#the best story of the AU and it’s not even the main plot point | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sundrop-writes · 7 months

Text

Kisses Like Fire Whiskey

Fred Weasley x Fem!Gryffindor!Reader

Summary:

When you come back from a long healing apprenticeship in France, you and Fred catch up over drinks, reminiscing about your days as mischievous rebels. In the drunken haze, some important things are realized.

Fred Weasley x Fem!Gryffindor!Reader. Best Friends to Lovers. Fluff (with a slight bit of Angst). Set post Deathly Hallows and during Goblet of Fire.

Word Count: 7,500

Harry Potter Masterlist | AO3 Link

Full list of warnings and author's notes below the cut.

Warnings: this is bookended with scenes that take place after the war, but obviously this is a Fred Lives AU; part of this takes place after main storyline of Deathly Hallows and part of it takes place in a flashback during Goblet of Fire (when Fred and the reader are in their sixth year); the reader and Fred are the same age; while part of this takes places post Deathly Hallows, there isn't mentions of the war; it's never mentioned exactly how long the reader was away, but the reader and Fred are both in their early 20s in the bookended parts; drinking and drunkenness are major plot points in this fic, as well as underage drinking; underage characters being in a bar/pub; Fred and the reader both drink, but there are mentions of Fred seeming more sober than the reader/handling his alcohol better; they are drunk to the point of lowering their inhibitions, but not to the point of passing out or forgetting things; mentions of George x Katie Bell as a background ship; mentions of splinching/the dangers of Apparating while drunk (does not actually happen in the fic, everyone is fine); mentions of vomiting due to over consumption of alcohol (doesn't happen to any of the main characters of this fic, it's a very small background element); passing mention of a cursed object that makes people spit up their own blood; creepy men approach the reader (and Fred defends her) - minor sexual harassment from older men toward the reader; this does use Y/N (I started out as a Quizilla girly, I will live and die by Y/N); this is mostly just mutual pining and fluff with a love confession at the end. So please enjoy!!

A/N: when I read the original request, I was inspired to take it a lot further, and after writing The Patron Saint of Liars and Fakes, I have realized that I really loving writing simplistic fics that are mutual pining that turns into a love confession. It's so much fun.

...

“So then - so then - Bill says: ‘where’s Percy?’, and Mum looks around the table and realises Perce is even there.” George chuckled brightly, topping off the telling of another one of their chaotic childhood stories.

“‘Course, Mum blamed it on us.” Fred said, rolling his eyes.

“As if she was wrong!” You argued, reaching out and smacking him on the shoulder playfully.

Your words were louder to your own ears than you had intended to say them, slurring slightly on your lips. Perhaps you had more to drink than you had realised, but you were simply having fun catching up with your dearest, oldest friends. So you couldn’t bring yourself to truly care or view it as a problem.

You were simply overjoyed to see Fred and George again.

You were visiting England for the first time in years, and naturally, the Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes shop had been your first stop. You had grown up with the twins - since your first year at Hogwarts together, they had been two of your closest friends. Ever since you had been sorted into Gryffindor with them, the three of you had been thick as thieves. Right from the moment you had suggested to them that they actually unscrew a toilet seat lid and send it to their little sister Ginny in the post when they had initially just been joking about doing so. Ginny had found it highly amusing - their mother, not so much.

But when you met Molly for the first time in person, you were always on her good side. You were very good at playing the ‘perfect angel’ in front of authority figures (unlike the twins). So you could very easily bat your eyelashes and say a few sweet things, as well as being on your best behaviour on the surface, before sneaking around with the twins at night and helping them with their pranks - not that anyone else ever suspected you of doing so.

You were the perfect accomplice for them. Someone who was labelled as a goody-two-shoes who was down for mischief at any time.

You had been slightly heartbroken when you found out that they were planning to quit their Seventh Year partyway through in order to start their joke shop. You knew that it had always been a dream of theirs, and it was your dream to see them succeed in it. But a large part of you had been hoping to graduate with your best friends by your side. They had offered for you to come with them, of course. They told you that you could have a very fulfilling career at the shop. But you had other plans for yourself.

So you watched them ride off on their brooms, cheering and hollering for them alongside everyone else. And after your graduation, you had come to visit the shop in its full glory, seeing its whimsical beauty with your own eyes before you left England. As much as you hated that your lives had taken such different paths, you admired them deeply for succeeding.

Since then, you had been in France. You had taken on a prestigious healing apprenticeship in order to become a high level Healer. It was something you had always dreamed of doing - helping people through the skilled art of healing.

Perhaps, in some ways, it was a career choice inspired partially by your two best friends - seeing them blow themselves up or get horrible boils testing their own products, you wanted to be able to soothe the side effects faster. And you knew that there were plenty more children out there like them. Children who would fall from trees pretending to be a dragon or lose their teeth trying to eat a deck of Exploding Snap, children who needed gentle understanding from a Healer rather than scolding.

You had recently finished up your apprenticeship, and you were hoping to get a job at St. Mungo’s to be closer to the people you always viewed as family. But even just stepping foot back in the twins’ shop felt like home. You had been greeted with tight hugs and so much chatter between them about missing you that you could barely decipher the words between two voices. They had invited you up to the flat above the shop for a drink - so now, hours later, you were quite tipsy and feeling the best that you had in years.

“You know boys, I haven’t - I haven’t been this tossed off my tits in quite a while!” You announced loudly, pausing between words to let out a small hiccup, signifying just how drunk you were.

You weren’t at the level of drunk where things were unpleasant - not where the room was spinning and you were on the verge of passing out, battling with nausea. But your normal sense of proprietary had definitely been tossed out the window, you felt fuzzy around the edges, and everything felt delightfully warm. Especially considering you had been drinking Fire Whiskey.

You hadn’t had a drink all throughout your apprenticeship, as much as the other young people working with you encouraged you to ‘take a load off’ every once and a while. Your work was something that you took very seriously (especially when Fred and George weren’t around to tempt you with pranks and daily mischief). So this was the first time in a long time that you had actually taken the time to relax, and the alcohol was hitting you a lot harder than even you realised.

The boys chuckled at your words, George turning bright red from how hard he was laughing. Perhaps the booze was hitting him pretty hard too. While Fred’s eyes were dancing with that brightness they always had when he was having fun, he didn’t seem quite as sloppy. You hadn’t been paying attention, but he likely didn’t have as much to drink, and had simply been enjoying your company the entire time.

“You know, I really missed you, Fred and George.” You said, pure sincerity dripping through your tone, your affection amplified in your chest by your drunkenness. You couldn’t hold yourself back - your emotions bubbling to the surface without your consent. “And I really, really missed you, Fred.”

You turned to him, putting a warm hand on his shoulder, your touch practically burning up through the sleeve of his silken shirt (you were surprised by how nicely the twins dressed now that they were established bussinessmen). You hated that you couldn’t hold back the need to emphasise the fact that you had missed Fred just a bit more. But he had been on your mind a lot more than his brother had, as scarily similar as they were.

Even if you had barely admitted it to yourself, throughout all your years at Hogwarts, you had a romantic inclination towards Fred.

It was never something you had acted on, for fear of ruining the amazing friendship that the two of you had. But as your visit to England grew closer and closer, you found yourself losing focus on your work and thinking about him more and more. You wondered if he had found someone - you wondered if his good looks, his charm, his humour had landed him a wife in the time that you had been gone. It wouldn’t have surprised you if, during the time you had been gone, he had married or even had kids.

Obviously he had a wonderful career nailed down, so a family would have been the natural next step for him.

Those thoughts made you approach the shop’s door with equal parts dread and excitement. You eagerly wanted to see him again but didn’t want to see that there was a ring on his finger. You had been all too happy to find out during your long, winding ‘catch up’ conversation that, in fact, he was still single. George had brought up that fact more than once, actually, nagging on his brother’s lonely status like it was the most recent funny joke he could prod at.

When you heard him talk about it, there was that insecurity still bubbling beneath the surface - the thought that you had missed your chance, or that Fred had never been interested in you romantically at all. It was something that couldn’t even be knocked away by booze, and that was gnawing at you now that storytime was winding down.

Fred and George exchanged a look - one of those silent conversations that could only be had through micro-expressions because of their closeness as twins. It was something that had always deeply irritated you during your days at Hogwarts, desperately trying to decipher if it meant ‘close to expulsion’ trouble or simply ‘skipping a class’ trouble.

“Well, would you look at the time,” George said, loudly and rather cartoonishly as he looked at his watch. It was something that you likely would have found suspect if you weren’t feeling hazy and drunk. “I told Katie I would pop over to hers sometime this weekend, so I should get going,”

Something that had come as a brilliant surprise to you: finding out that George was now engaged to Katie Bell.

Not only were you shocked to know that George seemed more than eager to ‘settle down’ and get married, but you were entirely curious about how they came to be as a couple. Especially considering that, as far as you knew, she had always seemed to find the twins’ pranks more annoying than anything else.

But you supposed that annoyance and attraction were two twigs on the same branch, the tree just needed to be shaken a little for something romantic to happen. The two of them hadn’t officially moved in together yet, as much as George talked about her with those sweet, rose-coloured lenses, and seemed to want to spend all his time around her. The twins still lived in the flat above the shop, two twin beds in the bedroom, as they always had in their room at the Burrow. But from the way Fred remarked on it, and from what you had seen glancing into their bedroom when you had gotten up to use the toilet, George was over at Katie’s far more than he was at their flat.

You couldn’t help but to find it sweet. George was in love.

It made you happy for him, knowing that he had found someone good for him. But thinking about it caused a pang in your chest as you wondered if Fred was lonely. You knew that loneliness certainly wasn’t a feeling that he was used to. If it was you or George, or one of his many other brothers, he always had someone at his side to keep him company.

You could only imagine what those nights were like - when the shop closed up and George popped off to his soon to be wife’s place, leaving Fred to nothing but the quiet. (You knew that Weasleys were never good with quiet - part of the reason that the twins were the way that they were.)

George peeled himself off the floor, where the three of you had been sitting around the coffee table in the lounge. Like a gangly baby deer, he began stumbling about due to his own drunkenness before he gained a proper footing and finally managed to stand up straight. You let out a snorting laugh at the sight and Fred - very clearly the most sober of the three of you - rushed out of his seat to grab George by the shoulders, making sure that his brother was alright.

“You sure that you’re okay to Apparate, Georgie?” Fred asked.

That kindness, that caring - it was something people often overlooked when they saw Fred Weasley. But it was one of the things that had drawn you to him the most. He was such a sweet person, and he cared about the people in his life with such a ferocity that it made your soul ache just to know that you were one of them.

“I’ll be fine, Freddie.” George replied.

Fred picked up George’s coat and began helping him into it, and you barely paid attention to the hushed conversation that the two of them had as you picked up the large (now rather light) bottle of Fire Whiskey and poured yourself another drink.

You caught something online the lines of ‘just go for it, for Merlin’s sake’ - very strained and annoyed, but you honestly had no clue what they were talking about. As you took a sip of your drink - you truly didn’t care.

Fred heaved out a sigh and then George disappeared with a crack. You craned your neck to look at the spot where he had been, just wanting to make sure that there was no blood or unsightly pieces of George left behind. There weren’t any - he had done fine.

“Havin’ another one, are we?” Fred remarked, walking around the coffee table to collapse onto the plush couch behind your back.

You chugged the rest of the Fire Whiskey from your glass all in one go, growling slightly as it burned sharply down your throat before you put the glass down once again.

“I’m celebrating!” You cheered loudly - again, much louder than you intended it to be. “I missed my best friends so much. It’s so - so good to be home.”

“But apparently you missed me just a bit more?” Fred chuckled, referring to your comment from before.

You moved to get up on the couch with him, and found your legs unsteady beneath you. Fred saw what you were doing and put a hand on your upper arm, hauling you back to sit on the cushions beside him. You moaned quietly at the warmth of his large hand on your bare skin, exposed by the camisole you were wearing. At one point, you had been wearing a nice cardigan, but you had stripped out of it as the alcohol drove your body temperature up.

You leaned back into the couch, and cuddled up against him. His body was soft and muscled at the same time, and he felt so nice against you. With your inhibitions lowered, you could see no fault in snuggling tightly into his side and laying your head on his chest. You wanted to simply enjoy the physical affection from a person you had missed so dearly.

You didn’t see the pure warring on Fred’s face as you did this - the confliction and yearning and hurt flashing over his features. He had missed you too, but he knew that you had missed him as a friend, just as a good friend, and not as the ‘one that got away’ that he had been thinking about every damn day since. But he could be cool about this, he told himself. He wouldn’t let his stupid feelings get in the way.

After a moment of pushing those pesky feelings back down, he finally relaxed into your touches and wrapped an arm around you, lazily brushing his fingers across the bare skin of your arm on the other side. You sighed happily at the feeling. From this close, he could smell the feminine floral waft of your perfume in combination with the hot cinnamon of the Fire Whiskey. And though it only made him yearn more, it was heaven.

He was all too happy to have you this close rather than you being so far away in France. He was happy to have you home.

“Do you want to stay the night?” He asked. “George’s bed will be empty, of course.”

He added on that second part quickly - he wanted you to feel comfortable, didn’t want to put any pressure on you to keep up this closeness, even if you seemed cuddly and affectionate because of your drunken state.

Originally, you had been planning to get a room at The Leaky Cauldron, but the twins’ shop had been your very first stop, and they had torn your suitcase out of your hands to bring it upstairs for you, so it was currently sitting off to the side of the lounge with your coat draped over it. And you never did get that room. Now, you realised it was laughable to think that you’d be staying anywhere but with friends, especially with the Molly Weasley hospitality baked right into them. You had to assume that even if George wasn’t at Katie’s, he would have slept on the couch so that you could take his bed anyway.

“Freddie, you know, I don’t think I’m going to get very far.” You said. “You - you got me pretty d-drunk.”

Fred smiled to himself. “Ah, I see. Once again, it is all my fault.”

It was something you did at large during your days at Hogwarts. You blamed him for yourself being late to class, you getting detentions, the few times you had ended up on Molly’s bad side. When in reality, you had always been a cheerful, willing participant in their chaos, you had always ‘blamed’ him for dragging you into it. But it only made him tempt you into more trouble.

“It is,” You sighed, turning your head to give him a wide grin. “You always g-get me into trouble.”

Fred let out a quiet laugh at this, and you laid your head on this chest once again. The two of you mulled in the comfortable silence for a few moments before you thought of something.

“You know, this-s reminds me, of - of the first time you got me drunk.” You told him with a laugh.

“Oh, god, back in sixth year?” He posed, returning to the memory himself. “That was epic. I still don’t know if I’d call it an epic disaster, or epic fun.”

“Bit of both.” You mumbled quietly. “Always is with you.”

Sitting there, curled up next to the lovely warmth of him, you remembered the night so fondly.

…

Leave it to Fred Weasley to pull you out of bed at half past two in the morning with no solid explanation as to why, aside from ‘we have plans’.

When you asked him why he couldn’t conduct those plans with George, as he usually did, he simply smirked and said that George had plans of his own. Which deeply worried you - but you tried your best to ignore it. You knew from experience that Fred wasn’t a walking troublemaker all the time.

In fact, the events of just a short week ago had proven that to you. He had invited you to the Yule Ball (as friends, of course) and the entire evening had been absolutely pleasant. No pranks - no water balloons, no coloured dye, no buckets of feathers, no charmed objects, no floods. It had been nothing but a delightful night of dancing and chatting with your friends.

Even now, as Fred pulled you into the mouth of a very small passageway that you had never seen before (one that caused you to slump over in order to walk through it), you pulled your scarf tighter around yourself and tried your hardest not to worry about what he might be up to. At the very least, if he was planning something large and disruptive, you would know about it, so that you wouldn’t be on the receiving end.

He had told you that these ‘plans’ involved going outdoors, so you had bundled up well, because there was still quite a few feet of snow outside and it was chilly, seeing as it was so late at night. But you hadn’t expected it to be so damn cold, walking in a random mystery tunnel underneath the school. Again, you had no clue where he was taking you or where the thing even led - you were simply glad when it became tall enough for you to straighten your back up.

“Where are we going, Fred?” You demanded harshly.

“You’ll see.” Fred told you, throwing a wicked grin over his shoulder at you as he continued to lead you forward through the darkness - the light of his wand being the only thing leading the way in the musty old tunnel.

“Nothing good ever happens when you say those words.” You replied, heaving a deep sigh.

“Well, perhaps, you could keep your mind open this time.” He said brightly. “Loosen up. Be open to all the possibilities that the universe has to offer you,”

You rolled your eyes at this. He was trying to direct your attention away from whatever scheme he had planned, that much was immediately clear to you.

“Is this an escape tunnel out of the country because you finally did something bad enough for your mother to kill you?” You joked. “Let me guess, you’re meeting George in Germany? What was it that finally pushed her over the edge? Did she find out that you two took bets at the World Cup? Did she find out about the-?”

Your words were abruptly cut off when Fred tapped his wand on the wall in front of him. It was a seemingly a dead end wall made of stone, keeping the two of you trapped at the end of the tunnel. But when he whispered some incantation under his breath, the stone began to grind loudly and it parted ways - letting in a gust of cold air from the outside, revealing the way out.

Fred stepped forward and you continued to follow him. As the stone grinded closed behind the two of you (now disguised as nothing more than a large, natural boulder) you gaped with shock as you saw a cluster of lights just down the hill and you quickly realised what it was.

“Hogsmeade.” You declared quietly, entirely shocked that you had walked through a dirty tunnel and ended up here.

Somehow, without getting caught - without setting off any charms that should supposedly be in place to keep the students on the school’s grounds.

Fred nodded proudly, grinning at you.

“How-?” You gaped.

“I have my ways, don’t I?” Fred said, his chest visibly puffing out with pride.

You decided not to question it. Especially because you fully understood it now - Fred was bored, he knew a way out of the school, and he simply wanted to have fun in Hogsmeade instead of laying in bed that night.

Fred took a hold of your hand as the two of you walked into town, and you took a quiet joy in observing Hogsmeade at night. Quite a few of the shops were closed, due to it being so late, which did make you wonder why Fred had even bothered to bring you there.

But he soon answered your question when he brought you to The Three Broomsticks - which was lit up, bustling and lively at this time. You knew that the front door was enchanted to alert the owner of underage wizards trying to pass through at certain times. Before you could even wonder what Fred’s plan was for that one - he led you around to the back, and he caught the back door out of someone’s hand as they ran outside and began puking in a snowbank, obviously unable to handle their liquor.

The two of you slipped in the back door completely undetected, seeing as it didn’t have those same enchantments to alert the owner of your presence. You began tingling with the glee that you always wore whenever Fred pulled you along to perform some mischief. You felt so joyous when you paired up to share wicked secrets with him. Fred had a talent for getting away with things (and other times, he so fabulously didn’t) - but he got away with a lot more than anybody ever realised, right under their noses. You felt clever just being around him most of the time.

With all the confidence in the world, still holding your hand, Fred pushed past some other rowdy patrons and waltzed right up to the bar. He tossed down a few Sickles (bet money that he and George had won from the World Cup, you could guarantee) and you couldn’t help but to grin at him as so confidently placed an order.

“Two Fire Whiskeys, please.” He announced, never once skipping a beat or faltering as any other underage person in a bar would.

It was strange to say, but Fred wore playful deception so well. You knew that you were staring at him with intense attraction written all over your face as you admired his antics. You simply hoped that he wouldn’t catch the love dopey look on your face and call you out on it.

“Coming right up, love-” Madam Rosmerta began to comply with his request without issue, but she took pause when she looked up from drying a glass with a rag long enough to truly look at the two of you.

That was the moment you thought it was over, for sure. You thought that she would send an angry owl up to Hogwarts, and the two of you would be done for. You began to imagine what kind of sick and twisted punishment McGonagall would have in store for the two of you - scrubbing cauldrons for weeks, trimming all the grass on the Quidditch pitch with scissors.

But somehow, Fred was a lot more clever than that. He wasn’t going to give up and simply let himself be caught.

“Aren’t you two a little… young to be in here?” She posed, glancing between the two of you and then looking back toward the front door, as though she was expecting the enchantments to suddenly begin wailing to alert her to a couple of underage wizards in the pub. Even though the two of you had successfully made it all the way over to the bar without that happening.

“Young?” Fred scoffed, putting on his very best tone of fake offence. “Honestly, woman, why would a couple of kids be in a pub at three in the morning?”

Rosmerta raised a brow at him, making it clear that she didn’t buy this - at least not yet.

Your stomach curled with nerves, and you tried your hardest not to show it on your face. You knew that this would either end in a spectacular punishment, or Fred would pull off one of his greatest hoaxes yet.

“Perhaps you might recognize us from when we were Hogwarts students,” Fred shrugged, trying his best to sound casual. “But we graduated year before last. And we just got off a very long shift with the Department of Cursed Objects, and we would simply like a drink.”

“Yeah, that last one was a doozy.” Your tongue moved before you gave it permission, and you found yourself leaning on the bar as you added onto Fred’s lie. “We had to hunt down this set of silver teaware that poisoned anyone who drank out of it. They were spitting up blood, and rotting from the inside out, choking on their own-”

“My apologies.” Rosmerta said, giving a curt smile. Clearly, she was increasingly uncomfortable with the graphic nature of your made-up story, and simply wanted you and Fred out of her way. “You must be right. The students from the school all start to blend together after the years. How ‘bout that drink then?”

She turned to grab a pair of non-cursed glasses, and when you glanced over at Fred, he was grinning widely at you.

“Good one.” He whispered into your ear, and you couldn’t help the shiver that went through you at the feeling of his hot breath on your neck. If asked, you would say that it was caused by the chill of someone opening the door, and not caused by your unbearable attraction to him.

When the drinks were placed on the bar in front of you, Rosmerta scurried off to attend to someone else. You picked up the glass that was half filled with the amber liquid, feeling intense victory and satisfaction flowing through you. In a predictable pattern, you and Fred gently clinked your glasses together.

But rather than making a congratulatory toast in celebration of getting away with the lies, you grinned widely at him as you said this:

“You’re a menace to society, Fred Weasley.”

“You love it.” He replied easily, giving you a cheeky wink as he tossed back the liquid in one clean gulp. He winced slightly and sucked in a breath sharply through his teeth. But it was clearly not his first time drinking, and you had to guess that Bill was the one responsible for that.

Wanting to match him, you did the same - you tipped the glass back, letting all of the liquid slide past your lips and down your throat in one go. It burnt sharply in a way that you absolutely weren’t expecting, and you began coughing and sputtering, giving away your amateur nature in one glance. It was lucky that Rosmerta wasn’t looking. Fred rubbed your back soothingly, though he did take a moment to laugh at you.

“Burns, doesn’t it?” He chuckled.

“You c-could’ve warned me.”

…

A short while later, the burn of the alcohol was certainly no longer a concern for you. You supposed that was part of the point - if booze made you drunk and detached from yourself, they didn’t have to make it taste good. Because after a while, you just didn’t taste it.

You and Fred were three rounds deep, and even though he was matching you drink for drink, he was far more composed than you were. He hardly seemed drunk at all, other than the cute way he giggled at your jokes. Perhaps it was because of his height, or his Quidditch playing muscles, but he was handling his alcohol surprisingly well.

You, on the other hand - you were properly sloshed.

You had shed most of your winter clothing and spread the pieces haphazardly around the table that Fred had sat the two of you at. And you were currently trying to balance one of the empty shot glasses on your forehead - just to prove that you could, while Fred watched on in amusement.

Of course, he was partially amused by your drunken antics, and partially watching your cleavage threaten to burst out of your tight, V neck tee shirt as you arched your back furiously, trying to keep the glass balanced there. Since you had shed off your jacket and thick jumper, this was what you were left in, along with your tight jeans and boots - and Fred found that he couldn’t keep his eyes off you.

“See! Told you I could do it!” You cheered, proud of yourself as you finally reached up and took the glass down, and then moved back to sit in your chair in front of Fred.

He couldn’t help but to smile at you. Honestly, he would never doubt you in anything you set your mind to. If you said that you could walk up walls or make Snape dance a jig, he would simply wait to watch it happen.

As he watched your proud smile and the way that the slightly drunken confidence caused you to sit up a bit taller, seeing the light from the fireplace gently kiss your skin - he was reminded of why he had brought you here in the first place. He let the alcohol in his own system give him courage (something that had been built into the plan) and he reached across the table, grabbing your hand gently with both of his.

The suddenly serious look that befell Fred’s face surprised you. That sense of surprise only grew when he took hold of your hand. He had more than captured your attention as he began to speak.

“Y/N, there’s something I really need to tell you.” Fred announced, his voice taking on a very rare serious quality.

It was something you had only heard from him when he talked about the possible ways to fund his joke shop or when you had fallen off a broom playing Quidditch at the Burrow and he had been worried about you being hurt. You nodded, stunned into silence, wondering if this meant bad news coming, eager for him to continue.

“Y/N, darling, you truly are the most amazing thing in my life.” He said, giving a small smile. Hearing this made your stomach tingle - it made the clasp of his hands around yours feel warmer. “You are so utterly brilliant. And you’re funny, and you’re the only girl I know who actually laughs at the stupid pranks I pull. I absolutely love spending time with you. I genuinely can’t imagine my life without you. So much so, that-”

“Hello, sweet thing.”

Fred’s words were disrupted by a deep voice, someone behind you who grumbled out these words and then let out a low whistle.

It took you a moment to realise that it was even directed at you. But when Fred’s face switched from that sweet smile to a harsh glare - a look that was rare for him, you followed his intense gaze over your shoulder to see what he was looking at.

It was a group of three men, much older than you, greasy-haired, wearing dark cloaks - staring at you like a pack of coyotes would stare at a hunk of fresh meat. Their gaze immediately made you feel naked, and though you were blazen hot, between the Fire Whiskey coursing through your system and the heat of the fireplace licking at you nearby, you had the urge to grab your jumper and pull it on over your head simply so that they would stop looking.

“Now what is a pretty thing like you doing in this dirty old pub?” One of the men asked, his voice feeling filthy in your ears and causing your spine to curl with disgust and something that you would hesitate to admit was fear. “Surely you must be lost, sweet thing. Need someone to show you the way home, then?”

You quickly jumped out of your chair and moved around the table to Fred’s side, where he had risen and easily swept you into his side with an arm around your shoulders. In a moment, you felt safer under his protective touch as he continued to glare at the men.

“Bugger off, then!” Fred ordered sharply.

“Oh, ‘bugger off’,” One of the others mocked Fred’s words in a whiny tone - clearly they didn’t take him seriously because he was obviously younger, even if he was quite tall for his age.

“What are you, her little boyfriend?” Another one of them joked.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am.” Fred stated confidently, tossing in the obvious lie. “And I can tell you that brushing your teeth is one of the first requirements to getting a woman of this calibre,”

You resisted the urge to laugh at how his statement made their faces immediately meek and embarrassed.

“Well, if she wants a real man, that’s up to her to decide.” The man said gruffly. “Innit, princess?”

When he tossed out the nickname, you felt bile curl in your stomach, and it took you only a second to move when Fred uttered his next words to you.

“Grab your coat. We’re leaving.”

You scrambled around the table to get your jumper, mittens, hat, scarf, and your coat. As you were reaching across to one of the chairs to grab the last item, one of the men actually had the audacity to grab your wrist, stopping you from pulling back with the item in hand.

“If the girl wants to stay and have fun, that’s her choice.” He grumbled.

You wanted to tout that no, your idea of fun wasn’t hanging around men like this, but your voice was shrunken down into your throat with fear.

His grip around you was stiff and painful, and you immediately looked to Fred - whose jaw was set with a seething anger that you had only seen in him once before (when Malfoy had dared to insult Ginny right in front of him). He reached one hand into his pocket and leaned on the table with the other hand.

The man still didn’t let go of you, and you wondered if Fred’s hand was sitting on his wand in his pocket.

“Listen, bud, I don’t speak troll, so I’ll say this very slowly for you,” Fred announced, his voice dark with anger. “Let. Her. Go.”

The man immediately became outraged at being called a troll, and he moved his hand off your wrist, curling it into a hefty fist that he moved to swing at Fred’s head.

Fred ducked out of the way seamlessly, and you pulled your coat into the pile of clothes at your chest as Fred’s hand came out of his pocket with a lump of something black that looked almost like ordinary coal. He tossed it down to the floor and it exploded into a cloud of pure, thick darkness. Before you could truly comprehend what was going on, Fred’s comforting arm was around your shoulders, guiding you back out the back door of the pub.

You were thankful to be surrounded by cool air, the anxiety unwinding around you as Fred guided you away from the scene.

“Freddie, that was amazing!” You gasped, more than happy to praise him for saving you from those creeps.

You trudged along through the snow, incredibly chilly now that the wind kissed your bare arms and you held your jumper and your jacket rather than wearing them. But you were distracted from that feeling as you stared at the pub. You heard muffled coughs and voices loudly complaining, and as you circled around to the front, you saw the dark smoke overtaking any light that was inside, so much so that it began to pour out from the chimney and leak out of the cracks around the front door.

“What was that?” You had to ask, looking on in pure curiosity of the concoction that he had released into the pub.

“...new product George and I have been working on,” Fred admitted, his voice quivering with nerves slightly as he heard the coughs and sputters from inside. “Should probably adjust the size of the pellets, though. That was a bit… much.”

“Everything about you is ‘much’, Fred.” You said, still feeling that beautiful drunken warmth. It morphed into pure admiration toward him that you could hardly hold back. “That’s what makes you great.”

Fred chuckled at this.

He helped you get dressed back in your warm clothes, and the two of you walked back to the castle through that secret tunnel once again. He never quite built up the courage to get back to that topic he had so badly wanted to discuss - the entire reason he had taken you to Hogsmeade in the first place. But he basked in the simple joys of the night as the two of you talked in the Gryffindor common room and eventually, you fell asleep cuddled up to his chest while lounging on a couch in front of the fire.

…

Now, all these years later, curled up on the couch with him much like you had been that night - you finally realised what he had been trying to say.

“Oh my god.” You gasped quietly, opening your eyes and sitting stark upright.

Fred was surprised by this, seeing as he thought that you were starting to fall asleep on his chest. He had been sitting there quietly, mentally debating if he should levitate you to bed or risk the neck cramps of sleeping upright on the couch himself.

“What?” He asked quietly, feeling entirely clueless.

“Oh. My. God!” You screamed, jumping off the couch and pointing an accusatory finger at him.

“What? What?!” He asked, the word growing in volume and sense of alarm in his mouth the longer you went without telling him what was wrong.

“That day - that day-” You were struggling to gather your thoughts into words, a drunken slur still slightly evident on your tongue. Though the anxiety and panic that had suddenly set in had woken up quite a few of your senses.

“What? What day?” Fred parroted back, even more confused.

“That day.” You repeated, pressing emphasis on the word. “That time, back in sixth year, when we snuck out to Hogsmeade.”

A look of dawning came across Fred’s features, and he became more sullen than you had ever seen him. It was something that punched you sharply in the chest as the realisation hit you even harder now.

You had been so stupid. How could you not have known it back then?

“You… you were gonna confess your feelings to me.” You said quietly, almost afraid to speak the words aloud.

Perhaps he could have saved himself some pain if he lied, but he saw no good sense in denying it.

“Yes.” He said quietly, unshed tears scraping the inside of his throat.

“What-?” Now it was your turn to gape with confusion. “Was that the only time? Why then?”

“That certainly was not the only bloody time.” Fred chuckled, the laughter sounding heavy and dark in his throat rather than joyous and light as it usually did coming from him. “I tried about a million other times before then - at the Quidditch World Cup, before we ran into your cousins who just so desperately needed your attention. On the train that year, before Katie burst in and stole you away to chat on about what a great summer you had. I thought perhaps you’d get the bloody point when I asked you to be my date to the Yule Ball.”

It felt as though an icy shard was shoved right through your heart.

You had been so stupid.

“I - I thought you asked me to go as friends.” You told him, entirely honest about your viewpoint.

“Well that just makes me feel like the biggest arse in existence.” Fred shrugged.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” You barked out, feeling an intense frustration rush over you.

You felt indignant, annoyed. You felt like something had been stolen from you - information, time that you should have spent with Fred as your boyfriend rather than the time you had spent simply wishing he was.

Fred scoffed at this, clearly hurt.

“Well, Y/N, at a certain point, I lost my balls!” He shouted back. That was a harsh thing to imagine - Fred Weasley losing the courage to take a risk. “I thought that after all the damn interruptions, the universe just didn’t want you to know that I’m hopeless bleedin’ in love with you.”

Your throat clenched up when he said it in the present tense - said like he still had those feelings for you. You wanted so badly to say it back, but your voice was caught in your throat for a harsh moment. It caused a pitiable silence over the room that made him rush to continue.

“Honestly, I thought - I thought it might be different after you left.”

He said quietly, his voice breaking around the words slightly.

“I thought that not seeing you every day… that I might be able to forget how I felt. But it only got worse. I thought about you every single day, and I missed you so badly. And now that you’re standing here in front of me - now, you’re not just some girl I fancied in school, now… you have turned into this magnificent woman that I love. And it would be my biggest regret if you didn’t know that.”

Fred confessed, his words so passionate that it caused tingles down your spine, and goosebumps across your arms.

“But you’re probably so drunk that you won’t remember this in the morning, and there’s probably some French arsehole named Pierre waiting for you-”

“There’s no one else.” You quickly blurted out, suddenly finding your voice.

Your body finally caught up to your mind, bursting with the urge for him to know this.

“It’s always been you, Fred Weasley.” You announced, your words slicing through the air like a diamond cutting through glass.

His eyes lit up and this, and he stared at you with the slightest bit of hope dancing across his features as he waited, holding his breath for you to possibly confirm the thing he had been dreaming about for years.

“And I certainly won’t forget this. No booze or potion - nothing could make me forget you saying the words I have always wanted to hear.”

You reached out and took a tight grip on the front of his shirt, pulling him toward you with force - you slammed your lips into his, finally doing the thing you had been dreaming of since you were a teenager. He let out a moan as you kissed him with as much intense passion as he had put into his words. Right as his tongue snaked toward your lips, you pulled back for a breath, and simply for good measure:

“I love you, Fred.” You breathed out.

“Oh, thank Merlin.”

#sundrop writes #harry potter #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter fandom #fred weasley x reader #fred weasley #fred weasly x reader #fred weasely x y/n #fred wealsey fic

269 notes · View notes

oddeyecir-cle · 5 months

Text

✶ ˖ ࣪ 📹 . ぅ

lee donghyuck enemies to lovers fic ideas (all fics are haechan × reader)

haechan who is your rival coworker + secretly deadpool

for the sake of this story, lets assume deadpool does hide his identity. he works at a tech company and is constantly beefing with his coworker that he's lowkey attracted to. and the plot could maybe be something like you accidentally finding out his identity and then using that information to slightly/ kind of/ in a non-toxic way to blackmail him. eg: making him run errands for you, asking to tag along on his quests as deadpool. then the pair gets closer through all the time they spend together etc etc.

✶ note : hyuck HAS to be the sassiest, funniest, most sarcastic, cocky human being ever. also include some spidermark maybe

haechan as the prince of the neighbouring kingdom

historical au. very basic ik but hear me out. your kingdom's glory and power is gradually draining and it's threatened by multiple rivaling kingdoms. that is when your mother, the queen, tells you there is no choice but to turn to hyuck's kingdom for help. you hate the idea but you know everyone's counting on you so you go through with it anyways. (this is historical so there could be a very cool scene of the reader riding on a horse in battle armour to neighbouring kingdom's palace themself but whatever). they're good, kind people so they agree to help you. they send over a part of their military along with some weapons and of course haechan himself, their most prized possession who, like you, is skilled with a sword and is a wise leader. there's lots of quarrels between the both of you when it comes to the topic of which one has more power over the other and about who should be leading the troops. but you soon put your animosity aside when you realize that you have to work as a team to win. (insert dramatic battle sequence with swords and arrows flying around. at one point, you and haechan lock eyes and suddenly he drops to the ground. the world starts to blur around you when you realize he's been stabbed in his back. you frantically rush to his aid but he falls limp in your arms. its now upto the writer to kill him there itself and end the story. very angsty, i love. or they could also save him somehow and give main characters the happy ending they deserve).

✶ note : sloooooowwwww buuuurn. i mean this should be a long ass series with 7k+ words per chapter. should be so heavy on the angst and the hate that it makes you wonder if they do actually end up loving each other in the end. please include sword fighting scenes with sexual tension i beg you. (im big on bollywood, can u tell).

haechan as a stranger/ tour guide you meet on a family trip

you've just gotten out of a 3 year long relationship after your boyfriend cheated on you with your best friend. things get worse when your family, unaware of your breakup, forces you on a 2 week trip to *insert cute, small country" . here you meet the annoying, sarcastic, a-little-too-happy-for-his-own-good donghyuck. he is with the group your family is touring with (him being the tour guide is a pretty cute plot too but it could kind of complicate things later) and instantly wins everyone over with his charm, except you of course. in classic hyuck fashion, he tries to keep getting your attention and eventually succeeds. his company helps ease the pain of the heartbreak he didn't even know about. its bittersweet when it's time to part ways. you realise after you come back to your college dorm that you never exchanged phone numbers and you fail to find him on social media as well. but fate has strange ways of bringing people together. which is why you cant stop smiling when crash into a certain someone during a regular grocery run.

✶ note : more on the fluff and less on the angst for this one. and maybe a dash of slice of life as well.

haechan as captain of the football team.

there is no actual plot for this other than the fact that you're a cheerleader and also his academic rival (there is no trope i love more than this). my vision for this is very 2000s romcom. ik this isn't a lot to work with but there could be some sub trope like fake dating mostly.

✶ note: nothing much just make it cute

+i have a few more ideas, will probably make a part 2

++if in the future, by some miracle, people do find these interesting enough to use, please dont forget to credit me!!

156 notes · View notes

displ3azant · 8 days

Text

(Before cut is In-Character.)

Hiii! Helloooo!

Hello!!!!!! Hehe, thiz iz actually super weird trying to write an intro-- give me a minute.

So, HIII!!!!!!! I'm Unpleasant! That'z not a joke, that iz literally my name. There'z no "deep reason" behind it, it iz literally just what people refer to me az. But, if that'z too weird, I do also go by Unplez or Plez for short.

Uh, pronounz? I don't really care, actually. I don't have a set gender, I've never really met a gradient who doez. That being said, since I started hanging with Infected I have been called he and she specifically a lot... so if it'z easiest for you, just roll with the crowd.

Right, so... the blog. Thatz thiz blog, haha! Well, the easy answer iz I waz super bored, Infected can suck a huge ####, and I like talking about myself! But... I kind of suck at talking in general, so I guess I'll type and answer questionz about myself.

BUT KNOW MY BOUNDARIEZ BEFORE YOU ASK QUESTIONZ! 👇👇👇

(Below cut is Out-Of-Character.)

To those who know me: Good to see you're still stickin' with me! I promise I will make an effort to make this blog much less of a dumpster fire like the last one.

And to those who are only now coming across this blog: Hello! My name is Hex. You don't have to call me "Mod Hex", or anything, just "Hex" will do. I'm the only guy running this thing here. I'll talk more about myself soon, because oversharing is what I do best.

Blog-Context

So, if it wasn't obvious enough from the intro, this is an ask/rp blog for the Unpleasant Gradient from Regretevator, but specifically in the context of the plez-centric au I have created for him. Or, well, the "AU" in question is actually just some freaky amalgamation of all my fucked up headcanons, which means...

I AM NO LONGER DOING DIRECT BLOG ASSOCIATIONS! Really sorry about that, I love my friends with all my heart but if I wanna keep consistency, I'm gonna have to "write the story" on my own. However, I do want to give full credit to my friends @sk8tr1101 and @party-noob for some major concepts involving Unpleasant, especially Audrey who already has some awesome ideas herself. Go check them both out!

MAIN TAGS:

#unpl3zansw3rz - Asks

#unpl3zrambl3z - Non-ask related posts/reblogs

#unpl3zlor3 - Plot points and similar

#ooc - Out-of-character post

OTHER TAGS (to be updated):

(nothing yet, hehe)

Blog-Owner

So hiiii, I'm Hex. If I can be bothered, out-of-character posts will either have the #ooc tag, be in purple text, or be signed off with my name. I'd prefer if you refer to me using he/it pronouns, thnx!

I'd also like you all to keep in mind I am 17 years old, therefore a minor, and even if I wasn't 17 I do not appreciate NSFW/Explicit jokes towards me, ESPECIALLY if you don't know me. It's one thing when you're my very close friends or my partner, it's another thing when you are a stranger on the internet asking me things I should not have to answer.

My other accounts are: @hexexists - my main blog, if you receive notifications from this account, please know it is just me! @hexational - my regretevator blog @geometricgiovanni - a Jeremy ask/rp blog set in the same universe as this one! Please note, however, that in the context of this blog, Unpleasant is not aware of the blog nor would he like to be.

Ask/RP-Boundaries

Let's start off by reiterating that I AM NOT OKAY WITH NSFW/EXPLICIT ASKS IN ANY CAPACITY! Sick of getting them, they're repetitive and annoying. Asking safe-for-work questions involving Unpleasant's anatomy is one thing, but I am not responding to ANYTHING involving genetalia.

ALSO! I am very unlikely to respond to things that is either hard to make a unique drawing for or don't progress the story (unlocking "lore" and such). I'm watching your ass, Mango, I know what you like to do (/lh). Joke asks are still okay, you don't *have* to progress story, but please keep in mind my "criteria" for answering asks when sending them. A clean inbox gives me a clear mind. I do not like notifications.

Shipping content: Shipping content is okay, I guess. Not exactly the direction I want to take things, though some storylines will involved implied ships. Don't push anything that isn't hinted at, and under no circumstances encourage proshipping or any kind of illegal pairing. If a ship is hinted toward that you personally do not like, then just block me and move on with your day.

Roleplaying: While I'd prefer to not be in direct contact with other rp blogs, I am totally cool with roleplaying side stories and stuff, interactions and such! Please keep in mind though, Unpleasant in this is not a very social person, so you're probably not going to get the reaction you want.

Also! I think OCs are super cool and am happy to respond/interact with them as well! However,

PLEASE DON'T SEND YOUR GRADIENT OCS TO THIS ACCOUNT IF YOU WANT ME TO DRAW THEM! Please instead send them to @hexational! A lot of people were sending me their Gradient ocs to the previous Unpleasant account, and as much as I love seeing Gradient ocs and Gradient sonas, I'd love to be able to draw them, and if you are just asking an opinion on them and not an in-character ask or a genuine question involving other gradients I'd much prefer you send them to the account previously tagged!

That's pretty much all I can think of! Sorry for the long post, I just have a lot to say hehe

Lots of love, - Hex

#unpl3zansw3rz #unpl3zrambl3z #ic #ooc #ask blog #regretevator unpleasant #regretevator ask blog #regretevator infected #unpleasant gradient

126 notes · View notes

kermyywhat · 7 months

Text

For those interested in AU with Siren Wilbur and Captain Quackity from the lower post

this AU has quite a rich lore and plot, it is mainly based on psychology and is quite difficult to understand, there are a lot of characters and they all went through a lot of suffering. If I talk about EVERYONE then it would take a VERY long time, but I can talk about the main characters: Techno, Tommy, Wilbur, Sally, Puffy, Quackity.

Everything begins with the kingdom of mermaids and sirens in the Black Sea.

A quick explanation about mermaids and sirens.

Mermaids have the tails of river and lake fish, such as salmon, herring, etc. That is, almost everyone, except predators.

Of course, there are always some cases-exceptions, so sometimes there are mermaids with the tails of predators. Also with sirens, sometimes you can meet a siren with a tail, for example, a goldfish (like Tommy).

Mermaids themselves are smaller than sirens, also dangerous, but mostly weaker.

Sirens are always predators, such as sharks, killer whales, piranhas, etc. (Although piranhas live in fresh water, they still belong to sirens that live in the sea). Sirens can use their voice in hypnosis, have very sharp claws and teeth, they are the strongest creatures in the black sea, so there is racism in the kingdom, where sirens humiliate mermaids.

An interesting point: pairs of sirens and mermaids.

Both sirens and mermaids are very jealous and loyal. They can only have one partner for life (or polyamory - 2 partners for life). That is, when a pair of sirens/mermaids dies, the other dies as well. The only way for one of the partners to survive is to have a child.

I can tell more about lore in other answers and posts, because there is a lot, a lot of information (after all, AU is exists more than a year, I came up with a lot lol)

Now plot & lore.

Technoblade is the eldest son, he is a siren with a white shark tail, and despite the fact that he is older and should be the heir to the crown, he joined the ranks of the knights of the kingdom.

Wilbur is the middle son, has a killer whale tail, he became the heir to the crown, so he has a lot of responsibility and interest in his every action. By himself, Wilbur is quite calm and wise, tries to be fair, but sometimes he breaks down and runs wild.

Tommy, the youngest and last son, he is pretty childish and in refers to things from a positive point of view. Wilbur doesn't always share this, and is more inclined to listen to the advice of Techno and their father Phil.

Tommy and Wilbur are often called the sun and the moon in the kingdom.

Sally is a river mermaid with a salmon tail. She, like other mermaids, unfortunately succumbed to humiliation from sirens and even other "privileged" mermaids. In the course of the story, she became Wilbur's girlfriend, which was greatly disliked by the other mermaids and sirens of the kingdom and eventually killed Sally, but Wilbur was able to survive because he had a child, Fundy/Tallulah, by Sally at the time. (I used to think that they would have a son Fundy, but now I think it would be better if it were Tallulah, because then Fundy would be a human child, and Tallulah would be a siren). But even though Wilbur managed to survive, he began to slowly lose his mind and go wild, due to which Phil had to put Wilbur in the kingdom's prison for a while.

Puffy. She plays quite a role in this story because she is a loyal knight of the kingdom and the best friend of the king and his sons. She is quite wise and compassionate, Puffy plays the role of a psychologist in this story. She is a siren, but I haven't decided what kind of fish her tail will be XD

captain Quackity. A cruel and influential man, he has been hunting sirens and mermaids for a long time. He is not a pirate, he is a hunter.

Pirates and hunters are a little different: pirates do not affect the inhabitants of the seas, they attack other ships, and hunters attack both the inhabitants of the seas and other ships.

after capturing Wilbur, the captain will treat him more gently than the other sirens and mermaids, because this is the first time a blue-blooded person has been on his ship. Despite this, he will still be quite cold towards Wilbur, and will try all kinds of methods to find out as much secret information as possible.

By the way, at the moment when Wilbur is on the hunter ship, Stockholm syndrome will happen and Wilbur will start to think that he loves the captain :(

so now there will be a spoiler for the ending:

The ship will be caught in a severe storm, sirens will attack their ship, killing many of the crew and tearing the ship apart. Quackity will drown when he tries to save himself and others, he will be stuck in the closed cabin. Wilbur will look for the captain and then he will find him, but it will be too late.

Wilbur will drag Quackity's body to the shore, there will be a difficult scene with Wilbur tearing his own body to pieces in front of Tommy, who will be hiding behind a rock nearby.

Tommy becomes the new heir to the throne.

The kingdom despises Tommy and Phil for his choice. The kingdom is in chaos, Tommy will have to make up for all his wrongdoings and prove that he is a good king.

Here's the story in a VERY short summary. I wanted to do it in the form of a fanfic, but I understand that I will not be able to, because it's too difficult mentally, I still need to study psychology.

I hope you like the idea if you're still here XD

Also, English isn't my native language, I apologize for possible mistakes in the text.

I hope I haven't exceeded any word limits here...

here is another sketch and art of this AU, which I drew in 2022:

lol I noticed that Quackity is on the right side in each illustration.

TY FOR READING ALL THIS HAHA...

#tnt duo sirens au #tntduo #siren wilbur #siren au #Technoblade #tommyinnit #captain quackity #Tallulah as a siren daughter #royal SBI #Wilbur Tommy and Techno as brothers #sketch #digital sketch #didital art #tntduo fanart

195 notes · View notes

aviivix · 10 months

Photo

Soooo... I’ve been dead for a while and that’s because I’ve been fixated entirely on Splatoon 3 basically since it launched and all this time I’ve been working on an AU/HC/Fanfic/Something Like That called Culture Shock.

Given this has been something I’ve been working on for a LONG time, and given it’s entirely tied to Octarians, I figure I might as well make a big post about it before Side Order totally invalidates it! (Though I’ll keep working on this as an AU even if I don’t like how it interacts with Side Order.)

Details and more art under the break! (Though the quality will vary greatly as, again, I’ve been doing stuff with this since Splatoon 3 came out.) This is an extremely long story concept and if you read the whole thing I officially owe you my soul

There's a LOT to this (as there is with any hyperfixation concept like this) but I'll try to keep it somewhat light on details. Of course, it’s subject to change, and the exact plot progression is still kind of in the air. A big part is whether the climax of Act II should actually happen at the end of Act I... But here’s what I’ve developed so far.

The Story

Prologue

Culture Shock is designed as a DLC story mode set a year after the end of Splatoon 3's main story. The Squid Sisters have disappeared at some point in that time (a familiar situation), and ol' Cuttlefish has called in all of the agents-- plus Pearl and Marina-- to join forces against the Octarians that are undoubtedly behind it. Rather than going into stages alone, the levels are designed for you to do them with CPU teammates.

It's pretty quickly made certain that Octarians were involved, and thus the group is airlifted by Off the Hook into Octo Valley to find Callie and Marie. Upon landing, the player is ambushed by a group of Octolings -- that is, until one member in the backline pulls down her mask and excitedly calls out. It’s Callie? And though she doesn’t immediately unmask, Marie is definitely next to her.

After some confusion and accusations from both sides, the Squid Sisters assure the Squidbeak Splatoon that they’re not brainwashed, and offer to explain everything. Though Marie warns that it’s a long story, so the group settle down by ol’ Cuttlefish’s shack for a massive flashback played from the perspective of the Squid Sisters.

(Gameplay-wise, this whole setup is to allow the player to interrupt the Squid Sisters’ sequence at any time, and then pick up where they left off. It being a flashback also means it’s easy to replay missions or go for 100% by just asking Callie to repeat something.)

Funny title card, and the real story officially starts. I’m gonna skip through things a lot more, since at this pace it would take WAY too long to summarize every little scene and there are a lot of things not really settled on. I’ll be keeping detail for the introduction, as well as some key scenes, but for any less important/in-between type stuff, I’ll be summarizing what happens. Even doing this it will be extremely long, though Act I is far bigger than Acts II and III because it’s primarily setting up the world and motivations.

Act I

Introductory cutscene, in which the Squid Sisters find themselves stuck in purple ink, locked in an Octarian vault. The Octarians who squidnapped them keep their distance, though one particular Octoling does try to chat (to the annoyance of the others).

She claims that the Octarians will let them go in time, and that they won’t be hurt - though the Squid Sisters are suspicious at best. And, after noticing their discomfort in the Octarian ink, she offers them her Octoshot to paint the ground their own color. As the Octoling goes back to standing guard, Callie inks the floor and the two slump over, one of them idly singing the Calamari Inkantation under her breath.

Fade to when the Octoling swaps guard duty with another Octoling, who leans up against the wall and, after the first Octoling leaves, promptly falls asleep. Callie realizes she still has the Octoshot from before, and suggests slipping through the keyhole in squid form. With help from Marie, she’s able to get out on her own, and sets out to find the key to the vault. (This serves as a tutorial for stealth missions - though the guard will not wake up even if you fail.)

After freeing Marie, the two of them head towards the door, whispering about how crazy it was that the guard slept through all of that. The guard then dully tells them that he wasn’t asleep. The Squid Sisters prepare for a fight, but the guard barely has his eyes open and has not moved. After some back and forth with Callie, this Wendy’s employee of an Octoling just assures them that if he could beat them, it wouldn’t have even gotten to this point, and tells them to do whatever they want - just warning them that the other Octarians wouldn’t be so lenient.

An Octoling watches them come out, but just looks around frantically before running up to meet them. Marie declares that they’re breaking out, and prepares for a fight... but the Octoling starts freaking out instead, first worrying that they’ll get hurt trying to escape, and then worrying about what the rest of the Octarians are going to do with the Squid Sisters gone.

Before either Inkling can interject, a much more stern Octoling calls out while angrily marching up to the group. Through this conversation the Squid Sisters learn that the worried Octoling is named Aris, the tired Octoling is named Oregil, and this new more angry Octoling is named Cy. What originally seemed to be a jailbreak quickly turns into some (rather silly) negotiations with Cy, the Squid Sisters trying to convince her that Aris didn’t do anything wrong, and that Oregil totally did all he could to stop them.

Though Cy clearly doesn’t buy it, she lets it go, returning Aris’s Octoshot but also warning the Squid Sisters that their squadron’s mission is of utmost importance, and if the rest of them won’t do their jobs properly, she will. That said, the two of them just broke out of the only vault they had. So now, the Squid Sisters have to just stay in camp under Cy’s supervision.

With no more weapon to brandish and a clearly blown cover, the two of them kind of have no choice but to agree. Though Marie alludes to how dysfunctional this squad appears to be, and how easy it will probably be to escape.

Though before the conversation ends, Aris asks if “Tetra” will be okay with this. There’s a sort of tension in the air immediately upon mention of the name, immediately pierced by an intimidating voice asking what was going on. This was an Elite Octoling, apparently Tetra. After a recap from Cy, Tetra turns to the surrounded Squid Sisters, and tells them in no uncertain terms to always remember that they are prisoners - they are not one of them.

From here on out, the rest of Act I is a sort of slow burn. At the start, it’s purely the Squid Sisters looking for ways to escape. But as time goes on, they learn more about these Octarians by sort of living their life, and through learning about the octo squad themselves.

Aris is kind, possibly to a fault. While she’s committed to the squadron and their goals, she’s also the most both-sides-ist of the bunch. She wants to think that everyone is trying their best, and does everything she can to avoid conflict, but as a result she doesn’t speak up as much when the Squid Sisters make faulty assumptions about them, and she uninentionally hinders their growth at the start by letting them hide behind her leniency. Over the course of Act I, she eventually has to realize she can’t just hold everyone’s opinion equally - the Squid Sisters are making judgements off of bad information, and she realizes that her enabling that is making it harder for everyone.

Cy is the opposite. Cy is deeply passionate about their situation, and takes any opportunity to show the Squid Sisters what they get wrong. She especially butts heads with Marie, having little patience for the various non-solutions to their problems, or for the ignorance about Octarian culture. She’s extremely well connected among Octarians, even having worked with Octavio himself, although she doesn’t seem thrilled about it. Thus, despite coming across as very headstrong and aggressive, she also is the source of a lot of information about Octarian life.

Oregil is a self-proclaimed realist - in actuality, a doomer. He doesn’t say much, but what he does say is not particularly hopeful. When put in charge of something, he doesn’t tend to have a lot of energy behind it, as he’s become convinced that, in the end, Octarians cannot be saved. That said, it would be wrong to call him fully complacent. He still sticks with the team, even if he doesn’t have much energy to contribute, and would rather go down with his sinking ship than abandon his friends and family. Though he always seems to be napping on the job, he never actually does, though not for lack of trying. He has insomnia, and it’s rare to find him asleep at all even when laying in bed.

The Elite Octoling Tetra rarely shows herself. The only things the Squid Sisters have seen of her is that she’s intimidating, and not to be reckoned with. But the way the others talk about her and interact with her betray a different story. Oregil is flippant about her commands and doesn’t actually give anything his all. Cy goes along with Tetra’s commands, but seemingly only due to her own reasons aligning with Tetra’s rather than out of any respect for her authority. Aris obeys, but the way she acts and talks about it makes it almost feel like she’s obeying out of pity.

Lastly, there is also a fifth mysterious Octoling that the Squid Sisters will occasionally grab a passing glimpse of. They don’t know who this Octoling is, and whenever she’s mentioned, the others assure them that “she’s nobody”.

As the act goes on, Callie especially pries deeply into the hows and whys of a lot of Octo stuff. She had been in Octarian territory before in Splatoon 2, sure, but she was being brainwashed by DJ Octavio himself and held up as a superstar. This time, she was fully aware of herself, and living the life of the average Octoling soldier in the time between Octavio’s Zapfish heists.

The two of them wonder why the sun hasn’t come up, and learn that without the Great Zapfish, the kettle’s “sun” cannot shine. It’s a land of eternal night. The Octolings seem to live on a diet of mostly power eggs and salmon, which they learn is because without light, most crops don’t grow. Many little things like this illustrating just how resource-starved this nation is.

There are a lot of assumptions made and corrected. A lot of complaints put into perspective when the things they find uncomfortable or annoying are things these Octarians have had to deal with every day. But one of the biggest things is their ideas of resolution. An early question being, “Why don’t you just leave? Inkopolis is a stone’s throw away.”

There are a lot of answers that are given to this, but to some effect, they all boil down to “culture”. Inkopolis isn’t the same as Octaria. It has different people, different history, different fashion, different food, different expectations... it’s just a totally different place.

Oregil’s lived in Octarian society his whole life - it’s his home. Cy is an artist, she makes distinctly Octarian music and sees firsthand how it connects those in Octarian communities. Aris knows Octolings are “accepted”, but only insofaras they appeal to Inkling expectations. It’s hard to express their culture without being seen as weird or other. Even little things like how they look - Octolings in Inkopolis tending to make their hair slimmer, straighter, adding patterns and minimizing the amount of visible suckers. Plus, how many non-Octoling Octarians do you see in Inkopolis and beyond? Maybe an Octoling can fit in, but what about an Octotrooper?

The most impactful realization for the Squid Sisters as well, is just how few Octarians are even there anymore. Between the exodus in Octo Valley, the bigger exodus in Octo Canyon, the horrors of Octo Expansion, and just recently the similar horrors of Alterna... all stacked on top of the nation itself being less and less hospitable year by year? Since the events of Splatoon 1, so many Octarians have been lost. Within the squad they’re in, pictures and murmurings from the rest of them tell the stories of at least four other Octolings that were previously in their squadron.

So then the other aspect of the Squid Sisters’ arc is... if they don’t think Octarians should be stealing the Great Zapfish or dealing with Salmonids or anything like that... what should they be doing?

Because so far, nothing has worked for them. Negotiations fail, because Inklings don’t know enough about Octarian society to understand why they need so much support. They don’t know enough about the history of Inklings and Octolings to realize that Inkadia is largely the reason they’re suffering. The average Inkling doesn’t know enough to realize there’s a problem, and the average Octarian doesn’t have a loud enough voice.

All this compounded onto the fact that now, the only Octolings Inkadia sees are the ones who decided that Octarians were oppressing themselves, to the point where they abandoned everything they knew to live in the nation that started this in the first place.

Though, it’s hard to blame them when life in Octaria is practically nonexistent. Losing so many people, living in such horrible conditions, led by an egomaniac whose awareness of his people is performative at best... but most Octolings can’t let that take away from who they are as a people. They don’t let it tear their communities apart, or sever the bonds they have with people. Their lived experiences show them that it’s worth fighting for. Well... except in one scenario we’ll get into later.

The final important thing that comes to light over this period... This whole time Octavio has barely come up, because he doesn’t even know the Squid Sisters are there. The squadron are a real squadron in the Octarian army, but this whole mysterious operation involving the Squid Sisters is entirely outside Octavio’s control. In fact, it becomes apparent that the Octarians at least in this squadron or associated with this squadron, hate Octavio and everything he’s been doing to their society as a whole.

They’ve always seen the Zapfish heists as a horrible, horrible ego trip. An extremely hollow, expensive move that only plants targets on the backs of Octarians. But even in feeling that way, Aris and Oregil both admit that there isn’t much else offering them hope. If not for Octavio stealing the Zapfish for those couple days of “sun”light, what would they be doing? Though Cy has a much more strong opinion there, asserting that doing nothing would have put those resources into survival rather than gambling it all on a fool’s errand.

Needless to say, the Squid Sisters get a bit wrapped up in this stuff. Talking to these Octolings, learning about their life, living it, offering to help (gameplay sections), and all around having a lot of beliefs challenged. It’s a lot of stuff that they are only able to wrap their mind around from actually knowing what it’s like to live through it, without the option to just leave when it gets too rough.

While at the beginning they were just looking for an opening to escape, by the halfway point they aren’t even really being watched anymore, let alone trying to break out. Tetra may call them prisoners, but by that point they’ve had so many opportunities to just walk away. The only thing keeping them there is the fact that if they leave, what will happen? And can they confidently say that it’s the Octarians’ fault for it happening?

By the end, their primary objective is to find something they can do to actually give them a shot. And for that... they’ll need more than just the two of them. The idea of bringing in the Squidbeak Splatoon is immediately dismissed as insane by Cy - especially the idea of bringing in THE Agent 3. But after a little while, with Oregil indifferent as always and Aris on board, she comes around, though warning that Tetra will not like it, and they could be accidentally luring Agent 3 into a death trap. But it’s a risk they decide to let the Captain decide for themself.

Act II

Acts II and III are far less elaborate, because this is after all the characters have been established, and the world has been largely explored.

Act II kicks off with there being a lot of reactions. (As a note, the Octolings with the Squid Sisters at the present time are Oregil, Aris, and Cy. In their own ways, they’re uncomfortable in the presence of Captain 3. Cy and Oregil also seem to have an attitude with how they look at Marina.) A lot of disbelief, but also, to some degree, understanding. Naturally, Captain 3 is skeptical, taking a moment to contemplate what they’re being asked to do.

But around this time, Marina cuts in, asserting that regardless of the cause, Octarian society is inherently a problem. That’s why she left. She accuses the squadron of perpetuating DJ Octavio’s oppressive rule, and that they could have their cake and eat it too just by moving to Inkopolis.

The group go back and forth, with escalating emotions and accusations, until Pearl declares that, whatever they’re plotting, Off the Hook and the Squidbeak Splatoon will put a stop to it. Silence falls over the group, until Marie retaliates saying that she doesn’t think she can in good conscience fight against people who are only trying to exist.

The other agents start taking the Octarians’ side, even Agent 8 who, despite hesitating given their trust in Off the Hook, still resonates too strongly with the plight of the Octarians to turn their back on them fully. Pearl is taken aback, but after a glance at a very betrayed Marina, declares the Squidbeak Splatoon their enemy too, Marina locking eyes with Agent 8 before Off the Hook take their leave.

Cy remarks that it’s a shame, but she understands exactly why Marina is acting this way. Callie asks why, but Cy just assures her that Marina isn’t stupid, so if everything goes right, she’ll come around. Aris tells the player where the kettle’s entrance is, and at their leisure, they can join the Octarians there.

Upon entering the kettle as the player Cy assumes you know how things work, and there are a few filler travel stages to break the story up a little, before eventually the group return to see Tetra emerge for the first time, locking eyes with Captain 3, removing her goggles for the first time, and immediately going on the attack. Captain 3 drops their weapon and holds up their hands, but Tetra still rushes them down, holding both Dark Tetra Dualies up to their face.

After a long moment of them staring each other down, Tetra narrows her eyes, throws her arms down in a burst of anger, and leaves without saying anything else. After a few sighs of relief across the group, the tone lightens up, and Cy guesses that Tetra won’t be bothering them - which is a relief.

The bulk of Act II itself is actually fairly underdeveloped story-wise and is a lot more gameplay focused. It reinforces a lot of the character stuff from Act I, but a big ongoing theme is repeatedly clashing with Off the Hook in various places, and getting more glimpses of the strange fifth Octoling and getting more hints as to what it really is that the squadron is planning, and why they’ve kept it hidden.

While their convictions are still the same, there is a growing level of uncertainty among the group as they feel less okay with being kept in the dark. Eventually, the Squid Sisters, Cap 3, and Agent 8 catch a glimpse of the mystery Octoling leaving, and watch them enter a building off the edge of the camp alongside the other Octolings. The Squid Sisters take the opportunity to snoop around the building, which appears to be a laboratory of some sort.

As the group search deeper within for answers, strange, distorted music can be heard - with oddly familiar vocals. It turns into a full stealth mission, until eventually towards the end you’re spotted and confronted by all four of the squadron members. Tetra warns that they were not supposed to come here, Cy is quiet for once, Aris is quiet as usual, and Oregil... actually looks motivated to stop you.

Of course this is a video game and you win that horrible 4v4, breaking through into the room ahead to find that fifth Octoling in a room full of synthesizers, speakers and computers. She calls for Cy, before turning around and realizing who it actually is.

Marie asks the obvious question, of what the hell this is, and the fifth Octoling who introduces herself as Sock, answers that this is a studio, actually. Well, a lab and a studio. Maybe it should be called a studyo. Weirdly lighthearted for what the group was expecting.

Cy, having respawned and entered behind them, is audibly defeated as she guesses an explanation can’t be avoided.

The studio was used over this entire period to study the effects of a song whose influence is as potent as it is destructive... the Calamari Inkantation. It’s the song that spawned not one, but two mass exoduses. It has an undeniable impact on the cephaling psyche. And, as they know, it’s one of the most important songs to not only the Squid Sisters, but Inkadia as a whole.

The fact that the Inkantation can grab the mind so easily when it isn’t being actively fought, and cause such extremely psychological changes... it was, and still is, one of the biggest problems Octaria has had to deal with. And up until recently, there was little you could do about the Inkantation besides actively study its influence.

What they found, was that it was able to simply cloud out your own lived experience. It would walk you down mental shortcuts, take advantage of the simplicity of certain ideas, and corrupt experiences that contradicted it. Causing Octolings to simply leave their struggling communities, their memories twisted with the idea that they’ve somehow invented their own struggle, corrupted only to enable the Octoling to gravitate towards assimilation without dissonance.

The only Octolings welcome in Inkadia are those who have listened to and internalized the Inkantation... those who, consciously or not, allow it to twist their memories and reshape who they are as people.

It’s a lot. Some Octolings are more resistant than others, and some, like Sock here, have managed to reverse engineer it and escape that way. Sock, an Octoling raised in Inkopolis, raised with the Inkantation, and only later exposed to its flaws - without memories of Octaria to have been twisted by it, she was only able to create new ones, to learn from those who live Octaria every day, rather than being stuck behind a layer of cognitive dissonance.

Of course, other Octolings simply could not leave. The new experiences formed after the Inkantation constantly falsify the old, corrupted memories, and reinforce the reality. But many Octolings, upon being swayed by the Inkantation, simply left and assimilated into Inkling societies.

The idea that the Inkantation is not only not good, but actively a corrupting force, was not something Cy nor any of the squadron were confident the Squid Sisters or anyone else exposed to the Inkantation would be able to process. And without that, how else would they understand the importance of their mission - to reverse the effects of the Inkantation using the strange, distorted song the group have been hearing.

Taking a lot of voice samples from the Squid Sisters was the only way they would be able to relpicate the sound that originally entranced those under the Inkantation’s effects. That’s why they needed to go for broke and resort to squidnapping. The Inkantation being a strong corrupting force meant that it was unpredictable how they would react to learning the truth behind the song, while still at least partially under the effects of it.

And that’s also why Cy said of Marina that she understands why she’s so hostile - Marina is one of the most deeply Inkantationed Octolings.

A lot of the breakdowns of how the Inkantation affects Octolings also resonates extremely strongly with Agent 8 - who, despite how prominent and overpowering the Inkantation was, was still able to hold onto friendly feelings around Octarians, and frustrations around their place in Inkling society. So many weird, dissonant feelings, are starting to make sense. But also, a lot of really awful feelings are starting to surface as well - traumatic feelings, now that they’re starting to think back on their life, and counterbalancing that to the horrors they witnessed in the Deepsea Metro. Horrifying, but... real. So, so, horribly real.

This is their last shot. If they can reverse the Inkantation across Inkopolis... who knows what it would achieve. But the plan, at the very least, is unity and community. Cy admits that in all likelihood, most Octolings will stay in Inkopolis even after the Inkantation is cleared. That’s their home now - they have new friends, new commitments, a new life... and there’s not much of a home to return to in Octaria.

But, maybe, some Octolings come to visit. Maybe some Octolings come back. Maybe those that don’t, can at least use their new life in Inkopolis to raise the voices of those suffering back home, and create a real partnership - no egotistical DJ required. And not just turning Octolings into Inklings with funny hair.

Act III

Well, once this whole reveal happens, there is a lot of internal conflict, but on the face of it, there’s really nothing to argue. There’s the disgust and to a degree personal insult felt at the idea that this song that was so important to them, that became a cornerstone of Inkadia, was harmful. That they the Squid Sisters enacted that harm onto tens of thousands of Octolings.

But it’s all there. Their minds want to deny it, but there’s nothing to stand on.

At the very least, they have a rare opportunity to set things almost entirely right. And so, they take it.

The plan is simple: Do what the Inkantation did. Blast the song out to as many Octolings as possible, and then... maybe overthrow Octavio for fun just as a bonus lol

The Squid Sisters are already popstars - they can just take the song into the Inkopolis News Station, perform it live, and get it playing all over, such is how Inkopolis is with its new music. Or well, that’s how it COULD work... if there wasn’t a sudden “NEVER GONNA HAPPEN” and muffled “Pearl--!!” coming from Agent 8′s earpiece, that they forgot to take out.

So... the easy walk-in walk-out strategy just turned into a big climactic final battle for the station. The specifics of which........ are still being ironed out, sORRY!

But generally, Pearl and Marina get backup in on the situation, and it’s a lot of small missions in one building, split across multiple teams, some stealth, some just battle, some objectives, and the final battle being a survival section over the Squid Sisters performing the song (playing as the squid sisters is cool but its not quite a Splatoon Final Boss if the Squid Sisters aren’t singing some variant of the Calamari Inkantation over it except that one time) including Pearl and Marina themselves getting in on the battle.

I’m not musical enough to think of how this would work, but it would be kinda crazy for it to sort of be objective-based by whether the Squid Sisters’ reverse-Inkantation or perhaps even Off the Hook singing the normal Inkantation is playing for more time - like a dueling song of some sort

After it’s over and you win, there’s this sort of both relief and confusion since it feels like not much happened - but it affects Marina. Like, god, does it affect Marina after everything that happened to her after the Inkantation. A lot of what she knew, the people she was close to, her life in general, all just flooding back. Suddenly realizing that these were not shadowy monsters that were out to get her, they weren’t evil clones trying to destroy the world. They were people she knew, old friends, family even, that were just trying to get by as best they could without leaving their friends and family in the dust. And then she let herself be swayed by a song, and then suddenly... how could she have just left them like that? What did she do to them? What did she do to herself?

But cutting through it all is Pearl’s voice, asking if she’s okay. Despite what she was worried about... it’s still Pearl. It didn’t make her hate Pearl or not recognize Pearl or change anything about how she felt about Pearl. It just, cleared the fog around the other people she cared about, that she had been convinced she didn’t.

So.... yeah!! Once all is said and done, Marina assures Pearl that she’s still her, that all these fears she had, didn’t happen. Plus, some minor panic over how close she got to keeping these thoughts down forever. But she didn’t, and now that it’s all over, she can let it out to Pearl and the rest of them.

Epologue

Other Octolings throughout Inkopolis start feeling similar things, though minus the Deepsea Metro trauma, and as anticipated, some of them do return. Some come back temporarily, some just have a lot to think about. Many who come back in some form or another will also sadly realize how close Octaria is to just crumbling to the ground. But over the following days, weeks, months, and years, both Octolings and Inklings work together to both raise awareness and to help reconstruction efforts.

It’s the start of a much, much, much larger social shift - that kind of also passively involves removing Octavio from power, but that’s easy enough at this point. And of course, Pearl and Marina come up with some shenanigans to get the squadron and the Squid Sisters... off the hook.

And that’s Culture Shock, the entire story exists for that one throwaway pun at the end thank you for listening you’ve been a great audience and even if this FINDS its target audience NOBODY will be able to read this before the direct that will inevitably have Side Order content which means NOBODY except ME will have the knowledge of this before their expectations are shfited by the existence of Side Order

Okay but seriously if you somehow finished all of this like, DM me on Discord @aviivix or something because we will become best friends

Also... if you can believe it... this is like maybe HALF of like all the story stuff I’ve got in Culture Shock - each member of the Octo Squad has an arc (especially Tetra she has the biggest arc but I barely mention Tetra here) and there’s big ass history with the dead Octos and a lot of specifics I didn’t touch... if you ask me about any of it I will be your best friend no questions asked.

TYSM!!!!!!!!!

#splatoon #splatoon 3 #squid sisters #octoling #agent 3 #culture shock au

291 notes · View notes

jade-len · 3 months

Text

bad svsss fanfic/au idea, pt. 2: random svsss anti-fan (or hater) transmigrates into svsss after tweeting "stupid author, stupid novels" and proceeds to solve 90% of the novel's conflicts out of pure spite by pretending to be a seer.

"luo binghe will not kill you, shen qingqiu. just trust me when i say that."

"please listen to me when i say this, luo binghe. focus on yourself for a bit. learn to love yourself too. yes i know you're hopelessly in love but you shouldn't just rely on his affection to hold up your emotional wellbeing, okay??"

"oh yeah no. the huan hua palace's sect leader is a pervert who preyed on su xiyan, which led to a bunch of conflict and misunderstanding and now he's kinda gotten away with it." *proceeds to explain the whole lore of it* "see you later, yue qingyuan!"

"zhuzhi-lang, i have very important advice, okay. just because you love someone and believe something is best for them, you should not force them to do it. by the way, can i see your uncle real quick?"

"yeah. uhm. it was all old palace master's fault. go fuck him up, tianlang-jun. just don't kill anyone else in the process. also uh, read better romance novels please."

"gongyi xiao, if immortal master shen qingqiu and shang qinghua ever ask you to look around for some special mushrooms, run right after you help them navigate huan hua palace. like leave the damn place. you will meet your fate if you stay here. ok cool bye."

"mu qingfang please introduce this thing called 'therapy' and 'counseling'. i promise you it will reduce qi deviations by 50%."

"mobei-jun... don't. don't beat shang qinghua up. look i know it's demon culture but maybe try to also learn some human courtesy too?"

"liu qingge. one day you will find someone who will have the same amount of devotion for you as you will for them. and you are an amazing person for it ok."

at some point they probably explain to sqq and sqh that they've transmigrated into a story that's about sqq transmigrating into PIDW, which is also a story.

there can be three routes to this:

1. there is no hurt. binghe's heartbreak points doesn't even exist. everyone is cool and there are no deaths. also tianlang-jun tortures and kill OPM, so there's that. maybe some romance or whatevs happens but it's all good.

2. while they stopped 90% of the original conflict, they proceed to accidentally create some more by simply being there. the system declares that they're the "new main character" for the audience, just like how sqq is with svsss. now, new and different plot points start happening to them instead of shen qingqiu! how will they use their knowledge now, with things they can't predict?

2. mid-way, they accidentally put a huge target on their back. unintentionally, they're going against the system's wishes and the whole point of the novel: uncover the hidden plot of PIDW. they're like a virus, a bug, something that isn't supposed to be there, but is. they don't have a system, they exist beyond that; so they can't just be sent back. they're accidentally ruining the story of svsss by not having any of the conflicts mxtx created to occur, and thus must be stopped before they completely flip everything over.

the new mission given by the system for sqq and sqh? [URGENT: stomp the bug, no matter what!]

#woah it got like. real meta at the end #svsss ideas #shen qingqiu #luo binghe #liu qingge #tianlang jun #shang qinghua #zhuzhi lang #yue qingyuan #gongyi xiao #mobei jun #su xiyan #svsss #mxtx svsss #the scum villain's self saving system

137 notes · View notes

batmanisagatewaydrug · 2 months

Note

i think you're onto something with the romance novels world and plot points needing to mirror the kind of outlandishness of the love story. bc the main characters are already inherently acting absurd just by falling madly in love in a month or whatever and then if you add in the contrivances of romance tropes, it starts to feel like whiplash trying to pretend the characters live in any sort of grounded "normal" world. Like when the author adds in a family conflict subplot where the MC is like in absolute shambles because her mom said something slightly passive aggressive at lunch. that reads as more jarring to me than like conflict being something ridiculous that her mom doesn't want her being a marine biologist bc they come from a long line of fishmongers. Give me absurd drama to match the over the top dialogue and character emotions, I knew it would be unrealistic it's a romance novel! I guess this applies more to romcoms, but the same would apply I think to an analogous serious scenario. Or at least that's my take on it

okay so having just finished genuinely the most boring romance novel I have ever read in my LIFE I'm going to expand on this a little so thank you for sending an ask that gives me such a great platform to do that

I personally generally prefer a romance that just gets fucking silly with it, like really outlandish. A Lady for the Duke (Alexis Hall) is obviously the dream, being a whole swoony historical trans-affirming fantasy, but contemporary fake relationship stories can also be fun in their sheer ridiculousness, like Love, Hate, and Clickbait (Liz Bowery), which I actually liked, and Unfortunately Yours (Tessa Bailey), which I did not like but was very funny. and let's not forget queen Helen Hoang's Bride Test, which has a premise that dances perilously close to human trafficking but all works out in the end!!!

BUT HAVING SAID THAT. I don't think that something needs to be totally implausible to be a good romance. two of my very favorites romance novels anywhere ever are Helen Hoang's Heart Principle (no one should be surprised Hoang is on her twice I adore her) and Akwaeke Emezi's You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty. both of these books are very grounded in reality but with very uncommon situations to heighten emotions and add urgency; in Hoang's case it's a character's adult autism diagnosis + death of a parent and in Emezi's case it's a very sudden and #problematic attraction coming out of absolutely nowhere. the stakes are very real, mostly centering around being true to yourself v disappointing your family, but the circumstances are still wild enough to make you say "god DAMN" and keep turning pages. hell, I'll even be extremely generous and include Mistakes Were Made (Meryl Wilsner) which is kind of a flop but does have the intriguing premise of "what if you were fucking a milf but her kid was YOUR BEST FRIEND and it was a secret?"

those are like the two sweet spots TO ME, and this book I just read (which was Thank You for Sharing by Rachel Runya Katz, I feel so bad putting it on blast but I know people are going to ask) really solidified it for me because TYFS didn't fall into either of those categories. I'm going to say something absolutely insane, which is that multiple times while I was reading it I found myself wishing that the book was fanfic, because on its own it just... didn't bring a lot to the table? it falls into the grounded category but doesn't really bring any of those heightened stakes to the story, it's just 330 pages of people in their late twenties complaining about dating and their office jobs. if I wanted that I could just ask my group chat! there's nothing particularly particularly gripping about watching made up strangers do it!

but then I was like oh hang on... if this was two fictional characters who are usually fighting with swords or throwing cars at each other or something this would be so gripping. it's literally the coffee shop AU principle, right? like seeing people in a very mundane setting having an office job and going to a bar is very shrimpteresting when they're normally defusing space bombs. I was explaining this to my housemates and I couldn't think of a straight couple to apply it to (the book is m/f) so I said Naruto and Sasuke, which is crazy because I've never seen a single episode of Naruto, but like. idk Naruto being a museum curator who has to work with Sasuke, a marketing specialist who he had beef with a summer camp 14 years ago, sounds kind of compelling, right? definitely more than just two people I don't know.

there's a post on here that I think about a lot that talks about why advertising a story with tropes doesn't work for original fiction as well as it does for fan fic because knowing the tropes is more helpful when you already have a sense of investment in the characters and their personalities, and I think this is related to that! I think sometimes you NEED to have a wider sense of scope for the characters for them to be interesting in a very mundane setting!

ANYWAY. much to consider, etc.

#bookblr

54 notes · View notes

dokidokitsuna · 3 months

Text

Goldilocks in Grimmland

This is so, so premature...but my muses have been with me from start to finish on this idea and I adore it, so I'm talking about it now! :D

So in the RWBY NeverFell AU, Yang's little mishap during the Vytal Festival actually follows her around for quite a while; with pretty much everyone but her closest friends whispering behind her back about what she did to Mercury. This is very isolating and frustrating for her, especially since she knows from Ruby's eye-witness account that Merc was definitely faking his injury. She's determined to figure out how and why she saw that illusion, and also kinda wants revenge against Mercury for low-key ruining her life. ^^; And her investigation eventually leads her back to him...except, he looks a bit different now. Shocked by his Grimmification and eager to know more, she dives even deeper into the mystery.

Unfortunately, by this time, Salem has arrived at Beacon, parking her giant whale outside the premises similarly to the way she did in Volume 8. ^^ And upon landing, it creates a Grimm-based ecosystem-- a dark forest that gradually spreads outwards the longer it stays there, only adding to the population of Grimm overrunning the area. That's a whole other issue, that the rest of Team RWBY will probably be helping with. For Yang, it's mostly just a giant hindrance to her investigation. She's got suspicions about Mercury (and knowing he's a silver-eyed warrior, suspicions about her deceased mother) and she's sure that the answers are somewhere in that Grimm-whale. But with the death-forest of Grimm surrounding it, it seems impossible for her to get there.

Until, she remembers she knows someone with a semblance that's perfect for the job. ^^

+++

There are several reasons why I love this idea: it gives Yang the spotlight for once in her life; it makes Mercury relevant; it provides an opportunity to get members of the main cast close to Salem.

But the biggest one is: IT GIVES ME AN EXCUSE TO USE REN!!!!! (≧∇≦)ﾉ

I've always loved Lie Ren; like Penny, he's one of those characters who's just impossible to screw up (in basic concept, anyway...). Across RWBY's many adaptations and spinoffs, he's always adorable and always looks cool in combat.

The only problem with him, and the reason I've rarely spoken about him, is that...people don't seem to care about him?? ;_; Specifically, in the source material, he's given so little to do that there just isn't much of a reason to care about him. He barely has any motivations that don't boil down to some variant of "protect Nora". Even Nora herself is given character connections and talking points outside of "her man", but Ren has no one and nothing else. He gets a couple episodes of spotlight in Volume 4, and that's it for the whole series. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I mean, just think about this: Ren is the only member of the main cast who doesn't have a character song. o_o Look it up, it's true. I had to look it up just to make sure, because I found it appalling...this is a character who was originally voiced by the creator of the show; why is he such an afterthought???

So I decided, if I don't like this, I gotta do right by him in NeverFell, somehow. And it was REALLY hard to think of a place to put him, until I suddenly struck gold with this idea. ^^ Yang's little 'detective story arc' had been a thing for a while, and although I wanted her to be separate from Team RWBY, I never really liked the idea of her being alone. A character like her works best with someone to bounce off, and Ren's coolness is a great contrast for her bubbly personality.

Plus, I think putting Ren in a position like this could service him, too: not only does it give me an opportunity to add his semblance, backstory, and maybe even a Nuckelavee fight to the plot in the absence of a V4 timeline; it could give him a chance to "flesh himself out" the way Nora did in V7. Y'know, allow him to really connect with someone besides Nora-- and then, maybe seeing how similar-yet-different Yang is to his childhood friend is what'll get him to realize that he's never done this before. That maybe he's stuck to the familiar dynamic of that early relationship for so long, that there are different sides of his own personality that he's forgotten about. Sides that are coming out now that he's on this new adventure, with a new friend~.

#now this #this I might ship a little bit #i do love rarepairs #rwby #yang xiao long #lie ren #I LOVE how these designs came out

57 notes · View notes

rrxnjun · 1 year

Text

when nobody's watching ;; hrj

pairing. huang renjun x fem! reader genre. high school au/university au, cheerleader! reader | coming of age, platonic, angst, fluff warnings. alcohol and weed mention, swearing wc. 11k (10.932) a/n. no plot, just identity crisis.

playlist. idontwannabeyouanymore - billie eilish ; patterns - sarah close ; lonely - the maine ; rare - waterparks ; always forever - cults ; snow globe - waterparks ; hope ur ok - olivia rodrigo

where renjun can't seem to figure out who he is when nobody's watching and where you carefully examine and amire each version of himself he creates along the way.

When you’re 14, you watch Mean Girls for the first time. In the dark of your bedroom, with your childhood best friend Jung Sungchan huddling all your blankets to his side, your laptop illuminates the midnight with the gorgeous face of Regina George as both of you awe and giggle at the silly script. When you’re 14, watching Mean Girls for the first time, you are very aware of the fact that after summer ends and you turn 15, you’re going to high school– and the image of having to live through the fate that met Cady, you shiver with horror. That night, you are determined to live through high school with a smile on your face. Too blinded by the dramatized image of the high school experience, you decide that you have to be one of the nice girls everyone likes, because if you’re not, you can’t imagine having to ruin someone’s life just for popularity. You don’t really strive for popularity, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that you’re simply too terrified of high school before it even starts.

When the time finally comes and you turn up to the building with a tall, lanky Sungchan by your side, you realize too soon that life is, sadly, not like Mean Girls, and while you’d love to wear pink on Wednesdays and walk around in designer clothing, your small high school in the tiny, microscopic town you’ve grown up in, is too old-fashioned to have their roles divided this way. Sure, the hierarchy is there, and the cafeteria sure does have assigned seats for all the different friend groups and extracurriculars, but it’s not as serious as the story you watched all those months ago with both terror and excitement, making you quickly realise that you don’t have to try hard to fit in with the populars, because it’s truly not that big of a deal.

And so, in the spirit of the new realization, you join the cheerleading squad. I know, it sounds ironic. All this fuss about the fact that Mean Girls wasn’t actually as realistic as you thought it was, all for you to end up with the popular girls anyway. In your defense, it wasn’t that serious. You weren’t even that good at cheer. Jung Sungchan just made you join so you could be at all his soccer matches so he could boast about his abilities the moment the match is over. Curse the boy and his athleticism.

Standing in the heat of the sun, droplets of sweat appearing on your forehead as you tug down on the short cheer skirt, you huff as the cheer captain– Ryujin, as you learned only a few minutes prior– walks around and yells at you with what you presume is supposed to be support and excitement.

“Y/N! Why are you just standing there?” she asks you, her voice genuinely concerned, but also laced with a bit of annoyance. This is the third time you’ve messed up on today’s practice, and while you don’t really mind that much, you think your teammates are close to breaking down.

“Uh…”

“You’re supposed to be all the way over here!” she reminds you, pointing to the spot next to her on the freshly mowed grass, making you smile at her with tight lips and jog over there, nodding. Of course you were supposed to be there. You knew that…

“What’s going on, Y/N? You did great yesterday,” she sighs, making you roll your eyes. Yes, you did well yesterday– that’s because the formation was still fresh in your brain and the choreography wasn’t as complex. Also, yesterday was much more casual, since it was the first practice of the year. It was spent getting to know each other and sharing snacks in the locker room. On top of that, it’s only been 24 hours and your brain adapts slowly. There’s no way you’d remember the formations you learnt yesterday, when the sun is glazing your high, slicked ponytail, making you think you’re going to overheat and fall to the ground any second.

“I just… kind of forgot the formation?” you smile innocently, making the older girl look at you with wide eyes and an ironic smile, the despair clearly written on her face.

“Don’t even try to tell me-”

“But I’ve got it now!” you say, showing her thumbs up, trying hard to calm the cheer captain down. You don’t really know what she’s like– from what you’ve seen, she’s nice, yet a little scary when she gets frustrated– but you can only imagine how she’s going to kick you out if you don’t manage to get your shit together and remember all the choreography you were taught yesterday. It’s just cheerleading, for god’s sake! You always liked gymnastics…

“Okay,” she huffs, shaking her head as she faces the front of the soccer field you’re currently training on, making you do the same as you notice the flood of your school’s soccer players get out of the gym, one of them being your dear friend Jung Sungchan, carrying the ball. “From the top! 5, 6, 7, 8!”

Your body moves almost on auto-pilot. Now, I’m saying almost– you don’t really remember the formation that well and you have to keep glancing to the girls around you to match their movements, but you seem to be in the right places at the right times, so Ryujin doesn’t really notice, which saves your ass, if you’re being totally honest. Curious of the sight in front of you, your eyes scan over the crowd of boys laughing to themselves as they kick the ball around, ready for their soccer practice.

You recognise some of the upperclassmen. Yuta is the team captain, and if your high school was like Mean Girls, he’d for sure be the Aaron Samuels of them all. He passes the ball almost gracefully to his best friend Mark Lee (you only know his name because one of the girls from the cheer is into him. He seems a little goofy, but you guess Jisu doesn’t really care), who passes it to another boy, whose name is either Jaemin or Jeno. You don’t really know which one is which, because they always go everywhere together, and when you asked Sungchan for their names the last time you saw them in the halls, he just told you it was ‘Jaemin and Jeno’, and so did everyone else you’ve ever inquired about the two. Nobody ever really specified which is which.

Making a swift turn with confidence– because this is the only part of the choreography that you actually remember– your eyes are met with Ryunjin that is now opposite of you, wearing a focused smile that only reaches her eyes when you look at her. You suppose it’s a form of encouragement, a silent praise that you didn’t fuck it up yet, and it makes you strangely comfortable. Turning back to the soccer players– because the formation requires so– your eyes continue to watch the small crowd on the other side of the field.

“Chenle, pass to me!” you hear someone yell out, making you giggle as the boy holds up a middle finger to his opponent that was trying to trick him with a childish stunt, passing to his teammate. Stepping from one foot to the other, continuing to half-focus on the task you’ve been doing, you watch the boy that’s now in charge of the ball, your eyes almost falling out of your sockets.

The boy now running around the field with the ball is fairly short compared to the rest of the team, his jet black hair flowing in the wind as he charges through the field. You don’t think you’ve ever seen him before, because you’re fairly certain you’d remember the perfect curve of his nose and the focused pout on his lips if the encounter between you two did happen, the white of his ankles captivating you in a manner you’ve never experienced in your all 15 years of life.

Yells and curses are thrown across the soccer field, the boy not really knowing what to do as he looks around in confusion. He looks like he’s just as good at the game as you would be… except with your eyes closed; so you don’t really know what he’s doing in the team. But hey, you can’t judge. Maybe he just really likes soccer and wants to learn. Everyone starts somewhere. Focused on the soccer practice, another sharp voice pierces through your ears– the owner of it being your cheer captain, Ryujin– making you halt in your movements and hide behind one of the girls in terror.

“Y/N I swear to fucking god if you mess up this formation one last time, I’m going to shave off your eyebrows in your sleep!”

There goes your daydreaming. Strange– you thought you had this part of the choreography down, you were 100% certain you were doing the right steps and that the timing was sharply correct. You must have been distracted…

“I’m sorry-”

“The practice is over for today, I genuinely don’t have the energy to deal with this anymore,” Ryujin huffs out, making the rest of the cheerleading squad take their duffel bags off the grass, scattering back inside of the school building.

“I promise to get it down before the match, Ryunjin,” you peep as you catch up to her, trying hard to regain your position as a reliable cheerleader. You were told your smile was quite captivating, something a good cheerleader should never lack, so you suppose you can’t really let that quality go to waste so soon.

“You better, or else I’m kicking you out,” she glares at you, and you can’t really tell if she’s joking or not.

Squinting at the sophomore, you hum. “Are you serious?”

“100%.”

Nodding, you clear your throat. Taking a glimpse behind your shoulder, looking at the boy that made you so distracted in your routine, you take notice of his lost expression and the aimless posture of his hands by his side. He’s almost a little too far behind the whole team, and while you don’t really know how soccer works, you really think he’s not playing the game right, but you don’t pay more attention to it as you look back at your captain with a warm smile.

“I’ll do better.”

This is your first encounter with the boy named Huang Renjun. You learn his name through your best friend Sungchan, and while you were teased for hours about the intentions of knowing it– because Sungchan is one gossiping fellow who lives for drama– you don’t back down and fulfill your plan of learning something about the boy. After stalking the soccer player on instagram for a bit, you learn that he doesn’t quite live on social media (and good for him, honestly), making you curse as the only pictures of him you find on your feed are the ones his mum posted on his birthday. He’s a baby on those and he didn’t even like the post, not paying attention to it from what you presume was pure embarrassment.

The soccer match is in two weeks, and while you’re not exactly living the plot of Mean Girls, you sit at the cheerleader table for the time being. You suppose getting closer to the rest of the girls can only serve you– you’re a 15 year old with a dream of having the wildest high school years, after all– and it’s also good to hear all the gossip about the soccer team. You finally learn which one is Jeno and which one is Jaemin, and you also learn that Huang Renjun is a freshmen like you–, and while you learn that everyone thinks that he’s insanely pretty (which makes you frown, because you selfishly wanted to be the only one), he’s also insanely quiet.

You tried to bug Sungchan into befriending him. It didn’t work– he already befriended the talkative Zhong Chenle, telling you that Renjun is too quiet to strike up a conversation. You just think he chose Chenle for his big house and the fact that he has his own basketball court he gets invited to four days a week, but you won’t say that aloud for the fear of sounding jealous of the fact that you can never tag along.

The weeks before the match finally pass and you’re at your first high school soccer game. Dressed in a skirt that just barely covers your asscheeks (you complained to Ryujin about it. She told you to deal with it– you’re exceptionally tall for your age), you twirl around with pompoms in your hands, cheering for the team you know by their names now. You quite like the feeling of having the whole school looking at you when you perform your routine in the half-time break, the formation now permanently glued inside of your brain, muscle memory trained hard now as you were watched by the stern eyes of your cheer captain the remaining cheer practices. Squealing and cheering for the team, you get so into the whole process that you feel like the main character of a movie (so glad it’s not Mean Girls), ready to watch the game when the routine is done and you can take a break on one of the bleachers.

Your eyes involuntarily follow Huang Renjun across the field. He does look a little out of place, you must admit. You wouldn’t really call him the sporty type either– his body not as chiseled and firm as his teammates, although you’d say that’s partly because he’s still growing and in puberty– but there’s something about him that makes you magnetically pulled to his presence, not being able to take your eyes off him.

So when the ball is finally in his charge and he runs around with it, looking like a lost puppy when you play fetch with it on its afternoon walk, your eyes light up, you almost even let out a happy squeal when he charges forward, the last few seconds of the match passing by as the crowd yells out a countdown. The whole thing is so intense you think you could pee yourself, if you’re being honest, and as you stand up to get ready to cheer for Huang Renjun’s goal– the one that could make your team win– the excitement dies down when the boy kicks the ball forward with no real intention, the opposing team instantly taking charge and striding towards your school’s goalie.

You may be a little obsessed with Huang Renjun, yes. But even you can admit that he messed up the match pretty badly, earning your team the first loss of the season, making the following matches end just as badly with the bitter essence of a bad start.

You’re just 15 when you first notice Huang Renjun trying to desperately fit in to a cafeteria table, the only thing that reminds you of your favorite teenage movie that you watched with Sungchan in the middle of the night. You’re just 15 when you see the first version of the boy, not knowing that the next four years spent watching him silently will be just as eventful and interesting, keeping you on your toes the whole time.

Sungchan would say you were just 15 when you first got a crush on Huang Renjun.

You’d disagree. Not because it’s not true,

just because you won’t give him the satisfaction of being right.

At 15 years old, Huang Renjun leaves the soccer team after two lost matches (which were, admittedly… both kind of his fault). Cheerleading isn’t as exciting anymore when he’s not there, but at least you get to watch Sungchan… am I right?

You’re already a sophomore when you finally share a class with Huang Renjun. You’d think this fact would help you get closer to him and learn something about the boy, but the opposite is true as your object of interest doesn’t really interact with anyone outside his circle, keeping to himself. Truth be told, you’d do anything to fit into his circle– but with the company he chose for himself in the sophomore year of high school is nothing close to what you represent, the science kids so far away from the cheerleading status you still hold.

While you’re still stuck in your Mean Girls arc, Huang Renjun switched to the Harry Potter universe, it seems. Or maybe it’s just your sudden obsession with the books that’s making you feel this way… Nonetheless, Renjun now reminds you of the Ravenclaw boys in Potions class, except this is reality and you’re only sitting in Chemistry, watching over his every move as he moves through the room and focuses on the experiments.

Sungchan nudges you with his elbow, scowling. “Stop ogling Renjun and fucking do something, I think this is going to blow up any second!”

Hissing at him, afraid his mean comment could be heard by unwanted ears, you grit your teeth at your best friend and roll your eyes. “Shut up.”

“No, I mean it, though, I think this is going to blow up-”

“I’m a cheerleader, Sungchan, I don’t know Chemistry, for fuck’s sake,” you sigh, fully commiting to the social norms you were put in. The soccer player only glares at you more after your comment, deciding to take the boiling mixture and spilling the contents of it into the sink with one swift motion of his hand, hopefully not burning the drain in the process and getting you in trouble. You never know with Chemistry. One wrong step and the whole school is on fire. On one hand, you’d love that, but on the other hand, you’d love to experience your first kiss before dying, so you really, desperately hope nothing goes wrong this time.

“Great, now we gotta start over,” you shake your head in disbelief, already taking another cauldron into your hand and putting exact measurements into the flask.

“As if the last mixture was salvageable,” Sungchan mutters, making you kick him into his shin for being annoying.

“Maybe you can befriend Huang Renjun and he can help us with the experiment,” you suggest innocently, watching your best friend melodramatically scream at your premise. This is not the first time you tried to make your friend to get to know Renjun, but it’s also not the first time he’s declining. You don’t know what’s so hard about being Renjun’s friend, you suppose he has a lot of them– from the looks of the group now standing around his small frame– Sungchan could easily sway the quiet boy with his charm and get him to your side.

“How many times do I have to tell you that I am not befriending Huang Renjun? You can do that yourself, if that’s really all you desire,” he huffs, shaking his head in disbelief.

“But-”

“No buts, for fuck’s sake,” he cuts you off, already knowing the contents of your rambling, “sometimes you gotta do the first step, if you want to cuff a man!”

“I’m old-fashioned, I’ll let you know.”

“That’s just… simply not true,” Sungchan grins, making you sigh.

“I mean, yeah,” you agree, feeling heat rising to your cheeks as you speak the next words, “I’m just shy.”

“Y/N,” Sungchan sighs as he looks you dead into your eyes, seriousness dripping off his tongue, “you’re like… the least shy person I know.”

Offended at his comment, because in this exact moment, you feel nothing but shyness when the topic of your conversation is Huang Renjun– your classmate you’ve never even talked to in the first place, but somehow grown interested in the first moment you’ve seen his face for the first time– you shake your head in disagreement. “You know that’s not true!”

“You made friends with my teammates even faster than I did! Don’t try telling me you’re shy when you were playing Call of Duty with Mark in his dorm room the first week you met him,” he rambles, making you grin at the comment. You knew he was jealous of you being friends with his older teammate– it didn’t matter that the boy was more awkward than anyone you’ve ever encountered (while also simultaneously being the most social human being on the campus, somehow. You’d say he’s so socially awkward and so social that it’s awkward at the same time.). At least you have revenge for not being invited to Zhong Chenle’s basketball court (yes, you’re still salty about that. You were decent at basketball. Well… more decent than Sungchan, at least.).

“That’s not the same, though,” you roll your eyes, making your best friend suggest something that is already known between the two of you, but never truly solidified in words.

“Because you like Renjun?”

“He seems interesting-”

“Because you have a crush on Renjun?”

“I do not!” you scream out, making the rest of the classroom look at you, resulting in you hiding behind your giant friend in shame. You only hope the rest of the conversation wasn’t heard by the whole classroom. You’d pack your things and move away to Nebraska if it was.

“I suppose the two of you are done with the experiment?” the professor inquires, making all blood leave your face as you vigorously shake your head in disapproval, apologetic smiles sent her way as you promise you’re almost done and that you’ll be quiet from now on. Truth be told, you don’t even know if you’re almost done. You don’t know how the experiment is supposed to go. You can only hope the period ends before you have to show the results.

Reading over the manual again, with Sungchan standing behind you and looking onto the white sheet of paper over your shoulder, you try hard to succeed in your assignment.

“I think I’ve got it,” he mumbles under his breath, gathering the things needed and finally getting to work, motioning for you to get closer and help him.

“You’re actually smart for a soccer player, you know,” you grin at him, the annoyed look on his face being the result of your successful teasing. Sometimes it’s fun to poke around with social norms and stereotypes– mostly because they’re kind of true.

“Just watch over the caldron and make sure it doesn’t bubble. If it does, turn the heating down, okay?” he urges you, earning himself a focused nod.

Now, the task at hand is easy. You just watch the caldron– it’s not difficult at all. But as we already established, you’re an individual that gets distracted really easily– especially when Huang Renjun is present in the same room as you, breathing the same air and looking insanely gorgeous even when he’s boredly looking at his own tools, seemingly done with the experiment with his head rested on his plopped-up hand, dissociated and uninterested. The group of boys around him– Shotaro, Jisung, Doyoung and Shohei, the proclaimed class geniuses at Science– look excited and immersed in the conversation, giggling at jokes and playfully smacking each other’s shoulders in fits of laughter when someone says something exceptionally funny. You imagine it’s Science jokes you wouldn’t get. You do fit the stereotype of a cheerleader, in a way– you’re not stupid, but you’re also not that smart in Chemistry, so you couldn’t indulge in their jokes even if you really wanted to.

Renjun looks uninterested and left-out. You feel the sudden urge to take him into your small circle, to ask him about his day and about his interests. He seems so different to the boy he was last year– while he did hang out with the soccer boys a few times after quitting the team, you didn’t really see him around. You suppose that the first impression you make on people is usually how you stay fixated in the minds of the general public, and while he used to be a soccer player for a while (two months, to be exact), he then lost the status, resulting in him being just… simply invisible for the rest of the year.

You were glad to see him with a new group of friends when you arrived in Chemistry class for the first time in your Sophomore year. While you didn’t really know how he ended up with them and what they do for fun after class, Renjun was now a part of the Science kids (this is your Mean Girls arc showing through. He does sit at the Science table in the cafeteria, though, so no one can really blame you for stereotyping.).

In this exact moment, though, he seems to be collectively excluded out of the collective. It’s frustrating– for this is the second time you’ve seen it happen to the boy– but you suppose there’s nothing you can really do or say to make it change.

“Fuck’s sake, Y/N! I told you to look after the caldron!”

“Oh shit!” you yelp out as you see the mixture boiling, the liquid inside turning black with steam, making the whole experiment fail for the second time.

Sighing, the boy only shakes his head at your distracted figure, taking the flask into his hand and once again, dropping the contents of it into the sink. Looking around the classroom, desperately trying to find something to anchor to so you can fix the situation, the bell rings and you’re left with the relief of knowing that the class is over and nobody can tell that you failed the assignment miserably.

“You’re lucky the bell rang, because this failure is completely your fault and I wouldn’t waste any time burning your skin off if we were called to show the results to the class,” Sungchan mutters, gathering his things.

“You’re not scary. I saw you shit your pants when you were eight.”

“Fuck off,” he rolls his eyes, leaving you behind to pack your things and silently ogling Huang Renjun on the other side of the classroom. The small circle of his supposed-to-be friends is now standing with the teacher, excitedly nodding as you hear them talk about a competition in Chemistry that is taking place next week. Interested in anything that includes Huang Renjun, you eavesdrop until you realize the boy was left out of the event– the four names scribbled down onto an application paper by their leader Doyoung left on the teacher’s desk, Renjun’s name nowhere to be seen.

You don’t think he did anything wrong to get left out. Looking at the neatly done experiment, you’re fairly certain he deserves to be on the list of applicants.

Looking at the group, you just think he didn’t fit in with them.

Huang Renjun leaves the classroom alone, his backpack thrown over his shoulder. After the year ends and he no longer takes Chemistry classes, you never see him with the Science kids again.

“I can’t believe you dragged me to the play just because you didn’t want to go alone,” you whisper to your best friend, staring forward at the stage. It’s almost over now, you can tell because you read the book it’s following– you were always a big Oscar Wilde fan– and you can’t help but giggle at the state of Sungchan. The poor boy isn’t used to having friends outside of the soccer player circle, and while he’s sociable, the image of showing up to the play completely alone, just because his friend Guanheng asked him to, is truly terrifying in his eyes.

“I can’t believe you only agreed when I said Renjun’s in the play,” he responds to you with a snarkier comment, making you roll your eyes at him.

“Shh,” you put your finger against your lips, subtly telling him to shut up, “I’m watching the play.”

“Sure…” he mutters, making you smile in satisfaction, for you managed to silence him and keep Huang Renjun out of the conversation.

You’re 17 now. You don’t know much more about Renjun than you did when you were 15, and you no longer share a class with him anymore, so you doubt you’ll ever really get to know him. You rarely see him, since you have no mutual friends or mutual interests, and so your silly crush started to subtly fade into the background. You must admit that you don’t look away when he passes you in halls with the group of drama kids he hangs out with now– you’re a weak, weak woman, after all– but the silent obsession with him is not your main personal trait anymore, and you can tell that both you and Sungchan are more than happy about the fact.

When the play ends and the whole cast scatters onto the stage to bow– you recognise Guanheng, Dejun, Kun, Sicheng and the director, Ten– all smiling brightly beside Renjun in the very corner, who only gives the crowd a shy grin as he bows down with the rest. Truth be told, you never expected him to get into the drama club. He always seemed quiet and reserved, but you suppose this is him experimenting with what he likes, finding the outgoing side in him and getting into more social circles.

After the lights turn back on and the school theater empties itself out, you find yourself waiting outside with Sungchan. The boy scratches the back of his neck in nerves, stressed from the sudden interaction with the drama kids. Your best friend is quite popular within the school, so you’re not really surprised that he and the charming Guanheng hit it off right away after meeting in Physics class. The sudden blush on his cheeks whenever you mention his new friend makes you strangely suspicious, though, but you won’t get deeper into it.

“Sungchan! Y/N!” you hear cheers from behind you, making you turn around and greet the cast of the play you just watched. Guanheng offers you a welcoming hug that you gladly accept, the rest of the friend group just as friendly to you as their connecting link is. Somewhere in the back of the group, you see Sicheng– the charming senior– trailing behind with Renjun. Too shy to look at him– because you still have the hint of the silly freshman on the inside– you avert your gaze off him and focus on the rest.

“We’re actually going to McDonald’s to celebrate the premiere, are you going with us?” Kun asks, a warm smile playing with his features.

“I- I mean-” you see Sungchan stuttering, shaking your head in disbelief at the hesitance he shows when he gets too much attention. Jumping in to save the boy, you quickly agree.

“We’re down!” you nod, seeing the man gratefully smile at you as you follow the drama club through the center of the town, towards the closest McDonald’s.

Throughout the whole journey, you’re painfully aware of Huang Renjun’s presence. You two haven’t even said hi to each other, and while you didn’t expect for that to happen, you still feel a little awkward to be invading his space. He’s in the back of the group with Sicheng, the two of them perhaps the closest of the whole club, and you wonder if it’s your fault for making him so distant himself from his friends right now. Did you invade his circle? Did you make him feel uncomfortable? You’ll leave, if that’s what he wants…

Arriving at the McDonald’s, you all order yourself your fast food of choice, the conversation flowing surprisingly easily after Sungchan gets accommodated to the new section of friends around him. Sliding into a big red booth in the corner of the room, you’re pressed between your best friend and Dejun, who can’t stop talking about the new Avatar movie. You almost agree to go see it with him in the cinema, from how desperate and excited he sounds, but then you’re reminded by the fact that you haven’t even seen the first part and you actually kind of hate sci-fi…

The whole time, your eyes don’t leave Renjun. Old habits die hard, you suppose, but you’re happy to see him genuinely laugh. You don’t think you’ve ever seen that on him before, and the sight of his eyes crinkled up into moon crescents and glittery stars in his dark orbsmakes your heart swell with fondness for the man. Still, though, you can’t help but notice the exclusion from the group– maybe he just doesn’t do well with crowds– as he sits in the corner of the booth with Dong Sicheng, while the rest are indulged in a shared conversation.

You don’t dare to try to include him in your conversation. Frankly, you think he isn’t interested, and it’s also not your place to organize a setting you were just tagging along to, only being invited because of Sungchan.

In the back of your mind, you think this is it. You think that Renjun’s battle of fitting in is finally over and that he found his place. He looked so familiar with the boys, so eager in the conversation with Sicheng– you’re happy he finally found his place in the world. It’s an unexpected one, to say the least, but you’re just satisfied with watching him be happy from afar.

You pay your goodbyes to the rest of the group after your meals are finished and the clock strikes 10. You’ve never been this close to Renjun before, and you don’t think you’ll ever grow closer. It’s fine with you, though. You’re always watching him– even when nobody else is, interested in knowing about his well being and the trajectory of his life. It’s strange, but it’s natural for you.

When you’re 17, you think Renjun finally found his place in the world– you think he’s finally satisfied with his table at the cafeteria, with the social status he has, with the group of friends around him; although still a little distant with most of them except for one. When you’re 17, you didn’t know you couldn’t be more wrong.

When junior year ends, Dong Sicheng graduates.

Renjun never hangs out with the drama club again.

When you finally turn 18– the birthday party with baby pink party hats and champagne all over the carpet of your teenage room– it seems like everything takes a sharp C turn. You’re a senior now, and while you got admitted to your dream university after many hours of stress and days spent filling out the applications with your best friend Sungchan late in the library, you don’t think you’re ready to leave your home yet.

It’s kind of weird that you realize the fact at a goodbye party thrown by your classmate Donghyuck. You’ve never really talked to the man before– you just shared multiple classes with him and he offered you weed outside of the gates to the building once– but there’s something about the aroma of the liquor he serves in his kitchen that makes you reminiscence about all the years you’ve spent in the cheer team or sitting at your little desk in the classroom, listening to only some of the lectures, because you didn’t really mind the rest. You also get back in your memory to the spacious cafeteria– the soccer team and the cheer team have joined their tables together after some months, and while it wasn’t like the Mean Girls, you still felt lucky to have such a big supporting system.

Your cheer captain– Ryujin– graduated one year before you, the role of the most responsible one falling onto your classmate Jiwoo not long after, since they were always friends and you all wanted to lead the team in the fierceful manner Ryujin always has. You swear you saw the ex-captain somewhere in the house a few minutes ago, though, carrying a bottle of vodka under her shoulder as she twirled her slim body around one of the guys that graduated two years ago, the one you always saw Donghyuck hanging around with in the backs of the school halls, wearing leather jackets and snickering with smug grins.

Twirling the liquid in the red solo cup around, standing alone in the corner of the living room (Sungchan left you stranded a few minutes ago, when he spotted Chenle and Guanheng in the crowd), your brain takes you back to all the memories you’ve made in the last 4 years.

You remember celebrating one of the only wins your school’s soccer team got in your freshman year with Sungchan, the tall boy carrying you on his back as he ran around the field in the lights of the reflectors. You remember blowing up the Chemistry lab with him once or twice, and you also remember the whole classroom giggling at you when you had to clean it up, accompanied by the horrified screams of your professor. The memory of the winter formal in your junior year is the most vivid in your brain– you went with your cheer friends, while Sungchan finally scored himself his first date. Her name was Lily and while you found the girl to be quite nice, the memory in your brain is so bright mainly because your dear best friend was so drunk out of nervosity of being with a girl that he puked in the school yard, leaving you to laugh your ass off until tears were streaming down your face.

Your whole four years were consistent. With the same group of people, in the same school halls and bedrooms of your friends when you had sleepovers as a cheer team building. You always had fun when new freshmen joined the team, making sure they know which Sophomore and Junior boys to be wary of, and while you’re excited for university, you don’t think you’ll get to replicate this carefree and silly presence of high school ever again.

“You okay?” you hear a voice call for you, making you snap your head up and see one of your classmates, Seunghan, staring at you with glittery eyes and a warm smile. You always perceived the boy to be quite the shy individual, but you think alcohol always helps everyone to get out of their shell.

“Yeah,” you nod, quick to make his worries fade away, “just lost in thought.”

“I get that. It’s surreal that we’re graduating, isn’t it?” he grins, shaking his head in disbelief. You didn’t expect anyone to get your feelings, but here you are– you guess you’re never as alone in your views as you think you are.

“It’s crazy…” you mumble, finishing up the cup and looking around, catching the boy staring at you constantly. Not really seeing your friend Sungchan anywhere, you decide the second best thing to do to pass time is to catch up with the boy right next to you, and so you lean closer to him and ask him if he wants to get out for some fresh air.

After seeing him nodding eagerly at your suggestion, you find yourself trailing out of Donghyuck’s house, straight to the backyard, while passing some of his friends on your way– their irises were twice as wide as a normal person’s would be and you swear you sensed the sweet, disgusting smell of weed resonating through the walls, so you were glad to get out before the essence got so deep inside of your nose and make you want to puke.

As a cheerleader, you were a regular at those parties. You’ve seen enough of Yangyang, Donghyuck, Eunsok… and Renjun getting so high and mixing the drugs with alcohol that it left them out of it for hours, and you don’t really need that for yourself right now.

“Finally,” you gasp when you reach the backyard, leaning on the wall of the house. Seunghan follows you with a cup in his hand that you’re not sure when and where he’s gotten on your way out, sipping on the alcohol as his eyes never leave your frame.

“What are your plans after graduation?” he asks, genuinely curious.

“University,” you say, letting your eyes travel through the backyard, finding multiple people sharing cigarettes and pipes in the bushes, giggling to themselves. “You?”

“Same,” he nods, “I got into the town’s uni, so I’m just gonna stay here, though.”

Humming, you take a short glimpse at him. Truth be told, you don’t know much about Hong Seunghan. All you know about him is that he’s super nice and he always greeted you when you passed each other in the halls, despite not having many shared classes or social circles. Your friend Yeri once told you that he’s got a crush on you when you got an anonymous Valentine’s day card in your locker during junior year, but you dismissed the thought quickly as you realized you’ve never really had a coherent conversation with him. Looking into his starstruck eyes right now, though, you can’t say that you wouldn’t believe it now…

“I’m moving across the state, actually,” you grin, desperate to hide your despair behind a smile. Sungchan got into a university only an hour away from yours, which is the only thing that’s keeping you going right now– while you will be so far away from home, at least you won’t be completely lonely. If you ever feel like it’s too much, you can just catch a train and meet your childhood best friend in the next town. It’s easy. Or at least, that’s what you keep telling yourself.

“Why so far away?”

“I don’t know,” you mumble, taking your eyes off him again, looking through the crowd in the yard and finding a familiar figure, sitting lonely at the edge of the empty swimming pool, his legs dangling inside as he leans back, supporting his weight with his arms and looks towards the sky, “they had the best History courses, I guess…”

The conversation you’re having with Seunghan is only a background task now, a side quest in your game, as you focus on what you’ve been doing in the back of your head for the last 4 years. You monotonously reply to his questions and hum at all the right places in the dialogue to seem interested, but your eyes are focused solely on the man sitting at the swimming pool, looking more lonely than ever before. You’d make yourself feel silly for paying more attention to a man you’ve never spoken to than to the blushy classmate standing to your left right now, quietly obsessing your whole teenage years with a stranger, but for all you know, this could be the last time you’re seeing him in your life, so you let your inner little crushing-on-Huang-Renjun self have it, at least one last time.

When you turn 18, so does Huang Renjun. He finds enjoyment in all the possibilities now open to him with the new status of an adult, his Fridays spent drinking away with his new group of friends. He wears leather jackets and ripped jeans, and while you find it quite attractive, you don’t think it’s what suits him the most. Hell, even the soccer jersey looked more fit on him– and he played for the team for a total of two matches. His hair is bleached blonde and you once saw him with red, puffy eyes and a little fucked-out smile accompanied by his sketchy friends in the park, so you can only imagine what he’s been doing his whole senior year. You’re surprised he even managed to graduate.

When you turn 18, it’s when you worry most about him. He doesn’t seem himself, and quite frankly, he never has, but this is the most unpredictable and unexplainable version of himself that he managed to craft.

You don’t think you’ve ever seen him genuinely laugh. And yes, you don’t know the boy, but still, you kind of miss the earlier versions of him, because at least those weren’t as self-destructive and damaging to his health.

You wonder why he’s not inside with his friends. You wonder why he’s so alone in the backyard, why he’s sitting at the empty swimming pool with a bottle of liquor next to him, why he’s not laughing at stupid jokes and dancing to bad EDM music in Lee Donghyuck’s house like the rest of his circle is. You wonder what made him hang out with the crowd for the last year, what made him let his grades slip and why he never seemed to stay with one friend group for long.

You guess it’s hard to be his friend.

Or maybe, he just finds it hard to be other people’s friend.

Changing himself up just to fit with the others, carefully crafting and molding his personality to have at least someone match his current energy– you wonder if it wouldn’t just be easier for him to be himself and let someone discover the true him for once. Because this surely isn’t him. And the soccer player, running aimlessly around the field wasn’t him. The kid that was good at science was never a good fit for the nerdy crowd either, because it wasn’t him. The drama kid that was decent at acting, but never really talked with anyone from the club other than Dong Sicheng (because even after all this time, you think that was his only real friend), wasn’t the real Huang Renjun either. And now, after the four years of admiring the mystery he is and examining him each passing day, you can for sure say that the version of himself that smokes and drinks in dark alleyways isn’t the real him at all.

After reminiscing on your four years of high school with a smile on your face, you wonder if Huang Renjun could do the same. If he smiles about the many twists and turns, or if he thinks of his high school years as a waste of his youth, a time he can only be reminded of with a bittersweet feeling, never fitting in despite trying so hard over and over again.

The boy at the swimming pool chews on the inside of his cheek, scoffing as he points his eyes towards the ground. There’s an urge inside of you to walk over to him and be a shoulder for him to cry on, be someone to finally offer him some comfort, to let him talk while you listen.

But you don’t do any of that.

You keep standing there, watching him, as Hong Seunghan talks your ears off about everything and nothing, making your confused heart simmer with despair at the broken look on Renjun’s face when he looks around for the last time before he takes the bottle standing next to him into his hand and smashes it into the pool with full force, the piercing sound of the glass shattering making your ears hurt as you jump up in surprise.

The boy stands up from his place as he storms off, your eyes meeting only for a mere second before he’s out.

“Are you okay?” Seunghan asks again, for the second time this evening already, while you look at him with a tight smile and nod your head at the question.

“Yeah. Just… got distracted.”

When you’re 18, you believe this is the last time you’ll ever see him. When you’re 18, all you do is wish him well.

Walking out of your trashy university accommodation, locking the door behind you– although you think it does nothing for the safety of your living space, considering the door is paper thin and anyone determined enough could get inside in two minutes, if they wanted to– you put the keys into your coat pocket and jog down the stairs, because you fear the old elevator ever since you heard your neighbor getting stuck inside of it one day when the power went out. Checking the time on your phone screen, you walk your way to university.

You always wanted to live somewhere far away. It’s not really about cutting people off or about starting new– Sungchan visits you every other week when he’s bored, after all– you just think you like the comfort the big city brings you. The architecture of the town is beautiful and your university’s History course is the best one in the country. You almost feel a little proud of getting in, moving out of the small hell hole your hometown was, and being competent enough to live on your own at 19, cooking yourself bad pasta for dinner every evening and posting instagram stories of the sunset with the song stickers from your playlist every other week. It’s a little surreal to live the life your younger self always dreamt of, for it doesn’t feel as strange and so brand new like you expected it to. You can’t say you don’t enjoy it, though.

Walking inside of the university building, still not used to the white modern walls and tall glass windows in the lounge area, you check the time and realize you still have at least 25 minutes until your lecture starts. Coming from a small town, you never really learned how to time your departure from home. You always arrive either very late or very early– it’s hard to calculate how long the walk is, when everything is within a 10 minute reach back home.

Deciding to spend some time in the lounge area before the class starts, because you don’t really feel like spending time in the lonely classroom and you also suspect someone’s having a class in there still, you walk towards the crowded place, adjusting the bag strap that’s sneakily slipping off your shoulder.

The view in front of you catches you off guard, the amount of students doing things to your little, anxious self (in moments like these, you wish you had Sungchan with you here. Despite being quite social in high school, it’s hard to make friends when he’s not around to be your isle of comfort; but you guess it’s time for you to be a big person and find friends on your own now), and as your eyes scan the place for an empty space to sit, your mouth drops agape in shock and surprise.

There is a boy with mousy blonde hair sitting at one of the bean bags, down in the university halls. He's surrounded by people, all typing away on their laptops, occasionally glancing up to their friends and talking in hushed smiles and cheery giggles. The boy is alone– scrolling away on his phone, earphones in his ears as the slight movement of his leg matches the beat– though, he doesn't seem lonely.

There are plenty of people around him, all with their kindred spirits, yet, the boy makes no effort in trying to fit into a circle; he doesn't try to match anyone's energy or to desperately make someone like him. In a way, the sight makes you sigh with relief.

Huang Renjun has finally stopped trying, and while this sentence usually doesn't have a nice ring to it, this time, you don't think there's anything more positive about the fact that he simply just has no energy to change himself to fit the vision of himself that is kept by others.

Taking a few deep breaths in and out, you contemplate on your next step. Is this really how you get to know your high school crush, after so many years of thinking of him? Is university really the time for your first real meeting? It makes you feel kind of silly, the tingling sensation in your fingertips making it hard for you to stay grounded as you shake your head to clear your thoughts, deciding.

Wiping your hands onto the fabric of your jeans, taking another deep breath in and out, you walk up to the boy with a hesitant smile and drop your body to the bean bag next to him, accidentally bumping into his outstretched legs. The action makes your cheeks heaten as your whole body feels hot with uncertainty, but you don't back away as he looks up to you with an uninterested look, merely just wanting to know what bumped into him and made him lose his focus and switch his attention to the world around him instead of his phone.

Clearing your throat, you force yourself to quirk up the corners of your lips into the most welcoming smile, greeting the boy you know so well, but also don't know at all.

“Hi,” you utter, seeing the boy glance at you with pure interest now, eyebrows furrowed as the gears in his brain work by themselves, trying to sort your face. When his thoughts are met with recognition, his irises widen as he works out a subtle smile, the one that reaches his eyes and makes them light up with a glittery sparkle, soft voice echoing to your ears.

“Y/N, right?”

“Yeah,” you nod, putting on an awkward smile, “from high school.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he nods, staring at you, as if to wait if you have anything else you want to say.

The encounter must feel strange to him. You've never really talked, and when you did, it was only when it was necessary. You were just a side character in his life– the one you pass in a game in a very unimportant side quest and never meet again, forgetting about it in an instant– however, to you, Huang Renjun, although he was never the center of your universe, was always there, somewhere in the back of your mind, as you looked after his every move and paid attention to every shift in his existence. To you, he was like the musician you fall in love with when you're a kid, and even though you don't listen to them anymore, you still have their account followed on instagram, keeping track of their every move, making sure they're safe and still loved by many.

Staring at you still, your throat gets dry as you have no words to say. Somehow, you always had so many things on your mind that you wanted to share with Huang Renjun, in each and every passage of his life. But now that you finally had the courage to walk up to him and talk, the words were stolen from the tip or your tongue and it's useless to try to search for them in your brain.

Maybe it's the boy recognising your hesitance, maybe it's his brain reminding him of all the times he's walked up to a new group and tried so hard to fit in with them, maybe he knows the lost look in your eyes all too well from how many times he's seen it in himself when he tried to make new friends; maybe it's the fact that he knows how stressful it is to walk up to someone and try to be their friend– nonetheless, for a reason to you unknown, he does something no one's ever done for him when he was in the position you are in right now, because, truth be told, this is the first time he's been in the position of being walked up to and interrogated with a premise of new friendship. And it's all thanks to you– so he takes the lead and warmly smiles at you, striking up a conversation.

“What's up? I didn't expect to see you here,” he says, taking his earphones out and putting them away to his pocket, turning slightly towards your figure and paying full attention to you.

Playing with your fingers in your lap, you turn your gaze away from him and master up a response. “I didn't expect to see you here either, actually,” you say.

“Yeah, well,” he shrugs, “I guess I just wanted to start over somewhere far away. It felt… a little claustrophobic back home.”

The two of you share a look full of understatement, because in his eyes, as his classmate from high school, you must have noticed at least some of the glimpses of his numerous friend groups over the time. And while none of them really worked out for him, since none of them ever really felt as if they were right for him, now, in the university halls, although a little alone and a little too ordinary, he seems like himself for the first time.

“I get that,” you nod, not wanting to dwell on the topic for too long in fear of hitting a painful spot in him or exposing that you’ve been watching him the whole time, “what do you study?”

“Art,” he says with an excited smile, the one that makes his eyes crinkle up a little and his expression is full of undenied joy and excitement, the one you’ve seen on him for the last time in junior year, talking away with Sicheng in a red McDonald’s booth– hinting that after so many years of changing himself up and trying to fit in with the rest, he's doing what he really wants and desires, with no expectations and harsh looks of others.

“That's so amazing,” you hum in amazement, offering him a genuine smile.

“It's very exciting,” he nods, glad he no longer feels like he’s been made from a broken mold, glad he no longer feels aimless and unarmed with everything he encounters, just like he did in high school in the sports teams and drama clubs, hating each passing second he’s spent doing something he despised, wasting away his life. “What about you?”

“Oh, I study History,” you reply, scratching the back of your neck, “doesn't sound as exciting as Art, to be honest, but I've wanted to study it for the longest time, so…”

“No, that's great,” he assures you, “although you don’t seem like a History kind of person,” he says, although he doesn’t know you that well– he can’t quite put a finger on when you two have met, and if you’ve ever even talked. Looking at you right now, though, he must have registered you, at least, because you seem too familiar in the foreign place and he finds himself silently holding on to the feeling of recognising at least something in the wide unknown.

Squinting, you curse the cheerleader stereotype for the first time in your life. “Is that supposed to be a diss?” you grin.

“God, no,” he shakes his head in disapproval, quickly leading you out of the misjudgement. “I just didn’t expect you to study History. I don’t know you that well, but you’re like, the furthest away from my image of a History major… but I guess my expectations can be wrong,” he defends himself, palms raised in defeat.

Humming, you still squint at him in uncertainty. “Well, I guess I get that. You seem like an Art major, though, to be honest.”

“Do I?” he asks, a tone completely different to yours– he looks grateful for the comment, his eyes shining with appreciation and maybe just a hint of pride.

To be honest, it's not really about the way he dresses that makes him seem like he’d study Art– his black high-top converse, beige pants and an oversized brown flannel could be worn by anyone– but his aura, the energy he gives off at first glance, is something that gives it away. This is the first time someone's ever affirmed Huang Renjun's identity, the real one, on top of that– the one he spent his whole life carefully crafting and creating, picking away the bad parts as he tried and failed to fit all the other categories he didn't like– and it feels truly euphoric to him, like he fulfilled his life-long goal and finally found his purpose. "Well, thank you," he says, and you can tell he means it.

You want to tell him how glad you are that he let go of trying to please everyone. You want to tell him how it's great that he finally found himself, how amazing it is that he finally let go of the desire to be liked for something he wasn't, just to be popular or have someone by his side. You want to tell him how you appreciated his existence all those years, how you watched over his every good and bad step, how proud you are of him for the journey he's taken and how amazing it is that he finally reached the final destination.

That would be weird, though– he doesn't even know that you’ve selfishly watched him all those years, tumbling and turning in the background of the mess his life had always been. So, instead, you mumble out a sweet: “You're welcome.”

By the way he looks at you, you almost think he understands your intentions. You almost believe he can read your mind and find the pictures of himself in your memories, each and every single one carefully preserved with his essence, although it was different each time and never really stayed the same.

But he can't. He can’t read your mind and he can’t tell that you know all about him, so instead, he thinks this is the universe rewarding him for being so patient, rewarding him for always trying, and that’s why he feels that he can’t let this opportunity get away from him.

“Do you want to hang out later? I have a class in 10 minutes, but I'd love to walk around and explore it here a little in the afternoon, if you're down,” he suggests, taking you off guard.

The new version of Huang Renjun that's in front of you is confident– something he always lacked, for it was never really him that he was showing to the world– and the new Huang Renjun is charming and magnetizing. You can't say you never felt like this about him before, because of course you did– you wouldn't have known so much about him and his various phases of life if you weren't interested in the boy, but the way you feel about him now feels more real– maybe because it's finally the authentic version of himself that he always was so afraid of showing to others. Electrified by his eyes, you bring yourself to nod.

“Of course I'm down,” you agree, smiling.

“Great,” he laughs airly, the sound making your smile widen even more, “I'll get your number, then?”

“Oh, sure,” you say, taking his phone out of his outstretched hand, typing the number into his contacts list. Walking up to him all those minutes ago, this wasn’t how you expected the encounter to go. You expected to say hi to him, to maybe hear him tell his major to you before he turns his back to you and walks away, never talking to you again. Instead, you get an invite, a premise of something new, a meeting that excites you and makes you feel all giddy inside, just like the first time you’ve laid your eyes on the boy in high school and decided to secretly hold your heart out to him, if he ever wanted to take it. It makes you feel like you should’ve done this long ago, like you should’ve walked up to him during high school, when you noticed him struggling, but perhaps, this is how it was always supposed to go, how you two were supposed to end up in each other’s lives and how you were always made to finally know Huang Renjun for real.

“Good,” he nods, locking eyes with you, “I have to go now, because the class is on the fifth floor and the elevator is broken, and I also don't really know my way around the building yet, but I'll definitely text you later,” he giggles.

Laughing, you shake your head in disbelief. “Of course. Good luck on not getting lost,” you say as you wave at him, his figure already standing up tall in front of you, his eyes glazing over your features for one last time.

“Thanks, I'll need it,” he tells you, “I'll see you later, then.”

“Later!” you nod, the smile never leaving your lips as you watch him leave and take a shy look at you over his shoulder for one last time before he takes the stairs up, eyes quickly drifting away when your gazes meet.

If anyone was watching you for the last few minutes, they'd think you were old friends. They'd think you were just catching up, accidentally bumping into each other and talking about the struggles of university life, bitching about the accommodation and how the professors seem uninterested in the topic of their courses. The reality is different, though, and although you and Renjun were just acquaintances meeting in a big town, miles away from the home, you can already sense that you and him were meant to have a storyline in each other's lives eventually.

This was Renjun's first time to be walked up to with a welcoming smile. It was also your first time to reach out and offer your friendship to someone. You changed your roles, in a way.

And while Renjun continues to find himself more and more each day, the true and real identity deep inside of him, he finally has someone by his side assuring him that it's enough and that he never has to change a thing about himself to be liked. No more masks and no more acting.

For the first time in his life, Huang Renjun knows who he is, even when nobody’s watching.

#nct #nct dream #renjun #nct fluff #nct angst #nct scenario #nct x reader #renjun fluff #renjun fic #renjun angst #renjun x reader #renjun scenario #nct dream fluff #nct dream angst #nct dream imagine #nct dream scenario #nct dream x reader

503 notes · View notes

hexhomos · 7 months

Note

HI! hope your day is treating you well, i’ve been interested in doomreed for some time but cape comics are sort of daunting to me just because there’s so much content and i really don’t know where to begin. what do you suggest? thank you!

STRAIGHT OUT THE GATE ill say, read [ "My Dinner With Doom" ] (this is a rly high-qual upload, open it up on desktop!)

It's a key issue oneshot with a lil bit of backstory retelling, featuring a private dinner that happens in the 00's - a good entrance point if you're curious about doomreed in summarization + generally speaking a Real Good Comic overall.

LONG POST INCOMING THIS IS A LONG POST / click readmore

the fantastic four are one of marvel's darling old founding teams so there is pretty much... endless archival, ongoing, multimedia and games content popping up all the time.

They are also kinda one of the rare teams where the growth of the characters is consistent? The kids are allowed to grow older and events from every major run are carried/referenced by the next author so if you want to do chronological there's a lot of incentive and fun stuff.

If you wanna dip your toes into the F4 as a concept, check out:

*the #1 issue of Fantastic Four By Waid & Wieringo (1997) *Mythos: Fantastic Four (2007) [ *The FF (1994) movie that is up for free on youtube!! ] *Fantastic Four (2022) by Ryan North as the current ongoing!

(Some) Singles centered on Doom/Doomreed:

*Fantastic Four (1961) Annual 2 is Doom's original backstory issue *Marvel Two-in-One (2017) by Zdarsky issue #11 & Annual #1 are both crazy good but they spoil big events/conclusions from previous runs if u care abt that!!! (My current fav fic came from these issues.) *Doomgate (novel) by Jeffrey Lang is a good option if you want something that is mostly prose, instead of a comic or movie

NOW BEFORE YOU JUMP AHEAD WITH ANYTHING I *am* following [ this reading guide ] which breaks down specific issues relevant to their relationship as a line through all the different authors over the years.

[ There's also this 2021 guide w/ a few other story/AU highlights! The author said u can send the blog questions and theyll answer too ]

The 'Modern era' (late 90s/00s/10s/Now) Starts with Waid and McDuffie's stuff. The latter wrote My Dinner with Doom!

If you're scared by all the names, don't be - when searching for the issues, just pay attention to the year, # number & author/artist creds.

What I'm reading/liveblogging rn is Hickman's Secret wars era, generally regarded as yaoi ketamine; It's a good epic narrative entrance point if you want to jump into it, and it eventually led into this huge marvel event that changed the multiverse and even brought miles morales into the main timeline, so its BIG and it happened in multiple books - the best way to go about it is;

Pre-hickman:

Fantastic Four (1961) #551 #552 #553 ➡️ (these introduce main ideas we will touch again in secret wars)

Fantastic Four (1961) #558 to #562 ➡️

Doom appears in these too, first/last issues more heavily. Stuff here will be ref'd during the next era.

If you're having fun and want to keep reading you can! Just know that the next storyarc has gathered a largely mixed response bc..... its Millar going hammywammy....... not that necessary.......

anyway when you see hickmans name in the cover STOP and

Jump to actual Hickman secret wars era:

Fantastic Four by Jonathan Hickman: The complete collection➡️

(optional, side plot) If you like Val + Doom, read specifically; *Fantastic Four (2014) #3 & #5 + Fantastic Four Annual (2014) #1 *Agent of Asgard #6 & #7 *Avengers World (2014) #15 & #16

New Avengers (2013) ➡️ check issues on picture, or, if you're a completionist, look for 'Avengers by Jonathan Hickman; complete collection' and skim for the doom/reed relevant bits. There's a lot of characters here but this is a buildup to the big secret wars. Secret Wars (2015) ➡️ (All issues!) Infamous Iron Man (2016) ➡️bendis' doom writing is not very good but hang in there because right after him: Marvel 2-In-One (2017) ➡️ (All issues!) is a banger. Yaoi btw.

You can basically read all the future/past ones as listed, or starting from the beginning of that author's period without worrying, bc they aren't as indebted to each other storywise.

You can also start somewhere else if you want or check out other single issues on the reading guides; It's not a crime! There's a lot of stuff with different takes and genres, I'm slowly chipping away at the secret wars era bc its just very thick and like a serious television drama attempt, except its also insanely funny sometimes.

(I'm still making my way through it so that's what I have at the moment!)

#doomreed #doctor doom #reed richards #victor von doom #marvel comics #reading guide #hexposts #fantastic four #dr doom #mr fantastic #mister fantastic #marvel #meta tag #fic rec

106 notes · View notes

booasaur · 1 year

Text

Pinned post - F/F Fic Recs

Anonymous asked:

Hi, I've see you saying that you're reading a lot of fic lately and I was wondering if you could rec some? I so trust your taste and I think we have so many fandons in common...

Hiya! So first, what I was reading over the summer were some new fandoms that I'm still mulling over. Those ships and fics, I'm not ready to recommend anything for, I'll come back to them later.

As you know, I find it hard to pick out faves and recommend things but coincidentally, some time back, when I hadn't read fics for years, I decided to see which I could easily remember. It’s not close to being an exhaustive list, I just noted down whatever came to me over a few hours, and almost all are pretty old, often from my first go-around in each fandom, but it’s a fair number. I've read other great ones that might not be as easily remembered for any number of reasons, like if I was in a particular frame of mind or if I read too many good ones at once so none really stood out, if I read them in between other things going on in life, etc. These ones slotted into the ole memory bank but that doesn't say anything about those left off.

I'm not sure how many of these are fandoms you're into, but when I'm in a real fic-reading mood I'll often try fandoms I don't know, so hopefully you can still give some of them a shot. I tried to organize by fandom though they're mostly in the order I remembered them, so it's not alphabetical or fave first--though it did end up being pretty chronologically backwards. I was literally going back through the years and I don't think I've read some of the anime ones in like, more than a decade? And while for my own list, I often was like oh, all of that author's fics for this ship and would know what I meant, here I tried to narrow it down to one fic per author, since it can be hard to know where to start, but definitely give their other fics a try if you liked that one.

Added a cut for length. All stories are f/f and complete unless specified. As I go through some of these, let me come back here to add that it’s worth keeping in mind as you read these that they are products of their time, some more than a decade ago.

Gilmore Girls - Paris/Rory

The Best Of It - by dollsome - 74k words » Canon, fake dating, set after the original series (so ignoring A Year in the Life). To win a point on a talk show, Paris announces she's dating Rory. It's incredibly in voice and matches the show vibe so it's just so funny and sweet and just a plain delight. It's what actually made me create this list, I was idly wondering what else I'd read that brought me this much joy.

Boston Marriage - by Jae - 5k words » Canon, college years, Paris has a proposal. The first fic for this ship I read, I think? Where I was like, oh, so it’s possible to be that in voice and replicate everything about a show even as distinct as this one. One of the ship’s classics (and being from 2005, just a f/f classic overall?).

The Unbearable Weirdness of Being - by klynkey - 3k words » Canon, assumed high school years, Rory and Paris get into a debate. After having read the one above, I found this soon after and was like, okay, is everyone able to easily replicate that Gilmore Girls patter? (No.) Another ship classic.

Agents of Shield - Bobbi/Jemma

To Keep My Wolves From Your Door - by pirateygoodness - 41k words » Werewolf AU, so elaborate and for a ship so relatively rare, I’m not sure how this exists but I’m glad it does. It’s got some plot, a sweet romance, smut with feelings, just a rewarding read every time I go back to it, which is pretty often. Given my main audience, I’ll mention there are some flashbacks to Bobbi and her ex husband but that didn’t affect my enjoyment at all.

Soulmate AUs (just chapter 2) - by alittleunstable - 3k words » Canon, cute little soulmate AU, which I’m always a sucker for.

Star Trek Voyager - Janeway/Seven of Nine

Where the Dream Takes You - by nejvit - 27k words » Canon, one of the tamer getting together Trek setups, more introspective rather than caused by some alien tomfoolery, but I really like how it handles the very commonly featured J/7 conflict of Janeway dating someone in her crew. It is a bit dense but I found the character and dynamic exploration so insightful and interesting. When I first read J/7 fics years ago (in the late ‘00s), this author’s fics didn’t particularly stand out but when I came back to the fandom more recently, they were among my very favorite.

The Rod and the Staff - by Trek in Tandem - 13k words » Canon, deals with the aftermath of an existing ep where Janeway went on a mission and ran into trouble. The religious stuff comes across as more the writer playing with the episode’s actual religious references than anything heavy-handed so I found it easily ignorable. Really great, clean prose, one of the writers who always stuck out to me for that.

Not Just Strip Poker - by Pink Rabbit Productions - 15k words » Canon, a funny, lighter piece that definitely starts out as full comedy, after a misunderstanding, but there’s some deceptively interesting discussion later on in this one too.

Stargate SG-1 - Janet/Sam

Bits and Pieces series - by Pink Rabbit Productions - 278k words, WIP » Canon, this series integrates Sam/Janet into the first season of the show and I don't think it was ever finished, and the last one especially was left on a cliffhanger, but the rest of the “episodes” are worth the read. Also, when I put this down for my own list, I just said "Pink Rabbit's Sam/Janet stuff", because I remember going through all of them at some point, the stuff outside this series was fun too, and if this full incomplete series is too daunting, definitely some of the one-shots might be more fun.

The Devil Wears Prada - Andy/Miranda

Truth and Measure - by Telanu - 272k words » Canon, diverges from the end of the movie as Andy decides to stay with Miranda. What even is there to say about this one? A true f/f classic, has been in the top three of my general f/f recs for more than a decade and still holds up. Just a perfect continuation of the movie, same world, same characters, continuing growth and development of characters and dynamics, a true believable slow burn romance. And the author’s published it without taking down the fic. :)

Facts of Life - Jo/Blair

Ribbon - by Della Street - 15k words » Canon, diverging in the college years. This is the first of her fics I read for this pair and I fell in love with her writing. Back in an era when a lot of authors started off with lots of exposition and setting up the scenario, I was so impressed by how quickly and easily she did her worldbuilding and character development, and how in-voice and and close to the show everyone was. Definitely recommend going through the rest of her Jo/Blair fics.

Birds of Prey (2002) - Barbara/Helena

And Another Thing - by fembuck - 12k words » Canon, a straightforward getting together fic, things come to a head after Helena starts pulling away. After seeing which of the fics I remember best and like most here, I think I really just favor a great execution of a simple premise. And because this is fembuck, whose fic was a load bearing pillar of f/f fandom, there’s a nice balance of humor and angst with the romance.

An Empirical Question - by harper_m - 30k words » Canon, an accidental fake dating situation spins out into something much more. In a funny coincidence, the same things I said about fembuck apply to harper_m, such a significant contributor to f/f fic over the years (see also this older archive account). This fic is again mostly a well done exploration of the characters and their dynamic if suddenly an explicitly romantic layer was added to canon.

Skins - Effy/Katie

An Imperfection in an Otherwise Perfect Plan - by harper_m - 21k words » WW1 AU, they’re nurses in the army. As with the Mockingnerd werewolf AU above, I’m surprised that for such a rare ship, there’s such a specific (and good) AU, but definitely not complaining. It feels that much nicer to find a true gem in such a tiny collection.

fate is overgrown - by thememoriesfire - 53k words » Post-series, years later, Katie’s in a rut and stumbles into Effy again. I do find it funny that I have no Glee rec from TMF and instead went for the Skins fic that isn’t even transatlanticism but I really love this one, to the point where there were a couple of months where I just reread it constantly, even downloading my own version to fix formatting and typos. It’s almost slice of life, as Katie and Effy find themselves surprisingly healing together, after their fraught history.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Sarah/Cameron

Resistance - by Anklebones - 120k words, WIP » Canon, diverges from season 2 as Cameron continues to glitch. Like a lot of the good Sarah/Cameron fics, this is a great dissection of AI and sentience and what it means to be human and have free will. I mean, within a great story, not just characters debating. It’s not finished but I really like what’s been written so far. The author also has a three-part complete fic where Sarah and Cameron are already in a messy thing and then have to confront some things when there’s an attack at school: Just Another day in Paradise… 1 2 3 (19k words).

No Rest for the Wicked - by InspectorBoxer - 172k words, WIP » Firefly AU, River Tam takes the place of Cameron while Sarah’s a new character to the universe. This is such a fun blend of the two universes and the romance is such a good slow build. As with most of the WIPs I’m linking, there’s enough to really enjoy even if not complete yet.

Once Upon a Time - Emma/Regina

The Secret's in the Telling - by pyrophoric - 250k words » Canon, set pretty early on but where Emma and Regina are at least nominally getting along. Things are set into motion when a mysterious thief shows up and keeps bullying Emma. This is one of my favorite iterations of their dynamic, with long-suffering secretly fond Regina and hapless too-earnest Emma.

You do not have to walk on your knees - by dollsome - 10k words » Canon, mid-season 2, Regina and Emma learning to get along. As is dollsome’s specialty, a lot of character work and humor. Also would recommend Teenage ... Dream? (12k words), where Regina gets like...kind of emotionally aged down? You’ll see. The premise sounds cracky but again, the character exploration and humor and sweetness. :)

Once Upon a Time - Aurora/Mulan

a story, a tale - by maleficently - 27k words » AU where it’s Maleficent who casts the original curse on Aurora and her true love, not Regina on Snow and Charming. This is so fun because you can see all the similarities and differences in how the story unfolds compared to the show, including flashbacks to the fairy tale world before the curse is cast.

Object Permanence - by badlance - 18k words » Canon, after Aurora and Phillip have made it to Storybrooke. Aurora’s still furious at Mulan for leaving them to go off with Robin Hood, but suddenly something happens to Mulan and Aurora can’t stop thinking about her. It starts off an interesting look at Aurora and how someone acclimatizes to the real world after Fairy Tale Land so like, therapy, jobs, but it’s quite romantic and sweet in the end. Also Could Have Been A Year (5k words) and its sequel Bear It Out Even to the Edge (17k words), where Mulan learns the price of staying away from Aurora and gives up everything to make sure Aurora’s okay.

Wicked - Elphie/Glinda

Gelphie Trilogy: 1. Easier Said Than Done 2. Inevitabilities & Eventualities 3. Possibilities and Certainties - by mecelphie - 3.8m words » Rape trigger warning for the very first chapter: Elphie suffers a violent attack and much of the first story is her healing from that, though the other two stories also occasionally bring up the lingering effects on Elphie. Back when I read it, the first story had some typos, missing punctuation and the like, that might also make it hard for some to get into it, but the world really unfolds into something incredibly rich and rewarding. Note that full series word count, it IS that detailed and extensive a story, almost slice of life, except for the precipitating event and things like homophobia and when Elphie's background is tackled. I haven't actually finished it yet, I pause every once in a while till I have a large chunk of chapters and then reread from the start and get sucked in anew each time.

The Thrill, Basis Determined - by Ridiculous Mavis - 24k words » Bookverse, just delightful, beautifully written fluff. Everything this writer writes is beautiful. The further down I go on this list the less restraint I feel in linking multiple stories by the same author, so of her other Gelphie fics, I'll also specifically rec The Way Out of Myself (22k words), bookverse bodyswap with Avaric and Elphie where they both learn something about the other and Invitations Under False Pretences (27k words, WIP), bookverse fake dating, it's not marked as complete but it doesn't leave you hanging, if you know what I mean.

The Week of Ill Repute - by Chudley Cannon - 37k words, WIP » Bookverse again, which, I don't prefer them over musicalverse, it's just worked out that I've remembered (liked?) these fics best. This one I remember from my very first Gelphie fic-reading tour and thinking, wow, this is so good. It never updated after that and I believe it actually does leave you hanging, but I mean, you specifically remember a fic more than 10 years later, it's gotta be on the list, right?

The Bletchley Circle - Millie/Susan

In the Blackout - by RidiculousMavis - 11k words » Canon, set during the Bletchley years, Susan’s just arrived and meets Millie, her flighty and irreverent roommate. A wonderful look at how they start to get along after their personalities and keen minds first clash.

Clerical Work - by Kivrin - 3k words » Canon, also set during Bletchley, Susan tries to figure out her feelings the way she would a code and then things fall into place in a surprising way. Relatively short but I loved the sharp little characterizations of the main four, including Jean.

Legend of the Seeker - Cara/Kahlan

All the Days - by tcbg77 - 67k words » Post-series, some years after, everything seems to be going well until Richard and Kahlan’s child is kidnapped. Cara, now Richard’s general, sets off with Kahlan to rescue the child. I love the pacing of this one, the length allowing for a full quest and a slow burn, and combined with the well-written action makes it seem like a fantasy story with romance on its own. I basically treat it as exactly that and reread every few years.

Within My Heart There Is Another Heart - by badlance and pirateygoodness - 26k words » Post-series as well, magic pregnancy. This is pretty in a way that makes my heart ache. i was surprised to see it was 26k words, since it feels so much longer and shorter than that at the same time.

The 100 - Clarke/Lexa

Within Me An Invincible Summer - by badlance - 62k words » Canon post-s2, Clarke gets over her anger at Lexa. One of the many great fics written during the hiatus, I’d put off reading it when I first got into the ship, during the start of s3, wanting to focus on what was canon at the time. And then of course 307 happened and I moved even farther away from canon, but this fic, its two-line summary, it showed up again and again in rec lists and bookmarks and was so haunting at the time, you know, seasons and people not changing, but finally I caved, and it was as wonderful as it had promised to be.

Love on the Ground - by hedaswolf - 19k words » Also canon post-s2, taking the s3 knife scene from the trailer and again spinning it into eventual forgiveness. There’s a bit in it that is one of my favorite moments in fic ever.

they take their shots but we're bulletproof - by nightshifted - 10k words » Again, canon post-s2, it’s like a whole genre of amazing fics just within one fandom, all the more precious for how that all turned out in canon. Like Within Me An Invincible Summer above, I couldn’t bear to read it for a long time but I knew it was one of the classics, I’d seen it pass by my dash very early on because of our shared Glee past. And yeah, it was very good, like all these post-s2 fics, allowed to be a little rougher and harsher because they didn’t yet know how much comforting the ship and fandom would need.

More Women than Warriors - by steklir - 172k words » Boarding school AU, new American student Clarke arrives at a British boarding school where Lexa’s the Head Girl. I don’t know what was going through the author’s mind when they were writing this but given the timing and content, it felt like an extremely low stakes and ultimately fluffy take on these two kids. There’s a lot of the show’s language and customs worked into this school, so that only adds to the impression, but in the end I’ll remember this for being a rewarding sloooowwww burn and really flowery, pretty writing.

Stud: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, Pride - by coeurdastronaute - 61k words » Modern AU, Clarke’s a teacher and Lexa’s a CEO. Really plays into the effortlessly cool Stud!Lexa thing that was going around at the time, but tbh, she was confident but nice, so I liked it. coeurdastronaute tends to write most chapters as self-contained, so it’s more like a string of connected stories than one long narrative. They’re super prolific and have a lot of stories I liked, I picked Stud as the one I remembered first, and then grabbed a few of the other more memorable ones, all modern AUs: Strip: 1, 2, 3 (10k words) - Lexa gets a lapdance HSAU (37k words) - College AU, I’m kidding, high school AU Heart: 1, 2, 3, Thanksgiving (30k words) - Lexa’s a heart transplant patient at the hospital where Clarke works

Aftermath - by MaraudingTurkey - 8k words » Canon, diverging from the middle of s2, Clarke accidentally courting Lexa. It’s super charming and cute (and because of how early it was written, avoids a lot of the angst to come).

Prompts Collection: Clexa - by nutalexfanfic - 114k words (as of 2022-12-30) » Lots of various short stories with all kinds of premises, canon and AUs. The author has several popular longer stories going as well, but they’re at various levels of completion and I actually remember really liking of the one-shots here. If interested in the longer ones, the firefighter AU Polis 433 (131k words, WIP) is quite popular, and I think the first one I read was the Olympic AU Individual Medley (95k words, WIP).

Abby Doesn't Ask - by onlyasdark - 3k words » Canon, some vague point past 307 where Lexa doesn’t die, short vignettes in Abby’s POV. A great example of an external perspective on a ship, because you get deliberately limited glimpses, and in this case especially colored by Abby’s not exactly positive feelings about Lexa, but despite all that, the relationship shines through.

The Library - by ethiobird - 55k words » College AU, they work at a bar (called The Library). I think what drew me to this one is that the Lexa characterization is more stoic than you often see in modern AUs, especially high school or college. I’ve ended up liking a lot of different takes on her but as much as it’s obviously nigh impossible to recreate the circumstances that created canon Lexa, I do have a particular fondness for that version so I like any fic that approaches it.

although i'm not making plans (i hope you understand there's a reason why) - by brokendevil - 6k words » Modern AU, friends with benefits but secretly in love. The kind of second person fic that really lets you wallow in the angst before the rewarding payoff. The author has several other popular works, especially a year of sundays (98k words), a small town AU, but this one just stuck in my mind.

To the Victor Go the Spoils - by exfactor - 11k words » College AU, Clarke and Lexa’s sororities are locked in a fierce competition. The author has some other very popular (and angstier) works but this one’s cute and fun as hell.

the business of caring - by coldmackerel - 72k words » College AU, pretty much a workplace comedy set at campus police. Someone’s painting graffiti masterpieces all over the place and as the head of campus police it’s Lexa’s job (she thinks) to catch the culprit. This author is so good at humor, and also can be really poignant at times, like in it's called contraband for a reason (54k words), a jumbled up timeline of the two in prison. I’m told the canon amnesia fic is quite good but I’ve not yet felt emotionally up to it.

The 300 - by Bucklethorpe - 66k words » Modern AU, Clarke accidentally burns down 300 of Lexa’s trees. This starts off as a bit of a joking take on canon, and is laugh out loud funny the whole way through, but also quite sweet. Definitely a frequent reread.

sworn under an oath - by faithtastic - 14k words » Canon, diverges from 307, smut with feelings but the feelings are so good. This authors probably far more famous work is don't wanna be your girl (105k words), with one-shot extras and even AUs, in which Clarke is a porn star, and that is funny and hot, but this fix-it so soon after ep 307 will always be a particular balm.

beat the devil's tattoo - by isawet - 53k words » Modern AU, they’re in college but Lexa’s secretly actually planning to take back the leadership of her small country. They fall in love anyway and it’s funny, hot, sweet, romantic, just a great well-written story with excellent reread value.

Your Heart On My Sleeve - by aredpen - 58k words, WIP » Soulmate-marking AU set in canon, if that makes sense. Starts when Clarke’s still up in the Ark and it’s just an interesting exploration of how it all would work in those circumstances. I love the little details and insight into what would change and how.

AGAINST THE MULTIVERSE - orphaned - 13k words » Modern AU, art student Clarke reads an article Lexa wrote and fires off an angry response, starting a correspondence. Despite not being particularly long or having a unique premise, I remember this one because the writing’s so confident and sure of what it wants to be. It feels like a lot of fics--most writing in general, really, tends to flatten itself to not stand out and it was nice to read something so strong.

To Wear it Like a Crown - by Laney_builds_cathedrals - 42k words, WIP » Teacher/student, kinda, and definitely an age gap, so don’t read if that’s not your thing. Clarke’s the new art therapist at a school for troubled kids and realizes things aren’t quite right. It hasn’t been updated in years but the writing is just gorgeous and I couldn’t leave it off, it’ll always have a place in my lists.

Remember Me. - by C_AND_B - 11k words » Amnesia AU, they were in a relationship and then Clarke gets in an accident. God, the perfect mix of angst and fluff. This writer has a bunch of adorable one-shots, so check the rest out too.

tear down the walls - by wariangle - 5k words » Modern AU, Lexa’s an MMA fighter but it’s not really about that, just Clarke falling for her. Extremely hot in a very matter of fact way, but also plenty of feelings involved.

five times clarke and lexa aren’t sure if they're a couple or not - by nutmeg101 - 8k words » College AU, everyone keeps on thinking Clarke and Lexa are together. They’re not so sure they aren’t. It’s cute! I mean, it’s exactly what a fic like this should be.

Help, I Need Somebody (Not Just Anybody) - by thesummerofrain - 92k words, WIP » College AU, Clarke volunteers at the college helpline, Lexa writes in. It’s an anonymous line, so no worries about weird tracking or anything like that, things just organically progress so that they meet and slowly become friends. It’s mellow in general and includes lots of slice of life moments with other people as well, and of course the romance is slow burn as heck.

Maleficent - Aurora/Maleficent

The Queen of Sunshine and Bright Things - by alittlelesspain (oprhaned) - 31k words » Canon, after the first movie, Aurora has to learn how to rule while Maleficient has to learn what her place in Aurora’s life is now. Through time skips, distance, and political crises, they relearn how much they still mean to each other. It’s beautiful and romantic and a great fic for those who wanted their connection from the movie to go further.

Glee - Quinn/Rachel

This Kiss - by poetzproblem - 141k words » Canon, set in s2, starting from a game of spin the bottle. Rachel and Quinn are shaken by their kiss and Quinn especially doubles down on her mean girl persona. Faberry’s had a lot of great fics and I’ve loved so many but I remember thinking while reading this one that this is probably how it would go, if it ever happened. It’s patient and takes its time and is one of my definitive fics for them. Also the Don’t Blink series (788k words as of 2023-01-13) is this expansive, ever-growing universe set after graduation. I haven’t read it all, but I’ve reread some of the earlier parts many times, for the super rewarding payoff to them realizing their feelings are mutual, and others finding out about them.

A Family of Trees - by powergrapes - 8k words » Canon, diverging after s1, Quinn keeps Beth. Rachel’s somehow the only one the baby will calm down for and Quinn is reluctantly forced to call on her for help. It’s sweet and funny, my favorite from this writer but they’ve written several great fics, most popular being Head Full of Doubt, Road Full of Promise ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 - 60k words), a real Faberry classic, where to cheer up Quinn up after giving up Beth, the club goes on a road trip.

Summer Mornings (oldest chapters at bottom) - by freshtilapia - 35k words » Canon, post-s1, we follow Rachel every morning of her summer vacation as she sees Quinn pass by on her daily run. Slowly they begin to hang out and bond. I think this was one of my first Faberry fics? I was a late bloomer, it took me a while to see their potential, but I really loved how authors saw their post-s1 dynamic and this was a super cute, endearing version of it.

Boats in the Sky - by WaveGoodbye - 39k words » Canon, diverging after s3, now both in college, Rachel and Quinn are actually friends. Such good friends that Quinn’s roommate thinks maybe there’s something more. As with Clexa above, it’s so interesting how much character dynamics and fandom attitudes change depending on when a fic is written, because unlike the tension in s1 or s2 fics or Quinn being strung so tight with internalized homophobia, now she’s chill, they’re getting along. I love seeing a fic starting with them as friends, plus, a good chunk of it is external POV, which is a fave.

Our Brilliantly Tangled Thanksgiving - by Elly-Bells - 4k words » Canon, diverging from s1, Quinn has kept Beth--actually, kind of AU too, because her parents are super nice here as well. But it’s just a super fluffy, super cute funny little fic. The author has a fair number of other fluffy fics of varying length to check out as well.

Crazy on You - by roxystyle011 - 82k words » Canon, futurefic written early on, Rachel’s a big celebrity now but gets into trouble and is court ordered to see a therapist, who turns out to be Quinn. This is written so early on I’m not sure if people would consider it the most in-character fic out there, though what is in-character when it comes to Glee, but it’s bold and fun and, as with the Clexa multiverse fic above, I just like when people take big swings with characters. There’s a moment near the end of the fic, when a certain page is turned, that still remains one of my favorite, most memorable reveals in fic to this day.

Dune - Chani/Irulan

Serendipity - by Tamoline - 26k words » Canon divergent, Duke Leto survives and Irulan ends up living in the Atreides household as a guest, while Paul is openly with Chani. When Irulan is called off world to testify, Paul sends Chani as her bodyguard. I’m always so grateful that I picked that year to randomly go through the f/f Yuletide entries because this is such a good fic and I could so easily have missed it completely. It’s got politics, action, enemies to lovers, just this great little novella that happens to be set in the world of Dune. It’s fics like this that have me going through the lesser kudosed out there because it’s a genuine fave.

Marvel - Carol Danvers/Jessica Drew

Smell Like I Sound - by Sineala - 7k words » Comicsverse, Carol meets Jess who’s great except Carol can’t shake an unpleasant feeling whenever she’s around. Mostly fluff surrounding the concept of pheromones.

He Picked the Wrong One - by beckydawolf - 34k words » Comicsverse, Carol and Jess are knocked out in a battle and wake up in an alternate universe where most things are similar, except that Carol is dead and there’s no Jess. They have to figure out what happened and why they were brought there and certain feelings come to light. It’s plotty and fun and the reveal of why they were brought to the alt universe is actually pretty great.

put them back in poetry (if only I knew how) - by singalellaby - 31k words » Coffee shop AU, Carol and Steve Rogers are best friends and come back from the army to open a bakery together. It’s a lot of slice of life stuff, making friends in the neighborhood, developing crushes on the regulars like one Jessica Drew, grad student, that kind of thing.

Teen Wolf - Allison/Lydia

Untitled - by elvesarebad - 13k words » Canon, post-s2, after recent reveals they’re no longer friends but Lydia asks Allison to help kill Peter. It’s angsty, a lot of raw edges and slow thawing of their frosty relationship in the middle of difficult circumstances, but the canon characters and friendship are so interesting and the writer captures that.

Bleach - Soi Fan/Yoruichi

The Art of Transformation - by siyentista - 30k words » Mangaverse, mostly, Soi Fan is injured during a big battle and Yoruichi realizes how much Soi Fan means to her. Despite an action-filled start, it settles into more of a slower character-centric fic, lighter and often comical. Given their canon relationship, it’s refreshing to see the dynamic be more mutual and balanced, and despite the relatively short length, the story feels satisfyingly built up (perhaps because of how much history they already have in canon?).

Brooklyn Nine-Nine - Amy/Rosa

Farm-to-Table, Non-GMO, Responsibly Sourced - by impertinence - 6k words » Canon, going undercover as a couple to bust a maple syrup heist ring. I mean, what more is there to say, except that it’s appropriately funny and cute.

Margin of Error - by idiopathicsmile - 8k words » Canon, Amy needs a place to stay and Rosa offers. The humor matches the show so well, and it’s great to see Rosa’s POV since she’s so deadpan.

Les Misérables - Cosette/Eponine

Any More Obvious - by idiopathicsmile - 2k words » High school AU, Cosette decides to befriend the school goth. It’s just sweet and cute.

This Longing I Inherit - by myrmidryad - 44k words » College AU, Marius starts dating Cosette and brings her into the friend group. Cosette’s so shy and sheltered, she’s thrilled to meet new people, including the cool and intimidating Eponine. As they all become closer, Eponine realizes maybe she’s crushing on her friend’s gf. It’s much more gentle and sweet and friendship-focused than how soapy and angsty this description makes it sound, and the length allows it a slower burn. A frequent reread, especially to get to the payoff.

she knows her way around - by lavendersgreen - 18k words » College AU, Marius is too nervous to talk to Cosette so Eponine, pining after him, volunteers to be their go-between. Cosette turns out to be surprisingly fun and as they become friends, Eponine starts to question some things about herself. The premise is already cute with even a but the characterizations and dialogue are so snappy and flow so easily, it’s a great execution of this trope.

to be loved and to be in love - by missandrogyny - 7k words » Soulmate-marking AU, they’re musical artists who meet at a concert and immediately get along. They start challenging each other to try songs outside their main genres, much to their fans’ excitement. The soulmate reveal is pretty satisfying as it’s seeded early, and the whole fic is sweet and cute.

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries - Gigi/Lydia

get loved, make more - by allthingsholy - 10k words » Post-series, Lydia feels uncomfortable around Gigi, given what they share in common and that everyone knows. In a series of vignettes over time, for each of the family events they meet up at, she slowly gets over it, given they have so many other things in common, including a love of gossip, fashion, and teasing their siblings. It’s a great character exploration and the writing’s so sharp and pretty.

Searching For a Sound We Hadn't Heard Before - by Care - 13k words » Post-series, again things are uneasy at first but they thaw and the two end up taking a road trip. That’s a trope with a lot of potential, now that I’m thinking about it, the way people get to know each other under those very specific circumstances, and this is a great execution of it.

from the dark with you above - by cairophoenix - 22k words » Post-series, again, an awkward meetup to slow friendship and in this case some prime pining afforded by the longer length. The strangers to friends to lovers pipeline just applies really well to these two, what can I say.

Improvising - by krakens - 3k words » Post-series, some years after, Gigi decides to surprise Lizzy and Darcy with an epilogue posted on Lizzie’s vlog. She enlists Lydia’s help and things escalate. It’s cute and perfect for this particular series, it would have to be that vlog as the catalyst again.

Candid - by rhymeswithblue - 5k words » Post-series, by simply hanging out with their famous siblings, Gigi and Lydia face some of the same online scrutiny. Again, I kind of love this aspect of a fic set in this world, because of course part it is that there’s a whole audience watching them and it influences them just as much they influence it.

She's the Man - Olivia/Viola

Loose Ends series - by fraidy_bat - 38k words » Post-movie, Olivia comes to terms with the fact that Sebastian isn’t Viola. By the time I was branching out and reading popular f/f fics many years ago, this was already a classic, both as a general f/f fic and in this particular fandom. One of those ships that makes so much sense, and this is an angsty but ultimately very rewarding take on what should have happened after the movie.

Tomb Raider (2013) - Lara/Sam

she traces your scars and rebuilds your world - by lescousinsdangereux - 18k words » Post-2013 game, Lara and Sam are still traumatized by what transpired on the island and lean heavily on each other, even as Lara heads off on another research mission. It’s a great character study at their PTSD but also building on the relationship from canon and sweet and romantic and funny. This was my definitive version of post-game canon, not the other games or the movie or the comics.

Game of Thrones - Margaery/Sansa

Keep the Bouquets series - by Netgirl_y2k - 7k words » Canon diverging...earlyish on, I don’t know the series, but most characters are still alive. Not thinking either’s worthy of Joffrey, the Lannisters arrange a marriage between Sansa and Margaery and they...make it work. Despite being relatively so short, each individual part under 3k words, they’re so effective, these two finding something in that brutal world.

St. Trinian's (2007) - Annabelle/Kelly

This Town We're Painting - by Fahye - 8k words » Post-movies, they’re an established couple, going about the not so normal lives of St. Trinian’s graduates. Funny and in the vein of the movies, bringing in many of the other former students, and solidifying the Annabelle/Kelly dynamic that seemed so full of potential.

Mai Hime - Natsuki/Shizuru

Inter Nos - by ethnewinter - 1.2m words, WIP » Ancient Rome AU, this very detailed, intricate story with all the Mai Hime characters, Shizuru’s a general and Natsuki’s assigned as her bodyguard during a visit to an allied kingdom. I’m gonna be honest, I haven’t read this in many, many years and definitely haven’t caught up, but even back then when it was a fraction of the size, it was already considered a classic. At this length, I feel like just reading what’s there is a reward in itself.

Kim Possible - Kim/Shego

Alone, Together - by Failte200 - 108k words » Canon, Kim and Shego accidentally get sent to an alternate dimension, same Earth, but no human. They have to get along to survive. Another f/f classic, I remember being much younger and the scale of the fic, the years they lived alone and grew older together, took my breath away.

BSP01: Best Sidekick Possible - by Sobriety - 62k words » Canon, there's a King of Thieves competition and Shego wants the best sidekick possible, i.e., Kim. I think I ended up really liking the romance in this one.

Phoenix Wright - Adrian/Franziska

Follow the Fool - by CantFaketheFunk - 53k words » Canon, post-Phoenix Wright 2, Franziska feels guilty about advising Adrian to perjure herself so when Adrian asks to see her, she invites her to Germany to stay with her. The setting can be a bit goofy, as it is in the game, but the characters and relationship are taken seriously.

Sailor Moon - Haruka/Michiru

FwB - by harukaze - 321k words » AU, no powers, they meet as adults and decide to become friends with benefits. I remember this one Greyhound trip I took from NYC to Toronto, I was riveted to this fic and just read for most of the trip, wanting to see how it'd end. Soapy and angsty and very addicting.

Annnd then these two het fics:

The Big Bang Theory - Penny/Sheldon

The Paladin Protocol - by SpaceAnJL - 88k words » Canon, the guys take Penny LARPing and she ends up enjoying it, and bonding with Sheldon while Leonard feels left out. Very character driven slow burn romance while being funny and presumably true to the characters, I've not actually ever watched the show, but I've seen a few clips on Youtube. Just a great fic and one of the few m/f fics I've read more than once.

Star Trek (2009) - Spock/Uhura

The Place Between - by PsiCygni - 309k words » Canon, set before the movie, Uhura needs an advisor for her project and Commander Spock needs a partner while negotiating with a particular alien species. The only answer? Fake dating! Slowwww burn and since I like both the characters in all their forms, an enjoyable fic.

And ya know, however old some of these might be, if you liked them, think about leaving a nice review. I had a saved fic from a site that’d gone down and like, more than 10 years after it was written I sent an email to the address provided and actually got a reply!

#this took so long...#if you see any typos or errors please let me know #replies #femslash related stuff #sent on 20221014 #Anonymous #fic rec #My favorite things #moved this over to a text post because the new tumblr editor has limits on the number of links #this was mostly done weeks ago #but having to move and reformat it made me put it on pause for a while #anyway #I really didn't move the order around much #you can see me remembering one fic from a fandom and then others from the same fandom #a fic by an author in one fandom reminding me of their fics in another fandom #and remembering different fandoms on different archives together #had to remove several entries from this version of the list since they were deleted :/#it's interesting to see how I often remembered more from smaller fandoms #like I'm just not gonna remember everything good from faberry or SQ #clexa was an exception since I spent like a year or two ONLY reading their fic and even curating a rec list #you can see from how emo I got for the clexa blurbs just how well I remember that time #some of the other small fandoms I only noted down the whole thing so I had to look through bookmarks for this list #which is why they have more than expected

302 notes · View notes

teecupangel · 8 months

Note

I've been replaying Nobodies and in the middle of the second game I thought "Hey this guy talks like Desmond!" then I thought it would be pretty funny if Desmond became a murder cleaner lol

Nobodies: Murder Cleaner is available for Android, PC (via Steam) and Apple if you want to try it. It’s a point and click game where you play as a member of a secret government organization and your job is to clean up after other members have killed the target.

So we have two option for this idea.

Option 1: Canon ‘Verse where Desmond becomes a Cleaner instead of a Bartender

In this one, the only thing we have to tweak is what Desmond’s history becomes when he left the Farm. Maybe he saw one of the Cleaners doing their job in Rapid City and the Cleaner didn’t want to kill a kid to cover his tracks so he makes Desmond his accomplice, helping him clean it up, all the while teaching him the ‘craft’. After that, Desmond tags along because the Cleaner says that’s the only way he’ll survive and maybe Desmond’s upbringing mess him up enough that he thinks this is okay. That this kind of life is actually better than the life he had back on the Farm. The Cleaner keeps a close eye on him and notices how ‘unique’ Desmond’s upbringing is. He even thinks Desmond has what it takes to actually be one of the ‘messy ones’ but Desmond preferred to clean. It feels… more distant to his life before.

We get our timeskip and Desmond is one of the best cleaners out there. His identity is ironclad because his Cleaner mentor gave him a new one and their organization made it official since they do have a bit of leeway with the government. In exchange, Desmond will be in their service which he doesn’t mind because the organization pays for everything he needs (other than the equipment and items he might actually need when it was time to clean up because having such equipment with him when he gets to the scene would be security guard bait).

At this point, the organization has an idea that Abstergo is very sus and there’s a shadowy organization that does questionable things against Abstergo most of the time. They don’t know the full story though but Desmond believes that his parents’ cult is actually an ecoterrorist group. He keeps it to himself though since he doesn’t want to be anywhere close to them.

With the backing of the organization and his more honed skills and espionage, Desmond is actually more or less a ghost even to Abstergo. They know Desmond Miles exist but they also know that he disappeared nine years ago. Desmond’s government records are all fake data but authenticated by the government itself. Hell, he even has an SSN and tax records. (Your call if he keeps his Desmond Miles name or he changes to like Desmond Miller or full on fake name like Derek Milton or something XD)

If you still want Desmond to be part of the Animus Project or to kickstart the main plot, Desmond gets caught because the organization has traitors and one of them took him while he was cleaning a scene that turned out to be a trap. However, Desmond knows how to play the game and his childhood training only help him become better at his job.

If Vidic kept the same ‘security’ in AC1 (cameras only, no visible guards), Desmond would find a way to kill Vidic and (maybe) Lucy before the guards even get there. Once he gets access to the computer (thanks, Lucy), tampering with the security feed would be easy because he’s done it before as a Cleaner. He’s also used to using items and devices he sees on the ‘scene’ so yeah…

Before the even finishes Altaïr’s memories, he’d most probably already made his escape after cleaning the scene.

And that’s when…

The Bleeding Effect starts…

Option 2: Full Spy AU where every Assassin is messy and Desmond has to clean after them

Okay, this one plays loose with the lore.

In this one, the Brotherhood is a secret organization that has the capital and the influence that a usual Hollywood super spy organization has.

And Desmond is the poor son of a high ranking member of the organization. He was being trained to be an operative but he didn’t want to be an operative like his father.

So… he became a cleaner instead.

In this one, I think it would be fun if Desmond is just some poor cleaner who has to clean up for the messiest of the operatives because he’s one of the best cleaners.

So the setup could be Desmond appearing on the scene and deducing which of his messy ‘regulars’ did this one and he all have nicknames for each of them.

One of them is super good at his job that Desmond just have to take care of the body most of the time. That one he calls “the light of my life” because it means a quick easy job then Desmond can just chill somewhere and see the sights until he’s called again.

Another one is someone who always has to chase their target and dear god, Desmond wants to strangle this operative so badly because Desmond has to clean up multiple places and that includes CCTVs used by the local government for the roads and such. That one he calls ‘the bane of my existence’.

The funny thing?

Both operative are the same person: Altaïr who seesaw between absolutely the best or having a bad day that can only be summed up as “the universe is conspiring against him to get some cardio today”.

Of course, there’s a lot more operatives that Desmond cleans after.

There’s one that liked to actually steal shit and Desmond just usually make that a burglary gone wrong most of the time.

There’s another operative who may or may not have a dog that he uses to rip apart his target and Desmond always prays the scene is somewhere outside so he can just make it look like a wild animal attack and always hate it whenever it happens in an office building or anywhere indoors to be completely honest.

There’s another one that tries to be sneaky but that only makes Desmond’s life harder because he has to make sure to look everywhere just to be sure that the sneaky operative didn’t miss or fuck up somewhere.

In other words, Desmond has a lot of complaints for his regular operatives XD

#murder cleaner desmond #two ideas for the ‘price’ of one #lol #yes #i am basing altaïr’s part #on how ac1 assassinations can be super sneaky #or would lead to chasing the targets everywhere XD #ask and answer #assassin's creed #desmond miles #fic idea: assassin's creed #teecup writes/has a plot #i guess i can tag #altaïr ibn la'ahad #too since i did name him specifically XD

84 notes · View notes

httpknjoon · 1 year

Text

drama, drama, drama | ksj

plot | Being the two of the biggest celebrities in Hollywood, rumors are always unavoidable. Eyes and cameras were always pointed at you and everything you will do can be used to form some new type of ✨drama✨.

words | 2605

genres | humor/crack, tiny angst, tiny fluff, actors!au

pairing | actor!jin x famous!reader

note | usernames used in the fic are all fictional. set in the last months of 2022 to 2023. the series is coming to an end! I'm actually surprised y'all voted for drama in the poll haha. this is basically the summary of all the big events that happened between the a-listers from the last months of 2022 to 2023. let me know your thoughts! enjoy reading.

main masterlist | drabble series

@/YNUpdates: Y/N receives her third BAFTA nomination for From The Other Side.

Grand award season began in November. A lot of acting nominations were being released to the public. It includes nominations for prestigious acting awards such as Academy Awards, British Academy Film Awards, and the Golden Globe Awards. Due to your great performance in your co-produced film, From The Other Side, you were nominated for Best Actress in countless award ceremonies, alongside other big actresses of 2022 such as Michelle Yeoh, Cate Blanchett, and Viola Davis. You were the youngest nominee for the Best Actress category.

@/loveyn: y/n getting the recognition she deserves <3

@/francheskatpurrs: can’t wait for her red carpet looks!

replying to @/francheskatpurrs:

- @/girlslikewho: i just know she will serve

You posted an Instagram Story on your account. After the announcement of nominees for the Academy Awards, you updated your fans with a picture of you in a fuzzy purple cardigan, tucked in your jeans. You were happily holding a big bouquet of flowers in what seemed like your spacious backyard. You didn’t caption it with anything, just four white emojis.

@/mintchoco: i’m crying the drought is over we’re getting a whole body pic now

@/sendmylove: y/n looking gorg in the simplest fit

@/l0nelyppl: omg is she finally coming back?????

@/sunshineyn: babe wake up y/n posted new photos

Your fans were delighted to see you doing well during your hiatus. For months since your break, you were just teasing them with goofy selfies and Francheskat pictures. But now that you posted a new picture, they are filled with excitement and hope that you will be back attending public events again. Including the award ceremonies for 2023.

As usual, talks about your personal life are always present. Particularly, your love life since your always-rumored lover was then spotted out with a model a couple of times No matter how long you stay private during your break, your face still managed to be on the covers of lousy gossip magazines. You don’t waste your time reading or even touching those. But you still come across them through social media.

For fans, there are commonly two types of them. One who always believes in every good and bad article they see. And there’s the other who can read between the lines of these articles and fact-check to see if they are reading a piece of true news or just some dumb gossip. Still, they cannot help but to react every report that may concern you or Jin. So, when a certain article with photos dropped on the last week of November.

Lee Sung Kyung and Jeong Joon Hyung Step Out in Italy for Dinner

The glamorous models were seen kissing during dinner in Italy a month after the Chanel ambassador sparked dating rumors with actor JIN.

@/PopCrave: Lee Sung Kyung posted selfies with her boyfriend, Jeong Joon Hyung on her Instagram.

@/jinhourly: I KNEW IT

@/hubbyseokjinnie: y’all threw jin under the bus when lsk is really just his friend

Your shared fandom with Jin took that news as a sign that such a crazy season won’t happen again. It was like a rainbow after months of rain. Their hope heightens even though they don’t really get much content from you two.

Then, December came. People waited if you were going to post something for Jin’s birthday as you accidentally made it a tradition. Last year, you didn’t post something but later revealed that you two were together in Seoul. And now that more chaotic things happened, everyone is waiting if you’re gonna do something. Then, just in the last hour of the particular day, you finally shared something.

@/PopCrave: Today, Y/N posted a picture of her cat, Francheskat wearing a little party hat. With the caption, “party cat”.

It wasn’t much but your fans ate it up. They were happy just by that image. You didn’t tag the birthday boy himself, Jin, or even Since your comments were turned off, your friend didn’t get a chance to express themselves in your post.

@/rareyn: omg she continued the tradition

@/JINYN: i’ll take this as a win 😌😌

@/miamorjin: y’all should check donny’s stories on ig rn

Your common friend, Donny, posted what seemed to be a soundless clip in his Instagram story. The camera was zooming in on Jin who was falling asleep as he sat on a sofa. His head slowly turned down as he swayed mindlessly, seemingly falling asleep. The clip ended when an arm reached for him. Happy birthday, bro! Donny captioned on the top center of the video. On the bottom right, he left a little note: get more sleep, sleepyhead 😴🐻

It was a cute video and birthday greeting. But something else caught the attention of everyone.

@/bluemoon04: that floral wallpaper in the background iykyk 😉😉😉😉

@/gingerly3848523: that’s yn, right? that’s her!

Replying to @/gingerly3848523

- @/C0RNELIA: i think so bc that sleeve!!!!

@/ynjinhearts: bro prolly muted the clip to hide any noise then that purple cardigan gave it away 😭😭

Aaron Taylor-Johnson Replaces JIN in the upcoming film, Fade Into You

The actor left due to scheduling conflicts

A24’s Fade Into You movie now has Aaron Taylor-Johnson co-star with Zendaya. Taylor-Johnson replaced Jin two months after the latter was confirmed to be cast in the said movie. His publicist explained that ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ actor left due to scheduling conflicts.

Just in the last year of October, JIN confirmed to star in two movie productions. The first was Fade Into You and the second was Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s directorial debut movie which remained untitled for now. It is still unknown if the actor will still pursue the latter.

This romance-drama film would have been Jin’s first movie project for 2023. It is expected to start production in February. The announcement was a surprise as it was already reported that the actor already flew to San Francisco, California to film. Just a day before announcing his sudden exit.

Nonetheless, director Kathryn Williams cleared out any upcoming rumors by sharing a statement. Which, she states:

Our lead actor, Jin, was respectful and kind enough to apologize personally to everyone on the crew for the hassle. He had his reasons and we understood it. We don’t tolerate any sort of rumors being made. That so, we wished Jin well in his future endeavors. Also, we are happy and thrilled to welcome Aaron Taylor-Johnson to our project.

The new year of 2023 just came and three days into the said year, articles about Jin leaving a project headlined the showbiz news. Admittedly, his fans were surprised. But on the other side of the coin, your shared supporters with him were all taken back to the happening from the prior year. It was like grey skies were starting to form and tower over their heads again.

@/zendayafp: would have been fun to see z and jin together for a project 🙁

Replying to @/zendayafp

- @/seokjinroyalty: i wish they would get to work soon!!

@/cinderellastreet: oh god i think i’m getting flashbacks

@/ynjinly: if you survived this fandom last year, you’ll be fine xx

@/loveynjin: then next thing u know he’ll be posting cat pics for the next months

Replying to @/loveynjin

- @/idkanym0re: HE DON’T EVEN LIKE CATS 💀💀💀

– @/SEOKJINSKIM: he’ll probably post francheskat too 🤡

Awarding season came. Much to your fans’ dismay, you haven’t attended any award shows from January to February. You snatched a few awards from different award shows, including BAFTA around the third week of February. Your movie director accepted it for you and read the short speech you sent her through text message.

Emerald stood in front of the mic, holding your award as her other hand scrolled through her phone screen, “I would like to thank the British Academy for this award. It was an honor to be nominated next to these amazing actresses. These ladies and their works were all amazing and wonderful. And to our lovely director, Emerald Fennel, thank you for trusting me with your art. You are brilliant and a sister to me. I love you with all of my heart. Thank you to everyone who worked hard in making the film oh-so-beautiful…. Em, I don’t know why you’re making me send you an acceptance speech two hours before the ceremony… It makes me feel delusional, honestly. LOL… Anyway… Whatever the result is, tell Brendan Fraser I love him ever since I watched him when I was five.”

The camera panned to the actor, who smiled and placed a hand on his chest before mouthing thank you. Your fans congratulate you through Twitter and silently hoped you will post something on Instagram since you’ve been pretty inactive again. Your last update was during Valentine’s day. Where you posted a picture of a picnic basket on green grass.

@/YNUpdates: Y/N won her first Best Actress from BAFTA, sixteen years after winning best supporting actress from the British Academy.

But Jin did an update on his Instagram before February ends, which was somehow rare since he normally just reposts pictures and stories his friends tagged him in. But just days after BAFTA, he posted a certain photo that might have caused a ruckus online.

@/loveynjin: I KNEW IT

@/ME0WFRNCHSKT: omg is he catsitting her

@/JINUpdates: Jin posted a new Instagram story with Francheskat. [insert photos]

It was a selfie of Jin holding Francheskat, who was happier than the pictures you share online. He captioned: with my best friend 😺

The last prestigious award shows that your fans are wishing you will make an appearance at is the Oscars. And it happened in March. Almost forty-five minutes into the red carpet event, a lot of celebrities had already arrived in their glamorous gowns and suits. Your fans are starting to lose hope when you posted through your social media account…

haha this is fun, you captioned.

It was a thirty-second black and white clip of you playing the piano. Ironically, you were playing Kitty Kallen’s old jazz song, It’s Been A Long Long Time. You were obviously at home, wearing a large sweatshirt with a claw clip on your hair to keep them together.

@/YNUpdates: Y/N confirms absence at the Oscars as she posted a new clip on Instagram.

You didn’t win the award but your fans still poured you with congratulatory messages. Due to Jin’s last post, they were still confused about the relationship between you two. Some just accepted the fact that you and Jin are maybe just friends or you will never confirm anything.

On the other hand, the media managed to create more rumors even though both you and Jin never went out in the public separately or together. You still haven’t done anything that might allude to your comeback and Jin… there are murmurs going around the fandom that he will probably leave his other project with Phoebe Waller-Bridge as the said film is not having any process. His last public appearance was sometime in May. It was an event for the debut of his new series on HBO. He made an appearance on the red carpet but was seen to leave earlier than others. He didn’t go to the after-party with his co-stars.

Rumors about you usually revolve around your possible romantic relationships, pregnancy, or anything that they will notice about your body or face. And now, with the press collecting every information they can get about you and Jin. You have something new to add to your list of gossip.

Hollywood A-Listers: YN and JIN rumored to be back together?

After months of rumored breakup, YN and Jin are allegedly back together. Various sources have shared their reasons to believe so.

“He has been trying to get her back after the whole chaos with Sungkyung.” a source claims.

Last October 2022, Jin was spotted on a couple of dates with model Lee Sungkyung during New York Fashion Week. The two later denied the romantic relationship going on between them through a shared statement by their publicists. They claim:

“Due to the number of malicious comments and articles the two celebrities have been getting, we would like to publicize that JIN and Sung Kyung are only friends. They have known each other since childhood as JIN spent his early years back in Seoul, South Korea, where he met Sung Kyung as his kindergarten classmate.”

The Chanel ambassador was later revealed to be in a relationship with another model, Jeong Joon Hyung. The attention was all panned back to JIN and YN as fans hoped for an update between the two.

A source that is close to the actress tipped, “YN has been really away from everyone she knows for a while. It was like she is isolating herself. She is focusing more on her wellbeing than surrounding herself with people she learned that used her for their own advantage.”

YN was on hiatus for any activities since March 2022. Still, the actress welcomed the year with success as she received awards and nominations for her performance in last year’s critical-acclaimed, From The Other Side.

“Jin wanted to focus on improving his relationship with YN. That’s why he recently left a good project. She made him choose between her and his career.”

Insiders claimed that due to the events last year, YN was allegedly having trust issues with the actor. Although the two had been very lowkey with their rumored relationship, fans have pointed out that the a-listers have set their eyes on each other since the filming of their first movie, Cornelia Street. The rumors build up over the years and it includes YN and Jin moving in together in a house somewhere in Connecticut just before the 2020 pandemic strikes. None of these were ever confirmed.

E!News has reached out to YN’s and JIN’s reps for comment.

The articles all used the same “pieces of evidence” to prove their claim. The Instagram stories, Jin’s leave in Fade Into You, and more paparazzi photos of him since they cannot really get photos of you since paparazzi assume you are always at home back in California. Surprisingly, the fans didn’t make a big buzz about it as they were already connecting the dots since your hiatus.

@/jamaisvu: atp the press are stealing our theories 🤨

@/ynthecatlady: can we copyright @/bluemoon04’s thread of proofs??? jkjk

@/jamaisvu: atp the press are stealing our theories 🤨

@/ynthecatlady: can we copyright @/bluemoon04’s thread of proofs??? jkjk

Just a few days later, after the getting-back-together articles floated over the waters of the internet, one of the past guest appearances you did with Jin during promotions for Maybe Yes, Maybe No earned attention. Someone posted an excerpt of the video where you and Jin play burning question with Ellen.

Ellen’s voice was heard as the camera focused on you and Jin sitting next to each other with buzzers in front of you two, “Finish the phrase “the way to my heart is…..”

“Is… through loving my cat as much as they love me,” you answered first, making the audience react with a soft aww.

Jin then replied, “Is through kindness and generosity… not just to me but to everyone in their surroundings.”

“On a scale of 1-10, how good are you at keeping secrets?” the host asked almost immediately after you two buzzed.

“Nine,” Jin replied.

“Ten. We’re actors. We lie for a living!” you exclaimed, making everyone in the studio laugh.

You two pressed the buzzers again. And now, to the part that made this whole clip viral on the internet again:

“Do you believe in second chances?”

Your leading man nods, “Yeah.”

“I… don’t know,” you replied, seemingly unsure as you pursed your lips. “For now, maybe no.”

a/n: asks are open for questions and bets!!

taglist rules

THE A-LISTERS TAGLIST

@jub-jub @yoontaethings @kissme-ornot @sleepy-daydreams @veronawrites @cuteipat @ratherbefangirling @babystarcandy-gcf @akirawhore @alpacaparkaseok @rjsmochii @lovesickbangtan @rapmonie2047 @btsiguess-kpop @angelarin @walkinganxiety0 @bloopkook @yoooonie @amara-mars @firesighgirl @zwiehe @hiii-priestess @lojocas @juju-227592 @singukieee @eshtravagent @canarystwin @petalsofink

PERMANENT TAGLIST

@dunixxd @cixrosie @jksjx @embrace-themagic @buttvi @starbtslove @missseoulite @vanntaesworld @kenqki @pixybear @miyukihoshi @stopeatread @seolaquotes

#jin x reader #jin fluff #bts jin #jin fic #jin au #seokjin x reader #seokjin fanfiction #bts social media au #seokjin fluff #bts fluff #bts angst #bts x reader #bts imagine #bts series #bts au #bts fanfic #the a listers ksj

211 notes · View notes