#I had read those puberty guides and such

[vavandeveresfan]

The Courage to Follow the Evidence on Transgender Care.

(WOW, the New York Times -- which a couple years ago had an ad about a qu**r girl who wished for a world in which J.K. Rowling wasn't the author of Harry Potter -- has published yet another opinion piece about trans, this one about the Cass Review. Personally, I think he's too lenient, but at least he's bringing attention to the review to Americans. )

(For those who can't read the NYT page, here's the text.)

Opinion, David Brooks, April 18, 2024.

Hilary Cass is the kind of hero the world needs today. She has entered one of the most toxic debates in our culture: how the medical community should respond to the growing numbers of young people who seek gender transition through medical treatments, including puberty blockers and hormone therapies. This month, after more than three years of research, Cass, a pediatrician, produced a report, commissioned by the National Health Service in England, that is remarkable for its empathy for people on all sides of this issue, for its humility in the face of complex social trends we don’t understand and for its intellectual integrity as we try to figure out which treatments actually work to serve those patients who are in distress. With incredible courage, she shows that careful scholarship can cut through debates that have been marked by vituperation and intimidation and possibly reset them on more rational grounds.

Cass, a past president of Britain’s Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, is clear about the mission of her report: “This review is not about defining what it means to be trans, nor is it about undermining the validity of trans identities, challenging the right of people to express themselves or rolling back on people’s rights to health care. It is about what the health care approach should be, and how best to help the growing number of children and young people who are looking for support from the N.H.S. in relation to their gender identity.”

This issue begins with a mystery. For reasons that are not clear, the number of adolescents who have sought to medically change their sex has been skyrocketing in recent years, though the overall number remains very small. For reasons that are also not clear, adolescents who were assigned female at birth are driving this trend, whereas before the late 2000s, it was mostly adolescents who were assigned male at birth who sought these treatments.

Doctors and researchers have proposed various theories to try to explain these trends. One is that greater social acceptance of trans people has enabled people to seek these therapies. Another is that teenagers are being influenced by the popularity of searching and experimenting around identity. A third is that the rise of teen mental health issues may be contributing to gender dysphoria. In her report, Cass is skeptical of broad generalizations in the absence of clear evidence; these are individual children and adolescents who take their own routes to who they are.

Some activists and medical practitioners on the left have come to see the surge in requests for medical transitioning as a piece of the new civil rights issue of our time — offering recognition to people of all gender identities. Transition through medical interventions was embraced by providers in the United States and Europe after a pair of small Dutch studies showed that such treatment improved patients’ well-being. But a 2022 Reuters investigation found that some American clinics were quite aggressive with treatment: None of the 18 U.S. clinics that Reuters looked at performed long assessments on their patients, and some prescribed puberty blockers on the first visit.

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Unfortunately, some researchers who questioned the Dutch approach were viciously attacked. This year, Sallie Baxendale, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at the University College London, published a review of studies looking at the impact of puberty blockers on brain development and concluded that “critical questions” about the therapy remain unanswered. She was immediately attacked. She recently told The Guardian, “I’ve been accused of being an anti-trans activist, and that now comes up on Google and is never going to go away.”

As Cass writes in her report, “The toxicity of the debate is exceptional.” She continues, “There are few other areas of health care where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behavior.”

Cass focused on Britain, but her description of the intellectual and political climate is just as applicable to the U.S., where brutality on the left has been matched by brutality on the right, with crude legislation that doesn’t acknowledge the well-being of the young people in question. In 24 states Republicans have passed laws banning these therapies, sometimes threatening doctors with prison time if they prescribe the treatment they think is best for their patients.

The battle lines on this issue are an extreme case, but they are not unfamiliar. On issue after issue, zealous minorities bully and intimidate the reasonable majority. Often, those who see nuance decide it’s best to just keep their heads down. The rage-filled minority rules.

Cass showed enormous courage in walking into this maelstrom. She did it in the face of practitioners who refused to cooperate and thus denied her information that could have helped inform her report. As an editorial in The BMJ puts it, “Despite encouragement from N.H.S. England,” the “necessary cooperation” was not forthcoming. “Professionals withholding data from a national inquiry seems hard to imagine, but it is what happened.”

Cass’s report does not contain even a hint of rancor, just a generous open-mindedness and empathy for all involved. Time and again in her report, she returns to the young people and the parents directly involved, on all sides of the issue. She clearly spent a lot of time meeting with them. She writes, “One of the great pleasures of the review has been getting to meet and talk to so many interesting people.”

The report’s greatest strength is its epistemic humility. Cass is continually asking, “What do we really know?” She is carefully examining the various studies — which are high quality, which are not. She is down in the academic weeds.

She notes that the quality of the research in this field is poor. The current treatments are “built on shaky foundations,” she writes in The BMJ. Practitioners have raced ahead with therapies when we don’t know what the effects will be. As Cass tells The BMJ, “I can’t think of another area of pediatric care where we give young people a potentially irreversible treatment and have no idea what happens to them in adulthood.”

She writes in her report, “The option to provide masculinizing/feminizing hormones from age 16 is available, but the review would recommend extreme caution.” She does not issue a blanket, one-size-fits-all recommendation, but her core conclusion is this: “For most young people, a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress.” She realizes that this conclusion will not please many of the young people she has come to know, but this is where the evidence has taken her.

You can agree or disagree with this or that part of the report, and maybe the evidence will look different in 10 years, but I ask you to examine the integrity with which Cass did her work in such a treacherous environment.

In 1877 a British philosopher and mathematician named William Kingdon Clifford published an essay called “The Ethics of Belief.” In it he argued that if a shipowner ignored evidence that his craft had problems and sent the ship to sea having convinced himself it was safe, then of course we would blame him if the ship went down and all aboard were lost. To have a belief is to bear responsibility, and one thus has a moral responsibility to dig arduously into the evidence, avoid ideological thinking and take into account self-serving biases. “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence,” Clifford wrote. A belief, he continued, is a public possession. If too many people believe things without evidence, “the danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.”

Since the Trump years, this habit of not consulting the evidence has become the underlying crisis in so many realms. People segregate into intellectually cohesive teams, which are always dumber than intellectually diverse teams. Issues are settled by intimidation, not evidence. Our natural human tendency is to be too confident in our knowledge, too quick to ignore contrary evidence. But these days it has become acceptable to luxuriate in those epistemic shortcomings, not to struggle against them. See, for example, the modern Republican Party.

Recently it’s been encouraging to see cases in which the evidence has won out. Many universities have acknowledged that the SAT is a better predictor of college success than high school grades and have reinstated it. Some corporations have come to understand that while diversity, equity and inclusion are essential goals, the current programs often empirically fail to serve those goals and need to be reformed. I’m hoping that Hilary Cass is modeling a kind of behavior that will be replicated across academia, in the other professions and across the body politic more generally and thus save us from spiraling into an epistemological doom loop.

#cass review #the cass review #cass report #the cass report #transgender #trans #trans insanity #the tide is turning #gender critical #gender ideology #gender identity #gender cult #gender madness

[icanseethefuture333]

i would really appreciate your advice, i was a loner in high school because i was teased due to my looks and social anxiety. and although i've glown up in appearance and am more social, i still feel really insecure... i graduated but i still feel this way... thank you

Pretty face, even prettier soul - a guide to inner beauty & confidence.

What to do when you look like a princess, but don't really feel like one?

I want to mention this is something I struggle with all the time. Even some of the most beautiful women in the world struggle with insecurities. Celebrities even create personas and alter egos to appear as more confident, when deep down they are actually dealing with anxiety. So anon, I personally believe you've always have been beautiful, but people were not kind or patient to you given the fact you were still a child going through puberty. I'm sorry you had to go through that, truly! You have to learn that what those bullies said or did to you isn't true and it is not your fault for what happened. Give your inner child the grace and kindness that those kids in your school never gave to you. Now that we have discussed that, let's move on to our guideline.

1. Take back your power

Our subconscious is filled with past memories and everything we experienced from the moment we are born into this world. Our parents, teachers, family members, people on television, etc, have taught us how to speak, read, and write just by merely talking to us or showing us letters. That is a very powerful thing to do! From babies to toddlers (AKA the early development stage), people are able to program an infant's mind. Not to mention, our brains don't even fully develop until our 30's. So what thoughts do we actually have to ourselves? Our feelings. We may have opinions or personal tastes, but that could easily influenced by the media and trends surrounding us.

You have to be in control of what your feelings are and what you will allow to take from others. We all experience unfortunate events and pain that is inflicted from others, but it is never right to inflict that same pain onto ourselves. I want you to acknowledge how those people in high school hurt you and write down in a journal how it makes you feel. Now, ask yourself - do those same words you remember hearing linger in your subconscious mind? Do you often have doubts or thoughts that transpire into feelings of unworthiness or insecurity? That my dear, is the toxic pattern that needs to be addressed and stopped immediately.

Do this in a safe and calming place (this might be triggering so do it when you are ready to).

Visualize the memory of the event of where you heard these harmful words said to you. What location did it take place? Was it brief? Did the situation last for a long time? Was there a lot of noise, or was it more quiet? How does your inner child feel in this situation?

As the memory comes back to you, tell your inner child that everything is okay, and that you are there for thrm now, that you will be their protector.

Take back your power from this situation and these people, tel them everything you wished you could of said. It's okay if you get angry, sad, or any other emotion. It's also okay if you want to forgive them or even don't. That's entirely up to you.

I recommend doing Shadow work, since healing from past trauma is a lengthy process, but this meditative exercise is a great start for addressing the problem you're facing so far.

2. Perception

How we perceive things in the world is different for everybody. For those of us with social anxiety or insecurity, we are more hyper aware of our surroundings and have a hard time relaxing. We are observant of those who give us looks or speak to us in a certain tone, but how is that look or tone deciphered? For example, you could be having a conversation with a close friend and the way she is looking at you or her tone doesn't seem to be the nicest, so you tell her this, then she says "oh I'm just tired, sorry if I'm not sounding too excited right now!". To you, you percieve her as aggravated and cranky, while to her she thought she was being geniune, friendly, and giving her best to be attentive to what you are communicating to her. This an example of how our perceptions can differ in the world. No one is wrong or right regarding this.

Keep in mind that you are perceiving things from your perspective and try to look at things from a different point of view. Most people are conscious about themselves because they don't embarrass themselves or look a fool, but actually most people don't pay attention to everything they're feeling insecure about. They might even like what you're insecure about or find it beautiful, and if they don't, it's not the end of the world!

Try to create a new lense and envision yourself in a more positive light. You could even practice affirmations, listen to music, or do activities that make you feel more confident. When we do the things we love, we often experience more feelings of joy or happiness!

3. Inner child healing

Oh you thought I was done talking about the inner child? Lol you thought wrong!

Our inner children are the last piece of the puzzle. They are the core essence of our self concepts and without them not feeling well, we are gonna feel the same 🥺!

When we were young, we all had our unique quirks that was deemed possibly weird, annoying, or silly, but what people don't understand that's just how children are! They are so creative and fun and have so much potential in their young minds, hearts, and souls!

You having feelings of insecurity because you are not seeing the beauty and lovable qualities that your younger self had. You are thinking that because "physically" you had a glow up or transformation now that you are more beautiful, but in actuality you are just now blossoming into a young adult. I just find it hilarious that society really brainwashed us into thinking that being "done" with puberty means we had a "glow up". You are still going to change and transform over a time. A tree is never done changing throughout the seasons. Sometimes it will be green and rich, with many leaves during the summer, then it will be all dry and brittled up during the winter. You never stop evolving as a human.

Let go of this way of thinking because it is not going to help you heal from your insecurity, addressing those issues will.

Do activities with your inner child, journal about them, think back to your childhood what made her happy or feel beautiful before any devastating situation happened. Children are really delicate, and this is you as a child, so you need to be kinder to yourself.

Perhaps find a picture of yourself at this age and praise or give them words of affirmations" "You look so nice today! I am so proud of you!".

4. Be yourself 👑

Ultimately, it comes down to realizing the potential and magnitude that you possess inside. You have to realize that there is, or are, going to be people who love you because you are just being you. You don't have to please anyone who doesn't fancy you, because I mean - who the fuck are they if they don't even like you? They're totally irrelevant. You have to see what others find so great about you and maybe even discover parts of yourself that is actually amazing. Our self concept is perceived in various ways. There is how people perceive you and then there is how you perceive yourself.

How do you wish to see yourself? Do you wish to continue thinking negatively or being harsh towards yourself? Or would you like to be able to come to a place of peace and to see those insecurities actually become a strength of yours?

Lastly, all I can say is be patient, once you start taking care of yourself and your inner child, things will be able to progress from there, but it is a process and a journey. So don't try to rush it.

I hope you find this helpful anon, take care 💕

#ask #anon #confidence #mindset #inner child #healing #trauma #anxiety #self concept #shadow work #advice

[9800sblog]

Could you do a reading on ateez thoughts on the brazilian show that they just made or what they think about the contry please?

It may seem like a little dumb question but i genuinely got curious about it

Thank you in advance love😀

ateez tarot reading

the member's thoughts on brasil and it's concert

ALL ALLEGED

somebody else asked for each member, so I'll combine both readings here hehe

general (all members, kq and staff)

they definitely feel that they were robbed a little, of opportunities, jongho wasn't there, the venue was not as big as promised, they didn't have time, fans were rude, bla bla bla. it was very reassuring tho, their first stadium, on the other side of the country, they felt energized, strong at work. but they had 0 time to enjoy, brasil is such a beautiful country, a tourist's wonderland, and they couldn't, it's a shame. I heard mingi bought a keychain.

seonghwa:

seonghwa was impacted frrr, he felt that he was dreaming, he really did wish to come here since childhood but he couldn't enjoy much, which made him upset. the concert, to him, was a dream come true, he's giving me sparkly feelings, he was really in love with the vibe and stuff, dude loves performing and the whole routine around it. he thought the rain was beautiful for the concert, but he wished to have met brasil in its tropical weather (cmon he's a tourist, why would kq do that with him 😭) he thought the place was dangerous, the 4 of pentacles comes up, holding his bag very tightly; the concert was also, the stage was a bit slippery and the boys saw many fans leaving the venue sick. he thought it was a beautiful beautiful place, he's so easily impressed, he loved it there because it was interesting to see completely different cultures, ways of living, literally night and day; the crowd and the staff are very different feom what deals with in korea, not that one is better than the other, it was just nice to see those contrasts. he also thought it was crowded, both the concert and the city, they couldn't go anywhere because fans followed them, they had to eat in super unknown places to not be seen. "I loved the meat, very salty, crispy, juicy" he wants to return as a tourist.

hongjoong

bro was so tired, he couldn't think straight, everywhere, all the time they needed him to talk and represent and work. working. all. the. time. my dude is 🤪 his mind is like shutting off, trying to stay awake, telling me his experience he was saying a bunch of nothings that he rehearsed and said millions of times before. "the entire time I was thinking 'I want my beeed I wanna go hoooome'". he is so tired, poor thing, I don't think he even knew where he was, what he was doing. he said it was beautiful, but he got near a head rest, he slept. he was not thinking straight, but my spirit guide said that he's sleeping HARD now kmkkkkkk somehow, tho, it was refreshing to him, like restoring his strength or passion or something, the feeling of achieving something new, seeing different people, different places. he just felt bigger, stablished, "I fucking did it". that's what he said. (before they came to latam, they were in LA and Japan again, and as much as they like it, it renewed his spirit to go and see what he hasn't, it didn't feel as limiting)

yunho

hes very angry, he did not enjoy, I won't go further because it's ugly. it's his own issues with the company. he said everyone's a son of a bitch, I'm laughing my ass off. he did say and show that he drank alcohol there "so icy", he's very very funny, wish yall seen it, dude's cool. he said he wanted to walk around the stadium and he couldn't, they said it was dangerous, he said he'll burn the stadium now because why not "just make it safer????" he said delicious beer and coffee, allegedly he brought home a few bags of brazilian coffee. he hates everyone and every company ever, yall please have patience with him, he's going through puberty.

yeosang

DUDE IS SO PROPER, HE IS SO CUTE.

he kept repeating he was so tired and he already forgot what happened in the concert. he loved the food, allegedly, farofa and guaraná were included and he wants more for his whole life, best part of the trip, he'll never forget. so cold, allegedly he forgot it's winter in the south and didn't pack accordingly.

san

san was feeling himself, he felt hot and sexy and desired (my whole body is cringing). the country looks nice to live in, he liked when it was calm, he liked the melancholy of the weather, it inspired him. coffee again, a hot topic, pão de queijo, allegedly, he liked the cheese itself, he said cheese puffs, I think he means bolinhas de queijo, but I am not sure cause I wasn't there. he liked his room, he liked the view of the stadium, the fan lights were beautiful. he wished fans would've been less physical, in every way, he had his space invaded and he thought fans only cared about their looks and bodies, which made him disappointed. san said he has lost his faith in humanity a long time ago and brasil solidified that. he knows he doesn't have a fair opinion tho, because his stay was so quick and packed, he wants to give it a second chance when he can just be san, hiding in his thoughts and melancholy.

mingi

mingi had the best time in brasil, mingi loved samba, mingi tried paçoca and coxinha, salgado de presunto e queijo. mingi didn't like the infamous brazilian soda, "too sweet", he said, underwhelming. such a mess, crowded, unorganized, mingi was stressed!! he was tired as fuck, people in that town are rude, fans give him no space, he was so annoyed, but he loved it there. there's this bit of plinc, like a little yellow light in his heart, he had such a bad experience but he feels so sweet, and calm, satisfied. mingi is an angel on earth, he said he had a spiritual experience there, he felt at home, which is very very interesting. he wants to know the country more personally, less expensive and rushed, more familiar. he felt at peace, although all he had were bad experiences everywhere, so tired all the time, he wants to return, it's very interesting. he loved the rain, he likes that weather, oh mingi said before that he loved the shower in his hotel because it felt like a sauna, and the fans are cool too, just too annoying, in his ears, screaming and demanding more of him, he's like "I'm just a dude! I can't" very softly, my god this man is an angel. mingi fell in love there, he really did, I think he found his second home. he feels so calm, so peaceful, at rest, familiar, so comfortable and truly happy. I have never read ateez like this before, it's insane.

wooyoung

"just another day, just another country, I just wanna go home". he seems to have dissociated a lot, he's tired, I won't bother him.

#ateez #ateez tarot #kpop tarot

[gffa]

idk if its canon anymore, but still what do you think about the jedi sending younglings away when theyve gotten too old? like yes the service corps are important and valuable but what if an initiate truly feels like theyre guided by the force to be a knight but no master ever chooses them and so theyre shunted off? do you think the council of reassignment would step in or something? that's a little off track, im just interested to hear your thoughts on how this age limit to be chosen as a padawan and become a knight fits in with the whole culture and theme of the order

To be honest, while I think there's a lot fandom can do with this to make them interesting, especially by showing that they're valuable and no less Jedi, I can't help but see them as a product of their time, specifically in that the book that really created them came out when only The Phantom Menace was out. The prequel movies weren't even complete yet, only the first one had come out, and so the books pretty much had free reign to do whatever they wanted and a lot of times it just did not mesh with who the Jedi were actually shown to be. It felt very much like the whole thing was created to give Obi-Wan angst for the audience that those books were aimed at--young readers who would enjoy the drama of feeling like your life is about to end at the age of 13. (And, like, to be fair to the books, they're not wrong that that kind of story resonated with many kids! XD I absolutely get why a lot of fic authors and fans hang onto that worldbuilding, I can totally see why they enjoy it!) But I don't think the idea of aging out of the Jedi really makes sense, even just from a coldly logical point of view. You put all this time into raising a child and you just kick them out at 13 if there's no Master choosing to train them? That seems like a huge waste of resources and just way too young for a given Jedi to really show their potential. They haven't even hit PUBERTY yet (well, assuming that we're going on a human baseline and age limits are adjusted by species' life spans), but you're leaving it up to whether or not a Master chooses to train them, instead of letting them develop into at least teenagerhood first?? That makes no sense to me, given that the Jedi are always handing out second chances like they're candy. Of course they'd do the same for their children. The Jedi actually seem fairly flexible, like they have rules in place for a reason, but when a case like Anakin comes along, they do bend and allow exceptions for situations that need it. So, I like what a lot of fic authors do with it, in expanding the role of the service corps and worldbuilding for them, but the age limit is one of those things that I just chalk up to "they didn't have even the full movie trilogy to work with yet and I don't think it fits with everything else we see of the Jedi, so it just doesn't really exist in my mind, unless I'm reading fic, and then it's the fic author's playground to do what they want and I can roll with the cool stuff they're going to bring". (It's definitely not canon anymore, at least not at 13. Ahsoka was 14 and implied to be on the young side, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan and Kanan were 13 and definitely said to be really young, Dooku was 16 when he became Yoda's padawan, another agemate of Dooku's was 16 and not chosen and said he'd have to wait another year, etc. The service corps may still exist in some manner, but I've never seen anything about Jedi aging out in Lucasfilm canon.)

#jedi order #meta

[tempestgnostic]

Thus Spoke the Half-Serpent

I can’t recall the first time I laid down next to the water’s edge and yearned for a home I’d never known. I must have been very young; it wasn’t until much later that I learned shame. In those halcyon days, in the peace between the trauma of birth and adolescence, I dreamed of swimming with nixies—the ones I’d read about in my copy of Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You. It would be years before I gave up waiting for a soulmate to appear beneath the surface of our neighborhood lake.

I joined the swim team just before the curse of puberty began to take hold. (I didn’t transition until my early twenties.) It was the closest approximation I had—yet, kicking around a pair of human legs felt just as wrong as the way my chest began to jut out beneath my swimsuit. I went to competitions across the state and did quite well, until dysphoria caught up with me and strangled my ambition.

My daydreams shifted as part of my identity once again rose to the surface. I was nearly always human from the waist up, but at times had the body of a massive serpent below. Other times, it was replaced with the digitigrade legs of a wolf, or even the body of a giant spider or scorpion. The serpent’s tail was always the most euphoric, though—the rest felt like using active imagination to cope with the ostracization I felt, being misunderstood and bullied relentlessly by peers. (To be a queer, autistic kid in Kansas is a kind of torture that should be reserved for the lowest circles of Dante’s Hell.)

I could write for hours about how snakes and their habits continued to pop up in the most interesting places—how I was once a ‘proud Slytherin,’ back when I was still ignorant of JKR’s legacy of hate; how euphoric I felt when I realized that getting a forked tongue is not uncommon in the body mod community; how the gods and spirits I encountered on my pagan journey kept pointing me to the serpent in increasingly obvious ways; how even my personal philosophy began to reflect my ophidian nature. “I slough off truths like snakeskin. The world is always changing—why should I remain the same?”

This—and so much more—rapidly coalesced into an awakening that truly began right after I allowed myself to accept my werewolf identity. I had ‘broken the seal,’ so to speak, and the kaleidoscope of my personal mythology erupted from that pinprick of light. Suddenly, it made sense why I sometimes expect to feel scales instead of skin beneath my waist, or why I find myself to be clumsy and awkward when I try to dance, unless my movement is serpentine and centered in my hips. It explained why I sometimes feel the swift forward extension of a viper’s fangs from the roof of my mouth when I open it just so.

When I get in bed, I wait until my legs fall asleep first, overlaid in such a way that they seem to melt into each other under the blankets. When my knees aren’t acting up, I allow the rhythm in my hips to carry me across the room as I dance to the music in my head. I dream of sunning myself beside a calm river, enjoying the feeling of warm rocks beneath my scales before slipping back under the surface. In my mind, I see silvery moonlight reflecting off of the water after nightfall.

There’s a beautiful young femme sitting by the water’s edge, enjoying the cool breeze. Something keeps her there, even as she sees me skim the surface of the water, striped scales suggesting half of my species. Cottonmouth. She speaks to me like a soulmate, our love a foregone conclusion, and I offer my hand with a gentle smile. I’ll teach her how to swim, and I promise not to bite—hard. She laughs, and my butch heart swells.

#alterhuman essays #alterhuman community #alt/non essays #alt/non community #nagakin #nagaposting #idk if this could fall under therian #probably not but i’ll look into it more #otherkin #otherkin essays

[animebw]

Short Reflection: Spring 2022 Anime

It is truly astonishing how good anime has been lately. Every season, I go in thinking, “well, there’s no way this is gonna live up to the incredibly high bar last season yet.” And every time, I’m proven wrong. Spring 2022 was a smorgasbord of excellent shows from start to finish, and even better, it was a smorgasbord of diverse excellence. No matter what kind of anime you most prefer, whether action, adventure, romance, drama, comedy, or even sports, this season gave you at least one show to really look forward to every week. And if you’re someone like me who pretty much likes anything as long as it’s done well? Then lord, I hope you’re ready to kiss your free time goodbye, because there’s a metric ass-ton of worthwhile anime from this season you need to catch up on. Don’t worry, summer’s looking pretty thin, you’ll have plenty of free time. So sit back, relax, and let me guide you through the good, the bad, and the truly brilliant that was anime in spring 2022.

The Rising of the Shield Hero Season 2: 2.5/10

Listen, it not like I was expecting this to be any good. Shield Hero has always been an absolute garbage fire of an anime, and the only reason I’m still keeping up with it is morbid curiosity at just how bad it’s gonna get. But I don’t think anyone, fans or haters alike, were really expecting just how lazy season 2 ended up being. Huge chunks of content have clearly been compressed into far too short a timespan, things happen with no rhyme or reason, huge events are glossed over or skipped entirely, and almost nothing that happens here feels connected to what was happening before. I guess maybe it was trying to pull a Hunter x Hunter Chimera Ant Arc where the story takes a diversion and spends the next significant stretch of time in a mostly self-contained one-off adventure, but it does such a terrible job justifying its existence that the entire thing comes of as a giant waste of time. Not that the main story was any good to begin with, but at least it felt like it had a reason to exist. A terrible, shitty, incel-pandering reason, but a reason nonetheless. Which makes it even more bizarre how this season actually tries to reign its more toxic aspects in, almost like the author finally realized that having the relatable protagonist be a literal slave owner might be a bad look and tried to course-correct midstream. Not that it succeeded all that well but, you know, an attempt was made. I dunno, man, this was just crap. But at least it was crap in a more interesting way than I was expecting, and with a show like Shield Hero, you really can’t ask for more than that.

In the Heart of Kunoichi Tsubaki: 3.5/10

Those of you who’ve been reading my blog for any stretch of time probably know that Teasing Master Takagi-san is one of my favorite rom-coms of recent years. It’s so goddamn adorable I feel like my cheeks are going to fall off whenever I watch it. Unfortunately, that same charm is nowhere to be found in this adaptation of a manga from the same author. The whole premise of a village of ninja girls who’ve never seen a man and yet one starts getting romantic feelings towards them rests on this weird assumption that once a girl hits puberty, she’s just inherently going to conform to heterosexual capitalist standards for how one should view love and desire. The protagonist literally has no frame of reference for the opposite sex and yet she gets all gushy over them like she burns through ten shoujo romance manga a week. And don’t get me started on how this show doesn’t seem to realize that gay and aro/ace people exist. Girls falling for guys is just treated as innate to everyone (and yet there’s weirdly a lot of yuribaiting as well? Not sure how that makes sense). Add to that the incredibly skimpy outfits on a cast of girls who are all, like, ten years old, and the whole thing comes off just as gross as Akebi’s Sailor Uniform last season. God, Cloverworks really needs to put its talents to better use.

Love After World Domination: 4.5/10

I honestly feel bad for Love After World Domination. It’s a unique enough twist on a rom-com- the hero of a super sentai team starts a relationship with the bad guys’ smoking hot second in command and they date on the down-low- and despite my fears that the premise could only sustain a few episode at most, it remained fresh throughout its run. In any ordinary season of anime, I think I would’ve been way more positive towards this show. But this was no ordinary season of anime. This was a season stuffed to the gills with stellar rom-coms, rom-coms that blow literally everything about Love After World Domination out of the water. It’s not as well animated as Kaguya-sama, not as consistently funny as Demon Girl Next Door, and nowhere near as adorable as Komi-san. And compared against those titans, its charms become harder to appreciate, while its flaws- the main couple isn’t really interesting outside of being a couple, there are too many eye-rolling fetish characters- become much more apparent. Perhaps in another timeline this show could’ve been able to work its magic, but as is, it sadly must settle for being the least interesting rom-com in a season bursting with them.

Deaimon: Recipe for Happiness: 4.5/10

So, remember Barakamon? Remember how that show’s premise was an idiot failson moving away from the big city to rediscover his passion while unexpectedly becoming a surrogate dad figure to a young girl? Well, Deaimon feels like it’s trying to recapture that same magic, albeit as a much more low-key tempo. This isn’t the boisterous, lively countryside that defined Barakamon; this is a chilled-out, pleasantly sedate depiction of life at a family-run bakery in the middle of Kyoto. It’s a show you watch not for the plot, but for a weekly dose of mellow vibe and interesting facts about wagashi, the art of traditional Japanese sweets. And I’m hypothetically down for that; unfortunately, Deaimon has a few too many imperfections to really hit the mood it’s going for. Too much time is spent getting to know characters that don’t really matter, too little time is spent on what should be the central relationship between Nagomu and Itsuka, and the show has an awkward understanding of how people talk to each other, resulting in a few scenes that dip into the uncanny valley of human communication. It’s too weightless to be unpleasant, but it’s too unfocused to really leave any sort of impact. Just re-watch Barakamon if you’re in the mood for this kind of show.

Heroines Run the Show: 5/10

God, what a fucking disappointment this turned out to be. Five episodes in, I was fully prepared to call Heroines Run the Show the hidden gem of the season. A wholesome shoujo-adjacent male idol anime that managed to make me cry at the climax of its first arc? With a protagonist voiced by Inori Minase and a cast of lovable characters? I should’ve been able to tell you all this was a feel-good delight that you shouldn’t let slip under your radar. But then the middle of the show gets a little shaky as it tries to explore the pressure put on girls to be cute and almost ends up glorifying it? Except it ends on a good note that avoids the arc’s more worrying aspects, so it seemed like we were still sailing smoothly. But then the final arc tries to tackle overly obsessed idol fans, and it shits the bed so hard it retroactively makes the entire show worse. It has been a long time since I’ve seen an anime self-destruct as badly as Heroines Run the Show, and all the good feelings I used to have about it are now curdled into frustration and anger. As good as that first half was, I can’t in good conscience recommend it anymore thanks to how disgustingly it all turns out. What a fucking waste.

A Couple of Cuckoos (1st Half): 5/10

Sound the alarm, folks: I’m enjoying a harem anime! Sort of. Kinda. Okay, look, it’s probably telling that all the worst parts of A Couple of Cuckoos are the parts intrinsically tied to being a harem anime in the first place. The forced excuses for fanservice, the eye-rolling notion that multiple girls would fall in love with the same potato loser, the fact that the prospective romantic partners include the protagonist’s stepsister god dammit anime why do you keep doing this. Suffice to say, this show is victim to most of its genre’s inherent flaws, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. You know what else it has, though? Snappy dialogue, surprisingly fun characters, believable and diverse chemistry between the entire main cast, and even some decent drama around the central conceit of blood families vs. adopted families and how different people fit into that paradigm. Take away the harem aspect, and this would be a damn entertaining little high school comedy with enough charm and genuine heart to stick with you. But, well, it is a harem, so all that good stuff has to come packaged with a heaping helping of Anime Bullshit (derogatory). I’ll stick it out to see if the second half picks up at all, but for now, you’re better off waiting to see how it all shakes out before giving this one a shot.

Healer Girl: 5/10

As a longtime theater nerd, I’ve often dreamed of the day we finally got a broadway-style musical anime. Not just an idol show where the songs are all performed in-universe (or idol-adjacent shows like Symphogear or Revue Starlight), but a show where the characters break into full-on song and dance at the drop of a hat to express what they’re feeling. Well, the wait is finally over. Here, at last, is an anime where any conversation can break out into singing and any scene can become a rousing three-part harmony. The musical anime of my dreams has arrived, and its name is Healer Girl. Eeeeeeexcept half of its songs are still performed in-universe anyway, while the songs that do follow the broadway formula are mostly just inconsequential fluff about random moments that don’t really matter. And the show built around those songs doesn’t really have much to offer on its own besides pleasant vibes and a very on-point face game. I dunno, maybe I set my expectations too high since the director of FMA Brotherhood was in charge, but Healer Girl just ends up feeling like a half measure all around. It’s charming enough that I can’t really dislike it, but it’s too insubstantial and unambitious to leave any sort of impact.

Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie: 5.5/10

So I went on a bit of a roller-coaster ride with this show. Before I watched it, I assumed it would just be another bland seasonal waifu show about selling a marketable girl to the lowest common denominator. Then I started watching it, and I was shocked by how invested I became. Izumi and his princely girlfriend Shikimori had the kind of meaningful chemistry that so few of these “start when the couple is already dating” anime have, and the fun supporting cast had me hyped for a pleasant rom-com delight. But then as I kept watching, it sort of became exactly the show I was afraid it was going to be. Episode after episode suffered from bland characterization and lowest-effort-imaginable scenario building, to the point that it became hard to remember what had happened in any given episode even minutes after I finished watching it. But then the show’s second half starting picking things right back up, and by the time we reached the final episode, it was probably the best version of itself it had ever been. Suffice to say, Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie is a weirdly complicated show to talk about for how simple it is. All I can say for sure is that when it is on, it damn well holds its own in a very stacked rom-com season, and perhaps that’s enough to be worth giving it a look.

Aharen-san wa Hakarenai: 6.5/10

I think it’s safe to call Aharen-san wa Hakarenai (Loosely translated, it means “Aharen is hard to understand”) the sleeper hit of spring 2022. In a season absolutely lousy with high-profile, high-effort rom-coms, this low-key lark about two weird kids bringing out the best in each other could’ve easily slipped through the cracks. But even without gorgeous production values, a riveting story, or truly outrageous comedy, Aharen-san proved to have real staying power. And I can see why, because while it can’t hold a candle to the likes of Kaguya-sama and Komi-san, this silly little show really struck a chord with me. Most of its humor comes from its deadpan co-protagonists as they bumble through ridiculous scenario after ridiculous scenario without so much as raising an eyebrow, and it hits far more often than it misses. But moreso than its understated goofiness, this show’s secret weapon is its casual, heartwarming acceptance of, well, difference. The titular Aharen reads pretty heavily as on the spectrum, her little brother like to cross-dress with her clothing, there’s a handful of pretty explicitly queer side characters, and the show treats them all with affirmation and kindness. It’s really damn wholesome, and as long as you’re not burned out from rom-coms this season, it’s well worth checking out.

Requiem of the Rose King (2nd Half): 7/10

It’s a damn shame it took Requiem of the Rose King so long to find its footing. The first half, as much as I liked it, was so cramped and inconsistent that it lost most of its audience before it really hit its stride. Well, let me tell you now: if you dropped this show? Pick it back up. Give it another shot. Because once it reaches its second half and timeskips to start re-imagining the events of the Richard III play itself, Requiem of the Rose King becomes really goddamn good. The story has more room to breathe, the machinations of the royal court work better with the show’s limited animation than the battle-heavy first half, and watching all these characters drawn inexorably towards their fate makes for the kind of gripping tragedy you rarely see these days. All of which culminates in a final episode that may well end up being one of the best finales in all of anime this year. Just be aware that this show comes with, like, all the content warnings, as it contains depictions of homophobia, transphobia, sexual assault, and arguably suicidal ideation. If you can stomach a story that tackles such difficult subject matter (not always perfectly, but better than most), then I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Bubble: 7/10

Bubble is the kind of project that was just inevitably going to be awesome from the moment it was conceived. A Weathering With You-inspired supernatural blockbuster romance with Tetsuro Araki in the director’s chair, Gen Urobuchi working on the script, and Hiroyuki Sawano providing the soundtrack? I’m pretty sure the laws of physics make it literally impossible for something like that to turn out anything less than cool as shit. And Bubble certainly is cool at shit, a film of staggering beauty that puts Araki’s trademark hyper-kinetic visual eye to fantastic use. From the gorgeous landscapes to the pulse-pounding midair parkour sequences that define this movie’s action, from the highly expressive character animation to the bonkers spectacle of the final act, Bubble is a feast for the senses in the way that only masters of their craft can truly pull off. The story, sadly, is nothing to write home about; it’s a pretty generic and cliched affair, even if it pulls all those cliches off reasonably well. But that audiovisual splendor still makes it well worth a watch. Turns out you can get away with an uninspired script when the spectacle that script brings to life is this damn good.

Ao Ashi (1st Half): 7.5/10

Do you miss Haikyuu? I miss Haikyuu. And if you’re anything like me, you’ve spent the years since season 4 searching desperately for a sports anime that scratches the same itch, only to come up heartbreakingly short every time. Well, suffer no longer, folks, because Ao Ashi is everything you’ve been waiting for. Okay, it doesn’t look as good as Haikyuu; its workmanlike production doesn’t allow for the kind of orgasmic sakuga heights that made Haikyuu such a breathtaking spectacle. But otherwise? This is everything I’ve been missing about my good volleyball boys. An expansive cast of characters who we get to know naturally over the course of time! An obvious deep knowledge and love for the sport being portrayed (soccer, in this case) and how its mechanics affect the story’s thematic trajectory! A hothead protagonist who must learn to broaden his horizons to achieve his full potential! A soaring soundtrack that would make Haikyuu composer Yuuki Hayashi proud! It’s even got a decent female supporting cast; Hana Ichijou is my precious daughter and I would die for her. Time will tell if the series’ second cours can push it to true greatness, but for now, if you’ve been looking to fill the Haikyuu-shaped hole in your heart, I cannot recommend Ao Ashi enough.

The Executioner and Her Way of Life: 7.5/10

It finally happened, folks. We finally have another genuinely great isekai. After so many piles of crap and utterly unmemorable pieces of cardboard, this genre turned out something awesome. And all it had to do was literally murder the self-insert male MC in the first episode so it could transform into a rip-roaring yuri action/adventure edgefest. To be clear, though, that kind of subversive brilliance isn’t the only reason I fell for The Executioner and Her Way of Life (but seriously, holy shit was that a great way to kick the usual isekai tropes to the curb). No, what makes this show work is because it has what basically every other isekai lacks: a good goddamn story. The setting is fully realized with its own unique culture, it incorporates the concept of being an isekai world into its worldbuilding in some truly fascinating ways, and the plot perfectly captures the Re:Zero appeal of wild twists cascading on top of each other in rapid succession as they recontextualize what you’ve already seen to fantastic effect. Not that this show is quite as good as Re:Zero- as much as I love Akari and Menou, their story so far hasn’t even neared the heights of Subaru’s journey toward self-actualization- but with how fucking wretched this genre usually is, I’m not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth. Bottom line, Executioner kicks ass, and if we can somehow get four seasons of that fugly skeleton show, then we have no excuse not to keep this one rolling for at least a few seasons more.

Ya Boy Kongming: 7.5/10

Generally speaking, when you get a show with a premise as bonkers as “Legendary Chinese strategist from the Three Kingdoms era gets reincarnated in modern Japan and becomes the manager of an aspiring pop idol,” there’s one of two possibilities. The first possibility is that the creators are just throwing weird shit at the wall for a cheap, cynical attempt at quirky brand recognition. The second possibility, however strange it might seem, is that they actually know what they’re doing. And I’m thrilled to say that Ya Boi Kongming is firmly in the latter camp. It’s a hilarious, heartfelt celebration of the power of music, chasing your dreams, and what it taking to become your best self, full of lovable characters, spectacular song performances, and just the right amount of batshit insanity to compliment such a wacky premise. It honestly makes me feel bad for Zombieland Saga; as much as I’ve enjoyed both seasons of that show, Ya Boi Kongming feels like the fully actualized version of what Zombieland could never quite achieve. I hope PA Works keeps this adaptation going, because these are the kind of good vibes I want to carry with me for many years to come.

Birdie Wing Season 1: 7.5/10

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. How the hell could an anime about golf- the most boring sport to ever exist- be in any way interesting? Well, I could try and explain it. I could explain how beautifully, confidently ridiculous it is at every turn. I could explain how it hits that pitch-perfect sweet spot of camp where it takes itself completely seriously despite running on the most batshit insane logic imaginable. I could explain how it mines incredible comedy just by using such a dull game as the high-stakes currency of cutthroat underground mafia schemes with enough bonkers future technology to make Seto Kaiba blush. I could even explain how it’s Actually Gay and that automatically makes it a must-watch. But really, no words can do justice to the magic of Birdie Wing. This is a show that must be seen to be believed. So instead, I’ll just ask you to watch this clip from the first episode:

This is maybe the twentieth most over-the-top thing that happens in Birdie Wing.

Got it? Good. Now go watch this damn thing already.

Dance Dance Danseur: 7.5/10

At first glance, Dance Dance Danseur feels like Mappa's attempt to recapture the Yuri on Ice magic of gorgeously animated bodies in motion. And it certainly accomplishes that: from the animation to the direction to the sound design, the way this show brings the art of classical ballet to life is absolutely stunning. But make no mistake, Dance Dance Danseur is a very different beast than its most obvious comparison. This is a show full of flawed people, immature teenagers who make immature mistakes against a backdrop far more vicious and honest about the world’s evils than I expected going in. It’s a story that dives headfirst into bullying, toxic masculinity, parental abuse, the systemic rot of the ballet world itself, and ways that artists striving for greatness, especially young artists, suffer and hurt each other in pursuit of finding what drives them forward. Does it pull it off perfectly? Fuck no. At times, the choices the characters make are so frustrating you want to reach through the screen and punch them. But as difficult as this show can be to sit through, it makes for some of the most realistic and compelling drama you’re likely to watch all year, drama only heightened by just how god damn gorgeous it all looks. It’s definitely not for everyone, but it’s well worth a look for anyone who can appreciate a story this jagged-edged.

The Demon Girl Next Door Season 2: 8/10

Ganbare, Shamiko! God, I’m so happy this show is back. The Demon Girl Next Door is one of the most underrated anime of the past decade, a gag comedy about a modern-day demon girl who accidentally seduces befriends the magical girl she’s supposed to be mortal enemies with and sets out to try and solve the issues that have left them both in dire straits. What makes this show great, beyond its incredibly fast-moving jokes that take great advantage of the anime’s limited resources, is just how damn good it is as building real emotional meaning into the story those jokes underlie. Few shows are this good at building compelling drama out of people trying to help each other, and while it never grows so heavy that it stops being a comedy first and foremost, that empathetic undercurrent gives this goofy little gag anime a way of really sinking its claws into you. If there’s one big flaw I can criticize it for, this second season makes it pretty clear just how much less compelling the supporting cast is than the two leads. Sure, they’ve all got their own charms, but every plotline that doesn’t involve Shamiko and Momo trying to out-gay each other is a plotline that would really be better spent on Shamiko and Momo trying to out-gay each other. Regardless, I had a blast with season 2, and I hope we haven’t seen the last of these adorable idiots yet.

Spy x Family: 8/10

Was there ever any doubt that Spy x Family was going to be a blockbuster hit? One of the most popular manga of the modern era, adapted by two of the most high-quality anime studios in the business (at least when they’re not destroying themselves with overwork)? You couldn’t get a more surefire success if you tried. And yes, surprising no one, I fell in love with Spy x Family just as much as everyone else. A master spy, a legendary assassin, and a telepathic orphan must forge a fake family for the sake of the spy’s mission, each one hiding their true identity from each other and doing their best to blend in to “normal” society, despite the fact that none of them have a damn clue what being normal actually entails. It’s a fantastic premise executed to near perfection, and the only real negative thing I can say against it (well, aside from the one creepy siscon character) is that this first season has left me unbearably impatient for it to get even better than it already is. This is a show that’s going to end up an all-time classic, and if you somehow haven’t checked it out already, consider this your call to give it a shot. It may not end up on your favorites list, but it’s basically impossible not to fall the slightest bit in love with.

Vampire in the Garden: 8.5/10

I’ll admit, I may be biased on this one. The concept of a post-apocalyptic lesbian vampire frostpunk road trip is so stupidly up my alley, I’d be shocked if I didn’t fall head over heels for it. But fuck it, this is my list, I make the rules. And even putting my personal preferences aside, Vampire in the Garden is fucking spectacular. It’s every bit the gorgeous, tragic melodrama you could ask for, telling the story of a human girl and a vampire queen who flee their warring species together in search of a paradise where they can all live as one people. The action is riveting, the worldbuilding is enthralling, and the bond that forms between Momo and Fine as they travel- and the fascinating way their arcs parallel each other in reverse- sucked me in and broke my heart in a thousand beautiful ways. It’s a fucking crime this OVA only had 5 episodes to tell its story; with a full cours to flesh out the actual journey and explore more interesting pockets of the world, this could’ve been right up there with Wolf’s Rain in the pantheon of anime’s post-apocalyptic masterworks. But even these 5 episodes are more than incredible enough for me to demand all of you to check it out. Studio Wit just does not miss, people.

Kaguya-sama Season 3: 8.5/10

Recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that if I had to choose between compelling protagonists or a compelling supporting cast, I would take the compelling protagonists. Sure, ideally one shouldn’t have to choose, but if the characters at the core of the story are fantastic enough to earn my investment, then I’ll likely gravitate to that story more than if the supporting cast outshines them. And that probably explains why Kaguya-Sama, as incredible a show as it’s become, isn’t going to end up on my favorites list anytime soon. To be clear, Kaguya and Shirogane aren’t bad protagonists by any stretch, and by the climax of season 3′s well-earned romantic buildup, I can finally say I’m invested in them as a couple as well. But I don’t come to this show for the romance at its core. I come for Chika’s batshit insane antics. I come for Ishigami’s shockingly compelling struggle to re-invent himself as a decent human being. I come for Hayasaka flexing on everyone, everywhere, all at once. And, of course, I come for the gonzo visual experimentation that’s quickly making this show second only to Nichijou in the pantheon of anime comedies that use incredible animation to wring maximum hilarity out of every joke. There are endless things to love about Kaguya-Sama; it’s just that Kaguya-Sama herself is probably the least of them. And that’s why, as good as season 3 is, there’s another rom-com that ended up snatching my Anime of the Season trophy right from under its nose...

Komi-san Can’t Communicate Season 2: 9/10

Alright, look: is this show’s supporting cast astronomically weaker than Kaguya-sama’s? Yes. Does it suffer from cast bloat that makes it hard to develop many of its characters beyond one-note jokes? Absolutely. Is Yamai Ren one of the worst... things to happen to anime since Mineta? Boy, you fucking know it. And yet none of that changes the fact that every time I put on an episode of Komi-san Can’t Communicate and see Komi and Tadano adorkably flailing their way through social interaction, my blood sugar levels spike hard enough to put me into cardiac arrest. God, I fucking love these two. I love how this show portrays their journey through self-betterment and self-acceptance. And watching Komi truly start to find her voice in season 2, literally and figuratively, was an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything. At its best, this show is a celebration of the ways that people come together, how we cross the seemingly impossible barriers of social interaction and forge companionship in a million different ways. It’s an achingly sweet, achingly sincere love letter to everyone who’s ever felt a little bit different, a promise that some day, with a little hard work, everyone is sure to find the place where they belong. And for all of its unevenness, that earnestness never fails to make Komi-san Can’t Communicate one of the most delightful watching experiences anime’s ever given us. Now bring on season 3, because if we don’t get to see these goobers actually start dating I will riot.

#anime #the anime binge-watcher #tabw #spring 2022 #spring 2022 sr #komi-san can't communicate #komi san wa komyushou desu #kaguya-sama: love is war #kaguya-sama #birdie wing #spy x family #aoashi #the demon girl next door #machikado mazoku #shield hero #vampire in the garden #in the heart of kunoichi tsubaki #paripi koumei #ya boi kongming #dance dance danseur #aharen-san wa hakarenai #love after world domination #deaimon #heroines run the show #healer girl #requiem of the rose king #the executioner and her way of life #shokei shoujo no virgin road #shikimori's not just a cutie #a couple of cuckoos

[twocubes]

dear twocubes, are you still doing the tarot readings? I have kind of given up on everything. A couple years ago I got diagnosed with celiac and I can't eat anything anymore. I used to be semi smart but now I have had to give all that up just trying to survive. My family is dysfunctional but I am too weak to escape. I tried to kill myself 4 yrs ago but ever since then it's like I'm broken inside. Plus I didn't develop properly in puberty (stunted growth) and I look sick and terrible. :(

:( I will do this for you!

as always, remember not to take my readings too seriously. hopefully it will be helpful, and if not, hopefully it's at least entertaining!

ok, so the spread I'm going to use is a cartomantic SWOT analysis, because... i mean it seems appropriate to your question, and also because i find it funny to combine business terms with divination.

So, the spread I got is:

right off the bat, note that this spread is very sanguine, i.e., to do with internal factors, how you are inside; in particular there's a focus on hearts, which should mean emotions, survival, visceral stuff like that.

note also the two zeroes and the two twos; having x + y = z suggests thinking of z as a consequence of x and y, cards being equal suggests thinking of them in contrast or in common, and having x + y = z + w suggests thinking of all of these things as having effects that come together.

in order, these are:

Strengths: THE TEMPLATE I USED TO DRAW THESE CARDS, reversed this card is to do with examples, either following them, finding them, or being them.

Weaknesses: EIGHT OF HEARTS EIGHT is to do with networks, indirect effects, etc, while hearts is emotions, health, and reproduction in the sense of what is necessary to continue

Opportunities: ZERO OF CLUBS, reversed ZERO is to do with absence; this can be in the negative sense (absence of something necessary) or in the positive sense (absence of obstruction, freedom). CLUBS is about labor, the things you are doing with your efforts.

Threats: TWO OF HEARTS, reversed TWO is to do with a relationship between exactly two things, or a single edge in a graph

Strength-Opportunity strategies (ways to use your strengths to exploit those opportunities): TWO OF DIAMONDS DIAMONDS is to do with the things that make life worth living, the things you find important, precious.

Weakness-Opportunity strategies (ways to use those opportunities to overcome your weaknesses): RED JOKER Red joker is to do with a profound, fundamental change in the things you find important.

Strength-Threat strategies (ways to use your strengths to overcome threats): ZERO OF HEARTS

Weakness-Threat strategies (ways to minimize threats and weaknesses): OMEGA OF HEARTS

I read these cards as follows:

Your strengths are to be found in departing from examples you find and figuring out how to do things on your own, you should trust in the value (to yourself) of your critiques; Your weaknesses are to do with the network that supports you both emotionally and to continue living.

You are free to search for a work (work in the sense of like, Life's Work, what you might Want To Do) for you to pursue, and this is an opportunity for you; at the same time there is a particular emotional/supportive relationship that you have whose instability is a danger to you.

In order to take advantage of your freedom to find new pursuits, look to examples you could follow and think of what they do wrong, think of ways you might do it but better, and pursue here a relationship (I imagine here an artistic or working relationship), letting yourself risk finding this relationship precious. Be aware though of repeating patterns in your unstable relationship!

In order to mitigate the weakness in your support network, let your finding of new pursuits guide a radical change in what you value in life.

In order to counter the threat of that unstable relationship, think of yourself as free to pursue new ways of supporting yourself or find emotional support by looking towards examples whose mistakes you can learn from. This pursuit though might be more serendipitous than your pursuit of new pursuits.

You can mitigate both the weakness in your support network and the threat of the instability of that relationship by thinking about what is necessary to support yourself in the long term; like, your support in the long term and what that might take.

Your pursuits of new relationships and new unalienated pursuits will result in conflict and back-and-forth effects between the new precious and old unstable support relationships; be aware of this. However, the work you do as a result of these conflicts might come together to lead to common solutions.

...

uhm, anyways that's how i read all this. maybe this makes sense, maybe it doesn't, maybe you can read these better, maybe this was funny in ways only you can tell ;p

side note: using business strategy tools as divination spreads seems to result in a really really rich reading lol. this is so funny.

#nouveau tarot nouveau

[anemic-comedienne]

I was small, and I felt very, very tall

There’s a picture of me from the fall of my senior year of high school that has a hold on me like no other. It’s a mirror selfie from October of 2019. I’m wearing a paisley print swing dress with pearly silver earrings, and my hair is perfectly curled to make it look imperfectly curled. I’m not pouting, nor am I smiling. I doodled on the image before adding a caption: a list of my favorite essays. Having just read Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror at the recommendation of my favorite teacher (who, at the time, was also guiding me through writing my first-and-last standup set,) I felt sinfully clever as I hit post. I was, for the very first time, in some tiny way, the person that I am now.

I’ve since lost the earrings; I finally gave the dress away this afternoon. But this girl, in a different mirror, from a different time – she sits on my shoulders like a devil and an angel, like a scrapbook and a poem and a semi-ironic instagram post. What makes this age of girl so magical has been described many times by much better writers: the being coming secondary to the being on the precipice of something, something that (although usually kind of bad) could, at that time, still turn out to be good. March hadn’t come yet, and neither had college decisions. I was fresh-faced, my skin clear for the first time since hitting puberty, and riding the high of falling in love for the first time. I was feminist in a way I would have described then as unapologetic but now would describe as unfortunately adorable. A kind of Lolita version of caring about things. A post-Buzzfeed, pre-HWC kind of conviction. I was small, and I felt very, very tall.

18 was the oldest I’d ever been, and 18 now strikes me as the youngest I’ve ever been. Before 18, I wasn’t me at all. 18-year-old me was the baby that eventually became who I am now, if I am a who now. Being 20 feels like being a toddler. I whine and I scream and I want to say things, I am dying to walk and talk, but maybe it’s just not time yet. I know what I need, but I don’t know how to ask for it. Or else I don’t know what I need at all, just that I need something.

One year prior to taking the mirror selfie, I gave myself bangs during a crisis involving the only ex I had to worry about at 16. The bangs were ugly through the whole of junior year, and even over the following summer, which I spent moon-faced and pining over someone who ended up liking me back anyways. But by the time I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, they had grown just to my chin. After being curled, and then having those curls settle all day, they looked great. They looked positively perfect. It’s impossible to cut hair to that length. It has to get there on its own. 

Maybe that’s what I miss. 20 feels like everything about me is self-made in the best and worst ways. I miss feeling effortless in ways that were meaningful. I feel like I should be grown up, but I’m not. I miss feeling more grown up than I had any right to be. I miss growing not up, but out. 

[echoesofadream]

thanks for the review! lol it's funny you say haegeum felt like a daechwita wannabe because yoongi said he was afraid of that. he didn't want anyone to think he was trying to capitalize on the success of daechwita. the title songs for the agust d trilogy are just meant to be connected and he composed haegeum around the same time as daechwita.

for amygdala, the repeating 'my amygdala' is so full of pain, especially when I saw the live performance, it captivated me form the beginning. he put his all into it.

i think with the singing on this album, i don't think he has all that much confidence in his singing, so much as him singing it makes it more personal. and the vocal processing on the singing that sort of makes it fit into the song goes so well with his voice. idk, i think his singing is very well placed. like, for the songs where a real singer is needed, there is a singer featured. but those songs where the vocals needed wouldn't end up raw due to the needs of the song, he knew his singing would be good enough for that, because it is. he knows he's not a singer, that much has been made clear by him, but he does seem to like to experiment with it anyway.

for me, d-day is his best work, but i liked hearing your thoughts on it. i get that not all of it is for you, we don't all enjoy the same things. j-hope has indeed not had a bad verse in his life lol

ok I really liked reading this ask, thank you!! I really enjoyed reading your thoughts and it made me wanna listen with your takes in mind. so im going to give you my live reaction to me re-listening to the album

D-day: still a bop actually, its good

Haegeum: i didnt know he said that about haegeum, thats funny, thanks for telling me! I still think haegeum is not as strong as daechwita but its good and its funny that he made it around the same time as daechwita. its a bop tbh and gets better if I dont compare it to daechwita lol. the MV (havent watched it since release tho lol) doesnt really have its own distinct feeling imo which is what makes it feel more like daechwita copycat.-.

HUH?!: yoongi channeling his UGH! energyyy epiiiiiiic. I love how this song doesnt have a like clear like "payoff" or climax or drop or whatever its called its epic.

AMYGDALA: I like the refrain a lot. also the "save me from here, hurry and get me out of here, yeah yeah" part </3 <3 ive seen clips of his live performance of this actually, and ah I feel like, I wasnt not a part of it? like the rest of armys were. like I could see this strong catharsis happening by I was just watching from the sidelines. which feels a bit bad I guess considering his previous music, like the last really really touched me. I dont actually think that his singing is the thing I mind really about this song, like I think it works. I just think the word amygdala specifically to me stands out a bit too much, it's a bit strange to use like this just repeating it, it holds no meaning like that and makes the pain he feels feel out of nowhere is my opinion, but if I ignore that I can totally understand what you mean. this song is very full of emotion and pain. the verses are ok but not great

SDL: same as amygdala I still find the "title lyric" a bit strange, cant really turn it off to appreciate the song unfortunately. his singing again is okay but I can never stop thinking he sounds like a teenage boy going through puberty when he sings, im really sorry that sounds so mean. but its true:/ but him singing does make it more personal like you said and gives the songs a bigger emotional impact. I get everything you said about his singing! I just feel like its a bit much like feel like theres a thing as too much rawness too

People pt. 2: puberty voice again in the so far away part:/.....and pls iu's lyrics, still feels like nonsense guide lyric they couldnt be bothered to change

Polar night: LOVEEE this song

Snooze: ok so first of all I loveeeee woosungs voice so much I am a fan of his vocals, ive listened a bit to the rose and his vocals are so good ive always thought so. its so full of emotion ahhhh I love it so much. so I loved him featuring on this! and this is a good song, yes. also I love violin its my second favorite instrument after piano

Life goes on: I think this is the song that threw me off about the whole album lol. I was never a fan of yoongis rap part in life goes on in the first place, and this song also has a lot of singing from him that I dont like, as well as the to me meaningless repetition of "life goes on". I think to repeat a phrase or word in a song it has to either slap sonically and/or hold a meaning that you can really feel. this has neither for me. booh

Conclusion: This is probably a really good album and I can understand why you like it so much. I am however a super picky person so the smallest things can bug me a lot lol and turn me off of a whole thing even if it's good otherwise. But also none of these songs really stood out to me personally, neither lyrically nor musically/sonically, in a way that made me wanna listen over and over. like none of them didnt really stick to my brain. Which is only a personal taste thing! im glad you liked it tho!

also listening to some of these songs again made me remember they are quite good, none are overwhelmingly good for me personally but d-day and haegeum is a vibe, and huh is fucking good actually?! amygdala is not as bad as I thought, snooze was also better than I remember. couldve done without sdl, people pt2 and LGO tho sorry:/ and even the songs I like still lack the power that I usually correlate with agust d.

[merrock]

CHARACTER INFORMATION

face claim: Chella Man

full name: Harley Hua

nickname(s) / goes by: Harley

pronouns & gender: trans/genderqueer, he/him

sexuality: pansexual (and panromantic)

birth date: May 27th, 1999

birth place: Boston, MA

arrival to merrock: 2021

housing: Historical Downtown

occupation: Artist/instructor

work place: The Color Wine (teaches evening classes), From Brush to Canvas (tour guide)

family: Parents in Boston, brother who I may put in a wanted connection for! 

relationship status: single

PERSONALITY

Harley is a warm and friendly person, sometimes to a fault. He often will try to put other people before himself, as if their needs are more important. But at the same time, he's the most confident he's ever been in his life and for the first time, is comfortable advocating for himself. Growing up, he tried so hard to blend in but now he's so proud of all the different cultures and languages that make up who he is. Still, he can be a little too critical of himself, especially when it comes to nutrition/fitness and his own art. 

WRITTEN BY: Elle (she/her), est.

BACKGROUND / BIO

triggering / sensitive content: audism/ableism, transphobia, gender dysphoria

Harley grew up in Boston, MA, with his parents and his older brother. He was an active kid, involved with gymnastics and later cheerleading as well. He loved to swim and spent as much time as his parents would let him at the beach or the community pool.

Although Harley passed his hearing test as a baby, when he was in kindergarten he didn’t pass his screening at school. His parents took him to an audiologist and was diagnosed with mild hearing loss. A few months later, another test showed he was gradually losing his hearing. Technically it was Harley’s decision whether or not to get a cochlear implant. His parents never intentionally influenced him one way or another. But his doctors had advised his parents not to teach him sign language, insisting that without sign language he’d learn to read lips and would function much better around other hearing people. The problem was that Harley never really picked up lip reading anyways, so his only option to communicate with people was to get the cochlear implant. At first he hated it. Everyone sounded like Donald Duck and inanimate objects all sounded like those bad industrial rock songs his brother liked. He slowly got used to it and appreciated being able to hear his friends and family again, but he remembered what things were supposed to sound like so he never found himself satisfied with the quality of audio that came from his implant.

At the same time, puberty was not doing harley a lot of favors. He never cared too much about his body growing up; he wore the most androgynous clothing his mom would let him and made a face but sucked it up whenever he had to wear a leotard for gymnastics or put on his cheerleading uniform. As he entered middle school and made the cheerleading squad, there was suddenly a lot more pressure to look more feminine and fit in. Baggy tshirts were replaced by form fitting clothes, and his basketball shorts were regulated to nighttime wear in favor of skinny jeans and short skirts. After spending all of elementary school barely being able to communicate with the people around him, he wanted so badly to just fit in and feel like a ‘normal’ kid. He’d look at his own reflection and see a stereotypical teenage girl and while he could appreciate that she was beautiful, it felt like he was looking at someone else and not himself. He knew deep down that he wasn’t ‘her’, but he didn’t know what that meant or how to fix it.

After high school, Harley moved to New York to pursue a degree in illustration. His childhood dream had been to write a comic book, but drawing the pictures that would appear in childrens books was the next best thing and a more realistic way to make a living. His brother had also decided to go to new york for college, so they were soon living together again. He became involved in his school’s gender-sexuality alliance and soon learned about the transgender community. And suddenly a lot of things started to click. As he was figuring out his gender, his brother was extremely supportive. Once he had worked through everything and decided he wanted to transition and start going by Harley, his brother stood by him when he came out to their parents. But his parents’ reactions weren’t as warm. They still loved him - they made sure to tell him that - but they also insisted that this was just a phase. Considering they had been very accepting when he came out to them as bisexual (actually, pansexual, but he had told them he was ‘bi’ just because it was easier) a couple years before, this was not the reaction he had expected from them.

During Harley’s freshman year of college, he met another deaf student who introduced him to the local Deaf community. He kept going to events and even dated one of the guys he saw at a lot of events, which required him to learn ASL.

His plan after he graduated was to stay in New York and find work as an illustrator. But this turned out to be harder than he realized. He struggled to find good paying jobs, which meant he had to keep working as a bartender and just do art on the side. At the same time, he and his boyfriend broke up and his brother took a job in Missouri. So Harley decided that maybe it would be a good idea for him to leave the city as well. He didn't want to move back to Boston, so he applied to art-based jobs all over the northern East Coast and heard back from Merrock's The Color Wine. He had never imagined himself becoming an art instructor at a sip-and-paint type studio, but he figured it was at least a good start to get some real, adult experience in the art world.

Not long after moving to the small town, the museum had an opening for a tour guide and with his art degree from New York, Harley was a standout candidate for the position. He's been working both jobs part time, plus spends a lot of his free time at The Body Shop.

#merrockbio #harleyhua #audism tw #ableism tw #transphobia tw #gender dysphoria tw

[whatsonmedia]

World Athletics restricts transgender people from female events.

Athletes like two-time Olympic champion Caster Semenya will find it difficult to compete under the new rules. Under rules adopted on March 24, 2023, South African runner Caster Semenya would have to undergo hormone-suppressing treatment (File: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters) Transgender women will no longer permitted to participate in female track. Also in field events, regardless of testosterone levels, according to World Athletics President Sebastian Coe. From March 31, no female transgender athletes who gone through male puberty would be allowed to participate in female world ranking competitions, according to Coe. Following a meeting of the global track and field federation's decision-making body on Thursday, Coe stated that World Athletics had consulted with stakeholders on the problem of transgender athletes, including 40 national federations, the International Olympic Committee, and Tran’s groups. "The vast majority of those polled agreed that transgender athletes should not compete in the female category," he said. "Many believe there is insufficient evidence that transwomen retain an advantage over biological women. Want more evidence that any physical advantages have mitigated before considering an option for inclusion into the female category." "The decision we took... was, I believe, in the best interests of our sport," he added. “Not saying ‘no’ forever” Coe stated that a working group led by a transgender person would be formed to closely monitor scientific advances. “We’re not saying ‘no’ forever,” Coe said. "We continue to believe that fairness for female athletes must take precedence over all other considerations," he said. "We will guided by the science of fitness and male advantage, which will inevitably develop in the coming years." We will reconsider our stance as more evidence becomes available, but we think the integrity of the female athletic category is paramount." World Athletics President Sebastian Coe. According to World Athletics, it became clear that there is "little support within the sport" for a proposal made to stakeholders that will be require transgender athletes to keep their testosterone levels below 2.5 nanomoles per liter of blood for 24 months in order to compete internationally in the female category. Tighter rules for athletes with DSD The council also decided to tighten limits on athletes with Sex Development Differences. (DSD). To participate in the female category, DSD athletes will have to lower their blood testosterone level to less than 2.5 nanomoles per liter, down from the current level of 5, and stay below this level for two years, rather than just one, as is the case now. The most high-profile DSD athlete is double Olympic 800m champion Caster Semenya of South Africa. Semenya has been attempting to participate in longer distance events. Last year, she placed 13th in her 5,000-meter qualifying heat at the World Championships. To compete in next year's Olympics, she would have to endure hormone-suppressing treatment for six months. Which she has stated she will never do again after undergoing the treatment under previous rules a decade ago. LGBTQ+ groups opposed this decision LGBTQ+ organizations such as Stonewall expected to oppose World Athletics' decision. They urged sports to be as inclusive as feasible last month. "The trans population may be small, but they have every right to participate in sports and reap the many physical, mental, and community benefits that sports provide," the statement said. "The scientific evidence base on transgender athletes in sports is growing, but it is far from conclusive." Read the full article

[buckyhoney-library]

volume control, b.b

A/N: Hope all is well, please give me feedback about what you think about this one, I had a lot of fun writing this one!

Request: Hi, I'm not sure if your taking requests right now. But if you are, could you do a Bucky x reader smut where the reader loses her voice so Bucky tries to see how loud she can get in bed without her voice? Thank you. You're an amazing writer.

Warnings: language, 18+, overstimulation, oral (fem rec), fingering, praise kink, unprotected sex (no glove, no love)

Word Count: 2.8k

Your POV

     The warm ginger flavored tea cooled the burning sensation of my throat. It seemed to be the only thing that I had tried that had calmed the feeling. Laryngitis had made an appearance this week, completely wrecking the use of my voice. Every time I tried to speak; I sound like a boy going through puberty.

     The last couple of days had the worst in terms of soreness- luckily that part is over. All that seems to be left of the illness is the voice cracks and inability to talk about a whisper. It has become more annoying than anything.

      Every time respond to Bucky, you could see the amount of self-control it was taking not to laugh or make a joke about the croaking.

     Dressed in only black spandex and a t-shirt, I pulled myself off the couch with my empty mug in hand. The couch seemed to be my home for the past week. I had called out of work for the week. Knowing that trying to talk to clients while sounding like a pubescent boy wouldn’t be very professional.

     Calling out of work had proven to be more beneficial in more ways than one. It allowed more time to be able to spend more time with my moody boyfriend and catching up on shows that I had been putting off.

     Bucky called off his avengers’ duties this week and took care of me while I wrestled with the illness. Trading in his weapons for running to the store to grab more boxes of tea, throat lozenges, and a variety of ramen.

“How many of those have you been though?” Bucky questions walking past me pouring the hot water in my mug.

     I pulled out a fresh box, ripping the cardboard lid open. It really did seem like we tried everything to relieve the pain. Spoons of honey, throat lozenges, saltwater, nothing helped other than tea. This means I have been drinking it like a madwoman.

“This is the second box since last night,” My voice cracking at the end. We’re making slight progress, the voice cracks getting further apart. I gesture to the bottle of honey; he grabs it from the counter handing it to me, shaking his head.

“You should probably slow down, you’re not gonna have enough for later.”

“That’s why I have you to get me more,” This time he doesn’t hold back on the laughs when he hears the faint cracks and strain. I turn back around in protest of his action, pretending to be upset at him.

     In reality, it was hard to stay irritated with him when he laughs. The pureness of the sound and the smile that would take up his whole face never failed to make me smile.

    He comes up from behind me, wrapping his arm around my torso. With his body pressing against mine, the coolness of the metal against my arms sent shivers down my spine. The hair on his chin tickling my shoulder, watching me as I finish pouring the honey.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing, you’re not feeling good” He mumbles, his lips nipping at the base of my neck. Moving my neck to the side, granting him more access to it.

    Bucky peppering kisses along my neck and shoulder. This action causing me to giggle and buck my hips against his and gripping the edge for the counter for support. A small breathy groan leaves his mouth when my hips made contact with his.

“I’m feeling fine now,” I manage to whisper without the croaking sound. He twists my waist, forcing my body to turn and face his. I look up at his blue eyes, they were darker than normal. His facial hair grown out a bit making him look softer and cuddlier.

“You sound better,” Bucky taunted, his voice had gotten lower and his eyes looking down at the gap between our bodies.

“Does it?” As soon as I thought my voice wasn’t going to crack, the words fall out cracked and broken. Ruining the seriousness of my tone.

Bucky rolls his lips in holding back a laugh.

“So good, baby,” Bucky slides his hands underneath the bottom of my shirt.

     A breathy whine escaping my lips, feeling his cool hand along the sides of my hips. His eyebrows rose at the sound,

“You sound so sexy,” His tone lowered and his eyes piercing mine. I pressed my body to him, wrapping my bare arms around his neck. His lips connecting with mine and his arms pulling me tighter, trying to eliminate any and all space between us. 

I can feel his bulge forming against my pelvis- all because of a moan.

     Sinking into each other, our lips matching in rhythm and pace. A raspy yelp leaving my lips as I feel a harsh smack against my right ass cheek. Completely forgetting the only thing separating it was thin spandex- Bucky’s favorite article of clothing. He says it is one of his favorite things that we have created.

     He liked the way it made my ass jiggle and moved with whenever I took a step. He especially went crazy when they’re rid up when I’d grab something from the top shelf in the kitchen, exposing the bottoms of my ass. He never failed to smack it, sometimes leaving his handprint through the fabric.

    Bucky’s flesh hand grabbing a fist full of ass and jiggling it himself. His release of the flesh causing me to whine again.

    The bulge that was currently trapped in his basketball shorts, started to throb. If only I could take it in my mouth and relieve all the pent-up pressure.

     Bucky’s lips moved away from mine but kissing alongside my jawline and down my throat. His hands now gripping my hips preparing me to jump back onto the kitchen island. I jumped, allowing him to guide me onto the cold granite.

     With his lips disconnecting from the side of my neck, his eyes peering into mine. It’s as if I could read his mind, knowing exactly what he wants. All I do is nod,

“I want to hear you moan, baby,” His hands teasing the waistband of the spandex. Dipping his fingers inside, but not going far. The feeling making my cunt moisten.

     Bucky’s true talent was his ability to tease. He was never in a rush, always took his time making sure that I was dripping before even daring to pull his dick out. It was like he got off on that the sight of the arousal dripping down the sides of my cunt.

“I want to see if you can still get loud,” My breath hitches, and my core tightening. My chest rises and falls heavier at the thought.

     As vocal as I am in bed, Bucky never put to the test how loud I could go. He was always satisfied with how vocal I ended being. What he loved, even more, was seeing me struggle to keep quiet. Teasing my clit with his fingers till I couldn’t help but moan.

     Bucky’s fingers starting in slow circles, watching me twitch and shudder. He’d dip his fingers inside gathering all the juices and using it to add pleasure. He’d moan at the sight of how visibly hard it was for me to stay silent. Some nights, he’d give me a towel or blanket to bite down on. Other nights, he’d want to see me struggle and wouldn’t give me anything to help.

    The moment I would make even the tiniest of whimpers, the pleasure would be ripped from me and I would be left not being able to cum till I could prove I could do it.

Those nights he was ruthless. Edging me till I was in tears.

Every time he’d pull away, making it almost painful to stay quiet the next time.

      I spread my legs giving him access to the place that was about to cause me a great deal of regret. His fingers slide inside the waistband of the shorts, bucking my hips at the contact. His fingers quickly being removed before they touched my clit.

“You fucking tease,” My voice was barely audible, his lips curl into a devilish smirk. Without any sort of permission, I removed my shirt. My breast dropped and Bucky’s eyes flickered to my bare chest, lighting up instantly. My nipples already hardening at exposure to the cold air.

     Within seconds, Bucky taking one in his mouth and his hand squeezing and kneading the other harshly. Eagerly tugging on my nipple with his teeth and soothing it with his tongue. I whimpered with every tug. I could see the smile on his face when I looked down.

     I wrapped my arms loosely around his head, keeping him focused on my breast. The only movement being when he’d move off the other giving attention to it. The nipping and tugging making my cunt completely soaked. I could feel it soaking through the spandex. The harsh treatment towards my breasts making the ache between my legs so strong, I thought Bucky could feel it.

   Bucky took his time giving each breast a moment to be assaulted, leaving them both sore. I silently prayed that my cunt was next.

    Bucky pulled away from my breasts, removing his shirt. The sight of his abdomen and dog tags, causing my pussy to throb a little harder. He places lips on my collarbone, slowly laying back on the counter and shoving the opened mail and assignment files on the floor.

    The combination of the cold granite and his hand made my back arch. He placed small kisses down my stomach till he got to my naval- that’s when he started to drag his tongue down till he got to the band of my spandex. I hold my breath as he removes my shorts, finally exposing my slick cunt. 

    I pushed my hips into the counter motioning the need for something to relieve the throbbing.

“So pretty, baby…” Bucky murmurs sliding his middle finger down the sopping wet folds, teasing my entrance. His finger only sliding into the first knuckle, he still standing while he does so. A scratchy moan getting past my lips.

“Yes, baby, I want to hear you.” Without warning he inserts two fingers and curling them, hitting the spongey tissue. My walls start contracting.

My throat tensing as I unexpectedly whine at the feeling.

“Good girl, I know you can get louder.”  Bucky eyes not leaving mine, I am now propped on my elbows and grinding my hips into his fingers. He adds his metal thumb to my clit, rubbing the bud at an agonizingly slow pace. Bucky removed his fingers from my cunt, bringing them to my lips.

    I open my lips enough for his fingers to enter. I sucked the clean, tasting myself. The saliva from my mouth being used as lubrication before he slid them back inside. The circles around my clit become faster. Our eyes met and his pace quickened. My jaw-dropping from the pure pleasure of his fingers. His mouth dropping with mine and his eyes darkened as he watched my body start to jerk.

A string of curses left my mouth and my vocal cords struggling to get any sound out.

“You’re doing so good” I laid back down, feeling my limbs fall weak to the feeling of my orgasm approaching. The soreness of my throat getting tighter, but not caring.

     Bucky crouched down coming eye to eye with my cunt, still fingering fucking my entrance. His thumb left my clit, but it was replaced with his lips. His tongue swirling around the bud. His facial hair scratching the sides of my legs adding more sensation down there. His fingers haven’t stopped, if anything they had gotten faster.

     My eyes rolling back, not being able to properly keep them open. I groaned and gasped at the fast-approaching orgasm. There was no denying that this would wreck my voice even more than it was before, but the feeling of his tongue and fingers making the future pain bearable.

“Fuck!” I went into pure ecstasy. I jerked my hips towards his mouth, my lower half becoming incredibly sensitive. Bucky doesn’t even seem to notice my body twitching. I gripped the kitchen towel beside me,

“Bucky, I-“ I was interrupted by his fingers curling again hurling me over the edge. My throat tensing again, it felt like it was bleeding inside.

         Bucky continues to attack my cunt with his tongue. His fingers leave my hole and join his other hand holding my hips down. I didn’t know how much more of the pleasure I could take.

“Such a good girl, you taste so good.” His voice muffled against my throbbing pussy as he licks the rest of the arousal up. I manage to prop myself up again, our eyes meeting again.

     His mouth glistening from my juices. His eyes don’t break eye contact, staring at me as a string of spit drips onto my clit. I watched in awe of him, he licks it up flicking my cunt one last time. My body has cooled down from the brutal assault.

“You’re doing so well, princess.” He brought himself up, I see the wet spot against his briefs. He was soaked through with precum. The tip was red and swollen, looking like it was going to burst with only a few strokes.

“But I know you can do better,” I sit up completely and watch as he frees his dick. It’s glistening with his liquid, reach to take hold of it in my hand. Bucky stops my hand from doing so, guiding it around his neck. Bucky gives his cock a few strokes, before sliding it up and down my folds.

His cock twitching against them.

The harsh usage of my voice was starting to affect my ability to even get any sound out at all.

     Bucky pushes slowly into me and in return, I clawed at his back. Our bodies have no room in between us anymore, my forehead pressed against his shoulder. His pace quickening. His cock stretching my walls and filling my cunt. The size of him never fails to amaze me.

With all I might, I managed to croak out a shocking volume:

“Faster, please Bucky,” He whined at the sound of my raspy plead.

    His thrusts turning into pure pounding at this point. His arms tightly wrapped around my torso. With the support around my back, my head falls back at the feeling of his cock ramming into me.

“You’re doing so good taking my dick,” He peppers kisses around my throat and collarbone.

My nails digging into his skin.

    My moans are loud, and the pain of my throat was masked by the intense pleasure building in my stomach. I couldn’t even think with his cock inside me. My orgasm building as his pace becomes inconsistent. He was close as well.

     I was surprised he lasted this long considering how he went in, already wanting to cum. All that was coming out of my mouth were a mix of curses and moans. His eyes lighting up with every sound that fell from my lips.

“I don’t how much more I can take,” My voice was in shreds, it was painful trying to speak at this point, but I couldn’t conceal them anymore. Not with his current speed and power.

“Cum all over this dick,” With his approval, my walls start pulsating and my forehead falls back against his shoulder. I watched his dick disappear inside me while I cried in pleasure, my legs quivering at the intense pleasure.

     Tears welling as the pain in my throat was becoming too much. Bucky powered through my orgasm, before his cock twitching inside me. His load bursting inside me. Bucky holds us in the same position while we are recovering from our highs. My pussy is milking every last drop of him, whimpering one last time as he pulls out.

   My breathing still heavy and the piercing pain in the back of my mouth becoming more prominent. I lay back against the counter, catching my breath.

“You got so loud, baby, I’m so proud of you,” Bucky coos while grabbing the kitchen towel that I was previously using as a grip.

         He glides the fabric against my cunt, whipping away his cum that was leaking out of me. I twitch with the contact with my clit. He takes my hands and pulls me back up to meet his eyes. I try to speak but wince at the pain shooting through my throat like daggers. His face instantly filling with worry.

“I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have- “He begins to panic, but I grab his wrists,

“It’s okay,” The only volume I could speak in being below a whisper. I hop off the table picking up my discarded clothes, sliding them back on. I bend down, picking up his briefs, and hand them to him.

“It was worth it,” I chuckle. He takes the briefs from me and looks at the abandoned mug.

“I’ll just have to get you more,”

#Bucky Barnes #Sebastian Stan #bucky barnes smut #sebastian stan smut #bucky barnes imagine

[lucidmagic]

NSFW Donna x fem!Reader Headcanons because I'm a slut

Anyway here's another apology headcanon post. These headcanons are in my universe of the Phytologist's Guide to Falling in Love because I'm a simp for those gays.

NSFW thoughts under the cut!

Let's face it Donna was a virgin before you two got together, so she is slow to pass that barrier as she is terrified of opening herself up to you and then you leaving her (not that the Reader would but it's a consistent fear of hers).

Her sex education was limited, admittedly, mostly to basic anatomical notions and what she could find in her scarce library. Her parents didn't get to it before they died, so it was up to Mother Miranda to fill in the holes when Donna began puberty.

Oh god, the talk with Mother Miranda, now that's a horror game.

Then enters Alcina. I believe when Donna was in her late teens, she started being curious but was too shy to really ask for a while. Eventually, she stammered out her curiosity and Alcina was surprisingly happy to fill in the gaps. I have a feeling she had to do this with her daughters so she's well versed in breaking the ice when it comes to sex education. Obviously, she has extensive knowledge of sex and anatomy both in experience and books, so Alcina talks Donna through what essentially happens and what is to be expected.

All the while Donna is blushing like an inferno.

Alcina teaches Donna in both different-sex and same-sex, because she's so much better than most country's sex education. How to be safe, consent, genitalia, masturbation etc. Very comprehensive. She even goes into certain types of sexualities that she knows of when she was in the world. Alcina puts in a word for Duke to get the latest in queer studies in book form and some other textbooks to round out Donna's knowledge.

At first, Donna is overwhelmed with all the information, terms, and anatomy. It takes her a while but she eventually gets through it. She well versed in the theory, but not necessarily the act, obviously.

The daughters and Alcina give Donna some books they think would help, some more flowery while others are more raunchy (read: Daniela). Donna particularly likes those that have a relationship built up over time rather than starting off hot and heavy. She loves the trust, admiration, and love that comes with it. Regardless of gender. But she does have a soft spot for sapphic romances.

Yet, regardless of how well versed in literature she is, it doesn't make up for experience and when the Reader comes along, it is the first time it is truly possible.

Though her heart wants you, like really really wants you to the point it's maddening, her mind is the biggest obstacle. She just can't comprehend that someone would want her, romantically or sexually. She'll overthink it to the point of headache when she's alone. Why would you want her? Desire her? Compared to her, you are the expert and clearly know what you're doing. So why her? Hell, she has a festering scar on her face. That can't be attractive.

It'll take time, though in the middle you two do share heated make-out sessions that leave both of you breathless, pupils dilated, lips bruised. But she would always stop you, and you would pull away not to overstimulate her or cross any boundaries.

Donna always apologizes for stopping and ruining the mood, but you always reassure her that it's fine and that you can wait. So long as you can be with her, you don't mind. The sincerity of your words always makes her heart swell.

Her first time with you is soft. And I mean soft. Slow, gentle, and lovingly, careful to make sure Donna isn't overstimulated or feels pressured into it. But god, it's perfect and Donna nearly cries with the amount of emotion coursing through her. Your attention, your love, your skin moving against hers... she should have done this sooner with you.

She's not loud but has these breathy moans that drive you crazy, especially mingled with your name. Donna saying your name, regardless of context, always does something to you. But when you're lapping at her or using your figures and you can see the flush on her chest. . . it drives you crazy.

Donna hates positions where she can't see the reader, loves making eye contact and watching you. Tries to keep her eye open as best she can but sometimes you're too good and she just can't.

Her moans come from low in her chest, deep within her, rumbling and so intoxicating.

No matter the position, you two are always holding hands, a sort of anchor to each other. Basically, cuddle-fucking each time.

Bottom-leaning switch. You love servicing her, wanting Donna to know she is desirable and worthy of love. On occasion, Donna would service you, wanting to let you know she appreciates you and wants you to feel everything she can offer.

Not big on toys, but the occasional strap is welcome. She mostly just wants to feel you, nothing but you.

Her neck is sensitive, and adores it when you kiss, nibble, or suck on it. She can almost come on that alone.

Though she doesn't like dirty talk, I do have two words: praise kink. Tell her how good she is, how capable, how beautiful, how absolutely stunning she is when she comes... makes her just fucking melt and turns her on more. She never felt that someone would love her like the Reader does so you saying those things will be music to her ears.

On occasion being assertive works on her, though there has to be clear communication of it beforehand, particularly on her end if she is having a good or bad day. Push her up against a wall or door, hell even her workbench, and just ravish her, not bothering with clothes, like you can't keep yourself from touching her. These are far fewer than 'proper' sessions but no less enjoyable.

Favorite positions: either you at her hips, eating her out and moaning into her, or her on top of you, riding your fingers and feeling your mouth on her breasts.

If you tease her relentlessly, she will beg for you. Breathy and moaning, practically pleading. She bites her lip and it is perhaps the sexiest thing you've seen. Once that happens, you have to give in and give her what she wants.

Loves to grab the reader if not cuddle-fucking, wrapping her arms around the waist, hips, shoulder, stomach just to keep you close to her, so she can feel you-- all of you.

With her permission, of course, would love to have a hickey souvenir to see the next morning or when she's getting ready. A reminder that it actually happened and it wasn't a dream or her mind failing her. Usually on her clavicle or her shoulder.

After sex cuddles are a must. They're perhaps the most important thing to Donna. Just you and her, skin to skin, lazily caressing each other and just existing. Loves it when she has her head on your chest, hearing your heartbeat sync up with hers and you hum or speak, rumbling her own chest and head. She falls asleep to it every time with a smile.

Play with her hair after and she will fall somehow deeper in love with you.

The phrase 'making love' always made her hesitant and squirm, it just didn't sit right with her, like it was clucky and ill-fitting to most scenes she read. . . But with you, your gentleness, adoration, and just overall you. . . she finally understands.

Anyways I'm a slut soft and I had to write these down. Next chapter will be out . . . whenever it can be lol. Sorry for the wait, but I love these headcanons regardless. And I hope you do too.

Love you all! Stay safe and healthy!

#my fic #the phytologist's guide to falling in love #re8 donna beneviento #donna beneviento x oc #donna beneviento x reader #donna beneviento #reader x donna beneviento #re8 donna #re8 #re village #resident evil: village #resident evil 8 #my headcanons #headcanons

[all-you-need-is-paul-mccartney]

This Boy (George Harrison x Female!Reader)

A/N: Hey y'all! welcome to my first oneshot! a lot of my stories are very plot-driven and they end up becoming these long chapter fics but I'm gonna see if I can make a handful of oneshots in the next little bit to kind of give yous something to read while waiting for the longer fics to finish up. this is my first one, and it's for Georgie!

Summary: It's date night, and you're more than ready to meet your mystery date; George, however, is not.

WARNINGS: Swearing is in almost all my fics, so this one isn't safe either probably, hints of suggestive behaviour, slow burn, friends to lovers, lack of self-editing probably, etc. *This fic is also LONG AF so I would advise y'all to start reading this when you have nothing else to do*

I'll rate this one as a T. Enjoy, folks!

George checked the clock on the wall again and sighed gently.

You were still getting ready.

As much as it disappointed him, George agreed-- well, more like offered-- to drive you to your blind date one of your girlfriends set you up on.

It's not that he wasn't excited or proud of you for getting yourself out there. He knew you'd been meaning to do that since graduating school.

He was just frustrated at the fact that whichever lucky man was going on a date with you that night wasn't him.

When he found out about the date, he immediately vocalized his distrust for the mystery person, despite knowing absolutely zero about him. You seemed heartbroken at that, and to make it up to you, he offered to drive you to the date.

So there he was, sitting on the sofa in the living area of your flat, waiting for you to finish getting ready.

George had taken you to school dances in the past, and while your mother let you wear makeup to them, it never took you this long to apply it.

You were definitely dressing to impress tonight.

"Lucky man," he just mumbled under his breath at the thought of that boy.

You and George had been friends since you were children, and he deemed you his Best Friend Forever only an hour into your first playtime.

You spent your days as children riding your bikes to the park to play, and helping each other with homework at each other's houses every night.

However, that sort of platonic "buddy-buddy" dynamic changed when the both of you hit puberty.

It wasn't until a boy at George's school questioned him if you were his girlfriend, that George realized he had a crush on you. Some of his friends had girl friends, and they were always teased about whether or not they were dating, but this was the first time anyone had put you and George together.

After this discovery, (which he would endlessly thank the young boy who opened his eyes to the truth in the first place) George began to notice lots of little things about you that he hadn't before.

You would run your fingers through the hair on the back of his head during hugs, you never took your eyes away from him when he was speaking; there hadn't been one time to name that you'd ever made him upset or angry, but more or less excited, and free, and joyous.

And not to mention, the way you called him "Georgie" made his heart pound so loud and hard in his chest that he might as well have just completed a marathon...

He was in love with everything only when you were around.

Actually, as awkward as George thinks it is, Paul helped him realize he was physically attracted to you.

The boys were on their way to George's after school, a few years after George realized he had a little crush on you, and the teenagers both caught sight of you watering the front garden of your home at the request of your mother.

George stopped in his tracks when he saw you, his mouth hanging open as he watched you do your thing. After being enrolled in his boy's school, you never had much time to see one another, as much as it hurt him; so he cherished every moment he could see you.

"If her ma catches you out the window starin' at her daughter's arse the way you're doin' right now Harrison, they'll rip your tongue right out."

George's face went bright red, and he turned to look at Paul in horror, slapping him on the arm for saying such a thing. "I wasn't staring at her like that!" But he couldn't help but steal a glance at your behind since it was now the topic of discussion, though he really didn't want it to be.

Paul knew George felt compelled to say something to you, and he smirked as George awkwardly raised his hand to wave as he called to you from the other side of the street.

"H-hey, Y/n!"

You turned around, and grinned at who you'd seen.

"Hey Georgie! Hi Paulie!" You twiddled your fingers at them, and George's stomach churned in jealousy at the fact you had a nickname for Paul, as well.

"Your garden looks beautiful, Ms. Y/l/n!"

Paul stole George's line. He fucking stole his line!

"A-and you look just as lovely as ever!" George added to one-up his friend.

You put a hand to your heart. "You boys make my heart sing." George took pride in your words despite them partially being for Paul as well.

"We need to see each other more, yeah?" George never expected his question to really get him anywhere, but he was wrong.

"Why not tonight? I don't have any homework and my parents are leaving town 'round five for the weekend to visit my auntie and uncle."

George's answer came quick, and effortlessly. "I'll be 'round for six. Sound good?"

"Perfect! I'll see you tonight then." You waved to the boys again, and then went back to watering the garden after bidding farewell.

The rest of the walk home was just Paul making fun of how lovestruck George was with you, and by the time they got to his house, just down the road from yours, Paul looked over at his buddy and smiled.

"No wonder you value your time with your darlin' over there so much, Magpie. Looks like she would definitely be a fine birdie in bed."

George looked over at Paul, eyes wide, and his voice broke. "... What?!" The thought of going to bed with you never crossed his mind-- well, until that moment.

"Hey, her folks'll be gone by the time you go over! You can make your move then! It's perfect!" Paul's words laced with excitement made George feel panicked, and the boy shook his head worriedly after a moment. "M-maybe it's not the best idea to go tonight..."

"Why not? All you ever wanna do is be alone with her!" Paul set a hand on the other boy's shoulder when he didn't answer. "What's up, George?"

"Paul, I've never even kissed her. She doesn't even know I like her like that! What if she likes someone else?! What do I even do?!" Paul was the biggest heartbreaker George knew. He'd had like... ten girlfriends since they met, and he kissed a whole three of them. They didn't last long, much like the fate of other young relationships, but George took Paul's advice as serious guidance; he needed to in a time like this.

"You just need to be calm. Take some deep breaths. You'll know what to do when the time comes. I know you will."

That night, George had many opportunities to dive in for a kiss, or mention his feelings for you; some of those opportunities he even believed you encouraged, but he didn't budge out of utter fear of rejection. George knew for a fact that Paul was going to facepalm when he asks him for details on the visit to your place.

Instead, the night only consisted of talking, and the only contact you made were a couple of hugs and a kiss on the cheek (which left George a stumbling mess again), though you did agree to spend more time together, which is how your friendship lasted so long.

He was so close to having you, and because he was too scared to make the move Paul (and maybe you) were encouraging him to make so long ago, you slipped through his fingers; and since, the thought of not being able to have you that way never left his mind.

Especially not when you were now a gorgeous young lady, blindly torturing poor George, who beat himself up every day because he lost his chance.

You were like a piece of artwork to George. You could be loved, admired, and looked at by him, but he could never hold you or touch you.

And George hated that.

George wanted you to be his girl.

And you were his girl-- well, in a twisted way. You were always with him, smiling and laughing about nothing and everything, holding onto each other in your darkest nights and guiding one another through personal struggles...

But when other boys started to want you too, George wanted to make it a point to keep the majority of them away.

Some didn't heed George's threats and went on to pursue you anyways, only to be turned down on your front steps by yourself. George never understood why you never reciprocated anybody's feelings, but it's not like he was verbally complaining.

And that's what lead up to tonight. George had wanted you for so long, and the sudden knowledge of a blind date had him in shock, especially since this was your very first time giving in and agreeing to go.

It killed him to know some rando was going to appear out of thin air to whisk you away, whisper sweet nothings in your ear and eventually put his hands on you, thinking his love for you is stronger than any other despite knowing absolutely nothing about how you should be loved, and treated...

But George hid his fury from you because you were excited about this date.

And he would do anything for you.

George's rage-inducing, mind-racing thoughts were interrupted by the sound of your bedroom door clicking shut from behind him. He turned his head, heart in his throat, and you stepped into the room.

You wore a lovely high-waisted navy dress, and a pair of black flats. Your hair was half down, the rest coming together at the back of your head by a matching clip-on bow.

As expected, your makeup was quite noticeable. The burgundy colour of your lips and dark brown eyeshadow had George's head spinning, and he couldn't resist ogling at the way that dress fit you so well...

"So… How do I look? Like, if we were about to go on a date..."

A date? Us? We?!

George's palms began to sweat, and his heart did somersaults. If only.

It was only then that he realized his mouth was hanging slightly ajar, and after snapping it shut, he swallowed in embarrassment, not daring to look anywhere but your eyes again in fear of falling victim to your appearance again.

Imagine not being able to trust your eyes?

"... What would you think?"

George squeaked, his lips moving hesitantly though he didn't make a sound. His face was surely an embarrassing shade of red, and the longer he waited into answer, the more anticipated you looked for a response.

George rose to his feet and approached you, bravely deciding to give you another good onceover after a deep breath, though he kind of lost all sense of feeling in his legs when you smiled at him with that perfect mouth of yours...

"Wow." George sighed, eyelids falling heavy over his brown irises as he admired you.

"I just... you... wow, Y/n." He couldn't come up with a coherent sentence with the way you were staring at him like that.

God, he was absolutely smitten with you.

Your eyes shone joyously as you placed your hand on your heart, and George, as impossible to him as it seemed, fell so much more in love with you than he was just moments before. Your presence rendered him speechless, and the thought inflated your ego a lot more than you would have expected it to.

George remained silent, but his gaze was still glued to you. He'd looked at you for long enough in his life to probably draw you perfectly by memory, but he still took his time to drink in what he was given; because who knew if he'd ever be able to see more of you than this?

"I... I'm-- I'm speechless, is what I am." He cleared his throat after a moment and said, "I... honestly hope my eyes are doing all the talking for me."

"Aw, you're just a sweetiepie, aren't you?"

You beamed at George, blushing as you took another step toward him. "Well Georgie... if you keep looking at me and sweet-talking the way you are..." your warm words were carefully chosen, and it was obvious that George was hanging into every single word you were saying.

"I may just have to pass on this date and spend tonight with you." Your eyelids fell heavy over your eyes, and you offered George a smile that was suggesting something maybe not so innocent.

"Wh-what?!"

"... I said I'm ready to go." You raised your eyebrow in a little confusion at George's flustered state.

Oh my fucking God she didn't even say that?!

Idiot.

Idiot, idiot, idiot.

"... R-right, yes, of course." George shook his head as if to rid his brain of the idea of tricking him like that again. He offered his arm out to you, and you linked yours with his before walking to the door together.

You passed a mirror on the way out, and George caught a glimpse of the both of your reflections, and his chest felt like it was on fire.

He looked so happy to be with you in that moment.

And you looked so happy to be leaving to spend time with another man.

George just hoped at least the reflection of him and you were going on this date together, and both of those smiles were meant for each other.

George pulled up to whatever restaurant this guy wanted to meet you at, which was on the other side of town. George did not approve of this and even reminded you of this on the way there, though you insisted you'd be fine, like you had the couple of times he mentioned this before.

You looked at him after he threw his car into park, and he gave you a little smile after a moment, but it didn't reach his eyes.

"You do look beautiful, Y/n. This guy... he's very lucky."

"I... I don't know what to say."

"Say you believe me."

You didn't say anything. Instead, you smiled sadly, and leaned in to kiss George's cheek. His skin darkened to pink beneath your lips before you could pull away and leave the car with another goodbye, though his ears were ringing and he missed your final farewell.

She doesn't believe me...

George waited until he saw you were seated in the restaurant to put his car back into drive, but something kept him from lifting his foot off the brake. He watched you adjust your silverware at your table, and clasp your hands together in wait.

... Maybe George wanted to wait for this guy to show up.

But would he really want to kill himself by spying on you and watching you fall for someone who wasn't him over the course of one night?

That was the question that made him decide to look back, and pull out of his parking space before he could spot anyone even go near the building. He was in drive and speeding home moments later.

The car ride back to his flat was a quiet one. George kept the radio off, and his fingers drummed against the steering wheel the whole time as if he were almost impatient to get home and do nothing.

Every time he looked in the rear view mirror and saw his eyes stare back at him, it just reminded him that his reflection left that restaurant alone and just as disappointed as his real counterpart.

It wasn't long before George pulled into his building's parking space and sulked out of his car, slamming the door shut. His eyes and nose were burning from the assault of unfallen tears.

He dropped you off to meet this guy. This was all on him this time.

George loved you. He loved you with all his heart, enough to swallow his pride-- sacrifice his happiness for your own.

As much as he didn't want to admit it, dropping you off that night felt like he was letting you go.

And was he?

He pretty much stumbled through the door because his fucks to give for himself were pretty much nonexistent at this point. He kicked his shoes off, not caring if he scuffed up the wall with black marks.

He just wanted to have a long hot shower, crawl into bed, and hide from everyone.

And that's just what he did.

His shower was well over an hour long, and that's where he broke down and cried for the majority of the time. He cried about you, and the situation his own decisions put himself in. He cried in jealousy for the threat sweeping you off your feet right now, and he cried as if that was the last night he'd ever see you again.

When he got out of the shower, well after the stream went cold, he had no more tears to shed. He was dehydrated, and he felt broken. He did a half-assed job of drying himself off before leaving the bathroom and collapsing into bed, only a towel secured around his hips.

His face was pressed into his pillow, and he tucked his arms beneath it and submerged himself even further into the soft fabric.

He recently switched detergent to whichever one you regularly used, and he just took in the familiar scent; anything to make him feel more at home without you actually being present...

George had no idea how long he was in that position for, but he fell asleep like that, only to wake to the sound of the phone ringing.

He got up and stumbled out of his room to ease the obnoxiously loud phone by picking up the call, shouting, and hanging up on whoever decided to phone at this hour-- whichever hour it was.

"Yeah," George rasped through the receiver, his tone laced with underlying irritation. He just wanted to be left alone in his sadness.

"George..."

"... Y/n?" He was rubbing the sleep from his eyes with the palm of his hand before you spoke, but your voice made him freeze.

"Oh Georgie..." your voice was breaking over the phone, and he could tell it wasn't the connection.

"Y/n, my Love, what's the matter?!"

"George he... He didn't show." George's heart stopped.

He didn't show.

George's grip closed tighter and tighter on the phone receiver, and he could feel the pure rage bubbling in his chest, and the plastic receiver crackling from the force under his fingers.

"Where are you?" He demanded. "I'm coming right now to get you," George was about to start throwing his shoes on, despite wearing absolutely nothing to start off with, his towel discarded and still on the bed from when he passed out.

"The same place you dropped me off."

God dammit, this fucking guy had you go to the other side of town just to be forgotten about.

It was finally settled: if George ever found out who this guy was, he'd kill him for doing this to you.

"Don't move. Be there in five." As soon as George hung up the phone, he took off to his room. He was ready in record time: under a minute. Up until the day he died, George wouldn't have been able to dress as quick as he did that night, and he never knew how he did it.

What really mattered was that George got to the other side of town in about five minutes, as he said over the phone.

George whipped into the parking lot and got out of the car. He hurried over to the front of the building to go in and search for you, but he caught a glimpse of you sitting at the curb as he grabbed the door handle.

His grip eased on the lockset, and he slowly turned to you. You were facing away from him, arms folded as you tried to shield yourself from the cool evening wind. You had no clue he was even behind you.

George sighed gently, shedding his jacket off and placing it on your shoulders without another word. He could see your whole body relax from the weighted piece of clothing, and he wondered if his scent was comforting for you too, as it was vice versa.

George heard you breathe out, but you sniffled afterwards. It broke his heart to see you like this. George looked around to see if anyone was watching, because if there was a chance this guy was cackling away in a parked car at the sight of you in tears, George would have had no problem kicking his headlights in and slashing his tires.

He dropped to the curb and sat down right next to you, not hesitating to circle his arm around your body.

At his touch, you curled yourself into a ball, and George scooped you up to squeeze you tight. And against his chest, when you knew you were safe from all harm, you gently sobbed.

George let you cry it all out, and the tighter you held onto him, the tighter he held onto you.

"Am I just unlovable George...? Is that it?" Your words were quiet and muffled, but George heard every syllable you mustered.

He pulled away from your embrace to look you in the eyes, and his grip on your arms were firm, but not tight. "Now Y/n, you do not for one second even think you're unlovable. That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard." His eyebrows were lowered in anger at the very idea of you feeling unloved.

Tears began to well up in your eyes, and George's expression softened. He reached his hand up to your face, and he could feel you shaking. He pursed his lips and furrowed his brow again.

George wished then more than ever that he was the one who was supposed to see you. He would have shown up.

"Y/n, you deserve so much better than this. If you were mine, I’d make sure sitting alone on the curb, stood up, would be the last place you'd ever find yourself, especially when you were so excited to go out..."

George didn't know where his little spurt of confidence came from, but he was more focused on the words he was choosing to use with you, and what he was all going to say.

"... If I were yours...?" You sniffled again, cheeks and the tip of your nose turning pink and George paused at the sudden realization.

You still had a chance to be his.

And all because that boy didn't show up, he still had time to figure out how he could pull it all off; but it had to be tonight.

He took a deep breath.

"I mean, anyone would be lucky to date you. I just... I sometimes wonder why you were never mine. Why you're not mine..." his voice lowered throughout the sentence, and the end of his confession was barely above a whisper.

You watched George for a moment, lips parted, as if you couldn't believe your ears, and the young man panicked a little, deciding to disregard his last words before it suddenly became the topic of discussion.

"Oh, my Love," George's eyes suddenly saddened as he reached out to wipe away your fresh tears and smeared makeup with his thumb. Your bottom lip trembled at the contact, and he sighed.

"Just because he didn't show up doesn't mean your evening has gone to waste." He stood up and turned to look down at you.

"The night is still young." He then held his hand out in front of you, and you looked at it for a moment as if you didn't know what he wanted from you.

"Y/n... give me one night. Let me show you how a man should always treat you."

He wasn't quite sure if he just unintentionally asked you on a real life date, or if you thought of all this as an act, but even if you didn't reciprocate his feelings, it gave George the chance of a lifetime to at least pretend you were his, even if this opportunity only lasted one night.

"Please."

You didn't move at first, but George was patient. You eventually slowly reached your hand out, and George helped you up, not making the effort to let go of you afterwards.

George looked up at the restaurant, and did a double take. "... You... you don't even like fancy places like this, am I wrong?"  All you could think about when looking at him was that he knew you so well.

"A place like this on a first date is a clear sign he'd leave halfway through and I'd be stuck with the bill." George smiled a little, and so did you.

You wiped your final stray tear from your cheek and George gave your other hand a squeeze. "... I'd rather get a burger and go for a walk, to be honest."

"Then that's what we'll do," George confirmed with a nod. It was settled, then.

George and you strolled to the car, still hand-in-hand, and he courteously opened your door to help you in. He ran over to the other side afterwards and climbed in behind the wheel before pulling out and taking off to find somewhere for you both to eat.

You both came across this quiet burger place downtown, and the both of you were able to get a booth in the back for privacy so you could both scarf down your meals in peace.

George ordered the same food you did, and you both settled on sharing a milkshake together (a single milkshake eventually became two).

"God," you looked around the nearly empty joint before turning your gaze back to George. "Do you know how much more comfortable I feel in here?"

"Even when you're dressed like you belong in a dress shop window?" George smiled around his straw and you matched his grin. "Shut up. At least my hair is brushed out."

The poor guy had no clue until now that he forgot to comb his hair out after his depression shower, embarrassingly clawing his fingers through his locks to at least tidy up the mess on his head.

You just laughed out that you were teasing him, and the joyous hiccups from your laughter had George briefly forgetting everything negative that had happened so far that night.

After settling down a little, your food was brought out and you both started eating.

There wasn't much for the both of you to talk about other than the part of your day when you weren't together, and it wasn't like George wanted to mention what happened to him in the last two hours or make you upset by talking about your night.

Instead you both settled on joking about old times. Before the both of you knew it, George had you giggling and smiling once again before your dessert even came, and when the waitress came around to your table with your two-person cookie skillet, you grinned even wider.

You thanked the waitress before she went on her way, and you looked up across the treat to George, whom you were half expecting to be drooling over the cookie. Instead, he was in a dream-like trance, soft gaze fixed on you, and only you. You weren't too sure if he even knew the skillet was in front of him, he was so distracted.

"George...?" You called to him gently as to not frighten him when coming back down to reality. His response was almost immediate, like he could hear you.

And maybe he did.

"... I'm sorry, I don't know how many times I've tried to say this already tonight but have chickened out, but you look just..." George was examining every inch of you that he could see and you blushed, casting your eyes down to the table.

"Angel, look at me." George reached over the table and rested his hand over yours. You lifted your head to look him in the eye, and he hesitated for a moment. Your full attention flustered him, then again it always did, but he took a deep breath.

"You look heavenly, Y/n."

You said nothing. This time, he had you speechless, but nothing wasn't the response he was looking for.

"Dontcha believe me...?" His question echoed through your brain, and you blinked. George scanned your eyes after giving your hand a squeeze. He knew you had something to say, and he was at the edge of his seat in anticipation for your words.

"... Do you really think so?"

"Are you kidding me?! Y/n, I... when you came out of your room tonight I just... looking at you right now, I'm at a loss for words. Heavenly doesn't even scratch the surface. No word exists that perfectly describes how you look to me. Now, or ever."

There was yet another spurt of confidence that washed over George. He had a feeling his words and actions were getting the both of you somewhere, especially when his final sentence had you blushing the way you were.

At least he knew he was doing something right.

George's grip on your hand tightened a little, and he flipped your hands over so your palm was face-up in his. He brought your hand closer to him, and he kissed your fingertips before leaving a final one at the centre of your palm. His eyes never left your red face as he did this, and he grinned against your hand when you offered him a shy smile.

Oh... she IS actually liking this.

When he pulled away, George looked down at the still-untouched dessert, and he smiled, releasing another nervous breath he was holding as he finally let go of your hand. "Let's finish up so we can go on our walk. Sound good, my Love?"

You only nodded before digging in with him, every nudge of his hand against yours reducing you to a blushing mess, and George, who was gaining more confidence as every second passed, would just smile to himself knowing he was successfully turning the tables on you.

But it wasn't yet the time to give in and confess, as much as George wanted to. He still had a nice long walk to woo you on, and then he had to do the important step of walking you to your apartment door at the end of the night, and God knows that was the part he was dying to get to.

You finished your dessert not long after and George payed the bill. After helping you out of the booth, you'd left hand-in-hand again.

The both of you stepped out into the cool night and you looked up at George. "Are you cold? Did you want your jacket back?"

You were holding it in your other hand since you'd taken it off at dinner, and you shoved it in his direction without another word.

He laughed and took the jacket from you, unfolding it and pulling it back around your shoulders before rubbing his hands up and down your arms to keep you warm.

"You'll catch a cold without it. Besides, you look better in it anyways." He leaned in and kissed your cheek, smiling proudly to himself when he pulled away and continued to lead you to the car, deciding it'd be smoother to not turn around and gauge for a reaction from you.

Like before, George courteously opened the car door for you, and closed it when you were in. Their destination was his place. It wasn't for the reason one would think, but the idea of driving you to his home and inviting you in with every intention of walking right past the kettle made George's legs restless.

In reality there was a park down the road from his flat that cut pretty much directly to your own humble abode. You'd walked the trail hundreds of times together to look at the pretty flowers growing in the garden, but something told George that this time, like everything else happening that day, was going to be very different.

When you pulled up to his building he raced you to get to your door for the second time of the night; the first being at the burger place when you first arrived. He took your hand and helped you out of the car, and he didn't let go, even after locking the doors to his car and leading you both down the road.

There was a silence that fell between the both of you. It wasn't bad. You took this time to think about your night, as did George. With every step down the road and into the park you took, the smile on your face only grew wider. As for George, he began to sweat with every step he took.

Every foot forward led him closer and closer to your door, where he was going to finally let everything off his chest and confess to you. The problem was that George's confidence was quickly draining, and this was something he needed to do.

He eventually let go of your hand to wipe his palms off on his pant leg, and at the immediate loss of contact, you were turning to him with a confused look on your face.

"Sorry uh..." he breathed out slowly, cheeks dusted pink. "I-I don't know why, but I'm kinda nervous."

Your look of confusion faded into an unreadable one. "Was it holding my hand?"

George shook his head. "No no, not that, I want to hold your hand."

"So what's the problem?"

He just shook his head again. "Maybe it's just... the stress of making sure tonight is perfect for you."

"What?!" Your reaction was sudden, and George's eyebrows were raised high up on his forehead at your exclamation.

"George, tonight has already been perfect for me! I had a great meal, I'm on a lovely walk with you..." you reached out to take his hand again, and he lifted his gaze from his shoes to look you in the eye. You smiled up at him from under the streetlight, and George smiled back a little.

"Georgie, I would never have asked for a better night." You squeezed his fingers with yours and tugged him forward gently. "C'mon, Magpie. Let's get home. It'll be cooling down soon, and I don't want you walking outside much longer than needed tonight."

George followed behind, but you still took your time coming home since the both of you got caught up in another conversation. This time, it was about the flowers you were passing in the park.

"... I used to water those for you, y'know." He pointed to a cluster of marigolds. To think that was ten years earlier and they still stayed put, growing outwards and stronger than ever.

"I used to check on them every day to make sure they weren't dying. You told me one time you really liked those flowers and I just..." he smiled a little at the memory. "I just couldn't get enough of your smile every time you saw them."

You turned to look up at him. You had absolutely no clue he did that for you. It made you love the flowers even more, and your heart jumped a little when you realized that the marigolds were the very reason George insisted you both took the trail all the tine.

"I'll still come across them when passing flower shops. I always think of you when I see them."

"Wow. George, I... I never knew you paid that much attention to me."

"Why wouldn't I? You're my best friend."

And George didn't say anything after that, especially when you didn't respond to his last comment, which he didn't even mean to say.

By the time George could think up a sentence to save himself from friend-zoning the both of you right then and there, he felt like he'd left it for too long.

His heart was sinking, and he tried to shake off the comment best he could, and walked you the rest of the way home.

His stomach was in a knot as he looked up at your apartment building. The front door to the lobby looked intimidating, and his palms began to sweat again. You slipped your hand out of George's, and it distracted him from his racing thoughts.

"You think I'm gonna just leave you here?" His question was sudden, and you blinked once.

"I'm sorry?" You looked from George, to the apartment door which was ten feet away from the both of you. "But George, I'm home?"

"I have to walk you to your door." You laughed at his response, head thrown back as you sighed. "You mean to tell me you, George Harrison, are gonna walk up five flights of stairs in the next two minutes just to make sure you can hear me lock my door and know I'm safe?"

"Would it be a real date if I didn't?"

There was another beat of silence as George watched your eyes shift from left to right in thought. You pursed your lips a little, and then looked him in the eye.

"... Suppose it wouldn't be then, no."

"Then may I walk you to your door, Y/n?"

You finally answered him with a simple nod of your head, and George reached out to take your hand again. He wordlessly led you to the door which he opened for you, and then brought you to the flight of stairs. Nowhere else to go but up.

In about two minutes, you and George got to the fifth floor. As soon as he entered the hall, it felt like the walls were slowly closing together as you both took quiet, careful steps towards the end of the way.

The entire time, your hands were glued together, and no one let go, even when you were both finally stopped, and standing in front of your door.

"I'm sorry about tonight, Y/n. I know you were saying earlier tonight turned out perfect and everything but..." George's brain was still on that platonic comment he made on the walk.

"George, there is no one I would have rather spent tonight with than you. No one."

George squeezed your hand, and then sighed. "I just wish tonight happened under different circumstances."

"Different circumstances?" You repeated a little confused, and the boy in front of you pursed his lips and nodded his head.

Deep breaths. Here it goes.

"Y/n, ever since I found out about this date, my blood has just been boiling with jealousy for that boy. Hell, I still don't even know his name and I could tell you he isn't good for you."

You looked taken aback. Jealousy was definitely not where you thought he was going with all of this.

"I fell in love with you, Y/n. Years ago. And because I feared rejection, I didn't want to take my chances and say anything. But the truth of the matter is that I'd be the happiest person alive just to be able to love you openly. I can't stand to see you cry the way he made you tonight."

Again, you stood there, no words coming to mind to respond with. Your silence didn't make George stop.

"To think for years my feelings for you haven't gone away. I've always thought you felt the same, yet you were never mine." George paused. "When can this boy get you back again, Y/n?"

There was a long silence, his eyes searching yours for your answer, and you were staring up at him like a deer in headlights.

"I-- if I'd known-- I never thought-- George, I had no clue." He could see the lost look on your face, and it made his heart ache, especially when your lip began to tremble and your eyes started filling to the brim with tears.

"Why do you think I turned down every guy who's tried to get with me? I just... I never thought you'd love me back, Georgie." His emotions sank into a deep dark guilt. All this time, and you felt the same way about him...

And then he blinked.

You feel the same way about him!

George reached out to you, his hand cupping the side of your face and stroking your cheek with his thumb. Your tears began to fall, and he pulled you into his chest tightly for a moment. "My Love," he mumbled, pulling away just far enough for him to see your face again.

"Oh, even when you're crying, you are the most beautiful thing I've ever set eyes on..." There was a beat of nothing; just the sound of shallow breaths shared between the both of you before George began to inch in slowly towards you.

"... George, what are you doing...?" Your question was gentle, and you didn't stop him from coming any closer. You didn't want to stop him.

"Something I should've done a long time ago."

His attention fixated to your mouth once before your lips finally clashed together.

For over a decade, George had waited for the moment he tasted your lips; and now that it was here, he was almost scared he wouldn't know what to do.

The both of you were holding your breath since you both felt a little unsure at first, but it was a given, he was kissing his childhood best friend, and you were, too. You kissed back a little, and George exhaled lightly through his nose, a little relieved knowing you were getting a little more comfortable with the situation.

George's hands fell to your waist, fingers curling around your body as he eventually pulled you even closer. You parted your lips a little, and he bit down on your bottom lip, pulling away after hearing you gasp.

"Oh! Did I hurt you? I'm--" George could barely rush an apology out before you pulled him down to kiss him again, and pushing him backwards until his back was flat against your door. He watched as you closed the space between you again, and your lips were on his again.

His heart was pounding, ears ringing loudly as you slipped your tongue into his mouth, and all the boy could remember thinking about was how blissful it all was in that moment. George threw his arms around you and started pushing back just a little.

You pulled away from him to gasp in a breath, George's hands grabbing your arms and pinning you against your door so he could put you in the place he was moments before; to give you the moment to experience just a fraction of all the love he would be able to eventually give to you.

His lips briefly found the crook of your neck and you moaned quietly as George sucked at your skin a little, which only resulted in him pulling away just to lean back in to kiss your lips and swallow your pleasant hums.

You eventually pulled away to face him again, lips swelled and pink, and breaths quick. You never thought you'd have so much trouble breathing while kissing someone.

Then again, it's not everyday that the man you're kissing is George Harrison.

"I know it's rare to ask this on a first date but..." George leaned down to attach his lips to the column of your throat, and he hummed against your skin when you moaned gently, delaying your question for a moment.

"... Did you maybe wanna, I don't know, come in, stick around for some tea?"

"Is that even a question?" George asked lowly against your neck, and you smiled. You reached into your purse to retrieve your apartment keys, which you blindly stuck into the keyhole since George was back to kissing you again, and the both of you stumbled through the door as soon as you got it open.

You and George kicked your shoes off after shutting the door, and you pushed him up against the wall in the front corridor to kiss him once again.

Ten years was way too long for the both of you to be deprived of one another any further, and George gladly let you migrate your lips to his neck after a moment, tilting his head back for you to make things a little easier.

With your head buried into his neck and your arms circled around one another, George lazily opened this eyes to watch himself in that same mirror across the hall he looked into a few hours prior.

All the boy could do was smile to himself, breathing heavily as he watched your reflection switch to the other side of his neck after leaving a mark on the right side of his throat.

Not only was his reflection successful in this date tonight, but George himself pulled off the biggest risk he could imagine and it paid off.

He finally got the girl of his dreams.

----------------------------------------

A/A/N: honestly, this fic lives rent free in my head and it has been since I wrote it, so I gotta show it off to y'all. Again, I know it was long, but I really hope you enjoy it <3

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[fictionalmenmistress]

🌸🍡Taehyung with a chubby darling🍡🌸

In which our best boy reacts to having a bashful girlfriend who happens to be volumptous and curvy... and chubby and soft... and he finds it to be SO SEXY she has no ideaaaa! *Y/N insert story!*

Some NSFW but mostly SFW, some angsty self image views, but soft and fluffy praises. Not requested, but I felt like doing it for a little self-gratification since he'd likely be exactly like this... enjoy lovelies~ 😚

All of my work is labelled under the hashtag #fictionalmenmistress, in the tags 🌸🍡🌸

"Hey baby~" Taehyung devilishly smirks, tucking his head into your shoulder.

"AHH!" You shriek, as your boyfriend squeezes you from behind. You pull out your earbuds and pause your music, spinning around to face him before you. "You SCARED me, Taehyung!"

Taehyung softly chuckled, taking you into his arms. "Awwww my baby... I'm sorry." He cooed, not taking your scolding seriously.

You pull your face away from his gentle hands, as he leaned closer to cup your cheeks... but pouts when he's denied.

"What if a sasaeng broke in and grabbed me or something? Its scary enough to be in such a big house all by myself, you know I'm always looking over my shoulder... because I'm scared of ghosts, and stuff going 'bump' in the night."

"But not us going 'bump' in the night, right?" He mischeviously smirks, taking your hand into his, examining your face with half-closed, lulled eyes.

"Taehyungieeee-" you whine, playfully scolding him to pay attention, as a blush surfaces over your whole face. "You know I scare easily."

"I do too, precious." He quietly assures, before groaning. "OKAYYYY, I won't suprise you off guard anymore... no matter how cute or amusing your reaction may be-" he murmured in submission, letting out a long sigh. "Can't I just... hold you now?"

You blush, as he guides your hand to his lips, pressing a delicate kiss against the back of your hand. "I missed you all day... you're usually with me at the studio, or waiting with those yummy muffins after dance practice."

You giggle. "You mean the ones I lie to PD-nim about? Saying they're faux muffins, that are really veggie-based, to enhance protein and carb burning?" You ask, lifting your eyebrows in an amused way.

"Yeah, those ones..." Taehyung sighs with a pout. "All the guys love them... even Mister Bang now."

"He does, doesn't he?" You grimace, remembering the tray you made their boss recently, per-request. "I feel bad about lying, now that he thinks they're okay to eat all the time..."

"NOOO we can't lose our muffins!!" Taehyung playfully whines, clinging onto your arm. "He'll make us diet if he knowssss!"

"It sounds like you miss my muffins more than me." You smirk.

Taehyung scoffs, shaking his head, before planting several, slow kisses, up your arm.

"No, there's nothing I wouldn't give to have you by my side. Every day... muffins or no muffins." He giggles, towering over you and gazing into your eyes. "I missed you today."

"I missed you too, Tiger. I had been needing to do some artwork for my webtoon panels." You smile, booping his nose. "I'm trying to build an audience for my own work!"

Taehyung gently groans, pulling you in close by your waist. "You know... I can reccomend it to army on weverse or twitter. You've always been the best story teller I know... so its not like I'd be making up any praises about how amazing it is..."

You run your fingers through his soft hair, as he nuzzles into your neck. You can feel his breath slowing, huffing against your skin to breathe you in. He sends a shiver down your spine, slowly squeezing his hands over your hips, almost like... he's kneeding dough.

"Tae... y-you know I want to make something for myself..." you blush, as his hands sensually explore their way up your back. "I want to have self-made sucsess, doing what I love. It means a lot to me, to say that I did it, without anyone's help."

"Mmmm... my pretty little buisness CEO... I love it when you're ambitious and driven."

You scoff, wriggling in his hold. "Oh please, Tae... I'm not little, c'mon." You blush, this time out of embarrasement.

He can feel your body grow stiffened in his arms.

"Why can't I just praise you?" He whispers, almost saddened that you won't accept the admiration.

He leans back and stares into your eyes, with a small childish pout of dissapointment on his lips. His eyes are big and glossy as they penetrate your soul... like that of a puppy.

Its so wonderfully strange how he can look so intimidating and sexy sometimes... then all of a sudden so soft and baby-ish.

And right when he had you where he wanted you, softening your attention to be on him and distracted... of COURSE he would try to snag a move on you again. There went his large, manly hands... gently gripping and easing into a subtle squeeze on your waist skin... before sliding so slowly and delicately down to your bubbly buttcheeks.

Ah those thick buns and 'thicc' thighs. You love them then you hate them... they jiggle when you move, they always have. And... they have those small dimples in them. You always felt hesitant to let your boyfriend touch the soft spots, worried he may be turned off by the texture of your squishy skin, or how your body isn't tight like his own body. And yet... his gaze and hands always wandered there most... he was so needy for those areas, always trying to weasel his way into exploring them.

You were pretty confident about your big breasts, however. Those didn't make you feel like 'too much' for him. Well... besides the faded stretchmarks from them growing so quickly during middle school. Puberty... it just kinda hit you like a truck. You went from looking like a scrawny child to looking like a shapely woman with a baby doll face.

Parents would get mad at you trick or treating, assuming you were a college student dressing up and requesting candy. And those pervy older men were always such a pesty, creepy problem. All this to say, you became very aware of your body, very fast. Your other classmates were still skinny and shapeless, with more boxy frames than curvy frames, and none of the boys in your class ever seemed to be attracted to you, over the girls like them.

As Taehyung has said once before though... a young boy wants to knaw on bones, while a grown man hungers for the meat.

"Did you just compare me to meat?" You asked him after the fact.

"No! No... that's not what I..." He giggled, shaking his head. "Its just an old saying, that I only really understood when I grew up. Basically, women with shape are the sexiest to men... but teenage boys are attracted to a more child-like, thinner look." he quietly said.

His words echoed through your head, before you attention re-gathered in the moment happening now.

"You're little to me..." he innocently cooed.

Yes, I suppose height-wise you were shorter than your tall boyfriend. But you always wondered if you looked too... big... standing next to him. He was so lean... with practically no fat on his firm, toned body. But you were soft all over. And seeing Taehyung at award shows... surrounded by all of those dainty, tiny girlgroup idols... they looked like they could fit in his hands. But you... you felt so big sometimes, with your foreign genetics.

Taehyung never seemed to care, and he never said anything but praises, but you still wondered in the back of your mind. Did he think you were too much for him?

Taehyung liked a challenge. The more you shyed away, the more he pressed into you, cradling you in his grasp. (He knew the difference between you being shy versus being non-consenting, and NEVER went against your limits or desires. He read people quite well, especially you...)

"Taehyung..." you gulped, feeling your lips trembling to get the words out. "D-do you think I'm... f-fat?" You stammer. The look on his face is almost appalled, angered. Who would make you have such a false impression?

"What?" He repeated. "Fat? Absolutely NOT." He corrected, tilting up his chin confidently.

"B-but... according to Korean standards..." you muttered, beginning to ramble now that pandora's box had been opened. "I'm-"

"Don't say it." He coldly ordered. "Korean beauty standards are unrealistic and drive even the skinniest and prettiest of Korean women to get surgeries that promise an 'ideal image'. But, everyone is perfect exactly as they are. I know you know that, and you know I know that too. So, screw what advertising comanies call the 'ideal image' in my country or yours. Ideal image, my ass."

"Taehyung!" You gasp, suprised that he swore. Your boyfriend wasn't one to swear... it was a rare quality about him.

The way he worded it made you chuckle at a realization.

"Well, your butt is indeed the ideal image..." you murmured, making Taehyung smirk to see you amused and feeling a little better.

"I'm glad you think so, Jagiya~" he cooed, guiding you to the couch without his arms leaving your waist. You trusted him wholly, to guide you backwards, or anywhere.

Taehyung suddenly slipped his arm under one of your knees, making you yelp as he pulled your thigh up against the side of his body. He confidently smiles all the while, his intimate gaze never leaving your eyes. You feel his hand squeeze the thigh, and you could tell he was doing it less for support to lift you onto the couch, and moreso to feel your volumptuous form in his grasp. Ohhh he loved your thighs... your soft, lovely thighs...

He slowly leaned into you, guiding you to recline back onto the expensive, large, comfy couch.

You giggled, as he leaned all of his body onto you, squishing you playfully under him.

"Taehyung!" You laughed. "You're squishing me!"

"I want all of my body to be against your perfect body." He sweetly grinned. "There's not an inch of me that doesn't belong to you."

"Well, you're suprisingly heavy..." you playfully pout, succumbing to the comortable pressure his body was pressing into you. It was arousing, actually...

"And you're suprisingly light." He gently remarked, flipping you both so you were on top of him. You knew he didn't mean that in a bad way.

"Or you're just strong..." you sighed.

"Maybe I'm strong... but your body is perfect to me. The way you FEEL..." he began, greedily squeezing his palms over the softest parts of your thighs. "The way you LOOK..." he hungrily growled, almost an octive deeper... sending a shiver through your core as he drank in the image before him. His eyes widened as they scanned over your bouncing large breasts in his view, as he watched you sit up, straddling him as he lied there. The smile on his face was pleasured, pleased. He was a happy man to have you on top of him, no matter how light or heavy you were... he WANTED you to press your lovely form into him. "The way you walk... so bouncy and sexy... I feel jealous about how the hyungs check you out when your back is turned." His voice turned devilishly lower... deeper... as if wrathful for revenge. "Its a crime that any man gets to see your godess-like form standing before them, besided me."

"Th-they do that?" You blush, not realizing the rest of the boys saw you in that way.

"Mhmm... all of them do. Its soooo not fairrr..." he grumbled under his breath, almost purring as he took in the sight of your squishy tummy against his chest, and your juicy thighs around him. "Kitten~" he desperately sighed. "I get so HARD, just IMAGINING how you look IN clothes that cover you completely... let alone the f-fantasies of you naked~" he humms, with a hitch in his breathy whispers.

"Hh-huhh..." he sighs, his breath hitching again, as his eyes lazily roll into the back of his head, before re-drifting back down onto you. Just the remembrance gets him THAT hot and bothered??

"For realsies?" You coyly, bashfully ask.

"Of course, kitten. Would I lie to you?" He asks, raising his eyebrows with a confident smirk.

"Maybe... if it would make me feel better..." you dissapointedly assume.

He sits up, supporting himself on one of his arms, making his chest press against your breasts through your shirt. You were face to face now... just staring into one another's eyes.

"NEVER." He assured. "I would never lie to you. There's no reason for me to lie to make you feel better, Jagi. You're literally a goddess."

You feel your cheeks flume red. "G-goddess?"

"Yes! Renaissance masters didn't sculpt ideal greek godess statues with soft curves for nothing..." he grumbled, blushing at the sight of your innocent face.

"Ohh Taehyungie..." you dreamily sighed, leaning fully against his chest as he slowly lowered you both down, to lie against one another horizontally.

"The way our bodies are so different... the way yours is so soft comared to how hard and stiff mine is... its perfect." He gently cooed. "I'm surpised that you're so comfy in my arms."

"Oh Tae, you're my safe place. I love how you feel... I love how you hold me." You intimately whispered.

He stared deeply into your eyes, as a gentle smile rested on his admiring, sculpted, handsome face.

"Didn't you find me during our Love Yourself era?" He asked, cocking a brow.

"Mhmm." You responded, rapidly nodding your head up and down in such a soft, innocent way.

Taehyung giggled, endeared at your cuteness. "Okay then. I want you to love yourself... because I love you. All of you."

He gently lifted your loose shirt up enough to grab onto your waist, running his hands slowly down the sides of you, to squeeze your soft tummy in his hands, his eyes practically glistening with desire.

"Ever inch of you... every hair, every patch of skin, every tint and shade, every texture. You belong to me, and you're the sexiest being in existance. And all of me belongs to you, only you, forever. Alright?" He romantically assured, gazing hopelessly into your eyes.

The soft smile that pulled into his lips, let you know the fullest sincerity of his tone. "Okay." You smile, leaning into his lips to kiss him.

Slowly, passionately you kissed, deepening the intimate act with every second. Soon enough, your hands were running all over one another, tilting your heads to reach your tongues into the deepest parts of your mouth. Body to body... you both were perfect, together and apart, exactly as you are... he loved you.

🌸 the end 🌸 (for more, visit my hashtag: #fictionalmenmistress in the tags 🥰 requests and headcannons are also open!)

#fictionalmenmistress #taehyung scenarios #taehyung imagine #taehyung kim #kim taehyung #kim taetae #taehyung #tae smut #taehyung headcanon #taehyung imagines #taehyung smut #taetae #bts #bts fluff #bts angst #bts x reader #bts imagines #bts fanfic #bts reactions #bts v headcanon #bts scenarios #btsv #bts v aesthetic #bangtan #bangtan sonyeondan #v smut #v imagines #soft taehyung #sub!taehyung #dom!taehyung

[kanmom51]

JM JK timeline - my observations how they grew over the years

JM JK timeline.- my observations how they grew over the years

 Disclaimer: these are my own opinions and conclusions.  Feel free to disagree, but hate or aggression will be unacceptable.

This is coming out so much longer than I anticipated, so please accept my apology in advance, I will have to post this in several parts (not sure yet how many).

Part 1

I have been wanting to tackle this for a while now.  

I have read many post on this matter.  Many believe their relationship started during the 2017 trip to Tokyo - that they ‘decided to become boyfriends’ during that trip.  I may be the unpopular vote here, but I tend to disagree on the matter.

While the 2017 trip did cement the relationship and strengthen it (I mean they finally got to have a few days of total privacy, being themselves alone with each other, with no outside interference), in my opinion, it most definitely was not the start of the romantic relationship between them. It was not a catalyst that brought them to the decision to have a full blown relationship.  

I find it  hard to make analogies to dating stages when it comes to JK and JM, because I believe we actually can’t in this case.  It’s so different.  These are two young men that spent their formative years together.  For JK Jimin was there throughout his defining teenage years, both of them becoming young adults living under the same roof, being together almost 24/7, going through all the hardships in the early years together.  Sharing all the highs and lows together.  You can’t compare that to someone that meets and starts dating, gets to know each other and so forth.  There is no comparison what so ever.  

Another misconception, in my opinion, is that JK didn’t like JM at the start, some even going so far as to say he hated him.  I don’t want to come out rude, but bollox.  JK was very young when he joined BTS, just at the start of his defining puberty years.  He was the youngest in the group and he struggled with finding his place, struggled with defining who he was, what he actually wanted to do, what he wanted for himself.  He found an older brother in Jin.  He found someone to look up to in RM.  He found someone to fool around with in Tae.  He looked up to Hobi and Suga, and they also tried to help him and guide him through his struggles. Fans saw these connections.  The fans also saw Jimin being super friendly, maybe over friendly, with JK, constantly saying how cute he is and how much he likes JK.  They saw what they perceived as a tug of war with Jimin, when Jimin is pushing onto JK and JK looks like he is pushing him back, like he wasn’t interested what so ever.  But this was mainly due to tendentiously edited clips.

Before writing these lines I made sure to go over chronological footage.  Starting with pre debut.  Seeing all this raw, unedited footage, and reading members interviews they gave just reinforced my disagreement with the ‘JK hated Jimin’ concept. It can’t be further than the truth. 

Jimin to JK was sort of a fresh breath of air from home.  Both of them from the same hometown.  JK having an older brother and JM missing his younger brother.  They both loved dancing.  They both worked their butts off.  It was an instant connection.  From the get go Jimin was a rock for JK, someone JK could talk to, rely on, practice with, someone that had a great influence on JK.  

JK was a shy introvert teenager, he didn’t know how to show vulnerability, he didn’t know how to show affection, and also I think Jimin’s level of openness and true affection towards him may have overwhelmed him.  In a later interview JK tells how he used to feel he had to wear a mask, not being able to be himself.  Not knowing how to behave in social environments, what was expected of him as ‘a man’ (when writing this the ‘men shouldn’t check their selfies’ conversation with Jimin comes to mind) .  So, he may have pushed back on occasions. Jimin’s affection and openness overwhelmed him.  But Jimin was the one to comfort him when he missed his parents, and cried at night.  Jimin was the one he spoke to when he was questioning his career decisions .  

It was hard for him to say or show Jimin that he liked him, that he needed his attention and friendship, but he did.  The most telling was when JM on Rookie King Ep. 4 (starting 23.07min) got up and sounded his frustration with the way JK was treating him.  I think he was actually caught off guard when JK, being honest, replied to Jimin tirade that he behaves the way he does because he likes him too much. That was certainly an eye opener. 

The episode was aired in May 2014!!! I keep saying over and over again: Listen to what they are saying!!!

Establishing the fact that JK and JM were close from the get go, I will move on to another conclusion I made that is a base for my timeline, another reason why I feel some of the timelines out there are incorrect.   

JK and JM’s love story is not one of “love at first sight” or physical attraction that leads to dating, getting to know one another and finally love.  It is my belief that JM and JK loved each other before they started exploring their physical attraction.  The closest analogy I can make is a romantic relationship that buds out of a great friendship.  When someone is your best friend, when you love them for who they are, when you know them in and out for all they are, including their faults, before you realise that you are physically attracted to them, that’s when love is so strong that there is almost nothing that can break it.  I believe that is the nature of JK and JM’s love, and that is why my timeline doesn’t fit other timelines out there.  There wasn’t a flirting period, a dating period, a relationship period etc.  Their relationship doesn’t fit those moulds. Yes there was flirting.  Yes there was hesitance moving forward once they realised they actually liked each other on a different level.  But it wasn’t within those ‘relationship moulds’ that are referred to in different posts.

Also, we need to remember that they weren’t going through all of this in a vacuum.  Both boys were in a boy band of 7 members.  All seven members very close to each other and love each other in their own ways.  Anything JM and JK did, any step they made towards each other could have a rippling effect on their friends, on their band, on their careers.  Add to that the fact that it was a ‘forbidden’ relationship, that not only is it a gay relationship frowned upon in SK society (frowned upon is putting it very lightly.  Being in a gay relationship could be so risky for them both.  Risky not only to their careers but also for their physical safety), but also, as idols, romantic relationships were a big no no. And what about their families? How would they take it? Will they accept them? They were young men that had to deal with all these issues, all while finding their way to each other.

 So, where do I stand when it comes to defining this love story’s timeline?

It’s hard to tell.  

That was a truly shitty answer, I know. LOL

We will never really know the accurate timeline, not unless JM and JK decide to share it with us one day.

But I’m not going to chicken out, not now.

I am going to tell you what I believe is more or less the timeline of progression in the relationship.

Saying that, I’m not going to get into too many details because that’s just wrong.  It feels too voyeur to me.

And here we go:

From re-watching old content,  I see a shift in JK towards the end of 2014 (maybe even mid 2014 during American Hustle Life).  He becomes ‘nicer’, in a way, towards Jimin, doesn’t stop teasing him though (sometimes as a guise to seek Jimin’s attention though, rather than laugh at him). He also becomes clingier.  Almost every shot taken he is by JM’s side, behind him or in his close vicinity.  He is seeking out JM’s attention.

20 Nov 2014 there is another ‘Looks ranking’ (during the Pops in Seoul War of hormone interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4JO1GxTKXI starting from 2.39min).  I find this one interesting.  Once again, JK ranks Jimin last, while ranking himself 6th. Jimin is evidently hurt by the ranking. You can see it on his face.  It felt like he was truly disappointed and hurt by what JK did.  I tried to find remorse on JK’s part, but couldn’t.  He finds it funny, or so it seems.  Did he rank JM last because he was the easiest to appease later? Did he do it to hide his growing attraction? We will never know.  I don’t think that he wants to hurt Jimin, I don’t even think he is aware just how badly he did hurt him. What is evident to me, in any case, is that at this point he still lacks the empathy and sensitivity towards Jimin and his feelings.  This is something that will develop later on in JK’s behaviour towards him.

This leads into the beginning of 2015.  Remember JM’s Bangtan bomb from January 2015, seeking out JK for an interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2JphzsaTIE )? How Jimin is adamant he is seeking out JK, who is avoiding him, and Tae’s teasing repetitively: “avoids?”.  Tae repeats this laughingly 4 times.  After a couple of times Jimin says it’s a joke, but after the fourth he actually turns sharply towards Tae, as if to wack him, saying again it’s a joke, making Tae giggle and say “sorry, sorry”.  From their interaction it’s totally clear that JK far from avoids Jimin.  The teasing way Tae repeats it 4 times shows us quite the contrary.  Not only doesn’t JK avoid JM, he seeks him out.  And what we can see from the clips around that time just strengthen that conclusion.  JK is constantly around Jimin.  He is the one that is seeking out JM’s closeness.  

Something else I noticed from this clip is how JK doesn’t flinch at the end when Jimin asks for a kiss and goes in for the kill.  I think Jimin was expecting JK to push back immediately, but that doesn’t happen.  After a couple of seconds JK does flinch, but not at the beginning.  It could be because he was surprised by JM’s move, but JM did say he wanted a kiss, and it wasn’t the first time he pulled a stunt like that.  JK also laughs at the end, after pushing back, unlike previous reactions, when he just seemed annoyed.  JK’s reaction just seemed different to me. This is only a nuance, and I might be wrong.

Next jump is towards mid 2015.  During this period between the start and mid of 2015 JK’s attraction to JM really shows. He just can’t keep his eyes or hands off him. He is most obviously attracted to him. Has he come to terms with it? I think he is still in turmoil at this point.  Not clear with himself what this is he is feeling, is it ok to feel this, and are his feelings going to be reciprocated.  Thinking about the situation he is in, how isolated he probably thought he was, is heartbreaking. It’s not that he had any one he could confide in within the group (not about that). He had to work it all out by himself. The person that he usually confided in, the one that he allowed to see him in his weaknesses was the person he had these feelings for.

  Some examples:  BTS Bomb after KBS music bank 1st place 9 May 2015 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV3vIYdTNIU from 4.36min) – moody JK when he’s eyeing Jimin interacting with Hobi and Jin, also the way JK averts his eyes when Jimin looks his way. He’s not happy. Mood changes when Jimin pays him attention pulling him by his shirt.  

BTS Yeoeuido Fansign 4th July -  2015.  https://twitter.com/i/status/775127718409150464   Very well known clip.  JK outright getting pissed off when RM puts his arm around Jimin and pulls him closer. Jimin calls out to JK several times, and JK ignores him, until Jimin asks the fans if they want to see JK send them a heart.  JK, with straight face, not a hint of a smile on his face, does the heart.  RM’s reaction also quite peculiar, removing his hand from Jimin after seeing JK’s reaction.  I recommend to watch the whole clip.  JK’s facial expression changes immediately after turning and watching Hobi, but then becomes solemn again when turning back looking at RM and JM, staring at JM as he gets up.

I bring up this example again, because I feel like this is a transition stage, when JK is finding it hard to come to terms with what he is feeling, but it is effecting his surroundings, that are becoming aware there might be something going on with him.  I don’t think that at this point JM is fully understands what is going on with JK, why he is acting all hot and cold.  I mean, like the other members, he might suspect that something is  going on, but feelings have not been made clear yet.

Somewhere between then and 29 Aug 2015 I think something changes.  I know the theory is that JK was shocked by Jimin fainting during their Osaka fan meeting on the 20th August 2015 and decided to make his move, referencing to the 20th Aug fanmeeting, JK stopping by Jimin’s side singing the lyrics of the song to him.  Jimin does seem pleased by it, but still I can’t say if that is actually the case.

Saying that, I do see a shift during the HK concert on 29th Aug 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPta9bGWmG8 .  During the performance of ‘Pretty woman’ (from 0.34min) there is a pretty intense, even sultry, staring moment that just feels is different.  The way they are looking at each other is just telling.  Following we can see Jimin checking out JK a couple of times, so much so that Tae notices it at some point.  That is the moment that I saw that something has changed.

To be continued...

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