#but also because people tell nuns all SORTS of things

[ofhollowhearts]

You should trust her.

#Odile Hollows #is not a nun but she does like to dress as one so people leave her tf alone on the road #but also because people tell nuns all SORTS of things #and she does love to know things she shouldn't!!! #My screenshots #ffxiv #ffxiv screenshots #hyur #middie #midlander

[schwarzkatje]

dark!orphan!ellie x nun!reader

disclaimer: i don't ever write notes but this smells like too much blasphemy not to put some warnings and disclaimers. so, this contains ellie being still in an orphanage BUT i obviously changed the age so that she is of age because it goes without saying that p*dophilia is not contemplated here. also, "sister" is used as a synonym for "nun", not with the meaning of "family member". lastly, it does contain smut even though it's not so detailed.

> for part 2 click here || for part 3 click here

ellie didn't wake up one day choosing to be mean. in fact, if you ever asked her why the rude behaviour, she would simply laugh it off and tell you to shut the fuck up with a bitterness so unlikely for such a young girl.

ellie thought it was her god given right to do whatever she wanted, having being already stripped enough of the pillars of her life, namely a happy family and a place her heart could call home. that resulted in her receiving reprimands and punishments from the nuns more than any other kid in the orphanage.

and you, the youngest of the nuns tasked with the upbringing of the kids and the newest addition to the orphanage, seeing how ellie behaved, decided it was the perfect opportunity to enact the knowledge you had acquired during your noviciate by devouring books about dysfunctional behaviour, specifically in orphans. you were positive people could change if showed how.

what you would invoke the lord's name for to swear was your entire and firmly believed doctrine, came to a brutal halt the very moment you came to the realisation of what ellie's bad reputation really was about.

it wasn't just a typical scenographic display of childish behaviours like refusing to attend class or the occasional smuggling of cigarettes that concurred to tear apart your good intentions. these were merely common patterns studied throughout the years by psychologists and educators, and the main topics in all of your books.

no, what made you falter was the fact that ellie seemed to relish being mean. if others acting the same way sported an inconsolable sorrow in their eyes, ellie's green ones would glow with the eagerness that came with the raising of the voices of the nuns, the laughable detentions and the yet unexplored range of just how far was too far.

it didn't help that ellie had learnt from the older kids all the gross vocabulary she has now assimilated, repeating the filthy words as a sort of statement to maintain the hierarchical status she has fought for and ultimately achieved among the majority of the orphans.

so it caught you off guard only the first time ellie fiercely exclaimed that "if you care so much about me maybe you should suck my dick tonight," as you apprehended over time that this wasn't and wouldn't have been an isolated incident, rather an infuriating routine that seemed only to increase the more you showed ellie how much it pissed you off.

of course, that time your cheeks were burning red and your brain was at war with the mortification of having received such a vulgarity in front of other pupils, alongside the humiliation that ticked with each second you spent silent, at a loss for words to properly tackle the problem at hand.

the best thing you managed to come up with was the most generic and fruitless "go out," pointing at the class door.

before ellie could walk through the door, she turned to you, smirking like you had just made her day, and slurring a sultry "don't get so wet when you scold me," after which she left, winking at you.

your hands were tied. you understood that you could inform the other sisters of what ellie was making you go through, but you understood just as well that it would be no to avail since the other nuns were there way before you and knew to a greater extent the amount of work needed to be implemented when dealing with ellie.

after the heat of the moment had died down, you gathered all of your strength, prayed hoping to receive some mercy, and recited like a mantra that you were the bigger person and couldn't possibly let your purpose go to waste.

the fact was that you realised too late that the presence of what you called the devil had certainly been lurking around and now manifested itself in the obscene form of ellie fucking two of her fingers inside of you from behind in the scriptorium, something that dealt the final blow to any hope of creating the optimal conditions to demonstrate the good of your heart.

ellie and her breath, together with her hands, were four fiends cooperating under the same objectives, being disrupting you, disrupting everything you represented and disrupting everything you stood for.

"no one has ever made you feel so good," ellie was insane herself for needing to hear you say it "otherwise, you wouldn't be needing to play the part of the perfect little sister who thinks she can fix everyone to compensate how empty she is," and no matter how desperately you tried and tried and cried out while doing so, your pussy was glistening with slick, feeling euphoric and on the brink of madness with how enticing the sensation and the blasphemous words that left ellie's mouth were. "you would be too cock drunk and stuffed with cum to care about anything else".

the ink and quill you were previously using laid on your desk where they shouldn't, spilling the black liquid and dirtying everything they touched. ellie could be compared to the two items, given how many times the sisters told her how harmful her tainting existence was. and maybe that was the reason her brain clicked and gave the command to her right hand to gather some of the ink and write "ellie's cum dump" on your ass.

as soon as your breathing quickened, ellie grabbed a fistful of your hair, yanked it throwing your head impossibly backwards and let you ride out the hardest orgasm of your life. the gesture wasn't just a display of dominance but it served as a lever to push you flat against the desk, treating you like a discarded toy.

"next time you come for me, expect me to fuck your ass. and it won't be with my fingers only"

#ellie williams x female reader #ellie williams x reader #ellie x fem reader #ellie x reader #ellie x reader smut #ellie williams smut #ellie x y/n #ellie smut #ellie x you #the last of us smut #ellie williams x you #ellie the last of us #ellie williams #ellie tlou

[venusjeon]

rock god

you've got one year left to either finish your novitiate and become a nun like your parents always wanted, or leave the order and live a secular life like you've always wanted. but the fact that a sister's flirty nephew is staying in the convent for the summer provides a perfect distraction to such headache.

♔ PAIRING: rockstar!jungkook x novice!reader

♔ GENRE: 80s au, angst, smut, humour, fluff, s2f2l

♔ WORD COUNT: 16.3k another long one i'm sorry

♔ WARNINGS: minor characters death, religious themes, catholic guilt, smoking weed, swearing, sacrilege and exhibitionism: fingering in a church, profanity, blasphemy, quiet sex & loss of virginity (you're probably thinking girl AGAIN?), protected sex, betrayal, one mention of rape

♔ AUTHOR'S NOTE: for an atheist i do seem to write a lot about religion lol. the first song jk writes & performs for reader + the inspiration for the title is rock god by selena gomez, and the second one church by chase atlantic. i recommend you listen to them in advance☺️ also, we'll pretend jk is blond in the banner okay?

1986

The day was going incredibly slow, as all of last month’s had.

Most people would attribute that to the fact that you were a novice, but their idea of what that entailed was far from the reality. Contrary to popular belief and even if some sisters wished it was the case, cloistered nuns didn’t spend all day just praying. There were many other things to keep busy with in a convent, such as attending to one’s studies, doing household chores, or working to bring money in and keep the place going. Free time had never been the part of the day you looked the most forward to, though, until recently. Not that it got any better then.

Contradictory as though it was, you were kept from the present by the same plaguing thoughts you didn’t want to be left alone with… And sometimes, such as now, you didn’t have any choice but to force yourself back into reality, running late as you were.

The novice mistress Sister Daeun—that is, the one responsible for the training of the novices—had assigned you to fix the torn seams on your classmates’ habits that morning. Hey, someone had to do it. So off you ran through the cloister not to melt under the same sun others didn’t seem to mind.

Others being Jungkook and the group of girls who gathered around to listen to him play the guitar.

The presence of men wasn’t rare in your abbey, built some centuries back. It was sort of shut off from the rest of the world, hidden up in a mountain, but lost hikers always wandered into it and the abbot was more than happy to let them spend a night or two as guests, regardless of their gender.

Jungkook was a guest too.

He was in a rock band, or so you’d heard, and that career choice was why his parents had kicked him out, something you’d pity him for if he wasn’t always in a cheery mood whenever you chanced to see him around. Of course, what guy wouldn’t, surrounded by girls?

It didn’t bother you that some of your less spiritual sisters succumbed to his tattoos, long dyed blond hair, charming voice, and piercings. Their parents would doubtlessly tell them to stay away from someone who looked like a delinquent—your conscience did too—but then again, they were the ones who’d forcefully made them join the order, so you understood where the girls’ disobedience came from. On a personal level, in fact.

Though not because of the same reason, you weren’t there willingly either.

Unlike theirs, your behaviour wasn’t scandalous in any way and there was no need for you to be schooled in rectitude, no. This was just the path your parents had wanted you to take since you were little and you’d resigned to comply, however unhappy it made you. It wasn’t that you wouldn’t make a good nun, devout as you’d been raised and actually enjoyed being, but it wasn’t your calling.

Leaving the lively cloister behind and trying to do the same with your affliction, you rushed to your destination.

About three hours later, you were still sat in front of the sewing machine in the otherwise empty laundry room, humming on a loop the part of the song Jungkook had been playing earlier. You couldn’t deny it was catchy... Besides, you needed a tune to distract you from the machine’s repetitive noise and the summer heat, or else you’d go crazy. Maybe you had already, given you’d failed to notice someone opening the creaky door and walking in.

“Hello?”

Startled, you raised your head to meet the eyes of the rockstar himself, filled with something akin to interest. “Oh, hi...”

Jungkook chuckled. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” Before you could kindly tell him not to worry, that it was your fault for spacing out, he grabbed the hem of his shirt to show you the hole in it that until then you hadn’t caught sight of. “I was told to come here to get this fixed?” He then glanced at the dozen habits lying on the table you still had to work on, and changed his mind not to burden you, “But I can come another time– Or not at all! I mean, ripped clothes are trendy, aren’t they?”

For the first time in a while, you laughed genuinely and not out of courtesy, “I wouldn’t know, there’s not much variety in a novice’s wardrobe.” Since Jungkook’s t-shirt would just take a moment to mend and you didn’t mind helping him, you decided to neglect your current task without a second thought, holding out your hand with a smile. “It’s alright, really!”

“You’re an angel.” He smiled back as he took off his t-shirt, exposing a toned body you weren’t prepared for. Bet he says that to all the girls, intruded a thought in your mind as though to make go away the uplift of his compliment, but you brushed it off before he reached the table. “By the way, was that my song you were just humming?”

“Oh? I heard you sing it earlier, but I didn’t know it was yours,” you said while getting to work. Meanwhile, Jungkook leaned against the door’s frame. “I don’t really listen to music much.”

“What?!” He was utterly shocked, eyes wide like he’d seen a ghost. “That’s the greatest sin of all! I’ll have a serious conversation with the abbot, they’re not teaching you girls the important stuff here.” Father Jimin would certainly be amused at such a request. “But I did see you running earlier in the cloister, now that I think about it. It is hot, Y/N, but I don’t believe the floor is in flames.”

He knows my name? What a stupid question. Whoever had told him to come to the laundry room must have seen you entering it and mentioned you’d be there.

“Yeah, I was late, had overslept. It probably looked like someone was chasing me… Nun on the run!” you rhymed out of nowhere. “There’s a title for your next single.”

“If naming my songs will get you to listen to them, I’m down.” You looked up from the task at hand to ask him if that meant he’d credit ‘Sister Y/N’ as a songwriter, but the sight of someone walking down the hallway towards the laundry room scared the words away. “You know, you’re too pretty to be a nun.”

Sister Daeun, now right behind Jungkook, smacked the back of his head and asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jungkook’s smile turned into a pout as he rubbed the spot. “Nothing, aunty. Ouch…”

Yes, he was her nephew, which was the main reason why Father Jimin had allowed him to stay not just for a few days, but the whole summer. Sister Daeun had promised on his behalf that as a thanks, he would help around to earn his bed and under no circumstances put in peril anyone’s vow of chastity. If he weren’t so good-looking, you imagined she wouldn’t have needed to make that promise.

“Y/N…” she sighed when she saw the pile of habits you had yet to fix the seams of. Despite the disappointment in her voice, she made sure to say tactfully, “It’s almost midday, I asked you to have all of them done before ten.”

Jungkook was the only one in the room who had no clue as to why you’d been working so slowly, but he didn’t hesitate to step forward when your head lowered in shame. “My bad, I’ve been distracting her for hours. And on top of it, I gave her more work…”

He approached the sewing machine, got his t-shirt, and put it on, all while you stared at him at a loss for words. Why would he take the blame? Sister Daeun started telling you to finish some other time and get ready for lunch, but you stopped listening, attention fixed on Jungkook as he discreetly winked at you before leaving.

That wasn’t the last time you met that day. Well, incorrect, because it was past midnight.

Like many nights before, guilt stirred a restlessness that kept you from falling asleep, the only solution you could think of being walking around the empty abbey in the hope of tiring your body and with it, your brain. It wasn’t that easy, though, often hours how long you’d wander about, always ending up at the cloister. Sitting on the stone base between the columns and gazing up at the stars brought some peace to you. More than praying, it appeared.

That night, such peace was disrupted when barely after ten minutes of it, the sound of a lighter being flicked made your head whip around.

“So you do have hair,” Jungkook joked as he sat against a column, bending one knee so he could rest his elbow on it. Although a bit embarrassed you were in your pyjamas and thus wearing no white veil that covered your head in front of a guy you didn’t know, you did the same on the next column to be able to face him. “Can’t sleep either?”

“Lately, not.”

He puffed at his joint before offering it to you, and a short laugh broke through your lips. Was he seriously tempting a novice to burn one with him? To be fair, he did mean to help you sleep, but it was still a bit… much for you. “I’ll pass, thank you.”

“Yeah, probably not a good idea,” Jungkook nodded at his own words before taking another puff, blowing the smoke to a side so it wouldn’t reach you. “I don’t want your parents to make a complaint because there’s a bloke loose in the convent corrupting the nuns. Can’t afford to be kicked out of here, too,” he whispered the last bit, as though talking to himself.

“Don’t worry, that’s not happening.”

“Why not? Are you girls not allowed visits or something?”

“No, we are, it’s just… they died last month. Car crash.”

“Shit, I’m so sorry.” You could see in Jungkook’s wide eyes how much he regretted bringing them up. “That explains why you were out of sorts this morning... Agh, I can’t believe they’re still making you do work, what a bunch of heartless pricks! Not to mention class, I mean, isn’t it summer?”

His indignation for your sake came as a surprise. Ignorantly, you’d allowed prejudices to decide what kind of person Jungkook was before he got the chance to show you himself. The familiar guilt well-deservedly returned to grip your heart.

“Father Jimin actually had me switch jobs with some sisters so that I’d get to do less demanding stuff,” you came to the poor abbot’s defence. “It makes no difference, but he’s not to blame nothing can.”

"Doesn’t praying help?” He took another puff, lips curling into a smirk at the thought that next crossed his mind. “I thought nuns had a direct line with God.”

The truth was your relationship with the Lord had strained. As someone whose thoughts and desires couldn’t help but fall into sin over and over, you didn’t feel worthy of His comfort, or dared ask for guidance. His or anybody’s.

“I have to go through the telephonist angels first, I’m not an official nun yet.” The muscles of your face relaxed, gaze falling to your lap. “To be honest, I don’t think I want to be.”

Jungkook’s head cocked to a side. “Really? So, what are you doing here? You don’t strike me as the type forced by her p– uh, family.”

“I do like this place and what they’re teaching us, but I’m here because my parents wanted a saintly daughter who could put in a good word for them up there. I tried telling them once that I have dreams of my own, but it ended in an argument they had the last word in. Now that they’re dead, it’s like the topic is permanently sealed, I can never talk them out of it. And I mean, I love them, so how can I disappoint them? What would it say about me if I waited until my parents were dead to disobey them?”

Only after you finished venting did it dawn on you that perhaps you’d said too much. After all, what did Jungkook care? What did anyone?

“What’s your dream?”

The question took you aback, but you still answered, “I’d like to go to university, get married someday, have kids... Not be trapped inside these four walls for the rest of my life, you know?”

“I know exactly what you mean, trust me,” Jungkook said quietly before puffing at his joint again. “You’re free to leave, though, right? I don’t need to master-plan an escape?”

You hummed a laugh, mindful not to be loud enough to wake anyone up, given neither of you should be out of bed. There may or may not have been a curfew you were breaking, as well as a tradition called the Great Silence in which everyone kept quiet from the final liturgical prayer of the day until the earliest one the next morning. It was a rule often broken, especially by you, but that didn’t mean the abbey wasn’t dead silent.

“Anytime I want, yes, only next year I’m supposed to take my solemn vows.” Jungkook nodded but a slight frown gave away he didn’t know what that meant. “Poverty, chastity, and obedience? It’s like a wedding with Jesus. I can always divorce him, but that doesn’t mean marriage is a light affair.”

Most orders didn’t work like that. There were various stages one had to go through before becoming a professed nun: an optional aspirancy, then a postulancy, a novitiate, and finally, a juniorate. Since you’d gone to Catholic school all your life, you’d skipped the first, done no more than a few months of the second, were about to start the final year of the third, and would not be doing the fourth since your convent didn’t teach it. Instead of six more years of formation before taking your perpetual vows, then, you had only one.

“Damn, and here I thought I had the most fucked up horoscope of the year. Maybe we were born on the same month.”

“What do you mean?”

“Doesn’t everyone know my parents kicked me out because I want to be a rockstar?”

“Yeah...”

Once again, you’d assumed wrongly about him. That because of his profession and looks, he was a rebellious kid who hated his parents and was glad to be rid of them. You hadn’t even considered their shunning might be putting him through a hard time.

“Look, disappointing your parents beats living a miserable life just to please them, even if it sucks. One day we’ll be old, and I personally want to look back and not regret my youth, feel like I wasted it. I’m not gonna tell you what to do but if you want my opinion, getting out of here and chasing your dreams says no more than you’re in charge of your own life.”

You had no idea why after that, Jungkook had taken it as his mission to stick with you.

It was common knowledge that you’d barely uttered ten words since your parents’ accident, so all eyes were drawn like magnets when you engaged in conversation with him of all people for hours on end. Since you came from vastly different worlds, it surprised you too that even though his company didn’t lessen your guilt, it was the best way to distract you from it. And precisely, that was his intention.

He would sit next to you at meals, trying to convince the sisters around the table in all seriousness that because they were cloistered, they weren’t aware Earth had been invaded by aliens last year.

“Do you think we’re stupid?” a postulant asked, giggles escaping you at how ridiculous the conversation you were having was. “Some of us do go out sometimes, I think we would’ve noticed.”

“They want you to think everything’s normal because only an army of nuns can defeat them!”

“How do we know you’re not one of them, huh?” you played along, narrowing your eyes in suspicion while Jungkook placed a hand on his chest, feigning shock.

“Aunty will vouch for me but even if not, I can’t believe you’d doubt me. We’ve known each other for like, what, a week? That’s enough for me to follow you into battle.”

“Sorry but can’t be too careful during an alien invasion.”

“That I warned you about! Why would I say anything in the first place?”

“I’ve been here for many years,” an older nun chimed in from the other side of the table, making everyone turn their attention to her. She addressed Jungkook, “You’ve just reminded me why I joined the order.”

He blinked, dumbfounded. “Why, sister?”

“Men talk so much nonsense it makes my head hurt.”

To see Jungkook argue playfully about aliens and men with a seventy-year-old nun who was having none of his shit was an experience, but it wouldn’t be just that.

Like you’d told him, Father Jimin had allowed you to switch jobs. Your old one consisted of embellishing clothes with elaborate religious embroideries—hence why Sister Daeun had asked for your help with the torn habits—that would later be sold on a street market stall in town beside other products manufactured by your sisters, whereas your new one required almost no effort.

There was an old married couple nearby who ran a goat farm, and a small group of nuns from your convent helped them in exchange of a portion of the food they made, instead of a salary. Father Jimin was clearly trying his best to raise your spirits when he’d assigned you to tend to the cutest new-born goats, but it wasn’t until Jungkook tagged along and you saw him struggle with the baby bottles, spilling milk all over his clothes and cursing at the tiny animals, that the abbot’s goal was achieved.

“No, no, no, come back, you little shit!” He chased a hoppy kid around the barn, unable to contain that lovely high-pitched laugh.

“How are you making a mess out of literally the easiest thing in the world?” you teased from the bag of pine shavings you were sat on, another kid resting otherwise peacefully on your lap.

“That’s easy for you to say, I’ve got Psycho making me do cardio over here!”

“Try this one,” you giggled, motioning to the empty spot beside you with your head so Jungkook would sit down. When he did, you lay the kid on his lap carefully and brought the baby bottle to its mouth, both of you watching as it fed without any problem. “See?”

It didn’t take long for the milk to run out, after which you and Jungkook stroked the kid to sleep while the other one still hopped around, sharing a smile when your fingers accidentally brushed.

Because he’d tag along, you agreed to helping out in the kitchen on another day, as time was somehow bearable if he was there. But you were still going through the motions, your parents’ absence ever-present.

“What do you think?” Jungkook stirred you awake from your trance. “Bitchin’, right? The best thing you’ve ever heard?”

The song that got stuck in your head the day you met was playing on a boombox he’d brought from his van and put on the worktop while the two of you and three other sisters cooked lunch.

The girl you’d just heard, he had explained, was the band’s lead singer Amber, whom he sometimes joined apart from playing the guitar. There were also a Hoseok on the drums and a Taehyung on the bass. Bangtan, their name was. You’d never heard of them.

“I’m not sure about the lyrics,” meaning all the cursing and allusions to sex, which got your sisters flustered in the background, “but I like the tune.”

“The tune…”

“I’m just more used to church songs, is all.” Jungkook’s eyes lit up. “No.” You knew he was thinking exactly of blasting his rock songs in the middle of Mass.

“Why not?” he asked as a joke while trying to steal a couple of french fries from a dish. You slapped his hand before he could.

“Because Father Jimin will exile you, duh.”

“And don’t you think I’ll give up yet. I’ll be found outside your cell’s window playing music on my boombox until you agree to go out with me.” You should’ve cast away the heat before it reached your cheeks, as his flirting was obviously just for fun. Something he did with all girls and which meant nothing. “Better yet, I’ll write you a song.”

“I don’t think a novice is the perfect muse for a rock song, especially if it’s about…”

Jungkook shook his head. “I’ll keep it PG-13 for you, I promise.” He then grinned, rubbing his hands together. “I’ll start working on it tonight.”

You weren’t together at all times, though. No, you had class, he had work, sometimes you didn’t see him for whole days. Such was the case one cloudy afternoon around three weeks after first meeting, when Father Jimin approached you in the cloister. It had been a while since your last visit to his confessional box, so you feared a scolding.

“I wanted to talk to you, actually,” he said with that distinctive, soothing voice of his as you walked together, “about Jungkook.”

Your heart missed a beat for a reason that escaped your knowledge. It felt, somehow, as though you’d been caught doing something you shouldn’t. “What about him, Father?”

“I hadn’t seen you smile for a while and now it’s all you do when he’s by your side. I know the past month has been very difficult, so it makes me happy to see you get through the loss of your parents, Y/N.” Did it really look like things were fine? Well, better that than having everyone worry about you until things got fixed, if that ever happened. “However,” Father Jimin continued, “as your Spiritual Director, it’s my duty to advise you not to rely too much on someone other than God for solace. There’s a reason for enclosure, so that the outside world doesn’t distract us from religion. Unless… you’ve reconsidered your life as a nun? There’d be nothing wrong with that.”

What Jungkook had told you that first night, you’d been chewing on ever since, but God and your parents had long won the war. ‘Honour thy father and thy mother’ was one of the Ten Commandments, after all.

“I have no doubts. I belong here.”

The last time you’d stepped in town had been for the funeral, but Bangtan was doing a gig at what Jungkook claimed was the coolest venue he’d ever been in and he’d managed to persuade the other members to perform Rock God, the song he’d pulled an all-nighter to write. You didn’t know what a title like that had to do with someone like you but apparently, the lyrics were from your point of view.

“You have to come,” he’d begged for the millionth time across the table the previous day, interrupting your Bible reading in the library. Luckily, nobody else was there, or had been before his arrival.

‘Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.’

Did that mean He would forgive you for the sin of going against your parents’ wishes? That you could hang the white veil and live how you dreamed of? The next passages from the Book of Isaiah answered those questions.

‘If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.’

In other words, you were fucked. There was no way out.

“I’d have to ask Father Jimin for permission, and I don’t think he’d let me go to a rock concert.”

You’d laughed to yourself at the idea but Jungkook had been serious, insisted, “Tell him you want to go buy groceries or something, he won’t say no to you.”

“You mean, ‘lie to him because he’ll take pity on you.’”

“Please.” He’d sank his elbows on the table, leaning so close you almost had to back away. You would have, had he not bewitched you with the most angelic of smiles. “Do it for me? I’ll tell Saint Peter I made you do it so he lets you in Heaven.”

That’s how you ended up in the queue for his concert, holding a plastic bag full of stationary you’d told Father Jimin you needed for class.

Jungkook had given you no ticket, said telling the security guy your name would suffice, and surely enough ‘Sister Y/N’ got you in. The habit had wisely been left at home, but the man still frowned at your modest outfit before putting a wristband on you that was a different colour than everyone else’s. You assumed it meant you were VIP.

There was a secluded area with round tables near the stage you were indeed taken to, where only a handful of other people were hanging out, waiting for the show to begin. You wouldn’t have thought of approaching them, as there was likely nothing you had in common, with them or anyone in the whole poorly lit venue. If you were there, out of your comfort zone, it was for Jungkook only.

The lights at some point changed colours and finally, the concert began. Bangtan got on the stage and performed song after song, giving their all to an audience that cheered loudly. You cheered too, captivated by a Jungkook who made you feel things with every look he gave you.

His blond hair was wet, whether with water, product, or sweat you didn’t know, but it dripped down his curls to his ripped clothes which allowed a glimpse of the inked skin of his torso. When had he got new tattoos? They weren’t there the day he’d got his t-shirt off for you to sew. You had never paid much attention to those that covered his veiny right arm and hand, but now you found yourself tickled by the fact, and wanting to see them up close. Definitely the tattoos, not his bare body… But most tantalising of all was the passionate way he played his electric guitar, moving around the stage with a confidence that made it clear he belonged there.

With that confidence, though, came a cockiness that had him eye-fucking every pretty girl in the crowd. Who’s to say he didn’t write songs for them too? Not to mention Amber, to whom he sometimes got so close you feared they were going to kiss—as did their fans, judging by their screams of excitement.

The last song of the night was Rock God, which he made sure to announce by enthusiastically mouthing you ‘This is it!’. You braced yourself for the lyrics.

Preacher man walked into the club, and he said He said, "Hey girl, can't you walk and not stray?" Father, I'm torn and I'm selling my soul to the Rhythm, the beat and the bass 'Cause I can't confess my rock and roll ways (Ooh) 'Cause I'm so possessed with the music The music he plays

Was the preacher man supposed to be Father Jimin? He wasn’t likely to walk in the venue right then, but the idea of him attending a rock concert was so absurd it made you smile. You guessed the tone of the song before Amber had even got to the chorus.

I can't stop my feet from dancing to the sound of his drum (Oh no) I fell in love with my rock god I can't keep my hips from swaying to his sweet melody You see, I fell in love with my rock, rock god

Oh, so not only did you like his music in this narrative, but you were also in love with him? You raised an eyebrow at that, to which he failed to bite down a smile. There must be thrill in succeeding to seduce a novice.

The next verse was similar to the first one. Then came the chorus again, twice, but it was the bridge that struck you, putting an end to the fun you were having. Jungkook watched your reaction closely, as he had during the whole song.

No, I wouldn't change a thing even if I could 'Cause I chose a path and I'm not looking back And I'm sorry if I left the angels crying over me

The chorus was sung twice more but the music muffled into the back of your mind, the bridge’s words lingering in the foreground. Would you be able to choose a path that resulted in your angels weeping? How could you? And how could Jungkook portray you as remorseless over it, when the matter was eating away at you inside?

The show was over before you knew it, and the audience slowly exited the venue while the band got out of their rockstars outfits and makeup backstage. About fifteen minutes later, they came into the area you were sat in and Jungkook bumped fists with the friends who’d come to see him in a rush, so as to not keep you waiting any longer.

Checking out your collared shirt and ankle-length skirt while approaching, he whistled. “Gee, Y/N, I can’t handle myself when you dress so sexy.”

“Because a novice’s habit is so much better.”

“There’s an appeal to it. Makes a man want to tempt you.” Earning a smile from him, you rolled your eyes. “Thoughts on the song. Shoot.”

You pouted. “Full of blasphemies. Are you supposed to be the rock god?”

“Who else?” Jungkook asked surprised. How did that escape you?

“Then why do I say ‘sound of his drum’? You’re a guitar player. Are you trying to set me up with your bandmate?”

“‘Guitar’ doesn’t rhyme with ‘god’,” he said matter-of-factly, it hitting him in the pause that followed. You laughed. “Well, yeah, neither does ‘drum’… but it does a bit more, right?”

“A bit more, yes. So, are you and Amber dating?”

Jungkook smirked. “Jealous much?”

“If you are,” you ignored his question, “she might not be too happy her boyfriend’s writing songs to other girls.”

“She has a boyfriend,” he cleared up, lifting a weight off your chest. “We’re just friends, what we do onstage is part of the show. Don’t worry, you don’t have to fight anyone to keep me.”

“What a relief,” you joked, taking a deep breath before continuing. “Listen, I’m gonna get going, it’s late and you said you were getting some drinks with Bangtan, so I’ll leave you to it. I had fun tonight, you did great.”

“I can drive you to the convent,” he offered, but you shook your head, picking the plastic bag up from the table.

“It’s alright, Sisters Joan and Theresa are still at their stall in the street market. I’ll go back with them.”

“Swell…” he said under his breath, hoping you couldn’t tell he’d wanted to say ‘bummer’ instead.

You didn’t see each other until the next night, when you broke the curfew yet again to hang out in the kitchen. Sat on the table, the two of you discussed your dilemma while sipping at the awful tea Jungkook had made. There weren’t many ways to fuck up tea, but he’d still managed it, holding the old kettle responsible.

All had begun with him pointing out you’d paled towards the end of Rock God and you telling him the lyrics had moved you because you’d chosen to finish your novitiate. There was no way, therefore, you could sell your soul to the rhythm, the beat, and the bass.

“I know I said I wouldn’t tell you what to do, but–”

“You did.”

“But hear me out. Now that we’re friends, I can’t just watch you make a decision I know you already regret.”

“I’d regret leaving too, at least this is the selfless choice.”

“Well, aren’t you a good person!” Jungkook’s mocking made you sigh and sip on your tea like it were alcohol. It did taste as bad. “Y/N, you need to live for yourself, not for two fuddy-duddies who couldn’t put their daughter’s happiness before theirs.”

“Don’t be mean to them.”

Jungkook only bit his tongue because of your pleading tone. “Sorry… Even if you loved your parents, you can’t deny they put you in a tough spot. I’m sure wherever they are, they’ve realised they were wrong and want you to be happy however you choose.”

“The thing is, they were convinced I’d be happy as a nun, that I just wanted to switch to secular on a whim. That’s why they ordered me to stay, they were looking out for me.” Jungkook almost grimaced at the word ‘ordered’, fought against commenting how messed up was the fact that you were using it in this context. Staring at the almost empty mug on your lap, you wondered whether it was insensitive of you to speak your mind. “It’s also what’s happened to you that I couldn’t bear happening to me, even if my parents are gone. I don’t want to do anything that would make them spurn me. I don’t want them not to love me,” your voice broke despite your best efforts.

Jungkook immediately stole the mug from your fingers and put it next to his on the table, so he could hold your hands. “Listen to me, my parents are assholes. Like, genuine bad people who shouldn’t’ve been allowed to have a kid. I won’t tell you the things they’ve said and done to me because you’d cry, but they are a different breed. Normal parents love their children no matter what. Why do you think yours would spurn you if they were still alive, instead of realising that they were making you unhappy?”

Good point, actually. If only it wasn’t far more complicated than that…

The second Jungkook withdrew his hands, you missed their warmth, even though it was a hot summer night. He sipped at his tea, and you suspected he only mmm-ed with delight to make you laugh, given he bloody well knew its taste was disgusting. Idiot.

“Just promise me one thing,” he added, a smirk tugging at his lips. “If you quit being a novice, go out on a date with me.”

Now, that made you laugh. “A date?”

Jungkook nodded, anchoring his foot to one of the legs of your chair so he could drag it close to his and rest his arm on its top rail, the proximity such that you could feel his breathing against your cheek. Heart racing, you crossed your arms and tried your hardest to appear unbothered. “I’ll pick you up at five and we’ll go roller-skating until we can’t feel our legs, then we’ll have dinner in my van while we watch a drive-in movie– A scary one, so you cling onto me for safety. Then I’ll drive you home, walk you to your door, and you’ll go ‘Oh! It’s too late, why don’t you stay over?’. So we’ll have some drinks, and you’ll take my hand to lead me into your bedroom, and then…”

“And then we’ll say our prayers and go to sleep.”

“To sleep, yes,” Jungkook chuckled, “afterwards.”

“I don’t know what makes you think I wouldn’t live almost like a nun if I left here. I am, in fact, a Catholic.”

“A relaxed one, I dare say. Oh, come on. You’ve never thought about breaking your faith’s rules? Not even to have fun?” He raised his eyebrows, waiting for a confession, but you shook your head.

“I can have fun without breaking the rules, I always have.”

Jungkook nibbled at his lip for a while, mentally debating with himself. Whichever of the voices in his head won, it made him say, “What if I showed you my ways? Would you be up for that?”

“Up for what, exactly?”

“You’ll see.”

Due to the series of communal prayers scattered throughout the day called Liturgy of Hours, it was as early as five that the whole convent got up. You’d usually go straight back to bed after the first one and get what more rest you could until it was time for class or work, but today, despite it being Sunday, a few sisters had volunteered to go to the farm and help around, you and Jungkook joining them to nanny the goats.

You didn’t mind getting your habit dirty there, but it was being an awfully hot July, which was the reason why you were wearing lighter clothes that morning when walking into the chapel alongside Jungkook to attend Mass. He was an atheist whom you supposed only went to these things to spend more time with you, and that warmed your heart.

Ever since you’d started hanging out, the same less devout sisters who’d previously flocked around him had gone back to the handsome abbot’s orbit, so the nearer pews to the altar had quickly been taken. Together, you sat alone at the back, the pew all to yourselves. Three quite tall sisters were sat in the one in front of you and acted as a barrier Father Jimin hid behind of, but as long as you heard him, it didn’t matter.

Your mind went elsewhere no more than a couple of minutes into the service anyway. Tuning out seemed to be easy as of late.

It was just so unfair, all of it. You could be learning in university, meeting new people, living a normal life where you wouldn’t need to ask an abbot for permission to go out if you fancied taking a fucking walk! It didn’t have to mean you’d stop practising your religion or let yourself fall into sin at all, nothing had to change in that regard. You took a deep breath charged with frustration. If only your parents hadn’t decided to take the car in the middle of a storm and you’d had more time to make them see reason… Why did they have to die? Why did God have to take them and leave you alone?

Right in the middle of your brooding was when Jungkook put his hand on your bare knee and asked in a whisper, “Hey, are you okay?”

You forced a smile that he didn’t seem convinced by, so his hand remained on the same spot after he’d gone back to paying attention to Mass. His touch didn’t make you uncomfortable, you welcomed it and the comfort it provided, but your jaw did drop when it slowly travelled down your inner thigh, towards your intimate area.

“What are you doing?” you mouthed, petrified at the possibility of anyone noticing. Luckily, the only person facing the pews was Father Jimin, who couldn’t see a thing from the altar thanks to your barrier-sisters.

“Showing you my idea of fun,” Jungkook leaned in to whisper, lips brushing against your earlobe. It wasn’t that what made you gulp, though, but the fact that he reached your clit and rubbed it softly over your linen shorts, up and down, side to side… The unexpected pleasure made your breath hitch in your throat, gaze flying around the chapel at the speed of light. “No one’s watching,” Jungkook reassured you. “Live a little, Y/N.” Feeling his middle finger now press your clit firmly and at an increasing pace, you looked at him, shocked there was no sign of shame on his features, eyes half-lidded with arousal as they studied your worried ones. “Tell me to stop and I will.”

Stop? You were still registering something had started there, in a sacred place, during Mass! What you were letting Jungkook do to you was all kinds of sinful, but… it felt so good you couldn’t bring yourself to say anything. Sobering up, he ceased his actions at that lack of consent, and was going to withdraw his hand and apologise had you not grabbed it and kept it in place down there, much to the surprise of both.

Relief showed on Jungkook in the form of an exhale. He wasted no time, then, sliding his hand inside your shorts and underwear, making you bite down on your lip when he found your clit once more and rubbed it in circles. He lingered there just enough to make your core pulsate with ache when he abandoned it to move on to your wet slit, something you had to slouch for him to do. He eased two fingers inside you that he began pumping in and out with a mastery that got you squirming in your seat, hand glued to your mouth to hold back the moans that threatened to escape it and gaze locked on the tattooed sleeve that disappeared inside your shorts.

That was when everyone started singing a hymn. Jungkook took the chance to quicken his movements, the sounds of your irregular breathing and his fingers sliding into your juices eclipsed by the song. He licked his lips, coating them with saliva before leaving chaste kisses on your neck, knowing if his tongue met it he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from fucking you right there and then. When he pulled back, he noticed you’d closed your eyes to get lost in the pleasure, and that they opened only when you felt his breath near your parted lips, to stare down at his. So close, yet he restrained the urge to kiss you, intent on watching you come.

He didn’t have to wait long, your walls now clenching around his fingers every time he rubbed that magical spot, thighs shaking as a result. All the tension built up inside of you suddenly released, and you dissolved into a daze just in time for the ending of the hymn. Not to overstimulate you, Jungkook gently removed his fingers and slipped out of the chapel. He returned a minute later with his hand washed and dry, and although you readily intertwined fingers with his when he reached out, you dared not meet his eyes after what had just happened.

That night you lay awake tossing and turning forever, unable to forget the feel of his touch.

Inexplicably, you weren’t ashamed of all the sins you’d added to the collection that day: falling into the temptation of lust, doing pre-marital sexual acts that didn’t lead to procreation, breaching your vow of chastity, desecrating a holy place, taking the sacrament while in mortal sin… Somehow, you just weren’t. You were, right after, but now it was as though you’d managed to sweep all the guilt related to it under the rug. As for the one related to your parents, well, Jungkook had been the sweetest distraction from it.

A distraction you craved again.

You must have been held sway by a demon when you got up from bed to go find Jungkook, but you were in no hurry to free yourself from its grasp.

Except for the first night, he tended to be the sleepless one who wandered about the abbey until you eventually joined him, so you knew he’d be awake. Indeed, he was on the phone in the community room, getting tangled up in the cord as he paced around, nervous. He couldn’t see you lurking in the hallway’s shadows, so you decided to let curiosity get the better of you and eavesdrop the conversation he was having.

“No, you’re not following,” he whispered into the phone. “My cousin’s friend’s brother is into this hot religious girl, and I– he! sort of fingered her in public… In a church… No, there were people present, it was in the middle of Mass… Nobody, that I’m– that he’s aware… No, Hoseok, it’s not dope! He’s going up and down the walls like a fucking yoyo... He isn’t so sure it was a good idea, fears he might’ve crossed a line… Well, he hasn’t seen her since, I think she’s been avoiding him– Agh, he thinks!... Fuck yeah, she did, and he loved it too… The problem is that I don’t want her to regret it and feel bad about it just because it wasn’t the time or place, or to never want to have sex because I got her into it the wrong way… What? He, I said he… You’re right,” he sighed, putting an end to his pacing. “I’ll tell him. Thank you, bro... ‘Night.”

Arms crossed, you couldn’t help but smile fondly. He was that worried about it? You should’ve known, you were friends after all. That was all he probably wanted to be, at least. Friends. With benefits, but friends. Who would want to be more than that not only with a novice, but with one as troubled as you?

A noise made you look up. It was Jungkook, now by the window, flicking his lighter over and over to pass the time. Your eyes inspected his fingers under the moonlight, the same ones he’d buried inside you that morning, and the longing that had got you out of bed returned to move your feet in his direction. You must’ve been abrupt while approaching him, though, as he jolted with a gasp at the sight of you.

“Sorry.”

“Y/N…” he said as he caught his breath from the startle. He had hoped you’d show up, but not so suddenly. Payback, he thought, for the way we met. “Listen, about earlier–”

You cut his sentence short with a kiss. It was soft at first, as timid as you felt, but Jungkook soon got over the shock that had frozen him and took charge of the matter, pulling you in a tight embrace. His tongue entered your mouth and swirled around yours like it was always meant to, or at least that’s what you wanted to believe. How else could it feel so good, and Jungkook so addictive?

It was a challenge, but you found the strength to step back and whisper so lowly that he almost didn’t hear, “I want you.”

“Are you sure?” Jungkook cupped your face with both hands, forcing you to look into his eyes. No need for that, they already had you enthralled, dark with the desire you’d infected him with.  

“Yes,” you exhaled, taking his hands in yours to lead him upstairs. “With you, yes.”

Once in your cell, you lost your pyjamas in a matter of seconds, both too impatient to feel each other.

Being naked and seeing Jungkook so was initially nerve-racking but once you were under the sheets, under his toned body, your bashfulness flew out the window. Especially when you saw his dick, already hard from just making out—you figured he’d been charged up since the morning. Yet his priority wasn’t his own pleasure, but yours, not an inch of your skin left untouched by his lips as he slowly travelled downwards. Until you started giggling out of nowhere, and Jungkook raised his head from in between your boobs to look at you in confusion.

“Your Barbie hair is tickling me,” you teased him as you tucked behind his ears the blond cascade that covered his face and grazed over your chest whenever he moved.

“Barbie, huh?” Jungkook whispered next to your ear only to lay a warm kiss right under it, all while he positioned himself in between your legs. “Do you want me to tickle you somewhere else?”

“Actually, I…” How did one say such a thing? “I want to tickle you, but I don’t know what to do.”

He chuckled, “My pleasure to instruct you.”

You did as he said and reclined next to him, upside down so he could touch you—he’d insisted—while you sucked him off. It did feel strange to take him in your mouth and run your tongue along the length of his shaft, at least until you heard his breathing speed up, resisting to buck his hips into your face as he was. Your cunt throbbed, and you wished Jungkook’s cock was inside it instead of your mouth. He seemed to sense that, so his hand soon crept between your thighs to remedy your ails, a whine escaping you then.

“You’re just as tight as earlier, fuck,” he groaned from the pillow as his fingers struggled to curl and uncurl inside of you, given you couldn’t keep still. It made you all the more eager to pleasure him, taking him as deep as you could so he saw the same stars you were beginning to see yourself. “You’re doing so well… That’s it, suck it harder, darling, ah… Wait, stop, stop!”

Immediately, you backed off. “Did I do something wrong?”

Jungkook sat up and used his thumb to wipe the drooling trail of saliva on your chin. “You were doing too well, miss.” Ogling your body, he licked his thumb. “Why don’t you come over here?” You nodded, would’ve agreed to do anything he asked in that moment.

He lay down again while holding your hands to guide you over to his lap, over his erection, but your sudden nerves made you shy away. Nevertheless, Jungkook pulled you closer with a smirk. “Where are you running off to?”

“I’m sorry, just… Will it hurt?”

He sat up to peck your lips cutely, “Oh, it will be excruciatingly painful,” and you pushed his chest with an eye-roll, so he returned to his previous position. He grabbed the condom he’d stopped by his cell to get before following you to yours and put it on.

A deep breath later, you grabbed his cock and placed its tip in your wet entrance, looking down at it to make sure you were doing it right. Hands between his head and the pillow, Jungkook watched patiently, turned on by your inexperience and the fact that he and he alone got to be the one to pop your cherry, make you break your vow of chastity. He thought it’d take you a while to get used to the size of his dick, but you surprised him by rolling your hips almost aggressively the second you sat on it, chasing pleasure as though it would escape from your grasp otherwise.

“Shit, yes, like that.” All flushed under you and with his eyes barely open, feeling the way you moved with all his senses, Jungkook ignited a lust in you that even an angel would be willing to fall from grace for.

“Oh my God, it feels so good…”

“I know, baby.” He wanted to dig his nails into your hips and move them back and forth himself but found that for a virgin, you were already doing a superb job, laughed instead. “Look at you, fuck. What a dirty bitch, you’re loving it.”

“I am…” you panted, his name-calling sending you over the edge. “Jesus, I am.”

It wasn’t long until Jungkook felt your walls clench tight around him, something he didn’t blame you for as he himself was close too. His cock had been burning in his pants ever since Mass, even after he’d jerked himself off in his cell when the service had finished and you’d vanished. Grabbing your wrist, he pulled you close to his mouth and kissed you hungrily, but even then, you refused to stop moving, felt too good. “Gonna come already? You like me that bad?”

I like you a lot. You were having a tough time not moaning, especially when he talked. His deep voice did all manner of things to you. “I’m so close, ah...”

“Why don’t I help you out with that, hm?”

He didn’t wait for an answer before bending his knees and repeatedly thrusting into you with such force that it had you gasping for air. If you’d known he could fuck you like that, you’d have asked him to be on top at the beginning. Eyes squeezed shut, you buried your head in the crook of his neck to moan against it as you came, finally letting go. Jungkook bit into your shoulder, not to hurt you, just hard enough to keep himself from grunting loudly as he found his own release after a few more thrusts, but your bodies remained locked until your heartbeats slowed down.

It didn’t hit you how loud your panting had been until your breath toned down and there was silence in the room. You prayed it hadn’t woken anybody up.

At some point, you got off Jungkook for him to remove his condom and go throw it in the bin next to your desk. You covered your naked body with the sheets, expecting to next see him get dressed, but he lay back on the bed. You didn’t understand.

“Aren’t you leaving?”

He scoffed. “Kicking me out, ouch. Why would I leave?”

“I thought… that’s what guys do.” At least, that was what your non-virgin sisters had told you. That men lost interest in a woman as soon as they’d had their way with her.

Jungkook shook his head as he said softly, “I’m not going anywhere.” Having sex surely messed with one’s head, there was no other explanation as to why you blushed like a teenager. The two of you got on your side, facing each other, and Jungkook started caressing your arm with the back of his fingers, the simple action so soothing you thought you’d fall asleep. “Is this nice?”

“Very,” you replied, eyes closing against your will.

“Did I go too far earlier?”

You were taken aback by the sudden question. “Maybe, but I liked it. You were right about breaking the rules. Looking back… I think it was what you said about living a little that got to me. Here at the convent, I don’t really feel alive, but I do when we’re this close.”

“See?” Jungkook asked gently, trying to make you see his point. “What’s stopping you from quitting, then? Nothing should cost you feeling alive.”

“Apart from my parents?” you sighed. “Look around. As a novice, I couldn’t receive their inheritance. Vow of poverty, remember? What you see in this cell is everything I own.” Jungkook had already noticed on his way in your lack of personal belongings. A cross hung over the bed, a small pile of religious books on the desk, a framed photo of you with your family, and little more. It was so empty and cold that anyone would’ve thought you’d just moved in. “I can’t afford to go to university, much less live on my own.”

“Well… I’ve been saving up for a while and I’m moving in an apartment with Hoseok and Tae when summer’s over. Why don’t you come stay with us? I’m sure they won’t mind!” he said enthusiastically, eyes sparkling like he’d come up with the solution to all your problems. “I’ll help you find a job and you’ll be able to afford uni, easy-peasy.”

You were too sleepy to chuckle, but a faint smile did tug at your lips because of how determined he was to fix things. Things that were too broken to be fixed. “Let’s not talk about this right now, please?”

Even though Jungkook wasn’t pleased with your response, he forced a smile. “Why, did I tire you out?” Leaning in, he kissed your lips lightly. “You’re right, let’s not ruin the moment. Come here.”

He had you rest your head on his chest, and held lovingly, you fell asleep.

Understandably, he’d left by the time you woke up. If anyone saw him coming out of your cell, they might work out what he’d been up to there and the two of you would be kicked out of the convent. His scent lingered in your sheets, but it didn’t make any less disappointing waking up without him by your side. What’s more, as you put on your habit after having a quick shower, you were assailed by the most heart-breaking questions.

What if Jungkook had pretended to be your friend only to get in your pants? What if, now he’d got what he wanted, he blew you off? What if you’d risked everything for a guy who felt nothing for you?

To your immense relief, when you walked into the refectory for breakfast, he waved at you with a smile and gestured you to sit next to him. You were going to before Father Jimin suddenly appeared before you.

“Good morning, Y/N,” he greeted warmly, as ever.

“Oh, good morning, Father!”

“I wanted to make sure everything’s okay.”

You blinked. “It is, why?”

Shit. He knows?

“You left the chapel in a hurry after Mass yesterday,” he said, “and you didn’t show up to the remaining services. Were you unwell?”

“Oh... Yes, I was.” If you had locked yourself up in your cell, it was for no other reason than to avoid Jungkook and digest the fact that he’d fingered you in public. You lied, “I was sick all day, but I’m fine now.”

“I’m glad,” Jimin said with a smile you returned, then grabbed your hand to surround it with both of his, like old people will. “I know this comes out of nowhere, but I’m really proud of you, Y/N. For pulling through these challenging times. Many, including myself, can only learn from your strength. I know you’ll make a great nun.”

He gave your hand a soft squeeze and left you there, frozen in your spot. It was as though your sins finally dawned on you, all of them at once. You’d really believed leaving the convent didn’t have to mean you’d betray your faith and here you were, sleeping with a guy you’d met barely a month ago without shame because that made you feel alive.

What had you done? What were you turning into?

No longer hungry, you left to go back to your cell, tears already streaming down your cheeks before you made it out of the empty hallways. Or were they empty?

“Y/N!” You ignored Jungkook’s voice and quickened your pace, too ashamed to face him. “Hey, wait up!” He sprinted to reach you, concern shaping his features when he blocked your way and realised you were crying and trying to hide it from him. One thing was telling him your troubles, another to break down like a pathetic, helpless little girl. In the most caring tone, he asked, “Hey, what’s wrong?”

You explained, told him how you felt.

“I’m letting Father Jimin down,” you sobbed. “Him, my parents, God, and everyone.”

“You’re not,” Jungkook kept repeating. “You’re in a period of discernment, right? So who says you can’t reach a conclusion by trial and error? That’s what other nuns have done too. Before they got here, yes, but it was doing things they later regretted that convinced them to become nuns.”

“I don’t regret last night,” you said in all honesty, “but I do hate that I don’t regret sinning... You just can’t understand, you’re not religious.”

Jungkook looked down. “Maybe I can’t, but if I know something it’s that if what we did made you happy, it shouldn’t be a sin.” He looked around to make sure no one else was there before cupping your wet cheeks and kissing you, every muscle in your body relaxing under his touch as he knew they would. “Now come with me and eat something.”

He didn’t fully convince you, but your will wasn’t strong enough to resist his tempting.

For the next three weeks, you continued sleeping together at night, pretending you were no more than close friends at day. Whatever the time, Jungkook made sure to spend as much of it as possible with you, although not for a moment did you ever let yourself believe he had any feelings for you other than sexual. You weren’t even sure you wanted him to develop them, truth be told, as this thing you had was a fling. Come the end of summer less than a month from now, he’d move out and you’d start the second and final year of your novitiate, so whatever it was between you had no future.

Still, he kept writing you songs.

Some he’d sing quietly in bed so you’d fall asleep listening to his angelic voice, but the latest one, Church, he’d also asked you to come see him perform in a concert. And so, you’d lied to Father Jimin again, claiming the ancient kettle in the kitchen was broken and a new one needed to be bought. What’s a sin more to secure your one-way ticket to Hell?

Jungkook had warned you this song was not PG-13. He’d be the one singing it, not Amber, and he’d begged and begged you to wear one of his huge t-shirts to the concert with nothing underneath, refusing to tell you why. Leaving the abbey dressed as modestly as was expected of a novice, you changed outfits in the venue’s toilets. You didn’t know why you’d agreed to it but the first line of Church explained his request.

You're wearing nothing but my t-shirt Call me shallow but I'm only getting deeper, yeah Stay on the ground until your knees hurt No more praying, baby, I'ma be your preacher

He half whispered the whole verse into the microphone, all while his eyes pierced yours from the stage. You couldn’t look away either, entranced by his voice and presence. So far from where you were sat, how could he make you feel as though the air had run out in the whole venue?

And I'll keep leading you on If you keep leading me into your room The drinks are all gone But that's fine, baby, so am I

You remembered the date Jungkook had talked about taking you out on and how… standard it now sounded to you as he turned his attention to the girls who cheered for him in the audience. Was it scripted? Something he said to all of them to lead them on? The more you thought about it, the more you realised he’d never actually take you skating. No, you were just for keeping his nights busy.

His gaze found you again.

I'm about to take you back to church (back to church) Well, tell me your confessions, baby, what's the worst? Yeah Baptise in your thighs 'til it hurts (you know it hurts) 'Cause I'm about to take you back to church (oh yeah)

I'll keep you up until the sunset Speaking in tongues, yeah, we ain't done yet (yeah) Don't take my verses out of context I know it's weighing on your conscience

Those last two lines… Further confirmation your relationship was just sex and that you shouldn’t read too much into anything he said, or feel guilty for sinning by having a friend-with-benefits. It was self-contradictory of you to feel down about him not reciprocating your feelings, but you did. Don’t they say love is irrational?

Despite how sad you’d got, the night didn’t end with the concert, but with Jungkook fucking you without restrain. When he was inside you, nothing else mattered.

You were in the back of his van, parked somewhere near the abbey yet not enough for anyone to hear the loud moans that each of his thrusts caused, even with the windows open not to melt in there.

“Fuck, keep moaning for me,” he grunted, gripping your waist to keep you in place.

“Keep fucking me, then…” Jungkook scoffed, would’ve commented on how dirty he’d turned you had he not been so close. You’d come already yourself, but were more than glad to let him go on until he did too.

“Since you’ve got such a big mouth,” he said, panting, “why don’t you put it to good use?”

It took him most of his willpower to pull out and remove his condom. You sat up and opened your mouth for him to shove his hard cock in, swirling your tongue around the tip before closing your lips tight around it and starting to bob your head to take all of him. A bit more experienced now and having learned to love sucking Jungkook, you knew exactly how he liked it done. You could feel it, his cock twitching against your tongue as you savoured it, letting you know he was going to come.

He pulled back again to jerk himself, and you began rubbing your clit, aroused again by the sight between your spread legs. “I thought you were done?”

“Yes, but you’re so hot…” you moaned, and he huffed out a laugh. Biting his lip harshly as he ogled your naked body and the way you touched yourself, it wasn’t long until he came all over your thighs, your own release following.

Jungkook smirked when he was no longer out of breath. “Dreams do come true.” He was staring at your thighs dripping with his cum and your own juices, and you realised he was talking about Church’s ‘baptise in your thighs’. You were about to smile when the rest of the song came to mind, and suddenly you didn’t feel like it anymore… Once Jungkook had cleaned you up with a cloth, he lay down next to you. “Come here.”

You always hoped he’d say that, even though he never failed to. So resting your back on his chest, he held you from behind, caressing your hands in a comfortable silence. It was then that you noticed the blank spot between the tattoos in Jungkook’s wrist. It was tiny, but seemed intentional.

“Are you not inking this bit?”

“I’m saving it for a small symbol, maybe a letter.” He kissed your temple. “Your name’s initial, what do you say?”

Your lips committed to it before your brain did. “Do you get tattoos of the others?”

Jungkook frowned. You couldn’t see him, but you knew he did. “What others?”

“The other girls you sleep with.” There was no jealousy in your casual tone, but it was still petty. Jungkook shifted so he could face you. He was indeed frowning, both perplexed and offended.

“There are no others,” he promised, serious as you’d ever seen him. “You trust me that little?”

“I didn’t think I had to trust you. Aren’t we just hooking up?”

Jungkook rubbed his eyes as if the confusion was giving him a headache. “You thought I was sleeping with other girls and said nothing?”

By what right could you ask him to be faithful in a relationship you planned to end soon? Besides, what if in doing so, you annoyed him enough to stop wanting to be friends? If sharing him with others was the only way to have him, it hurt, but you’d do it. You looked down as you whispered, kind of embarrassed, “I guess I do like you that much…”

Jungkook raised your chin with his curled index finger, made you look at him. He despised the sadness he saw in the depths of your eyes, the one you were trying to repress. “You’re much more than sex to me. I worship you and if I could, I’d spend every waking moment next to you.”

In a small pause, you tried to rack your brain. “Is that from a song?”

“No, but it should be. I’ll write it down later.” Jungkook nodded, agreeing the rhyme had potential. Still, he wasn’t going to let you change the subject. “Y/N, I’m in love with you.”

He is?  That did take you off guard.

“You shouldn’t be, I’m a novice,” you said anyway at your most hypocritical.

Jungkook sighed, “What’s so wrong about it? Don’t you love me?”

You didn’t want to lie to him. A smile made your lips stretch before you answered, “I do,” and softly, Jungkook kissed them. Every time he pulled back from a kiss, it felt like it had been too short, no matter how long it lasted. Like you needed more because you could never be sated of him. “Does this mean… we’re dating?”

“I mean, you’re technically engaged to Jesus, and I’m not a guy who likes sharing,” Jungkook joked before giving you a peck and returning to his previous position under you. “If you don’t wanna be just lovers, you’ll have to break up with him first.”

You answered nothing. Should you listen to him, though?

Around two weeks of bliss sprang from your love confessions, where it became hard to pretend you weren’t mad for each other in public, such as when he’d whisper in your ear how provocative you looked in your habit and you giggled like a schoolgirl in love—which, technically, you were. Your parents barely made it into your thoughts, as they were filled to the brim with Jungkook.

From the moment they were over, it all went downhill. Worse, it fell into an abyss.

You had just come out of class with other novices when your hand was grabbed by someone who dragged you through the hallway to head upstairs. “Sorry to steal her, sisters, it’s urgent!”

“Jungkook, what are you doing?” you asked as he led you into your cell in a rush, closing the door for privacy. “You can’t be in here during the day–”

“I’ve found a way.” Only then did you notice how excited he was, a grin across his face. “A way to pay for your university.”

His aunt had been the one to tell him, at the beginning of the summer, that he must plan ahead as an adult now that his parents had turned their back on him, but it wasn’t until he fell for you that he actually started doing that. He was sure he wanted you to be by his side on whatever path he took, for his future to merge with yours somehow.

You, however, knew this conversation would not end well. “Enlighten me.”

“Bangtan is going on a nationwide tour next year.”

“Oh my God, that’s great!” You held his hands and grinned with him. “I’m so happy for you.”

“Y/N, this means I’ll earn a lot of money.” Then, you looked away. “With what I’ve got saved up plus that, you can afford to go to uni, even a private one, and we don’t have to live with the boys, we can have a place of our own! On the road we won’t even have to sweat about that, our company will pay for everyth–”

You freed your hands from his grasp, said with a nervous laugh, “You’re going a bit fast, Jungkook…”

His grin faded. “What do you mean? Isn’t money what you need to get out of here?”

“I’m grateful you want to take care of me but I can’t leave, you know why.”

“Are you serious right now?” Jungkook couldn’t believe it. “Y/N, your parents are gone. I know it’s hard but you have to move on, I don’t want you to wither in this place when you have a chance at happiness.”

“Just because you chose to let your parents down doesn’t mean the rest of us want to.” You regretted those words as soon as they left your mouth, the sound of Jungkook’s heart breaking reaching your ears. Or was it your own?

It took him some long seconds to process you’d said that, then answer, “I told you how they were to me, forgive me for not giving a shit about them.”

“Well, mine are a different story. I do care about them.”

“And not about us? We can’t be together anymore after I leave the convent. Have you not thought about that, or were you going to end things like they meant nothing? Because for weeks, I’ve been trying to find a way to have a future with you.”

“I never asked you to,” you sighed, welling up. You might not have, but a part of you had wanted to. Wanted to go with him too. “There’s no way we can have a future together.”

Jungkook teared up as well, and you hated yourself for it. He was being met with unjust meanness from the person he genuinely loved. You sucked so bad.

“What am I to you, then? What have I been these past months?”

“A distraction.”

It wasn’t a lie, and that’s what hurt the most. You loved Jungkook, and yet, you’d used him to set aside the pain of your parents’ loss and the guilt that was consuming you for being a sinner. You were always going to dispose of him like a toy outgrown, regardless of everything he’d done for you.

He stared for a while, but you couldn’t meet his eyes out of shame. “That’s good to know,” he muttered before storming out, leaving you in a puddle of tears you deserved to be drowned in.

You trudged your way to class after a grey morning in the library. There was still no passage from any religious book that excused your countless sins and promised the salvation of your blighted soul, but that didn’t worry you so much right now. What did, was Jungkook.

He was likely avoiding you—for which you couldn’t blame him—though you doubted meeting and apologising for the ugly things you’d said would be a remedy to the damage done. Not that you didn’t mean them, but they could’ve been said with tact. Jungkook’s wicked crime was loving you, after all.

So busy were you missing something as random as his cologne that you didn’t notice until the end of the class that everyone kept stealing glances at you, whispering to each other afterwards. Even if a tired demeanour wasn’t deserving of such a disproportionate reaction, you still blamed the barely two hours of sleep you’d got for your sisters’ scandalised looks, but another novice approached you in the hallway out of pity to let you know you’d actually made the convent’s news.

You froze in your spot when she said it was because Jungkook had spread the rumour that you’d been sleeping with him.

No, please... Tell me he hasn’t.

Leaving your sister where she stood and running off to find him with the disapproving gaze of every other person you passed burning into your skin, you prayed you were inside a nightmare harder with each stride.

Jungkook couldn’t have betrayed you. Someone must have seen or heard you and put two and two together, right?

Such theory turned into dust when you saw him sat in the cloister surrounded by girls like the day you’d met, playing a melody in the guitar for their attentive ears. Somehow, you knew he’d done it then, and on purpose. You started to feel sick as you approached them, whether because of the summer heat or the knife stabbed and twisted in your back, you didn’t know.

“We need to talk.”

Jungkook didn’t bother to look up as he said, “If we were still dating, I’d totally be shaking at that sentence, Y/N.”

Some of your sisters giggled, others bit their lip not to. You went red, begged, “Please.”

Albeit reluctantly, he stood up and followed you to an empty hallway. You didn’t know whether you were more upset, scared, surprised, or disappointed, but the smell of the cologne you were missing earlier managed to calm you down a little, as Jungkook’s company tended to do. Your stupid body seemed to not have caught up on the fact that he was the cause of your hurting.

“What do you want?” he asked curtly.

“What do I want? To know how you could tell everyone about us, Jungkook, how you could do this to me. I’ll be expelled! And I don’t have parents or a family that will take me back if I go apologise to them, I have nowhere to go. Is that what you want? For me to be with you because I have no other choice?”

“Of course not, we’re done,” Jungkook assured you that wasn’t his plan, which you believed. He hated your guts, his dark eyes told you. “But now you’re not tied to a place you don’t really want to be in.”

“Oh, don’t pretend you didn’t do this out of revenge.”

“So what if I did?”

You stared at him for a while, speechless like he had the time you’d last met. “And here I thought you’d proved me wrong.”

“In what,” Jungkook asked in a scoff, “becoming a nun now that you’ve been dicked down?”

The coldness of his tone stung your heart. In disbelief, you shook your head. “No, in that there was more to you than what first meets the eye.”

A grain of shock broke through the mask of indifference Jungkook was wearing, probably because your words weren’t visibly said against your better judgement this time, but while seeing him through the same lenses as his parents did. You looked at him just like them the night they’d kicked him out, in a way he had hoped you never would.

And how could you not? You’d thought you knew him, yet he’d gone ahead and ruined your life. Maybe you never did know the real Jungkook at all, who was now too taken aback to come up with an answer before another novice approached.

“Father Jimin wants to see you, sister,” she said, after which you took a deep breath, nodded, and followed her without so much as giving Jungkook one last glance.

In his office, sat on his desk, Father Jimin was quiet. Had been so since you’d come in and sat down.

One of his elbows rested on his chair’s arm and two fingers pressed on his closed lips as he thought of what to say. You already had an idea of what it would be, and it made you no more ready, fists clutching the skirt of your lap.

“I don’t know what to say,” he finally confessed in a sigh. It struck you how it was the first time in the few years you’d known Father Jimin that you didn’t see a smile on his face, or at least friendliness. He was the kind of person who always saw the best in people but right now, there was nothing good left in you. “I’m truly at a loss for words. I never thought you’d do something like this, or that I’d find out from other mouths.”

Tears blurred your sight at the memory of him telling you he was proud of you. “I know I have no right to ask for forgiveness, but I’m begging you, Father. It was the mistake of my life–”

“You broke your vows, Y/N. Defiled a holy place.” Oh… Jungkook had admitted to that as well? Chin trembling, you pressed your lips together not to cry. “Lied to me about it and God knows what else… This behaviour cannot be tolerated. You can stay in the abbey until you find a job and a place to live, but you are dismissed from this community, if not excommunicated.”

You sobbed, unable to hold it in anymore, “Father, please. I can’t let my parents down, their last wish was that I become a nun–”

“Isn’t it your wish? Were you lying about that too?” Your head lowered in shame and Father Jimin leaned back into his chair with a loud sigh. “You should have thought about your parents before getting involved with Jungkook. Be grateful they aren’t here to see you stray this bad.” He waited for you to say something, but shame kept you from it, as he was right. “You may leave now.”

Everything had happened so fast that a week later, you were still assimilating it.

Except when necessary, you barely left your cell. Dreaded both the judgemental looks of your sisters and the non-existent ones from Father Jimin, who ignored your presence whenever he had to suffer it in the chapel or the refectory. Not to mention running into Jungkook. To your knowledge, he’d been kicked out too, was sometimes seen moving boxes from his cell to his van. There wasn’t much for him to pack, so you guessed he was dragging the process. What for, you tried not to care.

That was the main reason why, helped by the yellow pages, you’d been job-hunting through the telephone. Not that it was better or worse than going in person, because nobody wanted to employ an ex-novice anyway. They literally hung up when you mentioned you’d been expelled from the convent—as expected, to be honest—but lying again was not an option. You’d learned your lesson the hard way.

Eventually, you did manage to land an interview for a job. Given it didn’t pay that well, it’d be a while until you could afford to move out of the abbey and even longer until you’d step in a university as a student, which was frustrating, but at least you didn’t need anyone’s permission to leave. Since you weren’t a novice anymore, nobody batted an eyelid at you heading outside the afternoon of your scheduled interview.

You were near the main door when, out of nowhere, Sister Daeun stopped you to talk.

“My nephew’s told me everything. I can’t say I approve of your relationship, but it does make me feel better that there was love involved. A lot, apparently,” your gaze averted to the ground, “which makes your decision to break up with him out of respect for your parents all the more admirable. It was wrong of Jungkook to make it public, he knows that, and he would like to apologise and give you the money he made this summer.”

“I couldn’t take it, sister,” you opposed. “It’s his. He needs it to pay rent, he’s moving in with Hoseok and Taehyung.”

Wait, was that why he hadn’t left yet? Because he wanted to wait until September so he didn’t have to pay for August?

“He’ll make much more when he’s on tour,” Sister Daeun insisted. “This is the least he can do for you. That I can do for you, too. You’ll always be my novice, Y/N, no matter what.” Without a second’s thought, you hugged her tightly. It was solacing to know there was at least one person who saw past your sins. “Jungkook’s gone to get the money but he won’t be here until late, Bangtan is opening for another one of those rock bands in a concert tonight. He’ll give it to you tomorrow.”

“I was just going into town, so if you tell me the name of the venue, I’ll stop by. He must be there doing a stage rehearsal.” You remembered the light in his eyes when he’d explained to you everything about the vocation he was so passionate about, how sweet his smile was… No. No. You shouldn’t feel anything after what he’d done. “I want to get this over and done with as soon as possible.”

That turned out to be yet another bad decision.

Once your interview was over, you rushed to the same venue you’d seen Jungkook perform Rock God and Church.

Paying no mind to the fans at the entrance who looked askance at you for jumping the line, the security guy let you in when he recognised you. Memories of the two nights you’d previously been there stormed you while getting backstage, especially how fast your heart had beat because of the racy lyrics of the songs and the way Jungkook had looked at you from the stage.

Now, it died inside your chest as you watched him make out with Amber at the end of the otherwise empty hallway.

He had her pinned against the wall, hands gripping her ass to press their bodies together and lips devouring hers as though he couldn’t get enough. Amber’s hands were wrapped around his neck, and she now grabbed a fistful of his hair to pull his head back and start kissing his neck. You saw how Jungkook smirked at the action, turned on by her dominance.

Both in their rockstar outfits, they looked like a perfect match, so you couldn’t help but wonder if they’d been dating all along. If that boyfriend of hers Jungkook had told you about was none other than himself.

Forcing yourself out of your shock, you exited the venue through the back as quickly as you could, saving the cascade of tears that was already building up in your eyes until you were alone.

It wasn’t that you were going to forgive him and expected his apology to come with an offer to date him again, but even after everything he had done to you, you still loved him. You hated yourself for it, but you couldn't help it. You were so stupid that you wished he'd find you there, sat on the cold concrete, and just held you in his arms until you stopped crying.

The next day you slept through breakfast, and would’ve stayed in your cell until lunch had Father Jimin not summoned you to his office again.

Curiously, this time around he looked… sorry?

“I’ve been made aware of some information this morning,” he said from across his desk with a nod.

“About me?” You shifted uncomfortably in your seat. Oh, God, what now?

“I can’t answer that because it has to do with a confession, but it’s made me realise I was wrong.” He leaned in, gaze moving around as he tried to think of a way not to reveal anything disclosed in the confessional box. “I should’ve been more cautious instead of welcoming just anyone into our home. Sometimes, I fail to see beyond the surface, and it results in the harm of others. A harm I pray it’s possible to heal from.”

“I don’t understand…”

“What I mean is that you don’t have to be afraid anymore. You can go back to being a novice, or take as long as you need to resolve any doubts you might have. Whatever you choose, I’ll support you.”

“But, why, Father? The things I did– You forgive me?”

“I’ve seen you regret them even if they weren’t your fault, so yes, I do.” You frowned. “I just hope you can forgive me too.”

On your way back to your cell, you walked slowly, using all your energy to figure out what Father Jimin had been talking about. When the answer popped up in your mind, you turned around and ran through the abbey. If Jungkook had done what you thought he had… Fortunately, it didn’t take long to find him, as you almost crashed together when turning to the next hallway. Had it not been because he’d grabbed your waist in time, you would’ve fallen.

When he realised it was you, he let go and stepped back. “Y/N, I wanted to talk to y–”

“Did you tell Father Jimin you raped me?”

The question took him by surprise. “He talked to you first… Wait, I thought confessional secrecy was unbreakable?”

“He didn’t tell me, I deduced it on my own.” You crossed your arms, disappointed you were right. “Why would you do that? I can’t make sense of it.”

“It was the only way to get the abbot to take you back. It’s not like he can report me to the police, and I’m leaving anyway… I told him I made you do things and that you were scared to tell anyone.” Jungkook looked everywhere but your eyes. “I’m really sorry for outing you. It was fucking childish of me and you didn’t deserve it. I was just so mad at what you said… but I know that’s no excuse.”

A part of you wanted to apologise for that and even ask him if it was too late to start over, but another reminded you of what you saw last night and stopped you, along with the one that should hold the most weight—your parents. It was a miracle you’d been given back the chance to honour their wishes, so you couldn’t ruin it again.

“I also wanted to give you this.” Jungkook handed you an old school bag. “My aunt told you what’s inside, right? She mentioned earlier you were going to come pick it up yesterday at the venue.”

“Yes, I forgot…” you lied. “I was at a job interview and got out quite late.”

“That’s okay. Did it go well?” He shouldn’t have asked, it was none of his business anymore. The interest in you had just rolled out of his mouth before he could stop it.

“It did, actually.” Both of you knew that if you went back to being a novice, you couldn’t take the job, but neither addressed it.

“Swell.” Jungkook put his hands inside his pockets, looked at you like he wanted to say much more. “I hope you have a happy life, Y/N. I really do.”

“Wait, are you saying goodbye? You’re leaving now?”

So soon?

“Yeah, poor Father Jimin thinks I’m… Well, you know. I wouldn’t want someone like me around you girls either. Plus, it’s September today, summer’s over,” he said with a forced smile. “Hoseok and Tae are waiting for me in the van. I shouldn’t keep them waiting.”

Before he could leave, you walked closer and gave him a hug. It didn’t feel right even when he wrapped his arms tight around you and buried his face in the crook of your neck, what with everything left unsaid, but you needed to feel his warmth one last time.

“Goodbye, Jungkook. And happy birthday.”

Two years later

“You’ll like Bangtan, they’re wicked hot,” Chloe said for the third time, rather trying to convince herself than you, as she knew rock wasn’t your type of music. “Especially Taehyung, he’s my favourite!”

The concert was supposed to start soon, so hugging yourself and rubbing your arms, you stood on your tiptoes to check if the long queue ahead was moving any faster. “Well, I’m glad they’re hot, ‘cause I’m freezing.”

She, Chloe, was a friend you’d made on the first day of university. Lots had changed.

“It won’t be long now, get the tickets ready,” she gave you something to do, to forget about the February cold.

As she’d promised, it took less than five minutes for the two of you to enter the biggest venue in town. Such was the fame of Bangtan now. You were only glad the security guy from the other times wasn’t there to recognise you, since Chloe was unaware of your past as a groupie. It wasn’t that you were keeping it from her… You just didn’t feel like talking about him.

“Come on,” she grinned while grabbing your hand, all excited, “let’s get close to the stage!”

The concert lasted what felt like an eternity.

Not only did you have to endure Rock God and Church again, which opened the wound of a relationship you still hadn’t healed from, but you also had to keep your head down so as to not be spotted by the band members.

It was going alright, though, until you made the mistake of glancing up, and saw him. And he saw you.

Minus the fact that he wasn’t a blond anymore, Jungkook looked the same as always. Not that that was a bad thing. Whether in his rockstar outfit or covered in goat milk, he took your breath away. He skipped a few notes due to the shock of seeing you in the crowd but as the professional he was, he managed to make his faltering almost unnoticeable and keep playing the guitar like nothing had happened. But he wouldn’t lose you out of sight.

You wanted to look away, leave, even, but found you couldn’t, like Jungkook had put a spell on you. A spell that only broke once Bangtan thanked their fans for coming and left the stage.

Chloe, who’d been cheering throughout the whole show, now went on about how amazing it had been, how hot Taehyung had looked. Not really listening, you automatically nodded to everything until you heard, “Let’s go to the toilets before a line forms, I really need to pee.”

“Sure.”

You held her purse while you waited outside, recalling how Father Jimin had warned you seeing Jungkook again would only make your wound sting—to which you’d agreed! The only reason you were there was because you’d promised Chloe. Chloe, who was taking so long.

With a sigh, your eyes neglected that random spot on the floor they’d been fixed on and flew around to end up on those of Jungkook, who was walking towards you. The few people in the line to use the toilets gasped and watched their idol, but he didn’t care, walked past them like they didn’t exist. You, weren’t sure what to feel when he was finally in front of you.

“Hi,” he said with a faint smile that you returned rather awkwardly, given the fact everyone was looking at you. “Can we talk… in private?”

Every cell of your body told you to decline, that Jungkook was a book you shouldn’t pick up again even to leaf through, but your head nodded on its own accord. Hope you don’t mind, Chloe.

It was upstairs to the now deserted first floor he led you, and the balcony of which you stood next by, where you could see the few people left heading out. They didn’t hold your attention for longer than a second, though.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Jungkook spoke almost shyly, yet his eyes didn’t leave your face until he forced them to, not to weird you out. How long had he been staring like that? But you looked so pretty...

“I’m here with a friend from uni, she’s a fan.”

He didn’t understand. “Wait, you ended up leaving the convent?”

“I did finish my novitiate but I never took the vows. They let me live there, though.”

It wasn’t a decision you made overnight, obviously, and one Father Jimin and Sister Daeun worked hard for many months to make you see it wouldn’t have upset your parents as much as you believed, much less get them to stop loving you. In fact, you were still coming to terms with it, not entirely free of guilt, but a mix of secular and spiritual life was proving to be exactly what you needed.

The university and the abbey, parties and Mass, your new friends and your family… You could have both and save your soul from damnation. Now, could you save your heart from breaking all over again? It felt like it already was, physically so close to Jungkook yet so far that an uncomfortable silence had fallen between you.

“Are you seeing anyone?”

You looked at him. Cut to the chase, alright… “I’m not. A-Are you?”

Was that a sigh of relief he let out through his parted lips, or did you just want it to be? “No.”

“I thought you’d be dating Amber.” Jungkook frowned slightly, so you went on and confessed, “I saw you together the night before you left. I came to pick up the money and… Well, none of that matters now.”

Horror painted Jungkook’s face. That was how you’d remembered him? Getting off with Amber?

“She’d just broken up with her boyfriend,” he wasted no time in saying. “Neither of us was thinking clearly. It was a one-time thing, an adrenaline rush after a concert.”

You hugged yourself, lips pressing together at the details you didn’t want to hear. “You don’t need to explain, we weren’t dating anymore…”

“Fuck, I’m sorry that you’ve thought all this time that I was with her,” Jungkook apologised anyway, gaze falling to the floor in shame. “Actually, I know that it doesn’t count for anything, but I’m sorry about a lot of things.”

“Yeah, I wish it did. Count… Or better yet, I wish I’d gone with you,” you laughed, at the fact that you meant it.

“What?” Jungkook took a step closer, as though he’d misheard and wanted to make sure he got it this time. Suddenly, you realised what an idiot you were being.

“Nothing, forget it.” You turned around to leave before the lump in your throat summoned any tears, but Jungkook took your hand to stop you. He couldn’t let you go, even if he’d been the one to leave last time.

“I’m glad you didn’t come with me, Y/N, and that you got to do what you wanted. But I do wish I hadn’t ruined everything and hurt you. If I could go back, I'd punch me in the face.”

It didn’t mean you’d forgotten, but the truth was that you’d forgiven what he did a while ago. After all, “I was also a dick to you.”

“If you’re a dick, then I like dick.”

Actually, you hated him.

You hated even more that that made you laugh but it was because of Jungkook’s clownery that you first fell for him. And you’d never stopped loving him. He smiled fondly, caressing your hand. On his wrist, where there used to be a small uninked spot, now was your name’s initial. Neither had he, it seemed.

“Does this mean you want us to…?”

His eyes opened wide, feigning scandal. “What, here? I’d sooner do it in a chapel.” You rolled your eyes, but couldn’t keep from smiling. “How about we start with a date? Say... Friday at 5pm? I know a good roller-skating rink.”

⇢ drabble: faith

#bts au #btswritingcafe #jeon jungkook #jeon jungkook x reader #jungkook x reader #jungkook angst #jungkook smut #jungkook fluff #jungkook imagine #bts #bts scenarios #bts fanfiction #bts smut #bts x reader #bts jungkook #rockstar jungkook #bangtan imagine #jeon jungkook scenarios

[with-my-murder-flute]

Cristabel and the proverbial sandwich

(Spoilers for Harrow and Nona the Ninth)

I have not known inner peace since I saw someone say, "But come on, does anyone ACTUALLY buy John's story about how the nun died?"

Because honestly, I'd just kind of gone, "Super random, very weird interaction, boy there sure are cult mindworms at play here," and moved on to the next page.

But as soon as I saw that question asked, the amount I did not buy that story hit me like a load of bricks, to the point I'm kind of amazed that I ever did believe it.

Two people. A locked door. A nuclear standoff. A close-range head injury.

On one side, a full-fledged Catholic nun—well done, that’s the classic—who's best friends with a staunchly atheist world-class scientist and believes, if we're to believe John, that Jesus's problem is that he didn't stick to office hours.

On the other, a woman described as, "A total delight. Effervescent. Kind to animals and children. A master of the sword. Did not have the intellect you’d ordinarily find in a sandwich or an orange, and was a sickening twerp into the bargain."

Oh, and in the middle, there's also a necromancer who wants to bring back his friends... minus any little details about things he they might have done wrong. He "knows where memory lives in the brain", and they "won't have any of it." And "guys as careful as me don't make mistakes," but then again, all that means is that if he kills someone, he did it on purpose.

C— talks her way into a locked room with John, who's on the phone threatening some world leaders with a nuke, expresses care and concern for him, and then... decides he needs more data on the soul? And kills herself to provide that for him?

I'll be honest, I just don't believe that John was an ordinary guy, totally normal, could be any of us, and he just got put in a really stressful situation and made some bad choices but who HASN'T done things they aren't proud of??? I reject that point of view completely. Like, Elon Musk in any given interaction probably is really stressed out and unhappy and having trouble responding in a way that's at all well-considered or emotionally mature, but that doesn't mean that Musk isn't also, at baseline, a deeply stupid, petty, immature, grandiose, entitled, egocentric person. No matter what situation you put him in, he's going to keep on being those things.

I think that John's initial idea was to put the entire human population of Earth, minus some necessary staff, into some giant cryonic freezers, and give the Earth some amount of time to rest and recover from the effects of human-caused pollution. A plan about which I will confess some hesitation myself; being told "just lie down in this coffin, bro, you'll only be a little dead, I'll totally bring you back to life* in a couple centuries (*98% effective!) " does not fill me with an enthusiasm to hop on board.

And then his project got cut. And he decided, "Well, if they won't agree, I can just make them agree." After all, all that end game needs is 10 billion frozen corpses hanging out in those tin cans, and a small team of staff left to keep the place running. How it gets there is something he can afford to be flexible about. If people won't climb in on their own, he can put them there.

So when C— or the nun tell him to stop focusing on revenge, to bend all his energies to saving the world, I think he thinks: Well, I am. He's gonna wash the earth clean at the end of this! He just needs to be able to set the dominoes in motion. He just needs to engineer a situation that will justify taking his nuke out of the vault and making the pieces fall.

A situation that would be sabotaged, ruined, if anyone made a true deep sincere good-faith effort to talk him out of Plan Nuke and called the legitimacy of this crisis into any sort of question. He needs to prevent that from happening.

Actually. Also. He needs one more thing than that.

He needs an excuse to use the nuke, but also, he's finishing his homework at the very last minute. He still hasn't mastered the soul. He does need a few more test subjects.

Maybe he let her in and thought: Two birds with one stone, eh?

#lis's tlt theories #the locked tomb #the locked tomb spoilers #ntn spoilers #htn spoilers #cristabel oct #john gaius must die

[gwenllian-in-the-abbey]

What do you think of Grrm's portrayal of religion?

Hi anon, this is a really interesting question, and it took me awhile to put together what I hope is a coherent answer.

For context, I think GRRM's background is important to keep in mind. George is almost exactly my parents' age and belongs to the same demographic of American anti-war ex hippies who aged into broadly liberal baby-boomers. Their radicalism has largely mellowed over the years, they may not be the most up to date on the appropriate terminology, and they tend to prioritize nonviolent solutions to systemic problems (my mom often tells me the younger generation needs to do another March on Washington). One thing liberal boomers also tend have in common is that often they grew up religious but, as they entered their 20s and went to college, broke away from the churches of their childhood. My family is full of ex-Catholic liberal boomers like George. They might have dabbled in Buddhism or Hinduism in the 70s, New Age mysticism in the 80s or 90s, and ended up settling into statements like, "I'm spiritual, but not religious." Almost invariably, they have a sort of disdain for organized religion, which they associate with a kind of yokel mentality, a place for anti-Choice anti-LGBTQ traditionalists. Although they will profess "to each his own," to the average liberal boomer, the church represents regressive values and they cannot imagine why anyone would willingly return to it. Even those who did remain religious take great pains to make it known they are not like those Christians. And to be fair, liberal boomers have a good reason to feel this way. The churches of their childhoods were not fun places for people whose own ideas and values went against post-WW2 broadly white middle class values. Unsurprisingly, SFF authors tend to fit into this category.

And this sort of bleeds into a lot of 90s SFF. You see a lot of worlds that have religion, but rarely do you have characters that are religious, and even more rarely do you have sympathetic young protagonists who are religious. You might have the occasional kindly priest or nun type, but far more often these characters will be abusive, mean spirited, or narrow minded (think of Brienne's childhood septas). Religion is often treated with the same disdain by in-world characters as it is by the authors themselves. You might even have worlds that are almost entirely secular, with vague references to "The Gods," but without any real religious traditions constructed around them (Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings series, which features two vague dieties, Eda and El, who seem to have no religious traditions surrounding them whatsoever). You might have cultish religions that are actively dangerous and must be stopped, or you might have Catholic church analogues, existing in opposition to everything cool and fun. Protagonists tend to be cynical non-believer types, or they might start off as true believers and lose their religion along the way. Rarely are they allowed to have sincere and abiding faith.

And you can see a lot of this in George's writing, in the way he portrays the Faith of the Seven and other religions, and the way the fandom receives them. The Faith of the Seven is Westeros' answer to the Catholic church, but there are also the Old Gods, the faith of R'hllor, and others, often presented in opposition to each other. George himself sees religion as a divisive force, and in ASOIAF, we see religions in conflict with each other, we see them weaponized to fuel vendettas, we see them used to drive prophesies and start wars. There's a clip somewhere, of George at a panel, where he's talking about religious conflict and his take is very reminiscent of George Carlin's-- you can tell he knows the bit. "Are you really going to kill all of these people because a giant invisible guy in the sky told you too? And your giant guy in the sky is different?" George asks, receiving a round of applause from the crowd. It's a very modern view on religion, which is fair, I think. He's writing for a modern audience who have modern conceptions of the church, and he is making a deliberate point about the harm religion can do. .

What I do think is missing, or at least downplayed, are the ways in which the medieval church was really a driving cultural and social force in medieval Europe. We live in a secular society, so we have the luxury of disregarding the church in a way that medieval people did not. This is one major way in which the worldbuilding of ASOIAF departs from the real world middle ages. To portray the medieval church as a primarily regressive institution that mostly drove conflict is too simplistic. The Catholic church is what culturally unified most of western Europe into what was known as "Christendom." The clergy served political functions, such as providing an important check upon the power of medieval kings, and when the power of the church declined, despotism grew. Socially, for most western Europeans, the church was also the center of day to day life. Insofar as medieval peasants had any opportunities for leisure time and celebrations, most of these revolved around the church. The church was for centuries a driving force behind art, music, literature, and architecture, and it also performed important social functions, such as operating poorhouses and leper-houses, and providing educations for children.

And all of this was just extremely normal. Most people prayed multiple times each day, and sincerely believed in heaven a hell. The state of one's soul after death was such a real concern that the sale of indulgences-- a way that you could pay to get your dead loved ones whose souls were in purgatory into heaven more quickly-- became a major racket for the Church. I've seen the HotD fandom react to Alicent Hightower's level of devotion calling her a religious "fanatic" and I cannot stress enough how absolutely normal Alicent would have been in medieval times. This is where I blame the framing of the show more than George, because it does set Alicent's faith in opposition to Rhaenyra's seemingly more modern values, but does it in a selective way. For instance, Alicent comes off as prudish, and modern audiences hate a prude, but we never see how her faith would have certainly inspired her, as queen, to take other more progressive actions such as giving alms to the poor or bestowing her patronage upon motherhouses. In another post about the fandom perception of Valyrian culture, I talked about how this modern view of devout belief, particularly Catholicism, tends to cast anything that is presented in opposition to it as an unequivocal good, and I see this sort of rhetoric slung around the fandom a lot, "why would you defend the pseudo-Catholics who hate women??" But the pseudo-Catholics are really just normal medieval people, and they didn't hate women, they simply lived in a patriarchal society and the material conditions did not yet exist which would allow them to challenge that in any meaningful way.

#asks #faith of the seven #alicent hightower #grrm #asoiaf and religion #asoiaf

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Hi Kym! I apologize if you have answered an ask like this before, but I am curious for your opinion.

You've talked a lot about how intentional all the Buddie parallels are in terms of costuming for several seasons now, both with Buck and Eddie together, then with their respective girlfriends, and in comparison to Bathena. We are now even getting throwbacks to season 2 and Eddie's first episode with Buck's stonewash jeans! Tim is adamant in interviews that he never planned this bisexual awakening in advance (we know that Eddie was originally meant for Maddie ofc) and that he doesn't know where the characters are going yet, but even Oliver has said he intentionally leans into the Buddie of it all with his acting, or at least into Buck's then-presumed bisexuality.

My question is, with just how pointed and intentional the costume choices have always been, is Tim is lying? Or are the costume designers secret Buddie shippers and intentionally lean into this storyline too? How much of what we see in terms of costuming is the decision of the show runners/directors vs creative expression of the costume designers? Is there a point in the show for you where it became clear how intentional it was becoming with the costuming, where they may or may not have said, "we're going to commit to telling this story in subtext until we are allowed to tell it overtly"?

Thanks :)

Hey Cookie-Kat!!

How lovely to have you in my inbox, and what a great question!

putting my answer under the cut - because it got long!!!

The answer I give is going to have to be a bit vague I'm afraid because the reality is that as I don't work on the show and I'm not 100% sure on the set up of their various departments, I can't categorically state how they are going about things in 911 land! I can share my experience and knowledge of how things can be done and try to give you some sort of framework - but I can't definitively say that this is how they are doing things.

First up let's address the whole Tim lying thing.

Tim is all about subterfuge in interviews - its literally his job as a showrunner. I would take every thing he says in an interview with a giant grain of salt. the entire purpose of his interviews is to tease and hook people, without giving anything way becasue why would he spoil all the things he has planned that make people watch the show he is creating. If he came out in an interview at the start of the season and said

'yeah, we're going to do a cruise ship disaster and all these things are going to happen, and in episode 4 Buck is going to get kissed by a guy and figure out he's bi and Eddie is going to find out his girlfriend was a novice nun and its going to send him into a catholic guilt spiral, and maddie nad CHim are going to get married, but x, y and z are going to happen before they can get down the aisle'

Why would anyone tune in to watch the show? we'd already know what was going to happen so there wouldn't be any point - there would be no buzz and the viewing figures might be ok, but they wouldn't be remotely close to what they are. I know for a fact I probably wouldn't be tuning in - people like to be surprised, they like to speculate - we in fandom take it to a higher level, but even the general audience speculate - water cooler conversations about what you watched the previous evening and how you think it's going to play out are part of a show's appeal - part of how it keeps people watching - shared experiences are a powerful commodity, especially in network television and they cannot be shared if we all know what is going to happen.

I would also add that this season is the most explicit acknowledgement of buddie that we've had in interviews and that means something. The show - writers, actors etc have all been incredibly careful before no to ensure that they haven't crossed over into queerbaiting the audience - which is something I really appreciate them for. But this season, things have definitely changed. whether that is down to being on a new network, that actually has a marketing strategy and that actually seems to care about the show and the stories that they have wanted to tell, I don't know, but it is so refreshing and exciting to see.

Tim is a clever person - he knows exactly what he is doing and every single season, without fail we have him saying things in interviews that can be read in multiple ways - none of them have ever been lies - subterfuge is the name of the game - then if you reread them in the aftermath of the season, you can see what he said did in fact play out as he hinted at - he has the context that we didn't have at the time and that is why he can subvert and talk his way around things.

I genuinely don't think Tim planned to give Buck a bisexual awakening from the start - we know he never planned on the buddie of it all, but a good writer will go where the characters take them. As soon as you create something and put it into the hands of others (the actors, directors and crew) things can very quickly take on a whole new direction and a life of its own.

If you ask me, I genuinely don't think Buck could've had a bi awakening before this point - it wouldn't have made sense from a narrative perspective (and his death and rebirth actually make the perfect jumping off point to explore) until now because of the very nature of Buck.

There isn't a single show (by show I mean one that isn't a limited series which will by definition have a planned arc) on network television that knew where each and every character would end up at the end of the show or that characters journey (by this I mean when cast chose to leave a show). Yes they might have planned a few beats to hit along the way, but they wouldn't know the end point for the character. We have a perfect example on 911 - Michael - the show hadn't intended to end Michaels arc in the way it did - his journey as a queer man coming out later in life was an important part of the show - important for representation as much as anything - they had to adapt and change in light of what was going on with Rockmond and write out a character that they would've had other plans for.

The other thing I should mention is that When Tim says he hasn't decided or written the scripts for upcoming episodes, that doesn't mean he doesn't have a plan. He very much will have a plan. There would've been clear arcs for each character laid out at the start of the writing process for the season - they would want to get character a from one point to another by the end of the season. Its the how they get there that is the unknown - at this point we don't know the end points for any characters this season, but if we take season 5 Eddie as an example - at the start of the season he is post shooting and back at work, seemingly perfectly fine. By the end of the season he is genuinely in a good place having gone through his trauma arc. The arc they would've decided on for Eddie that season was to explore his trauma and how to get him from a 'seemingly' good place to a genuinely good place. From there they would've decided on various touchstones - so Ana being mistaken for Christophers mother and them being a family is his trigger to launch his arc. Chris being scared of loosing his father a major touch stone, pushing him into leaving the 118. His then feeling on the outside - left out and replaced by Lucy is his next one, followed by the fact all his army buddies are gone, another touchstone - coming in quick succession to build momentum and leading to his breakdown. Pushing him to actually get help - therapy is another touchstone - one that helps to get him to the end of the season in a vastly different place - healing but still working on things.

So you see - they generally plan an overall direction, but how they get there is the bit that is a bit fluid and can be determined to a certain extent by audience reaction (I don't mean that they would out and out rewrite the entire plan for the season for a character, but they might chose to lean into different aspects if the audience react in a certain way - we saw this with Lucy - planned for a bigger arc, but the audience reaction to her was pretty negative, so they changed direction with her character and cut her part down).

In terms of Bucks bi arc - they will have been waiting on how it was received before fully determining how to play it out for the rest of the season - I genuinely think we'll be seeing more of Lou as Tommy later in the season as a part of Bucks arc - The way Lou has spoken about it being initially a 4 episode arc, suggests to me that its always been intended to run it longer if reaction was good - which we know it was. My explectation remains the same - that Tommy will be around until either the end of episode 9, or the middle of episode 10, to get Buck to where he needs to be by the season end.

I am on the fence as to where exactly that is - Everything from set, costuming and the script is screaming at me that it's about Buck figuring out not only that he is bi, but that he is also in love with Eddie. That is his arc for the season. What I am unsure of is how they are going to leave things at the end of the season (and I think a part of that will have been determined by audience reaction), whether or not we'll leave him acknowledging his feelings to himself, to a third party (Tommy and or Maddie), or to Eddie himself. Of course part of it will be determined by Eddies arc and how far they plan on getting him in regards to dealing with his catholic guilt and what form and direction t hat is going to take, but I cannot see any reason to start exploring that aspect of his character if you weren't going to use it for a queer arc of some description.

In terms of costuming - which was the main point of your ask - sorry I get rambly in these replies some times - I always view it as the first 2-3 seasons at the very least will be about establishing a characters look and vibe within the wider show, and from then on you can start to play into themes and colour theory etc. Somethings you can establish earlier - especially if they are centric to a character more widely. Examples of this are Eddies army green tees and shirts - establishing him visually as ex military, or the black singlets that he wears when in an emotionally vulnerable place, or Buck wearing his white trainers as part of his search for self, or his white shirts as a signal of him being in danger. You can do this, because they aren't playing on anything in relation to other characters at this early point.

So the decision to take Buck out of jeans (stone wash jeans specifically - he's been wearing jeans they've just been black or dark navy) and have him in very obviously shorter trousers, creating a specific aesthetic for him - this smarter, fitted clean cut style that is different from his season 1 looks, has been about playing into his journey of searching for self - that is his big overarching arc - the one that spans multiple seasons.

The intent to do that, wasn't about Buddie (or bi Buck) when they started to use it as a visual marker for him. It was (and always has been) about Buck. about his search for meaning in his life and who he is, who he wants to be - about being his authentic self.

The reason I got so excited about seeing him in jeans once more, when the first stills dropped at the start of the season - was because I knew that it was a signal that this bigger arc was coming to fruition and moving into its next phase. The costume team have been sitting waiting for when the time was right to do this - its being done with such intention.

Of course I hoped that it would be buddie related - things were pointing in that direction from other costuming choices. And to me at least, I still think its very much buddie related - because to do this now - for this bi awakening arc - its too loud and too big for 'just' a bi awakening arc - its about something bigger for Buck - something long term (and I'm not saying Buck being bi is't long term, because obviously it very much is - bi rep is so important!) him figuring out he is bi is a smaller part of a bigger whole for his character. The implication of the jeans returning is that this part of himself he has unlocked plays into a bigger story. Bucks search for self has always been about finding love - about being wanted and seen and accepted for who he is. As a costume designer, I wouldn't personally be putting him into jeans at this point unless it was related to his endgame - being bi isn't enough on its own for them to decide to visually show that he has fully found what he has been looking for on his search throughout the seasons (the white trainers still being in used also play into this) because he is still looking for that lasting happiness - he's just taken a massive step forward to figuring out what it is and where it lies.

With regards to colour theory and the paralleling of Buddie with other ships such as Bathena or Madney. Colour theory alone it wouldn't be enough to convince me, it is in combination with other factors such as the paralleling of Bathena and Madney that it comes into play. The thing is, creating those parallels and colour theory combinations doesn't have to lead to something. I'm going to do a terrible job of trying to explain this, but I'll give it a go.

Various people, who work on the show in some capacity have all commented over the years that they weren't expecting the level of chemistry that Oliver and Ryan have. We also know that they have played into the buddie of it all with some of the scene choices they've made - sort of an acknowledgement of what we're seeing - the elf scene in s2 is a prime example - a nod to fandom and the fact that they are being shipped together - and an acknowledgement of the chemistry - without it necessarily needing to mean more (the same goes for things like the text comments on the botfly influencer livestream call etc).

Back then wardrobe are still very much in character establishment mode - creating and defining the looks of the characters, and playing into colour theory on an individual level, not necessarily on a partnership level (S2 Bathena would've been treated in this way as they were already intended to be an end game couple so you can play into colour theory much earlier), that comes later. I wouldn't have been able to write costume metas in season 2-3 in the way I do now, because the parallels didn't exist and the ground work hadn't been laid.

Once you get past that intial establishing phase, hat is when you can start to play into the colour theory much more in relation to specific characters and pairings. One of the clearest examples of this is Eddies black shirt green trousers combo that he wears at the loft when having serious conversations with Buck. He first wears it in season 3 at the end of the lawsuit/fightclub arc (3x09), and then we dont see it again until season 5 (5x04) at yet another scene in Bucks loft.

The meaning of the colours in that scene are important sure, it is playing into colour theory, but what is happening visually is that we're subconciously connecting dots and remembering that Eddie has worn this outfit before to talk to Buck - that means it must be a serious conversation, one very much focused on something Buck has done (or hasn't done depending on which way you look at things). Eddie has been in Bucks loft on multiple occasions between those two scenes, and Buck and Eddie have had multiple serious conversations in the intervening episodes as well. so why that scene if its not meant to make us connect dots?

Now on a fundamental level, those two scenes can be read as establishing the close friendship Buck and Eddie share - that they are following through on their s2 promise to have each others backs. its entirely correct to assume that - it is after all what those scenes are establishing. But what it is also doing is laying the ground work for if they want to take Buddie further. we know that the conversations about Buddie have been happening in the writers room and on set for a good long while, and even if you don't yet know if you're going to go in that direction, you would be foolish not to lay the ground work in a subtle way if you can, so that the option is there if you did decide to take that direction.

A show will use what ever tools are at its disposal to lay various foundations that it can then pick and choose to build on as it wants or needs to. It is why we see the pictures in Eddies house moving around, why things on the fridge change (fridge theory is not as out there as some people would have you believe - there is a whole thing coming up on Eddies fridge in reaction to guts and the digestive system - which will very much be playing into his catholic guilt arc!) in Christophers room move around and change - its not just about him being a growing (soon to be teenager) boy, its also about laying foundations for story arcs they might choose to develop down the line and the Buddie groundwork is no different.

Its not about the wardrobe team being shippers of Buddie - its much more about them knowing where a season is headed (in brad strokes, even if they don't have specifics) being really good at their job and now being able to bear the fruits of their labour from earlier seasons - they had been doing the same with buck and Taylor - now they're doing it with Buck and Tommy (and Eddie). It would've been super easy to spin the costuming for Taylor into more positive colours - especially on Buck - in season 5, but they had the bigger picture and knew she wasn't going to remotely be endgame, so they were able to play into that throughout the season. Establishing Tommy as a version of Eddie is building on the Eddie groundwork they laid and using it to make it very clear that we are supposed to see the similarities between them - its steering us as viewers towards thinking 'oh Buck has a type - He's dating someone like his best friend - he should just date his best friend' is all about subtly nudging the audience in the right direction - towards Buddie - its just most people won't pick up on it in a conscious way.

I'm not sure if this makes any sense or if it even answered your ask, but essentially the show is using everything at its disposal to tell the story its telling and they have been laying groundwork that can take things in various directions - they are just choosing to push the buddie agenda to an increasing degree (and I have said groundwork far too many times in this post!!)

Thaks for the great ask 💜💜💜

#kym answers things #cookie-kat777 asks #costume asks #costume things #911 costuming #this is such a rambly post!!! #does it make sense - who knows!!! #911 abc #buddie

[dungeons-and-dictions]

Another Analysis Friday, another Hazbin Hotel essay! Y’all told me your thoughts on their posing as hellvangelists on Sunday…

And I’m impressed! I can’t tell if Alastor won just because we all love him though. 😂 I personally like the costumes equally.

But the best part is that these costumes and their associated roles play into Vox and Alastor themselves!

Vox likes clout. He may like to have it in a more mature, business way than Velvette, but he’s still a clout-chaser. So, posing as a televangelist during his song makes complete sense! Despite humility being a big thing Jesus focused on, televangelists are known instead for their bombastic, fake, hell-emphasizing, prosperity gospel-embracing sermons spread across the screen. I remember the days of early Saturday morning being plagued by these guys as a kid.

As for Alastor? He’s hard at work behind the scenes, just as nuns and monks historically have done forever. While not necessarily humble, he doesn’t chase attention so much as asserts dominance if anyone questions him. Alastor’s disarming smile downplays his real power, so people pay attention when he does make his presence known. Similarly we are still guessing about his intentions and deal, as he would much rather not have either announced. And, nuns aren’t trying to outdo each other, unlike the sorts of preachers seeking to get rich rather than help others. Alastor is so out of Vox’s league that he doesn’t even see him as competition!

Naturally, these takes are opposed to each other just like Alastor and Vox are.

And bonus points for personal details on their clothing! Vox’s signature static waves on his robes, and the x symbols (matching his death injury in life) on Alastor’s habit. Love that these are on his habit at all, as he was shot in the head.

As a fun extra bit of religious trivia today, let’s just note that the inverted cross only became a Satanic visual in the late 1800s due to Eugene Vintras’ possibly occult masses, and definitely his eccentric followers. Lucifer uses the pentagram himself, which has been a symbol of divine powers since Babylonian times at least. It also became Satanic in the same time period due to an entirely different reason.

#analysis #analysis fridays #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel essay #alastor #vox #hazbin alastor #hazbin vox #hellvangelist #poll results #symbolism #religious symbolism #the more you know #Christian Hazbin fan

[theteasetwrites]

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon | S1E1 Thoughts

Okay I am gonna list all my positive and negative thoughts regarding each episode (I know no one asked but I feel like this is the only thing I am somewhat “qualified” to talk about ad nauseam on here).

⚠️ SPOILERS AHEAD ⚠️ do not read below the cut unless you’re okay with spoilers

Positive Thoughts

Norman’s acting is so good like?? Listen we all know he’s not Laurence Olivier and he doesn’t claim to be but goddamnit he nails the subtleties of Daryl’s expressions and conveys his emotions really well I think! I’m very impressed

Daryl hot

Obviously the cinematography, setting, and aesthetics are really cool. It’s both gritty but pretty!! I love the gothic architecture and how OLD everything looks, which is only exacerbated by the apocalyptic feel

Everyone in the cast is so good in terms of acting (well, I mean… Laurent is certainly there but he’s a child so we’ll be lenient)

Daryl hot

The walkers are great as usual. I love the burners. Really interesting! I’m kind of wondering if the “experiments” the people on the ship refer to relate to the burners? Maybe they’re making them like that idk.

I love the religious imagery. We have had cults and stuff in TWDU before but I don’t think we’ve had this Catholic vibe going on. I’m a sucker for anything nun related because I have a weird infatuation with them, so I’m all for it.

DARYL BATHTUB SCENE??? They put that in for the girls and the gays and we are LIVING for it

Daryl hot

Daryl is so reminiscent of early seasons TWD era with his witty lines and snark remarks. I feel like we don’t get to see this side of Daryl very often anymore, but now that he has his own show and is THE main character, we get to see those sides that have been neglected again. I also love how much he sort of scoffs at the nuns and their religion. Atheist Daryl we love to see it

It’s cool seeing people in France dealing with the same things our characters have dealt with since the beginning. It’s interesting to see these new parts of the world in this universe for sure

Daryl hot

I honestly just love thinking about how when Daryl gets home he is gonna have such a crazy ass story to tell everyone! It’s gonna be so cute to see him telling all the kids about how heroic he is and ugh yessss

Daryl deserves his own show. He deserves to be THE main character. People who said he can’t lead a show? Nah. Reconsider

I also love that Daryl MIGHT potentially save the world. Cool asf. And if anyone from the original series should save the world, I think it’s him.

Daryl hot

Negative Thoughts:

Okay. I have some very petty/subjective critiques. I realize a lot of you guys probably disagree with me but that’s okay! Don’t read my negative thoughts if you aren’t prepared to be annoyed with me lol. Once again, a lot of these are super petty/nitpicky

First thing that bothers me is that Daryl says he is from the Commonwealth. No. He is from Alexandria, thank you very much. Well, at least he should be. He should’ve been living at Alexandria imo but the finale didn’t really make it explicitly clear where he was living in that year time jump. Basically I just hate the Commonwealth because I have zero attachment to it and it’s just a stupid ass place that I wanna forget about

Daryl seeing Carol in his haze 🙄 … just annoys me solely because Carol annoys me. They could’ve just shown Judith because that would’ve made more sense to me. But don’t get me started, I don’t even want Carol in season 2. Anyway.

Laurent isn’t terrible but he’s kind of annoying in that “I’m so smart I know everything” way. Just very annoying smart kid at school who everyone hated vibes. Plus I just don’t think it’s realistic that he would be THAT smart just from being raised in a convent of nuns

I also fail to understand what they’re doing with Laurent. Is he just some kid that the nuns think is the messiah or is he ACTUALLY the messiah? Like are they gonna throw in a whole other supernatural religious element? Because Laurent conveniently knows Judith’s line from the finale “you deserve a happy ending too.” Right down to the letter. I find it cheesy as hell because I’m so tired of these blatant in your face parallels that are trying to be clever, which always involve children too like we get it children are basically the duck tape of TWDU. Don’t know what to do for this plot? Throw some kids in there!

Neither Positive nor Negative Thoughts:

I don’t trust the nuns. I think they’re gonna use Daryl to get what they want and they don’t really care about getting him home. Worse, I think it could be possible that Isabelle won’t let him get home. She already tried to keep him from using the radio. I’m not saying I hate her character or anything (I actually like her so far… as long as she stays friendly and not… overly friendly), I just think she’s way too invested in this “messiah” stuff to actually care about Daryl so I fear she will take advantage of him. We shall see.

Ok, those are pretty much all of my thoughts!

#twd: daryl dixon #the walking dead: daryl dixon #the walking dead

[cawdra]

Good question, @avvielalame-blog

GATHER 'ROUND, FOR I HAVE A STORY TO TELL ABOUT MY WEIRD HOSPITAL OPIOID TRIP THAT MADE ME HALLUCINATE NEW GOOD OMENS EPISODES:

Last year I went to the hospital. It was some cyst (idk the medical lingo), and it was painful af. They gave me some sort of strong opioid (again, no idea what the medical lingo is, but I think it was Buprensomethingsomething). Mind you, I was on antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds, but I hadn't taken them for almost a week, cuz I couldn't get out of my bed the whole time (before I eventually went to the hospital). I told them I was off that medication, and because the prescription is pretty old, they gave me the painkillers. TURNS OUT THE FUCKING MEDS WERE NOT OUT OF MY SYSTEM YET!!! So uhhh... yeah.

(If you don't know, mixing these two things can be very dangerous because they can raise dopamine levels too high or something, which is INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS!!! I'm a pretty large person, so this didn't hit me that hard (and also I was off the meds for longer than 24 hours), but if I was slightly less of a fatass and more of a responsible medicine taker, I might have actually been comatosed.)

Anyway, I was riding high that night. I didn't have anything else to do, so after seeing a good omens edit, my first thought was, "That seems gay. I'm in." So I turned on Prime and watched it all in one night. It's not like I was going to sleep in a ward full of screaming people anyway, so might as well make the most of it. The nurses told me to sleep, but I told them I wasn't sleepy, so they just gave me my antibiotics and, whatever else, took my temp and walked out. Did they care about the gay shit I was watching on my phone? No, they've seen worse.

Anyway, I watched the show, ugly cried for like an hour (harder than I did from the cyst that was torturing me for about a week), and then went to sleep at around 2 pm. When I woke up, I, as a responsible queer, decided to rant about it to my friends. After telling them all those things, one of my friends (who actually watched the show with his sister) said, "Are you sure the anesthesia didn't scramble your brain, cuz none of that happened lol."

When I tell you I was DEVISTATED!!! Literally a "You... you serious?" moment. Cried almost as much as I did at the ending.

Also, if you want to know: I had a dream about how the Ineffable Husbands teamed up with some nun (who was as much of a nun as she was a saint - only on a technicality) and they made her carry the Second Coming, which eventually got her kicked off the nunnery of whatever cuz 'These days, if you get pregnant as a nun, you won't be called ‘The Virgin Sarah’ or ‘The Virgin Linda’. You will be called ‘a common whore’. So much for being a virgin.' (Quote from my fanfic (and the weird opioid trip).

I don't know what the rest of the dream was because Mr. Party Pooper (aka my friend JK Juno ily (^з^)-☆) cut me off because I was talking nonsense.

Long story short, the painkillers got out of my system, I took my meds, renewed the prescription, and went on my still-on-going recovery journey.

Did I suffer two heartbreaks in less than 12 hours? Yes. Were they worth it? Eh. I mean, it inspired my fanfic, but wasn't THAT worth it. Did I enjoy my trip? No, I threw up, had diarrhea, and then constipation for two weeks.

I still get an awful surprise when I rewatch Good Omens for a specific scene, only to find out AGAIN that I was just hallucinating.

Moral of the story - don't do drugs and be honest with your doctors and nurses cuz you might actually die.

Anyways, TOODLES!!1!!111!!!

~ CAwdra

#good omens #aziraphale #crowley #good omens 2 #good omens 3 #good omens season 2 #ineffable divorce #ineffable husbands #neil gaiman

[matousakuraistrans]

One of the wonderful things about When They Cry is not only how Ryukishi07 noticably improves as an author and builds upon his themes and ideas from his previous works, but also how each successive work gets more blatantly queer than the last.

Higurashi has quite a bit of plausable deniability on whether its characters are lgbtq. The most obvious ones are Furude Rika and Houjou Satoko for each other, but this can plausibly be denied by someone who doesn't see it without too much of a strech in the original eight episodes. Personally I'd argue that literally the entire main cast of girls are lgbtq of some kind except maybe Hanyuu, but each of those arguments do require interpretation. This is Higurashi from 2002.

Umineko gets more blatant with explicitly queer characters, more often on the magic side but there are some on the human side as well. It's a coinflip on whether Zepar or Furfur is trans (though some clowns will use real life voice actors to try to give a definitive answer). Bernkastel and Lambdadelta are notorious toxic witch lesbians. Furudo Erika and Dlanor are in a less explicit relationship that's a bit dicey at times and coming after Furudo Erika's unpleasant breakup with her boyfriend. Williard seems to be in a relationship with Ushiromiya Lion by the end even as Ushiromiya Lion explicitly states they're unsure of their gender and or don't want to say on the matter and Williard accepts that without hesitation and explicitly states that the audience should too. Ushiromiya Ange has a relationship with Mammon that can be interpreted as romantic as well, and with the open ended ending of her future, one can imagine Ushiromiya Ange as all sorts of sexuality and potentially still in that relationship with Mammon if not closer. And then of course there's Yasuda Sayo or as I'd like to call the queerest and most gender and sexuality character of all time. If I tried to count their potential queer identities, I'd probably miss at least one or two, but they ain't straight and they ain't cis even if their individual personalities might be. There's even more that you could say about the themes of Umineko overall that also tend to involve Yasuda Sayo to some extent, but I'll leave it there. By the latter half of Umineko or the answer arcs, some people reading at the time were wondering basically "Where'd all this gay shit come from?" among other things. Some people couldn't handle it at the time and many still can't, and some are somehow still in denial of Umineko's queerness to this day more than likely. This is Umineko from 2007.

Ciconia even with only one episode out and presumably an eighth of the way done by traditional When They Cry standards manages to be EVEN MORE explicitly queer within said one episode. This time, with no interpretation or any serious level of reading and understanding the text and characters needed, the main protagonists Mitake Miyao and Mitake Meow who share a body are either transgender one way or the other with Mitake Miyao being a boy and Mitake Meow being a girl. To this they're like Yasuda Sayo except they definitely know their sex, and like Ushiromiya Lion they'd rather not say at least yet. Mitake Meow's boyfriend Jayden respects this and that his girlfriend might be trans and that she can tell him and they can work whatever out when she's comfortable about it. There's a whole ass scene or so about this and is impossible to deny. Ciconia also mentions explicitly there being surgery to acquire a penis in the futuristic setting as well, and possibly even artificial wombs if I'm not mistaken too, things that are at the moment still medical hopes and dreams for so many trans people. There's also discussions about the struggles of lgbtq people as well as gay moments mostly among girls but even with a guy as well (not listing them partially because my memory of some of their names is fuzzy, lol). There's a pro yuri nun idol squad even who states that love has no bounds and yuri is the best thing ever essentially, you literally can't get more explicit and in the text than this unless your measure of gayness deems sex to be the epitemy and ideal of gayness at all times. I'm not even sure how you could be a queerphobic When They Cry fan without blatantly ignoring at least one work or malding about it constantly. This is Ciconia from 2019.

This post doesn't say much about Higurashi GouSotsu from 2020 because I haven't watched it myself, but that's pretty explicitly gay too and much more explicit than the original and makes the queer content in the original as well more blunt and obvious. Not necessarily recontexualization so much as a potential fragment that builds upon what was already previously alluded to for nearly two decades by that point.

To people who genuinely think any When They Cry work is definitively and undeniably straight...I really don't know what to tell you lol. Like there's room for intepretation for quite a bit of this including towards a cis or heterosexual explanation at times, but at some point you're just not reading the text very well to think that it's all just cis and straight and that the gays are just delusional somehow, lol.

#higurashi #higurashi spoilers #umineko #umineko spoilers #ciconia #ciconia no naku koro ni #ciconia spoilers #when they cry #lgbtq #07th expansion

[simplykorra]

hearing you say you might not be around once the countdown ends/we learn the details makes me incredibly sad 😔 it’s making me anxious about how it might end up being better if Simon hadn’t said anything at all

regardless of what ends up happening, thank you for all that you’ve created and shared with us so far. You’ve seriously helped keep the show alive for a lot of us after the cancellation news

You're very sweet, truly I've had so much fun writing all these fics and sharing them with everyone, trust me when i tell you that the last thing i want is to leave this fandom

that being said

i feel like there's very little chance it happens.

because if the show comes back and ava isn't in it or they replace her or whatever, then a lot more people than just me are going to leave. we fought for avatrice, we fought to see ava come home and get the happy ending she deserves.

simon knows this, the streaming service that would have bought the rights to the show from netflix knows this - they're going to want everything that made the show such a huge hit to remain intact

you don't do all this hype and build up and say 'back and more epic than ever' only to then bring back a product that is less than what we had or completely different.

i feel like most of the pieces are already in place, legal things like nda's and maybe contracts (explaining why the show is still on netflix atm, because it won't leave the service until a certain date and nothing can be said), which also explains why the countdown/website exists in the first place - keeping people engaged while waiting for everything to sort itself out is a lot smarter than going radio silent for six weeks

alba is the lead, she is the face on every article that comes out about this show - no network out there is going to revive a show that's missing it's most important piece and warrior nun does not work without her in it, it just doesn't

[thatsgay-writes]

Title 🤷🏻

(Got this idea while working on another fic)

“Mary!” You yell as you watch her rush towards all the possessed civilians. Everything had been going downhill these past couple of weeks. First Sister Shannon had been murder by none other than Father Vincent, the halo was then put into a random person, and now what they thought was a tomb turned out to just be a cage for a powerful demon(?). No hate to Ava though, you actually thought she was pretty cool when she wasn’t running away from what she was given. You look away from the scene of Mary getting dog piled by the possessed and towards Beatrice. “You got to get Ava out of here and regroup with Mother Superion, hopefully she’ll have an idea of what to do.” “Don’t you mean we.” Beatrice responded looking at you, her eyes filled with worry at your wording. You give her a small sad smile before resting a hand on her cheek. “I’ll find you, okay?” You don’t let her respond and rush towards Mary and the possessed. “Y/n!”

Two Months Later

The past couple of months had been difficult to say the least, you think as you move fast in between people in the street. Adriel had come out and proclaimed his self as a prophet and has even made “miracles” happen. You check over your shoulder to see if you were still being followed. Since his introduction, he is growing a steady amount of believers/cultists, the Firstborn Children. Which is who you were running from at this very moment. Well running is a bit generous, speeding walking is a better term. You had yet been able to build your stamina back up to what it was before that dreadful day. Not only had you been unsuccessful in retrieving Mary from that pile of possessed but you also lost your arm, well forearm, everything after your elbow on your left arm was gone. You could only hope and pray that Mary was able to escape somehow as well. It had been a learning curve to say the least once you got out of the hospital after a week. Things you would usually have no problem doing were harder than they should be, like shooting a gun or fighting with your sword and shield, which now was just a sword since you are unable to hold a shield. You spent a good part of the past two months in a safe house in Rome that only you and Mary knew of.

Relearning some skills that you knew you were going to need in the very near future and waiting for any sort of message to come through on the cross necklace you had that connected to all of the OCP. It was times like these you wished you had paid more attention to the lesson that Mother Superion was teaching rather than staring at Beatrice so that you knew how to send a message on the cross. Luckily you knew how to read the code but you still wish there was someway to let everyone know you were okay. Especially Beatrice, beautiful, strong, resilient, and badass Beatrice… Your Beatrice. Your heart hurt thinking about how you would feel if you were in her position. The two of you had been together for 3 years, unknown to the other nuns, and the only other time you had ever been away from each other for this long was when you had a mission down in Madrid for 3 months. At least then you had communication, now it was just you alone with your thoughts.

———

Ava watched concerned from the bar as Bea was approached by a rather beautiful woman. She better not be trying to hit on Beatrice, is all Ava can think as she watches the woman grab onto Bea’s arm as the two share a small smile. Ava wanted to jump over the counter the second the unknown woman said something that makes Bea laugh and tell her that Bea is happily taken and that if you were here right now she’d be dealt with. Well, dealt with sounds extreme, the woman would be told in a nice and forgiving manner that was she was doing was not okay. Ava mentally applauds herself for knowing what you would actually do in this situation and that you would also tell her to not have these over protective thoughts for Beatrice because she could handle herself. But it was hard not to be over protective of Bea, it was hard for the first month to act like she didn’t hear Bea cry herself to sleep from worry when she thought Ava was already asleep. It was hard to watch her sometimes zone out and return with a sad look on her face, it was hard for Ava to watch as Bea mourned you after what had happened two months ago. Bea was being logical, there was a small chance that you and Mary had made it out alive from Adriel but that small chance is what Ava held onto. Even though there had been no word from you or Mary, there also hasn’t been any bad news and that’s one of the things that kept Ava going because if she was honest you and Beatrice were her best friends and with one missing and the other one sad almost all the time it was hard for her to continue hoping that they could find a way to beat Adriel.

The message had come in hours later, luckily for Ava and Bea it was perfect timing as Ava had just revealed herself to some of the Samaritans and Miguel. Ava watched as Beatrice read the flashing lights with bated breaths. Finally it was time for some action. “We’re going to Madrid.” Bea said finally and Ava jumped up from the couch ready to help with the packing that she had been watching Bea do this whole time. “Hold on there’s another message.” Ava turns back towards Bea and watches as her face turns from one of concentration to complete devastation. “Bea?” Ava asks as she gets closer to the girl and kneels in front of her. “It’s only three words.” Beatrice responds with a shaky breath as she allows tears to start falling from her eyes. “We’ve lost Mary.” At that, Ava feels any hope she had that you were okay vanish. She clutched onto Beatrice tight as they both allowed sobs to rack through their bodies. Ava’s heart hurts more at the thought that you were probably gone as well and that maybe Beatrice was right to let herself mourn these past two months.

———

You step into the flower shop slowly as you take in the trashed scene before you. What had happened since you were gone? You wonder as you look at the light covering of dust on a nearby table. There isn’t any way Mother Superion or any other nun were still here. You look around for anything that could point you to another meeting place and find a literal arrow in some dirt pointing towards a wall statue. You walk towards the wall and find a pair of tickets, you grab one and leave the other for whoever else is out there before heading out.

———

Ava and Beatrice stumble behind Camila as she leads them through the theatre and to a hidden room below. "This use to be a cover for resistance fighters during the civil war." Camila told the two as they walked in before being greeted by Mother Superion. You watch from behind a corner as she introduces them to Yasmine and you feel like a failure. How could you go from fighting demons to being scared to see one of your best friends and girlfriend, if you could even use that title anymore, it had been two months. They walk into another room to see the book Yasmine had all her information in and you follow quietly behind them, working up the courage to just say hi before Mother Superion forced you to come out of hiding.

"Muesem heist." You hear Ava say and you feel excited for a second because that did sound fun, until you hear Mother Superion and immediatly you feel scared again. "Before we go, there is one more thing I need to show you." She says towards Beatrice and Ava, who both wear a confused expression as Camila lets out a squeal and claps her hands together. "You will love it." Beatrice and Ava both share a nervous smile as Mother Supreion walks to the door and wraps the end of her cane around you arm and pulls you into the room.

You stare nervously at two of the four people in front of you. Ava's face gained a smile so big, you were sure it was causing discomfort, while Beatrice on the other hand looked frozen with her face void of emotion. "Y/n!" Ava says loudly and happily as she rushes in to give you a hug. "See I knew you would be okay! I told Beatrice that you would be fine and now..." Ava trails off as she turns to look at Beatrice who is still frozen. You can see Camila give her a nudge to push her towards you. "I must still be feeling the affects of that tranquilizer dart." Is all Beatrice says as she puts a hand to her forehead like she was checking her temperature. You knew you were going to have to be the first one to take a step. "Bea, it's me. I'm here and I am sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you." You tell her as you untangle yourself from Ava's hug and walk towards her, feeling tears well up in your eyes just from finally seeing her after two months of uncertainty and fear. All you really need and want was a form of comfort from her, a hug, a kiss, whatever. Just something to ground you after these past months.

You place a hand on Beatrice's face, who has still not moved an inch, and almost cry when you feel the warmth of her skin. "I missed you so much." You say letting a sob slip past your lips and that's all it took for Beatrice to pull you into the tightest hug you've ever felt. "You're really here, you're really here." You hear her repeat to herself as she tries to squeeze herself as close to you as possible, company be damned. "When we got the message about Mary, I thought all hope was lost, I didn't know what to do, I didn't-" Beatrice pulls back from the hug some, making sure her arms stayed wrapped around you, only to see you staring at her with complete adoration and love. Her breath catches in her throat and she does and says the only thing she can think of.

"I love you." Followed by a deep and barely publicly acceptable kiss. "So, so much." She continues as she pulls back. A squeal from Camila, or Ava, you couldn't tell who as they were both standing next to each other with large smiles on their faces. Pulls Beatrice back into the present and she finally remembers that there were in fact others in the room and Mother Superion, who just witnessed that whole display of affection. "Oh no." Beatrice mumbles as she buries her face in you shoulder, embarrassed by the proud mom smile she saw resting on Mother Superion's face. "Don't we have other important matter to attend to?" Beatrice says as she finally controls herself and puts herself back into the mission oriented mindset that she's usually in. "Starting with the fact that you are missing part of your arm. Who did this and where can I find them." You feel yourself blush from the seriousness of her questions and the determination in her voice that shows that she would cause some serious hell to whoever did this, making any nerves you had about the missing appendage disappear. You give her a kiss on the cheek, causing her façade to slightly break, "Your so cute when you get protective over me."

-----

Bonus:

Y/n: "Your so cute when you get protective over me."

Ava: *gags* Oh no, this is gonna happen all the time now isn't it.

Camila: Shhhhh, I've been waiting for this. I knew I was right all along.

Word Count: 2,070ish

#warrior nun #x reader #sister beatrice #Beatrice x reader

[artbyblastweave]

Gideon the Ninth Liveread, Chapter 6

Okay. Here’s the first one and the big one; this is absolutely not going to be a competition. This is not the Hunger Games. By explicitly raising the idea that they aren’t sure if it’s a competition, and then having Harrow go all in on her assumption that it is a competition, the author has confirmed, via the law of dramatic irony, that whatever is about to happen is not a competition. That said. I think it’s completely reasonable for Harrow to assume it will be. To use TVtropes parlance, she’s wrong genre savvy; she knows what kind of story she’s in, and more to the point, this feels like the kind of society- literally, pointedly fueled by death!- that would in fact have a death-and-infighting oriented selection process for its highest ranking fueled-by-death positions, which the empire would in turn gussy up with glamourous and prestigious language in order to half-assedly elide the horror of how their government works. That feels like a very plausible thing that a native of this universe might expect an imperial summons to turn out to be. I’m only certain that that’s not what’s about to happen because I’ve got special insight as the all-consuming voyeur of these people’s lives. (Also, I once saw a post specifically dragging everyone involved in…. whatever’s about to happen for assuming they were in The Hunger Games.)

The launch sequence highlights, to my eyes, the three positive qualities that Harrow has as a human being. The first is an impeccable sense of drama (acknowledged even by Gideon!) The second is that she’s deeply fucking funny in the audacity of her lies; she tells the whole community that her parents are going down in the tomb to look at some communion wine and he’s bricking them up in there now, and everyone just rolls with it. Does she think she’s good at lying convincingly? Does she have a frame of reference for what lying means when everyone doesn’t automatically treat you as a mouthpiece for religious authority? 

The last thing, though, is that I now have a slightly sympathetic motivation for Harrow; she actually does care about the ninth. They are her flock, her people, and they are old, and she’s watching them die one by one. And to Gideon, who hates everyone here, watching Harrow “do the census adjustments in her head” when a hermit drops dead from shock is a funny one-off gag of no real gravity; that Hermit is a set piece. But to Harrow it’s probably genuinely distressing, watching a bunch of people she cares about and feels responsible for who are quickly moving past the point where they can take care of themselves die off one by one, potentially taking crucial infrastructural knowledge with which to care for the others with them! I am significantly more sympathetic to her goal of revitalizing the house now; at a bare minimum, she could pull strings to get some competent elder workers out there.

And Gideon is finally leaving the Ninth. As part of her cathartic moment, she has an imagine-spot of the entire facility collapsing with her departure, for lack of her perception of it; this feels, though, like less of a metaphor than she’s treating it as. The idea of leaving the house doesn’t make the house seem fragile- her leaving the house is very literally making it more fragile. Gideon has noticed this sporadically throughout the earlier chapters for the sake of jabs, but the three individuals keeping the collective house half-life above 10 years or so have vacated the planet. She's acting like it's some great leap of imagination that the whole thing's going to physically collapse and explode when she’s gone, but when a few more bone nuns die and the already-framed-as-sucky Terraformers cut out, it might! It literally might. I’m not sure Gideon has shaken the places omnipresence in her life thus far quite yet; she’s realized it’s just a place, but not how fragile of a place. She is, to sum up, experiencing a very, very different sort of story than the story Harrow is the protagonist of. Harrow is taking the inaugural steps of a heroic quest to save her doomed hometown, but we see that quest from the viewpoint of the town punching bag. Fun things, once again, being done with Genre and protagonist privilege. 

#gideon the ninth #gideon the ninth liveread #the locked tomb #tlt #the locked tomb liveread #gideon nav #harrowhawk nonagesimus #thoughts #meta #blastweave livereads

[beautifulpersonpeach]

is so cute how jm keeps promoting and supporting jk bpp! they love and support each other, jk even said how jm promotes 3d on live. it makes me scratch my head how pjms say they want jm to stop promoting other members. i saw their pages in the tags. all they do is talk about jk and other members dragging them. all the time. they don't even talk about jm a lot, only jk and scandals and hoping bad things happen to jk and they want jm to stop promoting him. don't they know jm? you know how ppl say like idols like fans bpp? i've never seen fans so not like their idol like pjms and jm. they act like everything jm says he hates. how can they be like this?

*

Ask 2:

bpp i'm the same anon for pjm and jm. one pjm even said if they were jm's friend they want to tell him to not promote jk. why are they like this? can you pls explain this to me? i'm trying to understand them.

***

Hi Anon,

Are you asking me to explain akgae psychology to you?

Because if you are, I want to preface this by saying you're wasting your time observing people like that. Akgaes are just awful people who happen to develop a superficial hyper-fixation on an idol. Their attachment to their idol is superficial because it's so narcissistic. Their behaviours are more a reflection of their natural states than anything to do with Jimin or even how they see him.

It's why a PJM can think Jimin, who has said on camera more than once that he cuts off real-life friends who talk badly about BTS, why that PJM can unironically think they, a random 'fan', would get a listening ear from Jimin to tell him he should stop posting Jungkook on his Instagram.

Like, it's not even that they're delusional. It's that they're just really shitty people.

It's why they worship and idolize Jimin so much, putting him on a pedestal for being oh so selfless. The reality is that while Jimin is generally a very considerate person, he's not Mother Theresa (as she was known in her lifetime not the reveal afterwards lol). Most of what PJMs place on a pedestal is just Jimin being a decent human being and acting in ways other members have done at some point in different circumstances. But for them, it's the pinnacle of altruism because they can't relate. They can't imagine themselves being that kind or that decent, they can't even begin to picture the sort of relationship Jimin says he has with BTS members because they've got no analogs in their real lives. Akgaes are like judgy old nuns who pick people apart over the smallest human slights, and they actually enjoy being hateful. Hating is 90% of the reason they're here. Their happiness for Jimin stems from him introducing them to a world of six other people in the group plus their millions of fans for them to hate. Jimin has practically supplied them with a lifetime of hate fuel.

For an akgae, there's no bigger jackpot.

Nobody has to like someone because someone else likes them. It's fine if they (or anyone) dislike Jungkook, other BTS members and/or anyone Jimin says he respects. But the difference with an akgae is that their dislike of BTS members is tied to their love of Jimin, shown by the amount of time and attention they devote towards hating, disparaging, and actively looking to harm those members, while in the same breath imagining they're Jimin's friends and buddy buddy enough to tell him to ditch the members. Ditto for the other member akgaes because they all think the same way.

It's frankly kind of hilarious but also a bit psychopathic because all their actions show is that they don't actually like Jimin. They don't like who he is and what he does. They tolerate him because associating with him helps them achieve other goals through him, plus because they don't actually know him, they're more than fine believing that their own version of him is true to life.

This is also how shooters within ARMY approach BTS as a whole, relative to the wider music industry. The common thread that connects people like this, is that they aren't here for the right reasons.

But, as with all things in fandom, c'est la vie.

Jikook will still keep jikooking because nothing - not rain, not shine, not hail, not tornadoes, typhoons, droughts, floods, or tsunamis, will ever stop Jimin from gushing about Jungkook. And vice versa.

Jikook are just built different. And everybody else will just have to deal.

#jikook #jimin #jungkook #bts solo stans #bts chapter 2 #fandom behaviour

[twdmusicboxmystery]

The Daryl Dixon Official Trailer - So Epic!

@wdway:

Isn't it beautiful? Apparently we're supposed to have a long ten minute preview on AMC plus some time early tomorrow. I can't wait. Also the music in the preview link above is Clarie Lune which means moonlight.

@wdway

I've already watched this preview about four times and I foresee doing another four or five before I go to bed tonight. So beautiful and I'm so excited. Does anyone know what the big, good to see you, was? Was it as @twdmusicboxmyster predicted and simply seeing Daryl Dixon back?

@galadrieljones

Omg it’s so lovely, I love the Claire de Lune in the background. I need to watch it more!!

@wdway

Can't wait to see the long preview tomorrow. Or maybe tonight if someone bootlegs it from SDCC.

@galadrieljones

I’m going to rewatch, and maybe bring a little speculative analysis. Also, super excited about the 10min preview! If there’s a bootleg I may still wait, like if the quality is poor.

@wdway

Totally understand.

@galadrieljones

(Though who am I kidding LOL if it’s in front of my face I’m going to watch it )

I have watched it a bunch now, and it is so sweeping and atmospheric. I can already tell I’m going to really like Clemence Poesy and her performance. The little shot of her watching the train go by with the people screaming inside makes me think we will see her in flashback, and therefore, possibly Daryl as well. What he says about things happening to change you, and how she responds that they were both “broken until the world ended” conjures the past and how it has impacted them both.

It seems like we were somewhat on point, predicting that Daryl will end up at the Abbey where the nuns have taken Laurent into custody. He seems to be regarded as some sort of salvation for humanity.

One major twist will be, I suspect, the reason for why. Is he immune? We’ll know soon. I will say I love the idea of zombie-fighting nuns with their great big arsenal. Lol. They fight when they have to, to defend their flock. If anyone understands the nature and purpose of the Good Shepherd, it will be Trappist nuns.

It was very cute to me how Laurent was copying everything Daryl did. Daryl ran his hand through his hair, then Laurent did, too. Daryl took a sip of water, then Laurent did, too. I already want to adopt Laurent and save him lol.

The enemy faction, I am going to take a stab at it being related to the nationalist group that executed the French teams of scientists, re: the WB coda. If there IS a Davinci Code parallel here, then they would probably be aligned with Opus Dei, who are trying to eliminate proof that Christ’s bloodline lives on as a way of keeping control over the narrative they’ve worshipped for centuries.

My guess is that they want Laurent dead because Laurent may carry inside of him some form of the cure that was developed by the teams, which they executed. Laurent would be the holy grail. This is because if there is a cure, then they will lose control of the narrative, which is probably that the scientists caused the end of the world. Laurent, if he is the product of cure-based research, would prove that they could have saved the world, if they had not been executed.

The revelation that Laurent is immune would cause an uprising against those who killed the people who made him that way. My last bit of wild speculation is that the first season will revolve heavily around the plot with Laurent as a gateway into the research done by the French teams, which would then reveal that there are more people like him, all over the world.

We will also learn at some point soon that not all of the scientists on this project are dead. Of course, the Primrose Team was in the US when the end of the world happened. So was Dr. TB Ellis. Finding them would create more vectors toward the research that took place, which may have produced a cure. Of course, they will have to find these scientists, after they find that Paris is in ruins and that all the scientists in France have been executed. They will have to defeat the nationalist group and escape France back to America. As a plot, it is a bit of an inverse to Dead City.

Rather than rescue the boy from inside the evil organization, we are trying to deliver the boy into a cell that theoretically lies beyond the evil organization. Looking backward to Diverged. Perhaps Carol makes some sort of discovery pertaining to Team Primrose while Daryl is in France, and perhaps she goes after him to tell him what she found, because it’s just that important. That’s pure guesswork though.

I was also thinking, let’s have some more wild speculation on this glorious Friday, because it’s fun: What would make a bunch of nuns believe that a young boy is the savior of humanity? That he is their salvation? Catholics don’t take miracles lightly.

I thought, perhaps they witnessed him die and come back to life, not as a walker, but as the same person he was, only immune. This would have huge implications for TD. Because it could set up what happened with Beth very unexpectedly for Daryl.

Let’s say the nuns assure Daryl of what they saw. Maybe Daryl is skeptical, because it seems like he might be. We know he’s perhaps stopped believing in God at some point, according to what he said to Pope in season 11. And so Daryl is skeptical but he goes along with it because he trusts Isabelle and the nuns and he is taken with Laurent and he is chivalrous, so of course he will help them. But then say Daryl discovers that it’s not God, it’s science that cured Laurent and brought him back from the dead. Of course thematically that’s a whole theme: science vs. God, where is the line, etc.

He discovers the research at the laboratory, whcih lead to Laurent’s immunity, and he discovers that this research had been taking place in multiple sub-locations around the world, or even just in a couple of other places, one of them being Grady in Atlanta. Watching him put two and two together there would be extremely exciting and emotional. It would set things up nicely for season 2, which would revolve around escaping France and getting back to the USA to find these scientists and figure out what the hell is going on.

@wdway

Love this. I think your spot on very close to what we'll see. I have more thoughts, I will share those later tonight.

@galadrieljones

I’m going to add one more thing, which is that if this is anywhere near the truth, it could be possible that Beth was recaptured by the CRM after “dying.” Whether she’s still in their custody, I don’t know, but the Snow-White parallels suggest she could be. Just a thought.

 I also wanted to share just that I’m also thinking that it is possible he stowed away on some sort of freight ship and that’s how he got marooned. In the trailer, he’s fighting a guy in front of a sign that says, “Muster Station,” which is defined as “the place on a ship where passengers should assemble in the event of an emergency.” There are also multiple freight containers in the background after he jumps ship. So, seems like maybe, yeah, he was chasing something else entirely. I wonder what it was. Perhaps to do with Rick, but this will be the digression that leads him to his happy ending.

Also in the shot where he’s jumping ship, it looks like there are contrails, or vapor trails in the sky, like the kind left behind by aircraft. That could ofc be an illusion idk.

@wdway

Okay I just popped in and you need to go over to the regular safe zone group page and see what Domenica posted about her SDCC workday. She got a selfie with Greg N. She also said something that sounded suspicious to me of course she gushed about being a Bethyler and he said something to the fact that, well then, you're going to love the Daryl Dixon's, (I'm paraphrasing) spin-off something to that effect. Very open to interpretation.

@galadrieljones

Love this insight! Greg said, “Well then you should like the cool stuff that happens in the Daryl series.” !!

Ofc could mean a lot lol. BUT. She said she was crossing her fingers for a dream sequence which means even she, who isn’t TD, thought this could mean a Beth appearance.

Also isn’t Greg the one who spilled the beans about Grady being exploded and them all being dead a long while back? I think it was. Hmmm.

@wdway

Yes, that was Greg.

@wdway

What I actually came on is to ask you if there was a Fear clip floating around?

@galadrieljones

I haven’t seen anything, but I’ve been super distracted by the Daryl trailer. I’ll check around.

The reactions to Troy coming back are priceless lol

Plenty of ppl claiming we saw him as a walker, which, no. Also who would have thought that fans of a show about people coming back from the dead would be this incredulous about characters coming back from the dead

Maybe a test run for Beth. But ofc everyone would be stoked about Beth’s return except Carylers who will rightly be crying.

Fear setting the groundwork for plenty more fun resurrections that for sure.

Also it looks like there is no trailer for Fear 8b. One will not be released until closer to October…? Did they make some last minute changes????

I can’t really see any other reason? Unless they just couldn’t be bothered but that seems unlikely. Maybe they filmed some new stuff and don’t have what they want for the trailer yet?

@twdmusicboxmystery:

So, if there wasn’t a Fear trailer, what are these in reaction to? Was an announcement made about Troy?

@twdmusicboxmystery

Okay, I'm caught up. Finished watching DC and have the Daryl trailer playing on repeat as I type this, lol. Love the trailer! It’s great. I have thoughts on...everything. But I'll probably forget half of them. I'll leave DC for now, since you haven't finished it. But I think it has some very interesting implications, especially for the New York symbolism. And I may have some thoughts on a template they're using. Including how some of the Rick/Negan symbolism we saw during AOW might end up being fulfilled. I know I’m stating the obvious here, but they're definitely setting things up with these spinoffs.

As for the Daryl trailer, just like both of you, I need to rewatch a hundred times to get all my thoughts straight. But just a few first observations. Did we all notice that in this trailer, the captions say, I want HIM to know that I tried. So, the captions were wrong on the ones posted on SM? Also, people were wrong about the recorder. Or at least this trailer makes it look like they are. When he speaks, it looks like he's broadcasting, and people can hear him. Of course, we have to consider that the trailers can be spliced together in deceptive ways. So, maybe that one is still a question mark.

A note on how he interacts with Isabel. We all knew there wouldn't be romance between her and Daryl, but this is still worth noting. To me, the trailer proves the lack of romance. He interacts with her much in the way he would with Aaron or Carol. It's genuine and congenial--I'm sure they'll end up being close friends--but there's nothing tender or remotely romantic betwen them from what we see here. One of my favorite moments in the trailer is when she says the thing about Laurent reviving humanity, and he just tilts his head to one side. He manages to emote SO much skepticism in the way only Daryl can, lol. It practically screams "faith ain't done shit for us."

Which segues nicely into my next point. As you were saying above, Tarah, Laurent is clearly the Christ figure in this part of the story. Daryl's interaction with him (the hug) is far more tender than anything with Isabel. And obviously it's fatherly rather than romantic, but I can still see that Laurent and Beth will be parallels here, in the way that Daryl protects and cares for them.

It would be amazing if wherever he is taking Laurent, Beth is there, and that's how he first sees her. *sigh * cue a billion head canons* I agree with all you both said above. Looks so cute and epic and amazing. Love the music. Love the sweeping shots. Love the haunting little girl walker in the garden.

Love cemetery with crosses across the horizon. Everything looks freakin' amazing!

@wdway

I was wanting to show the tape recorder, it's incorrect this is Daryl talking about the Commonwealth, it's in America, not, It's an America, so sometimes these aren't perfect.

@twdmusicboxmystery, in this preview it does use the abbreviation 'em for them.

@twdmusicboxmystery

The one on Twitter says him. So they’re all different, I guess.

@wdway

That's why I say that we can't totally rely on what is written, that it could be a mistake by the person interpreting it. I will say what I watched was actually on AMC+. Right now they have all three previews available, the very short one with the overturned boat, the long 2 minute preview and the new one minute preview that was shown today. I will say I checked it out also in the longer preview when it first showed up on AMC+ and it also says, 'em.

Even in France we have X's. I thought this was a great shot too of the morning star he's carrying.

What I want to point out here is the hat. Remember the hat in Daryl's apartment an AZ. Hanging on the hook. We saw it when Carol went into Daryl's apartment with Dog in s10e21 Diverged.

I love the Beth floor. Black and white diamonds.

It's pretty bad when you’re truly hoping that the series live up to the promotional spots for it.

@wdway

Guys I loved everything that you wrote above describing this preview. Just a few thoughts about the previous in general. I'm really bummed that we didn't see one for fear. And I'm right there with you guys and saying how are people talking about the Fear preview when we can't view it. Maybe it was only for the people who attended SDCC.

Which doesn't make a lot of sense since you want to promote to a large audience and ny SDCC standards this year is very small because of all the strikes. If in fact Troy is in the preview and there's no reason why we should doubt it at this point that makes me even more excited about the teaser radios scene. Because what was the point of not clearly showing him when you announce hours later he was going to be in part 2. I feel more justified in my feeling that it was a tease for TD with that blonde hair.

@wdway

@galadrieljones

I love all your observations, @wdway. Especially the black and white floor. I can’t tell, but I thought maybe that Daryl had made a recording, then lost it, then it was found by the organization. To me, the thing they show looks more like tape player than a radio.

There also may be a theme beginning with recordings, imprints, etc. We know the French scientist watched a recording of Jenner before she was shot. We think that Daryl will discover something shocking via a recording as well. Computer hard drives, memory. Memory in general. I think and I hope this theme continues to vibrate under the surface of this story.

Yeah I saw the announcement about Troy via a secondary source. It’s a trustworthy account on twitter, but I don’t know where they got that info.

There really was very little information on Fear. Very odd if you ask me.

If they’re delaying the trailer until October, that would mean we’ll be well into Daryl’s spin-off by then. Maybe that’s why. Idk, maybe they made some sort of choice or change in terms of how the information in Daryl’s spin-off will impact Fear.

I do think Troy is returning, but I don’t understand what is with all the weird deflection and lack of information from tptb at this juncture. Why wouldn’t they make a formal announcement?

The rumor has been circulating for months, honestly. Just weird. Anyway.

@wdway

I believe it was in the article though that mentioned Laurent being 11.

@galadrieljones

That seems right! He seems like a cute lil 11yo

Still trying to figure out what the major surprises were supposed to be today though. If it wasn’t Troy, then what was it? What did we learn?? Maybe it’s just because we pay super close attention but other than the DD trailer which was amazing, there was nothing here we didn’t know, and even the DD trailer, while beautiful, was fairly expected. It didn’t contain any bombshells. I don’t even recall them mentioning Melissa McBride joining for season 2…?

@wdway

Them not mentioning MMB is going to be a real thorn in the carylers sides. They are so convinced that they're part of the fandom is going to be the difference between Daryl spinoff succeeding or being canceled. In their minds no one wants to see Daryl in France. The only way to save it is to let everyone know that Carol will be joining (The Carol&Daryl) show to save Daryl in s2.

@wdway

@galadrieljones

Well then LOL. I’m glad they didn’t mention Melissa. Again though…it’s weird! The information is out there. They must know.

@wdway

I left you a link, it's a very short article about what was discussed today in regard to part to a Fear. In this one it says that it was announced that it was Troy in the radio scene at the end of part 1. Then again there's some mistakes in this one also. They said that Fear Part 2 will begin the same night as Daryl's final episode on October the 22nd. Well apparently, these people cannot count 6 Sundays. Daryl's scheduled to end his the week before and then Fear Part 2 begins the 22nd.

@galadrieljones

Weird. Idk I think there’s got to be some confusion with what’s going on with Fear. The journalists are doing their best.

Or maybe it’s perfectly clear and just being poorly communicated idk.

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #team delusional #team defiance #td theories #td theory #beth is almost here #bethyl #Youtube

[b1rdbr41n]

tell me the milo lore, coward (lighthearted)

bet, to preface though, i am a gay lil shit and so theres a fair bit of oc x canon and weaving his backstory into pre-existing characters ect ect because its fun

the very basics!! Milo is an avatar of the dark that is not entangled in the whole mess of the peoples church of the divine host, however he does have some history with the catholic church.

BACKSTORY- START OF S1 STUFF

he was marked by the dark when he was very young, in an incident that ended up with his immediate family dead and him missing, during which he was also marked by the lonely. eventually he was found and was placed to live with his aunt (mothers side), who was a nun and got him into the church. he was unfortunately targeted and groomed by the priest (i dont know how to make that sound any less harsh my apologies) and generally did a lot of suffering in silence, all the while the temptations of the dark were eating at him. he made a plan to escape to go to college in london, but was found out and accused of being possessed (because they wanted to keep him in the church not out of any genuine concern of him being possessed). an exorcism was attempted on him and he ended up 'dying' in the process. his death was the catalyst for him becoming a full avatar (think like how jon only became a full avatar after pretty much dying in the unknowing) and he killed the priest in an act of revenge and then made his escape, still not knowing what exactly was going on with him as he didnt have any idea what the fears were. since he was declared dead he wasnt a suspect in the priests death, but had some trouble with creating a new identity to go by afterwards because he was still trying to live like a normal person and go to college and all that jazz.

in college was where he ended up meeting Oliver Banks, who took pity on him and finally explained what on earth was going on with him. the two dated briefly before they graduated, milo graduated with a bachelors in library science (if that is the correct name for it im not sure) and ended up getting a job in artifact storage in the magnus institute. (circa 2007, so gertrude era) he was pretty good at his job but was really quiet and private to the point he got a joke reputation for just being a ghost.

when jon became archivist he was transferred to the archives as an assistant, after a 'deal' with elias. elias would make sure he didnt have to hurt ppl to get fear, in return for making sure jon (he said everyone but he rlly only cared abt jon making it) lasted long enough for elias' goals (which he did not share with milo obviously). so milo was sent down to the archives to be a guard dog of sorts.

HOW HIS AVATAR SHIT WORKS

hes less associated with the whole cult-y aspect of the dark (and in fact actively despises the peoples church of the divine host despite their attempts to recruit him) and is closely tied to the 'brackish water' thats often associated with it. both his parents and the priest he killed died via their lungs being filled with black water. he needs skin to skin contact and intention in order to actually kill, which is why he constantly wears gloves, just in case. if he were to touch someone on. say, their chest, they'd get very cold, their throat would start to close and their vision would darken, like the background, other than milo, is fading to black. their lungs fill with black fluid and it usually pours from their mouth, nose and eyes. they basically drown on dry land and he's the only thing they see. its not super flashy and is usually very quiet up until when they yk. collapse

OTHER RELATIONS

the lukas family! milos father was one of the few lukas' that rejected the lonely and left, in an attempt to keep his children away from the lonely/the fears in general. however he sadly was unsuccessful.

Tim Stoker!! milo had a fwb situation with tim up until his death, the two had fallen for each other but never got the chance to say it, and with tim being so volatile in s3, when he learned that milo was an avatar they had a huge fight

Michael (distortion)! the two are.. i dont want to say friends but milo is very colorblind and that takes away so much of what makes the distortion scary so hes not very afraid of it, which it is fascinated by.

hes also got some history with @itschesshire 's ocs bastian and silas :))))

Gertrude Robinson. she pretty quickly found him out and they had a deal of sorts. they left each other alone and he wrote a statement (which jon later finds) as a sort of failsafe if he ended up being a problem for gertrude

OTHER????

he is a folk musician!! this has nothing to do with him being an avatar. boy just is trying to be as normal as he can ( i imagine he sounds like a mix of these two artists: https://youtu.be/HDHrQnIptq0?si=hCjZ-m_dJESkU5rW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMTaOoYXzEk)

hes a very kind and generally good person, and is very distraught with what hes done/has to do as an avatar

he cant go in the sun, at least not much

hes classically trained in piano

his shadow constantly changes, but never actually reflects his form like it should

he is CONSTANTLY cold

hes naturally blonde

im running out of things to put here just off the top of my head

#this is so long i told u i had a lot of shit abt him lol #tw very brief mention of grooming #my oc #oc: milo #tma #tma oc #the magnus archives oc #hes just a wet cat of a man #i love him dearly