#whereas i think the americans would make a really good 'oh god this is the afterlife? was that all for nothing???' character

[grinchwrapsupreme]

They should add a priest ghost to the Ghosts roster i just think it would be really funny to watch them try to reconcile their conflicting beliefs/have a catastrophic spiritual unawakening when they realize ghosts are real/they aren’t going straight to heaven

#bbc ghosts #cbs ghosts #i don't really care which one i think either could pull it off in different ways #we all know the british are great at agnostic priest characters #whereas i think the americans would make a really good 'oh god this is the afterlife? was that all for nothing???' character #like a real 'might as well sin then' character

[the-descolada]

Spoiler-Free Advance Review:

Exordia by Seth Dickinson

I could not put this book down, my god. Staying up super late multiple nights because I couldn’t stop reading is such a great problem to have, and Exordia gave me that problem more than any book I’ve read in a few years.

This is a very different book than Baru, but Seth’s evocative prose and dark humor is familiar from page one, and the laser focus on defamiliarizing real world injustices is again the core of the work. Despite being far more immediate (Exordia is set during the Obama administration in our world, with an alternate history beginning from the moment the book starts), the heaviness of the topics never gets overwhelming. There’s some incredible (and extremely fitting) tonal dissonance here, with every perspective character having their own sense of disaffected humor about the apocalyptic situation they’ve been thrown into.

I described this to my friend after just starting as “if the Books of Sorrow were written with Gideon the Ninth’s tone and just straight up in our world,” and I think that remains true throughout. There’s a huge amount of references peppered in, and it helps maintain that lighter tone to balance the despair of what is essentially a doomsday clock ticking down throughout the book - and it helps keep things grounded, honestly. I never felt it took away from the gravity of things, or was unnatural - after all, if I, an early 21st century sci fi nerd, was thrown into some fucked up alien bioweapon mystery, it’s hard to say my first thought wouldn’t be “oh shit, this is just like the Andromeda Strain!”

Having seven (eight?) different protagonist (or deuteragonist, I don’t know which they qualify as) PoVs is pretty wild but works perfectly here. Every character has such a unique outlook that you can instantly figure out whose head you’ve popped into even before any identifying names or things are mentioned - Seth’s mastery of the tonally cohesive PoV shifts was something I had loved in Tyrant, especially, and they’re equally impressive here. The characters are lovable, hatable, and everything in between - and each as mentioned is so distinct and compelling that I can’t say there was a single character who I was unhappy to get into their head. And that’s saying something, given who some of these characters are, but I’ll leave the specifics a surprise. Predictably, my favorites were the dysfunctional autistic butch-femme lesbians, but I really loved all of them in the end.

The base premise is almost comical in how small it starts to how much it escalates - a cynical, disillusioned Kurdish genocide survivor, Anna Sinjari, meets a terrifying (and yes…very hot. I’m a simple woman) alien in Central Park, and this seemingly chance encounter sees her roped into a small group of scientists, soldiers, and her own mother in a desperate countdown to solve an otherworldly mystery and save their world. The twists and turns of the plot are intense, so engaging that I was bouncing up and down at times (there’s plenty of sci-fi insanity that I absolutely eat up), and tightly paced.

Seth seems to really enjoy writing ethical dilemmas to great effect, and Exordia is ruthless in that area, taking the base concept of the trolley problem and the moral justification for what someone would sacrifice for the greater good and carving it apart for narrative weight. What greater good does the sacrifice serve? Is it actually good? Who gets to make the choice, and do they have a choice but to make it? There’s a lot to dig into here, and Exordia is a four course meal.

One aspect of this simply taking place in our world, rather than being an alternate universe like Baru, is that the defamiliarized commentary is even more on the nose. Whereas Baru is a commentary on empire and homophobia as a whole, transparently pulling from primarily American history of genocide and imperialism to shape a culture unlike our own in many ways to defamiliarize this moral exploration, Exordia is just literally about real world American imperialism and enabling of genocide in the MENA region, primarily the ramifications of the military industrial complex’s usage of drone warfare and the extremist regimes armed and encouraged by “counterterrorism.”

All this sets the stage for the question of what happens when a bigger fish arrives, one just as hell bent on empire building and justifying its own atrocities. The sci-fi intervention into this banal evil is at the same time a reflection of that evil, and asking if the world has the capacity for resistance to both. Exordia’s answer is profound, and far from easy, but entirely fitting for the ethical dilemma that runs throughout the book, creeping up on you slowly as you start to recognize what shape it takes in this story.

The central material conflict of the book, a locked box mystery of sorts that you piece together with the characters, is fucked up and fun and scary, a reality shifting threat that treads the line between body horror, meta-narrative, and lovecraftian math. It’s extremely cool, and I think it’ll be right up the alley of fans of The Andromeda Strain, The Locked Tomb, The Books of Sorrow and other parts of Destiny lore, and a lot of other SFF stories where ethics, horror, and mystery mix together.

I don’t want to say too much about the climax and the ending - going into this book without knowing too much was an incredible experience that had me on the edge of my proverbial seat - but the ending left me asking myself some very similar questions as I had at the end of Traitor, and I cannot wait for a reread when the physical book is in my hands to see what little foreshadowed things I can pick up on.

I don’t think people are going to be quite as completely emotionally Destroyed at the ending of this one as Traitor, but…it is very much a Seth Dickinson book, and they have quite the talent for making every thread tie together at the end to make the reader feel every emotion at once and realize that this could never have gone any other way. I cried, I laughed, sometimes simultaneously, and a book that can do that to me is entirely worth the experience - and what an experience this was.

Absolutely fucking incredible, I want more of these characters and everything they’re wrapped up in, 10/10.

I received an ARC of this novel from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

#exordia #seth dickinson #my writing #sci fi #sff books #queer sff

[shaunamilfman]

Speaking of Christmas, I’ve been in the holiday mood because, as I mentioned, me and my firehouse sell Christmas trees each year. So tonight while the Christmas music was bumping and we had some downtime between customers I wrote up some holiday HCs for Jackie/Shauna that I had off the top of my head.

- Jackie is the type of girl to start celebrating Christmas the day after (American) thanksgiving, blasting holiday music throughout the house, whereas Shauna will scream back at her “IT’S LEGITIMATELY STILL NOVEMBER, TURN IT OFF”

- Jackie absolutely has a checklist of things that she makes you all to do so she can have a good holiday. Baking cookies, decorating a gingerbread house, watching specific nostalgic Christmas movies and TV show episodes etc. Shauna will only barely tolerate this because it makes Jackie WILDLY happy.

- Jackie hangs mistletoe up around the house, and will run to meet you or Shauna under it when you’re passing by.

- Holidays aside the only thing that really makes Shauna happy during this time is when you guys take a walk while it’s snowing. She loves watching the snow come down and the relaxed down time with you because you don’t put as much of an emphasis on every moment leading up to the holiday as Jackie does. But you will always agree because seeing Shauna with a bunch of snowflakes caught in her eyelashes and hair makes your heart stop.

- Ms. Jackie Taylor CANNOT cook for the life of her, leaving the holiday dinner up to you and Shauna. Jackie decides to occupy her time with decorating because she was asked to leave the kitchen when something burned because she was left in charge to watch the stove while you and Shauna were trying to wash dishes and she’s j sat on the table texting while smoke billows out of the pot. When you and Shauna finally emerge from the kitchen you see the house is decorated so well it’s like the set of a hallmark movie and Jackie is just sat on the couch nonchalantly waiting for you both.

- Jackie will try to convince you and Shauna to take one of those “matching pajama, family pictures” to send out for holiday cards. Jackie is able to say very little of her plan however, before Shauna shuts her down.

- The holidays are probably really draining for Shauna as she has to split her time between her mom and dad, so she needs a lot more quiet time with you or Jackie. Just laying in bed, lights off, cuddled up to each other where no one talks, possibly watching a holiday movie.

- Shauna has to talk Jackie out of buying every holiday candle scent cause she can’t decide between “Walk in the Snow”, “Christmas Cookie”, or “Pine Wood Forest”

- On Christmas morning Jackie will act like an excited child, waking you and Shauna up at the ass crack of dawn because she’s so excited to give you both your gifts.

- Shauna I can see as a very sentimental gift giver without even knowing what she’s doing. Will give you like a book with information about all the dates you guys had been on with pictures, movie tickets, drawings etc and will be clueless as to why you burst into tears and hugged her.

- Jackie will get you very thoughtful gifts but they’re definitely more, materialistic things. Don’t get me wrong, by no means is it just any expensive thing she thinks you’ll like, she 100% clocked that you wanted something in like April and remembers to get it for you.

Sorry for flooding your inbox with Headcannons of these two, I have JackieShauna brainrot atm. Hope you’re doing well pookie, love ya <3

doesn't everyone start their christmas celebrations the day after american thanksgiving? thats when we always put up christmas lights and stuff. its when they start playing christmas music and shit i think shaunas just a hater on this one lmao

oh god jackie would want to fully celebrate every holiday im with shauna the hater on this one fr.

jackie purposely puts it up in your favorite areas of the house so she can kiss you and you're like "but you could just kiss me anyways?" and she'd just blush and shake her head

shauna loves that it gets dark so early during the holidays fr. she enjoys staring out the window as the snow comes down all broody and shit. i love being shaunas holiday escape omg that's so good. shauna looked so pretty in the snow scenes i cant imagine what she'd look like actually happy in the snow lmaooo

jackie burned water once but she runs the gingerbread house decorating like the navy. shes playing the sims with that icing bag fr fr. you walk out of the kitchen to see jackie standing on like a step ladder on top of a chair trying to put decorations up and both you and shauna are like "!!!!! jackie plssss"

jackie buys shauna the pjs and tells her they're for her. shauna reluctantly wears them and is like "oh hell no" when she sees you both wearing them and tries to run upstairs. yall get the picture but both you and jackie had to wrestle shauna to the ground. the pic is like you with your arm around shaunas neck while jackies pinning her legs down and strewn across her lap. you're both smiling but shauna looks fucking deadly. it's your favorite picture of shauna and you make it your pfp for months.

ugh jackie's ass would burn sugar cookie and pine forest at the same time and make the entire house smell awful. jackie walks in the living room to see you and shauna on the floor gagging while holding the blanket over your noses.

i absolutely do think jackie buys you super sentimental and meaningful gifts that show how well she knows you. shauna is so an experience/sentimental gift giver. she gets you tickets to do something you'd like with her or makes you super sentimental gifts for sure. i love the idea of shauna giving you like little poems shes written about you over the year.

absolutely flood my inbox bro i love talking jackieshauna. i'm doing very well, thank you!

#soffsh #shauna thoughts 💙 #jackie thoughts 🩷 #jackieshauna thoughts 🩷💙 #yellowjackets x reader #shauna shipman x reader #jackie taylor x reader

[avelera]

i know that giving sanctuary has a lot of stuff about “dad with dead son” angst for plot reasons and stuff but i have to admit sometimes i think of either hob or dream in the like …classic middle class white american dad fit of a polo shirt and cargo shorts or something equally ugly (big chunky sketchers shoes, those neon reflective sunglasses, god forbid a golf club) and i lose my mind laughing so thank you for indirectly planting that seed in my brain

Oh goodness, WHAT AN IMAGE indeed.

That said---! I could see it. I mean, for Hob I could see it. If there WAS a modern AU of Giving Sanctuary, the modern equivalent or vibe I see for Hob is like... guy who waited until his late 30s to have a kid, who really made sure he had a high paying job, met the exact right person, had the perfect house etc etc then loses his family and falls into a depression where he loses everything and can't hold it together as a result. And yes, he absolutely wears a polo shirt and ugly khakis at Robyn's like...5th birthday party or something and there is photographic evidence that Dream, for all he's starting to love this guy, still cannot entirely forgive ;P

That said, the timing gets weird with immortality because there is a distinct theme in the story around losing an adult son, someone he spent 20 years knowing and who Hob was about to send out in the world to start his own family, only to lose him. So maybe the better vibe would be "If the events of GS took place in the 20th/21st century but the characters were still immortal." Would be an interesting visual challenge to do like what is Hob's 1589 equivalent in the modern era, except maybe an update of 1989 but with a beard?? A flashy Rolex?

Whereas Dream is the sort of father I don't really see shown very much in media, which is someone with actually a bit of style who nevertheless had a child while pretty young? Like, people have kids all the time while they're quite young, I don't even mean teen pregnancy stuff I mean, 21 year olds who are adults settling down and starting a family is hardly the most outrageous thing!

So for Dream's human/modern AU GS equivalent (or NOT Human AU just "What if the events around Orpheus happened in the 21st century instead?) I see him and Calliope as like... that Goth/Artist couple who got married around age 21 when none of their peers were getting married, like everyone (aka the other Endless and all her sisters) thought they were crazy to settle down and have a kid, it was so against type for both of them, everyone thought they were much more into their art but instead they took the time to start a family.

And then they lost that child, broke up horrifically over it, and the Dream who meets Hob in this 21st c GS equivalent, emotionally speaking, is now a 30-something year old, still a goth, still very much an artist, but who has this sort of life experience that almost no one in his age group has had, who has this depth of trauma brought to his life that gets interpreted all the time as him just being this artistic, introverted, misanthrope y'know? He's a goth, that's Why He's Like

That, and no one actually ASKS him what went wrong in his life to make him like this because if they did, hearing "I got married to a fellow artist when I was 21 and happy and optimistic about the world, we had a son who died, and my wife and I split up by the time I was in my mid-20s, and now I'm in my 30s and I've been traumatized and convinced the world is out to get me ever since, so I've buried myself in my work to cope" is just NOT the answer one expects to hear!

So a modern Giving Sanctuary would be Hob, y'know, at the end of his rope, at absolute rock bottom, meeting up with Dream (human or not) in a bar like they agree to while Hob is now unhoused after losing it all and hey, if we go full modern/human AU, maybe Hob is someone Dream got a job for years ago as a favor to his sister, thinking Hob would crash and burn at it only for Hob to actually do very well! So Hob and Dream still agree to meet up every year since then y'know, just following up on this favor (Dream hoping the first couple times it was just to see Hob fail miserably because he thought the guy was a jock and an idiot) only for Hob to confess why his life has fallen apart is his son dying and to see Dream's reaction and to actually be the first person *ever* to hear the story and not be like 'What were you doing getting married when you were 21??" and instead being... actually sympathetic? And asking if he's ok?? Because it really is a huge problem that men who lose their children tragically don't get anywhere near the same support and sympathy that women do?

So yeah the grounded elements of Giving Sanctuary actually DO work in a modern update, absolutely!

And Hob absolutely wore a polo shirt and like... a Rolex to the modern 1589-equivalent meeting which was held at like... Dream's art gallery showing, showed a bunch of pictures of his wife and kid on his phone while bragging about his high paying job, and Dream took one look at this fucking chad and peaced the fuck out of that noise, only to have Hob show up a year after to be the only goddamn person ever who has actually understood the fact that 10 years later, Dream is still traumatized by having his life fall apart in his early 20s. The End.

#I'M SORRY I MADE IT SAD #giving sanctuary bts #giving sanctuary #1689 fic #modern au

[odessasilver]

When dealing with mythology, religion, and beliefs in fiction

Whenever I write a story which involves mythology, there is something I always make sure to do. Be respectful and do my research. Even more so when I’m not writing about my own beliefs or culture. I want a reader to see my writing and think “oh wow, this author has done their homework” rather than “this is nothing like them”. And one of the key things to respect them is by learning what you can about the subject, and applying it. Even in fantasy.

For fantasy to be truly believable, it needs good immersion, and to get that you need all the small details you don’t think about, little hints here and there at something bigger. And I think the same when applying things that don’t belong to me.

Another thing to remember is that some things we may write about, people still believe. We might not believe it, but it’s important to them, and I don’t think it should be taken lightly. I strive to get things as correct as I can in my stories, only taking liberties when I can’t find something, or to bend the rules slightly to add things such as magic.

Of course genre can change how the information we have found is applied. A parody piece might have gods acting nothing like their real-life counterparts and that can work. However, in more serious pieces, if you have a god in your story and they are nothing like their counterpart except in name, readers can take it badly. I certainly do, and it can put me off so badly I’ll tell people to avoid it. I don’t want this to happen to me, and so I work hard to stay true to the research.

Sometimes liberties have to be taken, there are gaps in knowledge, or even things not being translated so you can learn it. Sometimes you need to make things easier for your readers too, especially if they are quite different from the original culture. I find this a lot with my stories in Japan, and have to pick and choose a happy medium. One such thing is name order. In Japan it goes [Surname, First name] and people often call people by their surnames. In the west it’s [First name, Surname], and we often call people by their first names. So then I have to make a decision. When people introduce themselves do they do it the Japanese way, which would be true to culture, or the western way, which would be localised. In this case, I have opted for the western way, however I do have character refer to eachother with surnames when appropriate. I try to make it super clear to my readers which name is first and surname too, though it can be tricky. I feel like this is a happy medium that keeps things true, but means my readers can follow along if they aren’t sure on Japanese customs.

Another thing I have done is about spelling and pronunciation of words, the best example being the word yokai. In Japanese it’s actually transliterated as yōkai with the ō being an ou. So if I was going to do a direction translation, I’d use youkai. However, the -ou sound is different in English than Japanese and we would easily pronounce it as you-kai, whereas in Japanese the pronunciation is closer to yokai. So I decided to drop the u, and it’s still mostly correct, and it keeps the pronunciation closer than being exactly correct.

There are things, however, that I know I’ll do and write which won’t be right simply because I haven’t grown up in that culture, nor have I had the chance to visit Japan yet. All I can do it make it as authentic as possible, as anybody who is Japanese can probably pick out that I’m certainly not Japanese, nor grew up in that culture.

I’ve seen it from the other side, reading a story written by an American about England. It was the tiny things which gave it away, descriptions which made sense in an American setting, but certainly not here. It really broke my immersion, something you really don’t want to have happen to your readers.

On the other hand, I have seen it from an author who went above and beyond for her stories. Michelle Paver wrote one of my favourite series The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. They’re technically children’s books, and it’s a historical fantasy series, but the worldbuilding in them is breathtaking. I noticed it when reading the first book Wolf Brother even as a child, and it still sticks with me now, nearly twenty years later. And what did she do? She went out to get as much first hand knowledge about what she was writing—or as close too as she has fantasy aspects too—and built her world on that.

Through all that research and being able to add it into her stories, she also imparted knowledge onto her readers. Before those books, I didn’t know about aurochs, juniper berries, how hunter gatherers did sea fishing or how tools were created. And while enjoying reading the storyline of the whole series, I learnt so much. That’s exactly what I want to do with my stories too.

And from that I can then build on the more fantastical aspects and incorporate it to what I have learnt. Especially when dealing with the supernatural yokai, as for some little is known. But knowing the cultural rules and how other yokai act, it’s easier to make the lesser known ones fit right in place.

I also give a little leeway with timelines too. For example in my story One, Two, Three I have an indigo farmer, and a dye maker. Indigo dyeing certainly happened in Japan… however not til a little later than my intended year span. If I were writing historical fiction then I wouldn’t stray too far, but because I’ve got the fantasy element, I’m blurring the edges a little. And the benefit is I get to share really interesting things too. I’ve looked into the indigo dyeing and it’s really cool!

When it comes to writing about yokai themselves, I always treat them with care. They’re so much more than supernatural beings of the west and even now some still permeate into every day life for Japanese people. One of which is the zashiki warashi—and there is a great documentary video if you want to learn more about it here. We don’t really have an equivalent, but I can tell from my research they’re special. So I’ve taken what I have learnt from such research, and I apply it into the past for my stories, as there is a lot of culture around the world which has stayed the same for many years.

Lastly, and the most fun part about researching, you find out so many cool things. It can be frustrating having to research for information every few paragraphs, but the upside is that I can stumble on things which spark new ideas or give me something to filter into my stories as background information.

Sometimes I feel like I go too far trying to make things correct, but then I remember Wolf Brother and the appreciation I have for it, and hope one day someone can appreciate my stories like that too.

#indie author #fantasy #japan #historical fantasy #writblr #writing community #writeblr #japanese mythology

[team-council-two]

question for alpha:

what do you make of the stereotype that the french are cowards?

do you believe that people are straying away from this stereotype?

ive been getting into fandoms where french people are written like this and i would like to hear some perspective.

thanks

oh boy, *cracks knuckles*

so. i will be honest with you. i do not know where this stereotype comes from. or well i have a very vague guess but im not sure. i asked people around and they too just went big shrug. my only source of confirmation has been wikipedia.

see my closest guess here is that americans consider our surrender against the nazis in WWII to have been a cowardly thing or something, i dunno. weird takes on europe going on here and they seem to think we didn't fight before said surrender just cos only 46 days or sth bc apparently, blizkrieg who ? never heard of her or the absolute devastation they laid on my people. it also strikes me as a not particularly international take bc i genuinely never had heard it before being on socmedias used by americans. hell, the wikipedia page on french stereotypes lists it as exclusively american. this would match up with americans' tendency to equate cowardice and bravery as something the domain of war, which they care a lot about, whereas we just simply have other concerns, no offense.

anyways, see the stereotype we french people have about ourselves (and that actually is kinda relevant about reality), and a lot of people too, including americans, is closer to this-

thats french for we yell all the fuckin time and make a ruckus about everything ever. les gueuleurs quoi.

although support of unions is lessening due to the current political crisis we have been stuck in for god only knows how long, the french has a large culture about revolution, unionizing, human rights, left wings politics and shit like this. it may or may not be war every fuckin day at my home actually because of the union stuff (not shitting on unions shitting on my dad's terrible work homelife separation and his tendency to yell at the TV every night, bc apparently the TV is a conversation partner but your kid asking you to stop screaming isnt).

we just are known to protest a lot and backtalk to politicians and shit like that. and it seems that the cowardly stereotype is lessening because people on social medias are starting to point out, hey ! this isnt being lazy actually. the french is actively fuckin. blocking roads and burning shit and all that and being cunts to their politicians, and they have universal healthcare and a decent retirement system which we are realizing we fuckin wish we had in this dystopia of a life. maybe theyre doing sth right. (and well theyre right unfortunately the french itself is slowly forgetting that.) this aside yeah recognizing that making a fuss about your rights is a good thing the french do is kind of incompatible with the idea that the french are cowards, especially with the recent crisis of the gilets jaunes where people protested tirelessly despite actively getting wounded and arrested and disabled for life and killed by cops. and it really has been like this for a good while too, since industrialization or so, when capitalism became widespread.

so in other words. subjectively ? i do think the stereotype is unbased/pretty darn recent and mostly a cultural difference, and nor can i really explain it besides blaming Capitalist Propaganda. i also do not know if objectively such stereotype is getting less support, but subjectively, from what ive read around and so on, people seem to be a bit catching up, and seem to be accepting that unionizing and strikes are NOT a laziness thing but genuine bravery when facing a system that is strikingly inegalitarian and running well oiled with the blood of the people.

take this as you want. i have to admit this is a bit personal because americans' agressiveness towards the french have genuinely made me feel like i was unwelcome online, ive seen people wish that france would sink under the sea or specifically would get nuked, with no single hint of irony whatsoever. and among the animosity found here, ive always keenly felt the difference between what was considered hardworking and invested for the french, and what was considered lazy and cowardly for americans and the faint smell of capitalist propaganda hiding behind it all

Addendum: So yeah that stereotype about the french being cowards who surrender immediately, of course it exists in Germany too. And it's also most likely due to WW2 and propaganda related to that.

- Aschen

True to the post-Soviet world as well.

- Ray.

#langage language #pardon my french; i am verbose #i could write an entire book on how unfamiliar french people in medias seem to actual french people #spy is an odd case; ask me about him #one day ill also rant about fake french accents; including spys #anyways hatred of the french online is weird and strikingly frequent and i basically dread going online every time sth big happens #i wont mention anything bc if i do people might go Actually You Deserved It #and i dont wanna get that #hope i somewhat. answered sth satisfying to you #not tf2 #The Council has spoken

[unsettlingcreature]

*raises my hand* what's the story of the bean burrito girl?

oh god ok so this is a long one with a lot of stupid details. I need it to be known I was 18 and incredibly dense when it came to flirting (still am tbh, you gotta hit me with it like a truck).

it was december. I was hanging out with some friends and since some of them had an hour-long train ride to get home, we usually tried to squeeze as much time out as possible so it's also like 7pm and we are upstairs in the burger king that is no longer there.

the only other group of people there are a group of cosplayers. we're all kind of looking at them and I'm realising now, that my friends were viewing them as cringe whereas I was just curious. one of them, our deuteragonist for this story, was wearing a meulin leijon cosplay. me, a filthy little homestuck, wanted to make friends so I went over to the group and introduced myself, specifically walking up to the meulin cosplayer and saying how I loved her cosplay.

they were all really chill and when my friends said they were going to walk to the train station, I said I'd stay at the BK with these new people and speak to them on skype tomorrow like usual. eventually, the group I'm with starts to also start heading home. but the meulin cosplayer asks if I want to go get a drink and I awkwardly admit I don't have my ID on me. she says it's ok, she could buy a few bottles of drink and we could find somewhere to sit.

EXCEPT ITS FUCKIN DECEMBER AND NEITHER OF US ARE DRESSED TO SIT OUTSIDE AND DRINK AT NIGHT??? at first we try to stand by the heaters in the christmas market but get kicked out because the drinks we had weren't bought from the market itself. then we go to the arcade and sit at the back and get kicked out after about 30 minutes because we're not playing anything. eventually, we end up in a cineworld swapping a bottle of smirnoff ice back and forth.

we finish the drinks and she says how her parents are currently away so I could come over to her house for the night. now, I didn't realise what this implied. I just thought she was being friendly and wanted a sleepover. but I said no, I'd have to go home because my mum was expecting me to come back. BUT we make plans to meet up again for proper drinks next time.

next meet up for drinks, she asks if I've eaten yet and I say that I had but if she's hungry, we could go somewhere. we go to the newly opened taco bell where she orders three bean burritos. I remember this very clearly. she was a little self-conscious about it and I was like, nah, if you're hungry, get them!

we then go to my favourite pub and start drinking. at the time I was still IDing as purely a trans guy and was binding that night but at after a certain amount of drinks, I would always be like Fuck This so I took it off in the bathroom. immediately upon getting back, she is like "I'm so sorry but you have great tits" and I'm like um ok! thanks I guess?

she again says that I can come over to her house, her parents are still not back and she amps up her flirting, probably realising I'm dense as shit, and starts telling me about her collection of sex toys she has. and all along I'm just like haha neat! yeah, I only really have one vibrator, these are normal conversations to have with a new platonic friend! we finish the drinks for the night and I go home, again saying thanks for the sleepover offer but I'm going to just go to sleep in my bed. sorry, I can't bring you with you because my mum and nanna would be pissed. let's meet up again some time!

now, after trying her best to shoot her shot twice, she did not reply to any of my messages afterwards. I think she realised I was too stupid. but I was telling my friend about what happened and all of them were yelling at me that I was stupid and she was flirting/trying to get with me. and me, foolish little me, STILL TRIED INSISTING IT WAS JUST FRIENDLY? good god I was a bit of a dumbass. still am tbh.

sorry random american girl in england that thought you had a chance, if i had realised what was going on it might have been different but knowing how traumatised i was back then, probably it was for the best ✌

#i wish this was the only time I'd ever missed someone directly flirting at me #unfortunately. it was not LMAO. #long post

[raveneira]

What are your favourite ships from other animes you like ?

Oh I have a bunch, but I’ll try to name/show as many as I can think of

Fena x Yukimaru

Hanayashi

Haru x Futaba

Ash x Eiji 😭

Rebecca x Asta

YujiKiri, its canon idc.

Edwin, one of my fave OG pairs.

Kyoru

Kisa x Hiro...I just love them ok.

Gruvia

Hak x Yona

Yato x Hiyori

Saito x Louise

Eremin, controversial I know but its canon fars Im concerned, its way better than the actual canon thats for danm sure.

Banri x Linda, this should’ve been endgame idc what anyone says.

Haru x Ellie

Alice x Ryo

Sonamy

Zervis

Gochi

Yusuke x Keiko

Kaname x Sosuke

Ash x Serena

Jimmy x Rachel, yes I prefer their Americanized names lol

Darien x Serena, once again I prefer their Americanized names lol

Killgon, I dont actually SHIP it ship it but I definitely see the potential and I do believe Killua may have a slight crush on Gon, altho Im not sure if Gon reciprocates lol

Takaki x Ashton, LEAVE ME ALONE 😭

Mikazuki x Atra

Yamagi x Shino, LEAVE ME ALONE 😭

Inukag

Kohaku x Rin

Ritowa, I know this ones a bit controversial and I despise Yashahime but I do genuinely find their relationship cute and its possibly one of the few good parts of this god forsaken sequel. Of course I dont want them together currently because of the age gap, but Towa only has 4 years left till she turns 18 so as long as nothing serious happens between them till then Im totally for this ship. Atleast shes not a literal child he raised and is a teen old enough to atleast comprehend this sorta thing and know whats appropriate and what isnt.

Mikayuu...leave...leave me alone please 😭 Im still greiving

Karma x Nagisa, I dunno why I just always found them cute together

Asch x Natalia, they both lived happily ever after the end LEAVE ME ALONE!!!

JoshNeku, I cant fully explain why but I always really liked this messed up ship, theres so many layers and complexity to it that makes it so intriguing and conflicting to ship lol but overall I genuinely do believe Joshua cares for Neku and saw value in him in the end, not as just someone he manipulated in the game and gambled on, but genuinely sees him as a friend after witnessing him selflessly risk his life trusting Joshua when he had every reason to pull the trigger. To me I feel like these two have alot of unresolved issues they need to talk out but Joshua isnt willing to face Neku nor admit he actually cares and wants to be friends for whatever complicated reason he cant. But I believe if whatever wasnt holdin him back he would have joined Neku and the others and the two would’ve reconciled, which is mostly my basis for shipping it lol.

Sormik, its literally canon nobody can convince me otherwise, they have every bit of confirmation minus only an official statement sayin their endgame but honestly who needs that? anyone who’s played the game and watched the anime KNOWS these two are way more than friends and way more than brothers.

Kokichi x Shuichi, like JoshNeku this is a very complex and complicated ship, theres alot of flaws in it but also a ton of possibility. I feel like these two had a chance but missed it because Kokichi was such a constant liar and Shuichi never actually tried to understand him or give him the benefit of the doubt despite him trying to be a better detective, he failed to properly investigate Kokichi and get to the bottom of why he is the way he is and what his true motives were and instead rushed to assume the worst of him, doubting him till the very end. This ship is even more tragic than JoshNeku whereas Joshua and Neku ended up genuinely caring about eachother despite their messed up history, Shuichi completely gave up on Kokichi and vice versa, but you could tell the two did genuinely wanna get along with and get to know one another but simply couldnt because of the constant misunderstandings. Shuichi got impatient with Kokichi and gave up and Kokichi lost hope in befriending Shuichi and gave up on letting anyone in on his plans and resolved to die alone hated by everyone even the one person he had hoped would understand him. Their story is super tragic with so much untapped potential I cant help enjoying it. You could say Im over analyzing and sure maybe in a way I am but thats just how I see it.

Videl x Gohan, this one needs no explanation we all know this is one of the most healthiest if not THE healthiest non problematic ship in the entire DBZverse, its just so wholesom and pure theres really nothing bad to say about it. The one gripe I and many others have is Videl losing her drive as a fighter and retiring to being a housewife, not that being a housewife is bad its just given her potential beforehand and this being a shounen manga its not unusual for us to have expected more for her than just being a housewife. As for Gohan he is father and husband of the year, a million times better than his father was, this is why ppl need to stop sleepin on Chichi because she raised her son right, to be a real man and take care of his family. Gohan may be rusty and takin Ls now on the battlefield but atleast when he comes home he tends to his family instead of going to 10 different planets and mentors trying to get stronger while neglecting his wife and kid in the process.

Those are all the ships that comes to mind right now, sorry for giving so many but there are alot of ships I enjoy lol

#ask #pairings

[awed-frog]

Hey, I saw your post about unschooling and have a question. I'm training to be a teacher and enjoy it an awful lot. I have a great deal of respect for the profession and think it's an important job but have seen a number of Americans share horror stories about school- how they wake up in cold sweat in the middle of the summer holidays 17 years after leaving school thinking they'd forgotten to do their homework, talking about how school has no merits but to prepare children for a life of /1

work under capitalism and that fear is the underlying mechanism which makes the whole operation work and the school to prison pipeline. Now, I don't dispute that there are things we could do differently. (I also have no affiliation to the US and think of it mostly as a failed state but that's a separate issue.) But? am I insane to think that free and compulsory schooling is a good thing? Cause it's the only way to get mass literacy and therefore... access to art, critical thinking, history....

Hi, first of all kudos for training as a teacher! What a great job, congrats!

As for your question, yeah - it’s a complicated issue, and the one system I know well is my own, so I can only offer a half-assed opinion here, but if you’re insane, then so am I, because compulsory education for a number of years (ideally up to sixteen)? Yeah, that’s definitely the way forward.

Now, obviously there are some parents out there who want to (or need to) homeschool and do a great job, but I believe that’s a very small minority, and that homeschooling should still be monitored in some way to check that kids are okay and are actually learning something.

Beyond the obvious, which is access to basic literacy, I believe there are two big reasons why good, free and compulsory education is absolutely fundamental:

It shows kids their family is not the entire world and the way they do things at home is not universal. For lucky kids, this ‘simply’ means learning more about others, discovering other point of views, and learning to relate to different people; but for unlucky kids, it’s 100% necessary to get them in contact with the outside world so they can see what their parents do is not normal and hopefully teachers can also realize those kids need help. The idea a random adult (because if you have biological children, you’re literally that: a random adult, nobody ever checked to see if you’re fit to raise kids, and in some countries nobody asks if you need help either) can keep a child at home for eighteen years or more, strictly control their access to the outside world, and tell them whatever about anything...that’s terrifying, tbh, and 99% of the time people who actively want to do this do not have their child’s wellbeing in mind.

Another thing is that even in superficially non-abusive situations, the decision not to follow a normal curriculum can have devastating consequences. As flawed as it can be, school is meant to give you an idea of all the things you can possibly learn and help you understand what it is you’re good at and interested in. But as an unsupervised parent/teacher, or - even worse - an unsupervised faith-based school, you get to decide from the start what matters and what doesn’t, what a kid should be learning and what should be ignored. In the long run, what this means is that you’re making it more difficult for your child to leave you - and I mean, this is difficult for any parent but something every child must at some point do. So a homeschooled kid, or someone who grew up in a strict religious or ideological web, ends up being 100% dependent on his family or community for a job. If you’re taught no literature, no math, no basic science (and if you’re told universities are sinful, or government propaganda, or not for the likes of you) - how the hell are you going to survive in the world without your family? So this is a subtler form of abuse, but abuse nonetheless. And public school, for all its faults, gives a fighting chance to every kid to have the life he actually wants, and not the one his parents chose for him. 

So, yeah, I would change a lot about schools and as a hormonal new mom I’m daydreaming about homeschooling my kid in a darling little home-made classroom full of kittens and terraria (and hopefully move to the country and raise goats and forget about society entirely, because look at this mess), but I still believe compulsory education protects children and helps children to develop their full potential. This is why it’s so infuriating to see American Manichaeism at work on this issue - how the reaction to a bad system is homeschooling, unschooling, religious schools, and not teaching kids at all (I know I mention this, like, once a week, but I’m still shocked by this new idea Black kids shouldn’t learn math because math is now violence or something). Bad systems need fixing, but the very opposite of a bad system is not necessarily a good system. And what’s dangerous rn is that social media are connecting all sort of extremists to one another, so a common response to those unschooling problems I keep seeing are more insane parents chirping ‘Oh, don’t worry, my son is 14 and doesn’t know the days of the week! Just plays COD 24/7, but it’s fine! He will learn the alphabet when he’s ready!’ and that’s terrifying, it’s honestly so easy to fall into a hole these days and just keep falling, I was talking about this the other day with my partner and how I truly miss the days we had facts, you know?, real facts you could base an opinion on and have an argument about, whereas now 90% of the heated discussions I have with people is just us throwing links at each other and if you want to believe kids are better off living upside down inside a giant teacup, I’m sure you can find an ‘expert’ who’ll support that view and statistics you can use and entire communities offering tips on how to build giant teacups and ‘My toddler loves his teacup! Here is how to customize it so it won’t look girly!’ and my God. 

(Man I hope we’ll all be alright, what a dystopic timeline this is turning out to be.)

Anyway never mind all this noise, you’re doing the Lord’s work doing something you’re passionate about and helps people to boot - my only advice would be, remember to listen to kids who have trouble with school because very often teachers are people who loved school, so it’s important to understand what ‘bad students’ go through and take the time to help them as much as possible. But really, that’s it. Getting rid of formal education helps no one but billionaires and profiteers and bad, bad people. 

#ask #school #education #the us is one weird country #i mean there would be a point 3 #about nation building #but americans aren't ready for that #so we'll just need to keep it a secret

[shmegmilton]

Was there anything good about Hamilton the musical? My mother brought me tickets to go to it in the Summer and I want to know if I'm going to hate all of it.

Is Hamilton bad from a musical standpoint? (Nope.)

    Oh, don’t get me wrong, Anon--when I went to see Hamilton live, I had the same thought & I THOROUGHLY enjoyed it. The set design, comedic timing, & choreography (particularly the utilization of the spinning platform) are all incredible. And the songs, of course, are mostly certifiable bops. Most of them. I would say 40 out of 45. It’s not like “Guns & Ships” or “Room Where It Happens” weren’t amazing songs on the soundtrack, but the choreography really adds to the experience, & in the case of songs like “The Reynolds Pamphlet” or “Washington on Your Side” turns it into something really funny. Don’t take your eyes off the stage for a section, honestly.

The only weak-point of the music was, to be honest, whenever Hamilton was on stage; I used to think it was just a “Lin Manuel Miranda problem” because his flow is honestly... weird. I can’t really explain it--I’m a hip-hop dancer & there’s just something wrong with it--but even the man I saw performing as Hamilton couldn’t salvage it.

I assume it’s just a product of how Lin Manuel wrote his parts in the musical, since he admits that he can’t sing (& therefore would rather not) so there’s this weird juxtaposition sometimes where his part sounds really out of place, even when all the actors in a scene are “talk-singing.” (I don’t know, chime in, does anyone else feel me on that?)

The actors are all great as well, the performances & how they work off each other & the comedic timing are all fantastic, like I said. I like a good Broadway show. As a hip hop fan as we, the use of sampling is so insane.

The songs are also partially structured using actual quotes and other things that characters were known for saying or doing, so it’s impressive, all things considered.

---

Is Hamilton Bad from a Historical (Absolutely)

The real annoyance with the Hamilton musical (& why I would assume I’d hate it) is that it’s based off a biography; “Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow”, specifically. It’s a compelling read, but an embarrassingly awful biography.

-

    It’s less of a biography on Hamilton’s life & more of a intentionally misleading fluff piece where Hamilton is painted as this heroic, selfless visionary who is wrongfully slandered, which is infuriating on its own but it’s at the expense of painting everyone else around him who slightly inconveniences or holds him accountable for his actions, as the villains.

     Some of these people ARE villains, don’t get me wrong (for example, [HERE] is a list of legitimately monstrous things Jefferson is guilty of), but none of the actual horrible things these people did ever come up, it’s all about what THEY did to Hamilton... which usually just amounts to stupid shit like... forcing “him to admit he cheated on his wife,” or “being a battered housewife begging him for help & monetary assistance,” or, (I kid you not) “his wife being too pregnant for Hamilton to have sex with, so he decided he had to cheat,” which is a legitimate argument that Chernow tries to make.

Alexander Hamilton in real life had a hairline temper & the decorum of a child; he pushed away nearly every ally in his party he had & after Washington died he essentially had no political power. None of this is brought up the play, though--or if he is, it’s brought up in a way that intentionally makes you feel bad for him. It’s gross.

The “Pro-Immigrant” Message

     LMM is the son of 1st generation immigrants, & as such decided that a “pro immigrant” message was appropriate for the play. After all, Hamilton was an immigrant, right? It’s perfect because it’s something character would believe in, right? Uh... wrong.

Hamilton was the type of immigrant to “close the door behind him,” so to speak. He worked exclusively for the bourgeois & his party (The Federalist Party) was historically anti-immigrant. 

He himself used a lot of rhetoric that is popular today among xenophobes; he didn’t like immigrants because he wanted to “preserve American culture.”  He also assumed that the French Revolution was just “meaningless rioting” with no real goal (the “Revolution”, we’re not talking about the “Reign of Terror”) and expressed no real interest in helping refugees.

(Don’t get me wrong, having a message like this obviously isn’t a bad thing, it’s just makes it tone-deaf and bizarre watching it from the perspective of someone who knows this.)

-

Aaron Burr was an Afterthought. 

     The most confusing thing about the play is how Burr is portrayed. On one hand, he is presented as the villain (he does shoot him, after all) whose opening lines of each song by essentially calling Hamilton a bunch of names. From Hamilton’s perspective, he sings about how Burr is an opportunist who doesn’t have any political beliefs (which is a [LIE], by the way.)

On the other hand, he his presented as a tragic character; he is given songs like “Wait For It” & “Dear Theodosia” to humanize him, he even almost got a tear-jerker of a song after his wife died & he’s singing a reprise to his daughter through his tears, which was ultimately cut for time... (I’ll leave it [HERE] because it’s legitimately beautiful.) These are two very conflicting ways to present a character, but after looking into it a bit more I realized...

      --it’s out of place because the sympathetic Burr portrayal was written as a an afterthought. 

By some crazy chance, LMM lived in the same complex as Antonio Burr, a distant descendant (I believe he’s a descendant of Burr’s cousin?) Antonio was adamant about defending Burr and correcting a lot of LMM’s misconceptions (because, as I said, the Chernow book paints Burr as cartoonishly evil.) So, Antonio convinced LMM to spend more time in the play humanizing Burr.

It was Antonio’s idea, not LMM’s.

This post is already pretty long so [HERE] is a post I made more in-depth about why Burr’s portrayal is super dishonest (for example, he was actually pro-immigration, whereas the play has him mocking Hamilton for it).

Overall

    TL;DR, Hamilton isn’t that bad... as long as you turn your brain off. I personally just pretend that the musical is about Burr instead of Hamilton (“his enemies destroyed his rep, America forgot him,” describes him pretty well.)

I’m sure that you will enjoy yourself, don’t let my complaining dissuade you! (God knows that the actors appreciate the ticket sales right now.)

#Alexander Hamilton #Aaron Burr #Hamilton #Ron Chernow #AmRev #long post //

[coffeeteaitsallfine]

ok.... it’s Vampire Boyfriend, Live Free or TwiHard time

(disclaimer i dont actually really talk about S6x05 live free or twihard, it just sounded catchy)

No, Castiel is not the archetypical vampire boyfriend but he is a very Edward vampire boyfriend-- Seasons 6 - 8 in nice little arc. No, he is not lustful (just in subtext). S6-8 (& a lil before that) Cas is heavily the outcast. He is not impure traditionally (until he gets those leviathans!! sick ahaha sera!!!!!fightme) but he does have a crack in his chassis. Cas doesn’t think about sex the way humans do but it’s not really about that. Human feelings let alone feelings for humans are sinful (hellooo nephillims being abominations) they’re just “mud-monkeys.” To the angels, Castiel’s love for humans is worth giving him lobotomies over and over. Falling in love with one is the worst sin (“the very touch of you corrupts [Castiel]”). He is thus outcasted! (this was all written pre-s12 so go with it)

Now, in twilight the sex subtext isn’t subtext, it’s repressed because this is a good little Christian novel of course. Edward the vampire is constantly repressing his thirst and they’re only able to be together with ease once they’re on equal footing. I’ve reread it just this year. It’s repressed and not just in Eclipse when he won’t have sex with her. Bella CLEARLY has a sex dream and Edward knows about it but they don’t talk about it. Anyway, the text is the whole “I’m a killer bella” not blood drinking though. He is repressing that so it’s under control. NO no Edward is a danger magnet literally just crushing her with strength or luring other people to kill her. Castiel’s violence pre-s6 anyway is framed as holy and because heaven commanded it, but the slaughtering of angels for no good reason? unforgiveable. Cas doesn’t tempt dean in any lustful way but just the fact that he’s Gay and in love is already too obvious subtext as it is thanks to S4-5, bringing sex appeal or tempting imagery here would be too obvious or overdoing it i guess and works for us so it doen’t come off as predatory I don’t think. Meanwhile for the proxy Meg Castiel is the pizza man. (whereas s9′s answer to that is...nah he’s the babysitter apparently lol ? lets not read into it). Note as I’m editing: Eve literally eve is a character is S6? I forgot this but oh my god make it stop.

Then in S7 Cas is all “I deserved to die” because he killed a lot of angels and bad people as Godstiel (hello eddie boy’s serial killer murder streak if you didn’t pick up on this yet). Then, obviously, he is not even deserving of LOVE he’ll just hurt everything and everyone around and probably dean too. Cue the early S8 New Moon subplot culminating in fallen angels because we all know the third ingredient for the spell that would expel angels from societyheaven and lock the door behind them, was an angel falling love with a human. At the same time, his angel grace is taken away from him, making him a human no longer “pure” or without sin in the eyes of heaven like adam. the first to fall causing all the angels to fall with him.

Now this doesn’t quite work the same way for dean from dean’s perspective cause why would it. He’s not the Laura/Lucy to Castiel’s Carmilla/Dracula. (This makes Benny’s placement in Purgatory for the love triangle (literally) so in contrast like Benny IS this story’s Jacob) He’s not scandalized by the prospect of falling love. He’s got complicated emotions & thoughts is scared to for vulnerability reasons plus his own sexuality issues but I beg you to see that as separate and not over think it-- Twilight is very repressed, Dean is extremely repressed, poor Cas. But! Dean feels completely “pure” in purgatory & wants nothing more than to find the angel the entire time. He is Bella Swan thinking the killer/monster is an Angel (see: Twilight Ch. 23 “The Angel”), the only angel. All the other angels (vampires) are evil dicks but not my angel :) Mine is powerful, strong, psychic, and sexy. he’s beautiful and perfect and will never love me the way i love him unless we are the same species, equals if you will. 

Castiel is the vampire boyfriend, but not in the old, traditional way rather in the inevitably “modern” (2000s--early 2010s) take, where the vampire isn’t preying upon your sexual purity but the wholesome family ideal (ie lisa/ben, raking those leaves, the cookouts ah yes how american)....ehh yikes sera gamble? s6 reeks of homophobia thanks, thanks a lot. Except well, also, dean doesn’t really want that life not entirely. Neither did bella either tbh until the end but lets not get into that, except twilight is the “wholesome” ending, the opposite in every way to traditionally evil (lol ykwim...) vampires. The show eventually moves into a middle space, a synthesis of horror and home-- where it should’ve ended as we all know. Anyway, while writing this I remembered the beginning of Season 6, when the modern version of the vampire boyfriend arc kicks in, was also when they had the episode “Live Free or TwiHard.” Is this coincidence? probably, maybe, idk. I started this post just wanting to make casward parallels cause it sounded right and I’m a deancas/bellaedward truther for the Jokes, a Good Time, and the hot takes. 

except no, with Carver finishing up S8 (bookending the arc nicely with the two gay truckers being soulmates), Benny is the old world would be tragic vampire boyfriend and they couldn’t last! Sorry benny it’s been real. Castiel is the modern twilight vampire boyfriend, without predatory vibes and since religion is more of a plot device than a theme, less Mormonism and heteronormativity. Plus this reading is just sexy and cool and I like to have fun 

#deancas/bellaedward parallels #castiel twilight vampire boyfriend #mine #destiel #spn

[gentlemen-of-lies]

Gentlemen of Lies, chapter 6

Hart to Hart

(Next chapter)

(Previous chapter)

(Beginning)

————

“The next person on the list to check out is Lisa Hartley,” explained Owen the following morning. They were at a nicer café near Owen’s flat rather than the below average sandwich shop that served Curt’s hostel. Owen passed a file across the table they were sitting at, a more detailed overview of Lisa Hartley. Curt skimmed through it, already uninterested by the contents. “Previously a code-breaker at Bletchley, now she works as a receptionist. Good motive, as well as experience with secret codes, which is useful as a mole.”

“I suppose, but it says here she only speaks English and German. Not Russian. Surely that would be important.”

“Perhaps, but there’s every possibility she could have lied about not knowing Russian. Or maybe she still manages to feed them information without the need to speak the language.” Curt noted the lack of some sort of insult at Curt’s intelligence for not working that out himself. Was Owen starting to warm up to him? Hopefully. It would make his job a little easier, or at least less of a nuisance.

“So I’ll follow her after work, yeah?” Asked Curt. Owen shrugged his shoulders.

“If you want,” he said, utterly unbothered by the whole thing apparently. God, he was so annoying to deal with.

“Do you even wanna solve this case?” Curt demanded, slamming the file back on the table. Owen grabbed it and put it back inside his coat jacket.

“Jesus, Curt, why don’t you show the file to everyone in the café? This case isn’t mine, you were assigned to it by your agency for your own gain. Do you think I want to stay out of it? I would have solved it by now if I didn’t have to babysit you.”

“Oh shut up, you’re not some world famous spy, I haven’t seen you do shit. You’re all talk, no action. Whereas I’ve actually been doing my job.”

“Congratulations on doing the bare minimum. I’m busy, I have other cases to solve. So you go and continue you’re little game of hide and seek. Call me when you’ve actually solved something, if you ever do.” Owen stood up, deposited some coins, and left Curt sitting there with half a cup of tea unfinished (shaking it up a bit from all the coffee he was drinking which was making him very jittery; not a good state to be in as a spy).

“Bastard,” Curt replied under his breath, though still loud enough for Owen to hear him. Owen paid no attention, and soon Curt was sitting alone in the café, trying to move past his negative feelings towards his “partner” so he could focus on his own plans for the day. Since he couldn’t go to Lawson’s flat until late at night, he had the whole day to follow another suspect, so he supposed following Lisa wouldn’t be too much of a drain on his resources, even if he did want to follow Lawson instead. But then he thought about Owen, about how he had wanted to follow Owen as well, since he really was beginning to distrust him. Maybe he had put himself on the case to throw anyone off of him being the mole. It was certainly a plausible theory.

But, shit. Owen had left three minutes ago, soon to be four. He’d left it too late to follow him, and he had no idea where he was headed today. He didn’t even know which building Owen worked in.

Curt quickly got up, and left the shop. The street they were on was quite long, and he’d seen Owen walk to the right through the front window. Maybe it wasn’t too late for him to catch up. Curt looked to the right. He didn’t see Owen. But there was a one way street at the end. If he ran, he might be able to spot which direction Owen had headed down.

At the end of the street, thirty seconds later, Curt looked to the left- saw nothing- then to the right- and spotted Owen’s dark red jacket rounding a corner. One more quick sprint, as silently as he could, and Curt finally had Owen back in his sight. Looks like he had a new suspect to follow.

————

Curt trailed Owen from a distance, even more cautiously than he did with the other suspects. He definitely didn’t want to get caught in this instance. But Owen was none the wiser, and he ambled down the road, as if he had no care in the world. It was easy to follow him.

Around twenty minutes later, Owen (and Curt) arrived at the MI6 building on Westminster Bridge Road. It was an oddly long walk for Owen to take without hailing a bus, or a cab or something. Especially since he said he was busy. Didn’t look very busy to Curt.

Curt couldn’t enter the building, at least not yet, it was too risky otherwise. But at least he now knew the building that Owen worked in. Certainly a useful piece of information that Curt could use.

Half an hour later, Curt was tired of sitting around doing nothing. He had a lot to do, he just didn’t know what to do first. Perhaps he could enter the building, he was part of the secret intelligence after all, even if it wasn’t the British one. He could ask for files on Owen if it aided the case... but surely Owen would find out about that since he was on the case too. Damn. He couldn’t exactly break in to the MI6 building... could he?

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Curt told himself. ‘You’ve already got a flat to break into tonight.’ Besides, Curt was nowhere near the level of skill to break into a government facility on his own. Especially in broad daylight. But if nothing came up with Lawson’s flat, there was no harm in making some sort of plan to get a hold of Owen’s files.

Curt couldn’t stay there all day, eventually he’d get noticed, and besides, he didn’t want to sit still for hours anyway. There wasn’t a lot for him to do until five pm at least, so he decided to go to Lisa’s building where she worked as a receptionist and try and strike up a conversation with her. His flirting- if you could call it that- with Miss Lowe from his hostel had hopefully sharpened him up, and he’d be a little more winning with Lisa.

Lisa Hartley worked within the US Embassy, which for Curt was an ideal location. He wouldn’t exactly be out of place; he could just pretend he was an American looking for citizenship. All he had to do now was decide whether he’d follow her or Owen, since he couldn’t do both at the same time. Not that he had any idea what time Owen was going to leave work. In fact, leaving Westminster basically meant that Curt didn’t have much choice but to stick with Lisa. Fine. He at least knew where Owen worked, he could trail him another day. He’d take today to do what he was ordered to do, or at least until it got dark and he headed off to break into a man’s flat.

————

“Hi there, where do I go to see someone about citizenship?” Asked Curt to the woman at the embassy’s reception. He had arrived a few minutes ago, and the lady in front of him looked him up and down. She was pretty, dark brown hair done up in a neat hairstyle that every woman seemed to have. As with Miss Lowe, Curt tried to appear as suave as possible. But once again, it didn’t seem to do much.

“Do you have an appointment?” Asked Hartley.

“Uh, no. I didn’t know I had to make one.” She looked at him like he was an idiot, a look he was unwillingly beginning to get used to.

“Then I’m sorry, sir, I can’t let you through.”

“Aw, come on. I came all the way here. There ain’t anything you can do?” Perhaps his over exaggerated accent would work to soften her up a bit, but she stayed as uptight as ever.

“I can book an appointment for you, but you won’t see anyone today. Tomorrow at the earliest.”

“Sure, go ahead.” He didn’t want to make an appointment, in fact that would add in a real complication. He’d have to miss the appointment, sneak out of the building some way without Hartley noticing him. But he could still turn up tomorrow, try to talk to her a little more. Not that she seemed too much of a talker. Within five minutes of arriving, Curt had to say “good day” and find himself back on the grey-bricked street.

He could understand Lisa’s clearly pessimistic overview of life in general, and was the reason she was a suspect in the first place. She’d been important during the war, really important. A part of the code-breaking effort at Bletchley, probably very intelligent if she was part of the secret service in the first place. But now here she was, working as an unknown receptionist, telling idiots like Curt that they had to book an appointment in order to enter the building. Even if she wasn’t the mole, she was no doubt angry at the government.

Curt stood on the pavement for a minute or two. He couldn’t go back to the MI6 building, since Owen could have already left, and Curt would be waiting out there for hours, growing more and more suspicious to the surrounding people.

A break then? He wasn’t much in a position to take breaks, but he didn’t have much of a choice. He’d go back to his hostel and kill a few hours working out his plan for the night.

Either way, whether he failed to find much on Owen and Lisa, one way or another, he was getting information on Lawson by the end of the night. And would hopefully be one step closer to solving the case, preferably without Owen’s help.

#gentlemen of lies #spies are forever prequel #spies are forever #curt x owen #tin can bros #starkid #saf fanfiction

[kinetic-elaboration]

June 17: 1x23 The Omega Glory

Watched the very uneven episode “The Omega Glory” today. Upon some reflection.. I think I have seen it? But I think my last rewatch ended abruptly after “By Any Other Name” so it might have been some time ago.

Anyway, it was... something. Decent, I might even say good, until the last 10-15 minutes and then it just went off a cliff? That’s how I’d summarize it.

Sulu, my beloved. I’ve missed you.

Kirk knows where all the ships are. I mean, obviously, but I love to hear it.

Phasers on heavy stun huh?

It’s so weird to be on a different ship. That looks like the same ship. It’s so empty and haunted looking.

With creepy crystal remains of bodies everywhere.

“These white crystals... are the crew.”

Something was thirsty!! Perhaps... a water vampire? Perhaps... a former McCoy girlfriend?

(Honestly having watched the whole ep...they could have expanded this intro longer. It was creepy and mysterious. Then cut the last act.)

Oh no, they’ve been infected and now must quarantine. Sort of. I guess.

...Oh no, is this Vietnam? Again?

“Our old enemy, Vietnam.”

My mother suggested the disease might be communism and I don’t think that metaphor tracks through the whole episode but you know what.. anything’s possible.

I don’t like this whole “you can’t leave the planet or you’ll get sick and die” thing. Too familiar.

"I may never be able to leave this planet but I have a worse problem: a colleague may be breaking a rule."

Says the man who has frequently violated a directive that has never been referred to as Prime before.

Kirk is getting very mumbly. That’s his serious voice.... bu it’s also his Denny Crane voice lol.

Like bio warfare in the 90s? TOS really thought the 90s was going to be the dark ages, didn’t it?

Only 90s kids remember...

Spock bursting in with a wounded man, just bringing the drama, as he does.

He’s not even listening to McCoy. Rude.

Spock absolutely 100% would have killed Captain Tracey on instinct as soon as Kirk is threatened.

Sulu’s in command? I love Captain Sulu but where is Scotty?

Kirk is so good. Clever, strong, smart. Knows all the regulations.

Tracey’s so dumb. “They’ve eradicated disease and live for hundreds of years!” Man, have you considered that they are...aliens? And their life spans are simply.... naturally longer than human life spans? And even if you could isolate the serum, it might not work on humans?

And his master plan is to isolate their immunity and bottle it for profit. It’s our old enemy... capitalism and the exploitation of intellectual property.

A fight scene!

“The pointy-eared one stays.”

Another fight scene!

Spock is watching all of this, and you know what, I feel like he’s not upset about it. It’s just like Pre-Reform Vulcan. Perhaps some... Amok Time flashbacks? “Damn, I wish that was me.”

Peanut gallery Spock.

“I wish you could teach me that.” / “I have tried.” Omg where is my scene of Spock trying to teach Kirk the nerve pinch?

And then that look Kirk gives him.

I don’t get the point of this scene but it amuses me that as soon as McCoy sees the pretty girl, he feels better.

A post-apocalyptic alien world... a very interesting concept. Like you could do a lot with that idea imo.

“That’s our worship word [freedom too.” Umm.... questionable.

Damn bitch, that was cold. Just knocking him out like that.

Damn yankee.

...Yankee and Communist dammit.

McCoy’s not even surprised to see Kirk and Spock out of jail.

Nature created a natural counterbalance to the biological disease. Where is OUR natural counterbalance, I ask?

McCoy sounds extra Southern rn. It’s all the stress.

I really don’t think Shatner gets enough credit for his subtlety. His face when McCoy explains the whole situation...

Oh he's mad now. "You've hurt Spock for nothing! Oh yeah and also killed thousands but MOSTLY THE SPOCK THING!”

Whereas Tracey really doesn’t seem to care about anything but war for its own sake. He knows now that his master plan for immortality was nothing the whole time...but he still needs to call those Yangs.

In other words, another once-reputable figure of authority now gone mad.

Kirk’s voice is so casual when he’s talking to Uhura and Sulu, you feel like he’s gotta have something up his sleeve. He can never hide when he’s really upset about something.

...Apparently what he had up his sleeve was his crew knowing regulations and then another full body tackle. Fight scene 3!

"My need for attention is vital.” Same, Spock.

This is a very attenuated and unbelievable connection Kirk is making but he’s Kirk so I’ll assume it makes sense that he’s putting it all together so fast.

Alternate Universe: Vietnam canon-divergence lol.

For anyone keeping track, this is right about the point where the episode goes off the rails.

YOU’RE A ROMANTIC, JIM. Well he’s right about that at least and he should say it.

Oh no, an American flag.

Cloud William, chief and the son of chiefs. That’s continuity of government for you.

(Also pretty hilarious that this society is supposedly So American with our exact flag and Constitution and everything... but they’re not a democracy.)

I really don’t want to believe that “under God” is still in the pledge 200 years from now.

"You're confusing the stars with heaven." Kirk thinks he's being called an angel.

The absolute mishmash of meaningless, referent-free words here. America. Native Americans. Communists. The flag, the Constitution. God. Angels. Devils. What???

Like how can they both be flag worshippers AND...believers in God? Who is their God? Alien George Washington?

So rude to call Spock Kirk’s “servant.” That’s his space husband!

Is that a literal picture of Spock as a demon in their.. Bible?

I can’t even follow this anymore.

“You command him.” I mean...yes, that’s how the military works.

“He has no heart.” Wow, rude.

“His heart is different!” I stan one (1) Southern Doctor.

I feel like Spock is just... not having this at all. His face loos like he’s thinking what I’m thinking.

Oh no is that the CONSTITUTION??!

“Kill his servant” wow Tracey is obsessed with Spock, isn’t he? I guess everyone in the Fleet knows about them and their special relationship.

Spock is even amused by the knife at his throat. His eyes say "I am distressed--but fascinated!"

A FOURTH fight scene? And here I thought Kirk was going to recite the Constitution.

“I’m open to suggestions.” He’s just as worried about Kirk as McCoy is, bu the doesn’t show it.

...Yep, he’s being telepathic again. Not really in line with his usual telepathy but okay. Alien magic is flexible.

Okay I have a JD and I can confidently say there is nothing about good defeating evil in the Constitution.

And now this alien guy is immediately ready to make himself a “slave.” That seems problematic. What happened to the holy word “Freedom”?

Wow, Kirk's in a bad mood. "You can't pronounce your own holy words worth shit."

“This is only for the eyes of a Chief,” he says and Kirk just pushes him away.

Spock literally turns Tracey around for Kirk’s big final speech like “Listen up, bitch, my boyfriend’s talking.”

Is this the 4th of July episode?? Feels like there should be canons and fireworks going off behind him rn.

Idk, the words of the Constitution can't be so unique and unprecedented if a WHOLE OTHER ALIEN CIVILIZATION just came up with them, too, on their own, like monkeys typing Hamlet. (Given the timelines here... they probably did it first too lol.)

"Liberty and freedom need to be more than just words." Like what does that even mean in this context? Sounds nice but it’s very hard to put into the context of all the rest of this.

“And uh be nice to the Kohms,” after most of them (?) were probably just killed.

I really was into this until the last 10-15 minutes and I think there were under-explored concepts that could have taken the fever dream of whatever that bizarre-o fever dream at the end was. The abandoned ship. The leftovers of bio warfare. The whole weird and under-explained concept of immunity. The tragedy that so much was destroyed,, including but not limited to the whole Exeter crew, for no reason. What happened to Tracey to so destroy him--was it just greed? What about the “Prime” Directive? Is it important or not. They just leave at the end after (as Spock pointed out) doing quite a bit of their own meddling, even though meddling is allegedly the worst. Also, we know almost nothing about the Kohms at all. The “American” society clearly wasn’t democratic. Were the Kohms literally Communist?

I’m willing to accept a certain degree of alternate Earth scenarios--like Miri (though imo that was not a necessary component of that story) or Bread and Circuses, but this was too much. TOO unbelievable. And frankly unnecessary. You could do an allegory for alternate-Vietnam, and it would be just as clear but even more effective. There wouldn’t be any distraction in the form of “what the fuck is that flag doing here?”

There is a potentially incendiary concept here, which is the same one I thought of reading about actual COG plans--certain aspects of the Yanks’ culture survives, but with absolutely no meaning attached. They have a Constitution but they mispronounce all the words. They have this tattered flag but it has no other meaning. They’ve turned the symbols of the government into a religion, but they don’t practice any of the civil aspects of it--they have chiefs, not democratically appointed leaders, for example. Like, COG asks “what IS the country, and how do you make sure the country endures no matter what?” This was an opportunity to show the worst of that: the country continues to exist as symbology only--incredibly strong symbology, but only that--and all of the actual values that were supposed to be stored with that symbology have disappeared. Similarly, their hatred of their enemies endures. It’s lauded in the ep as their attempt to get “their land” back but what if it’s just war for its own sake, as Tracey seems to be engaging in? To tell that story, especially in the 60s, against the backdrop of Vietnam, and with the references to bio warfare and nuclear warfare, could be powerful. And I know TOS can work in metaphor and comparison. It doesn’t need to bring out a literal fucking flag.

Honestly, it was like they had one good, classic, sci fi story but it didn't fill 52 minutes so they tacked on the American Pride 4th of July Propaganda Extravaganza at the end.

It really felt like the lesson was “America good” lol.

I liked the concept of the post apocalyptic society in the aftermath of bio warfare as a cautionary tale for 1960s America, and I'd be up for crazed snake oil salesman Starfleet Captain (or...whatever his rank was) if it were a bit better explained. But the rest of it....

It also... could have been kinda incendiary with the idea that the Constitution and flag are religious symbols... I mean some people do treat them that way and I've always found that, first, blasphemous, and second, bizarre in such a hyper-Christian country. But I feel like instead of digging ito that, they just tempered it with "But also they're Christian, as you can tell by their drawing of devil!Spock, for some reason."

Idk, this story could have been complete with out the whole weird “Vietnam AU” back story or alternately it could have been a biting commentary about what defines America, and about whether or not our symbols might be more enduring--or even more important to people today??--than the laudable but more complex and difficult ideals that underpin the country’s founding. Are the words of the Constitution just gobbledy gook? They are if you don’t live by them, and America has always struggled to do that. It definitely would struggle even more in the aftermath of an apocalypse.

...I’m more annoyed now, thinking about the possible sci fi story that could have been...

Anyway next is an ep I’m fairly sure I haven’t  seen, so that should be fun.

#the year 2021 #2021: star trek #star trek tos

[helenalikesbtsnow]

The Ongoing Struggles of Being A Mall Gay (Part 1/3)

Read on ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN or here on tumblr below the cut

Summary: Hoseok works at Build-A-Bear and Yoongi works at the Orange Julius that gives them discounts. Warning for gratuitous overuse of American mall culture.

***

Hoseok is leading around a dog on roller skates. Not a real dog, though that would be fun. They named the dog Clifford, though he is neither big nor red. Hoseok just looked at the dog one day and decided his name was Clifford.

Clifford has pink sparkly roller skates and he’s being led along on his pink sparkly leash by Hoseok who is having way too much fun with him. He’s tried to teach Clifford to roll over, but he’s filled with polyester stuffing and therefore is unable to understand even the most basic of commands. He’s absolutely killing it in the “sit!” game, but that’s the only thing that he’s mastered. You don’t even want to see the disappointment in everyone’s faces when they tell Clifford to fetch and he just sits there, dead in the eyes.  

The mall isn’t really busy enough at this hour to rationalize Hoseok playing around with Clifford, but it’s not for any passersby’s amusement. Hoseok is having a blast all by himself thank you very much.

After a few minutes longer than anyone would have expected, he goes to sit by the stuffer. Hoseok picks up a few pieces of fluff off the floor that someone didn’t sweep up, and Taehyung’s head practically pops up out of nowhere from behind the giant contraption.

“Did you notice the new guy?” Taehyung asks.

“Um, what?” Hoseok inquires. Last he checked he was the manager and new hires go through him before anyone else. He would’ve noticed a new a guy. He would’ve hired a new guy since Seokjin doesn’t like to do it.

“No, not here,” Taehyung rolls his eyes. “I’m talking over there.” He points over to the Orange Julius, their direct neighbors. Hoseok analyzes and tries to determine which face is new. There’s Namjoon making small talk with a customer and Jimin pretending two cups are his eyeballs. The usual.

The new face is immediately recognizable because of how uncomfortable he looks. He hasn’t quite perfected how to wear the hat in a way that doesn’t make him look like a robot. He’s also got his shirt tucked in, which is technically a part of the dress code, but Namjoon has never and will never enforce it, as is evident by the fact that Jimin’s shirt is both two sizes too large and hangs down to about his upper thigh. Now obviously Namjoon, ever the rule follower, has his own shirt tucked in, but this little duckling hasn’t learned the culture yet.

“Oh, he looks like a freshly birthed child,” Hoseok notes, with a shake of his head. They’re just a little bit too far away for him to make out features on the face, but you could tell from a mile away that he’s a teenager. There’s no question he’s younger than Hoseok.

“Should we mess with him?” Taehyung asks.

“We’ll see what Jimin says,” he shrugs. He doesn’t want to mess around with a newbie without verifying it with him first, because the last time they did it, they scared the guys so much that he quit. Apparently pretending to get a needle through your finger with the assistance of lots and lots of ketchup is a no-no. Namjoon didn’t talk to them for like three weeks. It made the carpool pretty weird, that’s for sure.

“Jin, do you know anything about the fresh meat?” Hoseok calls over. He says it just a little bit too loudly, because a customer who’s looking at the Choose Me wall looks up, alarmed. Maybe referring to a person as a meat sack isn’t the best thing to say in front of a customer. The glory of being a manager though means he can’t get fired by his boss.

“This is a Build-A-Bear, not a butcher,” Seokjin doesn’t even look up from the paper he’s reading.

“I meant at the Orange Julius.”

Jin looks up and across the hallway, spotting the man that Hoseok is referring to. “Oh him. It’s his first day. Joon said he comes to us by way of Applebee’s.”

“Wow, glamorous.”

“Do you think he could hook me up with discounted appetizers?” Taehyung says.

“We should probably know his name before you start making dinner reservations.”

The confused customer walks away to be replaced by a mother and her daughter who are very clearly on a mission. Since Hoseok is an expert in the customer service game, he welcomes them with a big smile and a wave. Everyone has a rough outline of a script that they use, but this obviously varies based on who walks by their store.

It’s not a real store with four walls and an entrance, it’s actually a kiosk, or what’s called a concourse. It’s probably the biggest kiosk you’ll ever see. The little cell phone repair kiosk a few paces down is only about three feet on any one side, whereas the Build-A-Bear is large enough that it would take you about a minute to walk around the whole thing. The concourse has an employee “room” that runs right through the middle of the store. It’s not a room, it’s just got a little swinging door which separates it from the shopping area. This section only has one entrance, near where Seokjin is standing. The store is set up very much shaped like a horseshoe.

On one side are all the bear skins, which is the technical term, and even after working here for almost ten years, Hoseok still hates it. On the other side are all the clothes, and of course there’s the stuffer on the short end.

Read on ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

Hoseok has always been good around kids, that’s why he’s stayed for so long. His first job was actually at the Orange Julius a few meters away, but he could never stay there for that long, god bless Joon, though. In any case, whenever a kid walks “into” their store, he lights up and knows immediately how to talk to them.

This little girl, with her little mermaid T-shirt, seems like a pretty good candidate to show their new mermaid bear to, and he is right. She barely even has to make eye contact with the unstuffed bear before she looks to her mom with determination in her eyes.

“Is this the one?” he asks. It’s unconscious of him, but Hoseok gets lower to the ground whenever he talks to kids. He likes to be at eye level with them, it’s less intimidating. Hoseok does have one of the least intimidating faces of all time, but still.

She nods and Hoseok smiles, thinking fondly of how much he’ll spoil his own kid when he has one someday far off into the future. Got to get a boyfriend first.

He always has to look up at the parent like he’s asking for permission on behalf of their kid. The little girl’s mom is smiling, so he takes that a as a yes. Since it’s part of his job description, he leads them to the sound machine.

“When you’ve picked out any sounds you want, my good friend Taehyung over there will be able to bring your new friend to life,” he says. Absently, he organizes the bins so that all their eyes are facing up. When he first started, it was kind of creepy how all the animals stare at you, but he’s gotten used to it. Now, the more they stare at him, the stronger his temptation gets.

He doesn’t have an addiction to them, per se. He just has a lot of teddy bears. That’s okay. Lots of people collect things. He doesn’t have shame in that. He has to store some of them at his parents’ house because his apartment is too small, but that doesn’t mean he has a problem. He makes eye contact with a dinosaur and the two of them war with their eyes. Hoseok’s warm brown ones, and the dinosaur’s plastic green ones. He’s probably going to buy the dinosaur soon…

A few more customers come along and Hoseok helps them before gesturing over to Taehyung, who is designated stuffer for today. Hoseok’s favorite job hands down is stuffer, but he’s a good boss who will hand over the role every now and again.

After about an hour, they die down. It’s been about fifteen or so minutes since their last guest and Seokjin is talking about the squirrel in his attic again. Always the squirrel with this one.

“What if it lays eggs in your ceiling and then you start to run an entire squirrel condominium?” Taehyung asks.

“Excuse me?” Seokjin’s voice is way too loud when he responds. “Eggs, Tae? Eggs? Did you just ask me if the squirrel lays eggs?”

Taehyung realizes his error too late. “I didn’t mean eggs.”

“What did you mean Taehyung?”

“Oh forget it,” he says, shaking his head.

Seokjin calls across the hallway. “Joonie, Tae thinks squirrels lay eggs!”

“You what, Tae?” Namjoon responds. His voice is much quieter, because their stores are not that far away and there is no reason for Seokjin to be yelling other than to make sure everyone around them, or possibly in the whole mall, hears them.

“I’m going on my fifteen,” he says with a humph.

Read on ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

“Would you do me a favor and stop at the Barnes and Noble to buy yourself a book about squirrels?” Seokjin asks him. Taehyung, because he’s a good employee, waits until he’s taken his apron off to flip Seokjin off. Hoseok watches the entire scene with fascination from behind the Dress Me wall.

Hoseok gives it another ten minutes, letting Seokjin taunt him even more with how cute and domestic his life with Namjoon is. When he and Namjoon first started working together about a decade ago, he had probably the biggest crush imaginable on him. They were both oily teenagers, but he was utterly infatuated. Seokjin didn’t come along until a year later when the Build-A-Bear was put in. Before that, Hoseok kind of assumed that eventually, he and Namjoon would end up with each other. Obviously, as soon as Namjoon first uttered a word to Seokjin, they were already in love. It didn’t take too terribly long for Hoseok to realize he never could feel the same way that Seokjin did about Namjoon. The crush didn’t melt away overnight, but he got over it.

Hoseok isn’t jealous. He’s not lonely. His roommate Jimin is the closest, friendliest guy in the world. He absolutely adores the guy. However, it would be nice to be married and have someone love him the way Namjoon loves Seokjin.

“Did you read the email from corporate?” Hoseok asks him absently.

“I try not to.”

“I don’t understand how you’re paid as much as me when you don’t do anything,” Hoseok sighs. That’s not true of course, Seokjin is very good at his job and he is great at the things he does. He’s good with guests, money, numbers, business-y things. He’s just really bad with listening to what he’s told, and those corporate emails are always about him doing what he’s told.

Hoseok checks his watch and looks around the hallway. There’s no way anyone is going to be coming by any time soon. Hoseok is the kind of manager that won’t get angry with any of his employees for playing on their phones, but he doesn’t want to set a bad example by doing that himself. Taehyung has been here for nearly four years now, but Hoseok still views him as an impressionable young child, because that’s what he was when Hoseok first hired him. That was so long ago, back when they assumed Taehyung was just going to be one of their temporary hires until he graduated college, but once he graduated, he just never left them, and Hoseok is very thankful. Seokjin promoted him to assistant manager a year ago so that they could have one more set of keyholders.

He catches Jimin’s eye, who waves him over like he has something to say. Hoseok walks across the hallway to him where they don’t have any customers either. Namjoon is off somewhere, probably in the backroom.

Hoseok looks at the new guy now that he’s a little closer. He’s got black hair and the palest skin. He’s absolutely decadent, Hoseok notes. He’s gorgeous in a soft way like a tiny little marshmallow. What do they put in the water at these goddamn Orange Julius’ to make everyone so pretty? He doesn’t have a name tag yet, which is unusual considering that Namjoon is the manager and he’s Namjoon. New Guy is standing and looking uncomfortable like all new employees at any job ever look. Hoseok thinks to say hi to him, but he wants to know if Jimin is plotting something before he does so.

“Did you do that thing I asked?” Jimin says in the type of whisper that is meant to be overheard. He winks right after saying it and that’s how Hoseok knows it’s for the new guy’s sake. He’s ready and gives a small nod to indicate to Jimin that he knows what to do.

“Your instructions weren’t clear. I wasn’t sure where you wanted it.”

“In the river, dumbass!” Jimin hisses.

“That’s what I thought,” Hoseok nods. He’s trying to determine what he put in the river. Was it a body? Drugs? Something else? “I weighed it down so no one will find it.”

“Good,” Jimin nods. Hoseok spares the briefest of glances over to the new guy but he is very intentionally looking at the jewelry store a little bit down the hallway. Oh yeah, he’s listening. They have to make it more grandiose than this though.

“I don’t get why you had to kill the guy anyway,” Hoseok mutters.

“He knew too much.”

“I just wish you had consulted me first.”

“It was a spur of the moment decision. I had to do what I had to do right then and there. I would do it again, Hoseok. I would do it again.”

At that, Namjoon comes out from the backroom. “Hoseok?” he asks. It’s not uncommon for someone from Build-A-Bear to be standing against the counter like this, but Namjoon gets very territorial whenever he makes a new hire. Their last hire just left for college, and he usually hung out with his school friends rather than his adoptive family, which is how Hoseok refers to himself and his coworkers. That kid is not particularly missed so much as there is an absence of a human.

“Hey Joon, how are you?” Hoseok says, pretending to be surprised by his entrance.

“What are you two… oh come on,” the look of annoyance on his face when he puts the pieces together could be put into a museum. “Again? Seriously?”

“What are you talking about?” Jimin plays innocent.

“Why are you always doing this to me?” he aims the question at God and then turns to his new employee, “Whatever they were just talking about, disregard it. They do this to everyone I hire; they’re just trying to mess with you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Hoseok says. “I’m offended you would make such an accusation.”

“Just go away,” he says, shaking his head and making a shooing motion. He’s not ready to deal with both Jimin and Hoseok. The two of them have been roommates for just long enough that they have a mind meld that Namjoon doesn’t trust. It’s best to keep them separate at all times.

“Wow. Well you just lost yourself a paying customer.”

“Not cool of you, Joon,” Jimin shakes his head.

“I sign your paychecks.”

Jimin stands up straight dramatically and salutes, “yes sir!”

Hoseok laughs and returns to his actual job. Taehyung is back from break and he’s in the middle of helping two little girls pick out their new furry friend and he smiles fondly at them. Besides performing the motions, stuffing, ringing people up, the best thing about this job is just seeing how happy you make people. It’s the only job in retail where you get to make someone’s day one hundred percent of the time. It’s absolutely impossible to go to a Build-A-Bear Workshop and not leave with a smile on your face. It’s literally page one in the employee handbook. Make people smile, make their day.

Hoseok goes to hang out in the middle of the concourse with Seokjin who he now realizes was not actually reading a paper at all, he was just holding it up to hide his phone.

“You crafty son of a bitch.” He says it as quietly as possible because there are literal children only a little bit away.

Seokjin smirks. “You’re very gullible.” Seokjin isn’t usually one to be on his phone constantly while he’s at work, but the day has been unbelievably slow so far. Hoseok looks over his shoulder to see what he’s doing. There are very few secrets in this family. Mall family, that is. Hoseok knows what type of porn Jimin watches, though that’s less to do with them all knowing each other really well and more because he and Jimin’s rooms share a wall.

Let the record show that Seokjin is taking a quiz to determine what type of rock he is. Hoseok wouldn’t need a quiz to tell you that Seokjin is a rhyolite.

Hoseok grabs his phone from his hand and gives Seokjin an annoyed glare. “Will you go clean up after those two kids? They messed through almost every bin.”

“Ugh, fine,” he’s easy to push over because they both know he hasn’t done anything today.

“Taehyung,” he says leaning over the wall to look at Taehyung who is preparing to help stuff a very beautiful unicorn and bunny.

“Hmm?”

“Would you be interested in going home an hour early? It’s so slow.”

Read on ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

He nods vigorously and Hoseok rolls his eyes when he lets him go back to work. Taehyung is scheduled for another two and a half hours, but it’s a Wednesday and they haven’t even broken their midday goal yet and it’s three hours past when they were supposed to.

“I’m sending Tae home a little early,” Hoseok calls over to Seokjin.

“Fine with me,” he says. “We’re almost out of Pikachus.”

Hoseok frowns. Pikachu is one of the animals that he hates to run low on, because it’s so popular. Customers rarely yell at you at a store like this one, but when they do, it’s usually because you’re out of a Pokémon. One time a soccer mom made Taehyung cry when they didn’t have any Piplups and it’s the closest Hoseok has ever come to hitting a person. No one is allowed to be rude to his children and Taehyung is very much one of his children.

“I’ll run to the stock room to see if there’s any more,” he sighs. He walks out of the store and across the hallway, enjoying the sound his keys make when they jingle in his hands. Since they’re in a concourse, their stockroom is out the service door in the somewhat creepy mall employee hallway. It’s supposed to only be for people who work at the mall, but the door is always unlocked and lately, customers have started to learn that. It’s not haunted, but it’s also not not haunted.

Unfortunately, they do not have any more Pikachus and it’s not the kind of thing they can just order more of. Either they get more Pikachus in their next truck or they don’t. It’s not up to them what comes and what doesn’t. He notes that there is a substantial amount of fluff that was left on the ground, Taehyung the obvious culprit. Hoseok loves him, dearly and truly, but Taehyung hates sweeping with a passion.

He returns to the mall to see their store has once again cleared out, but a familiar darkly dressed figure is now approaching. “Well if it isn’t the traitor himself,” he says. As per usual, Jungkook is dressed in all black. He’s wearing his signature stomping shoes today. He’s light on his feet, which is good, because if he wasn’t, those boots would intimidate Hoseok into hibernation.

“I’m not a traitor, I’m a capitalist.”

“Sounds like something a traitor would say,” Hoseok says.

Jungkook throws up his arms in a shrug before he takes a seat at the table just outside the technical boundary of their concourse.

“When are you going to come back to me?” Hoseok asks. Hoseok is just tall enough to lean over to look inside the concourse where he reaches for something.

“As soon as you’re able to give me a 40% discount to Hot Topic,” Jungkook responds, pulling out his phone, because there is no other purpose to having a break then to check all the text messages that you haven’t received in the last three hours because all of your friends work at the same mall and have the same hours as you do.

“I still have your apron for whenever you come back,” Hoseok declares once he finds it. They put the apron on a How to Train Your Dragon Toothless that Jungkook himself stuffed, who, being a dark black dragon, is an adequate replacement for their lost comrade. Toothless goes by several different names now that Jungkook works at Hot Topic. Jungkook 2, Emo Boy, Judas.

Hoseok gives him his world renown, absolutely heartbreaking pout while holding up Jungkook 2. He gets all up in Jungkook’s personal space and tries to win his heart through his beautiful, devastating face.

“Not gonna work, Seok.”

“I’ll win you yet! Just you wait, Jeon Jungkook!”

Jungkook receives a message in the Group Chat, which he opens to see that it’s a picture of himself taken maybe thirty seconds ago, from Seokjin. The caption just says, “Bitch: sighted.”

Across the hall, Jimin, who is most certainly not allowed to have his phone on him laughs. He looks over and gives Jungkook a bright wave. It’s very difficult for Jimin to pretend to be angry when his personality is like a Peaches and Cream smoothie, which is coincidentally his favorite Orange Julius beverage.

“You’re all so very petty,” Jungkook sighs, holding up the message for Hoseok to see, though it’s all in good fun. He’s as much a part of their family as anyone else, even if he did abandon them viciously for Hot Topic.

“Put your phone away Mr. Kim,” Hoseok calls over.

“I don’t have my phone,” Taehyung says.

“No, the other one.”

“Hoseok, we’re co-managers. You don’t get to tell me what to do.” Seokjin is just in one of those funks. It happens on slow days like these. It’s not just because the store isn’t making as much money as their target, it’s also just very deflating to not be doing anything.

“We just miss you Jungkook,” Hoseok sighs. It’s been nearly a month since he left, but it doesn’t feel like he’s gone anywhere. His store is just down the hall. Far enough that they can’t shout to him, but close enough that if anyone gets pissed off with anyone else, they can go vent about it to Jungkook on their break. This is infrequent but Jimin occasionally has a short temper when it comes to Taehyung. Probably because they’ve been secretly fucking each other for like a year now, though Hoseok isn’t supposed to know that.

“It offends me deeply that you care more about discounted jewelry than you do about me,” Hoseok says. To be fair, Jungkook has been threatening to get a sleeve tattoo for some time now and that’s not technically allowed under store policy.

“Kids just have… too much snot,” Jungkook shakes his head. “They’re so full of snot. Just right out their nose onto their bears and then it gets on me, and I just… goths don’t have as much snot, Hoseok.”

Hoseok shakes his head. That’s the Jungkook he knows and loves.

“New guy!” Taehyung calls over, as the new guy clocks out for the day. The guy doesn’t even realize that Taehyung is talking to him because he looks like he’s about to walk in the opposite direction. “New Orange Julius guy!” Taehyung yells louder this time, and that gets his attention. It’s less vague, there’s only one person who could be given that superlative. He turns around, looking for the source of the voice, and sees Taehyung waving him over. He points to himself as if he’s asking whether Taehyung is talking to him, but who else could he be talking to. “Yes you.”

“Don’t scare him,” Hoseok says.

“Didn’t you and Jimin try to convince him you killed someone?” Taehyung asks.

“Ah, Namjoon ruined it.”

The new guy looks very awkward as he approaches, but Hoseok tries to be as welcoming as he can be, which is something he’s gotten to be very good at given the nature of his job.

“Hey there,” Hoseok says, waving at him. “How was your first day?”

“Um, good,” he says and Hoseok is a little caught off guard by his voice. It’s not that his voice is deep, but it’s deeper than you would expect when you look at his face. His voice sounds uncomfortable. Hoseok doesn’t want to scare the guy too much, even if it is kind of fun.

“I’m sorry me and Jimin messed with you earlier,” Hoseok says. “It’s something we’ve been doing for years. I didn’t actually hide a body.”

“Yeah, uh, I figured that out,” he says. Oh boy, he’s the cute kind of awkward that makes Hoseok’s heart stutter.

“We didn’t introduce ourselves!” Hoseok realizes. “I’m Hoseok, this here is Taehyung, and that guy over there is banging your boss.”

“We’re married! Stop telling people we’re banging. You came to the wedding,” Seokjin rolls his eyes, but then waves at the new guy. “I’m Seokjin.”

“He’s banging your boss,” Hoseok whispers.

“At least I can get some,” Seokjin says. Taehyung makes an “oooh” sound, because Hoseok walked right into that one.

“What’s your name?” Hoseok asks him, choosing to ignore both of the people around him.

“I’m Yoongi,” he replies. Hoseok smiles, deciding he likes that name. It’s sweet, just like Yoongi’s face.

“Nice to meet you Yoongi. In case Jimin didn’t give you the low down yet, we at Build-A-Bear and at Orange Julius are a family. You’re part of the family now. If you didn’t read the fine print when you got hired, you won’t have been made aware that you are now loved and respected. That’s just something you’re going to have to accept.”

“Jin is our mom,” Taehyung adds.

“I’m not your mom.”

“Namjoon is our dad.”

“That part is true,” Seokjin says.

“…Okay?”

Hoseok almost puts an arm on his shoulder, because that’s what he would do if Yoongi was anyone else, but he literally just met this guy and a few hours ago he had pretended he killed someone in front of him. Give it a little time before you get too familiar with him.

“I just mean that we look out for each other, that’s all. If you ever need anything at all, one of us will be able to help you out. We’re not just coworkers, we’re best friends.”

“Jeez, Seok, you make it sound like a cult,” Seokjin says.

“Why do you have to go around and ruin a bonding moment like that, man?” Hoseok says. “Well anyway, I’ll let you get on your way, nothing like going home after work.”

“Especially when you have someone at home who loves you,” Seokjin says. He’s laying it on pretty heavy today, but in all fairness, Hoseok has been single for a really, really long time.

“We’ve got to add you to the group chat!” Taehyung says, and Hoseok can’t believe he almost forgot.

“Of course! How could I forget? Is that cool with you, Yoongi?”

Yoongi takes a second but then nods. Hoseok is trying not to throw his personality at him so fast, but it’s hard when his personality is big. He takes up a lot of space just being himself. Yoongi seems like the kind of guy who would apologize for using too much space on a couch.

“Great,” he says and then hands his phone over to Yoongi. “Put your number in there and then I’ll make sure everyone sends you their name so that you can add them to your contacts. There’s only six of us, but if we ever get to be too annoying, just mute it and text us individually. The only person who will probably annoy you, though, is me. I post pictures of every dog I see on the street.”

“I enjoy them,” Taehyung nods. Taehyung often names the dogs that Hoseok takes pictures of. Jimin rates them. No dog has ever ranked lower than a ten out of ten, and for the longest time, Hoseok assumed Jimin was just an avid fan of the WeRateDogs twitter, but as it turns out, he had never heard of it. He just really loves dogs.

Yoongi tries to hide it, but Hoseok sees him smile just a little bit, and he’s proud of himself. Maybe Daily Dog Digest – which is what he calls his dog spotting – will bring that smile onto Yoongi’s face more frequently.

Hoseok decides very quickly that Yoongi is beautiful, which is going to get annoying considering he’s older than the guy and he doesn’t want to be creepy about it. Yoongi is probably over 18, but by how much is uncertain. He doesn’t ask him his age because that’s weird, but as Yoongi turns to leave, that small smile lingers in his brain. He is a heartbreaker, that one.

They watch Yoongi leave; Seokjin doesn’t look up because he doesn’t care, and he’s married so he wouldn’t look at him anyway.

“He’s gorgeous,” Taehyung says, stating exactly what Hoseok is thinking.

“I know, right?” he shakes his head. “He’s almost prettier than you Tae.”

“No such thing,” he shakes his head. “I’m definitely the prettiest, no one can even compare.”

As a manager, Hoseok works nearly every day of the week. If it were any other job, he’d despise that fact, but he gets to come into work every day, hang out with all of his best friends, interact with kids, make peoples days… really it’s hard to complain, because he’s been making a lot of money. To put into perspective how many hours he puts in, Hoseok has already managed to pay off his student loans and his car payments, and he’s barely in the latter half of his twenties. That just seems… unheard of.

He still lives with a roommate and the reason is twofold. He’s never lived on his own before because he’s afraid to and what better way to avoid being out on his own than to live with his very best friend in the entire world? He really loves and adores Jimin with all of his heart. They get along as well as two people can possibly get along. The second reason is because he wants to have a life someday. Maybe travel, maybe buy a house, maybe buy a drumkit. To whatever end, he wants to save his money in order to have those things, and having a roommate means that he can continue to save up.

He technically makes enough to live on his own, because they very much do not live in a big city, so rent prices are not terrible. Taehyung and Jungkook are constantly in his apartment when they’re not at work because Hoseok is a good cook and neither of them know how to use a toaster.

He tries not to sound too interested, but in the evenings when he and Jimin share dinner, he tries to see if there’s anything to learn about the new guy. Jimin knows as little about him as Hoseok does. His name is Yoongi, he has black hair, brown eyes, squishy cheeks. Jimin describes him as being very quiet, very soft spoken. Sexually ambiguous but probably straight. The guy is younger than Hoseok, far too young for him, so he really wishes he didn’t care to the extent that he does.

New Guy hasn’t contributed anything to the group chat yet, but he hasn’t removed himself from it altogether, which seems to be a good sign. The only thing he’s texted was the initial “hi, this is Yoongi” that he sent on day one. Whether he likes or dislikes Daily Dog Digest is yet to be determined.  

Hoseok works a few more shifts before he finally sees Yoongi again. Hoseok has an opening shift, so he’s too busy uncovering the concourse to see Yoongi actually come in for the day. He only notices him once he hears a blender start running. Hoseok turns to look over at them. Unsurprisingly, they don’t actually have a customer yet, it’s just that Jimin always starts his day out with a smoothie whenever he works a morning shift. Morning is a bit of a misnomer though since they open at 11:00.

Hoseok smiles. He gives a nod to one of his high school employees to continue setting the store up as he walks over to greet Yoongi.

“Good morning guys,” he says, smiling brightly. Yoongi looks up at him like a scared mouse but gives a small smile anyway. Hoseok forgot how pretty he is in the days since he last saw him. No one should have the right to be that cute.

“Morning!” Jimin shouts. He pours his peach smoothie into a cup and smiles at Hoseok like they didn’t just see each other an hour ago. Jimin has a short shift and then has to go to his real job, otherwise they would have carpooled.

“How are you, Yoongi?” he asks. He looks confused by Hoseok addressing him directly.

“Um, good,” Yoongi says. He’s the type to bite his lip. It’s quite sweet, actually.

“Great! It’s been a while since I last saw you. You like it here? Is Namjoon treating you right?”

Namjoon peers over at him from the register. Namjoon has never spoken a bad word about anyone ever in his entire life. He has had asshole customers yell at him and still remained as composed and perfect as he always is. Hoseok had an all-consuming, bone breaking crush on Namjoon for at least a year after meeting him, so his opinion is rose-colored. In any case, there’s no way in hell that Yoongi could possibly have any qualms with him.

“He’s very nice,” Yoongi says. His responses are short, not because he’s rude, but because he doesn’t say more than he needs to, which is basically what Jimin had described.

Read on ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

“If you ever have any problems with him just take it up with me and I’ll kick him in the ass for you. He owes me more than a few favors.”

Namjoon just rolls his eyes. Jimin is giggling, standing between the scene. He’s just sipping his smoothie like a child watching his parents fighting.

“Okay,” Yoongi says, he doesn’t even attempt to make eye contact with Hoseok, and it is very intentional.

“My name is Hoseok, in case you forgot,” he says.

“I remember, Hoseok,” Yoongi says, and his ears turn red but it’s so subtle that Hoseok doesn’t actually notice it.

Hoseok doesn’t meant to lick his lips. Yoongi is still not attempting to look at anything other than the counter so Hoseok doesn’t try to capture his eyes any longer. He just looks at him for longer than he probably should. He wonders why Yoongi doesn’t look back. He’s a soft-spoken kind of a guy, it’s possible that he’s just shy. Hoseok barely knows him at all, but he seems the type who takes a while to unfreeze around new people.

“Hoseok, your job?” Namjoon reminds him and he suddenly remembers that he is on the clock right now.

“Right! Well, do me a favor Yoongi and stop by the workshop when your shift ends, okay?” He smiles and Yoongi looks up at him and the eye contact that they have lasts for only about a second but it’s very heavy. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something else, but he revaluates and decides not to.

Hoseok turns on his heels and sees his high schooler folding up the tarps they use to cover the store. The two of them finish the task with Hoseok only turning to look at Yoongi a few times.

For whatever unholy reason, they’re frighteningly busy this Thursday. There’s no reason for it, the density in traffic for a retail store is one of life’s greatest mysteries. It could be that passersby see Hoseok’s wonderful face and decide to approach in order to get a better look. He is annoyed with how understaffed he is today, Seokjin makes the schedules usually, but there’s really no reason for why he would staff three people in the morning for a Thursday in the middle of summer, so it’s not his fault.

He doesn’t get another employee in until 1:00, and by then, the line for the stuffer is already six different groups, most of whom have more than one furry friend each. He was supposed to take his lunch once Taehyung clocked in, but there’s no way he’ll be able to sneak away until they’ve gotten through the line. He just sighs and powers through it.

About an hour later, Hoseok is finally able to take his break. He goes into the middle of the concourse and then lies on the floor and makes a groaning sound. He stays there for about five minutes, trying to cool down. When he decides he’s gotten his bearings, he stands back up, pulls off his apron and waves bye to Taehyung and the high schooler. He gets a whole twenty-five minutes of peace away from the store. Knowing his luck, there won’t be a single customer while he’s gone, but after that, the entire population of Bolivia will want to make a bear. He can’t wait until Seokjin gets into work later because his feet could honestly fall off at any minute.

He glances over at Orange Julius to see that they’re extremely busy too. Had he not noticed before how much shorter than Namjoon Yoongi is? He’s so little. Jimin must have already left, but Yoongi honestly can’t be much bigger than him, if he is at all. It’s adorable. What a cutie. Then he makes his way to Hot Topic to bother Jungkook.

Jungkook is the store greeter today, so he sees him right as he approaches. He waves at him, and Jungkook stares back with blank eyes. The store is as dark and cramped as every other Hot Topic in the world, and apparently, it’s a truck day so there are more staff than usual who are all pushing stock. Yet, for some unsaintly reason, they’re not busy at all, except for the two alternative girls who Hoseok just stuffed an Eevee and a Pikachu for ten minutes ago.  

“You can only bother him if you buy something,” Jungkook’s manager says, and he gives her a thumbs up. He can always do with more jewelry. Jungkook’s nails are painted today, and based on how shoddy the work is, he did it himself. He looks like a full course meal, but he’s Jungkook so that’s to be expected.

Jungkook looks confused at Hoseok’s disheveled appearance, because isn’t it a Thursday? Why does he look like he’s just fought a war on a goddamn Thursday?  “How bad is it over there?”

“It was a nightmare. I don’t know why. People getting back their tax refunds maybe? I thought I was going to die.”

“Sorry, dude. Tae working?” he asks, and Hoseok is slightly offended, because Jungkook doesn’t need to be asking about Taehyung when it’s Hoseok standing in front of him. He’s the one visiting Jungkook, not Taehyung.

“I fired him.”

“That’s a shame,” Jungkook sighs. “Now I can never return.”

“I’ll only rehire him if you come back too,” he says with an award-winning smile.

“Guess Tae will just have to find another job… Orange Julius will be hiring soon if you guys scare the shit out of the new guy like you did that one time.”

“Ah, he seems alright,” Hoseok says. “He hasn’t talked to us in the Group Chat yet, which I’m trying not to be offended by. He’s just a baby.” Jungkook is also a baby, to Hoseok at least. He met the kid when he was literally a sophomore in high school. He met Jungkook before he even met Jimin. Jungkook used to be shorter than him. Now, even without his stomping boots, he’s taller. Hoseok is starting to feel his years slip past too quickly. How can Jungkook have gotten so big?

“He’s quiet,” Jungkook nods. “But so was I when we first met; we just gotta soften him up a little bit. Maybe go out for drinks sometime.” Hoseok is still unable to comprehend that Jungkook is old enough to drink alcohol. That doesn’t even seem real. Jungkook will always be one of his teenage hires, he’s just one of the ones that never left him. Until a month ago. Ugh, traitor.

“I’m going to have him make his initiation bear later,” Hoseok says, getting excited thinking about it. He loves making new friends, it’s one of his favorite things in the world to do, and it’s so easy to talk to people at his job. Kids are easy, they’ll love anyone who makes a teddy bear for them. Adults are a lot of fun, because they think the heart ceremony is ridiculous, but you can almost always convince them to do it anyway. Yoongi should be a treat later. Hopefully he’ll manage to pull a little bit more of his personality out of that way too pretty shell.

“Do you think he’ll stick?” Jungkook asks. They’ve had a lot of difficulty keeping anyone in their family as of late. Taehyung was actually the last recruit and that was something like four years ago.

“I hope so,” Hoseok shrugs.

“You like him?” Jungkook says, looking maybe a little bit too deeply into him. Jungkook is a bit of a mind reader, and it has always been a bit frightening to Hoseok.

“I just think he’s a nice view from the store, that’s all.”

“Jimin is across the hall from you,” Jungkook says. He’d mention Namjoon too if he wasn’t married, because Namjoon is definitely something to look at.

“You’re horny for everyone, Jungkook,” Hoseok shakes his head. Jungkook is an enigma, hard to tell who he’s attracted to and who he isn’t. All that’s certain is that he is easily impressed.

Jungkook’s boss gives Hoseok a glare. They’re not enemies, but she did steal Jungkook from him, so they’re certainly not friends. He wonders what would happen if he ran away without buying something after he promised he would. She knows where he works, so he’d get found out. If there’s any one in a mall that knows how to contact a bounty hunter, it’s a Hot Topic employee. And maybe those bitches down at Bath & Body Works; he’s never trusted them. They have blue aprons just like Hoseok’s, and that seems far too coincidental to be a coincidence.

“Pick out something gay for me, won’t you, Jungkook?”

Jungkook nods, and immediately goes to the jewelry section. It takes him no more than a few seconds to throw a rainbow beaded bracelet at him. It’s overpriced because they work in a mall and also capitalism, but Hoseok goes to the checkout anyway. Jungkook’s boss doesn’t give him a discount. Most stores in this mall will give mall employees a 10%, but not Hot Topic. That’s why it was so easy for her to steal Jungkook from him. Jungkook always found a way to make a blue apron look slightly goth, and that has always been impressive.

Before he left, Jungkook had been threatening to get tattoos on his hands so that he couldn’t work at Build-A-Bear anymore. Hoseok rolled his eyes because he would’ve let Jungkook work there anyway, even if it is against company policy. He let Taehyung dye his hair blue that one time, he just didn’t schedule Taehyung whenever their district manager dropped by. Jungkook could do almost anything to his appearance and Hoseok would still hire him back.

“Gay enough?” he asks.

“Nothing will ever be gay enough for me, Jungkookie,” he smiles sweetly.

***

“Hi Yoongi!” Hoseok waves him over excitedly when he sees Yoongi walking out from behind his prison-like counter. He’s got a backpack over one shoulder, which makes Hoseok feel slightly awful. For him to be using a backpack means he is definitely too young for Hoseok to have attraction towards.

“Hi, Hoseok,” he says, and for some reason, when Yoongi stops in front of him, he seems warmer than usual. Maybe Hoseok’s sunshine is starting to rub off on him, or maybe Namjoon is breaking him down just a little bit. In a good way. You need to be a little bit weathered in order to fit in around here.

“Are you tired? It’s been a train wreck around here!”

“Yeah,” he nods. Seokjin is talking with a few customers, a family by the looks of it, at the front of the workshop, but he’ll be coming around soon to the stuffer, so Hoseok just steals Yoongi away to hang out by the register.

“I know how tough it is to start a new job when everyone is already friends with each other,” Hoseok says. “It’s awful. It’s so hard to break through. We’re all really close, and that’s why I don’t want you to feel left out. But if my personality is ever too much, just tell me. I know I’m a bit much.”

Yoongi blushes, but again, Hoseok doesn’t notice it. “It’s fine, I appreciate it. I’m just…”

“New jobs are hard,” Hoseok says when Yoongi drifts off. “But if you ever need any help, literally come to anyone. I happen to know quite a bit about Orange Julius myself.” He did work there for like two years, but that was so long ago. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t unofficially looked after the place a few times.

Taehyung pops up from behind the concourse. He went on his break a little while ago, and Hoseok just assumed he went somewhere, but apparently, he was just sitting on the floor out of view.

“Yoongi!” He says, excitedly. “How are you?” Taehyung has the personality of a puppy. In every way, he was supposed to be a dog, but someone flipped the wrong switch and he ended up as a person. He’s a very special person who Hoseok would do anything for.

“Good,” he says, and apparently the increased quantity of people shrinks him up a little bit. His shoulders get a little less slack once there are two people looking at him instead of just one.

“You like your new job? Is Jimin alright?”

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“Jimin is very nice, yes,” Yoongi says.

“Cool! Do you want to come get dinner with us some time? And by dinner, I mean the Panda Express at the food court. I’m a bit of an addict.”

“Um, sure,” Yoongi says nodding, and a soft smile appears on his sweet little face.

“Wonderful. I can’t promise when… we all tend to work the same hours, hard to get a break at the same time, but Hoseok will figure it out, won’t you, Hoseokie?”

“That’s a Jin question. I abhor scheduling.” Taehyung looks over at Seokjin who has migrated to the stuffer and is about to stuff the family’s chosen friends. It’s always alarming to Hoseok how kind and charming Seokjin is when he’s with guests as opposed to the snarky guy he knows. By all accounts, Seokjin is the nicest, kindest, and most wonderful person on the planet, but he’ll call you a motherfucker if you blink too hard in his direction.

Taehyung sighs. “Do you have anywhere to be? You should hang out for a little while, if you can.”

Yoongi shakes his head. “I’m off for the rest of the day.”

“Great,” Hoseok interjects. “There’s something you’ve still got to do.”

“What is that?” he looks wary.

“You, Yoongi, get to make an initiation bear,” Hoseok says, brightly. “I’m buying. As long as you name him Hoseok. If his name isn’t Hoseok I won’t let you make one.”

Taehyung smiles, “I have three Hoseoks at home.”

“You only have to name the first one Hoseok, I really don’t know why you kept doing that.”

“It’s fun,” Taehyung shrugs and takes a sip of his Orange Julius sponsored water. Taehyung is a serial forgetter of water bottles so at this point they usually put his water on the counter as soon as they see him clock in. Jungkook has recently become very save the planet-y so he’s been reprimanding Taehyung for how much he uses non-reusable cups.

Yoongi takes a second to find his voice and then stutters out, “You don’t have to do that for me-”

“Nonsense!” Hoseok says. “Everyone gets a bear, that’s just how it works. Or not a bear. You don’t have to pick a bear, we’ve got dogs, unicorns, bunnies. Pick whatever you want, but their name has to be Hoseok.”

“I have a very beautiful dinosaur at home named Hoseok,” Taehyung adds. “And a dog. And a monster.”

“I don’t appreciate the dog being named after me. I’ve never licked a toilet bowl in my life.”

“You’re actually serious?” Yoongi says, interrupting the back and forth that he and Taehyung could probably have for hours. Taehyung brings out sides of people that they never knew they had, it’s just the kind of person he is. He’ll get you thinking about the meaning of life, but he’ll do it in a stupid way by asking you what the shelf life is of your average wool sock. Wool socks last longer than cotton socks, but that leads into a whole philosophy majors worth of follow up questions. Taehyung doesn’t even pose difficult questions, that’s just what being around him is like. His brain is a lot wider from knowing Taehyung.

“Absolutely!” Hoseok says. “Have you ever built a bear before?” Yoongi shakes his head shyly and Hoseok gets the brightest smile on his face. “Perfect! My favorite type of guest! So, the first thing you need to do is pick out a friend. But you have to smile while you’re doing it, or else Taehyung doesn’t get to eat dinner.”

“I need dinner, Yoongi. Please smile.”

Yoongi smiles. He would have suppressed it if not for the fact that Hoseok has the prettiest smile he’s ever seen. That face could cheer anyone up. Seeing Yoongi’s tiny smile makes Hoseok glow. What a cute little thing, holy shit.

“You should get a horse,” Seokjin says, peaking over. “Hoseok hates it when we call him a horse.”

Hoseok gives him a death glare, and Yoongi just looks at the bins below him trying to determine the best Hoseok there is. There are many great options. There’s many rainbow or pastel colored bears which give off some serious Hoseok energy. There’s also a pink bunny which is one of Hoseok’s favorites that he recommends to half of their guests. Also, there’s a shark.

Yoongi looks carefully, analyzing everything in front of him. He’s never done anything like this before but the idea of it is fun. He wishes he could go back into his past and come here as a kid. He would’ve tripped over his own feet to have made his own bear.

Hoseok watches Yoongi look at his options with total fascination. He’s literally gorgeous. The profile of his face could make anyone swoon. He tells himself to force those thoughts away because Yoongi is too young for him. Not so young that Hoseok is a creep, but too young that he can’t think about dating him. He’s also probably straight because contrary to Hoseok’s friend circle, most people are straight.

Yoongi ends up picking one of the more classic bears. It’s a basic brown bear, some of the softest fur out of all the ones on offer, but it’s also on the cheaper end of the spectrum.

“You don’t have to pick one of the cheaper ones just because I’m buying,” he says. He’s a very honest person, Hoseok could easily just give a bear away for free, but crazily enough, he actually respects the company that he works for. Obviously, he’ll be using his employee discount on it, but he’ll still pay from his own wallet.

“I like this one,” Yoongi says firmly. “The fur kind of matches your hair color.” He blushes right after saying it, but Hoseok doesn’t notice because he takes a strand of his hair in his fingers and tries to look at it to determine if Yoongi is right.

When he determines that his hair does indeed match, he smiles and looks at him. “You can go absolutely wild with the other stuff. Get the most expensive sound, fill it with scents, buy a tiara. Literally, go crazy.”

Yoongi smiles. The thought of Hoseok in a tiara makes him feel a way he doesn’t think he should be feeling. He looks at the unstuffed bear in his hands and tries to determine whether a tiara would suit him.

“Do you want to put any sounds in it?” Hoseok asks, gesturing to the sound station. “You can get the Star Wars theme in there. I think that’s a pretty baller choice since his name is Hoseok. I like Star Wars a lot, so I’m sure little Hoseok will like it too.”

“Is that what you want?” Yoongi asks, looking genuinely interested in Hoseok’s opinion.

“It’s not about what I want, it’s about what you want. I’m just your tour guide here, all I’ll do is make suggestions,” he says. He tilts his head, undeniably intrigued by Yoongi. He wonders what his personality is like when he’s not nervous and dazed. It’s hard to get a read on him. Hoseok considers himself to be extremely empathetic, so sometimes he’ll detect things about a person without them showing it. It makes his job a little easier. It’s impossible to tell with Yoongi, though, because he’s dressed in a uniform rather than anything that could give him a sign. He also avoids making eye contact, which is precious, but it does little for Hoseok to learn anything about him.

“Okay, Star Wars then,” Yoongi says. Hoseok helps him look through the few different options, and they settle on the Imperial March, which makes Yoongi’s face get all squishy with a little smile. Hoseok adores it. He wants to pat Yoongi on the head and read him a bedtime story.

“I love when people get Star Wars,” he says fondly. “Nothing against Frozen, but Star Wars is classic.”

Yoongi nods and allows Hoseok to lead him to the stuffer. “Okay, Yoongi, this is the best part. This is where we give your bear life.” Yoongi can’t stop himself from blushing, because both Taehyung and Seokjin are watching him now with interest.

Yoongi feels a little bit like a zoo animal. Everyone is trying to learn things about him, but he’s the kind of person who is very contained when he meets new people. It’s weird walking into a circle of people who already know each other so well. It’s very intimidating, like Hoseok had said.

Then again, they’re all very open and kind to him, Hoseok especially. Yoongi is not an idiot, he knows that everyone around him is insanely attractive. Namjoon is too pretty, but he’s married so Yoongi doesn’t salivate at the mouth whenever he’s near. Jimin is an easy pretty, and from some source he was told that Jimin is decently famous on Instagram for posting dance videos. And of course, there’s Hoseok who has the brightest energy about him. Yoongi doesn’t believe in auras but if he did, Hoseok’s would be bright pink. Yoongi is going to inevitably fall for one of them, and the way that Hoseok looks at him makes him believe he’s already figured out who.

Hoseok places him in front of the stuffer and he’s presented with a pedal. It feels very foreign to him, looking at the limp teddy bear which Hoseok is about to stuff? Apparently? With a giant machine? That spins around and looks a bit like cotton candy? The concept is foreign, because there wasn’t a Build-A-Bear where he grew up. All he knows about the place is what he watches from behind his counter a few yards away.

The sound that the machine makes startles him, even though he’s heard it a dozen times just today. It’s a lot louder when you’re right next to it. Hoseok looks like an expert, not that he’s been spying on him the entire time while he’s at work, but it is hard not to let your eyes wander over to the giant blue store in the middle of the hallway. It’s even harder to avoid looking at the pretty guy who has a way with kids and has a face like a sunrise.

His eyes just gravitate towards Hoseok when he talks to customers, laughs with them, talks to them like he’s known them all his life. He seems like he’d be easy to talk to, because no one else has any trouble with it, but Yoongi is a hopeless gay who gets tongue tied around pretty boys.

“Alright,” Hoseok says, turning off the machine. Yoongi takes his foot off the pedal, though the machine has stopped so it’s not like it does a whole lot. “I’ll have you give little Hoseok a hug test to make sure he feels right.” Taehyung comes out of nowhere to hug Hoseok from behind his chair and he just sighs. “I was referring to the other Hoseok, but I appreciate it, Tae.”

“You feel just right,” Taehyung says. Hoseok pats his hand as he tries to shrug him off.

“Feel good?” Hoseok asks, looking to Yoongi though Taehyung has not let go of him. Yoongi nods. This is such a weird group of people, but he kind of likes them already. Especially Hoseok.

“Okay, now comes the actual best part,” Hoseok says, and he pulls a small fabric heart out of a bin right beside his machine. Taehyung lets go of him at this point, only to stand a few feet away to watch. Hoseok always does the best heart ceremonies, which doesn’t seem fair, because half of the time Taehyung just copies everything he does, but Hoseok makes it look so easy and natural. He really was made for this job.

Hoseok places the heart into Yoongi’s hand, and their fingers touch and it makes the real heart inside of Yoongi’s chest stutter just a little bit. He really is just so weak around cute boys, so it’s been a difficult job to transition to. To make it worse, Hoseok is his kind of cute boy. It’s all in the smile.

“So, the first thing you need to do is get that heart warm by rubbing it between your hands.”

“Do we really have to do this part?” Yoongi asks, looking sheepish. He’s seen this part from his perch, and it seems awkward to do it in the middle of the mall. He looks around himself, even though there’s nobody here to watch him. Well except for Seokjin and Taehyung. This just doesn’t feel like the sort of thing that a guy who’s in his late twenties should be doing.

“Don’t you want little Hoseok here to have a big heart?” Hoseok asks him, holding the bear by its arms like it’s ready to reach out and give Yoongi a hug. If the way he holds it wasn’t enough, all he needs to do is look at the real Hoseok’s lip pouting out. He’s never been good at saying no to people.

Yoongi just sighs, nods, and says, “okay.”

“Perfect!” Hoseok says and has Yoongi warm the heart up. He demonstrates with his hands what he wants Yoongi to do, so he copies. “Then you’re going to tap on it to get that heart beating. And you’re going to want to rub it on your cheek so that little Hoseok always smiles at you. And rub it on your funny bone so your bear is full of giggles. And rub the heart on your tummy so that he gets all of the food he needs without stealing yours. And rub it on your side so that he’s by your side for life. Anyone want to chip in?” Hoseok directs the question at the two behind him.

“Rub the heart on your toes so that he is toe-tally awesome!” Taehyung says.

“Rub it on your knees so that he always knee-ds you,” Seokjin says.

Yoongi takes it all in good stride, though he’s painfully awkward as he tries to modestly follow all the commands. He wonders if they’re just messing around with him again. When he thinks of that, his entire body stiffens up. He doesn’t want them to make fun of him.

“And the last thing you need to do is hold the heart up to your face and make a wish,” Hoseok says. He looks at Yoongi and sees that he looks very uncomfortable right now, which was never his intention. He probably shouldn’t have gone overboard on giving the bear so many traits. But it’s Yoongi’s first bear and now he’s part of the group so maybe he just wanted to show off. Then he opens up the back of the bear for Yoongi to put the heart into. “I’m sorry if that was too many things. We aren’t trying to embarrass you. We just really like our job.”

“I’m only here for the view,” Seokjin says, looking across the hallway to where Namjoon is serving both smoothies and looks.

Hoseok smiles brightly and Yoongi is mesmerized by it. “Do you want to add any smells to your bear?” he asks. Yoongi doesn’t hear the question. Embarrassing himself makes him weak, and in his weak state, Hoseok’s face is able to reach inside of him. He repeats the question when Yoongi doesn’t answer, so he blanches.

“Wh-what?”

“I have smells you can add to your bear,” he says and then scoots over on his chair to point to them.

“I made a bear with four smells inside once,” Seokjin says. “One in each arm and leg. Different fruit smell in each one. He smells like a smoothie, and it reminds me of my husband.”

Taehyung makes an aww sound and Seokjin just nods because he knows that he wins cutest couple award.

“Uh, I guess,” Yoongi shrugs. “What’s your favorite?”

“Cotton candy,” Taehyung says, his eyes darkening. It’s a frequent joke that Taehyung likes the cotton candy smell. He keeps one in his apron, so he goes around everywhere smelling like cotton candy.

“I like lavender,” Seokjin smiles.

“We’re out of lavender.”

“Then I like watermelon.”

“Oh me too,” Hoseok nods. “I’m a watermelon kind of guy.”

“Let’s do watermelon,” Yoongi says. Hoseok loves how easy it is to make any grown man excited about a teddy bear at Build-A-Bear Workshop. They come in with whatever bravado they have but then you tell a guy he can make his bear smell like birthday cake and his eyes light up.

He lets Yoongi smell it and when Yoongi nods a little too eagerly his heart thuds painfully against his ribcage. He’s so pretty, he’s so pretty, he’s so pretty.

Once the smell is inside, Hoseok stitches up the bear with lightning quick precision. Yoongi can’t stop himself from looking at his hands. They look strong, but also a little blistered from all the stitching and sewing he must do. When the bear is done, he gives little Hoseok over to Yoongi. He doesn’t mean to, but he gives little Hoseok a very excited squeeze and that’s what makes big Hoseok’s mouth dry up a little bit. He can’t stop himself from imagining Yoongi cuddling the bear late at night. God, and if he actually names the bear Hoseok! He’s going to cry!

“Thank you,” Yoongi says, and Hoseok nods.

“You get to dress him up now!”

Taehyung jumps up excitedly to give him a tour of their Dress Me wall. Everyone has a favorite part of the store, and Taehyung is oddly in love with showing off all the clothes that you can put on the animals.

“Might I suggest a tiara?” Hoseok says.

Read on ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

Taehyung shakes his head, “personally, I’m against shoes and tiaras because they are not as easy to cuddle in bed.”

“We also have bows!” Hoseok jumps up excitedly after picking up some loose stuffing from the floor.

Yoongi ends up putting the bear in a dinosaur pajama piece and Hoseok has never been prouder of such a marvelous creation before. Also, Yoongi lets him put the bows on the bear. This is quite possibly the most perfect bear that Hoseok has ever been witness to. He’s a soft, dark brown bear, that plays the Star Wars theme, smells like watermelon, wears a dinosaur onesie, and has pink and purple bows on his ears. He’s perfect.

“That’s hands down one of the most beautiful bears I’ve ever seen,” Seokjin says, and there’s no sarcasm to his voice which is astonishing.

Yoongi would feel self-conscious if he didn’t agree whole heartedly. Little Hoseok is one of the seven wonders of the modern world. Big Hoseok helps him to make a birth certificate which Yoongi finds adorable. True to his word, the name that goes on the birth certificate is ‘Little Hoseok.’ Big Hoseok then proceeds to take all of the tags off of the bear and his clothes and brings them to the register.

“No, it’s okay, I’ll pay,” Yoongi says.

“Um, excuse you,” Hoseok says. “I lured you over here in order to buy you a bear, you aren’t paying for shit.”

“But it’s expensive, I-”

“Listen, there’s nothing you can actually do to stop me, I’m the one who knows how to use the register,” Hoseok says. Yoongi accepts defeat, though it’s with several more “are you sure?”s. Eventually, Yoongi comes to be holding little Hoseok inside of a little box that is the perfect size to hold him. He honestly feels like ripping the bear right back out and holding him. He would probably prefer holding onto the bear’s namesake, but anything to keep him less lonely at night will do the trick. For now.

Hoseok sends Yoongi away brightly. Taehyung asks him to stick around a little longer, but he really needs to get some air, because breathing in Hoseok’s air makes him lightheaded. Aw fuck, he’s a little boy having his first crush in elementary school all over again.

***

“You know, for their first date Seokjin and Namjoon came here and recreated the scene from Ghost only instead of pottery, they made a unicorn,” Hoseok says.

“That was, like, our third date actually,” Seokjin says. Namjoon sits at the table outside of the concourse waiting for Seokjin’s shift to end. There are actually two other managers at Orange Julius that aren’t him, which is hard to believe because he’s such a workaholic. Crazy, right?

“Not to sound dramatic, guys, but that’s literally the cutest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life,” Taehyung says.

“The unicorn was our ringbearer.”

“Even I know that’s not true. I was at the wedding,” Jungkook says.

“So was I,” Taehyung says. Literally everyone was at their wedding. It was a year after their family had truly formed. Taehyung was fresh but he was still beloved.

“Well that’s what I’m going to write in my autobiography anyway,” Seokjin shrugs.

Namjoon looks at him with stars in his eyes, very clearly hanging on his every word like he’s an angel. There’s literally never been a couple more helplessly, adorably in love as Namjoon and Seokjin. If you look too hard at them then your heart will rot away. Also, you’ll crave desperately someone to hold you. Sometimes Jimin gives extended hugs and that’s the closest Hoseok has been to a person in about seven years.

In the process of looking at the two of them clearly in love, Hoseok sees a beautiful black-haired boy come in through the service door behind them. Hoseok’s heart bumps out of key for just the briefest second before returning to normal.

“Yoongi!” He says, calling him over. It’s been about a week since Yoongi made little Hoseok and ever since, Hoseok has been very excited by his presence whenever he sees him. Not to say he wasn’t before, but it’s a little louder now. He assures himself it’s just because Yoongi seems like he’ll fit into their friend group. That’s surely all it is. It’s not just because he’s also the prettiest guy Hoseok has possibly ever seen.

“Hi Hoseok,” Yoongi says smiling softly. Either Yoongi doesn’t say hi to everyone else or Hoseok tunes it out because of the way that his mouth looks when he forms words out of it. His voice is so calming. He could read you the dictionary and you’d be fascinated by every word.

“I’ve got to go to work,” Yoongi says and waves goodbye only a minute later.

“Oh, okay,” he says. Seokjin checks his watch and realizes that Yoongi’s shift starting means that his shift is ending.

“Freedom!” he says excitedly, tearing off his apron. Namjoon smiles at him and watches Seokjin as he goes into the concourse and clocks himself out for the day. When he returns, he kisses Namjoon a little bit too passionately for public and Jungkook makes a grossed-out face. Taehyung just thinks they’re cute. Taehyung loves love a little bit too much. Whenever anyone looks like they’re in love, he thinks it’s cute. His favorite thing in the world is when couples come into the store and record their voices saying “I love you” to each other for their bears. There’s no one who does a better heart ceremony for anniversaries than Taehyung.

“Take me away from here,” Seokjin says. They’re very weird people. They’re a match made in heaven, which is evident because they each put up with each other. Seokjin climbs onto Namjoon’s back like it’s normal and they walk away with Namjoon giving him a piggyback ride. God, Hoseok wants something like that.

“I want something like that,” he says.

“If we’re both single when we’re forty I’ll be that for you,” Taehyung says. Hoseok smiles at him and nods. He loves Taehyung, but not romantically. If he’s still single at that age, god forbid, he’ll live with any of his friends so that he’s not lonely, but he does not want to kiss Taehyung even though he’s sure it would be amazing.

It’s weird. When he first met Taehyung, even though he knew he was gorgeous, he never felt an instinctual urge to run his hands through his hair and kiss his cheek. Not like he thinks about Yoongi like that or anything…

He looks over to Orange Julius at the prettiest employee. Hoseok’s not close with the other managers there; one of them is a total piece of shit, and the other is way too serious. Yoongi is getting instructions for the day from the way too serious one, and his face in profile mesmerizes Hoseok.

“Um, earth to Hoseok?” Taehyung says, waving a hand in front of his face. He looks up from his trance and realizes they have a customer. He jumps right back into customer service mode with Jungkook behind him wondering if their little Hoseokie might have a bit of a crush.

***

Read on ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

“So,” Jimin says.

“So,” Hoseok replies.

“So.”

“So?”

“How do you like the new Orange Julius employee?” Jimin asks.

Hoseok frowns at him, sitting across from him at the dining room table that Jimin’s mom gifted them when they moved into their own place.

“Isn’t that something I should be asking you? You’re his coworker.”

Jimin purses his lips, “yeah, but you’ve been very eager to get him to interact with us in the group chat.”

“Are you trying to ask me for my permission so you can fuck him or something?” Hoseok asks. “Because, I really don’t think he’s gay.”

“No,” Jimin scoffs. Jimin doesn’t think that Hoseok knows he sometimes sleeps with Taehyung in a friends with benefits sort of way, but he does. Very hard to hide a secret like that from him when he’s both Jimin’s roommate and Taehyung’s boss. Hoseok is pretty sure that Jimin doesn’t know Taehyung is in love with him, but that’s just something they’ll figure out for themselves one of these days.

“Then what’s your point?”

“I’m pretty sure you want to fuck him.”

“I don’t want to fuck him,” Hoseok says, which is both a lie and the truth.

“You like him.”

“I… shut up, Jimin.”

He smirks at him and then winks. Jimin turns around to rinse off his plate, but he leaves the feeling in the air. He’s not surprised that Jimin sees through him, but he desperately hopes that he’s the only one. Yoongi can’t know that, he only just met him, and that would make their budding friendship very weird.

“When was the last time you had sex, Hoseok? I don’t think you’ve slept with someone since I met you. That’s like five years. What if it falls off?”

Hoseok throws a piece of egg at him which gets lodged in his hair. Hitting him where it hurts; Jimin cares more about his hair than he does about his health.

“Probably closer to seven years.”

“Dude! That’s a really long time.”

“I’m me, Jimin,” he says, like that’s an explanation. “I don’t sleep with people unless they’re special.”

“You never slept with me,” Jimin says, “I’m special.”

“That’s because you’re Jimin and I don’t like you,” he says, flinging another piece of food at him. He and Jimin went on one date soon after they first met. The two of them went to college and studied dance together, so it seemed to make sense at the time. They both thought dating each other might be convenient until they went on one date, found it awful and decided to instead be best friends. It’s been working out pretty well, neither of them has wanted to date the other since and it’s been nearly five years. Hoseok can’t imagine how terrible it would be if they had moved into this apartment and been trying to date. He might not have his best friend in the world if that had happened.

Jimin rolls his eyes and backs away from the projectile. “Okay, so maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but I do wish you’d date someone. You have to be getting lonely over there in your room, watching porn slightly too loudly because you think I can’t hear it.” Jimin barely even attempts to pretend he’s watching porn sometimes, that’s just the kind of person he is. Hoseok’s headphones are often put to good use because of the weird things Jimin is into.

“I’ll go at my own pace,” he says. “I’m married to my job, Jimin, you know that. I put in so many hours at work, so I barely have a life unless it’s with you.”

“Do you think maybe you’re just scared of entering a relationship? I’m not talking about Yoongi in specific. I mean in general. I think it’s been so long for you that you forgot how to date.”

“That’s very probable,” Hoseok says, going back to the food in front of him which he had been eating before he started throwing it at Jimin. “What about you, though, Jimin? You haven’t found the one yet, either.” He doesn’t mention Taehyung, because surely there’s a reason that he hasn’t told Hoseok about that.

“I date!” Jimin says. But he hasn’t since he started fucking Taehyung.

“You’re just as afraid of commitment as I am.”

Jimin scowls. “That’s not true. I at least know how to date someone. I know how to be a boyfriend and how to love someone and how to… fuck. You haven’t dated since college, and that’s not real dating anyway. You’re not a real person yet until you leave college.”

“I don’t want to deal with this right now,” he says, and that’s the honest to god truth. It’s all too much to think about. Yeah, he hasn’t dated anyone in a really long time, and it’s become easy. Being single is just the way that he knows how to exist. Allowing another person into his life is far too much pressure. He’d just as soon be content or discontent not putting himself out there than try to navigate the world of dating for the first time at age 26.

But then again, wouldn’t it be nice to cuddle someone? God, his skin hungers for someone to cuddle him and put their arms around his waist and kiss his neck. He blushes at the thought. He wonders who that person will be. What do they do in their life? What do they look like? Hoseok doesn’t view himself as a real adult, so he can’t have someone with a real job. He can’t date a lawyer, because that’s a whole ass person with their life in order, and Hoseok stuffs bears for a living. He couldn’t date a doctor, because they’re in charge of making sure people don’t die, and Hoseok puts bunnies into fairy princess dresses on the regular.

It really would be convenient for the both of them if he and Jimin had romantic attraction to each other. That would be pretty great. Or if he actually liked Taehyung, or if it was seven years ago and he had beat Seokjin to Namjoon. None of those relationships would last though, because he just doesn’t like them that way, even if there was once a time when he thought he did.

Yoongi is a convenient scapegoat. He’s too young, probably straight, therefor, he’s off limits. Hoseok can’t possibly find himself wanting to be in a relationship with someone if that person is five years younger than him, so he can continue to find Yoongi attractive all he likes, and he can save himself from committing to a real relationship.

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[saddiedotdk]

Tony Goldwyn admits that after seven seasons playing Scandal‘s Byronically romantic President Fitzgerald Grant, a one-episode guest stint on HBO’s horror series Lovecraft Country, as the menacing, aristocratic white supremacist/occultist Samuel Braithwhite, offered an opportunity to tap some less frequently summoned acting skills.

“It was very operatic, that character, so you don’t often get to do that on television, or in front of a camera,” Goldwyn recalls, noting a key scene in which he had to shout a mystic incantation in an invented dialect at the top of his lungs. “I had to learn, phonetically, this runic language, this whole long chunk of this spell that I was casting. And that was fun and interesting, and a muscle I had not flexed for some time.”

Goldwyn, who since Scandal wrapped has appeared in multiple Broadway productions and next headlines National Geographic’s miniseries The Hot Zone: Anthrax, joined THR to reflect on flexing those new muscles after Fitz, Lovecraft‘s unexpected immediacy, and his earliest TV acting guest stints on a string of now-classic series.

What kind of permission did the unusual genre-bending nature of the show give you as an actor?

Playing a to-the-manner-born white supremacist, who’s this sort of Gothic figure … you had to lean into the camp of it, the genre. But the way that guy’s mind works is representing something profoundly real and disturbing in our culture and human nature.

When you meet my character, he’s un-anesthetized, getting a piece of his liver cut out on a table in his lab, screaming bloody murder. And then Jonathan Majors enters the room, and [Braithwhite] says, “Oh, he’s darker than I [expected]” … That kind of a statement is shocking, and yet also camp, if you know what I’m saying. It’s larger than life, but tragically all too close to life, as we have seen this year, really. And that’s what’s so weird: Not that racism wasn’t a familiar concept in American culture, but we shot that in 2019, and the events of 2020 sort of exposed how close to the surface all that still is.

To see it come out at such a charged moment, immediately following the Black Lives Matter protests, when it achieved even greater degrees of relevance and immediacy, must have been a unique experience.

Slightly surreal, honestly. It was very disturbing. It’s very discomforting … When I read it, it felt dangerous and relevant and provocative, but also fun. When I saw it, it was still entertaining, but there was a much darker sensibility to the fun aspect of it, if you know what I mean. And honestly, for me personally, now that I’m reflecting on it … embodying a white supremacist was a very different experience in 2020 than it was in 2019. There was something where I could feel that I was at an arm’s length from it. Whereas now, there’s been a seismic shift, and it would be, frankly, much harder to do — which makes me feel a bit silly, because of course that’s my reality, and I think the reality for African Americans is not that different. People are like, “Yeah, wake up!” Which is what Misha [Green] was writing about, but the world has a very different lens on it now.

ELI JOSHUA ADE/HBO

After several seasons on a hit TV show in a regular role, what have you enjoyed about these briefer excursions? Fitz was such a complex character — he could be dark, he could be someone you rooted for — that the role doesn’t saddle you, the actor, with a lot of typecasting baggage.

I really loved playing Fitz, for the reasons you said … He was so complicated and had so many light and dark shades that made him just endlessly fun to play. And I’d never had the experience of living in a character for that long.

But that said, since Scandal ended, I’ve played five, six, seven different roles, all so different, from Samuel Braithwhite to the shows I did on Broadway … And the project I’m doing now for Nat Geo, The Hot Zone ­— the character I’m playing could not be more different from Fitz. It’s wonderful [after] going to work every day and playing the same character and literally wearing the same suit every day for seven years to just go to completely different places.

When you were starting out, you took the jobs that came your way, as actors do, and a lot of those were guest spots on future TV classics. What do you remember about those years? And what it was like to step onto a series as a young, up-and-coming actor?

First of all, I was just grateful to have a job! I mean, I still am, but when you’re starting out, just any work you can get is good work. And also, it was a way to learn about acting in front of a camera, because I started working in the theater, and the camera was very foreign to me.

I did a bunch of those guest star things in shows in the ’80s, from sitcoms to dramas and cop shows and whatever: Matlock and Designing Women and the pilot of Murphy Brown, and I did — oh God — a show called Hunter, do you remember that? And then a couple of things that had more meat. St. Elsewhere was actually where I got my SAG card … I did L.A. Law, too. I had a pretty good part in that.

I imagine this is true for people today still: It’s a rather difficult thing, because you’re coming onto a show, where everybody knows the show and everybody does this thing every day, and you’re kind of parachuting in to give your performance and play this character. And you don’t know anybody in it. It can be very challenging. And eventually, after you’re more experienced, you learn to relax, but that I found very difficult.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

#Tony Goldwyn

[noodlecupcakeswritings]

Ownership - Chapter 18 (A Kylo RenxOC AU)

Cora Ardmore and Kylo Ren work for rival companies, but they don’t know that until after they spend the night together. Once their identities are revealed to each other it’s a question of who will cave first?

This fic is mostly porn, pure kinky porn.

Please leave comments, kudos and reblogs if you like it. If you would like to be tagged, let me know.

Warnings: Language, Plot, Phone sex, Dom/Sub Relationship, Masturbation, Dirty talk, Alcohol, Snoke being a creep

Chapter 18

Kylo Ren

I had half an hour before lunch break was over, half an hour to psyche myself up to confront Snoke. Cora was right. If I wanted this story to get out to the public, I needed to get Snoke to trust me more. But it wasn’t her ass on the line. If I went in accusing him, there was no doubt he would return in a hostile manner. I had to do this calmly, as if I’d come across the anomalies and was making him aware of them. With my appetite gone, I replaced the lid on my takeout and pushed it away from me. Picking up my notebook, I decided to get this over and done with now instead of waiting around where I would only freak myself more. Exiting my office, I headed to the lift and took two floors up. Of course, Snoke had the entire top floor to himself. Whereas Armitage and I had to share.

The lift dinged, the metal doors sliding open to reveal the plush waiting area. His assistant, Martha, sat at her desk and gave a soft frown. I didn’t have a fucking appointment. “Mr Ren, there’s nothing here in his schedule that says you’d be visiting,” she said with a false politeness. “Surprise visit. Something really important I need to tell him.” “Well, he’s currently with Mr Tarkin and Mr Krennic until one pm. Your welcome to take a seat and wait. He may have five minutes to spare between meetings, but you really should have called ahead.” “I’ll bear it in mind for the future,” I gave her a fake smile before taking a seat. I didn’t like the fact he was meeting with Tarkin and Krennic, probably plotting god knows what.

My nerves were getting the better of me, my leg bouncing as I glanced at my watch every minute. Finally the door opened, Krennic and Tarkin leaving. Snoke stood by the door and his gaze fell to me, a smile spreading across his face. “Kylo, I wasn’t expecting you,” he spoke, “come in.” Following him inside his office, I waited to see where I would be allowed to sit. Either at his desk, or the couch, or the little table and chairs he had in the corner. Snoke took us to the couch, and I sat on the expensive leather. “You look like you could do with a drink. Whiskey? Scotch? Bourbon?” Snoke offered. The kinder and accommodating he was, the harder it seemed to go about this. But I had to keep reminding myself that what he was doing was wrong.

“Whiskey, please.” I answered. It would help calm my nerves and make it easier to talk. Snoke pulled a bottle from the bar and poured until the two glasses were half full. Handing me my drink, he sat down next to me. “What troubles you? I know that look,” he asked, taking a sip. Drinking a mouthful, I let the warmth of the alcohol settle in my stomach before finally speaking. “I didn’t want to have to bother you with something like this. It’s probably nothing, but I just wanted to be sure. I found some anomalies in the stock count folder from last year and I found a few companies that don’t exist,” I explained. Snoke nodded, his eyes dropping to my notebook, “did you write them down?” Opening the notebook to the marked page, I handed it to him. Snoke scanned the list with interest before handing it back to me.

“You always were so clever. I was a fool to not have you on board sooner. I have been selling supplies to other business partners. Smaller groups that are unlisted for a reason,” he confessed. Whilst this was going well so far, if I didn’t tread carefully, this could still go wrong. “When you say smaller groups, do you mean…” I trailed off. “What others would deem terrorists. Yes. I know that may seem very conflicting for you Kylo, our job is to provide security and defence for the country. But what about other countries that don’t have the same level of security and defence as us? If they are willing to pay for a product, then I’m not going to turn them down. Frankly, half of them pay better than our American customers.” “I understand. It’s just a lot to take in.”

Snoke smiled sympathetically, “I want you on board Kylo. I saw something special in you when we met, and I still see it now. You’ve always been such a valuable asset to the company.” “What would be required of me?” “You are always such a good businessman; you know exactly to strike a deal and get people to agree to the terms-“ “I think your mistaking me with Armitage,” I joked, “I know the two of us don’t see eye to eye all the time but when we put aside our differences we do work well together.” “You do. If you agree to be on board, I would also want Armitage on board. Both of you would be unstoppable and the pay rise you’d both get would be well worth it.” “I can talk to him, if you’d like. I don’t think he’d take much convincing.”

“I have a free half an hour later, I’ll do it. I’m glad you’ve agreed to be on board Kylo. It’ll be a great opportunity to progress like you’ve always wanted, you’ll be able to travel the world on the company’s expenses too. It’s a win-win situation. However, you’ll need to open a new bank account. I have a few open in Puerto Rico, that way I can’t be taxed even more. The money you make from this work I’ll deposit in that account.” Tax evasion. Another thing to add to the list of offences. “Right, you think with how much we donate to charity they could cut us some slack,” I joked. Snoke chuckled at that, which made me feel better about the situation. That I wasn’t being suspicious. “I would recommend going this weekend, the sooner its open, the sooner we can start really working together,” Snoke suggested.

The weekend? Cora and I hadn’t spent the weekend apart since the beginning of the relationship. Whilst I didn’t like the idea, I knew it had to be done. She wouldn’t be happy about it either, but she’d understand. “Sure, I can do this weekend,” I agreed. “Good. Leave everything to me, I’ll send you the details tomorrow. Is that everything? Or was there something else you wished to discuss?” “No. That’s everything. Thank you for giving me another amazing opportunity. I really don’t know where I’d be now if I hadn’t met you.” I finished my drink, and Snoke, then led me to the door. Once completely out of sight in the elevator, I breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

I couldn’t quite believe I’d gotten away with it. I knew better than to completely trust the situation though and let myself get comfortable. If Snoke wasn’t watching me like a hawk, I knew Tarkin or Krennic would be. Pulling out my phone, I sent Armitage a quick heads up text so he could prepare himself for Snoke later. Now I just had to break the news to Cora tonight.

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Later around 9:30pm I got ready for bed and slipped under the sheets. Grabbing my phone from the nightstand, I called Cora and waited for her to answer. “Hey, it’s about time you called me. I was starting to get worried that I needed to send the cops round for a wellbeing check,” Cora answered, the relief obvious in her voice. “You don’t need to worry, I’m okay. Snoke brought it and I’m in.” “That’s great. That’s really gonna help speed things along. I also found a few things today that might help.” “Oh?” “Armitage sent me something earlier. Theres a recorded break in at The First Order warehouses, but there’s no police report. Two crates of supplies were taken. Only the records doesn’t list any damage to the building and the alarm didn’t go off. So to me, it seems someone let them in and take what they wanted.”

I frowned, “Armitage sent you that?” “Yeah, I was just as surprised as you are. But it’s very helpful. I also did my own research. Last year the state of California made an arrest for suspected terrorism. I’m going to pull a few strings and see if I can get an interview.” I didn’t like the sound of Cora going to a maximum-security prison to interview someone on her own. But I couldn’t go with her now that I was ‘in cahoots’ with Snoke. “You’re not going on your own,” I replied, firmly. “I mean, I was probably going to take Finn or someone else with me. I’ve interviewed criminals before, I’ll be okay.” I still didn’t like it, but I didn’t have the energy to argue with her.

“I’m not gonna be able to do this weekend,” I finally broke the news to her. “Oh? Is everything okay?” “Its fine. Just Snoke wants me to travel and open a new bank account. Preferably overseas.” “For tax evasion purposes?” “Yeah.” “Are you going on your own?” “I don’t know. He’s organizing the whole thing. He also mentioned how he’d get Armitage on board too. So if that’s the case, we’ll likely be going together.” Cora laughed softly, “try not to kill each other during the flight.” “I’ll try not to. I’m going to miss you, Kitten.”

There was a pause on Coras end for a few seconds, “I’m gonna miss you too.” “What are you gonna miss more, Kitten? My tongue or my cock?” “Hmmm, that’s a very hard question,” she purred. “That’s not the only thing that’s hard right now, Kitten.” My cock was already half hard just from thinking about her perfect pussy. Putting my phone on loudspeaker, I placed it next to me on the pillow. Slowly I stroked and teased my cock through my boxers, the fabric getting tighter around my growing cock. “Are you going to touch yourself for me, Kitten?” I asked. “Yes, sir.”

“Put the phone on loudspeaker so I can hear how wet your pussy gets.” I could picture her biting her lip at that, her cheeks tinging a soft pink. There was a rustling sound, likely Cora undressing and getting herself comfortable. “Tell me how wet you are right now,” I ordered. Coras breath hitched as she stroked herself, “not quite dripping, Sir but I’m sure you can change that.” I chuckled, taking my boxers off, “your right about that, Kitten. Fuck, I’m so hard for you right now. Rub your clit for me, Kitten.” Cora inhaled sharply as she did as she was told. She whined softly, likely bucking into her own touch.

“That feel good, Kitten?” I asked, stroking my cock at the breathy little noises she made. “Yes, sir. Not as good as your fingers though.” “Bet my tongue would feel even better. I’d eat you out until you were shaking for me, Kitten.” My mouth watered at the thought of her dripping wet pussy, how good she always tasted. Gripping my cock tighter, I gave it long slow strokes, pre-cum beading at the tip. Cora moaned as she continued stroking her clit, the sound making my cock twitch. “How bad do you want my cock, Kitten?” I asked. “I need it, sir, I’m aching to be filled.” “Then use your fingers, Kitten. Fuck yourself open for me.”

Cora moaned louder as she likely pushed two fingers into her greedy pussy. Speeding up my own pace, I groaned at the mental image of Cora naked on her bed, her body flushed red and writhing in pleasure. “Still want my cock, Kitten?” I asked, my voice breathier than before. “You know I do.” “Make yourself cum for me. I want to hear you come undone, Kitten.” Cora cursed, likely curling her fingers against her hidden spot and rubbing her clit with her free hand. “Fuck, Kitten, I miss the feeling of your perfect pussy wrapped around my cock. When I see you next, I’m going to fuck you until neither of us can move,” I growled.

She could only moan in response as she continued to take herself closer to the edge. Her moans came more frequently, her breathing shallow. I continued giving words of encouragement, desperate to hear more of her moans. By now, I was fucking my fist, chasing my own climax. “Fuck! Kylo!” Cora cried out as she reached her peak, moaning my name over and over like a mantra. Cora moaning my name was exactly what I needed to tip me over the edge, cumming into my fist and across my belly with a guttural groan. I continued to stroke myself until the slight pain of overstimulation set in. “You better make good on that promise next weekend,” Cora giggled softly. “Don’t I always make good on my promises, Kitten? This one’s no exception.”

Taglist: @sweetfictionalworld​​​​​​, @sweetsec-93​​​​​​, @cltex84​​​​​​, @jana-banana-fana​​​​​​, @dark-night-sky-99​​​​​​, @little-laamb​​​​​​, @jynzandtonic​​​​​​, @neeharlow​​​​​​​

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