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#posting 1 year later lets go lmao
a-libra-writes · 2 months
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can I please request for a Mordecai Heller x female reader? like reader is a showgirl who sings on stage like Mitzi one and tends to attract a lot of attention but backs out when they feel this murdercat plotting their death lmao. thank you 😁
heyo! I decided to do a looot of the cats for this one, since its p similar to my Peaky Blinders Jazz Singer post that I was fond of. GN Reader.
Being a Jazz Singer & Performer!
Rocky - When he was hired and met you for the first time, it was absolutely an "infatuation at first sight" situation. Pros!: He's unfailingly polite and sweet, he seems to play with even more energy when you two share a stage, his grin is very off-putting to creeps who shout up at the stage and harass you. Cons: He can get quite distracted when you two share a stage. Many times Zib has had to pull him back with the rest of the band, because he keeps unintentionally scooting closer to you.
The worst part of the Lackadaisy falling onto hard times is the fact you rarely worked there now - you had to sing at other clubs to make ends meet. One of Rocky's big motivators for getting the club back to its old self is you'd come back! Forever this time! (Probably). Rocky doesn't exactly have the time or money to visit the other clubs you work at, so he wants all of your attention during your infrequent visits to the Lackdaisy.
Freckle - Look, he's a shy kid, and the whole 'sneaking out under cover of night to do bootlegging/torpedo shenanigans' is still new. He doesn't have a lot of experience or frame of reference for what a good club singer is like, but Freckle thinks you've got to be one of the best. You have to be, right? Your voice is wonderful and you look positively celestial under the stage lights - wait, that's weird to think, right? Thank God he didn't say it out loud. ... He didn't, right?
Freckle hasn't the slightest idea of how to approach you, so it's up to Ivy and his cousin to drag him over and attempt conversation. It's... a little pitiable, but he's trying. That said, he's surprisingly outspoken and a little scary if someone tried to mess with you while you performed. You're used to the heckles and catcalls, but it's shocking to see that shy tabby jump up from his seat and raise his voice at them.
Ivy - She liked you from the moment she first saw you perform at the Lackdaisy, and that crush hasn't dulled over the months. She maaaay have kept a few posters that advertised the clubs you sang at, and may or may not have cajoled her way into those clubs so she could watch the show. She could easily sweet talk her way to backstage, too - seems you've got a fan.
When the Lackadaisy goes downhill, it's Ivy who wants to sweet talk you into returning. You'll bring in a crowd! The acoustics are great! Pretty pleeease? Her dad Ivy will pay you and not get in trouble until months later when the family accountant goes over the finances. Obviously she cares about the club's wellbeing, but she also wants to spend time with you! Though she's bold enough to just ask you outright. She's also bold enough to outright shout and fight anyone whose heckling you - throwing a heel is a favorite tactic.
Viktor - You're someone he saw often in the olden days, back when the club could afford to have you perform several times a week rather than once a month. Viktor never cared much for the cacophony the crowd and music made, though he knew objectively you were an excellent performer. Rather than endure the crowd, he'd listen to your voice drift across the caves backstage, rehearsing with the band or just by yourself. It was pleasant to listen to, and he could do so in private, either coming back from a job or about to go on one.
Once things began to fall apart, it's not as though he went around to clubs ... or anywhere, really. So if you stopped performing at the Lackadaisy, you might never see each other again. Choosing to stay (or at least do a few pity gigs) would lead to the surprising sight of the big, morose Slav working behind the bar and watching from there, rather than his previous hideouts. It's a little intense to be under that stare... but not all unpleasant? And given how sparse the crowd is, anyone making trouble and catcalling will get dealt with so promptly, they won't even have time to finish their wolf whistle.
Zib - Well, obviously he's going to be drawn in by an attractive singer. Come on. Zib can be smooth when he wants, chainsmoker-scent and rumpled clothes aside. The band likes to tease him mercilessly about it, but that doesn't stop him from cozying up while you two perform together and shooting his shot backstage after every show. Back when the Lackadaisy was thriving, he could afford to hang out at the other clubs you performed at; nowadays, though, that's not so likely.
Even so, starting up a friendship or even fling wouldn't be difficult. He's attracted to and interested in creative spirits, doubly so if you two had very different taste (so there's more to discuss!) and you got on well with the rest of the band. Late-night debates about this musician or that show over a game of cards and several bottles of wine, either together or with the rest of the boys, and waking up half-dressed and seriously hungover come sunrise. Opportunities for visiting would dwindle as the Lackadaisy's business dried up, though if you stayed on ... No, he wouldn't want that for you. If anything you'd be mentioning to him and the band that there's other places to perform to pay the bills. Well, it'd be food for thought.
Wick - Wick wouldn't call himself a music aficionado, especially what's listened to at these rowdy speakeasies, but he won't deny how hard it was to focus on his business associates when you were on stage. So when he discovered you often performed at his favorite club, it was a pleasant surprise. He really wanted to speak with you at some point, at least compliment the performance, but didn't want to come off as those typical entitled wealthy guys who get too fresh with ""lower"" class performers ... so sometimes you'd find flowers in the dressing room and an anonymous note of appreciation.
He finally gets a conversation when you're a guest at a posh party he's attending, or when you continue to perform at the Lackadaisy in spite of the dwindling crowd. It's a shame your large audience is missing, but at least it's way less awkward for him to strike up conversation when you come to the bar? He probably won't bring up the flowers. Oh god, what if you think that's weird. You probably assumed the flowers were some freak fan. Is he a freak fan? He's not, right? (It will take him like months of dating to finally admit to the flowers thing)
Serafine - A good-looking cat with a nice set of pipes is certainly someone she'd notice, especially if they were a regular performer at the Marigold Room and other places she frequented before that. If it was the former, she'd have plenty of chances to wink when you met eyes, "chancing" across you backstage or just being forward and chatting you up after the show. She certainly isn't shy about expressing her interest, and it could be a fun fling.
You do look adorable swinging your hips and swaying your tail along to the beat, not to mention the different get-ups you have to dress in. Serafine maaaay or may not have wanted to help pick a suit out, or help with make-up, or give you some of her jewelry to wear... It's half marking her territory and half she loves to lounge around your dressing room and be a pest. You'd never kick her out and she knows it. She'll do it in other clubs, too, though you have no idea how she keeps getting past security.
Nico - Like his sister, he has no qualms nor shame about trying to get your attention on stage. Unlike Serafine, though, he'd start doing it immediately and be a general pest after the show. The difference between his attention seeking and the other men's in the audience is he actually has some charisma when you two meet backstage, so you're only slightly inclined to tell him to buzz off. He wasn't much of a music expert, and he still isn't ... But he likes hearing you rehearse and hum to yourself, and it's endearing when he requests songs.
He's pleased when you get gigs at the Marigold Room, as it's easier to hang around before and after the show - and bonus, he gets to be extra aggressive with throwing creeps out to impress you! But if you're performing elsewhere then Nico will stop by. He might be bruised and/or bloody because he just left a job, but don't worry! Sometimes he'll even bring flowers or whatever - though without Serafine knowing, she'd never let him live it down.
Mordecai - He wouldn't approach you any differently from others - he'd still be his usual prickly, anti-social, often awkward self - in fact, he might avoid an avid performer, simply because they often have fans around them or at least people recognizing them. What could get his notice was someone whose real persona is very different from their ostentatious self on stage - more quiet and pensive, perhaps. Like any attempt at friendship, let alone romance, it's slow going with him.
That said, he's the type to admire professionalism in a performance. A well put together outfit, thoughtful musical arrangement (as if he's an expert ...). He wouldn't like a femme presenting singer have to wear skimpy clothes or tolerate a rowdy audience. If there was a questionable manager or creepy fan bothering them, Mordecai can deal with that, at least, not that he'd tell his friend/partner. Mordecai would generally glare down any touchy fans and annoying admirers like a jealous terrier. This amuses Mitzi to no end.
Asa - Simply put, he saw you performing at a ritzy party he was invited to and reached out to your manager so you might perform on a weekly basis at the Marigold Room. Very professional! He'd send flowers with his name to the dressing room afterward, would make sure you're finding everything to your liking and not being bothered by anyone. Requests to continue performing would bypass your manager to being nice, short handwritten notes.
Eventually he'd pay you extra and treat you to a nice dinner afterward, if you were comfortable with it. If you let the older man down, he's not too bothered. He'd continue the friendly business relationship and would still send flowers and so on. He'd rather keep you as a good business associate and continue to enjoy the performances than let his silly feelings get in the way. Alas, he is hopeless at discussions of your music. My guy called a ukelele a tiny guitar.
Wes - He never hung around the Marigold Room after hours - it's his workplace, and not really his vibe - but it's very hard to resist not sitting by for an hour (or three) with a drink while you finish your set. Sometimes you two will meet eyes, or he thinks you are, and he considers dropping backstage to say ... hello? He's an 'employee', so isn't checking up on you a normal thing to do? Make sure you're satisfied with the Marigold Room and all that. Right.
Ironically that's how he's finally able to meet the singer he's been mooning over for months. A drunk patron was getting too cozy on your way out, and Wes happened to be there. His face and ... charming demeanor is good for scaring off upper class wimps. So there's that. He's not so bad, though - clumsy, and prooobably realizes you're out of his league. You get to see more of his earnest side when you two meet outside of the Marigold Room, where his fellow murderous gangsters coworkers aren't watching yalls every move with popcorn in hand.
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infamous-if · 1 month
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So sorry for the delay! ! My VS Code program wasn't calibrated with CSIDE and in the indentions basically messed up. The prologue coding is so wonky that honestly if I do anything I end up fucking up 2839393 lines of code. If you've been following a while, you're probably well aware of much hatred for the prologue's coding lmao but we live and we learn.
Storyline wise, not much has changed. Scenes are largely the same, since I'm pretty happy with what I wrote a year ago. For this rewrite, I focused mainly on the big things like choices that will impact the rest of the story and O's gender selection. Some new things include:
you can now play with Orion or Oriana Quinn
you can now express if the band went through a musical rebrand after seven and what the old genre was (which will come up later).
you can now choose whether mc "changed" after seven and what change that was (there's 4, technically 2, options and a "default" vague option, im open to more options since I wanted to do this but couldn't really think of any believable ones beyond the four).
new mc personality: attached vs detached. your mc can have an extra attachment to the band for obvious reasons, or can feel the opposite.
coordinating outfits can now be exclusive to the band members. your mc can be the unique unicorn of the group since they're the lead singer (this is definitely not gonna bite them in the ass later)
adding to that, your mc's reason for fame can be due to wanting to keep the band together.
a new flavor text feeling about seven is now added which is basically "idk how I feel" instead of hating or loving them, you can just make it that MC's feelings for them is just a big question mark. REALISM!
stat changes: stern/playful -- same thing as humorous/serious I just wanted words that encompassed a wider range of behavior Leader/follower - whether mc takes on the leader role or not camaraderie - a band stat that measures the trust/morale/closeness of the band
u can probably see where im going with the stats huh....
smaller changes include:
more choices and options
prose changes + dialogue additions and expanded/ added scenes
The beta testers have not touched this yet, as I wanted to bring it out to collect some last suggestions, ideas from Patrons. Of course, as always, if you do catch errors, please let me know.
My main concern for errors: O's pronouns. It was a long process but I may have missed a few pronouns here and there. Please let me know if you catch any <3
PROLOGUE: 93K WORDS (for context, the old prologue and chapter 1 were 92k together. The prologue is a tiny bit inflated but :))) 
I will make a post about beta testers soon. I've been quiet on that front because I've been just prioritizing getting this out first.
Now available for Band tier! (6$)
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okay hi just a warning rq my autocorrect is off bc it autocorrected my friend’s name to fuckin malayalam on accident. i dont like autocorrect.
ANYWAY! ive been listening to my lovely olivia rodrigo lately, specifically her new song obsessed. i wanted to know if you could make a fic with Ethan x fem! reader where readers bitchy friend has this ex (Ethan) and she made him out to be a real dick. like, manipulating and everything.
reader eventually meets him and it turns out that she remembers… a lot about him considering her friend is a constant yapper and cant shut up about him. Ethan actually turns out to be a real cutie patootie and could literally never hurt anyone.
a few days later theyd meet again at some club or party maybe where they end up hitting it off… a little too well.. yeah so she ends up in his bed (smut part, very dom ethan plspls 😛😛). they could be talking about something really random and then reader brings up how her friend basically completely lied about him and said he was a piece of shit when he really wasnt. like a realllll fluffy end before a small cliffhanger thats never gonna get finished where her friend ends up finding out and texting her.
so sorry if thats too long or confusing idk but i actually love your work so much im lowkey your #1 fan. 😍😍😍
HELLO! I switched this up a little, I hope that's okay! 💕
Also, I fucking loved the 'leave it on a cliffhanger part that won't get finished' because WHY IS THAT WHAT I DO lmao
Obsessed - Ethan Landry x Fem!Reader - Part 1
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This contains SMUT - Minors DNI
Part 2
Summary: Your friend told you horrible lies about her ex-boyfriend, and once you get to know him, you realize he's not the monster she made him out to be.
Contains: Mentions of a toxic relationship, Dom-ish cocky Ethan, rough-ish sex, oral - f receiving, p in v, fluff (If I missed anything, PLEASE let me know. I'm sleep deprived atm)
A/N: This was the one that pulled me out of my writers block, lmao. It's still not where I want it to be, but I'm TRYING. I'll try to post more this week, but I will be busy so bear with me haha.
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You didn’t know Ethan Landry, but you knew you didn’t like him. He used to date one of your friends, and after hearing all the horrible things he’d said and done during their relationship, you thought he was really scummy.
They dated in high school and couldn’t get enough of each other, so they wanted to go to the same college. They broke up right before freshman year started, and after almost a year, she still talked about him every chance she got. She’d tell you how controlling he was. The things he’d call her when he was mad. How he cheated on her. You couldn’t believe that she stayed in the relationship for as long as she did, because she never had anything good to say, except that she loved him.
You’d seen pictures of him, and after walking into one of your classes at the start of the new semester, you saw him in person for the first time. He was so shy as he took his seat in the lecture hall, some of the girls making their little comments about the rumors they’d heard about him. He didn’t seem like the type that would do the things your friend said, but maybe he was just really good at playing innocent. All you knew was that you needed to keep your distance from him.
When you met up with your friend later that day for lunch, you didn’t know if you wanted to bring up Ethan being in the same class as you, but once she brought him up, you decided to tell her.
“Speaking of Ethan…I saw him today,” you said, before taking a bite of your food. Her face dropped as she looked at you.
“Where did you see him?” she questioned. You explained that you saw him in one of your new classes, and she rolled her eyes. “Can you believe he still tries to text me?”
“What I can’t believe is that you haven’t blocked him,” you said, “I know I’d hate to see someone that treated me like shit’s name pop up on my phone.”
She started to giggle as you curiously stared at her. “I have him saved in my phone as ‘Tall loser with a small dick’, so I laugh every time he does text me.”
“That’s not toxic at all,” you said, as you started to think about what she’d said. “Wait, he treated you as bad as he did and has a small dick? What the fuck were you thinking?”
“All he had going for him was that he was cute,” she said, “But seriously, if I were you, I’d stay away from him.”
“Oh, please. Like I’d even want to be near him.”
Your morning wasn’t going as expected. You slept through all of your alarms; you didn’t have time to stop for coffee. You didn’t think your day could get any worse, until you walked into class and noticed the only empty seat available was beside Ethan. You took a deep breath before you walked over and sat down. Once you reached into your backpack, you realized that your laptop wasn’t there. You were in such a hurry when you ran out of your dorm and didn’t even think to grab it.
“Shit,” you whispered, “I’m so stupid.”
“Here,” Ethan said, passing you a notebook and a pen. You curiously looked at him as he offered a weak smile. “I always keep an extra notebook, just in case.”
“Thanks,” you said, a half-smile playing on your lips.
Once class started, you were taking your notes, but you kept glancing over to Ethan. He was so focused on typing that he didn’t notice, but you couldn’t help but wonder if everything your friend told you was true. At that moment, he didn’t seem like a jerk. Then again, he had only spoken a handful of words to you.
Ethan was aware of all the things that were said about him. He hoped that after a few weeks it all would’ve blown over, but once you have an angry ex-girlfriend paint you as some horrible, emotionally abusive asshole, it’s hard to come back from that. He knew that it was best for him to just keep his head down until he was able to transfer to a different school, where no one knew who he was. He was miserable at Blackmore, and he really had no reason to stick around, aside from the few friends he’d made.
After class was over, you tore the pages of notes you’d taken from the notebook to give it back to Ethan.
“Thanks again,” you said, as you handed it back to him.
“You’re welcome,” he said, shoving it back in his backpack. “I thought about just emailing you my notes, but I didn’t know if you’d want that.”
“You’re telling me I didn’t have to spend the last hour trying to write that fast?” you asked, as he flashed you a sweet, genuine smile. “Why wouldn’t someone want that?”
“I don’t know, maybe it’s because most people here hate me,” he said, sliding the straps of his backpack over his shoulders. “You’ve probably heard things about me.”
“Yeah…are they true?” you asked, as he shook his head.
“You’re the first person that’s asked me that. Everyone else just assumes everything is true,” he sighed, “But no, I’m not a bad person.”
You started to feel so guilty. You’d said plenty of bad things about him, but you only heard one side of the story. With your friends’ story changing so many times, getting more dramatic each time she told it, you were starting to realize that it was all bullshit. You still didn’t know exactly what happened, but you were curious to know what the truth was.
“You okay?” Ethan asked, noticing that you were lost in thought as you stood in front of him.
“I’m friends with your ex,” you said, as his smile slowly fell. “What’s the real story?”
He sat back down in his seat as the other students piled out of the room. You sat beside him as you waited for him to speak.
“I really loved her…but she was just so controlling. Then she cheated on me when she went to the beach with her family. I didn’t find out about that until right before we started college,” he said, looking over to you. “She was pissed that I broke up with her, then all these horrible things about me started going around.”
“That’s fucked up,” you said, as he nodded.
“Yeah, she’s still been trying to text me. I finally blocked her a few days ago.”
“Wait, she said you’ve been trying to text her,” you said, his eyes growing wide at your words.
“Her number’s been deleted from my phone for months. I have no interest in talking to her,” he said, “I know this must be weird for you since you are her friend, but I think it’s cool that you wanted to hear me out.”
“Well, I feel like I need to apologize…I’ve said some things about you that weren’t true.”
“She’s a good liar. She has almost the entire school hating me so it doesn’t surprise me that her friend does, too,” he said, as he stood back up.
“I don’t hate you,” you said, smiling at him. “I don’t know if you’d want to, and I know she’d kill me, but if you ever want to hang out sometime, let me know.”
“I’d like that.”
Ethan was kicking himself for not asking you for your number, or shit, even your social media so he could DM you. He thought you were beautiful, but he knew that hoping for a chance with you would be a reach. He really just needed more people in his life that believed him to make the time he still had at the university more enjoyable.
Your friend begged you to come to a random frat party that you didn’t feel like going to in the first place. After your talk with Ethan, you weren’t even sure you wanted to be around her. You still went, and after searching for her for almost an hour, you checked your phone to see a message from her that she wasn’t coming, and that she ran into one of the guys she’d been hooking up with on the way to the party.
“Why the fuck am I even here?” you said to yourself as you locked your phone and slid it into the back pocket of your jeans.
“Hopefully to hang out with me, if your offer’s still good,” you heard from behind you, recognizing Ethan’s voice.
“Hey,” you said as you turned to face him. “I didn’t expect to see the most hated man on campus here.”
“My roommate told me that if I stayed in my dorm tonight, he’d throw my Xbox out the window,” he said, glancing over to the muscular guy that was watching Ethan talk to you.
“Ah, so you were threatened into being social,” you said, as he started to laugh.
“I guess you could say that. Do you want a drink?”
“Sure.”
Ethan wasn’t much of a drinker; you could tell by the sour look on his face every time he took a sip. It gave him a little confidence though, as the two of you talked and got to know each other a little better.
“I don’t think I can drink this anymore,” he said, sitting the cup down on a table. You sat yours down too, and as soon as you did, someone bumped into you, shoving you into Ethan.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” you said, looking up at him. Your chest was pressed closely against his, his hands on your hips from catching you.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said, “You can stay this close to me all night, if you want.”
“Are you always this smooth? Or is it the alcohol?” you questioned as he smirked at you.
“I’m only buzzed,” he said, before he leaned down, placing his lips on yours.
Chad was still watching Ethan from afar, cheering and thrusting his fist in the air once he saw Ethan kiss you. He started to laugh against your lips before he pulled away to stare daggers through his roommate for interrupting the moment.
“I can’t take him anywhere,” Ethan said, as you smiled at him.
“We could go somewhere more private,” you suggested, as he took your hand in his.
“Want to go back to my dorm? He’ll be here for a while so I know we can talk without being interrupted.”
“Sure!”
Once you made it back to Ethan’s dorm, you were starting to think that he really did just want to talk. You enjoyed listening to him, though. He was telling you about all his hobbies and interests, and you were telling him yours. You started to glance around his side of the dorm room, noticing the cliché, dorky things you’d expect to see.
“Nice Star Wars poster, nerd,” you joked, as he smirked at you.
“Oh, I’m a nerd?” he said, as he nudged you back on his bed. He was hovering over you, his mouth inches from yours. The sexual tension got so thick as his eyes looked into yours, his hand rubbing your hip.
“Mhm,” you said, the corner of your bottom lip in between your teeth. “A hot nerd.”
He felt his cheeks start to heat up, and he really didn’t want you to notice, so he leaned down to finally connect his lips to yours. It didn’t take long for the kiss to get more intense, his tongue brushing across your bottom lip. You let him deepen the kiss, his tongue moving with yours as his hands started to roam. You whimpered into the kiss once his hand squeezed your thigh, your hips started to squirm underneath him.
He pulled away but still stayed close so the two of you could catch your breath. You were reading each other’s faces, and it was obvious that you both wanted more.
“How far do you want this to go?” he asked, his breathing still heavy as his eyes looked into yours.
“As far as you want,” you said, your sweet tone making him groan.
“That’s not what I asked you,” he said, as he leaned back down to kiss your neck. His curls were tickling you, but the only reaction you had were the soft moans slipping past your lips from how well his mouth moved. His hips were rutting into yours, showing you how hard he was for you.
“I want you to fuck me,” you said, as he pulled away to look at you.
“You sure?”
“Mhm.”
Ethan was a little, well, very eager. He got you undressed in what felt like seconds, leaving you in just your panties. Once he stripped down to just his boxers, you got a little curious. You glanced down to see his hard cock straining against the fabric, and started to laugh to yourself, your gaze going to the ceiling.
“What’s funny?” he asked, as he hovered back over you to take one of your nipples in his mouth. Your laughing stopped, a gasp slipping out when he started to suck. “I asked you a question,” he teased, before moving to the other side.
“She really does lie about everything,” you said, as his tongue swirled. “She said you had a small dick.”
He started to laugh against you, before he pulled back. “That’s funny, because she couldn’t take it.”
“I can,” you said, his smile turning to a smirk as his hand trailed down your body to rub you over your panties.
“We’ll see about that,” he said, as he moved lower down the bed to position himself between your thighs.
He slid your panties down your legs, before running his fingers over your wet pussy. Your eyes stayed on him, your bottom lip in between your teeth as he teased you. Your anticipation just kept building as he moved down the bed, positioning himself in between your thighs. He leaned in, slipping his tongue inside your entrance.
He was sloppily eating you out, his head moving from side to side. His arms hooked under your thighs to pull you as close to his face as he could as your hands went to his hair.
“So good,” you whimpered, your breathing getting faster as he worked you closer to your orgasm.
He slid his tongue out of you to focus on your clit, quickly replacing it with two of his fingers. Your back was arching off the bed as he moved his arm back and forth, applying as much pressure as he could to that spongy spot inside you as he sucked on your swollen bundle of nerves.
“You’re gonna make me cum,” you babbled, as he started to chuckle with your clit in his mouth.
That was all it took for your legs to start shaking and your grip on his hair getting even tighter. Once your pussy started to clench around him, he slowed his fingers to a slow roll, not wanting to overstimulate you. His tongue gently licked your clit as he worked you through it, your whimpers getting softer as you came down from your high.
“That was the best orgasm I’ve ever had,” you admitted through your shaky breathing. Ethan started to laugh a little as you looked at him, your eyes hazy. “What?”
“Just wait until I’m inside you,” he cockily said, “You still confident that you can handle it?”
“I know I can,” you said, your legs instinctively spreading wide for him as his fingertips ran up your thigh.
“What are you going to do when no one else can make you feel as good as I do?” he questioned, as one of his fingers started to rub circles on your clit.
“I guess I’d have to keep you around then,” you said, as he shook his head.
“You’d only have me until summer starts,” he said, his finger moving faster. “I’m transferring to a different school after this year.”
“No, you’re not..fuck. I’ll convince you to stay,” you said, relaxing into the bed as he teased you.
Ethan pulled his hand away from your pussy before he slid his boxers off. He crawled back on top of you and reached over to his bedside table to grab a condom.
“I might let you convince me,” he said, as he lined up with your entrance. You tensed up a little because you knew how big he was. “Relax, baby.”
You did as he said, taking a deep breath as he inched his way inside of you. You were moaning as he stretched you out, and when you thought he was all the way in, he just kept going.
“Oh fuck,” you whimpered, feeling so full as he finally came to a stop, wanting to give you plenty of time to adjust. “Told you..Fuck, I told you I could take it,” you said, already struggling to speak.
“Don’t get cocky,” he said, your mouth falling open as he started to move. “I’m going to ruin this pussy.”
“Ruin it,” you said, challenging him as your lusty, hooded eyes connected with his.
It took everything in Ethan to not immediately start pounding into you, but he didn’t want to hurt you. He started slow, your eyebrows already furrowing together, low moans slipping past your lips. The head of his cock hit that special spot every single time, but you needed more. He sped up a little as your legs wrapped around him, your hands gripped tightly around his biceps.
“Maybe you can take it,” he said, his breathing getting heavier. “Can I go faster?”
“Yes,” you whimpered, as his hips moved quicker.
Your brain was starting to turn to mush, the babbles slipping past your lips making absolutely no sense. The only thing your mind could process in that moment was how good Ethan was making you feel. He thought you were adorable, already so cock drunk, and he wasn’t even close to being done with you yet. He kept his pace, but occasionally thrust a little harder to see if you could take it, the loud moans slipping past your lips as your nails started to dig into his arms letting him know that you could.
He angled your hips to go even deeper. His pace was a little slow as he made sure you were okay. Your eyes were pleading with him to go faster, because you knew the words weren’t going to come out of your mouth. It was getting so hard for him to hold back, so he finally let go. He started to pound into you so hard that your skin was tingling, all the nerves in your body on edge. Your toes were curling as he slammed into your g-spot, your whimpers turning to cries as you felt your orgasm starting to build. It was hard for you to keep your eyes open, and you were sure Ethan was going to have your nail marks on his arms forever with how hard you were squeezing him.
“Fuck,” was the only word you were able to get out, your legs wrapping tightly around him as your body started to involuntarily jolt. Ethan was sure that everyone in the surrounding dorm rooms knew what was happening, because you were being so loud. He wasn’t letting up though. He loved that he was making you feel that good.
It only took a few more deep thrusts before your entire body started to tremble, loud whines flooding out of your mouth as the wave of euphoria washed over you. He chased his own orgasm as he fucked you through it, your pussy clenching him so tight that he was moaning himself.
“I’m almost there, baby,” he said, a slight rasp in his voice from all the panting he’d been doing.
You went limp, your grip on his arms and your legs around his waist relaxing as his hips started to falter, a loud groan slipping past his lips as he released into the condom.
He took a minute to catch his breath before he slid out of you. His abs were burning and his arms were sore from your nails, but he quickly got up to take the condom off so he could take care of you.
He crawled in the bed next to you as you adjusted to lay your head on his chest, still so fucked out that it was hard to process your thoughts. Ethan just held you close, his hands softly rubbing over your bare back as you relaxed into his touches.
“You’re okay, right?” he asked, after a few minutes of you not saying anything. You lazily nodded as your hand moved to rub across his chest.
You laid there in silence as you started to think about what’d just happened. You knew your friend was going to be pissed if she ever found out, but did that even matter? She made almost the entire university hate Ethan for things he never did, and it made you sad that he felt like he needed to switch to a different school so he wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore.
“So…” you finally said, “How can I convince you to stay?”
He let out a nervous laugh, not knowing the best way to respond. “I can’t take people talking about me the way they do anymore.”
“Even if I convince everyone that it was all lies?” you questioned, your tone playful as you angled your head to look at him. “I think it’d be awful for you to leave because of her. You could miss out on someone that would treat you right.”
“Someone like you?” he questioned as he looked down at you. You nodded, before he leaned down to kiss you. “You’re good at this whole convincing thing.”
“Does that mean you’ll stay?” you asked, smiling as you sat up to look at him.
“Yeah, as long as you don’t break my heart,” he said, wrapping his arms around you to pull you back down to his chest.
“I won’t.”
You stayed in Ethan’s bed for a couple hours, making plans for all the dates he wanted to take you on. It felt like you’d known him for way longer than just a few days, the two of you having an instant connection. You hated to pull away from him, but you knew you needed to get dressed before his roommate got home.
“It’s late, can I walk you back to your dorm?” he asked, as he started to put his clothes back on.
“I can’t believe I thought you were this horrible monster. You’re so sweet,” you said, as he smiled at you. “Yeah, you can walk me home.”
Ethan walked you to the front door of your building, pulling you into a gentle kiss before he pulled away.
“I’ll text you,” he said, as he started to back away.
“Yeah, let me know when you make it back to your dorm, please,” you said, as he nodded.
When you made it upstairs and got settled into your bed, you heard your phone vibrate as it charged on your bedside table. You grabbed it and saw a goodnight message from Ethan, a huge smile on your face as you responded to him. You were so exhausted from the time you’d spend with him, and you soon felt yourself start to doze off. You heard your phone buzz again, your eyes lazily opening to see if it was Ethan. You took a deep breath once you read the message that was sent to you.
‘Why the fuck were you kissing Ethan at that party?’
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ambassadorarlert · 6 months
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toxic!armin head canons
author’s note: this fr has been a long time coming. it took a while to gather my thoughts lmao. he can’t be sweet all the time, right??😭
warning: modern au. toxic characteristics — obsession, jealousy, possessiveness. gaslighting.
18+ ONLY MINORS DO NOT INTERACT
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we're not gonna look away from armin's whole underlying character trait of being a known manipulator. he is going to gaslight you.
armin starts his mind games as a last resort. when he's desperate to have his way. when he's being back into a corner, and you're holding your ground in an argument or disagreement. when you're winning and he's losing. he'll play into his unfortunate-baby face-sweet-boy persona and say, "i'm only telling you/doing this because i love you!" armin slaps, "I don't know what you want me to do." at the end of most arguments because he knows it will make you quit arguing out of pure frustration.
we can all agree armin goes through your phone
he immediately clicks on iMessage to see who you’ve been texting. snoops through everything. pictures, contacts, notes. all of it. armin goes all up in your private dm’s, discord, looks through your snapchats. who you’ve been sending tiktoks to. he’s so extra, he even scrolls on your social media timelines. your dash. your fyp. just to see what you’re always looking and giggling at bc who is making you laugh if it’s not him ? arminknows he won’t find anything and that you would never do anything behind his back. but he looks anyway and holds his breath just in case. and, if he does find something he doesn’t like, he will confront you about it and not even address the bigger question
major attachment issues. in bold, italics and regular size font.
the root cause being his parents died when he was really young and was only raised by his grandpa who worked all the time. /: armin definitely has mommy issues. he's very anxious to pleasure you and do everything you want him to bc a.) he's hopelessly devoted to you b.) for some reason he think it'll make you love him more. armin will get really attached to you after the first date, and everything in your relationship moves quickly. he says i love you first. 3 months into the relationship you’re moving in together. engaged after 1 year, married 6 months later. he’s sensitive and in tune with everything you’re doing and feeling and saying. the slightest change in your voice, oh you must be mad at him. when you're literally just tired and have 0 energy, he must be annoying you. armin needs regular reassurance and validation. he will straight up ask “do you still love me?” at least once a day.
armin gets jealous so. so easily.
armin thinks he's not good enough for you and that you deserve someone who can do the things he can't, while simultaneously not being able to bear the thought of you being with another man. he views other guys as a threat and is off-putting on purpose. he goes through your followers and interactions daily and reports guys who leave compliments and thirsts. he gives guys dirty looks when he see's them obviously looking at you. will ask trap questions like "would you still be with me if you could start your life over?" armin is well liked among your girlfriends but makes no effort with your guy friends, and has succeeded in distancing you from a few of them. he disguises ultimatums as open communication. armin's jealousy is a delicate spectrum.
he's very possessive of you.
you're his everything and he wants everyone to know that. you're so gorgeous, he's not gonna hide you away. armin recognizes that you're your own person, and you can show off however you'd like. as long as he's somewhere in the background. he encourages that you tag him in all your posts. he fights for his life trying to convince you to let him come with you while you go out with your friends and he wins most of the time. but when he has to stay home, he stays up and waits for you, he double/triple texts and asks when you'll be home even though you made a point to give him a timeframe. and don't even be 5 minutes late because armin already has seventy-five questions lined up. if he's feeling extra silly, he'll start a fight over text. 🤪
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2023. do not copy or repost any work by arlertwitch on any other platform. violators will be prosecuted. 🪼 — @artsyblkblocked / @sleazymac-n-cheesy / @arlerts-angel / @chiinni / @aegonslawyer / @stoned-eren /
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tocomplainfriend · 5 months
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Some random complaining!
Hazbin Hotel totally got cut off- I mean Viv probably wanted at least 3-4 season or something, but they just gave her 2. Cause the Angels already starting the genocide is so early. Which what does that mean for season 2 if this is just season 1?
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I really thought it all would've started after the events of the pilot. So we just got Alastor, Nifty, and Husk. And then getting Sir pentious in the hotel, and going through some time before the extermination.
I think we are going to get normal "get to know the characters" episodes, but then scaling to the extermination date. (which I thought it was held by the end of the year). No clue of what's after that... really.
The "we will show a heaven a fight" shows me that the idea of redemption of sinners is left behind really fast. Which I found interesting, so that sucks.
Oh, look is her!
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Also, I really thought they would do a small thing about the swearing. Look... I swear a shit ton! But Viv can not write all her characters like that. She said, "I write the characters how I talk"- that is not good because all characters talk the same and all force of swearing in the series disappears. The fact that Alastor doesn't swear is good, cause it gives him more character. I really hope that Charlie doesn't swear half as much, it would fit her character more. The daughter of Lucifer, that's the one out because she is nicer. But has casual to little swearing is outstanding. (It would be more special if multiple of the sins in HB weren't sweethearts). Husk swearing a lot makes sense old man, alcoholic, gambling addict from the '70s. Hopefully Nifty doesn't, She is from the 1950s when swearing was less frequent, and used specific words too-which I hope the language of the year is they are from-in the same way they are with Alastor. In the idea of Nifty being a maid during her life, you would guess she would swear less than other characters.
Every person talks and swears differently individually. So I hope not all characters over swear.
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Look at Nifty! (you can do small jokes like this without swearing or heavy sexual garbage all the time)
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These guys here looked a bit weird.
Also, I supposed Vaggie is still from 2014 and El Salvador, right? Like she died went to heaven, became a fallen angel... right? Am I wrong about that? Genuine question!
Also, I wonder what they will do with Sir Pentious? Velvette is not anywhere on the trailer, I think. I'm sure Baxter doesn't exist lmao. I really wonder how they will balance things with personal things for each character-at the same time of the angel's attack.
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Are they full front fight the angels? Where are this guy's machines?
Someone wanted a bunch of Broadway voices, and was so ready to throw old VA's out, damn.
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Are they going to have time to explore how characters died, what let them be in hell even? Gonna do a post about that and heaven stuff later on!
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On thin ice (Hockey player! Miguel O’Hara x Figure skater! Fem! Reader)
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Y’all… this word count… I’m was almost gonna slept it up but decided not too. Anyways hehe. Also the last chapter is gonna be posted on Halloween at the witching hour in PST, cause Halloween chapter! so I’m excited about that lol. The usual, not proofread, Miguel might be ooc.
(Y/F/N)- Your full name.
Not much Miguel and reader interaction but what is there is worth it. Me attempting to write about sports stuff I don’t know anything about even though I promise I did attempt research. Cursing (I think tbh I can’t even remember but probably), fluff (if you squint?????), I’m giving up on these tags lmao.
Word count: 2.8k
Series Masterlist
Chapter 14: Ever thought of callin’ when you’ve had a few? ‘Cause I always do.
It wasn’t entirely surprising how quickly you got everyone in your group to agree to go to the game later, although you were expecting Logan to be against the idea since he hates the sport, but apparently his want to see you and Miguel get together was stronger than his hate for hockey since he immediately agreed.
You were currently in your 4-way shared Airbnb getting ready for the hockey game, having already been kicked out of the dorms by the university despite there being a game tonight, which didn’t make sense in your opinion, but that’s neither here nor there. Usually you would usually travel back home during the breaks, but due to you and Logan participating in regionals this year, you had to stay in Nueva York, you had both decided to stay in one rather than a regular hotel since it would be cheaper, Kate and Xavier tagged along for emotional support.
“I’ve never actually attended a hockey game, what do you wear? Probably a crew neck or a hoodie right? It’s still an ice rink. Maybe I should wear school merch, ugh but the only school related jacket I have is our skating team varsity jackets.” Kate, Logan and Xavier just stayed silent as they watched you rambled on, their faces full of amusement (and from Logan just the slightest bit of annoyance) as they watched you freak out , glancing at you every once and a while as you kept pacing between the hallway bathroom and your room as you attempted to get ready for the game despite it not starting for another 3 and a half hours.
“You should have asked Miguel for one of his spare jerseys.” Logan teased as he wandered towards your doorframe and leaned against it as he watched you dump your suitcase over your bed. How the hell do you not have a red or blue jacket??
“Shut up Logan.”
“You’re overthinking this, you know.”
“What? No I’m not.” Oh, you totally overthinking this.
“He’s got you whipped.” Logan snickered, shaking his head as he crossed his arms over his chest. You in response threw a pillow in his direction, which he hit to dodge.
“You’re not funny Logan. Do you have a school sweatshirt I can borrow?” You said, releasing a deep exhale through your nose as you turn to look at him.
“I think I think I have a spear.” He replied as he picked up the pillow off the floor and tossed it on your bed. “I just don’t want Miguel trying to beat me up over you wearing my jacket.” He added as he walked over to where you were standing, stopping once he was right next to you.
“He wouldn’t, I promise. I won’t let him.”
“This is actually kinda fun to watch.” Xavier said to Kate, as she glanced over to you before back at the rink. The spiders were currently in the lead 2 to 1 and it was about to be the end of the first period, a little less than 6 minutes before the timer reaches zero.
“It’s totally scary though.” Kate said as she took a sip of her soda, you nodding in agreement.
“So glad I went into figure skating…” Logan muttered as his eyes widened, an almost horrified look spreading on his face, but he couldn’t look away. You would have giggled at his reaction if you didn’t feel the same way. Both sports are dangerous just in their own ways.
You turned your head as you saw Peter pass the punk to Miguel, who you believed was playing center, (you watched one of those 10 minute crash course videos on how hockey works before you came to the show because whether if you were aware of it or not, Logan was right about you being whipped already) as he was making his way closer to the goal, when one of the players on the opposite team came crashing into him back first. The other player’s elbow “accidentally” hit Miguel’s face, and Miguel was knocked back, landing against the wall as the player on the opposite side took the puck.
“What the fuck-.” You muttered under your breath in shock, cringing slightly as you watched Miguel’s hand going up to cover his mouth, his face wincing in pain, your hands going up to mirror his actions. As soon as Miguel’s hand made contact with his mouth, a timeout was called. The spider's couch went up to Miguel first, talked to him for a bit before walking over to where the referee was. You couldn’t hear anything from either interaction, so you just watched silently, ignoring your friends glances towards you, keeping your eyes on Miguel, worried written on your face. Miguel’s eyes shift around the arena, before finding yours, you can tell he’s trying not to cringe as much as soon as your eyes meet, as if he didn’t want you to see him in pain.
Once you two were looking at each other, you took your hand off your face and mouthed an “are you okay?” to which Miguel took his hand off his mouth and gave you a thumbs up and a smile, but his smile didn’t free you of your worries, in fact, it made it worse, before you could stop your body, you let out a gasp as your eyes widened. His mouth was bleeding, and it was bleeding a lot.
His expression seemed to falter a bit upon seeing your reaction, to what though you couldn’t really tell. Panic? Worry? You don’t know. Other then the initial pain he felt when the elbow made contact with his face, Miguel wasn’t really worried about his injury despite the metallic taste filling his mouth, he didn’t feel anything break or a tooth fall out, sure he’ll probably be sore from a few hours and will have to clean his mouth guard, maybe think about getting a cage instead (this wasn’t the first time someone has elbowed him in the face during a game) but he knows it’s a part of the sport, that’s what he signed up for when he started playing. So why was it that seeing the concern on your face made his chest tighten with guilt? Miguel didn’t have another time to dwell on his thoughts before his coach sent him to the locker room to clean up.
Miguel felt like he was going to go insane if he didn’t get the taste of blood out of his mouth. He’s already gone through 4 sticks of gum and had to refill his water bottle twice in an attempt to flesh out the coppery taste from his senses. He let out a frustrated huff of annoyance as he spat out another piece of gum and brought his water up to his mouth and took a big swig, gargling it a bit before spitting it out in a sink and finally started to make his way out, his bag with his gear slung over his shoulder as he exited the locker room. They had won the game luckily, but Miguel wasn’t as happy as he wanted to be about the victory, maybe it was because he was still mad about getting elbowed in the mouth, maybe it was because he had to be benched due to him getting injured so early in the game or maybe it’s because out of all the games he played this season, of course he got injured at the one you were attending.
Most of the team has gone home already, some stragglers were left, two of those being Miguel and Peter, and Miguel wouldn’t be surprised if you had left already, he probably would have if he was in your shoes. Maybe you got the ick from him now after watching him get hit in the face, and he would be back in square one all over again, the thought was more painful then the hit to his mouth. His mind was running a mile a minute as we made his way down the hall and towards the main exit to head to his car where Peter was most likely already waiting for him. As he walked, he was trying to keep his thoughts on his sore jaw and about the game, trying to to not think about how you saw him get hit, or how your face twisted in disgust at the sight of his bloody smile after you asked him if he alright, the embarrassment and angry he felt when after he came back from the locker room Coach Turner benched him, how-
Is that you talking to Peter in the parking lot???
“I should turn around and wait till she leaves…” he told himself under his breath, but his feet continued to move him closer to where both of you stood near Miguel’s car. Once he was a big closer Peter noticed him first, since your back was facing him, talking to him about something he couldn’t quite pick up on.
“Ah speak of the devil.” Peter said with a smirk, one you would haven’t thought much of, but Miguel knew that there was a smug undertone to it, as if he was right about something. “Sup Mig, we were just talking about you.” He continued as you turned to face him, your eyes widened for a split second as they scanned Miguel’s face, as if checking for more injuries, before you took a step closer to him, you hand instantly going to rest gently on his arm.
“Hey! Oh my god, are you okay? That hit looked brutal, god that jerk.” Miguel didn’t know if it was the way your tone and face went from concerned to annoyed as you spoke, or the way you hand went traveled from his arm to his chin, lightly gripping it and moving his face from side to side gently, mirroring his actions earlier in the day when he did the same to you after he bumped into you at lunch, but god did you make his heart burst with warmth.
“I’m okay ice princess, calm down.” Miguel assured you with a small smile, a chuckle escaping his swollen lips as he took your hand and brought it down away from his face, giving it a light squeeze as he did so. Neither of you have realized that Peter had slipped away into Miguel's car.
“Okay, okay good.” You sighed and nodded, glad to know he was relatively okay.
“Didn’t mean to get you all worried Princesa.”
You scoff, taking your hand away from him and lightly hit his chest.
“God, you always gonna say something stupid, huh?” You rolled your eyes, but your tone couldn’t hide the smile forming on your face.
“Of course I do, ice princess, how else am I supposed to annoy you?”
To say you were nervous was a complete understatement, you have never been more terrified for a skating performance in your life. It was your first time performing for regionals after all.
You had barely gotten a wink of sleep, a few hours at most, but you mostly spent the night twisting and turning, glancing at your phone to look at the time, before letting out a frustrated groan and pulling your sheets up a bit higher in an attempt to get yourself to finally sleep. But your attempts were mostly futile, finally throwing in the towel around 5:00 in the morning, deciding it would be better to spend your time Getting ready for the day you’ve been anticipating rather then attempting to get another hour of sleep you know you won’t get.
By the time the clock had struck 5:30, you'd already packed your equipment in your bag, and had loaded it in Logan’s car, not surprised when you saw his back already packed, before making your way to the kitchen to make yourself breakfast, something light but enough to keep you full till lunch.
“You couldn’t sleep either?” Logan asked when you saw him enter the kitchen, two Starbucks cups hand, passing you one as he took a sip of his, his voice low as to not wake up Kate or Xavier. You let out a hum and nodded your head as you took the one he handed you and took a sip, the caffeine making you wince as you feel it try to wake your body up a bit.
“We should hit the road soon, coach Kavinsky said we should be at the rink by 6 so we can make it in time for check in and make it for our off ice warm up.” You said as you stood up from your seat, putting your dishes in the sink.
“God, I didn't know our short program would take so long…” Logan huffed as you both threw your figure skating jackets over your performance outfits for the first half of the competition, as you both rushed down the arenas long hallway being careful to avoid running into some of the other pairs as you made your way back to the locker rooms to change.
“Did you see Kate and her boyfriend?”
“No. Did you see Miguel and his friend?”
“No. I didn’t get enough time to look around the seats to find them.”
“Same.”
You both dropped the conversation once you both reached your respective locker rooms. Quickly changing out of the first dress and slipped the second one on, it was a full black dress with long mesh sleeves and smoke black mesh on your sides, being sure to be careful with the gemstones that were placed around the waistline and the chest, and the black feathers that accented the back in order to look like a pair of small wings as you slip your jacket back on, before going to change your lip color and eye makeup.
You were stressing hard, hell, you were surprised you were able to apply your eyeliner with a steady hand. You didn’t need to rush, since you and Logan weren’t going back on the ice for a while since they still had a few short programs to go through before you were supposed to go back on, but you tended to rush when you were nervous. Once you finished fixing your makeup you went to touch up your hair, placing two feathered wing hair clips that pinned flat against your head to match the ones of your costume, one of each side of your head. As you were placing some more bobby pins in your hair to help keep the small wings in place you heard your phone ding next to where you had placed it next to all your supplies. Once placing the last bobby pin in your hair, you grabbed your phone to open it and look at the notification.
Hey, you did amazing, can’t wait to watch your other dance. -unknown number
Fuck how your heart skipped a beat.
You didn’t even need to ask who it was to know it was Miguel, although you never gave him your phone number, so you were a bit curious as to who he had asked for it, but for now you’d have to push that to the back of your mind and focus at the more important upcoming task at hand.
“Next skaters going for the free skate, (Y/F/N) and Logan Martinez.”
A pause as the two go into their starting positions before Swan Lake by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky begins to fill the arena, the two skaters cladded in black, the gemstones on their costumes, despite their small size, shimmered brightly from the lights. No sounds other than the music filling the rink and the occasional swish from the skates slashing the ice.
You might be representing the black swan but you’ve never looked more like an angel in Miguel’s eyes. Despite the tragic atmosphere that the performance was depicting, you looked absolutely heavenly to him, he shouldn’t be surprised, this is what you love to do, what you wanted to do for a living. But he’s never got the chance, no starch that, the privilege of watching you do a routine in all of your full glory. He’s caught glimpses of you and Logan doing both routines during practices, but that was different, you wouldn’t portraying the emotions like you were right now, you wouldn’t wear the performance outfit like you were now, and the energy you were putting into the routine was far more grand than when you would practice back on the uni’s arena. He could already see himself watching from home as you and Logan were representing the country in the Olympics, but then again, maybe it was just his heart talking,being overzealous. He didn’t know if it was the performance or just your presence that he couldn’t tear his gaze from, but he wasn’t even sure if he wanted to look away in the first place.
You and Logan were selected to advance to sectionals.
Taglist: @tayleighuh @cowboylikeevie @coralineyouareinterribledanger @jukioku @loser-alert @miguel-ohara-eater @serpentstarr @littlexscarletxwitch @darksidescorner @sukioyakio @minimari415
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wovenstarlight · 3 months
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I got an interesting anonymous ask on the SFS Tumblr asking about the reasoning behind a bunch of Yoohyun's decisions that had… less-than-stellar outcomes, let's say? (LMAO.) and I'd like to keep the TL blog clean so I'm answering Anon here. I'm gonna post their ask in full for reference, because the answers to each individual question overlap:
Hi, thank you very much for your time, energy and effort. What you are doing is really amazing and admirable. I know you are busy enough and I shouldn't trouble you, but after reading the manhwa, I had questions about Yoohyun's logic and sentiment, and I became more confused after reading the novel and I don't know who to ask. Please ignore my message if it's to much trouble. 1: Why doesn't Yoohyun spend the last years of his life on earth peacefully with Yoojin, even though he knows that the world will end soon? 2: What did Yoohyun accomplish by leaving and humiliating Yoojin that he was persistent to do it for so many years? 3: Why instead of using his forces and technologies to protect Yoojin, he announces to the world that it is open season on him and he is worthless? (Normaly no one dares to harm the family of an S class but Yoohyun expose Yoojin to danger by abandoning him.) 4: Why does Yoohyun stop protecting Yoojin when the most dangerous part of Yoojin's life as an F class hunter begins? (Using his influence he could easily ban Yoojin from entering dungeons. Or he could have secretly formed a group of the most powerful hunters to go with Yoojin to dungeons. This way he could have provided him with everything he needed and keep him safe. That is, if he had any intention of protecting him.) 5: Why would Yoohyun gain all that resources, power, wealth and connections and he sit around and does nothing so that Yoojin would face death every day and rot in the basement? He gain all that for what, if not for protecting Yoojin? 6: Why doesn't he ever change his procedure or provide new options for Yoojin to stop going to dungeons? (Yoojin has no chance for a peaceful life due to not having a degree and being a notorious person. And he doesn't know about that cult.) Yoojin got to see his 30 years old birthday cause the cult didn't feel like killing him and he took care of himself in dungeons and was lucky that only his legs broke. So why would Yoohyun identify as a doting brother? The more I think about it the less I understand.
(crossposted on AO3, if you'd prefer to read there)
Okay, so, I'm really prone to rambling at length and this is a subject I have strong feelings on, so I'll give you a very short version of my answer in bullet points, and then a longer version with proper chapter-specific references and full explanations of what I think was going on.
Yoohyun wants to repay Yoojin for all the care and love he's given him, but as a 17-year-old, he doesn't have much social power
Yoohyun's Awakening puts himself and anyone he loves (i.e. Yoojin) in a dangerous position, because while he has individual physical power as an S-rank, he still lacks social power and also can't singlehandedly protect Yoojin 24/7
Yoohyun, in all his rash 17-year-old glory, takes the drastic action of cutting off Yoojin, planning to build up enough power to protect Yoojin and then reunite with him. Yoojin, as just your ordinary everyday 22-year-old, faces no risks other than people targeting him in order to hurt Yoohyun (I don't agree that no one would dare to harm the family of an S-rank, for reasons I'll elaborate on later in the long answer), so if Yoohyun's not close to Yoojin, then that cuts it down to "no risks at all", right…? So tell the media, tell the world, that no, Han Yoohyun doesn't give a shit about Han Yoojin. Yoohyun assumes he'll be able to explain it all to Yoojin one day and that he'll understand. (This should answer your Question 2 and Q3.)
But it doesn't work out as expected. Yoohyun thought it'd take much less time to establish his position than it does in reality (the assumed 4-ish years ended up as 6+ years). Also, Yoojin's gone from trying to make up with Yoohyun in a way that'll let them be together again (not going to happen, because Yoohyun's still not ready to bring Yoojin back into the fold) to being in his own terrible situation, so he's started lashing out at Yoohyun. So even if Yoohyun was in a stable enough situation to try reconciling with him, Yoojin might not be open to it by this point
Somewhere along the way, Yoohyun learns from the filial duty addict Diarma the world is going to end. He doesn't drop everything and go to live with Yoojin because even now, there's still the concern that maybe Yoohyun won't be able to protect Yoojin from everything, and maybe Yoojin doesn't want Yoohyun around, anyway. There's no use in going to live with Yoojin if it'll just end up getting Yoojin killed through Yoohyun's inaction (Q1).
So Yoohyun keeps maintaining his guild and his power so he can keep protecting Yoojin from what he thinks are the Real Threats. (Because the worlds of low- and high-rank Hunters are VERY different. Yoohyun probably assumes that because Yoojin's not facing the high-rank Hunter dangers, he's facing no dangers—a stupid but understandable mistake, given that Yoojin also assumed the exact same thing in reverse about Yoohyun! It sucks, it really does, but I really do think Yoohyun just… didn't realize just how bad it was.) (Q5) And the world can end whenever it wants; if there's no challenging it, then at least Yoohyun's kept Yoojin safe in the meantime.
And the one danger they have in common, dungeons—you suggest Yoohyun banning Yoojin from entering any, but Yoohyun's cut himself off from Yoojin entirely, remember. Trying to interfere in his life would be met with (a) STRONG rejection by a deeply hurt Yoojin who doesn't understand why Yoohyun thinks he has any say in Yoojin's life anymore, and (b) interest by Yoohyun's rivals, who'd wonder why he's trying to keep his hyung away from dangers when he says he doesn't care about that hyung's wellbeing, putting Yoojin right back in their crosshairs. (Q4)
Also, the immoral people have been killing Caregivers of S-ranks. Diarma might have told Yoohyun about this. If he did, then Yoohyun's goals would definitely have gone from "stay strong and one day reconcile with hyung" to "NEVER get close to hyung, because there are beings outside this world, much more powerful than anything I can match in a reasonable timespan, who will 100% kill him". At which point, even if Yoohyun had wanted to reconcile with him, or compromise by just adjusting his plan and talking to Yoojin a little more, or literally anything past making a show of total and complete indifference, he couldn't have without knowingly risking Yoojin's life. (Q6)
You and I and all the other S-Ranks readers, removed from this situation as we are, can think of half a dozen ways Yoohyun could probably have gotten around things. But the simple fact is that in that situation, under that much pressure, with that much emotional attachment to his brother and literally everything that mattered to him at stake if he fucked up in the tiniest of ways—forget making perfect decisions, there was absolutely no way Yoohyun was going to do anything other than what seemed least risky. Because to do otherwise would be risking Yoojin’s life and therefore his own. And the choices you’ve already mades, the path you’re already on—no matter how bad it is for you, no matter how bad it is for the people you love, no matter how much it hurts—will always, always be less risky than the unknown path, because at least this way, you know what dangers to expect and brace for. At the core of the matter, it’s just that… the path that was best for Yoojin's happiness wasn't the path that was best for Yoojin's life expectancy, you see? And Yoojin can't be happy if he's dead. Yoohyun can't be alive if Yoojin's dead. That's all it came down to.
……oh my god that was so long actually. And that was supposed to be the TL;DR. The long version is going to be SO long. I hope you like reading 50-page passionate essays. There's a poll at the end, you can look forward to that!!!
(Also, okay, before we jump into the Deep End. Two disclaimers.
Anon, you said you read the manhwa and novel, but I read only the novel, so some of my chapter references might be unfamiliar. I know they shuffled events around a little in the webtoon, too, so I'll try and describe the general events so you can find any webtoon parallels.
Yoojin's a REALLY unreliable narrator and definitely doesn't know a lot of what Yoohyun's gone through. Part of that is because there's things he has no way to pick up on or deduce; part of that is because he wants to not think about Yoohyun going through bad shit; part of that is because Yoohyun doesn't want Yoojin worrying about him and has actively hidden the worse parts of his life from him. So a fair part of what I'm talking about is going to be reading between the lines and extrapolating.
Okay, disclaimers done!) Now on to the long version with references. Let's go point-by-point based on the TL;DR.
#1: Yoohyun wanting to repay Yoojin
I mean, the skill's called Last/Final Repayment! Isn't that enough? Where did you think that came from? There certainly wasn't anything Yoojin wanted to repay Yoohyun for.
Okay, no, more seriously. Yoohyun and Yoojin have grown up with only each other to depend on. Yoohyun has watched Yoojin take care of him alone their whole lives, with no outside support, keeping a roof over their head and their stomachs filled. For Yoohyun's sake, Yoojin has given up:
A complete education, with Yoojin having "dropped out of school to take care of his little brother", as mentioned in chapter 1.
A proper social life. In chapter 25, Yoojin says his friends in his early 20s were "middle-aged factory workers" instead of people his own age.
Hobbies. He says to Yerim and Myeongwoo in chapter 45 that one of his "few hobbies" is taking spam calls, but his character profile from the E-books volume 1 confirms it's his only hobby, and one that's now fading… which leaves him with zero personal interests. (The spam calling thing is almost certainly something that sprouted from loneliness in the years that the brothers were separated, by the way. After all, why would Yoojin waste time listening to some stranger on the phone talk to him about something he doesn’t care about? Most likely because there isn’t—wasn’t—really anyone else who’s willing to talk to him, anymore.)
The sole birthday present of "a 10,000 won bill to buy something tasty to have with his friends" he got from their parents, which "would be used for Han Yoohyun’s birthday. As [it was] every year", as mentioned in chapter 239, during Yoohyun’s flashback to childhood.
And Yoohyun, a helpless child, could only watch as Yoojin gave up all of that, to no real benefit of his own, just to focus all his attention and resources on supporting Yoohyun.
By the time he was in middle school, Yoohyun was already talking about becoming a doctor since it'd be "advantageous in a lot of aspects"; he says he "just wanted to make it so you [Yoojin] could live comfortably" (chapter 258). Yoojin wouldn't have to be the sole earner, and would've been able to pursue his own happiness as well as Yoohyun's. Yoohyun wants very badly for Yoojin to not have to worry about him anymore. It makes sense that that sentiment would remain even after he Awakened.
#2: Yoohyun's Awakening
And boy what an Awakening it was! Straight from a random orphaned kid with zero social life and decent grades to one of the world's most desirable and dangerous individuals, basically overnight. He has none of the social sway that the rich and well-connected Sung Hyunjae or the professional athletes Moon Hyuna and Choi Sukwon do, and he refuses to get the help of big corporations like Choi Sukwon and Bak Mingyu (and Yoon Kyeongsoo? I forget if Soodam was also a corp-backed guild). So he's got no power, but he's also declared his intent to create a guild, and that combined with his nature as a born S-rank makes people perceive him as a threat. Maybe not so much in the early days, when people think he's just an arrogant, stupid kid who's going to crash and burn, but definitely more so as time passed, which Sung Hyunjae confirms in chapter 152:
“[Han Yoohyun] was at an age where he had a lot of problems, starting out living alone.” […] “He wasn’t even alone, strictly speaking. I heard Team Head Seok and the others joined Haeyeon early on.” I heard that Seok Simyeong had visited Yoohyun-ie even before Haeyeon was founded. He was still annoying, but I had to give him his share of the credit for Haeyeon. Sung Hyunjae gave a small nod at my words. “Even so, it isn’t easy for a latecomer to find his place.” “That’s… You’re right.” “For the first year or so, it was easier. Since most of them said Haeyeon wouldn’t be able to properly establish itself.” Sung Hyunjae also said he hadn’t been interested in Haeyeon—in Yoohyun-ie—at the time, either. “The problem arose when it started to become a major guild.”
The second the initial "LOL, this has got to be a joke, right?" blinders come off, he's at risk. And he would've known that this would happen right from the start—Yoohyun's smart enough that he would've understood the lack of attacks was just because they didn't see him as a real threat yet.
So, again: a latecomer on the scene with no power and no experience to his name, and seen as a threat to deal with. No social connections means he has no one to rely on to help him with Yoojin's protection: it's up to him alone. And even S-ranks have to eat and sleep and use the bathroom and do half a dozen other things that would pull him away from Yoojin's side, not to mention the all-important requirement of raiding dungeons, which Yoohyun himself admits in chapter 71 was one of his main concerns:
“Once I start a raid on an S-rank dungeon, I’ll be gone for a week […]. Me… avoiding you… was also largely due to the S-rank dungeon raid time. Since, obviously, I can’t look after you once I go into the dungeon.”
So Yoohyun himself can't just stay by Yoojin's side as his bodyguard 24/7. He'd have to leave him unattended for, at minimum, whole weeks. Which means he doesn't have a reliable, sure way to keep his hyung safe.
#3: Cutting off Yoojin, and the risks to an S-rank's family
And that's not even mentioning his own safety. What happens when Yoohyun's hurt and can't help with guarding Yoojin? And he will be hurt, either by dungeon raids or other people. If you don't think that second one is a concern, as early as chapter 6, when Yoojin and Yoohyun are having their first meal together, Yoojin asks about Yoohyun's ability to cook, and he says he taught himself:
“I’ve got items for detoxification and de-cursing, now, but I didn’t have them before. So making my own food felt safer. Even now, when I enter dungeons, I bring dried rations I made myself. Since it’s most dangerous inside dungeons.” “…Detoxification? De-cursing?” What was I hearing right now? As in, there were bastards who’d poison and curse his food, so he had to make it himself… that sort of thing?
Yoohyun himself, a strong, healthy S-rank with a good constitution and one hell of a temper, was at risk of being poisoned and cursed through something as everyday as food. You said that normally, no one would dare attack the family of an S-rank—but if people are willing to attack the S-rank himself, knowing that he'll kill them for sure if it fails and he learns they're behind it, then what's stopping them from attacking the S-rank's family?
There's two points you could argue:
Yoohyun says in the chapter 6 conversation that "It’s a major crime for an Awakened person to target an Unawakened person, so I made them think it wasn’t worth it to risk going after you." But that'd only last for the 3 years up until Yoojin Awakened, and honestly, there's a real risk that anyone targeting Yoojin before that time would just be rich or socially connected enough that they could make the charges go away.
The other argument that if they attack an S-rank's beloved family and that fails, now the S-rank is coming after them with a vengeance, and he's not even suffering from the aftermath of poisoning or a curse to weaken him in the slightest, so that might scare them off. But, like… people do stupid things when they're desperate. In that kidnapping where Yoojin met the Krecke Blackie (chapters 46–49), sure, Yoojin had his own special skills that made him valuable, but he also had five major guilds and the Association all dedicated to his protection. That's several times the protection a single S-rank could offer, and some idiots who weren't even in a desperate situation still tried to go after him for benefits similar to what you'd get from having leverage over an S-rank. So I really don't think anything would stop people from threatening Yoojin. If anything, the combined facts of Yoohyun starting out from a weak position, Yoohyun obviously caring about Yoojin, and Yoojin being so much weaker than Yoohyun would make that the best option by far, if you wanted to hurt Yoohyun. After all, it’s not like Unawakened F-rank Yoojin can fight back himself, and again, Yoohyun isn’t going to fight you if it would risk Yoojin’s life.
So, Yoohyun goes "if I distance myself from hyung and make people think it WON'T hurt me for him to be hurt, then people have no reason to target him!" and follows through. I do think this was a stupid move on his part, even if he intended to explain it all to Yoojin eventually, because by not letting him in on the secret right from the start, he guaranteed that Yoojin would be hurt and upset by his sole remaining family member seemingly abandoning him for better prospects. Which leads Yoojin to start making his own stupid moves, which snowballs into a series of bad decisions on both their parts, and so on… but we'll get to that in a minute. The problem, I think, is that this plan could've worked, if only Yoohyun had told Yoojin at the start, so that Yoojin knew not to draw attention to himself. Maybe they could've done regular calls on burner phones or something, to stay in touch, and they'd have been happier that way.
Unfortunately that didn't happen. Why? Because, as Yoohyun states in that same conversation in chapter 6, he "didn’t want to burden" Yoojin. Yoohyun's desire to protect Yoojin is not just physical, but also mental/emotional—he doesn't want Yoojin to know that Yoohyun's going through all this trouble of leaving home and dealing with threats to his life and making big decisions, because he doesn't want Yoojin to worry.
[EDIT: And actually, thinking back over this, do you realize—Yoojin always talks about how Yoohyun was a delight of a child to raise, never complaining, never throwing tantrums, wonderfully behaved and always doing as he was told. Enough so that Moon Hyuna has to tell him, explicitly, in Chapter 43, that that’s not normal, in those exact words:
“He was a good younger brother who never needed to be scolded. Ever since he was little, he listened well and didn’t worry me…….” “You said you were the one to raise him, right? After you lost your parents early. That’s not normal.” She clicked her tongue and continued. “A good, obedient little brother from a poor family without parents. That sort of thing doesn’t even appear in children’s fairy tales these days. Because it’s not realistic.” “I mean, to go that far—” “Kids are kids. They get frustrated and angry if there’s something lacking, they make trouble to get attention, they compare themselves with others, and beyond begging their parents to buy them something they want, they might even resent them. Parents might still think their kids are cute, but brothers? To them, they’re just enemy bastards; I also have a younger sibling, so I know. Of course, there are brothers and sisters who get along. In peaceful households where their parents take good care of them. Even then, it’s not like they never fight. Younger brothers in particular are a type that need to be put in their place; older siblings the world across would probably agree.”
This suggests that Yoohyun and Yoojin have never, ever, EVER experienced conflict on major life decisions. Not once have they argued about Yoohyun making choices that Yoojin wouldn’t like. Which means Yoohyun approached cutting off Yoojin with a very particular mindset, and I have some guesses as to what exactly that mindset was. Do you think he hoped Yoojin would understand that his perennially well-behaved brother would have some reason for leaving home? Do you think he just… didn’t know how to approach telling Yoojin about his choice, knowing it’d upset him so much, so he simply didn’t and hoped for the best? Or was it something else entirely?
Either way: Yoohyun absolutely did not know what would come of this choice. He definitely did not expect just how hard it would be on Yoojin. At the time, he was probably just wanting to spare Yoojin the heartache of their first major argument about Yoohyun’s life choices.] And it's that very desire to not bother him with the knowledge of how much Yoohyun's suffering that eventually makes things go wrong and both of them suffer for it.
#4: Yoohyun's strategy failing
What do we know about Yoohyun's plan going wrong? We know that Yoohyun intended to wipe out his enemies before even thinking about allowing Yoojin into danger. In that conversation in chapter 6, he tells Yoojin to wait "just 1 year" and to basically live in confinement, locked up safe inside Haeyeon, until Yoohyun's done. Combined with the 3 years since the dungeons appearing and Yoohyun Awakening, that means he thought it'd take maybe 4 years in total, with hurrying at the end to accommodate Yoojin already being involved with him again. Yoojin says in narration that pre-regression, it took him 3 years instead of the 1 he's proposing, which puts us at a total of 6 years minimum before Yoohyun could even think about reuniting with Yoojin.
But, of course, a lot can and did happen in those 6 years. Within the first 3, the brothers' relationship had deteriorated enough that Yoojin blocked Yoohyun's number, as mentioned in chapter 32 by Yoohyun to Yoojin during novice Hunter training:
“You got angry and told me not to call, remember? You even blocked my number.”
Why was Yoojin angry? See chapter 158, when Yoohyun was temporarily amnesic due to Jellyfish's fog:
“I’m certain I told you not to come near me.” …I remembered. When I’d heard that, I’d blocked Yoohyun’s number, telling him not to call me back.
Yoohyun's repeated refusal to tell Yoojin about his plans, just telling him they had to stay apart, only worsened their relationship. And while Yoohyun did attempt to reach out and help Yoojin in ways such as sending him money to cover living expenses (probably hoping to repair their rapidly deteriorating relationship), that also made it worse, with Yoojin rejecting all of those attempts. As he explains in chapter 274, during the flashbacks induced by Jellyfish in their fight:
Gritting my teeth, I sent back the money Yoohyun-ie sent me without even laying a finger on it. To the me of that time, it was horrible money that my young brother had as good as traded his life for. Yoohyun-ie wanted me to accept living expenses and stay safe, but I believed my brother was being sent to his own death and could never accept it.
It isn't like Yoohyun didn't try to reach out. He did. The problem was that all of his attempts were undercut by his continued refusal to tell Yoojin why he had distanced himself, such that all those attempts at staying in touch only rubbed salt in the wound of being abandoned. And as early as 3 years in, by his own admission in chapter 6, Yoohyun starts to think that things have gotten so bad that even if he tries to confess everything now, Yoojin might not "be understanding". He might not be willing to let go of his hurt and resentment to reconcile with him.
So should he stop reaching out, then? Surely there's still hope that they can reconcile in the future. Someday, maybe, when Yoohyun's sure he can protect Yoojin, even if Yoojin doesn't want to be with/near him.
#5: Learning about the world ending
Only, there's a deadline imposed by the end of the world, which Yoohyun learns about from filial duty addict Diarma. Part of the contract with the filial duty addicts, as Sung Hyunjae explains in chapter 102, is not interfering with said end of the world. Actually, the contractors have to give "their word that they’ll eliminate obstacles" i.e. other people fighting against the end of the world, so Yoohyun can't do anything about this deadline. This gives him a limited amount of time in which he can "eventually" reconcile with Yoojin.
So, as you ask, Anon, why not spend that limited time with his brother? Well, just because there's an end of the world approaching—which Yoohyun can't even talk about! L-rank contract, remember—doesn't mean that Yoojin is 🌟magically🌟 going to get any less mad about Yoohyun abandoning him for several years than before. Yoohyun still doesn't want to explain, so that argument is absolutely not getting resolved.
Even if he tries to explain vaguely that there's some threat and that he'd like Yoojin to live with him or at least accept his offers of protection and security, what happens if Yoojin refuses? Yoohyun clearly isn't willing to violate Yoojin's desires too far, since the most certain way to keep him safe would be to lock him up in a vault somewhere inside Haeyeon and never let anyone else see him, but that would trample all over his free will and happiness, not to mention it'd ruin Yoohyun's "live normally and happily with hyung" goals. So he'll have to let Yoojin stay out in the world, while all of Yoohyun's rivals and enemies are still out there, watching the Haeyeon Guild Leader reach out to his brother and wondering if they've reconciled. At that point, it doesn't matter if they actually have made up or not. If someone even suspects that Yoojin is close to Yoohyun, then they'll target him on the off-chance that it's true. And if Yoojin did refuse Yoohyun's offers, which he's almost certain to, then he's defenseless against whatever attacks come. And they will come. In chapter 6, Yoohyun admitted that a single visit to Haeyeon Guild by Yoojin, willing or unwilling, would be enough to get attention on him:
“But if I directly give orders for you to be brought in and allowed to live within Haeyeon Guild, my enemies will start to actively target you. Even with you just being here right now, I’m sure they’ll already have started keeping an eye on you.”
Think of it from Yoohyun's enemies' perspective. If Yoohyun cares about Yoojin, attacking Yoojin gives you leverage over Yoohyun. If Yoohyun doesn't care about Yoojin, then he won't care if you're attacking Yoojin, so you'll face no retaliation from him. Yoohyun's enemies have nothing to lose from this, while Yoohyun has everything to lose. So, in this situation, it'd be better to take the least risky path: just don't engage with Yoojin at all.
And, also, even if he'd decided to take that risk, there's a different one when it comes to actually figuring out a system to guard Yoojin. This point is more speculation, but I do think Yoohyun might have struggled with deciding when he'd done enough for Yoojin's protection. Because the reality is that Yoojin was never, ever going to be 100% safe from all dangers ever. Again, the vault method is the only way Yoohyun could achieve that. Yoohyun could've put together any amount of high-rank Hunters as Yoojin's exclusive security detail, and he'd still have to leave him alone with these potentially corruptible strangers for a full week at a time during every S-rank dungeon raid. I suspect there was a real risk of Yoohyun continuously going "I just need to get a bit stronger and a bit more established" indefinitely, without ever reaching a point where he was actually satisfied. (Which, if this was indeed a risk in canon, would be overridden in the post-regression timeline by Yoojin's keyword usage making Yoohyun's desire to live with him again and uncertainty about Yoojin's response win out over the urge to keep obsessing over safeguards.)
#6: What counts as a "real" threat
When it comes to Yoohyun's need to defend Yoojin against threats, there's also an important aspect you need to consider, which is: what threats? You see, the worlds of low-rank and high-rank Hunters are very different, to the point where Yoohyun seems to completely overlook some aspects of what Yoojin's used to dealing with, while Yoojin explicitly notes on multiple occasions that he didn't even realize Yoohyun faced certain dangers. As always, we come back to the poisoning attempts mentioned in chapter 6, the first time Yoojin realizes Yoohyun was suffering his own ordeals. This sort of sneaky threat gets reiterated in chapter 11, after Yoojin's trip to the Hunter Mall, when Yoohyun tells him he can't even take a simple drink from any public vendor because it might be poisoned (not something that'd work on Yoohyun himself, but it certainly would on those lower-ranked people around him who he cares about). No, not even in a government-sponsored location like the Association, because even these locations are filled with other guilds' spies and informants. Yoojin's internal response is essentially "what sort of underhanded bullshit is this", and out loud he questions Yoohyun about it:
“But would they do that sort of thing in none other than the Association? If they get caught, the backlash will be huge.” And if Awakened people couldn’t trust the Association, it’d end up hurting the guilds, too. “Of course they wouldn’t make trouble inside the Association. But it’s possible to have their target sent away in an ambulance or police car.” “…And then that ambulance or police car goes missing?” “You’re getting it.”
And Yoojin literally thinks, not a paragraph later, that this is maybe too much even for him:
Somehow, the further things went, the more I felt like I should stop being involved with this brat Yoohyun-ie and go off to live on my own.
Better the dangers you know than the ones you don't, but in Yoojin's words.
Everyone in the high-rank sphere is, well, high-rank. Strong and resilient even when they don't have defensive skills, to say nothing of when they do. They face threats, yes, Real Threats that pose danger to them and risk their safety and status, including threats from other people—Song Taewon mentions to Yoojin in chapter 83 that he's investigated Yoohyun for murder multiple times a year—but because they're so strong, those threats come in the form of dungeon monsters or social attacks, not actual physical harm. Especially not physical harm from other people; like, chapter 75 mentions there's laws against S-rank Hunters going into dungeons together for fear that they might hurt or kill each other, so unless they encounter each other in a dungeon break region where combat is expected (or pick fights with Chief Song, an S-rank duty-bound to fight other S-ranks), they're never really going to encounter personal threats from other Hunters.
Take all that through the lens of protecting Yoojin: he's just some guy, he's not involved in the social/political Hunter Hunger Games, so he's probably fine on that front, right? And otherwise, Yoohyun just needs to protect him from dungeons (keep Yoojin out of them when possible, prevent breaks in his area), and maybe just some general watching out for Yoojin getting himself into anything risky, since he's so weak as an F-rank. That's all the threats Yoohyun sees on a daily basis, so that's probably it, right?
Wrong. Low-rank Hunters have their own set of threats they face, and while a part of that is dungeons and monsters, a very large part of that is also just… being easy to kill, in a community of people very ready to kill. Low-rank Hunters murder each other a hell of a lot more than high-rank Hunters get to even hurt, let alone kill, each other. Think about how easily the knowledge of dungeons being good body disposal spots comes to Yoojin (chapter 19, when threatening Yerim's uncle). Think about the way Yoojin talks about being pressured into slave contracts and miner guilds, and how common it seems to be for low-rank Hunters to be maimed and disabled and left in the lurch (chapters 21 and 22, saving Yoo Myeongwoo from Hope Resources Guild). Think about chapter 49, where Yoohyun claims there's strong camaraderie among high-rank Hunters, and Yoojin responds with this:
Comradeship, huh. There was no such concept in low-rank Hunter teams. Of course, it wasn’t like there were no good people around. The problem was that they all died before long. There were fixed low-rank teams united through trust and friendship, but it was very rare that they lasted. With how strongly they banded together, if one of them died, they couldn’t endure the shock and would fall apart; and even if that didn’t happen, if they were doing well for themselves, they’d be attacked from the outside by the many Hunters who’d find them unpleasant. But a high-rank dungeon raiding team that suffered few such accidents could form a sense of comradeship and keep staying together.
Low-rank Hunters will get killed by monsters, or survive only to get killed by the loss of their teams, or find good teams only to get killed by other jealous low-ranks, or (in Yoojin's experience) survive multiple team-wide killings only to get ostracized and distrusted for being suspiciously good at surviving (almost like you're the one setting up your teams to fail! really makes you wonder, doesn't it?), or, or, or…
High-rank Hunters just… survive. That's it.
Of course Yoohyun wouldn't know to protect Yoojin from these threats. He's never faced them. To him, fighting other people is a fun, challenging pastime, where no one being allowed to kill each other is an unspoken rule that goes implicitly understood. He wouldn't realize how it was very much not fun for Yoojin; maybe he'd know it intellectually, but I don't think he'd understand, not without getting up close and personal to see Yoojin struggle with it, which he can't do himself. If he tries to send someone to spy on or just generally help out his brother, Yoojin's primed by his experiences to distrust the people around him, so spies won't get anything out of him, and any strong Hunter handpicked by Yoohyun to help his hyung might simply be unable to gain Yoojin's trust. (Picking out a whole team of strong Hunters? Even if Yoojin trusts them, they'd probably end up victimized by jealous Hunters. Rinse and repeat.) You must also take into account that Yoojin's been made enough of a target by society that he's hiding every weakness someone could potentially exploit. Hell, if he's hiding well enough, you might think he's doing just fine.
And in the time period where it would be blatantly obvious that Yoojin was not fine, that early period right when he Awakened and turned into society's scapegoat overnight? That was when Yoohyun and Haeyeon were also being targeted, and wouldn't have been able to spare the kind of attention and help Yoojin would've needed, not with all the scrutiny they were all being subjected to. Actually, when Yoojin's reminiscing about these times in chapter 59, he hypothesizes it might've been Yoohyun's rivals themselves who were behind the scapegoating:
At that time, it would’ve been hard for that guy to look out for me. Public opinion wasn’t good in many ways, and there were too many scrutinizing eyes for him to secretly look after me. Now that I thought about it, I wondered if there wasn’t some sort of operation targeting me. The response was too excessive to have simply been the work of a few trash journalists. It was a matter that could be packaged excitingly, I was an F-rank which made me easy to use, and at that time, it could drag down Haeyeon Guild in the public opinion. Whether it was the government, the Association, or rival guilds, they’d have been fools not to use me.
If it was Yoohyun's rivals behind it, then by fighting on the Haeyeon front, Yoohyun might actually have been keeping Yoojin safe, too. How do we know he didn't actually mitigate the suffering to some degree? We haven't heard from Yoohyun about his side of things during this time, so we don't have a definite answer one way or another.
Certainly, Seok Simyeong didn't help at all by making a public statement denouncing Yoojin, especially not when it was so bad Yoojin admits to almost being suicidal over it (chapter 19)! But, well, it was a busy time. We don't know whether Yoohyun was consulted on that one, or if it was something they rushed in order to get ahead of the situation. It might also be that Yoohyun was consulted and made the choice that they'd publicly denounce Yoojin but privately offer him support, only for Yoojin to reject it as he did before with the money Yoohyun sent. Yoojin's done this before, where he conveniently doesn't mention a detail about a scenario until it becomes immediately relevant!
I cannot emphasize enough that we don't have Yoohyun's perspective on this. We don't know what he was doing or not doing to help. But we know, from his love for Yoojin, from his desperate desire to keep him safe at all costs, that he must've been doing something. Was that something effective? Was it useful to Yoojin's immediate life? Who knows. But he was trying.
#7: Banning Yoojin from dungeons
…Keyword being trying. Because, uh. To be honest, how well do you think any direct attempts at "helping" went over? The very first moment that Yoojin regresses to is when Yoohyun got him out of a meeting with an Awakening broker. And Yoojin himself says that ended so badly that "after listening to Yoohyun-ie’s nagging, I’d become furious and stormed off, shouting that I could take care of myself and to quit bothering me" (chapter 5). So if Yoohyun tries to openly keep Yoojin out of danger, then Yoojin is going to have a screaming fit of anger at his life being controlled by someone who apparently isn't even interested in being in it.
And that's before Yoojin Awakened. Once he had an actual, legal, government-assigned license saying he could go into dungeons? Yoohyun had zero standing. Zero chance he was ever going to be able to stop him from going into dungeons, short of breaking down and crying and begging for him to not do it, which (to successfully convince Yoojin he wasn't just putting on a show or trying to guilt trip him) would also require Yoohyun to admit he still cared about Yoojin and reveal his 3- uh, 4- I mean, 5- 6(!!)-Year Master Plan To Keeping Hyung Safe Forever And Ever.
Yeah. Never gonna happen.
And even that one (1) attempt at keeping Yoojin away from dungeons and Hunters and everything related could've gone really badly, because as Yoohyun himself admits in their chapter 6 conversation, his enemies will "already have started keeping an eye on you [Yoojin]". Just from one single show of apparent concern for Yoojin's wellbeing! Can you imagine what would've happened if Yoohyun kept stopping Yoojin every time he tried to go into a dungeon? Setting Yoojin's own frustration and anger aside, can you picture the kind of attention that would've gotten Yoojin? No, this was one battle Yoohyun had to lose in order to win the overall war.
Anon, you mention providing "new options for Yoojin to stop going to dungeons". Okay, sure, we're starting with Yoojin being society's black sheep and probably rejected out of hand from most positions he applies to, and Yoohyun's only leverage in society being in dungeon- and Hunter-related fields. What options would he have provided for Yoojin? A dungeon- or Hunter-related job, probably at Haeyeon or one of its affiliates? That's precisely what we're trying to avoid, and also visible enough that Yoohyun might as well not have even fucking bothered with the 6-Year Master Plan etc. etc. Okay, so then something at one of Haeyeon's sponsors-? Except Haeyeon famously doesn't have backers, and any connections they have through business deals will be glaringly obvious to Yoohyun's rivals if leveraged. Oh, Han Yoojin, the man who no one wants to hire, got a job at a company whose products Han Yoohyun sponsored just a while ago! Absolutely no one is wondering how this could've happened. Also, funny how Han Yoohyun's helping Han Yoojin find work, it's almost like he cares about him… (And so the end begins.)
Remember, all of Yoohyun's efforts at separating himself from Yoojin require actually being separate from Yoojin and the choices he makes. Yoojin's life is—unfortunately enough for Yoohyun—his own to live… and his own to ruin.
#8: The transcendent threat
And all of that—every single one of these environmental factors that make it so Yoohyun has a billion and one concerns to consider before he can so much as talk to Yoojin—all of that comes before we take into account one more fact:
God Hates Caregivers Personally.
Or, in a non-joking manner, and in the fashion Yoohyun might have learned about it from Diarma, as is strongly suggested in the virtual reality dungeon arc during chapter 246:
There are beings out there, outside your world, stronger than anything you know, and this is acknowledging the fact that you are among the strongest existences humankind will ever produce. These beings rule your entire world, are the children of the very power that created the dungeons terrorizing your planet, are themselves so powerful that they can predict dungeons and manipulate the system in their favor, that they can manipulate the circumstances of individual humans as long as they're inside dungeons. In allying with any one of their number, you make an enemy out of half of the entire population of these transcendental existences. You have already made an enemy of them. And these people, these all-powerful creatures, who you've painted yourself a rival of? These same people have a known track record of killing the loved ones of people like you.
Your brother goes into dungeons every week as part of his job. He's already at immense risk. If you go near him, if you make it seem even slightly like you're interested in him personally, you make him an out-and-out target for these transcendents, and they'll smite him. He dies, and you die, and it's game over.
Option one: You can grow to their level, meet them with equal strength, certainly, but will you get the time to grow that far before they kill your brother? Is his natural lifespan even long enough that he'd survive the time it took for your growth? He dies. You die. Game over.
Option two: Don't pose a threat. It's too late for you to never get on their radar in the first place, but if you can keep from seeming any more dangerous, maybe they won't give him any attention. Secure a favor that will let you help him when he needs it, at most, but otherwise never use your transcendent connections to your own advantage.
Option two, taken to its conclusion: If you die before your brother does—if you die calling in that favor and saving his life—you never have to see him be killed.
(Option two, on the flip side: You will not expect it to be your own ally who set the stage for your loved one to be killed.)
So, basically, every single concern Yoohyun's had about protecting his brother that made him distance himself and not tell him anything so far? All of that is taken and cranked up to difficulty level Maximum. "If I show interest in hyung, one of my rivals or enemies might choose to hurt or kill him!" The transcendents WILL kill him with NO known incentive. Yoohyun might assume it's because he poses a threat to their side, but he can't be absolutely certain that's it. In fact, he doesn't know anything about this opposing transcendent faction, since he was blocked from contacting them by the very fact of having chosen a side in the first place, as Water Droplet explains when discussing the born S-ranks in chapter 106:
“We don’t know for sure either. The filial duty addicts contacted them first, so their information is obscured. We only know that there are five, and about the ones that are in contact with you.”
And while Yoohyun-as-Alpha knows the reasons behind the immoral people killing Caregivers—namely, that they want to remove distractions for S-ranks, so that they focus on combating dungeons and monsters—if Diarma had told Yoohyun about this, and if he'd thought to apply the bare minimum of intelligence to his delivery (a disclaimer that must be made, with this transcendent in particular), I really don't think he would've told him why. No, he would've wanted the immoral people to seem like a dangerous threat, so he would just have said that they might kill Yoohyun's family, without giving him their reasoning.
Which means Yoohyun knew nothing about the immoral people's motives, nothing about their goals, nothing about what they'd see as aggression. Which meant, hypothetically, that any and every action he took could trigger them to smoothly and efficiently eliminate the only person he loved in all the world. It would be so easy, too; Yoojin's entering their turf multiple times a month as part of his daily job, a fact which we've already established Yoohyun couldn't do anything about. The only thing he knew for sure is that they hadn't killed Yoojin so far.
Remember what I said before, about the known path being safer? Because you know the dangers you'll face on it? Yoohyun knows doing what he's doing right now is keeping Yoojin alive. He can't control a single other thing outside of that. And the danger posed by not doing what he's doing just got shifted to a level he is not prepared on any level to respond to. Before, he might've thought Yoojin was safe at least inside dungeons with his chosen teams; from his perspective, "dungeons with only guild members inside are actually safer than the outside world" (chapter 134), while the outside world was more of a risk because of all of Yoohyun's enemies. But now? There is danger all the time and in every location Yoojin goes, even those outside of this world, on an insane, unrivaled level. He is never, never safe, and any single unexpected action Yoohyun takes puts that at risk. If doing anything at all is dangerous, then it's better to do nothing.
So, yeah, that's the crux of it, isn't it. Yoohyun needs to protect Yoojin every day, every single time. Everything else in the whole world only needs to kill Yoojin once. In such a situation, how would Yoohyun ever dare to risk making either of them vulnerable?
…The end! I hope that this explanation, long as it is, has given you at least some additional insight into Why Yoohyun Did All That, and helped serve as a reminder of just how little we actually know about Yoohyun's perspective of the events pre-regression.
By the way, this entire post is pulling only from information we get up to chapter 272; there’s more information revealed up to chapter 350—actually, even just in the next few chapters after that, up to 275—that sheds more light on Yoohyun’s decision-making process in the pre-regression timeline. Maybe I’ll come back and post a part 2 to this analysis someday using the additional information we get as time goes on, but right now, this much will have to be enough.
In any case—thanks for reading this far. And of course, as promised, here's the poll!
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markantonys · 6 months
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My Mom Reacts To: wheel of time season 2 episodes 5-8 (episodes 1-4) (season 1)
the episode 1-4 post did not contain book spoilers, but this one does, so beware!
first, some dinnertable questions that arose in the past few days:
mom: 3000 years ago, when the first dragon was around, was ishamael--wait. was ishamael the dragon? me: no mom: but he was around back then? me: yes, he was the first dragon's best friend, but then he betrayed him mom: just like how liandrin is betraying everyone
(also, she keeps trying to call him "ishmael" like the moby dick character)
mom: at the end of 14 books, does good triumph over evil? me: i'm not gonna tell you that mom: well this show won't go for 14 seasons, or if it does, i'll be in a dementia ward by then
mom: how long is someone the amyrlin? me: for life, unless they get removed mom: is it an elected position or would they have like a coup? me: [sweating] it's an elected position
she wanted to know where everything was, so i pulled out the handy randland map mug she gave me for christmas to show her! haha
she also asked if we see more of the other colors (ajahs) in the books, and i said if anything we see less because liandrin and alanna have much less screentime in the books, and she was very surprised to hear that
dad: [setting up a dad joke voice] what's it called when lan dies? me: what? dad: lan's end
(okay that might be an americans-only joke lmao there's a big clothing chain called lands' end, not sure how widespread it is. but it cracked ME up, at least!)
mom: does lan die?!?!?!? me: you read his wikipedia article like 2 months ago mom: well i don't remember any of it, that was a long time ago!
she also assumed that no one who is together now (lanaeve + randgwene) will end up together. i'd straight up told her a while ago that rand and egwene don't end up together but she wasn't totally sure of that now, so i think it's actually okay if i tell her spoilers because she'll forget them immediately djkfjgh
episode 5
"she should be glad to get those ridiculous nails cut"
she was horrified by the horse slaughter!
my dad laughed at the guy getting his head exploded, maybe it's not just rand maybe he just likes to see Anyone have a bad time
elyas: your friends from the two rivers aren't your pack mom: ohhhh 😔😠 elyas: neither was your wife mom: [GASP]
she loves hopper so much and i'm not ready for her to see ep8!!
brown sister trio introduced, we pause as i am tasked with writing down every ajah and what they do lmao
my mom repeatedly asked if suroth was a forsaken. probably because she has The Audacity to talk to an actual forsaken Like That!
not much reaction to aviendha at all this episode! i think my mom was a bit overwhelmed by all the new info being learned in this episode, so she was more concerned with trying to figure out who the aiel and the seanchan are than with paying attention to aviendha specifically (partially my fault bc i first explained the aiel as "those warrior people" and she thought i meant the seanchan lmao). she mourned that we hadn't started our character/terminology list on a bigger piece of paper!
i had to fight to keep it together rather than shout with joy during the gawyn namedrop djkjfgh
mom: did the red one free nynaeve so they could try to escape?? me: yes mom: she is just too complicated for me
in this same vein, my dad later referred to liandrin as a "double double agent"
moiraine: [big sigh] dad: she's always a drama queen
he's not wrong jkdjfg
ishy tenderly stroking rand's face also got no reaction, much to my surprise haha i meanwhile was silently losing it
when the seanchan were bringing out egwene and saying how powerful she is, my dad was like "but she's the wrong one, it's the other one who's powerful" oh my god let poor egwene LIVE djkfg even he is pulling a "did you hear that nynaeve is the most powerful channeler we've seen in 1000 years" on her!
my mom cracked up at moiraine saying "it's your choice rand, i mean it this time" and was like "yeah i was gonna say, is she ACTUALLY going to let him choose here?"
episode 6
my mom literally THE SECOND renna's bracelet linked with the a'dam: "so she can channel too? i thought these people punished everyone who can channel" not her INSTANTLY clocking The Sul'dam Secret when in-world it apparently took hundreds of years for anyone to notice hahaha this certainly lends weight to the "this information Is Known but routinely suppressed, as fascist governments are wont to do" interpretation over the "literally not a single person had any idea until the wondergirls" interpretation
lanfear: why do you think you can't trust me? mom: because you have a silly hat
911 lanfear's just been murdered. i guess some people (straight women) ARE immune to her dominatrix outfit djkfg
my mom also voiced her displeasure with rand's haircut again in this scene. my mom 🤝 me 🤝 mat
BOTH my parents thought lanfear's condition was going to be that rand had to kill moiraine himself! the second he opened his eyes they both said it! they're already thinking so dark!
on that note, i'd predicted my mom would be annoyed at moiraine for refusing barthanes's sandwiches, but that was not the case: instead, she and my dad both went "oh i bet the sandwiches are poisoned" they're so suspicious of everything now! and rightfully so
"i can hear you bickering from the fruit market" got a good laugh
my mom also gave a hearty, appreciative chuckle at mat shitting on rand's hair. he spoke for all of us!
mat: i'll meet you in an hour mom: they don't have watches, how will they know when it's been an hour?
mom when moiraine apologizes to barthanes: why is she being nice? me: because she feels bad mom, as if it never occurred to her moiraine might have a conscience: oh..............
mom when siuan arrives in cairhien: now someone can tell her about liandrin! me: but no one here knows that mom: UGH!!!
haha welcome to wheel of time! the necessary information is always stuck in the wrong plotlines and unable to be passed along to the relevant people!
elayne to nynaeve: if we help ryma, we can't help egwene mom: oh this poor woman, now she's faced with another hard choice just like in the arches! me: [sits there stunned because i never made that connection]
episode 7
my mom loved lan telling rand to tuck in his shirt, naturally
lan: heron dips over the wing [or whatever the name was] mom: what? me: it's a sword form, they all have weird names mom: oh, that would explain why it didn't make any sense
lan: your duty is to protect everyone in the world, not just the ones you love mom: that's a big responsibility :(
she laughed and said "she doesn't like not being the boss!" at nynaeve's face when elayne told her to do what she said
she is SO PRESSED about other characters needing to find out about liandrin. she was so excited when anvaere eavesdropped and then so mad when moiraine left before anvaere could tell her the news (but i reassured her by saying that moiraine is about to go to the same place as nynaeve & co who will be able to tell her)
moiraine: [is Mean to lan] mom: TUH! dad: he should just slay her
mom: so what does this tea do? me: allegedly it will show mat his past lives mom: but it might be a trick me: ishamael DOES call himself "father of lies"
my dad was like "that was cool!" after mat's bad trip, which is among his biggest reactions to anything, other than "[chuckles] that was a good one!" when egwene said "renna i will kill you"
ishy: i just want to close my eyes and never have to open them again mom: so kill yourself then 🙄
911 ishamael's also been found murdered. i think she could put the forsaken in line honestly, "you have a silly hat" "kill yourself" she's just not having any of their shit. i hate to compare her to cadsuane, but it's kinda giving cadsuane.
lanfear's dominatrix outfit did get more appreciation this time though when the silly hat was not present ("they had fun with her costumes")
rand: i need your help lanfear mom: ??????? doesn't he know she's evil???????
"she could at least say something nice to lan 🙄" when moiraine fails to say something nice to lan after getting unshielded thanks to him
lanfear: [broken amyrlin line] mom: is she broken??? me: i think she just meant metaphorically, not physically mom: oh. but their love is broken :(
episode 8
my dad actually put his laptop away to watch this episode with his full attention. this is high praise! he never does that!
mom: who's that? [dain] me: the whitecloak perrin spared when he escaped with aviendha mom: i don't remember that me: we watched that YESTERDAY mom: 🤷
she did remember after another moment though haha but that supports my impression that ep5 was A Bit Too Much New Info for her to take in all at once
lanfear: rand i'm the only one who truly cares about you mom: i don't think THAT'S true!
when perrin tells hopper to stay there: "he's just going to leave his dog out in the desert with no water???"
mom when lanfear calls ishy sweetheart and strokes his hair: wait was he the one she was in love with????? me: no it was rand's past life, that's why she's obsessed with rand mom: rand's past WIFE???? me: LIFE
babe wake up new polycule just dropped (lanfear/ishy/lews/ilyena)
she GASPED when renna cut off egwene's braid! as she should!
she said "too bad min isn't here" during the episode (she thought it would be helpful if min could tell mat what would happen if he were to touch the dagger; i was like "i think he knows it would be bad mom" lmao) and after the episode she anxiously asked if we would ever see min again, dammit mom don't you dare become a min stan on me jdkfgh (although, the fact that she thought we might not see her again indicates it's 0% on her radar that min might be anyone's love interest, which is interesting! a number of show-onlys were at least expecting her to be mat's i think)
nynaeve: i'll make you regret the first kiss your mother ever gave your father mom: [delighted] that's a creative one! dad: there are a lot of nasty women on this show and only one nasty man [ishy] me and mom: TUH!
although he is not wrong to say that s2 was the season of Female Villains and Women Being Mean (and i loved every moment of it!). don't you worry dad, rand's gonna be stepping up to fill the Nasty Man Quota soon enough. and i can't wait!
dad when rand is watching egwene from a distance: he's not doing a good job of hiding me: at least his cloak is the same color as the wall dad: well his dumb face isn't
why is he SUCH a hater when it comes to poor rand jkdjfg please, that's your future son-in-law!
they both were repeatedly pressed about everyone carrying the horn box (or rather "the briefcase" as my dad called it) out in the open
mom: they need to just put it in a sack! me: they don't have any sacks on hand! mom: there's plenty of sacks lying around!!!
she keeps thinking that rand got the heron-marked sword from his mom, and when she saw that turak had one she was like "but i thought those were the swords of the aiel?" and i cracked up imagining how offended aiel would be to hear her say that
she missed rand killing all the seanchan because she was too busy asking me the above question, but when she looked back at the screen she went 1) "oh, this is so gory" 2) "did RAND do all that????"
she was sad about ingtar, she was like "ohhhh, i liked him :(" imagine caring about ingtar, could not be me jdkfg
me: so lanfear is talking about the seals of the other forsaken, she wants this guy to throw them all in the ocean because she doesn't want them to be released mom: why doesn't she just do it herself? me: me: me: i don't know, actually..................
(maybe she just wanted them gone stat but didn't want to leave falme for even a moment while shit was going down with rand and ishy? or maybe she was like, I'm Too Hot And Iconic To Get My Hands Dirty Doing Things Myself)
mom as soon as renna's shown to be alive, after egwene's picked up the collar: she should go put the collar on her!
she been knew again!
mom at the mat-perrin reunion: put the spear down before you hug him, you'll stab someone by accident!!!!
she was glad to see egwene get her vengeance, but added "but now i bet she'll feel guilty for killing someone because she's a good person :("
ishy: [talking about what rand did in his past life] mom: rand doesn't even remember that! rand right on cue: i'm not lews therin!
i warned her "you might not want to look" just before hopper's death, but she did look, and she was very sad. as was i!
she thought that one of the heroes of the horn was stepin and i told her it wasn't (it was just some random guy with similar hair) but maybe i should've let her keep on believing it because it's a nice idea!
mom when the spear goes through ishy and hits rand: OH NO!!!! just like min said!!! me: [vibrating with glee over The Great Cauthor Stabbening]
when ishy said "i'm sorry old friend" to rand here my dad said "that sounds familiar" and i was like what's he talking about? but then realized that's what LTT said to ishy in the cold open!!! my heart!!! thank you dad for catching that parallel, i gotta go make a gifset now
"how is one guy holding off all these soldiers by himself?" mom i cannot believe you of all people would doubt lan!
she laughed at rand being like "[half-dead] who are you???" but made no comment on the subsequent romantic shot of elayne. however, after the episode she was like "'who are you?' rand said................is something going to happen with him and elayne??" and i was like 🤷😁😁😁😁 and then she said "but they both have red hair, are they from the same place?" and i told her that elayne is not aiel and not ALL redheads are aiel lmao and maybe i should've just said "you'll see" but. i don't think it's a spoiler to confirm that elayne is not aiel.
she does not believe that ishy is really dead, and she kept asking me if he was really dead and if he shows up again later in the books and i swear, the three oaths possessed me in that moment and made me incapable of saying "yes he's really dead, no we don't see him again in the books". so i just kept shrugging which probably made it obvious that indeed, this is not the last we see of him haha
mom when moiraine starts weaving fire in the direction of the tower: what's she doing?! everyone's up on that tower!!! me: she's not trying to BLOW UP RAND mom: oh
at some point during all the battles she was like "now what's lanfear up to during all this? 🤨" a good thought to have always!
at the end of the episode: "now we have to wait a whole year or two for the next season!!!!!" she's hooked!!
favorite character roundup: my mom said lan is #1 and egwene is #2, and she also loves loial, and she said that she didn't care for perrin last season but likes him a lot now. my dad said his favorites are "the tree guy" (loial) and "the new woman at the end who's more powerful than anyone we've seen so far" (moghedien! that one was a surprise to me. tumblr 🤝 my dad. i hope he'll enjoy The Season Of Moghedien next season! tho it could also be that he just said her because she was the last character we saw and he'd already forgotten all the other ones lmao)
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tervaneula · 10 months
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Hi! I'm Terv, welcome to my blog!
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How to turn off "Best stuff first" so you'll actually see my posts
Here's some handy-dandy info about my stuff. Might heavily edit this later because I'm nitpicky like that lmao, but anyway, here we go!
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Art tag: tervdraws Writing tag: tervdrabbles Personal tag: it's terv
Leonardo/Usagi tag: leoichi
AO3: katterv Pillowfort: tervaneula Bluesky: tervaneula
Commissions: Closed Ko-Fi: tervaneula Redbubble: tervaneula
❌ Do not repost or edit my art and writing! ❌
A little piece about fandom etiquette
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My blog is a tcest & apritello & aprileo free zone.
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Latest NQK update
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Chapter 14: Don't Worry About It
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A list of my ROTTMNT related fics under the cut. Most of them are illustrated! 💜
General [9/?]
help me believe (that i'm your brother) (G)
The road to recovery has been long but finally, the brothers are well enough to introduce Future Boy to one of the most comforting of habits - the turtle pile. Unfortunately, Casey has some doubts about his place in their family.
please don't be a hero (again) (G) (part 1 of a series)
Donatello needs his coffee. Leonardo finds him first.
lean on me (i'm strong enough) (G) (part 2 of a series)
Leonardo needs to get better, be better. If not for himself, then for Michelangelo - his baby brother shouldn't worry about him as much as he does.
you make me proud, little brother (G) (part 3 of a series)
Raphael worries and Leo's quip goes wrong. However, it leads to an emotional turnaround neither of them saw coming.
a lesson in trust (G)
Leo feels guilty for getting Raph caught by the Krang and refuses to let go of that burden. His big brother isn't having it anymore.
not quite kintsugi, but close (G) (ongoing)
The plan is simple. If all else fails, Michelangelo will make a time gateway for Casey to undo what Leonardo, in his youthful arrogance, started all those years ago; it will require sacrifice, but they are ready for it. Until the moment comes, of course. Or, in other words - what if Future Leonardo and Michelangelo both end up in the present with Casey? Kintsugi (金継ぎ, "golden joinery") is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise. (Wikipedia)
repeat until death (T) (Major Character Death)
A companion piece to Chapter 7 of not quite kintsugi, but close. Leonardo doesn't want to let go. In the end, as long as Donatello is concerned, he never did.
Cold Feet (G)
Leonardo is enjoying his lazy morning… until a certain human teenager disrupts his peace.
some boys do lay eggs (T)
Leonardo is just about to fall asleep when the weight of a body thuds against the side of his bed, startling him awake, but not awake enough to shake him out of the heaviness of near slumber. “Whassit,” he mumbles, sticking his hand out from his blankets and feeling about until his fingers touch the edge of a hard shell. Ah, he recognises the shape – it’s Leo. “...are we boys?” 
sleepless (G)
Leo is so, so tired and goes to his dad. Splinter thinks up a plan to put into motion in the morning - but it seems that he's already helping.
Leoichi (Rise x Usagi Chronicles) [6/?]
with friends like these (G) (part 2 of a series)
Meeting up with his old friends and introducing his new boyfriend to them certainly hadn't been in Yuichi's plans for the day - but it turns out to have been a welcome surprise later when it helps him realise something important about his own feelings.
make your home in me (E) (part 4 of a series)
Click the link to read the summary!
world's end boyfriend (T) (AU)
Leonardo lost Yuichi to the apocalypse almost exactly five years ago. It's now been a year since he, Michelangelo and Casey made their impossible portal trip to the present day, successfully preventing the Krang invasion this time - so imagine Leonardo's surprise when his little brother tells him that they're going to rescue his mate. They only have one chance.
and just like that (T) (ongoing) (part 1 of a series)
What was supposed to be a simple shopping trip to the Hidden City turns into an embodiment of a romcom when Leonardo runs into an unfamiliar white rabbit. Or more accurately, the rabbit's dining table.
soft bunny, warm bunny, little ball of— uh oh (G) (part 3 of a series)
Leonardo feels so lucky. He has the world's softest boyfriend who doesn't mind being treated like a giant teddy bear! Too bad it made him forget something very important.
breathe (and let go) (M) (part 5 of a series)
Leonardo needs a break from his… everything, and Yuichi is always more than happy to indulge him.
cracks never healed (they can heal now) (T)
Their plans for a nice date go awry when Leonardo and Yuichi run into a giant rampaging robot. It's swiftly dealt with, but not without a price.
well worth the wait (G)
Hana has been worried about her adoptive father's new relationship. Yuichi puts those worries to rest.
And that's it! For now. <3
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nozunhinged · 6 months
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Kiseki Dear To Me Actors Talk about EP 9 Part 2
Happy Kiseki Day everyone ❤️ I can't watch today but I scheduled this post to sweeten the day for you guys :) here's part 2 of the translation our lovely Tumblr friend made!
1. Someone asks, 4 years later chenyi should already understand what ai di felt for him, so why did he ask ai di “why”?
Chen yi basically says, the question of “why” isn’t “why did you do that that night?” because he already has come to terms with what happened that night.
The “why” is asking, “why are you different to me now? How come you no longer stick with me? Why have you pushed me far away? Why would you say you’d always look at me and then turn around and disappear and now have a terrible attitude towards me? Why did you choose to leave me at that point in time? Why did you sacrifice yourself and go to prison for me? Why are you rejecting me now?”
Basically, he’s like, bro what is this emotional whiplash lmao. And then ai di says he had interpreted the question to be “why did you do what you did that night 4 years ago?”
So they were basically having two entirely different conversations when chen yi took him home for his first meal after getting out of prison.
I AM SO NOT OKAY PEOPLES 😭😭😭
2. Ze rui asks, so in those 4 years in prison, you didn’t go see ai di even once?
And chen yi is like, well, the real question is if ai di would let me see him LOL
HAHAHA that's so Ai Di!!
3. they talk about how zong yi is the kind of character that keeps all his burdens to himself and doesnt ask for help because he doesnt want to burden other people, so when his dad and sister were crying, he felt like he had to stay strong and act like everything was totally fine and he’s not having a hard time even after having been in prison for four years
Aaaaaawww Zongyi bby everything will be okay 🥺🥺🥺
4. zhe rui says he knew ai di would protect zong yi for him in prison
💔💔💔
5. zong yi says he really believes zhe rui lost his memory bc as a medical student witnessing zhe rui’s head get pummeled, he has 80% certainty the sustained injuries caused memory loss, and zhe rui says unfortunately he has no way of letting him know whether or not he has memory loss (he was trying so hard not to give away that he didnt actually lose his memory lmao)
I hope you enjoyed this and comment a thank you please ❤️❤️
Read part 1 here
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kanmom51 · 7 months
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I kind of feel it's time to bring this back
Seeing how 3D has resurfaced the JK is straight as a arrow claims are back, I guess it's time to bring back my 3 part "JK ain't gay" expose (and a little bit more too...)
Read these over peeps, if and when you are feeling a little down or doubtful. Cause we all know JK ain't gay...
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
This one kind of relevant once again, don't you think?
I said I have more, well here you are:
Different song, same logic.
And
I am going to end this with these two little points for you to mull over:
JK singing girl (in lyrics he didn't even write himself) means everything but him sucking on JM's ear in front of 10s of thousands of fans, him caressing on camera the hickey he let JM give him, JK sitting for 90 minutes mesmerized and watching JM content totally infatuated, JM flying to NYC to be with JK for his solo debut, going out to dinner for Silver day and then disappearing to CT together (oh, and soooooo much more), all that means nothing?
Ask yourselves why you are so fast to believe a 14 second blurry clip, which you may have watched a couple of times on your phone screen? Without proper fact checking. Ask yourselves why you are so quick to assume that whoever that is in that clip is JK? That it's his place? That you know, even if by some unexpected chance it's him (it isn't), that the person is his gf? That she's pregnant from him (this one tops the cake. Man is a baby daddy by this account)?
Please apply critical thinking. And most definitley don't just chuck aside 8 years of ongoing continual Jikookery for some lines in a song and a blurry clip.
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PROPAGANDA
STARFIRE (DC COMICS) (CW: Sex Trafficking)
1.) She is frequently put down in the og 80s comics due to being more expressive and open with her emotions, and ever since the og she has frequently been painted as just eyecandy (ignoring her sexual trauma) when her character is so incredibly complex. Special mention goes to red hood and the outlaws (2011) (written by a sexual harasser) for just terrible stand out awful reasons which will be seen in the below photos and her 2015 solo for combining her vapid portrayal there with her cartoon quirkiness to culminate in a trash comic that is just her basically being the born sexy yesterday trope.
2.) 2011 reboot, in RHATO she was turned into a walking fetish by retconning most parts of her character and erasing all personality displayed in the past 30 years of comics. in that iteration she is only interested in sex and is dehumanised and ‘exotic’. she ‘forgot’ all her past relationships because she doesn’t care about them only sex. her only purpose in that book is as a powerhouse and a sex/love interest for one of the male characters who view her as a trophy because she used to date someone he dislikes (in this continuity) let’s also not forget that she was first created just to be a love interest and although she did grow into a hood character at some point, she is treated horribly time and time again by writers because of conflicting ships. she’s written as a ‘vixen’ as opposed to another ‘good girl’ female character who is shipped with the same guy in canon
3.) Her original characterization was fairly decent, however it still had her stuck in relationships with men that weren’t very good for her and had overtones of racism with how she was written. Post that her characterization was slowly chipped away at, some writers with harder sledgehammers than others, culminating in current writing where she’s dismissed as “just a fling” to her original counterpart (Dick Grayson) to prop up a different ship (Dick Grayson/Barbara Gordon) and frequently has been used as eye candy in other comics. Simply open the first comic of Red Hood and the Outlaws, which obliterated her personality to make her associate/be subservient to the Red Hood, and you’ll find plenty of panels of her appearing simply for eye candy in the boobs and butt pose for absolutely no reason. This is not the only time she’s been used to cater to the male gaze (I’d argue even in her original context that was part of her appeal) but in this comic she essentially has no personality beyond “i want sex” as her memory of all past events has been erased. She’s essentially just a tool for her male counterparts in the comic to bounce off of, and eye candy to bring more male readers in. She does eventually get more storylines later on, but that doesn’t excuse the bad writing she was put through. Her own solo series also cashes in on her sex appeal, by infantilizing at the same time as drawing her in skimpy outfits + more boobs and butt poses galore to go for the “born sexy yesterday” misogynistic trope.
BUMBLE (WARRIOR CATS) (CW: Domestic Abuse)
1.) Back with another Warriors submission, I bet you’ll be getting a lot from other people too LMAO. Bumble is a kittypet (housecat) who befriends the male protagonist Gray Wing’s girlfriend, Turtle Tail, and lets her stay in her house. This gets Gray Wing all pissy because he’s controlling of Turtle Tail and shares most of the wild/clan cat’s proclivity for looking down upon kittypets. Turtle Tail gets pregnant by another kittypet, Tom, who tries to control her by hiding the fact that humans take away kittens after they’re born. Eventually Bumble comes clean about it so Turtle Tail returns to the forest. Some time later, Bumble is found in the forest seeking refuge because Tom has been physically abusing her, scratching her where the humans can’t see. So, she’s CANONICALLY ACKNOWLEDGED as a domestic abuse victim (unlike Squirrelflight who meets all the textbook signs but the narrative and authors deny it). How do you think our good guy protagonists, i.e. Gray Wing “The Wise” and Turtle Tail, respond to an abuse victim seeking refuge? They tell Bumble to go home, thinking to themselves that she’s fat and soft and therefore would be useless in their group. Bumble stands up for herself and asks to speak with the leaders of the group. One of them asks if Bumble could just get along with Tom better (bro???) and when Bumble says it’s not within her control, the leader suggests being nicer to the humans instead. Another rival leader butts in and verbally abuses Bumble again by ripping into how fat and lazy and useless she would be. Despite Turtle Tail having been friends with Bumble and Bumble had helped her through her own hard times, to Gray Wing’s approval Turtle Tail chooses not to intervene as Bumble is forcibly escorted back to her abuser. But that’s not all. Later Bumble is found in the forest maimed and dying, and it seems likely that Gray Wing’s brother Clear Sky, a male with a long history of violence, is the culprit. Rather than mourn the dying innocent cat, Gray Wing’s primary concern is how other cats might be mean to Clear Sky if they think he’s a murderer, and reassures himself that refusing to help Bumble in her time of need was still the right decision.
2.) I have no idea how she managed to be written so horrifically from an abuse victim and woman (/she-cat I guess) standpoint but here we are. Okay so my memory is a bit fuzzy but basically Bumble was a character in Dawn of the Clans and a close friend to Turtle Tail, a major character, as well as a character who lived close to Tom, an abusive dickhead of a cat. Bumble was largely depicted as just a really sweet cat. Turtle Tail was very briefly the mate of Turtle Tail, but once she got pregnant, he became super violent towards both her and our gal Bumble. Tom actively hid the fact that, once her kits were old enough, Turtle Tail’s kits would probably be taken from her, and made Bumble keep quiet about this too, but Bumble eventually told Turtle Tail the truth, Turtle Tail left and Tom became extremely violent towards Bumble because of this, and was extremely abusive towards her. Eventually, Bumble ran away from him to where Turtle Tail and co were and begged to stay, since the wilderness as a whole was genuinely more safe than being around Tom was. Naturally, this meant kitty xenophobia from cats who had only arrived in that area recently, because everybody was insistent than, since she was a kittypet/house cat, things wouldn’t work out, and even her friend Turtle Tail denied her on this, insisted she was too soft to live in the wild and only sent her towards a cat Bumble wanted to convince because she was absolutely certain she’d be denied. Also our good old protagonist Gray Wing got to spend this scene being all upset about this soft cat wanting to join them to escape an abuser and was all bitter about the fact that Turtle Tail lived with her for a short period of time, and he also got to have a sweet romantic moment with Turtle Tail after denying an abuse victim an escape from her abuser. Also as much as I like Tall Shadow usually she sucked ass in the following scene because she was essentially telling Bumble to go find a way to make peace with Tom as if she was not the one being abused (Bumble pointed out that Tom was the one who would need to make peace for it to happen, not her) and that she should just make life better by going back to being a housecat and being spoiled despite the fact that she was actively at risk with her owners because of Tom. Then she leaves after being threatened by several cats there and is called soft on the way out. The next time she appears she is literally dying, and her death is just a plot device to create a stupid little mystery which is solved in a very stupid way. Also her abuser does continue to be a shithead and for some reason is fully permitted to kidnap his own children but he also gets a heroic death and the only reason I will not rant more about him is because this is too long already. Long story short Bumble deserves the world and everybody who decided not to let her escape her abuser just because they thought she was soft sucks
3.) Is nice to the group of starving, feral wild cats that left the mountains so their friends and family could have more food to eat and befriends one of them to the point of opening her home to her after she leaves the group because the guy she likes is too dumb to notice she likes him and keeps falling for his brother’s love interests.
Unfortunately, because Bumble is a house cat who lives in a house with people and not a Wild and Free cat, this is a grave and horrible crime (luring a wild cat into the safety and comforts of domesticity) and is villainized for the rest of the arc, including for things wildly out of her control
I.E.
Her owners taking in an aggressive male cat that bullies and abuses the two female cats already living there
When Bumble’s friend leaves and goes back to the wild cats, Bumble leaves her home (as the abuse as has gotten worse) to see if she could either get help or have her friend return so the abuse isn’t as bad again)
Bumble eventually dies in the wild because the feral cats all hate her for ‘stealing’ their friend and tricking her into becoming a kittypet for awhile and refuse to help Bumble adjust to wild life or even teaching her how to hunt.
They are littl e to no hard feelings at her death beyond ‘good riddance’ but the aggressive tomcat that chased her out of her home is later regarded with good feelings and regret at such a ‘good, heroic cat’ passing when he dies despite him literally never doing a good or kind thing in his life and actually causing trouble for the wild cats right before dying
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ygiroadrift · 3 months
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Velvet and Veneer lives in my head rent free 1
So have some doodles from like. Last year (December 2023)!
The brainrot of them is insane dude - Their designs and dynamic is stuck in my head, not to mention their species is pretty much spaghetti rubberhose LMAO. Hell I drew them during my first term college final somebody, and that my last drawing of 2023 is literally them! I am ill
November 2023
Y'all I thought I drew something in November 2023 but that's just the beginning of my brainrot lmao (aka collecting screenshots of them). My actual doodles started at December lol.
December 2023
Behold. The first drawing of them and I use approximately 1 reference and proceeded to not elaborate further and drew their proportions and hair and face by memory -
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This was drawn while I was doing one of my final first terms LMAO
On a random note. Whenever I draw a "full piece", I always have this side file (or paper/canvas in traditional terms) just for the litte doodles I made along the way!
This is exactly what happened; I was like. drawing a man sleeping with the blankets like the ocean (because the term wants us to draw a scenario based on a prompt and an expression; in my case atm it was Ocean Sounds and Metaphor). But there's this two spaghetti twinks hanging out in my side file LMAO
Sometime later (a day later), like old fashioned Ygiro, I drew them as dragons to get my hands going
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I cannot get Veneer's hair right at that time; his hair is killing me
Bonus Floyd because why not!
0n a random note 2. In an AU where all of trolls are based on dragons... I feel like Mount Rageons would absolutely be Noodle Dragons™ (Chinese Long Dragons), and that Trolls would have been Fae Dragons
And that the Vacaytioners (?) would probably be plush dragons (ok I'm gonna stop now; this post ain't about dragons!)
...
Ok I half lied here's V&V as dragons that I decided to properly colored and lined (+ Crimp dragon to fill in some empty space except I used 0 references so she just looks. wrong)
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I feel like they both would be this. beautiful white dragons with golden undertones and their respective colors as an accent...
On a random note 3. I remembered pondering why their hair is green instead of like other colors during December, but I guess it lets them stand out I guess
Though in context to the dragons, if the white is like pearls and that the blue/purple is like sapphires and rubies (or whatever gems are purple, I forgor), the green would have been something like jade! Talk about drip.
... Okay a lil more before I moved on; Velvet would have long luscious hair from the head to the tail because it just makes sense, while Veneer would have them shorter. Same goes to their spine spikes.
ANYWAYS
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Anyways, Veneer was particularly stuck in my head for the entirety of December 2023, as you can probably tell by these doodles
There's like more of him but I have hit the image limit so uh. Expect part two LMAO
Their faces are drawn better I swea
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kimbapisnotsushi · 1 year
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i started writing this back in the last week of december going on into january bc we had so many karasuno bdays back then so uhhh TECHNICALLY this is a late bday post honoring like four people LMAO but let's go!!
during kageyama's first birthday at karasuno he gets a mysterious series of texts from an unknown number that goes like > happy birthday > not that this means you're forgiven > just thought it was the right thing to do > i know it's your first since. well. you know > you don't have to text back or anything!!!! > fuck fuck fuck just pretend this never happened BYE
he brings up it up two years later when he, kindaichi, and kunimi are better friends and kindaichi buries his red face in his hands and screams and kageyama isn't sure why
kunimi pats him on the back and tells him not to worry about it
ennoshita has a playlist that is solely just like white noise and creaking sounds and generally just things that would make you shit your pants alone in the dark and when asked why he just goes "it's the only way i can feel anything inside"
tsukki will NEVER admit it but he ASPIRES to be the level of deadpan that ennoshita is
tanaka: "so . . . why do you like him again?" ennoshita, watching a video he recorded of futakuchi walking straight into a lamppost bc he was playing pokemon go: "he makes me laugh"
no joke i think ennoshita is a dateko celebrity bc everyone knows about the guy that futakuchi kenji pines over bc futakuchi kenji is just known in a million ways and maybe like 90% of them are Not Good
a third-year has futakuchi by the collar and they're like "all right PUNK get ready to have your lights punched out you'll be seeing stars when i'm done with you" and futakuchi just sighs longingly and goes "ennoshita has eyes like stars . . ."
daichi is that type of upperclassman who knows very single friend of his juniors' but not in like a cool older sibling way he does it in a cringefail modern parent kind of way
kogane used to be soooooo scared of him before finding out what a huge dork he is
actually kogane isn't scared of asahi bc he's so used to aone and asahi cries over it
(sorry for plugging in dateko so much i just genuinely think they have such a fun relationship with karasuno i ADORE it)
onagawa: "man idk how you do it" narita: "do what?" onagawa: "being the only normal person on your team"
yeah no narita is carrying the weight of the world as the only person with the brain cell on karasuno
sometimes it's ennoshita but he's been dead inside since first year so
suga tells the first years he knows martial arts but all he really did was go to one (1) judo club demonstration during his second year of middle school and somehow managed to flip the captain over by sheer luck and never tried again
for takeda's birthday everyone teams up to get him a really nice fountain pen, a classical poetry book, and a quality bottle of sake. for ukai's birthday tsukki leads a powerpoint presentation on why smoking is bad for you and that he really should stop, backed up with everyone else standing behind him with their arms crossed and nodding along
okay that and they also get him a really cute apron (embroidered with crows!!) for him to wear around the store and a bag of good coffee
kiyoko has all - and i mean ALL - the snacks from the local convenience store on a tier list and when the vbc asked how the fuck she managed to do that she just went "my track team was a lot weirder than you guys"
actually the reason why daichi asked kiyoko to be the manager wasn't because kiyoko was the only one with no club activities going on it was because she gave asahi a hair tie when nobody else would and asahi had been trying to befriend her since (and also return said hair tie) but was too nervous to make the first move
asahi: "noooooo daaaaaaaiiiichiiiiiiiiii i caaaaaaaan't i'm so awkward and embarrassing!!!!" daichi, with all the confidence of a fifteen-year-old constantly winging it: "it's okay, i've got this!"
yeah he's just as surprised as you are that it worked out
especially considering he pitched it to her like a used car salesman
kiyoko carries a lot of hair ties with her when she starts just for asahi and when he leaves the team she doesn't stop bc she tells suga, daichi, and the second-years, "he'll come back, just wait and see"
THEY WERE FRIENDS TOO!!!! THEY WERE FRIENDS TOO!! THEY WERE FRIE -
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bfwonu · 2 years
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my seasons were always you.
pairing: seungcheol x fem!reader genre: smut. porn with the essence of plot (18+, minors DNI). wc: 1.8k tags: bff!au AND fwb!au, reader has a vagina, oral + fingering (f receiving), poor attempts at mid-sex banter, one (1) fem term of endearment, a bit of cum eating, reader very briefly cries once out of stress/frustration (not during sex), implied pining i guess but like i'm telling you there is hardly any plot in this thing summary: you're stressed because of finals. your best friend, seungcheol, knows how to fix that– temporarily, at least.
a/n: hi hello this is the first smut piece that i've written and posted...like ever lmao! title is from 134340 by bts, which i listened to for the better part of writing this. hope u all enjoy, feedback is greatly appreciated :-) <3
You went into tonight fully intending to study, really– if you don’t for at least a couple hours per day this week you’re certain that this one final is going to kick your ass and you’d kiss your 93% in the class goodbye. 
But Seungcheol, the ever-observant friend that he is, texted you an hour into your study session saying that he noticed you seemed so tense when he ran into you the other day, and that he can help you relax a bit– that he wants to. 
And, well. Who are you to deny yourself of some stress relief?
True to his word, he’s at your apartment in less than ten minutes, first embracing you in a hug that you didn’t even know you needed; comforting hands iron out the tension in your back, causing a few tears to slip from your eyes. You mumble an apology into his chest for getting his hoodie wet, and you can hear the amused smile on his lips when he promises you don’t need to apologize for that. 
Labels are something that you’ve never really bothered to put on your relationship with Cheol. The two of you met during your sophomore year of college through some mutual friends, always thought the other was attractive, and ended up hooking up at a party. You only meant for it to be a one-time thing, but drunk decisions turned into sober ones and eventually neither of you found yourselves seeing anyone else. 
Funnily enough though, your friendship became a lot more emotionally intimate after regularly having sex with each other; you began to tell him things you had never told anyone before, went to him when you felt like you couldn’t go to anyone else. He became your comfort person, your rock. Your best friend.
The story is far from glamorous (and maybe a little bit confusing), but it’s yours. And you wouldn't trade it for anything else.
“Lemme take care of you, yeah?” Seungcheol pulls away slightly to meet your eyes with enough sincerity to make your heart swell. You have half the mind to tease him for the contrast between his tone over text compared to now, but you find yourself feeling too exhausted and too desperate to just let go for that. Instead, you pull him closer again to whisper a yes, please against his lips, connecting them not even a second later.
Your every muscle seems to melt into him, and the next few minutes pass in a lust-induced blur– gentle kisses turned heated, knees hitting the back of the bed, hands intertwined. Before you know it you’re lying on your back, oversized t-shirt pulled over your tits and Seungcheol between your legs. 
“Cheol,” you all but whine as he sucks another hickey onto your inner thigh, so close to where you need him but not close enough. “Don’t tease.”
“M’not teasing,” he chuckles, his breath ghosting over your core and your hips involuntarily cant upwards. “Just taking my time with you…
“Plus,” you gasp when he presses his thumb along the seam of your pussy through the fabric of your panties, stopping just below your clit. He smirks at the wet patch underneath his finger. “Wanted to get you a lil’ worked up first.”
You huff in annoyance, fighting the smile that wants to creep its way onto your lips. Just by being here he already makes you feel more like yourself, like all your stress and worries are far, far away (you’re sure a mind-blowing orgasm still wouldn’t hurt, though). “So cocky.”
“So impatient,” he quips back, but he obliges anyway and pulls your underwear down your legs. “Y’know you’re lucky you’re the one who’s stressed out of their mind right now, otherwise I think we both know who would be punishing who for talking back.”
You prop yourself onto your forearms and tilt your head to the side, pretending to think. He makes it so easy sometimes. “Hmm…I dunno, depends on the day.”
It’s his turn to huff now, shaking his head fondly and muttering brat under his breath before he’s licking a bold stripe up your cunt, causing you to loll your head back and bite back a low moan. One of your hands flies down to grab onto his hair as he moves his tongue over your clit, every witty bone in your body going limp when he groans at the sensation and takes the bud into his mouth. 
Eventually, Seungcheol replaces his lips with a thumb on your clit so he can switch between running his tongue up and down the seam of your pussy and pushing the muscle past your entrance. You’re hardly able to keep quiet any longer, each exhale accompanied with a breathy whine as he repeats this over and over, practically making out with your cunt.
He laps at your entrance one last time before taking his mouth off of you. Even with your eyes fixed on the ceiling you can feel his gaze on you, hear the smug lilt in his voice. “Don’t have that much to say now, huh?”
You want nothing more than to bite back, but the man’s thumb is still messily rubbing your clit and you need his fingers inside you so badly that you feel a bit dizzy. Seungcheol smirks against your thigh when your “shut up” comes out much more wistful and fragmented than you intended.
Fed up with the lack of contact, you attempt to buck your hips upward, which only earns you a tsk and a strong arm draped over your stomach to hold you down. You let out a frustrated whine.
“Want you to look at me, baby,” he hums, and you can only assume that you won’t get what you want until you oblige. Your hand blindly finds one of the pillows at the top of your bed to place behind your head (since your arms hardly lasted a minute holding yourself up earlier).
Satisfied, he inches closer and closer to your core until his mouth is hovering over your clit. “Good girl.”
Before you can even think about feeling embarrassed by the arousal that gushes out of your cunt at his praise, Seungcheol is dragging his tongue through it, spreading it up to your clit before sucking the bud back between his lips. 
Your jaw goes slack in a silent moan, eyes still locked on his when he finally, finally slides a finger into your awaiting hole. The silence doesn’t last very long, however, when he starts pumping it in and out of your pussy, petting your inner walls and adding another finger after almost immediately finding your g-spot. He knows your body well enough by now that he hardly has to even try.
“Hah– oh, right there–” your hand that’s still in his hair tugs him impossibly closer, causing his eyes to momentarily flutter shut, as if he’s getting lost in the taste of you.
Seungcheol increases the speed of his fingers ever-so-slightly and adds just the right amount of pressure to have your chest heaving, your free hand moving to pinch your own nipple as your high approaches. “Fuck– hnngh– Cheol–”
“I know, honey, I know,” you best friend coos between kisses to your clit, “been so stressed these days…needed my fingers n’ mouth to take your mind off things, hm?”
“Yeah, god I–” the arm that was draped over your stomach moves to hold down one of your thighs instead, spreading you wider for him and pulling another groan from the back of your throat. “M’close, g- gonna cum.”
Humming in acknowledgement, Seungcheol focuses on repeatedly curling his fingertips to massage your g-spot. With your hips no longer tethered to the bed, you begin fucking yourself onto his fingers; you watch as his lips stay latched onto your bud, head moving with your hips, and the visual is enough to send you over the edge with a cry of his name.
He continues to gently lap at your arousal and pump his fingers into your cunt, letting your walls clench around him as much as you need to until you’re too sensitive.
“Fuck,” he croaks after you gently push his head away, sounding just about as fucked out as you feel. Then, you glance past his broad shoulders to see his hips stuttering as he grinds into the mattress.
“Wait, did you…” your question trails off with a raise of your eyebrows.
“Cum? Yeah, fuck that was…I love it when you get really vocal.”
You smirk at the thought of him getting off to getting you off. “Hm. Noted.”
“Like you didn’t already know that,” he remarks with a roll of his eyes, before he slowly pulls his fingers out from inside of you with a lewd pop. You swear you merely blink and Seungcheol already has the digits in his mouth, sucking your cum off of his own fingers. It’s obscene, really.
He notices you intently staring at the fingers in his mouth and pulls them out to ask, “wanna taste?”
You shake your head, to which he very cutely pouts in confusion until you pull him up by the front of his shirt to kiss him, adding your tongue into the mix without hesitation. You’d much rather taste yourself mixed with his spit this way. 
When you pull away, you’re met with a dazed-looking Seungcheol. “Much better.”
“Noted,” he echos cheekily with a kiss to your forehead, finally sitting up onto his knees to get off the bed. “Hang tight, I’ll get us cleaned up.”
You close your eyes and internally sulk at the loss of warmth, but you're soon put at bay when Seungcheol returns with a damp washcloth, making a pit stop at your dresser to grab a fresh pair of panties for you. 
“Hey, keeping these here finally came in handy,” you crack an eye open to see him proudly holding up a pair of his boxers that he accidentally left at your apartment once (long, long story), which pulls a tired laugh from your lips.
After cleaning you up and changing in comfortable silence, Seungcheol settles in your bed beside you; he allows you to wrap yourself around him, hooking a leg between both of his and resting your head in the crook of his neck. A soothing hand returns to your back, rubbing slow, comforting circles that practically lull you to sleep.
Just as you’re about to drift off, you feel a finger poking at your cheek. You once again pry one eye open to look at your best friend. “Can I help you?”
He lets out a giggle at your grumpiness. “I just wanted to ask…are you feeling better?”
“Yeah, much better,” your eye flutters shut again, accompanied with a contented sigh. “Thank you. For…for always taking care of me.”
If you were looking at him, you would see the adoring expression painted on Seungcheol’s features. You both know you aren’t referring to just the sex.
“Always.”
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