#and hell: half the people on that screen have been in a star war

[pagerunner-j]

In honor of the debut of Ahsoka, DPed (director of photography, since someone asked) by one Quyen Tran -- and yes, it looks fantastic -- I want to bring back one of my other favorite things on Quyen's resume.

Namely, that time she spooked the shit out of Travis Willngham.

Behold: one of the best bits from all of Critical Role's Narrative Telephone series, where Sam (Riegel, her husband, for the uninitiated) asked her to bring their creepy doll into the room for the...benefit?...of everyone else on his video call. This is how she chose to interpret that request.

Q is a treasure.

#critical role #narrative telephone #ahsoka #star wars #quyen tran #she got to shoot a star war and it's the best #and hell: half the people on that screen have been in a star war #travis is jedi master jaro tapal! #a jedi master who DOES NOT LIKE CREEPY DOLLS

[david-talks-sw]

"If it's amazing, they'll know."

When talking about "George Lucas' vision" and the original six Star Wars films, there's one thing to bear in mind and that's Lucas' style of filmmaking.

These are movies for kids, designed to emulate the Saturday matinee serial format from the '30s, à la Flash Gordon. You see this most of all in the dialog. But something else you notice is George Lucas' filmmaking style, particularly in how he films and edits.

Take Darth Vader's introduction, for example.

Look at the composition: Vader stands tall, in contrast to the - as the script puts it - "fascist white armored suits of the Imperial stormtroopers". They're all in white, he's all in black, he's bigger badder, emerging from a cloud of smoke. What an entrance.

But if you think about it, it's just a single full shot. Very basic.

Compare this to Kenobi, wherein Vader is treated like a monster out of a horror movie. First, you glimpse his shadow, people reacting...

... then ominous bits and pieces like his boots or his lightsaber...

... and finally Vader himself, in all his terrifying glory.

That's a modern way of shooting it and it admittedly makes ol' Darth seem that much more imposing and absolutely badass.

But Lucas comes from a background of editing, experimental filmmaking and used to work as a documentary cameraman.

So what he did is just put the camera down and have Vader walk in. It's a faster yet differently-efficient way to introduce the character. It's more about dynamic pacing and visuals.

And that is Lucas' style. In his words:

"The way these films were put together, they're shot very much like a documentary film and the action of stage, and then I shoot around it. I don't stage for the camera. And as a result, there are a lot of things that happen pretty much by accident. It lends an aura of authenticity to everything." - Star Wars - Episode I: Podracing Featurette, 1999

Another example: the introduction of General Grievous.

A door opens revealing his ugly mug and he walks in. Boom.

But in Star Wars Storyboards: The Prequel Trilogy, you find that - as envisioned by the storyboard artists - our introduction to Grievous would've been very different.

"We wanted to have the introduction to Grievous be a series of really close shots that would be a series of details: his creepy foot, his creepy hand...

... his scary alien eyes...

... but George brought up an interesting point. He didn't want the film to concentrate on one design detail or one element— but rather let the world be there and let the viewer find those things without necessarily having it shoved in their face." - Derek Thompson, SW Storyboards: The Prequel Trilogy, 2013

"George nixed the idea, saying: 'I don't want something to be special because of how it's filmed, but because of what it is. Just put the camera on it and let it play out in front of the audience. If it's amazing, they'll know.'" - Iain McCaig, SW Storyboards: The Prequel Trilogy, 2013

That's it in a nutshell. "If it's amazing, they'll know."

The above storyboards look awesome and seeing Grievous be introduced that way would be great... but it wouldn't be Lucas' Star Wars. It would be some other director taking a crack at it.

And this way of shooting can be weird, even boring, at times. I mean compare Mace leading his troops into battle...

... to Aragorn leading his, in Return of the King.

The latter is so much more emotionally impactful. For a number of reasons (eg: Aragorn is a deuteragonist, Mace is a secondary character with less development), but one of them is that the moment is just shot in a way that's more interesting.

First we have an angle on Aragorn as he smiles and charges. Then the rest of the other characters as they react and follow suit, then the troops do the same.

With Mace it's, uh, *checks notes* he flourishes his saber and charges, the clones follow. Hell, for half a second we're looking at just an empty screen.

But y'know what the shot does look like?

It looks like something out of a WW1 documentary.

It's that authenticity he was mentioning further up.

At the end of the day, you can call it campy or bad... it's Lucas' style. It's cinema. There's a logic to it.

"To me, the script is just a sketchbook, just a list of notes, and, sometimes, I prefer the documentary feel of free flow, so I let my instincts tell me where to go. I like to create cinematically; I don't like to have a plan. I like to have a rough idea of what I'm going to do-certain themes, certain issues I'm going to deal with-and then I try to do so." - The Making of Revenge of The Sith, page 116, 2005

He doesn't try to make a character look particularly badass with camera angles or make the shot too choreographed, he just goes with the flow, and makes the deliberate choice to shoot it that way, because for better or for worse... it's his movie.

So yeah, just a tidbit I thought would be interesting.

Edit:

@schilkeman added this very interesting point in the replies:

"He doesn’t stage for the camera, but he does compose for the camera. The documentary style, while somewhat detached, requires the filling of the screen with motion and light. The way things move through frame seem very important to him. These are things his films excel at."

#george lucas #lucas quotes #cinema

[heich0e]

dinner and a show - miya osamu/f!reader (haikyuu!) part 9 in the bff!osamu series tags: angst, childhood friends to pining, mama miya deserves a netflix comedy special or a nobel peace prize, sometimes home is a person and sometimes that person wants you dead, finally a bit of communication i was about to call in UN peace keepers, things r getting FEISTY FROM HERE FYI this chapter is the literary equivalent of the elevator ride at the beginning of the haunted mansion

Mama Miya has always loved variety shows.

For as long as you’ve been coming over to visit the Miya house, if the family matriarch was present, there was a better chance than not that the television in the living room was on and there was some kind of spectacle unfolding on the screen—the louder the better, in her opinion. 

She’d told you once that she just loves the way people laugh on variety shows, so loudly and freely, and that there’s nothing better than the sound of a house filled with laughter—and you know from lived experience that the Miya household had never been one that was short of joy, nor of it’s own chaos, in much the same way as those outrageous shows she loves so much. 

As you grew up, you came to invariably associate that particular type of television show with the woman who had raised you like a second mother; sometimes when you missed her—when you missed home—you’d put one on just to bask in the cacophonous familiarity. But watching a variety show alone in your Osaka apartment pales in comparison to watching them together in the tidy living room of the Miya home, tucked under the kotatsu, sipping tea and eating fruit and occasionally making jokes about which one of the handsome male celebrities joining that week’s episode as a guest would be a better husband—comparing their heights and their jawlines and their variously successful careers in the entertainment business.

But right now, you’re not looking at the dashing star of that new historical drama who’s trying to climb up a rock wall against a ticking clock.

Instead, you’re looking at Miya Osamu who is standing in the doorway to the living room of his family home, and he looks like he’s just seen a ghost.

Though, in his defence, you probably don’t look much better.

Cradled in your palm, your satsuma rests unmoving—frozen in place just like the rest of you. It’s half-peeled to reveal the soft, pale orange flesh hidden beneath the pith, but you barely feel the weight of it as it rests forgotten in your outstretched palm. The scent—the one that just moments prior you’d been remarking was so fresh, so bright—seems duller now. Everything that isn’t Osamu seems to slip away to grayscale and to background noise; unremarkable against the stark contrast of his painfully familiar face.

Neither of you even blink. 

Miya-san had just gone to the market to pick up a few things for dinner, after repeatedly insisting that you stay for a meal and eventually wearing you down. She’d left you in the living room watching TV, promising to make her trip to the store a quick one, and otherwise ignored your offers to join her.

She was supposed to be coming back soon, at any minute really, but suddenly you’re poised to flee. Everything in your blood is telling you, urging you, to run as quickly as you can—to preserve whatever tattered shreds of your sanity remain after the past six weeks of hell.

The six weeks that had felt more like a year. A war. A lifetime.

The six weeks that had seen you finally seek refuge in Hyogo under the guise of housesitting for your parents, who had gone travelling abroad—as convenient an excuse as any to escape Osaka and the troubles that plagued you there.

Little did you know that the troubles would have the same idea as you.

Your eyes flicker momentarily in the direction of the rear door of the Miya home, the one that leads out into the backyard—the yard that backs onto a little wooded grove where you used to play as children, running carefree and wild. The grove where you used to take naps in the shade on sticky summer days. The grove where you had once broken your arm. It’s foolish, you know, to even think about leaving; your shoes and coat are at the door, with only slippers on your feet and a thin sweater on your frame. Your own childhood home may be only a few houses down and around a corner from the one where you currently find yourself, a five minute walk at most even if your pace is leisurely, but dashing out the back door and making a break for it would be inadvisable—not least of all because there is a woman due home at any moment, one who has loved and raised you like one of her own, who is expecting you to be here when she returns. A woman who wants to share a meal with you and hear about your life. A woman who doesn’t know why you had come crawling back to Hyogo. 

A woman blissfully unaware of how much unresolved tension is currently polluting every inch of her living room.

Your conscience is already heavy to begin with. You’d avoided Mama Miya for the past week—having faked a cold for a few days to buy yourself some time alone when you first got to town. She’d called you every day to check in, and she brought you homemade soup and medicine more than once. The very least that you owe her is a proper visit. You can’t possibly leave now.

Osamu’s lips part, his eyes—his deep, infuriatingly kind eyes—meeting yours.

“Ma doesn’t know I’m in town,” he says, and the first sound of his voice feels like a knife between your ribs. “I can go and come back later after… after you’re gone.”

He knows, you realize. He’s watched and understood every terrible thought that has raced through your mind since the moment he entered the room play out plainly across your face. You’ve always loved that about Osamu—how you hardly need to say anything at all in his company, and he still understands your mind and feelings just by reading the lines of your features.

Now it makes you feel sort of sick.

You mull his words over belatedly, having been too shocked to digest them in the moment at which they were spoken. Slowly you nod, the slightest little dip of your chin signifying your agreement to his offer. Accepting, tenuously but decidedly, his olive branch.

He seems to deflate slightly, a flash of hurt behind his eyes.

But it’s all too late, anyway.

“Samu?” Miya-san’s voice rings out through the house, incredulous but noticeably thrilled, the sound of the front door closing punctuating the eager call like a question mark. You hear rapid footsteps and the woman appears a moment later with a wide smile on her pretty face. “What’re you doin’ here?” 

She sets her shopping bags down on the floor at her feet, wrapping her son up tightly in her arms and rocking him back and forth. You watch as Osamu smiles against the crown of his mother’s head—a gentle, peaceful look on his face as his eyes flutter shut—and you avert your gaze, because witnessing the tender moment is strangely and inexplicably painful.

“Just wanted to come home for a visit,” he murmurs, and it takes everything in you not to dwell too long on the way his figure towers over his mother in your peripheral vision—tall and broad and strong now, just the way she raised him.

“Did you two plan this?” the matriarch asks. She looks between the two of you as she finally pulls away from her son’s embrace, though her palms still gently rest upon his forearms.

“Nah,” Osamu laughs lightly, and to his credit he’s doing a very good job at acting like just being in the same room as you is not one of the most hideously uncomfortable moments of his life. “I had no idea she was gonna be here.”

“You didn’t tell him?” Osamu’s mother questions you, visibly surprised. And she’s right to sound so shocked, because if this was any other day—or at least any day that didn’t follow what had transpired between the two of you six weeks ago—Osamu would have been the first person you’d have told you were coming home. Would have been kept up to date, nearly to the minute, with any stop you made in your hometown or any variety show adventures you embarked upon with his mother. Would have known exactly what the two of you were having for dinner, how it was being prepared, and he would have received a photo of the meal when it was finally time to eat just to make him jealous (and because you know he likes to feel included on the visits where he isn't able to join you.)

“Oh, he knew I came home for the week,” you lie quickly, meeting Osamu’s gaze and suddenly hoping above all else that your thoughts are as clear to him as ever. He looks more startled by the sound of your voice than you expect him to. “Just didn’t know I’d be here today, since I stopped by so last minute.”

Osamu swallows, then nods. “Yeah.”

Mama Miya smiles and clasps her hands together. “Well, this is such a nice surprise! Tsumu’s not hidin’ somewhere waitin’ to scare me, is he?”

“’S just us, Ma,” Osamu laughs lightly, and she reaches up to pinch his cheek affectionately. You don’t miss the way his eyes flicker over to you when his mother turns her back.

You’re still holding your satsuma in your hand, but you no longer have the faintest desire to eat it.

“Needa hand with those?” you hear Osamu ask his mother as she picks her shopping bags up from the ground. You hear some rustling, and can only assume she’s elbowed him based on the way he yelps and then laughs. “Ow! I’m just tryin’ to help!”

“Ya hardly just got here yourself, bag’s still at yer feet and everythin'!” his mother chides him, but it’s full to the brim with love. “Just sit down and relax for five minutes, will ya? Yer lookin’ dead tired.”

His mother waves him over insistently in the direction of the kotatsu where you’re seated before she shuffles off towards the kitchen, the plastic bags in her hands swishing as she goes.

His mother is right: Osamu looks, without softening your words, haggard. He’s got shadowy rings under his bleary eyes, his skin looks dull, and his hair still has a faint ring indented around the circumference of his head from his trademark baseball cap. He looks like he did when he first set up his business—tired, stressed, wearing a little thin at the edges from the portrait of his usual self.

You wonder if you look the same in his eyes.

Mama Miya had remarked similarly on your own appearance when you showed up at her door earlier that afternoon, but you at least had the falsified alibi of having been recently ill to hide behind.

Osamu is watching you from the doorway, still hesitating to move any closer—like a man who stumbled upon a beast in the wild, and is equally parts fascinated and petrified.

You look away.

“Sit down,” you tell him, your voice quiet and slightly cold as you stare at the orange in your hands. “She’s gonna think something’s wrong.”

Something is wrong, you both know that truth all too well, but the last thing you want is for her to know that. This entire situation between the two of you is already bad enough without the shame of other people knowing. Without his mother, of all people, knowing.

Osamu nods, and then approaches the kotatsu slowly. When he lowers himself down to the floor, he takes the seat opposite you at the small square table instead of beside you like he normally would. Something in that contrast stings a little bit, though you’re certain you’d be more upset if he was any closer than he already is—you’re suddenly exceedingly conscious of the possibility of your legs brushing underneath the table, and it makes you shift nervously, drawing your limbs as close and compact to your body as you can.

Osamu is so still on the other side of the table that it’s almost uncanny. Statuesque in a way that might make you laugh if this whole mess wasn’t so harrowing, if the wound wasn’t still so fresh. You’re not even sure he’s breathing.

“Just… be normal,” you whisper, finally setting your forsaken orange down and reaching up to rub at your temples where you feel the beginnings of a tension headache thrumming beneath the skin. You sigh, long and drawn-out. “I don’t want her to worry.”

He nods again.

The television show continues to play on across the screen beside you both, and while your eyes may be on the screen, you doubt either of you are paying much attention to it. You roll your half-peeled orange from one hand to the other idly across the tabletop, occasionally picking away at the skin.

Mama Miya appears with more plates of fruit not long after, having taken time to cut them up for you both even though she’s already busy preparing a meal in kitchen—the sounds of sizzling and her knife against the chopping board having filtered down to the living room while she worked.

“Sure ya don’t need any help in there, Ma?” Osamu asks, peering up at his mother as she cranes down to set a plate of apple slices in front of him.

“I fed you and yer brother just fine for 18 years, didn’t I? I know how to make a meal,” she jokes, returning to her full height and wiping her damp hands on the front of her apron. She glances over at you, smiling knowingly as she rests her hands on her hips. “Besides, ya haven’t seen this little thing all week—I’m surprised you two aren’t hangin’ off each other like ya usually do.”

Your eyes meet her youngest son’s, and you both quickly look away.

You can’t help but wonder if the woman before you suspects something then, even if she doesn’t say anything and in spite of your careful attempt to conceal it. But with two boys like hers, her sense of perception has long been honed to a fine art—she knows when trouble is brewing long before it strikes—and it wouldn’t surprise you in the slightest to learn that she’d known something was off even before that small slip-up. Maybe she’d known from the moment you’d shown up at her door that afternoon. Maybe she knew the second she heard from your mother that you were coming back to Hyogo.

Dinner is awkward. 

Maybe not overtly—there aren’t prolonged silences, or tense stares across the table, or any real moments of palpable discomfort—but it’s a careful balancing act between you and Osamu pretending to be up to date with each other’s lives, and neither of you navigate the steps particularly gracefully. You mention one of Osamu’s employees, asking how they are and what they’ve been up to at the shop since you’ve been home in Hyogo, only for Osamu to “remind you” that they had moved up to Sendai to go to school earlier that month. He mentions a project you were tasked with at work, and you awkwardly stumble when you explain that it had changed hands a few weeks prior. He didn’t know you were “sick”, you didn’t know he’d gotten a glowing review from a notoriously harsh food critic. Neither of you even try to mention Atsumu in fear of getting the wires of your falsified stories crossed. 

You try to keep quiet as much as you can, after that. You sit back in your chair, picking at your food and contenting yourself with watching the Miyas chatter away across the table before you.

Osamu and his mother eat the same. You’ve noticed it before, but now you have time to really dwell on the observation. They hold their chopsticks in the same slightly peculiar way, just a bit too far forward to seem comfortable. They pile food on their plates in the same order. They even occasionally reach to sip from their glasses at the same time.

How familiar it all is makes your chest feel achy like a bruise, because there’s an undercurrent of something being just slightly off. You’ve sat at this same dining room table a hundred times, shared meals just like this one too frequently to count them, but this time something feels different. 

Fortunately there’s plenty to drink to accompany dinner, and the alcohol helps balm the sting.

Mama Miya is pouring you another glass of sake when she asks, “So are you two drivin’ back to Osaka together tomorrow?” 

Osamu freezes with his chopsticks lifted half-way to his mouth, and the two of you share a glance from opposing sides of the table, trying to telepathically draft some kind of cover story. You had already told her that you were planning on heading back to the city tomorrow around noon, but you have no idea what Osamu’s plans are.

“Not sure yet,” Osamu says eventually, wiping at his mouth between bites of food. “We were plannin’ to play it by ear. I thought about stayin’ till tomorrow night since I made plans to visit Kita-san in the morning.”

Mama Miya accepts this lie easily, and the conversation continues on.

You resent how easy it is to slip into routine with Osamu. It’s been six long, terrible weeks since you last laid eyes on him, but soon you find yourselves finishing each other’s sentences, passing condiments across the table before even being asked for them, and filling each other’s glasses when they’re empty without thinking. It all comes back to you like second nature.

Because it is, maybe.

“Ya need a haircut Samu,” the woman at the head of the table says, her words a little slurred and her cheeks blazing bright pink thanks to the sake. Mama Miya loves to drink, but can’t hold her liquor for anything—it’s always reminded you of Atsumu.

“Do I?” her son reaches up and ruffles his hair absentmindedly, leaning back in his chair. “Got it under my cap so much I don’t really notice.”

His mother is right: Osamu’s hair is longer than he usually lets it get, as he tends to keep it short and easy to manage now that he’s working at the shop. It hasn’t been this long since you were in high school, and there’s a little tendril of dark hair that curls right beside his ear that you find you can’t stop staring at.

“Maybe I’ll buzz it all off,” Osamu finally says with a shrug.

You and his mother both make similar sounds of disgust.

“You and yer brother are my flesh and my blood, and I love ya more than anything,”—Mama Miya rests a hand across her chest dramatically, her expression somber—“but I’m telling ya right now yer heads were not shaped to sport buzzcuts.”

You can’t help but laugh into your hand at the impassioned remark.

“What about letting that little thing at ya again with a pair of scissors?” the woman beside you juts a thumb in your direction as she questions her son.

“Not a chance,” Osamu snorts, glancing fleetingly over to you.

You’d once cut gum out of Osamu's hair when you were both nine—a gift courtesy of Atsumu—and to the best of your recollection, you did pretty well for someone who wasn’t even tall enough to ride most of the attractions at amusement parks.

“I did a great job,” you gripe huffily as his slight.

“My hair was lopsided,” Osamu reminds you pointedly.

“Maybe I was going for something avant-garde, something high-fashion.” You roll your eyes as you reach for another piece of meat from the dish at the centre of the table—pinching it in two with your chopsticks and placing the other half onto his plate without thinking. “Guess I'm asking too much for a guy who wears that same baseball cap and cycles between three t-shirts day in-day out to understand my vision.”

Mama Miya cackles at the jibe, tipping her glass back to drain it. “Oh, you two crack me up.”

Osamu smiles a little, picking up the piece of meat you’d just given to him and popping it wordlessly into his mouth.

When dinner is done and the plate are cleared, Osamu washes the dishes and you dry them—assuming the roles you two have long claimed after sharing countless meals together. You work side by side at the sink in quiet, with just the clink of dinnerware, the sloshing of dishwater, and the sound of Mama Miya laughing along to a variety show in the other room to be heard between you.

She’s had enough sake now that you aren’t as worried about her picking up on things, so you can let the facade drop slightly—you can just exist in an uncomfortable quiet without fretting so much. 

You’re not sure which is worse: the pretend ease, or the very real discomfort.

“I’m gonna head out now,” you call to the woman laying on the sofa as you poke your head through the doorway to living room, all the dishes from dinner now dried and put away. Osamu shuffles past you to take a seat beside his mother on the sofa.

She stares at him like he’s grown a second head as he settles down next to her, her lips parting as her eyes remained glued to him.

“Aren’t ya walkin’ her home?” she asks, bewildered.

As kids, neither you nor the twins had been particularly concerned with walks home—or anything remotely close to etiquette. The three of you would stand at the corner half-way between your homes, exchange a few parting words and maybe an insult or two, and then go your separate ways—only to repeat it all again the next day. But that changed in your early teens, rather unexpectedly really, and the twins have never ever let you walk home alone since. 

It wasn’t always both of them accompanying you—sometimes it was just one or the other—but one of the two always made the walk alongside you, no matter how short it was, or how late it had gotten, or if the weather was unpleasant. One of the boys always followed all the way to your door and waited until they knew you made it inside, without fail. At first you found this strange development overbearing, and then humiliating when you found out that their mother had told them it was something they had to do, but over time you found that you were grateful for it. 

You grew up in a very safe neighbourhood. You never felt any real danger making the short walk on your own. But doing it with the twins’ company made made you feel cared for, protected almost—even before you knew about all the terrible things out there in the world that made women need escorts home in the first place.

Osamu is quiet at your side as the two of you shuffle along towards the corner where your streets meet. He stands nearest to the roadway, with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket and his eyes on his feet. It’s the very same path the two of you have walked a thousand times in just the same way, no doubt your feet falling into the exact parts of the pavement they’ve already tread before. But the walk home has never felt like this. The two of you have never been so unsettled in each others’ company.

You stop when you reach the corner, your feet cementing themselves into place as solidly as the ground beneath them.

“This is far enough.”

Osamu stops, already half a step closer to your house than you are since he hadn’t anticipated your sudden halt. He looks at you, a furrow making itself known between his brow like your words aren’t quite registering in his brain. He’s never walked you just halfway before, and maybe that’s why he’s hesitating.

You blink hard a few times, then move to step past him and leave, already making plans to take an earlier train back tomorrow just to avoid running into him again. Your little neighbourhood is much smaller than Osaka, and Osamu’s presence is too loud here to ignore.

But you’re glad, at least distantly, that you made it through the evening relatively unscathed. Tender and bruised, certainly. But the wounds you’ve been trying so carefully to mend over the past six weeks seem, largely, to have stayed knitted closed.

You can see your house from the street corner as you step towards it, the windows dark and waiting for you. You’re looking forward to scrubbing the day from your skin and then crawling into bed, hoping you can forget all about—

“I’m sorry.”

Your body goes stiff, and your feet—without any conscious command—stop carrying you forward. You stand with your back to him, your shoulders rigid like raised hackles, but you know Osamu is still there.

Still watching.

Still waiting.

Your teeth bite down hard into the flesh of your cheek.

You muster every shred of resolve that you can, and weave the iron of your will into your throat to make sure your next words ring firm. “Osamu—“

“No, I need to say this,” he interrupts you before you manage to say anything at all, and he sounds desperate. “It’s all I’ve been thinkin’ about fer weeks.”

You’re angry. Furious, suddenly. A white hot rage boiling up in your throat that tastes bitter and revolting and wipes away any lingering trace of sake on your tongue. All Osamu has been doing lately is whatever the hell he wants, and it’s really starting to piss you off.

You just want to go home. You just want to throw the meagre amount of belongings you’d carted to your parent’s house with you into your suitcase, hastily dump too much water into your mother’s houseplants to hopefully get them through the weekend, and then get the hell out of Hyogo.

You don’t want to be here.

You don’t want to hear this.

“I know I’m bein' selfish. I know that all of this is because of how selfish I’ve been. What I did that night wasn’t fair.”

You’re listening to him in spite of yourself. In spite of the fury ringing in your ears. In spite of the pain in your gut that feels like stitches tearing.

“I know what I did was fucked up. That it… That I ruined somethin’. That even if you can forgive me, everythin’ will always be a bit different now because of what I did—and I am genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, sorry for that.”

You find yourself softening. Or maybe wilting slightly—withering under the warmth of his words. 

“But I’m not sorry fer how I feel,” Osamu’s soft words sound remorseful only because he isn’t in the way that matters most to you. “I can’t be. I tried ‘n I can’t.”

You feel yourself shaking your head, intimating the dissent you feel but can’t bring yourself to voice. Your feet are still stuck, keeping you there. Trapped by your body against your own conscious will. You’re so nauseated you think you might be sick.

Osamu sucks in a breath that shakes on the inhale. “I’ve loved you my whole life, y’know that? I don’t even know what it feels like not to, so callin’ it that doesn’t even feel right most days,”—there’s a waver in his voice that cuts through you like a blade—“And maybe it used to be different, or maybe it’s always fuckin’ been like this, but I have been a god damn mess for the past six weeks tryin’ to think of a way that I can do this without you and I came up with nothin’, because there’s not a single part of me or my life that isn’t the way that it is because you’ve always been there.”

You’re choking. You’re choking now. You can’t swallow. You can’t breathe. Your throat is a vice that you can’t pry open, that you can force neither air nor words through when you need to. Your heart is lodged, firm and unmoving and worn raw, in the hollow of your throat.

You finally turn to look at him, but your sight is blurring at the edges.

His face is so pale that part of you—the part that has cared for him for as long as you've cared about anything—worries he might faint. His expression so grave he looks like he’s in the throes of mourning. It’s unfair that grief colours him this way. That even in this moment, under the buzzing streetlight, with the world shifting underfoot, that he should still be so handsome. That he should still look like your Samu.

“I know that this is a shitty situation that I caused. But I couldn’t do it anymore. I needed you to know how I felt—how I feel—because it was eatin’ me alive. And even without Tsumu’s party it would have happened eventually. Maybe it woulda happened better, or maybe it woulda happened worse, but it still woulda happened—because no matter how I went about it or what I’m fucking up by sayin’ it, it’s true.” Osamu squeezes his eyes shut tightly, swallows, and then opens them again to fix you in his stare. “I’m in love with you and I always have been.”

“I lost you both, Samu,” your voice is quiet and brittle when you finally find it in the knot of your throat and let it free. “I know that’s partly my fault, but I just couldn’t look at Tsumu and not see you. It hurt too much. Suddenly the two most important people in my life just weren’t there anymore. That’s not fair.”

Because this is bigger than just the two of you. It always has been.

“I’m sorry,” Osamu says to you, but his words are so faint they risk being lost in the cool evening breeze.

“Please stop apologizing to me,” the only reply you can bring yourself to utter reflects every bit of your exhaustion—your voice is flat and lifeless when you speak the words.

The two of you stand there on the street corner, the half-way point between your childhood homes, and it’s so impossibly quiet.

“I don’t know where we go from here,” you say as you pull your coat a little bit tighter around your frame, and for the first time all night it feels like the only time you’ve been truly honest.

Osamu looks at you, and if you sort through all the emotions in his eyes, you know you see the same feeling reflected back in his stare.

On Sunday evening, Osamu makes his way back to Osaka alone, and the house you grew up in is dark and empty when he passes it. As he drives back to the city, he can’t quite shake the feeling that neither of them—not Hyogo, not Osaka, nothing and nowhere in between—feel quite like home to him the same way that they used to.

#osamu miya x reader #miya osamu x reader #osamu x reader #miya osamu #osamu miya #hq drabble #hq writing #writing #bff!osamu

[transitranger327]

So I actually have a Star Wars story to tell (it’s a core memory): Echo has always been my favorite clone trooper. My family, especially my brother and I, started watching The Clone Wars during season 1 and we became mega-fans (I was 9, he was 6, literally the target demo). Every Friday we’d watch the new episodes, then Saturday we’d go to star wars dot com and watch all the behind-the-scenes content. We missed the first time “Rookies” aired, but we saw the behind the scenes content for it, and caught it on reruns. We immediately knew Fives and Echo were our favorite clones, he picked Fives so I picked Echo. But we were so disappointed when they weren’t in the rest of Season 1 or 2. But we were absolutely stoked for the series 3 premiere when we heard Fives and Echo were in it. And then they were gonna be ARC troopers? We were losing our minds. Our favorite boys, ARC troopers‽ Unfortunately for me, the Citadel arc happened next. Don’t get me wrong, we loved seeing the Dominos in the phase 1.5 armor. But for some reason we missed the end of episode 2 of the arc (where Echo dies), and when the bts content said Echo died I was inconsolable. I refused to ever watch the ending of that episode for YEARS. When Fives kept showing up in seasons 4 and 5 (Umbara arc is like my favorite SW movie), I was always jealous that my brother’s fave was still around and mine wasn’t. Then TCW was cancelled and I thought that was the end of it.

About a year later, I heard they made half of a Season 6 but it was only on Netflix. It took me a while to figure out how to watch it (on the high seas, as my family didn’t have Netflix), but I was in high school now. The first arc having Fives discover order 66 and coming this close to exposing it? I’d been thinking about that kind of story for forever (my favorite Star Wars AUs are where order 66 didn’t happen or was disobeyed). I was so excited to tell my brother…until I saw s7e4 and Fives died. My brother was just as sad/mad as I was when Echo died. But I finished Season 6 and thought that was the end…until I went onto star wars dot com and saw that there were unfinished animations for some episodes called “the Bad Batch”. And then…my world became whole. ECHO WAS ALIVE!!!!! Sure it was janky af, felt dubiously canon, he had been thru hell and was now a cyborg, but MY BABY BOY! My brother was, of course, just as jealous that my clone was alive and his wasn’t.

Then 4 years later. TCW Season 7 was announced. The Bad Batch arc would be in glorious HD. Echo was firmly alive and hanging out with the Bad Batch. And he got me thru lockdown, as TCW was one of my comfort shows I’d watch and s7 was airing in April/May 2020. And the Bad Batch were gonna get their own show? Hell fucking yeah.

Here we are, 16 years after Echo first graced my small TV screen, and he’s still my fave. I see a lot of myself in him. How by-the-book he used to be and isn’t anymore, how his life fundamentally changed and now’s not exactly a man (I figured out my sexuality, gender, and disabilities in 2019 right before TCW s7 remastered Echo’s return). I would almost certainly die inside again if he dies in the TBB finale. Anyway I’ve never shared anything this personal about Star Wars with anyone and TBB tumblr definitely seems like the kind of people who want to hear this.

#star wars #the clone wars #the bad batch #clone trooper echo #tbb echo #lgbtq #seriously corbett and rau if you hurt echo again i will find you

[tiny012]

What "development" is this person talking about? They're given more screen time and made into comic relief characters but that's about it. I was hoping not to see the need to prop up the '90s anime until AFTER Cosmos was released in the US. They completely downplayed the threatening nature of Sailor Animates. Compare Lead Crow's bantering with Siren and her wiping out Phobos and Demos and catching Sailor Mars off guard and threatening Venus as well. No idea what the designs have to do with this.

People still don't understand what character development is

Character development does not equal screen time.

We are not with them a long time but we do know why they are doing what they a doing and get a little backstory.

Especially the fact the 90's anime completely changed their backstory to be being an senshi who gave up their star seed meanwhile in the manga they were never senshi in the first place but WANTED to be senshi. To the point they help Gal kill the senshi of their own planet because she promise them if they do that they will be reborn as senshi with a Sailor Crystal.

That is more tragic because they were promise something and thought's they was working towards that but was never going to get it in the first place.

Shit Tin Nyanko gave Artemis and Luna the ride at by saying they abandoned Mau to help out Usagi which she was very pissed off at that.

Then you have Lethe and Mnemosyne that are "true" senshi but their planets was at war with each other and they saw their planets get blew up by Gal and then they served her.

Would it been more nice to spend more time with them?

Yeah sure

But you have Galaxia pretty much killing a senshi left and right to get Usagi which they were pretty much pawns in this for Gal, it's not going to be like that.

To me they did a couple things

To show there are more senshi out there besides the 11 ( well 12 if you count Chibs) that we have spent almost five arcs knowing. That planets outside the Solar System have their own Planetary Sailor Senshi protecting the planet.( Which it could have been awesome if we got another series exploring more senshi but how Toei treated Naoko, I don't blame her.)

To be a cautionary and tragic tale of girls who want to be a senshi and was lead astray by someone who promised that but it was never going to happen. Which they was used for that person bidding and their own personal goal didn't matter.

To show that without a Sailor Crystal or Star Seed, the body is just dust. Showing that a Sailor Crystal or Star Seed is someone soul and the body is expendable. (Which is many religious teachings, it's been taught that the soul will live on but the body will turn back into the earth aka dirt or dust.) Which the only thing that was keeping those five alive was the bracelets and without them they was just dust.

Some people don't understand how deep was getting in this arc but because they only spent one or two page time before they was gone and not 20-30 episodes being comedic relief before finally getting killed yall want to scream "THEY GET NO CHARACTER DEVEOPLMENT! "

It's bad enough they scream that over and over again about the core four when if you really look closely those girls are not the same people they were when the manga started.

They have changed completely while still maintain their traits.

Do you we have ever seen Ami showing anger for not getting an high score on a test to the point she's ripping a paper in half?

Even Haruka and Mic is not the same people we met from Infinity arc to Stars Arc.

The fact those two went from being all about not making sure Hotaru didn't awaken to Saturn to pretty much taking care of her and treating her like she's their own kid.

Hell Hotaru went from a father who only used her for a science experiment which she was only kept alive by being a half machine, to finding a friend, to awaking up to the powerful senshi who thought they was always " the unwanted guest" to now she has a family, a best friend, and doesn't have to be alone anymore.

Pluto My god Sets. Sets went from being pretty much a kid senshi that had to stay a the door of time guarding it with no friends at all, that was told not to break rules, to befriending Chibiusa, a girl who was a lonely as she was who had no friend's, who she broke all the rules for because how much she loved her and wanted to save her , to being reborn by NQS in present time, and now being the " mother" type figure for the whole team

Mic was straight up gushing about the fact they are in high school again and can enjoy the experience because when they was at the academy they was on a mission. They are able to be normal high schoolers hanging out with each other and with the other five.

Do you think we have saw Mic break her lip stick because one of the starlights told her the color was tacky? Not how she was first introduced to be the elegant one.

We was able to see different sides of the girls and show how multi-faceted they could be while seeing them grow.

All these girls started off feeling like they are alone. That people and society had a perception about them which was father from the truth..

Usagi said fuck that shit and befriended every last one of them which they found a friend in her and found friends with each other. They founded their own family which help them grow and able to show who they really are to not only to each other but to other people as well.

"We're all lonely stars. That's why we seek each other out. We want to be united. Together as one. Because that is how we were in the beginning. "

-Usagi to Chaos in Act 59 in StarS Arc

Does that line really encompass Sailor Moon as a whole but some people fail to grasp that concept??

They were all lonely stars, found each other, and made an unbreakable bond with each other. ( Which you can tell how strong their bond was because they was pretty much can feel when the other one is in trouble, they can feel when one them got killed, and they all stayed together in the Cauldron waiting on Usagi.)

And because we do see that but not 100-200 episodes of that people want to say they didn't get any character development.

That's why you can't tell me their friendship was better in the 90's anime than the Manga/Crystal because it's not true.

#tanya rants about sm

[captainsophiestark]

P.S. Fuck Off

Han Solo x Reader

Masterlist - Join My Taglist!

Fandom: Star Wars

Summary: Y/N's one of the logistics-focused members of the Rebellion, a job no less important than any of the fighter pilots in the long term. They've gotten to know Han pretty well in the brief time that he's been around, so when Han leaves a resignation note intended for high command on their desk, they exercise their best judgement and don't pass it along, luckily for both of them.

Word Count: 1,479

Category: Humor, Fluff, maybe some minor angst if you squint?

Putting work into an AI program without permission is illegal. You do not have my permission. Do not do it.

I sighed as I sat down at my cramped desk in one of the many makeshift offices of the Rebellion. We were about to fly a last-ditch mission to try to blow up the Death Star, and still, I had to do paperwork. If we succeed, like we're planning and hoping to, then the papers still need to be in order. Just because Leia and my other colleagues were right didn't mean I had to like it.

I braced myself for all the supply reports I was about to try to organize, but stopped short when I saw a messy handwritten letter sitting on top of everything else. I picked it up and scanned to the bottom for a name, and found none other than Han Solo's signature at the top of a long P.S.

I sighed and shook my head, then went back to the top of the letter and started reading.

I don't know how the hell people usually do this, but consider it my official resignation from this stupid Rebellion.

I scoffed and rolled my eyes. Han was nothing if not dramatic.

I came here to get paid, not risk my neck for some impossible ideals I don't even believe in. I got my money, so now I'm getting the hell out. Good luck to all of you idiots, especially the kid.

Han

There was a big ink dot at the end of the "n" in Han's name, like he'd left the pen there and paused for a long time. I chuckled to myself as I read on.

P.S., I don't even know how I got dragged into this fool's cause in the first place. Bunch of idealistic idiots, that's all you are. And you're just gonna get yourselves killed. For what? For nothing. I wish I'd never gotten roped into any of this bantha shit. Half of you were probably expecting me to put something sappy in this, like "may the Force be with you", since you're flying against the Death Star. Well I'm NOT. You'd all be better off if you had more survival instincts and knew better than to go up against that thing. It's a suicide mission. You need all the help you can get.

The last letter and period quickly trailed off, like he'd forced himself to drag his hand away from the paper. Then, written in tiny print at the very bottom of the page:

P.P.S. Fuck off, all of you. And don't die.

I laughed to myself as I tucked the letter into a drawer of my desk. Han had been wrestling with his morals and realizing he still had them after all since he'd gotten here, and it had been truly adorable. I got the feeling this was all part of his process. He'd be back to help us, whether he knew it or not.

I spent the next hour scanning through as many documents as I could, getting an idea of everything we might need to know before our fighters made contact with the Death Star. Once I finished, I hustled to the control room, where Leia and I would monitor the mission with the rest of the top brass.

"Y/N. Anything we need to know?" asked General Dodonna. I shook my head.

"Nothing at all, General."

He nodded, then turned back to the screens in front of him as I took my spot next to Leia. We watched with bated breath as our fighters approached the Death Star, and then their attack run began.

I barely breathed for the entire duration of the attack. We lost some very good people, but by some miracle, Luke managed to take down the Death Star with a one-in-a-million shot. Han, as I'd expected, swooped in to save the day at the last possible moment. Hearing their victorious cheers over the radios made my heart soar, and I rushed to the hanger with everyone else at the base to welcome our heroes home.

The celebrations spilled into the hallway as the whole Rebellion converged on each other. I laughed, completely caught up in the joy of the crowd. I stumbled down a mostly-empty hallway, trying to get my head on straight again. We didn't have a whole lot of time to spare. The Empire knew where we were now, which meant we had to move, ASAP. Our success in destroying the Death Star would buy us some time, but not much.

I was also one of the key people involved in moving everything from one place to another, which meant I had to come back down to Earth a little sooner than everyone else.

Still, the smile didn't leave my face as I started heading down the hallway and away from the celebrations. I'd drink champagne the whole way to our new location, but until the last ship left the ground, I needed to be focused.

"Hey."

I turned around at the sound of an unusually-cheerful Han. He took a few stumbling steps towards me, a delirious grin on his face. I couldn't help smiling back at him as he approached.

"Hey there, flyboy. You look like you're feeling pretty happy to be back."

"I'm alive, so I guess I'd have to say yes."

"Oh no, don't give me that," I said with a grin as Han finally reached me. He stared at me with his hands on his hips, trying to play the cool guy, but this time he was not succeeding. "You could've gone almost anywhere in the galaxy and been alive. But you came back here."

Han sighed and ran a hand through his hair, a crooked grin still on his face as he looked at the floor. I smiled fondly, and when Han looked up, I didn't try to wipe the look off my face. He chuckled.

"So what, now that we all almost died you're not trying to hide it when you stare at me?"

I shrugged. "What can I say? Almost dying gives you perspective."

Han's eyes met mine again, and still, I didn't look away. The goofy smile slowly fell from his face as I took another step towards him, completely closing the distance between us and then leaning in. Slowly, Han wrapped one arm around my waist and pulled me tightly to him, then tangled the other in my hair. I swear my heart stopped dead as our lips finally met.

The kiss was soft, way softer than I ever thought it'd be with Han, let alone after a near-death experience like that. I loved every second of it though, and when we finally broke apart, I couldn't keep the dreamy smile off my face.

"I'm not gonna lie... I've been waiting a while to do that," laughed Han. He still held me close to him, and I hummed as I ran a hand through his hair.

"Well, as long as you're planning on sticking around, you'll be able to do it a lot more often."

Han grinned, then leaned in for another kiss. He broke away after a minute though and a gave me a sheepish look.

"I guess I'd better go talk to high command about taking back that resignation letter, huh?"

"Oh, come on, Han. Whether or not you want to admit it, I know you pretty well now. I never turned it in to them."

"...Really?"

"Yeah, really. I knew you'd be back."

"I didn't know I'd be back."

I just shrugged. "You probably did deep down, but that doesn't matter. I knew."

He laughed, wrapping his arm around me a little tighter. I leaned into him, laughing as he nuzzled into my neck and kissed me.

"Han, I have work to do."

"Work? Damn, I knew you were crazy, but not that bad."

"I'm serious. We have to get the hell out of here now that the Empire knows where we are."

Han sighed, then loosened his grip on me and straightened up. He fixed me with a look, and I raised my eyebrows while I waited for whatever he wanted to say.

"So, this whole... moving... thing... Need any help?"

"Really?"

Han sighed. "Yeah, why not? If I'm in I might as well be all the way in. As long as you don't give anybody that resignation note."

"I'm framing it and putting it on my wall."

Han rolled his eyes as he wrapped an arm around my shoulders. I chuckled, and we started wandering down the hallway towards my desk. We had a lot of work to tackle, but with Han by my side, it didn't seem quite so daunting.

If we could find a way to take down the Death Star, I knew we'd be able to handle anything else that came our way.

#star wars #Han Solo #han solo x reader #star wars fanfiction #star wars imagine #star wars oneshot #han solo fanfiction #han solo imagine #han solo oneshot #Original Trilogy #star wars a new hope #star wars one shot #star wars og trilogy #rebellion #death star #millenium falcon #han x reader #leia organa #the rebellion #Luke Skywalker

[catgirl-catboy]

Oooh my god Gravity Falls.... I got really into it about a year and a half ago, and I made the incredible mistake of looking at r/gravityfalls. I hadn't even thought you could hate Mabel, and certainly not that strongly, but I underestimated redditors. I've never had a gen to ship fic ratio that went this far on the gen side though, and there were some really good fics. I think the best things I've read for it were a really cool timeloop fic in which Stan and Ford patch things up and a fluffy verse with sweet feelings. Oh and there was one soulmate fic that was purely platonic, and usually I love romance but my aro heart cherishes platonic soulmates every time I stumble upon some. But the show is absolutely great, and I'm a little sad I wasn't there in its heyday, but what do you want. What I would not recommend is what I've been trying to do, ie slowly try to get into Marvel comics stuff (the same way you get into a pool a little, go up to your knees, water on your neck, don't jump in to avoid a shock). The hell of trying to figure out who's who and what comes when and are we talking about MCU verse or comics verse and who's that canon AU guy and where does blorbo appear - and all the while you see the wonderful opinions of dudebros with no taste and women who are really into Taylor Swift (one of those being worse than the other of course, liking TS isn't a crime). Almost like Star Wars but also worse :) sorry I rambled there, I don't actually think we really share fandoms? I wanted to talk a little too haha

No worries!

I am not a fan of bill/dipper in the SLIGHTEST and read mostly genfic, but all of the recent antis of it are so annoying to me. Like, learn your history! The ship has been in the fandom longer than you have,

Eh, I can kind of see where the distaste of Mabel comes from, since I feel like she gets slightly too much screen time, at the expense of Dipper. Thats more of a fault than the writing than the character. That being said, its way overblown, and a lot of people tend to forget that she's 12! If I were 12 in these situations, I'd be way worse.

Platonic soulmate fics are either the best fic known to man, or garbage, depending on how its written. (sometimes you just get the vibe that whoever wrote it is looking down on probalematic ships, yk?) If you liked this one, send me the link!

I've never been into MCU comics, they seem like they have a high barrier to entry. Glad you're having fun, but I highly doubt anything can be Star Wars, but worse. Feels like the current writers of SW hate what made it great, so I feel disconnected from anything post-TFA. Shame, since SW was my childhood.

#ask tag #moinstalks

[destinationtoast]

Top TV shows (and TV podcasts) of 2022

It was a great year in TV! Lots of new shows I really enjoyed. I mostly haven't been pulled into the transformative fandoms, but there have been a hell of a lot of TV podcasts out there that I've been enjoying as accompaniment. I've listed podcast recommendations where applicable.

Favorite new shows

In roughly descending order -- though the first two are tied for first place:

Andor (Recommended podcast pairing: The Ringer-verse's House of R, which you'll see mentioned multiple times; it's multiple hours of thoughtful analysis for each episode of show from two of my favorite podcasters, Joanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin) -- it totally caught me off guard how good this is. It's absolutely my favorite Star Wars property. It feels uncomfortably relevant, full of people living under slowly growing tyranny and having to make all sorts of morally uncomfortable decisions about when to act and what to sacrifice. It also has the best droid ever, I think, and my favorite dark!bureaucrats. It felt a little slow initially, but the last half of the season gripped me so hard -- and I've heard that on rewatch those first ones planted all sorts of interesting seeds. There are a couple early threads that I'm really hoping we revisit in S2, because otherwise they're a bit dissatisfying and messy. But everything else in the show is so carefully and well done, that I expect we probably will.

Interview with The Vampire (Recommended podcast pairing: official AMC podcast, hosted by comedian/tv writer Naomi Ekperigin -- this had great interviews with the show creators/actors/bts folk; also enjoyed The Ringer's single-ep discussion) -- I was unprepared to love this one, too. Adored the books in high school (there were only ~5 at the time), but did not expect them to be turned into a brilliantly updated and compelling show. Making Louis & Claudia black and moving it forward in time were terrific moves. And making the sexual relationship text instead of subtext, with all the queer crisis that that puts Louis through, on top of the conflicts due to race... Ugh, it's so fucking good. I also am intrigued by what they're doing with the framing story. I totally re-fell in love with these characters enough that I'm about to embark on a reread of at least the first few books, even though I think a lot of the adaptations choices surpass the original work.

Severance - This was fantastic, but I never found a great podcast. I'm also a little worried it'll be a mystery box show that never has satisfying payoffs for a lot of the weird stuff that's been set up. But I loved it, and I'm excited for more.

House of the Dragon (RPP: House of R; also enjoyed HOTD by Bald Move) -- like many, I was wary following the debacle that was the end of GoT, but it felt good to be back in Westeros. This season didn't hit the highs of the best of GoT, but it also came nowhere near the lows, and I found it pretty compelling throughout and loved how much of it focused on women. I hope next season follows a wider set of characters. This was the only show on the list I felt compelled to write fic for, and I am disappointed that there's not more canon-compliant Alicent/Rhaenyra fic.

Station Eleven (RPP: official HBO podcast, hosted by showrunner Patrick Somerville) - I read the book when it came out and mostly found that it wasn't really for me. but I thought that I would probably like an adaptation for the screen. I was right, and having an IRL pandemic arrive on the scene in the meantime only made it more interesting to me. I really liked about 70% of the changes they made to the book in adapting it, and even though I thought some of what they did with the "big bad" failed, I still enjoyed it considerably. And listening to the showrunner talk about the process of adaptation was terrific.

Rings of Power - (RPP: House of R; also enjoying @wildwren and @aadmelioraa's new rewatch/deep dive podcast, Where the Shadows Lie, which covers some of the fandom discourse as well as the show - but it's by two new podcasters exploring the format, so I don't mean to set it up as competing with long-established professional podcasters! XD ) - this show was definitely slow at times, and I wish it hadn't invested so much in a couple character reveals, because I don't think the identity mysteries were nearly the most interesting parts. Still, I loved a lot about it, including both worldbuilding and some of the characters (harfoots and elves and dwarves ftw!), and I am looking forward to more. This may be the show where podcasts added the most additional meaning for me, in part because they provided interesting tie-ins to source material I hadn't read, but also because they unpacked a lot of layers of characterization and worldbuilding that I didn't always catch on first watch.

The Sandman (RPP: Endless, hosted by author Lani Diane Rich and author/comics editor Alisa Kwitney) - Been a huge fan of the source material for decades, and I was delighted to be able to see it onscreen at last. I generally thought the adaptation was very good (good enough that I haven't felt any need to explore it through fic), and I'm also enjoying all the tumblr fanart a great deal.

Heartstopper - I didn't think about this one much at all when not watching it, and never thought to look for a podcast. But I binged it rapidly twice (once with my BFF, Mr. Maccas), and it was delightful both times.

Favorite continuing shows

For All Mankind (RPP: Hi Bob! by Bald Move) - This show continues to be such an interesting alternate history, with a number of great characters, even if I find some of the storylines a bit uneven. Why isn't everyone talking about it??

Tuca & Bertie (RPP: Baby Geniuses isn't directly show coverage, but it's cohosted by show creator Lisa Hanawalt and Emily Heller -- a writer for Barry -- and it's weird and hilarious and occasionally serious, much like the show) - I'm so bummed this was just canceled, but the seasons we got were amazing. Contained a surprising number of deeply real issues that I don't usually see portrayed (e.g. the intense menstrual pain being dismissed by doctors was all too familiar, plus a bunch of the career-related compromises & angst), all mixed in with hilarious bird-person + plant-person worldbuilding and delightfully absurdist humor.

Star Trek: Lower Decks (RPP: Greatest Trek, hosted by two guys with a history in filmmaking and who are extremely endearing and goofy... these two have entertained for years with their The Greatest Generation podcast, which I also recommend.) - Every episode slays me. It's great to have a funny podcast that helps me spot all the references and Easter eggs.

Honorable mentions to messy yet compelling Euphoria and White Lotus.

Shows I wanted to continue watching but didn't get to yet: Barry, Industry.

Shows I enjoyed rewatching

Ted Lasso (RPP: Unspoiled! Ted Lasso - the two bestie hosts are having so much fun watching the show, as hardcore fan RoShawn introduces it to newbie Natasha; they can get rambly, but it's usually cute) - I rewatched it a bunch because of reasons; never stopped enjoying it.

BtVS (RPP: Buffering the Vampire Slayer -- hosted by songwriter/musician Jenny Owen Youngs and queer activist Kristin Russo, who are hilarious and also write a good song about every Buffy episode omg) - I'm currently rewatching S4 and interspersing Angel for the first time ever (I'd previously binged them separately), and Angel is comparatively quite rough, but the crossovers sure are making more sense this way. :)

#toasty recs #tv #podcasts #tv podcasts #2022 #op #long post #not like my top picks are obscure or anything #:) #but i still wanted to record them and give podcast recs #50

[jyndor]

I think you conveyed my point better than I did. I expected Andor would be tough to watch if it was going to tackle serious issues. What I didn't expect was Bix not being an "active participant" in the show. Like you said, she is treated like a punching bag. Even if Bix gets to fight back in future episodes it will still mean she spent most of the time suffering in different ways. Same for Cassian. Rogue One doesn't spend half the movie showing Jyn being in Wobani. The Force Awakens doesn't fill Poe's screen time with his torture.

Andor is educating through shock value, which seems to be working for some viewers. It doesn't for me. I think there are others like me who wanted to be inspired by representation in a Star Wars story and instead are watching their representation be treated like punching bags. Which is different from people who don't like the show's message. The type of suffering is not surprising. The amount of it is. I think it's too much and that they could convey the same message with less. This makes the show a hopeless slog to watch at some points.

I don't understand why other people aren't sympathetic. Is nobody else upset with how horribly Bix has been treated compared to any other female lead? Even if people don't agree, they should at least be respectful. Thankfully you have been which is why I'm writing this in the first place.

I want to second the other anon that was excited for Bix and Cassian. I understand what you meant but I thought the tension in their relationship would come from the plot. Now it seems they are simply terrible for each other. Like you said the show would be a lot better if Cassian was younger. Watching an adult man try to pay off his debts while the woman marketed as his romance gets tortured was not what I signed up for. Even if Cassian turns out to have been a rebel this whole time like you said, it's too late. -- Bix anon

Anon I cannot possibly be saying my point correctly because no one understands that I get the point of what the show is saying but that I struggle with WHY the WRITERS decided to GO IN THIS DIRECTION lol like I do not know how I can put it any other way besides they're doing what they've decided to do very, very well but I don't get why they made some of the decisions they did.

I think what I'm hearing from some people is that they feel validated by seeing the realities of fascism and white supremacy in the treatment of these characters. I cannot speak to that and I feel uncomfortable even pushing back when someone says that because like... yeah it's never going to be my experience.

I personally don't agree that it is using shock value to educate, but I understand why you feel that way. To me most of the show has actually not been gratuitous - it's served a narrative purpose and wasn't just there to get eyesballs on them or like idk to make people gasp. but there are some choices that make me think there needs to be some more voices in the writer's room (Clem's execution for instance is one that I'm sorry it just doesn't sit well with me.) Like shock value for shock value's sake is the og Game of Thrones to me, but also what is and what isn't gratuitous is very personal. It's literally you know it when you see it. Everyone will have different standards.

And that's very important for you to decide. Is it too much for you? It may be. That's disappointing as hell but I don't think there's anything wrong with people who are too close to the issues they're talking about needing to step back and not engage with the show.

I've seen much worse examples of torture porn but I cannot deny that Bix's passivity is something I don't like as a literary choice - not as a realistic thing or unrealistic thing. Maybe if the show has these characters take on serious leadership positions (we know Cassian will be a captain at some point so I'm not worried about him rn even if I am disappointed) in rebel cells that will help? I didn't have high hopes or really much feeling about how their relationship would go because they called them on and off and I just hate on and off relationships LOL.

I do think it's telling that the show has handled most of the women characters so nicely but Bix has been treated like a punching bag. It does feel odd, but I don't even hate them having an angel of death kind of Mengele character, like I think that's important! but idk it felt a little unnecessary to see her being tortured - the aftermath would have been enough imo. THAT felt like the most gratuitous moment in the show.

Not for nothing, I want to flag something because I don't know that I would be as concerned about how passive a character (as opposed to dynamic, again, not in a political sense I'm talking academically in a literary sense rn) Jyn is also very passive in her own story. Things happen to her - in the film she is abandoned by her parents, picked up by saw, trained and raised as saw's daughter and a partisan rebel, abandoned by saw, is in prison, is broken out of prison, is put on a rebel mission with Cassian, and is given Galen's message by Saw - ACTIVE MOMENT she goes to try to save her father and then gives her message to the rebel council - and then she is given an army by Cassian, we don't even see her planning the Scarif attack or anything. She is pushed along by the actions of others with a few exceptions. I think part of that is a result of the reshoots - which Tony Gilroy did so much of that he is credited as screenwriter of Rogue One. He did not write the screenplay, he did a LOT of the reshoots so he changed the story enough to have that credit (it's a union thing iirc). I don't know where it happened but somewhere Jyn sort of lost a lot of spark (as well as a lot of dialogue).

I want to flag that not because I think like Gilroy is some misogynistic demon lol and I think he's done a great job with the politics of the show for the most part. but I don't want to ignore the feeling I have that Gilroy has some blindspots and women may be one of them.

the funny thing is that I am actually loving the show and I don't know how else to say it. I don't know that I'm being clear, and I feel like I'm just repeating myself over and over again at this point and it's a little aggravating tbh because I just feel like I must not be saying my feelings clearly.

#andor spoilers #star wars andor #fandom critical #racism #imperialism #fascism #torture #meta #answered #asks #anonymous

[desertleviathan]

Thoughts on Emet-Selch. Spoilers for FFXIV Stormblood, Shadowbringers and Endwalker abound. And grumpy, aggressively negative opinions about a character other players mostly adore, and the lead writer for the game also seems to adore. If you don't want to read that shit and you poke your nose in here anyway, I'm gonna post the Dead Dove gif at you.

Sometimes the FFXIV community is a very strange place for me to interact with as apparently the one player who saw the "Your character seems like they may be a reincarnation of Azem" ambiguity and took that opening without hesitation to declare it all just a wild coincidence.

A bunch of NPCs think one of my WoL's prior incarnations was good friends and colleagues with the cabal who became the inner circle of the Ascians? Nah. Actually no. 100% false. You are mistaken. Sometimes a person's Aura can just have a similar color to another person's Aura or whatever.

I'm absolutely not casting moral judgments on anyone who has strong positive feelings towards these characters. They're fictional and their crimes are fictional and the most "real" thing about them is that many of them are very attractive and charming. I get that. I think a number of them are very nice to look at and/or listen to as well.

But I'm the kind of player who mostly perceives the game through the filter of the life experiences I've invented for my character. When Emet-Selch sashays onto the screen, my WoL, an Ala Mhigan expatriate, doesn't think: Oh there's my old friend from the Convocation. He was misguided for a long time but we have made amends and I'm glad to see his ghost showing up to support me!

What my character thinks is: So. Emperor Solus zos Galvus of Garlemald. The man who forged the empire into an engine of conquest. The man who lead the invasion where my parents died, among countless others of my countrymen. The man who enslaved my people, outlawed our religion, sent our young and strong and healthy as conscripts to other lands to repeat all of these crimes against strangers, left our weak and sick and elderly behind to fend for themselves under backbreaking tax burdens, and pillaged every available physical resource of our homeland such that by the time we liberated it, there wasn't a whole lot of it left that was worth returning to. The man who did the same or worse to countless other nations, and placed this entire half of the Star under threat of brutal war. The man who oversaw the bizarre experiments on his own offspring that unleashed motherfuckin' Zenos on the world, which may genuinely be the worst thing of all. At least within the actions of that alias.

Because that man was secretly the Immortal Genocide Wraith Emet-Selch. Makes sense.

And that man also personally orchestrated the complete eradication of at least seven full inhabited worlds such that not even an archaeological record remains, not even a barren husk to serve as a monument. That man came a whisper away from scrubbing two further worlds out of memory as well, one of which is still trapped in a state of all inhabitants having been warped into undying-but-eternally-hungry monsters, and the other of which has been narrowed to a tiny circle of surviving territory surrounded by a wasteland of uniformly sun-scorched dust. That man, after all that shit had, the fucking gall, the repulsive, monstrous, obscene arrogance, to demand that I 'remember us, remember that we existed.'

Fuck that guy. I killed that sick son of a bitch, and he deserved it. I would do it again without a single heartbeat of hesitation or regret.

But he still seems to exist, and tales of any number of Hells and the judgments of Nald'thal aside, he does not seem to be experiencing any particular retaliatory torment in his afterlife.

Not only is he not chained up in a pit full of smoldering coals getting jabbed in the beanbag with a pitchfork or whatever, he's showing up here at the End of All Things, when I really need to keep my mind focused, to act like he's on my team and has my fuckin' back now?? Just palling around with his dead boyfriend (who is admittedly lovely, no quarrel whatsoever with Hythlodeus, pleasure to see you again buddy), having a grand old time???

I don't care what memories death may have restored to him, he did what he did in full possession of free will and an allegedly superior capacity for rational analysis. Dude went out of his way every time we talked to brag about how much better his his Bigass Aether-Dense Aumoratine Brain was, and he still decided to do all this heinous shit, acting deliberately and meticulously every step of the murderin' way.

Are there depths of evil so awful that redemption becomes impossible, and forgiveness can't be earned? Man, I don't know. I'm not a saint. I'm not a philosopher. I kill monsters. And that man is Star-wide Existential Threat. And one that has not been fully neutralized, given how his moldy soul keeps bubbling to the surface. (And for the record? What redemption? He hasn't even apologized. His janky ass tried to recruit me, tried to kill me when I refused his offer, got killed by me in self-defense, and now he just keeps... showing up, acting like we're all cool.)

So.

Next time I climb down the Aitascope it's gonna be with a backpack FULL of White Auracite.

Anyway. Just had to get that mess out of my skull. Here's hoping the story post-Endwalker doesn't find too many excuses to go back to the Ascians and Aumarot well. I feel like we've devoted enough of this game's lifespan to exploring those particular stories, and I personally don't need any more unless they figure out a very different direction to take the next Surprise Ascian appearance.

#Captain Siege Zabac #FFXIV #Ascians #Emet-Selch #FFXIV spoilers #Grouchy old man ramblings #Again I really have zero problem with anyone who ships their character with him or whatever #my character hates that guy as much as it's possible for one person to hate another person #and the way the lead story writer keeps assuming otherwise without giving me any room for my own interpretation kind of rubs a raw nerve. #Also for the record Siege didn't like Venat a whole lot either.

[sunderedazem]

Can I do two WIP Ask?

One for Dragon Blade and the other for Shinigami Padawan?

You most certainly can, anon friendo!

SO, Shinigami Padawan was, as one may assume, a crossover between the anime Bleach, and the original Star Wars trilogy. It centered Hitsugaya just after the WInter War (he stabs Hinamori, his sister/love-interest/we're-never-really-sure and is nearly cut in half) who's isekai'd to Tatooine and is found by One Uncle Ben. Obi-wan therefore gains a new semi-Padawan (b/c midichlorians = spirit particles in this crossover), Hitsugaya swears off fighting and becomes a Force healer, and helps the Rebels and Luke through the rest of the original trilogy. I got maybe one or two chapters into it before A Distraction XD

And as for Dragon Blade - if you're unfamiliar, it's by far my largest, most well-known fanfic, but it's a few years since I've updated it. It has its own TVTropes page and is posted in it's entirety on ffnet (just goes to show how old it is) and only partially on ao3. It was mostly written before I knew what ao3 was...and before I was mature enough to understand that trolls love being entitled little shits and "criticizing" fanfic that's a) fucking free and b) clearly written for the author's enjoyment.

It is also a crossover - Boku no Hero Academia and Bleach - and again stars Hitsugaya falling into an alternate world, but this time it's not a pure isekai, it's a parallel-universe sort of deal, and both the Bleach universe and the Boku no Hero universe were eventually going to play a big role in the story. Hitsugaya has to deal with repressed PTSD, developing a Quirk, evil Villains, and trying to return home - it's kind of a rollercoaster lmfao.

However, as you may infer from my salt above...ffnet is shit for keeping unwanted commentary away from your inbox. Eventually I got so fed up with people being jackasses for no fucking reason (and got concussed around the same timeframe and couldn't look at computer screens for more than like 15 minutes at a time) that I moved fandoms, and the fic has been on hiatus since. I have the entire rest of the fic plotted out - hell, some of it's even written - but the entitled fucks on ffnet balanced out all the nice people there (there were many nice people. they were sweet. They are the sole reason the story hasn't been completely deleted from the internet until i finish it)

#dragon blade #fanfic asks #wip ask game #wip asks #yeet!! thank you anon!

[wipbigbang]

Story Title: The Bridge Between the Stars, Part One Fandom: Star Wars (Rogue One/Rebellion Era) Link: AO3

Headers by the amazing pennywaltzy!

Summary:

After the ‘accidental’ death of her father (retired Imperial Navy, though I’m sure that had nothing at all to do with his death), Alderaan native Kreyla Trozrela (stoic, cold, and already a sharpshooter at 16) joins the rest of her family in space.

Or, more accurately, in the fight against the Empire.

It’s a Rogue One prequel, a Rogue One sequel, and a Rogue One everybody-lives AU all rolled into one!

Warnings:

Rated E for Explicit Smut and Extreme Self-Indulgence

Non-explicit rape/SA (off-screen) and aftermath, major character death, canon-typical violence, childbirth, interrogation under torture, and Alderaan blows up. 

No beta. We die like Bothans.

Characters: A cast of almost entirely original characters!

Meet the Trozrela family, the crew of the Istabith Falls:

Irshe: captain, pilot, oldest sister, hard ass

Mom: mechanic, second-in-command, Fun-Killer

Sassy: medic, middle brother, ray of sunshine

Cady: not-much-older-but-annoyingly-superior cousin, apprentice healer

QT: astromech

Mewloorun: tooka cat, trash goblin

and Kreyla: youngest sister, apprentice mechanic, sharpshooter, and our MC

Together the crew are members of Viceroy Organa’s Alderaan Resistance (Sunburst Division), primarily acting as smugglers, blockade runners, and small-time infiltrators.

Major canon characters (in order of appearance): Jyn Erso, Saw Guerrera, Jek Lawauqne, Cassian Andor, Shaeeah Lawquane, Bodhi Rook

Pairings:

Jyn Erso/OFC, Cassian Andor/OFC, Jek Lawquane/OC, Shaeeah Lawquane/OC, mild Jyn Erso/Cassian Andor, hints of Cassian Andor/Bodhi Rook.

That’s all for now, though in Part Two it will become a beautiful poly web of Cassian/Jyn/Bodhi/OC, and various combinations therein.

When I Started: November of last year (holy shit)

How I Lost My Shit:

I got stuck in my head. I’m sure you can all guess the litany: “Nobody reads OCs! Nobody likes OC/Canon! You should be focused on writing stories that you can publish! Why are you wasting your time and effort when you only have a finite amount of words in your tiny pathetic brain??”

Between us, though, my shit was never that well-contained to begin with. My dad’s health has been bad, my pain levels have been bad, my partner’s job was bad, the world is a dumpster fire, and I was also querying an original novel, which is its own special level of disheartening hell.

How I Finished My Shit:

It started with my spouse (a prince amongst men). “Hey,” he said to me when I was finished tearfully pouring out the above litany to him, “you should write whatever makes you happy. People will like it, because you’re a great writer,” (a prince, I tell you!), “but It doesn’t matter who reads it as long as you have a good time.”

Then I stumbled on a promo for the Big Bang, and it all fell into place.

With an outside deadline on hand, I was able to give myself permission to stop worrying about reception and just write the damn thing the way I wanted to read it. I hope you enjoy reading half as much as I did writing.

#submission #fandom: star wars #fandom: rogue one #!completed shit #!2022

[bearpillowmonster]

Sixteen 2023 Movies Ranked

I didn't say top, because I only saw 16 movies that actually released this year. There are some really good ones that technically released at the end of last year (like Puss in Boots) that I didn't see until this year but I guess I won't count those. But I will include Suzume because it released in the US this year.

16. The Boogeyman - This one wasn't even my choice, it was my dad's and I told him it was going to be stupid and it was yet it has great reviews. I just can't get into horror movies though, it's very rare there will be one that spikes my interest.

15. Rebel Moon - Ugh, yuck, regurgitated Star Wars.

14. Shazam - It wasn't as horrible as some people make it out to be and I wasn't that big of a fan of the first one but it just didn't make the villains all that interesting, except Anthea, felt like it did some things right and other things wrong, never really "improving".

13. Ladybug and Chat Noir - It's really just how you like your burger done, because it does a lot of what the series already did and then recontextualizes it, adds cruddy music, and a few new scenes and ending. It's an origin but also an ending, it's a franchise all in one movie. Really weird how it's set up, the animation is good but really best suited for the Youtube clips.

12. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts - Mindless, doesn't really accomplish anything, becomes really cheesy.

11. The Marvels - Wow, this is weird putting this so high but once again, not as bad as they say, the villain is pretty bad though despite a cool set-up. It has the gimmick too but doesn't make as much fun with it as I would've liked. Ms. Marvel is the highlight, the ending sucks and really I'm just reiterating popular opinion.

10. No Hard Feelings - Another one I'm surprised is this high. The premise could've been better as well as the twist but I can't say it wasn't memorable or a fun time.

9. Five Nights at Freddy's - Not a horror movie, more a kids movie. Some changes I liked, most I didn't. Cool to see all this on screen though.

8. The Flash - The CGI is horrendous but it has Supergirl, it has Flash, I don't care much for Michael Keaton's Batman, I just really like the fast scenes and the ending.

7. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - Yeah, it wasn't the end all be all like everyone was saying for me. I look back at the others and think how great they are, even during the film I questioned myself. Rocket's story is really the only thing I liked about it, cut away way too much from what you actually want to see and replaced it with goofy stuff you don't care for. Even the music was weak for the most part.

6. Suzume - I was invested with the chair and the doors and cats were cool but it switched to a different movie for the second half and tried focusing on her relationship with her aunt where it didn't seem earned, needed more conflict in that area where not everyone is the good guy.

5. Super Mario Bros. - Mario and Luigi and a Donkey Kong too, A thousand troops of Koopas couldn't keep me from you- I just really wanted this movie. It was fun but for one, Chris Pratt did a really good voice in the beginning then it just became Chris Pratt. The whole dad thing was shoehorned and was unneeded, they could've had some characters be actual characters when they were stock NPCs and very generic music choice, would've been better to just keep it all score.

4. Barbie - Already? Wow, this was one of the highlights too. Great music. Great style and personality, smart dialogue and plot.

3. TMNT Mutant Mayhem - I saw this in theaters and I just couldn't stop laughing because of how it's a kid's movie and all Superfly ever says is "What the hell?" It got my sister to be a fan of the franchise, the animation was excellent, we have some of the best versions of these characters (I said some). Really fun.

2. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning - I'm a fan of Ghost Protocol but the rest are just action flicks to me, I just really like the setpieces of some of them is all but this one actually gave me a run because it kept my attention steady and on the edge of my seat despite the strange plot. This is where I actually felt it could be matched up against the likes of any other spy thriller like James Bond.

Across the Spider-Verse - As if it could've been anything else but in all seriousness one of my favorites of all time and really stepped up the game. I haven't stopped thinking about it and it was summer when I went to go see it in theaters. I didn't think I would experience something like that again and here's to hoping its sequel is just as good or dare I say that it's even possible to be better.

#2023 ranking #movies #2023 movies #films #cinema #ranked

[ruby-whistler]

i made a list of the vibes of the hermits i watch, so you might want to check some of them out! this is just mostly jokes, but i thought all of the more “serious” propaganda was missing something, so have what truly makes hermitcraft worth it; the players’ unique styles!

will be back on my dsmp stuff asap but it’s the first day of season 8 and i would really appreciate if you checked them out through the links provided :]

Grian; [ episode one link ]

vibes of a 17 year old mcyter, is actually 27 and married

noo not my red jumpah!

chaotic capitalist

someone is making the server better through order? *starts another war* whoops, hand slipped :D

he built a- he rebuilt his entire megabase in survival, above a giant lake of lava, in the nether, on hard mode, upside down??

“watching as scar dies over and over in my trap is peak comedy and i’m tired of pretending it’s not” but it happens like 5 times i every season

video editing is very main-stream and good for short attention spans!

*sad montage over losing stuff he’ll get back in 15 minutes because he’s rich*

pesky birdd! great elytra flier! amazing builder! will tnt your house! poultrymannn!!

wholesome, chaos incarnate, talented architect

why won’t mumbo respond to my messages it’s been two weeks :[ (clingy)

doors???????????? your house has doors???? no doors for you good sir!

will laugh a lot at a lot of things, esp when he’s with his friends

genuinely just so fun to watch

Mumbo Jumbo; [ episode one link ]

perfect british accent

mustache man (warning: he has no mustache irl)

*fails ten businesses in a row* iskall please help

redstone is his element

“it’s actually quite simple” i like your funny words magic man, now can you repeat how in the hell you made a that fancy vault work-

filmographer?? i think? met up with grian irl

him and grian have a robot son named grumbot. that has nothing to do with the vibes but i had to mention him because he means a lot to me.

tries to stay out of wars and server politics until someone (grian) drags him into them

minigame maker, makes the hermits competitive and that is scary (also very funny) e. g. button, hermit challengesss!

“it’ll be fineee” *que shot of everything on fire behind him*

makes his base a living being and then all his neighbors end up feeding it instead of him

conspiracy theorist. bumbo baggins. the usual.

very entertaining videos that help you learn more about minecraft mechanics!

GoodTimesWithScar; [ episode one link ]

wheelchair creator with literally the best vibes

so wholesome i. he is so cool he makes me so happy :’D

*extremely cool announcer voice* ooooo hello there my fellow miners and crafters, good timeees with scar heree, and welcome backk to the wonderful world of hermits and crafting, and we’re flying over-

commentates everything extremely well

spends tenths of hours on builds within a single video and doesn’t bat an eye

lore for all of his builds! he builds these amazing bases to tell a story!

“i wanna see white flags! white flags, outside your base, by-“ wait no wrong anti-rebellion army leader

all videos have a clear objective

mostly building, but he loves hanging out/helping his friends!

loves disney movies! wants to go to space! :D

kind-hearted, always makes everyone else smile

can be chaotic but usually just tries to have fun and make sure everyone else has fun too

*flies into a tree on half a heart* wait what why did i die D:

scar. scar please eat. you’re going to die for the tenth time this video-

the non-chaotic capitalist, has extremely creative shop designs

a danger to himself, but also the kind of person you can’t be angry at for long

BdoubleO100; [ episode one link ]

the guitar music at the beginning of his videos brings a smile to my face, it just has such an immaculate mood

*camera pans over him as said music plays* ladies and gentlemen welcome to another episode of hoimycraffff

the way he talks is extremely endearing

one of the best builders on the server - probably best builder of interiors in existence

able to make a palette using any number of strange blocks and then make amazing builds using it

built a whole castle as a backdrop, then built an entire giant mountain for said castle

extremely sensitive to short jokes, usually gets pranked by others because his reactions are always so funny

his daughters show up from time to time in his room while he’s recording and it’s so cute

*has no way to see the sun but still knows it’s nighttime* gotta go schleep!

scar, pointing at him “this is why we can’t have nice sunsets”

(scar dies because of mobs every time bdubs isn’t on the server to sleep)

likes to be accomplice because he isn’t the one being made fun of (/lh)

*shoots himself in front of a confused grian because he thinks the guy wants his face again when he’s actually just looking for a netherportal*

is usually the underdog so it feels good when he wins

they’re all actually such great friends so it’s genuinely funny to watch

he himself is amazing at entertainment and just a very cool guy

ImpulseSV; [ episode one link ]

what’s going on everyone, my name is impulse and welcome back to hermitcraft!

always speaks with a smile in his voice

has a good dynamic with basically everyone

great co-worker and always helps out if he can

had his base turned pink during the swap, and instead of changing it back afterwards, he dyed his skin’s hair and clothing pink to match it

very cool and original building style!

makes a lot of farms and sells what he gets in his few shops

makes money to be able to do more stuff and make more farms

blows up most his base ever so often to rebuild parts. you know, like a normal person does in minecraft survival.

the grind is never over

the guy who always gets all of the work done on the school project and proceeds to be chill about it

always has very cool side-projects going on and puts his heart into all of them

pog timelapses!!

Rendog; [ episode one link ]

*short, funny scene from the video at the beginning slowly fades out into great music

dogs howling as the half-dog half-cog logo comes up*

greetiiings cyberdogs and citizens of the interbubs! this is ren diggity dawg coming atcha, in another minecraft episodes varuuummm the hermit. craft. server. (hey!)

we’re kicking things off today my friends, from the- *location name on screen*

that intro gets me hyped every time

he’s a furry who talks in bro language it’s great i swear - very atypical but fun

he transformed an entire biome into a star wars planet for his base

his building skills and dedication are incredible

horny (just a little bit)

the only person who cared about mycelium in the whole rebellion

does a lot of roleplay-themed stuff and mysteries to be solved

“b-dubba-dubs one hundred”

extremely upbeat & sweet guy

adds -age after everything “biddage” “flyage” to make it sound Cooler

amazingly positive always and funny as hell

mcc winner!! wooooooooo :D

always tries to be where stuff is happening and interact with people

very entertaining editing style

Iskall85; [ episode one link ]

drives joke into the mud and then picks them up and does it again which is funny

starts videos with one-off bits

iskallman!!! the superhero literally no one needed and yet there he is

only has one (1) braincell when with mumbo

they both do and they’re hilarious together every time

like when they laughed at squeaky noises for ten minutes straight. guys please you’re adult men

bernie the leaf master

omega (something) of doom!!

encourages gambling (in a videogame)

he has so many jokes he keeps using i can’t possibly fit them all in here

basically a wildcard

i have no idea what he’s doing this season

i have no idea what he’s doing ever actually

tame chaos, confusing to the point when it’s funny again

really great builder as well!

mostly for younger audiences but his videos are a good watch in general

feel free to send asks about hc! i’m already loosely involved in hermitblr but yeah, my dsmp followers aren’t immune :] /lh /j

#long post #hermitcraft #hermitcraft s8 #hermitblr #ruby's rambles #:] #all my personal opinions #just wanted to add to the hype lol

[dadsbongos]

gentle lover

(1)gentle lover (2)burn me to the ground Movie/Game/Show: Loki Dynamic: Loki Laufeyson/Reader Warnings: spoilers for infinity war/1st episode of loki ig, fem pronouns Summary: Loki almost wishes he could've experienced the life he's watching of you and him together. ~~~

There’s something about looking upon the gentle face of a lover and coming to the realization that you’d do anything for them. It isn’t as though you never knew - the knowledge was already there, it just took a few seconds for the thought to become cemented as truth. Loki sees this in himself as he stands before the TVA projection of his life.

He’s paused at a moment on an unnameable planet. He sees himself standing on a balcony in what he assumes to be a late-night, but instead of staring up at the stars, he’s looking upon a woman beside him. She’s looking at him as well. They share the glance with smiles - and that’s what alarms Loki most. The smile he sees is one he hasn’t felt in years. It’s small but it’s more genuine than the leather he was wearing moments ago. It’s a smile he hasn’t felt since before he knew about Laufey. Since before his mother…

He knows that woman. One of Thor’s Midgardian friends. The one assigned to watch and guard him in New York.

He doesn’t know why she’s there with him. He doesn’t know why she looks so content to be on another planet with him. He doesn’t know why he looks so at peace at her mere presence. He doesn’t know why it makes him miss a reality he’s never even known to exist.

He almost wants to be there, just to know what it is about that woman that brings him so much tranquility at that moment.

She’s just another bug, their difference in lifespans is proof enough of that. But Loki knows that look, as much as he hates to admit to his own conscience, he knows that feeling smeared across his own face. It’s caring. Tender. A softness he’s never felt for others is now on full display to a Midgardian.

Loki clenches his jaw and resumes the projection.

He watches the two slide their hands together on a railing, interlocking their fingers.

The Loki onscreen’s eyes flicker between hers and their joined hands. It isn’t even him that speaks first, it’s her.

“When this whole thing is over and Sakaar is ruined and Thor has the throne, where will you go?”

Silence is passed between them, Loki brushes his thumb over her knuckles, tilting his head to the side briefly in thought, “Where will you want me?”

She chuckles and shakes her head, “You wouldn’t want to go to Earth. Unless you’d like the Avengers up your ass.”

They giggle together, ignoring the very real reason why the Avengers would be so onto him in the first place. Loki blinks at the woman, scooting closer to her, “I wouldn’t be fond of that… but for you, my dear, I’d tear the universe apart.”

He kisses her knuckles and she merely jokes back, “That sounds like exactly why they wouldn’t want you. Sorry to say they’re not fond of universe-tearing.”

“I’m charming and romantic and this is how I’m repaid?”

“However,” she stresses with a broad grin, “I can’t say that’s not excellent bargaining to keep you on a leash.”

Loki’s brows furrow and he nearly pulls back, “Like a dog?”

“Well, now,” she bites her lip in thought and looks away at the dystopian city below, but Loki still looks at her.

He looks at her as though she’d sewn the very realms together. As though she’d hung all the moons and suns and stars and planted every sweet flower and harvested every fruit. He looks at her like she’s the beginning of his world - and he knows that it also means that, if she asked right then and there, he’d help her destroy the world too. He looks at her as though she’s the only true love he’s ever known. And for all this Loki, watching himself and this woman be entwined, knows - she probably is. He can feel it through the very projection he’s watching, and so he plays another scene with her in it.

“For a woman who could undoubtedly tear people apart, you master the role of a noblewoman, love.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

Her response is dripping in lighthearted sarcasm and it manages a laugh from the Loki onscreen as he lays back in a shared bed.

“I am somewhat on the espionage scene, it’d be a little embarrassing if I couldn’t even pull off a little role like this.”

“Even so, I admire you for it.”

“At this point, it’d be rarer to find something you don’t admire me for,” she lightly huffs, a smile tipping at her lips as she finishes tying up her dress, “Not that I’m complaining. It's a huge ego boost.”

“There certainly is much to admire about you,” Loki shows his palms as if to display a sort of surrender.

Before more can be said, the projection is paused once again. Loki closes his eyes and lets his head down in the silence - almost expecting that voice to creep through his mind again. He can hear her now, in his head. He knows that out there, in those other variations of him on the sacred timeline that haven’t yet become Variants, they can probably hear her too. In a more realistic sense, of course. Because if they’re determined to fall in love, there must be one of her fated for every one of them. And he almost pities the fact.

He plays the projection in bits and pieces.

“My mother…”

“Loki, stop, you don’t have to.”

“I wish to, dear.”

“Loki…”

“My mother, I truly feel that she would’ve adored you.”

He takes in their love story as it comes and he struggles down what feels too intimate for even him to watch.

“Do you ever worry about the day when you wake up and I don’t?”

“Yes, of course, I do.”

“What will you do?”

“I prefer to not think on that.”

“You think about everything.”

“Some things… are better left unplanned for. At least for now, when that isn’t a valid worry in my mind.”

He almost wishes he hadn’t touched that tesseract. Just to live a life where he gets to see first-hand how this human woman manages to creep under the walls he so carefully spent years crafting.

“I love you.”

“Poor choice, really.”

“Loki. Seriously. I love you.”

“I love you, too, dear.”

It’s bizarre to see himself love. It’s bizarre to watch as he cares for a being he once would’ve had no qualms ruling over. It’s bizarre to know that this is what could’ve been the happiest times of his life if he hadn’t picked up the tesseract.

“Did you ever imagine yourself here?”

“On a spaceship with a bunch of Asgardians and the gladiators from Sakaar? No, never.”

“I meant with me.”

“I know, I was just messing with you. And… no. To be honest. I thought maybe I’d have to watch you as a guard or something. With the whole trying-to-take-over thing, but never that I’d be your girlfriend.”

“Eh.”

“‘Eh’? The hell does ‘eh’ mean? I am!”

“It sounds so… juvenile. Girlfriend - boyfriend.”

“What? Wife sounds better?”

“In honesty? Yes, it does. I’d much rather call you my wife than my girlfriend.”

“You can’t joke about that! I’ll get my hopes up.”

“Who said anything about joking, dear?”

And as he comes to the end, as he watches himself be lifted by the titan he’s come to fear more than anything, he hears her. Her mourning. Her screaming. Her pleading. Her gut-wrenching cries.

He watches her and Thor crawl to his body and sprawl themselves over it in heaps of hiccupped tears and choked sorrows.

“You were supposed to out-live me… Loki, please. You’ve come back before, Loki, please, come back again. Come back again… I can’t - I can’t live this life without you, Loki… please… please come back again…” she sounds as though her heart itself has been ripped from her chest and torn in two before her very eyes, “You were supposed to out-live me… Loki...”

He looks away from the screen. Decides that now is too much. He can’t watch her lose what she saw as the world. Loki barely knows her and yet he knows himself enough to know if he watches her grief then he’ll want to mend it.

Looking upon her and seeing how deeply and irrevocably she’d cared for him, knowing of his past and forgiving his ways and loving him anyway, he knows he’d want to end her cries. It’s that feeling of realization that makes him feel ridiculous for wanting to do so much for a Midgardian he hasn’t fallen in love with yet.

Yet?

Yet.

It’s a feeling of realization that he’d do anything for that lover of his, when he gets to love her. If he gets to love her.

And it’s that ‘if’ that makes him understand why Mobius was so interested in making him watch his own life. His own future. It makes him realize what he wants but can’t have. His brother, his love, his happiness - it gives him something to want. Lying just out of reach.

So long as he’s compliant with the TVA, he assumes. Otherwise, he’d have to tear the universe in half to even see that Midgardian woman once again.

#loki x reader #loki x y/n #loki x you #loki laufeyson x reader #loki fanfic #look guys idc if i can't have the characterization of a ms birbs #just let me post my bs and then :)

[marky4l]

Step by Step / Mark Lee

step by step / mkl

pairing: Mark Lee x Reader

From an innocent childhood friendship to a juvenile high school rivalry to a forced pairing for a Psychology paper, it seems you and Mark just can’t avoid each other. But something’s a little different now.

genre: fluff, angst (a little bit), suggestive themes, childhood friends (barely mentioned!) to enemies to lovers, college!au

notes: lia yeonjun chan hyuck jeno all make tiny appearances 

word count: 17.2k 

hi!!! this is my first work nd I’m really excited to put this out I’d looove if you could give it a read :^) hound me on my inbox if u wanna i take anything

“Remember when we were best friends in fifth grade?”

His voice is a little quiet, and there’s a very obvious undertone of boredom, but you hum softly anyway, nodding, as if to question why you would ever forget. Fifth grade was a suburban brew of Star Wars marathons, figuring out the world, and Harry Potter merchandise littering your house. Fifth grade was lemonade and oatmeal, knitted sweaters, and sneaking into your mom’s vanity to swipe her makeup. And fifth grade was Mark—bright eyed, geeky Mark, with his Death Star replica and weird electronica music. 

Mark, who had an affinity with Troy from High School Musical and Spiderman, and wanted to be just like them. Mark, who would show up grinning to your front door everyday, pie dish in his nimble grip. He was the one who had opened a lemonade stand at the corner of your block so he could buy you the Gryffindor scarf you’d been nagging your mom about the entire holiday season. He was the one who learned the chords to your favorite Jonas Brothers song and sang it to you each time you requested it.

“Yes, I do,” you answer instead, clearing your throat. 

You attempt to push down all the memories that just ran through your head and adjust the grip you have on your pen. “Well,” Mark continues, “that was ages ago. Beats me why it ever happened.” 

The timidity is replaced with a tidal wave of teasing, and the annoyance that had disappeared is beginning to crawl all over you. Again. You roll your eyes and pull up the slides your professor had assigned. “Beats me why we even ended up in the same university, let alone the same class,” you jab, “if you thought I forgot about how you outright failed our Spanish classes in high school, I didn’t.”

Your friendship with Mark had reached its unfortunate demise to the hands of middle school, where you had branched out with your interests and began to stick to societal (as societal as school can get) norms. He had joined the geeky, cool kids; you hadn’t joined a specific social circle, but you had a best friend, Lia, and you were generally good with everybody. 

Somehow, despite you both being in good graces with everyone, you had a deep-seated dislike for one another that stemmed from an intense academic rivalry. Specifically, the competition to become school council president. That had ended now, seeing as though you were both in college, but the abrasiveness of your banter had never worn off.

“Oh, because you were so good at Physics?” he says, voice even. His brow is raised. “We all have our strong suits, you know. You’re one to talk.” You decide to pay him no mind, instead jotting down the criteria for your final project in Psychology 1—something about the stages of grief. You’re supposed to relate it to a different human process and show how they fit with one another. 

It’s absolute fucking bullshit, and the fact that Mark Lee became your partner among a hundred students is beyond you. Absolutely beyond you. 

He nears your screen, reading the content of your project, eyes squinted—you’d noticed his lack of decent eyesight years ago, but it seemingly hadn’t improved. “Relate the stages of grief…hold up, what? That’s difficult as hell. What are we supposed to do, lose a loved one?” You roll your eyes, turning to him. “No, Mark. The point is to find another process that happens gradually and relate it to this—denial, bargaining, anger. Get it?”

He stares back at you. “No.”

You groan audibly, turning back to your notebook. “This is impossible. Can we just switch partners so I won’t have to deal with you?” He smirks, kicking his feet up on the library table. Absently, you note how nice his sneakers look. Reclining onto the seat, he shuts his eyes as if to contemplate. 

“I heard through the birdvine our professor’s the type to pair up people she thinks would look good together for shits and giggles. Girls and boys, boys and boys, you name it. Johnny”—he’s referring to a guy who’s a year above yours, studying Biology—“tells me over five couples have been born out of this class. Isn’t that nice?” You scoff, scrolling mindlessly through the slides to keep yourself distracted. 

“It really is. A shame we won’t be adding to that list, because I can’t fucking stand you.” He laughs loudly, the vibration of it remaining in the deadly silent air. “I can stand fucking you, though,” he says, and then, before you can even blush, “All jokes. Don’t get your hopes up, ‘kay?” He’s quick to get up, just as flustered as you are at the uncharacteristic phrase that just left his mouth. He collects his jacket and jogs out of the library with a small, half-assed bye under his breath.

—

Lia’s eyes bore into yours. “He actually said that? I’m telling you, he’s some weird kinky guy under that whole cool geek persona. High school Mark would never have. Oh my god. He’s a furry—he’s a furry!” She flops back onto your bed, laughing. You poke at her waist in protest. 

“It’s because he’s surrounded by too many weird classy fuckboys. You know, those that think that they’re all that because they haven’t roofied a girl.” You’re half-joking, and you’re really only referring to maybe two guys you’ve happened to see Mark with. As if to read your mind, Lia continues. “Hey, I heard some of them are okay. They’re not, like…those ‘nice guys’, if you get me.”

“I do,” you quip. “But I guess I’m just trying to find a way to justify the whole 360 in Mark. I mean, in high school, he was still nerdy—well, you know. Shy. But jump to sophomore year of uni and he’s suddenly some…” You rack your head for a proper term. “Sex god?” your friend asks, holding in a laugh. “Oh, eat shit,” you fire back, “really, eat shit. And while you’re at it, feed me some, too, because I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to turn in at the end of the term. Like, Jes—”

There’s a faint knock at the door, and then. “Lia? It’s—uh, it’s me, Daniel? Er, Daniel Choi.” Your wide eyes can’t possibly match Lia’s as she tugs on a decent-looking pullover and puts it on. As she swings the door open, you manage to sufficiently hide yourself under your duvet and attempt to hear their conversation. 

“You know, it’s okay if you leave out the whole…saying your full name at the door part. Trust me…I know you,” she jokes, and you hear him laugh before you detect the crinkling of a plastic bag. “Chinese. Uh, I bought some extra for your best friend, because I’m not gonna pretend I don’t see the sentient blob on the bed.”

You pull the blanket off and smile sheepishly. “Hey, Daniel,” you say, “thanks for the food. I owe you an empty room next time, I swear by it. It’ll be easy, since I’m gonna be”—you heave yourself off the bed and onto the floor, where they’re both sitting—“holed up at the library for the next few weeks.” 

Lia nods, chewing her chow mein, and then when she’s done, she explains to Daniel your whole huge Psychology end-of-term paper about stages and grief and whatever, oh also she’s partnered with Mark Lee, this guy that we both know from high school, and she dislikes his guts, oh you know him? 

“Wait. You know him?” You repeat, and Daniel nods, ruffling his black mullet. “His room’s, like, three away from mine. He’s studying Theoretical Physics, right? Yeah, he’s always in his room doing school shit, but every weekend he’s out with the upperclassmen. He’s probably out now, ‘cause it’s Friday. How he even charmed them, though, is a mystery.”

Mid-dumpling, you roll your eyes. “Y’know, the hardest part is being partnered with him. But also, even finding what kind of gradual process to relate denial and anger too is weirdly hard. It feels like I could find something, but I haven’t gotten it…quite…” you trail off, your eyes landing on Lia and Daniel across you—they’re smiling softly at each other, and you distinguish their fingers interlocking quietly, as if you wouldn’t notice. 

“…yet. Except maybe I have. How would you want to participate in my end-of-term paper?” Their gazes turn to yours, and you nod frantically. “Oh my god, I’m a genius! Seriously! Falling in love! Yes! It’s denial—anger—whatever, whatever! It makes perfect sense. The end is acceptance, too! Oh god, Li, it’s perfect. I will owe you for life if you help me out.”

“Wait, what? You dove straight into it, what—recap, please,” Lia asks, and you compose yourself before explaining giddily. 

“Falling in love. It happens gradually, and we can compare it to the stages of grief. Seeing as you and Daniel are headed right there, we can use you as some test subjects. It’s not required to have respondents or subjects, really, it’s just an extensive paper, but it might help get the grade up. This is gonna be great, and if you ever wanna back out, you can, because it’s not mandatory.” Lia and Daniel meet eyes briefly, and then slowly, nod. “Okay, that’s pretty smart,” Daniel says, “I’m up for it. Are you?” Lia nods, slowly and hesitantly, and you smile widely. “You two just saved my Psych grade. I’ll be at Giselle’s tonight. Just…not on my bed.” You grab your keys and phone and bound out of your room, straight into the elevator at the end of the hall.

The elevator door nearly closes when a Converse-clad foot steps in, and your eyes rake up the figure, eventually landing on his face. 

“Jesus fuck,” you mumble, “you must be kidding me.” 

Mark enters the elevator with a small, teasing smile, hands tucked into his jacket’s pockets. “Hey, dude, what’s up? Was on your floor on my stop down to get some money Lucas owed me,” he says, “this is actually a godsend, because my genius brain found us a project idea. Relate grief to something else gradual? Easy as pie. Falling in lo—” 

You cut him off before he can finish, “Falling in love, right. I thought of it first, earlier,” you say profusely, absently noting the pettiness in your tone. He whistles. “No need to get all possessive over an idea the previous classes have used before, man.” You continue, ignoring him. “Whatever. Lucky for our grades, I went the extra mile to get us some test subjects. Do you know the two Chois? Lia and Daniel?” 

He nods once, “Yeah, their PDA on Instagram is fucking sickening, but I see your technique, and I like that—we get some extra data from their god awful PDA.” You nod once, and he continues. “It’s nearing 11 on a Friday night. Whose party are you headed to?”

“You’re welcome for the test subjects,” you gripe. “Anyway, I was so giddy about coming up with it, I just left them to…well, fornicate. As a compromise for being lab rats. I texted my…” you realize you’re starting to share too much to a guy you typically dislike talking to, and then there’s a silence in the air that’s painfully awkward. 

“You texted your…?” Mark asks. “My friend, but she’ll be home at 1AM, so I’m out to kill time. No parties, just…I dunno.” He nods again, and then the elevator lets out a blissful ding. You step out simultaneously, and then he faces you. “Look, it’s freezing out, you’re in shorts and a puffer coat, and it’s three hours to 1AM, so I doubt you’ll get far.” You scoff at his words despite feeling your legs shake from the breeze outside. “I’ll be fine, dumbass.”

“Just concerned,” he says, in a tone that sounds more blank than annoyed, but he turns and heads toward the door anyway. He swivels back around briefly. “It’s in Johnny’s apartment. Just a couple people, if you get bored freezing.” He jogs outside then, and you inwardly appreciate the small gesture, but again, annoyance returns just as quickly. You linger a bit before heading out yourself, walking briskly to a local Japanese restaurant. You consider this an opportunity to have some me time, some rest after a shitty week in university. Lasting ’til 1AM alone and entertained would not at all be a problem. 

You last one ramen bowl and head to Johnny’s apartment.

—

When Johnny Suh answers the door, he’s clad in a makeshift shower curtain gown of sorts, and is flushed and very buzzed all over. He hikes up the top to cover his chest and laughs profusely. “Did Mark invite you?” Behind him is a sizeable group of just about twenty people, which looks like forty in a cramped communal space. You’d been here before—Johnny likes to invite just about anyone to get stoned and listen to Kid Cudi on Fridays, and you had pushed Lia to accompany you before. 

You distantly spot the kitchenette, the small living room, and then the two bedroom doors opposing each other. “The rule was to show up wearing something not marketed as clothing, but Mark didn’t follow the rules, so. Anyway, you’re off scot-free, too…” he pauses, “…if you take off the puffer coat. We’ve got heating, anyway. Free booze and weed, too.” You figure being in a flimsy tank top isn’t so bad—you’re sure half the people here are already getting laid or trying to, and nobody would really pay attention to you.

You shrug off the coat as Johnny steps aside to let you in, hugging it close to your body and navigating your way to the kitchen. The granite counters are filled with various bottles of booze, and you also note the cigarettes and blunts lining the island. You peruse the brands before settling on a sealed can of decidedly not-so-cheap-looking beer, and crack it open to take a swig. It’s warm and fucking disgusting, but there’s not much glitz in an “anything but clothing” off-campus college party anyway. 

There are several people scattered among the living area, passing around a blunt—another group is playing suck and blow. You make your way over to the cheap couch on the far end of the room, taking a seat on the arm and stretching out your hand to claim the blunt. It’s Jae who passes it to you—Jaehyun Jung, an upperclassman whose infamy (for wearing nothing but toilet paper and running through campus) greatly surpasses him. “Who are you?” he asks, and you holler your name back over the Kanye West song playing in the background. “Mark invited me,” you tack onto the end as compensation.

He nods in understanding, watching you take a drag and pass it back to him. He only hands it back, saying, “It’s nearly done, just finish it,” and getting up to probably get some booze or another blunt. 

You scan the area for a better place to cherish your weed, because you’re definitely not going to do it on the arm of a couch housing three couples making out to the high heavens. You spot an open window and a fire escape just beside the kitchen and walk over, ducking into the cool night air. It’s not quiet, it never is, and you treasure the peace that comes with the noise, closing your eyes and trying to milk the last few drags. All that is flushed down the drain when somebody kicks you out of your reverie and your last two drags are falling down, through the grills of the fire escape. 

“What the fuck?” You look up to meet, of course, Mark’s gaze, teasing and mischievous. 

“That wasn’t fucking funny, asshat. Get away from me.” You get up instantly, ducking back into the house and searching for your coat. It’s (very unfortunately) buried under a couple who have escalated from making out to borderline public indecency.

“Fuck it,” you mumble, swinging the door open and mentally preparing yourself for the cold once you get to the sidewalk, floors down. Mark follows suit, a laugh gracing the atmosphere around the two of you. “You know, I forgot how fun it is to make you pissed off. I did it all the time in eighth grade when I told our teacher you knew the solution to the Physics problems.” You’re fucking pissed. However petty, you’re fucking annoyed that you couldn’t finish the blunt, and you pay no attention to him. 

He badgers on anyway. “Hey—it was a mistake, I wanted to say hi to you.” You scoff, finally turning—“Why? Because we’re friends? We’re not. We’re Psych partners, we came from the same high school, we share a couple mutual friends. But you and I are not friends, not objectively, anyway. Please, Mark. I only just re-acquainted myself with you today, but, like, you’re already so annoying!” You’re at the elevator now, and when the doors slide open, you step inside and let them close at once. You barely catch the unreadable look on his face in your annoyance, and you lean against the wall, shutting your eyes and breathing heavily. 

How you’d even get to Giselle’s, or how you would wait out the remaining half-hour before she got home, was just up to whichever higher power happened to be witnessing you that night.

—

The door of your professor’s office closes with a saddening click. You stare back at her name, embossed on the wood in bold, in defeat, accepting your fate with a heavy heart. Just fifteen minutes prior, you had entered with a whole spiel prepared on how you just had to swap with somebody from your class so you wouldn’t have to work with Mark. This speech had occurred twice now—with your TA, and then once with your professor. This was your second chance, your redemption: so you prepared notes, you prepared convincing words—you had a point. 

But your professor simply shooed you away, muttering how she didn’t have time for you because she was going to be receiving hundreds of papers in a few weeks’ time from a different class and she, quite honestly, couldn’t be bothered. You bite your lip, thinking back to the previous Friday—it was nearing two weeks since your small outburst at Mark. Since then, you’d expected to build a silent rapport of just working, observing Lia and Daniel, and then parting. And that was almost it. You would show up to your so-called “lab rat sessions”, cup of warm caramel latte in hand, and work. 

Except Mark would constantly make noise, jeer, swipe your pen, and do other things that got on your nerves.

“You’re going to have to stop trying sometime,” Lia says, backhugging you. She’d been waiting outside. You let your head loll back onto her shoulder and whine. “Do you know when you’re so frustrated you want to cry? Yeah? That’s exactly how it is, Li. I can’t keep up with this for another two, three months. It’s like he’s not even, like, fuck, like he’s not even trying, y’know? We’re building the foundation of a pages-long paper. This isn’t some finals essay he can bullshit in three hours.” 

You groan as Lia pulls away from you, whirling you around to face her. “It’ll be fine, I swear to you. I’ll help out, anytime you need it. I promise. If I start hating Daniel, I’ll even pretend like I’m in love with him. Head over heels.” You let yourself laugh and pull out your phone as you two begin to walk towards your dorm.

She tsks. “We’re gonna have a thing tonight, right? Like, a lab rat session?”

You nod, squinting over your calendar app. “Yeah, at around 5:30 to 6. It’ll be quick, but Mark and I are gonna have to stay behind to divide the work for the general paper and then start. Hopefully we can get some outlining done by tonight…so don’t wait up,” you sigh. She smiles apologetically, pinching your waist affectionately. 

“Daniel and I will totally help you. He’s a Mark anti now. I told him about the party outburst thing.” You had sent her a slew of texts that night, and like every other story you had told (save for the most private ones), Daniel had caught wind of it. You’re half sure he was capable of blackmailing you at that point. “Good,” you shoot back, “I’m going to need all the anti-Mark force I can get.”

“Why?” You both turn to see Mark standing idly behind you. There’s a beat, and then: “You look like an inane stalker,” you retort, turning to continue walking. Lia follows suit—with the two of you, the vibe of the atmosphere would always come easy. If one was mad, the other would act mad, too. 

“Hey,” Mark repeats, falling into step beside you, “why do you need an anti-Mark force? Tell me.” At this point, your nerves are on fire and your blood is boiling, and you’re beginning to envision beating him up on the quad. “Mark, it’s been great, but we’re going to our dorm, and in case you don’t want to catch a restraining order, I suggest you get off at your floor instead of following us like a creep,” you say sweetly, quickening your steps until he’s far behind you, smiling. Fucking asshole. 

“I’ll see ya this evening, then,” he teases, and you grumble under your breath.

—

It’s 5:45 when Lia and Daniel leave the library—fifteen minutes early. You and Mark leave ten minutes later, hours before you were supposed to complete your task. You’re fuming, and for once, Mark has the decency to read the room and feel remorse. 

The evening had started off well enough, though—Lia and Daniel had showed up, did their thing, described what was happening, and you and Mark had noted it down. And then, well. Mark spilled water all over your planner, which, in hindsight, was definitely unintentional, but in the spur of the moment, you could do nothing but your natural—everybody’s natural—response to getting something precious ruined. You began to cry. “What the fuck,” you sniffled, “is wrong with you?!” You had shaken the majority of water off your planner, but any and all dates had been smudged and bled, and you couldn’t bring yourself to forgive him. “I know I called you annoying, but this is too far,” you had said, watching his face go from teasing to genuinely sorry. “Dude, it was accidenta—” 

“I don’t give a fuck—!” You quickly cut yourself off and wipe your tears when you see a young library assistant heading towards your table. Everybody composes themselves—Lia and Daniel straighten out the things on the surface and Mark sits up straight. “Hey,” he says. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but two students already came in with a noise complaint. We’re gonna have to ask you to,” he makes a gesture, “leave for now and come back tomorrow. Also, the puddle on the table…yeah. I’m really sorry.” He leaves, as if to make sure you have no other choice but to just go, and you slump back onto your chair in exhaustion. 

“You two can go ahead,” you hear Mark say, “I’m really sorry about this. We’ll clean up and apologize.” Faintly, you hear them get up, and you feel Lia’s hand squeeze yours as she promises a text and food later. You let your eyes remain shut, drinking in the quiet, trying to calm your inner turmoil.

Ten minutes later, when you’re out in the cold November air, Mark finally speaks. You had cleaned up and collected your things in silence. “I’m really sorry,” he says, “it was an accident, for real. I know I tease a lot, but, uh, I’m being serious. I would never have done that on purpose. I see you write shit on that thing a lot, so…I know how much you like it. Treasure it…? I don’t—whatever it is, I’m really sorry. Like, really. T’was an accident. If you need me to pay for it…” You shake your head softly, hugging your damp planner closer to your sweater-clad chest. “It’s okay. Thanks, anyway. For helping. I’ll email you what you have to do. Bye,” you turn and begin walking in the direction of your dorm. The sun is beginning to set, golden orange hues casting a vast array of colors onto the landscape of the city. You sigh softly, heart heavy with annoyance and exhaustion, and speed up before you start having a mini-breakdown.

—

Stage 1: Denial|

Your cursor blinks back at you as you finish typing in your outline for the introduction. It’s early into November, but already, you’ve had to shut your window to shielf yourself from the biting breeze outside. Across you, Lia applies mascara and talks to you. “What are you up to?” she asks, face contorted. 

“This godforsaken paper,” you mumble back, “just finished the introduction outline. I’m trying to give a loose definition for each gradual ‘stage.’” Shoving your Macbook off your lap, you get up to stretch. “Which I’ll probably find on Google Scholar, honestly. If you had to give me a definition—what’s denial?” 

She hums contemplatively, wand on lash, and then pipes up. “I think it’s just a stage where you can’t face the fact that you’re interested in that person. Like, why them? With Daniel, he wasn’t really my type. So the whole denial was denying I liked him, because…well, yeah. But I think it differs. Some people deny it because they’re shy, or ashamed, or weirded out that they even like them.”

You’ve had your fair share of crushes before, and sure enough, you had denied them all. But that was high school—college, though, had only brought short-lived flings and one night stands; you were an overachiever, much too committed to your own prosperity to pay mind to anybody else for too long. (Except Lia.) So you hadn’t really experienced the whole boyfriend-in-university thing—not that you particularly wanted to, but you were just human; you were curious. Lia had gotten it, and it looked wonderful. 

Speaking of—“So, a week without meeting Mark in person, huh? How is that going for you?” You scoff lightly, shaking your head as you pull your hair into a bun. “It’s going just fine. Dandy, actually. We work from our dorms and you and Daniel just update us. It’s a fine arrangement that I regret was not formulated sooner.” Lia nods in understanding, and you watch her pull on a top, mutter I’m out and head outside. For the fifth time this week, you’re alone in the dorm, with nothing but your Alexa playing SZA and your laptop. You pull it onto your lap again, staring at the boldface letters you had typed minutes prior: denial. You had no firsthand experience of being mature and going through denial; not in that way, anyway. You found it stupid that people even denied when it would be less painful to just admit interest.

You blow a raspberry as you research studies related to the term, bored out of your mind.

—

Two days later, you meet Mark again. 

You’d also had the pleasure of, for a minute or two, meeting a friend of his, Donghyuck Lee from Economics. He’s loud and amusing and, from your viewpoint, undeserving of somebody as boring as Mark. (That’s from a minute-long intercation.) 

At Lia’s insistence (and likely Daniel’s, too), you two met up to properly work and collaborate. In fear of being kicked out again, the four of you had chosen to meet somewhere else—a cafe off-campus affectionately named something along the lines of Saltwater Coffee. Naturally, after Donghyuck leaves, you find yourself sitting idly (awkwardly) beside Mark. “They won’t be long,” he says suddenly, “er, Daniel just texted me. They’re near.” You nod, pursing your lips, eyes trained onto your laptop. “We’re almost done formulating the denial stage and we can start outlining anger and bargaining. This’ll take about a week more—maybe mid to late November? Uh, I know it seems justifiable to slack off with the holidays,” you say, “but I really want us to finish this early. The due date’s in mid-February, so we can pass this on the 14th.” You turn to face him. “Get it? ‘Cause it’s Valentine’s Day.”

He nods. “Okay. No slacking. I get it. The Valentine’s is smart, too.” You nod back in silent understanding, turning back to type frantically into your keyboard. 

You hear the door jingle and Lia’s small “hey, guys”, so you look up and offer a smile. “I’m gonna go order everyone some coffee,” Mark says beside you, getting up and shuffling over to the counter. Daniel joins him, and Lia takes a seat across you, her smile knowing and apologetic. “Everything okay?” You blow a raspberry, but smile, anyway. “It’s not so bad. It could be better, but no more banter, just very annoyed auras…? You get it. It’s just been tough trying to divert my focus to this and ignore all the annoyance I feel.”

“Totally, I get that,” she says, “but all the same, I’m glad he’s matured a little bit and lessened all the ribbing.” You smile at that, agreeing, and then the conversation spirals into one about both of your days—“Professor Callahan totally pops a stiffy over Professor Michaelson”, “Daniel tells me Joshua cheated. Yes, on Jess!”, “Mia dropped out the other day and nobody knows why, hope she’s okay”—before Daniel and Mark return, coffee cups in hand. Mark places one next to you, and profusely, you look up at him, who’s just about to sit. 

“Thanks, but I don’t drink brewed coff—”

“It’s a caramel latte, the only thing you drink. Heard you say that to Lia once.” He takes a seat and pulls his laptop open. 

You stare at him, taking the cup and bringing it to your lips. Sure enough, it’s caramel—thick, and foamy, and sweet. You look up at him again, but he’s busy on Google Scholar, perusing through journals and studies. You shake your head before turning to Lia, who’s already looking at you, expression mirroring yours. 

Sweet, she mouths, but you purse your lips and choose not to acknowledge it. “Thanks,” you say quietly, and he hums to say you’re welcome. 

Your eyes flicker to him. He’s wearing a knitted sweater, but he’s pulled it up to his elbows. He’s typing quickly, and he can use all his fingers, too (you fail miserably at that), and his brows are furrowed as if he’s stressed, or in a hurry. You’ve never really noticed this much of Mark before. It’s probably, you think absently, because you’re confused. Puzzled at the gesture that you didn’t expect—at all.

After an hour, he angles his laptop to yours. “Nailed the intro. High five?” You open the Google doc on your own browser, and sure enough, the word count has increased monumentally. You can’t deny his knack for writing. “There are a few discrepancies in grammar,” you say instead. “But…okay. This is good.” You ignore his hand, in mid-air, and continue researching. 

Lia holds in a giggle, but turns back to Daniel, who, after fifteen minutes, turns to you and Mark. “Lia and I are heading out, guys,” he says, and Lia quickly tacks on. “Hey, if you need me to stay, I can,” she says quickly, but you smile and shake your head. 

“This might take a while. Go ahead. See ya at the dorm, Li. Bye, Daniel.” Mark bids his farewells, too, and they leave you alone in the cafe. It’s nearing a three hour crunch when he abruptly gets up to stretch, a low grunt leaving his lips. “I’m exhausted,” he sighs, “but at least we’re nearly done with this whole denial thing.”

“We’re actually only just starting,” you state, “this is going to go through a lot of editing and proofreading.” 

He chuckles and walks back to the counter to order something, and you shut your laptop to rest your eyes. Your glasses rest uncomfortably on the bridge of your nose as you breathe deeply. You lose track of time, and you open your eyes ten minutes later, fumbling to get up properly. There’s a panini beside your laptop, wrapped neatly in a tissue and laid on a plate. Mark’s is empty, save for crumbs, and he says nothing. 

“Get up,” he remarks teasingly after a while, and you groan in exhaustion. “I am, I’m up,” you mutter, straightening your back and flexing your neck. Inwardly, you wonder if you should thank him for the panini that is obviously yours that you obviously did not buy for yourself. 

Then Mark’s hand stretches out to take the panini, and he takes a bite. “Sorry,” he says, “I had to put my second sandwich in your space. This table’s a little small.” You hum back in acknowledgement, nodding once. “It’s, uh…all good,” you respond, voice small as you type into your laptop. Internally, your body fills slowly with humiliation and confusion, but you stay quiet, and that’s how the rest of the night goes: a silent, steady beat of keyboard clicking and the occasional question. 

No banter, no nothing—it’s a godsend, yes, it is, but you can’t help but miss the abrasive, playful conversations the two of you had built up over the previous several weeks. But really—had you truly assumed he had bought you a panini? As if a coffee wasn’t enough? You felt at odds with yourself for even expecting such a gesture from the guy whose main habit was to annoy you to the ends of the Earth.

“It’s late,” he says, as if he’s reading your mind and knowing you’re absolutely mortified inside. “Let’s head home.” You nod, deeming the night’s work satisfactory—maybe even beyond, considering the amount of effort you both put into the output. You shove your laptop and charger into your bag and pocket your phone, lingering awkwardly and waiting for Mark to finish packing up. He’s particular with it—he has little sections in his backpack for the wires and chargers, and even his AirPods, and his laptop. 

“Very organized,” you find yourself commenting offhandedly, your tone taking on a teasing edge. He glares playfully back at you. 

“Sorry I don’t want my wires to break,” he shoots back, eyeing your flimsy tote bag, “unlike some people.” You roll your eyes and, against your strongest wills, a smile appears on your lips, albeit a small one. His eyes linger on your smile for a little bit before he clears his throat and zips up his knapsack. “Let’s, er, go. Thank Jesus we’re in the same building.” When you exit, the air bites at you despite the jacket covering your body, and you quicken your pace. “It’s cold as hell.”

“Ironic,” Mark says. You hide a smile.

—

That’s what November brings you—the next week and a half are composed of just slowly learning to get used to working with Mark again and going home late into the night, crunching to the max. 

Your paper begins to take on more and more structure, and two out of the six days you’ve met, Mark has set down a caramel latte for you to arrive to. The acoustic music slowly phases into holiday guitar, and the coat rack at the entrance is weighed down more and more as the days pass, preparing to welcome December. 

You and Mark work silently, save for the rare banter and eyeroll, and very gradually, the annoyance that had bubbled up within seconds before had sank down. You’re not friends, per se—it’s just that the frustration and exasperation had lessened considerably. 

You were civil. That’s it. You won’t try to deny that you’ve been thinking about this a little too much—about what your “friendship” had become with Mark. You hadn’t snapped at him in days, and he hadn’t tugged at your ballpen in even longer. It wasn’t that you had cowered him into silence by crying over your planner—it may have instigated it, but his behavior was…different. 

More calm, more sure. Less childish. He would still tease you, but not as much. It’s nearing mid-November now, and you’ve successfully done much of your introduction and denial, needing less and less of Lia and Daniel’s presence. (Which you’re sure they’re grateful for.) But being left alone with Mark isn’t as bad as you once thought—

“Hello. Earth to you,” you distantly hear, and you whip your head in the direction of the voice as you pace back to your dorm building. Mark stares blankly back at you. “What,” you mumble back. He quirks a brow before continuing. “I was saying, I think I need to take a rain check tomorrow. The, uh”—he clears his throat—“um, yeah.”

You eye him. “Okay…?”

He nods profusely, “Yeah, all good.” The walk continues in silence, the sun finally setting down behind the Manhattan skyline beyond you and the breeze taking on a chillier temperature. You sigh softly, fatigue overtaking you as you stare at the building nearing you. “If you take a rain check, just make sure you write it within the day or after,” you say, half-sternly and half-tiredly. He mumbles a “got it” and you both jog up the steps to the lobby, where you run into, by some weird twist of the day, a small group of anti-abortion protesters.

“Jesus Christ,” Mark mutters under his breath. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.” You rub the bridge of your nose in your fingers, choosing to tune them out and instead maneuver your way through the door. Before you can even take a step, though, they’re all up in your face with pamphlets and brochures and a guitar. “Excuse me,” you grunt, trying to gently push them aside, but they only come on stronger. “A child is a child,” they say. “If you know anybody who’s—”

“Is this your new initiative? Preying on college students on school grounds, unaccounted for?” Mark asks from behind you. You turn to find he’s filming and stifle a laugh. “I’m surprised nobody’s kicked you out. Won’t be long, now,” he adds with a smile. 

You tune out nearly everything else—it’s really just them telling Mark to stop recording and him retorting with equally snarky phrases. It’s not until maybe after a solid two minutes of back and forth that one of them, a weird middle-aged woman, pulls out a burgundy gummy bear from a bag and pushes it into Mark’s camera. He takes it from her and examines it, puzzled. “That,” she says matter-of-factly, “is the approximate size of a fetus. It’s big. It’s sentient, alive. What, I beg of you, what would you do?”

Mark squints at it. Then he pops it into his mouth, takes your hand, and runs straight to the elevator across the floor. 

“There’s a bunch of anti-abortion people outside, it’s not cool!” He hollers to the receptionist before the doors close with a damning click. 

There’s a beat, and then.

Both of you are doubling over in laughter. “Why the hell would y—why would you do that?! You’re insane!” The response is: “Because they’re not cool! They’re fuckin’ annoying! So I ate their baby!” There are tears in your eyes, your laughter so hard it’s nearing silent—Mark’s, though, is loud and annoying sounding, though you seem to not mind so much. The laughter subsides when the ding of your floor sounds and you straighten yourself up. Getting into a different position reminds you of the very there, very obvious brushing of your hand against Mark’s, which he’d taken just moments earlier, post-baby eating.

You freeze and jerk your hand away. “I’ll, um, go now,” you say, “I’ll see you tomorr—no, the day after.” Against your wills, you meet his eyes, and you’re surprised to find that he’s already looking at you, an unreadable expression on his face. “Okay,” he says, his eyes not leaving yours. Your heart beats faster at a very small increment, but you head out and semi-run to your room, swinging it open and leaning against it. 

You look up to find Lia and Daniel engaged in a heated Monopoly match. You make no noise, mind (and heart, but you can’t tell why) racing fast. You watch them play for a second before they both look up slowly.

“You’re smiling like a goddamn idiot,” Daniel says. Your face falls immediately. “I’m, um, no I’m not,” you say casually, pacing over to your bed and flopping onto it. Lia laughs loudly. 

“That sounded so freaked. Like we’re your mom and you just brought weed home kind of freaked.” Pause. 

“Are you hiding something from me?” She rises from her spot to look at you, head in pillow and all, and you let out a muffled “no!”, probably too defensive for your own good. 

It’s Daniel’s turn to snort. You look up and glare at him, “You’re getting too comfortable for your own good. You need to humble yourself, Daniel. What’s it again? Oh yeah, Yeonjun, right?” He rolls his eyes at the use of his Korean name and turns back to the Monopoly board.

Lia flops atop you, eliciting a grunt from your lips. “Are you okay? Did somebody flirt with you? Did Mark finally fuck off and leave you alone properly?” 

At the mention of Mark, your heart races—you will it to stop, and audibly groan in the process. “What is it, you bitch?” Lia asks, tugging on a section of your hair. “It’s nothing, Li! Nothing, I promise.” She glares at you before walking to Daniel and covering his ears. Instantly, he begins to let out a chorus of Lalala, and deeming the environment safe enough, you let it slip.

“Mark and I held hands. But it—”

“You what?!”

“It really, really doesn’t mean anyth—”

“How can that not mean anything? It’s hand holdi—”

“If you would listen to the backstory you’d know!” She pauses, and then uncovers Daniel’s ears and knees him. 

“Okay, get out. Monopoly postponed, Jun,” she says, pushing him out insistently. He barely collects his phone and keys before he’s out, but you swoon silently when you catch him pressing a short goodbye kiss to her forehead before actually leaving. She turns immediately, fire and curiosity awfully evident in her face. 

She nears you. “Explain.” 

And that’s what sparks the story of the weird protesters, Mark’s power move, and the unintentional hand hold that lasted a few moments too long. She nods the entire time, laughing, and then her face straightens out again. You can almost hear the gears in her head turning as she analyzes the situation, and then she nods once. 

“Okay. Perfectly justifiable to freak out.” Another pause. “But why were you smiling?” You stare blankly back at her, head working impossibly quick to formulate a reply. You’ve taken too long now, judging by the way Lia is looking at you with the most shit-eating grin on her fucking face. You groan.

“You like him, you bitch!” 

You shake your head, facing her. “I don’t, dude. Trust me. I just…it was a fun experience, so naturally I’d be laughing. And smiling. But I’m just not interested in Mark! I’m not,” you fumble, being completely honest. 

You didn’t—not even if you looked in the mirror and asked yourself. But you couldn’t deny the feelings you felt in the ten seconds from the elevator to your room, your heart racing and your fist curling and uncurling. When you look at Lia again, she’s still smiling, flushed. “You like him,” she says into her palm, which she’s slapped over her mouth in disbelief. You stare back at her, your expression baffled. “If I did,” you begin, getting up to discard your shirt, “I’d have told you by now. It’s really not that big of a deal unless you make it out to be.”

After that, you and Mark spend nearly three weeks walking on eggshells around each other. While conversations are no longer avoided, and you could talk without getting exasperated or too embarrassed, finger brushes are frequent, and eye contact only makes you extremely nervous. You had worked until the second stage—anger—already, but you’d still been polishing the denial and introduction. Considering November wasn’t over and the paper was due February, you figured you were moving at an okay pace. Besides, a lot of your friends hadn’t even begun.

—

There are two instances where you rush home, mortified beyond belief.

The first when when you struck up a conversation with the cute, Australian barista. Scrawled in big penmanship on his name tag is Chan. You had brought up, in passing, how often you’re at the cafe and how you probably deserve a free drink. He replied with a low hum, and you dialed down your flirty tone, slightly embarrassed. But not really. You’ve rejected plenty of people before. It’s when you’re already paying for your drink that he replied, handing you your (for a change) iced matcha with a small grin. 

“I’d have flirted with you weeks ago if you didn’t have your boyfriend with you all the time. He’s always buying you your drinks.” You spluttered for a good second, staring at him incredulously. “He’s not my boyfriend,” you finally said. 

He had shrugged, nonchalant. “He sure as hell looks at you a lot for someone you’re not dating. And you do it just as much, if not more. I’m observant, by the way. Not a stalker.” You had taken your cup and paced over to the other end of the cafe, sat across Mark, cheeks heated.

He looked up, brow raised. You shook your head.

The second time was when Donghyuck graced you both with his presence. You quickly found out that he was a magnetic presence and you both shared similar interests. The energy you both created was both amusing and annoying to Mark. 

Although you kept quiet mostly, you enabled Donghyuck’s incessant teasing, which annoyed Mark to the ends of the Earth. “You’re a dork. Isn’t he?” You look up and nod with a smile. Mark rolls his eyes, sending Donghyuck into a laughing frenzy. Mark just grunts and continues typing.

Hyuck had made a joke about how two Physics textbooks discussed why the sad man named Mark owns two of them and didn’t have a life, and you laughed. 

You didn’t usually laugh, not around Mark, at least, since it was safe to say you didn’t have any source of entertainment in such a boring guy. But you laughed at the witty joke, and Donghyuck, without thinking much, had said in passing: “Mark, I guess you’re right about everything about her being pretty.”

Mark said nothing, typing. You said nothing. Nobody said anything, not even a sly Donghyuck or, from the counter, an even slyer Chan.

—

When you see Mark next, it’s three days later, and it’s, for the second time, in Johnny’s apartment. 

Lia had asked if you wanted to tag along, and you found no harm in going. (“You’re going because Mark is” becomes Lia’s favorite phrase of the night, so much it’s spread to Daniel, who you’d succumbed to and spilled everything to hours prior.) The walk there has something boiling low in your gut and you’re quiet, in fear you might end up vomiting in nerves or saying something stupid. Lia teases you, but her hand clasping yours reassures you, and you squeeze it tightly. 

You get there late—it’s past 1AM, and you have a sense of deja vu walking into the cramped space. It’s fuller this time—people are creeping into the bedrooms to smoke in private or do some other things, but suffice to say it’s crowded as fuck.

“Want a drink?” Lia hollers, and you nod over the music. Johnny’s neighbor is another upperclassman named Doyoung, though he’s mainly referred to as Doie by just about everybody around him.

You’ve seen his girlfriend call him bunny a few times, though you’ve long desired to repress that memory. 

Judging by the fact that you can faintly hear a different song from the next room, the party has probably extended to Doyoung’s. There’s quite a gathering this week—the rich freshman who you’d befriended once before, Chenle, and his horde of friends are here; from Lia, who hands you a drink, you learn that Kun and Sicheng, two incredibly attractive juniors, are here, too—in Doie’s, though. The party only intensifies, which is hard, because Johnny’s apartment is very tiny.

Eventually, you find yourself in the bathroom, smoking a joint you’d grabbed out of the clammy hands of a tipsy Chenle and kicking a couple out under the guise that you’re Johnny’s cousin. Chenle had protested but eventually given in, pulling a new one out of his pocket.

The bathroom light is white and harsh, but there’s a very funky lamp at the corner. From your place inside the dry (and thankfully clean…looking) bathtub, you eye it. It’s a tall one in the shape of a glass of margarita. 

You heave yourself up and find the switch, and then when it’s on, you giggle at the green light emitting from it. You have absolutely no idea why Johnny, Jaehyun, or their roommate Jungwoo (3J, as some call them) have a decorative, margarita-shaped green lamp, and in their bathroom nonetheless, but you shut off the main light and return to smoking your blunt. Deciding your ass aches far too much, you lean against the tile wall and cherish the smoke.

The door opens abruptly, and you curse, pushing it back closed. 

“I have explosive diarrhea,” you say robotically, using the same excuse you did for the previous three couples that showed up. 

From the other side, you hear a shrill laugh and sound of confusion. When you peer over the other side and see Mark, you groan and laugh. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I saw you come in. Like, twenty minutes ago.”

“I’m cherishing the party privately.”

Mark ushers himself into the dark space and shuts the door. He makes a show of locking it, as if to show you it’s possible to do so. The sound of it locking sends a wave of nerves up your spine. 

“I didn’t lock it in case a medical emergency happens and they have to rush inside.” 

Mark quirks his brow. “I doubt they would think to go inside the restroom and not panic and call 911, you know.” 

You shrug in indifference and take another drag, reluctantly offering it to him.

He takes it, and you pause for a second to observe him. His hair, dark, and which usually covers his entire forehead like a broom or at least parts in the middle slightly, is now styled differently. 

He’s in a fitting black shirt and blue jeans, and, upon your closer inspection, silver rings adorn his fingers. You will yourself to look down. It’s dark. “What’s that you’re holding?” You ask instead, trying not to extend your stare at his shoulders.

“Your puffer coat,” he says, tossing it to you. “Left it last time.”

“That time when you annoyed the shit out of me, right,” you retort.

“Yes, exactly that time. That was ages ago. Weeks ago. Look at us now.”

“Us now—what, still disliking each other?”

He laughs humorlessly, but doesn’t entertain you further. He turns to the lamp instead. “Do you know I was there when they moved this in,” he begins, gesturing to it, “Jae got it at some weird, awful flea market, and he had to buy some extra wiring to fix it or whatever. I was doing Physics homework. It was at the start of this school year. And I bet you didn’t know…” he bends down and reaches to the base of the lamp, pressing a button, “that it changes color.”

The room is bathed in red now, and you swallow. “Interesting,” you manage to say, despite the racing in your head. “Very,” he responds, taking a step closer to you. You gaze up at him. He’s tall. You breathe softly. You nod in agreement. You don’t know what to do. You want to punch him and kiss him and leave all at once. 

You want to kiss him, oh God, you want to kiss him.

“Oh God,” you say softly, out loud. Oh fuck. Too much weed?

He inches closer, leaving the blunt on the rim of the sink. “Why?” He smiles a little and you smile back, nervous. He’s so close now, and he smells so good—like cologne and laundry and weed. You shake your head. “Nothing,” you mumble back.

He’s even closer now, eyes boring into yours. You adjust your strap, a nervous habit. He takes your hand and does it for you. “I like this song,” he says casually, like he’s not playing with the strap of your dress. “Do you know what it’s called?” It’s vaguely familiar to you, but you shake your head. 

“It’s Jhene Aiko,” he replies, and you nod. You gravitate closer.

You stare at him. He stares back. “I’m high,” you say. You giggle. “I had a brownie and that blunt.”

“That’s a lot,” he says. “Don’t finish the blunt, ‘kay?” You nod back, and giggle again. In two seconds, your nervous mechanism has kicked in and you’re laughing like a psycho. “I’m high,” you repeat, and then he kisses you, effectively sobering you up.

Huh. He kisses you, effectively sobering you up. He kisses you.

You kiss back, shocked and relieved, deepening it, trying to get as much of him as possible. His hands are big and wide and warm, traveling all over you. You want him. Your arms wrap around his neck, pulling him closer, lips molding against yours deliriously. 

“Want you,” you say when his hands play with the hem of your dress, teetering closer and closer to your core. “I said, I want you,” you whine, “now.” Mark only laughs, his hands under your dress and playing with the lace waistband of your underwear. 

“I like how this feels,” he mumbles. “Wanna take a look.” You whimper, hiking your leg up and nodding. “Please, just…touch me,” you say breathlessly. “Please.”

“I will,” he says, voice calm. “You’re being good.” You can’t deny the noise you make at the praise, breathy and loud. You pull him in again, drunk for more, your hands raking through his hair. It’s dark, the both of you basking in the small red light. Mark hikes your dress up, inching it higher, slowly, until he sees the hem of your white lace underwear. He grunts and pulls at it. “I love this,” he says. “So fuckin’, Jesus.” 

You giggle against the smile. He toys with your panties for a bit before finally pulling them down, watching them sink to your ankles. “Hot,” he jokes, and you laugh in disbelief. “Why would you even be joking abou—”

“Mark! Let’s go, it’s 2:30!” Donghyuck’s voice is just as loud and clear as it would be if you weren’t separated by a door. Jolted, you and Mark instinctively break apart and stare at the rattling door. “Maaaark,” he sing-songs, knocking to a beat. You stare at Mark, waiting for him to respond.

“I have explosive diarrhea,” he says. You stifle a guffaw, pulling your panties up.

He pouts, tapping your ass. “Bullshit,” Donghyuck says from outside. “I’m cooomin’ in!”

In the span of a minute, where you realize Donghyuck is not bluffing and in fact has a stolen bathroom key from Jungwoo’s bedside drawer, you manage to shove yourself into the bathtub and hide yourself with the curtain. Mark switches the light back on, much to both of your disappointment, and pretends to smoke the blunt you’d left on the sink fifteen minutes ago. Ergo: pre-kiss.

You find your phone on the bathtub floor and grip it, turning the brightness down. You have a plethora of messages and voicemails from Lia, five calls from Daniel, and an interesting iMessage of Donghyuck’s red, weed-induced eyes from an unknown number. It could be anybody, and that scares you.

The texts are all frantic, and they’re the last things that bring you out of your high and back to reality. Where are u, who u with?, u getting railed??!, Have you seen mark?

“Hyuck, if I actually did have a shitstorm coming out of my ass, you’d be so sorry for breaking in,” you hear Mark say. You sink lower into the bathtub, awaiting Donghyuck’s voice. “You were the one who suggested we go at 2:30, and you’ve been smoking weed for the longest time, dipshit,” he says, “now let’s go. I haven’t seen your Psych girl all night, so you can cry about it at home.” You faintly detect Mark protesting and then, “Let me just freshen up! Just go ahead.”

Reluctantly, you peek out and find Mark alone. You get up and fix your dress.

You’re sober now. The red lights are gone. It’s just you and Mark, plain and simple. Your feelings haven’t gone away, though. You’re fucking fucked. You want him to fuck you. Oh, fuck.

“Go,” you say instead, spluttering. “And I’ll see you. Tuesday.”

You leave first despite yourself, not turning around for even a split second, finding a worried (and then relieved) Lia and taking five consecutive tequila shots to down the nerves and denial bubbling in your system. She raises a brow, but you refuse to even meet her eyes, head and heart pounding impossibly fast. You want to kiss him again. So, so bad. But what the fuck did you just let happen?

—

Stage 2: Anger|

Lia hadn’t pressed, and you were nervous, but it was getting easy to diverge the details of what happened during Johnny’s party. You had instead opted to work alone, too much of a coward to even see Mark’s face. If you were being completely honest with yourself, you feared you might just kiss him if you ever saw him. So you spent days at class working, and then at your dorm working, adjusting your route to avoid, as much as possible, Mark or Hyuck’s buildings and that godforsaken cafe. You did text Mark, though, and the exchanges were brief, not even a “thank you” or “good morning” preceding them. It was awful.

Working alone forced you into a heavy load of retrospection. You would think deeply, like how you are now, spiraling into a series of questions where you studied the play-by-play of what happened in the bathroom, up against the wall. You liked it. A lot. But you couldn’t. You wouldn’t let yourself. Why it even happened…God. You mentally berated yourself for giving into it. Didn’t you hate him? Or at least dislike him? Didn’t you take pleasure in scolding him or fighting with him?

“You’re freaking me out,” Lia says from her bed. She’s been staring at you. “You’ve been lying on your bed staring at the ceiling for twenty straight minutes.” She walks over to you, flopping next to you, her arms winding around your body. “You can tell me anything.”

“I know,” you say, nervous. You gulp.

“Okay. If you’re n—”

“Mark and I kissed.”

She sits up and turns to look at you.

“Made out, more like. We were going to fuck if we didn’t get interrupted.” You’re mortified, refusing to meet her gaze. When you look up, her face is even, but you know she’s bubbling over with giddiness inside. “That is so fucking great, dude,” she replies. “Why are you so embarrassed?”

“Because it’s Mark,” you whine. “He’s not…I don’t know.”

She lies back down. “You’re overthinking this.” You laugh, poking her waist. “I know, but I just…I feel like he might not like me much anymore.” You recount the way you left him hanging, despite the lack of awkward air and the potential to talk and become something. She tsks but justifies it, because she’s so good at that, being a mediator, and you continue with your day quietly. 

Your mind is always on it, though, his hands and his lips, and you’ve scoured Spotify for the song playing that he had commented on.

It’s called Pussy Fairy. You cannot make it up. It’s a weird title, but the song is heavenly, and you can’t deny when it’s full blast on your AirPods and your hand is creeping closer and closer there, trying desperately to replicate what you felt in that moment. When you’re not sated, ashamed and sighing, you resort to working on your paper. There are moments where both you and Mark are working at the same time, and you hate yourself for getting all flustered when it happens. 

—

It’s a Tuesday, in the early afternoon, when you’re out of class and cleaning out the little litter in your dorm, repasting whatever decorations fell off, et cetera. You have the time, anyway, and it wouldn’t hurt to fix the place up a bit. You’re halfway into re-stringing Lia’s fairy lights when someone knocks on the door, jolting you. You curse under your breath, hopping off her bed to swing the door open and reveal—

“What is up?!” Donghyuck grins back at you. His hand is raised in a high-five invitation, which you hesitantly reciprocate. “Mark tells me you’re meeting today, and that I should come remind you, since it seems like you forgot. He says you haven’t texted all day. Since I was on this floor—do you know Jeno Lee? Do you know it’s so amusing how Mark, Jeno, and I all have the same surname? Anyway. I was here on your floor to remind Jeno about an Econ presentation, and Mark texts me and goes, if you’re with Jeno, then remind you—you as in you, you—to come meet me and work.” 

He talks so goddamn fast. “You talk so goddamn fast.”

He just guffaws, high-fiving you again. “Well, you get my point, right? Meet Mark at the cafe and work is all he said to do. If you wanna.” You nod slowly, absorbing his words. “Tell him I’ll be a little late,” you say simply, and as you’re about to shut the door, he talks again, his voice quieter this time. “I know you were hiding behind the curtain.”

You pull the door open again, so fast a minuscule gust of wind washes over both of your faces. “You’re kidding,” you say, “you’re kidding.” You stare at each other for a second before his solem features break into a smile. “I am. Mark spilled everything to me, so I decided to trick you.” Relief and annoyance break over your system as you swat Donghyuck’s shoulder. “You’re a dick,” you spit. “You’re bringing a bad image to Econ majors.”

He merely laughs and closes the door himself, light brown hair fluffing with the severity of his laugh (cackle.) Slightly annoyed, you drag yourself to get dressed, dread building up in your stomach at the prospect of seeing Mark again. Not when your mind conjures up what happened everytime you just see his name. Or the word mark. You’ve been out of it since it happened, not even responding to your usual heated debates with the conservative Trump supporter in class. You suppose the best way to confront it is to simply confront it.

When you get there, though, it’s clear that confrontation would not be an option. Immediately, when you sit, the air shifts into something oddly familiar—the atmosphere between the two of you when you first got partnered up. Except now, Mark won’t even give you a pinch of attention, or banter, instead typing his questions into the document to avoid verbal conversation. (He is a fucking petty bitch, you’ll give him that.)

You stroll over to the counter, pout set on your lips. “Hello,” Chan says politely, and you just smile half-heartedly. “Lover’s quarrel?” He teases, and you roll your eyes. “He’s ignoring me,” you respond, watching him make you a latte. “And we’re not dating. We never were.”

“Mm, right,” he says, finishing and setting your drink in front of you. You laugh a little, taking it. “No. We weren’t. But I’ll update you.”

When you return, Mark’s looking at you, quiet as ever. You break his gaze and continue working, working and working until the sun sets, nestled deep behind the horizon. When you look up again, the sky is already dark, city lights providing solace to the place. You look at Mark quizzically, as if to ask him what time you should both leave, but he just shrugs. “Any time,” he states plainly, and huffing, you get up.

“I’ll go right ahead then,” you say, trying your best to sound annoyed and get your message across. He says nothing, watching you pack up your stuff and sling your bag over your shoulder, and then eventually, leave.

Daniel is the first to see you in your raged, annoyed state—you meet him in the elevator of the lobby, your blood boiling and your fists balled. Knowing you’re headed to the same floor, he presses the button, ruffles his hair, and then lets the silence take over. And then, “What’s going on?” You breathe deeply, turning to him with a tired look on your face. “Mark’s going on,” you mumble, “he was ignoring me the entire time. And to think he was the one who requested my presence! It makes no sense. Why would he ignore me when we can just talk about it?”

“About what?”

It suddenly occurs to you that Daniel knows about your weird feelings for Mark, but not how they culminated. You splutter. “Um, about us. Everything.” Daniel looks amused, but the doors open, and you thank them for the temporary exit from the topic. He stops you right outside, though, and pulls out two ticket, card-looking things. “Wait, um. Listen, Lia and I are going to reach our seven-month…anniversary, I guess, of, y’know, being a thing. I know it seems really small, but I want to give her a little something out of appreciation, so I got us a room at this ski lodge outside the city.”

“That’s so sweet,” you say honestly, “but I must admit, it comes on sort of stalker-y. Like you’re whisking her off out of the city.”

He beams even louder. “That’s why you’re coming. With Mark!”

You gape back at him. “Did you miss the whole I-hate-him thing that happened in there?” You jab your finger towards the closed elevator doors, disbelief written across your face. He laughs. “Sometimes you can’t keep hiding behind”—he begins walking to your room, and you follow suit—“emotions, like anger. When I liked Lia, there was a point where I was just pretending to alienate her so I wouldn’t have to face that I was starting to love her. Like her. And you know, she did it right back.” 

“Oh, quit it,” you scoff, insistent. “You’re lecturing me like you’ve been married a decade.”

“That’s what I want,” he says, and you gag. “The first step to that would be ski lodge trip, so you’re coming!”

You’re in front of your room now, and you pinch his wrist as he reaches for the handle, gaining his full attention. “I’ll gladly go,” you whisper, “if Mark’s out.” Daniel just laughs, shaking his head. “No, no. An overnight trip would delay your paper severely. Plus, they have two beds per room.”

“We’ll be staying in the same roo—hey, Li,” you say, quickly cutting your angry rant off when she opens the door, her face confused (to say the least.) 

“Mm, hey,” she says, ushering the two of you in. “How long were you two out there?” Daniel shrugs, ruffling his hair and then pressing a kiss on Lia’s forehead. You boo from your place on your bed, buried under your duvet. “You both suck,” you holler, “always sexing it up in a sacred space. AKA my room.” Lia just grins and jumps on top of you, drawing grunts from you both. Daniel seats himself on the floor and busies himself with his phone. “How was Mark,” she whispers into your hair, and you groan.

“Bad,” you respond, “I’m so annoyed. We’re back to square one.” She makes an apologetic noise and gets up with a sigh, adjusting the strings of her pullover and then hugging Daniel. You watch them. You want to kiss Mark again. Life sucks that way.

—

Predictably, Mark turns down the offer of the ski lodge. He’s polite about it, too, especially since he and Daniel have grown a little bit closer since the start of your project. Daniel is, by no means, a “Mark anti”, but he would participate in the ribbing sometimes. Still, he’s insistent on the trip, saying it’s the best way to welcome December and that the forecast predicts a nice, thick layer of snow. It takes a week and two coffees everyday for Mark to give in, under the condition that he buy his own room when you get there.

Which, honestly, really, you have no problem with. Really, you think to yourself as you unceremoniously shove a knitted sweater into your bag. Really. Lia, who had graciously accepted the surprise, watches you abuse your bag, shoving sweater and scarf inside like they want to murder you. “Relax,” she says after a while. You laugh, playing it off (not so) casually.

The drive up there, courtesy of Daniel and a borrowed Prius, is fun, and cramped, but still decent, considering it was just an hour long. You’re in the back with Lia, and Mark is in charge of the AUX, which, of course, comes with its own bout of jokes. You even find the heart to participate and laugh in a few, not daring to meet his eyes. But all his songs are so fucking good. Frank Ocean, Jhene Aiko, SZA, and smaller indie artists flow from the speaker under his phone. The car ride has its share of epic karaoke moments—Mark plays ABBA, and Queen, solely to make sure everybody is belting out to the high heavens.

You get there when the sky’s purple and orange and there are some skiiers scattered around, though, since it’s not the proper holiday period, not too much. You trek over to the main lodge and that’s where Daniel pays for his reservations, and he and Lia retire to their room and promise to get up for dinner. You’re, again, alone with Mark in the lobby as you both stare at each other, willing the other to get up first. He does, to buy his own room like he said he would, and you can faintly hear the exchange from your seat on their nice, fluffy couch.

“I’m sorry, sir. We’re renovating a majority of the rooms for the holidays. That’s why reservations were a prerequisite for staying here.”

Mark sighs. “Okay, right. I’m so sorry. Um”—it’s at this point that you go up next to him, polite smile on your face, ready to take the room key and fuck off—“could we just get an extra blanket, please? For one of the beds.” The receptionist gives a curt smile, handing over the keycard and nodding. “That’ll be one queen-sized warm blanket, then,” she hums, typing away. The receptionist beside her goes to the back, presumably to get the blanket. Mark nods, smiling. “For two queen-sized beds, it must be a big room for both of them to fit comfortably,” he comments offhandedly, fiddling with the card.

The receptionist chuckles. “There is only one bed, sir.”

Oh, God. “Oh, God,” you whisper. “One bed?” She nods with an eye-crinkling smile, like her words have not just rained hell upon the two people across her. “One bed and a sofa,” she corrects herself, reading the information on the computer by the desk. Not wanting to risk your last shred of sanity, you smile profusely, walking quickly towards your room which, thankfully, is on the same floor, at the end of the hall. It’s a small, quaint place that would be honest-to-God perfect if not for the fact that—

“There’s one bed,” Mark sighs, the truth clicking into place. “Daniel is a fucking shithead.” You drop your bag onto the carpeted floor, surveying the room with a scrutinizing gaze. It’s sizable—a bed, a couch, a window. There’s a small wooden desk that looks like its legs can barely hold its weight, and then another door, leading to the bathroom. It’s not bad at all. But you’re exhausted, the sun’s long gone, and your resolve is shredding away as the seconds tick by. “Take the couch,” you say dismissively, “or the carpet.” You make a beeline for the bed, but Mark’s arm wraps around your waist, effectively stopping you.

Ohmygodohmygodohmygod “Shut up and let go of me, dick,” you stutter out. Mark loosens his grip and you shove him off, glaring at him. He gazes back down at you, a glint of amusement in his eyes. “We can’t just make up terms without negotiation,” he says matter-of-factly, and you blow a raspberry. “Fine. Let’s negotiate then. I’m a girl and that puts me above you because chivalry isn’t dead, thus, boom, I get the bed.”

“I was in the uncomfortable passenger seat all day and my lower back hurts,” he counters.

“My legs are wobbly.”

“Bullshit. My back aches.”

“You already said that, it’s invalid.”

The back and forth only intensifies, your arguments growing more and more bizarre, until finally, your volume is so high Lia says she can hear it faintly, four doors down. 

“The couch looks comfy,” you try, but Mark stands firm. 

“Do you know what? The bed is big. It’s a big bed. And we’re not going to take up much space. If we divide the bed with the sofa pillows…” you pick up the cushions and line them up neatly along the middle, “…then we can sleep beside each other without having to make contact with each other.” He seems convinced, stepping closer to the bed and nodding. “Okay. I get first dibs on the shower.”

“Asshole,” you mutter, but you let him anyway. You’ve unpacked nearly all your things and he isn’t done yet, so you’ve resorted to scrolling mindlessly through Tiktok and laughing at just about everyone that pops up on screen. Mark finally exits after what feels like forever, and you keep your eyes trained on your screen to avoid looking at him. From your peripheral vision, he is very much shirtless. There are no words exchanged, the thickness in the air only building bit by bit.

—

Three hours later, post-dinner, post-abandoning the thought of working on your paper, you’re stumbling into your room after helping the very tipsy couple of the night into theirs. You’re beyond tired now, and you can tell Mark is, too, despite the lack of eye contact or communication between you. You don’t even look at him, brushing your teeth and removing your makeup and clipping your hair up into a bun. It’s when he does the same, and you’re both in bed, using your phones, that he finally breaks the silence.

“I’m not mad,” he says. His voice is even and calm, and you quickly shut your phone off and sit up, peering over the pillow boundary you had created. You look at him expectantly before he sighs and continues. “Why did you leave?”

You stand up, getting out, trying to increase distance. You’ve never really liked confrontation. “I was weirded out,” you spill, “and scared…? I guess with the nearness of being caught, and with all the lights on, I was just shocked back to reality.”

He sits up. “What’s reality?”

“I don’t—know,” you splutter, getting back on the bed. “Not kissing you?”

He laughs, and then it becomes silent. “Right. Let’s sleep, then.” Without another word, he pulls his lamp off, and only the white moonlight is left illuminating the both of you. Shucking yourself under the covers, feeling your heart practically thump out of your chest. You honestly think he can hear it, or at least feel it. Suddenly the boundary doesn’t do much. You turn away from him, nervous, and you can faintly hear his breathing even out. You shut your eyes for a second. When you open them again, he’s looking right at you. “Just checking to see if you’re asleep,” he says quietly. You nod. And then you lean upwards, just a touch, so your lips nearly brush slightly. “Night,” you say, before turning to sleep for real.

You’re not sure when. And how. Sure, you faintly remember digging your legs sleepily through the sheets to find warmth and tangling Mark’s in your own. But still—when you’re up, the pillow fort is at your feet, hanging precariously off the four post bed, and your back is against Mark’s chest. His breath fans lightly over your hair and you blearily register what happened overnight. His arm is slung over your middle, it’s quiet, and oh Christ, he is hard.

It’s fairly late. He’s hard. The antique clock mounted up on the wall tells you it’s around nine, which essentially gave you seven hours of sleep. He’s hard. You bask in the warmth of Mark for a while before your resolve solidifies and you gently push his arm off from its position on your hips. He only comes on stronger, wrapping fully around your waist, mumbling incoherence into your hair. He’s hard. You squeeze your eyes shut, summoning sleep to overcome you quickly, but it never does. Dread overcomes you as you feel your underwear grow damp.

“Mm,” Mark grunts, his hand around your waist loosening. You move away but his head suddenly lolls into the crook of your neck, his lips touching the side of it. You whimper. He’s a fucking asshole, even when he’s asleep. You pinch his arm, jolting him to half-awakeness, and you roll away, despite your body’s protests.

He blinks his eyes open. “Sorry, shit,” he says, voice deep and ridden with sleep. You’re fucked.

“It’s okay,” you splutter instead. “Just go back to sleep.” You faintly register that you sound just as exhausted as he does, and you bury your head back into the covers. Everything, plus the sound of his voice, has you dripping, and you breathe in deeply to poorly disguise a whimper. He chuckles, already half-asleep, from where he is, and it’s quiet for a few minutes before you realize he’s fallen asleep. Knowing Lia and Daniel will be busy for a while, you pull a spare pillow over your head and chant to yourself before falling back asleep, too.

When you awaken, the bed is cold and empty, and the shower’s running. You check the time to find only an hour has passed, but you’re much more awake now, getting up and knocking incessantly on the bathroom door. “Hurry,” you demand hoarsely, “I want to go skiing.” You hear a muffled okay and scurry over to your bag to find the pair of leggings you had packed for this. You also find your parka, and you pull off your shirt to clasp on a bra.

“Not that I don’t mind,” Mark says, eliciting a yelp from you as you tug a sweater on at record speed, “but generally, that kind of thing only goes unnoticed in nudist colonies. I could research some for you, if you’d—ow! I was joking, God!” You bonk him twice over the head with the Bible on the bedside table, your brows furrowed angrily. “You looked, asshat,” you say, collecting your things and locking yourself in the bathroom.

When it becomes increasingly evident that Lia and Daniel have no plans of exiting their room, you grumble and resort to skiing alone. But as you’re shuffling out, bundled up, you spot Mark leaning against the exit waiting for you. He looks up and tsks. “About fucking time,” he says, holding the door open for you. It’s not that cold out—maybe you’re just used to having snow and chilly weather, and so is Mark—so you barely shiver, walking around and looking for a good place to ski.

“Forget skiing,” Mark says after a few rounds. “Let’s go sledding. I have a thing.”

“A toboggan, you mean.”

“A funny word. Really, just say sled.”

You let up, anyway, the bright sky and cold ground sending serotonin right into you. Sure enough, Mark does have a nice, blue sled that he lets you on, and then the two of you are bolting down the hill at breakneck speed, laughing all the way. It’s quite a long ride, and you’re smiling and yelping so much the cloth you’ve used to cover your neck has ridden down, the cold air hitting your face harshly.

You land very ungracefully—the toboggan hits a small tree and sends you and Mark catapulting in the same direction, your hands clawing at the air for expense. You find Mark’s arm and cling onto it in the split second you’re in the air, landing on a clearing of thick snow. The arm you’ve clung onto pulls you closer, Mark grunting “be careful,” and when the whole fiasco’s over, you’re smiling like an idiot, and you’re right on top of Mark.

You’re not straddling him or anything, but you’ve just happened to land with your face a little above his. You can’t stop laughing, your face flushed and red with the cold air hitting your face. So you laugh. Why wouldn’t you laugh? It was a good day. A good ride down the hill. So you keep laughing until they’re reduced to giggles, Mark laughing right along as you pull down the covering of his mouth and tug his beanie off, ruffling your hands in his hair and dipping down to kiss him.

He kisses you right back, his lips cold but quickly growing warm with the friction. You smile into the kiss, your hands roaming all over his pink face. The kiss is giggly and light, your hands all over each other as the sunlight filters in through the thick trees overhead.

You pull away after a while. “I hate you,” you whisper. He presses a kiss to your jawline and lets it linger there. “You think I don’t?”

—

Stage 3: Bargaining, Depression|

You’ve begun to type the structure out when Lia tugs on your pajamas, her tone insistent and curious. “What’s up with you and Mark?” she presses, her cheek pressed to your stomach. You fervently hope she doesnt notice how your breathing quickens, and, keeping your voice even, you answer. “We’re…thinking about things.”

Which—you were thinking about things, to be fair. There were things to be thought and you had to think about them. It was a broad half-truth. It had been two weeks since the ski lodge thing, and you and Mark had decided it was probably best to shut the fuck up about everything you had done. (Everything meaning a few kisses here and there, and maybe a little more under the covers.) You’d hated yourself for hiding it from Lia, but you and Mark were actually feeling hesitant about moving forward with whatever you were. There was a lot of ambiguity and questions, and until you could clear it up yourself, you knew you weren’t ready to tell anybody else. You had talked about it already—clearly, the two of you were beyond jumping straight into a relationship after not liking each other that much and then becoming hesitant friends.

But it was, if you had to admit it to yourself, nice having that little secret.

“I’d want to tell Lia soon,” you tease, walking steadily beside Mark. The afternoon sun is warm on your heads, the snow falling intermittently. He turns with a small smile. “I’d want to tell Hyuck, too.” You scoff, burying your head in his chest. You probably look fucking disgusting. Around you, Washington Square Park is full of natives and tourists, and college students like you, all scurrying around and giving you that very much holiday feel.

He buys you a hot cocoa and hands it to you. “Are you heading home soon?”

You take a sip, your tongue hot. “If my ratty dorm counts as home, then yes.”

“Home is a feeling, not a place. Does your ratty dorm feel like home?”

“Kind of. Lia’s there. And so is the rat infestation in the ceiling.”

Mark nearly chokes on his cocoa. “You’re gross as fuck.”

You let out a loud laugh, your beanie nearly falling off with the bounciness of it. Mark reaches behind you to catch it, pressing a kiss to your lips in the process, soft and light and God, you like it. A lot. “Clumsy,” he remarks, pulling it back on and dragging a generous amount of your hair in front of your eyes as he does it. “It’s gonna be Christmas soon, and thank God we’re nearly done with this paper.”

“It was my genius idea to combine bargaining and depression,” you quip. “That’s my gift to you. Merry Christmas, Mark Lee.” He laughs at that. His laugh, you’ve noticed, is goddamn loud, and it’s a literal cackle, but he always looks so happy when he laughs. And buoyant. “You look stupid,” you say, but the smile on your face is undeniable. He glares playfully at you, taking your hand and walking you both in the direction of your building.

“New York in the snow,” he hums. “Always a great place.”

“It’s full of tourists,” you counter. Always disagreeing.

He chuckles and then, like clockwork—like how you’ve done it for the past six dates—you separate when you’re just shy of a meter away from the lobby entrance. Your fingers curl in search of his, and you jog up the steps, eager to get into the warmth of the building. The lobby’s pretty empty, save for a couple of students. Mark’s ahead of you, already pressing the elevator button and waiting impatiently. 

“We’re alone,” he sing-songs, his eyebrows wiggling. The doors open right as you take Mark’s hand, and you look up to meet Daniel’s wide eyes. Then you look to the right to meet Lia’s.

Despite your inner turmoil, you remain nonchalant, pinching Mark’s wrist instead of holding it like you’d planned. “That’s why our professor fucking hates you,” you say, narrowing your eyes. Your heart is beating a mile a minute, but you muster a neutral expression, shoving your hands back into your pockets. Lia knows you, though, and her furrowed eyebrows and parted lips say everything—but you just shrug, playing off what they could have caught you doing. “Hey,” you say, walking into the elevator with Mark. It all blows over.

AKA: Daniel has to drag a curious Lia away from you, with a promise that you would converse later. You and Mark are alone again, in the elevator, your hands barely touching, laughs loud. It’s all blurry after that. You’re high on a laugh and the thought of a kiss—you drag him over to your room, hands in his hair, breathless, loose kisses. You’re both so exhausted, though, that all you manage to extend your energy to is taking your tops off and making out lazily to the songs you’d recommended to each other.

“Mm,” he says when one of your songs starts playing. “It’s a nice song.” You nod with a smile. “I know it is, it’s one of my recommendations. It’s called Softly.” He plays with the strap of your bra. “I’ll give it more of a listen, then. Also, a red bra to school? Whatever will the professors think,” he jokes lightly, pressing insistent, but soft kisses on your shoulder. You laugh, pinching the inner part of his arm and eliciting a swear from him. “I was joking! I know you wore this for me, stupid.” The wind whistles outside, barely audible from the half-open window across the room, overlapping with the music.

This all feels too real, now.

You pout lazily against his bare chest. “Get off before Lia gets in,” you mumble, your heart beginning to race. He does, for what it’s worth, rolling off your bed with a loud thump and tugging his shirt and sweater back on. You watch him (fondly) annoyedly, your hair draping over you as you get up to properly shove him out. “Out, out,” you chant, laughing, and he giggles, turning abruptly to poke at your waist.

“Shut up,” you groan, a smile on your face. There’s a beat, then he pulls you close and kisses you, running outside right after with a literal guffaw. You watch him, wrapping your fleece blanket around your frame as he runs to the elevator, sweater backwards and hair messy.

—

Doubts are normal. This you’re assured of, but your head pounds with the sheer amount of things you’re cramming into it. You squint impossibly harder, trying to get the nail polish into the crook of Lia’s nail. You’ve probably overdone it, judging by the way she jabs her knuckle in between your eyebrows, her face contorted in worry. “Are you…okay?”

You narrow your eyes, the inner debate of telling her raging on and on. The nail polish drips onto her fingernail, rolling onto her pant leg, and she yelps, but her eyes are still on you. “You can tell me anything,” she says, softer this time. You know she’s serious—you know you can. You always have. You told her about every fling, one night stand, pregnancy scare, bad grade, hot professor, and spoiled deli food you’d encountered since you ever became friends. She knew you. And you were so sure she knew what you were about to say.

Except you didn’t know what you wanted to say. Your feelings were a mess, and you wanted one thing as much as you wanted the other. You couldn’t place what you wanted, and if you had to narrow it down, you’d realize that you were scared of what you wanted. You were never really one for commitment, or a relationship, or really anything, for that matter. And the fact that you were so hung up on thinking about what you and Mark would become—Mark? It all seemed so dystopian, almost. Like you’d never expected it. Your friendship was a childhood bubble that popped in the span of your first high school semester, and that was that. But just two days ago you were being kissed all over by the same guy you’d had a cutthroat student council president competition with.

It seemed so absurd? Crazy? Those adjectives were a little over the top. Deep down, if you dug deep enough into the parts you didn’t even tell yourself, you knew what you were. And if anybody else were to know, it would be Lia.

“I’m scared,” you choke out, your voice shaky. “I’m scared and sad, and happy and angry, and I want this but I don’t.” You cover the nail polish, shaking your head. “This is all so new to me. I hate how much I feel, especially because it feels so wrong. You know me—relationships are just not cut out for me. They’re scary and new. And people in relationships turn all gooey. I’m scared that this won’t last, but I’m scared that it will, and I’ll be doomed to an eternity of bland, padlocked relationships. It’s weird. I could be feeling this way for anyone, but it had to be Mark? If only I didn’t hate him, then maybe we could’ve gone off on a better foot. If only this whole thing never fucking happened, right?”

“It’s okay,” Lia cuts in. “Being scared is okay. It’s part of the whole process. And nobody said you had to get along like conjoined twins in a relationship. They just go when they go and end when they end. Not every relationship starts as a high school sweetheart thing and ends with three kids and a picket fence. And I’m so sure Mark would be so understanding if you didn’t like him or if you chose not to continue.”

“You knew?”

She laughs. “Of course I knew. I know a post-sex glow when I see one, and I was blinded that morning at the ski lodge.” You groan, pinching her indignantly, hiding your face in your hands as she laughs out of view. “Okay. Take some time and think about it, but for now, I want to get my nails done, so.” 

—

It’ll be a week before you come up with what you want, and the whole time you generally avoid talking about solemn topics with him in person. 

It’ll be another few days before you finally talk to him personally—with your paper nearly finished, you suggest a meeting at the library. It’s just two days before Christmas Eve, and you know Mark’s going to be driving to Canada, so you want to snatch him away for your own personal time for just a second. The snow has all but thickened as you meet outside the building, the silence deafening.

“Hi,” he says, smiling. You know he’s probably picked up on your erratic, quieter behavior in the past several days, but you gulp and lead him inside anyways, to your favorite section. “It’s almost Christmas Eve,” he says, watching you stall, surrounded by Philosophy books from just about every century. “I know,” you say, hoping you don’t sound too nervous.

“You sound nervous,” he says.

“Do I?” you ask shakily, your voice taking on an unnaturally high pitch. “I mean, er. I guess I sort of am. I guess I’ve been thinking about everything lately—about you and me and everything that just happened so suddenly. Because—because it did happen so suddenly. I just…needed time? Yeah, time. To think about everything. Because it all happened so quickly, I…” you stutter. “I’m scared of these things. I’m not used to them. Relationships? Things that last longer than a couple weeks? I don’t like these. 

I have something bigger I want to focus on and anybody who gets in the way just isn’t worth it. And it’s so weird how it was you out of all people I started thinking about it with. Usually I just have the rare fling and then they’re gone, and I’m not even mad. But you’re different. And I like it. 

But I just needed time to find out if I really liked it. If I really wanted to try. I know it’s only been a few weeks, and I probably sound really fucking stupid, but you get me—you get me, right? And that’s how I realized—if it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I don’t know why I overthought it. I mean, it’s a good thing and a bad thing that I did. Like, on one hand, I got to really think about how this would play out, and on the other, I’d just end up spiraling. And it’s just weird. I hope you don’t know I hated you. Hate you? Hated you. I was just—it was all so juvenile. Everything just stemmed from that one awfully dumb high school rivalry. But other than that, you were always a cool…see what I mean? I’m kind of rambling—even if I thought I had planned this out. And. Yeah. I dunno. I fucking…I hate you, stop laughing.”

Mark smiles down at you—you’re busy pretending to read a Sartre book to look unfazed, but your flickering gaze says it all. 

“Okay, stupid,” he says, bordering onto a laugh. “If that’s your way of saying you’re willing to give this a try, then I graciously accept. Should I be saying something equally long? I—is that how this works?”

You roll your eyes and kiss him instead, pulling him close, Sartre’s postulates dropping to the floor alongside your tiptoes.

—

Stage 4: Acceptance|

“Acceptance is just that. Just accepting that you love that person after weeks or months of all the other stages. With her, it was. Like. It’s the whole sitting down after silence, having some time for the revelation to set in before you realize you love them. Or like them? Well, love them, I guess. But I don’t know why you would be asking me this.”

You bury your head further into Mark’s shoulder, your eyes strained from how long they’d been trained onto your screen. You smile up at Daniel, thanking him for the input and beginning to type it in, watching Lia doze off on his shoulder. “We’re asking because we’re not quite there yet,” Mark hums, “it’s just February. It’s barely been two months.” You nod, watching Mark type where you left off on the document. Daniel snorts from across you. “You’re just about, I guess.” Mark chuckles, shrugging so your head bounces off his shoulder unceremoniously.

“Like I’d ever fall in love with that shitstorm,” he says pointedly.

“Oh, and I’d fall in love with this dickwad?”

“You’re perfect for each other. Bullying, but we all know Mark brought back gifts from Canada and that you stitched an initial onto his sweater.”

“To practice my embroidery. Also, I stitched Mark’s initial. M. Asshole.”

“Okay,” whistles Daniel, his hand unconsciously coming up to make sure Lia doesn’t fall off his shoulder. “But hey, you’re just about to submit this paper and I’m fondly remembering all the times you despised each other. And when you”—he points at you, devilish grin on his face—“started gushing to Lia about how he”—he then turns to Mark—“kissed you at Johnny’s party.”

“God, it’s not the time for that yet, we’re still a fresh couple,” you groan, burying your head in your hands. “You have so much dirt on me, Choi.” Mark just laughs, though, loudly, bringing the other cafe-goers’ attention to yours. He bites your shoulder to stifle it, eliciting a laugh from you. “I agree, there should be a certain time requirement for pre-relationship embarrassing stories,” Mark says, closing his laptop. Lia gets up at that point, already half-awake from the ruckus (AKA Mark’s laugh), pulling on Daniel’s sleeve. “Alright, and that’s my cue to get this girl some more coffee and then go.”

“Mm, I’ll come with,” you say, “I need a refresher before we leave soon, anyway.”

You walk in between them, your fingers laced in Lia’s as she squeezes them sleepily. They order first and then they’re off with a smile and a polite goodbye, leaving you to order your drink. You gaze up at the menu, and then down at—

“Long time no see,” Chan says with a knowing beam. “How is your not boyfriend boyfriend?”

“Well, he’s my boyfriend now.”

“See, I always know. What do you want?”

“An iced ca—how did you know?” You ask, tempted.

“It’s just…the energy? It was a hit or miss, but I kinda got that feeling that something was going to happen.”

“Hmm,” you hum. “An iced caramel then.”

“And a black coffee for her best friend!” Hollers a new voice that you could never miss, turning slowly towards the entrance to meet Donghyuck’s crazy eyes. He’s in a suit, which isn’t unusual given the sheer amount of presentations he’s had to do since the new year started. You roll your eyes but put in the extra cash anyway, much to Chan’s amusement. Hyuck nears you with a sly grin. “I hear you’ll be submitting your paper soon. I just want my name in there so I’m in your professor’s good graces.”

“She’s not even going to be your professor, Hyuck,” you say, taking your drink and smiling at Chan. You and Donghyuck both walk back to where Mark’s sitting, you beside him and Hyuck across the both of you. “Yes, but it pays to be in somebody’s good graces, I swear. See what happened? I got you two together. I orchestrated your entire love st—”

“Okay, now you’re just lying, Hyuck,” Mark says with a laugh, finishing up the first few paragraphs and closing his laptop. “We’re not even in love.” But his friend lets out a teasing smile, his eyes narrowed, and he gets up with a loud farewell and alibi about “being needed by my better friends.” You assume he’s talking about Jeno.

—

You walk to Mark’s room alongside him, thanks to the promise of his roommate, Jaemin, sleeping at a friend’s. Your fingers are intertwined loosely. The sun’s setting and Mark’s room is sheathed in beautiful shades of orange and pink, a vast array of dusk settling over the space. It happens quietly, but full of laughs, which is how it happens when you’re both tired and/or shitfaced. You do this a lot—a routine of sharing new songs or books you’d picked up over the week and then making out while they play in the background or while one of you read. It’s awfully, horribly, terribly fucking intimate. 

“Your bra sucks,” he jokes.

You love it.

“Get better abs and we can talk about it,” you counter, poking his toned stomach. He really, fully guffaws at that, pulling you onto his lap and then tugging his guitar out from where it stands at the corner. You flop back onto his bed, watching him play—and then registering the familiar opening of the Jonas Brothers song you used to request nearly everyday. “Lovebug,” you muse with a smile, singing along to his voice, carried away. You’re sleepy and light, and you know deep down—in that space of yourself where you’re all but honest—that you were going to fall in love with him someday.

Later, when all you’re doing is hugging him as he reads your latest Philosophy requirement to you, he pauses.

“Is this the 21st century idea of love?” He asks idly, unclasping your bra and connecting the moles on your shoulder. You hum. 

“It’s the Gen Z idea,” you say, connecting the ones on his bare back. “And this isn’t love.”

“Corny.” he smiles against your collarbones. You kiss his neck. It’s all very gradual.

—

hope you liked it :) drop an ask! I absolutely love all types of feedback 

#mark lee #mark lee imagines #mark imagines #mark drabbles