyes meet your supposed enemy, to which he expressionlessly says: “Rum and coke. I know vodka makes you puke.”

“Thanks,” you say, hesitantly taking a sip and averting your gaze from the male, taken aback by his sudden act of service.

“Will you dance with me now?”

Sighing, you shoot him a glance, seeing the shit-eating grin appearing on his face again, making your blood boil at unreachable heights. “I will kill you tonight, Hyuck.”

“We’ll see about that, spider monkey.”

“Oh, you two look amazing together-”

“We’re not a couple,” you cut off the stranger passing you by on your walk down the street, sighing to yourself.

A few drinks, screams at the top of your lungs on the dance floor and selfies in your Halloween costumes later, you two and another few friends– the most sober ones of the group– were sent on a McDonald’s run. You argued that you could just order pizza, or that you could just get Postmates, but Jisung got too drunk to remember how it works and insisted on you getting it personally, because, quote, the stranger could eat his chicken wings, and, well, Jeno can never say no to Jisung, so… here you are.

“Not gonna lie, dudes,” Mark says, laughing to himself, “the disgusted look on Y/N’s face every time she has to explain this to someone is the only thing keeping me going right now.”

“I’m glad that at least someone is having fun,” you mutter under your breath.

“Who said he was the only one? I am enjoying this,” Donghyuck snickers, walking by your side as if to annoy you even further. Every time his hand accidentally brushes against yours as you walk– because even though you’re the most sober of the group, the amount of rum and cokes you’ve drank tonight is still enough to make you walk a little to the side– makes you want to turn around on your heel and scream into an endless void full of your misery.

Every time you see the man next to you grin with his perfect pearly whites, the hairs on your arms stand up in nerves, your stomach feels funny and the pit on the very bottom of it only deepens. You’ve never felt this much frustration, annoyance and anger towards someone. Normally, you’re a pretty chill person– it’s just that Lee Donghyuck is a menace to society and to yourself twice as much.

Walking into the McDonald’s that’s luckily only a few streets away from Johnny’s house, you stand in line and wait for your turn to finally order the endless list of meals the group waiting back at the party managed to stick together. Looking around, seeing a long line of teenagers dressed in various costumes, you find a new sense of appreciation for humanity. Isn’t it funny how once a year, we dress as someone else for one day just because we feel like it? Humans are actually pretty cute, if you think about it.

Lost in your thoughts, you almost don’t notice Donghyuck talking to someone that’s standing behind him. His words blur in your tipsy mind, allowing yourself to relax for just a bit and calm down before you have to carry the bags with food down the street again, back to the party, when the words girlfriend and Bella startle you awake.

“Yeah, it took me so long to convince her to come as Bella, ‘cause she always refuses to watch the movies with me, but she loves me too much, so she finally agreed-”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Donghyuck?” you ask, not even having enough energy to scream at him anymore, just furrowing your brows in resignance.

“Don’t mind her, she gets a little grumpy when she’s drunk, right, sweetie?” Hyuck grins at you as he puts an arm around your shoulders, pulling you close. The smell of his showergel mixed with the cologne he uses– strawberries and coconut with just a hint of pinewood– hits your nose, making you swim in a weird sense of comfort and jumpiness. You once told him he uses too much cologne. He joked that it was so you would notice him, but ever since, the smell of his cologne has become less prominent, the sweet mix of strawberries and coconut making itself more known to your nose every time he was close to you in any way.

“We’re not even dating…” you lock eyes with the stranger dressed like Batman as you sigh, seeing the confusion in his hooded eyes when they jump from your figure to Donghyuck’s close to each other in a comfortable embrace.

Standing in the line at McDonald’s, various grinning teenagers pointing towards you two and telling you what a cute couple you are, you grow tired of explaining to them that your matching costumes are a mere coincidence. And with Lee Donghyuck sabotaging your every attempt at getting it straight and telling everyone that you actually hate your supposed other half, it becomes impossible to spread your truth, and so you just eventually stop trying.

Drinking so much the world is spinning and you feel hot in your cheeks, talking in the kitchen with Jaemin, Jeno and (ignoring) Donghyuck, you feel like this evening couldn’t get any better. You see, you may sound like an alcoholic right now, but the more rum and coke you drink, the less you mind Hyuck’s annoying teasing and the bad music choices from the resident DJ Jungwoo. You asked him to play Pitbull twice. He refused both times, and if that’s not a sign of a bad DJ, you don’t know what is.

Laughing at a joke Jaemin made, you momentarily lock eyes with Hyuck before you jump up in surprise at a loud scream coming from behind your back.

“Bella! Where the hell have you been, loca?!”

Turning around, you see a tall man with a wig on, wearing the most ratchet outfit cut out of a 2009 movie– there was no doubt, this was none other than Xiao Dejun dressed as Jacob from Twilight. Laughing at the whole situation– because there’s nothing else you’re able to do now, after realising that the three of you accidentally wore the costumes of a love triangle without knowing the other’s intentions, you watch as the man replicates the scene from the movie and runs towards you to pick you up into a spinning hug.

“This is getting ridiculous,” you giggle when he puts you on the ground.

“Why? You didn’t plan this?” he asks, seemingly not knowing about the rivalry between you and Hyuck as his eyes dance from him to you, seeing you shake your head in disapproval.

“Don’t listen to him if he tries to tell you otherwise, but no, we did not plan this,” you laugh, seeing Dejun join you in the little moment of you slowly going crazy.

“Well, that’s just great, because that means I can drag you to the dancefloor without Edward here getting mad at me!” Dejun yelps as he physically drags you to the living room by your right hand, body swaying to the beat of the never-stopping EDM music playing through the speakers. You don’t really remember you and Dejun being this close, you only had a few classes with him last semester, but it seems that the alcohol level in your blood is no longer letting you have any barriers tonight. Eyes shortly switching to the kitchen– completely subconsciously, really– you notice Donghyuck staring at the two of you with a cold look, jaw clenched. It only adds to the costume of Edward, you’d say, since you don’t remember the man having any other expressions in the movie, but the sight of Hyuck looking like that makes you a little taken aback, since you’ve never seen him with this face before.

“Are you sure you two didn’t come together? ‘Cause Edward Cullen over there looks a little jealous, if I may say so myself,” Dejun screams into your ear, making you roll your eyes at the comment.

“Don’t mind him,” you shake your head, “we hate each other.”

Dejun’s eyes widen at your last sentence, surprise overtaking his features. “Really?”

“Yeah,” you snicker, “he called me Dora the explorer for two months after I got a really bad haircut, I can’t stand that guy,” you laugh, seeing Dejun only snicker as he takes your right hand and rises it towards the ceiling, urging you to twirl for him like a ballerina.

“Well, that’s understandable,” he laughs, “even I’d hate him for that, if I was in your place.”

When the song ends and Dejun finds another familiar face in the corner of the living room, you find yourself sitting on the abandoned sofa in the middle of the room, finally letting yourself take deep breaths and try to force your head to stop spinning. Fanning your face before you take off your statement Bella zip-up hoodie, you let your eyes rest for a moment as you notice the sharp pain in your left temple– the first sign that you’ve had enough alcohol for tonight. Telling yourself you’re only gonna stay until you don’t feel a bit better, you try to force your brain to not shut off, before a painful slap to your thigh startles you awake as the sofa dips next to you with the weight of another figure.

“You okay?” you hear the all too familiar voice of none other than tonight’s Edward Cullen. After so many hours of being around him, you don’t even hate it as much anymore– in the loud screaming of the evening, you’d even consider it a safe haven.

Humming in agreement as you nod, you notice his hand on your thigh lightly massaging the spot he slapped before, the touch of his hand burns your clothed skin, sending shivers down your spine. “You want some water?” he asks, but as you shake your head to say no, there’s not a single thought in your head as you focus on the motion of his fingers on your leg, thinking of how you’ve never seen him so caring before, making you believe that maybe if he wasn’t so annoying towards you, you wouldn’t hate him as much.

“Do you want to go home?” he asks again, making you want to curse at him for breaking the silence (well, not really, since the havoc is still happening and the music is still playing), but instead, you only hum and cover his hand on your thigh with your palm, not even thinking about your actions. The danger of drinking is that you never know when the drink you have is the last one that takes you over the edge of having fun to being absolutely fucking miserable, and you think that the one you had right before Dejun dragged you to the dance floor was exactly the one doing just that.

“In a bit. Want my head to stop spinning so much first,” you say, letting your head drop onto his shoulder, enjoying the calmness of the situation after the stress and loudness of the whole night.

The smell of strawberries and coconut overtakes the smell of alcohol lingering in the room, calming your senses and making you wonder why you never gave Hyuck a chance before. It’s not like he was wrong about the haircut, after all…

“I’m team Edward, just by the way,” Donghyuck mumbles into your ear, making you snicker. To think you were considering that he wasn’t so bad just a few seconds ago…

“You know, Hyuck, I’m starting to think you’re an actual vampire, with how you’re sucking out my energy the whole evening,” you mutter, hearing the boy laugh at your comment before his tone turns suggestive as he leans even closer to your ear.

“Maybe I can suck your neck instead, like an actual vampire, you know-”

Feeling hot in your cheeks from the comment that just escaped from between his lips, hating the way it made you feel all funny in your stomach, you sigh and move away from him, standing up from the sofa in urgency. “I’m actually going to kill you, you know-”

“Oh, come on,” he giggles, taking you by your hand and dragging you back down to the sofa, “sit for a bit and then I’ll walk you home, okay? I was only joking…” he says, seeing you roll your eyes, but your body slides deeper into the sofa cushions, getting comfortable. “Unless…?”

Yeah, never mind. Lee Donghyuck is still the most annoying (affectionate) human being you’ve ever met in your whole, entire life.

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sirenjose · 24 days

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Predictions for The Voyage of Oceanus

(I made guesses last year for the Zinaida event and managed to correctly guess Andrew was the culprit/killer before it was revealed, so I wanted to try to do that again this year before we got too much info or any answers)

Main Predictions

Frederick is the antagonist (as in he will be the cause of the events that occur during this event or at least a contributor to some degree)

The jellyfish toxins will be the cause of everyone going crazy/behaving abnormally and whatever hallucinations they see (ex: my guess is it is the reason behind Alice's behavior and what she said she saw to Inference)

Charles will be involved in whatever incident Inference has to solve but won't be the actual true culprit (this is a guess based on Charles' backstory, as his actions indirectly lead to the (accidental) death of his friend. As it was indirect, that's why I guess in this event Charles will either be falsely suspected to be the culprit or may play a minor role in what happens but he won't do anything super bad, at least on purpose)

Violeta may seem dead but may not actually be truly dead (based on how she likely survives in canon after Joker leaves her to die in the snow, and how I wonder if she'll be involved in the "guest performance" referenced in Mike's 3rd letter)

Side Notes/Predictions

That agreement Branley had many of the personnel aboard the ship on his voyage sign is suspicious, the same one that Mr. Worthington didn't have to sign as he wasn't part of the "core personnel". Secretive agreements usually imply something up. "Trying to hide their research discoveries" feels like whatever they found out could be important, and the crew 25 years later will likely discover whatever it was considering Inference makes a comment about doing so during the event. Not sure yet about this, just wanted to call out it's suspicious and stood out to me.

Speaking of suspicious, there's also that letter from whoever provided Inference with his disguise. No idea who this is. I did try to think about who it could be, but many of my guesses didn't feel quite right (I wondered about Wu Chang, but we know nothing about him or why he'd help. There's Paranormal Detective, but he wouldn't do something like this. There's Fiona, who does do disguises, but I'm not quite sure. There's White, but like Paranormal Detective, as Inference knows him, I doubt he'd do something in this fashion. My big random guess is DM, even if just because he'd get a laugh out of making Inference dress in the type of outfit Inference detests. That and DM seems to be the reason Inference gets involved in a lot of the cases we see during these anniversary events. So yea, he's so far my first guess, but who knows.)

Frederick was the "benefactor" to spend a "huge amount of money" building this copycat ship and getting all the exact details, down to the roles people play, as similar as possible. So with how long he spent to prepare this, it contributes to the idea that Frederick could be behind whatever incident occurs during this event aboard the ship.

I don't quite know why, but for some reason Keigan mentioning the "blue jellyfish pendant" stood out a lot to me. (Honestly I at first didn't really read everything, but I paused after seeing that mentioned). Not quite sure why, but reading it made me wonder if whatever this was would be important, or if it appearing or disappearing would be important for this event. I actually reread everything after that, which was when I realized it belonged to this "Professor Schelling". It was only then that I made the connection "Hey, Frederick's S-tier has blue jellyfish themes all over his outfit". Maybe if Frederick was tied to this Schelling person, that could explain why he'd put so much effort into recreating this ship and voyage. Then from there, I noticed it mentions Schelling's "acedemic achievements" weren't "directly inherited", with his children being "too young" to learn anything of "scientific value". Not "directly inherited" makes me think of Frederick in canon who didn't inherit his family's musical talent. And I had to reread the children bit twice to realize it's not saying he didn't have children. He did, they were just too young. So his children were the ones that didn't "inherit" that stuff from the previous line. Ergo, Frederick might be the kid of this Professor Schelling. So even if he wasn't very knowledgeable about science initially, considering the science books in his room, it seems he might've tried to fix that, potentially similar to Frederick trying to be a famous musician despite not having the same musical skills as his family. If Frederick is recreating what happened 25 years ago, and his father was involved, maybe he's trying to prove he is just as good as his father? I'm also thinking of parallels to Frederick in canon and why he's going after the Blue Hope gem...

Similar to how I wonder if Orpheus drugs the participants by including it in their meals, I wonder if the jellyfish toxins will poison people by being included in people's meals. Frederick did mention it can affect people if ingested. That would potentially mean Demi might be working with Frederick, since she prepares people's foods. Considering how Demi seems to be working with the manor owner and her roles in other events, this wouldn't surprise me too much. Her name is "Siren" after all, so this sort of role, especially if she's giving people toxins that could cause hallucinations like a siren's song might, seems fitting for her codename.

The mention of electromagnetic fields reminds me of some of the research/theories I wrote regarding Jose, as I remember discussing how electromagnetic fields, like what is mentioned in Wu Chang's letters regarding events during Jose's game, can affect compasses, which can lead to people getting lost, which I remember due to my research regarding Jose's Bobolink skin (bobolinks are birds that can navigate via electromagnetic fields, and will fly in the wrong direction due to mesing with those fields). I remember the event mentioned Inference's clock being frozen at 6:30. I wonder if this'll be important somehow. (I also just find all the potential connections to stuff I did for Jose funny and had to call it out. Works out I already did all this research so I know about some of this already ^_^')

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blackautmedia · 6 months

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So I found your post on ToTK insightful, but one thing I didn’t see you cover is how according to the narrative, when Zelda went back 10,000 years she went to her distant relatives. It was still her kingdom, just very early. What do you think of how this ties in to the themes you were talking about?

Sure thing! Hope I can address this well.

For those not in the know, this is the post we're discussing--the Orientalism of the Mummy in Dehydrated Ganon.

I also want to qualify this with two things:

I'm not Native. I'm a Black person speaking as someone who also has a heritage closely related to colonial violence and white supremacy, but not someone who can speak for Native people. I can only go by what more experienced people have said and books and readings from them.

I'm using the word "Native" which itself encompasses several different people. I don't use this to imply they are the same or interchangeable with the cultural practices and ideas the Zelda franchise is drawing from.

To your question, I feel it doesn't really change much thematically because neither Zelda nor any of the Hylians in the present day have any cultural features, practices, or attitudes that codify her as a Native person except as a costume or set of resources and knowledge associated with her.

It's not portrayed as if it's her heritage she's been disconnected with, but is effectively portrayed as a white person being introduced to an entirely new culture in how exoticized it is.

With the Zonai, their coded status comes in the form of their way of dressing, the Geoglyphs being Nazca lines, the designs of the shrines, the Zonaite outfit Link has, etc. It also narratively shows up in how it's framed as "archaic" in-game as referenced by the naming of the armor related to the Zonai versus the white rule the land has in the present day and how they're portrayed and characterized around extinction.

It's almost point for point the exact narratives and ideas about Native people colonizers use in real life. Native people imagined as a people who no longer exist but still had worthwhile resources better suited in civilized (white) hands.

A big part of why the myth of Native extinction gets pushed so hard in real life (and in turn is repeated and propagandized in media about Native or Native-coded characters) is because it reframes how we talk about recompense for them.

If you imagine a world and buy into the repeat narrative of Native people all being extinct, there's nobody left to do right by. It helps shape the conversations around policies and decisions by people in power.

Things like environmental justice, land back initiatives, reparations, healthcare access, and many other things Native people advocate for are pushed aside by erasing the people fighting for it. It's a form of colonial erasure meant to justify inaction.

So while Zelda technically is a descendant of the Zonai, the story doesn't really do anything with that to challenge the way it's recreating a colonial narrative about Native people. We've historically seen her as a pure white woman, one whose purity is contrasted with the toxicity and dangerous wickedness of Ganon.

The few times we do get characters with features or a heritage that deviate from eurocentrism (ex. Nabooru, Urbosa, Demise, Princess Hilda, Tetra, Midna, Ganon, Sonia, Telma, etc.) they're either the villain, sympathetic only in how they directly align and submit to Hyrule's power as one of the "good ones" or they're just murdered or erased from the story entirely.

The Gerudo are out looking for boyfriends, but we overwhelmingly see this in relation to white men in-game despite there being numerous dark-skinned Zelda characters in their partners and even in who is spying on them or trying to sneak into Gerudo town as a bunch of creeps.

Zelda as a franchise is very dedicated to positioning whiteness as inherently superior and more desirable.

The (white) Hylians have a god-given right to control and rule, and all of the non-white races of people are better off for it. While Zelda is technically a descendant of a Zonai, we still see her effectively as an innocent and almost holy white woman.

The franchise operates on the idea that some people are born with magic abilities and are essentially destined to rule over others and that any challenge to that superiority is inherently evil. The characters who ever challenge that are either villains or are antagonized and cut down for it.

#tears of the kingdom #totk critical #zonai #can youtubers please recognize this when making lore videos about the zonai #totk spoilers

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kayla1507 · 2 years

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D:BH Cut Content: The untold story of “Jericho”.

So I realized there’s a hidden meaning to the different murals scattered along Ferndale during Markus’ hunt for Jericho: they are in fact an easter egg to Markus’ original arc. A look into concept art shows these colorful graffiti didn’t initially exist:

Instead Markus was supposed to follow a trail of symbols which are identical to the ones Rupert drew at [The Nest]. Now these Ferndale graffiti tell a story in meticulous order, let’s take a closer look:

The first mural we encounter at the left wall of Ferndale station draws us back to the start of Markus’ story: [Shades of Colors] as Markus stands surrounded by a mob of angry humans. Religious symbolism in form of a halo is prevalent in almost all of the murals referencing Markus. This correlates with various cut NPC dialogue naming Markus as the personification of their android savior rA9, an arc which was later removed from his character.

This mural proceeds onto the opposite wall, picturing the cop who protects Markus, the aggressors shoving him to the ground as well as a wounded, bleeding Markus (party hidden beyond the information sign).

At the end of the mural we see an intoxicated man and a person swinging a baseball bat. I’m not sure about this one, but it could possibly be referring to Markus’ violent encounter with Leo Manfred in [Broken].

The android fighting ring was an optional cut chapter had Markus successfully evaded the police in chapter [Broken]. The man depicted in the middle not only resembles Markus quite a lot, he’s also once more surrounded by what resembles a halo.

A hooded, homeless person next to a white car might seem random, but actually isn’t if you take a close look at concept art of [Jericho]. After the Fight Club was raided by human cops and Markus crawled out of the android graveyard, there’s nowhere left to go. Or is there? Not only can the white car be spotted in the upper artwork, but Markus is also wearing the same outfit on his search for Jericho, complete with a hood on his head.

This mural of a redhead girl idolized with a halo (again, the religious symbolism) depicts Riley, a human Markus befriends during his time at Jericho when she moves into her new Ferndale apartment. This may not have been long after Markus arrived at Jericho, you can see Markus is still wearing the exact same outfit.

“Still beating heart of Detroit”: Human hands are caressing a mechanical heart, symbolising the developing romance between Markus and Riley. Perhaps it’s their love that’s strong enough to convince Markus that humans and androids can coexist peacefully, despite the horrors he has suffered at humanity’s hands.

Markus helps Riley furnishing her new apartment and raise her small child. A short period of sunshine and rainbows, at least until Tracy shows up in Ferndale. Traumatized and hopeless like Markus used to be, Markus might have recognized himself in Tracy and takes her under his wing.

These four robots depict our Jericrew: Markus, Tracy, Josh and Simon. They stand united, although one of them looks special. The color red symbolizes Markus, matching the color scheme of his very first mural, but a part of himself is being passed over to a comrade, Tracy. The little red gear taken from Markus is once again circled by a halo, likely symbolizing Markus’ purity and wisdom in correlation to his mentor-student relationship with Tracy.

This woman had reminded me of Lucy before. Two heads are painted right next to her, one black and one white. I am now pretty certain it symbolizes Lucy telling Markus and Tracy their fortunes. Tracy in black, who represents shadow. Although she is hateful the gears turning in her head suggest you can still change her mind. And Markus in white, who represents the light. Which one will prevail?

This “Sparkle City” repair store mural symbolizes chapter “Spare Parts” in which the group raids a Cyberlife warehouse to gather replacement parts to repair fellow androids.

And last not but least: the fate of Jericho. Jericho’s symbol made whole, foreshadowing a perfect ending in which Markus succeeded to guide and help Tracy mature into a better person and leads Jericho to their righteous victory as they fight in unity.

Or his utter failure, Jericho torn apart. A failure for which Markus is exiled and Tracy takes the cepter for herself to enact her revenge by destroying Detroit.

Some thoughts on the topic of the cut Markus content:

I think the rewriting of Markus’ storyline— and I mean severing his connection to rA9 and Riley — hurt the immersion and his character development immensely. And working on this compilation reminded me once again of just how much Markus interesting content we missed out on.

First of all, Quantic Dream maintained the “Markus is our true leader!”-worship among Jericho. But it is no longer explained how Markus so easily converts androids cybernetically like a super spreader, or why all these deviants “follow him without question” (to recite his own words), because Markus is being no longer portrayed as rA9. And because he no longer represents rA9, the instant obedience of his newly acquired followers feels less like religious faith in their god and more like Markus reprogrammed them into mindless drones who just tag along with the plan. And while I can guess why Quantic Dream decided to leave rA9 as an ambiguous mystery, the arc would’ve added onto the mysterious backstory of Markus and also Elijah Kamski as Markus’ creator, giving these two characters some much appreciated depth.

The cut of the Fight Club was another missed opportunity to have Markus interact with people outside of Jericho and providing character growth unrelated to him being an idolized leader.

Most importantly, I think we missed out with Riley’s merge into North. Riley was (as far as we know) Markus’ only persistent connection to humankind during his time as Jericho’s leader. But with Riley’s character being cut, Markus feels entirely isolated from the outside world and quite naive when it comes to his peaceful approach. Because Riley and Markus’ love story should’ve been a major turning point to convince him there is still good in humanity and their species can coexist peacefully.

#dbh #dbh meta #dbh deleted content #dbh markus #dbh riley #dbh tracy #dbh marla #dbh jericho #dbh jericrew #detroit: become human

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soobadnoonecanstopher · 3 years

Text

Touch it for Real, Part 9

Genre: Humor / Fluff / Angst / (Eventual) Smut 18+

Warnings: OMG they were roommates / slice of life / slow burn / mutual pining / crude humor / cursing / virgin!baek / idiots to lovers / unresolved sexual tension

Characters: Baekhyun X You/Female Reader

Description: You teach Baekhyun how to date. (Basically the Get You Alone M/V)

A/N: DO NOT YELL AT ME! It is going to be okay.

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 , Part 6 , Part 7 , Part 8 , Part 9 , Part 10

You had a secret.

For such an abstract and shapeless thing you could sure feel it sitting in there.

It was pulsing.

Your secret felt like a splinter lodged just under a single taste bud that sat in the center of your tongue. You could feel your white blood cells attacking it, trying their best to push it up and push it out, but still it clung tight with its sharp barbs lodged within your cell walls. You brushed your tongue against your teeth.

The secret did not budge.

What you knew about them though, was that secrets did not like to stay hidden forever.

Your fork slipped and clanked noisily against the ceramic plate and the bright orange carrot ball rolled across the smooth white surface nearly sliding over the edge onto the white linen. Whoever decided that your steamed vegetables needed to be shaped into spheres simply for aesthetics should be forced to come out here and explain how you were supposed to spear one of these things while also avoiding the risk of it shooting across the table and hitting your date in the face.

Ben turned out to be very nice. If you were into tall, handsome, clean-looking, and responsible guys who drove their own cars and also had things like health insurance and retirement plans. When you first saw him, you were struck by the firmness you felt when he shook your hand and smiled brightly at you. He had all of his teeth and a head full of hair. He was definitely walking around on his real legs too. He looked like the kind of guy who didn’t let the clean laundry sit in the dryer for longer than a day and changed out his toothbrush every three months. You couldn't see a single fault.

You were trying your best to make a good first impression.

Really, you were.

Well, while also keeping an eye on Baekhyun who sat beside you with his focus down on his plate as he sliced his food into bite sized bits. His control of the fork and knife felt so careful and so exacting, it neared obsession. He had not ordered the steamed vegetables. None of his food rolled.

Across from him, looking just as cute in person as her online dating profile pictures conveyed, was Mia.

Mia was fine.

She was fine.

You didn't want to get into it.

Her clothes were fine. They were exactly the kinds of clothes you had expected she would wear.

Her hair was fine.

She actually had a hairstyle that reminded you of one of the characters in an anime you watched with Baekhyun once and you wondered about the upkeep costs of that particular shade of blue that streaked through her hair. You wondered if she had to switch to blue towels and blue pillow cases or if everything in her house was just stained forever.

Baekhyun’s cheeks blushed when he shook her hand and his smile was bashful, if not a bit tight when she complimented his glasses. Your mind briefly considered the plush, expensive white towels you both owned at home and a flash of horror overcame you for a split second when you imagined those towels streaked with a blue stain from the shower.

He bought those glasses at a store. Anyone can go to the store and buy glasses. Did such a superficial compliment really warrant such a deep shade of pink on his cheeks?

You took a sip of your glass of wine and the sweet, cool liquid had a tart aftertaste that lingered on your taste buds long after you swallowed and you stabbed roughly at the runaway carrot again, impaling it with the prongs of your fork.

Finally.

“I got it,” you said out loud to yourself with a wide smile and you held your prize up in front of your face for a second. Long enough for your eyes to drift across your table to meet Ben’s and you caught the soft amused chuckle that puffed from his nose.

You’d already gotten through the backstory. Starting with the curious question from Mia about how you and Baekhyun got to know each other and you took a quick glance toward Ben as Baekhyun explained that you and he had been roommates for a couple of years. You caught the slight smile on Ben’s lips as he looked down into his water glass and you wondered if he was pleased that he already knew the answer to this question as you had been quick to tell him this important detail about your life as you chatted with him during the last week or so.

Mia on the other hand simply let her eyes drift over from Baekhyun’s face to land on yours for a moment and you offered a disarming smile by way of explanation. Not that either of you had any explaining to do. You could live with whoever you wanted to live with. It took her ten seconds to return your smile, although you didn't quite believe it, or believe that she was done with her curiosities about this topic.

You couldn't really blame her although you’d given her nothing to be suspicious about. Not in the last 20 minutes since you’d all arrived and nibbled on shared appetizers, at least.

Hell, you hadn’t even touched him all day. From before you both arrived at this fancy restaurant and just relinquished your coats to some stranger simply because she held a hand out and sported a severe enough hairdo and manic look in her eyes that was too frightening to question. From the morning when you woke up and wandered into your kitchen to make toast for one and you ignored the sound of his feet shuffling in, half-asleep to grab a yogurt from the fridge. You hadn’t even helped him style his hair; which looked stunning, by the way, with the waves and the faded brown color that absolutely looked like something the perfect boyfriend would let you play with as he laid on your lap. He hadn’t even asked for your help picking out his outfit. He’d simply done it all on his own and waited for you by the front door wearing those jeans and smelling like that familiar scent that he bought for your date with him weeks back.

When had this all become so awkward? You’d never been afraid to touch Baekhyun before but now, well, the touches hadn’t ever concealed quite so much meaning before.

By the time the entrees arrived the conversations had moved on to hobbies and interests.

Ben was a movie buff, and his favorites were mostly mainstream blockbusters of the Marvel Superhero variety. He enjoyed many of the genres of films you’d mostly seen just the previews of. His top ten contained a bit more horror than you were comfortable with. One in particular, a prolific film based on a Steven King novel, had been the kind of psychologically terrifying film that made your chest rattle and you had spent most of the second half of that movie with your face buried in Baekhyun’s arm begging him to just describe to you what was happening and to tell you when the scary parts were over.

When he asked you what your favorite movie was you hesitated for a moment before pulling the movie Forrest Gump out of basically thin air. Yes you had enjoyed the movie. Yes it was something you’d seen more than once and if it was on television right now you would sit down and watch it from start to finish and you would enjoy it. It was a respectable favorite to have. It was the kind of favorite movie you would not be embarrassed to show to your grandmother.

But it wasn’t actually your favorite and you could feel the burden of Baekhyun’s eyes as he turned his head to look at your face when you said it.

Something about naming, out loud with your own lips — the light and fun, mindless guilty pleasure of the film that was actually your favorite movie that you’d watched hundreds of times and returned to watch again and again every time you felt even a little bit upset; something about saying it out loud to this table of people with countless of hours of media consumption under their belts and opinions about things like prolific directors, production companies, hefty CGI budgets, and overused, tired tropes that absolutely should be dropped in 2021, well it just felt too vulnerable for you to say out loud.

You swallowed a sip of your wine and refused to turn your head to look at Baekhyun until you heard the sound of his throat swallowing the ice water he sipped.

When Mia changed the topic to Anime you felt Baekhyun come alive beside you and Ben slinked back in his seat a little as the two of them got to talking about something that was highly anticipated and was slated to be released next year. Rumors about artists and directors with names you could not know flew easily from their lips and Mia mentioned the name of one previous work that you recognized.

In fact you had watched the entire thing last year with Baekhyun and you remembered talking excitedly about it with Mia during one of your early text conversations.

Your face lit up and you happily joined in, excited to finally know what in the world they were talking about when you accidentally let something slip when you reminded her of what she had said about the anime before. Luckily you stopped yourself before you could admit that you had actually been the one she had been chatting with at the time.

Still, she caught it. She was very quick and sharp and you watched her face as she registered that you’d referenced something that only Baekhyun should know about. Had you just fucked up?

“Ahh, we,” you raised your index finger and waved it lightly toward where Baekhyun had stiffened up in his seat beside you, “he told me about what you said.”

There was a moment when her eyes widened and she looked at Baekhyun briefly before returning her focus to you.

“He...told you about me?” She lifted a hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, straightened her back and leaned forward with her forearms rested in front of her plate on the table. Her off-the-shoulders number dipped when she leaned in and you caught a bit of black lace and the bunch up of her impressive bosom.

She smiled a coy smile aimed across the table.

You followed the smile and your eyes reached Baekhyun. He’d been hit with the smile and had been too stunned to return it. Instead, he lifted a hand and rubbed it over the back of his neck twice before reaching the same hand forward to grab the ice water he’d been sipping all night as he pulled in a mouthful and puffed his cheeks before covering his lips with his flattened palm and swallowing noisily.

“I also mentioned you to my friend,” Mia said not quietly enough for it to be just for him and you dropped your eyes down to the half finished chicken on your plate.

She was fine. Mia was fine. She’d done absolutely nothing wrong. She was nice and she was probably a good person, but you kind of wanted her to die.

“So,” Ben interjected suddenly and you looked across the table at him as you tried to conceal the surprise on your face to find him sitting there.

You noticed he was done with his food and his plate had already been cleared away by the super attentive waitstaff.

The negligence of your own date weighed heavily on you and you angled your chest forward to face him directly for whatever questions he had for you.

He was pointing toward Baekhyun and Mia with his extended finger and raised eyebrows.

“You two work in computers?” It was a work question. He’d gathered this much from the brief introductions everyone had given and while you had failed to offer any insight as to what you did for a living, Baekhyun and Mia had both mentioned computers.

“He’s a software engineer, and I’m a programmer. Similar but not the same,” Mia explained. You weren't sure of any of the details or of how they were different. You hadn’t really put much thought into it. You knew Baekhyun worked the magic with the keyboard and could fix anything that you happened to break.

“I’m in advertising. Just got scouted by Comma Entertainment and I’ve accepted.” Ben had a hand raised to his chest and his eyebrows were up. This seemed important to him and you let your lips form into an impressed O shape as you raised your eyebrows. His tone and the way he said the name of his new employer seemed to warrant the excited reaction.

You weren't familiar at all with his industry but you knew how to react like you knew what he was talking about. He certainly seemed impressed by himself. Who were you to discourage his enthusiasm.

“You’ve heard of it?” You sold it too well. Baekhyun had leaned close to you and whispered an aside question and you shot him a tense look with your eyes as a warning, but you quickly pushed your smile wide for Ben who was, deservedly, very excited about his new position.

“Of course, who doesn’t know Comma for advertising. That’s a very big deal. Is that why you were so busy last week? We hardly got to talk.”

Your subject change was so slick. If you hadn’t been the one to do it, you’d have been impressed by it. The disappointed pout on your face sold it well.

“Actually I was at the bank a lot last week. It was so weird. I had a few accounts that seemed to be hacked but then it turned out to be nothing. Had to change all my passwords though, so that was annoying.”

“That sucks. They didn't take anything did they?” Mia spoke up from beside Ben; concern written all over her face.

“No. Whoever did it just seemed to access purchase histories mostly. Some loser of a hacker. Didn't even get any money.” Ben’s lips pulled wide and he was laughing with his head thrown back at his perceived victory over the hacker that had been messing around in his bank records.

“You can learn a remarkable amount of information about a person’s bad habits from their bank history, Ben. Sure utilities and rent; that’s boring. You can find out how often someone gets hammered at bars. How many of those bars are also strip clubs. How many maxed out credit cards they make minimum payments on each month just to keep their head above water. Their gambling losses and the motel rooms they book in the bad part of town…”

Baekhyun was speaking up beside you. You turned and you looked at his profile as he spoke so candidly and with what you could only describe as a certain smugness on his voice.

The only reason he’d stopped talking was to catch his breath. It was the most he had spoken all night and you honestly felt taken aback by the suddenness of his words and more, the topic he spoke on. It felt weirdly pointed. It just felt so detailed; almost accusatory.

“What?” You hissed the question; focused it hard and as under your breath as possible to the man seated beside you.

His lips closed up before his eyes turned to look at you and you caught a quick blink of his eyes that preceded a softening of his features that had no business looking that confrontational in the first place.

“I’m not saying any of that stuff applies to Ben.” Baekhyun lifted a slim dismissive hand to wave toward your date. “It’s just an example. For all we know Ben’s only weakness is eating fried chicken every day.”

Ben’s lips were pulled into a thin line on his face and his jaw unclenched when you looked back at him. Then he was smiling at you and it was bright and convincing. You smiled back at him and shook your head at your wacky roommate’s antics.

“Actually it’s pizza. You caught me buddy, I’m a hardcore pizza addict. Every night.”

“Well, not tonight.” Baekhyun shrugged with an odd smile landing on his lips.

Ben’s tight smile flattened and the two men seemed to be staring at each other for longer than you thought was polite for a shared first double-date.

“So what is it that you do?” It was Mia who ultimately broke the tension and you looked across the table into her eyes. She had a pleasant smile on her face and was still chewing on a piece of bread, clearly unbothered by the strange standoff that had just been going on between the two men at this table.

Surely you weren't the only one to notice how odd it had been. Had you just imagined the tightness in Baekhyun’s fist that laid over his thigh and the hard glare in Ben’s eyes?

With Mia’s question though, you felt your own lips pull closed and your eyes danced around the table to the other curious parties who also were now looking at you to answer the question.

You’d prepared well for this date. You’d made sure Baekhyun had the detailed first date topics, questions and answers for perfect small talk, even the section on table etiquette. You’d made sure he knew you’d be here to steer the conversations toward topics he was comfortable discussing and you’d even set up a safety signal he would use if he wanted to bail and just go home.

You’d planned it all out, down to the detailed progression of the evening and how at the end someone might even suggest going together for drinks. And should one of the dates wish to split off, it would be completely okay as long as the corresponding person felt comfortable. You’d even promised that under no circumstances would you abandon Baekhyun to do this on his own if he didn't want to. Not even at the behest of Ben, your date.

They were looking at you and you'd gone quiet. You’d been so busy preparing for this date that it never occurred to you that you were also actively involved and that someone might possibly ask a question about you and your work.

Your work. Well…

“Uhh...I don't really do anything worth mentioning.”

You felt it. It was a warmth that had pooled in the skin around your nose. Your cheeks felt warm and you felt just insignificant enough for it to take your undeserved confidence and throw it out the window.

Ben and Mia were watching you. You pulled your bottom lip in between your teeth and bit down on the dry chapped skin on the surface.

“Nothing?” Ben said and his eyes were wide with a look of confusion on his face.

“Well, not nothing.” You were not completely unemployed. You had been quite impressive before. You’d been working with the best publicists of an entertainment company and had been in charge of crafting and perfecting the asset sheets of many of your company's highest profile artists. You’d been the best at it and at one time had been highly sought out for your expertise. You had a way with it. You could work some real magic. You could make a dud of a raw potato sound like a five star course in a Michelin star restaurant. Losing your position in the spring of 2020 had really been a huge blow to your confidence. You looked back at how far you had fallen. Boring data entry jobs to make ends meet. Taking on weird side gigs so you could afford tiny luxuries like your favorite scented lotion or the name brand tampons instead of the store brand.

“I do have a job.” You added lamely. “It’s just not at all interesting.”

Ben dropped his eyes from yours and Mia shrugged her shoulders and stabbed a carrot ball expertly on the first try.

“Yeah but what is it?” Mia said as she chewed daintily. The heat in your cheeks spread and you let your eyes wander away from hers over the various dinner items that covered this table.

Beside you, Baekhyun’s movement caught your eye and you turned to see him place an elbow on the table in front of him and he leaned forward.

“She’s a dating coach. She’s really good at it, but much too modest when she talks about herself.”

Oh no. He wasn't about to spill the beans was he? This was definitely not something in the approved list of first date dinner topics. Wasn't this topic too incriminating? Wouldn't Mia put two and two together and figure out that you had been coaching Baekhyun all along? Also, wasn't this new profession of yours too brand new to start talking about so freely like this? What the hell was he doing?

“A dating coach? What’s that?”

Strangely, Mia didn't seem to be looking at Baekhyun with wheels turning and sirens blaring. She was looking at you with her mouth empty and hung open with a look of genuine interest in her eyes.

“Do you like, feed them what to say in an earpiece?” Ben was speaking up from the other side of Mia and you laughed at the absurdity of such a silly rom-com movie cliche.

“Well no. I’m not a pickup artist. I am a dating coach. Think about it like a sports coach. I am teaching my clients the skills to play the game. Skills to overcome dating anxiety, or I’m teaching them to identity and move away from self-sabotaging behaviors, limiting beliefs, or preconceptions that are detrimental to a healthy relationship.

I have clients that don't even know where to begin. My goal is to strategize with them and place them effectively within the dating scene so they stand the best chance. It’s incredibly hard to be objective about your own love life, but I provide an outside viewpoint. I step in and intervene when I see something that isn't in line with their relationship goals or the vision they have for dating.

I’m not teaching manipulation or just telling them what to say. There are no love spells to make someone fall in love with you. I’m changing the way they believe in themselves so they can present themselves to someone else in the absolute best way to begin a real relationship with someone.”

You’d been leaning in as you spoke animatedly with your hands. You felt the genuine excitement building with your words. You were surprised at how much of your previous profession’s language applied to this new exciting endeavor you were embarking on, but there really were tons of overlapping similarities between the two fields. The explanations just poured out of you.

You hadn’t said any of this out loud before to anyone but the more you talked about it, the more elated you felt about what you were doing with your life. With how much you had been helping Baekhyun and how much progress you had seen in just one day of helping your clients — Baekhyun’s friends Minseok and Sehun. Sehun had finally, finally sent you his first selfie that wasn’t taken from his lap after you’d sent him many examples of good selfies taken from different angles. Minseok was already halfway through the materials you’d sent him to study and had been working hard on identifying and changing the self-defeating language he’d used in his rough draft dating profile.

“She has an app.” Baekhyun piped up from beside you. He’d leaned back in his chair as you spoke.

Both Ben and Mia’s faces mirrored each other’s. Their eyes were wide and their mouths hung in amazement and you quickly closed up your own mouth and grabbed anxiously at your wine glass, feeling a little bit embarrassed about having talked so much. You couldn't resist the chance to smash their misconceptions about what your goals actually were with helping your clients. None of these people were unlovable. They were all worthy of finding someone and you were going to give it your all to help them see their own value.

“Not at all interesting?” Mia spoke up, “that’s super interesting. That’s really, really cool. Can—Can I have your contact info? I have a friend that would be interested in your services.”

“You have an app too? This is something we could advertise online. It would do extremely well on certain kinds of reddit forums and definitely in most online gaming communities.” Even Ben sounded excited, if not a bit overly judgmental, and you heard a quiet, but hostile scoff next to you.

You ticked your head toward the sound but did not turn to look at him. You knew that scoff well enough to hear the annoyance in his voice at whatever he thought Ben might be insinuating about online gamers and the connection to the incels that haunted the forums of reddit.

“I think it’s a bit premature to think about online advertising. I’m still only one person.”

Ben smiled and shrugged off your quick dismissal of his idea to partner up and advertise your business to the desperately lonely and pathetic gamers of the world. Hell, the more you thought about it, the less inappropriate Baekhyun’s annoyance was. Ben could use some coaching on choosing less insulting words.

Thankfully the dinner was over and the check had been taken care of. You looked away from the palpable awkwardness that slapped you across the face when Baekhyun waved away Ben’s card and paid for the entire bill with his own.

“You can get me next time, buddy.” He definitely said this word sarcastically. It was out of line and you simply could not find the right moment to pinch his leg under the table to get him to behave himself in a discrete enough way that would not get you caught by the other two people at this table.

You let it slide simply because you had no way to stop it. He was ignoring the way you waved your finger frantically at him down by your calf. You knew he could see you in his peripherals.

No, Baekhyun. Stop that. Be nice. Your hand was saying. He wouldn't even look at it.

The dinner was over and the movie was starting soon. You’d picked a restaurant that was close enough to the theatre that you could walk.

You paired off. It was far from natural. You actually caught Baekhyun’s eyes as you stepped quickly and walked ahead of him, falling into step beside Ben and you left behind Baekhyun and Mia to bring up the rear. It took every ounce of self control not to turn around and look behind you to see how closely they walked to each other. To see if Baekhyun kept his hands shoved securely in his pockets or if he swung his arms at his side as he walked, inching a hand closer and closer to Mia’s swinging hand in the hopes of a back of the hand brush of his warm skin against hers.

Your steps must have stalled. You’d reached the theatre and you looked up to locate Ben, only to find him at the box office purchasing four tickets for the movie you’d all agreed to watch days ago. For the life of you, you couldn't remember what you were seeing. You merely followed where you were led and found yourself seated in a center row of a movie house sandwiched between Ben and Baekhyun. You noticed the center armrests had been lifted when you arrived and simply did not bother to lower them since everyone was too full from dinner for any movie snacks or drinks.

The house was mostly empty and then lights dimmed as the movie began. You searched your brain and nearly pulled out your phone to check your chat logs for the name of the film but decided against shining a tiny bright light in a dark room.

The movie began and you were quickly drawn into the narrative. It was a dark film and as the soundtrack began to take on more sinister sounding tones you recognized that your heart was racing and you were feeling the tension all over your body. It was not a gorey horror film, but it was leaning more toward the psychological suspense thriller genre. Not really something you watched much of.

To your left, Ben sat completely still; focused only on the movie screen. He looked so calm and nearly unaffected by the terrifying things happening on the screen. He occasionally shifted in his seat but did not react to the jump scare that flashed before your eyes and made you flinch hard in your seat. You’d reached the point in the film when the main characters were in genuine danger and you began to wonder if anyone would make it out of this movie alive. Was this one of those films where everyone was doomed?

It happened again, another jump, another loud shocking sound and another noise startled you and you dove to your right, hiding your face in the warm shoulder of the man sitting beside you.

The realization was instantaneous. The second you felt the warmth of his arm, and the smell of him hit your nose, you pulled your head up and you straightened out your spine, mumbling a quiet apology to Baekhyun for using his arm to hide behind as you removed any and all contact points you had with his body. You angled your hips and your knees away from him and even went so far as to stick your hands well under your own thighs and keep them there so you didn't grab for him again. You had been doing so well by not touching him at all today. Why did it have to be a scary movie?

Things grew more frantic on the screen. You held your breath and tried your best to keep from reacting as much as you could. How long was this movie? How much longer did you have to endure this? You should have paid more attention to the details of this part of the date. This was your own fault. You were acting like a big baby because you couldn't handle a little frightening scenes in a movie.

It was coming again. You could feel it building. You closed your eyes and terrible sounds were erupting all over. You would just not look. You could make it through if you just didn't look. With your eyes closed the sounds felt louder than ever and when you thought you couldn't take it anymore you considered committing the enormous sin of getting up during the climax of the movie to use the bathroom just so you didn't have to sit through this anymore.

There was a shift beside you then. You felt warm fingers inching down your forearm, traveling the path your hand took that led below your thigh and someone was reaching for your hand and pulling it out from where you’d been sitting on it. Someone to your right was gripping your hand with his own warm hand and you opened your eyes to look down between the hidden space between your hip and Baekhyun’s hip. There, you saw the grip of his hand that wrapped securely around yours.

He squeezed down once and you followed the length of him up to catch a glimpse of the side of his face. He was looking up at the screen. His eyes were open and he did not flinch at all. He was so still aside from the occasional movement of his lips when he moistened them with his tongue.

You could handle this if he lent you a little bit of his strength like this. Your eyes returned to the screen but your mind wandered back down to the secure comfort you felt in his hand.

You felt your own secret throb.

It made you flinch just a little bit and Baekhyun’s hand shifted then. He moved, lifting the tight grip for a moment and you wondered if he was done, would he take his hand back and leave you cold and afraid again? The lift was for the shift of his fingers and you felt the push of each digit between yours. He pushed his fingers between yours; interlocking your hands together with his and his thumb moved lightly over your own thumb, brushing comforting strokes again and again through the loud and scary and shocking scenes that played over that screen.

This time the racing you felt in your chest had nothing to do with the scary movie. He was touching you. He was holding your hand in secret. It felt forbidden with his date sitting right beside him like she was and with your date seated right beside you like he was. All of your attention was down on the slow pressure you felt from his thumb as it traced the shape of your own thumb down from the very bottom up to the tip, around again. The simple up and down had a slow and sensual rhythm to it. When he lifted his hand his thumb moved and you held your breath to feel that same very slow touching trace the outline of the palm of your hand again and again. He drew absentminded shapes into your skin with the pointed tip of his thumb and your eyes drifted closed as the longing grew within you. He followed the paths of the creases in your skin like a palm reader. He did not even need light to see them, he simply felt them and traced along the paths.

You let him.

You felt bewitched.

You loved him.

The credits rolled on the screen and the lights switched on. The change was abrupt. You were taken by surprise and shocked by it like you were from the jump scares in the film.

His warmth left you. His wandering light touch, his deliberate and careful exploration of the lines that made up the palm of your hand vanished.

Everyone was standing and everyone was walking out of the theatre house and your mind felt clouded and dazed but you followed where their steps led and you found yourself standing outside of the exit doors with the three other people who you entered with.

Baekhyun stood beside Mia and Ben occupied the space of the sidewalk square that you also stood inside.

It was the end of a night. You felt an overwhelming urge for this evening to be done so you could go home and shower and maybe eat something sweet and distracting and maybe made out of chocolate.

“Well this was fun,” it was your own voice that ultimately called it.

Mia had been looking at Baekhyun who had been looking down at his own feet as he lightly tapped his foot on the concrete below. Three taps.

Tap, tap, tap.

You felt a jolt of realization. Baekhyun had just tapped his foot thrice on the floor below him well within your sight and you recognized what that meant. He was feeling done. He was done with all of this exhausting socializing and being out in public with so many people around and he wanted to go home now. This was him asking you for help now as he wasn't sure how to end the date but wanted it to be over.

“What about...grabbing some drinks, maybe...” Mia was talking only to Baekhyun as she looked at him, “if you aren't too tired.”

“Hey Baek, isn’t your grandmother coming over early tomorrow? Do you still have to get ready for that?” You interjected suddenly and Baekhyun looked up into your face with his mouth open and you watched his eyes move slowly over your face as he recognized what you were doing. You were giving him an out. Mia had asked him to go for drinks and you were giving him an excuse, should he need it.

You both knew his grandma came every other Sunday. You both vividly remembered the wonderful visit you had at the beginning of the week with her and she wasn’t due to arrive again until next Sunday.

He could simply correct you if he really did want to go with her. He could call you a dummy and tell you that you had the wrong week again and playfully tap you on the head to jog your brain back into functioning the right way as he often did when you got something mixed up.

“Oh, yeah she is,” Baekhyun grabbed your convenient reminder from the air and smiled a rueful smile directed at Mia. His smile widened with the wince on his face, “that’s too bad.” He added and Mia took it well.

She smiled and nodded her head and there were well wishes for a safe trip home all around as you all parted ways.

Ben said he would text you later. Baekhyun told Mia the same and you waited until they both walked away to follow Baekhyun back to his car for the quiet ride home.

The silence was heavy, but it was comfortable.

Baekhyun didn't speak at all and you could tell by the way he carried himself that he was tired. He wasn’t normally an extroverted person and found it very draining to carry on a full conversation with friends he knew well. Strangers like he had been with tonight, well, you could see the fatigue in his movements and you knew he needed something warm to drink and maybe some comfort with a familiar favorite tv show to zone out in front of.

You handled it better. You were used to having to go out of your home occasionally and you even enjoyed socializing with your coworkers on the few days you went in to the office for work. You felt a bit drained but mostly you were preoccupied with watching how he was handling it and you were also burning with curiosity to know how Baekhyun felt about the whole thing.

He’d wandered into the living room and he found the sofa. You followed him close behind and grabbed the remote, flipping to a familiar and funny cartoon that you often saw him playing in the background as he worked on things. He didn't usually watch it that closely but it was comforting enough to stay on and keep his mind occupied for a while.

You didn't speak. Everything you had to ask him could wait. Even the scolding you had for him about how he acted toward Ben could also wait. You’d let the man breathe a little first.

You busied yourself in the kitchen making two cups of hot tea and when you returned you found his head leaning against the back of the couch with his eyes still glued to the screen. He had a passive smile on his face and he reacted positively to the wacky scenarios the characters found themselves in. He would occasionally speak out loud, speaking along with a funny line he knew by heart and you found it impossible to resist saying the follow up joke. You knew this show as well as he did.

He accepted the tea with a smile and had a few sips and you set your mug on the coffee table in favorable of the comfortable side of the sofa, the side with the pillows that allowed you to rest your head comfortably as you watched the big tv.

You were feeling pretty good. Baekhyun had now officially gone on his first date with a real girl who wasn’t you and he’d had a nice time. You could see from where you laid your head down how relaxed his face was as he giggled at the show.

You stretched and you felt his warm thigh with your foot. This sofa was long enough for you to stretch out completely and you only barely reached where he sat at the other side. You wiggled your toes, unable to resist the light messing with him that you often gave in to and his hand reached down to grab ahold of your foot, which he held in place as he paid attention to the tv.

Your phone buzzed in your pocket and you sat up a little bit to pull it out.

You saw a text message from Ben.

From the preview you got the idea of what kind of text message the man would be sending you an hour after your first, and apparently your last date with him.

-Hey you seem like a super cool girl, but...

The preview showed you enough to know that he was dumping you before you’d even gotten anything started with him.

You opened the text. Your curiosity outweighed your sense of self preservation.

-...but whatever’s going on between you and your roommate, well it doesn’t really seem like there’s much room for me. I just don't think I can start something knowing I’ve already lost. Thanks for inviting me tonight. The movie was fun. Good luck with everything. - Ben

You felt the sting.

You couldn't help it. You’d spent all evening watching Baekhyun interact with Mia with every ounce of your self control devoted to not letting your jealousy show at all. At one point you’d been so damn engrossed in them that you forgot Ben was even there. What an unfair and shitty situation to have put him in. You quickly keyed out an apology for your crappy date etiquette and thanked him for going out with you tonight.

You couldn't even blame him for anything. He had been sweet and he had tried his best to be the perfect gentleman. What had you expected?

You sent the last message you would ever send to Ben and tossed your phone roughly toward the coffee table. It bounced but landed in the middle.

The racket called Baekhyun’s attention and he turned to look at you with his eyebrows raised in question.

“Ben just rejected me.”

Somehow saying this out loud to Baekhyun felt better than hiding it from him. It felt less miserable than keeping it inside of yourself and letting yourself suffer the sting of the rejection alone.

Baekhyun’s lips pulled into a small frown and he took out his cell phone from his pocket and tossed it roughly on the coffee table beside yours. It took a similar bounce and your eyes widened in surprise at the sudden gesture.

“No way, not Mia too,” you said in genuine fear and Baekhyun shook his head with his shrug still well in place.

“Nah, I just can't lay down with my phone in my pocket,” he said as he wiggled on the sofa trying to get comfortable, “though in hindsight I can see how you would think that, sorry. Mia hasn’t texted yet.”

He was wiggling, finding no comfort in all the positions he tried and you caught his wandering eyes for a second as you lightly tapped a hand over your belly.

This…

This would be fine. This was something you both did sometimes. Baekhyun said your belly was warm and comfy and made the best noises and he liked to use you as a pillow when he was just too tired to go to his own bed.

He moved right away at your invitation and you let your legs part around his chest as he laid his head down right on top of you. He turned his head to face the tv and didn't even squirm too much before he sighed out loud. His arms laid on either side of your waist and you felt the constriction as he lightly squeezed around you.

You really hadn’t gotten to touch him all day. Your fingers found their way into his hair and you felt a low moan from the back of his throat travel though your body as you raked your nails down the back of his head to his nape.

“Peanut,” you said softly, feeling every little bit of the annoying little tickle of that stupid secret sitting inside of you.

You could feel the heaviness of his body as he gave in and relaxed his muscles on you. You felt every breath he took and they seemed to be changing as you played with his hair and he gave in to the relaxing comfort you offered him.

“Hmm?” He replied after a long while. You angled your face and could see that his eyes were closed.

“How was the date? Was it nice?”

You had so many hopes for him. You were trying your best to ignore the pangs of your own selfish jealousy and get past it all to get to something good for him. Something that would make him understand how incredible he was. How beautiful he was inside and out and how precious of a human being he was.

“Mhmm, I liked it.” He said softly and he shifted and you felt him tighten his hold around your waist briefly before he relaxed again.

“Did you really? Do you think you liked Mia?” You kept your voice strong. You did not allow your fears to overcome your voice. You were okay with this if he was okay.

He did not answer right away. You’d stopped playing with his hair and you kept your hand rested over his head. He was so warm. He was so lovely.

“Do you want me to like Mia?”

No.

Mia would be so good to him.

You did not answer. Your answer would have been no. It would have been selfish. You’d just been dumped by your date, how dare his date have gone so well. You’d both been on the same date. You could still see the way she looked at him. She found him just as lovely as you did.

You felt a thickness at the back of your throat and you swallowed it down.

“I’m trying, Bug. She’s very nice to talk to. Do you think I should like her?”

Was this because of his mistrust of people? Was this his shyness about letting someone he didn't know very well in close?

You couldn't respond. You did not trust yourself to do the right thing.

“You should go rest if you’re sleepy,” you said, you know, like a coward.

It took him a few minutes of laying on top of you before he realized that you were right and he would be much more comfortable in his own bed. He nodded and pushed up with his arms, and his eyes stayed closed and his head stayed hung down as his feet shuffled and he made his way into his bedroom, leaving his door open you merely heard the loud sound of him plopping down on his bed.

You were stuck where he left you.

Stuck in about as crappy a mood as you’d ever found yourself.

You hated everything about this. You hated how much you loved him and you hated how receptive he was to the idea of dating Mia. You hated how she looked at him and giggled at his small jokes and you hated HATED the way his cheeks blushed and the shy smiles he gave her when she talked to him.

You laid there and you stewed in your mood for longer than was good for you and the only thing that made your it up was the simultaneous buzzing that brought both of your cell phones to life on the coffee table.

You reached for yours. It’s as your dating coach app. Baekhyun had received a new message from Mia. The feelings that surged through you were taking over your sense of what was good and what was right and what was proper behavior for someone like you to participate in.

You swiped to read the message.

-Hi Baekhyun. Sorry I couldn't wait until tomorrow to text you. I had an amazing time tonight and I was wondering if you would like to meet up tomorrow after your Grandmother’s visit for coffee? I have something I’d like to ask you.

You felt as if your body was on fire.

You could feel it deep inside your chest, deeper still inside your belly where his head had been resting moments before. You felt it in the palm of your hand where his thumb had traced the patterns of lines there. You felt it in your lips that he had kissed and in your tongue ached inside of your mouth from your stupid secret.

You reached for your phone. You opened the app for the power he’d given only to you and you responded to her message as if you were Baekhyun.

-Hi, Yeah, that sounds fine. I’ll meet you at 1pm.

Your hands moved on their own. You moved to the internal commands of your app and you deleted both of the messages from the chat history. When you picked up his phone you saw the notification for Mia’s message vanish before your eyes and when you unlocked it and accessed his chat log, there was no sign of the unimaginable and unforgivable sin you had just committed against him.

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 , Part 6 , Part 7 , Part 8 , Part 9 , Part 10

Tag list: @j-pping @blahblahblah-boo @his-mochi-cheeks @amyeonzing@littleflowercrown13 @baekinmylife @insta1010 @nana-banana @f4ncyvelvet@bbhbeth @totallynerdstuff @byunbabybaek @maijinki @bbyunz@theclawofaraven @kingkushdealer @uhobob @baekswifey @punchmebaekhyun @xlxbaekhyuneex

#baekhyun #baekhyun fanfic #exo #exo fanfic #exo fic #baekhyun fic #baekhyun ff #exo ff #baekhyun scenario #baekhyun chaptered #baekhyun fluff #baekhyun angst #baekhyun smut

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duuhrayliegh · 3 years

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Fuck Misogyny

request: Bucky uses his newly gained knowledge of feminism to squash misogynistic interview questions. @ptrs-prkrs

warnings: language, creepy men, feminist!bucky

a/n: hey babes!! i hope this lived up to what you wanted! i couldn’t find the exact video you were referencing but i know what you’re talking about, so i drew inspiration from a few others.

p.s.: my requests and tag lists are open!!

xoxo ray

full m.list

The set up was simple. A long row of fold out tables covered in black fabric, microphones in front of each seat. Black papers were taped to the backs of the microphones with each team member's name. Bucky had told Evie that he wasn’t going to be able to work out with her today because of this so it better be worth it. The PR manager for the team, Amanda, had set everything up. Hired the mediator, notified the press, everything. Ever since they announced that they were going to be hosting an Avenger’s Q&A Panel, the internet quite literally broke.

Of course Bucky had been doing lives on TikTok with the group of five for the past couple of weeks now, so he was becoming quite comfortable in this format. He’s become increasingly active on his social media accounts, gaining more and more followers everyday. Granted, there were still haters, as Freddie called them, but Bucky ignored them for the most part.

Bucky was actually excited for this press meeting. He was finally gaining traction in the media and he knew how to correctly answer their questions. As Amanda had explained, there was going to be several questions from the mediator, tons from the press that they had invited, and then some fan questions as well. They apparently were going to be live streaming the conference on YouTube allowing them to read the comments and questions as it went on.

“Okay, everyone. You have two minutes until we start.” The team was in an empty board room in the Hilton hotel. Tony didn’t want everyone on the compound’s grass because he just had it fixed. Bucky scanned his fellow teammates. It was impossible for everyone to dress for the same event. Steve was wearing a shirt that was almost bursting at the seams with a pair of jeans and sneakers.

Tony was wearing a lovely Tom Ford, three piece, two-button, of course. Natasha and Wanda were wearing ripped jeans and casual tops. Vision was wearing a sweater vest and slacks, Bruce was clad in slacks as well a jacket covering his shoulders. Sam was wearing a button-up shirt and pressed jeans and he couldn’t find Clint anywhere, probably hiding in the rafters again.

Bucky had his iconic leather jacket donning his shoulders, a pair of slightly ripped jeans. His outfit was picked out by Cassie and Penny. “You need to look like you care but like you don’t at the same time.” Is what they said, the phrase made Bucky shake his head. His hair had finally started growing back and he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about it.

He had gotten help from Evie before he left Cassie’s apartment. She had pulled back the top half, braiding back two sections into the bun at the back of his head. There were pieces dangling in front of his eyes, “to accentuate the facial features, trust me they’ll love it.” Was Evie’s explanation as they pushed him out of the apartment, so he wouldn’t be late.

“Alright guys! They’re calling your names!” The team filed out of the board room and into a large ballroom. Bottles of water were placed beside each placemat. Tony went out first, followed by Steve, then Bruce, Natasha, Clint, Wanda, Vision, Sam and ending with Bucky. They all settled into their seats, Bucky peeled his jacket off himself, placing it on the back of his chair. His black short sleeved shirt highlighted the gold inlays of his vibranium arm.

“Oh, I see we’re showing some muscle today huh, Buck?” Sam teased as Bucky took his seat next to him. Bucky groaned in realization, covering his microphone so it didn’t pick up what he planned to say.

“Good God, is this what it’s going to be like the entire panel? You just bugging the shit outta me?” They shared a laugh making the rest of the members look at the pair. The audience clapped as they were introduced and continued clapping as they assembled before them.

“Thank you. We would like to welcome everyone to the first, of hopefully many, Avenger’s Q&A Panel.” The female mediator, Stacey, read the assigned lines off the sheet on her podium. “We are going to start with questions we curated for the team and then open it up to the members of the press. After that we will turn to our live stream and answer some viewer questions.” The press rustled in their seats, pulling out pens and journals as well as their phones to record. “Okay, starting off with a question directed at the Avengers in general. How are you feeling about coming before the media in this type of format?” Glances were exchanged between the members, not sure on who was going to start.

“I feel that this is a great way for the general public to learn a little bit more about each individual team member.” Vision was the first to respond and Steve added on.

“Yeah, I definitely think that there’s a common misconception that we don’t want to engage with the media or the general public. We do, unfortunately due to the amount of research and training that we are doing behind the scenes, it just goes to the back of our minds.”

“Right. So Tony and Bruce, we all know that you two are geniuses. What are your feelings on expanding the teachings of STEM courses to not only high school, but as far back as elementary school or even kindergarten?” The pair thought about the question before answering.

“Well, I definitely think that offering STEM-based classes at a younger age would be beneficial, especially if we were to allow the kids to continue to switch what they want to focus on.” Bruce started. “It’s incredibly anxiety-inducing for teenagers to have to decide what they’re going to do with their life right before they are thrust into an unforgiving world.”

“Yeah, I’ll never understand why we do that to our future leaders, it’s honestly baffling. Why do American schools wait until high school to require our children to learn foriegn languages, they aren’t going to retain that information. The same applies for such comprehensive courses like STEM-based ones. If you wait until their brains are already developed so far, then they’ve already decided what they think is interesting and if they don’t find those courses interesting then they aren’t going to pay attention.” Tony finished Bruce's thought before nodding to each other smugly, obviously proud of themselves for answering the question so well.

“Interesting that you see it that way. This last one goes out to everyone and then we’ll open it up to the reporters. How do you deal with the stress and anxiety that comes with being an Avenger? Do you feel a certain amount of pressure to always do the right thing?” Stacey shuffled her papers, tapping them twice on the podium.

“We all have our own routines and ways that we decompress after missions so that really just depends on the person. Like I think that Bruce listens to opera music, and Wanda mediatates, Tony tinkers. It depends on the person.” Natasha answered concisely, making Bucky nod his head. He could recall all of those things to be true.

“Oh definitely, and it doesn’t hurt that we have a former VA Trauma Counselor on board to help us work through the harder stuff.” Steve added a gesture of his head to Sam.

“Speaking of that Sam, just a quick question before we open it up. How difficult was it for you to transition from regular Air Force missions to Avenger level missions?” Sam made a face at Stacey before answering.

“Um, I mean, it’s not that different. You’re always fighting one of the Big Three-- aliens, androids, or wizards, no matter what department you’re working with. The only transition I had to deal with was the Tony Stark-erized suits. Now that I think of it, Tony, can we make it tighter?” Sam quipped making the room laugh with ease.

“Alright, well now we’re going to open it up to the reporters. Starting with this gentleman in the front and then if we could also give a microphone to someone on that side of the room. Okay, thank you.” The first reporter stood up, holding the microphone in one hand and his phone in the other.

“Hello. John from Huffington Post. The Avengers inspire almost everyone around the world, so we would like to know who inspires you? Who do you look up to in terms of your idols?” He sat back down as the team contemplated their answers.

“Gandhi.” Bruce said, Tony snapped his fingers and pointed at him then added. “Pepper, she’s so amazing.” Steve looked down to Bucky, who shrugged.

“I would probably have to say that my sister, Sarah, inspires me. She raised her two sons, Cas and AJ, by herself after the Blip and was able to keep the family business going.” Sam’s answer made Bucky smile. Sam had brought him to their house in Delacroix, he remembered waking up to Cas and AJ playing in the kitchen, happy giggles filtering through reminding him of his time in Wakanda. By the time that Bucky had refocused on the conversation they had moved on without his answer. Several different questions went by, all directed to the team at large, until Chad.

“Hi, I’m Chad for the Daily Mail. My question is for Wanda and Natasha.” The pair of women perked up, excited to have a specific question. “Do you find that your equipment hinders you in doing your job as well as your male counterparts?” Stunned expressions settled over the womens faces, then annoyance. Bucky’s brows shot up to his hairline, appalled that someone had the balls to ask that. Wanda and Natasha handled the question with grace and much more restraint than Bucky would have.

“Well for me, I am able to move things with my mind so I can throw things randomly at people even if I’m not in the room. I’ve been very fortunate to work with Natasha who has Widow training, so my hand to hand combat is improving immensely. And being able to work with Princess Shuri in Wakanda to learn how to fully control my powers. It’s an ever evolving process that I’m always excited to take on.” Bucky nodded and turned his attention to Natasha.

“My favorite thing is training with either Steve or Bucky because they push me to do my best. We all have our specialties here and it’s nice to learn new skills or improve old ones with people who support you.” Natasha sat back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest, throwing daggers with her eyes at Chad in the audience, waiting for him to say something else. Chad stood again, yelling so he could be heard over the crowd’s commotion.

“That’s great, ladies, but forgive me, you didn’t answer the question I asked.” Bucky pushed forward in his seat, leaning into his microphone.

“I’m sorry, I think I misunderstood what you asked them then. I would like for you to clarify what you mean by equipment.” Chad balked, not expecting a male’s voice to respond.

“You know what’s implied by equipment, sir.” Bucky’s jaw clenched at the man.

“Did you just ask two of the most capable women that I’ve ever known, if their equipment, which I’m assuming you’re referring their breasts, made it to where they couldn’t do their job as good as the rest of their male counterparts. Just to be clear, that’s what you’re asking?” Chad stuttered as he answered yes.

“Right, well first off that’s disgusting. Just a bit of background for you, Wanda is the strongest Avenger here, plain and simple. As for Natasha, she’s the smartest woman I’ve ever met and she can take down every single male here.” Bucky took a breath before continuing. “So, what I think you really want to know is how they encourage their teammates to keep up with them.” He dropped his head to look at the two women down the line.

“Don’t worry Chad, I’ll ask them the right question, since you can’t quite seem to understand how to respect women.” The team was holding back snickers at Chad’s reaction. “Wanda, Natasha. Chad wants to know how the hell you push your male teammates to be just as good as you are. What are your strategies to keep us on our toes while training?” Claps sounded from the women press members and Bucky awaited the pair's response. The next press member stood and asked a question.

“Hi, I’m Chloe from Vanity Fair. This question goes to everyone on the panel.” Bucky settled in for another question that didn’t matter. “How do you continue to be aware of things happening in our society today? Do you keep up-to-date through new channels, or social media?” The answers were rather generic from the team, all of them rather uncomfortable from the tension that Bucky and Chad had created. Stacey interrupted after Chloe’s question.

“Okay, we’re going to open it up to viewer questions from our live stream.” An iPad was placed on the podium in front of Stacey and her eyebrows rose. “Okay, there’s quite a variety here. Here’s one for Steve and Bucky.” Bucky perked up, nervous to answer because his adrenaline had worn off.

“One viewer asks, ‘Steve and Bucky, being from the 40’s, women were treated like second thoughts and were talked about like objects. Now, you’re in the 21st century, not much has changed. What have you been doing to support feminist causes?’”

“I just want to say that everyone should be answering this. It’s true that during the 40’s women were not treated the right way, and they still aren’t today. An 18 year old can’t walk down the street at nine o’clock at night without being catcalled. I am a proud feminist, as everyone should be. I think that as a team we are doing pretty well in that department. As far as what I’m doing to support feminist causes, I’m doing as much as I can. I actually recently enrolled in online classes to expand my knowledge on many subjects, seeing as how I am from the 40’s and all.” The crowd laughed along with Bucky.

“Almost all of my classes have to do with either psychology or gender studies, it’s a fascinatingly haunting subject. One book that I’m reading right now was suggested to me by my friend Cassie, it’s called Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot. The author doesn’t let up and I’m only halfway through it. Look, I’m still educating myself, but I’m a strong believer in doing what is right for everyone, so I’m trying. Thankfully I have a few people keeping me in check as far as my actions.” Bucky thought his response was well thought out for being an on the fly question. He was new to the concept of feminism but that didn’t change the fact that it made total sense.

“I’m with Bucky on this. The 40’s were a rough time. I remember the first time I met Peggy Carter, I was astonished that a woman could be in such a powerful position. One of the first things she did after I met her was punch out someone who made a sexual comment to her. I’ve been supporting feminist causes ever since working with Peggy.” Steve added, a sad smile spreading on his face reminiscing Peggy.

“This one says, ‘As a total fan of all of you, I love seeing what you post on your social media accounts. When are the rest of the Avengers going to follow Bucky’s lead and download TikTok?’” Bucky’s head flew back into a full body laugh. Tony shifted forward in his seat, pointing his finger at the laughing man down the table.

“I would just like to say he didn’t get that approved before doing it. However, it did go over really well, so we’ll consider it.” Wanda’s mouth rolled inwards, stifling her laughter.

“We’ll consider it, you’re such an old man. Most of us have TikTok already, we just don’t make content on it like Barnes over here.” Sam said, tossing his head in Bucky’s direction.

“I’ve got like three videos on there!” Bucky and Sam began bantering back and forth.

“Yeah and one of them is dancing to a Cardi B song! Who even showed you that? I thought you only like 40’s music?” Bucky made a face at the man.

“Uh, just because I didn’t like your suggestions for music doesn’t mean I don’t have taste. My Spotify playlist is filling out quite nicely, Wilson.” Bucky and Sam didn’t quit fighting from then on, just little jabs at each other under the table.

“Here’s a good one,” Stacey had a smile on her face, “Are you allies of the LGBTQ+ community?” Bucky responded quickly with no hesitation.

“Yes, many of my friends are members of the Alphabet Mafia. Why wouldn’t we be?” Wanda nodded at his question, laughing at his use of the phrase Alphabet Mafia.

“Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’m dating a fucking android, I’d be pretty hypocrictal if I wasn’t an ally. Nat, Clint what about you?” Clint bobbed his head in response.

“Oh yeah. We all are, even the Star Spangled Man with a Plan.” Steve’s shoulders shook with laughter at Clint’s nickname for him. The team broke out into laughter, joining Steve. Stacey cleared her throat, commanding the attention of the room again.

“Alright, everybody! That’s it for today.” She glanced down at her papers. “We would like to thank everyone for coming out today and joining the Avengers Q&A Panel. At this time we are unaware, if we will be conducting another one of these, but the odds look good based on the response.” The team filed out of the ballroom and into the empty boardroom. Bucky was the last to get into the room and he was approached by Natasha and Wanda immediately. Wanda wrapped her arms around him in a bear hug.

“That was so sick, Bucky!” She stepped back and Natasha offered him a side hug as well. “Where’d you learn all that? And since when are you taking online classes?”

“That guy was being an asshole, he needed to be put in his place. I hope you guys didn’t feel like I overstepped or anything.” Bucky hung his arm over Wanda’s shoulder, leaning his weight on her. “And I started about two months ago. They’re going really well, I’m learning a lot and enjoying it surprisingly. It’s a good thing to do in my free time since I’m not always on missions.”

“I’m proud of you James, that was impressive.” Natasha complimented him, she wasn’t usually a woman of many words so that was a lot. Bucky smiled at her, nodding his head. His phone began buzzing in his back pocket, so he excused himself from their conversation. His screen displayed one of Evie’s senior pictures, signalling that she was calling him. He pushed the green button and brought the phone to his ear to answer her call.

“Hello?” She ignored his greeting with a squeal.

“Check your Twitter! Bucky, you’re trending! Here I’m putting you on speaker, we’re all here Buck!” Shuffling noises were heard through the speaker as Evie began reading the tweets to Bucky. Laughs from Cassie, Freddie and Penny could be heard behind Evie’s voice.

“Oh my gosh Eve! Just let the man get back to what he was doing!” Freddie yelled at an excited Evie, who retaliated with a scoff.

“Okay, okay! Just remember we have a movie night tomorrow! It’s Penny’s turn to pick so we don’t know what to expect.” Evie mumbled the last part into her phone speaker. Bucky heard the impact of a pillow hit Evie, causing her to grunt in pain. “Okay! We’ll talk to you later, Buck! See you soon!” She hung up the phone before he could get a word in edgewise. Bucky shook his head as he shoved his phone back into his pocket. Amanda approached Bucky asking to speak with him privately.

“So we’re getting a flood of interview requests from networks and papers. We would like to start running with this. We’ll have to go over everything with our PR guy, Ryan, but it should work out. As long as you’re comfortable with all of this.” Bucky smiled and nodded, following after Amanda as she continued explaining what would happen going forward.

He was nervous, of course, but he could tell these nerves were coming from a place of excitement instead of fear, which was a new sensation for the man. It wasn’t unwelcome, it was the same as when he first started hanging out with Cassie, Penny, Freddie and Evie. It was the same when he went on his first mission with the team. Bucky was ready to tackle this next adventure, whatever it would entail.

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hopeymchope · 3 years

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Wonder Egg Priority finale thoughts

My Tumblr has a lot of anti-bully content, so it was probably no surprise when I began to watch and enjoy Wonder Egg Project this past spring. The series famously hit production delays that forced them to put out a mid-series recap episode, and that decision in turn forced them to push the final episode until late June. But now that the series (or at least season 1) is out there and complete, I thought I’d talk about how it all shook out in the end as well as the questions it left me sitting with.

For the uninitiated, here’s a bit of the context: Wonder Egg Project deals with four middle-school teen girls who’ve undergone hardships either at home or at school or both. They all lose someone they care about to tragic suicides, and then they discover the titular wonder eggs. They get these eggs from a vending machine and then, when they fall asleep, they enter a dreamworld where these eggs hatch to reveal a young person who recently committed suicide. For that night, it is the duty of the girl who got that egg to fight and defend that suicide victim from monstrous enemies that represent their abusers and oppressors. The girls are told that if they protect enough of these victims over many nights, they will be able to resurrect the specific person they lost to suicide. But of course, if you get injured or killed in the dreamworld, it affects your body in reality as well.

The squad: Ai, Neiru, Rika, and Momoe.

Obviously, bullying is among the topics most frequently explored here, but we also deal with so many other terrible things that people might experience during childhood and adolescence. Physical, verbal, and sexual abuse are all on the table. Coming to terms with one’s gender identity is raised. It’s a show that manages to tackle a lot of heavy subjects through the lens of what’s essentially magical girl combat. I mean, there are no outfit transformations or any of that stuff, but still.

With THAT out of the way, let me talk about how the series wrapped up.

It’s clear to the viewers that there’s a lot that doesn’t make sense during the show — it’s intentionally very trippy and ethereal at times — and there’s also a lot that raises obvious questions even if you grasp it. Where do the eggs and their connection to the recently deceased come from? How do the psychological traumas of the various egg-children manifest as monsters that can literally kill you? What’s the deal with Acca and Ura-Acca and their freaky dummy bodies? What are they getting out of this whole deal with the eggs and the girls? What do the repeated references to the “temptation of death” mean? How does access to the Egg Garden even work? Is it really possible to resurrect their dead friends? Is Mr. Sawaki a predator or a chill guy or what? Why did Neiru’s sister stab her? And so on.

The writers could’ve opted to keep things mysterious and hazy and metaphysical for the entire run or they could’ve provided lots of explanations and tried to ground this weird story in some sort of strange logic, but I’m actually pleased that they opted to go down the middle. There are answers for many things, but not for all. And when those answers come, they typically just raise more questions as well as doubts to their validity.

SPOILERS for the finale/”special episode” below the cut.

So, obviously the answers for Acca and Ura-Acca are centered around Frill. Frill is this interesting fusion between the artificial and the organic; her body can be injured like any regular physical body, but she’s actually an A.I. on the inside. Acca and Ura-Acca are the exact reverse of this — they’re human minds inside of completely artificial bodies. Exactly how Frill started invading girls’ minds to lure them towards suicide is kept incredibly vague, but she serves as the embodiment of the “temptation of death” that was so-often referenced in the show. Frill doesn’t really appreciate life or care about the finality of death, making her a pretty natural foe for the heroes who have spent the entire series learning to appreciate their lives and bemoaning painful losses.

Can you even believe this bitch?

Acca and Ura-Acca also have documents talking about how warriors of Eros need to battle against Thanatos, the embodiment of death, but what’s that all about? We don’t really get into it. Is Frill somehow Thanatos herself? I mean... I guess maybe you could go that route, but I sincerely don’t think that’s meant to be the case. I assume she’s just another player in the game, and she happens to have taken Thanatos’ side in things. Her artificial existence and resentment of her fathers leads her to treat death flippantly. She was programmed to be selfish sometimes, and that selfishness has ultimately manifested itself in the worst possible ways. Intriguingly, we see Acca and Ura-Acca act similarly selfish in how they drive our four heroes to risk their lives just to battle Frill. Acca in particular shows that he’ll risk anyone’s life to get to Frill, who killed both his wife and daughter. But Acca never has to risk his own life. He’s just risking other people. Both sides of the equation are treating human lives like disposable pawns in some kind of war game.

Y’all are SUPER-SKETCH.

It’s never really clear how these eggs work. We’re told that the Accas created the eggs, and honestly, I could’ve figured as much on my own. But they don’t try to explain how the eggs can contain the souls of suicide victims or how they manifest those people into dreams, and frankly, it’s probably better not to try.

I was really shocked that the girls actually manage to resurrect their dead friends. I was 100% certain that was going to be a scam and the point was going to be about learning to move on and live for the moment and appreciate those bonds while you had them, etc. And there is some of that. Alas, the price of resurrecting those people they care about is that the people in question no longer know them or remember them. That was pretty brutal... having our heroes nearly die over and over in service of people who ultimately will no longer care about them at all. Although they did the impossible and brought someone back to life, they had to lose those people all over again. I suppose this, like much fo the finale, emphasizes that we should appreciate our relationships while they last, because you can lose them for so many reasons. Regardless, I’m not surprised that Momoe just wanted to quit and avoid getting hurt after that. It’s understandable.

There’s a lot of discussion around parallels in the last two episodes. Parallel worlds with alternate versions of the self are raised multiple times, Ai gets an awesome encounter with a parallel version of herself that really brought her emotional journey to a head, and we even have to deal with a doppleganger of Neiru at the end. This leads to the revelation that Neiru looks exactly like her formerly deceased sister... a fact that presumably was part of what drove the sister to attack Neiru in the first place. Given that we’ve already been told that they were both genetically engineered, their identical appearances don’ seem that strange. But then the finale tells us that Neiru’s one dream is “to be human,” and suddenly the characters assume Neiru was an A.I. just like Frill. That... seems like a leap to me. I mean, she was genetically engineered to lead her company and never had a family of her own; no wonder she feels inhuman! So I’m not sure if I should take this at face value.

Neiru real or fake challenge

Another thing that I don’t think we can take at face value is Mr. Sawaki’s explanation of Koito’s death. In episode 12, we meet a parallel version of Ai who actually killed herself. The big boss monster for Ai to fight while protecting Alt-Ai? It’s a dark, abusive version of Sawaki. And our Ai inexplicably assumes this monster was made from her own fears. A very bizarre conclusion to jump to when you remember that every single boss monster has been the abuser of the victim that the girls were defending in that episode. By all available evidence, the Sawaki monster should be a parallel-world Sawaki who is very much exactly the scumbag he appears to be! Notice how Alt-Ai never says a damn word about the Sawaki Monster - never asks who he is or why he’s like this, etc? She’s not even surprised. That just lends further credence to my belief. FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE.

So in the finale, when our version of Mr. Sawaki claims (via a VERY awkwardly inserted voiceover) that Koito’s death was an accident after she tried to ruin his reputation because she fell in love with him, why should I believe any of it?! The previous episode introduced me to Abusive Sawaki! Sure, we don’t have any reason to assume our Sawaki is That Dick, but we JUST learned that he’s certainly capable. Furthermore, how could Koito suddenly be the ONLY accidental death among all of the available suicide victims in the dreamworld? She shouldn’t have even appeared there if it was just an accident! Although I’d like to believe that Sawaki was someone who Ai and the girls were jumping to conclusions about based on nothing... but it sure doesn’t look that way from here. And given how the show ends things, I fear we may have a hard time learning anything else about Sawaki. Ai changes schools and runs away, there is zero comment on what happened to Sawaki’s relationship with her mom... he’s just gone now.

As the final episode winds down, we see Rika and Ai fall back into bad habits, as they all treat Neiru just like they treated the girls they tried so hard to save. Rika acts disgusted by a friend and abandons her, treating Neiru the same way she treated Cheimi. When Neiru finally reaches out to Ai and calls her, Ai ignores the call and throws her phone away, thereby ignoring her friend’s needs in the same way she ignored Koito’s when she failed to record the bullying Koito was experiencing. You might even be able to connect Momoe’s choice to walk away for the sake of self-preservation to her decision to reject Haruka and walk away, honestly. And to compound the bad news that the show gives us near the end, we skip forward months to learn that Ai, Rika and Momoe have all drifted apart. Ai is in a new school, but we don’t see her with any new friends. She’s back where she started the show.

The difference, however, is that she doesn’t seem hopeless and lonely. She seems wistful, sure, but she never seems beaten down. She still treasures the friendships she built even if they wind up fading away. So there’s still a message in here about moving on, because even if you lose a person or a connection, it will forever matter.

*insert engine rev-up noises*

In the final moments, we see Ai preparing to run in the exact same pose she used back in episode 1 when she first stood up to the abusers within the dreamworld. This time, she runs to grab her chance to reunite with a dear friend. She takes charge of her own future and her own self-worth, somehow gets back into the Egg Garden (even though Rika wasn’t even allowed to enter after she rescued her specified victim, so uh... how did Ai get back in exactly... ?), and insists she’s going to use the eggs to see Neiru... even though the eggs only let you see the dead up to this point, so uh, that doesn’t really make any sense either. Consistency, motherfucker — DO YOU USE IT?

Amidst all the uncertainty that the finale left us with, at least we can see Ai find herself in a more confident place. She spends much of the series learning to stop running from her problems in the real world. Even after she gains confidence in the battles of her dreams, she struggles to face reality. It’s a huge step when she returns to school. Yet even in the very last episode, she opts to run away to a new school rather than cope with seeing Koito each day. But at last, she decides to take charge of her reality and try to reunite with her new best friend, Neiru. She’s wavered on her path, but ultimately, she’s grown. Although you could simultaneously argue that she’s failing to learn the lesson that rescuing Koito should’ve taught her...

“Ai Ohto is BACK!”

I don’t think any of us expected this finale to be a cliffhanger coming into it. And unfortunately, we don’t know if there will ever be another season or a movie or anything. Given how people reacted to this finale with such overt hate, I really don’t expect anything more. And I think that would be a goddamn shame. Even with a finale that doesn’t quite stick the landing, I still found it fascinating and engaging. The series is more than worth the trip for the characters, for the themes and topics it explores, and even for the fluid action scenes and music. And this is a series that was made by first-time writers and a first-time director! Yet I’d easily call it one of the best animes from the past couple of years. For total newcomers, that’s a goddamn TRIUMPH.

So I hope we reunite with these girls again. I hope Ai manages to get the band back together, find out exactly what’s going on with Neiru, and face down Frill. Even if they never wind up in some ultimate battle with Thanatos, I don’t know that that’s the point. All of us are in a battle with Thanatos every single day, after all. They just need to show how they’ve all gotten stronger together and truly overcome the “Temptation of Death” by beating back Frill (and her ridiculously powerful dreamworld bug-people) as a unit.

But maybe that’s too obvious and simplistic of a message for a show like this one. Maybe this complex ending centered on the main protagonist’s self-actualization and the value of fleeing relationships is more in keeping with the melancholy nature of the series.

... I still really want to see the more obvious happy ending, though. I think they deserve it.

#wonder egg priority #ai ohto #wep #anime #anime reviews #wonder egg special episode #wonder egg priority special episode #wonder egg priority finale #wonder egg finale #wonder egg

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whattodowithace · 3 years

Text

Drinking With Cupid Part II (Chan)

Title: Drinking With Cupid Part II

Pairing: Chan x Reader

Genre: Angst; Fluff

Word Count: 5,159 Words (all parts)

Writer: Whattodowithkpop [Lio]

A/N: I think I have seen a movie or tv show with a similar concept to this, but if I have, I don't remember for certain. I was also inspired by the song 'Drinking With Cupid' by VOILÀ. This is for the@acewriters writing event. *****

The day had finally arrived, their first anniversary, the anniversary of the day they met at Cupid's party in the hallway of a venue neither one expected to find each other at. A lot had progressed for the couple, having become official shortly after their first date, meeting friends and parents and being adored by everyone involved. However, there was still the matter of Chan being Cupid that hadn't been discussed. He had put it off time and time again as all his fear of past relationships resurfaced and made him too self conscious to admit.

After the wonderful year had passed for Chan, he was left with that constant worry that this was going to be another devastating heartbreak, one that was destined for failure from the start. He couldn't shake that feeling, the fear plaguing his heart as he fell for her more and more. He had one thing he had to do, one thing he always promised himself he wouldn't do. Run his own numbers with hers.

She too had her fear, the memory of her past fiancé haunted her, however she loved Chan, and she was confident he was different, confident he wouldn't do that to her. He had told her his stories of his past relationships and how they scarred him and she knew he knew how it felt to love someone for so long and for it to end in despair. Her purpose changed in the year she met Chan, her plan to take down Cupid was on the back burner as she was too consumed in her own happiness to care what happened to the algorithm. She still disagreed with its philosophy, however she had something else to occupy her time with, something she could pour her love and energy into. Chan.

However, little did she know, that her fight with Cupid's algorithm wasn't over and that she was about to face it head on.

Chan arrived to the restaurant first, taking his seat at the reserved table as he awaited her arrival. He was there early, so he didn't mind the wait, however his impatience to tell her his findings on the secret numbers he ran lessened his focus.

He was thankful he didn't have to wait long as he saw her enter into the dark atmosphere of the restaurant, the darkness complimenting her dress as it flowed to the floor, covering up the heels she wore, the heels that held a familiar sound to them as she crossed the foyer to their table. Chan felt underdressed as he inspected her outfit, even though he was in a crisp black suit with a white button up, his black tie being a gift from an investor who was quite wealthy. Next to her he felt that no one could be on par with her beauty or grace. He greeted her with a kiss, his lips lingering on hers as he was captivated by her beauty, forgetting everything else in the world. She's the one that pulls away with a giggle, her arms on his shoulders as she stares into his eyes.

"There is plenty time for that later, Yuchan." She whispers, kissing his cheek before taking her seat, leaving a stunned Chan to recollect his thoughts before sitting across from her.

The waiter that assisted her to their table asked if they wanted wine, to which they agreed and Chan picked out. It was a big night for both of them, however they had different reasons as to why.

"I have something I need to tell you." Chan speaks up, his heart in his ears as he feels as if a rock was sitting in his stomach, making him feel sick.

"I do too." Her smile was a sharp contrast to his nervous facial expression.

Chan takes in a shaky breath as he looks down to his hands, making her worry for him, her smile dropping.

"Chan, are you okay?"

He keeps his head down, tears sitting on the brims of his eyes as his lip begins to quiver. In a shaky voice he responds. "Our numbers aren't compatible."

The soft music that was playing in the restaurant seemed to deafen against her ears as his words bounced in her head. Her heart clenched in pain, her hand pressing against her chest as pain shoots through it.

"I'm Cupid." Chan continues, his eyes still downcast, oblivious to the physical pain he was putting her through. "I ran our numbers because I thought they'd be high, I was so sure we were perfect together and it had a low compatibility rating."

When Chan looks up his eyes widen in concern, standing from the table he runs to her side, crouching next to her as he grasps her free hand in his to try and comfort her in some way. Steady tears streamed down her face as her inhales and exhales were shallow and shaky.

"This whole thing is about Cupid's algorithm?" She choked out, her broken voice making Chan's heart break as he began to regret what he had done.

"My numbers are only in Cupid because I got matched three years ago to the man I got engaged to that later cheated on me before our wedding." Her tears heavier as her words began to sound more like sobs. "He laid there in bed with someone else and said your exact same words. **Our numbers aren't compatible.** And here you are saying the same?"

Chan felt more pain strike his heart as she cried, her sobs quiet, but loud enough to catch the attention of some of the patrons in the establishment.

"I'm so sorry."

With those words he left, fear and guilt plaguing him and causing his chest to swell and his heart to palpitate. The walls felt as if they were closing in on him and he needed to escape, so he ran, leaving her crying with money for the check on the table.

Byeongkwan watches his friend cry, the scene familiar to him as he hears her soft sobs even with her face stuffed in his couch cushion. His heart ached for her, however his anger blazed against the one that caused it. He was so happy for her, her goals in life changing as she got to know Chan more, her desire for revenge dwindling until it was non-existent, his heart swelling as she moved on. And here it was, all crashing down around her, harder than even her first heartbreak with her fiancé. Byeongkwan stood helplessly by as he did his best to care for her as she tried to nurse her broken heart.

Byeongkwan wasn't surprised when he got a call from Chan, especially seeing her phone was off there was no way he could reach her. However, he was expecting his words to be for her to come get her things from his apartment and that he wanted all remnants of her gone from his life.

"How is she?"

Those were his first words, no hello, no acknowledgement toward Byeongkwan at all. He wanted to be happy about this, that Chan seemed to still care for her, however, one man's care wasn't going to be enough to heal her.

"How do you think she is?"

Byeongkwan's words were like venom, his tolerance for Chan at a zero as her sobs traveled through the phone line, loud and clear for Chan to hear, his heart breaking at the sound.

"I was an idiot, I didn't think things through, I got caught up in myself and my own fee-"

Byeongkwan cuts him off, not wanting being the in-between for the two.

"I'm not the one you should be telling that to."

With that, Byeongkwan ended the call, not wanting to hear another word from the boy as he went back to his friend, who had fallen asleep, much to Byeongkwan's relief. He loves her, but anyone would get tired of hearing the deep sobs of a heartbroken girl for hours on end. He covered her the rest of the way, fixing her hair so it would pull away from tear stained cheeks and give her some air. He sighs, leaving for his room to get some sleep himself, sleep overtaking him as soon as his head hits the pillow.

"You're an idiot." Donghun states with bluntness with a deadpan expression.

"I know!" Chan cries, his head falling into his hands.

"I told you you needed to tell her."

"I know, Donghun. I messed up."

"And how are you going to fix it?"

Chan looked up to his friend, his mouth hung open in shock as Donghun's face stays stoic, waiting for an answer.

"This isn't something you fix. I took the most beautiful thing I had and crushed it."

"A year ago, the most beautiful thing in your life was Cupid. You would spend your days and nights pouring your energy into this project and you receive no benefit for it, except a pile of riches that does you no good."

Chan looks up to Donghun, his eyes filled with tears as he hears his friend's words.

"You spent your days and nights pouring your love for her out and receiving the same, if not more, love from her and here you sit feeling sorry for yourself instead of fixing the one good thing you had."

Chan felt guilt rush through him as the images of her crying in the restaurant reenter his mind, his heart aching at the memory of hearing her cry over Byeongkwan's phone.

"I don't know how to fix it."

"Then you need to spend the time and energy to think of way to fix it. It's what you did before and this means a lot more."

Chan knew Donghun was referencing Cupid. When Chan looked at his failed relationships, his way of coping with it was Cupid. She brought him out of the rut he had put himself in with spending all his days on Cupid. He knew Donghun was right, he had to fix it. Chan came to, opening his mouth to thank Donghun before realizing he was already gone, leaving Chan to think for himself. It didn't take a genius to know what had to happen, however, it would be one of the hardest things Chan would have to do.

A week passed and she was still on Byeongkwan's couch, feeling the pain just as strong as she felt it at the restaurant. She thought she knew true heartbreak, but nothing prepared her for the pain she felt now. She avoided all of Chan's calls, even asking Byeongkwan to avoid them also, not wanting any connections left leading her to Chan. She was looking through her phone, the pictures of her and him haunting her as she tired to will herself to delete them, however her heart couldn't bring her to do it, thus resulting in more tears. She sniffles as she hears her name from Byeongkwan's room before hearing a commotion as he reveals himself in the doorway.

"You need to turn on the tv." He says, grabbing the remote to flip on the tv, a news story playing. She feels sadness as she reads the headline, 'Cupid's CEO calls for press conference.'

"Byeongkwan, I don't want to see anything about Cupid or anything associated with Chan." She chokes out, bringing the blanket over her head to block out the screen.

"I would never make you watch something that would hurt you more."

She waits a few moments before dropping the blanket, her tears already streaming as Chan comes to the podium. Cameras flash as they take his pictures while reporters begin asking questions, all of them asking if he was the CEO.

"My name is Kang Yuchan and I am the creator of Cupid." Chan states waiting as the reporters murmur and more cameras flash. "I created Cupid three years ago when I experienced heartbreak after heartbreak. I felt there should have been a way to predict how compatible you were with someone, a way to confirm you were dating the right person. This algorithm has worked for so many people and has helped thousands of couples find their other half. I was so thrilled to see so many people finding love all thanks to Cupid's algorithm. I thought that numbers and percentages were the only way for someone to find true love."

Chan looks down at the podium he stood upon, composing himself before looking back up to address the camera and reporters again.

"A year ago I met someone. Someone who made me unafraid to love that made me forget my philosophy based on numbers. I fell in love by meeting her and then going on dates with her and meeting her family, friends and hearing her embarrassing stories."

She let out a crying laugh, remembering all the stories they both heard about each other.

"I forgot all about percentages, until the night before our anniversary. I got caught up in numbers and compatibility, I got consumed with the facts and figures and I got so scared of giving my heart to her completely even when I knew all she would do was keep it safe."

She looks to Byeongkwan, sobs racking her body as she begs him to turn it off as she feels her heart break more. Byeongkwan looked sorrowful at her and asked her to keep watching for a few more moments.

"I messed up and ended up breaking her heart. All because I had to run our stupid numbers to see if they were compatible. Love isn't determined by numbers or figures, it's found by realizing the best friend you grew up with has always been there for you or the barista at your local coffee shop makes you nervous because she's so cute or... it's found escorting a beautiful woman to a boring corporate party."

The silence that befalls the room was deafening, everyone waiting with bated breath for his next words.

"That is why, I am closing down Cupid."

The reporters scramble to their feet, asking questions as Chan leaves the podium, smiling to the cameras as he makes his exit off the stage.

A knock sounds through Byeongkwan’s apartment, the people inside knowing who was on the other side of the door. Byeongkwan stands to answer the door, giving her an encouraging look as he goes to let Chan in.

Before Chan steps fully inside, Byeongkwan grabs his arm, giving him a side glance as he warns him in a low voice.

“If you break her heart more, I’ll break you.”

Chan nods in understanding as he gulps in nervousness, having seen Byeongkwan’s arms he doesn’t want to face them.

Chan enters the living room as Byeongkwan walks to his room, giving the two space. Chan’s heart speeds up when he sees her, having not seen her for a week made his heart long for her. He still thought she was stunning, even with her tear stained cheeks and puffy eyes. Her hair was a little messy and her clothes were oversized, a passing thought of them being Byeongkwan’s made him upset, however he shook the thought, knowing he wasn’t in the position to feel that way right now.

“Hey.” He greets in a quiet voice, standing in an awkward stance in the middle of the living room.

When he entered she was staring at the tv with a blank expression and even at his words she didn't move to look at him. Chan felt helpless as he looked at her, desperation filling him as he wanted her to pay attention to him, even if it wasn't the same as before.

"I..." Chan fumbles around his words, unsure what he came to say, only knowing he wanted to see her. "I shut down Cupid."

"Did you think that would earn you forgiveness?" Her words were monotone, but it chilled Chan to the core, his voice catching in his throat.

"I didn't" He whispers under his breath, his head hanging low. "It's only the start."

She jerks her head to him, seeing his eyes trained on the floor as he nibbles his bottom lip.

"But for me to prove myself to you beyond this I have to have your second chance."

His eyes met hers, filled with hope and longing that made her chest tighten. She had missed him and she wanted to forgive him. She got off the couch, running to him to wrap her arms around his neck, her head resting on his shoulder as she felt tears soak his shirt. He held her tight, his nose on her neck, getting traces of her perfume that he loved so much.

"I'm so sorry I hurt you." He whispers. "I never want to see you hurt again."

His arms tightened around her at those words, his smile wide at her being in his arms again.

Previous Part ~

A.C.E MASTERLIST

#acewriters #recoromanwrites #a.c.e #a.c.e chan #a.c.e chan x reader #a.c.e x reader #a.c.e imagine #a.c.e fanficiton #ace #ace chan #ace chan x reader #ace imagine #ace fanfiction #whattodowithkpopwritings

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thosekidswhohuntmonsters · 4 years

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Playing With Fire

Summary: Sure Tom is twice the readers age, but she's tired of being treated as some naive little thing. When she finally confronts Tom she soon finds out that she's playing with fire.

Word Count: 2780

Rating: v spicy, deff 18+

Authors note: almost finished reposting all my tom stories! woohoo!

♡if you enjoy this fic you’re welcome to leave a reblog/like/comment! feedback is not only welcomed but encouraged!♡

The interviewer was nearly beaming, “So in the last trailer, there was quite the scene between you and Tom”. Instantly you smiled, knowing exactly what scene she was referencing. Without answering the question you teased, “That was in there for like a split second, how did you all pick up on it?”.

Anthony intervened, “Because it was you and Hiddleston getting it on...that’s all the world could ask for!”. The crowd ate up Anthony’s response, cheering wildly for him. Finally Tom spoke up, “I didn’t know our kiss had the ability to save an entire planet (y/n)”.

Turning to him you nodded your head, “I don’t know, it was a pretty good kiss”. While Tom tried to hide a blush, all the fans went wild again. Unable to resist you added, “I mean..am I wrong here or?”.

That caused you and all of your castmates to erupt with laughter. Evans shimmied a little bit, “Ohh (y/n) I think his inability to answer the question means it was”. You didn’t know who was more excited, the audience or the interviewer.

Quickly she added, “ I think the chemistry between your characters is quite prevolevent, we see sort of a build up in the last film and now it seems to be exploding”. Hoping you weren’t alone with the millions of dirty jokes filling your mind you turned to Sebastian, and the look on his face made you realize you weren’t the only one.

Anthony was more blunt, “Y’all are getting very creative with phrasing nowadays…”. The interviewer smiled, and she was nearly blushing herself. You laughed a little, “I was afraid I’d been the only one picking up on the double meanings here”.

Reeling you all back in as if you were children Tom finally spoke up. His voice was soft, “No other character has had an immediate effect on Loki in the way (y/n)’s character has. I think Taiki did a wonderful job in the last film not only introducing her, but almost showing her through Loki’s eyes at some points”.

He finished his sentence with a warm smile as he held your gaze. You smiled too, “Working with Taiki was amazing, I think he’s the reason why my character was able to flourish in the way she did. The response I’ve gotten from fans is just incredible”.

Evans made a face, “That was sweet, but neither of you answered the question. Let’s be real, Loki wants to smash”. Once again the entire room, the stage included, was filled with laughter.

Chris patted Tom’s shoulder, “I mean sorry bro but I’m right aren’t I?”. As if on cue the entire audience shouted back “yes” to Chris, only encouraging him. An eager hush fell over the room as everyone waited to see how you and Tom would respond.

Tom adjusted his glasses, “I mean..that’s one way to put it Chris. I’d much prefer to say that the desire from Loki’s side is definitely there, but he’s trying to keep it hidden. It’s another internal battle Loki has with himself; to indulge in his feelings or remain closed off”.

Chris rolled his eyes at Tom’s nearly poetic response, but soon found himself smiling. All eyes turned to you, waiting to see your take on things. You saw hundreds of phones in the audience, all recording your next words.

“While I feel that my character is complex, and still developing on screen, I think she has more freedom. While she shares having a rough past with Loki, she uses hers as motivation to not waste any of her present. Chris put it beautifully, she wants to smash”.

It was so entertaining to see everyone's faces during your heartfelt answer, and the watch their reactions change completely. Tom was shaking his head but there was a clear smirk across his face.

The panel went on and you and your castmates continued to enjoy yourselves. With the movie coming out in a couple days, everyone was less stressed about having to keep secrets. You loved teasing Tom Holland about his spoiling, but you could relate to his stress.

After the panel had finally finished you were all moved to a waiting room. Instantly Evans asked, “So what are we all doing later?”. Everyone began throwing out different plans, naming certain bars and clubs, but Tom was silent.

Quietly you asked, “Are you seriously not going out with the group?”. He laughed softly before turning his head towards you. He whispered back, “Love I hate to disappoint but-”. Maybe it was because of his last breakup, but he’d been in a funk.

You didn’t even let him continue, “Fine if you’re not going out then I’m at least not letting you stay in alone”. Before he could protest Chris repeated over the final plans for tonight, the group reaching their consensus.

You smiled, “I’d love to see what drunk shenanigans you all get into, especially you Chris, but I think I’m tapping out tonight. Rain Check on making horrible decisions we’ll all regret in the morning?”.

Chris raised one of his eyebrows as he tried to figure out why you’d say no, sure you weren’t the biggest drinker but you’d always been down to come along. After finally putting things together he grinned, “Sure thing kid, I have a feeling you’re gonna enjoy yourself anyways”.

While the group continued to talk about what tonight would entail, you continued to hold Chris’s gaze. When he knew no one else was looking he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively and mouthed, “finally”.

Knowing exactly what he’d meant you rolled your eyes overdramatically mouthing back, “Fuck off”. Chris laughed it off, knowing full well that you were just joking. He was one of your closest friends, and he knew nearly everything about you.

Mundane things like your favorite color and time of the year, but more interesting things like your turn offs’ and ons’, and especially the fact that you had a major crush on Tom Hiddleston.

Preparing for tonight everyone went their separate ways, different security guards escorting everyone to their rooms and such. As the room became empty Tom turned to you, “Love are you sure you don’t want to go out with the rest of the group?”.

You smiled, “One can always get drunk, but spending a night discovering what the Tom Hiddleston thinks is fun is a once in a lifetime opportunity”. Once again he tried to hold back a smirk, but couldn’t.

“Hate to disappoint but my night is going to begin in my hotel room”. You didn’t back down, infact Tom had no idea how that was all you’d ever wanted to hear. Boldly you teased, “Normally that's where a night ends”.

It felt good to see him laugh, especially if it was from something you’d said. As the guards let you both to the elevators he softly said, “Darling you are trouble”. You watched him bite his lip, and you thought you were going to explode right then and there.

Within a minute or two you were in his room, a huge fucking bundle of nerves but trying to mask it. As he closed the door you asked, “So let me guess, we start the night off with some tea?”.

He chuckled softly, “I was thinking wine”. You gasped while placing a hand over your heart, causing him to laugh once again from your teasing. Tom sat down on the bed and began calling room service.

While you waited you continued to look around the room, well really it was more of like a mini apartment. Something you’d never get used to was the rooms marvel put you all up in, it was much more luxurious than needed.

Tom’s drink choice only made your nerves only worse. He’d been acting as if this was going to be some boring night, but here you were dressed to the nines in his hotel room about to order a bottle of wine.

After you heard him hang up the phone you turned back around to face him. With fake casualness you asked, “What's next on the agenda?”. You were starting to think you had no idea where this night was going to go.

Tom began taking off his tie, “First I’m getting out of this bloody suit”. For a moment you blinked, pretty sure you were just dreaming at this point. After realizing you were staring you nodded your head.

“Oh you don’t know the half of it hun”. With that you stepped out of your heels and began taking off your jewelry. By now his button up was hanging loosely from his body, “Well you look ravishing”.

You were leaning against one of the bureaus, while he still sat down on the bed. You felt lighter now with most of your outfit off, “I’m on to you Tom, and your whole gentleman act”. He raised his eyebrows at you, still playing dumb.

“Anything leaving that pretty mouth of yours is trouble, but the word ravishing? Makes a girl feel all kinds of things”.

Slowly Tom’s tongue ran over his lips, before he bit his bottom lip altogether. You heard a knock on the door but before you answered it you repeated, “Trouble”. Tom never felt more connected to Loki than in this exact moment.

He was having his own internal struggle right now; to finally let you know how he feels, or to fight back the most intense feelings of desire he’s ever experienced. Throughout this entire night he’d slowly been losing; inviting you up to his room, ordering wine for you both, eyeing you like you were a meal, but he couldn’t help himself.

It didn’t help either that you’d been teasing him nonstop, it was like you were begging him to make a move. Leaning forward while taking off your shoes giving him a perfect look at your cleavage, teasing him about where a good night ends, it was all getting to him.

After tipping the hotel staff you entered back into the room, “Alright Hiddleston, let’s get down to it”. You’d pulled him out of his thoughts, causing him to finally look back up at you. Walking towards him you placed down the two glasses on the nightstand, still holding the bottle in your hands.

Tom was apprehensive, “And what exactly is it?”. You wiggled your eyebrows making him smile. After you both laughed you got serious, “This funk you’ve been in. Is it because your last rela-”.

He shook his head, his ex was the last thing he’d been thinking about. She’s left his mind months ago, and hadn’t entered his thoughts since. You on the other hand had nearly consumed him.

The only thing that stopped him was that he was nearly twice your age, you were only twenty-three. You were young, playful, a complete tease, but the worst part was that your qualities weren’t just skin deep.

You were also everything he’d ever wanted emotionally; always so concerned about your friends well being, empathetic, incredibly funny, so wonderful to your fans, and somehow much wiser than most people his age.

Getting up from the bed you began to pour yourself a glass, “Look, you can get tipsy and tell me what’s wrong or you can tell me when you’re sober and skip all the awkwardness of the morning after”. He shook his head, if you wanted honesty he’d give it to you.

“You sure you want the truth (y/n)?”. You nearly spit out your wine, was he being serious? Sarcastically you asked, “What can I not handle the truth?”. Your reaction caused Tom to shake his head.

“Darling, I think you’re being a little naive. You still have some-”. You couldn’t believe what you were hearing, he was playing the age card. Sure you were younger, but hey you were older than Tom Holland!

You shook your head, “Oh so I’m too young and innocent now? What could you possibly have to say that my fragile little ears can’t handle?”. You could feel the moment escalating, especially with the look in his eyes.

His voice was sultry, “Oh love you’d be surprised”. You wanted to doubt him but the current look on his face sent shivers down your spine. Trying to regain your confidence you said, “Then surprise me”.

Tom got off of the bed completely, and started walking around the room. His tie had been loosely hanging around his neck but now he’d gripped it in his hands. It was like a prop, “For starters, you’re too seductive for your own good”.

God how did he make sex sound like shakespeare? Your eyes widened, “Tom what does that even mean?”. Sighing he ran his hands through his hair, he was trying to find the words. He looked to you again, “Do you have any idea of your affect on me? How flustered you make me in front of thousands?”.

As he continued he groaned, “God it just makes me want too-”. He stopped himself mid-sentence, knowing that he was going to shift the entire mood if he continued. By now he was standing in front of you, only inches away physically by a sea away mentally.

You looked up at him, “Makes you want to want? What does it make you want to do to me?”. He’d told you that you were playing with fire but you were calling his bluff. His voice was deeper now, “Little girls shouldn't play with fire”.

That sentence went right to your core. The thing was that Tom looked like he was enjoying himself while saying it, it was the most blissful he’d been in months. You licked your lips, “Are you afraid you’re going to take advantage of me somehow? I’m twenty-three years old Tom”.

As you continued you let one of your hands trail up your body, “You treat me like I’m some innocent fragile little girl, but I’m not as vanilla as you think”. Your response only seemed to amuse him more.

“Have you ever considered that I like that you’re older than me? I don’t want some little boy, I want a man. I want someone to take control, and satisfy my needs”.

His breathing was deeper now, any control he’d been clinging on to had now vanished. Leaning forward he placed his hands on either side of you, almost trapping your body. His voice was much deeper now, “Why don’t you really tell me what you want me to do”.

You leaned forward, “What? That I want you to fuck me like a real man? Pin me down and take me? I don’t know Tom, I’m so fragile and innocent I might break”. Your smirk was the largest it had been all night.

He let his hand trail softly down your cheek before gripping your chin tightly. Tom used his grip to tilt your head up and hold it firmly in place, “You little minx”. You licked your lips, you desire showing now more than ever.

“Look at you now, licking your lips inches from my throbbing cock. Is that what you want love, my cock wrapped around those pretty lips?”.

You nodded your head, convinced that if you tried to speak you’d just moan. Shaking his head he groaned again, he couldn’t believe how beautiful you looked. He’d never had someone look up at him so intoxicated before, and he imagined he’d been looking the same way at you.

Tom was letting himself go, finally indulging in ways he’d wanted too ever since your first scene together. He clicked his tongue, “As much as I’d love to see that, I think some payback is in order”.

To your surprise Tom got down on his knees before you, his face now level with yours. Slowly his hands ran up your thighs and pushed back your skirt, “Well darling, let’s hope you’re not this quiete for much longer”.

As you watched the smirk form upon his lips you knew his whole gentlemen act had finally been through completely out the door. You started to pull your dress off completely, “Be careful what you wish for babe”.

Using his grip on your thighs he pulled you closer to his mouth. His tongue darted out of his mouth and swept across his bottom lip, “And I’m trouble?”. Together you laughed for a moment, thankful for how effortless this all felt.

Tom was amazed how you could so easily flow from making him smile and laugh to wanting to rip your clothes off and pin you against the nearest wall. He decided that he didn’t want to waste anymore time thinking, and finally start doing.

♡ thank you for taking the time to read this, you’re a babe♡

Forever tags: aka some amazing people: @moonlessnight14 @sexyvixen7 @angieptt @painkiller80 @becca-dolan @team-heichou @thatpeachybandgirl @allthesesonsobitches @buckybarneshairpullingkink @couldabeenamermaid @taeeemin@littleredstarfish @nali67 @only4wakingup @mcenziehughes

*if there is a line through your name that means that for some reason it won’t allow me to tag you*

*forever tags are always open*

#tom hiddleston #tom hiddleston x reader #tom hiddleston smut #tom hiddleston imagine #tom hiddleston fic

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bittervitter · 4 years

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ang0mang0′s “copycat” claims

I didn’t want to have to make another post about this, but since people on sonicfan799 / thatAnge / @ang0mang0′s Tumblr profile are getting riled up about this ridiculous drama that should have died ages ago, I figured I’d defend myself. Some people who are trying to support me have been saying incorrect things too, so I also wanted to clear that up. This crap has been going on for months, everyone is sick of it by now. Instead of being brief like I did for other social medias, I’ll be as detailed as possible this time.

[1] “she’s copying/imitating/heavily referencing from my art style!!!”

Like people have said a million times, no I’m not. And nor is anyone else. Just because someone draws the Sonic characters in a similar style to you does not automatically mean they took, copied or “stole” those ideas from you. You don’t own the concept of buff, fluffy bodies or chubby muzzles. COINCIDENCE, as much as you hopelessly deny it, is very much a possible thing- even in crazy situations such as this. There are several other artists who have similar art styles by mere coincidence. IT IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE. As examples, these Instagram artists have similar styles: @ azulytoons and @ indigonite0 / @ magenta_mel and @ zer0finix / @ himemikal and @ natirix. NONE of these artists are “stealing” or referencing from each other- they just have similar art styles, and that is perfectly okay! They draw completely different things with completely different mindsets. The world does not revolve around you, ang0. Not everyone knows who you are, so some people who use the same traits that we do don’t even know we exist.

Also, to anyone unaware, an art STYLE is not merely how one chooses to portray a character. An art STYLE is also what brushes you use, how you sketch, how you line, how you colour, how you shade, how you choose to portray certain objects or ideas- basically your entire fucking understanding of how something’s supposed to look and how you LIKE it to look. It’s not just “chubby faces, poofy curly hair, buff bodies”. It’s everything in a piece AND that.

[2] “she’s tracing my art/ redrawing my ideas!”

Literally no. People have constantly asked you to provide evidence and you refused to. All you did was scream “but it’s so obvious, just look at it!” or “are you dumb? use your eyes!” and several other insults. If you want to prove a point or make someone see something, GIVE. EVIDENCE. The only person who actually provided “proof” was pin_kpeach, your ever so loyal whiteknight, but her “proof” only backfired and proved that the both of you are extremely delusional. In the drawings of ours that she layered over each other, next to NONE of the lines lined up. It looked like a clustered mess of scrap, and the reason for that is because IT WASN’T TRACED. In the one or two drawings where ONE. SINGLE. PIECE. actually lined up was entirely zoomed in to make it seem as though the whole thing was traced. No, honey, that’s not how you provide proof. That’s how you pull a muscle by reaching so desperately to lie about me. The rest of the drawings in those pictures didn’t line up at all, and one- or I believe both- needed to be titled to line them up in the first place. You could say that some people trace things and resize or rotate them, but if I were as dumb as you persist to say, then I wouldn’t have done something like that. Either way, one aspect of a drawing lining up is a common thing for people who have similar styles because- well, I just said it. THEY HAVE SIMILAR STYLES. If they draw something the same way, well fucking duh, it’ll match someone else’s drawing almost exactly sometimes.

[3] “she’s too petty and too much of a liar to credit me! saying the art isn’t hers will hurt her oversized ego!”

Ahaha no. The only one here with an inflated ego is you, ang0. You call me the egotistical one yet you act as though your life is falling apart just because someone else draws like you on the internet. Stop acting like a special snowflake, you are not the only one on this planet with an art style of that nature. I don’t credit you because crediting you makes no damn sense. Why should I credit someone who’s had absolutely no impact on my work whatsoever? What in the hell did you do for my drawings that makes you deserve so much credit? Did you sketch it? No. Did you line it? Nope. Did you colour or shade it? Not a chance. Just because I came up with a design for the characters that happens to look like yours does not mean I owe you jack shit. You cannot. own. a style. Get over it.

[4] “she worsened my depression and is the reason I can’t draw anymore! I have no motivation when there’s some idiot copycat stealing all my art!”

I don’t want to sound like that kind of person, but you worsened your own depression. You painted this false picture in your head and continue to hang onto that belief like your life depends on it. I haven’t done ANYthing to you. You came to ME with these stupid claims back when my art looked LESS like yours, before I even knew who you were. You’re making yourself feel horrible because you, for some paranormal reason, refuse to believe that you’re not the only one with that kind of style. This is why people call you childish, you’re like a whiny baby that can’t accept another child having a toy similar to yours. I can’t even decide whether I should say “grow up” because you’re older than me- not to mention you’re an ADULT.

[5]”she constantly sends her whiteknights to attack me, harass me and send me threatening messages!”

I’ve said several times to my followers NOT to harass you or your followers or anyone against me in this mess at all. I do not send anyone after you. People say things to you out of their own free will and with their own words. I can’t magically know when this happens, why they decide to and I especially can’t control anyone. I’m sorry that my friend Koro sent you all those DMs and horrible messages wishing a lot of very bad things onto you and your family- I asked her several times before and after not to do that, but I didn’t have a clue she did it until after the fact. Either way, don’t go around assuming that I put people up to this or I intentionally ask people to do these things to you. Why in the hell would I do that? What good does that do? All I wanted to do was talk things out but at this point, you don’t even take me seriously, so I can’t even try anymore. The few times we did talk you refuse to see my point of view and just see me as a liar. What the hell am I supposed to do then?

[6]”all vio does is lie, she’s so fake all the time, lying for her petty ego”

I’m not even sure how to respond to this but I thought I might as well bring it up. No matter what I do or say, ang0 sees me as nothing but some retarded liar that can’t help but lie their way around everything, even though I’ve been nothing but genuine all this time. It’s why I can’t even communicate with her anymore, because “shut up, stop lying you copycat” is all I get in response basically.

[7] her insane hypocrisy

Ange and pin_kpeach have said numerous times that I’m rude or insult her, and there have been times where I’ve been mean out of anger, but I know for a fact I apologized for it in DMs. Ange apologized too. I don’t remember ever insulting her after that, but ang0 doesn’t ever stop ridiculing and insulting me with almost every comment she makes on the drama. If she really was sorry, she wouldn’t have done it again, but I guess she said “fuck it” and just continued anyway. Pin_kpeach likes to say I’M the hypocrite for saying Ange is harassing me yet being rude to her a couple times, yet they do they exact same thing, but even worse?? I try my best to be as civil as possible, but ang0 and pink don’t waste a second calling me and my supporters all sorts of colourful names just because they don’t agree with her claims. In fact, here’s a list of every single thing ang0’s ever called me:

retarded, retard, stupid, idiot, dumb, low IQ, mentally ill, crazy, talentless, skill-less, copycat, art thief, (dumb) cow, fuckhole, asshole, bitch, wanna-be artist, unreasonable, clown, fake, liar, hypocrite, delusional, dick, stalker, bittershitter, dumbass, immature

There’s probably more than that, but that’s as much as I can remember. Not hard to forget when she repeats them almost all the time.

[8] gatekeeping ideas

Ange and pink act as if two people drawing a character in the same outfit automatically equals “du bist kopying mein style!!”. I can’t even begin to imagine the mental gymnastics you need to do in order to believe a thought process like that is logical. She thinks that anyone who draws Amy in a dress with a white under-skirt or white ruffles underneath is nothing but a copied idea from her. She thinks that me drawing Amy in a green tank top, blue backwards cap and blue sports shorts is copying her drawing of Amy in a green unidentifiable top (you could only see her back, she didn’t seem to have straps) and blue sports shorts with a slightly different design is automatically copied from her. The poses, shading, angle and idea behind the drawing were COMPLETELY different- but nonono, “this is stolen because the outfit is the same!” They also use the excuse of the whole chubby faces, curly hair, blah blah blah- see point [1] as to why that’s BS.

[9] her perception of my followers/supporters

Aside from Koro, I don’t know if anyone has seriously threatened or harassed her. Her followers comment on my posts, my followers only comment when she brings up the drama or whines about it. She insults my supporters when they don’t agree with her and act like they’re a bunch of immature brats who are wrong while she’s the high and mighty mature one seeing through non-existent lies. I’m used to her making fun of me, but I’m sick and tired of her insulting people who have nothing to do with the drama just because they don’t agree with her. Like, seriously? You call everyone immature and stupid yet you’re the one insulting people non-stop just because they realize how ridiculous and childish you’re acting. That’s why “childish” has become a popular adjective for you, ang0. BECAUSE YOU’RE BEING CHILDISH. CONSTANTLY. You get pissy, insult others and put people down but whine and cry the next minute because you constantly like to play the victim. Speaking of which...

[10] the victim card

I have absolutely no idea what ang0 goes through in real life, but there is no excuse for how she’s behaved during this drama AT ALL. Ange constantly defames her own artwork, calling it shit, calling it every bad name in the book, but doesn’t hesitate for a minute to gatekeep her style as if it was the best thing in the world. She says it’s because she “worked her ass off” and doesn’t want people just stealing her hard work. Okay, but you do realize that other people put just as much work into their own art, no matter if it looks like yours or not, right? She demands that people change their style to stop looking like hers, acting as if that can be done in a matter of minutes, because people having similar styles makes her uncomfortable. Well, surprise motherfucker- welcome to the internet. No one is original and everyone is original at the same time. People are bound to come up with similar ideas and you’re just going to have to deal with it. But despite the similarities, people are still original in their own right. If you believe that people can change a style so easily, why not just change your OWN style? Because you worked your ass off? Well, THEY WORKED THEIR ASS OFF TOO. So don’t act like you’re the only one who’s put effort into their craft. Art is hard, and that applies to EVERYONE- even professionals.

You blame me and other “copycats” for all your problems, blaming us for worsening your depression, ruining your passion for art- when you’re the only one who does this to yourself. Yes, there have been genuine art thieves in your life, and people who have stolen your art- but what I’m talking about are the people like me who DON’T steal your art or are merely inspired by you. People who say “you should be happy they’re inspired!” aren’t saying “you should be happy they’re copying!”. They’re saying that you should be glad that your work is so inspiring that people create their own unique ideas based off your own. Inspiration doesn’t require credit unless they’re purposefully taking a massive part of the original. But being inspired by a hair style or even a pose isn’t stealing. It’s inspiration, that’s it. I’m not inspired by you at all, but I can at least appreciate your art- even if you think I’m just being fake.

[11] ang0mang0′s history and why this shit doesn’t even make sense

Ange has said publicly and to me in detail about how she’s been accused of the same “art style theft” in the past. From what I’ve gathered or heard, people used to accuse her of copying a popular artist called myly14 who’s Sonic art is pretty much everywhere. Whether it be in edits, MVs or whatever else. Looking at her old art when she went under the name sonicfan799, her art does look similar to myly’s, but ang0 insisted that she didn’t copy myly and didn’t even know who she was. She legit said “it’s not my fault my art looks like someone else’s”, so basically- it was coincidence. She said she changed her art style because she “isn’t an asshole and didn’t want to make the other artist uncomfortable”, even though art style theft isn’t a thing and no one needs to be forced out of a style just because someone else already draws that way. I have no idea what myly’s stance on that situation was, but the fact that it happened just proves how stupid her current claims are.

Ange says that her style is “too complex” to be coincidentally similar to someone else’s, even though the fact that it’s happened 30 times (according to her) just proves that no, ang0, no it fucking isn’t. Your style isn’t complicated at all. Detailed sure, but no style is too complicated to be similar to another’s. Being complex doesn’t make something any less likely to be identical to another complex style.If you didn’t copy myly14 in the past, what right do you have to accuse me of the same damn thing? If I really am copying you, then you have to admit to copying myly, because you can’t just lie about your past and then shit on me for doing the same thing. So it’s either you stop this nonsense or you drag this drama down with you to your grave and admit you copied myly14.

Another thing, myly14 didn’t even have a “simple” style. The fact that her art was almost instantly recognizable and popular meant that she had a signature style that stood out. Yes, she used a lot of the original Sonic style’s anatomy, but her stylization of said anatomy, her shading and the way she composed her pieces gave her a signature style. The most stylized thing I could see was how she drew muzzles, and guess who drew muzzles in a similar way as well? You did. People saw how your way of drawing faces and some parts of the body and thought it looked liked myly’s. The similarities in your anatomy, and not your shading or colouring, was what made people think you copied her. That exact same thing is happening between me and you. My shading, colouring and composition is entirely different from yours, but some parts of the anatomy are similar.

If you really didn’t copy myly14, you have absolutely no. fucking. excuse. to accuse me of the EXACT. SAME. SHIT. that happened to you.

You never needed or deserved to be pressured out of your old style just because people thought it looked similar to someone else’s, and that’s why I refuse to change my style now. Because it isn’t. fucking. fair. To ANYONE.

[12] how I feel (this is copied over from my DeviantART)

At this point I've grown used to what she has to say, but it still hurts. She thinks that I'm some kind of cartoon villain maniacally laughing behind a computer screen every time I post something because she's so deep into her belief that I really copy everything she draws and that nothing I've never posted has any true effort put into it. She genuinely believes she owns all my art and that I devote my entire gallery into recreating her image or some crazy shit like that. It sounds really dumb, but from what I've read from her poorly constructed comments and rants, that's basically what she believes.

She thinks I don't care at all about how all this affects her or anyone at all, but I do. It doesn't just hurt me in the sense that she makes me feel awful with all her insults, but I just feel so bad for her. I feel guilty in the sense that I couldn't do anything at all to help her, not that "shes prolly feeling guilty and made that april fools joke to let out some guilt!!". (If you don’t know, on April Fools Day, I changed my Instagram bio to say “clown” and call myself “the ultimate copycat” as a joke.) That was a really stupid reaction from her by the way... who the hell comes up with that? Now that she's going away for a month, I feel even worse because all I wanted to do was try to make her come to her senses and end this mess. I thought I could talk some sense into her- that didn't work. Her delusions are so strong, she's like a brick wall. I thought I could ignore the drama- that didn't work. She "clowns" and talks about it so annoyingly often. Not to mention people do things on their own to stir shit up. I thought I could support her regardless and maybe try making her feel better about her art- that didn't work. She thinks I'm fake and that everything I say is a lie. Because of me, she probably doesn't believe other people too- and that makes me feel even more terrible.

No matter what I do, I'm automatically the villain and she's the tortured, helpless artist that everyone is against because "everyone is dumb, supporting a copycat" and she's just "used to it, because she's dealt with so much shit already!". It's so ridiculous. If she would just try to actually better herself or the situation, she wouldn't feel so horrible all the time. Like... for god's sake, she relied on a video game to make her happy- that's not healthy, and just like I suspected, it didn't fucking work.

more of how I feel

Because of ang0, I just feel like garbage. My self esteem and confidence in my art was already low. Thanks to her, I don’t feel original (or as original) anymore- and I’m afraid to show many of my new or old ideas because she or her whiteknight pin_kpeach may spring out and say “copycat! stolen! you’re not original!” and a plethora of other insults. I can barely sketch or draw Sonic content without panicking and feeling worthless because all I have is her words and her opinions stuck in my head. She blames me for her demotivation and shit like that when she’s done the same thing to me. She thinks I don’t care about her or her art, when I do, but when I say that, she calls me fake. In reality, ang0 couldn’t give a damn about me and I’m pretty sure she’d be happy if I were dead. She has said before that she doesn’t care if I killed myself soo... there’s that. Anyway lemme not drag my feelings out too long, I just thought I’d say it to anyone willing to listen since her immediate response would’ve been “fake, liar” etc, etc. I really don’t want anyone to feel bad for me or anything like that, I just want people to listen and understand. That’s all.

a final note

I’m really thankful- like, REALLY thankful- for everyone who’s been on my side throughout this. I don’t like picking sides, and I’d hate to make people do so, but there doesn’t seem to be any in between to this at all. It’s either you believe I’m copying her or you don’t. Most people don’t- thank goodness for that- but some do. And there’s nothing I can do about it. At this point, whatever man.

Please please PLEASE do not harass ang0. Don’t threaten her, don’t insult her, don’t do anything rash or fucking illegal. It’s all fair game if you want to POLITELY SPEAK to her, or try to start a discussion, but please don’t do anything stupid. And especially don’t do things in my name. If you want to debate with me or her, do research first- don’t just jump to conclusions or make assumptions.If you want nothing to do with this drama, then simply don’t say anything- just be aware of what’s going on, that’s all I ask. So nobody gets the wrong idea on either side.

Sorry for this being so long, I think I’m done for now.

Thank you if you read the whole thing.

[9.4.2020]

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qrovidcore · 3 years

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hey what’s up tumblr i’ve now seen hbo’s watchmen all the way through Three Fucking Times and i very well may go for a fourth if given an excuse whoops and apparently i can’t stop thinking about Laurie’s joke in She Was Killed By Space Junk, no i’m not the first person to analyze this and i’m sure i won’t be the last but i sure do have some Thoughts^TM, so here’s some meta let’s go.

major spoilers ahead for the entire series:

Hey, it’s me again. I’ve got a joke. Stop me if you’ve heard this one. There’s this guy, he’s a bricklayer. He’s really good at it. He’s a real master of his craft. Because he’s precise. Every brick has its place. Anyway this guy has a daughter and he’s gonna teach her to be a bricklayer because after all, all a man has is his legacy. So dad decides to build a barbecue in the backyard. He does the math. He figures out exactly what he needs and he shows the daughter how to do everything. Step by step. And when he finishes, it’s a beauty. It’s a perfect barbecue. Just the way he drew it in blueprints. Only one problem. There’s a brick left over. One single brick. The guy freaks out. He must have done something wrong. He’s gonna have to start all over again. So he picks up his sledgehammer to knock the thing to pieces and his daughter suddenly says ‘daddy wait! I have an idea.’ She picks up the orphan brick and throws it up into the air as high as she can. And then…shit. Messed it up.

Okay forget that joke. Can I tell you another one?

As I said, I’m not the first to break down that Laurie is referring to specific people who have an influence on the story, there’s plenty of meta posts online that’ll say the same thing. I just think this is a Really Clever way to introduce us to her, to the major players in this story, and to the events from the comic that are going to end up being referenced. Anyhow, the bricklayer here is The Comedian. Laurie’s father. I’ll get back to this and how it connects later, but given that one of Watchmen’s major themes is the concept of legacy - who carries it and how, and what happens when that legacy is painful - this is a neat little hook into that idea. Laurie’s dad’s legacy. What she’s done with it, what she’s going to do with it, how she feels about it. Again, coming back to that.

Okay. Forget the brick. New joke. Three heroes die and they all show up at the pearly gates. God’s there and he’s going to decide what their eternal fate shall be: heaven or hell. Our first hero is dressed up like a big owl. God says to him “I gifted you the ability to make fantastic inventions. What did you do with this amazing talent?” Owl guy says “I made this really awesome flying ship and lots of cool outfits and weapons so I could bring peace to the city.” God asks, “So how many people did you kill?” Owl guy seems offended. He says “Zero. I didn’t take a single life.” God frowns. “Sorry owl guy, your heart’s in the right place but you’re just too soft.” God snaps his fingers and the hero goes to hell.

I'm not super into the comic so it took me a while to get that she's referencing Nite Owl. I think this is strange since he doesn't appear in the show himself, whereas everyone else she talks about does, but I suppose it gives a more rounded-out view of the different approaches to heroism, and what exactly constitutes it, and also ties in another one of the original Minutemen. They did cut this over her arrest of Mr. Shadow in the bank, which makes me wonder about his role and why he appeared, and I still find it strange that this part of the joke wasn't about someone who had more of a presence in the show. (Though that being said, DC making fun of Batman, their own big-ticket character? 10/10 thank you for this).

Where was I? The pearly gates await our next hero in line for Almighty judgment. Our hero number two is confident he can game this out because that’s his God-given talent: smarts. Some might even say he’s the smartest man in the world. “So what did you do with that big brain I gave you?” asks God. “As a matter of fact, I saved humanity, ”says Smarty Pants. “Well how’d you do that,” asks God.” “Well I dropped a giant alien squid on New York and everybody was so afraid of it they stopped being afraid of each other.” “OK,” says God. “How many people did you kill?” Smarty Pants smiles. “Three million, give or take. But you can’t make an omelet without breaking a couple of eggs. “Christ,” God says. “You’re a fucking monster.” “Am not,” says Smarty Pants. God snaps his fingers and our hero goes to hell.

GOD YES PLEASE DRAG OZYMANDIAS. GET THIS FUCKER’S ASS. Though the line that’s sticking out to me here is “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a couple of eggs.” Watchmen’s got an egg motif - and that’s an entire post on its own - and wow this is a place to drop it. I find it interesting that it’s given to Adrien here. Especially since it comes back later, when Will tells Angela that that’s what Jon said in justification of giving his life to stop the 7th K/Cyclops and Trieu. Eggs are used for a lot of things, but this line ties the motif solidly to a value of life here - how Adrien is the way he is because he refuses to value other peoples’, and maybe how Jon is the way he is because, when you can see the future laid out before you and live knowing how you’re going to die, how do you learn to value your own?

Okay. We’re down to the nitty gritty now. One hero left. God cracks his knuckles ready to administer the final reckoning. Now Hero Number 3 is pretty much a god himself. So for the sake of telling them apart, he’s blue and he likes to stroll around with his dick hanging out. He can teleport, he can see into the future, he blows shit up. He’s got actual superpowers. Regular God asks Blue God what have you done with these gifts?” Blue God says “I fell in love with a woman, I walked across the sun, and then I fell in love with another woman. I won the Vietnam War. But mostly I just stopped giving a shit about humanity.” God sighs. “Do I even need to ask how many people you’ve killed?” Blue guy shrugs. “A live body and a dead body have the same number of particles so it doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter how I answer your question because I know you’re sending me to hell.” “How do you know that?” asks God. Blue God sounds very sad when he softly says “Because I’m already there.” And so, a mere piston in the inevitable of time and space God does what he did and will do. He snaps his fingers and the hero goes to hell.

And now, we’ve got Jon. Dr. Manhattan. It's a neat moment of insight into his actions, motives, and how those are perceived by others (namely Laurie), and it's a nice thread of introduction to his previous actions to drop for audiences who haven't read the comics (actually, I can make this point about Adrien’s part of the joke too). Especially because most of what we get of Jon in-show is his relationship with Angela, his entire character arc really revolves around her and we don't see him portrayed as the contentious, unfeeling figure the world sees him as. So this sort of contrast between him as a figure and him as a person is very telling, doubly so coming from someone who it's clear knew him. And I really appreciate that there’s just as much stiffness as there is warmth to the Jon we the audience see - he’s kind, he’s loving, but he’s also very matter-of-fact and deterministic, and that bit of characterization really spans the gap between these two versions of him.

And so it’s been a long day at the pearly gates. All the heroes have gone to hell. His work done, God’s packing up to go home and then he notices someone waiting. But it’s not a hero, it’s just a woman. “Where did you come from?” asks God. “Oh I was just standing behind those other guys the whole time, you just didn’t see me.” “Did I give you a talent,” God asks. “No, none to speak of,” says the woman. God gives her a good long look. “I’m so sorry. I’m embarrassed. Seriously, this almost never happens but I don’t know who you are.” And the woman looks at God and she quietly says “I’m the little girl who threw the brick in the air.” And a sound from above, something falling: the brick. God looks up but it’s too late. He never saw it coming. It hits him so hard, his brains shoot out his nose. Game over. He’s dead. And where does God go when he dies? He goes to hell.

Into some Thoughts^TM that I haven’t seen anyone theorize yet(?): I think God is meant to be Lady Trieu, and even if Laurie wouldn’t know this yet that’s some brilliant fucking foreshadowing. It's not as exact, but enough parallels are there that I think they're purposeful. It makes Trieu out as the ultimate judge of everyone - and in a way, she is. She sees herself as the most deserving of power of everyone, and it's her who kills Dr. Manhattan - sends him to hell, you could say, and he knows she's going to do it. It also hints at how she's going to die too, crushed by her machine falling from the sky like the brick, because she didn't expect anyone would be capable of stopping her. And where does God go when he dies? He goes to hell. Trieu isn't ultimately above the others, and she's subject to their justice as they are to hers.

Fitting too that Laurie is involved with the plan to stop Trieu, since, as I said I’d come back to, the girl who threw the brick is Laurie herself. Her depiction of herself in this way is representative, perhaps, of Laure's own feelings on vigilantism and what justice is, and that she's the force that's going to bring down these overblown personalities and their many incorrect uses of their abilities. Given this, it's interesting to think how the "failed" joke at the beginning connects, given that Laurie's dad is the bricklayer, and he's definitely... not a good person, or at least not in this continuity. But I wonder if it's indicative of what Laurie mentions about her parents training her up to do vigilante stuff (especially since she’s based in part(?) on a member of the Minutemen from the comic), and how she feels about her father and his work. If the brick is symbolic of his work as a vigilante, is Laurie throwing the brick in the air, and ultimately taking down the threat at the top, meant to indicate how she sees herself using what she learned from him, or - maybe and - a disrespect for his work based on her justified hatred of him?

Roll on snare drum. Curtains. Good joke.

#god hi i guess i'm watchmen posting now #i am so sorry #i doubt watchmen is a thing that needs my thoughts but unfortunately i am hyperfixing and i have way too many of them #am i posting this because i want to draw something based on this with trieu as god? mayhaps but it's way too fucking long so we'll see #i may also be posting this for my partner despite his not being on this hellsite #bc i was trying to explain this to him at like 3 in the morning last night while actively falling asleep so #aaaaaanyhow #hbo watchmen #the paranoid android speaks!

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deluxeloy · 4 years

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Aight let’s do a face reveal even though I’ve done so several times already.

maybetavroshomestuck’s guess!

Close, but no cigar. I’m actually “only” 187 cm tall, which is a little over six feet for the metric-illiterate among us. Still enough to bump into the corners of cupboards my parents leave open, though! My head hurts!

jaceladag’s guess!

I like how out of your way you went despite the information you did have. While I did inherit all the facial hair in the family, and also some of the curliness, I actually keep it trimmed fairly short to keep it in that golden minimal itch zone. When I was younger I used to have blond hair (that word looks stupid all of a sudden, p sure it’s a fake word) though it did darken a bit as I aged. For some reason, my beard turns reddish if it starts getting longer.

I do indeed have blue eyes, though they keep shifting back and forth to greyish as the seasons pass. At one point they had some yellow in them. Still not sure what that was about.

Despite being tall as mentioned, I actually weigh less than 75 kg (165 pounds, for Those Of You). For an adult my length, I could definitely benefit from gaining some weight. Maybe I wouldn’t get tired so quickly if I had any significant reserves to speak of.

andthedarknessgrows’ guess!

Now we’re getting to the interesting part! First off, I’d like to mention my tumblr avatar is an old character of mine. Her name is Curie, and she’s a misdreavus I used in an old pokemon roleplay group on deviantart. She was drawn by yumiko21 on the same site.

My hair is nothing like hers, as mentioned. Dark blond, not even quite brown, let alone black or grey. I do have a few stray grey hairs already at the ripe old age of 25, though, so that’s probably fine.

Everything else in that sentence is, somehow, eerily close to reality. I do wear glasses with minimal rims, I do have a relatively pronounced jaw (it partially unhinges!) and my eyes are indeed blue-adjacent.

The ponytail is a little off, though. While my hair is often long enough for one, I absolutely hate doing anything with it. I tolerate it when my girlfriend braids it, but they definitely get undone immediately after. You’ll see at the bottom of the post.

As for the gender guess: Somehow, the opposite. It’s not ambiguous, mostly because of the beard... But look closer, and it turns out I have naturally long eyelashes and kinda feminine hands. My mom used to tell me people would mistake me for a girl if I kept my hair too long. Still hoping it’ll happen someday, just to know how it feels. Probably won’t, though.

The turtleneck is way off, but you somehow referenced the exact outfit of one of my dnd characters. I’m going to guess you saw the art before, but if you didn’t, you should probably use your powers for the good of humanity.

As for my environment... There are books, and there is a computer I spend a lot of time at, but there aren’t that many books, and this is not an office. Good try, though.

Also, I can’t recall what my own smile looks like and I can’t do it on command, so, uh.

Picture. Yeah.

This is easily the longest I’ve ever talked about my appearance.

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silenthillmutual · 4 years

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alright let’s do this. let’s talk about why dankovsky is definitely trans.

i’m on day 6 now so i guess i’ll add some shit to the pile as it goes along

of course i could make a ton of jokes that are vague gestures like “i, too, am 5′2 and have my bachelor’s degree, so as a gay trans man i of course know one when i see one”. and i can! i do! i can confirm that at 27 we are just Like That. i think there’s also something to be said about him getting called ‘dandy’ and ‘fop’ by people (which, btw, have been used as slang terms for gay men) - something my friends and i all noticed after starting HRT is that we now care way more about our appearances - but that’s more of the same, more on the fun side of personal interpretation.

but since my bachelor’s degree is in being Deeply Disrespectful*, i might as well go over what i consider to be text-based evidence in favor of this interpretation. because this is the kind of thing i do in my spare time, for fun.

at the moment my working memory only gives me three big things to go on:

first, the carouser who suggests that the mara / shabnak-adyr / steppe creature is actually daniil. all of the steppe creatures mentioned in the game thus far, to my knowledge, take on the guise of women. beyond the obvious (daniil being read as a woman, or effeminate in appearance - something i’ll mention in the next point as well), there’s the fact that all of these steppe creatures appear as something that they aren’t. this could work on several levels; by day 6, people are starting to turn on daniil. because he’s become more or less a glorified errand boy and political chess piece, it would be easy to take a step back and see how he’s being scapegoated now. he’s been set up, as an outsider, as an easy target for disdain - all three of the healers have been, which really comes to a head for him & clara specifically in day 6 (artemiy has been getting it from the first day but by day 6 has disappeared). and although this rumor about daniil comes from talking to the carouser, talking to the teenage boy and the tot will reveal that other NPCs are starting to see him as a failure, too; the tot specifically says “we are so, so afraid of you”. daniil gets called a Harbinger of Death. but this takes on an extra layer of meaning if daniil is in danger of being read as lying about who he is, in terms of gender (which i’ll talk about in point 3).

second, and this isn’t specifically about daniil being trans - but i think he’s almost definitely meant to be read as queer, but maybe with the exact label being open to interpretation. he gets called a fop and a dandy, both of which refer to foolish and vain men who spend too much time focused on their appearance (so it’s kind of funny that he can comment on the wealthy man npc and ask him about the “mad tailor” who came up with his outfit. is daniil insulting it, or is he looking to buy it?) - but those are also both terms that have been used as slang to describe gay men. i’ve seen it mentioned before that although this game doesn’t have dating sim elements in it that daniil can flirt with maria and eva...but honestly? he has flirtatious dialogue with pretty much everyone within his age range. i mean, good god, in artemiy’s route, the his first interaction with daniil includes daniil referencing plato’s description of soulmates to describe them. and artemiy can sleep in his bed. and, actually, with that in mind - rats and dogs aren’t the only ones who take the blame for carrying and spreading disease outbreaks: trans and gay people get thrown under the bus here all the time, too...and daniil is sometimes implied and other times outright accused of being the source of the plague or of its spread. plenty of video games are sloppy, and i could easily handwave something like that...but pathologic is hardly sloppy, so i couldn’t shrug it away here.

last: daniil’s entire route seems to keep circling back to misogyny. in the context of psychological horror, part of what makes the genre its own distinction is bringing the central character’s most secret fears to fruition. this is a staple of the silent hill series; all of alessa’s terrors come to life in silent hill as relentlessly hunted by her mother (while harry, who adores his daughter, has to search to try and find her the whole game, only to fail no matter how well you did), james and angela and eddie are all forced to come to terms with the murders they committed and what that means about them as people, and one of heather’s underlying fears is the terror of sexual assault and pregnancy that leads up to the reveal of how exactly she’s going to give birth to god. and daniil’s route is about uncovering the truth - but the townsfolk’s ideas of uncovering the truth is in brutalizing women, frequently with comments as to how well they perform gender. despite aspity projecting her internalized misogyny on daniil, he has plenty of snarky and furious comments to make about the way women in the town are treated. and here’s what would make this extra horrifying for daniil: they are already starting to turn on him, so what exactly would they do to the doctor they now see as an agent of chaos if he’s outed as afab? the entire context surrounding the townsfolks’ desire to expose women as monsters pulling tricks reeks of transphobia. the steppe creatures do really exist - or at least, one of them does, should you do sticky’s sidequest for day 6 - and you could definitely attribute parts of daniil’s route to be a conflict of old world vs new world, city vs. country, and class oppression - as i think you’re meant to. but the misogyny keeps cropping up the sidelines like veins in an arm. it’s easy to see why mysticism vs. science is a big part of daniil’s journey in the game, and i think it’s (sadly) refreshing to see misogyny shown as an evil, and i get why these things are linked to daniil’s cynical ideas about the nature of humanity and how that’s at war with his being a doctor and the desire to “cure” death or at least extend longevity (it must be hard to want to see a world succeed that wants to see you fail). but what role does misogyny specifically and explicitly play in the horror aspect of his story? (please keep in mind that the realities of how transphobia and [misaimed] misogyny affect trans men needs a lot of nuance; if you are not a trans man yourself, please be open minded to the discussion.)

anyway. that’s what i got so far on my thoughts about the topic... i’m sure i’ll think of more stuff later but it’s like two in the morning and my hyperfix brain should go sleep, lol.

#plato posts #plato plays pathologic #pvp is plato versus player #pathologic spoilers //#despite the title this is actually just headcanon w literary analysis #bachelor deeply disrespectful

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rainbowserenity · 5 years

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY @comeonlight~ I hope it’s as awesome as you <3333 thank you for being so great and such a light in my life ily so here is some OTP <333

Hope’s job had only one major rule:

Do not approach talk to the talent. Ever. Under any circumstances.

That was just fine with him. He’d been at this gig long enough to realize that most of the ‘talent’ that came through needed personality lessons. One model had actually refused to look at anyone’s face, which had dragged on the shoot for much longer than really needed.

Then again, it wasn’t like he’d get much chance to talk to the ‘talent’ even if he’d wanted to. Hope was a mere lighting assistant, which was just a fancy title for someone who held up lights and flicked some switches according to someone’s ‘vision.’ It was fairly boring most of the time. The only reason he was still working the job was because it actually paid far better than most places in town – and his boss was actually pretty good about working around his school schedule.

Plus, he had to admit, it was pretty interesting to see celebrities up close, even if he didn’t really follow much of pop culture at all. It wasn’t like he could tell people or talk about it outside of work, but he figured that once he’d finally gotten his degree, it’d be an interesting tidbit of information that he’d been within twenty feet of some supermodels.

Because of the general hush-hush environment concerning the celebrities – he’d had to sign a non-disclosure agreement on more than one occasion – they didn’t really get new staff all too often. Sometimes staff from other locations would come to theirs and he knew most of them.

Therefore, it was a complete surprise when he showed up to work early one morning and saw a stunning rose-haired woman pouring coffee.

She was dressed in a simple pair of leggings and an oversized shirt – usually the uniform of choice for makeup artists. A new one, maybe? Or an apprentice?

Whoever she was, Hope knew he was embarrassing himself by just staring. There was something very vaguely familiar about her, but that wasn’t why he couldn’t look away. It wasn’t even her incredible beauty either, although that didn’t hurt.

There was just something about her that drew him in. He’d never felt anything like it. People at school often told him that he had charisma, but that wasn’t quite the vibe he got from this woman.

No, he just felt that somehow, someway, they were meant to be standing here in this exact moment.

In the next instant, Hope realized how ridiculous he sounded in his own mind. He shook his head and walked towards the coffee. Who cared he usually drank tea in the mornings? Everyone needed a change now and then.

The woman dumped some sugar into her coffee, then glanced around before putting in some more. He smiled before he could stop himself and reached for the coffee pot.

She whipped her head around at the gesture, like she’d just noticed someone was right behind her. At the sight of him, her guarded expression visibly relaxed and she nodded. “Sugar?”

The word sounded so foreign that Hope momentarily froze, almost overflowing his coffee in the process. As it was, he filled it right to the top of his cup before fumbling with the pot and setting it down. “Uh, um – apparently not.”

Piercing blue eyes flicked towards his nearly-overflowing cup. She smirked. “And it’s still so early. Hard to imagine that we still have the whole day to go.”

Hope relaxed slightly. So she was a staff member. “Yeah, but that’s what the coffee’s for, I guess.”

“Tell me about it. I don’t know how I’m upright half the time without it.”

“Oh, yeah.” He tried to pretend that he totally drank coffee on a regular basis, yep. He totally wasn’t the only college student in existence who actually got a decent amount of sleep every night. “Kind of amazed I made it here without it.”

She eyeballed him again before another smirked formed on her lips. It was like she could see right through him, somehow. But that was completely ridiculous. “I know what you mean.”

They both chuckled in that sort of awkward way that Hope had only experienced a handful of times – when you knew there was somewhere else you had to be, but you didn’t want to leave the company of the other person and were trying to figure out if you could find a way to see them again.

At least that was easily done. “So, uh, are you here from one of the other studios?”

For some reason, the question caused her to grow quiet. She took a step back and stared – really stared at him, her head slightly tilted to one side. A thousand emotions flickered in those eyes of hers – surprise, amazement, appreciation, intrigue.

Before either of them could say anything, a woman with wild black hair he’d never seen before came out of the makeup studio and spotted the two of them. “Oi!” She tapped her wrist where a watch would’ve been if people wore them anymore. “Coffee break’s over! Get your ass over here!”

The rose-haired woman rolled her eyes in a spectacular fashion. “Sorry. Duty calls.” She turned away and took a sip of her coffee, but then glanced back over at Hope. “I’ll...see you later, I’m sure. Maybe we could talk more.”

“Oh. Uh.” Hope blinked a couple of times, wondering if there was anything that could have possibly warranted further conversation. Was coffee really that fascinating?

Apparently so, because he nodded a second later. “Yes. Absolutely.”

She quirked a bit of a smile before heading into the makeup studio, shaking her head at something the black-haired woman was saying. Maybe his hunch was right and she was a makeup artist. They tended to stick around during shoots in case there were any touch-ups needed or a new look.

Would he really see her later?

Why did he want to so badly?

Hope thought about this the whole time he slugged down his coffee. He thought about it as the rest of the staff arrived and his job got started. It distracted him so much that he couldn’t even concentrate on the whispers of who they were all supposed to be working with today.

“She’s already here?!” one of the photographers shrieked. “Her call time was at nine!”

“Well, you’ve heard the other studios,” one of the wardrobe people said. “She’s, like, notoriously punctual.”

“Punctual is one thing – being nearly an hour early is a whole different level!” the photographer continued, sounding dramatic. But this was typical for him, so Hope didn’t pay it any mind.

Instead, his mind continued to wander – and he kept his eyes peeled.

One of the worst parts of this job was the long, long stretches of time where everyone just needed to hurry up and wait. They had to get everything ready as quickly as possible, but then it was just a matter of sitting around and waiting for everyone’s jobs to finally finish. Hair and makeup, wardrobe, set design...not to mention that some of the celebrities that came through were ridiculously demanding and wouldn’t do anything until those demands had been met. He still had nightmares about the one model-who-shall-not-be-named that had put everyone behind schedule for three hours because she hadn’t had any vegan cannolis in her room.

And she hadn’t even eaten them.

Today though, things seemed to be moving at a faster pace than usual. Hope gladly threw himself into his work, which for now, involved standing on a step-stool and rearranging one of the lights to his boss’s specifications. Everyone was buzzing around with an energy he hadn’t felt in a long time.

Hope glanced at the other lighting assistant. “Hey, Noel.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you know who the talent’s supposed to be today?”

Noel paused and glanced at him, looking both bewildered and amused. “What, were you not paying attention earlier?”

“I guess not.”

“Man, even I know about her.” Noel shared the same interest in celebrity culture as Hope did – that was, basically none – so this was especially intriguing. “She’s all over the place lately – I think she was on the cover of, like, six different magazines in the past month. She’s the face of a bunch of different charities and stuff, too. Yeul loves her work,” he added, referencing his girlfriend.

“Oh.” Hope tried to imagine the newsstands. Something itched in the back of mind. “Who is - ”

“All right everyone, look alive!” The black-haired woman suddenly sauntered out and clapped her hands. “You’re lookin’ at the new face of Louis Vuitton right here, so you’d damn well better be makin’ her look good!”

“Shut up Fang,” a familiar voice muttered.

Very familiar.

He nearly dropped the light when out came the rose-haired woman, dressed in an extremely fancy outfit with a sheer black top with frilly designs on the back.

She wasn’t a makeup artist.

Not at all.

“Lightning Farron!” The photographer walked up and shook her head. “What an honor it is to have you here today!”

Of course, he said that to everybody, but it actually sounded sincere this time. And why wouldn’t it?

Hope couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid. Lightning Farron! The Lightning Farron!

Of course he knew of her – the woman who had appeared in magazines seemingly from nowhere, who was famous for being discovered in a kickboxing class. Earlier in the year, she’d worn a holster on her evening gown while modeling on the runway to bring awareness for gun control. She used her fame to start numerous charities and was, as he’d heard, notoriously punctual.

Lightning Farron, quite possibly one of the most famous models in the world.

That’s who he’d talked to.

That’s who he’d felt an instant connection with.

Oh, god. He was done for. There was no possible way anything could ever come from this.

But a few minutes later, when Lightning was directed into her first test shot, she glanced up and met his eyes, clearing recognizing him. Her lips, lined in a neutral expression, curled up ever-so-slightly at the corners.

“There!” the photographer cried. “That smize! Just like that!”

Somehow, Hope managed not to drop any of the lights or do anything stupid. Instead, he simply smiled back.

After all, he wasn’t supposed to interact with the talent.

But there were no rules if the talent came to him...

#hopelight #hoperai #hopurai #hopelight fic #comeonlight #a;lskdjfliwjeflwiejf #I WROTE THIS AT LIKE 2AM #BECAUSE I FORGOT WHAT DAY IT WAS LOL #PLZ BE GENTLE #someday i'll write a proper model AU #oh well i hope you like this moon #i just had my LV lightning posters for inspiration #shining down on me like the beauty face she is #~swoons #anyway HAPPY BIRTHDAY AGAIN #<333333333333

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