#and eventually you will see it. and youll be able to look back and understand that it was always in front of you

[kyeomsense]

svt hyung line as your bf hcs

im not sure what inspired this but here are some hcs for svt's hyung line being your bf >.<

svt x f!reader, all fluff

wc: ~1.9k

read the maknae line ver

seungcheol

☆ always "accidentally" leaves his clothes at your place (and loves when you wear them or return them and they smell like you)

☆ puts his arm around your waist whenever he can. he loves how you both look in photos with his arm around you

☆ lets you put kkuma's pins in his hair and poses next to her ("arent we cute? we look alike, right?")

☆ takes you out to eat at fancy restaurants just to see you all dressed up. he likes the way everyone in the room turns to stare at you as you walk in. you look gorgeous, and hes so smug about being your boyfriend its almost annoying.

☆ loves matching couple jewelry, especially rings. will always buy them and give them to you saying "look, these are so cute! we can match!!"

☆ buys you literally everything you look at (hes definitely a big gift giver) and wont take them back even if you leave them in a box at his doorstep.

☆ the type to pull up anywhere at any time with just one text from you just so you dont have to drive. even if youre not a passenger princess, youll turn into one while dating him

☆ possessive; definitely demands that your lock screen is a photo of him kissing you to ward off other guys. hes even asked you to start wearing his cologne so that they know youre taken

☆ loves to pout at you until you give in and give him what he wants (usually, a kiss)

☆ you basically cure his insomnia. he always tightens his grip on you when you try to get out of bed in the morning and makes you late to work ("babe, if you leave i won't be able to sleep. just stay for five more minutes..")

jeonghan

☆ loves to tease you and see your reaction, but reads you well and knows when to stop

☆ a bit mean, but in the most endearing way possible. the type of start play fights in front of your friends and suddenly burst out laughing when they get all concerned

☆ lets you hold on to him for as long as you need to, especially in situations where he knows youre uncomfortable

☆ whisks you away from crowded areas to be alone with you and hug you

☆ keeps a candid polaroid of you in his wallet

☆ sets your lock screen as an extreme close-up of his eyes that jumpscares you the next morning

☆ a bit shy about showing affection in front of others, but eventually gets used to it and becomes more bold as time goes on

☆ knows exactly how to press your buttons and does so all the time, only to relieve the tension between the two of you with a boop on the nose or a kiss that makes you laugh

☆ enjoys spending time with you at home more than outside, but does take you on spontaneous shopping sprees when he gets a burst of energy (you leave the mall after an hour of looking around because he's tired)

☆ listens to you and comforts you when youre having problems, but is able to gently tell you when its your fault without making you upset (its a gift!)

joshua

☆ always thinks of you whenever hes out shopping and ends up buying you gifts that remind him of you

☆ loves to surprise you and see your reaction with back hugs and kisses

☆ remembers your dietary preferences/restrictions and puts in extra effort to buy foods that fit them

☆ pulls up with two drinks instead of one without even needing to ask you

☆ hand-makes you something related to his newest hobby (a bracelet, perfume, etc.)

☆ loves to watch you talk about things youre passionate about. he loves the way your eyes light up and (although he cant understand a single thing about your tangent) tries his best to keep up with you

☆ always up for a challenge, specifically ones that end in him receiving kisses ("really? alright, bet.")

☆ loves to play with your hair and helps you style it whenever he can

☆ listens to you when youre upset and just allows you to rant it all out while rubbing your back and holding you close

☆ makes the cheesiest acrostic poems for you and laughs when you cringe at him

jun

☆ loves hearing your laugh (and he'll do anything to keep hearing it)

☆ goes out of his way to do weird things to make you crack a smile and distract you if youre sad/uncomfortable

☆ likes it when you run your hands through his hair. he lays his head on your lap and lets you massage him

☆ takes photos of you whenever you make a weird face in your sleep and looks at them when hes bored (they give him something to smile about when hes away from you)

☆ hugs you from behind and lays his head on your shoulder whenever he needs comfort

☆ up for anything! a late night drive to get the most unhealthy burgers in existence? sure! dressing up in stupidly large mustard and ketchup costumes for halloween? absolutely! waking up at the asscrack of dawn to prank minghao with silly string? hes already on his way!

☆ tries his best to stay up with you for as long as possible, but finds you so comfortable that he ends up falling asleep with his head on your lap

☆ hangs out with your friends and lets you hang out with his, too. definitely the cause of a friend group overlap/merger

☆ gives the worst advice as a joke before he gives you his actual advice just to see your dumbfounded face

☆ gives in to the kitty agenda and lets you jokingly paint whiskers on him with your eyeliner. the selfie he takes afterwards is saved as your lock and home screen.

hoshi

☆ makes you horanghae for a photo and sets it as his home and lock screen

☆ helps you paint your nails on your non-dominant hand, but ends up leaving a mess. he pays for a manicure afterwards to make it up to you

☆ tries to teach you how to dance and is genuinely encouraging. he doesnt laugh or make you feel bad when you make a mistake, instead just helping you through the movements until you can dance a simple routine with him

☆ is always bragging about you to his friends and is super proud of you and all your achievements ("guys.. my girlfriend is literally the smartest, prettiest, most loving person ever.. how did i even manage to pull her?")

☆ always supports you on your endeavors! he makes constant deep-dives into your hobbies and interests so he can enjoy them with you and talk about them with you

☆ is super affectionate when hes drunk (hes been latched on to you and peppering kisses on your face for the past hour and he has no plans of stopping for the rest of the night)

☆ seems to get into the most odd situations that you bail him out of, but hes thankful every time

☆ hes a big hit with your friends and family. they all love him and he prides himself in that

☆ gets way too excited while spending time with you and ends up spilling the drink hes sipping on (he cleans it up while you laugh at him)

☆ takes you with him everywhere he goes. his friends are accustomed to the two of you being a package deal

wonwoo

☆ normally wouldnt go out of his way to do anything, but commits to any silly bit you have in mind with full passion and force (even if it makes him blush like an idiot afterwards)

☆ likes to have you in the room/next to him when he plays video games (the type to say "gg gf buff" after he wins his ranked games)

☆ he silently cares for you; he puts his hand over sharp corners so that you wont get hurt if you bump into them, he walks on the outside of the sidewalk so that you wont get hurt by the cars, he always puts out your work shoes so that you can just slip them on during the morning rush

☆ hes always watching after you and keeping an eye on your surroundings. he wraps his arm around your waist and is extra affectionate when he sees a creep staring at you

☆ the type to let you hog the blanket on cold nights without much pullback. he resorts to cuddling closer to you to stay warm

☆ reassures you that even though he doesnt show it as boldly as others do, he loves you and plans to stay with you forever

☆ goes grocery shopping with you after his afternoon nap. his hair looks like a bird's nest, but he doesnt mind and follows you around the market fondly, making sure to hold your hand as he walks

☆ loves it when you need help getting things off the high shelf. he loves to tease you about it and likes your frustrated expression

☆ he wears his glasses more often because you like them on him

☆ when he wakes up every morning, his arm is numb from you laying on it for the night. still, he doesnt move a muscle until you stir

woozi

☆ even with one of the busiest schedules on earth, he still makes time for you. for the time he cant see you, he leaves you small, thoughtful gifts

☆ he has a small part of his studio decorated and furnished just for you

☆ he always lets you listen in on what hes making, and asks for your opinions. he really takes what you say to heart and even makes the members re-record some parts just so he can see how your suggestion fits in to the song

☆ he takes you to the gym. regardless of whether or not youre actually working out with him, he likes having you there with him to cheer him on. it pushes him and makes him hit a new PB every time!

☆ even though he doesnt show much affection physically, he shows it through his music. he has countless songs saved in his drafts with lyrics about you, about how perfect you are, and about how youre constantly running amok in his mind and heart

☆ writes lots of his solo songs for you, and even records drafts of them, but can never manage to sing them to you without blushing like a madman and having his voice crack from the nerves

☆ he honestly thinks youre the most wonderful person hes ever met. he loves you completely and has no doubts in his mind about his feelings. you complete him.

☆ his apartment, previous cold and empty, is full of life thanks to your decorating skills and the scent of your lingering perfume

☆ he loves it when you wear lipstick and kiss him. when he looks in the mirror, he can see the hues of your pretty red lipstick all over his face and neck

☆ the type to make you look at him by grabbing your chin and turning your head. he likes your flustered reaction and kisses you to help you regain your composure

a/n: this was so fun to write!! maknae line next :3

#svt x reader #svt #svt fluff #svt fanfic #seungcheol x reader #jeonghan x reader #joshua x reader #jun x reader #hoshi x reader #wonwoo x reader #woozi x reader #seungcheol fluff #jeonghan fluff #joshua fluff #jun fluff #hoshi fluff #wonwoo fluff #woozi fluff

[buckys-little-belle]

Hey maybe as an idea to continue the little terror acts of fairy what if she wants to pick shiny crystal rocks for Eddie as a Champaign prop or something but it actually ends up being glass shards? Maybe cuts her hand on one or something I don’t know it’s how you want I love your writing style of that particular story btw

Hellfire Babysitting Club (Part Five)

Little Shiny Things

Eddie Munson x Little!Reader (They/Them pronouns)/ The Hellfire Club x Little!Reader (They/Them Pronouns)

Warnings - Talks of cuts on hands, talks of glass, reader picks up glass, uses of bandaids and other medical supplies, shallow cuts but fairy picks up glass so they aren’t exactly perfectly fine

Notes - THIS IS EXACTLY HOW EDDIE LOOKS AT GARETH I SWEAR YOULL UNDERSTAND IN A SEC I JUST AHHHHH, this is really short, I had a longer draft done, but Tumblr ate it, and I genuinely can’t remember half of it’s plot. So please enjoy this short chapter!

SFW - Please keep all interactions with this post and with this blog SFW

- - - - - -

Y/n stood at their locker, a note in their hands, backpack slung over their shoulders. ‘Meet Gareth at our spot, I will be late. - Eddie.’ The note said, the messy writing written in black ink, clearly rushed.

Y/n huffed, confused as to why Gareth would be there too, they didn’t need a babysitter, at the moment. A little frustrated Y/n went to their next class, allowing themselves to get lost in the work in front of them.

- - - - - -

When the bell rang Y/n went back to their locker, placing books inside, and taking what they needed for the night. Rushing to the back doors, located closest to the field they needed to cross, they tripped, scraping their knee. The shorts they were wearing not giving any protection from the ground.

Y/n stood up, determined to get to the meeting spot, hoping to not slip, they didn’t want to prove anyone wrong in thinking they needed a babysitter. Y/n could do this themselves, they had bandaids in their bag, and they could stay big.

“Hey Fairy.” Gareth called out, sitting ontop of the picnic table, his bag on the bench, a notepad and pen in hand.

“What are writing?” Y/n said, sitting on a bench and pulling their bag up beside them, grabbing their first aid kit.

“A list of props for Eddie’s upcoming campaign.” He mumbled, looking to the sky as if he was asking it for answers. Quickly looking back down and jotting a few more words onto the page.

“Can I see?” Y/n chuckled, Gareth in the moment, not noticing how funny he looked.

“Mhm.” He mumbled, tilting the paper for them to see, things like ‘rocks’, ‘twigs’, ‘cape’, and ‘blue scrap fabric’, were written down, the biggest word being ‘CRYSTALS’ at the top of the page, a number one in front of it.

Y/n looked away, thinking about what they had at home, what they could contribute. They stood up eventually, slowly walking away from the table and closer to the thick forest, looking at the ground for twigs and rocks. Slowly they began picking up a few rocks, some twigs, and accidentally some dirt. Y/n chuckled again, walking towards the table to put things down when a twinkle distracted them. A small shiny peice of something sat under a few flowers, shielded slightly, but the sun was still able to highlight it.

Y/n crouched down, placing the things in their hands down in a small pile, leaning in towards the shiny thing. Thinking it could be a crystal, perfect for Eddie’s campaign, Y/n scooped it up, not taking a second to examine it. Immediately pain began to radiate through their hand, their palm warming. Looking down Y/n saw the small amount of blood on their hand, not too much to alert professional attention, but enough to begin slipping. The confusion and stress of the situation too much to handle, especially after a long day of school. “Gare?” Y/n whined, turning towards the boy.

Gareth had immediately perked up, his nickname ‘Gare’ only being used by Y/n when they were little. Looking over he saw a small grouping of green and yellow glass in the terror’s hand. A few of the smaller pieces poking slightly into their skin. “Okay, okay, crap.” He exclaimed, dropping the notebook and walking towards a now sobbing Y/n, grabbing their hand and slowly picking up the grouping of glass.

Y/n winced, the feeling uncomfortable but also reliving. “Hurts.” They whispered, looking up at Gareth, hoping for some sort of comfort or anything from him.

“I know, I know.” He said, walking the two of them over towards the picnic table, sitting Y/n down, him crouched down in front of them as he panicked.

“Fairy?” A distant voice called, clearly the voice belonged to Eddie. “Little Terror?” He sound louder, more frantic.

“‘s Eds.” Y/n whispered, silent tears streaming down their face as they slightly smiled, looking towards Eddie who had now turned into the clearing.

“Jesus H Christ.” He sighed when he saw Y/n crying, and their hand bloodied. “What happened?” He asked, taking Gareth’s place, crouching down in front of Y/n and grabbing their hand, his eyes quickly taking in the damage, then looking disapprovingly at Gareth.

“They grabbed a thing of glass off the ground.” Gareth murmured, he was quite literally there to keep an eye on Y/n, they had had a rough day and Eddie just wanted to be extra cautious because he was going to be late. Eddie looked up towards Gareth, anger clouding his eyes. “They were big, and they were just wandering!” Gareth exclaimed, trying to save himself. “I swear, I only had my eyes off of them for a second!”

“Enough.” Eddie said after seeing Y/n getting continually stressed, the more Gareth raised his voice. Eddie grabbed Y/n’s bag, opening it and grabbing a smaller bag, one that held some basic first aid items. He pulled out some bandaids and then rummaged through their backpack again. “Where is your bear?” He questioned, looking at Y/n confused. They always had their special bear in their backpack, just in case they needed some known comfort.

“‘s lost.” Y/n cried, their emotions going up and down rapidly. “He fell out a few days ago.” A pout was evident on their face, just pure unhappiness engulfed Y/n.

“How about we get you another one?” Eddie said, talking to distract Y/n from their hand, now being cleaned. “We can go shopping after the next meeting hm?” He hummed. Y/n winced as a bandaid was placed on one of the small cuts, but they nodded. “What will you name this one?” He asked, placing two more bandaids on other cuts.

“Maybe Eds?” They asked, their tone soft, and their face warm from crying.

“You can’t name it after me!” Eddie chuckled, planting a few kisses over Y/n’s hand, making them giggle.

“Then ‘m not sure.” Y/n sighed, looking at Eddie now and not their hand.

“You can name it when you see it.” Eddie suggested, standing up and packing the things he had taken out back into Y/n’s backpack. “Okay let’s get going.” He sighed, grabbing Y/n’s good hand and leading them out of the woods. “You’re off babysitting duty for a week.” Eddie said as he turned towards Gareth, Y/n chuckling.

“Eddie seriously?” Gareth questioned. “It was an accident!”

“I know, you just need some time to learn from it.” Eddie said, sounding oddly wise beyond his years.

“That’s bull-“ Gareth began.

“Don’t” Eddie said, finishing Gareth’s sentence. “What has you giggling little terror?” Eddie asked, now diverting his attention to Y/n who still held onto his hand.

“You said duty!” They screamed, a wide smile on their face as they pointed at Eddie. “Duty, duty, duty.”

#anon #buckys little belle #age regression fic #little!reader #age regression #eddie munson x little reader #eddie munson little fic #eddie munson fic #eddie munson age regression #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x little!reader #eddie x reader #eddie munson #hellfire club x little reader #hellfire club x little!reader #hellfire club x reader #hellfire club #stranger things age regression #stranger things

[instexcamera]

droolinf over merman kanata.

hear me out, Fantasy AU where you're a solo pirate taking a break on this secluded island you found. Kanata comes around and is like "why the fuck is there a massive ship in my territory" then he sees you and now hes like "now theres an attractive pirate here, what do i do" You accidentally spot him and he ran away. Initially, he didn't want you there. But after days, almost a week now, he's starting to see some perks to letting you stay.

Ever since you saw him, you've been leaving out part of your huntings for him. Since he wasn't the strongest swimmer even for a merman, sometimes it was hard for him to catch food, often eating seaweed instead of that yummy lobster that ran away.... As a thank you for the food you provided him, he decided to give you a little gift.

suprise! the gift is him. he goes up to shore when he knows youll be there, and strikes up a conversation with you. You're elated you finally get to talk to the merman you saw, and hes happy because you agreed to keep feeding him. for a price of course. He keeps you company and lets you stay on his island for who knows how long, (please be forever, hes started to grow attached to you) and you keep hunting for him and keeping his tummy full!

anyways you both agree to the deal and now its been what, weeks? you both grow closer and closer, but now all he thinks about is you. talking with you, eating with you, mating with you, fucking you(or fucking him, hes not opposed) ... He doesn't want you to leave anymore and mating season for him is coming soon,,

ajjdhsn i have many thoughts on this (him) nd one of them is getting him pregnant... mfgh keeping his tummy full in more ways than one...

god this is so long i apologize

Wuah! No it's ok I really liked this! I just can't respond quickly to things currently!

I've also been getting quite a lot of fantasy au things in my inbox and now I'm imagining something for everyone. I also accidentally made this much longer than I originally thought I would

But yes Kanata, seeing a island in the distance one day after a while of searching, knowing you can't return back to your main land for a while because their at war (thanks Eichi). So finding a pretty good little island filled with fruits, woodland creatures, and marine life is perfect

Kanata notices right away, chilling on the shoreline however he splashes back in the water before you spot him. He keeps watch diligently and hopes he isn't spotted since he wouldn't be able to swim as fast he would want to get away

Claiming the land, setting up small houses, and eating the food, he watches it all attentively. He can understand you relatively well however he struggles a little, the mers have a different language. Sometimes when you went fishing you'd accidentally drop a fish, crab, or lobster. As soon as you're away he grabs it, overjoyed he can finally get them quick enough since you either killed it or stunned it

A month later he works up the courage to approach you. Secretly you had known the mer was watching but had never expected a interaction. He looks like he might dart with any surprising movement from you yet you hold a good conversation with him. Him asking you about food and eventually making a deal, you can stay if you give him food.

The longer you stay the more attached he gets, finally bringing you a pretty piece of sea glass he found. He meant it as a proposal but he didn't tell you, expecting you to know but obviously you didn't. Accepting the glass happily, he assumes you accept his proposal

He becomes more attached, showing up more often. You think it's cute not knowing in his eyes he sees you as his partner, or mate. And when heat season rolls around he expects you to help him. So when you act confused he has to explain. The thought of having a merman husband and not knowing made you laugh but you agreed to help him

You didn't know how mer people had sex. Never something which interested you yet you knew of people who had relationships with them. So when a slit on his tail opened up to reveal a long cock, almost like a tentacle, it surprised you

It didn't take long for you to get over it, not wanting to upset Kanata or make him feel self conscious. He can't prep you, his webbed hands make it basically impossible so you have to deal with the pure stretch of him

It's not that bad, being in the water with him and his cock having a sort of a aphrodisiac making it close to painless, only feeling pleasure. Of course you feel the way he forced you open, the feeling of fullness and when his tip hit your most sensitive area, making you squirm on his cock

Except when you move, he growls, fingers digging into your body as he bites down on whatever area he could, he had you now and you couldn't do anything. He would have let you go if you wanted him too, except that was the farthest thought from your mind, only wanting him to fulfill his needs and reach your own orgasm

He'd eventually have you crying and over stimulated on him, full of his cum which makes your stomach glow a slight light blue. When he'd finally pull out and his cum is leaking out, it's a sign to him you're fully his, if the marks on your body didn't already prove that point

He would lay with you on the shore until you decided to leave, shaking legs making it a little hard to leave him but you must before someone in your crew gets suspicious, they don't know about your relationship with Kanata. That's the one thing he hates about being with you, he can't always be there, of course no one would shun the relationship yet he was a little scared

#enstars smut #ensemble stars smut #enstars x reader smut #kanata shinkai smut #kanata shinkai x reader #kanata shinkai x reader smut

[scrapersnbotscom]

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Coach brian has utilized the latest science and research to come up with a new way unlock your glutes pdf of training glutes that has turned the industry upside down. Which is where step 4 critical bench unlock your glutes . Glute activation workout daily movesglute bridges 3 sets of 10 reps with 5 second pause at topclam shells 3 sets of 10 reps per sidewake up exercise 10 reps with 5 second holds done 3-5 times throughout the daynow as your glutes activation improves and you've had success with the progression exercises eventually youll reach a point where these daily glute exercises for the most part will no longer be needed.

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Use the various cues provided below and experiment with a weight shift progression where you descend to about the way down hold this position and then slowly shift your weight from one foot to the other side to side. Which is a great way to potentially forget how to activate critical bench unlock your glutes your glutes. This time engage your core and place your hand on the glute of the down leg.

And even better during your breaks perform what ill call a wake up exercise for your glutes. The lphc has a large role in the activation of the glutes and the muscles of the lphc work to stabilize the hips low back and glutes. He's the best trainer in the world when it comes to building a better booty. You'll also help clients understand why stronger glute muscles are about more than just looks.

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A look it's this simple. And terms this phenomenon as gluteal amnesia. To re-activate the glutes we turn to a tool of physical therapists use to rehabilitate injured athletes neuromuscular activation. Feel your unlock your glutes program hamstrings lower back or quads more than your glutes then this is an indication that your glutes aren'tdoing what theyre supposed to during hip extension.

That's it. Why do leg exercises when you're trying to hit another muscle group entirely do glute specific exercises to get your backside bigger and rounder and save the leg movements for another day. Often times It's the hamstrings and lower back that take that extra load.

To progress it you can pull your knee up at the top and hold at this top position for 1-2 seconds. It's also an especially useful way to start integrating the glutes in movements that produce power and force. So long story short your glutes are important. And luckily dr.

So long story short your glutes are important. Each plays a role in stabilizing supporting and mobilizing the legs hips and lower half of the body. When faced with the same program their glutes deliver raw unbridled power and speed.

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And instead get up and take a walk or have a stretch at least between every 30 minutes of sitting. Glutes are the biggest muscle in your body. Thanks brian klepacki unlock your glutes again for sharing this useful content. Try Unlock Your Glutes for 60 days and discover how to force your glutes to grow like you've never experienced before.

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#unlockyourglutes #unlock my glutes #unlock your glutes #critical bench #brian klepacki #Youtube

[chisatowo]

Haunted apartment au thoughts time

(Also hi this is me post writing the tags of this post I sort of went off on a weird tangent and reached the tag limit so now it feels kinda weird just posting this bdmsbsmsg)

#rat rambles #haunted apartment au #almost none of the characters involved are in a good state mentally when the story starts #shuichi is trying so hard to improve apon his life but its all just so exhausting #and everyone around him seems to be handling this shit so easily #and he doesnt have any form of strong stability and its scary #himiko is in a state of feeling horrible and depressed all of the time but not wanting to work forward #both because of tge fear and expectation of faliure #and the fact that she just cant comprehend a world where she can be actually happy #and doesnt know how to even begin reaching for a future she doesnt belive she has #and I was going to type out a thing for kaede top but tbh this has bedn for the sake of stress relief and I think Im calming down now #dealing with shitty mental health is hard. #and its hard to accept sometimes that its both always going to be at least a little hard and that its still worth it anyways #sometimes it doesnt feel like you have a future #like youre reaching out for nothing #or walking through darkness #but just because you cant see something doesnt mean its not there #and eventually you will see it. and youll be able to look back and understand that it was always in front of you #and it wont be like a finish line to mental stability #and it might be frustrating reaching one goal only to realise that theres still more journey to make #but each time you reach that future moving forward will become a little easier #because even if you still cant see the next step you can at least trust that there may still be something there #a couple years ago I probably could have never been able to imagine a future in which I didnt fully hate myself #but regardless I still reached it #maybe not fully but. I know I can improve now. its hard but not impossible #Im not fully happy by any means but I am doing way better than I was before and Im happy about that #the future is scary to me right now. but I can only hope that things will clear up as I move forward #and hopefully one day I can look back on now in the same way that I look back on my middle school years now #sorry for going off on a weird tangent on my dr au post #I think I feel a lot better now though

[bestialchorus]

DATING YOUR NOSFERATU GIRLFRIEND WOULD INCLUDE:

-Completely meeting by chance after she stepped out shadows in response to a creepy individual trying to put their hands on you in a dark alley. Her presence was enough to have them screaming for the hills but you were completely entranced ……some may call this love at first sight. 

-She immediately tried to scurry away until you called out for her to wait, you feeling comfortable enough to not only do that but to look at her, REALLY look at her and not with disgust but pure admiration seemed to keep her around long enough for introductions to appear. Your kind soul and beauty are what eased her anxiety and kept her sticking around for much more to come. 

-As soon as you heard her gravely voice you knew you were done for. 

-Your dates are often at night (for several reasons). She loves taking you to the city’s most secluded spots and let’s just say out of all your friends’ you always win when highlighting the strangest places you’ve been intimate.

-You quickly start to memorize the sewer system below the asphalt as they act as your girlfriend’s safe haven You’ll spend a lot of time in the sewers with your beloved; whether on dates, just hanging out or actually using them to get across the city quicker. 

-When youre first intimate she’ll do everything in her power to make sure its pitch black but you reassure her that you find every part of her beautiful and that there’s no need to hide from you. She’s hesitant at first but trusts you enough to finally see all of her and that you do. You stop her from trying to touch you and instead pepper every inch of her flesh with kisses and follow up with a trait that makes you love her……..you almost miss the small tear that forms on her eye (though she tries to fight it back).

-Her creating a dedicated space for you in the abandoned lighthouse occupies. At first you didn’t understand what “project” was taking up weeks of her time until she brought you in a formerly empty room that now was fully furnished and completely modelled after your taste. It honestly made you tear up and she completely doubled down on claiming “an empty drawer in her room wouldn’t be enough”..

-You being able to see through the veil of her “tough street” attitude and knowing when she needs reassurance of you loving her. Eventually, she even becomes a tad comfortable with actually asking for it and you give it to her ten fold.

-You slowly becoming introduced to more kindred but even then she prefers to keep you separate from her world as much as possible. You wouldn’t be aware till much later but you find out she’s gone out of her way to make sure she has individuals she trusts to watch you from time to time, if say you unknowingly travel into an enemy clan territory. It takes her a lot of favours but it’s more than worth it for her.

-You playfully rubbing her pointed ears whenever she tries to come off as cool or badass and for her to immediately melt 

-Her calling you a literal goddess only for you to quickly throw it back to her and there’s no hiding a blush with her skin

-her carving yours and her initials with a heart around it throughout random spots in the city she knows youll see

-She has an enormous sweet tooth and often carries around candy in her leather jacket. She always make sure to carry your favourite sweets.

-You both love going on evening thrift shopping trips and impromptu midnight convenient store/gas station food runs

-Her teaching you knife tricks and eventually getting you your own knife after she was sure you wouldn’t hurt yourself

-You storing her “blood supply” in specific medicinal containers in the fridge so none of your roommates accidentally try to open them.

-moments of intimacy con sometimes include blood and knife play and youre the one who suggests them. 

-Her calling you “pretty girl” or “sunshine” as terms of endearment

-Her prominent fangs either tickle you or completely mark up your body.

-Her being extremely easy to please. You could bring her a pretty rock and she’d promise to “protect it with her life”

-You helping to patch her up whenever she has a rough run in with a rival clan member 

-You love her forked tongue and boy does it love you back.

-You slowly help get her out of her shell and more comfortable with public places (properly covered and or disguised) 

#hc #nosferatu #nosferatu clan #vtm #vtmb #vampire the masquerade #vampires #wlw #vampire x reader #god what I wouldn't do for a nosferatu wife #rpg #nosferatu girlfriend

[quokkacore]

with great power I [lee jeno]

summary: there are two things jeno loves most about his life. one being spiderman, the other being you, his best friend. there’s just one issue: after your father’s death, you decide you hate both spiderman and yourself.

pairing: lee jeno x reader

genre: superhero au, high school au, coming of age, best friends to strangers(ish) to lovers, fluff, ANGST, minor crack

warnings (for this chapter): language, violence, gun violence, the mafia, parental death, police presence, sexual references, bullying (ily san im sorry), the dreamies being dicks to each other, police corruption, towards the end jeno experiences something similar to sensory overload, americanized names, pop culture references, VERY jeno centric

song rec: we go up - nct dream // any song - zico // 21 questions - waterparks // talk (remix feat. megan thee stallion & yo gotti) - khalid // sunrise - ateez // i really like you - carly rae jepsen // dare - gorillaz // stray kids - the tortoise and the hare

word count: 10.5k

a/n: this is so late...... i blame attack on titan. but hey!! better late than never :] a huge thanks to @doderyscoffee​ for beta reading <3

main masterlist // story masterlist

chapter one: jeno and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week

Jeno despised Tuesdays. He was pretty sure that Tuesdays despised Jeno as well because all of his worst days just so happen to be Tuesdays. He was 96% sure that, if there was a god, his day off was on Tuesdays, or that the planets aligned in such a manner on Tuesdays that it caused universal despair and misery. If he was to take Donghyuck's word for it, his chakra attracted negative energy the most on Tuesdays.

When Jeno was 5, his goldfish Pippin had died on a Tuesday. When he had his ass handed to him on the playground by San Choi in the third grade, it was a Tuesday. And in the seventh grade, he'd failed his Spanish test, missed his bus and walked home in the rain only to find out that his Aunt Sunny was at work, he'd left his keys in his locker and that had to wait an hour before she got home to unlock it for him, all on a Tuesday. 

And wouldn't you know it, here he was, late for the first day of senior year, which was, of all days, a godforsaken Tuesday.

In his eternal wisdom, he'd stayed up gaming with Renjun until two in the morning, and because of it, slept through his three alarms, one set at six-thirty, the other at 6:45, the last one at 7:00. 

He'd woken up at 7:17, to the sound of his elderly neighbor's pet chihuahua barking at a pigeon, checked the time, immediately panicked, sped into the shower, gotten dressed in a haste, grabbed a few granola bars from the pantry, and ran out the door while trying to jam his backpack closed, and managed to catch the train at 7:40, which took about twenty minutes to get to his stop, plus a ten-minute walk to school, and class started at 8:10. Not to mention he’d have to stop by the office and pick up his schedule. At best, he’d be five minutes late to his first class. But tardies were tardies, regardless, and the last thing he needed was to lose his perfect attendance streak. 

He fished out his phone while standing on the train, waiting for his stop, scrolling through Instagram, and liking random pictures. A ping! from his phone caught his attention, then two, then a third. He smiled softly when your name popped up on his screen.

[7:48 AM]

y/n: pssst

y/n: shithead

y/n: where r u ????

[7:49 AM] 

y/n: i can sEE u online on ig u know

jeno: …… i'm on the train

jeno: woke up late

y/n: YOURE GONNA BE LATR

y/n: LATE*

y/n: ON THE FIRST DAY OF SENIOR YEAR

[7:50]

jeno: probably, yeah

jeno: it's the school district's fault, why would they make the first day of school on a fkn TUESDAY 

y/n: ohhh yeahh its terrible tuesday

y/n: [sent an attachment!]

[7:51 AM]

jeno: SHUT UP

jeno: you're not funny >:(

jeno: how dare you laugh at my misfortune

y/n: au contraire im hilarious

jeno: meanie :(

jeno: im gonna be late i hate it here

jeno: it'll end up on my permanent record and i'm not gonna get into college and then i'm gonna die,,,

[7:52 AM] 

y/n: sometimes ur worse than hyuck i swear 

y/n: FIRST OF ALL permanent records dont even exist !!!!!! its propaganda duh

y/n: also ur literally never late 

y/n: im sure o n e tardy wont do anything chill

y/n: dont be stupid youll be fine

Don’t be stupid. Too little, too late, he thought, already having got off the train at a previous stop. Now, he was looking for an unoccupied street or alleyway, which, for once, was easy, taking a deep breath before he did the exact opposite of what you’d told him not to do. Don’t be stupid. 

The buildings are low, he thought to himself, it’ll be easier to see me. 

Don’t be stupid.

Too late!

Thwip!

Jeno didn’t hesitate to use the web fluid to pull himself up onto the wall, climbing in a haste, before running and jumping onto the next building. He quickly built up a quick pace, using the web fluid occasionally to swing onto a building slightly out of jumping range. 

Signs in English, Chinese, Korean, and Spanish flew past him as he seemingly flew over the Queens traffic, leaving Flushing behind and crossing quickly into College Point quicker than he would if he took the train. He glanced to his left and caught a view of the bay, and far across it, the LaGuardia airport watchtower.

Jeno had lived in New York City his entire life. He knew Queens like the back of his hand, knew every dingy alleyway, every sketchy street, which restaurants to avoid if you didn’t want to get food poisoning, which convenience store aunties were the nicest and didn’t pinch his cheeks too hard. It was his home, and most likely would be for the rest of his life. 

But seeing it like this, flying past him below as he glided with ease from building to building would never cease to be a sight to him. It was like watching from the perspective of an outsider, seeing people in their cars, walking along the street gave him a brand new perspective. A Jeno’s eye view, he called it, since he was pretty sure he was the only one in New York City.

Another noise from his phone brought him back to reality. He shook his head, stopping briefly to catch his breath and fish out his phone briefly. 

[7:57 AM] 

y/n: let me know when u get here !!!

No time to respond, he put away the phone and continued his trek to school. He had less than ten minutes to get there. But he knew he was already at least five minutes away, much quicker than he would be if he had decided to stick to the train. He smiled a bit to himself, feeling ever so slightly smug.

The hustle and bustle of the city definitely proved challenging to find a place to land without many eyes, but he figured it out eventually, landing behind a dumpster in an alleyway behind a restaurant that he knew was about three or four blocks from the school. He figured it would be a lot better to take it on foot from here. The notebooks he was carrying in his backpack bounced up and down with every step he took. 

After what seemed like forever, the gates to the school appeared in his view, and Jeno felt a joy in his heaving chest, something he would have never thought would happen upon seeing the absolute hellhole that was Samuel Morse High School. 

[8:06 AM]

jeno: just did >:D

Picking up his schedule was both quick and insanely long. He couldn’t stop himself from tapping his left foot while the secretary found his schedule and handed it to him. “Kibum, please hurry,” He muttered, and Kibum raised an eyebrow at him, but his gaze was teasing. “That’s Mr. Kim to you, in school at least.” 

He handed Jeno his schedule a few seconds later. “Tell your Aunt to come pick up her casserole dish, by the way. She left it at my house after my last viewing party.”

“The Bachelor?”

“Please. We’re too classy for that. Drag Race.”

“Ah. I see.”

“Jeno,” Kibum said, staring up at him from his desk, his gaze now much more serious, “Get to class. Happy first day of senior year.”

“Thanks, Mr. Kim.”

He managed to make it to chemistry class at 8:09 with seconds to spare. His eyes quickly scanned the room upon entering, hoping his friends were in the class with him. He caught a few familiar faces, most of which, like San Choi's, he wished to avoid. No one paid him any mind. Everyone was still speaking to the people next to them, no doubt exchanging stories of summer vacation. 

  A hand shot up towards the back, waving at him. A smile stretched across his face as he registered your face, feet not hesitating to carry him towards the empty seat next to you. His heart skipped a beat at seeing your smile, and he tried his best to ignore it.

“Hey,” You greeted, “That was fast. I thought you said you were gonna be late.”

Jeno shrugged, eyes landing on the dark shade of the lab table. “The train was a lot faster than I expected, apparently.”

You wrinkled your nose. “Why do you smell so bad?”

“I, uh… ran a little.” 

You grimaced, and Jeno tried to casually sniff at his slightly sweaty clothes. It’s not that bad. “I still don’t understand why you won’t let me drive you to school. You’re literally next door.”

“I don’t know,” He answered, rolling his eyes, “Maybe it’s because when it comes to that truck, you are absolutely insane. You won’t even let me drink water in that thing.”

The truck in question, a faded red 1998 Chevrolet S-10, had been your gift to yourself for your 17th birthday. You’d spent two summers saving up to buy yourself a truck, and that was what you were able to get for what you had. To say it was a huge piece of junk on wheels was an understatement. 

The thing smelled like mothballs no matter how many air fresheners you bought it, the engine sounded like an old man having a coughing fit, and there was a very suspicious stain in the backseat that wouldn’t go away no matter how many times you scrubbed it. But for some reason, you treated it like it was your own baby. The amount of times you’d yelled at Jaemin for trying to put his feet on the dashboard was too high to count.

You mirrored his movement, eyes rolling as you sighed. “At least let me drive you home after school today. Maybe you can stay and we can finally watch Blade Runner.”

You’d been trying to get him to watch the film for almost a month now, begging and pleading because you insisted that he’d love it. He offered an awkward stare, before opening his backpack and pulling out a notebook. “Can’t,” He mumbled, “I’m headed into Manhattan. I have my internship afterwards.”

“Oh, yeah,” You said nonchalantly, eyebrows shooting up as you remembered, “Park Industries.” 

He was about to reply when Mrs. Baker, the chemistry teacher, finally entered. She’d been working at SMHS for 30 years and had never, apparently, been nice, if his Aunt Sunny’s stories were anything to go by. However, she had apparently always spoken as if she smoked two packs a day. She was rambling about the importance of making the most of senior year academically, adult responsibilities, college, and whatnot. You and Jeno exchanged glances often throughout the monologue, hoping it would end soon. 

“Enough of that,” She said after what seemed like an eternity, “Everyone quiet down, I’m going to call roll.”

Names were quickly called, and Jeno was ready to pull out a pencil and start working with you until Mrs Baker demanded a switch in seats, beginning to call on random names in an effort to deter everyone from speaking. 

"Please not with Choi, please not with Choi," Jeno muttered under his breath, glancing warily at San, who was staring ahead, looking bored. 

San had had it out for Jeno ever since day one, in first grade. For some reason, everything Jeno did seemed to annoy the other boy. He wasn't funny enough, or too nerdy, or too quiet. Jeno was always too much or too little for him. 

You touched his forearm, and he looked towards you. 

“You’ll be fine,” You said softly, trying not to alert the teacher, “You’re not gonna get paired up with him, and you can take it to the office if you need to.” “Yeah, because I’m sure Coach Peralta would be thrilled if someone tried to get his precious midfielder in trouble.”

“Choi, San,” Mrs Baker’s voice rang throughout the room, and Jeno braced himself for the worst, eyebrows furrowing with worry. 

“You’ll be sitting with… L/N, Y/N.” 

Jeno’s shoulders slumped, but your face remained impassive. You picked up your stuff, and pouted silently at Jeno in apology, before making your way to the front. 

“Lee, Jeno,” Mrs Baker called a few minutes later, “You’ll be sitting with Jang, Yeeun.”

He breathed out a sigh of relief. Yeeun is nice, Jeno thought to himself, I could sit with Yeeun. She wasn’t part of his main friend group, but he had tutored her in math during sophomore year in exchange for her helping him with Spanish, and they’d been pretty friendly ever since. 

“Hey,” Yeeun greeted as Jeno sat down, and Jeno smiled at her. 

“Remember, these will be your assigned lab partners for the rest of the semester. No changes, no exceptions.” Mrs. Baker sat down at her desk, before beginning to talk about something Jeno didn’t really pay attention to.

You exchanged glances with Jeno, and he gave you a look of sympathy as you gestured at San with your eyes. San was talking to you about something—probably bragging about some soccer achievement—but you weren’t paying him much attention. Jeno swallowed something growing in his throat as he looked at how your hair looked today. 

It was nothing relatively new, the same hairstyle you used on most days. But still, there was a bit of a shine to it. He wondered vaguely if you had changed your shampoo, the other day you’d been complaining about how itchy your normal shampoo made your scalp—

“You still haven’t told her about how you feel?” Yeeun asked quietly, and Jeno’s head snapped back to look at her, eyes wide.

“W-what? Me. Like Y/N…” He laughed nervously, trying to keep his voice down. He scratched the back of his head, avoiding Yeeun’s accusatory stare. “You’re hilarious, Yeeun. Tell another one.”

Yeeun shook her head. “You’d better hurry before someone else snatches her up, Jen. She’s not gonna wait around for you forever.”

 “I don’t like her, Yeeun.” 

“Keep telling yourself that.”

“Hey! Jeno Lee!”

“Hey! Jaemin Na! What do you want!” Jeno answered as he sat down, mimicking Jaemin’s tone next to him.

“Well, for starters, a million dollars, and second, a date with Yiren Wang, but I doubt you can help me with either of those, so...”

Jeno glanced at the rest of the table. Along with Jaemin, Mark,  Renjun, Donghyuck, and you were watching the interaction between the pair. “Where are the munchkins?” Jeno asked, noticing Chenle and Jisung’s absence. No one could really call them munchkins anymore. That nickname dated back to middle school, before the two underclassmen had gone through growth spurts.

“Eh, they should be here soon,” Renjun said, chewing on a french fry, “How’s your day been?”

“Pretty good so far, I guess. I got AP Calc with Mr. Washington later, though. That man wants me dead.”

You rolled your eyes. “He doesn’t want you dead. I’m telling you, you and Hyuck have been spending way too much time together. You’re being more dramatic than usual and Hyuck’s being more… weird than usual.”

“And just what is so weird about being enthusiastic about senior year, Y/N?” Donghyuck asked, shaking his head, “It’s our last year in this hellhole, I’m excited that we’re finally getting out of here. And besides—”

“Please don’t bring up the fact that you’re abandoning us next year.” Chenle seemingly appeared out of nowhere, sitting next to Renjun, Jisung following quickly behind him.

“Hi, Sungie,” You said with a smile, and Jisung smiled back. “Hi, Y/N.”

“What were you saying, Hyuck?” Jaemin looked at Donghyuck, who had taken the quick interaction as an opportunity to take a bite of his sandwich. His wide eyes darted to the slim boy, cheeks stuffed with chicken. 

“Oh,” He replied after swallowing, “This is gonna be my year. I’m getting male lead for the winter musical and no one is gonna stop me.”

“Do you even know what musical you guys are doing yet?” Mark asked, “What if it’s like… Shrek?”

Jisung made a face. “There’s a Shrek musical?”

Mark nodded, and Renjun laughed.

“I don’t know about male lead, if it’s Shrek. You should try out for Donkey,” The Chinese boy joked, “With those front teeth, you’re a shoo-in.”

The entire table was silent for a moment, before snorts and chortles started pouring out from everyone except Donghyuck.

“Fuck you, Huang.” 

Renjun flashed the friendliest smile he could muster. “Not if you paid me a million dollars.”

The subject remained on extracurriculars, everyone in your group except for Chenle and Jisung now wary of college applications. Donghyuck had been in theater ever since middle school, Renjun was in the robotics club and the debate team with Jaemin, who was also in the student council. Mark was on the math team with Jeno, and you had founded the film club. 

"You're not gonna believe who asked to sign up for film," You huffed, looking kind of confused. The rest of the table looked at you expectantly, and you pursed your lips, almost as if you were trying not to laugh.

"San Choi."

Renjun scoffed. Jaemin raised his eyebrows before letting out a single, humorless laugh. Jeno made a face, poking his plastic fork at you. 

"What is San Choi doing asking to sign up for film?"

"Fuck if I know. He said he needed one more extracurricular if he wanted to get into some college in Florida and he liked going to the movies, so he wanted to try out film."

Mark rolled his eyes. "I swear there's nothing in that guy's head but hot gas. It blows my mind."

"He's a dick," Chenle grumbled, "I'm still not over how he and Wooyoung taped Jisung to the flagpole last year."

Jisung scowled. "I thought we agreed to never bring that up again."

“Do you think they’ll finally calm the fuck down this year?” Jaemin wondered, looking wistful.

You took a sip of your coke and shook your head. “Doubt it. They’re not the hateful eight for a reason.”

The mood at the table turned tense, until Jaemin frowned at his french fries, before sighing and clapping his hands together dramatically. “I would like to hear,” He mused, “About the nuance that theatre gives the cinematic masterpiece that is Shrek when converted into musical form.”

Donghyuck beamed. “Oh, it’s amazing. You see…”

If it was difficult to get Donghyuck to stop talking in general, it was impossible when it was about theater.

The conversation continued on until the bell rang, and the eight of you had to go your separate ways. Jaemin and Jeno had the same class, so they both walked together down a relatively calm hallway. Jaemin looked both ways, before finally lowering his voice. 

“So, you’re going to see Mr. Park today?”

Jeno nodded, looking down at his shoes. “He said he wanted to give me an assignment. Says there’s something big going on.”

Jaemin’s eyes lit up with curiosity. “Did he say what kind of something?” 

Jeno shook his head, pouting slightly. “I’ll let you know tomorrow.” 

Once school was out, Jeno was getting ready to get onto the subway once again, this time heading towards Midtown. It was only day one and, as Jeno had predicted, Mr. Washington probably was out to get him, because he’d swamped the class with homework.

As he left the school, he spotted you in the parking lot, leaning against your car door, texting someone. He glanced at his phone. He still had plenty of time, he figured. He walked over to you, and when you looked up, you smiled. 

“Hey!” Your voice had that signature tone of enthusiasm to it, and Jeno smiled back immediately. 

“Hello,” He sing-songed. “So, I was thinking… are you free on Friday night?”

You looked somewhere above his head, furrowing your eyebrows before you perked up again and nodded. “Yep! Why?”

“I’m free after nine. Maybe then I could come over to your house? So I can finally get you to stop harassing me about Blade Runner.”

You grinned, pumping your fists enthusiastically. “Hell yes,” You answered, “Do you want me to get like, some frozen pizzas or something?” 

“Pizza sounds good,” He said. “Who are you even waiting for?” 

You made a face that made it seem as if you’d just gotten a whiff of rotten milk. “Well—”

Your response was interrupted when the school doors slammed open, and eight figures poured out, carrying themselves with confidence Jeno both envied and despised. He frowned, trying not to react at their loud whooping and laughing. The Hateful Eight.

“Oh.” Jeno averted his gaze, meeting your eyes again.

“Yeah. If you don’t hear from me later it’s because I jumped out of my truck because I don’t wanna work with—”

“Well, hello, gorgeous!” San’s voice filled the parking lot, and Jeno took a deep breath. Your mouth stretched into a tight-lipped smile at the unwanted ‘compliment’. 

“Hey, San.” Your friendly passive aggressive tone almost made Jeno smile. “I’ve been waiting here for like, fifteen minutes. You could have just given me your number and asked me to send you pictures of my notes, you know.”

He shrugged, turning his body so that his back was turned to Jeno. “Sorry, babe. Coach wanted to talk to us about the upcoming season. When he gets going, it’s hard to get him to stop. And besides, where’s the fun in just asking for pictures when I could come here, talk to you, and take the pictures myself?”

You didn’t respond, but rather pulled out your backpack and began digging through it. When you pulled out your notebook, you handed it to San, who flashed a wink at you. You barely held back a gag. 

“Thanks, Y/N. I’ll just be a minute.” 

He walked over to the hood of your truck, and just as you were about to continue your conversation, two figures slung their arms around both of Jeno’s shoulders, causing him to flinch. 

Out of the fifteen soccer players on the team, San and his best friends—seven of them, to be precise—were the worst. The others were pretty nice. But right now, seeing two of those seven surround your best friend made you uneasy. 

Wooyoung was loud. He was also a temperamental brat. His dad owned three used car dealerships over in Brooklyn, so naturally, he thought he owned the entire world. He wasn’t someone who would get too physical in fights, like San, or Jongho, or Yeosang. But when he was angry, he could easily get you to jump into the stratosphere by yelling at you once. Over the years, he’d made several teaching assistants and substitute teachers cry, only getting let off with a slap on the wrist every time. 

 Yunho was terrifying for completely different reasons. He was friendly, but a little too friendly to the people he wanted to control. He could read people like books and could easily manipulate whoever he wanted. But he wasn’t afraid of getting physical either, especially not when he was built like a goddamn Power Rangers Megazord. 

All in all, they definitely weren't anyone you wanted near you, near your friends. Especially considering how much they had it out for your friends. 

"Hey, buddy," Yunho said, looking down at Jeno with a wide smile. "How was summer vacation?"

Jeno gnawed on the side of his cheek as he considered his answer. "Um, it was okay." He looked at you to catch your eyes darting between San, Yunho and Wooyoung, like you were analyzing the situation. "I kinda stayed in and played video games most of the t—"

"Cool, cool," Yunho answered, carding his free hand through his bleach blond hair. "What about you, Woo?"

"Oh, dude, it was so cool," He bragged, "I went to Brazil for like, a month. I went clubbing with Instagram models and shit, it was wild."

You stared at him as he patted Jeno on the back rather aggressively. "Where did you go? Have you ever even left New York?" 

You knew the answer. Only a few times when the debate team went to compete in different states. Jeno spoke up again. "Well, yeah a few t—"

"Doubt it," Yunho scoffed. He craned his head back. "San, you done yet?"

"Almost!" San answered. Yunho turned to face you, and for some reason his smile seemed genuinely kind. “What about you, Y/N?”

You never understood why it was that the soccer team hated your entire friend group, but seemed to tolerate you. It made no sense.

So you shrugged. “Not a lot, I guess. Did my summer reading. Hung out with my friends.” You flashed a reassuring smile at Jeno. “Right, Jen?”

Immediately, he relaxed a little bit. “Yeah.”

San appeared from behind Yunho, Jeno and Wooyoung. “Thanks, Y/N. I owe you one.”

You waved your hand, wanting them to get rid of them quickly. “Don’t mention it. But next time, just text me for my notes. I have to get to work, so…”

“Oh! My bad,” He answered with fake remorse, before unlocking his phone and handing it over to you. “Here. For next time.”

You stifled a deep sigh, punching in the numbers hesitantly. “Just for homework, got it?”

San took his phone back, holding a hand over his heart and raised his head. “On a gentleman's honor,” He declared, and you bit back a laugh. Jeno looked like he was going to hurl.

“San!” The team captain—Hongjoong—called from a few feet away, “Are you guys done yet or what?”

“Coming!” San yelled back.

“Alright, we’ll let you go,” Wooyoung said, patting Jeno on the back again, a bit too harsh for comfort. “Bye, Y/N! See you around.”

 The three of them stalked off, leaving you and a very frazzled Jeno. “Dicks,” You muttered once they were out of earshot. “You good?”

Jeno shook his head, waving his hand dismissively. “I’ll be fine.”

You tilted your head, frowning. “Jeno—”

“I gotta go,” He said quickly. “I’ll see you later?”

You nodded, offering a lopsided smile. “Yeah. Be careful!” 

Jeno offered a deep bow, fluttering his eyelashes. “On a gentleman’s honor,” He sighed, adding a very bad British accent to it. You burst out laughing, eyes squeezing shut.

You didn’t catch the way Jeno’s shoulders relaxed at the sound.

I want you to know now

Baby, it could go down

I don’t wanna talk about it

Baby, let’s just go now

The train ride into Midtown didn’t take too long. He spent it digging through his backpack for his Park Industries lanyard, listening to music and thinking about you.

When you talk right to me 

You gon’ have to do me

Every time you think you’re leaving 

You running back to me

You’d met Jeno when you were six. Truth be told, he didn’t really remember. For him it was like you weren’t there at one point and by the time you were, you were thicker than thieves. It was a difficult time for him. He had just lost both of his parents, and was moving in with his Aunt Sunny and his Uncle Jinki, who were barely out of college at the time. He’d had to move to a new school and basically restart his entire life. You were the first sense of stability in his life for months. 

Your mom lived next to his aunt and uncle. So naturally, you went to the same school and went on the same bus. And somewhere along the way, you two clicked. You’d introduced him to Renjun, Jaemin and Donghyuck. You were there to comfort him whenever he got pushed off the slide by San or Wooyoung. 

He was there for you when your stepdad and stepbrother moved in when you were nine and you weren’t sure how to deal with it. He was there when your mom died when you were thirteen. He’d introduced you and your friends to Mark, Chenle and Jisung. 

And you were there when his Uncle Jinki got killed when he was fifteen. And because fate had an especially cruel sense of irony, it had happened on a Tuesday. You didn’t know, but at the time, he had just gotten his powers. Your comfort and words unknowingly had a secondary effect: he made the decision to use them for good, and… well. The rest was history. 

Can we just talk? Can we just talk?

Talk about where we're goin'

Before we get lost, lend me your thoughts

Can't get what we want without knowin'

Just like when he met you, he didn’t recall an exact moment where he realized he’d fallen in love with you. He knew there was a world where he loved you, but wasn’t in love with you. And he knew that there was a world here he’d fallen in love with you—he was living in that world now. He realized he was living in that world maybe when he was sixteen, and had been stuck in it ever since. 

You were it for him. He’d had crushes before. But never something like this, where he was so aware of your presence around him. It wasn’t the way he was hyper aware of someone like San, or like Yunho or Jongho. It wasn’t out of anxiety or fear, where a shift in mood activated his fight or flight. He was aware of you in a way that only people who truly know each other do, where he could pick up on subtle changes in your behavior, but not out of fear. Rather, out of a desire to take care of you and to not have you worry about anything. 

I've never felt like this before

I apologize if I'm movin' too far

Can we just talk? Can we just talk?

Figure out where we're goin'...

As the train rolled into the station that was a fifteen minute walk from Park Tower, Jeno put away his headphones and took a deep breath.

The “Jeno Tingle” as his Aunt Sunny called it—Jeno hated the term—had taken him a few years to gain control of. And while he could never truly turn it off, he could at least tune it out enough to be more at ease. The only time he did so was at school or when he was studying, just because he wanted to feel normal, and because being aware of everything going on around him really messed with his concentration. 

Jaemin didn’t understand. “If I was able to tell whenever Seonghwa was behind me because he wanted to scare me into doing his chemistry homework, I’d never turn that shit off,” He’d said once. But truthfully, Jeno didn’t really care. Because while yes, he was still slightly scared of the “hateful eight”, he knew damn well that if things got to be too much, he could kick their asses if he wanted to. 

It was his friends he worried about. He couldn’t be around them 24/7. You, not so much. He knew you knew how to fight. Even worse, he knew that San had the hots for you so you were off limits to the rest of them, be it bullying or flirting. But for everyone else… Well. He couldn’t hover over them like some guardian angel. 

Now that the “Jeno Tingle” was on, it allowed him to sense everyone within a certain range around him. He could zero in on certain sounds with ease, and his reflexes became heightened. Halfway on his walk up Park Avenue, he jumped away from a chihuahua on its leash a second before it started barking at him.

When he entered the first floor lobby of the Park Building, he scoured the crowd of employees and visitors until he landed on one familiar face. 

He'd met Doyoung about a year after his dad started dating your mom. Things between your parents were starting to get serious, and Doyoung was four years older than you were. When they moved into your house, Doyoung as your new stepbrother became the de facto chaperone and babysitter. If you wanted to go to the mall with Jeno, he had to take you. Every time you dragged Jeno to the movies, Doyoung had to go also. 

To an extent, it wasn't that bad. Doyoung was cool, and he was smart—he was the one who got Jeno interested in computers and chemistry. He graduated high school at 16, and finished his bachelor's degree at 19. He'd also interned at Park Industries, and secured a job there almost immediately after college. 

To an extent, he was the whole reason Mr. Park knew who he was, because of one incident. It was relatively soon after he started the whole vigilante thing. Jeno, still figuring out how to maneuver on the webs that shot out of his wrists, had accidentally crashed into your backyard late at night, when only Doyoung was awake. He was standing in the back door while he was waiting for his dog to finish peeing. 

Initially, the older boy had freaked out, thinking that it was a burglar or something. When he yelled out that his dad was a cop and was asleep in the house, Jeno panicked, and pulled off his mask, holding up his hands.

“Woah, woahwoahwoah! Doyoung! It’s me, it’s me!” 

Doyoung’s eyes had widened to the size of saucers, paying no mind to the dog as it sauntered up to Jeno, before turning onto its back in a request for belly rubs.

"You're the spider guy everyone's been talking about!?"

"Spider man," Jeno had answered, voice cracking as he dusted himself off. He cringed at the sound of his voice. "...and yes."

Of course, his cover was blown, and he'd begged Doyoung not to tell anyone, especially not you. And while Doyoung had promised not to tell you, it didn't stop him from telling his boss. 

That had been almost three years ago now. The rest was history, and after that Jeno didn’t have to run around in bright red sweatpants and dollar store swimming goggles. Now, he had a nanotech suit that allowed him to activate protocols of the suit through voice commands using something top-secret Mr. Park called D.R.E.A.M technology. Direct Response Engaged As Machine—yeah, Jeno didn’t get it either. 

Doyoung offered Jeno a smile as he escorted Jeno past security, showing them his employee clearance pass. "Hey. How have you been?"

Jeno shrugged, recounting his day in minor detail as he was led into an elevator labeled authorized personnel only. 

This elevator only went up to the 35th floor, seeing as everything past that was only cleared for a certain list of people approved by Mr. Park and his security team, and everything past the 90th floor were Mr. Park's private living quarters. 

Now, as Doyoung led him to another elevator to head up to the 85th floor, which was always where Jeno got to meet with Mr. Park—which wasn't often, maybe once or twice a year—he wondered where he would be if he hadn’t surprised Doyoung that night. He would probably still be using those ugly red sweatpants as part of his disguise.

"How's Y/N?" Doyoung asked. 

"Oh, she seems okay. That guy who hates me keeps coming onto her though. He's a huge douchebag."

Doyoung frowned. "He's not harassing her, is he? Because if he is—"

"He just won't stop flirting, even though she clearly isn't interested," Jeno said bitterly, "He isn't physical or anything. Trust me, it wouldn't end well for him if he was."

Doyoung wasn't quite sure how to respond to the younger boy's dark tone. He looked down, clearing his throat awkwardly.

“So… how’s the apartment?” Jeno asked. Doyoung perked up instantly.

“Oh, now that Taeyong’s moved in and did his interior design thing, it looks great. He’s really done a great job at it.”

“When am I gonna meet this guy? He sounds cool.”

“He’s really cool,” Doyoung hummed, cheeks heating up. “Things are getting really serious.”

Jeno smiled at how flustered Doyoung, who was normally so level headed and calm, became at the mention of his boyfriend.

“You guys sound like a really good couple,” He said. Doyoung chuckled, waving his hand. “Oh, well—” 

 The elevator dinged, and Doyoung sighed. “I’ll tell you later. C’mon.”

The hallway it opened up to was lined with pictures of the company's history, starting from pictures of black and white of people in vintage clothing, to pictures in sepia tones to finally pictures of the current CEO at locations around the world: Chanyeol Park.

Jeno walked behind Doyoung as he led him down the hallway, before stopping in front of a door, and a friendly looking man in a suit. 

Junmyeon was a part of Chanyeol’s Security and Intelligence team, and often sat in on these meetings with Jeno. The chain of contact also included him. If Jeno couldn’t contact Doyoung (which rarely happened), he’d contact Junmyeon. And if he couldn’t contact either of them, or it was an emergency, only then could he contact Chanyeol. So far, that had only happened once.

"Hey, Junmyeon," Doyoung said, "Mr. Park's 4:30 is here." 

Junmyeon nodded, before smiling at Jeno and giving him a wave. "Hey, kid."

Jeno offered an awkward grin. "Hi, Mr. Kim."

Junmyeon rolled his eyes sarcastically. "Kid, you're making me feel ancient. I've told you a million times, just call me Junmyeon."

Jeno shuffled awkwardly, before nodding at the older man, watching as he pressed a button on his earpiece. "Hey, Yeol. Jeno's here."

The muffled response was barely heard, but Jeno automatically understood what Mr. Park said. Junmyeon turned to open the door, and let the pair inside. The “office”—if it could even be called that—opened up to more of a lounge, than anything. A wall of glass overlooked the Manhattan skyline, but Jeno knew that from the outside it looked only like a wall, due to camouflage technology developed by Mr. Park himself. As Doyoung and Junmyeon stayed back, closer to the door, Jeno took a few steps toward the man in question.

Chanyeol was standing a few feet in front of the glass window, working on a holographic model of a new piece of tech. His face was turned downward in a concentrated frown. He barely spared the teenager a glance as he said fondly, “Hey, kid.”

Jeno was used to this. Chanyeol wasn’t cold per se, but he wasn’t warm at all. He knew that Chanyeol cared about him, even if he didn’t really show it in a conventional way. Chanyeol was a very… eccentric man, so he had his own way of saying and doing things. 

“Hi, Mr. Park. Um… you wanted to talk to me?”

“Yep! Needed some help from the friendly neighborhood Spiderman… A little birdie told me about something going on in Queens.”

“Queens?” Jeno asked, gripping the straps of his backpack. “You mean, other than the usual stuff?”

“Other than the usual stuff,” Chanyeol repeated, nodding. With a wave of his hand, the hologram disappeared, and another one appeared in its place. This time, instead of a 3D model, a few pictures and another, smaller 3D model appeared. Chanyeol turned to face him, frown deepening. He pointed at the model—a long, shiny oval-shaped purple stone. It reminded Jeno of an amethyst, but instead of turning white at the base, it turned to an iridescent jade tone. “You know what this is, right?”

Jeno nodded, remembering seeing the rocks all over the news when he was a kid. “That’s… that’s a Chitauri stone. From the invasion a few years back.”

Chanyeol nodded, standing up straight. “These stones have the potential to power weapons with no need to recharge, or change them out. They’re an infinite, extremely strong power source, Jeno, and in the wrong hands can be very dangerous.”

Jeno took a deep breath, feeling his stomach sink slowly. Chanyeol sighed. “Cleanup of the city after the invasion was long, and difficult, and obviously the government and the company weren’t able to get everything. It caused a black market to pop up. Now, the NYPD has been investigating it for years, but they have their limits… that’s where you come in.”

“M-me, Mr. Park?”

Chanyeol gave him a crooked, reassuring smile. He pointed at one of the pictures, which was of a man who most likely didn’t know he was photographed. He was walking somewhere, face looking angry and stern.

“You don’t know who this is, right?”

Jeno shook his head, and Chanyeol turned his head to nod at Junmyeon. “You’re up, tough guy.”

Junmyeon huffed, before walking up to Jeno. He put his hand on Jeno’s shoulder as if he could tell that he was growing anxious. 

“Jeno, that’s Henry Duke. From what we understand on the intel team, he’s one of the cornerstones of the alien tech black market. He’s one of the top dogs. From what we understand, he likes to be present for all major negotiations that his group makes. A source of ours told us that there’s going to be a negotiation on Friday night not too far away from LaGuardia. We want you to go out there and just get a feel of what’s going on.”

“Just watch them, right?” Jeno looked at Junmyeon, who patted his back reassuringly. “Just watch. Don’t engage unless you absolutely have to.”

“You can do that, right?” Chanyeol said quietly, crossing his arms. “Because if not, then it’s totally—”

“Yeah, of course I can! Friday—shit, Friday. At what time are they supposed to be meeting up?”

Junmyeon furrowed his eyebrows, before answering, “Around eight or nine.”

Jeno bit his lip, thinking about the promise he’d made to you. It would just have to wait, he supposed. Chanyeol rarely asked anything this big of him.

“Alright,” Jeno agreed, “I’ll do it.”

Chanyeol grinned, clapping his hands together. 

“Perfect.” 

They discussed logistics briefly after. Doyoung would be on call with Jeno, his custom made suit allowing them to communicate, letting Doyoung see everything Jeno was seeing via a video feed coming from the ultra thin lenses placed in the white eye sockets of the mask. Doyoung would then report to Junmyeon, who would report to Chanyeol, who would probably report to the FBI. Jeno was only to engage if absolutely necessary.

After that, he set out on patrol. He usually found some discreet place to hide his backpack, and then went all over Queens looking for trouble, quite literally. Around five thirty, he stopped a robbery in Murray Hill. Then, around seven, he stopped a man from stealing a woman’s purse in Elmhurst. Nothing too much.

Around eight, he finally headed home, this time dressed normally, using the train and not web fluid. He walked home, tired, knowing that he’d immediately have to do that cursed AP calc homework. When he got home, he opened his backpack pocket to look for his keys, rummaging between his notebooks and other things. 

Shuffling through his stuff, he furrowed his eyebrows as he couldn’t find them. Thinking back, he remembered this morning, when he’d left in a rush… and had very obviously left his keys on his desk.

“Shit,” He muttered to himself. He rubbed his eyes tiredly, remembering that Aunt Sunny had said she’d be working overtime tonight. He could very easily sneak in through his window, but he was pretty sure he’d locked it the night before, and it was too early. People’s lights were still on—anyone could see him if they just looked up, and then he would be screwed. 

Huffing and zipping his backpack up, he marched up to your house, before ringing the doorbell. He shifted his weight back and forth, from his heels to the balls of his feet, until the door opened up. A familiar man with a face just like Doyoung's, but older, with graying hair and arms scarred and muscled from years of working on the police force stood in the doorway.

“Jeno?” Your dad offered him a warm smile. “Hey, kiddo, what’s up?”

“Hi, Mr. Kim,” Jeno said, smiling back. He shifted nervously. “I, um… I left my keys in my room this morning, and my aunt’s working late, so… could I… maybe wait here? Y/N’s home, right?” 

The man nodded. “Of course, of course. Come in!” 

Your dad had always been super friendly, even from the day Jeno had first met him. You'd told Jeno once that he was the only real father figure you'd ever had. Once everything settled after him and your mom got married, you started calling him dad altogether. And since you and Jeno were practically glued at the hip, he got along with your dad almost as well as you did.

“Okay.” Jeno stepped in and set down his backpack at the base of the coat rack next to the door, as he’d done a million times before. Jeno stepped into the living room, and sat down on the couch. He folded his hands in his lap and looked up at your dad.

"I think Y/N's in the shower, but she should be done soon. You can just wait here if you want… have you eaten anything yet?”

“Uh, I had a granola bar on the train, but that’s it.”

“We have some leftover pasta here, if you want—”

“Thanks, Mr. Kim, really! I’m fine.”

Your dad nodded, sitting down on his recliner. “So, have you started your college list, yet? Y/N said you wanted to stay here in New York.”

Jeno nodded, pushing some hair out of his face. “Well, yeah. It would make things a lot easier, I think. I might want to apply to NYU, but I think I’ll just go to community college, or something.”

Your dad shook his head. “You’re a pretty smart kid, Jeno. I think you could get into Columbia if you set out to. Plus, Chanyeol Park doesn’t give out internships to anybody. That’s your secret weapon.”

Jeno smiled. “Well, you’ve got a point.” 

Your dad gave him a friendly punch on the shoulder. “Come on, trying won’t hurt!” Your dad made a face, and then rubbed his knuckles. “Have you been working out? Those muscles weren’t there the last time I did that.”

Jeno laughed, trying to think of an excuse. “Oh, a little bit? The house needed some fixing up over the summer, and I wanted to help Aunt Sunny, so…”

“Jeno?” 

He turned immediately, eyes landing on you at the base of the staircase. You’d changed into an old t-shirt and pajama pants. Your hair was slightly damp. “What are you doing here?” You asked, with a curious smile.

His shoulders slumped, and he grinned sheepishly. “Terrible Tuesday strikes again. I forgot my keys.”

You grimaced. “Brutal, dude. You wanna come up?” Your eyes moved to your dad. “Or am I interrupting guy time?”

“Oh, definitely,” Jeno answered, playing along. He took a cocky tone as he rested his hands on the back of his neck. “Your dad was just telling me about how much the NYPD needs me.” 

You stifled a laugh. You dad seemed to be holding back a laugh too. "Hey, you're joking, but if you keep working out like that, and if by some impossible chance, the college thing doesn't work out… We might just be able to catch Spiderman if we finally got some brain cells on the force."

"Ugh, dad," You groaned, unaware of Jeno's gut twisting, "Not again."

"Yeah, Mr. Kim," Jeno said, scratching the back of his head, "He's not that bad."

Your dad shook his head. "Look, I don't hate the guy. In all honesty, crime rates have dropped since he started doing his thing. But he thinks he's above the law, and his methods can be a bit… unorthodox sometimes. He’s been undermining us for years and his tech is state of the art. Makes me wonder about what we should do to modernize the force."

Jeno looked downward, wondering what would happen if your dad knew the truth.

"Well, I guess we may just never find out. Jeno'd make a horrible cop. He couldn't hurt a fly if you paid him a million dollars."

But you came to the rescue as you grabbed his backpack, and soon enough he was up the stairs with you, heading into your bedroom, laughing to yourselves when you heard your dad jokingly call out, "Fifteen inch distance, you two! Door stays open!"

He sat on your desk chair while you lay on your bed, limbs splaying out. 

"So you left your keys."

Jeno groaned. "Don't remind me. I was in such a rush to leave, that I… I forgot. I'm so stupid."

You rolled your eyes, rolling over onto your stomach to look at him. "You're not stupid, Jen. You made an honest mistake because you were in a hurry." 

Standing up, you walked over to him and leaned against the desk. "Seriously, Jeno. What's gotten into you, lately? You freak out about every little thing. It's starting to worry me." 

Jeno shook his head. "I don't know," He admitted. "I think I'm just scared about how after this year, everything changes. Renjun’s headed upstate. Jaemin’s going to Boston. You want to go to LA. I think Hyuck and I are the only ones who want to stay here. I just… I don't want things to change." 

Your expression turned sad as he continued. "Everyone is expecting great things from me. You're smart, Jeno. You can get into an Ivy. Or, you have a Park internship, you'll be fine. What if I don't want things to be fine? What if I want them to just stay the same?"

You stayed silent for a few moments, trying to think of what to say. Jeno was relatively level headed for someone your age, but even he had moments of doubt and panic. It made moments like these difficult.  You sighed before grabbing him by the hand. Wordlessly, you tugged him over to the bed, sitting him down and leaning your head on his shoulder. He could feel the dampness in your hair seeping slowly into his shirt.

"I guess I understand what you mean," You mumbled, trying to reason with him, "But come on. You wouldn't really want everything to stay the same. You can't tell me you want to keep getting AP calc homework. And I definitely doubt that you'd want to have your ass kicked by San for the rest of your life."

Jeno looked at the floor. "You're right. But you know that's not what I mean—"

"I know," You huffed, "I'm just saying. Change… it's inevitable. The longer you fight it, the harder it is."

Jeno nodded. "This sucks."

"It does," You agreed, taking his hand in yours. "But at least we have each other's backs, y'know?"

Something of a smile appeared on his face. You were so close to him, leaning on him, stroking his knuckles with your thumb. He hoped you couldn't hear his heart pounding in his chest. 

"We really do, huh?" His voice turned quiet, with a bit of a sleepy lull to it. He allowed his head to rest on yours. "You're so comfortable. Can I like, use you as a pillow for the rest of my life?"

You giggled. "I'll consider it on two conditions."

"Oh, you'll consider. How generous of you."

"Yes, I'll consider. Now, do you wanna hear my terms or not?" 

Jeno raised an eyebrow. "Go ahead," He said, before putting on his best Marlon Brando voice, "Make me an offer I can't refuse."

Snorting, you lifted your head off of his. "Okay. One, you finish your calculus homework here before Sunny gets home."

He pursed his lips. "Okay, I could probably do that. What's the other one?"

"Let me drive you to school for the rest of the year." 

Jeno stared at you, and you nodded, eyes wide. "Trust me, Jen. You wouldn't need to wake up so early! And plus, you can't text the guy manning the subway asking him to give you five minutes because you need to find your keys."

Jeno gnawed on the inside of his cheek. You did have a point, and to be honest, he could probably refrain from putting his feet up on your dashboard.

"Deal." 

You grinned. "Awesome," You answered, before nodding towards his backpack. "Now get to work, Einstein."

The rest of the week wasn't that bad. Yes, you were absolutely batshit insane about your truck in the morning, but he soon realized he didn't really mind. Not when it allowed you both to spend some twenty extra minutes together in the mornings, and they were spent joking around and listening to your extremely varied playlist. 

On the other hand, he was saddled with more and more homework, greater and greater expectations. The looming threat of Friday's mission rolled around, and it made Jeno feel like time was passing much too slowly but also way too quickly. There was so much on his mind. He had chemistry with you on Thursdays in the afternoon, which also meant that San was there. Which also meant that sometimes, his heightened senses would pick up on San dropping a tacky pick up line which made Jeno want to punch him in the jaw.

Finally, finally, Friday afternoon rolled around. As he bid you goodbye and promised to see you later, he tried to ignore the feeling in his stomach. The feeling that something was about to go very, very wrong. He went out on patrol, ready for Doyoung to set up the call and tell him where he needed to go. It didn’t help that there wasn’t a lot for him to do that day. Crime had seemed to slow down altogether. 

When the time finally came, and the sun was beginning to set, Doyoung rang in at about 7, telling him the location. An old warehouse near LaGuardia airport, hidden from prying eyes. Jeno made his way to the place, avoiding security cameras Doyoung warned him about, and found a place to hide. There was a hole in the warehouse roof, which allowed him to peer right into the building without being seen. It was about thirty feet from the ground.

“Why is it always old, abandoned warehouses?” Jeno grumbled. He heard Doyoung laugh quietly. 

“Beats me,” Doyoung sighed. 

And so they waited. Jeno wondered vaguely if you were still working. He wasn’t sure. They made time talking quietly, until a black SUV rolled into the warehouse. “Woah, Doyoung,” He murmured, “Hold up.”

Jeno leaned forward, but quickly realized he probably wouldn’t be able to hear what was being said. “D.R.E.A.M, activate Heightened Intelligence Protocol.”

Activating Heightened Intelligence Protocol.

The protocol allowed Jeno to use the lenses over his eyes to zoom in on specific targets, as well as use a microphone embedded in the suit to pick up audio from far away and feed it directly into his ears.

He watched as three figures got out of the car, a fourth remaining in the driver’s seat. The trio stood in front of the car, and Jeno recognized the man in the middle as the man Junmyeon had been talking about.

“Alright, there’s Henry Duke,” He said, “The one in the middle.”

 “Got it,” Doyoung replied, sounding satisfied. “Now all we have to do is wait for the other party.”

“Did Junmyeon’s sources say anything about who it would be?”

“No. They weren’t able to find that out. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Jeno’s eyes never left the man. “Do you think it’s something international?”

Doyoung sighed. “I’m not sure. If it is international, then you need to be even more careful.”

“Got it. I think—Wait, here they come.” 

A second vehicle, this one another black SUV, rolled up not too far away from the first car. The lights turned off and the engine sputtered to a stop, and four men stepped out of the vehicle.

Jeno’s stomach dropped, and of its own accord, his mouth let loose a quiet, “What the fuck,” as he registered the person leading them. 

“What?” Doyoung asked, before realizing what—who—he was looking at. “...Is that my dad?”

“I think it is,” Jeno whispered, fingertips suddenly numb. Who was he kidding? They both knew who it was. 

“So,” One of the men next to your dad said, “You show us yours, we’ll show you ours?”

Henry Duke clapped his hands together with an impish grin. “I suppose. Reagan, get the case.”

One of the two men standing beside him started off toward the trunk of the car. “It caught me off guard when I heard that the force wanted to purchase these. Almost made me wonder if this was your attempt at a sting operation.”

“What made you change your mind?” Your dad asked. Jeno swallowed at how cold he sounded. This wasn’t your dad, and it didn’t seem like Officer Kim either. This was someone Jeno had never met before. 

“Honestly, Kim?” Duke raised an eyebrow, shrugging. “It was you. Your cooperativeness and willing to feed us information, as well as your… insurance agreement. And besides, you made a very interesting point when you said that the Avengers Initiative and Park’s alum Spiderman is ruining the way the law operates around here. That type of bitterness… hard to fake.”

Your dad huffed. “We’re fucking tired of it.”

The man leaning against the car your dad had stepped out of scoffed. “If this helps us catch the little asshole, then so be it.”

Jeno frowned. “I’m not little—”

“Jeno, shut up!” Doyoung snapped. 

“—Alright, then.” The man holding the briefcase—Reagan—clicked it open, as if it were a prize reveal on The Price is Right. Five guns, all modified to hold glowing Chitauri stones were placed carefully together side by side.

“You know the basics. No radiation. Keep it away from security scanners and x-rays. They will blow up. And second of all, these are at half the price, along with the promise from the chief of police that my business won’t be touched, and will only be distributed to officers in on the operation and have agreed to turn off their body cameras when they decide to use these weapons. Should this not be a sting operation, we’ll be back here to negotiate.”

Jeno leaned forward, watching anxiously.

“Yes, sir,” Your dad answered, nodding. “We have the money here.”

“Hand it over, then.”

That was when Jeno made his mistake. He leaned forward too much, and proceeded to fall right through the hole, bringing down some scraps of the roof with him. As he tumbled through the air, the zoom on his lenses caused him to grow dizzy as he had no idea what he was looking at. He caught himself before he could fall, clumsily commanding D.R.E.A.M to go back to turn off the current protocol. His vision returned to normal, and he swung up onto a rafter holding the warehouse up.

“So, we have company.” Duke didn’t sound as amused as he had before. His face turned into a sneer. “Get him.”

In less than a second, before Jeno could say anything, five guns were pointed directly at him. He managed to swing away before any bullets could hit him. 

“Jeno, get out of there now,” Doyoung ordered. 

“What about the guns?” Jeno asked, swinging to another rafter. “They know I’m here, I might as well get them before I go—”

“No! Jeno, listen to what I’m telling you. You’ve done more than enough, and you need to let it g—”

Your dad aimed, and a bullet fired right at Jeno’s chest. For a second, he forgot that the chest area of the suit was lined with bulletproof material. While it didn’t shoot into his chest, it ricocheted right off him, and since he was in motion, it somehow caused the bullet to bounce back in the direction in which it came. 

The wind was knocked out of Jeno, but it was nothing compared to watching the bullet land in the middle of your father’s chest. On the other line, he heard Doyoung yell, followed by the sound of something falling. And then, as he made his way back towards the hole he’d fallen out of, he couldn’t rip his eyes away from the body as it crumpled to the ground. 

The others around him scrambled to get back into their respective cars. Jeno was back on the roof now, trying not to hyperventilate. “I’m sorry,” He gasped, “Do—Doyoung, I-I’m sorry, I didn’t want to—”

“Jeno, you need to get out of there, now,” Doyoung said, voice raspy. “GO!” 

So he did, and Doyoung cut off the call once he was out of the vicinity. Jeno didn’t blame him. He swung across buildings, feeling numb as he looked for the apartment complex roof where he’d decided to hide his backpack.

When he finally did, he changed in a hurry, before slumping against the wall and forcing himself to take deep breaths. 

Doyoung’s dad—your dad—was dead. And it was all his fault. 

He cried on the way down the staircase. He cried on his way to the subway. The entire time, he ignored people’s stares. Suddenly everything was too loud, and if he met someone in the eyes he’d just about break down in the middle of the station. 

As he got onto the train, Jeno thought about all of the things your dad had done for you, and for Jeno. All the times he'd taken you both to Coney Island in the summer when you were younger. The year Pokemon Go came out he took the both of you driving around in his car so you and Jeno could catch as many Pokemon as you could. 

He’d formally adopted you when you were thirteen. You were his daughter in nearly every sense of the word, regardless of blood. And now he was dead, because of a stupid mistake that Jeno had made.

What would you say if you knew? He didn’t want to know. Checking the time on his phone, he saw he’d gotten a message from you just three minutes ago.

[8:36 PM]

y/n: lemme know when ur outside!! :)

“Fuck,” He murmured, wiping his eyes. He knew he needed to stop crying before he got to your house, and he had about ten minutes before he got to his stop, and then another five minute walk to the neighborhood. He focused on taking deep breaths and taking long swigs from his water bottle in the meantime, trying to tune out the sound of other people talking and the sound of the train on the rails.

The walk was the longest five minute walk he’d ever taken. The flashing lights of convenience stores did nothing to calm him down. As the stores in his peripheral vision began transitioning into suburban homes, he felt his heart speed up again. The constant movement as he walked meant he missed his phone vibrating in his backpack as you rang his number.

After what seemed like an eternity, two familiar houses came into his line of vision, and his shoulders slumped as he spotted you on your porch, looking small and teary, curled up into a little ball. In one hand, you were clutching your phone.

His stomach twisted as he put on a confused tone, even though he knew damn well that you knew. “...Y/N?”

You stood up, running to him and burying yourself into his chest, crumpling into his arms. You would have fell over if Jeno hadn’t held both of you up. 

“Jeno,” You sobbed, “You’re n-not go-onna believe it.”

He brought a hand up to caress your hair, holding back tears of his own as he asked a question he already knew the answer to.

“Y/N, what happened?”

taglist: @decembermoonskz @itsapapisongo @lenaluvs​ @crescentjen​

#kwritersworldnet #nct angst #nct x reader #jeno x reader #jeno angst #jeno fluff #nct au #jeno au #kpop scenarios #kpop angst #kpop imagines #nct dream x reader #lee jeno x reader #my writing

[drs3x]

have we really discoursed so hard that weve circled back around to "hating men is BAD..." do u realllllly not see how saying that hating Men is Transmisogynistic is.... VERY.. QUESTIONABLE..???

no i get that its questionable which is why. Again. if id known the post was going to be seen by as many people as it was, i wouldve anticipated that some ppl wouldnt be able to follow my exact line of thinking and maybe explained a bit further

hating men for simply being men and telling yourself and others that they are inherently bad because they are men, while maybe soothing in the moment (because i understand Personally that lots of men, esp white cishet ones, are shitty and oftentimes its a result of the power imbalance in a patriarchal society), is an unhelpful line of thinking bc if you really, truly believe that men are the way they are due to their gender, you remove the motivation to hold them to higher standards, and accept that they will just be Awful Forever Due To Some Inherent Flaw In Manhood. and you’re buying into gender essentialism, which is something terfs and radfems buy into as well (as much as they Will Not Admit It). its a dogmatic and black and white way of thinking, and radfems and terfs will see you (maybe not you specifically as i dont know if You the anon are tma) doing this and youll become a target for their sympathy and eventual indoctrination, which ultimately harms trans women and transfemmes more than anyone

and gender essentialism and bioessentialism (which is DEFINITELY a core tenet of radfem ideology, i promise you) are both Essentialism, are both beliefs that there are personality traits and behaviors inherent to entire groups of people because of something arbitrary like one’s gender or the kind of body they have or once had. theyre the belief that, no matter what happens to some people, they will simply never change or break out of the expectations you have for them -- which is anti-queer because our community is Built on not meeting cisheteronormative expectations, and transphobic because Trans People Literally Change Their Genders All The Time. and if you believe that someone born one way is going to be that way forever, terfs, radfems, and other transphobes would love to agree with you. so you have to understand that if a trans or detrans person can change their gender (often multiple times in their lifetime),  their gender literally offers nothing in the way of explaining their behaviors or personality traits

i Do see how easy itd be to twist my words into “op thinks that trans women arent women” but terfs and radfems really do look for and stick around people who totally and unequivocally hate all men on the basis that they are men, and the current trend in Queer Humor(tm) ive been seeing where people drag on men for the simple fact that they Are Men is. worrisome. it worries me. i get that theyre jokes but i cant find them funny because ik some people are internalizing that shit without thinking critically abt it first, about who could be telling these jokes or who could be listening for whoever laughs the loudest at them

#long post #before all this i was a Small Blog and the most notes i would expect on a vent post like that would be like. 10. maybe 15 at the very most #most of which would come from ppl i know personally and have talked w/ about gender before #so i figured they would connect the same dots i was connecting #and so i skipped a Lot of steps between point a ('gender essentialism harmful') and point b ('tma people are harmed by this') #ik i dont owe every stranger online an explanation but. u seem worried. i am also worried. probably about the same thing #and i dont want you to feel unsafe bc of a misunderstanding #terf m #transmisogyny m #transphobia m

[moons-and-stars-and-shit]

hi !! can I please get a 🍰?

i just came across of you writing and it is so cute !! (´-﹏-`；) every post made me feel all warm & fuzzy inside ~ please feel free to totally ignore this if this isn't the proper way to ask or if you already closed your request (also I'm sorry if you already closed your request I didn't noticed) . Also sorry if this has any grammatical errors or if the descriptions don't make sense, english isn't my first language.

so, uhm, to begin my name is elliot (she/her) I'm 5'4, I'm from argentina (south america) i speak spanish & english (among other languages) idk how much I'm supposed to put on here so I'm just going to describe myself as redacted as possible. (Don't know if this is necessary but I'm jewish ¿) ^_________^

I have short brown wavy hair, just a couple of centimeters below my ears, i have bangs, I'm very pale ¿ not chubby but also not skinny average if i may say so. My fashion style changes from time to time but i usually wear clothing in the range of black to white, also sometimes I like trying whatever aesthetic is going around at the time.

Personality wise I'm pretty calm at first, i'm not very good with getting to know new people so I try to be as quite as possible but once I get comfortable i tend to be very loud, i like making my friends laugh since i think that's the most sincere way of knowing they talk to me because they like me. I would say I'm like the mom friend/therapist friend since i really like helping and listening people talk. I love having deep conversations with friends/loved ones, they give me this sense of connection nothing else can give me. I am very blunt and it usually comes off as rude but i try to sugar-coat my words as much as possible.

And while I very much love everyone who is friends with me I have a very hard time showing it and/or showing my empathy for them (one of the reasons as to why I'm not good with meeting new people) but i try to become a better version of me day to day.

What i look in a person is someone who can understand me and my boundaries, since I'm germophobic PDA isn't really something that i enjoy doing but with time i can get myself around to it. Someone whom I can trust enough to be emotionally open with and vice versa. Talkative or not doesn't matter to me. My love language is acts of service. ^_________^

I hope you have a really amazing day ! ! remember to drink water and eat something yummy (*＾3＾)/～♡ don't be too harsh on yourself and keep in mind that many people love you, ba-bye ! ╰(⸝⸝⸝´꒳`⸝⸝⸝)╯

🍰 for @vvanteffect

Romantic Matchup

Sakusa Kiyoomi

How yall met

You guys met during the All-Japan Youth Training Camp

(You were a partial manager from Nekoma during that time)

Shockingly enough he actually approached you

Granted his cousin was forcing him to socialize but that's not important

He had noticed how you tended to stay away from other people or how when you did talk to someone it was usually a very short conversation

Basically you seemed like the least contaminated person he could talk to so he just went for it

Right away he noticed how blunt you were

Like he would ask you a question adn the longest answer you would give him was about a sentence

“Hey how are you”

“Good”

“Uh so what school are you from”

“Nekoma”

You get what i'm saying

But honestly he didn't really care he just kept talking to you

And the longer he talked to you the longer your responses would get

You guys spent the rest of camp together

And when it was time to go home you exchanged numbers so you could stay in contact

Your schools weren't too far from each other so you guys would see each other in person when you were both free

And well he ended up falling for you

What they love about you

Of course he loves that your also a partial germaphobe

It makes it easier for him to be around you knowing that you try your best to stay clean

He loves how simple you are

From the clothes you wear

To how you talk to other people

He tends to over analize if people are to complicated

But with you everything is just short and sweet

He loves how good of a listener you are

Like if he's had a bad day he can just call you and rant about it

And not only do you listen

But you also help him solve his problems

This next one isn't really something he loves more like something he's proud of

He's very proud that he's gained enough of your trust for you to talk to him

Like full blown conversations

Your guys convos have come a long way from the very first conversation you had

He's just happy that you trust him enough to talk to him

What you love about them

You love that he respects your boundaries

Let's be honest here

Mans isn't really into PDA either

Like come on

LOOK who were talking about here

But that's not the only boundary he respects

He respects All of your boundaries

Like all you have to do is tell him you don't like something and he'll stop

You love how he can handle your bluntness and not get offended

Honestly when you look back on how you met him

Your shocked that he even kept talking to you

That whole training camp people would keep on trying to talk to you

But then leave after a short while because you were being blunt and they took it the wrong way

But not Sakusa

He kept on talking to you even when you were acting pretty cold

And your very appreciative about that

Favorite things to do together

Ok so even though you live semi close together

It's not like your neighbors

So his favorite thing to do with you is to just facetime you and talk about each others days

And when you guys are able to get together

He prefers that you both just stay inside for the most part

So you do just that

Usually your in person hangouts include playing board games, reading,or watching movies together

And if you guys decide to go out

He makes you wear a mask the whole time

And you guys will usually just take a walk at a park or on the beach

Somewhere where theres not a lot of people yk

Random Hc

He has bought you two matching masks

His homescreen on his phone is a picture of you that he took while facetime you

Once you guys were in public and he accidently gave you a kiss while both of your masks were on

And now thats just became a norm for you two

You guys have these matching pajamas

Friendship Matchup

Kuroo Tetsurou

How yall met

You are Nekomas manager

And since kuroo was the captain you worked very closely with him

Which eventually made a friendship bloom

Why you became friends

He kind of saw you as a compitition if that makes sense??

Like when he first met you it's almost like you didn't want to talk to him

Which couldn't be true because he's awesome!

Sure you are kuroo

Anyways kenma had made some backhand comment on how some people just dont wanna talk to him

And kuroo was like 🧐

So he made it his goal to befriend you

It started with him having basic conversation with you everyday

Then it turned into him talking to you during the school day

Which then turned into him inviting you to hand out after school

Eventually you guys just became besties

What yall love about each other

He loves how straightforward you are

Like if you don't like something youll say it

If someones ticking you off you'll tell them

Even though your bluntness is something you get insecure about sometimes

He thinks it's one of your best traits

He also loves that you are bilingual

It makes for a good time when your ranting about something because your languages will start to blend

And if your really mad you'll just switch to spanish and just start ranting

And even though he can't understand a word your saying

He just smile and nods till your done

You love how deep your conversations can get

Like he'll play along with whatever deep topic you talk about

“What's the meaning of life”

“I would say its to give life a meaning”

Yeah y'all talked about that for HOURS

You also like how helpful he is

If your ever having a hard time managing the team he'll always offer a helping hand

And if your ever struggling with schoolwork he's always there to help you

Random Hc

He was very shocked when you and Sakusa started dating

He threatened to kick his ass if he ever broke up with you

Hes tried to learn spanish but gave up after a week

But he did learn how to say all the cuss words in spanish

After he befriended you he rubbed it in kenmas face

Kenma was just like 😐 ok

But kuroo took satisfaction in his victory

You really had kuroo thinking for a whole day when you asked him

Did the color orange come before the fruit? Or is it vice versa?

Still hasn't come up with an answer to that question

#haikyuu!! #haikyu x reader #haikyuu fandom #haikyuu fluff #haikyuu x y/n #haikyuu hcs #haikyuu matchups #sakusa hcs #sakusa x reader #sakusa kiyoomi #sakusa x y/n #kuroo headcanons #kuroo tetsuro x reader #kuroo hcs #kuroo x y/n #kuroo tetsurō

[fir-freund]

Hey, Here’s That Mary Fic I Was Talking About

Hi to all my new followers and mutuals. Sorry to all my new followers and mutuals.

I fully expect people to not be interested in this or get some sort of backlash for it. But also, like I stated up front, it’s fully self indulgent; I mostly wrote this for myself. Even then, in a fandom where it’s weirdly common to find fanfics that focus on “dubious consent”, *ncest, c*rpse *buse, the general fetishization of mlm relationships, and so much more, this comparatively isn’t that bad.

[not gonna tag this too much, don’t worry. Not gonna clog up the main tags or whatever.]

Fic and everything under the read more 🤙🏾

+Reader x Mary Goore fluff fic+

Mary Goore is your partner. While publicly very confident and self assured, Mary practices age regression in private as a way to help himself cope when things become too stressfull [he regresses to about 4-7, ‘big kid’ age]. You, his partner and caretaker, come home to find Mary had a less than superb day, and work to help him feel better; Enjoy and I’m sorry ✌🏾

You knew what to expect as you climbed up the steep steps of the apartment building.

Not even an hour ago, Mary sent you a text. It was short and simple, a combination of the bat and baby bottle emojis that you two agreed on in advance for situations like these. It always made you smile and chuckle to yourself, remembering his slight protest,

“Is the bottle necessary? I’m notta fuckin’ baby,” his words were soft but still very pointed. Whatever true irritation he may have been feeling was thrown off by the way he seemed to insist on looking down and fussing with the hem of your shirt, teeth worrying his bottom lip.

Ever so gently, you reached over, thumb gracing over his lip to pull it free of his teeth’s harassment before cupping his cheek; his eyes almost instantly darted up to meet your face. “I know Mare, but it helps me know when you need me, I’d like to be there for you.” The comment was simple, but enough for him to soften and give a quiet, but sweet and understanding ‘okay’.

“Besides,” you added, his cheek still resting in your palm, “even if you are a big boy, you’re still my little baby bat!” This time, Mary met your remark with a laugh, his cheeks flushing a faint pink in the process as the last signs of disagreement left him.

You managed to find your key and work open the locked door by the time you finished replaying the events in your head, taking extra care to keep the squeaking of the doors hinges to a minimum, and shed your thick winter coat and boots with as little noise as possible. It took you a moment to truly shake off the cold and get some sense of warmth back into your hands. Despite the many thick layers you had worn, some cold still managed to find a way to creep under everything and settle into your bones. Thankfully, the small but still sizable flat was warm enough; Mary must have turned the heat on at some point.

The faint sound of the living room’s tv was a giveaway to where your partner was situated. There on the couch, Mary sat, knees pulled up to his chest and eyes studying the screen. He seemed comfortable from the peek of him you had gotten standing in the doorframe and looking him over. He was engulfed in a sweater you had gotten him purposefully a few sizes too big, bats, grinning skulls, and spider webs covering the garment, fleece socks patterned with the titular red and gray stripes of Freddy Krueger's sweater keeping his feet warm as he idly twiddled his toes. Looking at his face, his eyes were glassy and red, brow ever so slightly knitted together; he had been crying.

Mary noticed you before you could think to say anything or make your way over to him without the movements being too sudden and while still very clearly upset, his face lit up, brow line softening and eyes getting big.

“Hey little lamb,” your voice stays steady and sweet as you meander over to the couch and seat yourself next to Mary, moving to rub a reassuring hand in broad circles over his back. Even through the sweater you could feel the warmth he was radiating; he must have been sitting there for a while.

Without hesitating, Mary moved from his bunched up position, shifting to lay against the worn sofa, arms wrapping around your midsection and face buried into your stomach.

“Hi..,” the words were mumbled and you could feel the syllables rumble through you. You pulled him in closer, rubbing at his back again and watching him.

The two of you sat like this for a while. The only real sound being the chatter and noise of the tv, volume just low enough to offer some sense of silence. You spoke up,

“Can you tell me what’s wrong, Mary?”

A grumble in response, his face nestling deeper into your midsection.

“Remember we talked about using our words when we’re upset. Like a big boy, right?” Your voice stayed level while holding hints of sternness, hand still soothing over him.

There was a moment where he was silent, before giving a grumbled ‘yeah’, and rolling over just enough that you could see his face; while nowhere near crying again, he still looked hurt.

You reassure him, “just talk when you’re ready.” And he does. It takes another moment of sitting in relative silence, but eventually he speaks, voice low and rough with the strain of tears. “Practice was really bad today Nothing sounded right and the equipment started actin’ all weird, we couldn’t get it fixed right,” he pauses as he collects his thoughts. “Then I wanted to try writin’ some new stuff to work with later, but none of it was good! It was dumb, none of it made sense!”

As Mary went over everything bothering him, you patiently listened, nodding in understanding in some places and frowning along with him in others. It wasn’t much. Nowhere near as awful as the full on fist fights and screaming matches you can recall him having told you about through a storm of grinding teeth and cuss words, but that didn’t take away from him feeling hurt now. Be it some mild irritant, or something larger and ‘world ending’, you liked to be there for Mary and help him work through it.

You didn’t respond right away, mostly to give Mary the opportunity to vent any further. It showed in his face that there was something more he wanted to say, but didn’t; not that the look of strained thought on his face was any surprise to you. Words didn’t seem to come to him so easily when he was like this.

“Is that all, little lamb?”

He nodded, face now fully looking up at you.

The slight frown on your face could be heard in your words, sympathy and reassurance peppered throughout to drive the point home. “I’m sorry to hear all that, Mare. It’s always the worst when the day doesn’t workout right.”

Another affirming nod of his head, expression now more of an angry pout, than that of someone who was distraught or close to tears. Mary’s face, pale save for the bright flush in his cheeks, now showed the telltale signs that he was angry more than anything; brow knitted together, jaw tight and teeth chewing at his inner lip as he looked down at his hands.

“Baby bat, look at me,” it was more of a command than a suggestion, but the way you gently grabbed his chin, placing your thumb against his bottom lip to coax his clenched jaw loose, seemed to ensure he didn’t fuss. Looking into those large, dull green eyes, as they stared up at you, the hand at his chin moved to gently hold his cheek; Mary didn’t hesitate to lean into your touch.

“I know today’s been very, very crummy. But the day is done. You’re home, you’re with me, and you know I love you, right?”

“Mhm..”

“Watch, I promise you tomorrow is gonna be a thousand times better! You’re gonna get so much done tomorrow, I know it. And when I come home you’re gonna be sooooo excited to show me what you’ve been working on, youll barely even be able to tell me about it!” With every little word of reassurance, Mary’s expression grew softer and softer, until showing the faintest hint of a smile and laughter. The bits of joy and calm starting to peek through were only made stronger as you pulled him in close, falling into a storm of kisses as your lips met any exposed skin they could find. It wasn’t long until he was in a fit of giggling and squirming, ears now tinted the same shade of pink as his cheeks.

Finally stopping the incursion of kisses, Mary now sat in your lap more comfortably, head against your shoulder and hand holding yours.

“I love you,” he said, still as quiet as when he first spoke, but nowhere near as demure.

“I love you too, baby bat.”

The rest of the night carried on like this, the two of you cuddled together on the couch until you both dozed off, the unmistakable synths of R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour serving as a lullaby.

#oak writes things #Mary Goore x reader #mary goore #Mary goore fanfic #fluff #agere #ask to tag

[thoughts-of-the-unheard]

oh nothing in a book has ever made me as angry as fucking pissed off as i am now about the end of chain of iron and i have a lot to say on it (i have more to say on the last few chapters of chain of iron than i did on the entirety of the folk of the air series)

ill start with being glad lucie was able to raise jesse but definite reylo vibes there and im ignoring the end of that so watch me ignore if lucie dies ill be like yea ya know shes just,,, somewhere else but i hated how many secrets she kept from fucking everyone i mean she didnt tell a single person the whole truth of anything shes got secrets on top of secrets and thats not good but hey matthews drinking isnt good either and no one but the lucie and cordelia ever really say anything about that so theres that and im not counting james’ you dont love anyone as much as you love that bottle or w/e he said bc that wasnt talking to him to try to help and get him to stop drinking that was just a hit bc they were fighting and i hate that i hate that they were fighting bc they wouldnt have been if it wasnt for that fucking bracelet and which has caused so many fucking problems that i could cry in indignation bc its not its not fucking fair james spent the last what three years of his life in a fog not being able to feel and not being able to notice his parabatai slowly spiraling into a drunken depression from something thats not his fault at all i mean yes it is his fault that his mother took the potion but it is not his fault that the baby died thats no ones fault but whoever sold him the potion and yea he shouldnt have bought it in the first place but he was kid and he thought that was the only way he could get the truth and its unfair its fucking unfair and alistair god alistair he knows what he did in school was wrong but he saw it as the only way and now hes trying to make up for it and apologise and be a better fucking person and thomas sees that and thomas loves him for that and alistair wont let himself be loved and its not fair and anna oh anna talk about not letting yourself be loved she put on such a good front she did but she shouldnt have ariadne loves her and wants to be with her fully with her but anna has to understand the stigma of that and why ariadne cant come out yet hell thats still a problem today but we wont get into that because anna clearly loves ariadne but shes too afraid of getting hurt again and frankly she should just go for it i mean so what if you get hurt again at least youll finally feel something because i know she feels nothing for all those other girls i know theyre just replacements for ariadne and it isnt fair and speaking    of   replacements    fucking grace fuck grace but fucking grace just casually destroying james life listen i dont give a shit how she grew up i couldnt care less about how tatiana treated her and how scared she was of her because if shed just fucking helped then she wouldnt have to worry about a damn thing from tatiana i mean theres a number of things grace couldve done she couldve told the merry thieves everything and they couldve defeated belial like they are now and then no one would be around to help tatiana and grace couldve told anyone in the clave about all of tatianas shit and then they wouldnt have underestimated her and she wouldve been in a proper prison and thus unable to escape so damn easily and thus not fucking able to get to grace okay shes a fucking idiot and i hate her and i hate reading about her and im fucking disappointed in her for not taking the damn bracelet off okay i had very fucking low standards for her but i hoped she would take the bracelet off and at the very least i thought she could fucking not manipulate him further like god damn girl james is a much nicer and understanding person than i am and he would try to protect her from tatiana if he knew that grace was being threatened by her if grace took the bracelet off and told him the truth he would help her i fully believe that but since he had to find out on his own he was furious as he should be but i dont think he had to be nice to her when she showed up at the end there i mean i wouldve just yanked her in the house and started yelling at her right there fuck pretending his still under that enchantment fuck talking to her in private okay id chew her out in the entryway its not like cordelia doesnt need to know she fucking does and i think her finding out by overhearing james arguing with grace is actually a fantastic way to find out because she gets to hear everything all of what james feels and all of what grace did completely unfiltered not that james would try to hide it from her but hed definitely try to soften the blow and i just think she needs to hear the whole truth and AND i really fucking hate when characters overhear only part of something and assume the worst and run away its so common and i hate it so much and i hate how she ran to matthews because i knew it was going to happen and i knew matthew was in love with her and that it was already straining their bond because no one fucking realised that james was madly fucking in love with cordelia because of that fucking bracelet have i mentioned have i mentioned how much that bracelet pisses me off i dont think i have lets get into it so how james was unable to feel properly for three years and how his head was so foggy he was unable to think properly too and how because of that he missed matthew becoming a drunk and how the merry thieves look to james as their leader so if james isnt saying anything about it then there must not be anything to say and how james was already in love with cordelia before the bracelet and thats part of why grace couldnt control him and how he loved her for years how he was in love with her for years how no one knew this not even him because everyone thought he was in love with grace how cordelia was in love with him but thought he was in love with grace how cordelia got married to him knowing she was in love with him and thinking he was in love with someone else how she could tell he wanted her but thinking he just wanted her body and that he was still in love with grace how she’d rather have some of him than none of him at all how he picked out everything in their house with cordelia in mind how he remembered that she loves chess and she never thought he would how he learned a whole other language for her how he immediately checks on her after every battle how everyone, especially cordelia, just writes all this off as who knows what because he cant be in love with cordelia if hes in love with grace and hes obviously in love with grace how no one could ever notice there was something wrong because they were feeling the effects too how james was so in love with cordelia that that love unintentionally broke an enchantment made specifically for james by a Prince Of Hell one of the most powerful beings the entire species will ever meet and i think that covers the gracelet situation but i keep thinking of the scene where the bracelet cracks when grace first went to curzon street and kissed james and james’ mind literally thinking it was cordelia because who else would he be kissing and afterward grace saying ‘i dont know who you think you were kissing, james herondale, but it wasnt me’ and im like damn right bitch get fucked but back to cordelia running to matthews okay i know she didnt know matthew was in love with her so she wasnt doing anything wrong going to him but i kept thinking they were going to kiss or something because we all know matthews in love with her and there were a bunch of hints that cordelia might be attracted to matthew and she was upset about james and i just kept thinking something bad would happen and i was right but shit i didnt think id be like that i had no idea matthew was leaving for paris and even less of an idea that cordelia would join him and the thing is i cant even be mad i cant blame her i would probably do the same thing hell id probably ask to go with and im very proud of her for saying she’d go If matthew stops drinking i really appreicate that and i hope he gets better but the all those misses how james left the house only minutes after cordelia and arrived at matthews only minutes after they left and how he could see them at the train station could see them getting on the train and leaving and leaving him behind because his sister is missing and he shouldve ran and caught them and begged them to stay if not just to help find lucie because they both think of lucie as a sister and they absolutely wouldve stayed to help her and then there would be the chance for james to explain the gracelet situation and everything would be fine it would fine eventually and everything would be okay but NO and ive said a lot but i havent even mentioned cordelia being a paladin for fucking lilith yet where did that come from i was not expecting that ill tell ya see i thought it was odd that wayland the smith would still be alive and that it wasnt mentioned in any of the other books and i thought it was odd that some apparently god-like blacksmith would be wearing such an elegant jeweled necklace and i thought it was odd that magnus would be back from the spiral labyrinth for just a day and would be staying with hypatia instead of ya know his own place but shit id never have put it together as one person let alone lilith and i cant say it came out of nowhere because it said that edom used to be liliths so it would make sense that she would want belial gone so she could have it back but still that was unexpected but im not disappointed i mean im obviously upset that cordelia is now pledged to the mother of demons and feels like she cant even touch a weapon speaking of which what did she do with cortana where did she put it she said she dealt with it which makes me nervous but we know she couldnt have broken it or anything a) because i dont think she physically can and b) emma has cortana later but i think cordelia should keep cortana close since its the only thing that can mortally would belial and apparently he only needs one more before something happens im guessing before hes like gone gone so she definitely needs cortana and lilith wants her to kill belial so i think she should and if shes stuck as liliths paladin after that and never wants to touch a weapon again so be it but get rid of belial first ya know anyway i think there was something else i wanted to say but i cant remember so if you read all of this holy shit im sorry thats a lot i hope it was entertaining at least and i hope i didnt also get you pissed off

#chain of iron spoilers #chain of iron #coi #choi #the last hours #tlh #lucie herondale #jesse blackthorn #lucie x jesse #secrets #matthew fairchild #cordelia carstairs #cordelia herondale #james herondale #james x cordelia #drinking #the gracelet #the bracelet situation #parabatai #alistair carstairs #thomas lightwood #alistair x thomas #anna lightwood #ariadne bridgestock #anna x ariadne #grace blackthorn #tatiana blackthorn #belial #prince of hell #enchantment

[undertaker1827]

JWJWNAKAAN PROMT 1 AND 4 WITH GRELL AND HER S/O ANS HER S/O JUST WATCHED GRELL REAP THEIR BEST FRIENDS SOUL AND GRELL SEES THEM WATCHING AND IS LIKE SHIT FORGOT TO SAY IM A REAPER!!1!1!1 I LOVE UR WRITING AND I KNOW YOULL DO GOOD WITH IT 💕💕 HOPE UR STAYING SAFE AND DRINKING PLENTY OF WATER

I am drinking plenty of water, I hope you are too! Thank you and I’m glad you enjoy my writing, and I’m so sorry this took me so long, I hope you didn’t think I’d forgotten you!!

Hope you all enjoy and have a look at my masterlist?

-

Today was going to be a good day. You had woken up early with the intent to get up and get out. It was summer, it was a rare occasion in which the sun was beaming down over London and it was overall the perfect day for your plans. More accurately the plans for you and you best friend. Today had been in the works for a long time, keeping you both sustained through cold days and times where the day had not been exactly right. You were going to meet each other at London Liverpool Street station, then grab the tube to the centre of the city. Breakfast was going to be somewhere along the banks of the Thames, probably sandwiches and a good, strong cup of coffee each. Then the day would truly begin. You were going to hit all of the major tourist destinations, despite having already been to many of them previously. You planned to visit some of the on location shoots of your favourite show, purely for the sake of taking pictures and being able to prove you had in fact been there. You were going Asian for lunch, though where more specifically you had not yet decided, and all out fancy for dinner. And if you didn’t get home until the early hours of the next morning, who was going to stop you? Especially given that your friend hadn’t been feeling so well recently. This was bound to list their spirits.

It was still early when you ran though droves of commuters at Liverpool Street, waving your travel coffee cup in greeting. Your friend lifted a hand in return, though even from a distance you could see they looked a bit pale.

“Hey, you alright?” you asked, a little breathless from having moved so quickly. They explained they had felt quite ill for the last few days, but absolutely rebutted your attempts at going home and postponing the day out. You had been planning it for too long, they said, and really, you were excited enough to agree. You were making your way along the South side of London’s great river, a quitter spot and certainly not on the average tourist information sheet, but it was very close to an on location shooting site. It was really just a case of finding the exact place…

“There!” You called out suddenly, briefly glancing over your shoulder to beckon your friend and then running full pelt, thrilled at your discovery. In your excitement, you failed to see your friend starting to lean heavily on a black fence, nor did you see them collapse to their knees and finally fall to the ground. Location confirmed, you turned to speak to your friend, only to find they were not there. Calling their name apparently did nothing either. Becoming increasingly concerned, you quickly retraced your steps, only to hear an achingly familiar voice speaking clearly from around the corner. A voice belonging to someone who claimed she was too busy with work to go out with you the Friday just passed. Your steps carried you forwards until you could see crimson flooding the now grey, drab street. So focused were you on the explosion of colour that you didn’t see what she was standing over.

“…August 1995, died July 18th, 2019 aged 24 years. Heart attack. No notes of interest.” With that you watched as your lover, your crimson Grell yanked a chainsaw out of the lifeless body of your best friend, having placed a stamp in a book and returned both to the pockets of her coat. “Apologies darling, you truly were so young. But there such is life, yes? Now I have to-“

“Grell?!” The scream ripped through your throat before you had time to second guess it. “What the hell have you done?!” Grell flew around to face you, coat flaring out to frame her body and hair whipping around her head, the bloody chainsaw held out to the side with a strength you hadn’t know she possessed. You were knelt on the ground by your best friend in seconds, holding their hand and whispering to them, illogically trying to get a response, any response. Focused as you were on their body, you hadn’t seen Grell’s eyes widen at the sound of your voice, nor had you noticed the shock passing over her features or the realisation adorning it not a moment later.

“I never told you...” Grell breathed, amazed by her own carelessness regarding someone she cared so much about.

“Never told me what?” You choked out, looking up through the mist coating you vision. “Never told me what?!” Grell’s typically concerned look faded to something much softer, uncharacteristic of her outside of home. A quiet, sad air passed over her.

“That I’m a reaper.” You felt sick. You felt so sick.

“You just murdered my best friend and now you’re trying to play games with my mind? What the hell!”

“Y/N...” Gasping for air that didn’t want to come, you tried to push back your nausea, tears running down your cheeks and shaking your head. “Please, I know it was careless of me I just never thought - look it’s a lot to take in, I understand. But please listen to me. Look! My To-Die list, dispatch give me a new one every day. Y/N look!” She was desperate, you could see that. But even as you took the leather bound note book and glanced over your friend’s entry, you absolutely refused. This was utter madness. You trusted Grell, you were supposed to be able to trust her!

You threw the book back at her, uncaring as to whether she caught it or not. But when you turned back to the body laying next to you, your fractured heart broke to see someone already moving them. Eyes widening, you shook your head frantically and stumbled to your feet clumsily following after a man dressed all in black. He had a hearse pulled over in a tiny backstreet opposite to where they had been killed and he appeared to be taking them to it. He had already laid them inside by the time you got there.

“W-wait, please,” you whispered, emotion overwhelming your voice as you all but pushed past the stranger. “That’s my friend. That’s-”

You had almost reached their shoulder as a hand closed around your wrist, gentle but firm and strikingly cold.

“Come away, now,” the man murmured quietly, sliver bangs covering most of his face but his mere presence somehow calming.

“Undertaker,” Grell warned from over your shoulder, grip on her weapon tightening. ‘Undertaker’ raised a placating hand, carefully extracting yours from his hearse and starting to lead you back to Grell. When you realised this, you dug your heels in almost immediately.

“No. Don’t, she’s a murderer, she killed them!” You pointed behind you, trying to get this man to understand what had happened. Only he saw Grell’s face fall into despair.

“She’s not.” You paused in your protestations, raising the wrist he was still holding between you. What? “What she told you is true, she’s a grim reaper. They harvest the souls of the dead, they do not actively kill them. I can only assume it never occurred to her that she should tell you.” You turned, looking from Grell to Undertaker and back again.

“Y/N it’s true, I swear it,” she murmured, expression pained.

“Did you never notice her eyes?” Grell frowned, and you both moved to face Undertaker. “You must have, surely.” You moved to run a hand through your hair.

“Of course I noticed, I just... I thought the thing about chartreuse phosphorescent eyes was just a legend. I never realised, I never knew it was real!” Undertaker nodded.

“Understandable. I will have to go now, though. A fresh stiff always attracts too much attention.” His hand raised to silence your words before you had a chance to say them. “You’ll be able to see them again, just not right away. I’ve got my own job to think about.”

You and Grell stood in silence as the hearse drove away. It took you a while, but you eventually mustered up the courage to turn around, grabbing her elbow to make her walk with you and then quickly dropping it again.

“Will you explain? Please?”

“Of course,” she whispered. “As both myself and Undertaker already said, I’m a reaper. I only collect people’s souls when they die, I don’t kill them. It was her time.” Hands stuffed into your pockets, you glanced over to the river you were now walking besides.

“Could I have done anything?” Grell gave a small, sad shake of her head. You nodded in return. After another 10 minutes of silence, she spoke again.

“Can I do something? What do you need?” You inhaled deeply.

“I want to go home,” you started. “I don’t want to be alone,” was added more quietly on to the end.

“Hold onto my arm?” You glanced up at Grell, weighing up your options for a moment before deciding what the hell and then doing just that. The next thing you knew you were standing back in your apartment. Your incredulity was met by the reaper explaining a form of portalling was also something they could do. She looked at you calmly, silently asking what else you needed.

“Please just hold me?”

Grell nodded, dropping the chainsaw - which she had explained was actually a death scyth - and walking towards you, proceeding to sweep her arm beneath your legs then carry you to an armchair, sitting comfortably with you curled into her. Head resting on her shoulder and eyes slightly glazed, she drew gentle patterns along your back.

“Thank you.” It came out as a hushed whisper. Grell shook her head, squeezing you tightly to her.

“I’m so sorry.” You just nodded, squeezing your eyes tightly shut and trying to make sense of everything. You thought it would take a while.

#black butler #black butler grell #black butler grell x reader #black butler grell sutcliff #grell #grell sutcliff #grell sutcliff x reader #grell x reader #female grell #black butker x reader #black butler reader inserts #kuroshitsuji #kuroshitsuji x reader

[onionjulius]

[...]

For all the hands we’ve wrung dry over it in recent elections, electability isn’t a thing you can measure. It’s subjective, not objective — which is why Sanders isn’t the only candidate whose persona can be twisted one way to fit a narrative of unelectability, and another to tell a story of certain success. (Sen. Elizabeth Warren can attest to that.)

Political scientists study electability, but electability ain’t no science. Instead, researchers say, it’s basically a layer of ex post facto rationalization that we slather over a stack of psychological biases, media influence and self-fulfilling poll prophecies. It’s not bullshit, exactly; some people really are more likely to be elected than others. But the reasons behind it, and the ability to make assumptions based on it, well …

“[Electability] is this vague, floppy concept,” said Nichole Bauer, a professor of political communication at Louisiana State University. “We don’t know who is electable until someone is elected.”

“I’m not sure I’m who you want to talk to,” said Julie Brown of West Des Moines, arching her eyebrows and flashing the Elizabeth Warren button hidden under the flap of her canvas purse. She came to the Sanders rally with her teenage daughter, curious to understand why he was polling better than her favored candidate. As Sanders proxies worked the crowd, we huddled against a wall, talking about the ways electability and psychological biases overlap. “I think he is electable and that frustrates me,” she said. “It frustrates the female inside me. If Elizabeth Warren had had a heart attack, they would have put her six feet under.”

Determining who is electable inevitably pits candidates against each other, especially in an election year when the top priority for primary voters — by a long shot — is nominating someone who can take down the sitting president. Brown is a voter who sees “electability” as basically a reflection of whether a candidate can clear the hurdles presented by the electorate’s prejudices.

Months of talking about the primary — and wondering whether candidates will eventually win the general election — has made electability a hot buzzword of the 2020 election. But, scientists say, we’ve not put as much work into clearly establishing what it is.

When physicists suspect a thing exists, but can’t observe it directly, they start studying the stuff around it. You can’t see the particles, you can’t look at the black hole, but you can see what happens when they crash into something else. And that’s basically what political scientists have ended up doing with electability. To understand it better, researchers have looked at a couple of different kinds of social collisions: What voters like in a politician, and what those voters think other people like.

And, in that way, Julie Brown isn’t wrong about electability and bias, Bauer told me. Social scientists do use voters’ biases to understand what electability is and what it might look like.

[...] 

So it’s fair to say that our notion of electability is, at some level, related to our individual knee-jerk social biases — things like the color of a person’s skin, or the way they present their gender to the world. We take those ingredients and we make assumptions about that person. We make assumptions about what other people might think about that person. We make assumptions about what researchers want us to say when they ask about our biases. We make a stew — reactions and reactions to reactions. It’s virtually impossible to avoid bias in perceptions of electability, said Alan Abramowitz, professor of political science at Emory University. “Just about anything that affects how you feel about a candidate could affect assessment of electability,” he said.

Media narratives, in turn, often prey on these biases, which only makes them stronger. In lifting up electability as a marker of fitness, we’ve inadvertently created a system that caters to whatever our imagined lowest common denominator might be. You might want to vote for a black, female candidate, goes the narrative … but other voters are racist and sexist and so you can’t.

Because, of course, electability isn’t just about individual feelings.

When voters like Julie Brown and Brooks Vander Kopsa talk about whether Bernie Sanders is electable, they aren’t really talking about their own feelings. They’re talking about what they think other people feel, which is where polls come in.

“The average person knows a little about politics, but not a ton,” Stephen Utych, a professor of political science at Boise State University, said. And voters use polls as a source of information to fill in the gaps. “If I’m a Republican and other Republicans don’t like this person, I don’t know what it is, but there must be something wrong with them,” Utych said. We American voters really like to believe we’re independent, Kam agreed, but the reality is that we take a lot of cues from the herd.

But polls can become a bit of an ouroboros. Kam and Utych’s 2014 study found that candidates who were behind in the polls were rated less favorably by voters — and voters were less interested in seeking out information about those candidates.

The interaction of polls and media becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy, Abramowitz and Utych both said. And candidates can shift the perception of how electable they are by striking back at the media and crafting their own narratives. In a 2018 study, the share of voters who, after reading a candidate’s defense of their own electability, were willing to think the candidate could win the election more than doubled, rising from 15 percent to nearly 34 percent.

This early in the election season, there’s still an opportunity to change the narrative – to grasp electability out of the jaws of defeat. And that’s the paradox that leads candidates like Sanders to spend months traversing the early primary states – breakfast to breakfast, handshake to handshake. Winning Iowa allowed Barack Obama to craft a narrative of electability around himself in 2008. Conversely, Bill Clinton lost Iowa and took second place in New Hampshire in 1992. But, from that, his campaign was able to spin a narrative of being the “comeback kid”, said Seth McKee, a professor of political science at Texas Tech University. “I think Iowa and New Hampshire matter so much in how the media portray the horse race after the votes have been cast,” he told me.

But building those narratives and harnessing those horses are dependent on the idea that voters have a good idea of what other voters want, or what other people’s deal breakers might be. And the psychology gets very tricky here. Frankly, experts said, voters aren’t great at knowing what’s going on in their own heads, let alone those of strangers.

[...] 

Then there’s the issue that electability is not a fixed idea. What makes a candidate likable to the nation, as a whole, is in flux — tracking, experts say, with hardening partisan lines.

And voters see it, too. James Muhammad, a Californian visiting Iowa, was one of the other people I spoke to at the Sanders rally. When I asked him about electability, he just laughed. “Was Trump electable?” he said.

That’s a question academics are also asking. And it’s one that’s deeply tied up in attempts to understand what electability looks like to Democrats now. From what we can see in research on congressional races, which are more numerous, there’s something about electability that is shifting. Something fundamental.

“I think there is an idea in the media of a centrist, usually white, not necessarily college educated voter who is the one at play and that probably has influenced the way the media is covering it,” said Joshua Darr, a FiveThirtyEight contributor and professor of political science at Louisiana State University. That assumption of the power of the centrist voter is, to some extent, evidence based. Historically, being moderate and appealing to centrist voters was a great way to win congressional elections, Utych and Abramowitz both told me. But that’s been changing. Abramowitz’s analysis of the 2018 House elections turned up evidence that an incumbent candidate’s past voting record — whether they were more moderate or not — didn’t really make much of a difference in whether they won or lost, regardless of party. What’s more, he told me, the number of moderate members in Congress has been falling for decades. Forty-eight percent of the 95th Congress (1977-79) fell within the moderate range of ideology,1 compared to just 16 percent of the 115th Congress (2017-19), Abramowitz found.

Ideologues are elected more often than they used to be. Outsiders are elected more often, too. And the percentage of true swing voters is shrinking, Utych said. So does that mean someone like Sanders is more electable and someone like former Vice President Joe Biden is less electable? Electability here becomes a game of divining which group is more important to winning — swing voters or the partisan base. But that’s no more accurate than trying to estimate how sexist your neighbors are. “Which segment is bigger … there’s not great information on that,” Utych said. “Anything you say is just guessing.”

Even attempts to pin electability down subjectively leave you chasing your own tail, said Elizabeth Simas, a professor of political science at the University of Houston. We know from decades of research that voters have a tendency to line up their assumptions about who is electable line with the person they want to be elected. Maybe that means people just want to maintain some kind of cognitive consistency. “But it’s just always going to be impossible to parse out whether someone supports a candidate because of electability, or if a candidate is perceived as electable because they are the preferred candidate,” Simas said.

[...]

Maggie Koerth is a senior science writer for FiveThirtyEight. @maggiekb1

#fivethirtyeight #u.s. politics #u.s. election 2020 #maggie koerth #long post

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

In a beige reception hall in a Des Moines suburb, over paper plates piled with the remains of a Monday morning continental breakfast, Sen. Bernie Sanders urged a packed house of Iowans to manifest their dreams. Imagine an America where cancer only kills you, rather than also rifling through your wallet. Visualize a future where no American child has to pay off her grandmother’s student loans. Cynicism is high and more than a quarter of us believe the American Dream is unattainable, but Sanders’s stump speech offered hope. “Everything is impossible until it’s not,” he said. The crowd went wild.

This speech was about issues but it was also a pitch for the semi-improbable Sanders campaign, itself. Before you stands a 78-year-old Jewish man, a self-described democratic socialist and an independent interloper in the Democratic Party, who is making his second try at the presidency after 30 years as a professional gadfly.

Yet here we are, five weeks later, and that same old People’s Grandpa is the candidate most likely to win a majority of delegates in the Democratic primary. Everything is impossible, after all, until it’s not. But the pundits say Sanders is risky, and the pundits are honorable men. Already, you can find headlines full of concern that even if he was viable in Iowa, Sanders won’t be able to win when it really counts. In other words: Sanders isn’t electable.

This whole concept of electability is frustrating to voters like Brooks Vander Kopsa of Granger, Iowa. Standing in the back of the crowd, he told me who is and isn’t electable makes no sense to him — but he’s not even sure it matters. “There’s all this talk about electability. ‘Oh, this person is so much more electable than that person.’ But when I look at policy and I look at track record, I don’t know who is more electable than Bernie,” he said. “So, electability. I guess I don’t know what that is.”

Is Sen. Bernie Sanders the most electable candidate? There’s no way to know.

STEPHEN MATUREN / GETTY IMAGES

Truth is, nobody does. For all the hands we’ve wrung dry over it in recent elections, electability isn’t a thing you can measure. It’s subjective, not objective — which is why Sanders isn’t the only candidate whose persona can be twisted one way to fit a narrative of unelectability, and another to tell a story of certain success. (Sen. Elizabeth Warren can attest to that.)

Political scientists study electability, but electability ain’t no science. Instead, researchers say, it’s basically a layer of ex post facto rationalization that we slather over a stack of psychological biases, media influence and self-fulfilling poll prophecies. It’s not bullshit, exactly; some people really are more likely to be elected than others. But the reasons behind it, and the ability to make assumptions based on it, well …

“[Electability] is this vague, floppy concept,” said Nichole Bauer, a professor of political communication at Louisiana State University. “We don’t know who is electable until someone is elected.”

“I’m not sure I’m who you want to talk to,” said Julie Brown of West Des Moines, arching her eyebrows and flashing the Elizabeth Warren button hidden under the flap of her canvas purse. She came to the Sanders rally with her teenage daughter, curious to understand why he was polling better than her favored candidate. As Sanders proxies worked the crowd, we huddled against a wall, talking about the ways electability and psychological biases overlap. “I think he is electable and that frustrates me,” she said. “It frustrates the female inside me. If Elizabeth Warren had had a heart attack, they would have put her six feet under.”

Determining who is electable inevitably pits candidates against each other, especially in an election year when the top priority for primary voters — by a long shot — is nominating someone who can take down the sitting president. Brown is a voter who sees “electability” as basically a reflection of whether a candidate can clear the hurdles presented by the electorate’s prejudices.

Months of talking about the primary — and wondering whether candidates will eventually win the general election — has made electability a hot buzzword of the 2020 election. But, scientists say, we’ve not put as much work into clearly establishing what it is.

When physicists suspect a thing exists, but can’t observe it directly, they start studying the stuff around it. You can’t see the particles, you can’t look at the black hole, but you can see what happens when they crash into something else. And that’s basically what political scientists have ended up doing with electability. To understand it better, researchers have looked at a couple of different kinds of social collisions: What voters like in a politician, and what those voters think other people like.

And, in that way, Julie Brown isn’t wrong about electability and bias, Bauer told me. Social scientists do use voters’ biases to understand what electability is and what it might look like.

Is former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg the most electable candidate? There’s no way to know.

MARK FELIX / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

A lot of this comes from experimental studies — contrived situations where researchers present participants with information about hypothetical candidates and ask them questions about how likeable that imaginary person is, or how much leadership ability they assume the candidate would possess. It’s not the real world, but it does tell us something. Specifically, Bauer told me, voters’ conception of who can get elected appears to be based on who has been elected in the past. “And we always think about men,” Bauer said.

For example, men generally have lower pitched voices than women — and there’s a lot of research suggesting that people are more willing to vote for somebody whose voice pitch is more, well, manly. In a 2016 paper, researchers made recordings of five men and five women speaking the same sentence: “I urge you to vote for me this November.” They played these recordings for 393 men and 411 women, all of whom were participants in the Cooperative Congressional Election Study — a nationally representative survey that’s used to track all kinds of voter behavior and opinions.

Participants were randomly assigned to listen to either five pairs of male voices or five pairs of female voices, and were asked which of each pair they’d prefer to vote for. Across the board, participants preferred to vote for the candidate with the lower-pitched voice, regardless of if that candidate was male or female. And the effect was clearer for participants over 40 — you know, the people most likely to turn out to vote.

But it’s not like someone’s voice means much when it comes to actually governing. The people who did this study of voice pitch later went back and analyzed whether the voice pitch of sitting members of Congress correlated with their legislative activity, the holding of leadership positions or their influence in setting legislative priorities. Lo and behold, having a deeper voice does not make you a better politician. Voters just apparently sorta think it does.

Is Sen. Elizabeth Warren the most electable candidate? There’s no way to know.

JEREMY HOGAN / ECHOES WIRE / BARCROFT MEDIA VIA GETTY IMAGES

Studies like this run somewhat counter to actual electoral outcomes, though, said Cindy Kam, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. Yes, studies suggest that voters hold female candidates to higher standards than their male counterparts — women who get elected to public office tend to be more qualified for the jobs they hold than men who get elected, for example. And women are significantly underrepresented in public office. But that’s not the whole story because, while biases exist, women who do run seem to do about as well as men when it comes to getting elected.

Racial bias, on the other hand, more clearly factors into outcomes of who actually wins elections, Kam and other experts said. Studies have found that white voters see black and Latino candidates as more ideologically extreme and less competent. There’s also evidence white voters resist coming out to vote for black candidates even when they share an ideology with that candidate. And black women still rely on the black electorate to win their races.

Even Barack Obama, who won the presidency, probably didn’t get the votes a similarly positioned white candidate would have. In their 2012 book “The End of Race?” political scientists Donald Kinder and Allison Dale-Riddle analyzed voter data from the 2008 presidential election. Based on party identification, you’d have expected any candidate put forth by the Democratic party that year to pull in 55.5 percent of white voters. Instead, Obama got 43.3 percent of the white vote. He won the presidency, but with lower enthusiasm and turnout among whites than a similar white candidate would likely have had, Kam said.

So it’s fair to say that our notion of electability is, at some level, related to our individual knee-jerk social biases — things like the color of a person’s skin, or the way they present their gender to the world. We take those ingredients and we make assumptions about that person. We make assumptions about what other people might think about that person. We make assumptions about what researchers want us to say when they ask about our biases. We make a stew — reactions and reactions to reactions. It’s virtually impossible to avoid bias in perceptions of electability, said Alan Abramowitz, professor of political science at Emory University. “Just about anything that affects how you feel about a candidate could affect assessment of electability,” he said.

Media narratives, in turn, often prey on these biases, which only makes them stronger. In lifting up electability as a marker of fitness, we’ve inadvertently created a system that caters to whatever our imagined lowest common denominator might be. You might want to vote for a black, female candidate, goes the narrative … but other voters are racist and sexist and so you can’t.

Because, of course, electability isn’t just about individual feelings.

When voters like Julie Brown and Brooks Vander Kopsa talk about whether Bernie Sanders is electable, they aren’t really talking about their own feelings. They’re talking about what they think other people feel, which is where polls come in.

“The average person knows a little about politics, but not a ton,” Stephen Utych, a professor of political science at Boise State University, said. And voters use polls as a source of information to fill in the gaps. “If I’m a Republican and other Republicans don’t like this person, I don’t know what it is, but there must be something wrong with them,” Utych said. We American voters really like to believe we’re independent, Kam agreed, but the reality is that we take a lot of cues from the herd.

But polls can become a bit of an ouroboros. Kam and Utych’s 2014 study found that candidates who were behind in the polls were rated less favorably by voters — and voters were less interested in seeking out information about those candidates.

The interaction of polls and media becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy, Abramowitz and Utych both said. And candidates can shift the perception of how electable they are by striking back at the media and crafting their own narratives. In a 2018 study, the share of voters who, after reading a candidate’s defense of their own electability, were willing to think the candidate could win the election more than doubled, rising from 15 percent to nearly 34 percent.

Is former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg the most electable candidate? There’s no way to know.

JEREMY HOGAN / ECHOES WIRE / BARCROFT MEDIA VIA GETTY IMAGES

This early in the election season, there’s still an opportunity to change the narrative – to grasp electability out of the jaws of defeat. And that’s the paradox that leads candidates like Sanders to spend months traversing the early primary states – breakfast to breakfast, handshake to handshake. Winning Iowa allowed Barack Obama to craft a narrative of electability around himself in 2008. Conversely, Bill Clinton lost Iowa and took second place in New Hampshire in 1992. But, from that, his campaign was able to spin a narrative of being the “comeback kid”, said Seth McKee, a professor of political science at Texas Tech University. “I think Iowa and New Hampshire matter so much in how the media portray the horse race after the votes have been cast,” he told me.

But building those narratives and harnessing those horses are dependent on the idea that voters have a good idea of what other voters want, or what other people’s deal breakers might be. And the psychology gets very tricky here. Frankly, experts said, voters aren’t great at knowing what’s going on in their own heads, let alone those of strangers.

A June 2019 Ipsos poll, for example, found that 74 percent of Democrats and Independents said they’d be comfortable voting for a female president, but only 33 percent of those same people believed their neighbors would be as open-minded.

The effect captured in that Ipsos poll is so common, social scientists use it in their research to make sure participants aren’t just blowing some woke-sounding smoke. “People aren’t stupid,” Bauer told me. If you just ask who they like as a candidate, they’ll figure out that you’re trying to see if they’re sexist. “But asking if you think they’ll win is asking if you think other people will vote for that candidate. It takes social desirability pressure off the individual.” But when polls turn up results like that, are they showing that Democrats are secretly more sexist than they let on? Are they showing Democrats are unfairly contemptuous of their fellow Americans? Maybe a little of both? It’s hard to say, but it does demonstrate how hard it is to predict electability based on what you think other people think.

Then there’s the issue that electability is not a fixed idea. What makes a candidate likable to the nation, as a whole, is in flux — tracking, experts say, with hardening partisan lines.

And voters see it, too. James Muhammad, a Californian visiting Iowa, was one of the other people I spoke to at the Sanders rally. When I asked him about electability, he just laughed. “Was Trump electable?” he said.

That’s a question academics are also asking. And it’s one that’s deeply tied up in attempts to understand what electability looks like to Democrats now. From what we can see in research on congressional races, which are more numerous, there’s something about electability that is shifting. Something fundamental.

Is former Vice President Joe Biden the most electable candidate? There’s no way to know.

SCOTT EISEN / GETTY IMAGES

“I think there is an idea in the media of a centrist, usually white, not necessarily college educated voter who is the one at play and that probably has influenced the way the media is covering it,” said Joshua Darr, a FiveThirtyEight contributor and professor of political science at Louisiana State University. That assumption of the power of the centrist voter is, to some extent, evidence based. Historically, being moderate and appealing to centrist voters was a great way to win congressional elections, Utych and Abramowitz both told me. But that’s been changing. Abramowitz’s analysis of the 2018 House elections turned up evidence that an incumbent candidate’s past voting record — whether they were more moderate or not — didn’t really make much of a difference in whether they won or lost, regardless of party. What’s more, he told me, the number of moderate members in Congress has been falling for decades. Forty-eight percent of the 95th Congress (1977-79) fell within the moderate range of ideology,1 compared to just 16 percent of the 115th Congress (2017-19), Abramowitz found.

Ideologues are elected more often than they used to be. Outsiders are elected more often, too. And the percentage of true swing voters is shrinking, Utych said. So does that mean someone like Sanders is more electable and someone like former Vice President Joe Biden is less electable? Electability here becomes a game of divining which group is more important to winning — swing voters or the partisan base. But that’s no more accurate than trying to estimate how sexist your neighbors are. “Which segment is bigger … there’s not great information on that,” Utych said. “Anything you say is just guessing.”

Even attempts to pin electability down subjectively leave you chasing your own tail, said Elizabeth Simas, a professor of political science at the University of Houston. We know from decades of research that voters have a tendency to line up their assumptions about who is electable line with the person they want to be elected. Maybe that means people just want to maintain some kind of cognitive consistency. “But it’s just always going to be impossible to parse out whether someone supports a candidate because of electability, or if a candidate is perceived as electable because they are the preferred candidate,” Simas said.

And there’s no better place to see that ambiguity than at a primary campaign rally. Skirting the edges of a cheering crowd, Brown and Vander Kopsa basically both want the same things — a candidate who cares about average people, a candidate who will be a game-changer and think outside the box. They both suspect other voters aren’t engaged or doing the research necessary to know who meets those criteria. What they don’t agree on is whether Bernie Sanders is inside the box, or out of it.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Maggie Koerth

[the-sanders-sides]

inidan american (desi) logan

a sequel to this post because people asked for more and i decided that they shall receive (and also i love writing these)

fair warning, logans a bitter kid, and this isnt as positive and happy as romans post. ive experienced two different ways of being desi, one where i lived in fully asian and indian community and didnt even think id ever feel alone, and another where i moved to a place where i havent met another desi in like 7 years of living here in a 3 hour driving radius. in romans post i played into my first experience and how at home i felt. in the second experience, the one im in right now, i am much more bitter about who i am and not really knowing anyone who gets it anymore. so i play into that A LOT in this. so keep that in mind. (and he will get happier in a future part. m planning on making this into a series)

ok so first off. his name is logan sanders. people (mostly other indians) dont believe him when he tells them. he tells them they dont know indian history. they say they do. he tells them that the british fucked around (quite literally) in india for four centuries so of course english names would stick with that precise wording

sometimes when he’s annoyed enough and doesnt want to explain this for the millionth he defends himself with this russel peters skit (watch it, it’s hilarious) because it describes his family. to a T. 

he grew up in a community with not very many asians, and knew no indians outside his family so he felt a sort of disconnect to his culture

while his grandparents and parents would teach him about indian culture, he felt so distant from it since he knew no one outside his family who was indian, and since he didnt have any siblings or any nearby cousins to hang around with

he had visited india once but he was too young to remember it properly or too remember his cousins

the closest mandir was an hour away so that also limited the amount of indian kids/people he knew

he barely knew hindi because everyone in his family spoke english, especially in public

he felt guilty over the disconnect he felt and would always try to bridge it but would never accomplish this because it he kept losing passion since he rarely saw other people like him in the real world and in the media and he didnt see the point of trying

this all changed in eight grade when he moved next door to the Kumar family in a north indian street of some south asian blocks in an asian community

when his family first moved, the Kumar family invited the Sanders over to welcome them

it turns out the Kumar’s had a son who was the same age as logan

“hi logan! im rohan kumar! but i like going by roman instead of rohan!” 

this introduction pissed logan off 

he was seething because why would this kid who got to have an indian first AND last name change his name to an english one! why didnt he see the value of his name!

he knew right away that such a difference meant they could never be friends 

“im logan sanders, but thats all youll get to know about me because i see no use associating myself with someone as... well, ignorant, as you”

roman decides to whip out one of the swears his cousins taught him and whisper shouts “who are you calling ignorant, bhenchod?” 

 it became clear to him that this was new turf, and people on this new turf must be speaking hindi. and that he was the ignorant one if he couldnt talk in hindi. he made a vow to learn it as fast as he could to make sure this roman kid wasnt better than him

but, logan grits his teeth and says “you, and i know it must be true because you were too dumb to understand me the first time”

this evidently struck a sore spot in roman because he didnt fight back but just stalked away. logan smiled slightly, happy to have won that argument

logan asks his grandpa to teach him hindi and his grandpa gets super excited

they start lessons immediately and despite barely hearing it growing up, it’s as if his brain was made for this because he picks the language up amazingly fast and in a months time, while not able to speak back yet, he can understand most casual conversation

his first diwali in basically little india is the most magical thing ever

diwali at his old home was very quiet because there wasnt anyone around to celebrate with

everyone is so happy in this new home however. everyone is dressed up and all the houses are lit up and there are diyas everywhere and he doesnt want to admit it but the kumar’s have the best rangoli on the street and it’s because of roman and he knows roman did it because sometimes he’d stare out of his bedroom window while doing homework and have a perfect view of roman delicately working on it for two weeks

(the kumar’s front porch had been covered with tarp waiting for diwali to make sure romans precious rangoli wasnt stepped on or ruined. when it’s finally let up, everywhere where there could be art, there is. it’s insane how good at colors roman is, logan thinks)

diwali morning: 

he fights his parents because he doesnt want to miss school for diwali because americans dont have a day off for it. his parents set the clocks in the house ahead to make him think he overslept so he would skip school. (logan didnt know that his parents had submitted an excused absence form for religious reasons and that the school was very understanding. he thought it would be like his old school where he wouldnteven bother trying since he wasnt christain and the school was lkinda discriminatory)

they spend the morning in mandir and it’s nice. for once he doesnt feel different from his peers because he goes to mandir and not church or synagogue. he feels at home.

diwali afternoon:

the afternoon is spent with frantic cleaning and cooking and digging around for the diya’s that were still in boxes, packed away from when they moved

logan offered to find them all to continue with a diya science experiment he started two years prior. his theory was that the diya’s were multiplying and there were more each year despite no one buying anymore

this held true, because even though he could only find half of their diya collection, it was somehow more than the entire diya collection of two years prior. 

diwali evening:

theres a big potluck and everyone in the neighborhood is out talking to each other, looking at the decorations at everyones houses, eating samosas, and playing with sparklers. 

logan feels content

he makes a new resolve to learn more about hinduism. if this is what ti was supposed to be, then he never wanted to be away from hinduism. 

he looked at the metaphors and symbolism in everything and finally understood what his dad meant he told logan that hinduism is just science written in poetry and that string theory is written in the ancient texts

middle school in this new town is so much better than middle school in his old home. why?

a. doesnt get bullied for being a nerd

b. doesnt get called gay slurs 

c. the classes are harder 

d. much less racism

e. all of the above

soon enough, logans asking his grandpa to teach him how to cook Indian food

Logan spends the day burning dosas and making lopsided rotis

(eventually he gets the hang of it, and a he'll be cooking food for an infuriating Indian boy ;) ;) psst it's roman)

Speaking of boys

Coming out isn't an option for logan

He knows that his parents arent really religious enough to really look into hinduism and see that no, gays are not bad

But they are traditional and conservative enough to be homophobic

not homophobic as in spewing hate with the westboro baptist church at a pride parade

But homophobic as in "the gays are fine as long as they don't do it in front of me" kinda thing

So Logan stays quiet

the closet kinda sucks but i mean what can he do

it’s safer inside, and he as illogical as wishing is, he wishes that people would use their brains and realize there’s nothing wrong with gay

anyway

in school logan makes his first desi friend, who was dubbed as anxiety years ago and cant seem to get rid of the nickname and now has a whole complex about his name so logan doesnt know his name

logan and anxiety meet in the school library: logan studying and anxiety hiding

people dont like anxiety

especially non-indian kids

surprise surprise it’s an old buddy called racism, but anxiety’s story is for another time

(but even though no one really likes anxiety, whenever racist shit goes down, it has to go through roman)

so logan and anxiety become fast friends

and they make fun of roman (a+ bonding)

logan claims that roman is a hypocrite for changing his name to an english one while being so immersed in indian culture

anxiety doesnt dispute this, but says he has a past with roman

a past that involved getting stuck with the name anxiety

again, another story for another time

one day, when logan and anxiety are eating lunch they see roman destroy some homophobes who throw around the word f*g and keep calling caitlyn jenner, bruce jenner

logans chest surges

he’s all like “what?? emotions?? pride at roman?? is he better than me for being so open and standing up for what he believes in??”

gay panic basically

but logan masked it well and pushed it away

the next day roman comes to school with a pride patch on his jean jacket

logan feels like he cant breathe

logan is supremely jealous of roman.

he can be gay in peace

he can pretend not to be indian in a way that benefits him

and he’s not affected by stereotypes in the same way?? like what does this kid not have

and by stereotypes i mean

roman is the complete opposite of all indian and desi stereotypes: loud, flamboyant, theatrical

logan’s personality is exactly how the stereotypes are. he’s nerdy and likes science and math and it seems like he cant escape the stereotypes. they follow him. and he feels guilty that he likes science and math and is nerdy. 

as illogical as it is, he wishes he was different from how he is

but logan later learns that there are more than just his perspective on being desi and that every desi kid growing up faces challenges about it that are different than his, causing them to experience being desi differently

and logan will accept that, in another story at another time

for now, he’s just bitter. and as illogical as it is, he wishes the world was better

and now, i shall tag some people who asked to be tagged and some other desi’s who loved this because i feel like you guys might appreciate this too. also i love u. desi famders squad up.

@sssixeyedrunt @ultimate-queen-of-fandoms2 @caterpiller-tea @xxxbladeangelxxx @snufflesthegrim227 @cloudchaser7 @thelowlysatsuma 

#logan sanders #logince #virgil sanders #roman sanders #desi #desi headcanons #sanders sides #mine #please love this #r #l #v

[lovenikkimadegeeky]

WHY [DEICIDE KALPA] COMING BACK AS A RECHARGE FOR THE 3RD TIME IS BAD FOR THE PLAYERS OF LOVE NIKKI

[Kalpa] is the first suit to come back as a recharge for a 3rd time. On all other servers, every recharge comes back to the {Store} and/or for crafting after 6 months.

But wait, [X] came out 6+ months ago for us and it’s not available to buy/craft? That’s because back in March LN started selling recharge suits twice. We are the only server that does this which means that we are the only server that doesn’t get the suits for buying/crafting after 6 months. [Kalpa], if we were on any other server, would have been available for buying/crafting since AUGUST.

SO WHY DOES IT MATTER THAT IT’S RETURNING FOR A THIRD TIME? If all suits can return for a third time what’s to stop it from returning for a fourth or fifth time? What’s to stop them from just never releasing it for buying/crafting? Since March we’ve only had one recharge suit come back for buying/crafting. We should have so many more recharge suits to buy/craft and instead we get [Kalpa] back as a recharge for a third time.

This is incredibly unfair for so many reasons. Why is our server, and again it’s only our server, losing the option to get these suits for free? Why aren’t we being treated as well as the other servers? Free-to-play players should be able to get these suits. (For the record, I am not f2p.) Players who can’t afford to buy every recharge should be able to get these suits. Every player on the other servers, no matter their VIP level, can get these suits eventually except us. And that’s bullshit. We deserve better.

I can’t tell you what to do but I can tell you that if [Kalpa] sells well this time and if we don’t make our voices heard about how we’re not going to stand for this, then suits will continue to come back for recharge over and over again. And they may never come back for buying/crafting. It seems like such a little thing but this could completely change the way the game works.

We can change their minds. We can make them listen to us. We’ve done it before. Check out below the read more for ideas on how to do so (apologies to app users for whom “read more” doesn’t work):

Comment on every post on LN’s fb and write a public post on their page listing why this is shitty. Comment on every instagram post. Leave a negative review on fb, google play, and/or the apple app store. Email them at [email protected]. Bury them in a fucking deluge of messages about how we refuse to be treated so unfairly.

Put your money where your mouth is and let them know to what degree them bringing back recharges a 3rd time and not bringing them back to buy/craft will impact your spending. Please only tell them something that you’ll stick by because they need to take us seriously. Tell them that you’ll never purchase a recharge brought back for a third time. Tell them that you won’t purchase anything when a recharge is for sale a third time. Tell them that you’ll stop spending money at all if they don’t stop bringing back recharges for a third time. Choose whichever of these you’ll follow through on. Money is the #1 thing that they’ll pay attention to so make them pay attention by making it a financially bad choice for them to ignore you.

If you send them a message, some key things to keep in mind when writing it: If you do have a VIP level, make sure to mention it, so they know you've spent money on the game in the past. Specify the consequences if they don't listen to us. Let them know why you feel strongly about this; if free-to-play players are a big part of that, make sure to mention them. Remember that they’re not native English speakers and they've shown that their grasp of English isn't great. This isn't a judgement on them, rather I'm bringing this up so you'll keep that in mind; try to use simpler words and language, so that there’s less of a chance of them coming across a word or phrase that might cause confusion.

If you’re lazy or low on spoons or hate writing an emails, below I’ve pasted the email that I sent them. Make sure to change it to fit your personal play style and/or your personal opinions. Making it not look like a copy/paste would be great but I understand if that’s too much and I think a copy/paste would be better than no email at all. 

........

I am VIP 6 and I will not be buying anything while Deicide Kalpa is up for recharge a third time. Any time any suit comes up for recharge a third time, I will not spend any money the entire time it is up. If you continue to bring suits back for recharge for a third time, I will stop spending money entirely.

Free to play players deserve to also get these suits and it's unfair to them to not bring recharge suits back for free the way all the other servers do. One of the reasons that I love this game as much as I do, and one of the reasons I was willing to start spending money on it, was because you gave free to play players the ability to also get recharge suits. If you're going to be unfair to free to play players, which was one of the main reasons I started spending money, I'll just stop giving you money.

All players deserve to be treated with the respect that other servers get and a recharge suit coming back a third time shows that you're not giving us that same respect, especially not your free to play players.

....... 

And, no, this is not happening because we boycotted ranking events. The Chinese server boycotted ranking events in 2015 and their recharges do not come back as a recharge for a second time and they still come to the store/crafting after 6 months. (See the comments for sources.) Let me reiterate, we are the only server that they are doing this to, including another server which also boycotted ranking events. We are being treated poorly for no reason other than they’ve decided our server, for whatever reason, doesn’t deserve the same respect other servers get. And it’s bullshit.

#love nikki #love nikki game #love nikki dress up queen #lnduq #miracle nikki #news #recharge #past recharge #bugs and issues #because oh boy is this a big issue #i don't normally ask this #but please reblog this #we need the whole community behind this