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mingkiyoo · 2 years

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about time (j.yh)

summary ⇢ your longtime boyfriend breaks up with you on your anniversary night. you go over to yunho’s apartment to seek comfort from him while you drown your sorrow away with alcohol. one thing leads to another, and you find yourself in an awkward situation with your best friend.

pairings ⇢ yunho x reader

genre ⇢ best friends to lovers; slow burn; non idol au; suggestive, heartache, smut, fluff, comedy

note ⇢ 18+ content, minors DNI. // this is my first ever fic so i hope it’s not too bad. i just can’t get over sweet bestfriend yunho secretly harboring feelings for y/n >////< please like and reblog if you love it <3

warnings ⇢ best friend!yunho, fem!reader, drinking, y/n’s ex-boyfriend fell out of love, yunho is kind of a player (no focus on this), sexual frustration, big dick!yunho, hand kick, oral (f receiving), fingering, semi rough sex (protected). other side characters’ names will be familiar—it’s purely coincidence and in no way intended to represent the idol. i feel like i’m missing something so please let me know!

word count ⇢ 9.8K

—

“That jerk!” You scowl as you reach for the bottle of merlot that was sitting on the coffee table to get a big sip. “How dare he break up with me on our anniversary?”

Yes. Today is your anniversary with your long-time boyfriend, Jin. You've been dating since freshman year in college. Jin is the man of your dreams, the love of your life. It's a little disappointing that you're not married to him at this point in your relationship.

He was promoted recently to a regional manager position at his company, and he's gotten busier since then that it's so hard to spend time with him. There had been months when you never saw him in person, and you were limited to only video calls and texts because he went on too many business trips.

When you got a call from him yesterday morning and he invited you to go out to dinner with him tonight, you were elated. It's been so long since the last time you went on a date. You can't help but smile at the thought that despite his busy schedule, he remembered your anniversary.

The possibility of Jin proposing tonight entered your mind, but you quickly pushed it aside. You didn't want to get ahead of yourself.

But what if he does?

“I'm thankful for all the years that we were together,” You recall him saying earlier tonight.

After a nice dinner at your favorite fine-dining restaurant, he offered to drive you home. You were sitting in his car in your driveway. Jin was looking everywhere except at you as if he was searching for the right words to say next. “... but I think it's better for the both of us to grow separately from here.”

You felt a knot form from within your stomach. You’re tempted to ask a question you’ve been meaning to ask all this time but can’t bring yourself to.

But if you don’t ask now, you might never get another chance.

“Was it your assistant?” Jin didn’t reply. And you knew that was his answer.

Yunho caught your wrist and took the bottle of wine from your hand. “That’s enough. You’ve had way too much to drink.” He was sitting right next to you on his couch, but he got up to take the alcohol as far away from you as he can.

You whine as you hug your knees to your chest and bury your face on them. As soon as Jin left after he dumped you, you whipped your phone out and dialed Yunho’s number in a hurry. The last thing you wanted was to be alone tonight so when he answered after the second ring, you immediately asked him where he was and if you could go over to his apartment, cry your heart out as you drown your pain away with alcohol.

“I’m outside but I can meet you at my apartment in 20.” You heard Yunho say amidst the noise from the bar you assumed he was hanging out at. It’s Friday night. Of course, your hot best friend would be out in a bar. He was probably flirting with a cute girl when you called. You felt bad at the thought. You didn’t want to spoil anybody else’s night just because yours was terrible.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to ruin your Friday night,” You were fighting back tears and trying so hard not to sniff on the phone and give away the fact that you’ve been crying. But Yunho noticed. He always noticed.

“Everything okay?” Yunho asked. And right there, you let it out. “No.”

You feel a spot on the couch next to you dip as Yunho comes back to join you. His presence always has a calming effect on you. Aside from the fact that you didn’t want to be alone tonight all heartbroken, you needed emotional support. Being your best friend for as long as you have been with Jin, Yunho is the only person in this entire universe who can give you that comfort right now. With gentleness, Yunho places one large hand on your back and starts to soothe you.

“Am I ugly?” you slur at your words. It’s not a real question. Yunho’s right. You had way too much to drink and now it’s catching up to you.

“Are you what?” he sounds surprised. There’s a hint of humor in his tone.

“I don’t think I’m ugly?” you can feel your world spiraling. You place both hands on Yunho’s shoulders hoping that it will help steady you. “I mean—I’m not the prettiest girl in the world, hell, not even in this room and there’s only you and me here. But I think I’m decent?”

“No! Hell no!” he exclaims, shifting in his seat to get comfortable in front of you. “Of course, you’re pretty.” His other hand moving towards your face to tuck a stray hair behind your ear. “Not as pretty as me but so is everyone else.”

You chuckle and hit him on one shoulder. He’s not wrong. He’s absolutely beautiful. His kind eyes, round and dark brown in color—no one will ever guess that he sleeps around. He’s tall and even though he doesn’t have an overly muscular body, he looks strong. He towers over most of his guy friends. He’s an attractive man. You always found him attractive. You would’ve dated him if he wasn’t such a player.

Yes. Yunho is a player—a pleasure-seeker—as he likes to put it.

Aside from the fact that he’s hot—yes, as much as you hate to admit it—Yunho has his way with words. You’ve seen him talk to other girls before on multiple occasions and there’s no way anyone could resist his charms. It’s so easy for him to get a girl anywhere he goes.

In all the years you’ve known him, he’s never been in a steady relationship. The longest relationship he’s had—if you can consider it one—that you can recall was probably a week. When you asked him once before why you’ve never seen him with a girl longer than a week, he just shrugged and said, “I refuse to waste my youth in a monogamous relationship and vow to use this precious time to explore and have fun.”

You respect his choice, but you couldn’t be more opposite. You’d rather be in a steady relationship with someone you can completely trust and give your whole heart to than waste your time sleeping around. It’s important for you to belong to someone who makes you feel secure… like Jin. Well, not anymore. He fell for his assistant and although he claims nothing has happened between them, he still broke up with you so something can actually happen between them, and the thought is making your blood boil again.

“I hate him! I even put my pretty underwear tonight because I thought after 5 months, I’ll finally get laid!” you pull your shirt up to prove it, revealing a black lace lingerie underneath. “The panties match too,” you say as you reach down for the button of your jeans.

You hear Yunho choke as if something is stuck in his throat. He averts his gaze, grabs your hands before you can strip in front of him, and quickly pulls your shirt down to cover your almost bare chest. “I did not need to know that, and I definitely did not need to see that.” He says, emphasizing on ‘that’. His ears turning a pinkish color.

It’s the first time you’ve ever splurged on a lingerie. Hell, it’s the first time you’ve ever bought lingerie—period. You spent over a hundred dollars for this set, and it was all for nothing.

“I have needs too, you know?” you snap. “It’s been way too long and I’m desperate. I thought maybe this will bring the spark back in our relationship.” Unsure why you made air quotes in your mind at the word ‘spark’, you look down on your fingers. Yunho is still holding your hands in his.

You turn towards the back of the couch and bury your face into the cushion wailing in defeat. Much more than your heart, it hurt your pride that your boyfriend—now ex- boyfriend decided today, out of all days, to break up with you. With all the last-minute cancels on your date plans and the fact that you saw him only eight times in the past 5 months and none of those times was he intimate, you were tempted too. You almost ended it yourself. But for the sake of all the years you’ve been together, you decided to give your relationship another chance.

Whether you’re hurt because he threw away all the years you were together for someone he met only a few months ago or because he broke up with you first, you’re unsure.

“Hey,” Yunho says in a low tone. “I’m sorry. That sounded mean.” He reaches for your chin and gently turns your head to face him. “Please stop crying… or I might end up punching someone out.”

“You’re lying,”

“You’re right. I hate getting punched in the face. I like my face too much,” he says as he brings one hand to rub his own cheek.

You laugh. You always enjoy these playful banters with Yunho. No matter how serious the situation is, he never fails to crack you up with his playfulness and funny antics. You try to recall the last time Jin has ever made your stomach hurt out of laughing so much but you don’t have such a memory while you always end up throwing your head back in laughter whenever you’re around Yunho.

You straighten up. His hand is now cupping your jaw, his thumb gently swiping away the tear that has fallen down your cheek. “Please stop crying. I hate seeing you cry.” He’s serious now. “It’s his loss. He’s a complete idiot for letting you go. He doesn’t know what a gem he’s missing out on. It sounds cliché but it’s true, there’s plenty of other guys out there who will treat you better.”

“Yeah?” a small smile curving on your lips. “Except you, apparently,” you tease him.

“Yeah,” you see him smile but it didn’t reach his eyes.

You turn towards his hand that is still cupping your jaw, his thumb still resting against your cheek. You feel your lips brush against his skin and the friction makes you close your eyes. His hand feels warm, it’s making you sleepy. Somehow, this moment with Yunho just feels right. He has one arm over the back of the couch. The warmth radiating from his body is enough to let you know he’s moved closer to you without having to open your eyes. He’s right there. He’s close and you feel safe. You turn your head towards his hand once more and this time, you plant a soft kiss on his thumb.

When you open your eyes, you see Yunho looking intently at you. His eyes dark and his lips slightly parted. His breathing shallow and fast. Whether it’s the alcohol making you adventurous or the look on his face as you plant more kisses on his thumb and palm, you’re unsure. You hear him gasp. He likes this. The idea of you having this much effect on your best friend is boosting the confidence you thought has been completely shattered a few moments ago.

Still feeling dizzy and your head cloudy, your brain fails to stop the words from coming out of your mouth. “Can I?” you ask him. Yunho opens his lips, but words fail him. Looking over you, he swallows hard. And you take that as a yes.

Once more, you plant a soft kiss on his thumb before you finally take it in your mouth.

“Mmm,” he moans softly as you swirl your tongue around it occasionally ghosting your teeth against his skin. How can his thumb feel soft and rigid at the same time against your tongue?

“Fuck,” he groans, and you grab his wrist to steady it, pushing his thumb deeper.

In haste, he takes his thumb out of your mouth. You lean forward hoping to catch it.

“Come here,” he grabs the back of your neck as he firmly presses his lips against yours. The suddenness of his action startles you and you start to wonder if you’re just dreaming it.

Is this real? Am I this desperate for intimacy that I’m dreaming of kissing my best friend?

Yunho’s lips start to move against yours, and it pulls you back to reality. It’s real. Your best friend is kissing you and he’s awfully good at it.

An inexplicable feeling of relief and appreciation washes over you. Yunho holding you in his arms feels right. He feels like home. It feels right to be with him.

“Yunho—,” you breathe into his mouth, and he takes this chance to slowly deepen the kiss. You grab onto his arm for support, his opposite hand wrap around your waist, pulling you closer to him. The feel of his body against yours is making your head spin out of control.

“Oh fuck,” he moans into your mouth, and it sends shivers down your spine. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs, his forehead pressed against yours. You close in on his mouth in desperate need as if you can’t get enough of him. You never want his lips to leave yours even for one second. Yunho kisses you again, his tongue finds your upper lip flicking it twice. You gasp at the sensation, and he slides his tongue into your mouth, tangling it with yours. He’s so good at this.

You groan, frustrated that you can’t seem to get close enough, so you gently place one hand on his chest and push him against the back of the couch as you swing one leg over his hips so you’re straddling him.

His gaze still fixed on you, his expression full of shock and lust. One hand reaches for the back of your neck bringing your lips back to press against his, the other winding around your waist. He shifts his pelvis forward, the stiffness underneath his jeans brushes against your core, and you whimper. You’ve never been kissed like this. Your mouth has never been devoured like a delicious dessert while strong arms were wrapped around you, holding you in place.

“Y/n,” the sound of your name on his lips is enough to send your mind into overdrive. You start grinding your body against his almost unconsciously, matching his rhythm. You feel his erection rub against your clothed core once again and this time you throw your head back at the contact.

“Oh,” you moan, the room suddenly feels so hot. If it gets any hotter than this, you might combust. You feel Yunho’s lips move to your cheek, down to your jaw and now he’s planting hot, wet kisses on your neck.

Both arms are wrapped around you now and you feel him bury his face on your neck while he tries to catch his breath. You grab onto his shoulders, your lips pressed against his hair. He stopped kissing you so suddenly but he’s still holding you close, leaving you confused.

“What’s wrong?” you ask him. He doesn’t answer, instead he squeezes you into the hug a little harder.

He finally breaks away from you. He gathers your legs on one arm and suddenly, you’re no longer straddling him.

Barely sober and still confused, you try to look into his eyes but his wouldn’t meet yours. Yunho has a somber expression on his face, one you’ve never seen before in all the years you’ve known him. He’s always been energetic and playful. You’ve never seen this side of him before. You want to ask him again to check that he’s okay, but you can’t bring yourself to open your mouth.

“You must be tired. You should go to sleep,” he gives you a small smile though he doesn’t look at you. He stands up, still holding you in his arms, and starts walking down the hall to his bedroom. The door is slightly open. He kicks it with one foot to let both of you in his room.

He’s so quiet. It’s so unlike him. You think to yourself as he lowers you down on his bed. He pulls the duvet out from underneath you and tucks you in. You stare at him intently, looking for his eyes amid the barely lit room. He finally meets your gaze, the expression in his eyes, unreadable. You feel his fingers brush against your cheek.

“Good night, y/n,” you feel the mattress shift as he stands and make his way towards the door. You try to reach for his arm hoping you can convince him to stay right next to you, but he already left.

He left.

Yunho left you in his room. By yourself.

You feel your throat close. Tears are rolling down your face and onto the pillow. The reality hit you. You just kissed your best friend, and he’s clearly regretting it.

Does he hate me?

Did I just ruin our friendship?

You turn and bury your face onto the pillow, silently praying that he doesn’t hear you cry from outside his bedroom. You thought you were heartbroken when you came here but now you feel as if your heart has been ripped out. Are you grieving the end of your relationship with Jin or the pain of rejection from your best friend? You’re pretty sure it’s the latter.

—

It’s been a week since that faithful night. You still can’t believe that you and Yunho shared a steamy kiss after you were dumped.

You haven’t seen him since, and you miss him terribly. But thinking about the way things went down that night and the lingering heartache, you resolve that it’s best that you don’t run into him for a while. At least until you’ve accepted that he just doesn’t see you as a woman.

To Yunho, you’ll always just be his best friend. Nothing more. And that’s enough. It should be.

You’re surprisingly thriving for someone who was dumped just a week ago. With all the years you’ve spent with Jin, you thought you would at least cry in bed for a week. But after only three days, you’re back to your usual routine. Things at work are going smoothly, your family is healthy, and you started working out again. Life is good—aside from the fact that you can’t bring yourself to reply to Yunho’s text from the following morning.

You feel your phone vibrate over your head and it woke you up. When you open your eyes, you noticed the sheets immediately. You’re not in your bed. This is not your room. And then you remembered. You’re in Yunho’s apartment. You came over as soon as your ex-boyfriend, Jin, dropped you off.

You quickly check the time on your phone. It’s flashing 7:15AM on the screen. The sun is already up, the warm sunlight is barely penetrating through the thick drapes.

You slowly sit up, pain splitting through your skull. You recall bringing your own poison last night, hoping it will drown out your sorrow, but your heart is still aching and now you have a hangover too.

You gasp as you recall another memory from last night. Yunho’s lips were against yours. One moment you were sharing the hottest kiss you’ve ever had in your entire life, then the next thing you know—it was over. You clutch your chest, the pain of rejection still lingering.

You carefully turn the doorknob to Yunho’s bedroom, praying you don’t wake him up if he’s sleeping in his small living room because you might die of humiliation, considering how things unfolded last night. You peek your head out the door and find him sleeping on his couch.

You tiptoe towards him, carefully grabbing your stuff that are spread all over the floor.

Yunho is sleeping soundly on his back, one arm covering his eyes. Your legs bend almost to their own accord as you bring yourself closer to watch over him.

He looks so peaceful. Your gaze trailed down towards his lips and you recall the feeling of them against yours. You notice how his lips perfectly curve into a heart shape. Were they always plump like this?

Yunho shifts slightly in his sleep. You place one hand over your mouth trying your best not to make a sound as you jump up, moving as far away from him as possible, hoping you didn’t wake him.

It seems like he’s still fast asleep. You quickly yet carefully put your shoes on and grabbed your things. You glance back at him one more time before you head out the door, gently shutting it behind you.

As soon as you got home, you plopped down on your own bed, you heard your phone vibrate from inside your purse. You reached for it, took your phone out to look at what the notification was for.

It was a text message.

From Yunho.

[Yuyu] “I noticed you already left. Did you have coffee at least?”

You wanted to text him back, but you couldn’t think of a good reply. You tried: “Yeah. I didn’t want to wake you” Delete. Delete. Delete.

You tried again: “I didn’t have enough time” Delete. Delete. Delete. You took a long sigh and put your phone back into your purse.

It’s 6:58PM on a Friday night. You’re mindlessly looking through Netflix’s library of shows and movies you can watch while you eat your dinner. It’s been 30 minutes, you’re done eating, but you still can’t find anything good to watch. As soon as you let out a sigh, you hear your phone vibrate on the couch.

[Minmin] “We’re going to the Rec Room tonight. Do you wanna come?”

It’s Mingi. You wonder by ‘we’ does he mean all the boys are coming? Including Yunho?

You don’t really have anything interesting to do tonight and it’s been a while since you hung out with them but are you ready to see Yunho? You’ve held out so well. Are you ready to face him after you’ve been rejected and heartbroken? What if you act awkwardly around him? What if the others notice? Wait—do they know?

It’s not that Yunho didn’t try to reach out after your multiple failed attempts at replying to his text. He did. He called you a couple times, but you never answered. You froze every time you saw his name on your phone screen and even if you were so desperate to hear his voice, you couldn’t bring yourself to answer, and he was sent to voicemail each time.

One time, he left a voicemail:

[Yuyu] “Hey… I haven’t seen you in a while. Just wanted to check in… Hope you’re okay.”

He’s sweet as ever, you nearly tear up. How can you hate this man for the let down when he’s being thoughtful like this?

You met Yunho just a little after you started dating Jin in college. Even then, he’s always been so popular with the girls.

One semester, you had the same class. You were both late, so you settled at the back of the room. You instantly clicked and ever since then, you’ve been great friends.

It’s probably because you were already dating Jin at the time but looking back, you never really wondered what Yunho thinks of you. You’ve met every single one of his rendezvous and you never once wondered if he would be interested in you in a similar way.

Besides, casual hookups were never your thing. You’re such an idealist when it comes to relationships. And that’s why even if Jin didn’t give you butterflies in your stomach or the dizzying feeling of being in love, you stayed with him, and at one point in your relationship, you believed you were in love with him.

Fiery passionate relationships scare you. You’ve heard and witnessed too many horror stories of intense, burning, hot relationships only for it to die down faster than it started. Jin felt safe, and that was exactly what you wanted.

But after the moment you had with Yunho in his apartment last week, you’re not so sure anymore. You at least know that if it’s with him, you’d be willing to give it a chance.

That’s enough reminiscing for one night. You stop yourself before you can even start going down the rabbit hole filled with what ifs. You bite the inside of your cheek as you type a reply to Mingi’s text, letting him know you’re down.

—

It only took you 18 minutes to get to the Rec Room by Uber. You worry that you might get trashed tonight so you decided to leave your car behind.

Loud noises from pin ball and video games, as well as the thrilled clamor of players welcome you into the large space.

You pass by a series of game machines and find your friends huddled around the laser hocky table. Mingi and San are playing against each other, and it looks intense from where you’re standing. Even though you can practically feel your heart in your throat, your eyes search for a familiar face, and you found him. But an instant wave of regret starts to weigh on your chest, your stomach in knots. You rethink your decision to hang out but it’s too late now.

You see Yunho standing against an arcade basketball machine, a bottle of beer in hand, a petite girl whispering into his ear. Whatever she said, it must have been funny because you see them giggling together. She’s wearing a light blue cropped tank and a mini jean skirt to match, an oversized cardigan over her shoulders. She has a full face of makeup on. She’s cute.

You unconsciously look down and start examining your own outfit. It’s a casual night so you decided to wear your favorite pair of lululemon leggings, a blue flannel over your cropped tank and stepped into your go-to Nike Airforce 1s. You put a light wash of makeup on but loaded up on the mascara before you head out.

You initially thought that it’s just the boys, they’ve seen your potato state multiple times before, they wouldn’t care. But now, you wish you’d put a little bit more effort into how you look.

Not that you want to impress Yunho or anything. Right?

“y/n!” Mingi shouting across from you, interrupting your thoughts. You notice Yunho turn his head in your direction from your periphery. He straightens up as soon as he sees you.

Mingi starts jogging towards you. He opens his arms wide and pulls you into a bear hug. “I’m glad you could make it!” he says, a smile curving on his lips, making his eyes disappear. You rest your chin on his shoulder, but the height difference is straining your neck.

“Thanks for inviting me!” you say amid the struggle.

As soon as Mingi breaks away, you see San come around the corner. “Hey!” he starts messing up your hair, earning him a groan from you. “I haven’t seen you in a while, I almost forgot how you look like!” he pouts.

“I’m sorry,” you tell him, biting the inside of your cheek. “I’ve been busy lately and there’s been… some changes in my life.” Your eyes find Yunho’s, looking intently at you as he slowly approaches you. You can’t tell if he’s happy to see you or what.

You exchange greetings with the other members then finally you hear Yunho speak.

“Hey,”

“Hey,” you respond awkwardly, barely able to hold his gaze.

“I didn’t know you were coming,” he says.

“Yeah,” you look at your feet, shifting your weight from side to side. “Mingi invited me. I didn’t’ have any plans so…” you continue, wondering why you feel so awkward. It’s just Yunho and his friends… and a cute girl.

You consider running back home and hiding from the world forever when someone else finally starts talking and you breathe a sigh of relief. You look up to see the same petite girl that was standing next to Yunho just a few moments ago.

She holds out a hand. “Hi,” she greets you, a sweet smile plastered across her face. “I’m Mina. You’re y/n?”

You try to hide your surprise at the fact that she knows your name. You wonder if you’ve met her somewhere before but you’re pretty sure tonight is the first time you’re seeing her.

“Hi! Yes—,” you reach out for her hand and gently shakes it.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” she adds, beaming. Panic starts to bubble up in your gut. You wonder who told her about you. Is it Yunho? Are they together? Did you miss the memo and kissed your best friend, not realizing he’s already seeing someone else?

The thought makes your stomach roll. “I hope they were all wonderful things,” you say, trying your hardest to put on a smile.

You feel stuffy suddenly and you look around, praying for someone to come and rescue you from this awkward situation.

Like an answered prayer, Mingi comes back and interlocks one arm around yours. “What do you want to drink?” He gently pulls you towards the direction of the bar and you’re so thankful for his aid, you can almost kiss him.

—

It’s only 10PM but you can barely keep your eyes open. Mingi notices you yawning into your forearm.

“Tired?” he asks, bringing his long fingers to softly pinch your cheek.

“Yeah. I think I’m done for the night,” you say as you take one last sip of your cocktail.

Mingi has no idea how thankful you are that he pretty much never left your side the entire night. He’s so attentive, occasionally asking to make sure you’re still good. He takes you with him whatever game he takes interest in playing next or whenever he goes to the bar to get another round of drinks for everyone. He’s kept you busy. Busy enough to barely notice Yunho being all chummy with Mina. You feel a sharp pang of jealousy in your chest. He’s your best friend and you want to be territorial, but you can’t. He’s not yours. You remind yourself.

Hongjoong and Seonghwa are playing pool. You’re not sure where San and Yeosang are. Jongho is sitting right next to Mingi, scrolling through his phone. To your relief, Wooyoung has kept Mina entertained the entire night, although Yunho doesn’t go too far away without the two. You occasionally feel eyes on you and when you look up, you meet Yunho’s gaze. He has a blank expression on his face. You’re the first to break eye contact each time.

You press up to your heels and start gathering your stuff. “Did you bring your car?” you hear Jongho ask.

“No. I Uber-ed here just in case I get trashed. I don’t want to leave my car in the parking lot,” you say.

Mingi stands up and pulls you into a hug. He’s such a sweetheart. He’s been touchy and clingy all night. You don’t really mind since out of all of Yunho’s friends, Mingi is your baby.

“I’m so happy you came. I’ve been missing your face,” he says, gently pressing one hand at the back of your head, pulling you closer.

“Thank you for inviting me! I would’ve stayed in my sweats and spend the whole evening looking for something to watch on Netflix until I fall asleep,” you say, wrapping both arms around his waist.

He rubs your back with one hand before he lets you go.

“Did you book your ride yet?” you hear Yunho ask. You turn around, surprised to see him standing behind you. He was just talking to Wooyoung and Mina across the room.

“I have,” you answer him. “It should be here in 10 minutes. The driver is dropping off their last passenger somewhere close—”

“Can you still cancel it?” he asks again. Why does he look so serious?

You give him a confused look. “I brought my car. I can drive you home. Cancel it,” he explains.

“But you’ve been drinking too?” you argue.

“I only had one bottle,” he counters. “I didn’t want to drink too much in case you need me to drive you home.” His words tug at your heart. This is classic Yunho. It’s like he has a ‘y/n’-needs-help’ radar. He always seems to know when you’re in need of something or looking for help and he always manages to be there for you. And when he’s not available, he sends one of these guys so even if they’re technically his friends, you feel like you’re a part of the group too.

“Oh no! It’s fine. They’ll be here in 10 minutes—” you check the app on your phone. “9 minutes now.”

“y/n,” Yunho says in a firm tone. “I’m driving you home.” It’s not a question or a request.

You sigh. “Okay,” you concede, canceling the booking after you’ve checked that it’s not too late.

Yunho quickly runs up to Wooyoung and Mina across the room. You figure he’s letting them know that he’s leaving to drive you home. You can’t help but catch Yunho’s hand squeeze Mina’s arm and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. You don’t like that he’s being intimate with another girl, and you realize that you’re being absurd for thinking that way, but you can’t help it. It didn’t bother you before but now it does and the thought that you can’t have Yunho all to yourself makes your heart sink.

“Let’s go,” Yunho says, and you head towards the parking lot. Although Yunho gets around, you’ve never seen him friendly with another girl before. He always drew the line at flirting. Maybe you just didn’t pay much attention? You never pry into his business, but you recall one time when you asked him out of sheer curiosity if he ever talks to the girls after he sleeps with them.

“No,” he says casually. “I don’t talk to them or see them ever again after that one night. I’m not looking to get in a relationship, so I hate to give anyone the wrong impression.”

—

The entire ride home was uncomfortable to say the least. Both of you barely spoke, tiptoeing around each other. His radio was on but all you could hear was the sound of your heart pounding. The awkwardness in the air was too much for you to bear so you resorted to fake napping.

Yunho pulls into your driveway. You open your eyes, straightens yourself up and quickly unbuckles your seatbelt.

“Thanks for driving me home,” you say, giving him a small smile. Not waiting for his reply, you reach for the car door and hurriedly step out. “Good night, Yunho.”

You head towards your front door, a lump in your throat starts forming. You sigh.

Why am I having such a hard time trying to talk to him? We’ve been good friends for so long. It was never hard like this.

Even while you pretended you were sound asleep the entire ride home, all you could really think about was how much you missed Yunho. It was hard not to see him for a whole week when you almost lived together considering how often you came over to each other’s apartments. When you don’t see each other longer than what’s considered normal for the both of you, you at least exchange text messages or call each other. When you think about it, you’ve seen Yunho more often that you’ve seen your ex-boyfriend Jin in the past 5 months.

Since that night, you’ve been aching to touch him again and the fact that he’s sitting right next to you, so close yet so impossible to reach is driving you mad, the fear of another rejection hanging over your head.

You get inside your apartment but before you can shut the door, you see Yunho trying to squeeze his form into the door frame. “Do you have beer?” he asks, breathing hard as if he’s been running.

It takes you a second to realize you’re staring at him but not letting him in, so you open the door a little wider.

Yunho gets in and closes the door behind him. He follows you straight to the kitchen then to the refrigerator. You grab two cans of beer and hands him one. Yunho quickly cracks it open, taking a big sip. You both lean against the kitchen counter, standing side by side.

You try to focus on your beer and not on the fact that Yunho is standing so close you can feel his warmth against your skin. His elbow gently bumps into your side, and you jump. You look up to meet his eyes.

“Sorry,” he says softly, finally breaking the silence.

“It’s okay—” you assure him, turning your gaze forwards.

“Are we okay?” he asks, you can tell he’s staring at you from your periphery.

“Yeah,” you say, looking at the beer can in your hand. “Why wouldn’t we be okay?” It’s not a total lie. You tried to feel okay, to bring back the same dynamic you had with Yunho before that night, but you failed miserably after each attempt. In truth, you haven’t been feeling okay since that night, all week, all night but you can’t tell him that. You can’t risk another heartache.

“I feel like you’re avoiding me…” he says in a small voice.

Yunho places his beer can down on the countertop. He turns to face you, placing one hand on the counter on either side of you. “Are you?” he asks. He’s searching for your eyes, but you keep your head down. “Talk to me… please,” he continues when you don’t answer. He sounds like he’s in pain.

He notices you fidgeting with your beer can. He gently takes it away from your hand and places it down on the countertop next to his.

You feel your cheeks heat up and you bit your lower lip, trying to fight back the tears that spring to your eyes. You look down at your fingers, trying to muster up the courage to tell him what’s been weighing on your mind this past week. He cups your jaw with one hand, his thumb gently stroking your cheek. He nudges your head up, forcing you to look at him.

You feel a lump in your throat forming, your stomach in knots at the thought that you may be passing the point of no return, but you’ve had enough of hiding your feelings. “You do it all the time with other girls,” you blurt out, meeting his gaze steadily, “why not with me?”

It took Yunho a moment to realize you’re talking about that night.

“Y/n,” he sighs, and it hurts. The heartache you endured last week has nothing on the pain you’re feeling right now. You already know what he’s about to do or say. Still, it doesn’t make it easier to hear the rejection straight from him.

“Because it’s you—” he says, dropping his hands by his side. You interject quickly before he can finish hoping it will soften the blow. “I- I’m sorry. I was stupid and I needed- I needed you…” your voice breaking. You swallow and turn in your spot away from him, so you don’t have to face him when he finally turns you down.

“I know you don’t have feelings for me… I know you don’t see me like that,” your heart breaks all over again and you can’t help the tears that are now spilling over. “It’s okay… really. I love you just the same.”

You feel his fingers reach for your elbow and you squeeze your eyes shut. You’ve been aching for his touch. So desperate to feel his body against yours. But he doesn’t want you—at least not in the same way—and it hurts. It hurts that you realized too late that you love him. It hurts that he can’t return your feelings. It hurts that you potentially just ruined your friendship, and it hurts because you don’t know how to go back to the way things were.

You step back away from the counter, Yunho mirroring behind you. This is too much, too painful for you to handle. Much more painful than when Jin ended your relationship of so many years. You hurriedly go around the corner of the counter, heading towards the living room when Yunho grabs your wrist, stopping your tracks.

“What do you mean?” he asks. You glance at the floor before looking back at him. His eyes roam over your features as if he’s looking for something. You hesitate slightly before opening your mouth to say something you know you’ll immediately regret.

“I- I’m in love with you.”

Yunho’s eyes widen at your confession. He opens his mouth then shuts it close again. Your eyes are overflowing with tears now and you look down at your fingers before you wipe your face with the back of one hand. “I- I don’t know when I started feeling this way…” you stutter, “but I know it wasn’t just because of that one kiss,” you’re talking faster now. “I’m sorry… I don’t want to ruin our friendship, but I can’t keep ignoring these feelings anymore—”

Yunho takes a step towards you. He places both hands on your face, cupping your jaw and he dips in to kiss you. One of his hands travel down your back, he holds you tight and pulls you closer. The kiss is rough and desperate, leaving you breathless when he finally breaks away. He bends down low and presses his forehead against yours.

“Oh,” he sighs. “What am I going to do with you?” an amused laugh on his lips.

You push him back, brows furrow in confusion. “Wait, what—”

He straightens up. “I love you,” he says simply, eyes sparkling, the corners of his lips pull up to a smile. “I’ve been in love with you since the moment I first met you.”

You shake your head, more confused than ever from the sudden confession. “But… you didn’t want me? You pulled away?”

He sighs again and look at his feet. “I knew you needed that release and I know I could give it to you. I want to,” he pauses. “But because it’s you, I didn’t.”

He reaches for your wrists and hold them in his hands, his thumbs drawing little circles on your skin. “I can’t make love with the woman of my dreams and expect for it not to crush me.” He looks back up at you, his gaze soft. “You were drunk, and I didn’t want to take advantage of you. What if you wake up the next morning and regret all of it? It would’ve broken my heart.”

Woman of his dreams.

“Y-you never said anything. You never—”

“Made a move on you?” he finished your sentence for you. “Jin was good to you, and I didn’t want to be that guy. You always seemed happy and content, so I buried all these feelings deep down inside of me hoping to forget they even exist.” He says quietly. “I know this sounds cliché so don’t laugh at me,” he pauses, his gaze steady on yours as if he’s waiting for you to swear it. “I wanted to stay in your life no matter what, even if it meant being your friend—your best friend—I was willing to do it.”

“Oh,” your breath hitches.

“But you came to me, and I let my guard down,” he says, bringing both hands to cup your face, his thumbs wiping away any remnants of tears from your cheeks. “All it took was one kiss to bring those feelings back up to the surface. I wanted to tell you sooner, but I thought maybe you need space—some time away from me—considering how you never responded to my texts and didn’t take my calls.”

“I’m sorry,” you mutter, “I thought I’ve been rejected, and I was hurt. I didn’t know how to face you…”

He chuckles. “Basically, we’re just a bunch of idiots… waiting on each other.” He says, tucking a stray hair behind your ear. “Promise me, we won’t do this again.” He holds your hands and squeezes them. “If you want to tell me something, don’t hesitate… tell me. I promise to do the same—like we’ve always done.”

You nod and Yunho kisses you again, gentler this time as if he’s afraid to hurt you then he deepens the kiss, pouring all the feelings he’s been trying to hide all these years into it. You’re both panting, desperate for oxygen when you pull away. “I love you, y/n. I’ve loved you for so long.”

“I love you too, Yunho.”

Wrapping your arms around the back of his neck, this time you kiss him. He lets out a moan and you can’t help but feel the heat pooling in your core. He wraps his arms around you, his large hands reaching down to cup your ass, pressing his hard length against your belly, your knees turning Jell-O. “You have no idea how much I’ve been wanting to take care of you since that night,” he says between kisses. “I barely stopped myself. I wanted you so bad.”

“Yunho—" you whimpered, desperate for more, eager to get closer, you grind your body against his. A low growl escapes his lips and the sound of it makes your skin tingle. He grabs your waist and turns your body, so your back is against the counter. Without breaking the kiss, he grasps your sides, lifts you up and sits you on the countertop before squeezing his form in between your legs. “I don’t think I can stop myself this time.”

“Then don’t,” you breathe into his ear.

“Oh,” he grins. “I’m not planning to.”

His lips trail down the side of your jaw and up towards your ear, nipping at your lobe. He starts moving south, planting hot, wet kisses on your neck. You feel his hands everywhere, palming every dip and mound and you stifle a moan.

His fingers start moving up from your thigh towards your core. When he runs his thumb along your aching heat, you nearly lost it.

“Fuck,” you grab onto his shoulder for support. “Hmm… you’re already so wet, I barely touched you,” he says, tilting his head back, looking at you through hooded eyes, a playful grin plastered across his face.

You’re not sure when he did it, but you notice he’s already taken your shoes and socks off. His fingers trail against the waistband of your leggings, nudging them down. You lift your hips slightly so he can take them off you. You’re thankful you decided to wear your best-looking underwear tonight.

“I’ll try to be gentle…” he murmurs into your ear, his voice deep, his hot breath against your skin, making your skin flush. “…but I can’t promise it.” His eyes are dark and intense. “You need to tell me if it’s too much for you, okay?”

You nod and his thumb swipes across your bottom lip. “Open for me,” he slides one finger into your mouth, finding your tongue and you start swirling it around the tip. This feels familiar and your brain tingles at the memory of you sucking on his thumb that night. You didn’t realize how much Yunho’s long and beautiful fingers turn you on.

Yunho takes his finger out of your mouth. He yanks your panties to the side and runs his finger that was in your mouth along your wet slit causing you to whimper, your free hand grabbing the edge of the counter.

“Please,” you whisper. He finally takes your panties off you and tosses it to the side so you’re fully naked from the waist down.

He bends down low in between your legs, large hands on each of your thighs pushing your legs apart a little bit wider. You bite your nail, suddenly feeling embarrassed. This is not your first sexual encounter, but it is your first time with Yunho, who you’ve been friends with for a long time. He’s never seen you like this and to be honest, you look so soft and vulnerable, so exposed in this position, Yunho nearly loses his mind, his cock throbbing underneath his pants.

“You look so beautiful like this,” he says before his lips finally dive into your sensitive heat and you can’t help but throw your head back at the contact. His warm tongue teasing your sensitive spot causing you to arch your back on the countertop. Yunho takes it as a cue and starts devouring you as if his life depended on it.

“Fuck,” you grab a fistful of his soft locks, your hips start moving almost to their own accord, trying to find a rhythm, desperate for more. When he stiffens his tongue and presses it inside you, the pleasure nearly takes you out.

“Oh my—” you can feel your release getting closer and closer. Yunho grabs one of your wrists pulling forward so you can curl up and watch him eat you out. “Look at me,” he says, his mouth momentarily taking a break. “You feel good, baby?” he asks.

“So good.” He chuckles against your skin. His tongue finds your entrance again, relentlessly pressing in and out and it tips you over the edge. You shudder out a moan, legs shaking as you come apart against his mouth.

“Let’s move to somewhere more comfortable.” He wraps your legs around his waist, interlocking your ankles behind the small of his back. He lifts you up and starts walking towards your bedroom. He knows the layout of your apartment as if it’s his own.

He places you at the foot of your bed and with one swift move, he takes your tank top off you, followed by your bra so you’re fully naked in front of him. He’s dreamt of your naked body before, as much as he tried not to, but the sight of you right now beats whatever he had in mind.

He scrambles to take his shirt off and quickly tosses it to the side. You’ve seen him without a shirt before when you went to the beach along with his group of friends, so you already know that he has a fit body. Your eyes feast on his perfect proportions—broad shoulders, strong chest, toned abs and arms. He’s beautiful.

He yanks his pants and boxers down just enough to let his stiff length spring free from its confinements. Your eyes widen in surprise, and you worry for a moment if it will fit. He’s big.

Yunho kisses you again, more desperately this time. He pushes one finger inside you while his other hand moves up to fondle your breast, capturing it in his mouth and you let out a whimper in response. You hear him tear open the foil wrapper and you instinctively spread your legs wider for him. Yunho lines himself up against your entrance and he gasps when he finally starts sliding forward.

You’re both panting now. He places both hands on either side of you so he can slide further. “Fuck, baby. You’re so tight,” he cries. “I may not last long.”

You wrap your legs around his waist, pressing him down on your body. He’s all the way inside you now and you feel impossibly full.

“Please,” you whisper into his ear, pressing your forehead against his, your hand gently pulling on his soft locks. “I need it.”

Yunho pulls all the way out but sinks right back in—all the way—causing both of you to whimper, your nails digging into the skin of his back. He starts moving his hips, keeping his pace slow and steady at first, slowly stretching you out until your body is used to his size. You can’t believe how close you are already. You buck your hips up to meet each thrust and as if Yunho can sense your urgency, he picks up his pace causing you to whine and moan underneath him, your release just around the corner.

“Let go,” he says, and his words are enough to tip you over the edge. “Yunho!” you cry out, arching your back as you clench around him, legs shaking at the intensity of your release. He’s not far behind. He drives into you a couple more times before you hear him cry out your name as he shudders inside you.

He collapses on top of you, staying there for a moment before laying on his side right next to you. He pulls you in and you rest your head on his chest. His heart beating as loud as yours as you both try to catch your breath. “You’re amazing,” he breathes, kissing the top of your head.

“Umm, Yunho…” you lift your head up to look at his face, his eyes are closed.

“Hmm?”

“Is this okay? What about Mina?” It’s probably too late now but you’re dying to ask.

“What about her?” he asks calmly.

“Didn’t you bring her to the Rec Room tonight?” you ease up on your elbow, your face hovering over his and he opens his eyes to meet yours.

“I did,” he says casually. “But she’s there for Wooyoung,” he continues, his fingers playing with your hair. “We work together. I told her we’re hanging out tonight and she asked me if I can take her so they can officially meet.”

“So… you’re not together?” you ask.

“Nope,” he immediately responds. “Y/n, I haven’t been with anyone in the past 5 months. We’ve been spending so much time together. I thought you would notice.” He chuckles, softly pinching your cheeks.

You tilt your head to one side and start pouting. “How does she know me?” you ask. Yunho smiles. “She may have heard the boys tease me about you once or twice before.”

Your brows furrow in confusion. You’re still not sure where he’s going with this.

“They think I’m stupid for not shooting my shot with you,” he scoffs. “They think we should be together.” His face lights up, eyes sparkling, and he looks flushed. He’s so adorable and you can’t help but swoon.

“How did I not realize sooner that I’m actually in love with you?” you ask. It’s not a real question and he seems to know it.

Yunho smiles, holds your hand and squeezes it before planting a soft kiss on your palm. “I would’ve waited forever for you.”

—

A few months later…

You enter the neighborhood coffeeshop with your boyfriend Yunho. Fingers intertwined as you walk hand in hand towards the counter.

“Do you want the usual?” he asks.

You nod and just as you were about to open your mouth to add something, the guy with an awfully familiar figure standing in front of you turns around.

It’s Jin.

“Hey,” he smiles, his gaze turns toward Yunho then back to you. You’re pretty sure he noticed you holding hands.

It takes you a moment to realize your mouth is open and you greet him back. You exchange glances with Yunho, hoping he understands what you’re trying to communicate with him. It seems like he did because he mouths “You good?” and after you give him a nod, he starts stepping away to find a table for the two of you.

You hear Jin chuckle in front of you as he places his card back in his wallet. “I see that you two finally started dating each other…”

Finally?

“What do you mean?” you ask, an awkward smile on your lips.

“Y/n,” he says. “We were together for a long time,” he continues. “I know things about you… maybe better than you know yourself,” he pauses, his eyes look like they’re searching for something. “You’re in love with him,” you follow where he fixed his gaze, and you find Yunho sitting by the glass wall. He’s already found a table for the two of you. “You have been… for a long time.”

Jin’s words urge you to recall all the fond memories you’ve had with Yunho all these years. It’s hard to miss the affection you have for each other. Everyone seems to know except the two of you.

“At first, I thought maybe I was keeping the two of you from getting together,” he pauses again and look at his feet then looks up to meet your eyes. “But I think we both know that’s not the whole truth.”

You bite your lip. He’s not wrong. You were so scared of getting your heart broken. You’ve heard and witnessed enough of fiery, passionate relationships and the end always look the same, someone’s heart in a million pieces. You led yourself to believe that what you wanted was something safe and familiar. You liked that your relationship with Jin was predictable because you thought you can avoid getting hurt this way, not realizing that you were growing apart and both of you were no longer happy. But now, you realize it’s not about how the relationship started. The right person will always feel like home.

“I know you loved me too and I’m thankful for it—” he sighs. “I’m sorry that I hurt you… but we both deserved better.” He places a hand on your shoulder and gently squeezes.

You smile at him.

—

You place the drinks on the table before you settle on the seat opposite Yunho.

“What did he say and how dare he touch you?” Yunho blurts out before taking a sip of his coffee and it makes you giggle.

“Are you… jealous?” you ask, narrowing your eyes as you tease him.

“Me? Jealous?” He scoffs. “So what did he say?” he asks, his lips in a straight line.

You laugh a little louder this time. Yunho is in no way a jealous boyfriend, but he can get a bit territorial, which is understandable considering you just talked to someone you’ve had a long history with.

He pouts when you didn’t answer right away and he’s so cute, you want to squish his face.

“He said it’s about time we started dating each other,” you say casually.

Yunho loosens up, he stretches out a hand on top of the table and you place your hand in it. “He’s right,” he admits. “It took us way too long to get here,” he pauses, squeezing your hand.

“You should know…” he leans forward, holding your gaze steady, a playful grin on his lips, “you’re not escaping me… ever.”

#ateez ff #ateez fic #ateez fanfic #ateez #jeong yunho #yunho #yunho x reader #yunho fic #yunho smut #ateez smut #yunho fluff #ateez fluff #kpop fic #kpop smut #kpop ff #my fics

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boruto-the-rewrite · 3 years

Text

At the beginning of school this week, we had the students due an “about me” assignment. It was due today, so here are some of them. Last names have been censored for privacy.

From Boruto U.:

[Image ID: A third grade “all about me assignment”, where individual fields are written in with red ink and messy, childish handwriting. It reads: “All about: Boruto. I am 8 1/3 years old. I live with my mommy. My Friends Are: Scourge!!! Himawari. I like to watch: SSS Warriors. My Favorite Color: red. Food: burger. Animal: cats (with a backwards ‘s’). Books: Warriors. Favorite Activities: playing warriors with my sister. I am good at baking cookies (mispelled). When I grow up I want to be: Scourge.” Next to “scourge” there is a drawing of an angry looking cat. End ID.]

This one was a little hard for me to read... I had to get my teacher’s assistant to help me decipher it. As a longtime friend of his mother, I have known Boruto for many years and can safely say this is accurate (although admittedly it’s a little embarrassing I didn’t know about the cat books earlier). He is certainly good at helping Hinata “back cokies”.

From Inojin Y.:

[Image ID: Various parts of the paper are filled in with black. It reads: “All About: Inojin Yamanaka. I live with: Sai & Ino Yamanaka. Friends: Chouchou, Shikadai, Chouchou’s friends. I like to watch: Bob Ross. My Favorite Color: Black. Food: cheesy goldfish. Animal: Lion. Books: Percy Jackson (Percy is spelled with an ‘s’). Favorite activities: Drawing, game, drawing, lego. When I grow up I want to be: tattoo artist (tattoo is spelled with only two ‘t’’s and one ‘o’). I am good at: everything.” End ID.]

A very creative child, though I’m surprised he didn’t use any colors; I left some crayons and colored pencils out for everyone to use. Normally he includes much more color in his work... either way, it’s no surprise he wants to be a tattoo artist.

From Sarada U.:

[Image ID: The same paper. It’s written in cursive, and some parts are colored in. It reads: All about: Sarada Uchiha. I am 8 years old. I live with: Mom. My friends are: Chouchou. I like to watch: documentaries (misspelled; missing the ‘a’). My Favorite Color: chartreuse (misspelled, written in red ink). Drink: blackberry tea (mispelled; berry has an ‘a’ instead of an ‘e’). Animal: okapi. Favorite activities: studying, reading. Books: Cambell’s Biology 9th version. I am good at: spelling. When I grow up I want to be: hokage.” End ID.]

We haven’t started learning cursive yet, but it seems Sarada already has most of it down; it’s pretty messy though, and again I had to enlist my TA to help. Amusingly, she wrote chartreuse in red. I think this might also be a sign for me to start focusing more on proper spelling. Maybe I can combine it with our ninja theory lessons.

From Mitsuki:

[Image ID: “All About: Mitsuki. I am 8 months old. I live with: parent. My friends are: snake, log, metal. (Snake is misspelled as snek.) I like to watch: Wild Kratt. My Favorite Color: #62F0C8. Food: scrambled egg. Animal: snake (snake is misspelled the same as before). Favorite activities: Instead of text, there are some childish doodles of green snakes. Books: Chika Chika Boom Boom. I am good at: staring contest. When I grow up I want to be: Herpatologist.” End ID.]

I have some concerns regarding the recent transfer student Mitsuki. For one he didn't write his last name, and most of his friends seem to be some sort of inanimate object or wild animal. The ‘parent’ is probably referring to the person in his last drawing. I'm also not too sure he understood what the assignment meant under the "color" section, he seems to have just written a bunch of numbers and letters (unless that’s the name of a color...?) . All in all, this project has created more questions than answered them...

From Metal L.:

[Image ID: The handwriting is extremely small and hard to see. It reads: “All About: Metal Lee. I am Eight years old. I live with: Dad, Grandpa, and Sleepy Grandpa. My friends are: dad, grandpa, sleepy grandpa, Mirai. I like to watch: Dragon Ball Z. My Favorite Color: green. Food: Curry of life. Animal: Hitmonlee. Favorite activities: running, workout, pokemon, hiking/camping. Books: Martha speaks. When I grow up I want to be: dad.” The ‘I am good at’ section is left blank. End ID.]

I appreciate the fact that Metal Lee did the assignment properly, although it would be appreciated if he learned to write a bit bigger; I had to ask my TA to help ‘translate’ this one too. He also left the "I'm good at" section blank; did he forget to do it, or is this an insecurity problem? It's good to see a kid his age enjoying so many outdoor activities though.

From Chouchou A.:

[Image ID: The writing is childish, and the writing is in multiple colors. The I’s are dotted with hearts. Some sections are colored in with bright colors. It reads: All About: ChouChou. I am: 8 years old. I live with: Akimichi clan. My friends are: Sarada, Inojin, Shikadai, Sweetie (misspelled as “sweatie”), Shinki, Boruto (??). I like to watch: all cartoons. My favorite color: pink. Food: caviar. Animal: monarch butterfly (misspelled with only one t). Favorite activities: watch cartoons, talk with friends. (the e and i in friends are switched). Books: Happy Happy Clover. I am good at: making friends (misspelled the same way as before). When I grow up I want to be: fashionista.” End ID.]

I'm glad to see how much color Chouchou used in her project, and also at the amount of friends she's been able to make. Her strong ambitions to be a fashionista is reflected in her work. It’s also very nice to see her have so many friends... though I’m not sure why Boruto has question marks next to his name.

Of the students who offered to share theirs, only one didn’t turn in anything. I’ve contacted their parents about participation.

#boruto uzumaki #sarada uchiha #chouchou akimichi #metal lee #mitsuki #inojin yamanaka #shinosensei_op #school days #grades

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if-the-crown-fits-translate-it · 3 years

Text

Discord pt 87

[Date: 17/03, 01.51 PM - 17/03, 03.53 PM GMT]

[This conversation was going on in #general2, simultaneously to another in #arg. The second is referenced later and will be posted separately after this one.]

Prince: “Hello, everyone. It's been a while. :)”

fetch: “oh hey buddy :]”

Maxwell: “Oh hey prince longtime no see”

fetch: “and goodmornin everyone”

[donti: “hi prince, whats up”]

Prince: “Not much. Still kind of... off from last night. It's been a long time since I've had those thoughts, so I'm still reeling a bit.”

fetch: “well at least you're doing better now. baron mentioned you went to the comfort room? that musta helped a lot”

Prince: “...Yeah, it helped a little bit.”

[Maxwell: “Been a while since I’ve seen ya prince hope things are going okay”]

Prince: “Yeah... I'm sorry, I've just been really out of it lately. I'm not sure what my deal is.”

[fetch: “have you been eating and drinking well? exercise and sunshine might help too”]

Prince: “Yeah, I've been doing all that! It's just... I don't know. I think I just miss my family. That's all...”

fetch: “aw :(”

Maxwell: “It’s fine I haven’t been feeling the best either lately....though I know what it is I just don’t know how to fix it ha”

Prince: “I'm sorry to hear that, Max. I hope things get better for you soon :)”

fetch: “i hope things get better for you too! missing family is always hard”

Maxwell: “I hope so as well....we’re trying to figure out ways to get rid of what’s bothering me but I hope you feel better soon too”

Prince: “They'll be here soon, so I think I'm just starting to get anxious for them to be back already :)”

fetch: “I'm supposed to keep it a secret, but i can give you a hint! my favorite number is how many days away it is :)”

Prince: “I'm supposed to keep it a secret, but i can give you a hint! my favorite number is how many days away it is :)”

fetch: “...4?

no wait it was 5, we had the same favorite number right?

no wait”

LLyr: “3, according to the blog”

fetch: “...3. 3 days?

well call me jesus fucking christ”

Prince: “Yep! i can't wait to see them all again! :D”

fetch: “im. im glad! :]”

Prince: “I think I'll feel a lot better when they're back. I wanted Viscount to teach me how to play guitar but he left so suddenly I never got the chance to ask. I'm glad it's so soon. I don't think I can wait much longer :)”

[Jack: “That’s so cool! Maybe you can teach him to play violin in return, haha”]

Prince: “Maybe, if he wants to learn! :D”

Jack: “:D

Y’all could duet maybe”

Prince: “I’d like that! :D”

Maxwell: “I....hope things go well if they come back”

[donti: “What else are you planning on doing when they all come back?”]

Prince: “Well, Page likes to draw, so I was thinking we could draw together, and I always love to play with Knight! :D As for the fourth, I'm going to have to get to know them a little better first :)”

donti: “Oh! Is the fourth arriving on the 20th?”

Prince: “They all are, yes :)”

Prince: “I've been thinking... do they miss us as much as I miss them? They... they had to have left for a reason, after all.”

Maxwell: “......I....”

Maxwell: “I think they do you miss you.....”

[fetch: “maybe they're just the type to run off on adventures? I did all the time as a kid”]

Prince: “Maybe... I hope that's the case. I probably shouldn't be thinking like this. I just can't help it for some reason... what if I did something wrong to make them want to leave, to make them hate me? You know? Crown said that these thoughts will go away soon. I really hope so. I hate having them.”

Maxwell: “No no it isnt your fault....trust me i know it isnt”

[fetch: “I'm sure they don't hate you buddy :[ you aren't the only one they left behind. They left countess and baron and crown too”]

Prince: “Baron's been spending all his time in the comfort room and I'm pretty sure Countess lives in the library at this point. And Crown can't be here as often. I'm always alone...”

[fetch: “Maybe try striking up conversation with countess? Maybe she can teach you some ciphers!”]

Prince: “Maybe... are you guys sure I didn't do something wrong? I know I mess up a lot without meaning to...”

Maxwell: “its not your fault trust me”

fetch: “Yeah, you're a-okay :D”

Prince: “...I keep seeing arguing pop up on my screen from another channel. Is everything alright?” [The channel referenced is #arg]

fetch: “oh yeah everything's cool :] don't worry bout it”

Maxwell: “yeah yeah uh dont worry”

Prince: “If you're sure... I am the messenger after all :) If something is wrong, I have to let Crown know”

Maxwell: “Nope nothing is wrong its fine”

[fetch: “honestly, I think everything is going according to plan for crown! so he'd be pleased to know that :]”]

Prince: “I'll let him know that, then :D”

Prince: “While I'm here, is there anything else I should let Crown know when he arrives?”

fetch: “let him know... he's getting what he wants.”

Maxwell: “fetch what...”

Prince: “It really doesn't seem like the argument is nothing... do you promise everything is okay? Or is this just another situation where everyone is lying to protect me?”

fetch: “its alright. we're done fighting.”

fetch: “it's okay its fine everything's okay and im gonna take a nap”

donti: “Sorry about that Prince. Tensions are a little high right now”

Maxwell: “yeah....”

Prince: “I just want everyone to be okay... that's all. If there's something wrong, you can tell me :)”

Prince: “Should i read through it?”

Maxwell: “No!”

Spark: “No!”

Maxwell: “Its fine its fine no need”

Kate: “I think reading through it would upset you and we don't want that, but it's not like its hidden from you so I guess if you did want to read it, it's there”

donti: “best if you didnt,”

Jack: “A lot of it is really angry, but if you want we won’t hide it from you.”

Prince: “...

I see.”

donti: “did you read it?”

Prince: “I'll... I'll be sure to let Crown know everything is going according to plan...”

Maxwell: “prince please tell me you didnt

prince....please”

donti: “...”

[Kate: “You read it, didn't you, Prince?”]

Prince: “...yes.”

Maxwell: “how much did you read?”

Maxwell: “like....all of today or anything with yesterday..”

Prince: “I.. I guess I hope you like your new circlets... Page... ? Knight...? That...that is who you two are, isn't it?”

Maxwell: “i....”

Maxwell: “im....max”

Prince: “...

Right. Sorry.”

Maxwell: “and fetch....is fetch...”

Maxwell: “its not your fault”

Prince: “You were Page and Knight before, though, weren't you? Before you left?”

Prince: “.. why did you leave?”

Maxwell: “ okay yes we were

but we didnt leave because of you

or baron or countess”

Maxwell: “ i...

we...well...”

Maxwell: “we werent ourselves

although we were page and knight thats...not who are or rather not who are anymore”

Prince: “...

...Do you still like us as Max and Fetch..?”

Maxwell: “yes yes of course!

we still all care for you”

[donti: “how could they not”]

Prince: “Why else would they leave us?”

Maxwell: “we....werent very happy

neither me, fetch or marcus were really ourselves”

Prince: “... I don't understand. I thought everyone was happy. You guys all seemed so happy. That doesn't make any sense.”

Maxwell: “its why you see such a difference in how we act compared to who we were

it....wasnt us”

Prince: “Things are better here, though. I’m happier here with Crown than I ever was without him... Son’t you guya want to be happy?”

Maxwell: “i wasnt truly happy neither were the others

That doesn’t mean we don’t care about you though, Asher, we still do”

Prince: “...Asher... That’s my... my name...

...”

Maxwell: “yes it is”

Prince: “Asher...? Asher... Asher..” [At this point, some letters are not in Ender]

Maxwell: “asher?

you okay?”

Prince: “Wait. No, stop. I don’t want to remember, please”

Maxwell: “i...”

Prince: “Please”

Prince: “I don’t want to remember”

donti: “Hey buddy pal prince, asher, whoever you are.

friend. youre fine.

breathe.”

Prince: “I’m not Asher I’m not Asher I’m Prince just Prince”

Jack: “If you want us to call you prince, that’s fine.”

Prince: “I’m not Asher I’m not Asher”

Jack: “Prince. Breathe.”

Prince: “What did you do make it stop”

Jack: “Prince. Just breathe. Calm down.”

donti: “breathe. breathe. calm.”

Prince: “...”

fetch: “this is why I wanted to drop it.”

donti: “we’re sorry, please,”

Jack: “You’re remembering what’s been taken away. It’s not happy, but you can breathe through it.”

Maxwell: “fuck fuck fuck”

#on:discord #by:prince #by:maxwell #by:fetch #if the crown fits

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groundnul · 4 years

Text

The Call: Modern! Kyojuro X Depressed Reader

Request: Hi there, fam! 💖 May i ask you a scenario of Kyōjurō helping a depressed y/n? Thank you ~

Title: The Call

Pairing: Kyojuro X Reader

Words: 3580

Warnings: depression, brief mentions of suicide (the mentions of suicide are put between a set of bolded asterisks, so if you are sensitive to this type of material, you can skip that portion without missing much of the story)

Notes: this is set in the modern AU! history teacher kyojuro rocks my socks off

Summary: Reader gives fellow teacher and longtime crush Kyojuro Rengoku a late-night call. What will come of it?

Impatient eyes stared at the clock across the room, waiting for the final bell. This day, like so many others in the past month, seemed to pass agonizingly slow. Lately, this is how time has felt for you. If you tried, you couldn’t remember what you were doing this time last week. Part of you is convinced it never even happened, like you’re just floating through a nonlinear collection of experiences independent of one another. What is a memory, anyway?

Nevermind, that’s too deep.

Eventually, the final school bell rang, signaling the end of the day. You reminded your homeroom students of their upcoming homework assignments and told them to travel safe and stay warm. After the last few students trickled out of your classroom, done with their cleaning duties, you closed the door and lay your head down on your desk in defeat.

This rut you’ve been in isn’t exactly new to you, but that doesn’t make it suck any less. You’ve learned to live with your depression and manage the symptoms, but knowing how to take care of yourself and actually doing it are two very different things.

You don’t know the last time you got a full night’s sleep, or had any time to yourself. You’ve eaten nothing but fast food for the past week because you can’t bring yourself to make a trip to the store, much less cook yourself an actual meal. Clothes are piling up around your apartment along with dirty dishes and miscellaneous school work. You know this isn’t how your life should be, but it is, and you’re too exhausted to fix it.

It’s not like there’s anyone at home to clean up for, anyway. Clutter is your cat’s paradise, and you do well enough in your own filth that it doesn’t really matter to you right now. When you’re feeling up to it, you’ll take the time to get things in order. That time is just not right now.

You startle at a loud knock on your door. Perking up in your seat, you smooth out your probably frizzy hair and preemptively plaster on a smile for the guest. Turning to the door, your smile becomes genuine. Tired, but genuine.

The bright eyes of Kyojuro Rengoku peered through the small window of your door, his signature smile beaming. Ignoring the beating in your chest, you chuckle, gesturing for him to come in. He swiftly opens the door, striding over to your desk with a stack of papers in his hands.

“Hello, (L/N)-san!” he announces, holding out the papers to you. “Kocho-san asked me to drop these off.”

“Thank you,” you say, accepting the papers from him.

“My pleasure!” he assures, crossing his arms over his chest. “How was your day?”

“Oh, it was good,” you say automatically, flipping through the papers. Resisting a sigh at the sheer amount of papers, you set them onto the desk, giving him your attention. “Thanks for asking. What about you?”

“My day was great!” he exclaims, pumping a fist halfway up in enthusiasm. “My students are excited to learn more about the Muromachi period!”

You let out a tired laugh at his show of passion, crossing one leg over the other.

“I don’t blame them,” you say earnestly, smiling at him. “You’re very good at what you do, Rengoku-san.”

He beams at the praise.

“Allow me to say the same about you!” he insists, his grin growing. “My students always look forward to your class.”

Your face flushes at his praise, eyes looking anywhere but him.

“Thank you,” you say quietly, adjusting in your seat. Is it hot in here? “That’s very kind of you to say.”

He nods, his expression dipping into something softer. As you cover a yawn, he crosses his arms back over his chest.

“It’s true,” he says, eyes looking over you carefully. “Have you been getting enough sleep? You seem tired.”

Your eyes widen at his unexpected question, stilling in your seat. What are you supposed to say to that?

“Oh, well, I- um…” you stutter out, cursing his directness. “It’s just been one of those weeks, y’know.”

You laugh half-heartedly, intertwining your fingers in front of you. It’s not really a lie, but it’s not the whole truth, either. “But thank you for your concern.”

He nods understandingly, seemingly lost in thought for a moment. His eyes meet yours again.

“Just let me know if there’s anything I can do to help!” he offers, hands shifting down to rest on his waist. But unprovoked, his eyes light up, as if he has a brilliant idea. “Actually, let me-”

He digs into his pocket, pulling out a small pad of sticky notes. He feels for the pen in his front pocket, stepping forward towards your desk. He sets the notepad down on the edge, leaning over to scribble down several numbers. At this proximity, you can smell the subtle hint of his cologne.

God, he smells so good. What you wouldn’t give to-

At the recognition of your thoughts, you feel your face grow hot again. No. Absolutely not. You can’t think like that about a fellow teacher who is right fucking-

“Here,” he says, pulling the note off the pad and handing it to you. “My phone number, in case you need anything.”

You can tell he doesn’t have any ulterior motives, no secret reason for doing this, but it makes your whole body feel flushed nonetheless. Hesitantly, you reach forward, gingerly taking the slip of paper from his hands.

“Thank you,” you say softly with a gentle smile. He smiles back, murmuring a soft “mhm” as he straightens back up to his full height. A silence falls over the room, and as your eyes meet again, you can’t help but notice how intimate this interaction suddenly feels.

Averting your eyes, you clear your throat, opting to grab the stack of papers in front of you.

“W-well, I better get-” you start awkwardly.

“Of course, of course, I’ll leave you to it,” he says, turning to walk back to the door. On his way out, he pauses to look back at you.

“Have a good evening, (L/N)-san,” he says happily, grabbing the door knob.

“Thank you,” you answer almost too quickly, internally scolding yourself. “You too, Rengoku-san.”

With one final smile he pulls the door to, exiting your room.

Once he’s definitely out of sight, you shyly cover your very red face, elbows propped onto the desk.

To make a long story short, you’ve been into a certain history teacher for a very long time. After teaching here for two years, you were promoted to teach in the same grade as Kyojuro. Despite only getting to actually get to know him this year, you’ve admired him from afar during faculty meetings and assemblies. He’s the life of the party, the heart of this school. His unbreakable spirit and passion for what he does makes him a wonderful teacher and role model. And somewhere, in the midst of your admiration, you fell for him. Hard.

He, of course, hadn’t noticed. If he noticed every girl that fell for his charm and good looks, he wouldn’t have enough hours in the day -- in your opinion, at least. Maybe you’re a little biased. Even so, you’re certain that if he did know of your feelings towards him, he wouldn’t reciprocate them. A guy like him would go for an outgoing, model-wife type of girl, someone who can confidently host a cocktail party.

You sighed, tracing over the numbers on the note with your fingers. That’s why what just happened was so shocking to you. That brief moment you shared may have been nothing out of the ordinary for him, but for you, it made you feel on fire, setting off alarms inside your soul telling you to take hold of this man and never let go.

Perhaps you were being a little dramatic. Regardless, that’s how you felt.

Your head was still reeling. You got his number! Were you really going to call him? You had to, right? You instantly felt anxious at the thought, unsure of what you’d even talk about. You’d have to come up with something beforehand, a list of questions or maybe a topic area of interest. You could talk about school, if nothing else. He did say call if you ever need help, after all.

Calming your nerves, you folded up the slip of paper, sliding it securely into your bag. Once you were home, you could think more about this latest turn of events, but for now you needed to get some work done.

. . .

The remainder of your day passed easily enough. You finished up most of the grading you needed to get done as well as some paperwork that had been piling up. The walk home was uneventful, but you did grab some takeout. You ate while you watched the news, pushing your stubborn cat away from your food. For most of the night, you were fine. You didn’t clean up any of the mess in your apartment, but you weren’t stuck in your head for once, so you took the opportunity to indulge a little and watch your favorite show.

But eventually, it seemed the high from your interaction with Kyojuro finally dissipated, leaving you feeling just as hollow as before. Doubts swirled your mind, assuring you had no chance at winning his affections, that you were unworthy of him. You found it hard to disagree as you lay in bed, tossing and turning. It was only around 10 p.m., which was rather early for you, but you figured it would be better to try and get more rest. You body was having none of it.

You frustratedly sat up out of bed, shoving your feet into your slippers as you made your way into the kitchen. Rummaging through the fridge, you found nothing of interest, so you just made some tea to sip on solemnly at the kitchen table. Staring at the wall across from you, you were barraged with a series of intrusive thoughts.

*******************************************************************************************

Thoughts about bad things you’ve done in the past, the people you’ve hurt. Thoughts about the people who hurt you, used you and humiliated you. Thoughts about yourself, everything you don’t like, everything you wish were different. Your heart sunk as memory after painful memory flooded into your brain, tainting the calm atmosphere of the night with sadness and disappointment.

Soon enough, you were crying over your cup of tea, wondering just what in the hell is wrong with your brain. Why can’t you just be happy like everyone else? Why can’t you just take pride in who you are and what you do? Why isn’t that enough?

Will it ever be enough? Would you be better off dead? Would that be easier than enduring this-

No, you scold yourself, not everyone is happy. Everyone has their own issues. You can’t let this temporary lapse in judgement permanently alter your life. This pain is temporary, and it will pass just as it has before. You wouldn’t be better off dead. You would leave behind the people who love you, your family, your students. You couldn’t do that to them. And shit, what if there is a chance with Kyojuro? Are you just going to throw that away?

*******************************************************************************************

You sigh, sniffling as you wipe the stray tears from your face. Across from you on the table is your bag, left haphazardly in your exhaustion. You see the corner of the sticky note Kyojuro gave you sticking out from the interior pocket. You stare at it for a long time.

Should you call him right now? You look at the time on your phone -- 10:33. It’s disrespectful to call someone so late. But it is a Friday, and...

You’d like to hear his voice right now. Listen to whatever he’s willing to say. Slowly, you reach across the table, digging into your bag for the note. Pulling it out, you study the numbers again. You muster a sad smile as you examine his handwriting. It’s cute.

Unlocking your phone, you dial in his number, holding your finger over the call button. Should you really be doing this?

On the upside, if you call and he doesn’t pick up, you can just hang up. He won’t know it’s you that called him. On the other hand, if he does pick up… oh, fuck it. What’s the worst thing that could happen?

In a moment of surprising boldness, you hit the call button as your phone rests on the table. Part of you is so unbelievably shocked you actually pressed the button, and the other part is running through every possible worst-case-scenario. It’s the familiar “hello?” coming through your speaker that breaks you from your shock, sending you scrambling to pick up your phone from the table. You manage to put the phone to your ear as he says a second “hello?”, this time more confused. Damnit, he must have heard your scrambling. Oh well.

“Hello?” you say into the speaker, trying to mask your anxiousness. You clear your throat quietly, trying to eliminate the scratchiness from your earlier crying.

“(L/N)-san?” he asks, sounding a little lost.

“Y-yeah!” you manage in a soft, yet cheery tone. “Sorry for calling so late. I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

You turn your head and sniffle, trying to mute the sounds of your previous sadness. You hear shuffling on the other end of the line, the sound of blankets moving.

“No, I was just winding down for the night,” he explains, but there’s a touch of either concern or alarm in his voice. You can’t really tell which without seeing his face. “Is everything alright? You sound like you’ve been crying.”

You chuckle humorlessly, pinching the bridge of your nose at your foolishness. Why did you think this would be a good idea, again?

“No, no, everything’s okay,” you say dismissively, waving a hand even though he can’t see you. “It’s, um…”

You choose your words carefully, cautious of telling him too much.

“It’s just been a rough night, is all,” you finish honestly, sniffling again.

“Oh,” he responds quietly. There’s a pause before he speaks again, like he’s deciding what to say. “... Do you want to talk about it? I’m happy to listen.”

You sigh, clearing your throat again. These crying noises are probably annoying, you should stop doing that.

“That’s okay, I just…” you trail, unsure. “Actually, I don’t really know why I called you… so this is probably kind of weird…”

Regret wells up within you. You shouldn’t have called.

“You know what, I’m sorry, I probably shouldn’t have called, I should just-” you begin, frustrated with yourself for thinking this was a good idea.

“Don’t worry,” he interrupts your rambling, cutting off your negative thoughts with the warmth of his words. “We all have nights like that.”

A beat of silence passes. You feel yourself relax a little.

“I’m glad you called, actually,” he admits, and you hear more shuffling on the other side of the line. It sounds like he’s in bed, judging from the slight creaking of the bed.

“Really?” you ask in playful disbelief, fully aware of how fast your heart was starting to beat as you sipped your tea.

“Mhm,” he says, and you can hear his smile as he speaks. “I forgot to ask for your number earlier.”

You just about spat out the liquid in your mouth, but instead, swallowed roughly, coughing for a moment before letting out a haggard laugh.

“What was that?” he asks curiously.

“You just about killed me is all,” you chuckle, wiping up tea drips that did manage to escape your mouth. You cough again into your sleeve, laughing. You hear his pleasant laugh from the other side of the line, and will the blush on your cheeks to die down.

“I’m glad I didn’t,” he says, and you can’t quite tell if he’s being genuine or playful. Maybe both.

“Me too,” you reply with a breathy giggle, standing up from your chair to walk around your house. You were beginning to feel antsy. You wracked your brain for something to talk about, your mind eventually thinking back to earlier in the day.

“Actually, I did have something I wanted to ask you,” you admit, dodging your cat as it ran through your legs.

“What’s that?” he asks, sounding intrigued.

“Earlier today, you mentioned something about the Muromachi period,” you say, hoping you didn’t sound like too much of a bore. You shouldn’t, right? This is his thing. “... Could you tell me a little bit about it? Or- or anything, really… I just… I just like hearing your voice.”

The latter part of your sentence was so quiet that if he wasn’t listening as hard as he was, Kyojuro would have missed it. Luckily, listening was a specialty of his, and he took your compliment to heart.

“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” he replies cheerily. “But if you’d like an in-depth explanation, we might need to arrange a coffee date.”

You were quiet for so long Kyojuro worried he said something wrong, but really, your mind was just racing, your feet glued to the floor. He proposed it so casually, like it was no big deal. Did he usually do this? Either way, you were absolutely floored.

“(Y/N)?” you heard him ask through the speaker, forcing you from your thoughts. You’re too flustered to realize he used your first name.

“Y-yeah!” you say a little too loudly, wincing at your volume. “That sounds great.”

“Great,” he comments confidently. “How about tomorrow around noon? We could meet at that little cafe near the school.”

You can’t help the stupid grin on your features.

“That sounds perfect,” you say, contemplating your next words. “But… I do have a question.”

“Hm?” he hums attentively.

“... Do you take out all of your fellow teachers on coffee dates?” your voice is quiet, hesitant. In truth, you’re afraid he’ll say yes, that all of this is just normal to him. You’re praying this date is what you think it is.

“You’d be the first,” he confesses openly, sensing what you’re getting at.

You bite your lip to contain your excitement, sealing away the tsunami of screeches building within you.

“Good to know,” you say bashfully, letting out the breath you were holding.

“Now, about the Muromachi period…” he begins, sounding awfully scholarly all of a sudden. You laugh at his abrupt change of topic, but listen quietly as he runs you through the story of Ashikaga Takauji’s fight against the Kenmu Restoration. Part of you thinks you should be taking notes, but the other part of you just enjoys hearing him speak. Nestling into bed, you snuggle up under the covers to the sound of his voice, occasionally asking questions. Right now, it felt like he was a friend you’d known for years.

“Wait, so people would get punished for showing this Takauji guy in a good light?” you ask for clarification, wondering if you really heard him right.

“Mhm,” Kyojuro affirmed, surprised you were actually listening-- or, rather, still awake. “It was only in the last fifty years that we were able to appropriately evaluate Takauji’s influence in context. Before then, it was considered a form of slander against the state.”

“Wow,” you mused, staring up to the ceiling. “That’s wild. It’s so crazy how people in power can basically rewrite history.”

You move your phone away from you, checking the time for the first time since you laid down.

“Wha-It’s almost one in the morning!” you tiredly exclaim, embarrassed you kept him up this long. “I’m so sorry, Rengoku-san. I wasn’t keeping track of time. I didn’t mean to keep you up so late!”

He chuckles at your apologies, shifting in his own bed.

“It’s fine,” he reassures you, a touch of humor still in his voice. “I enjoyed talking with you. You’re a very good listener.”

His honest words struck a chord within you, bringing back your bashfulness from earlier.

“Well, you’re very interesting to listen to,” you say truthfully, expression soft as you consider what to say next. “But I guess we can continue this conversation tomorrow.”

“Right,” he says.

The silence between the two of you is comfortable, neither wanting to hang up. You’re the first to break the quiet.

“Thank you, Rengoku-san, for everything,” you say gratefully, hoping he gets what you mean.

“It was my pleasure,” he says warmly. “And (Y/N)--”

You breath gets caught in your throat at the sound of your first name coming from his lips.

“Mhm?” you inquire wordlessly, not trusting your voice at the moment.

“You can call me Kyojuro,” he finishes, voice soft.

Cue that giant, stupid, silly grin of yours again.

“Okay,” you reply, hoping he can’t hear the pure joy in your tone. “Goodnight, Kyojuro. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He chuckles, and your heart flutters in adoration and embarrassment. He could totally tell how happy that made you.

“Goodnight, (Y/N). See you tomorrow.”

As the call ends, you can’t help but yell out in excitement, startling your cat. With a soft apology and a laugh, your turn to put your face into your pillow, yelling and kicking your feet like a school girl.

A date with Kyojuro Rengoku.

Perhaps calling him was a good idea after all.

#rengoku kyoujurou #rengoku kyojurou #kyojuro x reader #kyoujurou rengoku x reader #rengoku kyojurou x reader #rengoku x reader #kny rengoku #kny #Kimetsu no Yaiba #demon slayer #depression #suicide #brief mention of suicide #cursing

333 notes · View notes

desdemonafictional · 3 years

Text

2020 Fanfic Year End Summary

Hey ho let’s go

Nev does these every year and I think they’re interesting, so for the first time I’m gonna give it a go too. I feel like this has been the longest fucking year--the Zine feels like it was two years ago and last January feels like it was ten years ago.

I’m gonna answer some questions and do a little reflection on the year

This year I technically finished Icarus with 2k words of a 36k story, and after that I went on to produce 197k words not even COUNTING the stuff from GPAU which I do not know how to divide up for 2020.

That’s 23 fics in one year, 8 of which were cowriting projects. This year has been, objectively, insane. By comparison, in 2019 I produced 17 fics and at the time I thought THAT was doing pretty impressive work. Now it’s not my best year by sheer number of titles--2018 was an oil boom while I was into JTHM and I actually put out 25 fics that year, some of which were short oneshots and some of which were two- or three-shots. But in terms of words? 2020 knocked them all out of the park. Which is absolutely something I owe to my amazing friends who let me ride around in their brains like the parasite I am.

In 2018 I started cowriting with Chokopopo, in 2019 I started cowriting with Neveralarch, and in 2020 I just did a fucking ton more of that with no looking back. It’s so incredibly motivating to have someone to show your progress to! And to have someone to hand the project over to when you’re stuck. If I hadn’t had Nev to bounce off of, most of this fic wouldn’t have been thought up at all, let alone finished. And don’t even get me started on GPAU! Choko and Zephyr and me have done such amazing things with “Welcome! Everything is fine”, and I can’t wait to be able to wrap that up and leave it for posterity.

I switched job positions around July of this year, and it’s changed the way I produce fic. Not sure if it’s good yet or not. I was never actually under a stay at home order this year because I work for a state agency, so to a degree I’ve missed out on the ways that quarantine affected other writers. I think I was fortunate?

Best Title

Ahhh this is tough, I put a lot of effort into my titles this year--I promised myself in 2019 I was going to stop using song lyrics for fic titles because they make songs loop in my brain and it’s self inflicted torment, which is a promise I... mostly kept. “Dress Your Idol in Gold and Ashes” is the one I put most effort into probably, because I kept toying around with it trying to find something that was evocative of the right pagan imagery, and also the idea that got me started on the fic was a passage in a text book about the daily dressing of an idol statue in ancient Egypt.

“Broke My Last Glass Jaw” gets special mention because I named it after an essay that I wrote in undergrad for my African American Lit course, in which I broke down themes of the spoiled american dream via the lens of 90′s rap.

Worst Title

“Take one for the Team” is definitely my laziest title. It’s just super self indulgent kink fic, no character arc or anything, so I couldn’t find a good image or phrase to bring in for the title. Also I remember I really wanted to post it quickly, since it was a response to some art I was looking at, and I wanted the artist to see. I’m sure I could have done better with the title.

I did end up titling “Fear and Delight” after a song but I forgive myself because I literally only wrote the fic because the song existed first.

Best Summary

Some of these summaries I wrote and a some I did not, but of the ones that I wrote I think.... “ I'm All Full Up on Yesterdays, Don't Sing Me No More Blues” is the best one. It launches you directly into the action, while preserving the surprise reveal at the end of chapter 1. I actually wrote chapter one with this summary in mind, so it was baked in there from the start.

Jazz turned in his seat, cube at his lips, just in time to spot the white pursuit vehicle steaming and panting in the doorway. “Jazz of Staniz,” the enforcer shouted, “surrender the matrix and come quietly!”

Jazz knocked back his drink. “Well!” he said to the open-mouthed bartender, “time to split!”

Worst Summary

I mean, summaries are hard for everyone, right? That’s the thing we all universally struggle with, I think? I usually end up liking mine, and this year I was less afraid to just let a section of the story speak for itself. Anyway the worst one is “ Broke My Last Glass Jaw” by virtue of the fact that I had to come back months later and add another line because I wasn’t satisfied with how it was reaching audiences.

After the war, Impactor is at loose ends.

(They were friends once, weren't they? After all this time, Impactor wonders if Megatron hasn't managed to forget.)

I really wanted that one line to say it all, but honestly it requires a lot of trust in me as the author and most of the people who pass by the fic in the archive aren’t gonna know me from adam. The second line clarifies what kind of story it’s going to be in terms of tone and theme.

Best First Line

I’m pretty ambivalent about most of my first lines. Since Nev already pointed out the first line in “ Apotheosis”, I have to admit, it is pretty good. It gets off to a real jaunty start.

“Excuse me,” Starscream said, striding down the steps of the senate chambers with his cape flaring out behind him, “get your cowcatcher out of his face, you tin-plated amateur despot, he’s with me.”

I also like the audacity of a run on sentence that is the opening to “ Desecrate You”

Ratchet clicks the video because it was auto-recommended, and because First Aid is always dropping hopeful hints that he wants her to watch his show when he’s supposed to be grading papers, and because something about the title (“This is Definitely a Hoax! None of this is Real! Short Cut Footage Episode”) makes her wonder why the hell someone who runs a Ghost Hunting youtube channel would bill their own hard work as a hoax right out of the bag.

Worst First Line

Definitely the least interesting is from “Tantric Sex, and Other Mysteries of the Divine”. I guess it’s another fic where I was really eager to get to the meat of the fic, and so I just went back after I was done with the fic and wrote a paragraph of bare bones setting context so we could move on already.

It’s game night at Swerve’s, and Nightbeat is out in the thick of the crew for once, getting the lay of the land.

I have the same problem in a few fics, which probably arises from the fact that when I read a fic, I often skim the first paragraph or so to see if I really want to commit to the read. So I sometimes write like I’m expecting the audience to do that too. I probably need to work on that. Man, I even did it in Sexy Staycation.

Best Last Line

I like endings! I usually have a good gut instinct for where stories should end, and how to pace that, and what image I want to close the fic on. Often times I’ll be writing a story and feeling really lukewarm about it, and then the ending will come to me, and I’ll feel totally won over by it. That happened with my Suicide Squad fic years ago. So this is for the most part me picking the best of the things I already like. “Broke My Last Glass Jaw” has a good pithy one; I like how it isolates this moment as a moment of choice, and how it’s also ambiguous whether he will change because of this or whether he’s doomed to go back to his predetermined pattern.

And despite the unguarded door and the empty inviting streets beyond, where no one wants or expects anything of him but his feterless bitter trog onward into the next waiting prison cell, Impactor lays down, and Impactor does.

Special mention goes to “ The Sky Dark in its Eclipse : Orange Light Remix”, because the ending section is one of the big changes I brought to the remix, and I’m really happy with how it alters the shape of the narrative and also how it changes the focus of Rung’s arc. Most of the actual words in this fic were written by Choko in 2018, so this is like a collab in slow motion--I changed loadstone moments mostly, some of the framing, all of the backstory, and updated the setting for Cybertron. But the ending is all me.

On the morning of Intro to Psych finals, while Hot Rod hums and taps and scrolls back and forth through his test on the front row of the testing hall, Rung will sit behind his desk and brush the dust from the rotors of his fateful archetype, and start the long process of putting the pieces together once and for all.

Worst Last Line

Again, I like my endings, so this is really the worst of the best. The original ending line I wrote for “ All Our Urgent Restless Sighing” was:

Deadlock’s finials twitched. “...I am a reasonable amount of interested,” he said, “in this topic.”

And in the beta process, Nev came back in and added the line about Ratchet and cuddling, which was a big hit with the readers it seems like. So clearly I benefitted from some help there haha!

Looking back, did you write more or less than you thought you would this year?

you know what, I definitely wrote more than I thought I would. I didn’t see “Don’t Sing Me No More Blues” coming at all, and that was once a month for most of the year. I was hoping that I would be able to write a few things outside of Transformers, because I always worry that my long spans of hyperfixation are driving away my longtime readers... and I did manage to get one hxh thing written that was good, and one hxh thing started that is mediocre so far. So I guess I’ll call that good enough.

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, just your favorite.

hmm I’m really proud of the Pharma chapter me and Choko put together for GPAU--the body horror, the tragedy, the lotus eater machine plot. But even though that felt like a whole ass story of its own, I guess it’s only a chapter at the end of the day. So my favorite story would be “Apotheosis”. It’s just SO much, and we had SO many things we wanted to do, and somehow we managed to do them ALL. Corpses! Children! God! It’s got everything! The only thing it doesn’t have is the idea that literally started us plotting out the fic. And that was “ritual public sex with Starscream and Rung”. Oh well. Maybe someday. Probably not.

Okay, Now your most popular story

Ha! I tend to view the success of a fic more based on its bookmark ratio than its hit count, but by the numbers, unsurprisingly, “ Don't Sing Me No More Blues” is my most popular fic of the year at a whopping 3k hits and 113 bookmarks. Well, it is jazz/prowl which means it has a built in audience of considerable size, and it also updated seven times this year which increases its net range, so no surprise. But I think people also just really vibed with it--it’s very much a product of the times we are living in, and I don’t think it could have been written in any year except for 2020.

“Dress Your Idol” has 58 bookmarks, by the way. I’m extremely proud of that fic for having such a high bookmark to view ratio. I guess the people who did read it liked it a lot.

Story most underappreciated in its Time.

Okay nothing is as under-exposed as the stuff I produced in JTHM, so I’m definitely not complaining. It’s hard to think about leaving TF because TF is such an enthusiastic community. That said, “ Neggnog Cozy” did not get eyeballs. I’m not surprised, it’s short and it’s gen, and Thundercracker doesn’t have the built in audience of say Starscream. Still, I thought it was really funny and cute and I would have liked it if more people would have given it a chance.

Story that could have been better

Oh, “ Melusine Among the Tombs” for sure. I went into that with only the first chapter planned and immediately after realized that I had no idea where the fic was going and also I had lost my grip on canon characterization after a couple years going rusty in other fandoms. I plan to finish it eventually, but I need a better plan than “wing it???” first.

Sexiest Story

I wrote SO much weird kink this year. Like. Shout out to past me for writing some pretty spicy JTHM fic, but this year I really leaned into how weird you can plausibly get with an all robot all alien cast.

“ The Sensual Machine” is the most unabashedly horny because it was written specifically for a weird kink themed zine that I was an editor on. “Desecrate You” is also quite horny but I almost exclusively wrote the frame device for that, so I don’t get sexy credit lmao. “Fear and Delight” was a big hit with all the hxh readers and I think it has an element of sexiness more so than pure horniness--its has a kind of glamour and style to it.

Most fun story

“Starscream's Sexy Staycation” is by far the most unabashedly comic and sexy and silly and low stakes. It has one of my favorite kinks, a beautiful stupid moment of Ratchet suffering, and Rung calling safeword which is something new and fresh and I want a lot more of it in the world.

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?

“ Lacunae” was given to me as a yule gift prompt with the express intention of explaining who the fuck Carmilla’s mother was, and what the deal is with Carmilla as well. This would have forced me to reevaluate my understanding of the novel except for the TEENSY insignificant fact that I realized I had never finished reading Carmilla, somehow, and ended up reading it for the first time in December in preparation for yule. So uh. Hmm.

I think “ Don't Sing Me No More Blues” made me think about Prowl in a different way. I wasn’t really expecting him to be this hard-edged idealist when I started out on the fic. He was originally going to be much more like the autistic coded Prowl of “The Cop and the Cryptid,” one of my favorite fics ever. Also, I started writing the fic about a month before the riots and police protest kicked off in America this year, and it really caused me to zero in on how Prowl being part of a system like that affects his relationship to the world and other characters.

Hardest Story to Write

“ Elegy for Actaeon of the Hounds” took me a total of six months to write from start to finish. I don’t know why. Well, It’s partly because there are three involved sex scenes and sex scenes are actually very difficult and time consuming for me to write. It’s also partly because I kept wanting it to have a character arc, and I kept getting stumped on how to handle that. Beauty and the Beast plot lift? Have Rodimus be a rabbit? Eventually I settled on the version that kept the cast tightly cinched down around Megatron and Rung, and I’m happy with the result.

Easiest Story to Write

When we were writing “Apotheosis” it felt like we were on FIRE, we were so productive and we started three other projects between us while it was in motion. But “Take One For the Team” was absolutely the most fun to write, it basically wrote itself

Most Overdue Story

“Champagne in the Final Days of Rome” was based off a conversation I had with Nev pretty early on in our friendship--Discord says it was June 2019, so that’s uhhh ten months between discussion to actual writing? And it still didn’t turn out to be the fic we were originally outlining, haha.

Oh god you know what was really the most overdue? The last chapter of “Icarus; or, Look Who's Digging His Own Grave”. It was literally a year, January to January, between chapter 12 and 13. For a while I thought maybe I was just going to have to leave it there, without resolving the time loop problem at all.

Did you take writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

Writing for the zine was a big risk. I remember Nev had to reassure me at least twice that what I was writing wasn’t too weird or off-topic or embarrassing to be part of the project. Now, of course, I’m very happy with it. But my god I was nervous to post something that was like.... straight up actually bimboification applied to one of the most popular toy characters of all time.

What I learned from this is that people love horny shit, are READY to take a chance on a weird fic when its in the right wrapping paper, and when in doubt you CAN sell people on a kink they’re not really into by making the kink actually a reflection of a character arc. Are you writing this down?

Do you have any goals for writing in the new year?

Finish GPAU!!!!!!

I’d like to FINALLY sit down and do some hard work on my original fiction. I’ve been kind of waiting for the tf hyperfixation to wane so I could move forward, and I think that process is in motion now. But who knows. If Rung shows up in the new comics I might get nerfed again.

Other than that I’d like to write at least one fanfic that isn’t TF, and I would like to get this really crunchy Rung/Pharma fic off the ground so I can make some people CRY

#2020 retrospective #fanfic

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duncanwrites · 3 years

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All the books I read in 2020, reviewed in two sentences or less

My 2020 in reading was, naturally, a little strange. I had lots of long pauses, did a bad job of keeping track of everything I read, used an e-reader for the first time, and read more for work than I usually do.

So these may not be in strict chronological order as they usually are, and there may be a few missing, but here’s the list, as per tradition:

Rising Tide - John M. Barry: This history of the Mississippi floods of 1927 and the resulting changes in how the US deals with natural disasters is one of those stories about how politics and personality can become a part of the concrete world, and essential for understanding the racial dynamics of disaster response. Well-told, and worth reading.

The Consultant's Calling - Geoffrey M. Bellman: A very useful recommendation from a trusted friend that now has a long-term spot in my office shelf. This book isn't only about consulting, it also offers great thoughts about finding your place and impact in organizations in general.

Range - John Epstein: I think Range is the nonfiction book that had the second- greatest impact on my thinking about myself this year (stay tuned for number 1!): I've always approached my professional and political work as a generalist, and for a long time I felt like that approach was leading me to a dead end. Reading this convinced me that I could be effective and even more useful with my fingers in a lot of different pies, and nudged me to keep searching for my most effective place in the movement.

The Accusation - Bandi: A harrowing work of realist fiction from North Korea that shows the toll authoritarian hero-worship takes on the soul.

The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead: I found that the quality of The Underground Railroad did not quite match its notoriety. It felt like two books awkwardly joined, where the more grounded approach to the emotional and interpersonal stakes of slavery and freedom was attached to a poorly-explored fantasy device.

Maus - Art Spiegelman: So much more than a book about the Holocaust, Maus is about parents and how pain is handed down between generations.

I Love Dick - Chris Kraus: After a long enough time, it becomes hard to evaluate books that are meant as a provocation as well as storytelling, but even 20 years on, it's not hard to see why I Love Dick brought us so much of the style and voice of feminist writing on the internet. A unique, itchy, sticky piece of work.

Bloodchild - Octavia Butler: Whenever I see an Octavia Butler book in a used book store, I buy it. This collection of short stories is a fantastic example for what transgressive, visionary speculative fiction should aspire to.

King Leopold's Ghost - Adam Hochschild: What I love about this book and the other I've read by Hochschild (Bury the Chains_ is that he very carefully merges deep explorations of systems of violence with the way that they can be undone by the people who participate in them. King Leopold's Ghost is as much about Belgium's murderous plunder of the Congo as it is about the successful global movement against it.

Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon: Priory of the Orange Tree is built on a strong foundation, melding Eastern and Western dragon stories into one universe, but couldn't seem to tie all of its threads together in a compelling way by the end.

Desiring the Kingdom - James K. A. Smith: Smith's point about meaning and desire being embedded in every day practices is a valuable one, but I think I may be just too far outside of his target audience of religious teachers and thinkers to get the most out of his explorations here.

City of Brass, Kingdom of Copper, Empire of Gold (The Daevabad Trilogy) - S. A. Chakraborty: This series is exceptional, and some of my favorite books of any kind that I read this year; I certainly think I recommended them more often than anything else I read in 2020. A high fantasy built on Islamic and Arab cultural iconography, the characters are insightfully developed, the world building grows with precise pacing, and the themes of intergenerational trauma, and sectarianism are handled with expert delicacy.

Leadership and the New Science - Meg Wheatley: While I appreciate the effort to apply metaphors developed from scientific paradigm shifts to provoke paradigm shifts of thinking in other areas of work, I think this book strains its chosen metaphors a bit too far to be useful.

The American Civil War: A Military History - John Keegan: I appreciate that there's a value to these kinds of military analyses of conflicts, but I found this book's neutral tone - and sometimes admiring takes - towards the Confederacy off-putting. Two things I did take from it: the outcome of the war was not certain at the beginning, and speed is truly a critical part of winning conflicts.

To Purge This Land with Blood - Stephen Oates: This was the first substantial reading I had ever done about John Brown, and Oates' book made it very clear why he is still one of the American historical figures most worth talking about today. The contradictions, complexities, and unimpeachable truths caught up in his raids are almost too many to name, but I think he is one of the people most worth thinking about when considering what actually changes the world.

Normal People - Sally Rooney: Anyone who denies that this book is anything less than a truly great novel is not telling the truth, or does not actually care about the feelings people feel. It is a work of keen emotional observation, and perfect, tender language, as well as a pleasingly dirty book -- and there is nothing I would change about it.

Conversations With Friends - Sally Rooney: Still a banger, I think Conversations with Friends struggles somewhat to get to its point, and has less of the pleasing depth and ambiguity of Normal People. Still worth your time and attention, I think.

The Glass Hotel - Emily St. John Mandel: I loved Station Eleven, and I can't imagine having to follow it up, and I unfortunately think The Glass Hotel doesn't quite accomplish all it set out to do. It wandered, hung up on a few strong images, but never progressed towards a point that needed to be made, and I finished it feeling underwhelmed.

The Water Dancer - Ta-Nehisi Coates: Coates is an essential nonfiction writer who can turn a phrase to make devastating, memorable points - but I thought his novel failed to do very many of the things that make his nonfiction great.

A Visit From The Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan: Someone once recommended this book to me as a way to study voice in character development - it is certainly that, as well as a brutally efficient window into hope, fame, and aging.

Trick Mirror - Jia Tolentino: The best parts of Trick Mirror show why Jia Tolentino is one of the writers most worth reading today: she knows how to find the experiences and people that wormhole you into dimensions of American culture that you might not otherwise think carefully about. While I think some of the essays in the book are weaker than her usual work, overall it is still terrific, and her essay on Houston rap, evangelical culture, and drugs is one of the best anythings I read all year.

My Dark Vanessa - Kate Elizabeth Russell: I feel like I'm on very shaky ground making any definitive takes about a book like this that is so fundamentally about gendered violence and what it means to be a victim of that violence. But I will say that I think it's important to recognize how power and charisma can be used to make you want something that actually hollows out your soul.

Prozac Nation - Elizabeth Wurtzel: Without a doubt, this is the nonfiction book that had the greatest personal impact on my life in 2020, and I have much longer things I've written about it that I will probably never share. While I've not ever been to the extremes she describes here, Wurtzel describes so many things that I clearly remember feeling that the shock of recognition still hasn't worn off.

The New Jim Crow - Michelle Alexander: In truth, we should all be shaking with rage at the American justice system every single day. This is certainly not the only book to explain why, but it does a particularly good job of explaining both the deep roots, and rapid expansion of the system we need to dismantle.

The Martians - Kim Stanley Robinson: Getting another little taste of the world Robinson built in the Mars Trilogy only made me want to drop everything and read them again. Well-made, but not stand-alone short stories that are worth reading if you've finished the novels and aren't ready to leave the formally-Red yet.

The Wind’s Twelve Quarters - Ursula K. Le Guin: One of the things that makes Le Guin so special is the sparseness of her prose and world building, and her genius is very much evident in her short stories.

Matter - Iain M. Banks: This is the second Culture series book I've read by Banks, and once again I thought it was inventive, satisfyingly plotted, but not so heady to be imposing. A very solid read.

Ogilvy On Advertising - David Ogilvy and Ogilvy On Advertising in the Digital Age - Miles Young: The original Ogilvy on Advertising is frustratingly smug but at least delivers plain and persuasive versions of advertising first principles. Ogilvy on Advertising in the Digital Age is also frustratingly smug, but is mainly useful as an example of the hubris and narcissism of contemporary advertising executives.

Goodbye to the Low Profile - Herb Schmertz: Schmertz was the longtime public affairs director for Mobil Oil, and in this book he talks about how they worked to manage public debate about the oil industry, without realizing that he's writing a confession. Reading this it is abundantly clear how the oil industry's commitment to making deception respectable led to the collapse of the American public sphere.

The Lean Startup - Eric Ries: I was surprised by how much I liked this book, and wish more people who wanted to start political projects would read it. The Lean method is a way of building organizations that are ruthlessly focused on serving their base of supporters, and evaluate their work against real results - and I think we all could use more of those.

Zero To One - Peter Thiel: Another book that reads like a confession when perhaps not intended to, Zero To One's main point is that the point of building businesses should be to build monopolies, and that competition is actually bad. A great starting point for understanding what's gone wrong in America's tech economy.

The Mother of All Questions - Rebecca Solnit: Of the many things to cherish about Solnit as a writer, the one I needed most when I re-read this book is her ability to gently but doggedly show other ways of imagining the world, and ourselves in it.

Native Speaker - Chang-Rae Lee: I think this is the third time I've read this novel, and the time I've enjoyed it the least: somehow on re-re-reading, the core metaphors became overbearing and over-used, and the plot and characters thinner.

Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller: There are several excellent entries in the sub-genre of classic tales re-told from the perspective of silent women characters, but this is the first I've read re-told from a man's perspective - in this case, the likely-lover of Achilles in the Iliad, Patroclus. While not necessarily a groundbreaking work of literature, it is a very well-executed one that tells a compelling story about how violence can destroy men who carry it out.

Uprooted - Naomi Novik: What makes Uprooted so engrossing is that its magical world feels grounded, and political: magic has consequences for the individuals who use it, and further consequences based on their place in the world. What makes it frustrating is the overwhelming number of things the author has happening in the story, and the difficulty they have bringing them to a conclusion.

#books #reading #booklist

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tottwritesfanfic · 4 years

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Fanfic Authors Tag Game

Thankee for tagging @moramewhq

AO3 name(s): Tottwriter, [REDACTED] Fandoms: Haikyuu!!, Digimon (a little lapsed, but I still tinker with my WIPs!), sliiiightly BNHA, and I have a TUA wip which I will someday resume. I try not to venture into new fandoms but, you know...I fail. Number of fics: I have 56 posted works, but also, uh... a few which I haven’t gotten to posting yet.

1. Fic I spent the most time on:

Um. Oh jeez. I mean, I guess nothing has overtaken Hope’s Fire just yet, because that’s the monster. Hopefully nothing else will? XD

2. Fic I spent the least time on:

Well this is genuinely a toss-up, because I have a few which I wrote for 20 minute prompt game fills, and then hardly even bothered to edit before they were thrown up on Ao3 without a backward glance.

Annoyingly, some of them are among my most popular works.

3. Longest fic:

Hope’s Fire! As I said, it’s the monster, currently clocking in at ~144k. My longest completed fic is The Ocean’s Curse though, which is 62.4k!

4. Shortest fic:

Okay so my shortest fic is actually a bit of weird experimental stuff I wrote for Starbound, which you will note I did not list in the fandoms above, lol. It’s old and weird and 351 words long... I don’t think anyone wants to read it. You don’t want to read it.

5. Most hits:

Hope’s Fire! It’s not really surprising tbh, given how long ago I started it and how many chapters it has.

6. Most kudos:

Hope’s Fire wins this one too! I bet you’re all really shocked to learn this.

7. Most comment threads:

...imma give you lot one guess.

8. Favorite fic I wrote:

fuck. Er. I dunno? I mean I write because I like writing them, you know? But honestly if I have to narrow it down... Parallel for the ‘serious’ fics, and either Press Play or (Not) Moving On for my more lighthearted stuff. It’s hard to pick when I swing between such tone extremes!

9. Fic you want to re-write:

I mean this is probably gonna sound really dumb but...kinda also Hope’s Fire??

Hear me out tho, because it’s complicated (and also I sorta already am). This fic started in 2015. I love it wholeheartedly, and I keep coming back to tinker and I wish life would stop throwing so much shit in my way and let me devote a bit more time to fic-writing so I continue it properly.

But the periodic and spaced-out returns have meant that every time I knuckle down I end up re-reading the whole fic for continuity and tone reasons. You can probably see where this is going. Each time I read my old opening I cringe. It’s just not up to the standards of my writing today and it bugs me.

If I’m being brutally honest, part of the reason I haven’t updated it in so long is that I keep getting distracted going back and tweaking/fixing old chapters rather than focusing on new ones. It’s a bad habit but one I just can’t seem to kick.

10. Share bit of a WIP or a story idea you’re planning on:

You know, I’m actually gonna give two. I’ll drop them below a cut because this got long, but I know I have both Digimon and HQ peeps here and it’s sucky to be in the fandom that doesn’t get the love. I can’t promise when I’ll manage to get either of these posted (I’m trying to avoid adding more works to my Ao3 until they’re actually, you know, finished) but...they exist!

First up, we have Fun and Games at the Adventure Cafe

Yes, this is exactly what you think it is:

The notice on the door said “HELP WANTED” in large, sensible font.

The addendum “Enquire Within” sat below it, equally formal.

Scribbled underneath in scruffy handwriting was just one more addition:

‘as in we’re hiring. dw we know what we’re doing.’

The notice on the door the following morning was back to plain old:

HELP WANTED Enquire Within

…It lasted half a day or so, at least.

As Sora remarked later, it was a wonder they got any applicants at all. Then again, as Taichi remarked, it wasn’t as though a lot of places were taking on extra staff—which was something of an oddity as the summer approached.

“It’s that swanky place round the corner,” he said with disgust, peering out of the window. “Bastards are driving everyone out of business.”

“But not you guys, right!” piped up their current interviewee. “You’re doing great! Honestly, as soon as I saw the sign I knew I had to apply. I’ve always wanted to start my own ramen business, and I figure I ought to start out with a popular place like this and get some real experience in the industry, you know?”

“Er, yes. Right,” Sora remarked, looking over his application. “Well, Daisuke, I will have to warn you that as a new hire you’d be working front-of-house rather in the kitchen, but if you’re okay with that—”

“Eh, just tell him he’s hired already,” Taichi replied, turning back to face them with a grin. “Yamato could definitely use a hand in the kitchen sometimes, so taking on a future all-rounder makes total sense.”

From the look Sora shot him, it perhaps didn’t, but Daisuke was already practically leaping to his feet with a grin, exclaiming that they could totally rely on him, and he absolutely would not let them down and could start the next day if they needed him to.

Next up, for my HQ peeps, here’s a little snippet from Connection Problems, my longtime langushing halfway chatfic. I’m not sharing the chatfic stuff because formatting tumblr is hell, though.

Kenma always suspected that being a third year would turn out to be a pain, but he’d rather hoped his fears wouldn’t be realised within the first few weeks of the school year. Really, it’s bad enough that Kuro, Yaku and Kai have left, and that everyone else nominated him for the role of Captain (he’d talked them down to being Vice Captain instead, but that, apparently, was as low as they were prepared to go). He does not need Taketora constantly pestering him about—of all things—a chat group as well.

“Come on, I thought you and Kuroo were like, joined at the hip or something! Don’t try and act like you don’t miss him now he’s at university.”

He shrugs. “I have a phone. We’re keeping in touch.” Because, really. That’s all that matters, isn’t it? Why does everyone have to complicate things so much?

“Yeah, but, it’s not the same, right? Besides, what the hell! You spend all that time on your phone as it is. And even Fukunaga joined, right?”

Kenma glances over at Shouhei, who nods, grinning sheepishly. Drat.

“Still, I don’t have that chat app you all use,” he says. “It’s too much trouble setting it up, when I can message Kuro just fine.”

That should have been the end of it. Any rational person would have seen that it was no good, and left him in peace. Kuro would have, certainly. Not pushing—never pushing, actually. Just nudging him along a little, and even then, only when it comes to volleyball. He’s learnt all of Kenma’s limits over the years.

But the thing is, Kuro isn’t there any more. It’s just himself, Taketora and Shouhei, and okay, Shouhei never pushes—he hardly ever says anything, for that matter. But Taketora is clearly some sort of demon and he, Kenma, is being punished. Maybe he really pissed someone off in a previous life. Maybe this is a penance so he can piss someone off in his next life with a free pass. Either way, the badgering doesn’t let up.

Kenma holds out until the 27th of May. Seven weeks of hassling is more than enough for anyone.

Aaaand for tagging how about: @ahiddenpath, @humandisasterbuckybarnes, @mooifyourecows

#tag memes #fanfiction stuff #Hope's Fire #once again the author gets waaay too carried away #also if you wanna know my other ao3 you should probably DM me and also be over 18 #because *coughs*

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queenlua · 4 years

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Rules: Answer 21 questions and tag 21 people you’d like to get to know. hey fill it out too if you’re into this sort of thing! (tagged by @deetvar, tyty)

nickname: Lua

real name: not telling

zodiac: in Chinese zodiac, horse. in western zodiac, virgo. (i prefer the former)

favorite musicians/groups: DANNY BROWN, Emancipator, Bad Religion, Ellegarden, A Thee Silver Mt Zion, Nappy Roots, Busta Rhymes, Twista, Major Lazer, Flying Lotus, Aesop Rock, J Dilla, Less Than Jake, Streetlight Manifesto, Band of Horses, Kanye, Yoshiki / X Japan, Frank Ocean, Electric Six, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Yoko Kanno, David Wise, Utada Hikaru

favorite sport teams: college basketball is the one true sport. i love University of North Carolina & Kentucky, and also, literally any enemy of Duke is a friend of mine

other blogs: i got a dreamwidth

do i get asks: not really

how many blogs do i follow: 311, apparently, though i assume a lot of them are inactive

tumblr crushes: i don’t really know what this would mean

lucky numbers: i’m fond of 3 and 333 and prime numbers in general

what am i wearing: pajama paints, white furry jacket, purple tanktop

dream vacation: i still need to do a couple months of just chillin out in eastern Hokkaido and looking at birds and skiing

dream car: the real dream is not having to own a car. i miss boston public transit like burning

favorite food: …god, i like a lot of food. anything you can drown in cajun seasoning. okra masala. popcorn. steak. soup dumplings. ramen. taco bell. sushi. the kind of food you get at campy teppanyaki places. the kind of food you get at family Italian restaurants with like, absolutely preposterous proportions & there’s a parmesan shaker on the table so you can just drown everything in cheese. idk if i’m painting a coherent picture here at all lol

drink of choice: at the moment, apple cider and diet coke. i also really like rooibos tea and black tea when i can be assed to actually boil water

instruments: piano (pretty well) and oboe (passably, though i’m out of practice). i also played marimba in the pit of my high school marching band and that RULED, i could play with four mallets at a time, and it’s such a cool instrument, i miss it

languages: i took uh, two semesters of Spanish in high school from an awful teacher, and two semesters of Japanese from a good teacher. that’s… that’s about it. languages are tragically not my thing alas

celebrity crush: no idea what my current one would be, but when i was fifteen i thought Hayden Christensen’s SW3 hairdoo was mighty hot

random facts:

i sat around a while trying to figure out what may surprise or interest longtime readers, but gosh being interesting on the spot is hard. here’s what i got:

* i’m the lone nonatheltic nerd in a giant extended family of uberjocks. i have a cousin who played basketball in the NBA, another cousin who played professionally in Europe and coached for a while in the USA, basically all my siblings/cousins/etc set some kind of record in their sport when they were in high school, etc. this meant that, my mom spent a long time desperately trying to find me a sport, because Poor Lua Will Feel Left Out If She Doesn’t Find One :(, so every six months i was thrust into a new one. to be clear: i didn’t mind this! mom would say “do you want to try tennis” and i’d say “sure” because i’ll try anything *once*, and i generally found the sport diverting/amusing, but i was just never any good at them and none held my interest for more than a year.

sports i attempted during that period in my life: soccer, basketball, volleyball, ballet, tap dancing, tennis, cross-country, lacrosse, swimming, probably a couple others i’m forgetting

i am not good at sports

* in my fifth grade spelling bee i misspelled the word “macaroni” because i fucking HATED macaroni, we didn’t have any boxes of the shit in my house, how the hell was i supposed to know it only had one “c”. in my sixth grade spelling bee i misspelled the word “onyx” because I THOUGHT IT WAS SPELLED LIKE THE POKEMON NAMED “ONIX” FFS. i am very mature and totally over both of these and don’t stew over them late at night

(…the kid who got sent to the regional spelling bee instead of me fuckin misspelled “FOIL.” what a fucking tool. who let that brat out)

* i read only a little bit of fanfiction, off and on, as a kid, and didn’t start writing my own until halfway through college. i wrote the first draft of “crush” while pretty damn tipsy after i left an a capella group party at 2am, i wrote “delicately, madly” when i was in-hindsight deeply depressed during a fucking horrendous internship, and i wrote “lust like remembrance” in an annoyed fit after a complicated love triangle i was involved in imploded, in like, a weird passive-aggressive why-are-these-dudes-so-bad-at-feelings sort of way

#meme

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elizas-writing · 4 years

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Of the latest “controversial” opinions to rock social media, renowned director Martin Scorsese voiced his dislike of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). To Scorsese, MCU films are more like an amusement park than cinema which is meant to “convey emotional, psychological experiences.” As you do, this sparked some outrage among fans and even a few filmmakers from MCU. Scorsese himself even wrote an op-ed for The New York Times to further explain himself when the backlash got out of control and specified he meant the whole comic book film genre.

On one hand, I understand not wanting to give in to an elitist ideal of what “cinema” is, and comic book films deserve to be on equal footing as any other genre. Not every film needs to be a grand masterpiece, and art is subjective and can come from anywhere, even in the MCU. Black Panther is an expertly crafted film of Afrofuturism and deserved all its awards nominations. Guardians of the Galaxy, despite being an inherently goofy franchise, delivers a strong, emotional, complex narrative of found family and overcoming trauma from a lifetime of abuse. MCU also gave a ton of publicity for more unknown actors and directors. And audiences steadily flocked to the rest of their work, and they look forward to what else they have to give besides superhero films; it’s one of the reasons why Taika Waititi is now a favorite director in my book. And give credit where it’s due, Marvel is the only successful cinematic universe so far to stay in the long run where others spectacularly failed. It’s not perfect, but all things considered on what could’ve gone wrong, it’s surprising to see the hard work pay off.

At the same time, despite being a longtime fan of MCU, I’m starting to feel fatigued with the superhero genre. And this began way before Scorsese said anything. With the release of Disney+, fans are expected to subscribe and watch these new shows which apparently will tie into future movies scheduled out until 2022. It’s also not much of a secret that Disney is morphing into a corporate monster and consuming all media it can grabs its hands on. And with more time to further reflect on some of these movies without the excess hype, I admit I was probably far too kind on my initial reviews. There are a lot of MCU films I can discuss in these regards, but as I drafted this up, I had far more to say on Spider-Man. So that will be my primary focus for this piece.

At the end of the day, Scorsese’s opinions are mainly on his personal film tastes— also, c’mon, the guy agreed to voice act in fucking Shark Tale of all things; no one’s twisting your arm to take his word as gospel—, and not everyone is gonna automatically like the superhero genre. I respect that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and I agree it feels like the film market is oversaturated with them. And there is still a lot to be said on recent filmmaking trends and if MCU can keep a steady momentum in the long run. It is possible to have too much of a good thing. After a while, you’ll want to leave the amusement park, but when will that point be? Well, I’m here to break down my biggest frustrations with MCU through Scorsese’s lens and a reevaluation of Spider-Man, both the character and the movie franchise.

I. Too Many Damn Franchises

In his op-ed, Scorsese worried about “franchise films [which] are now your primary choice” in major theaters, leaving little room for everyone else. It isn’t much of a stretch that we don’t see a lot of original content which stands on its own between all the sequels and reboots which expect prior knowledge of its predecessors to understand what is going on. And of course, Disney is the largest perpetrator of this with all the properties they own and all the live action remakes/reimaginings of their original content which no one asked for (no, trust me, you didn’t ask for an origin story of Cruella de Vil; turn off the nostalgia goggles).

Yeah, there’s only like, one of these I want to see

Some of MCU’s individual franchises, particularly the earlier films, work well on their own without necessarily needing to watch every other film in the universe. Some are only connected with super minor details which can be picked up from context clues or dialogue referencing events of the previous films. Guardians of the Galaxy is the best example of this as their adventures are self-contained up until Avengers: Infinity War. But then you have Tom Holland’s Spider-Man which completely relies on fully understanding what’s happening in the universe as whole; what happens to him in Captain America: Civil War and the last two Avengers movies influences the plots of Spider-Man: Homecoming and Far from Home. It’s impossible for this iteration of Spider-Man to stand on its own without MCU context. And they can only spend so much time to recap the previous movies because they assume you already watched them; the recaps are just bare bones refreshers. Each new MCU film is further tied into the entire franchise, so now you have to watch a decade’s worth of movies to understand the individual franchises.

MCU is also one of many franchises dominating movie theaters, averaging at about 2-3 releases per year. It may not sound like a lot, but it’s overwhelming when they’re sandwiched between other franchises from D.C. Comics to Harry Potter to Star Wars and whatever 80s or 90s properties Hollywood finds worthy of a reboot/sequel. Movies are still pretty expensive, and we can’t be expected to see every movie as they release. So we end up having to pick and choose what to immediately see in theaters. And if you’re seeing a franchise film, chances are you’ll also have to backtrack on whatever predecessors are available to get the context of a new movie. When other movies, especially non-franchise films, don’t perform as well upon opening weekend, their showings are reduced, and you’ll be lucky if they’re still there a month later. And this is part of why directors like Scorsese turn to streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime to release their movies to not panic on box office numbers, “the primary delivery system” as he calls it.

While streaming services are convenient and far less expensive than movie tickets, viewers are still subject to content overload. With fluctuating availability of certain titles, you still have to pick and choose what you want to see first before it disappears for months or years. Do you want to watch this new Netflix original film that’s gonna be there forever, or do you want to watch re-runs of The Office before its contract expires? Sometimes if a service doesn’t see an immediate high viewership of certain original shows, they get cancelled and fade into obscurity. Now everyone and their mother wants to hop on the streaming bandwagon, and spread out their exclusive shows as thinly as possible, including Disney. The overall costs come close to cable or satellite television which goes against the whole point of streaming services.

Expanding the MCU to television isn’t a new concept. We still have Daredevil and Jessica Jones on Netflix, just to name a couple shows. Although they referenced the MCU films, their worlds were separated far enough that you could watch the shows without needing to see any movies. But then you also have something like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D which is more dependent on seeing the movies to understand the show’s plot. If you didn’t see the latest MCU movie that weekend before the next episode, you’ll probably miss out on the context and be barraged with spoilers. Although the events of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D weren’t referenced in the MCU films, the fans still have a lot of work to keep up with the show’s story.

Also, I know y’all are worried about brand integrity, but you already own Hulu…??

Not only were all the Netflix shows cancelled in favor of Disney+, but the shows on the new platform are said to affect future films, including all the new characters to be introduced. We still don’t know to what extent the shows and films will tie in together, but it already sounds demanding to keep up with. And let’s be real, who asked for WandaVision, a show with two of the most boring MCU characters? Or Hawkeye after Jeremy Renner decided to make a raging asshole of himself? Do I really need to watch these shows to understand the movies going forward?

Again, it’s still too early to determine how much the shows will coincide with the movies. And given the success of a show like The Mandalorian, I hope I’m wrong on the quality of future Disney+ projects. But I can’t help notice that MCU started favoring quantity over quality since they know they can make bank regardless of the project. It aaaaalllllll comes back to money which brings me to the next big issue of MCU.

II. Business Over Art

Business and art is always at odds with each other in filmmaking, especially if you’re going into Hollywood, and it’s never easy to compromise on the two. You need to find a balance between getting a finished movie out to theaters and not wasting the production’s time and money. According to Scorsese, this used to be “a productive tension that gave us some of the greatest films ever made.” However, in recent years, this balance tipped in business’s favor “with absolute indifference to the very question of art.” As a result, we don’t get the full “unifying vision of an individual artist.” We just have “worldwide audiovisual entertainment” and cinema. “They still overlap from time to time, but that’s becoming increasingly rare. And [he] fear[s] that the financial dominance of one is being used to marginalize and even belittle the existence of the other.”

Okay, this is still fun no matter how many times I see it

Sadly, we see this financial dominance with Disney grabbing on as many properties as possible and launching their own streaming service with exclusive shows and films. This became most heated with the Spider-Man character rights debacle with Sony. Back in August 2019, Sony disagreed on Disney’s proposed 50-50 split of MCU Spider-Man movie profits. If a deal wasn’t made, Disney would lose the rights to Spider-Man, and the MCU wouldn’t get a third film for the character. And it took a month for the companies to reach a deal to keep Spider-Man in the MCU with the third film scheduled for July 2021, but the details of the new deal weren’t publicly disclosed. Fans were divided as to which company was in the right, and it’s a little bit of Column A and B.

On one hand, it’s annoying when studio executives get in the way of the art and think they know what will guarantee box office and critical success. And it’s especially irritating in this case when character rights bounce around and determine who will make the next movies and what stories to tell. Spider-Man already has not one, but two previous franchises cancelled before their full potentials were realized. Yeah, Sony kinda shot themselves in the foot with the crap quality of Spider–Man 3 and The Amazing Spider–Man 2, but I can’t help wonder how these stories could’ve gone if they were allowed to continue.

Still the superior Spider-Man movie, by the by

On the other hand, Sony was right to refuse Disney’s initial offer. You think after the tremendous success they had with Into the Spiderverse that they would settle on only half of the profits? Disney has more than enough monopoly on Hollywood that they’re nowhere near in danger of bankruptcy like they used to be. We still need studios which will put their foot down to greedy demands and will better unleash creativity in ways which even Disney is still too chicken to pursue. I’m still so glad we waited on Sony to make Miles Morales the star of his own movie, because MCU has a bad track record of keeping up with diverse representation that only within the past 2 years of a 12-year-old franchise did we finally get movies not led by cisgender white men. And there was a lot more genuine love to do this story and these characters right to show anyone can be a hero.

Between the tug-of-war on character rights and franchise overload, these business decisions greatly affect the movies, and some of these stories may not live up to their full potential (not to mention the actors’ contracts which dictate how much screentime their characters get). As this is Disney we’re talking about, we also run into my final major issue with their control on MCU.

III. Cultural Authority on Stories

I knew saving my books from the UC: Santa Cruz Walt Disney class would come in handy some day!

In her essay “Fantasia: Cultural Constructions of Disney’s ‘Masterpiece'”, media historian Moya Luckett discusses the concerns of Disney holding “cultural authority” on the images of famous stories. As Disney is a formidable part of most everyone’s childhood, they are usually the go-to images when we think of Cinderella, Pinocchio, Peter Pan, and dozens more. Disney is clearly doing something right if these films are enjoyed decades later. I still go to Disney when I first think of Robin Hood, and it’s just as great as when I watched it as a kid. Unfortunately, with Disney dominating family and children’s media, they don’t allow much room for other interpretations to shine.

For example, with Luckett’s focus on the 1940 film, Fantasia, music critics worried “that the power of Disney’s images would anchor the music,” so some audiences may immediately associate “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” with Mickey Mouse or “Pastoral Symphony” with centaurettes instead making their own interpretations¹. And those critics were definitely right to worry, and the concerns expanded beyond classical music. To this day, folks still react with shock when they read the original books or darker iterations of fairytales which these movies are based on. In some extreme cases, Disney’s images contribute to racial stereotypes and distorted perceptions of histories and cultures, and the company still hasn’t figured out how to properly express that while they were products of their time, they weren’t okay then and they’re certainly not okay now.

But anyway, what the fuck does this all have to do with MCU? Sadly, Disney’s cultural authority leaked into MCU too.

With an indefinite future and the inevitable MCU reboots of characters and groups like the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, it is probably going to be literal years before we see new versions of characters like Tony Stark or Steve Rogers, at least as far as live-action movies are concerned. We’ll always have the numerous cartoons and, of course, the original comics, but the live-action films are stuck until Disney reboots these franchises themselves, or they pass the rights along to another studio to do so. For some viewers, MCU may be the first go-to images of these heroes, and not every fan will be dedicated enough to seek out other adaptations on their own. And that’s not a good thing if a comic arc or character gets a shitty adaptation. One such example, which also ties into Spider-Man, is the Civil War storyline which was adapted to film with Captain America: Civil War in 2016.

The original comic, published from July 2006 to January 2007, was a mega Marvel crossover event in which after a superheroes and villains battle ended in over 600 civilian deaths, the U.S government quickly passed the Superhuman Registration Act. Any superpowered person— regardless how they obtained their abilities— was required to register with the government, publicly reveal their identities, and enlist with S.H.I.E.L.D. for training to serve as a hero. Many heroes split up into two factions: one led by Tony Stark, who helped pass the law, and Steve Rogers, who went rogue to create the Secret Avengers because he found the law violated civil liberties of freedom and privacy. Families and friendships were torn apart, and the fighting escalated so badly that it was no longer even about the law but about Tony and Steve’s massive egos on who was right, resulting in more damage than any villain could’ve done (I recommend watching Comicstorian’s overview of the story for more details since it there’s so much going on, and his video is nice and succinct).

MCU already put themselves in pickle trying to adapt one of the biggest comic stories ever as they couldn’t portray the same scale of conflict, emotional zeitgeist, or the multiple sideplots weaved in. Film is already an inherently limited medium of entertainment for time, so cuts are inevitable. And what do you do when you can’t bring in major players like the Fantastic Four or the X-men? Well, for Captain America: Civil War, the conflict was scaled down to the Sokovia Accords which gave control of Avengers activity to the United Nations since their more recent missions often did more damage than good. In theory, this isn’t necessarily a bad idea since it still ties into the themes of government control versus civil liberties and when heroes need to be accountable. And the two sides still align similarly to the original comic with Tony Stark in favor of the law after his screw-up with Ultron and Steve Rogers against it after S.H.E.I.L.D. turned out to be front for HYDRA just a couple years before.

Unfortunately, the conflict over the Sokovia Accords is too quickly sidelined over Bucky Barnes being framed for a terrorist attack and a severe misunderstanding of his brainwashing when he was the Winter Soldier. The characters’ motivations— most of which have nothing to do with the Accords at all— jump all over the place on why they side with Tony or Steve. The ultimate battle boils down to a bromance love triangle, and I don’t feel like the MCU Avengers are a cohesive enough unit to feel any emotional drama when they split apart. In the long run, the worst consequences that anyone faces for violating the Sokovia Accords are either going into hiding or being placed under house arrest. And the law really stops mattering to anyone once Thanos snaps half of the universe’s population out of existence, making most of the film inconsequential. And for all of MCU’s best efforts to cut and edit the story to fit to film language, it’s still underwhelming to not have the massive scale the comic had. I don’t know if Civil War could ever have a proper live-action film adaptation without splitting it into multiple parts, and let’s be honest, audiences only have so much attention spans before they want something new.

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One of the major sideplots of Civil War was, of course, Spider-Man’s involvement, which became a huge selling point in the film’s trailers. In the comic, Peter Parker was ambivalent towards the Superhuman Registration Act, because villains could use the heroes’ public identities to attack their friends and family. But he still had faith that Tony Stark had everything under control, and revealed his identity in a press event to publicly voice his support for the Act. However, after a fight against the Secret Avengers resulted in the gruesome death of Goliath, Peter questioned Tony’s motivations and switched over to Steve Rogers’s side in hopes to de-escalate the fighting so no more heroes would die. At this point, Tony and Peter were well-acquainted that the former supplied him with his own tech, particularly the Iron Spider suit, so the side-switching (including a one-on-one fight between the two) was a hell of a surprise for readers. And I was really looking forward to that dynamic to play out in MCU, especially with a younger version of Peter Parker.

“So, cool if I just dip out for like 3 months without explanation?”

But MCU decided to throw out that conflict in favor of Peter Parker giving unquestioning veneration to Tony Stark as his mentor when he honestly doesn’t deserve it– I covered some of this briefly in a previous post on Tony Stark’s character stagnation, so there is some repeat but also some update with Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home in mind. Anyway, let’s break down Tony’s wonderful career as a mentor: manipulating Peter to join a fight against Captain America without the full details when it was already a huge misunderstanding; putting him on radio silence when black market weapons dealers were ready to steal his tech and just said he had it under control (spoiler: he didn’t, and Peter had to save the day himself and was nearly crushed by a whole building in the process); and trusting him with a pair of hi-tech glasses without instructions on how to not accidentally set off drones against his classmates.

This scene from Homecoming will always annoy the piss out of me. You can’t change my mind.

There’s a lot of confused framing and intentions to unpack here. Tony clearly doesn’t have certain situations under control, constantly struggles to come to terms with the fact he can’t save everyone, and lets anxiety overwhelm his better judgement in his deluded ideas to protect people. Despite his paranoia of saving everyone, Tony somehow doesn’t seem the least bit concerned with all the dangerous situations Peter, a 16-year-old, throws himself into while he’s on vacation. And Tony is still framed in the right on how he handles his problems, including punishing Peter for questioning his poor communication skills. Yeah, bold flex from a guy who waited until the last second to help save a boat full of civilians. Yes, we have to go through “with great power comes great responsibility” in a Spider-Man story, but Tony was well-aware how eager Peter was to prove himself, especially when he’s much more inexperienced and at a much younger age where he seeks validation from adult role models. Aside from giving Peter some nice tech, Tony didn’t actually teach him anything about heroism, and he certainly didn’t care to get to know him personally when he’s out of the suit which severely undermines the mentor-student route they attempted with these two characters. Tony gave Peter a lot of power, but didn’t guide him how to responsibly use it.

Sweet moment; you gonna apologize for the part where you sat off to the side while he was almost crushed by a building?

I wanted to see that conflict between Peter and Tony like in the comics. It would’ve been fascinating to see the perspective of a teenager roped into the adult world of heroes. Perhaps he’d look back on his involvement in Civil War and wonder why the hell he was a part of that and what being a hero means to him. I didn’t want Peter to be punished for rightfully questioning Tony’s methods, and maybe, just once, Tony would get a come-to-Jesus moment and stop being a perpetual douchebag. The closest we get to those moments of actual love and mutual respect are the last two Avengers movies when Peter is snapped out of existence and Tony sacrifices himself to stop Thanos. The payoff is in the right mind, but MCU forgot the proper build-up to establish any genuine connection between Peter and Tony, let alone hold the latter accountable for his constant fuck-ups and neglectful mentoring. The lost potential in that bond and the Civil War arc only scratches at the surface in regards to why this adaptation of Spider-Man falls short.

Another gripe diehard MCU fans had on the character rights debacle was if Sony got back Spider-Man, how would they do the next movie without referencing Tony Stark? And this ties back again to the fact MCU Spider-Man cannot work as a standalone franchise. Peter Parker’s growth revolves too much on other MCU events and characters, especially Tony, and you don’t know who he is without those outside influences. Even the villains’ motivations are framed around Tony doing them wrong in some way. Yes, most viewers are familiar enough with Spider-Man that it’s redundant to show the origin story again; we know Uncle Ben is gonna die no matter what. But personal tragedy and family love were always Peter’s primary motivations to becoming a hero, and MCU barely references them. They can’t even get the dynamic between Peter and Aunt May right; their love is so lifeless and dull.

Iron Man Jr? Spider-Man? I don’t know anymore…

What makes Peter’s arc fascinating to watch isn’t him proving himself to Tony or some other surrogate father figure. It’s his relationship with what little family he has left, sacrificing his emotional needs to protect them, using his resourcefulness to build himself up as a hero, looking out for the underrepresented of New York City so they don’t have to go through what he did, and accepting that he can’t save everyone, even with all his best efforts. MCU shows snippets of that arc, but the development is still too focused on Tony to the point where Spider-Man feels more like an Iron Man Jr. It works well enough for the overall MCU, but not so much as an individual franchise when you compare the story and character relationships to the films made by Sam Raimi, Marc Webb or even Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman. Thank God that Spider-Man has so many adaptations for people to flock to, because if this was someone’s first and only introduction of the character in live-action film, they’d be hopelessly confused.

Sadly, that ends up being the case for so many MCU characters whose stories are also stuck with too much outside influences instead of being allowed to develop on their own. If I tried to cover every character potential wasted in MCU so far, we’d be here forever. As of late, MCU focuses on tying every event and character arc together and overloading on Easter eggs to build up to the next major plot conversion instead of creating stories with organic world-building which can stand on their own. This isn’t the case for every MCU movie, but it is the most common trend in their latest projects which will most likely continue to that next crossover event, whenever and whatever it is. The allusions to other films in the universe should be embellishments, not the entire story’s foundation.

Although I’m curious where they’ll take Peter Parker given the midcredits scene of Far From Home, I also wonder if they’ll tell his story with him front-and-center and without referencing Tony Stark every five minutes. But what’s done is done, and MCU’s Spider-Man relied too much on those allusions to the point where some fans forgot what made him a great hero to begin with. When you strip away his involvement with the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D., his arc is feeble compared to other adaptations. Sure, Tobey Maguire got goofy at times, and Andrew Garfiled’s drama was maybe too heavy-handed, but their Peter Parkers are at least well-rounded characters who figure out what being a hero means to their personal growth. Tom Holland does well with what he’s given, and I love seeing his emotional vulnerability, but I don’t know who his Peter Parker is without Avengers shenanigans.

I want to continue enjoying MCU as much as anyone else, but it’s hard to not see Scorsese’s point that most of these movies are mindless like amusement parks. At some point, we gotta turn off the hype goggles and see what else these stories have to offer besides how they relate to larger events in the cinematic universe. It’s not bad to indulge in mindless fun every now and then, and we still get fantastic movies out of MCU, but audiences will get tired of the obligation to watch dozens of shows and movies to keep up with the story. And with Disney controlling almost all of entertainment, we need to re-evaluate if they’re interested in telling engaging stories or in shooting out franchise after franchise to maintain steady profits and if these are even good-enough adaptations of such beloved comic characters we want to automatically go to when we think of them. As I said before, it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and you need to leave the amusement park eventually. Since we know so little of their next crossover events, I hope MCU finds the point where they can satisfyingly wrap up the story of this universe before we get exhausted by it all.

Luckett, M. “Fantasia: Cultural Constructions of Disney’s ‘Masterpiece.'” Disney Discourse, ed. E. Smoodin (New York City, NY: Routledge, 1994), 227.

Shout out to my darling friend, Kayla, who helped me through one of my rough drafts to help focus this piece!

As always, if you enjoyed this post and what I do here, consider buying me a ko-fi! Your support is much appreciated!

Martin Scorsese Isn't Totally Wrong: The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Overindulgence, and Re-evaluating Spider-Man's Arc #martinscorsese #mcu #marvel #spiderman Of the latest "controversial" opinions to rock social media, renowned director Martin Scorsese voiced his dislike of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)

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statetalks · 3 years

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How Many Republicans Are In The Senate Currently

Filed Candidates By Political Party

Republicans on track to keep U.S. Senate majority

As of September 7, 2020, 519 candidates were filed with the Federal Election Commission to run for U.S. Senate in 2020. Of those, 402â199 Democrats and 203 Republicansâwere from one of the two major political parties. In 2018, 527 candidates filed with the FEC to run for U.S. Senate, including 137 Democrats and 240 Republicans.

The following chart shows the number of filed candidates by political party.

Easy Races Tough Races

In Arizona, Democrat Mark Kelly has held strong, sustained leads in the polls for months over Republican Sen. Martha McSally.;

He’s an astronaut and husband of former lawmaker Gabrielle;Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt in 2011 and became a gun-control activist.

In Maine, Trump has all but longtime incumbent Susan Collins. She appeared unbeatable until recently, winning;her last race, in 2014, by 37 points.

5 ways a Joe Biden presidency will affect Canada

She’s now trailing in the polls to the speaker of Maine’s legislature, Sara Gideon. Coleman said Collins is being pulled apart by the polarized politics of our time.

Collins frequently enrages Democrats and moderates by voting with Trump. Yet she also infuriates Trump allies; a research project by the news website Axios found that Collins is actually the No. 1 most likely of all congressional Republicans to condemn Trump in a controversy.;

“She’s really tried to walk the line of being a moderate in the Trump era. And that’s just very hard,” Coleman said.

Are Senators Chosen By Popular Vote

Beginning with the 1914 general election, all U.S. senators have been chosen by direct popular election. The Seventeenth Amendment also provided for the appointment of senators to fill vacancies. There have been many landmark contests, such as the election of Hiram Revels, the first African American senator, in 1870.

Recommended Reading: How Many Log Cabin Republicans Are There

List Of Current Members Of The Us Congress

Features of Congress Background United States House of Representatives elections, 2022 Analysis Lifetime voting records Net worth of United States Senators and Representatives Staff salaries of United States Senators and Representatives National Journal vote ratings

The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the United States of America’s federal government. It consists of two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives, with members chosen through direct election.

Congress has 535 voting members. The Senate has 100 voting officials, and the House has 435 voting officials, along with five delegates and one resident commissioner.

to find your representatives with Ballotpedia’s “Who represents me?” tool.

Us Senate Representation Is Deeply Undemocratic And Cannot Be Changed

Few, if any, other democracies have anything this undemocratic built into their systems.

The U.S. Senate, as you know, is currently divided 50-50 along party lines, thanks to the impressive double win in Georgia, and counting the two technically independent senators as Democrats, since they caucus with the Democrats.

But, according to the calculation of Ian Millhiser, writing for Vox, if you add up the population of states and assign half to each of their two senators, the Democratic half of the Senate represents 41,549,808 more people than the Republican half.

Millhisers piece is named after that fact: Americas anti-democratic Senate, in one number.

41.5 million. Thats a lot of people, more than 10 percent of the population . You might think that in a democracy, the party that held that much of an advantage might end up with a solid majority in the Senate, rather than have just barely eked out a 50-50 tie in a body that, taken together, represents the whole country.

Republicans have not won the majority of the votes cast in all Senate races in any election cycle for a long time. Nonetheless, Republicans held majority control of the Senate after the elections of 2014, and 2016 and 2018 and still, after the 2020 races, held 50 of the 100 seats.

GOP does better in lower population states

Works to the detriment of Democratic power

Its deeply undemocratic. Nothing can become federal law without passing the Senate.

Smaller states had to be reassured

Read Also: How Do Republicans Feel About Climate Change

List Of Current United States Senators By Age

This is a list of current U.S. Senators sorted by age. The United States Constitution requires Senators to be at least 30 years of age. Age does not determine seniority in the Senate.

As of August 29, 2021, 5 senators are in their 80s, 18 are in their 70s, 32 are in their 60s, 30 are in their 50s, 14 are in their 40s, and 1 is in his 30s.

The median age of currently serving Senators is 700921436488000000067;years, 339;days.

The median age of taking office for currently serving Senators is 51 years, 75 days.

The median length of their Senate terms to date is 700839925440000000012;years, 238;days.

Rank

United States Senate Elections 2020

U.S. Senate Elections by State U.S. House Elections

Elections to the U.S. Senate were held on . A total of 33 of the 100 seats were up for regular election.

Those elected to the U.S. Senate in the 33 regular elections on November 3, 2020, began their six-year terms on January 3, 2021.

Special elections were also held to fill vacancies that occurred in the 116th Congress, including 2020 special U.S. Senate elections in Arizona for the seat that John McCain won in 2016 and in Georgia for the seat that Johnny Isakson won in 2016.

Twelve seats held by Democrats and 23 seats held by Republicans were up for election in 2020. Heading into the election, Republicans had a majority with 53 seats. Democrats needed a net gain of four seats, or three in addition to winning the presidential election, to take control of the chamber. The vice president casts tie-breaking votes in the Senate.

On this page, you will find:

Information on historical wave elections

Don’t Miss: How Many Registered Republicans In Texas

How Is Senate Majority Chosen

The Senate Republican and Democratic floor leaders are elected by the members of their party in the Senate at the beginning of each Congress. Depending on which party is in power, one serves as majority leader and the other as minority leader. The leaders serve as spokespersons for their partys positions on issues.

Effect Of Republican Retirements

Republicans keep control of the House and Senate

Indeed, 2020 was actually a Democratic-leaning year, with Biden winning the national popular vote by 4.5 percentage points. So theres a good chance that states will be at least a bit redder in 2022 than they were in 2020.

That could make these retirements less of a blow to Republicans than they first appear. Whats more, by announcing their retirements so early, Burr, Toomey and Portman are giving the GOP as much time as possible to recruit potential candidates, shape the field of candidates in a strategic way in the invisible primary and raise more money for the open-seat campaign. And in Ohio specifically, Republicans still look like heavy favorites. Even in the Democratic-leaning environment of 2020, Trump won Ohio by 8 percentage points, implying that its true partisan lean is probably even more Republican-leaning. Ohio is simply not the quintessential swing state it once was; dating back to the 2014 election cycle, Democrats have won just one out of 14 statewide contests in Ohio and that was a popular incumbent running in a blue-wave election year .

Nathaniel Rakich and Geoffrey Skelley, FiveThirtyEight

Don’t Miss: Which Republicans Will Vote To Impeach

Many Republicans Mobilizing Against Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill

The bipartisan group of senators who crafted the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is preparing to take a victory lap as the Senate moves toward passing the bill in the coming days.

But a large number of Republicans are mobilizing against the bill that includes $1.2 trillion of spending and $550 billion in new spending on hard infrastructure projects, such as rail, ports, electric vehicle charging stations, and broadband.

Right after the group of bipartisan senators introduced the bills text on Sunday night, Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee gave a long floor speech in opposition to the legislation, arguing that the Constitution does not give Congress to go out and spend money on anything that we deem appropriate and that the price tag is too high.

Shame on us for making poor and middle-class Americans poorer so that we can bring praise and adulation to ourselves and more money to a small handful of wealthy, well-connected interests in America, Lee said.

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said that he would vote against the bill, sharing an article that called it an epic binge of green subsidies and more handouts for states and localities.

Several Republicans in the House are also stating their opposition to the bill.

No one should support something that will serve as a trojan horse for the Democrats reconciliation package, which the White House wants to use to pass massive amnesty, the RSC memo read.

Washington Examiner Videos

Join Govtracks Advisory Community

Were looking to learn more about who uses GovTrack and what features you find helpful or think could be improved. If you can, please take a few minutes to help us improve GovTrack for users like you.

Start by telling us more about yourself:

We hope to make GovTrack more useful to policy professionals like you. Please sign up for our advisory group to be a part of making GovTrack a better tool for what you do.

Young Americans have historically been the least involved in politics, despite the huge consequences policies can have on them. By joining our advisory group, you can help us make GovTrack more useful and engaging to young voters like you.

Our mission is to empower every American with the tools to understand and impact Congress. We hope that with your input we can make GovTrack more accessible to minority and disadvantaged communities who we may currently struggle to reach. Please join our advisory group to let us know what more we can do.

We love educating Americans about how their government works too! Please help us make GovTrack better address the needs of educators by joining our advisory group.

Would you like to join our advisory group to work with us on the future of GovTrack?

Email address where we can reach you:

Thank you for joining the GovTrack Advisory Community! Well be in touch.

Recommended Reading: What Percentage Of Republicans Support Trump

About The House Of Representatives

The United States is also divided into 435 congressional districts with a population of about 750,000 each. Each district elects a representative to the House of Representatives for a two-year term.

As in the Senate, the day-to-day activities of the House are controlled by the majority party. Here is a count of representatives by party:

Also Check: Why Did Democrats And Republicans Switch

Republicans Secure Half Of Total Us Senate Seats

WASHINGTON U.S. Republican Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska won reelection Wednesday, assuring Republicans of at least 50 seats in the 100-member Senate for the next two years, while leaving control of the chamber uncertain until two runoff elections are held in Georgia in early January.

After slow vote-counting in the northwestern-most state of the U.S. after the November 3 election, news media concluded that Sullivan had an insurmountable lead over Al Gross, an orthopedic surgeon who ran as an independent candidate with Democratic support. The contest was called with Sullivan, a conservative, ahead by 20 percentage points.

With Republicans assured of at least half the Senate seats, attention now turns to the two January 5 runoff elections in the southern state of Georgia.

Two conservative Republican lawmakers Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler now hold the two seats, but both failed in separate contests last week to win a majority, forcing them into the runoffs.

Perdue faces Democrat Jon Ossoff, an investigative journalist who narrowly lost a 2017 race for a seat in the House of Representatives before trying to oust Perdue from the Senate seat he has held since 2015.

Loeffler, who was appointed to her Senate seat in early 2020, is facing Raphael Warnock, a progressive Democrat who is senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

You May Like: How Many Seats Do The Republicans Control In The Senate

Govtrackus Is Taking A New Focus On Civic Education

Help us develop the tools to bring real-time legislative data into the classroom.

If youve visited a bill page on GovTrack.us recently, you may have noticed a new study guide tab located just below the bill title. This is part of a new project to develop better tools for bringing real-time legislative data into the classroom. We hope to enable educators to build lesson plans centered around any bill or vote in Congress, even those as recent as yesterday.

Were looking for feedback from educators about how GovTrack can be used and improved for your classroom. If you teach United States government and would like to speak with us about bringing legislative data into your classroom, please reach out!

Overlap With Other Forms Of Denial

Ultimately, the findings of this analysis show thatdespite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contraryclimate denial remains alive and well in the United States Congress, and its impacts are already costing lives. Furthermore, dangerous denial within Congress is not limited to climate change alone. By this analysis, 82 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and six U.S. senators are both climate deniers and members of the sedition caucusthose who denied the certified results of the 2020 general election and therefore supported President Trumps violent attempt to overturn these democratic results.*** There is also significant overlap between elected officials who deny climate science and elected officials who deny the reality of the pandemic that has sickened millions and claimed the lives of more than half a million Americans in the past year. In fact, as this analysis was being written, one congressman-elect and another congressman who had both cast doubt on the science around climate change died from COVID-19.

Members 1st: January 6, 2015 December 18, 20152nd: January 4, 2016; January 3, 2017

Read Also: Are There More Registered Republicans Or Democrats

Democrats Got Millions More Votes So How Did Republicans Win The Senate

Senate electoral process means although Democrats received more overall votes for the Senate than Republicans, that does not translate to more seats

Follow live updates on US politics

The 2018 midterm elections brought significant gains for Democrats, who retook the House of Representatives and snatched several governorships from the grip of Republicans.

But some were left questioning why Democrats suffered a series of setbacks that prevented the party from picking up even more seats and, perhaps most consequentially, left the US Senate in Republican hands.

Among the most eye-catching was a statistic showing Democrats led Republicans by more than 12 million votes in Senate races, and yet still suffered losses on the night and failed to win a majority of seats in the chamber.

Constitutional experts said the discrepancy between votes cast and seats won was the result of misplaced ire that ignored the Senate electoral process.

Because each state gets two senators, irrespective of population, states such as Wyoming have as many seats as California, despite the latter having more than 60 times the population. The smaller states also tend to be the more rural, and rural areas traditionally favor Republicans.

This year, because Democrats were defending more seats, including California, they received more overall votes for the Senate than Republicans, but that does not translate to more seats.

The rise of minority rule in America is now unmistakable

Senators Committees And Other Legislative Groups

Democrats win House, Republicans keep Senate

The Senates 63 members represent districts from across New York State. Senators belong to a single conference and one or more political parties.

Weve made it easy to filter senators by party, committee, and the other legislative groups in which they gather to consider the merits of proposed legislation and to better understand complex legislative issues.

Senator has new policy idea

Idea is drafted into a Bill

Bill undergoes committee process

Senate and Assembly pass bill

Bill is signed by Governor

Recommended Reading: Why Do Republicans Still Back Trump

Arguments For Expanding The Number Of House Members

Advocates;for increasing the number of seats in the House say such a move would increase the quality of representation by reducing the number of constituents each lawmaker represents. Each House member now represents about 710,000 people.

The group ThirtyThousand.org argues that the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights never intended for the population of each congressional district to exceed 50,000 or 60,000. âThe principle of proportionally equitable representation has been abandoned,â the group argues.

Another argument for increasing the size of the House is that is would diminish the influence of lobbyists. That line of reasoning assumes that lawmakers would be more closely connected to their constituents and therefore less likely to listen to special interests.

Why Are There 438 House Of Representative Members

On this date, the House passed the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, fixing the number of Representatives at 435. The U.S. Constitution called for at least one Representative per state and that no more than one for every 30,000 persons. Thus, the size of a states House delegation depended on its population.

Read Also: Who Are The 10 Republicans Who Voted For Impeachment

Recommended Reading: Why Republicans Do Not Like Obamacare

source https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-many-republicans-are-in-the-senate-currently/

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patriotsnet · 3 years

Text

How Many Republicans Are In The Senate Currently

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-many-republicans-are-in-the-senate-currently/

How Many Republicans Are In The Senate Currently

Filed Candidates By Political Party

Republicans on track to keep U.S. Senate majority

The following chart shows the number of filed candidates by political party.

Easy Races Tough Races

In Arizona, Democrat Mark Kelly has held strong, sustained leads in the polls for months over Republican Sen. Martha McSally.;

He’s an astronaut and husband of former lawmaker Gabrielle;Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt in 2011 and became a gun-control activist.

In Maine, Trump has all but longtime incumbent Susan Collins. She appeared unbeatable until recently, winning;her last race, in 2014, by 37 points.

5 ways a Joe Biden presidency will affect Canada

She’s now trailing in the polls to the speaker of Maine’s legislature, Sara Gideon. Coleman said Collins is being pulled apart by the polarized politics of our time.

“She’s really tried to walk the line of being a moderate in the Trump era. And that’s just very hard,” Coleman said.

Are Senators Chosen By Popular Vote

Recommended Reading: How Many Log Cabin Republicans Are There

List Of Current Members Of The Us Congress

Congress has 535 voting members. The Senate has 100 voting officials, and the House has 435 voting officials, along with five delegates and one resident commissioner.

to find your representatives with Ballotpedia’s “Who represents me?” tool.

Us Senate Representation Is Deeply Undemocratic And Cannot Be Changed

Few, if any, other democracies have anything this undemocratic built into their systems.

Millhisers piece is named after that fact: Americas anti-democratic Senate, in one number.

GOP does better in lower population states

Works to the detriment of Democratic power

Its deeply undemocratic. Nothing can become federal law without passing the Senate.

Smaller states had to be reassured

Read Also: How Do Republicans Feel About Climate Change

List Of Current United States Senators By Age

This is a list of current U.S. Senators sorted by age. The United States Constitution requires Senators to be at least 30 years of age. Age does not determine seniority in the Senate.

As of August 29, 2021, 5 senators are in their 80s, 18 are in their 70s, 32 are in their 60s, 30 are in their 50s, 14 are in their 40s, and 1 is in his 30s.

The median age of currently serving Senators is 700921436488000000067;years, 339;days.

The median age of taking office for currently serving Senators is 51 years, 75 days.

The median length of their Senate terms to date is 700839925440000000012;years, 238;days.

Rank

United States Senate Elections 2020

U.S. Senate Elections by State U.S. House Elections

Elections to the U.S. Senate were held on . A total of 33 of the 100 seats were up for regular election.

Those elected to the U.S. Senate in the 33 regular elections on November 3, 2020, began their six-year terms on January 3, 2021.

On this page, you will find:

Information on historical wave elections

Don’t Miss: How Many Registered Republicans In Texas

How Is Senate Majority Chosen

Effect Of Republican Retirements

Republicans keep control of the House and Senate

Nathaniel Rakich and Geoffrey Skelley, FiveThirtyEight

Don’t Miss: Which Republicans Will Vote To Impeach

Many Republicans Mobilizing Against Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill

The bipartisan group of senators who crafted the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is preparing to take a victory lap as the Senate moves toward passing the bill in the coming days.

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said that he would vote against the bill, sharing an article that called it an epic binge of green subsidies and more handouts for states and localities.

Several Republicans in the House are also stating their opposition to the bill.

No one should support something that will serve as a trojan horse for the Democrats reconciliation package, which the White House wants to use to pass massive amnesty, the RSC memo read.

Washington Examiner Videos

Join Govtracks Advisory Community

Were looking to learn more about who uses GovTrack and what features you find helpful or think could be improved. If you can, please take a few minutes to help us improve GovTrack for users like you.

Start by telling us more about yourself:

We hope to make GovTrack more useful to policy professionals like you. Please sign up for our advisory group to be a part of making GovTrack a better tool for what you do.

We love educating Americans about how their government works too! Please help us make GovTrack better address the needs of educators by joining our advisory group.

Would you like to join our advisory group to work with us on the future of GovTrack?

Email address where we can reach you:

Thank you for joining the GovTrack Advisory Community! Well be in touch.

Recommended Reading: What Percentage Of Republicans Support Trump

About The House Of Representatives

The United States is also divided into 435 congressional districts with a population of about 750,000 each. Each district elects a representative to the House of Representatives for a two-year term.

As in the Senate, the day-to-day activities of the House are controlled by the majority party. Here is a count of representatives by party:

Also Check: Why Did Democrats And Republicans Switch

Republicans Secure Half Of Total Us Senate Seats

With Republicans assured of at least half the Senate seats, attention now turns to the two January 5 runoff elections in the southern state of Georgia.

Two conservative Republican lawmakers Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler now hold the two seats, but both failed in separate contests last week to win a majority, forcing them into the runoffs.

Loeffler, who was appointed to her Senate seat in early 2020, is facing Raphael Warnock, a progressive Democrat who is senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

You May Like: How Many Seats Do The Republicans Control In The Senate

Govtrackus Is Taking A New Focus On Civic Education

Help us develop the tools to bring real-time legislative data into the classroom.

Overlap With Other Forms Of Denial

Members 1st: January 6, 2015 December 18, 20152nd: January 4, 2016; January 3, 2017

Read Also: Are There More Registered Republicans Or Democrats

Democrats Got Millions More Votes So How Did Republicans Win The Senate

Senate electoral process means although Democrats received more overall votes for the Senate than Republicans, that does not translate to more seats

Follow live updates on US politics

The 2018 midterm elections brought significant gains for Democrats, who retook the House of Representatives and snatched several governorships from the grip of Republicans.

Constitutional experts said the discrepancy between votes cast and seats won was the result of misplaced ire that ignored the Senate electoral process.

This year, because Democrats were defending more seats, including California, they received more overall votes for the Senate than Republicans, but that does not translate to more seats.

The rise of minority rule in America is now unmistakable

Senators Committees And Other Legislative Groups

Democrats win House, Republicans keep Senate

The Senates 63 members represent districts from across New York State. Senators belong to a single conference and one or more political parties.

Senator has new policy idea

Idea is drafted into a Bill

Bill undergoes committee process

Senate and Assembly pass bill

Bill is signed by Governor

Recommended Reading: Why Do Republicans Still Back Trump

Arguments For Expanding The Number Of House Members

Why Are There 438 House Of Representative Members

Read Also: Who Are The 10 Republicans Who Voted For Impeachment

Recommended Reading: Why Republicans Do Not Like Obamacare

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