#and it’s counterproductive to say I don’t have any or that I don’t try to

[evangelineshifts]

FUCK IT !

You know I started thinking about the analogy that people use for manifestation and shifting comparing it to when you order something online.

And for me that analogy made sense but I could never truly relate to it cause when they said “you don’t wonder when your package is coming, you just know it is and you don’t question that etc etc”

And while yes that is true to a certain extent, I actually DO wonder when my packages are coming sometimes. I DO check how far they are from my location. I do anxiously wait for them to come.

I realize that that’s okay. Cause no matter how many times I check the order status. No matter how many times I check how long it’s been since I ordered it, my package STILL CAME.

I think the way we’re told to restrict ourselves from thinking about how much time our manifestations are taking or when we’re gonna shift actually makes it worse.

When you tell someone not to worry about something, to let it go and not thinking about it, to feign indifference the harder they’re going to try to. Which in turn just makes them think about it more.

It’s counterproductive at best.

When I order something I do think about how long it’ll take. I do check the status but once I do I just kind of go on once I’m done. I don’t really feel any particular way about how long it’s taking cause I know it’s mine and it’ll get here.

I trust that the delivery service will get it here in due time cause that’s THEIR job not mine and leave it at that 🤷🏽‍♀️

Another thing I noticed is that in ordering things- at least for me - I don’t worry about HOW it’s gonna get here. It could be delivered on my doorstep, in the mailbox, dropped from a fucking helicopter, ANYTHING, and I have never once cared.

And it might just be me being slow and realizing this is what they meant in those posts later than everyone else but it’s just like- clicked !

I’m always SO worried about the process of shifting.

What method should I do? Should I even do a method?

What if I get bored? I dont want to do it if I’m bored.

What will I think about? Should I look over my script? Maybe Pinterest boards for visuals?

What if I forgot something? I should check my script.

What if I fall asleep?

What if? What if? What if?

WHO FUCKING CARES?!? That is not why you’re doing this. Who cares about that process when the end goal is the destination.

I’ve been avoiding shifting for the longest because I just kept stressing out over the shifting aspect of it. I would maladaptive daydream about my dr and be happy in that but the thought of attempt a shift made me groan.

The thought of affirming and persisting in my manifestations seemed strenuous.

But thats not the point. With practices as fluid as this focusing on what to do is literally the last thing you need to be worried about and I just now realized that.

You’ve probably heard this all before but like fr, do whatever the hell you want. If you want to shift wide awake, eyes open and dancing with music blasting in your ears- do it. Who’s gonna tell you that you can’t? Who has the credibility to say it’s impossible.

No one.

If you want to manifest by literally saying one affirmation and deciding it’s done and then going on doing whatever the fuck you want until the 3D catches up, then do it.

Tell yourself it works for you and then do it.

✧ dividers by @benkeibear !

#evangelineshifts ˖⋆࿐໋₊ #angel rambles 🪽 #reality shifting #shiftblr #desired reality #shifting #quantum jumping #law of assumption #manifestation #neville goddard #shifting realities #edward art #shifter #shifting reality #shifters #shifttok #law of abundance #law of manifestation #law of attraction #shifters of tumblr #percy jackson shifting #shifting to pjo #shifting to marauders era #hogwarts shifting #shifting to desired reality #teen wolf shifting #teen wolf dr

[eat-0utthe-r1ch]

Tips for cutting out sugar?

I already don’t snack anymore. I eat one meal a day (usually dinner cuz that’s the ‘family meal’). I’ve deleted delivery apps off my phone (which has saved me SO MUCH money). But I’m still struggling not to crave sugar.

My family and I went out to eat last night (we went to where I work cuz I get a discount) and when it came time for dessert I like couldn’t find it in myself to say no. I’ve been doing so good trying to resist cravings, I don’t break my fast just to have a snack someone offers me, I only break when it’s time for dinner and I eat any snacks I’m offered within an hour of dinner (careful not to binge or overeat since I know it will be counterproductive to fasting the whole day). Then I restart my fast and do the same.

But for some reason, I just can’t get rid of sugar. No one in my family is skinny (except my older brother, he has my uncles genes), so we always have sugar in the house (in my opinion it’s more than we should but don’t mind me). Every way I turn, even if I did snack, the only options would be processed and sugary unless I bought them myself. I don’t get a lot of cravings anymore but when I do it’s almost always for sugar. I’ve been trying to break it by making a small smoothie when it gets unbearable but sometimes I just have to tough it out.

Please help🫶

(0n1y pr04m3)

#ana rant #pro a4a #ana trigger #disordered eating thoughts #ed dairy #ed disorder #ed not ed sheeran #ed not sheeren #ana advice #ana bllog #🕯️as a 🪶 #an0r3c1a #an0rec1a #tw a4a #tw ana diary #ed behaviour tw #tw restrictive ed #tw disordered eating #tw ed diet

[lukabitch]

I'm good at being friends with people but as soon as I start catching romantic feelings, I avoid them like the plague (which is quite counterproductive, I know :/). How would a killer of your choice react to a survivor they're on good terms with suddenly avoiding them for the same reason?

Me too bestie! It’s just feels so awkward talking to them. I’m doing multiple killers because I fell like it. Thank you so much for the request! :)

Tw: Killers being aggressive and possessive.

Killers: Ghostface, Wesker, Trapper, Micheal Myers.

Ghostface:

He immediately knew something was up.

He didn’t know why you were avoiding him he just knew you were.

The two of you would talk all the time when seeing the other outside a trial.

So it was really suspicious when you would duck and hide from him.

It’s starting to get to him more and more. He just couldn’t stay away from you any longer.

Eventually he would find you during a trial and pinned you down.

To say he was frustrated was an understatement.

He certainly wasn’t expecting the answer you gave him. You had feelings for him of all people?

He very quickly warmed up towards you.

Expect to be teased into oblivion about this.

“Aw you like me? Come on say it again! Pretty please?” I swear he’s bratty!

Eventually though he would give you a kiss. A very nice way of saying he likes you back.

This is the start of a beautiful relationship. :)

Wesker:

Uh oh big mistake.

This man is absolutely annoyed.

I mean why can’t you just talk to him? Was someone keeping you from doing so?

He’s a bit more reasonable unlike Ghostie.

He’ll leave a note asking to meet him at a specific spot. It wasn’t the spot the two of you talked at. It was the one you first meet at.

You come around the corner and immediately try and turn back.

He was not letting you go that easy.

He would gently ask why you were avoiding him. He didn’t want to scare you off with being aggressive.

He’s surprisingly gentle and sweet about it.

Omg? You made this man into softy with your cuteness!

Will mumble about how you could have talked to him.

“Sweet boy you could always tell me. I would say yes.”

Awww you two are so sweet together! :)

Trapper:

He’s more sadden by you avoiding him.

Did he do something wrong? Was he too rough in a trial? This poor man was racking his head.

He needs to talk to you but with him being the brute he is it’s a bit tough.

I mean it was almost like he would scare you off!

He would get frustrated not with you but with himself.

He had a plan to keep you in place. Don’t worry it’s not a bear trap.

You were off in the woods and he was able to get behind you. Obviously he startled you but it wasn’t the reason you were squirming.

When he hears that you like him it’s like a weight lifted off his shoulders.

This man is holding you like a teddy.

You’re the most important thing to him in this realm.

He’s going to make sure you know that!

He’ll tell you how much you’ve helped him. He’ll just be saying the sweetest things.

“I love you, you know?” Yes you did in fact know. :)

Micheal Myers:

He’s more confused is anything. He may be a bit angry.

He would try to get closer to you but you’d just run off.

Unlucky for you he’s incredibly good at tracking.

He’ll just follow you until he can confront you.

He’ll grab you and hold you in place. Probably will give one of his head tilts.

He didn’t ask he really couldn’t but hearing you blurt out why was interesting.

He’ll just hold you might press the press the lips of his mask against you.

He somehow manages to be both rough and gentle at the same time.

Considering this man isn’t used to giving and receiving affectionate he doesn’t know what to do.

He can’t exactly communicate his feelings but he’ll try his best.

He’ll do any type of song and dance to get the point across that he likes you.

Eventually you’ll catch on and the two of you just hold each other.

The most quiet and cute couple in the realm!

#dbd #dead by daylight #dbd killer #request #dbd survivor #killer x survivor #danny jed olsen johnson #danny johnson #dbd headcanons #dbd ghostface #albert wesker #dbd mastermind #dbd wesker #the trapper #dbd trapper #micheal myers #dbd x male reader #danny johnson x male reader #albert wesker x male reader #trapper x male reader #micheal myers x male reader

[luxthestrange]

Beastars Incorrect Quotes#9 HARU JINXED IT-

When Haru got kidnapped by the Shishihumi ...you were with her when it happen and were brought along for the ride...Safe to say when they haven't heard what humans are they started to question you...you decided to have a little fun along with Haru~

Chief Lion:-If we have to, we are willing to resort to torture methods to get answers out of you nasty hell beast!

Haru*Still roped up next to you and raises her brow at him*When you say “tortured”, do you mean physical or psychological? Physical seems counterproductive; They would likely tell you anything if it meant an end to the pain, and you have no way of knowing what was true

Y/n*Nods along at her retort* Or I might like it too much. And then you got a whole new thing to deal with…

Ibuki*Glares at you as he comes to your level* What do you mean by that?

Y/n*Looks up and down at him and shrugs*"He aint ugly..." *wiggling eyes brows* Oh, you’re stupid, huh? I can work with stupid, “Daddy/Mommy” Likey Dummy~

Haru shoulders start to shake trying to hold back her laughter but laughs anyway

Haru: Good one Y/n!, Daddy/Mommy likey-

Free: You better stop laughin’ at us!

Ibuki grabs Your collar and growls at the Your face

Ibuki: Yeah! You’re the ones at our mercy!

Y/n: It’s hard to resist, I’m really sorry. I mean, considering your approach thus far, you’ve had us tied up here for what, hours? And you haven’t even had to confirm what exactly I am!

Chief Lion*leans down curious* What are you?

Y/n: I’m a Taurus/Zodiac Sign~

Haru bursts out laughing so hard she started to snort

Free: Oh, a smart guy/gal eh?

Agata: One more quip out of you and we’ll shut you up!

Y/n: Ohh, getting kinky!~

Both Lions recoil in a shock away from you

Free: WHAT?!? We ain’t playing any of your vile weird kinks!

Y/n: I mean, that’s what it sounds like back there. You sickos…

Haru*Sarcasticly leans on your shoulder*PLEASE, don’t give them ideas Y/n~

Mc: Why not? I know the shit you’re into- *Giving her “The look"*

Haru*Blushes and rolls her eyes*...

Agata: STAAHP! We are NOT getting kinky wit youse!

Ibuki: Calm down, Agata! Don’t let this monster get to you!

Y/n*sees them walking away* Hey, aren’t we going to get a phone call, bitch?~

Agata: Well, that entirely depends: Who ya gonna call, hmm?~*Makes baby voice*

Y/n: Your fat mom, thanking her for a fat time!~

Free: Nice try, creep! His fat mom is DEAD! *Agata starts crying into his own arm*

Part 2 of:

#beastars #beastars x human reader #beastars x y/n #beastars x reader #beastars legoshi #beastars haru #beastars shishigumi #beastars ibuki #beastars free #beastars agata #beastars haru x reader #haru x reader #beastars ibuki x reader #beastars in the nutshell #beastars incorrect quotes #incorrect quotes

[dark-audit]

Myths to Avoid When Writing Torture

Fiction makes, implicitly or explicitly, some kind of argument. A fictional portrayal of a guy simply going for a walk might make the argument that walking is a nice activity to do. This might not be a particularly earth-shattering message, but messages like this are implicit within the literary tools we use in how we portray characters, behavior, settings, and relationships. This underlying argument – a theme – is present in all of fiction. It’s why you’ll often see people make the statement that “all art is political”. And when it comes to torture – a subject which in and of itself has been the topic of political debate for millenia – how we approach the ideas and arguments made within fictional depictions of torture warrant, in my opinion, a degree of care. Torture isn’t just something that happens in movies. It is something that happens today, to real people, on a global scale. It’s not even particularly rare.

The difficulty with the subject of torture specifically is that for the past two decades, the public perception of torture has shifted on a global scale, seen most clearly in how torture is presented in contemporary media, fiction or otherwise. Everybody believes these myths. And getting indoctrinated into having reactionary takes on a topic is nobody’s fault, considering that almost every source outside of academia feeds you misinformation. But that’s, y’know, kinda why I made this blog: in the hopes that I might be able to get people to consider what ideas they’re presenting in their writing.

I want to start out by briefly reitorating some basics of how torture apologia typically works within political discussions, because this very much is relevant to how you can avoid accidentally sending the wrong message.

The first thing you need to understand is that the real-life debate surrounding torture isn’t framed in terms of whether or not torture is good or bad – everybody, including torturers themselves, will concede that it is bad. The more insidious argument is that torture is useful for achieving certain goals, and that it is therefore justified in extreme emergencies. Not only does this argument try to soften the usually rigid negative framing of torture in moral discussions, but it also seeks to poke holes in the international laws which ban the use of torture outright. It’s a moral, political and legal argument all wrapped up in one reactionary package. For this reason, having the theme of “torture is bad” doesn’t always mean a piece of writing isn’t making use of torture apologia. “Torture is useful” serves that goal just fine.

Torture is also often discussed in terms of civility – not the civility of the torturers, but the civility of the victims. It’s the argument that the people who are being tortured are bad people, and therefore don’t warrant the respect and dignity we usually offer to other human beings; they are so bad, essentially, that it’s fine for us civilized people to war crime them. Whenever I’ve encountered this argument, it has usually been presented in a way that was, shall we say, sussy as fuck – some even give up the pretense and straight up call their victims “savages” or “degenerates”. I hope I don’t need to explain why this line of thinking is insane, but in any case, it’s just my way of getting you to consider that a lot of the myths surrounding torture are rooted in broader sociopolitical issues, often racism and religious discrimination, and historically, most often within the context of colonialism.

With that in mind, let’s get into the myths, starting with the most obvious one.

"Torture for information works."

Every study I’ve read has concluded that torture is counterproductive when it comes to gathering intel from reluctant sources. Under severe pain or distress, victims are more focused on saying whatever they think the torturer wants to hear to make the torture stop, as opposed to providing accurate information. On a neurophysiological level, severe pain or distress actually interferes with the pathways of the brain relating to long- and short-term memory; this means that torture in and of itself is likely to destroy the very evidence it sets out to gather. Furthermore, victims are less likely to cooperate if subjected to physical abuse, including torture, and nothing in the infliction of pain itself works as some kind of truth serum. Lying and defiance are more likely under torture.

To a large minority of people, portraying torture as a reliable tool for gathering accurate information will make the implicit argument that torture, although usually bad, can hold utilitarian value in certain exceptional cases. I’ve written about this more in depth here.

"Under torture, everyone cooperates sooner or later."

French prosecutors used torture in the events leading up to the French revolution, as a way to gain forced confessions from suspects. Their failures and successes were jotted down, leading us with a pretty revealing insight – the highest success rate for gathering forced confessions was in Toulouse, an exceptionally high 14%. In Paris, only 3% of suspects cooperated long enough to sign their name – the rest did not. This is one of the primary reasons that the French criminal justice system eventually dropped using torture for intelligentsia. To quote Darius Rejali, who wrote The Book on torture: “Torture the clumsiest method available to organizations.”

So no, not everybody talks – in fact, rough estimate, 90% of torture victims never do. Defiance is by far the norm with torture.

"When the bad guy does it, it’s torture – when the good guy does it, it’s a tough, but morally justifiable decision."

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Heroes of stories, especially in the action genre, often engage in the use of torture for information, usually following the framework of the ticking bomb scenario, a thought experiment based on the false notion that torture works as an interrogation method. Here, torture is turned into a heroicact, one that speaks to the toughness of the person who uses it. Ask yourself if you want to frame torturers though this lens – because if you do, you are literally justifying the act torture, and, y’know, you do you, but I am gonna call you stupid and reactionary. Torture done by a “good” person is just as abhorrent as torture done by anybody else.

"Some methods of torture are less severe than others."

This myth stems from governments trying to downplay the use of certain methods of torture, and usually goes hand in hand with euphemistic redefinitions of the concept, such as the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation methods,” also known as “torture lite,” or the Israeli “coercive interrogation.” The methods that have been proposed in this supposed less severe category of torture includes stimulated drowning, also known as waterboarding, as well as caning, beatings, limbs being broken with clubs, sleep deprivation, stress positions (ex. forcing a person to crouch against a wall for extended periods of time,) mock executions, sexual assault, and more. If these things all just sound like torture to you, it’s because they are. There is zero evidence to suggest that any torture methods, including those that leave no physical mark on the body, have less severe outcomes than those that do not – on the contrary, non-physical torture methods, including mock executions, or witnessing the torture of a loved one, have been ranked by victims as causing equal amounts of psychological distress as physical torture.

"Torture only causes harm to the person who is being tortured."

This is incredibly unrealistic. Torture is an act that is destructive in all directions, causing trauma to victims, their family, witnesses, and even torturers themselves. It disintegrates the structure of the organizations that use it, it breeds resentment and hatred in the communities around it, and it radicalizes people into extremism. Pretending that consequences like this don’t exist isn’t torture apologia per se, but if your aim is to show the realistic outcomes of torture, these are some of the things you need to consider.

Torture is portrayed as “scientific”; torturers are “skilled” in the “art” of torture.

The most common methods of torture in use today are: hitting people, sleep deprivation, and starvation. These don’t require a whole lot of brain power to conjure up, in fact the infliction of intense suffering is very straightforward. Human beings are full of nerves. Stick a knife anywhere, and I’d be more impressed if it didn’t cause pain.

Not to mention, portraying torture as “scientific” or something that “requires technical skill” makes the implicit argument that torture works for its intended use, here under the condition that you should at least do it right – which brings us right back to that utilitarian fallacy.

"Torturers are expert interrogators, and possess an extraordinary ability to detect lies in their victims."

Studies have been done on the ability of police officers to detect lies for about four decades now. The average person will have a 57% accuracy rate, meaning they’re barely better at spotting deception than a coin toss. For police officers, the highest estimate is around 65% - but it might also be as low as 45%, meaning they might be less accurate than a coin toss – even though police officers tend to think of themselves as exceptional at spotting deception. The same trend is seen in torturers.

In fact, this myth in particular originated from torturers’ accounts of how they conceptualize themselves, which is not only false, but also cringe. When an interrogator starts making use of torture, their focus tends to shift away from gathering reliable information, and more towards “perfecting” the infliction of pain, which means that over time, those interrogative skills are substantially degraded – they are terrible interrogators. So torturers are no better at spotting lies than your average person; they might actually be worse. They can’t read minds, and they don’t possess some secret mystical knowledge about the psychology of their victims.

"You can train someone to resist torture."

Loads of intelligence agencies and revolutionary groups around the world have published material that supposedly serves as manuals for resisting torture, but the truth is, torture is so extreme, there really is no way to prepare or train someone to “resist” it; this is something that even the CIA has acknowledged. Everybody’s reaction to pain will be different. There is no way to predict how torture will affect anyone, much less give them instructions beforehand that will somehow magically negate those effects.

"Brainwashing through torture works."

Torturers can’t change the emotional framework of a person through the infliction of pain. They cannot change the strongly held beliefs and opinions held by their victims through the infliction of pain. They can’t erase someone’s entire personality or make them a ‘blank slate’ through the infliction of pain. They can’t predict how a victim responds to torture, much less direct that response to their own benefit. This is not how pain works.

This is not only an implicit argument for the usefulness of torture to change someone���s behavior or force religious conversions, but the myth that torturers have some form of control of their victims even after the torture has ended is also used in real life to paint survivors as dangerous or unstable, and thereby bar them from treatment and aid, and even to allow access into countries to escape the circumstances that facilitated their torture in the first place. That last point is why you often see the advocacy of refugee rights in organizations that work to prevent torture; these two branches of activism have a huge overlap.

Torture victims cannot be controlled by their torturers. Brainwashing isn’t real.

"Stockholm syndrome is real."

This is a derivative of the brainwashing myth, which means all the connotations previously mentioned remain, but as a cherry on top, Stockholm syndrome as a trope can also serve as an implicit argument for the utility of domestic abuse. So that’s cool.

If you deliberately inflict suffering on someone, that is guaranteed to make that person dislike you. In real life, torture survivors not only tend to be extremely resentful of their torturers, but they also tend to be resentful of anyone belonging to the same demographic as their torturers, whether that be ethnicity, nationality, or even gender or general appearance. Like I said, torture radicalizes people.

"Torture makes people obedient."

Any physical abuse or neglect, including bad cell conditions, access to medical aid, decent food and clean water, is likely to breed resentment in victims and makes them far more reluctant to cooperate with their aggressors. With torture, defiance is the norm, by far. You saw this on a larger scale in the war on terror, for example – turns out that carpet bombing a country to deter terrorism only radicalizes the civilian population, producing more terrorists. No form of violence exists that will make a person particularly eager to shut up and do what you want them to do. It will just make them hate you.

The notion that torture makes people obedient is also an implicit argument for the use of corporal punishment or as crime deterrence, something that along with capital punishment has repeatedly been proven false by sociological studies. People just do not function like this. If you want to create obedience in your story – violence is the last thing you should use.

"People “break” under torture."

Victims of torture sometimes make the conscious decision to do what their torturer wants them to do, and this often serves as a means to buy enough time to plan an escape, or mount up whatever act of defiance they can manage. Sometimes they simply do it to get the torture to stop – this, too, is a tough, conscious decision. If you want to consider this a form of “breaking”, by all means go ahead, but implying personal weakness or lack of willpower in torture victims rubs me the wrong way. I personally see it as a rational choice made by a person who is in an otherwise impossible situation.

"Torture survivors are “broken”."

Torture certainly can lead to extreme psychological distress, but again, the term “broken” here implicitly makes the argument that torture victims simply lacked the mental fortitude to withstand their trauma. In my opinion, there’s a certain degree of victim blaming involved with framing torture survivors in this way, and certainly, it’s a framing that inherently strips away their agency.

Another thing that rubs me the wrong way is the fact “brokenness” implies a degree of permanence and rigidity to human beings that simply isn’t there, as if we are solid objects that, once shattered, can never regain the function we once had. It’s a nitpick, but I view people as organic things, capable of healing and growth – not as glassware.

Conclusion

I’d wager that while reading this, a good portion of you recognized some of these myths from depictions of torture in fiction; that’s not particularly surprising to me. These myths aren’t just widespread, they’ve been engrained in the global public perception of torture by decades of political debate and government propaganda, and as a result, have seeped into popular culture.

Torture isn’t rare, and neither is torture apologia. According to Amnesty International, 31% of the global population believes that torture is justified “in some cases”; as of 2014, AI had also reported on torture or other ill treatment in 141 different countries, despite the fact that torture is internationally recognized as a war crime.

In an ideal world, the subject of torture in fiction is treated with the same due diligence with which we have learned to portray subjects like homophobia, sexual assault, and racism; because, to be fair, all of these things have the capacity to intersect, and very often do. The first step in that regard is to spread awareness about how torture actually functions, which is what I hope to slowly start doing on this blog. At the very least, I hope I can make people more aware of how they choose to portray torture in their writing.

#nonfiction #torture #torture apologia #ive got plans to write about all these things more in depth at some point #so if you see sth you would like me to elaborate about by all means let me know

[vnzndt]

He said they weren’t dating. He said not to ship it seriously and dig into their actual personal lives

I feel like that should just be a given tho. If you believe dnf is real that doesn’t mean you have to harras people lol and also anyone trying to dig into their private relationships is weird anyways.

agreed!!! and just building on what i said in an earlier ask we’ve seen time and time again public friendships grow distant due to constant digging and speculating but more specifically when it’s done in broad daylight for said friends to constantly face (and while i don’t think dnf would ever fall into this category solely because of the nature of their relationship, it’s still worthwhile mentioning) like at the end of the day speculation is still speculation and it’s gotta be eerie constantly seeing it about yourself and your best friend (especially given dream’s circumstances & his very unfortunately public journey into being queer) i feel like it would set a lot of internal expectations for your friendship

people will always be weird and take things waaay too far like i will never see a point in spending your time harassing people who disagree with you over your opinion on these two strangers’ relationship that you have no control over nor insight in. as much as i think dnf got a little somethin somethin going on i think it’s counterproductive & potentially harmful to both them as public figures and our reputation as a fanbase for us to ever let any serious speculation grow over into a place where both dream, george, and anyone who already thinks we’re all freaks see it lol

and i especially think that anyone assuming dream is lying and that he’s dating george are seriously missing the point of the conclusion. even if that was the case (as disrespectful as it is to assume) if it’s private, it’s private for a reason. we as fans owe dream, at the bare minimum, respect for his private relationships and that should’ve been a given from day 1

i don’t think it’s inherently harmful to think/observe that dnf may be more than platonic so long as you keep it out of sight from cc’s and those who can use it as ammunition against you/us, as well as not taking it so seriously to the point that your earth is shattered when dream/george inevitably say, as they have time and time again, that they aren’t together currently

#but as george said it’s not shipping if it’s real #am i right guys #ollie asks #yapping

[soft-dollie]

"Disorder" and "Disability" are NOT dirty words!!

A frustrated rant

I saw a video today and I can't get it out of my head, so I'll write about it instead. Excuse me and apologies if this sounds incoherent or if anything is incorrect.

The video was of a mom telling her followers about why she wouldn't tell her daughter that she has ASD (her daughter has autism) because she's "not disordered". It's frustrating to constantly hear this going around because it's false. If your daily functioning is not being disordered because of your traits/symptoms, you don't have autism. Autism is a disability, not a "superpower" like people in the comments were saying. I WISH that my autism didn't disable and disorder me, and that I "didn't know I was different", but that's what autism does. Yes, autism is a spectrum, but even Level 1 autistics are disabled because they have autism.

"Disorder" and "disability" are not dirty words, and by pushing the narrative that we should find a different name for the diagnosis, we are contributing to the stigma that disabled people get. Having a disorder doesn't mean you're fucked for life, it just means you have trouble functioning in a world that isn't accommodating for you, and that's not your fault or any disabled persons fault.

These "autism moms" also want to start replacing the diagnosis "Autism Spectrum Disorder" with "Autism Spectrum Condition". As an autistic person, the word "condition" sounds so much more demeaning and degrading than "disorder".

Autism is a Neurodevelopmental disability and disorder. AND there's nothing wrong with having autism. Both statements can be true at the same time. Being autistic isn't something to feel ashamed about, neither is being disabled or having another disorder.

I might be grasping straws here, but claiming that autism isn’t a disorder because your child “isn’t disordered” is excluding and silencing the hundreds of thousands of autistics who ARE disabled and disordered (like myself). It’s tone deaf, and seems to come from a place of privilege that might not be recognized in some situations.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but trying to change an entire diagnosis because you “dont agree with the wording” is counterproductive. ASD is autism, no matter how you put it. You don’t have to use “ASD” to refer to yourself, but don’t act as if the words disabled, disorder, and ASD are malignant.

Words have meaning, and ASD was called a disorder for a reason. This "ASC, non-disordered autism, autism is a superpower, autism mom" movement feels like it is pushing the autistic community back, and its frustrating to see.

#autism #actually autistic #autism spectrum disorder #autism struggles #disability #dsm 5 #mental health #autism acceptence month #autism awareness #autism awareness month #level 2 autistic #diagnosed autistic #medium support needs #low support needs #high support needs #mental health awareness #neurodivergent #neurodiversity #psychology #neurotypical #allistics #asd

[blues824]

Hello! I love your concepts! Is it alright if I ask for a Leona Kingscholar reader x Demon Slayer. Like Leona in a Demon Slayer isekai. Thanks!

You didn’t specify which characters, so I decided to do the main three since I don’t have nearly enough fics about them. Gender-neutral reader

Tanjiro Kamado

Sometimes he questions why you even decided to join the Demon Slayer Corps if you were just going to be lazy and sleep for the majority of the time. Sure, you were royalty, but that didn’t give you any excuse to excuse the lives of the living and innocent.

However, when you were in battle you were so admirable. While you didn’t really care about the innocent lives at stake, you were valiant in your fight against the demons. Then you would turn back to the person you saved and tell them that they were strong for surviving this long.

He also didn’t appreciate the little nickname you gave him. You knew that he ate meat, right? Therefore he wasn’t an herbivore. Also, your nicknames for everyone else were just rude in general. You often called Zenitsu ‘cowardly bastard’ and you often fought with Inosuke and called him “pig-headed idiot”

However, he saw how you treated Nezuko, especially when they went up against the Hashiras' judgment. You shamed them for not giving her a chance, and Tanjiro was grateful that you did that for them. You then became an official member of their squad.

He has seen your unique magic which he at first mistook for a different type of Elemental Breathing Style. You turned demons to sand, which he found absolutely incredible. It really allowed them to not get held up in battles over and over again.

Eventually, you both get together and you both are extremely protective of each other and of Nezuko. He will make you food that is so good but includes vegetables to make sure you remain healthy enough to fight against demons. You both make a pretty cute couple actually, with him as a husbandly figure and you as his ‘spouse’.

Zenitsu Agatsuma

When he first saw you, he thought you were so freaking hot. He asked to marry you on the spot, but you refused saying that even though you were royalty you had no intention of getting married anytime soon. After all, it was too complicated and too much work.

He wanted to marry you even more when he saw you on the battlefield. You were a figurative (but also literal) beast in the fight, and he would most likely be hiding behind you. He doesn’t even try showing off to you.

He didn’t care about any nickname you decided to give him because it was unique to him. He, in return, often called you ‘sweetheart’, ‘love of my life’, ‘spouse’... the list just goes on and on. He just can’t express how much he loves you in a singular nickname!

He often argues with Inosuke a lot, but you just find the boar-headed demon slayer annoying. Zenitsu argues against him because he often goes against the rules of the Demon Slayer Corps and it’s counterproductive.

He was intimidated by you when he first saw your unique magic and you turned a demon into sand. After, you nonchalantly explained that if you overused your power, then you would overblot. This made your lover so freaking worried, so everytime you used your power he made sure you rested up after.

When you both get together, he is the househusband figure and you are the one wearing the pants in the relationship. He actually prefers it that way, since the chances of him dying that way are lower than if he were in battle.

Inosuke Hashibira

You both clash heads a lot. With both of your competitive natures, you were annoying to the entire group. However, he respected you because you would never back down from a challenge, especially if it had to do with honor.

Your technique in the battlefield was what made him find you interesting, and that made him want to try and fight with you to see who was stronger. You both were wild animals in a fight, so it made sense that everyone was scared of the two of you.

He definitely butchers your name, and you retaliate by calling him herbivore because you know for a fact that he doesn’t know what that word means. The one time he did get your name right was when you were hurt in battle and he yelled your name.

Oh, yeah, have I told you that you both argue most of the time? You both are so freaking annoying to Zenitsu and Tanjiro, and you do it for free. Unfortunately, you both intimidate a lot of people as well because of y’all’s anger issues.

When you used your unique magic, he tried to challenge you. You, caring about him too much but never admitting it, immediately refused. He continuously tried to fight you, but you decided to put an end to it by just falling asleep.

The moment you both get together, everyone is relieved because now you will keep each other busy (take that how you want to). He actually tends to lead the two of you within the relationship, but you have to teach him about your cultural norms as a lion beast-person.

#demon slayer #demon slayer x reader #kny x reader #kny #kimetsu no yaiba #kimetsu no yaiba x reader #tanjiro x reader #tanjiro #tanjiro kamado x reader #tanjiro kamado #zenitsu agatsuma x reader #zenitsu agatsuma #zenitsu x reader #zenitsu #inosuke hashibara x reader #inosuke hashibira #inosuke x reader #inosuke

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA for posting graphic writing online? No TWs for this, I don’t actually talk in detail about anything graphic in this ask (which I realise is probably counterproductive but anyway.)

I really need some advice and I don’t know where else to turn. I don’t know if this is exactly relevant to this blog, but I really don’t know who else to ask.

I love writing. Fanfic, original work, anything. I’ve always been engaged in online spaces for writing. I’m currently working on some new writing I want to post in these online spaces, like on wattpad and quotev.

My problem is I love horror, i’m obsessed with it, and it makes my way, very prevalently, into all of my writing. Even worse, I’m a good writer, and when I want to be graphic, I do it pretty fucking well. I’m not trying to brag, it’s a real issue because the spaces I plan to upload are pretty notorious for having some shoddy writing, and I’m worried (perhaps erroneously) when I say “this work is graphic” readers will associate that with “graphic” works they’ve read before on the same site, but that my own work will turn it up to 11 and they’ll be unprepared for it. Even worse because these sites are pretty famous for having child users, even when they probably shouldn’t be using them.

I would be posting this writing online with all the apt warnings I could possibly use. I really want to share and add to the communities online that helped encourage my own love of writing. But I worry that I’ll be exposing it to the wrong audience, and I’ll be exposing children to some graphic, disturbing stuff. Of course, I would be tagging everything as mature, but I know how kids are online (I was one) and I know that warnings like that do Jack shit.

Is that really my responsibility? Would I be the asshole for uploading my works? I haven’t uploaded anything yet. I feel guilty about this, but I don’t know if i would be in the wrong, or if this is even something to be worried about at all. Other authors don’t seem to have any worries about publishing graphic works, so maybe I’m just being over cautious?

I also find this all pretty embarrassing (peep the anonymous submission) and don’t have anyone to talk to about this in real life, so I have no real guidelines if what I write is “too graphic” or if it’s really not that graphic at all and i’m thinking too highly of my own prose.

I would really appreciate some advice/feedback. Thank you!

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

[cookie-crumblr]

✨My Dastardly Villain~✨

F!Hero Reader x M!Villain Yan OC

Part 1~

His Info: 💰✨

Part 1 _ Next Part>>>

!!!MINORS DNI!!!

CW: F!Reader, reader has a vagina, reader referred to as she/her, general violence, reader drinks alcohol, reader’s alia’s is Solar (powers include teleportation, and fire control), dub con (both parties are tipsy), explicit language, reader has tits, unprotected sex- I HAD SO MUCH FUN WITH THIS ONE GAIS I LOVE KAI I HOPE U DO 2 🙈✨, P IN V, oral on ML, umm like slight bdsm if you squint i think… and i think that’s it!

Song rec: Bop it up! by the marias

Anything in This Colour happened in the past:

An explosion inside the bank sends ripples of vibrations through the streets of New York City.

“He’s just so destructive! It’s so lame! and counterproductive,” You take a long hard swig of your drink.

He nods along with your complaints, enthusiastic as he listens.

The dive bar is full of greasy food, and even greasier patrons. it’s the perfect hole in the wall place to escape.

You’re conversing with a handsome man that’s wearing a black crop top and some grey washed jeans with silver chains decorating every inch of him. Though you have to admit your eyes are dying to see underneath all that.

You snap one of the villain, Sobek’s, obvious traps as you enter the bank.

“Oh my gods!” He responds, “What an absolute asshole! My own co worker is always getting in my way and trying to mess with my process!” He groans while rolling his eyes.

A orb of water whizzes past your head, you look up and find Sobek with a person hovering above the ground, only their lower half in the bubble so they don’t drown, but gods does it look uncomfy hanging there! “SOBEK!!” You roar! “Put that person down!”

“She’s always telling me what to do, like she knows what’s best!” He takes his turn with a swig of his fruity cocktail, but it makes him grimace.

You giggle at his obvious distaste for alcohol. “These idiots we work with really suck.” You say, trying to hold in any stray laughs.

“I’ll toast to that,” He holds up his glass, swaying a little as he does.

“Woah there sailor, someone’s a little tipsy” You reach up to take his glass and fall over onto him.

Catching himself, and you, on the edge of the bar, he says, “You sure you’re not?” and laughs, it’s such a beautiful and honest laugh, all the sounds of the drink machines rumbling and patrons’ boisterous voices fade as only his laughter filters through your ears.

You’re hyper focused on just him now, noticing how soft his hand is on your arm. You admire the way his big veins bulge under his dark skin as they run over the flexed muscles of his forearm.

He looks like a swimmer with some resistance training. you had been admiring his exposed belly for a while… And now you’re touching every ridge of taught muscle, you can’t help but glide your hand down the washboard, you tug on his silver chain that lays lazily over his hips.

You feel hot, and forget to breathe while still leaning over top of him. You hear him sigh out practically in your ear! You didn’t realize just how close you two actually are!

“Ah, um… Sorry, I-I guess I must be pretty tipsy…”You push yourself up, using his thigh… every part of him is so solid, like bricks of gold beneath your weight.

You’re both well over your limits, it would be a bad idea.

His dark brown eyes enrapture you, so full of lust and life, and vigor. He wants you too.

It’s such a bad idea…

“I-I should go,” as you pull away from him, his hand remains loosely floating in the air, lingering where it held you. He doesn’t move to chase you.

You stumble home feeling like you’re floating. You keep thinking about his eyes, how deep and warm they were…

No! stop thinking about him! You missed your chance, don’t go fantasizing now! At least not when you’re outside your nice comfy bed.

Once in your apartment you hurry, stripping as you cross the living room. You slip on some night clothes and go to brush your teeth when you start thinking about him again…

*Pop* you’re teleported from your bathroom to somewhere else, randomly, again!

Shit! This keeps happening! You have the power to teleport, sure… But you can’t control it!

And now you’re even more dizzy as the world spins from the drinks earlier.

As you calm down from your instantaneous, and unexpected jump in space, and grab your head, you start to look around the room…

You’re in a stranger’s bathroom! and the guy from earlier is now right in front of you!

He’s in a loosely held towel, hung low around his hips.He’s still wearing that little waist chain and your eyes linger. That perfect V just in your peripherals but you’re frozen to the spot, staring right at the center of his hips.

“um… Welcome to my place…?” In utter confusion, he stretches up and messes with his hair.

Oh gods… When he lifts his arm over his head, his muscles all over his body just—

You’re still just standing there, staring!

“S-sorry! I don’t know how this keeps happening!” You finally thaw and cover your face while spinning to give him privacy.

“You keep teleporting into people’s bathrooms when theyre naked!?”

“N-No!! i’m not— I’m not some pervert!! I just… Can’t control when or where I teleport—s-sometimes…”

He laughs, “Huh, sure.” He’s not convinced, but he’s not upset by the development, “well… Now that you’re back, wanna… Pick up where we left off?” He tries to sound cool, but he’d be lying if he wasn’t just scared shitless when a random person teleported to his sacred space without any warning.

However, he’d also be lying if he said he was anything but excited with who it turned out to be.

“And…” You look over your shoulder at him through your lashes, “Where did we leave off?”

There is fluttering in your stomach, maybe it’s the alcohol but… Nope. It’s really not. He’s just magnetic.

“you had your hands all over me,” he says with a shit eating grin.

Your skin alights, it’s burning hot and not because of your fire powers. You feel this heat.

“You also had more clothes on…” You say coyly.

“Just get over here,” he commands, which you follow promptly.

“Can I?” You ask a little shyly, hovering your fingers just over the promise lands of his body.

“Be my guest,” He smiles down at you, bringing his arm down so he can caress your cheek. His skin smells so sweet, like almonds.

You put your hand on his chest before sliding it down, swallowing hard as it gets lower and lower… Over that waist chain, and tugging on it, when it’s at its limit it flies back up and tickles him. his belly flexes inward a little under your still roaming hand.

Your eyes follow, wide and filled with wonder at his prospects. He hesitates before letting the towel fall to the floor.

Youre still looking him over when you realize youre still somewhat covered.

You start to strip, dragging it out just a little as you do.

First slipping off the shorts under your big top, holding them up and dropping them next to the discarded towel. Keeping eye contact with your mouth slightly agape, ready and wanting.

You pick up the edges of your top and roll it up a little before you pull it up over your head.

Once undressed you step closer, and reach up around his neck, you feel his hot and hard dick rub against your belly and whine because it’s not already in you.

You jump up and wrap your legs around his waist, he catches you without a problem, and feeling that thing under you is like being on a -very hot- cloud.

You’re both smiling like dorks, and colliding lips and smashing teeth alike, you can’t get enough of eachother and you haven’t even felt eachother yet.

He pushes you up against a wall first, tongue roaming your panting and open mouth, feeling every one of your ticklish little spots. Your soft sounds come out a higher pitch as he continues to torment you.

His massive hands are on your ass, digging in and spreading your cheeks, wishing that they could explore your body further still, but loving the squish of every kneed while they stay.

He groans ravenously in your ear, as he pulls you off the wall and sits you on the counter instead. His head moves down your front and drapes a leg over his shoulder. He’s peppering little kisses and nips all the way down. You’re breathing is becoming ragged, and he’s mesmerized by the way your tits move as your lungs fill up and empty.

“You’re so hot,” He spreads your lips with his thumb and presses his molten tip to your opening.

“Oh my gods!” You whine excitedly!

When he pushes into you he does so slowly and backs out every centimeter or so to push back in further, oh the effect is maddening! “Y-you Liar,” You moan.

“pfff what!?” He bottoms out while scoffing.

“About being shy!” You say before he pulls out to pound into you once and thrashes your whole body, sending a shockwave through you. You grab onto his shoulders fast! “OoooOh!” You whimper.

“C’mon, you’re not gonna finish on me already are you?” He smiles something fierce, that has you clenching, “If i see a ring before i say, you’re getting punished.”

“N-no! i didn’t agree to that!” You complain, before he smacks your clit, making you jump and whine harder. You think you just came, you’re squeezing and fluttering inside but the build up didn’t stop! and, oh shit…

“I didn’t say you could yet,” He tsks, and picks your other leg up putting that one over his other shoulder.

You feel so stretched, and he can reach so much deeper~ “Ah~!” gasps and moans leave you lips in a melody that he wants to put on repeat.

Knocking on the door startles you, but he keeps pounding into you, “Kai Mallory! You better not be doing what it sounds like you’re doing in OUR bathroom!”

“Shit.” He pulls out after a minute of hard debating.

“Who’s that?” You whisper.

“My mom…” He groans and wipes off his face.

He helps you down off the counter. and you both get cleaned up and decent before opening the bathroom door, heads down in shame.

“Sorry mom”

“I did not raise you like this!” She pinches his ear to bring him down to her level. “You’re lucky your sister isn’t home!”

You try to hold in any giggles, but it’s kinda cute funny seeing such a big tough guy let his mom do whatever.

She relents and walks away, before turning back and holding up two fingers to her eyes, and pointing them at you both in a “i’m watching you” motion.

“Sorry about that,”

“It’s all good! I didn’t know you lived at home!” or his name! “Kai.” You sigh it out.

“Come with me, I at least have my own room” He laughs a little embarrassedly.

His palm is warm in your own, you let him lead you down the hall.

His room is nice and clean! and he has a bed frame!!! score!

He lays down and pats the bed next to him.

“I can help you with your teleportation problem,” He’s laying with his eyes closed and his arms behind his head. “If you want…”

“Really!? You’re super?” You climb onto the bed but stay near his waist.

“N-no! definitely not!” he bolts back up.

“Kai…?” Your body is still so hot, and he didn’t get to finish…

“Yeah?”

“C-can I help you finish?” You ask, your hands timidly pawing at his shorts.

“um, yes. is that even a question? hah!”

You pull his short band down and his dick flings out already hard, it looks so painful… His slit pulses as his cock twitches, and leaks some pre.

“So big…” You put your tongue to his wet tip, it still tastes like you. You groan against it, and his hips roll just barely.

His stomach sinks in as he breathes and becomes more excited.

You wanted to play with him a little more but you both just want to cum, you start to play with yourself as you take him into your throat.

You relax it as best as you can but your still gagging around his length.

“You okay?” He asks sweetly.

You hold up a thumbs up “mmhmm~” and bob your head on his dick. As you pull back your head tilts up putting more pressure underneath his cock and as you go back down your head tilts down to give it that pleasurable pause all while his head and glands get sucked and taken so deeply.

You’re massaging him with your tongue and tasting him, and you’re both so excited.

Your fingers spin on your clit and as you cum for the second time that night, so does he.

“mmf!!!” Your throat is filled with a tsunami of cum, you swallow and swallow but there’s still more! some seeps out of your lips around him, you try to lick it up, but he’s already seen. He grabs your jaw in his palm, your mouth still around his dick.

“You let some out…” he wipes your chin with his thumb.

As you stare up into his eyes, you swallow again and realize he’s still hard.

“What’s your name?” he asks, with a dorky smile on his face, and his cock still down your throat.

#Spotify #my oc #oc x reader #oc x you #my fic #dead dove do not eat #oc kai #oc superhero #superpowers #superhero reader #villain oc #villain #villain yandere #cute villain #villain oc x you #villain oc x reader #superhero x villain #hero x villain #hero x supervillain #hero smut #villain smut #yan smut #smut #fem reader #x oc #x reader #x you

[funhouse-mirror-barbie]

I don’t think that EP 4 of Hazbin really romanticizes Angel’s abuse, but, personally, I am made MUCH more uncomfortable by the fact that the storyboard artist who was the lead for that episode has been very open about the fact that he has a rape fetish.

More discussion below, I’m really wanting this to be the only time I talk about this, as I really don’t like discussing “drama” and try to stick to writing and design critiques.

This felt like something I needed to address though, because it largely changed the lense through which I view Hazbin as a piece of media—please know that this is JUST me talking about my personal frustrations with the background information of this episode, and how it was made—see end of post for TLDR; CONTENT WARNING FOR DISCUSSIONS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT AND RAPE:

And. I just want to make it clear that, my issue is NOT with the storyboarder having rape fetish. I don’t understand it, but as long as they’re not ACTUALLY assaulting or hurting anyone, it’s not really mine or anyone else’s business. That goes for anyone with that kind of fetish, honestly.

The problem I have comes from not knowing whether or not any of the scenes depicting extreme abuse and rape in the show were done to explore a darker topic seriously, or if they were done for the artist’s own sexual gratification.

The scenes during “Poison”, to me, are an extremely uncomfortable look at the horrors of sexual abuse and assault and sex trafficking.

But I don’t know, and can’t know, if that’s how the creator of Hazbin and the lead storyboard artist see it, despite claiming they take the story seriously.

I really really want to believe that the scenes were storyboarded in good-faith, as a way to look at these things and help SA victims feel seen, because that’s how the episode has constantly been described by Hazbin’s creator.

However, I just CAN’T believe it knowing what I know about the storyboard artist’s tastes.

They have been very open about shipping Valentino, Angel Dust’s abuser and rapist, with Angel Dust, and have made multiple drawings, comics, and an animatic of Valentino abusing Angel Dust. The storyboard artist has confirmed that the context they see these character’s relationship in is non-consensual.

And AGAIN, I’m not saying that that makes the artist a terrible person or objectively bad or something. As I said, I personally don’t understand it, but I’m not here to be the “fictional character fetish police”.

I’m bringing these things up as examples of things that have caused me to believe that Poison may have been made as fetish material—something that really only upsets me this deeply due to Hazbin Hotel’s creator’s insistence that it was always meant to be “objectively” respectful victim representation somehow. Bringing up these examples is important because it potentially adds more context to the way the Episode 4 was written.

I have a REALLY hard time believing that when lines from one of the storyboarder’s fetish comics were adapted into the show itself in Episode 4.

This is the original fan comic the head storyboarder made vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

This is the dialogue that APPEARS to have been heavily influenced by or adapted into the show— vvvvvvvvvvv

I’ve previously explained how I believe that some of the discussion surrounding Episode 4 of Hazbin were really counterproductive, in that many people, fans and critics alike, were talking about it as if it could be proven objectively whether or not “Poison” was done respectfully.

Im not going back on that, because again, a survivor of SA feeling represented or not by something is EXTREMELY subjective, and I don’t think anyone should try and “disprove” their feelings and opinions. That’s not what I’m trying to do here, and that’s not what I’m about.

I wanted to talk about this to go over my own personal feelings about the situation, and how it’s caused me to lose any last little bit of remaining trust I had in the show runner’s abilities to portray serious topics maturely.

I want to believe so badly that Poison shows Angel’s Dust’s graphic abuse to say something about abuse as a whole, to show how awful it is, and to try and support victims and help them feel seen. I initially thought that was the case when I watched the episode.

But learning the context behind how the episode was made and who storyboarded that has changed my perspective.

In a lot of ways, the way I feel about it is very similar to how I now look back at shows like iCarly and the Amanda Show, which I loved as a kid. When I first watched iCarly when I was young, I thought the random foot jokes were funny. I thought it was just the kids being silly.

But now as an adult, knowing and understanding how much control the show’s creator had over the actors, and may have been putting his personal foot fetish into the show has changed it for me. I have the context now behind the reasons those sorts of jokes and scenes were written into the show. And it’s upsetting to know that. It’s changed how I view those scenes.

I experienced the exact same thing learning about the Hazbin storyboarder’s fetish

I can’t see Poison or think of episode 4 without wondering if it was made as fetish fuel for the artist. If so, it changes the way I see the episode, because it’s no longer a look at the horrors of SA and rape, it’s fetishizing the very thing it’s claiming to take seriously.

And if so, it makes the 3 days of Hazbin’s creator arguing with people online that the scene was done with victims in mind and to be respectful really frustrating.

I mean. If they WANTED to make a show with a rape fetish, then ok. Well. I wouldn’t want to watch it but like. That’s their prerogative, and as long as no one is actually being hurt, that’s fine. I don’t get it, but whatever.

But for me, the creator’s INSISTENCE that the portrayal of abuse was objectively respectful and not fetishizing abuse in any way, when we KNOW that the storyboard head of the episode and Poison has a rape fetish involving Angel Dust and Valentino, leaves an incredibly bad taste in my mouth.

It makes me doubt that the more mature themes in Hazbin are being written with real consideration for survivors. That, coupled with fans saying that SA survivors and viewers who were upset about Poison’s portrayal of abuse owed Hazbin’s creator an apology of all things…just because they were upset by or didn’t like the episode, makes me feel so gross about everything.

I just don’t know what else to make of it all.

Anyway TLDR/

-The Lead Storyboard artist of Episode 4 of Hazbin Hotel having a rape fetish they express through art of Angel Dust/Valentino doesn’t bother me personally. I don’t understand it, but I don’t think a fetish like that makes someone a terrible person.

-What DOES bother me is that, when many SA survivors discussed and brought up their very valid concerns about how the Episode would be handled given the above, they were largely dismissed by the creator and fans.

-The fact that I just don’t know if the episode was made as fetish material or not has changed the whole context of the episode for me. I want to believe the episode was made with good intentions like Hazbin’s creator claims, but I can’t knowing what I do about who was involved in making the episode.

-And FINALLY while everything I spoke about has changed the way I personally see the episode, if you, or anyone, still find comfort or strength in the episode or love it, I am NOT trying to take that from you. I am not trying to convince anyone that they need to have my same opinions or feelings on this. I am not trying to argue with anyone or act like I have a moral high ground over anyone else. I am talking ONLY about how learning more about the person in charge of a lot of Episode 4 of Hazbin made me feel personally, and changed my view on the episode as a whole, which may affect my future critiques and thoughts.

#hazbin hotel episode 4 #hazbin hotel critical #hazbin critique #hazbin hotel criticism #hazbin hotel critique #long post #funhouse convo

[weizhiyuan]

Okay. So. I had a whole 1700+ word essay written about my thoughts on too many bl fans assuming actors are straight but it was very uhhh rant formatted and got too heated so I’m gonna try again and be a little more chill and concise abt it…

Let me get straight to the point. I didn’t mention fanservice or shipping real people in that little post I made (I wasn’t expecting it to get any notes tbh lmao) but that’s very much related to what I’m talking about. In my experience, being vehemently against fanservice and rps goes hand in hand with assuming these actors are straight which is of course heteronormativity (homophobia!).

Fanservice & shipping are a vital part to the bl ecosystem, and they aren’t going away any time soon. And I don’t mean because it’s great for promoting a product or an upcoming series (which, yes, it can be, not denying that) but fanservice, in fact, queers our perception of “truth” and “reality” when it comes to these actors’ lives. When an actor is purposefully vague about their relationship or sexuality, they’re able to simultaneously not put themselves at risk by being “out” in a more traditional/upfront (perhaps western…) sense while also being capable of being perceived as queer to some degree by their audience. Infinite homosexuality glitch! Shippers are important because they play a role in believing their fav bl couple are together for real aka they are gay for real (also it’s just fun to do…). Yes, some people overstep boundaries but for the most part people are capable of being respectful.

I see a lot of people say bl actors are absolutely not dating each other and 99% of them are straight and probably even homophobic etc. constantly but like… who told you that? If anything, a job where you’re perceived as gay while still being not out enough (having such a hard time phrasing what I mean by this lol) to keep your safety would be way more appealing to literal queer people right? And surely most actors know what they’re getting into by partaking? Yes there can be issues with fanservice, rps, etc. but I can’t help but notice everyone seems to be focused on the issues and never the benefits. Assuming the majority of bl actors are straight is just plain homophobic, and I might argue it’s counterproductive to resist and say it’s “none of my business” when they’re purposefully going out of their way to make it our business (if you’re not into fanservice/shipping that’s fine whatever but what I’m saying is they are trying to make a point to be visibly queer on some level). Yeah, not everyone is gay, I know. But I have a good feeling there’s a lot more queer people in the industry than most people assume.

#does this make any sense even? there’s so many thoughts in my brain about this #I could go into even more depth but aaaaghhhgh #wording things is hard #anyway. continuation of my maybe controversial take ig #society and the entertainment industry can is and will be homophobic #the micro bl industry is part of the entertainment industry. even if it’s more accepting it’s not necessarily easy to be out idk #b.txt #idek what to tag this as so I will just use my tag lol #wait more tags more tags not trying to say we need to know Every bit of info of ppl’s lives but I am saying fanservice has a value

[joonary]

banana clip | jhs

↳ summary: he’s your roommate and your best friend. that was enough of a reason for the heartsick feeling in your stomach at the thought of him leaving, wasn’t it? 

but even so, with him in tokyo and you in los angeles, you can’t help but wonder if he looks both ways every time he crosses your mind.

↳ genre: fluff; angst; roommate au; study abroad au (is that a thing? i’m making it a thing); friends to lovers; jung hoseok x reader

↳ rating: pg-13

↳ warnings: swearing, mild alcohol consumption, pining and overthinking, timeskipping but all of it is denoted by timestamps, introvert hoseok indulgence

↳ word count: 25.1k

↳ a/n: can you believe i plotted this fic in 2019? and then it ended up being nothing like my original outline LOL. heavily inspired by hoseok being an infj and his s-tier instagram usage. unbeta’d as per usual, but dedicated to rose @kinktae​ for her roommate hobi dream (which i included, minus the **** ******** unfortunately). messed around a lot stylistically and characterization-wise in this fic, please feel free to hit me up and let me know what you think!

[date unknown, 2022; 1:46 AM PST]

Laundry is always best done in the presence of another. 

Well, not necessarily. If you think back to the days when you lived at home, you would purposely do your own laundry in the wee hours of the night, the presence of your mother or siblings in the cramped laundry room with you being more counterproductive and energy-consuming than anything else. 

Not even to mention your first year of university, where you had done your laundry in pockets of time between classes, feeling the awkwardness and dread bubbling up in the back of your throat the second you poked your head into the laundromat and saw another student doing their own chores at the same time as you. 

It didn’t matter if they didn’t even try to make conversation with you; you preferred to do household chores alone–often popping a playlist on and letting your brain run on autopilot as you cleaned–and there was nothing wrong with that.

But this–this is different. Hoseok looks just as sleepy as you and twice as stubborn, refusing to hit the sack until at least all of your shared and sorted piles of clothing have made it into the dryer. 

(Clothes today, sheets and blankets tomorrow. That was what your agreed-upon, riveting plans for the weekend with your roommate entailed.)

He makes for a good laundry partner though, the pair of you sitting cross-legged on the living room carpet (which was vacuumed this morning by the man himself, by the way), your shared Spotify playlist turned into white noise with the dozens of quick conversations you’ve thrown back and forth between the soft thuds of folding clothes. 

“I’m gonna get some water, want something?” you ask, standing up and dusting non-existent dust off your pants. 

(They’re not even your pants, actually, but a pair of Hobi’s basketball shorts that you were borrowing for the weekend alongside one of his sweatshirts. When it came to clothes, his closet outnumbered yours ten-to-one, which is exactly how borrowing his clothes while yours were in the wash for the weekend became just another part of your routine.

All of his shit was vastly more comfortable than yours was, anyways–it almost had you looking forward to weekends like this.)

“Mmm, maybe a CapriSun?” Hoseok decides, eyes lighting up like it’s the best idea he’s had all night. And it is.

“Shit, I might get one of those instead too,” you contemplate, already making your way to the refrigerator. 

“Wild cherry for me!” You know by now that that was exactly what he would say next. 

“You’re the only person who likes that flavor, I swear.”

“I only like it because you drink all the Pacific Cooler every time we buy.” He cranes his neck enough to make eye contact with you at your place in front of the fridge, a dramatic lilt to his voice. “It’s been so long that I don’t even remember what any non-Wild Cherry juice tastes like…”

Now he’s just fucking with you. With a roll of your eyes and a smile way too big to hide any fondness behind it, you toss the juice pouch halfway across the room towards him, which he catches effortlessly in one hand. 

You’re in the middle of puncturing the thin film of where your straw is supposed to go in your own juice box when the washing machine beeps to signal yet another finished load. Your roommate is already springing to his feet before you can react, muttering a quick “I’ll get it” as he squeezes past you into the hallway, one of his hands brushing against your upper arm and making your heart leap into your throat. 

The feeling doesn’t dissipate, even as you make your way back to your makeshift laundry-folding station on the floor.

Hoseok brings forth yet another basket of warm clothing from the dryer, and you fall back into your routine without addressing the incident. Like you always do–physical contact wasn’t anything amiss between you two, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t cause mild jolts of flusteredness every so often.

(Okay, sue you. It was perfectly normal to find your friends physically attractive without thinking about it any further, right? You were perfectly content with your relationship with Hoseok at the moment without wanting to take it any further.)

It’s nearly an hour later when Hoseok speaks again. There’s usually never this little chit-chat between you two for this long, but the late hour and the task at hand is mind-numbing enough for the pair of you to bask in at least a little silence. Or the effort of speaking is what’s truly exhausting–it’s not an uncomfortable lack of conversation, and the still-running playlist has you both occasionally humming along at random intervals to whatever track is playing.

(Yes, you’ve been at this for hours, and your music has yet to come to a halt. Living together for nearly two years and sharing a surprisingly large amount of taste in music from the get-go has resulted in a playlist of a whopping nine hours and forty-six minutes.)

Whatever the case, the next words out of your roommate’s mouth are ones that shouldn’t surprise you as much as they do.

“I’ve always wanted to study abroad.”

Now that’s something you’ve never heard him mention before. “Really?” 

He hums in confirmation before elaborating. “Yup. Deadline just passed for Fall semester programs, so I’d be planning for Spring instead.” 

“Aren’t we graduating next Spring though?”

“Yeah, I went to advising and depending on the program, I should be back before commencement in June. They don’t recommend it, but it’ll only be one semester,” he assures. The seam of his lips seals like it's a promise. “January to May, that’s it.” 

Shit, he went to academic advising for this? And the way he talks makes it seem like this is something that’s been on his mind for a while now, something he’s been planning and only just now geared up enough confidence to mention to you. 

“Yeah, I’ve always thought that studying abroad would be fun. But damn, six months is still a pretty long time.” You can’t even remember what you’d been up to six months ago. Off the top of your head, at least.

“Mhm, it’s just an idea though,” Hoseok says casually. But you can tell already that this is much more than that.

Months of preparation in advance before telling you or not, for you, he’d be willing to throw the entire idea down the drain and you know that. So you voice exactly what’s on your mind.

“I think it’s a great idea,” you smile. You revel in the way his eyes light up at your input. You value his input in your own turmoils just as much–it feels good to know that your friendship will always be mutually beneficial. “It’s not like you don’t have the money, especially now that Jiwoo’s out of grad school. Perfect setup for new experiences.”

“Experiences for what?” he can’t help but laugh, heart-shaped smile breaking yours in two. “The Instagram aesthetic? The chance to be humbled because I’m not really as trilingual as I put on my resume? There’s nothing I don’t have now that I could want out in Japan.”

“A girlfriend,” you joke. “You don’t have a girlfriend. But seriously, does there really have to be something in mind that you want in order for you to go? Sometimes you just gotta take the leap when you get the opportunity to, and the best experiences come that way.”

“Damn, someone’s getting existential,” he says with an expression of mock-surprise flashing across his brows, playing off your words easily. He takes another sip from his CapriSun pouch. Yours has long since been flattened and discarded to the floor. “Now it seems like you’re just trying to get rid of me.”

Brushing his snide remark aside with a playful eye-roll, you realize that he’s already got a country in mind. You shouldn’t be surprised, given the other extensive amounts of research he’s apparently done so far.

“Japan, huh?”

And for what feels like the hundredth time since this conversation began, he nods, only furthering your previous assumptions. It’s just like him to have all of his own thoughts organized before sharing them with you.

“Looked at other countries too, but their programs ran way longer than our own semesters do. Plus it just–I don’t know–caught my eye.” He elaborates even further, his interest in this endearing to you. “I went with my dad a couple times when he had business trips over in Tokyo and Osaka, but I think nine-year-olds appreciate vacationing completely different from how twenty-one-year-olds do.”

“I mean, it’s like two-thirds of a vacation, considering you still have to go to class and shit.”

He huffs out a small laugh. “Back then it was like two-thirds of a vacation too. I had a lot to learn.” 

“Guess so,” you sigh. You know he’s always had this immense pressure to manage a portion of his family’s country in the near future, but from what he keeps you updated on as of late, he’s much happier to be working in marketing, amongst other projects he’s taken on. 

When you first met Jung Hoseok nearly a year-and-a-half ago, he was a closed book. Not in the silent, mildly awkward mannerisms type-of-way like your neighbor Yoongi, but in the sense of where it was damn near impossible to know what he was thinking, and getting him to open up about anything about his personal life and work at all was like pulling teeth. 

You’re happy to know that he’ll gladly confide in you in just about everything now, but nonetheless, it always intrigued you with how good he was at only showing people exactly what he wanted them to see. Maybe it was all the wide smiles and loud outfits. 

Brushing your speculations aside, you propose another idea. “Hey, maybe now instead of being managing director of the Los Angeles branch of the company, you could be one over in Tokyo?”

Hoseok gives a narrowed eye smile. “Seriously, if you’re plotting to get rid of me, it’s not gonna be that easy.”

You smile with a wrinkle of your nose. “Damn. Back to the drawing board, then.”

Despite his words, you would never even dream of getting rid of him. Hell, even his proposed leave left something akin to loneliness to settle in the recesses of your mind. 

He’s your roommate and your best friend. That was enough of a reason for the heartsick feeling in your stomach at the thought of him leaving, wasn’t it?

[January 1st, 2023; 11:46 PM PST]

“You’re not bringing the condom shirt?”

Hoseok pops his head out of the closet at your question, the strips of tin foil in his hair gleaming in the change of lighting like a shitty 5’10” disco ball. 

“Should I?” he shoots right back, holding up a different button-up shirt by its hanger before laying it out on the bed beside dozens of other various articles of clothing.

“Ooh, I got a better idea. Lay it out over here and you can wear it to the airport instead, and I’ll take a shit ton of pics for you to post later.”

“You’re a genius, you know that?”

You’ve always admired Hoseok’s sense of fashion. From the brightly-colored ten pound shoes he wears to the plain white t-shirts, he manages to turn every place he goes into his own personal runway. He carries himself so coolly that he can make anything look good, honestly.

His organizational skills leave nothing to be desired, and this is no exception–for tonight, he’s just laying out all the clothes he plans on bringing with him to Tokyo, and tomorrow he’ll have that impromptu fashion show you’ve been begging him for as a secondary measure of what really should go and what should stay. Then it’s to the ironing board for all of it before hitting his suitcases. 

You’d think by now that you’d have picked up on at least some of his tidiness, but a side-by-side comparison of your closet to his would easily debunk that theory. 

This has been going on for hours, both of your opinions on certain outfits being thrown back-and-forth like a ping pong ball. 

(Remember what you said about him having trust in your judgment? Apparently that weight becomes lessened in terms of fashion, because Hoseok is having way too much fun debating you on how good his questionable outfit combinations were.)

Eyes beginning to grow heavy with sleepiness, you check the clock. His hair should be done right about now, right?

You approach him, standing while he sits on the edge of his bed, carding your fingers through the newly dyed mouse brown strands. You unfurl the nearest strip of tinfoil, triumph creeping into your smile when the highlighted strip turns out exactly the shade you pictured it to.

“Good?” he asks, eyes wide with anticipation.

“Nah, sorry but we have to shave your head now.”

He playfully shoves at your shoulder with a laugh before letting you pull him to his feet. And he follows you to the bathroom, making an incredibly good point when he tells you that even if it looks bad, he looks good in beanies anyways.

But the backup plan isn’t even necessary–he looks a little too good, if you’re being honest. You were by no means an expert at dyeing hair, but with the way Hobi’s highlights turned out, it might as well have been done professionally. He makes goofy faces at the mirror while you undo each chunk of tinfoil, growing more and more impressed at your handiwork as you go along.

“Holy shit,” is all you can say as you ruffle your fingers through his hair. 

“You like it?” he asks with a tilt of his head, meeting your eyes in the mirror. Always asking you for your input. He only laughs in disbelief when you nod your head vigorously.

“I’m serious! Like damn, I just got weak in the knees a little.”

He snorts this time. “You’re so ridiculous.”

You step beside him, inspecting his strands from a different angle. It’s seriously so unfair how pretty his side profile was.

“I can’t tell if you’re staring at me, or if you’re just tooting your own horn for how good it turned out,” Hoseok jokes pointedly, making his way back to the bedroom after you declare your answer that both were true. 

Aforementioned tidiness gets abandoned after a few more hours and tens of shirts later, when the realization settles in that Hoseok has too much clothes on his bed and too little surface area for him to be sleeping.

“Fuck this, we’re gonna do laundry again before I pack anyways,” Hoseok mutters, sleepiness overpowering his usually stable judgement as he shoves aside the pile of potential pants to pack to make enough room for the both of you to fit on his mattress. 

You honestly don’t even remember the exact moment that the both of you had nodded off to sleep, but you recall lying side-by-side like fish in a tightly-packed can while you chatter about all the things that are going to change in the coming months.

(Hoseok expresses disbelief, like he still can’t believe he’s actually going through with this. You flick his forehead while you reassure him that in ten years from now, he’ll be glad he went.)

You stay like that until the morning sun peeks through the blinds that he has perpetually drawn, the light scattered across the array of colored clothing that was now cast to the floor.

[January 7th, 2023; 3:33 PM PST]

The thing about California that you’ve grown to both love and hate over the years is the lack of a chill to the air, even amidst the peak of Winter.

It’s a welcome break from the sweltering heat that overtakes more than two-thirds of the year, but the lack of low temperature and wind leaves the air feeling stale. Or perhaps that was just you seeing the grass being greener on the other side where Hoseok will be going.

(In this case, the grass wouldn’t be greener, but covered in a blanket of snow like every romance drama’s winter. But you digress.) 

You feel as though you’re even more jittery than he is when you look at the boy through the rear view mirror, who has his phone out and camera aiming towards the LAX sign, the setting sun reflecting off the metal and bathing them in a lazy pink glow.

Yoongi’s behind the wheel and Hoseok insisted that you should sit shotgun, leaving him in the backseat with all his bags. Jiwoo had wanted to tag along as well, but she had gotten caught up at work and compensated by inviting you both over for dinner the previous night. There isn’t much being said currently, just the three of you humming along to whatever music you allow to come up on shuffle.

You can’t really blame Hobi’s uncharacteristically quiet attitude though. He’s been running around nonstop throughout the duration of this week trying to make sure that himself and all of his belongings would reach their destination safely, and even when he wasn’t moving physically, he was on the phone or sending emails back and forth with the university to ensure that the process was going smoothly. 

At least he’ll catch up on rest while he’s on the plane. Or perhaps right now too, with how (predictably) horrible LAX traffic was going.

“See, this is why we leave for the airport at least three hours early,” Yoongi says matter-of-factly. He takes his hands off the steering wheel to emphasize that your vehicle is currently at a complete stop.

“You sound like your dad,” Hoseok shoots right back, causing you to laugh.

Yoongi shakes his head. “Fuck, I am getting old, huh?”

Hoseok and Yoongi have known each other longer than you have known either of them, but the three of you get along so well that it feels like you’ve known each other your entire lives. Which is funny, honestly, considering that you and Hoseok hardly ever saw Yoongi to begin with. Not only because you have other friends and each other that you opted to hang out with more, but because Yoongi spent so much time working in his studio that even him taking a few hours off to take Hoseok to the airport–and to have lunch with you two beforehand, too–felt sentimental.

The car’s painfully slow movement leads you all to resort to classic road games to pass the time. By your sixth round of iSpy, you finally make it to the parking structure. 

Airports feel like liminal spaces to those who are immersed in it, but for those who are only there for drop-off and pick-up, all you feel is the chaos. From the traffic, to the checking in of bags, to finding the correct areas to go, you’re easily growing exhausted. The security line where Hoseok’s flight has directed him to go feels like a force field, knowing that this is where you’re going to have to say your final goodbyes. 

It’s a shame that Hobi can’t bring you and Yoongi all the way to the gate to wait with him. It only makes the countdown of time you have left together feel even shorter. 

Even with that in mind, no more sentimentalities are left to be said, you all opting for a much more casual line of conversation.

“What are you guys gonna do now?”

“Not even gonna lie, I’m hungry again,” you throw out. 

“Yeah,” Yoongi nods in agreement. “Figured you would be too, so I already planned not to be working for the rest of the evening so we can go somewhere.”

Hoseok looks just as shocked as you are at his planning ahead, but you’re the one who comments on it. “Damn, Yoongi’s just constantly playing 4D chess with himself, huh.” 

Hoseok throws his head back in a laugh so hard that you feel like you don’t even deserve it for your shitty quip. But the body language of his laugh is contagious, and you find yourself snickering right along with him. Even Yoongi lets out a pained laugh at his own expense.

“I’m already hungry too,” Hoseok nods after he settles down from his laughter. “I’m so excited. I love airport food.”

He’s so strange that it’s endearing. It’s not even the airline food he was excited for (which, understandable), but the overpriced Panda Express on the other side of the security check that he was setting his stomach on. Things he says like this only contribute to the ongoing list of things about your best friend you’ll never understand. 

Eventually, you know when you should leave though. Despite the fact that you almost selfishly want to stay here forever, if only to bask in the time you have left with Hobi, your excitement on his behalf reminds you that you’re stalling. The weariness you had seen in him in the car has also seemingly been replaced with the same enthusiasm you were feeling, now that he was alert and awake under the fluorescent LAX lighting.

“I’ll see you in March,” he promises. Just like what you had agreed on a few nights ago. He’ll be back for Spring Break for sure–but even with that promise in mind, there was three months separating you until then, so you hug him with enough strength for you to remember his presence for four. And he hugs you back equally tight, until you both can’t help but squeeze out a laugh at how close you are.

And then he does the same for Yoongi, and in place of where Yoongi will usually pull his tsundere act and resist Hoseok’s affection, he revels in it the same way you had instead. It’s so blatantly obvious how much the both of you are going to miss him, and how much he’s going to miss you in return. 

Yoongi and you can only watch as he proceeds forward towards the escalator, bag slung over his shoulder and head of brown hair fluffing as he moves. Every few steps he casts his gaze back, shooting you a smile and a wave before he continues onward.

He faces you one more time before the walkway meets the escalators, throwing another goofy grin your way as his facial features grow less and less distinguishable the further up he goes. Be it the distance or the growing anticipation in your gut that makes it so, but he’s disappearing out of sight and he’s disappearing fast.

You wave your last goodbye, and with the next blink that may or may not have had tears accompanying it, Hoseok is out of your line of vision and onto another chapter. And so are you.

[January 7th, 2023; 7:44 PM PST]

When you leave the airport, the LAX lettering is illuminated from below by a soft hue of blue against the canvas of a pitch black sky. The excess of city lights makes seeing stars nearly impossible, and absentmindedly you wonder if Hoseok has a better view of them from seven miles in the air.

“Don’t hate me.”

Your head cocks up and towards your companion from where you had been absentmindedly staring at the road, the blur of the city passing by. Yoongi’s hands have a tight grip on the steering wheel, like he’s expecting you to sock him because of what he says next. “You know how I said I figured you’d want to go out to eat after we leave the airport?”

You wait for him to continue in lieu of a response. “I invited a friend to come to dinner with us.”

A blink. Then, “Why?”

Great. As well-meaning as Yoongi was, you couldn’t believe he would spring something–or rather, someone–on you like this. He was just as socially awkward as you were, for crying out loud! You would have at least appreciated more of a warning than this. 

(Ideally four business days in advance, but you’ll take anything more than what he’s chosen to give, honestly.)

It’s not like you had any means of dodging the situation either–Yoongi was your ride home, unless you wanted to throw yourself into oncoming Los Angeles traffic instead of taking your chances with whatever friend-of-a-friend he was bringing along. You pretend you don’t actually contemplate it for a moment.

He shrugs, eyes forward and lips pursed in a slight pout. “Don’t know. He’s nice–I promise–and I thought it’d be nice. I figured we’d have more fun together than letting you just go home and mope about how much you’re gonna miss Hobi.”

You cock and eyebrow at him. “Don’t act like you don’t miss him already too.”

“I’m not pretending anything,” Yoongi pouts, raising his eyebrows and flexing his fingers against the steering wheel in self-defense. “But I know it’s hitting you five times as hard as it is me.”

“Pfft. I’d say someone is projecting a little,” you dismiss with a laugh. “And don’t say it’s a roommate thing, because if Namjoon were the one leaving instead of Hobi, do you really think you’d be as miserable as you think I am right now?”

Yoongi only wrinkles his nose in response. Cutely, you might add. “No. But that’s the difference between our households. You and Hoseok are best friends and do everything together. Namjoon is just some guy that lives in my house.”

You shake your head with a laugh. He’s unbelievable. “Yeah, whatever. And your brilliant solution to cure the loss of my best friend is to drain the life outta my social battery?”

He heaves out yet another sarcastic sigh as he puts his car in park outside of the restaurant. 

“Trust me, if I wanted to kill your social battery that badly, I wouldn’t have given you a warning at all. So speak to me nicely.”

[January 7th, 2023; 9:06 PM PST]

Per his word, Yoongi’s friend is nice.

The thing that strikes you the most about Kim Seokjin is his sense of humor, or rather, how much it contrasts from your own. And Yoongi’s too, for that matter–it makes you wonder how the hell the pair of them became friends to begin with.

They play off of each other well, though. Seokjin makes self-inflating jokes and outlandish claims, and Yoongi is always ready with a dry and quick-witted comeback. If Hoseok were here, he would say that the pair of them were like their own comedy skit. 

“Okay, hear me out. What’s your MBTI type?” Seokjin leans forward, as if to increase your engagement from where you sit across from him in the booth.

Yoongi lets out a groan. “Not this shit again.”

“Just shut up and let her answer, man.”

You frown, needing a second to think. It’s been ages since the last time you took the test. “An INTP, if I’m remembering correctly.”

“Perfect. Riddle me this then, Y/N,” Seokjin says, folding his hands together like he’s about to ask you a question on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?. “Do you like fishing?”

What? 

“I mean, I guess so.” You can’t remember the last time you’d even thought about going fishing.

“Yes!” he cheers, like he’s a physicist who just discovered a new subatomic particle. Yoongi full-on face plants into the table. The former takes that as an opportunity to clarify: “I’m trying to convince Yoongi over here of my theory that all INTPs like fishing. We now have three pieces of evidence to go into my thesis: you, me, and him.”

“For the last time, Jin, I’m not an INTP, I’m an ISTP. ‘S’–as in you’re a fucking Sucker for thinking this is a valid theory. And besides, Y/N’s answer was half-assed and the only reason I like going fishing is because you drag me with you all the damn time.”

You laugh. “My answer was not half-assed. If you ever need funding for further research, you know where to find me.”

Yoongi looks more and more miserable the further you and Seokjin drag along the bit. He begins to regret introducing you, the biggest enabler known to man, to Jin of all people, the man who definitely does not need any more enabling outside of what he undeservedly already gives himself.

He has to admit though, he’s glad that you’re entertained by tonight’s antics–that was all part of the plan. He wasn’t kidding when he said that he didn’t want you to be sulky over Hoseok being gone.

He knows that the pair of you were just friends, and had no plans of that changing in the future. But still, you didn’t have to be in a romantic relationship for you to miss him as if he were a significant other.

The set line of concentration between Yoongi’s brow is dissolved when Seokjin nudges him to ask to maneuver through and out of the booth, telling him that he needs to use the bathroom. 

As he scoots out, Yoongi wonders why the hell he didn’t sit in the deeper end of the table to begin with. Two drinks paired with Jin’s already fidgety nature made for a bad combination this early on in the night, especially before food had arrived to distract him. Bladder: 1, Seokjin: 0.

But with the new friend’s absence, you can converse with Yoongi more comfortably.

“This is so weird.”

“What is?”

“I can’t remember the last time I went out and Hoseok wasn’t there.”

You love Yoongi, you really do. But you wish he would stop looking at you from across the table like the “No Bitches?” meme of Megamind. As if he were any better.

“Don’t look at me like that! You act like I don’t know that you spend sixty-nine percent of your time cooped up in your studio.”

Yoongi sighs and shakes his head at you again, whether it be from your actual comment, or your inopportune choice of number. But either way, you’re spurred to continue your rant. “And you spend the other thirty-one percent of your time sleeping or with Hoseok and me! So don’t act like I’m the only one who misses him.”

“You know the more defensive you are, the more you’re only proving my point right?”

Before you can form a response to his dry and pointed question, Seokjin’s speaking to announce his return.

“The bathrooms are really nice here,” Seokjin says, eyes lit with approval as he sits back down across from you, as if he were commentating on the interior design and not the efficiency of their plumbing. “The toilets probably have the same sucking force of a black hole.”

And before you can even speak, Yoongi’s already shooting back his own deadpan comment. “That wouldn’t be possible because toilets have a max PSI of fifteen.” 

You really do wonder if they’ve considered starting a podcast together.

Small talk has never really been your forte. Which is why you’re glad that Seokjin seems to be comfortable enough to circumvent that, aside from initial questions about what the other is studying and what you both do for work. But what catches his interest the most is when you mention that you play PC games on occasion.

“Do you play MapleStory?” he questions immediately, eyes lit with anticipation. 

You think for a moment. “Haven’t in a good while, but I definitely used to play a ton in high school.”

“Oh my God,” Seokjin says. “Can we get married?”

“Jin!” Yoongi says, brows knit in concern at his friend’s sudden question. Only for the older boy to raise his hands in comical defense.

“In the game, in the game!” he assures, causing you to laugh. “If we get married, we get bonus items, plus we share all of our Mesos and materials.”

“Like a two-man guild?”

“Exactly like a two-man guild!” Seokjin smiles as he nods excitedly. “See Yoongi-chi! She gets it!”

Yoongi definitely decides that introducing the pair of you is either the best or worst decision he’s ever made in his life. He’s still unsure of which side it’s leaning more towards.

At the end of the night, Seokjin asks you for your phone number. But like Yoongi said, his intention wasn’t to set you two up. All he wanted to do was expand your friend circle now that you couldn’t spend twenty-four hours a day with your roommate. 

And if that comes in the form of a guy who wants your contact information solely to help him grind in MapleStory, so be it. 

When you finally arrive home and bid Yoongi goodnight before slinking into your own now-empty condo, you find a follow request from what appears to be Seokjin’s Instagram account. Moments after you accept the invitation, you find another notification telling you that you’ve been tagged in his story.

You inspect the photo to ensure you don’t look stupid (for the intents of purposes of uploading it to your own story, yes, but also because Seokjin has a hell of a lot more followers than you, and who wouldn’t get nervous over that kind of thing?), but you’re relieved to find that you admittedly look really good. 

You can’t say the same for Yoongi though–the poor guy looks as though he were mid-sentence when Seokjin snapped the photo, leaving him partially blurred and cheeks puffed out. Not that it has any negative impact on his appearance; as Hoseok once said, Yoongi looks cute doing just about anything.

Swiping into Seokjin’s DMs, you type out a quick message.

[9:54 pm] jin 😗: Mentioned you in their story

[10:06 pm] you: You mentioned jin 😗 in your story

[10:06 pm] you: nice meeting you today :) also can you send me this pic?

[10:16 pm] jin 😗: yeah of course

[10:16 pm] jin 😗: IMG_298.jpg

[10:19 pm] you: thanks!

[10:19 pm] jin 😗: mhm :)

[10:20 pm] jin 😗: nice meeting you today too!

You heart his message before promptly sliding your phone into its charging port on your nightstand, commencing in your nightly routine.

Without Hoseok here, there’s no music playing throughout the entire house. There’s no loitering at the sink while you wait for your turn in the shower, no menial conversations about your day and the funny things that you overheard while you were on campus. 

You twiddle your thumbs for a moment once you’re ready for bed. You contemplate calling Hoseok to check in, but he should be somewhere over the Pacific Ocean right about now. Even though it’s more likely than not that he paid for in-flight WiFi, you’d rather let him sleep to prepare for the long days ahead.

With that thought in mind, you find yourself settling into bed sooner than usual, and drifting off into a heavy sleep.

[January 8th, 2023; 8:27 AM PST]

When you awake, you habitually reach out towards your phone’s place on your nightstand. It’s part of the luxury that comes with the weekend that you awoke naturally, rather than by an alarm clock. You only have the next few days to bask in that though, with the upcoming semester starting next week already.

Fumbling to unlock your cell phone, you swipe away any notifications that could be dealt with later. But your sights focus on one bubble of an Instagram notification in particular.

[5:12 am] jung hoseok: Replied to your story: replaced me already? :(

Unplugging your cell phone from its charger before rolling back over in bed, you grin at your screen, uncaring about how silly it must look—who else was home to judge you, anyways?—as you type out your reply.

[8:29 am] you: you know i could never

[8:29 am] you: how was your flight?

You smile at the incoming call notification that greets you almost instantaneously. 

[January 14th, 2023; 11:21 PM PST]

It’s not until a week later that you hear from Hoseok again. Not that that’s a bad thing, per se; you’re sure he’s had a ton of things to settle in, from his room, to his class schedule, to even just the mundanities of his day-to-day life that he’s had to adjust to accommodate living in another country. 

[11:21 pm] hobi 🌱: I’M A LIAR AND A CHEATER

[11:21 pm] hobi 🌱: 😭😭😭😭💦

[11:22 pm] you: ?

[11:22 pm] you: also PLEASE do not use 💦 as a crying emoji

He’s always done this—using emojis without a single drop of irony in his tone, regardless of whatever implications it may have to the broader internet. 

[11:23 pm] hobi 🌱: JUST LISTEN

[11:24 pm] hobi 🌱: i know i said i wanted to study abroad because my japanese was rusty as fuck

[11:24 pm] hobi 🌱: turns out i’m REALLY rusty

[11:24 pm] hobi 🌱: BUT MY ROOMMATES ARE BOTH KOREAN

[11:25 pm] hobi 🌱: AND THE GIRL I MET IN CLASS YESTERDAY IS FROM TEXAS 

[11:26 pm] hobi 🌱: SO I’VE PRETTY MUCH ONLY BEEN SPEAKING KOREAN AND ENGLISH

[11:26 pm] hobi 🌱: I HAVE PROBABLY SAID THREE SENTENCES IN JAPANESE OVER THE PAST WEEK

Okay. Maybe he’s not quite as settled as you assumed he’d be this early on. 

[11:27 pm] you: LMFAO

[11:27 pm] hobi 🌱: that’s all you have to say

[11:28 pm] hobi 🌱: your best friend is committing cardinal sins as we speak and all you have to say is “LMFAO”

Why the fuck is he so fast? Whether it be text messages, Instagram likes, Twitter replies, you name it–he responds within seconds, like he’s somehow mastered the art of telepathy with his iPhone screen.

You quickly erase your initial message in lieu of responding to his sudden accusations. 

[11:29 pm] you: at least give me a minute to type 😟 goddamn

[11:29 pm] you: actually

[11:30 pm] you: are you good to call rn?

[11:30 pm] hobi 🌱: wait wait i don’t need to be roasted THAT hard

You snort, pulling yourself off your bed to make yourself look at least somewhat presentable before you hit that FaceTime button.

[11:31 pm] you: you’re an idiot

[11:31 pm] you: and you promised me a dorm tour so 

[11:32 pm] you: if you say no now then you’d REALLY be a liar

[11:32 pm] hobi 🌱: fuck

[11:33 pm] hobi 🌱: Incoming FaceTime Call

When you pick up, you’re suddenly hit with a wave of something that feels like relief when you see Hoseok. It’s nice to see his face–you didn’t even realize just how badly you’d missed him, too wrapped up in your own bustling schedule, until he was right in front of you. At least, the two-dimensional version of him was in front of you, trapped on the other side of your phone screen.

“Hobi!”

“What’s up!?” His smile is so big and bright that you’re nearly certain it has healing properties. 

There’s so many things that you want to ask him that you don’t even know where to start. You want to know how classes have been, how his dorm is, the people he’s met, the food he’s had–the list could go on for miles, so you settle on the first thing that comes to mind: “What are you doing right now?”

“Check it out!” he replies excitedly, lifting up his phone to show you a 360° of his dorm room behind him.

With his hand now in the frame, he points out several amenities in his new bedroom. “Bed. Desk. Window. Bathroom. Closet. Jimin.”

At the mention of his name, the boy you’ve never seen before spins around in his office chair from where he sits at the desk that runs parallel to Hobi’s. “Hi!”

“Hi!” You wave back in return.

The room looks a lot smaller than yours does at home. Hobi’s never dormed before, so you’re sure that it’s definitely a change of environment for him. 

(Not like the rest of the trip wasn’t, but you digress.)

As if reading your mind, Jimin chirps in. “Sharing a room shouldn’t be too bad. We would’ve let Hoseok-hyung have the single bedroom, but Taehyung arrived three hours before both of us so he got dibs. But I promise you that he’ll be in good hands.”

Your eyes narrow playfully as you joke. “He better be, because you’ll be the first person I’m throwing under the bus if anything happens.”

Jimin throws his head back with a laugh. Hoseok turns the camera and your attention back to him, flipping the screen to continue touring you through his desk setup. True to his tidy nature, everything is clean and color-coordinated, and essentially every study aesthetic blog’s dream setup. 

There’s only one thing out-of-place that you see amongst his desk, which is–

“Hey, your alarm clock is still set to PST!”

The digital alarm clock matches the exact time that sits on the corner of your phone screen. Hoseok doesn’t even bat an eye before he offers his response. “Oh, I know.”

When you tilt your head in confusion, he elaborates with a laugh. “I wanted to be able to see what time it is over there too, so I know if it’s a good time to bother you or not.”

“That’s genius.” You honestly had forgotten all about the time difference. Sure enough, you can see the bright sky behind clouds illuminating the university campus out the window in his background, when you know that the only thing out your own window is darkness and the faint twinkle of distant stars. 

You lean over your phone to reset your own alarm clock time to match the one it should be in Tokyo, clicking a solid sixteen times before the hours coordinate with his time zone. You shake your head in mock annoyance when Hoseok makes a remark about you being a copycat.

“C’mon,” he says as he stands up from his desk, as if you were physically there with him and not trapped behind his phone screen to go wherever he chooses to take you. 

“Where are we going?”

He places his phone on the floor so that you can see him lacing up his boots–he’s wearing rubber boots because it’s snowing over there, which was just another thing that you had forgotten about the distance between you: he might see snow frequently in Tokyo because it’s still winter, unlike Los Angeles where even in January the heat was hardly tolerable. 

Shrugging his overcoat on, Hobi regards you with a grin. “You haven’t seen the rest of campus yet.”

[January 25th, 2023; 5:14 AM PST]

You absolutely detest doing laundry with other people. 

But with one arm holding a basket full of sopping wet clothes, you have no choice but to knock on the solid door in front of you.

Yoongi’s puffy and sleep-ridden face greets you, but despite the dough-like quality of his features, you know that the reason that he’s even awake at this ungodly hour is not because he’s an early riser–but because he hasn’t slept at all yet.

He gives you a half-assed nod of acknowledgement as if to ask what you need from him. 

“My dryer’s broken,” you state simply. You don’t elaborate and you don’t particularly need to, as Yoongi shrugs and moves to let you in. 

“Stay as long as you need to,” he says as he maneuvers to the kitchen, starting up the coffee maker like it’s second nature to him. You murmur your thanks before approaching his washer and dryer system. 

“Namjoon’s not home?”

“Nah, they got him working night shifts at the hospital again,” Yoongi shrugs. “Honestly, a part of me thinks that he prefers night shifts over daytime. Crazy bastard.”

You cast a gaze down the hall to where Yoongi’s studio-slash-bedroom is, and sure enough, the door is cracked open and the light is shining through, further solidifying your earlier assumptions that he was up and active before you had even arrived. 

With that, you snort. “Yeah, I can’t imagine who else would willingly want to spend their night working.”

He only huffs a guilty laugh with his back turned in response. 

Like in your own home, the closet containing the laundry unit faces the kitchen, causing Yoongi to resort to washing dishes to keep you company in your chores, which you appreciate. But once he’s done with that and you’re a few loads deep into your laundry, he traverses to the bathroom to get dressed for the day. 

It’s at this moment that your phone rings. 

It’s still early enough in the day for anyone to be calling to be pegged as unusual, but a glance to your screen shows you that it’s Hoseok. 

You mentally count on your fingers how many hours ahead of you he is, before determining that it is a reasonable hour, for him at least. 

As soon as you pick up the video call, he’s going off on whatever story he had to tell you, similar to how he does when he’s at home. You miss the exposition of his story as you adjust your phone volume. 

“—so after the class ended I stood up, right? And then Jungkook—that’s his name—got up really fast too and then his camera bag smacked me square in the face! It was a little embarrassing because it didn’t hurt but I was just so shocked that I wasn’t sure what to say so I went ‘ow!’ and of course that made Jungkook feel bad and—wait.” Hoseok pauses his storytelling when he takes in your appearance. 

For one thing, even though you’re still dressed in pajamas—one of his hoodies, actually—you already look awake and alert, which isn’t what he had been expecting at all. He was anticipating you to still be sleeping and for him to be the minor inconvenience that woke you up. He blinks.

“Good morning,” you chirp in a deadpan tone, continuing to fold the pair of pants in front of you. “Night? Afternoon?”

You start counting on your fingers again to figure out exactly what time it is in Tokyo, but Hoseok isn’t even paying any mind, still trying to figure out what the hell is going on. 

At first glance, whatever residence you’re currently at resembles your own to a tee. But Hoseok knows that there’s supposed to be a crack in the ceiling above the kitchen island where you’re sat, caused by the time you threw one of your shoes up there to (in)effectively kill a spider. And also the stools at the island are a different color and shape. And it almost appears as if the entire layout of the place is inverted. What’s even more jarring is that the whole place looks vaguely familiar. 

Hoseok blinks. Again. 

“Mind if I ask what you’re doing at Yoongi’s place at”—He makes a show of leaning back his chair until he can see his designated Pacific Standard Time clock—“six-twenty-seven in the morning?”

You don’t miss a beat, eyes focused on folding the edges of your shirt properly rather than the phone screen when you reply: “Why, are you jealous that I found a new laundry partner already?”

The lack of response has your gaze snapping back up accusingly. “Oh my God, you are!”

Hoseok sputters, a laugh of disbelief bubbling out. “Am not! I’m just saying, it caught me off guard to see you guys together so early. Had me thinking you guys were a thing or something.”

You and Yoongi, a thing? Has he met either of you?

Laughing again, you don’t miss the opportunity of fucking around with your best friend. “Damn, that obvious? Hey Yoongi,” you begin, taking notice of the man padding back into the hallway with a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. “Wanna come over and eat ramen? Do you want to come see my cat?”

The look on Yoongi’s face is one of downright horror, but what Hoseok can’t see through the screen won’t hurt him. “Okay, okay, you can stop now!” Hoseok says, waving you off to take the attention away from the redness in his face.

Hoseok is the dramatic one out of the pair of you, the one who laughs with his entire body to a point where he’s nearly falling to the floor—but right now you think his reaction is so funny that you’re about to fall out of your chair. 

“It was a serious question!” He whines. “But yeah, I called to tell you that I think I made a new friend today.”

“The guy who hit you with his camera bag?” you ask with pinched brows.

“Yeah, even though I said, like, two words to him after the incident. But I have class with him again tomorrow.”

“Damn. First impressions only happen once though.”

“Don’t remind me,” Hoseok groans. “Or else I’ll just be a hermit and skip going out with Jimin tonight. In fact, I just won’t leave my room again until June. Wait, seriously though, are you guys together now?”

You wrinkle your nose with another cryptic laugh at his lingering curiosity. “Go to dinner, dummy!”

And before he can get the last word, you beat Hoseok to the punch when the sound of you hanging up the FaceTime call rings in your ears. 

[February 14th, 2023; 7:58 AM PST]

You never schedule classes in the morning. 

But today, you find yourself leaving for campus much earlier than you normally would choose to. According to a girl you had spoken to briefly in one of your classes, some student society is giving out free boba in favor of Valentine’s Day, and you weren’t about to pass up the opportunity in exchange for another undeserved hour of sleep.

At least, that was the plan.

When you swing your front door open, a petite package sits on your welcome mat, your own name and address staring back at you on its shipping label.

You don’t recall ordering anything lately. With pinched brows, you bring the package to your kitchen counter to assess. 

Sliding the rectangular box out of the manila envelope, you turn it over in your hands. It doesn’t feel particularly heavy, and the box shape is reminiscent of the kind you would only find when you purchase jewelry. 

It couldn’t be a Valentine’s gift, could it? 

Biting the inside of your cheek, you do what you always do the second that you have a moment of doubt. 

“Hello?”

Hoseok picks up right away, like he always does.

“Hey Hobi, look at this. I got a package addressed to me that I don’t remember ordering.” You wave the box in front of the FaceTime screen to show. You were going to mention your suspicion that it was a potential Valentine’s gift from someone you didn’t know, but you opted not to out of embarrassment of sounding vain.

(If Hoseok comes to the same conclusion as you, however, then you’d feel a lot more confident in your own suspicions. You trust his judgment a hell of a lot more than your own, honestly.)

Hoseok leans closer to the screen to observe. “Holy shit, open it!”

“Are you sure that’s okay?” you ask, as if you aren’t already prying the lid off the box with curious fingers.

And inside the box sits a bracelet. It’s gorgeous, a thin silver chain with several deep green pearls lining the rim of it. It’s prettier than anything you’d ever buy for yourself. Your eyes widen and so do Hoseok’s, although for different reasons.

“Oh.”

“Oh!” Hoseok says, an embarrassed smile on his face like he was the world’s biggest idiot.

“That’s from me!”

It was?

“Look!” He lifts up his own right wrist, which adorns a bracelet that was identical to the one in the box in front of you. “I got this in the first week after I moved to Japan. It reminded me of you the second I saw it, so I knew I had to get one for you too.”

“Oh my God, you really didn’t have to,” you say worriedly. You can’t wrap your head around how pretty the piece was. “Thank you!”

“Of course,” he beams. “I forgot that shipping all the way to L.A. would take a few weeks before it got to you. I guess I just assumed you had gotten it a few days after I sent it.”

“And you just thought I wouldn’t say anything about it?”

Hoseok laughs. “I don’t know! Maybe you didn’t like it or something!”

“Hobi, this is beautiful, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you shake your head. You can’t express your thanks enough. 

He smiles, satisfied at his pick and your reaction. He’s always had a good eye for jewelry, alongside his meticulous fashion taste. “When I was buying it, the lady said that green pearls are supposed to symbolize new beginnings. I thought it was fitting.”

“It really is, huh?”

“I’m glad you like it,” he says warmly. You feel like you could cry. “Hey, listen, I gotta head out now, but I’m really glad you called today. I miss you.”

“Miss you too,” you nod your agreement quietly, still at a loss for better words.

He says your name, causing you to look at his illuminated face on the phone screen one more time.

“Happy Valentine’s Day.”

And then he’s gone.

Even minutes after Hoseok hangs up, you still find yourself rooted to your place in front of your kitchen island. Screw the free boba. It probably sucked in comparison to whatever this was.

He got you a bracelet simply because he was thinking about you.

In your opinion, a hey-I-was-thinking-about-you-today gift from none other than your best friend had a hell of a lot more sentimentality than a secret valentine from someone random.  

He got you a bracelet simply because he was thinking about you.

You turn the sentence over and over in your head, the same way you roll one of the pearl beads between your fingertips idly.

[February 17th, 2023; 12:11 PM PST]

Your phone is propped up against your book bag across from you, filling the space where Hoseok would usually be. 

“Happy Birthday!”

Nobody ever looks good on a goddamn FaceTime call, but Hoseok always does. Even now, when it’s a little bit past 4AM where he’s at, even when there’s a drunken pink tinge to his cheeks and an irritable expression to match.

(You had joked once that Yoongi and Hoseok switched personalities when inebriated, which both of them had vehemently denied.)

There’s a happy little smile that decorates his face when he thanks you, dimples on full display. 

You wanted to call him right when it hit midnight in Japan, but he hadn’t picked up. You tell him just as much. He tells you that his friends planned a little get-together that started with plans for birthday dinner at midnight, and ended a mere twenty minutes ago after copious amounts of drinking.

You play up how butthurt you sound. “I wanted to be the first person to wish you a happy birthday.”

“Damn, you really had nothing better to do, huh?”

“The hell is that supposed to mean? It’s your birthday!”

“I don’t know, since I’m not there, you could always hang out with different people now, try new things!” You blink, and then your eyes narrow. What was he trying to say, exactly?

“You callin’ me a loser, Seok?”

He looks flabbergasted, like you had struck a nerve. “Of course not. I’d rather spend my birthday with just you and Jiwoo, honestly. Like last year.”

Last year, your lives had been majorly different. You had been approximately a year-and-a-half into your lease with Hoseok, and in that time you had already grown close enough to own the title of being his best friend.

When you first met Jung Jiwoo, you had admittedly been jealous of Hoseok. 

Not everyone had sisters like her–a constant stream of love and support, and not to mention damn good fashion taste to go with it.

But that envy that you had felt faded away easily, because Jiwoo was quick to adapt to treating you as if you were another one of her own siblings.

Like Hoseok, she just clicked with you. And even in Hobi’s absence, she still made time for you, still invited you to come to the mall with her and to take Mickey on walks. And when Hoseok was around, you had been around for all of her milestones that she allowed you to be a part of, including her wedding.

The memory makes you smile, actually. 

Jiwoo and Hoseok bickered very rarely, but they had gotten into a squabble that resulted in hours of not speaking to one another over what had happened first: Hoseok asking you to be his plus one, or Jiwoo asking you to be one of her bridesmaids. 

(“I asked her to be my date first!” 

“Well, she won’t just be a guest anymore! This is like an upgrade!” 

“But now her being my date won’t be the memorable thing!” 

“Memorable? Did you forget that this was my wedding we’re talking about? Being your plus one doesn’t mean shit because I would’ve invited her anyways!”

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t even have known her if it weren’t for me!”)

Even though the memory of last year is something to be cherished, you know that how he’s spending it today will be something just as great to reminisce about. “Yeah, but when are you ever going to spend your birthday like this again?”

“You’re right,” he huffs out with a satisfied sigh.

He looks radiant as ever, like the weather in Tokyo was working wonders for his skin over the past few months. But then again, his skincare game was top notch at home in LA too. The sun shines brightly no matter where it is on the map, no?

“Check it out,” you say, chest the only thing visible on your screen as you reach over your phone’s perch to retrieve something from your bookbag.

“What’s that?” Hobi questions, eyes wide like he doesn’t already have a sneaking suspicion about the plastic container in front of you.

“You’re so mean,” he whines. You only giggle in response.

“First, Jungkook thinks the most appropriate birthday gift for me would be for us to go skydiving,” Hoseok lists miserably. “And now you’re taunting me by buying my favorite cake knowing damn well that I can’t have any.”

“What am I supposed to do? Mail it to you?” You pout. 

Ignoring you, he only continues to whine. “This is so fucking foul.”

“What do you mean?” You feign ignorance, procuring a spoon to eat your cake with. “I’m just celebrating your birthday with you.”

“I can’t believe you’re torturing me even though you’re thousands of miles away.”

Smiling around the spoon in your mouth, you repeat the same words he told you before he was miles and months out of reach from you. 

“Well, if you were plotting to get rid of me, it’s not gonna be that easy.”

[February 21st, 2023; 3:51 PM PST]

The first thing you see when you refresh your Instagram feed after class is a story post from none other than your best friend.

It’s a mirror selfie showing off his outfit and the iced coffee in his hand, and despite it being a simple outfit of a white t-shirt tucked into acid washed jeans, he looks good as ever. He wears a closed lip smile, dimples on display. 

Pushing out the doors of your lecture hall with one hand, you don’t hesitate for a moment before throwing out your reply.

[3:52 pm] you: You replied to their story: why are you so cute? :>

“Oh my God, Y/N?”

Freezing, you pray that the voice isn’t who you thought it was.

The grin you had mustered up stays plastered to your face when you turn to face the source of the voice. “Yujin!”

You thought you’d have a mouthful to say the next time you saw the girl. 

You thought you’d want to rub it in that you’ve got a great roommate now, and that you’ve even got a job lined up for you after graduation. You were so petty that you wanted to do all that just because she was such a horrible roommate to you four years ago.

But now she looks like someone else entirely.

Long hair that was once dyed in that “new city, new me” shade of brown was replaced with a sleek but trim cut in its natural color. She stands up straighter than you remember; does her makeup with more refinement than that eye-catching quality that she always had four years ago.

She looks like she’s grown so much in the years since you last crossed paths, and the way her gaze is pinned on you makes you think that she must be thinking the same about you.

“How have you been?”

“Busy,” you summarize with a soft laugh. “You?”

“Same,” she murmurs.

As you continue to talk, you come to find out that she had taken a gap year last year due to family reasons so she won’t be graduating alongside you, but now she was a RA at the same dorm building you had shared. Yujin tells you that she’s glad that you have a solid roommate now. 

Your lives had branched out in such different directions, but even you can admit that it relieves you that there was no bad blood between either of you.

When she says she has to leave for her next class, you let her go, but promise that you’ll have lunch again sometime. Usually when you make plans like that, you don’t mean it, but you genuinely want another chance to catch up with her.

Exhaling a breath as she takes her leave, you spare a glance down to your new notifications and smile dumbly at your best friend’s words.

[4:09 pm] jung hoseok: why are you so cute too? :>

You grin with a shake of your head.

You had spent so many years thinking that Yujin was awful and selfish and a million other words that had negative connotations attached to them, but in reality, she was just a normal but mildly inconsiderate roommate. The childish and petty behaviors that you recalled from nearly four years ago were nothing atypical of the fresh-faced and wide-eyed college freshman that both of you were. She’s probably telling her current roommate horror stories of similar caliber about you, and honestly? You probably deserved all of it just as much. 

But then again, your time with her wasn’t anything like the dynamic between Namjoon and Yoongi that you’ve come to know. The pair of them are like passing satellites, on the same wavelength, but only communicate when necessary. They know each other’s schedules, but differ so much in personality and behavior that they see the other asleep more often than they do awake. They label everything in their refrigerator with names and never cross the doorway boundaries into each other’s bedrooms. And it works for them.

But Hoseok–he was in a category of his own. 

He takes care of you, and you know that you do the same for him without question. You both know when to joke around, and when to be serious. Even now, though technically living together, you still cared so much about each other.

That had to mean something, didn’t it?

[March 2nd, 2023; 1:21 AM PST]

“Man, I fucking hate this place.”

“Same.”

Your eyes are burning. You can’t remember the last time you’ve stared at a computer screen for this long for something that wasn’t academic-related, let alone a game with graphics that haven’t been improved whatsoever in the past twenty years.

You release your fingers from the keyboard and lean back in your office chair, your in-game character going stagnant. 

Jin’s character does not, and you continue to watch as his caricature falls from the tree branch platforms for the nth time. He’s probably ten seconds away from tearing his hair out, but so are you. 

“They don’t call it the Forest of Endurance for nothing. This has gotta be like what I imagine sitting on your own balls feels like.”

“Yeah, pretty accurate.” One thing you appreciate about your short-lived friendship with Kim Seokjin was the lack of a small talk phase; unlike a majority of the people you’ve met in university and lost contact with after the menial small talk came to an end, you and Jin jumped straight into the comfort level where vulgar jokes didn’t have any resounding tension or odd looks. “Next time, let’s just play League or something.”

You wrinkle your nose, despite the boy not even being able to see your face right now. “I’ll die before you get me to touch League of Legends.”

“Hm. Valorant?”

“Maybe.”

But like all activities where you can feel your social battery crash coming soon, you know a good cut-off point when you see one. “You gonna stay on?”

You hear the clacking of Jin’s keyboard through your earbuds. “Oh shit, are you gonna go soon?”

“Yeah,” you sigh out, concealing your yawn from the mic to avoid him hearing it on the other end. “I’m getting sleepy.”

“Oh, yeah go ahead,” Jin replies, and you watch his character continue to swing his weapon as he bounces around the screen. 

“I’ll probably stay on ‘til I hit Level”–He pauses as he contemplates the level needed to enter the dungeon he was telling you about a few hours ago–“207.” 

You hover over his character, confirming that his character was on Level 201. Yeah, he’s definitely going to stay online for a good while longer. “Damn. Good luck.”

Seokjin offers a small, pained laugh. “Tell me about it. Goodnight, Y/N. Sleep well.” You can practically feel his tiny, endearing smile through your headphones. 

“Yeah, goodnight Jin.”

Wheeling your office chair away from your desk as soon as you hang up, you flop backwards onto your bed in record time. 

Without even thinking, you find yourself with the phone app of your phone open and hovering over Hoseok’s contact information. 

He picks up on the first ring. 

“Hello?” There’s a pause on his end, like he’s taking notice of the odd hour for you. “Is something wrong?”

You breathe out a heavy, sleepy sigh. “Hey Hobi. Nothing’s wrong, I just felt like hearing from you.”

“Oh.”

“Man, I can’t wait for Spring Break already,” you sigh out, already daydreaming with eyes closed about the notion of sleeping in after midterms.

“Dude, same. I’m so burnt out.”

“Got plans?” You wonder if he remembers his promise. You really, really hope that he does.

“Leaving as soon as my last exam is over on Friday. I have some business to take care of with the company in Seoul, so I’ll be staying there for a few days.” A beat. A breath you didn’t even realize that you’d been holding. “And then I’m coming home.”

Home. To you. 

Because you don’t know how the hell you could ever doubt your place in his life when he’s always said otherwise. His school was in Japan, his work was in Korea, and his home life? Well, that was wherever you were. If you had joined the study abroad program alongside him, he’s sure that his home would be found in that quaint dorm with the pink-glowed lighting. 

“Good. You better come home–I’m sick of doing the dishes,” you smile with your lips sealed, masking your relief from eyes that can’t see you. “Anything new happening with you?”

“Yeah, actually!” He says, and you can feel rather than hear the way he bubbles with excitement. “You know how I got promoted to Project Manager a few months ago? Well, I just got approved to lead my own project from start to finish.”

That’s incredible. You’ve always admired the inner machinations of Hoseok’s mind, so to see him finally get the opportunity to express that fully makes you almost as excited as you’re sure he is. From the concept, to the name, to the packaging, Hoseok is so meticulous with every aspect of his life, and you have no doubts in your mind that this will reflect that perfectionism and hard work. 

“Any ideas yet?” You question.

He pauses, like he’s contemplating telling you or not. You can feel the dimpled decisiveness on the answer he lands on. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

You sigh out both your content and discontent in the same breath before Hoseok continues. “What have you been up to?”

“Me? Not much. Just finished playing MapleStory with Jin and now I’m exhausted. Just glad I don’t have work tomorrow, to be honest.”

“Oh, that’s why you’re still up, huh?” Attentive as ever. “You should sleep then, since your social battery is probably drained as hell.”

“You’re my battery,” you let out a yawn. Hoseok laughs at your nonchalance, imitating the iPhone charging noise just for kicks.

“I’m serious,” you say. “Talking to other people exhausts me, but I never feel that way about you.”

You’re so fucking tired. 

Your phone is thrown onto the pillow next to you, and with the way you roll onto your side, the muffled rasp of his voice through the pillow almost makes it feel as though you’re laying on his chest.

Your eyes drift shut, and you almost bask in wondering if he would run his fingers through your hair if he were actually here.

Wait, what?

This was Hobi you were talking about, for crying out loud! You must be more sleep deprived than you initially thought, or maybe your hormones were fucking with you or something, because there’s no rational explanation as for why you were indulging in the sheer thought of receiving such affection from your roommate. 

Pumping the breaks on your own mind, you shoot straight up in your bed, stiff as a board. Your heart is racing for reasons you don’t want to think more about, and it’s at this moment that you tune back into what Hoseok is saying. 

“Are you even listening?”

“...Yes.” You weren’t.

“Liar!” he accuses, knowing all too well the telltale signs that your attention span had dropped off. If only he knew that the reason wasn’t drowsiness, but something way out of left field that you hadn’t even seen coming.

If you’re not mistaken, it sounds like Hoseok is also settling into bed.

“Wait, what time is it over there?”

A pause. Shifting around, like Hoseok is checking the time himself. “Almost six. I have a group project to work on with Jungkook and some others around eight, so I have time to get a nap in.”

Hoseok never takes naps.

At least, not routinely, and judging from what he’s debriefed you on about the details of his day so far, there’s nothing in particular that would invoke him to do so.

Naturally, you question it. “A nap?”

“I’d be sleeping too if I were over there, no?”

Well, yeah. But he wasn’t here and you weren’t there, so what reason would justify syncing your sleeping schedules?

“I guess so,” you say. You wish your heart rate would slow the fuck down so you could just fall asleep already. “Doesn’t mean that this makes sense still.”

“Shh,” he giggles, and the sound beams brighter than the sun even through the receiver. “Just go to sleep.”

“Maybe I could if you weren’t so loud!” you shoot right back, pinning the blame on him rather than your own racing heart.

“Is this better, then?” he whispers. If his normal voice was enough to sufficiently scramble your thoughts, then it's a wonder that you weren’t flatlining right now at the hands of his low rasp.

Fuck.

The laughter peters out immediately, and there’s such a long pause of silence as your breath catches in your throat that it almost appears like you had fallen asleep.

More shuffling on the other end of your phone line, and you have half a mind to wonder if he was going to hang up now that you were no longer at attention. But he doesn’t. You hear him settling down comfortably once more, and with a clearing of his throat, he whispers two more words so softly you feel like you could melt: “Goodnight, Y/N.”

You can’t find your voice to respond, and you can only pray you don’t talk in your sleep. Even versus your overactive heart and mind, slumber finally wins. 

He stays on the line until he too has fallen asleep and had to awake once more, but he lingers in your mind for much, much longer.

[March 27th, 2023; 9:46 AM PST]

You don’t feel like getting out of bed. You should really be using the empty schedule of your Spring Break for good rather than evil, but the storm raging outside makes wanting to be a productive member of society exceedingly difficult.

It also makes for soothing background noise to your slumber.

You really don’t have anything of importance today, save for picking up Hoseok from LAX later in the evening. You’d be on your own tonight, with Jiwoo away and visiting her husband’s family in Seoul and Yoongi claiming he was busy with work tonight. 

You don’t mind, honestly. You just want to see Hoseok already.

Because he was your best friend, and because he’s been gone for three months, of course. Absolutely no other reasoning or feelings imposed any influence on your desire to see him.

But two words that light up your phone screen are enough to dampen your mood, like the rain that dampens the clouds like a wet rag outside.

[9:49am] hobi 🌱: flight’s delayed 🥲

It’s funny, how you were across the world from one another, yet the weather was just as abysmal where the both of you were. Except you were in bed–rumpled sheets that smelled like no one but yourself weighing you down into your own bubble of safety from the rain–and Hoseok was stuck at the airport for God knows how long now, wet shoes and the impatient travelers attached to them surrounding him. 

It’s not funny at all. 

Because you’re so similar in nature that it feels like there’s no physical distance between the two of you sometimes, and even after three months apart you find yourself waiting to exchange mundanities with Hoseok each night only to be greeted with an empty bedroom.

The bedroom that will apparently remain empty for even more hours than previously anticipated.

The only thing that can reel you back in from your negative thoughts was the notion that his bed will only be unoccupied until tomorrow, whereas the past months felt as though there was a hole in your heart and in your apartment that you simply needed to get used to.

But to be honest, you’re nervous as fuck. And you’ve never felt this way about Hobi of all people, not even when you had first met him from that stupid roommate ad he made and plastered around town.

You’ve told yourself again and again that this week together would either confirm or deny those recent blips where you felt as though you and Hoseok had the potential of becoming more. Like when he bought matching bracelets because he knew you’d like it. Like when he fell asleep with you on the phone. Like all of the sweet promises he’s made to you in between the lines of texts and through imaginary phone cords.

Fuck. The more and more you replay those memories, the deeper you fall into your own turmoil. 

What if you’re imagining it? What if Hoseok has always talked and acted like that, and the distance has really gone to your head, making you think that you were more significant to him than you really were?

You don’t want to be heartbroken if you get your hopes up. 

If heartbroken were even the appropriate term to be using. You weren’t sure how to interpret Hoseok’s intentions, but hell, you weren’t even sure how you felt and how you wanted this to go.

With mussed hair and an even messier mind, you drag your hands across your face, rubbing the sleep from your eyes.

You shouldn’t think about this any harder than you need to. Overthinking has never done you any favors.

You draw out a response to Hoseok’s text message, typing and retyping as you figure out what it is that you want to say, before you finally resign and call him instead.

“Hey!” There’s a big grin on his face when he answers. He’s wearing a pair of yellow-tinted sunglasses that he looks ridiculously good in. He looks exhausted–and judging by his Spring Break plans that he had outlined to you a few weeks back, he had every reason to be.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just tired and wish I was on the plane already. Sorry.”

You blink. “What is there to be sorry for? It really isn’t your fault.”

Hoseok breathes through his nose, a laugh that you can tell through the phone line does not reach his eyes or even the corners of his lips. “I dunno. I just wish I could be on my way to see you already.”

You pretend that that simple sentence doesn’t have your heart leaping out of your throat. Your next admittance doesn’t help at all to mask that: “I wish you were here already too.”

There’s a few moments of staticy silence that you know can’t be attributed to shitty airport cell service. You wonder if your words carry as much weight to him as his do to you.

“We’ll see each other soon, okay?”

There he goes again, making promises to you at the drop of a hat. And he has still yet to break a single one. 

“Okay.”

The thunderstorm doesn’t let up, but neither does the one in your heart.

[March 28th, 2023; 1:31 AM PST]

You’re awoken by a jarring noise that definitely was not thunder, but a rapt knock against your door. 

Grabbing your pepper spray off your nightstand, you make your way over to the door. You feel both startled and relieved to find that the man on the other side of your door was none other than Jung Hoseok.

“I don’t have my keys,” he explains simply.

You shrug. You don’t know why you had expected him to, considering all the ways his routine has changed in the past months, likely including the tidbits of his life that he keeps on hand. Or rather, in his back pocket.

Once let in, he drops his suitcases to the side in favor of enveloping you in a vice-like hug, the kind that makes up for three months without any physical contact. 

Through your sleepy haze, you follow him through the apartment like a lost puppy as he rolls his suitcase around to settle in. And when you make your way back into your own bedroom, he follows. 

You flop down on your side of the bed, still warm from where you had been curled up and sleeping just half an hour ago. Hoseok sits on the opposite end, legs dangling over the side. He fishes his cell phone and wallet out of his pocket before setting them down gently on your nightstand, and that’s when you notice something else odd that he’s placed down with them that has your brows creasing.

“You smell like apples, by the way.” There’s a heart-shaped smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, revealing the same pretty teeth you’ve gotten acquainted with over the past three years. “Don’t tell me you finally caved and bought that custom shampoo you were eyeing?”

“You’d be surprised at how much I can get done without you here and constantly distracting me,” you joke with a wrinkle of your nose. There’s irony itching at the back of your throat, considering Hoseok is quite possibly all you’ve been able to think about in his absence. You wish it didn’t feel like you were lying to him. 

Your friendship wasn’t built on lies. You can’t be a good roommate based on that either.

“Your keys are on my nightstand.”

At your statement, Hoseok looks caught, but not guilty. “Oh. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you the real reason I didn’t use them.”

“Bet.”

You’re not expecting much. Maybe he just didn’t want to catch you off guard if you had been sleeping? You certainly would have taken that into consideration if you were him and he were you, given Hoseok’s jumpy nature. Or maybe he just–

“I just couldn’t stand the thought of waiting another night to see your face.”

What the hell are you supposed to make of that?

You try to stop your heart from leaping into your throat, now wide awake. Keyword: try. Because friends don’t say that to each other. You’d never say that to Jiwoo, or Yoongi, or Namjoon, hell, even Seokjin. 

But friends also don’t say the next words that come out of your mouth. 

“Then it’s a good thing you’re sleeping in here, ‘cause you can look at me all you want.”

The sarcastic lilt to your voice makes it easy for you to pass off your own words as an empty invitation. Your eyes are already falling shut, body comfortable in your sheets and your heart content with the knowledge that Hoseok made it home okay. You hear Hoseok let out a laugh, the infectious kind that forces your eyes open to question him what the hell he thought was so funny.

“I’m sleeping in here?”

It’s at this moment that you take in the weight of your previous words. But blame it on the sleep deprivation–or the years of friendship, or the funny feeling in your chest that you’ve only just begun to acknowledge–for your refusal to withdraw the offer. “I mean, it’s not like there’s sheets on your bed.”

There’s a slight crease in Hoseok’s brow that disappears before you can even think about why it was there. “Guess so,” he tosses out casually, getting up quietly to pull back your duvet on the side where he once sat. He’s not even in pajamas, just whatever comfortable clothes he had worn on the plane, but you can’t bring yourself to care.

You don’t think you’ve ever been this close to your roommate–not even the time you two got stuck in the elevator at IKEA three days into your lease could compare to the tension that you suddenly feel. But as always when it comes to this boy in particular, he finds a way to shatter it.

“Your feet are so fucking cold!” you yelp, flailing to put as much distance between you and him as possible without falling off your own end. 

The laughter that fills the air eventually simmers down to a near silent chit-chat of all the things missed over the last three months, stories bridging the gaps of time between your semi-weekly phone calls. 

It’s nice, the way that your lowered volume makes the lack of physical distance between you and your best friends palpable. You almost still can’t believe that he’s right in front of you and not trapped behind the glassy exterior of your phone screen. 

And just like that, the contentedness in the pit of your stomach makes way for sleep to pull you under. 

[March 28th, 2023; 1:31 PM PST]

Falling back into your old routine is easier than you expected it to be.

You and him sit sprawled on the couch, just like old times, as if he was never gone at all. One of his legs is tucked over yours, effectively trapping you to the fabric-lined couch prison, a water bottle tucked snugly against his lap. You don’t let your eyes linger.

You two always sit like this, partially out of the comfortable usage of your entire couch space, but also because it became something of an inside joke for you to remain trapped until you two definitively pick something to watch. Yes, even with Hoseok’s physically energetic nature, he notices that you become extra hyperactive when you find yourself indecisive over something. 

Your thumb roves over the remote, scrolling past movie selections that you don’t even bother to read the descriptions of. 

Biting your lower lip, you contemplate your options. You and Hoseok had opted to stay in today, courtesy of the rain showers just outside your building, and also to give him another day to recover from the jet lag. Maybe you should watch something you’ve already seen before, just in case he nods off to sleep?

(As annoying as it is to rewatch an episode when the other falls asleep, you both do it every single time the incident occurs, just because getting to see each other’s reactions to the plot happenings is half the fun of binge watching together. 

At least, that was your reasoning. You’re not sure if the same applies to Hobi.)

You stop your scrolling while some new Netflix suspense film is on the screen, the trailer automatically playing. Not because the title caught your eye, but because the boy right beside you did. 

His hair roots are recolored in a way that is nearly identical to how you had done it, and while you initially whined your disappointment that he hadn’t waited for you tou do a touch-up, you have to admit that you’re glad he stuck with the same style you had decided on together.  

(“Like a Smucker’s Goober Jar,” you had said, reminiscing on the look of those peanut butter jars that you haven’t seen since childhood. “Which is perfect, since you’re such a goober.”

“Such an asshole,” he complained with the world’s biggest heart-shaped grin on his face, and with that he knocked the three boxes of the dye and bleach you had held up into the shopping cart.)

You had chosen his hair color together, dyed it together, but days after it was said and done he was on the other side of the globe. You hadn’t gotten to fully appreciate the look until now.

It suits him really well, but you said that already. Numerous times, but it will never really be enough. The fluffed quality of it provides the most beautiful juxtaposition to his sharp jawline and the distinguished slope of his nose.

Fuck, his side profile really is a work of art. 

You catch yourself staring before he’s able to, and with a swift lick over your dried lips you resume flicking through potential shows to watch. 

You can’t watch anything horror because that wasn’t exactly conducive to winding down from jet lag, especially if the person in question was Jung Hoseok. But you also aren’t in the mood to watch any romance movie, because no matter how grown and mature you become, you still get awkward seeing sex scenes in films. 

Damn, your entire mouth is dry.

Indecisive and growing restless, your thumb drops from the remote scroller again. Maybe you should get up to get drinks and snacks and then come back to choose something with a fresh pair of eyes? Yeah, that could be good.

Except there’s one very burdensome barrier in the way: Hoseok’s leg. 

He doesn’t even notice the way you squirm, once again caught up in whatever nondescript trailer has begun playing when you relinquished control of the remote.

You don’t even try to fight your way past him, already accepting your fate that you’re stuck here until further notice.

There’s still the water bottle sitting on his lap.

Your stupid fucking brain connects the dots of what you’ve done a second too late, too caught up in the very obvious problem (dry mouth) and the even more obvious solution (drinking water) that lay less than an arm’s length away.

It’s when Hoseok curiously turns his head towards you that you realize that the water bottle now pressed against your lips was definitely not your own. In fact, you didn’t even have your own presently, nor could you even remember the last time you drank water.

But he doesn’t react in any way to your actions, even with the wide-eyed pause that you give when you become cognizant of your actions. He just shrugs like this was regular Tuesday behavior, and you take an excessively large gulp of water, as if to challenge him.

He laughs, shaking his shoulders, before proceeding with what he wanted to say. “Just pick whatever you wanna watch. It’s already been like twenty minutes.”

“How about The Haunting of Hill House?” you ask, scrolling over to your to-be-continued list. You lower your other arm, the water bottle now settled in your own lap.

“Isn’t that scary?” Predictable. You shrug.

“I watched a couple episodes with Yoongi and Namjoon. It’s scary, sure, but it’s more like… introspective horror? If that makes sense.”

He snorts. “Of course Joon wants to watch something that can be called introspective horror. And you too.”

“It’s good, seriously!” you pout. “Yoongi’s just as much of a chicken as you are, and even he could manage to watch!”

“Put it on,” he nods, caving easily. For some reason you don’t think that using his other friends as ethos was the reason he agrees. “But if I get scared again, I’m sleeping in your room anyways.”

There it is. “Yeah? Says who?”

He smiles his dumb, heart-shaped grin. “I don’t have sheets on my bed, remember?”

When you smack his chest in annoyance, he only offers another laugh, mirroring your prior actions when he reaches his hand across you to pluck the water bottle back from where you held it in your lap and bring it to his mouth. 

Letting it go with a stunned loosening of your grip, you realize that him reciprocating what you had done made you even more flustered than before.

You taking his water bottle from him was one thing, but him taking it back just meant that he didn’t mind sharing back-and-forth.

You don’t know what to do with your empty hands now–now that you know yourself far more than you’ve ever let yourself before. It feels like you’re new to this. New to this feeling in your chest, new to being human. 

Clearing your throat, you proceed to hunt down your series of choice in your Netflix list. You can feel Hoseok looking at you from the corner of your eye, and you avoid it for as long as you can before you offer him a soft turn of your head.

There’s this look in his eyes that you’ve never seen before, and it’s so warm. Not in the same way that his smiles felt like sunlight filtering through an open window, or how the softness of his voice felt like a gentle summer breeze. No, this warmth felt like it was for you and could only be felt by you, the kind of warmth that seeps into your bones and stays there, the kind that couldn’t be described by any analogy in any language. 

Has he always looked at you this way? How the hell could you have never noticed?

No–it didn’t matter how long this gaze of his had existed, if it even did before this very moment. What mattered was that it was there now, and where you go from here. 

Hoseok only tilts his head at your gawking. He looks like there’s something else on his mind, something more that he wants to say to you, but he swallows it down alongside another sip of water he takes from the same bottle you had drank from.

Perhaps you were both guilty of the same thing.

[April 1st, 2023; 5:27 PM PST]

Hoseok pokes his head into your room the same way he always does.

He may be a good roommate who kept his boundaries, but one thing for certain was that you almost never spend a moment alone in his presence. Maybe Yoongi was right, you were attached by the hip.

But his presence was never bothersome and this time was no different, with him entering your room to sit cross-legged on your bed, a cardboard box no bigger than a loaf of bread sat on his lap.

When he asks if you’re busy, you explain that you were just restarting your computer because Seokjin finally begged hard enough to convince you to install Valorant. Hoseok tells you that he wants to meet Seokjin sometime.

“I think you and Jungkook would get along really well,” Hoseok thinks aloud.

“How come?”

“He’s afraid of microwaves.”

“Seriously?” You swivel your desk chair around to face him. You’re asking both for confirmation of Jungkook’s oddities, and how the hell that would make him similar to you.

“Dead serious.” You don’t know which of your questions Hobi’s response refers to.

“You’d like all of them, honestly,” he hums, and from what you’ve heard through the grapevine about each person, you don’t disagree. “Y’know when you were a kid and you wished that you and your friends could all live in the same neighborhood with all your houses side-by-side? That’s how I feel about all of you.”

When you laugh, Hobi throws up his hands as a soft defense. “Hey—it’s not childish! I just wished that everyone’s schedules would align and you all could finally meet.”

After hearing your PC whirr back to life, you abandon your seat at your desk to make your way over to the bed with Hobi. “I’m sure that’d be nice.”

He nods in agreement, but you don’t miss the way his nails almost nervously tap at the cardboard surface he holds.

“What’s in the box?”

His response is instantaneous, like he was anxiously waiting for the opportunity to present itself.

“Remember I told you I’ve been working on that project at work?” You nod. “Well, they just sent me a box of the lip balm samples to make sure the formula was how I wanted it to be before we start thinking about packaging.”

“Nice!” you say, interest suddenly piqued at the new information. It’s a bummer that the product in question was lip balm though; you were incredibly sensitive to particular formulas that left your lips dry and cracked and were counterproductive to the product’s purpose. But if Hobi was the one whose idea it was, you’d buy their entire stock, honestly.

Peeling back the wings of the box, Hoseok regards you.

“Here,” he says, scooting closer. “I know you said flavored lip balms were the ones that caused the most problems, so I made sure all of them are unflavored and unscented.”

What?

“What?”

Hoseok has bright lights in his eyes, clearly excited to be indulging you in his thought process. “You told me once that it’s hard to find lip balm products that don’t give you allergic reactions, so I wanted to make sure that whatever I made was something that would be good for you.”

He remembered that? You don’t even remember when you had even brought up that issue to him, unless it had just been something quick in passing. “Really?”

You hate how short your answers are, but you really are at a loss for words.

“Yeah, of course!” He takes the several small pots out of the box before unscrewing one and dipping his fingers into it. “Now come here so we can test it out–hey, don’t look at me like that! My hands are clean!”

Fascinated, you lean towards him, allowing him to swipe his fingertip across your lips. “Let me know if this one feels dry or itchy at all,” he murmurs, expression so focused on your mouth that it makes you flush with heat.

How the hell did this one already feel much smoother than any other lip balm you’ve used before? You rove your tongue over your lips, then blot them together to evenly spread the balm.

“I really like this one,” you say simply.

“Oh, already? There’s still, like, six more for you to test out!” he exclaims, making you laugh. “Also do you like lip balms in pots like this, or do you prefer the sticks?”

You have no preference, honestly. “Doesn’t really matter. I wanna see what packaging you come up with.”

Hoseok makes a disgruntled facial expression. “This is about you! Just pick one, doesn’t matter what I have planned.”

You click your tongue. “Fine. I like the chapsticks better because it’s easier to keep in my backpack and purse.”

He pulls out his phone before quickly typing what you’d said into his Notes app.

You wonder just how much time he spent thinking of you amongst the vast blueness of your lack of contact, and how that amalgamated itself into him making you something like this.

Ever interested in his work, you question, “What’re you gonna call this line?”

Hoseok gives you a small, dimpled smile, eyes soft. “Blue Side.”

You could cry.

“Hoseok.”

“Hm?” he questions, still barely a few inches from your face. 

You had almost forgotten about your own gift for him. Now was as good a time as any to bring it up, not that it even compared to half of what he’d done for you. “I bought you those cookies and cream waffles that you really like. They’re next to the fruit bowl in the kitchen.”

His eyes light up instantly, and he’s pulling himself to stand even faster. He’s already making his way to the kitchen with the speed of a true cookies and cream enjoyer. 

“Oh my God, can we get married?” he nearly moans, and you envy how easily the words come out without making him need to fight down ninety layers of emotional constipation to do so. 

It’s because of that hindrance that you can’t bring yourself to say that you were just thinking the same thing. In a joking, lighthearted manner, of course.

You beg him to show you more pictures from his trip, and he happily obliges you between bites of his beloved waffle. 

“If I ever need to go to Japan again for work or something, I’m definitely taking you with me.”

Your heart skips several beats. “Would you really?”

“Of course,” he says with a grin. “Yoongi too. There’s so many things that I want to show you guys, and these pics are definitely not enough. Unrealistic, but if I could, I’d travel the world with you guys, honestly.”

You look at him across the kitchen counter, and you can’t express how right it feels now that he was back home, that he was back by your side.

Fuck.

You never want this week to end.

[August 10th, 2020; 3:42 PM PST]

You’ve never been much of a firm believer in fate. 

There’s something unsettling about the notion of putting all your trust into something like red strings and falling stars to sort out your life for you. Because if that were the case, you’d have gotten into your first-choice university, you wouldn’t have landed yourself the world’s shittiest roommate as a college freshman, and you wouldn’t have promptly given up on the entire collegiate dormitory system as a whole.

You wouldn’t be without a stable living situation a mere two weeks before the beginning of your sophomore fall semester like you were right now.

But today–today, there’s something strange about the atmosphere, and it’s not just a result of the sweltering Los Angeles heat. The summer sun doesn’t make a habit out of drawing people into one of the pricier boba tea stores on this side of downtown, especially people who are already worn down from yet another unsuccessful morning of apartment hunting.

You’re sitting at the lacquered table in the corner of the shoebox of a place, right beneath the air conditioning vent. There’s a corkboard on the wall opposite you, clusters of it tacked with polaroid photos, some of whom you recognize to be the bubble tea shop’s current staff.

There’s one of those neon pink papers tacked up as well–the kind that’s practically made of cardstock and costs a shit ton of money at any local craft store–that effectively kills the entire board’s aesthetic. If the creator’s plan was to make it stick out like a sore thumb, they’ve certainly done a good job at it. Even the font is distinct enough to be read from where you’re currently seated.

LOOKING FOR A ROOMMATE (OR FIVE)!

Hi! My name is Jung Hoseok (19M), and I was joking about the five roommates thing, but I’m sure there’s a way that we could make that work if necessary. I’m currently a college sophomore, and an avid finance major. My favorite cereal is Lucky Charms, I’m really good at folding laundry, and I have shared custody of my Shih Tzu named Mickey with my older sister.

Apartment Location: 903 Hydrangea St., Building J, Unit 26 

Amenities include:

in-unit laundry

quick access to the LA Metro Rail

complex is pet-friendly, has a gym, pool, and secure package-delivery

two bedroom (one for me, one for you!), one bath

Splitting rent and utility costs 50/50 would be ideal, but I don’t mind stretching to pay 60/40, or even 70/30. Anything you can do would help! 

CONTACT ME HERE ↓

It’s awful. 

The graphic design makes it look like he had looked up “how to make a killer roommate advertisement” on Google, then proceeded to follow all of the WikiHow page’s instructions without even bothering to realize that the page hadn’t been updated since 2009. 

There’s a mismatch of photos of the apartment in question, all either a) printed in an ink too dark to make out its features or b) taken in such abhorrent lighting to a point where no details of the photos were even salvageable to begin with.

There’s those flimsy little paper tabs at the bottom, pieces of his contact information condensed between dotted lines and fine print out for the taking. All five tabs are untouched.

It’s awfully convenient. 

You try to rationalize your way around it.

What nineteen-year-old is so trusting of the world, to the point where he’s willing to put his full name, age, address, and phone number out into the public like that? Sure, it was a smart move on his part to advertise at a mostly college-aged occupied place like this, but you could never be too cautious about sharing your information publicly. Hell, your Instagram profile is still private out of that same sense of paranoia. 

He’s bold and that makes you a little concerned, even if you have never once met the guy.

Besides, who even uses paper flyers to advertise things like this in this day and age? Most other students would resort to your university’s plethora of Facebook groups or even Reddit to maximize the outreach of their situation.

Well. To be fair, all of those aforementioned sources that you had contacted winded up being fruitless endeavors anyways.

It’s like the more you try to rationalize against it, the more tempting the offer becomes.

What are you even saying? You shake your head, as if to physically clear the thoughts away. It works momentarily, even if the suggestion lingers in the back of your mind as you finish your milk tea. 

You stand, checking the area around your table to ensure that nothing of yours had dropped out of your flimsy tote bag. Your laptop has long since died, which is probably a good enough indicator that it’s time to return back to your hotel room. 

The hotel that will only be yours to stay in for the next week. Fuck, the things you’d do to have a permanent address right now. 

Your body fills itself with dread as you even think about dragging yourself back through the public transportation system in this heat. Your eyes flit back up to the corkboard, the tacky pink poster serving as a last-ditch effort at stalling before you can leave this air-conditioned paradise.  

Fuck it. 

Tearing off the first and only missing swatch of contact information from Jung Hoseok’s roommate ad before leaving the café, you allow the sun to warm your skin and the work of fate to warm you from the inside out. 

[August 10th, 2020; 8:19PM PST]

The paper is beyond crumpled after making itself at home in the back pocket of your jean shorts all day, but the digits are still legible enough as you dial them into your phone and hit call.

[April 9th, 6:52 PM PST]

After Hoseok leaves, your apartment feels somehow emptier than before.

Nothing about your dynamic has progressed, but then again, you hadn’t made any moves for it to. No matter the way you had felt in the days approaching his arrival, nor the moments you had shared in the short time he was with you, your feelings hadn’t been made explicitly clear. So it wouldn’t be fair for you to go expecting things to change. 

There was one dumb thing that you had agreed to do together once he left: to have a dinner date eating the same thing together for once, rather than him eating breakfast while you ate dinner, or vice versa.

(“Ooh, sushi would be a good idea,” Hobi had said, getting ahead of himself already. “There’s this really good sushi bar near campus, but it’s kind of pricy so if I go there, you better not half-ass your end and get fucking gas station sushi or something.”)

True to your promise, as the clock approaches seven, you find yourself trekking back to your apartment after picking up your takeout from the local sushi restaurant that you and Hoseok liked most here. 

You make sure that you look decent on your FaceTime camera. This wasn’t a formal date, but still, your newfound nervousness around the boy had you feeling just about as anxious as someone who was currently being hunted for sport. 

Not that it mattered though. You don’t know a single person who looks flawless when stuffing their face with sushi, so your behavior is kind of gratuitous.

Hoseok told you that he’d call you first, so when the clock hits seven, you wait.

The clock ticks. Five minutes pass. Ten. At the twenty minute mark, you cave and call instead. The phone rings once. Twice. By the fifth ring, you end the call. 

You wonder if last week during Spring Break was a mistake. You let your heart do all the talking while your mouth said so little, and it was the closest you’d ever been to him. Close enough to crash and burn. 

As the hour bleeds onward, your sushi becomes room temperature. You pop the styrofoam container back sealed with shaky hands and shove it into the back of your refrigerator, out of sight. 

You’re not hungry anymore. 

[August 12th, 2020; 6:52PM PST]

It’s only a mere two days later when you schedule to meet up with Jung Hoseok for the very first time.

Over the phone, he seemed polite enough. His voice rings loud and clear when he introduces himself; not enough to startle you with the volume, but distinct and animated enough to relax your guard from his genuinity. 

His rambunctious advertisement makes sense now. If you recall the phrasing and general loudness of it, you can practically hear all of the printed words being said in the exact cadence of his voice. 

Muffled sounds of a dog barking and of a woman’s voice in the background during these phone calls also helped corroborate at least some of the legitimacy of who he advertised himself to be. He tells you that his and his sister’s lease was coming to an end, and the renewal process presented itself with the opportunity for her to finally move in with her long-term boyfriend instead. 

(“And leaving me to fend for myself! I’m fighting for my life out here!” he adds, overexaggerating enough for a distant “shut up!” to be heard over the receiver, most likely from the aforementioned sister.)

He also tells you that there was a slight change in plans from what he had advertised: his sister would be taking their dog, instead of splitting its time between apartments. According to Hoseok, he’s generally well-behaved and potty-trained, save for the time that he pissed in his sneakers to get his attention, but even as much as Hoseok would miss him, he’d rather not stress him out by the constant change of location. 

He reminds you again and again that him saying all of this and even scheduling a meet-up with him did not mean you had to feel obligated to agree. 

If the cocktail of oversharing and professionalism was his attempt to make you feel more at ease about the entire situation, it was a damn good one. Because you find yourself agreeing quickly, allowing him to choose the restaurant for you to meet at in two days time.

The restaurant that you find yourself standing outside right now, nerves being the only barrier from entering. 

A sushi restaurant, to be exact. So the silver lining of the evening is that even though you could potentially not move forward with the lease, you’d at least enjoy yourself at dinner.

(You do text your mother and one of your friends from university the place’s address, just in case you wind up getting kidnapped or something. Laugh all you want, but you can never be too cautious.)

You heave out a sigh of relief when you spot Hoseok, whose presence is exactly how you’d expected him to be: radiant, bubbly, yet with an aura of seriousness to him.

He introduces himself, and the first thing that you notice is how good his fashion sense is. You’re relieved that the outfit you chose for tonight is at least somewhat presentable in comparison. 

It’s a little awkward at first, but that was expected. He asks you questions about yourself, and you offer him similar questions in return. If this is how cordial he’d be as a roommate, you wouldn’t mind it though, honestly. It wasn’t like you had any other options.

The conversation picks up from its staleness when you find yourself both ordering Philly rolls, which in your opinion, were easily the best sushi roll you could order. Not to mention that they were consistent, so even across different restaurants, they didn’t vary by outrageous amounts in taste, and they generally weren’t that messy. Hoseok agrees with each one of your points, expressing relief at your words because his sister vehemently disagreed–

“Hi!”

Snapping your gaze upward, you’re greeted with who has to be the prettiest girl you’ve ever seen in your life. Not just in the way her hair was curled to perfection, or her manicured nails, but the way her eyes lit up with interest as she regarded you, the way her dimpled smile matched Hoseok’s.

“I’m Jiwoo, Hobi’s sister,” she states, punctuating this by extending her hand towards you.

“Nice to meet you!” you chirp in response. “I’m Y/N.”

“Ah, Hoseok mentioned you a few days ago! I really hope you do decide to move forward with the lease, it would make me feel a lot better about moving out and leaving him,” she says with relief creasing between her brows.

“You don’t have to worry,” Hoseok frowns. “I’m not a baby.”

Jiwoo laughs, voice melodic. “I know, but still. I’m always worried about you.”

After more idle chatter, Jiwoo tells the pair of you that she’s meeting her fiancé at another table in the restaurant, and with that, she takes her leave.

Hoseok exhales a breath. “Hope you didn’t mind my sister springing a surprise visit on us like that. I was planning on introducing you two if we moved our arrangement forward, but she was just so excited that someone actually reached out that she couldn’t help herself.”

The puzzle pieces itself together one-by-one. “Jung Jiwoo… as in Mejiwoo the clothing brand? And Base Line Cosmetics?”

“Yeah, that’s us.” There’s no hesitance in his answer like there would be if he were privy to sparing you the details of his family’s wealth, but there was also no marked cockiness, as if he were flaunting it. 

At your visible sense of interest, he elaborates. “Base Line is owned by our family, but Jiwoo was always more interested in working in the fashion industry over cosmetics, so she went and started her own business off it. Technically, her company is still a subsidiary of ours, but props to her because she did pretty much all of the start-up work on her own.”

“How about you?”

He offers a shrug. “I’ve helped my sister design a couple pieces just for fun, but honestly? I’m having fun just working in marketing for Base Line.”

If you’re being completely honest, you don’t know the exact schematics of what working in a business like that would entail, but you can piece together enough. You’ve seen his Instagram feed, hell, you’ve seen his outfit as he sits at the table across from you–he seems like the kind of person who was keen on aesthetics, and marketing seemed like exactly where he belonged.

“Which reminds me–you’ve gotta meet my neighbor Yoongi,” he says, eyes lit with excitement. He covers his mouth as he swallows down his spicy tuna roll before continuing. “He’s got the prettiest lips I’ve ever seen in my life and we’re trying to work on advertising for our new lip gloss line that’s in progress right now, but he keeps turning down my offers of modeling for it. Hey–you’d make a great model for it too, actually! If you want to or if you know anyone who would, I can contact our agency about it.”

He’s grown so animated talking about the business that it makes you endeared. “Signing this lease isn’t secretly a pyramid scheme for model recruitment, is it?”

“Caught me,” he laughs, throwing his head back in amusement as he does. “Was hoping you wouldn’t read the fine print.”

It’s at this moment that you realize exactly what it was that intrigued you about Hoseok so much: He talks to you like you’ve known each other your entire life, like you’re an old friend that he can tell anything and everything to, but a new person for him to show all of his colors to and let you do the same. 

And you want to. His genuine attitude is enough encouragement for you to open up about yourself with the same amount of zeal, filling your end of the conversation with stories about your own family, your plans after university, and even pulling out your own phone to show him pictures of your parents’ dog.

It’s like his presence alone is enough to make you see the world with rose-tinted glasses.

By now, you’ve long since abandoned the notion that moving in with him was merely for the sake of both of your necessities, but because you wanted to. 

It’s so easy for you to fall into conversation with him that the next time he mentions the lease, it’s the easiest decision that you’ve ever made when you hold your hands out for him to give you the rest of the paperwork to look over before making your arrangement official.

[April 10th, 2023; 6:11 AM PST]

The fact of the matter is that you should’ve seen this moment coming. 

No matter the title of roommates, or the late night talks, or the fact that he has a copy of your class schedule saved to your phone, or the fact that he fucking applied lip balm on you because he wanted to, you didn’t have any claims to stake over his time. 

He cared for you well when you were around, but that didn’t mean you had any permanence in his mind when you weren’t. He’s Jung Hoseok for crying out loud. 

[6:13 am] hobi 🌱: Incoming FaceTime Call

Unlike the butterflies that you hadn’t even consciously recognized them to be every time you saw his name flash across your phone screen, seeing it now only makes you anxious.

You brace yourself for any explanation he may have. Prepared to not let any cracks show in your smile when you answer, because technically he doesn’t owe you one.

But the face that greets you when the FaceTime call rings through isn’t your best friend–in fact, there’s barely a face visible at all. A girl’s forehead is visible, camera angle definitely one that you are familiar with from all the instances you’ve stayed on the line with Hoseok while on the move. 

Multiple girls actually–you can count at least three heads who are all now crowded over the screen of Hoseok’s phone. None of them are the aforementioned boy. 

“Oh my God, she’s so pretty!” The girl who says this clearly gets smacked by one of the other voices present, if the yelp she lets out immediately after was anything to go by. 

“Hi! You must be Y/N! Hoseok was in such a rush to go home earlier that he left his phone in my bag! None of us realized that you called, sorry.”

You let out a breath. Fuck. Never mind the fact that he puts his phone in this girl’s bag frequently enough for him not to know when it’s missing. And for over twelve hours at that.

“Hi,” is the only small and pathetic answer that you let yourself share.

“Here, let’s stop right here,” the girl who was presumably holding his phone states, seemingly directing the rest of the group towards somewhere for them to stop walking.

There’s fumbling, more words that go over your head are exchanged, and then the camera is propped up against a café table where you can now see the three girls clearly. You recognize them individually, all three of them being girls who had made occasional cameos amongst Hobi’s social media posts of his group of friends he had made internationally. 

“Okay, okay, there we go. It’s really nice to meet you! I’m Momo, and this is Mina and Sana.” She gestures to the two other girls present.

“Ah, Hoseok told me a lot about you guys! I’m really glad that he’s made such great friends over there,” you nod. There’s so much going on right now that you can’t even make good conversation.

“Yeah, Hoseok’s told us before that he really wishes you could’ve studied abroad too. He keeps going on and on about how much you’d love it here,” Mina states. 

Sana’s quick to agree, adding more anecdotes atop the other girl’s words. “He’s always talking to us about you, it’s like sometimes he doesn’t even realize how much he does it. Like we went shopping a few weeks back, and he was explaining to me your lip balm allergy and he was really intent on making sure that his Blue Side lip balm would be perfect for you. It’s seriously so adorable how much he likes you–”

Clearly Sana is the one out of the three who has a knack for oversharing, because Momo gives her a swift pinch to her side before redirecting the conversation. “We’re on our way to Hoseok and Jimin’s dorm now!”

For the first time, you don’t hesitate to cut in. You barely even need to glance at your designated clock of Hobi’s time zone to know that it’s late at night already. “At this hour? Seriously, I appreciate it but you really could’ve just waited until morning.”

Sana is quick to shake her head, pink curls bobbing as she does so. “We’ll be careful, I promise! Plus we’re all together, Mina has her pepper spray, and we’re almost there already. Thank you for worrying!” Her warm smile damn near melts your heart. 

“Plus we know how important this call was to Hoseok!” Momo chimes in. The other two girls nod. “If we weren’t already heading over, I guarantee that he would’ve been banging on our door ten minutes from now.”

Really? You could believe it if it were just about the fact that he had lost his phone, but you being the reason why he was sent into a goose chase to get his phone back as soon as possible was somehow hard to believe.

There’s suddenly laughter and muffled voices that you can’t decipher speaking to one another on the other side, and you see rather than hear the way Hoseok and Jimin make their way into the FaceTime camera radius. 

“Y/N!”

You’d recognize the way Hoseok calls your name anywhere. 

His heart-shaped grin, his fluffy head of hair, how good he looks in a simple black t-shirt. Although the FaceTime quality is fuzzy around the edges due to the poor cell reception of the area, you recognize him immediately. 

“I’m so sorry,” Hoseok says, face coming close enough to the screen to make your heart pick up several paces. “Mina and I have the same phone case, so she must’ve accidentally taken my phone along with hers when we went grocery shopping this morning. Jimin and I literally turned our apartment upside down looking for it, and then Taehyung told me to retrace my steps through every lecture hall we went to today–”

“Only for him to realize that he had no classes today,” Jimin finishes, wrinkling his nose with fondness. “For someone so smart, he has the memory of a goldfish.” Hoseok slaps him on the shoulder in reply.

You laugh along with their storytelling, and then you can’t hear the pair of them as they speak to each other about what to do next.

“Since it’s late, Jimin and I are gonna walk the girls back to their dorm before we head back home. We’ll catch up later, I promise,” he fills you in, and with that you say your goodbyes.

So he didn’t miss your dinner date. Relief washes over you as his words echo in your mind.

We’ll catch up later, I promise.

Who are you to not believe him?

[April 21st, 2023; 1:17 PM PST]

You never thought you’d be doing this.

Running into Yujin that one time was something of a coincidence, and even though you had made peace with the grudge you’d previously held onto, you never thought that you’d want to see her again, much less in an effort to become friends.

But you could use a fresh face to talk to. Your free time was mostly occupied with Hoseok, Yoongi, Seokjin, Jiwoo, and occasionally Namjoon, and as much as you loved all of them, your head’s been a mess ever since Hoseok left after Spring Break ended and you have a feeling that speaking to any of them regarding the man that all of them were inevitably close to wouldn’t be the most productive idea.

(Re: Yoongi would hit you with a big fat “I told you so” hammer, Jiwoo was his sister, and Seokjin was… well, he was Seokjin. So yes, you were running low on options.)

You’re not necessarily looking for someone to vent about him to, but a distraction is nice.

It also helps that Yujin is somewhat familiar to you, but still a new person all the same considering how much her personality has changed from what you remember.

It’s nice to converse with her much easier than you had four years ago, it really is, but even Yujin begins to notice how you’re practically itching to get something off your mind. And per her usual mannerisms, she attacks the issue head-on. That much hasn’t changed about her.

“Oh my God, there’s a guy, isn’t there? That’s what’s bothering you, isn’t it?”

“Nothing’s bothering me,” you lie, but you know damn well that it’s not convincing in the slightest. Defeated after meeting Yujin’s unimpressed gaze, you continue.

“So I have this roommate now.”

“Mhm,” she recalls, sipping her drink through her straw. “The one studying abroad?”

“Yeah that’s the one.” You take a breath, your mind a mess as you continue. “He came over to visit for Spring Break, and I dunno, it just felt like something’s changed since I last saw him.”

Yujin’s brow creases. “In a good way or a bad way?”

“That’s the thing,” you say, voice laced with frustration. “Like, I started feeling like this a little bit before he came, and then some things happened during the week that made me feel unsure if I’m just reading too far into the situation.”

“Things meaning what?” Yujin cocks a brow in interest, causing you to elaborate further into your recount of the week.

“So we were on the couch and he had this water bottle on his lap, right?” Yujin nods, and you take a breath before continuing. “But like, one of his legs was kind of slung over mine so I didn’t wanna get up, and God, I don’t know what know possessed me to do this, but I reached over and—“

”Oh my God, you accidentally grabbed his dick!?”

“No!” 

A pause. 

”You grabbed his dick on purpose!?”

You wince, embarrassment flushing through your mind. You had been so caught up in the casual intimacy of what you had actually done to even consider where this story sounded like it was going. “No, Yujin, I did not grab his dick.”

“Damn.” You ignore the fact that she sounds almost disappointed.

“As I was saying, he had a water bottle, and I just reached over and grabbed it out of his lap and drank from it! Like, what the hell, right? We’re close, but we never share drinks or do anything like that!” You attempt to laugh off the disbelief, but you should’ve known that airing out your feelings would come with inevitable prodding.

“So why’d you do it?”

Fuck. You don’t even know the answer to that still. 

But you take the first step to figuring out what the hell you’re feeling by putting all the pieces on the table so you can put the puzzle together in due time. “That’s the thing–I have no fucking idea. But I did it so easily, as if we do it all the time, or like he hasn’t been gone for three months.”

“Do you think you’re falling for him?”

And there it was. There was the question that you were dreading having to answer, not only to yourself, but apparently now you put yourself in a situation where another person’s input was involved.

At your lack of verbal response (even though your body language spoke volumes, in Yujin’s opinion), she pins you with another, slightly easier question: “What do you want to do now?”

It’s like her words open a dam, and you find yourself spilling your thoughts. “I want to talk to him about it. And about the bracelet he gave me, and the fucking lip balm formula that he made specifically because he knows my skin is sensitive. I need to know if it’s just me that’s feeling this way because I’ve never felt so comfortable around someone before and maybe the distance is what’s making me overthink–”

“Wait, he made you a what?”

You explain to Yujin Hoseok’s family brand, and his new project, and how he told you himself that he made sure that it would be specifically catered to your best interest. Her jaw only drops even further.

“That has gotta be the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.” You wave her off with a groan.

“I’m serious!” Yujin continues earnestly. “It’s not everyday that you hear that a guy cares about someone to a point where they’d fucking create something for them, friend or not. All I’m saying is that if you do feel something for him now, it’s pretty fucking obvious why.”

When you can only huff out a laugh, she tacks on another statement. “But I mean, talking it out would only do you good, and there’s no need to rush into starting something once he gets back home.”

Home. You feel your heart rate pick up several paces every time you get reminded of the fact that his home is where you were. That you and your quaint little place that you’ve curated to suit both of your needs and wants were his anchor amidst everything else going on in his life.

But Yujin’s right. There was no rush, and you take peace in that reminder.

“But also keep me posted, ‘cause I really want to see you guys end up together.”

You only laugh with a roll of your eyes.

[May 6th, 2023; 2:01 PM PST]

Talking it out really does help. 

That much should have been obvious, really—literally every study and every piece of media shows that communication will almost always do more harm than good.

So when Yujin helps you realize that your feelings for Hoseok were much deeper than you had previously assumed them to be, it doesn’t feel like a weight sitting atop your chest anymore. If anything, it felt more like a balloon tied by a string to you now, a part of you wherever you go, not holding you back but simply an extension of your day-to-day life. 

But for now, you’ll deal. Complicating your relationship with thousands of miles between you would do you no good, and besides, you had to focus on graduating soon. Yeah, you can hold off for another few months before deciding what to do.

What was another couple months when these feelings have been accumulating for who knows how long? 

You heard through the grapevine (otherwise known as Min Yoongi) that Namjoon is never home because he’s a PA. And that when his day isn’t occupied by work, he often spends it out of the house anyways. 

Previously you had assumed that that would mean going out with friends, or partying, but from the rare instances that you had spoken to him, you had found out that more often than not he spends those excursions alone, visiting museums and bonsai gardens and wherever the hell he was in the mood to go at the time. 

He’s mastered the art of taking himself on dates, honestly. 

Which is how you find yourself taking a page out of his book, sitting at a café you’ve never 

been to in a part of the city that you never find yourself having a good enough reason to be at. 

It’s a cat café, to be specific. You’ve always wanted to come to one of these, but your busy schedule never allowed you to even consider that you’d have the time to do so. Being here now only proves that you had only convinced yourself that you never had time to take for yourself all these years.

You snap videos of the cute felines that come your way and are hasty to publish them to your Instagram without even checking them for potential flaws. Because it doesn’t need to be perfect. You don’t need impeccable evidence of where you’ve been, you’re just happy that you’re here at all.

You hardly check your phone throughout the day, but when you do, the notification that greets you makes you smile.

[2:19 pm] jung hoseok: Replied to your story: so cute! you gotta take me here when i get back 😩

You tap out your reply promising him that you will.

And afterwards, you take a trip up to the Griffith Observatory. You hadn’t gone since you were a kid. Long before college, long before Hoseok.

Hoseok. Your best friend that you’d had no idea would ever occupy this much space in your mind.

Attraction. Fondness. Dependency. Love. All of them look similar, but they aren’t the same. 

But you’ve spent so much time trying to figure out which one was closest to what you felt that you’ve come to realize that your feelings for Hoseok couldn’t all be encapsulated using a single word. 

Not only does he take care of you as a roommate, but he cares for you even when he isn’t physically there. He wants you to live well, and he’s shown again and again that he’s constantly thinking of you when you’re not around.

You wonder if you’re on his mind just as much as he is on yours.

[May 15th, 2023; 11:46 PM PST]

These days, you find yourself enjoying things on simple terms.

You enjoy your sleep, so you try not to get home too late. You hate the feeling of cramming for exams, so you start studying little by little a week and half early. 

You have nothing better to do on your Saturday so you do laundry. You have nothing better to do on your Sunday so you and Namjoon go to the duck pond. 

You stay in and cook dinner instead of ordering in when you may have splurged a little too hard on a cute top you saw at the mall. 

The only downside is that living your life day by day rather than keeping everything planned to a tee has reduced the frequency of you and Hoseok’s phone calls.

But you don’t mind, he’s busy and so are you. 

You message him about his frequent adventures on his Instagram posts, and he texts you to ask what you’ve been up to every few days. When you do call, the conversations aren’t any less boisterous as usual, and the longevity of the calls aren’t any shorter.

To anyone else, things are as normal as it gets.

But you still miss him so, so badly.

[June 1st, 2023; 4:44 PM PST]

This time, you do everything right. 

There’s no thunderstorms, there’s no miscommunication of landing time, there’s no surprise knocks on your door in the dead of night, there’s no bed sharing.

The drive home through LAX traffic was stale, your playlists were stale, and Hoseok opting to sleep on the sheets that had been left on his bed since he left in March felt stale too.

The problem was that there was no problem at all; a year ago, hell, two months ago, you would have pegged this as normal behavior amongst the pair of you. The problem was that you wanted things to be different, that you wanted there to be more to your relationship dynamic.

But things don’t change overnight. So why did it feel so different from how this went down back in March?

[June 13th, 2023; 10:44 PM PST]

Graduation comes and goes easily.

You and Hoseok both make a mutual agreement to take two weeks off of work after graduation, just a slow inhale and exhale of a break before you two come to terms with the fact that the rest of your life will be filled with nothing but day-in and day-out monotony.

As promised, you take Hoseok to all the places that you had grown fond of during your little escapades around Los Angeles. He tells you–”it’s silly, I know,” he had mumbled with a shake of his head–that he feels like a foreigner in a place where he’s spent four years living already, and he gives a relieved exhale when you say that until recently, you had felt the same way.

Despite the fact that you now have a degree, the crowning accomplishment of your past four years of hard work, you can’t ignore the other ways in which your life still feels unfinished.

You should’ve known that your feelings would bubble up to a precipice like an unwatched boiling pot, that there’s no planning this sort of thing–that eventually you’d spill the mess of what’s on your mind when you least expect it.

It happens like this. 

It’s a surprisingly cold evening for June in Los Angeles, and like the oddball he is, Hoseok takes that as a reason to celebrate. 

In favor of the occasion, he makes spicy tofu soup because in his words, “how often do you really crave soup in the middle of Summer?”

(You don’t tell him that technically the Summer solstice wasn’t for another week.)

He presents you a bowl of his hard work with a raw egg on the side, because even though he could have cracked it into the soup for you easily, he knows you take odd satisfaction in the feeling of cracking eggs perfectly. And you eat dinner together like old times, with quiet chatter and spoons clanking against bowls.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately,” you start. Hesitant.

You feel stupid already.

You contemplate chickening out when you close your eyes in a drawn-out blink, but you somehow find it in you to continue, the silence splitting like a fragile eggshell to make way for your sunny-yellow emotions to spill out.

“When I first met you, I had no idea that you’d mean this much to me.”  

You want to tell him that his presence in your three years of friendship has left a mark on you in a way that no other person has. That you can’t appreciate him enough for the little things he remembers about you and the things he buys for you without a second thought. That on both high and low days, he’s the first person that you want to be around and the last person you want to see before you nod off to sleep. 

You want to tell him that you hope that he can lean on you and rest just as much as you do on him. That you love when he tells you about what’s on his mind, and when he shows you pictures of moments he’s captured on film of the world through his eyes. That you love how he fills every room he enters with sunshine that reflects off every person he meets, how he always knows what to say to make others feel significant in his presence. 

You want to tell him that meeting him was devastating.

What is love, if not devastating?

Was this love?

A near-silent exhale, and then you continue. “And I meant it when I said I was happy for you and I’d always be there for you when you went abroad. But the space and time apart made me realize that there’s this huge Hobi-shaped place in my heart that just wouldn’t go away.”

You’re not even sure if you’re making sense anymore, but you push onward. “What I’m trying to say is that our time apart made me realize how much I don’t want to just have you as a friend. Even when you came to visit during Spring Break and when you came back two weeks ago, I just kept having this feeling that I need you around. Not in the way that things used to be, because we always had that and it was never awkward between us, but a step further.” 

“I found myself wishing that we could go to dinner and to museums and the beach and actually call them dates instead of just saying that we’re hanging out together,” you continue. You want to look away from his gaze, but you refuse to. “I want to be able to call you my boyfriend when people ask what we are, and I want to be able to hug you and hold you without feeling like I’m crossing a boundary.”

Hoseok only looks at you with those unreadable eyes again. His gaze is always full of enough light to rival the warmth of the sun on your skin, but right now it feels as though you’d burn up if you dared to let your gaze linger. 

“I’m sorry if it’s just me.” 

Your breath comes out shaky now. The last thing that you can do now is cry–because you really don’t want his pity. And you don’t expect him to feel the same way, despite the rest of the world telling you that he does, and the fact that you just spilled out all your wants straight to him.

Yes, that’s it–you just needed to get this off your chest. You’ll still be roommates first, friends second after this moment passes, and now that you’re graduated, your lives are just getting started and you’ll only keep moving onto bigger and better things. The world never felt so big and overwhelming and fuck, it must be the late hour that makes you feel like you need to escape. 

The sound of his voice is enough to drag you back down to Earth.

“Y/N,” he says softly, scooting his chair towards you and placing his hand against your back. You think he’s gearing up to let you down easy, so the question he prompts you with catches you by surprise: “How long?”

How long have you been feeling this way?

You try to think. And then you verbalize it. “Since you bought me the bracelet.”

The bracelet that adorns both your wrist and his right now. The one that was meant to symbolize new beginnings for both of you, but now felt like the final nail in the coffin of your friendship.

You’re taken aback when he shakes his head with a smile. “Hoseok?” You ask, feeling small and vulnerable, needing him to say what’s on his mind before you combust.

“I’m an idiot,” he begins. He continues before you can question what he means by that.

“Do you remember when you were doing laundry at Yoongi’s house?”

When you nod, he looks like he’s fighting down layers of embarrassment to say what comes next. It’s rare that you ever see Hoseok expressing emotion beyond what he wants you to see. 

You take an odd amount of comfort in it.

“You were right–I was jealous. But not because he was spending time with you, or because I really did think that you guys were together. It was because I realized how much I missed getting to spend every second of every day with you. Throughout the day, I find myself wanting to tell you about every place I go and everything I do, but I found myself wondering what you were up to even more.”

“What I’m trying to say is… I’ll be yours if you let me,” Hobi says, and you break. “I want to take you on dates wherever you want to go, and I want to hold your hand and come home to you after work every day. I want to share all my thoughts with you, and I hope you’ll do the same for me. I know we do a lot of these things already as friends, but I want to try to be more.”

“Yes,” you breathe out. Yes, a hundred times over. “I want that too, Hobi.”

It’s out there. Both of your feelings are out in the open air like freshly-hung laundry, and you’ve never felt so much relief. The tension in the room dissipates, even more so with what Hoseok says next.

“So… around the same time, huh?”

You cringe through your smile. “Yeah… around the same time.”

“I hope you know that no matter where I am, no matter who I’m with, nobody compares to you.” You know your face must be scrunched in such an unflattering near-sob, but Hoseok only looks at you with rose-tinted lenses for eyes.

The feelings that you had for him and he had for you was not just tested by the vast blueness of distance between you, but it was because of it.

You don’t know when Hoseok rises from his seat to encase you in a back hug, but he does. He does it tenderly and paired with a kiss to the crown of your forehead, as if to piece back together the eggshell of your heart that you’d been so afraid to break.

You think you love him, but for now you won’t say it.

[August 10th, 2024; 3:42 PM PST]

You roll your eyes when Hoseok kicks you out of your shared bedroom because he needs to pack his underwear.

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” you deadpan, and you think the way Hobi’s ears flush red at your words is downright adorable.

“Still,” he pouts, before promptly shutting the door on you. You sigh.

It’s been little over a year since you and Hoseok had officially begun dating, but life moves fast.

You and Hoseok had moved out of your two-bedroom apartment once your lease had ended, in favor of buying a quaint little bungalow closer to the beach. Though initially you were unsure if that was too big a step to be making too soon, Hoseok reminds you that you had already been living together for years–that you had already been his home long before buying one of your own–so what difference did it really make?

It was a bit saddening to have to say goodbye to Yoongi and Namjoon as neighbors, but they promised to visit since you were still barely twenty minutes away from your previous home.

And visit, they did. So did Jiwoo, Yujin, Seokjin, and occasionally Hobi’s friends that he had accumulated in Japan.

(He was absolutely right, by the way. You and Jungkook had clicked immediately and stuck together like glue after he initiated an intense debate on who would win in a fight, between Tony the Tiger and the Kool-Aid Man.

For the record, you and him were Team Kool-Aid Man, while Hobi and Taehyung were Team Tony the Tiger. You’d be bitter that Hoseok disagreed with you, but the look of sheer bafflement when you explained your reasoning made the entire ordeal that much funnier, and worth it, in your opinion.)

Hoseok’s Blue Side line launched earlier in the summer. He had begged you to be the model in the commercial films, but you insisted that you could be his muse, but you couldn’t be that multitalented.

But it all worked out in the end, because you told him to outreach the modeling gig to Seokjin instead, which kickstarted his acting career internationally.

(“Why didn’t you tell me that your friend was hot? He’s perfect for the job,” Hoseok had said, baffled after meeting Seokjin over dinner for the first time.

“Why do you think I told you to ask?” you huff. “And I figured you’d already seen him from my Instagram posts while you were gone.”

“How could I, when you were the only thing I could ever focus on?” 

You had smacked his chest softly to hide the way his words flustered you.)

In fact, the reason Hoseok was packing to begin with was for an international work trip in Osaka. One that he had cordially invited you to come with, once again true to the promise he had made to you all those months ago.

“Are you done yet?” you ask restlessly, not giving a shit as you push your bedroom door back open. “I really don’t care if your undies have holes in them or whatever, but at least let me in so I can pack too–”

You pause when you round to your side of the bed, taking notice of the not-so-subtly hidden square velvet box tucked under a shirt or two in his suitcase.

Hobi’s back is turned, facing your shared closet, clearly unaware that he’s done such a shitty job at hiding what was likely supposed to be a surprise. “Yeah, you can come back in now.”

Apparently he’s also unaware that you’d already reentered the room.

You and Hoseok had discussed marriage a handful of times, which had only increased in frequency over the past couple months. Despite the fact that you both concluded that you were still young, you had also pointed out to him that you didn’t ever see yourself wanting to be with someone else, so the wait wouldn’t do you any good. Hoseok also cracked a joke that it’d be good for tax purposes, but you don’t miss the relief that washed over his face that you were on the same page.

And that was where you had left it.

Approaching him and looking at him sideways now, you’re entranced as ever by his features. The sharpness of his jawline, the slope of his nose, the intensity of his eyes as he debates on what to pack.

When he catches you staring, you let him.

“Is something on my face?” he asks, eyes widening as he already starts wiping at his mouth.

“Nope,” you sigh out, uncaring of how lovesick your gaze is.

You lean up to give him a chaste peck to his cheek, which he had clearly not been expecting. “I love you,” you murmur, basking in the dimpled grin he returns.

Yeah, your life is good with him in it.

#networkbangtan #hyunglinenetwork #bangtanarmynet #btswritingcafe #btsghostie #hoseok x reader #hoseok x you #hoseok fluff #hoseok angst #bts x reader #bts x you #bts fluff #bts angst #bts fanfic #bts fic #bts fanfiction #hoseok fic #hoseok fic recs #fic: banana clip #my brain is leaking out of my ears my god.......... #formatting this gave me carpal tunnel jfc hope u guys enjoy

[aesopsharpmybeloved]

Tess' Sharpuary - 10. Breakfast

Sweet brekafast is served in Hogwarts on Sunday, which is incredily popular with the students. A certain potions master appreciates so as well.

chapter specific tags: slice of life, fluff-ish, friendship

relationships: aesop sharp x reader (alluded to), aesop sharp & dinah hecat

10. Breakfast (1k)

tw: none

“Your lip, dear” said Dinah Hecat next to him, smiling into her cup of tea. Aesop used his fingers to wipe at his lips, quickly discovering that a dusting of fine sugar remained there from his meal. He licked the sugar from his digits unceremoniously, making his friend chuckle. “What?” he asked with a lifted brow but got no answer. Deciding not to focus on it too much, his hand reached for another scone. He brought it to his mouth and nose, breathing in its sweet smell before he proceeded to bite into the treat happily.

His eyes closed shut as flavour exploded on his tongue. The pastry itself was soft and incredibly fluffy, only lightly sweet, and sticking to the roof of his mouth somewhat. The generous filling of strawberry jam and whipped cream played a delicious symphony, the strawberry’s cheerfully wild sweetness mellowed by the airy, incredibly light and cool whipped cream, a hint of vanilla slowly creeping in and filling his senses. He wasn’t able to stop the deeply appreciative sound that hummed its way through his chest.

Dinah finally stopped pretending to read the Daily Prophet and turned to face him: “I swear to Merlin, Aesop, you’re looking forward to the sweet Sunday breakfast more than the students are!” Aesop chuckled but didn’t reply as his mouth was currently full of the sugary pastry. There was nothing quite like the Sunday breakfast at Hogwarts. It was served until ten o‘clock, so he had the luxury of sleeping in a bit, and most of the items weren’t usually served on any other day, as this amount of sugar was highly counterproductive to the students’ focus in class, the staff found.

Therefore, Sunday was something the majority of people in the castle looked forward to, the staff included. And Aesop, as Dinah liked to tease, most of all. However, that was just his sweet tooth, rather than any sort of aversion towards the goodies the house elves normally served them.

No full English breakfast could ever hold a candle to the breakfast readily available in the castle every day, and the smell of perfectly brown toast and eggs scrambled to perfection could be smelled long before one actually entered the Great Hall. It was enough to make many students visibly increase their pace in the morning, even those who looked like they were a mere pillow away from creating a make-do little nest right on one of the benches in the Viaduct courtyard and going right back to sleep.

It was a big change, having breakfast every single day. Back in his Auror days, Aesop scarcely had the time to make one in the morning before he had to go to work, and would maybe make some for himself on the weekend. After his injury, well, he did try to start his day off with at least a hard-boiled egg and toast, but usually just settled for a cup of tea. The firm routine of eating at Hogwarts actually forced him to exercise as much as he was able to with his maimed leg, as otherwise he’d be forced to enlarge his clothes. It took a while for him to adjust, but once he did, everything began feeling normal. Comfortable, actually. 

“You make it look like you haven’t had anything sweet in years, not less than a day ago,” Dinah spoke, pulling him out of his thoughts. He washed his last bite down with several sips of tea and turned his head towards her once more: “Hm? How would you know? I don’t remember eating anything sweet here yesterday.” Dinah’s eyes held a mischievous sparkle as she rested her face on her hand, and Aesop immediately regretted saying anything.

“Maybe not here, but I saw one of my Ravenclaws ascending the stairs from the kitchens, and then going in the direction of Faculty Tower, rather than the Ravenclaw one. So I figured she was either sneaking you some sweets from the kitchen, or she went to see Noreen about an injury she received in the Hufflepuff common room. One, for some reason, feels slightly more probable than the other.” Aesop cleared his throat. Dinah’s perception was as brilliant as it was maddening, and she knew there was something more going on between him and the now Seventh-year Ravenclaw that met the eye… And it felt like she’s known so for longer than Aesop himself. Simply maddening. It was as if she was teasing him over an innocent school crush, absolutely nonchalant about the fact that this ‘crush’ was on one of their students… 

Not to mention Aesop feared he was long past a mere crush…

“Just so you know, I do not ask her to sneak me sweets from the house elves,” he said instead, rather flatly and dumbly, prompting her to chuckle. The potions master willed his body from rushing blood into his cheeks, and his hand from crushing the scone and aking a mess of his robes. Merlin’s beard, if he was going to get this grilled every day after he’s had tea with the young woman, he might as well begin taking his breakfast in his room. Seeing just how often he met the girl and therefore provided Dinah with ammunition for further teasing, it might actually be a preferable solution. .

“I’m only teasing you a bit, dear, no need to get so defensive,” Dinah said, attempting to placate him as if she heard his little mental tirade, “just make sure you get some vegetables and meat inside your belly as well. Not even you can exist solely on scones and biscuits. I’m almost afraid to ask whether you’ve already tried so...”

The potions master couldn’t hold back a small chuckle of his own.

“Perhaps not,” he said, “but they work simply marvellously for breakfast.”

---

Thank you so much for reading ❤

[Ao3] - [Sharpuary 2024] - [Masterlist]

#aesop sharp #professor sharp #hogwarts legacy #my art #fanfiction #reader insert #drawing #aesop sharp x reader #aesop sharp x mc #sharpuary #sharpuary 2024 #fanart #hogwarts legacy fanart #hogwarts legacy fanfiction

[the-wip-project]

SloMo WriNo: Instantly Improve Your Writing With One Simple Trick

Want to make your writing instantly better?

Don’t we all?

Promising instant improvement is an easy way to hook eyes, (I’m sort of sorry for click-baiting you— but not too much.) so a lot of writing advice is framed that way.

But is it actually possible?

Generally the advice on those types of posts isn’t anything revolutionary. You’re told to eliminate adverbs/filter words/telling. Or perhaps the advice is additive. You should start using all 5 (or even 6?) senses in every description, do or don’t use certain tenses or povs, change up sentence lengths, use more paragraph breaks, and so it goes.

It’s (usually) all useful advice, especially when applied in moderation. (No one will come and shoot you for occasionally using suddenly or summarizing a scene instead of showing every detail.)

The issues is that a lot of writers (especially beginner writers) are seeking some sort of magic bullet. That one trick that will change everything and magically make you good. (never mind that ‘good’ is far more nebulous and subjective than anyone wants to admit.)

Sadly, once you get beyond learning things like punctuation and when to insert paragraph breaks, there’s not really any single technique that you can quickly apply and immediately lift the quality of your writing.

For the rest, it really takes time. Even if the advice is good, you need to learn when and how to apply it.

As such, there’s only one technique that will definitely make your writing better.

Practice.

Yeah. So boring. The least sexy piece of writing advice. Write more.

But it’s also the simplest. (Not always the easiest, but definitely the simplest!) Writing is not mystic or singular. It’s just like any other art or craft. The only way you get good is by spending time at it. And just like anything else, you’re going to be bad before you can start to get good.

You would never expect to become an accomplished guitarist by spending lots of time listening to and thinking about music, while almost never picking up your instrument to practice. And you will not become a good writer without practicing the action of writing.

It’s a comforting idea that gets bandied around at times, that writing isn’t just fingers on the keys or pen on paper. That it’s thinking and daydreaming and making mood boards etc. While those writing adjacent things are fun and undoubtedly can help you write, they are not writing. They are not practice.

Spending your time doing those things instead of writing do not make you a better writer, and obviously they don’t finish your novel or writing project.

Which is my goal here. To help you finish your project. As such I spend very little time on dispensing advice on plot or prose, and focus mostly on the process of writing.

That’s not to say that I don’t think you should spend time on learning how to write better prose, or how to create compelling characters and plot, those things are important! But if attempting to learn that stuff gets in the way of practice, then it’s counterproductive.

So don’t let the writing advice become the focus of your writing. Apply advice slowly, and don’t overwhelm yourself with trying to fix all your perceived faults at once. (I still have a difficult relationship with punctuation, but I’m learning. Slowly.) If you can, focus on techniques that interest you. Keep things low pressure— fun even?

Yes you want your work to be as good as possible, but also, you’re doing this writing thing because you enjoy it, right? So don’t allow the pressure to be good to stop you from having fun. If trying to apply a certain piece of writing advice is making you miserable, toss it aside. It’s either bad advice, or it’s not the right time for you to worry about it. Above all, avoid anything that kills your joy and makes writing a miserable chore.

So I guess this is my one piece of advice that will improve your writing (process) instantly.

Enjoy yourself, and ditch anything that ruins that joy. You’ll get better at your own pace, as long as you keep writing.

—Maree

Subscribe to my substack to make sure you don't miss a post, chat with me on the WIP Project discord, and tag any posts you make about the challenge with #slomowrino if you want me to see them!

#slomowrino #writing advice #get better #instant improvement

[zaharya]

ADHD science ramble – a comment response

So if you know me at all, you know I have ADHD and also a neuroscience degree. Meaning sometimes I ramble a lot about the science behind ADHD and ADHD meds. Generally, people appreciate it at best, or ignore it at worst – but apparently not on reddit! So, I'm coming home – forgive me for straying, Tumblr, please give me back my belief in people's ability to understand nuance.

The comment below was in response to a post asking about ADHD medication, including concerns about stimulants and addiction, and the question of "will I quit these meds or is this a life-long thing". They also mentioned "rejection sensitive dysphoria" (which is not a medical term!) and asked for other people's insights on any of these things. I tried to give that. The original post is now suddenly deleted, and the comment was invisible even before then for whatever reason (I won't speculate whether it was censored by the mods or not, it doesn't matter.)

But since those are all pretty general topics and this was a lot of effort to write, I'm re-posting it here in the hopes someone will benefit from it – it may just read a bit odd at times because it addresses the OP of that post. So if ADHD medication, treatment approaches, stigma, or emotional dysregulation are at all relevant or interesting to you, give it a glance. There's a TL:DR at the bottom as well. If Tumblr could stop bitching at me about the formatting that'd be great. Please ignore potential oddities with the list levels.

COMMENT RESPONSE IN VERBATIM

OKAY SO, buckle in my friend because you have activated my ADHD research deep dive mode. For the record and some context as to where I got all this; I have a BSc in Psychology, and did a research masters in cognitive and clinical neuroscience. Throughout both degree programs, I've written every single paper I could choose the topic for about some aspect of ADHD. (I do not have a license for psychotherapy yet, but I am getting one.) I also just have ADHD myself. What I’m trying to say is: I know way too much about ADHD and now I must tell you about it because what else am I supposed to do with it — ANYWAY … I should probably structure this somehow so it’s less overwhelming. We’ll try this:

Medication

Strattera/Atomoxetine (ATX); how it works, why it may or may not be working for you

Stimulants; how it works, evidence regarding the risk of dependency and abuse, connections to other substance use (since you mentioned nicotine)

Long-term treatment plans; factors to consider / questions for you to evaluate for yourself

RSD — probably a rant, first; why buzzwords are counterproductive even if the experience is 100% valid

Emotional dysregulation; research again, also potentially about meds

rejection sensitivity slkjdsjfs it escalated, help

Community and peer support

Yes? Yes. Feel free to skip any parts that are too sciency, if that doesn’t interest you!

First of all, congratulations on your diagnosis! You’ve already made one of the hardest steps. But let’s get into it, shall we?

ADHD Medication

Non-stimulants / Atomoxetine (ATX)

I must say, I am quite surprised that you were prescribed ATX as your first option, given that stimulants are very firmly established as first-line treatment.

Regardless, a couple of facts about it: ATX is a selective noradrenaline (NA) reuptake inhibitor, which also affects dopamine (DA) levels, specifically in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) because— well because brain chemistry. (I’m trying very hard to keep this simple, can you tell?) Basically, the idea is to regulate DA levels through an indirect mechanism via NA. And that works pretty well, generally. ATX is effective for approximately 50-60% of people, and the effects reach moderate strength.

Now you said that you don’t really notice any effect; that can have several possible reasons:

It just doesn’t work for you; 50-60% of people show a response, sure — but the other 40-50% do not! Unfortunately it is possible that you simply are part of those 40-50% non-responders.

The exact mechanisms of that are still unclear, but there are many factors that might influence someone’s drug response, including individual differences in metabolism, genetic factors etc. --- we’re still researching that

ATX, unlike stimulants, doesn’t necessarily have immediate effects. Full therapeutic effects are generally not evaluated until at least 2-3 weeks after starting it. That also means that the effects can develop slowly, which can make them harder to notice because it’s a somewhat gradual change.

On top of that, if your doctor is even the slightest shred of competent (which I hope), they’ll probably have started at a fairly low dose, meaning that;

you might just not feel it yet, but the effect may still emerge

you might need a higher dose; if that’s the case, this increase is generally done step-wise and quite slowly, to monitor the effects (and side-effects) properly. I suggest asking your doctors about what kind of trajectory they have in mind, so you can decide whether that suits you.

You mentioned mood swings; definitely mention that to your doctor! Psychological side-effects of ATX should be closely monitored

Note that this is especially important if someone has (potentially undiagnosed) comorbid disorders. I don’t know whether that’s the case for you, but better to be aware either way.

All that said, I also take ATX and I must say that on its own its effects are barely noticeable for me. It’s only because I know that my symptoms can be worse that I even consider it effective. I am an unusual case, though, regarding med-response etc. and I take ATX in combination with Elvanse (Lisdexamfetamine; LDX).

Which I guess brings us to stimulants. You say you’re reluctant out of fear to form a dependency, if I understand correctly. Well, the research is quite interesting in that regard — but let’s cover the basics first.

Stimulants

Stimulants, i.e., various types of amphetamines (AMP) and methylphenidates (MPH), are the standard first-line treatment for ADHD. Both AMP- and MPH-class drugs essentially increase the efficiency of the PFC —same as ATX — but where ATX only directly targets NA, AMP and MPH inhibit the reuptake of DA itself as well as NA reuptake. This direct effect on DA levels is basically (very basic; oversimplified even) what makes them stimulants. It is also likely the root for your concerns about dependence risks, because DA is involved in our reward-system in the brain — i.e. the thing that tells you “i want more of this”.

So, yeah, these concerns are not unfounded, HOWEVER

It is important to remember/note that a lot of the public narrative around ADHD and ADHD medication is heavily distorted by stigma. The number of people who worry about stimulants being addictive is leagues away from the actual prevalence of stimulant abuse/dependence.

This also kinda ties into your question about whether you will stop taking meds at some point or not; the idea that treatment must be temporary roots in the stigmatisation of mental health treatment.

I’m not saying that life-long medication treatment is a delight and a joy, but I also don’t think that it is the ultimate evil it’s sometimes made out to be. –– EXAMPLE: Think of a diabetic; they will need insulin for the rest of their life, but in their case nobody would ever suggest that them taking it is somehow a bad thing.

Mental health in general is unfortunately still heavily stigmatised, and that also impacts the narrative around treatment options, including medication. And more often than not, public beliefs about psychiatric conditions are downright and blatantly wrong.

In this particular case, actual research indicates that stimulant treatment actually decreases the risk for substance abuse in ADHDers. (Generally, adequate ADHD treatment reduces risks for all sorts of unpleasant things, like comorbid disorders, social isolation, divorce, accidents — I could go on. Not the point.)

The point is that overall, from a research perspective, the risk of drug dependence due to stimulant medication is quite low. Hell, literally everyone I know who takes ADHD meds will go “shit I forgot my meds” at least every other month or so.

Of course that doesn’t mean that we can all just pop stims however we like without a care in the world. As with any other medication, monitoring effects and side-effects together with a doctor is key.

With all that said, there is good reason why stimulants are first-line treatment for ADHD: 65-80% of people show a treatment response, and for a lot of people who don’t initially experience an effect, switching to another type of stimulant will often do the trick (total response rates of ~90%). Besides the fact that they work for more people, they also generally work better than non-stimulants, meaning that the symptom improvements are stronger for stimulants. Does this mean you should just get over yourself and go for stimulants because they’re clearly superior? Of course not.

Medication response is ultimately a very individual thing; it is basically impossible to know how you’ll react to any given medication before you try it. So in the end, it really comes down to what you want. It’s your decision, based on your priorities and values.

The same goes for your question of “will I take these meds forever” — that’s up to you!

Generally speaking, ADHD doesn’t go away. It is not something you grow out of any more than you can grow a second brain to replace the one you have. And our brains have ADHD. So, symptom-wise, we will always experience ADHD to some degree at least.

Of course, there are plenty of other treatment approaches such as CBT and literal mountains of helpful strategies to learn about and use. And that’s wonderful! Still, therapy alone is generally considered less effective than meds, but it does help. The best treatment approaches are multimodal, i.e. a combination of pharmacological treatment and behavioural interventions. Aka we take meds and go to therapy. Amazing.

So let’s say you’ve taken meds for a while, you’ve gone to therapy, you’ve learnt all the strategies — you decide to quit the meds. What happens?

Well first of all, nobody can know that beforehand, so keep in mind that these are hypothetical assumptions based on scenarios that research described as likely

Anyway, you quit whatever meds that ended up working for you. Ideally, you do that slowly so you don’t have any withdrawal issues, but eventually you’re off the meds. As a result, your brain isn’t getting that neurotransmitter boost anymore that the meds created (though some research shows that some benefits might persist, yay!), meaning that cognitive impairments are stronger again.

Does this mean all your symptoms come back? Well, yes and no. On a basic brain level, impairments return at least in part, but the strategies you learnt in therapy might still help you cope with those impairments better than you used to before.

So you might be overall more functional, thanks to those strategies, yes.

But strategies will not fix your brain chemistry, and if there’s no dopamine there’s no dopamine, and suddenly you spent all day in bed. Or you’re staring at your work open in front of you feeling like there’s a thick panel of glass between you and your screen/keyboard and you just cannot make yourself type. These things won’t go away, and strategies will not always do the trick

Personally, I dread the idea of living my life entirely off meds. My main hobby is writing, which is nearly impossible without my meds — and even if I had a less challenging hobby; I want to do things in life, not waste my time trying to get myself to brush my teeth. But, again, that is a very personal decision that you ultimately have to make for yourself.

Still, here are a few things to consider that might help you evaluate your options:

Need — what are your primary needs? Which symptoms are impacting you most? (Yes I’m getting to the RSD sfksjhgj)

Want — what are things you want beyond the most important needs? Where do your priorities lie?

Benefit — what benefit are you getting from [medication X]? How much positive effect does it have on your symptoms? On your life as a whole?

Need-benefit — do the benefits fulfil your essential needs? —> if not, that’s probably not the right med for you

Want-benefit — do the benefits fulfil your wants beyond the essentials?

Cost — what costs is [medication X] causing you? Do you have side-effects, if so what are they, how bad, how frequent?

Cost-benefit — do the benefits outweigh the costs, on a somewhat objective level? (effects vs side-effects)

Cost-benefit-want — Are the benefits worth the costs, also taking your individual values, concerns and goals into account?

This last one can get quite complicated, I’ll admit, but in the end I feel like this one is what tips the scale for a lot of people.

You could have the most amazing improvements, if you suffer side effects that keep you from something that is important to you, it’s probably not worth it in the end.

Vice versa, in my case, if it means I can write, I will accept that I’ll feel incredibly nauseated on some days for like 1-3 hours. It all comes down to individual choices in the end.

-deep breath- So, that was a lot, whops. So much, that I should actually go and work, so I’ll try to keep the RSD thing short. Conveniently, the AutoMod already summed up the most important bits:

RSD is not a recognised medical term

Instead of RSD, it is better to use concepts and terminology with solidly established definitions such as emotional dysregulation and rejection sensitivity to talk about the experiences people tend to label RSD

This is particularly important when consulting mental health professionals; well established concepts enable them to assess your symptoms and needs better than vague, ill-defined buzzwords. I have had people tell me they were going to switch to another doctor because theirs wasn’t familiar with RSD --- that is an issue!

Buzzwords like that tend to hinder treatment progress, because they are too vague to be properly informative. Most people have a very specific conceptual definition of RSD --- namely the one that describes their own symptoms best.

That renders it basically useless as a communicative device. Doctors cannot mind-read; you are doing yourself a favour if your communication (including terminology) is as clear as possible.

Obviously nobody expects you to know specialised medical terms --- just try to avoid buzzwords; of any kind! RSD is just a very very popular one and therefore warrants repeated clarification.

Now, just cause it’s not A Thing(tm), doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. And yes, the experience of rejection sensitivity in ADHD is valid and should not be dismissed!

Emotional dysregulation is actually one of the most prevalent and most impacting symptoms of ADHD, but because it isn’t part of the diagnostic criteria, a lot of people aren’t even aware of how much ADHD impacts emotions — and how much that impacts life for ADHDers. Emotional dysregulation leads to all sorts of other problems, like social isolation or comborbid mood disorders like depression or bipolar. So, clearly, it’s something should be addressed when it comes to treatment.

And would you look at that, they did! Yay!

Research shows that stimulants are effective for reducing symptoms of emotional dysregulation; as mentioned earlier, ideally you combine that with therapy.

Especially for emotional dysregulation, therapy — not just strategies, therapy — can be very beneficial, because emotions are hard. A lot of ADHDers, especially those that only get their diagnosis in adulthood, develop suboptimal coping mechanisms throughout their life that are very hard to dismantle without help. But resolving those patterns often makes an immense impact on the general quality of life.

Conclusion: Get a good therapist. It’s worth it. (Good = someone you trust and click with, you have to be comfortable.)

Now, one last thing (almost done I promise), because you said you don’t really have anyone to talk to about this:

I strongly encourage you to actively seek out ADHD communities in a format that lends itself to connecting with people on a personal level.

So, quick story time: Back in 2018, I (by complete coincidence) stumbled over a video of a TEDxTalk about ADHD on Patreon – who even browses Patreon?! Anyway, I watched it. Cried. A lot. Backed that Patreon immediately, before even looking at the actual YouTube channel it was for. The Patreon came with Discord rewards — I had never heard of Discord but there’s nothing like ADHD impulsivity, so I made a Discord account and joined that server.

Literally my whole life has changed since then. My perspective on ADHD has changed so so much simply through seeing other people having the same struggles, and yet they were still unique. And it was a wild ride. I look at some of the beliefs I used to have and am baffled at myself. But that’s not the main point, though knowledge always does help. No, the main point isn’t another strategy or lifehack. The main point are friends. True, actual friends who accept you, but also understand you.

When I joined that server, I very quickly met a lot of people. It was wonderful to suddenly be in a space where people related to my experiences that had previously always singled me out as weird or rude or incompetent or whatever. And all those people were lovely, but they’re not the friends I mean; most of them I am not in touch with anymore. I mean the select few. They are what made the biggest difference for me. I met one of my top two best friends like 2 months after joining the server, when we both became moderators. We later did community management together for over a year, until I moved on to other things — they are still Community Manager there! I flew to the other side of the planet for their wedding. We spend hours on video chat sometimes, both just working and hanging out because we like each other’s company (and it helps us focus). I can tell them anything, even if I hate what I did or didn’t do or say or think.

Those friends.

And I don’t know you, obviously, so maybe you already have that friend, in which case I’m very happy for you. But judging by your statement that you have nobody to talk to—

I’m not saying that joining an ADHD community will magically drop a best friend for you out of the sky, but it’s honestly not a bad start. Simply gaining the peer support of people who understand and relate to your experiences is worth it.

Okay, phew. Now I’m done. For your convenience;

TL;DR

non-stimulants might still take effect or you might need a different dose

stimulants are heavily stigmatised and the actual risk for substance dependence is quite low if the treatment is properly monitored by a medical professional

ADHD doesn’t go away; we will always have ADHD brains and there will always be issues that cannot be solved with strategies

It’s up to you to decide whether you want to take medication for it, and whether you want to take them long-term or not. I personally am fairly certain that I will continue to take these meds as long as I can. Even though there are downsides, the benefits are more than worth it for me.

Emotions are hard, everyone should go to therapy.

Make ADHD friends! (I personally really like Discord communities; I can recommend the HowToADHD community — that’s the server I mentioned earlier — but it’s unfortunately behind a (very low) paywall. If you don’t know that YouTube channel, I’d also recommend checking out Jess’s videos.)

But back to the point: Friends. Whichever platform you are comfortable with – try connecting with people beyond surface level conversations in public comments/threads/channels. Slide into those DMs!

And that’s all. That was way too long and I apologise. I hope any of it was helpful and understandable, I know I can get a bit sciency sometimes. If anything is unclear just ask. Good luck with your journey! It might be hard in the beginning, but it gets easier with time, I promise.

END VERBATIM

I hope anyone finds this useful, if only for validation. Shit's hard, but we'll all be fine, together.

#this was a lot of effort #it's literally over 3000 words #pls be proud #i just want a headpat and validation #also i hope it helps #adhd #science #adhd science #research #rejection sensitivity #emotional dysregulation #medication #stimulants #adhd meds #information #comment response #reddit #purely informative