Tumgik
#not good enough miniseries
llycaons · 2 years
Text
the REASON I hate 2005 p&p has not a lot to do with how accurate it is, I think I just have a particular loathing for the kind of dramatic romance that movie was trying to do. but I was mad they removed austen's jokes to try to make their own cringey and unfunny one-liners, and they removed her lines to substitute their own corny attempts at romance. it was all just so over the top and painful to watch and seemed so wholly unoriginal and polished and boring...idk
4 notes · View notes
madebycoffee · 2 years
Text
me: knowing the plot of pride n prejudice since i can remember since I was subjected to watching the BBC 1995 miniseries about 100 times as a kid.
also me upon listening to the audiobook once these two fools finally are on the same page: 🥺😭❤
5 notes · View notes
pagesofkenna · 9 months
Text
its been a really long time since we had a movie based on an Oscar Wilde script, why is that
1 note · View note
cashmoneyyysstuff · 1 month
Text
chocolate confession ♡
Tumblr media
fem reader, part 2 for the ring pop proposal miniseries since yall were asking for it ! fem reader, soft n worried katsu, white day chocolates, katsu n reader r in highschool (ignore the no dorms blehh :P) in this one, this also reeks of my ocxcanon ship msorry yall lolololol, i dont think there are any warnings, but lemme know if i missed sum else !
Tumblr media
the first person who realizes katsuki is trying to confess to you is his mom because he hasn't left the kitchen since he'd banished everyone from coming in as soon as the sun peeked through the curtains.
the older woman had no idea what the sounds of pots and pans clanging, mixed with not-so-quiet cursing meant, at first. but she figured it out quickly, call it mother's intuition, or the fact that she checked her calendar and realized tomorrow was white day.
mitsuki knew her son was going to confess to you when he came back from school with a cutely wrapped box of chocolates. her katsuki was still rowdy—if not rowdier and even less approachable than he was as a chubby cheeked little boy, so she guessed by the blush and barely suppressed smile on his face that—
"ouuu, got yourself some chocolates ? aren't you a heartthrob.." she teased "who'd you get those from ?"
katsuki scoffed at his mothers teasing. he rolled his eyes, but they wouldn't—or rather couldn't stray far away from the wrapped sweet treats. he runs his thumb over the ribbon tied in front.
"..yn gave 'em to me." he huffs proudly.
as she guessed, they came from you. of course.
katsuki is still—if not even more protective over everything that involves you, practically growling at his mom's not so sneaky attempts at trying to sneak a chocolate when he had opened the box "yn made 'em for me, so no touchin'." he snarled, stomping over to his room and ignoring his mom's knowing smirk when he made his way up the stairs.
this memory brings her back to now when she suddenly hears..nothing. absolute silence in contrast to all the ruckus from only a few seconds ago. and then the door creaks open just a bit and mitsuki sees her son's head peek out from the corner. she looks up from her magazine to raise a brow in question and the blond boy glares, jolting his head to the side in a silent plea for her to come over.
she saunters to the door, knowing smirk growing wider the more her son's grumpy face comes into view. she gets a peek of her kitchen through the small crack her son allowed her to see. she had to admit, though rowdy, katsuki was anything but messy. even though the dishes piled up, she knew he'd clean them up soon enough. she looks down at him and he avoids eye contact.
"can i come into my kitchen now ?" she smirks. katsuki scoffs at his feet. he grumbles something unintelligible before side stepping and telling her to 'just come in already.'
the woman is greeted with a batch of freshly made chocolates, which she assumes are one's you like if she knew how enamoured her katsuki was with you.
"ouu, who are these for, hm ?" she teased, but if he knew her son well enough she knew that these—
"sh-shut up !" katsuki snapped, cheeks turning red and eyes drifting around the room "you know who.." he challenges. mitsuki smirks wider, crossing her arms.
as she guessed, they're for you.
"okay.." she humors him, shifting her weight to her other leg " and what do you need me to do here ?"
katsuki inhales shortly to himself. he picks up one of the chocolates, not from your tray because those were for you and no one else, but from another tray she hadn't noticed of sloppier batches.
"try this." is all he says. handing her a little piece of deformed chocolate and she plops it into her mouth. she takes the time to let the sweet treat melt on her tongue before letting out a pleased hum. katsuki straightens up and his eyes shine and brighten the slightest bit.
"mhm, these are good." she acknowledged "but why don't i get one of the pretty ones ?" she teases. her katsuki all but scoffs in her face, simply stating that "these are for yn, not you."
and mitsuki realizes. he must've been working for hours trying to make these chocolates perfect for you, she guessed. her heart warms and her eyes soften at her son's adoration for you.
"but the one you gave me is good too, why can't you just give her one of those ?" at that, katsuki shoots her an incredulous look, like she had just told him something utterly unimaginable.
"i can't go around givin' her shitty chocolates ! 'specially not if i.." he trails off suddenly, grumbling with balled fists. he wipes at his cheek to try and wipe off his embarrassment. mitsuki feels her smile practically reach her ears. she's too good at this.
"if you what ?" she sings, leaning towards her son. he grumbles.
"if i—stop looking at me like that ! s'creepy so knock it off !" the blond snapped, face and ears a bright shade of pink and mitsuki can't help but bark out a loud laugh at her son's flustered state, her laugh drowns out the low growl he makes. she decides to spare him after a good giggle.
"okay, okay. i get it." she reassures. because she does, of course she does. but she sees something is wrong with the way her son seems satisfied for only a second before he's chewing at his lower lip and the way he wipes his hands against his pants. she knows her katsuki is extremely hard to handle. he could be quite the brat, but also extremely stubborn (she thinks she might know where he got that from.) so asking him simply what was wrong was out of the question. so she decides to coax him into it.
"you gonna give them to her tomorrow ?" he nods, hiding his eyes with his bangs.
"they're good. so i'm gonna give 'em to her tomorrow." her son nods at his mumbled pep talk, but the tension between his brows doesn't let up and after a moment, he sighs grumpily.
"what if i, like, fuck it up..?" mitsuki's eyes soften at her son's insecurities showing despite himself.
"how would you do that ? all you gotta do is hand them over." she asks softly. katsuki huffs.
"it's not that simple," he retorts "what if i make it weird ? what if i make things between us weird an' she doesn't wanna be with me anymore..." the sad tone of voice and the angry little puppy dog eyes make mitsuki melt, despite growing up a lot. despite being quippy and rowdy and a major brat, her katsuki will always be her little boy tugging at the bag of sweet ring pops he'd begged her to buy at the grocery store. her little boy who smiled a bright determined smile as the bag crinkled in his hand following his proud stomps to the car back home, ready for tomorrow.
a surprised throaty noise escapes katsuki when his mom places a hand in his hair, running her fingers through it. he makes a displeased noise, again, but doesn't try to stop her. mitsuki does realize her son is trying to confess to you with these chocolates, but she's a woman too and she knows you, she's known you since you were small and she knows how much you care about her son. she knows from the way katsuki kept the chocolates to himself, the barely supressed giddiness in all of his actions and the way he took his time enjoying every bite she knows and realizes that these chocolates were most definitely just for him.
and she guessed maybe you were trying to tell him something too.
she knew her katsuki had absolutely nothing to worry about, because you carried you empty ring pop container around with you in your bag and proudly explained it was 'your husband katsu' that gave it to you with a giggle. because you'd kiss his cheek without worrying about the ooh's and the kissy noises, only her son's cherry red cheeks but proud smile. because you'd giggle and laugh when he still called you his wife well into elementary school, and because you still smile so wide at the mention of his little ring pop proposal. and so, she smiled. startling katsuki by rubbing his hair fast like an almost noogie. he growls at the sudden shift, gripping his mother's arm and pulling away with a scowl, rubbing and trying to fix his hair. "the hell are you doin', hag ?!" her son seethed, and all she can do is smile.
"you got nothin' to worry about, katsuki." she says sincerely, the boy's arms drop and altough his barely there pout remains he tries to act tough, raising a brow at her "how do you know that ?"
"call it mother's intuition." her smile widens at his scoff and rolled eyes, he's better at it now and she laughs. " why do you wanna give these to her ?" she urges. he thinks for a moment, before his cheeks burn red again but his eyes go soft and warm and so much more enamoured with you than he was all those years ago in the car.
"cus..i like her.." he confesses "an' i don't want anybody else to do it before me." he finishes bitterly.
he's always been protective of you. any other boy you were paired up with or sat next to when the class seating order changed was considered public enemy number one for a while. of course, you had him on a leash, always being able to soothe him by saying that he was your number one best friend. and that was more than enough for him to throw smart glares and snarky smirks, grabbing your hand and dragging you off somewhere to show you something cool. something he knew you'd find cool because he prided himself in knowing exactly what you liked more than the other boys. your favorite ice cream, flowers, and chocolate flavor.
and mitsuki smiles. "right, you like her. so you can't let that scare you off, can you ?" mitsuki feels her heart soaring with pride, albeit with a little amusement when her son scoffs in response "course not. i ain't scared of shit." he states, she decides to ignore the irony of his statement for now.
"of course," she nods "and just between us, i think she likes you, too. i dunno how she does but.." katsuki's eyes widen like she'd just told him something ridiculous, completely ignoring her jab at him. she has to hold back a harsh laugh at how oblivious her son could be.
"that's just my guess though !" she shrugs nonchalantly "but there's only one way to find out if i'm right.."
after a beat, katsuki nods to himself with a grunt, grabbing the tray of chocolates and putting it in the fridge, ready for tomorrow, and wordlessly rolling up his sleeves and starting the dishes, as mitsuki guessed, and she smiles. she pets her son's head again briefly, ignoring his dissaproving grumbles, before giving him a pat on the back and wishing him good luck.
the next day, katsuki walks over to her, sat on the couch, immediately after coming back from school, with a proud smirk and gleaming red cheeks. and mitsuki knew she had nothing to worry about as she grins back.
Tumblr media
taglist *if your name is pink i unfortunately couldn’t tag you :(( : @73isthebestnumber @gold24fish @m-inluv @katsuisbaby @teddiiursulas-ink @moonbabysstuff @brandydel @queenpiranhadon @chuugarettes @starieq @aishio14 @andysdrafts @hyunorue @touyasprettydoll @itsfiive @annoying-bitxh @h0nestly-though @atinytiredpanromantic @mikalame @itzjustj-1000 @deepressed @evam23 @erenstitanweave @m-0ona @chaoticgay13 @lotusstarr @koreluvsspring @giannitaa @waterstarz @nayeonsdoormat @the-crazy-star-12 @kovu-bunnbunn
tumblr is tweakin so if some of your tags don't work m'so sorry :(((
3K notes · View notes
neil-gaiman · 1 year
Note
Hi, Neil! You've mentioned that Brian May was initially reluctant to give you permission to use Queen's music in the miniseries (because of competition with the Bohemian Rhapsody film, I think?) but I don't remember you ever telling us why he finally relented. Unless it involves a secret phrase not unlike why the sheep finally obeyed Babe the pig, how did you get him to change his mind?
He wouldn't let us use Queen when we did the BBC Radio 4 adaptation. He was concerned that people might think that Queen was being made fun of, or that Queen was being seen as something old-fashioned or something. For Good Omens the TV show I wrote him a letter, which said...
Dear Brian
Terry Pratchett and I had a private joke, back in the 80s, that any cassette in your car would eventually turn into Queen's Greatest Hits. We put the joke into our cowritten novel GOOD OMENS, and wove a certain amount of Queen magic through the book. Done because, pretty obviously, we love Queen. The book went on to sell enormous numbers over the years, and whenever two Good Omens fans got together, they would talk about Queen.
I know that when Dirk Maggs approached you when he did the Radio 4 adaptation of GOOD OMENS, you were wary about getting involved, due to concerns about, well cassettes, and the possibility of it positioning Queen in people's minds as something old fashioned or silly.
Which, I thought, when Dirk told me about it, was fair enough.
I've now spent the better part of the last four years writing scripts for, and shooting, a TV adaptation of GOOD OMENS. It stars Michael Sheen, David Tennant, Miranda Richardson, Adria Arjana, Michael McKean, Derek Jacobi, Jon Hamm, Nick Offerman, and lots of other amazing people, and it will be narrated by Frances McDormand. It is directed by Emmy-award-winning Douglas Mackinnon. 
Douglas loves Queen. I love Queen. David Arnold loves Queen.
And the millions upon millions of Good Omens fans around the world love Queen too. So we have put various moments in there just for them (including a brass band playing "Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon"). We want Queen music to comment on the action.
The show will come out from Amazon, and then from the BBC, next year. This year we are in post-production.
We'd love to show you some of what we've got. We'd love to pick your brains and to get your take on what we're doing. To find out if there's a way we can include you, or just brief you on what we've planned so far.
And Brian cheerfully apologised for having said no before, and said yes.
(Queen didn't want us to use the song Bohemian Rhapsody initially, because of concerns about the movie, but after a while they were happy even with that.)
5K notes · View notes
megistusdiary · 27 days
Text
𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 𝖊𝖓𝖑𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙𝖊𝖓𝖊𝖉 𝖇𝖑𝖊𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖓𝖌 𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪
Tumblr media Tumblr media
dom!succubus yae miko x sub!fem reader
warnings: smut (mdni), wlw content, miko has claws/fangs, she's a bit obsessed with you + steals you at the end
contains: shibari, cunnilingus, pussy slapping, tribbing, orgasm denial, overstimulation
pt. 1 of the succubus au miniseries
word count: 2.0k
Tumblr media
miko is the type of succubus to enjoy her prey to the fullest. once she has you ensnared in your very own dream, she holds nothing back. yet something about you taunts her.
each time she seeks you out, she just can't seem to settle on the right time to feed on your lust. she's been watching you for quite some time now. she's always rather finnicky with her food, taking her time to select the perfect prey. but there's something about you that has her curious.
she's usually the type to lure her pretty toys with a few wet dreams. soon enough, they're practically begging for something, anything, without even realizing it's her they want. it only takes her a few days to figure them out, really. once she gets what she needs, she discards her toys, thrown away to find the next docile little thing to sink her teeth into.
she's been watching you for a longer time than she usually wastes on humans. considering she's a succubus, she has the ability to walk in dreams, though she can also walk unnoticed (if she wishes) through your version of reality. miko follows you around, observing your day-to-day activities. she finds it monotonous, trying to find an angle to use to drag you to her.
slowly, she begins to pay more attention. rather than just watching, she starts to notice things about you. the little quirks only perceptive beings would spot. the way you tap your foot when you work, the way you bite the inside of your cheek, the little creases of your eyebrows when you're annoyed. it almost makes her sick how she can actually anticipate your actions before you do them.
miko walks through your life like a ghost alongside you. she's haunted by you, and she doesn't know why. she wants you all to herself. not just for the night, she wants to possess you entirely. she wants to figure out what makes you tick, and then she wants to strip it all away to make you into her perfect pet to please and feed on.
but another part of her, the strange, new, sensitive part, wants to keep you close to her for something she's never felt before. this... feeling is not possessive, no. this is as close to what humans call 'love' as a demon like her could manage, she thinks. she likes watching you laugh. the way your lips curl up in amusement at stupid jokes from your friends. your smile is infectious, and she thinks it cruel that she isn't the reason she sees you smile.
she itches to touch your skin, your hair, to run her fingers down your spine. she wants your body, yes, but she wants to keep you. maybe you could be her pretty little pet, cure her strange obsession for you so she can move on. she's tried before to forget about you, but she can't bring herself to.
yet, she wonders why she hasn't just taken care of all this yet. why hasn't she simply taken you? she never really needs to make her prey desperate for her. that's just all in good fun for bored succubi like her. it makes the chase all the more fun. so, why does she torment herself with watching you and never anything more?
sometimes she catches you at night, playing with yourself beneath your blankets. soon enough, all tuckered out from your little session, you fall asleep. she knows this is the prime moment, but she wants to draw it out subconsciously. it's nearing obsession the way she edges herself with you. her fingers itch to touch you, but she refrains, practically punishing herself.
but then it happens. a night when you've come home exhausted, which, albeit isn't a rare occurrence. something about you seems off tonight, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes. you climb into bed, stripping yourself with one goal in mind, to which miko watches you eagerly.
she's almost disappointed when your session ends with you simply growing more frustrated, tossing the covers over yourself and curling up on your side. her tail stops moving, drooping without her even realizing as her brows furrow. how boring.
well, surely this was her cue?
the logical part of her brain tells her it's merely because your body would still be aroused, still prepared to orgasm.
her heart tells her it's because you were obviously upset, and you didn't even get the relief you desperately chased. poor little human, unable to find pleasure on her own.
she feels bad for you, sneaking into your little dreamworld and seeing the image of you curled up in your bed. she approaches you confidently, a little smirk on her lips as she drags her finger up your blanket-covered body, tapping the tip of your nose.
you wake up slowly, looking up at her with furrowed brows. "is this a dream?" you ask suddenly, and she laughs, turning to the side and covering her fangs with her palm.
"oh, aren't you adorable." she coos, pinching your cheek. she leans down, cupping your jaw and puffing your lips out. "you look so tired, little one." she glances off, her hand taking a more gentle touch than she would with any others.
she can see you eyeing her tail curiously as it sways, curling up behind her body. her thumb gently strokes your skin, and she smiles almost wickedly. "you're so cute, i could just eat you up..." her eyes trail down your blankets, falling on where your waist would be. "you're lucky i like my prey a little slutty." she pinches your cheek, giving you no time to react to her words. "you're practically dripping, i can smell it."
she yanks the blankets off, revealing the wet patch on your panties and your surprised little face. you can't even manage to hide it before she's pushing your thighs open wide with clawed hands. they dig into your skin, leaving little indentations in your thighs as she leans in. you swear her eyes glow in the darkness of your room, focusing on your panties.
her clawed fingers trace over your clothed cunt, teasingly scraping the sharp points over your clit, feeling you squirm from the light sensations. she laughs, leaning up and suddenly bringing her palm down over your pussy. it's a dull thud and a slight pain that makes you yelp, thighs struggling to close as she keeps a firm hold on one.
"so sensitive too. what a little treat, and all for me?" she slides her free hand up to your jaw, tilting your already glassy eyes up to hers. "all for me?" she repeats, lightly squeezing your jaw.
and, really, you're not quite sure what takes over you when you respond with a meek little, "yes, all for you." slightly muffled by her hold on your face. she pats your cheek, satisfied as she settles back down between your legs.
she rips your panties right off you, tossing them away haphazardly, grinning up with sharp fangs. she nips your thigh just to hear you gasp for her before she licks a slow, fat stripe up your cunt. her tongue is skilled as she circles your clit, teasing your sensitive nerves as you begin to squirm.
you just can't help it. she feels so good, and your hips move on their own, grinding on your tongue. and then, once more, she slaps your pussy. considering it's your bare flesh now, it stings more, and she delights in your whiny little cry for her.
"bad girl." she chastises. "keep still for me." she warns, biting your skin again before diving back in.
you do your best to stay still, trying not to move your hips, but when she slides her tongue into your dripping hole, your hips jump. she suddenly lets out an almost disappointed sigh, pulling away. your slick still coats her lips and part of her face as she stares down at you.
"no! please- please wanna-"
"you're a disobedient little thing." she tuts, ignoring you. "you're lucky i like little brats." she drags a hand up your jaw, booping your nose before summoning ropes in her hands. it all happens so fast, and suddenly, you find yourself completely tied up.
intricate red rope knots cover your body, keeping you all tied up in a way she has easy access to your pussy, but one where you can't move at all. you struggle against the ropes, whining at her and she grins. "what's the matter?"
"'m sorry!" you whimper and she shakes her head.
"aw, but this doesn't have to be a punishment, does it? it's not so bad, being all tied up for me. you're much cuter when i don't have to keep reminding you of the rules." she covers her smile with the back of her palm. she leans back down, eyeing your dripping pussy. "you're wet enough, i'd say."
she sits up, making you watch as she slowly, teasingly strips. she unties the delicate strings holding her outfit together, revealing her breasts first. she lets the fabric slide down her stomach before she pulls it away to reveal her bare body. she cups her own breasts, seeing your desperate gaze.
"wanna touch, please?" you ask her and she sighs, teasing her own nipples with a wicked grin.
"if you're a good girl, maybe i'll let you. that's something you have to earn." she answers, positioning herself over you. she spreads your thighs, her cunt hovering over yours. "now, be a good little toy, and stay very still while i use you."
she slides her pussy over yours, her clit rubbing against yours as you mewl loudly for her, already sensitive from being edged earlier. she laughs wickedly, grinding more firmly. her grip on your legs is harsh, but the pleasure from her rubbing against you is sending your mind reeling.
"ah, sweetheart- you're drenched. you feel so good." she muses, head falling forward as she uses you entirely for her own pleasure. she drinks up your pathetic mewls and whimpers.
"close, i'm close, please, please-" you begin to babble, tears forming in your eyes as you desperately beg for her.
"go on, cum for me like the little slutty human you are." her ears flick, the jewelry in them jingling as she uses your body.
she feels your release against her, making it even more slick. you sigh with relief, only to whimper and cry when she keeps going. she grabs your face, shutting your mouth. "i didn't get to cum yet, don't be selfish. besides, you were begging me just a minute ago to cum. i'm letting you cum as many times as i decide. isn't that so generous of me?" she nods your head for you, patting your cheek and continuing to grind against you.
once she's wrung two more orgasms from you, she's sat herself right onto your face, riding your tongue as her clawed hands destroy your pillows. she uses you like you're nothing more than a toy to her, grinding her clit on your nose and completely suffocating you.
all you can feel, smell, hear, see, and taste are her.
she coos at you, so condescending as she cums on your tongue. "drink it all up, it's all for you. so strange that such a filthy little thing like you can get me so worked up. ah, looking after you had me pent up for the longest time." she smiles down at you, untying the knots as you lay limply on the bed.
she cups your cheek, her heart skipping a beat when you nuzzle into her palm like a little kitten.
"oh, it's a shame you're so cute. i almost feel bad for what i'm about to do. almost." she pets your head, letting you fall asleep in your dream.
she sneaks back out into the real world, picking up your sleeping body, carrying you off to her dimension. perhaps you'd be an interesting pet for her, indeed.
after all, miko wasn't quite done with you yet. she just can't help it that she's the possessive type ♡
559 notes · View notes
j4gm · 8 months
Text
SPOILERS!!! REFERENCES AND EASTER EGGS IN F&C ep. 10: CHEERS
The finale!
Tumblr media
Pawn Swan! This was another character who first appeared in Steve Wolfhard's post-finale loredump about the 1000+ world. I never expected to actually see him in the show.
Tumblr media
Nuts how this is like the third time we've seen Simon's ass. I love how Shermy is just chilling and playing video games while GOLB lets this random old man take a turn at the wheel.
Tumblr media
This establishing shot of Fionnaworld shows that it's very small. By the time it is restored at the end of the episode, this ominous white border is gone and there are more buildings, implying that it became a complete world.
Tumblr media
I can't believe Gary was thirsting after Scarab in this situation.
Tumblr media
There is a shop called Evergree Flowers; likely a reference to the episode Evergreen.
Tumblr media
This shop window advertises that you can learn to kick bugs. Appropriately enough, Cake kicks Scarab through this shop window while in her Godzilla form.
Tumblr media
The Betty statue has become GOLBetty.
Tumblr media
It should be clear by this point that Casper and Nova are a parallel to Simon and Betty, with all of their decisions being made by Casper with little consideration for Nova due to their unbalanced power dynamic. This is why Simon realises that he should have been more considerate of Betty's dreams, rather than single-mindedly chasing the Enchiridion and the crown.
Tumblr media
The credits confirm that genderswapped Ash is named Ashley. I wonder what happened to her after she fell into the void. Probably nothing good.
Tumblr media
Poor Marshall never gets to finish his songs. Truly he is the genderswapped Marceline.
Tumblr media
The name "GOLBetty" is now canon; Simon uses it in this scene.
Tumblr media
I'm not sure what's happening to GOLBetty here. A loose thread to pick up if this story ever gets a continuation, perhaps.
Tumblr media
Simon steps through several different universes, including all the ones we saw during this miniseries. I'm not sure what this world full of tiny bears is meant to be.
Tumblr media
Some kind of industrial capitalist hell universe.
Tumblr media
This is the Water Park Prank artstyle, implying that Water Park Prank takes place in a separate but canon universe. So Water Park Prank is now canonically canonical! (what a ridiculous phrase)
Tumblr media
Some kind of Jake universe.
Tumblr media
A universe featuring Magwood and his volcano lair, from the episode Evergreen.
Tumblr media
The snail! It's not dead after all. And it's a great way of symbolising a return to regular Ooo, as is the reappearance of the smiley butterfly.
Tumblr media
This was a strange selection of characters. I hope Jay hasn't left his younger siblings on their own if their dad is dead. At least baby Finn won't have to grow up in Vampworld, though part of me liked imagining what that would have been like.
Tumblr media
Fionna mentions that his is her top fantasy. The other two of her top three fantasies were Cake being able to talk and a kingdom made of candy.
Tumblr media
She gets a hammer, like she had in the dream sequence at the very beginning of the miniseries.
Tumblr media
Kheirosiphon goes back to working in a teashop, just like he did on The Drift before he was imprisoned by Scarab. Also Marshall's outfit here is incredibly gay, it's great.
Tumblr media
There is an ad here for a daddy issues themed comedy night. Sounds like Marceline's kind of place.
Tumblr media
Prismo's face glitches for a second. Ominous.
Tumblr media
Simon definitely needs to move out. This is probably an even more important realisation than coming to understand his influence over Betty.
Tumblr media
In the credits of this episode, Simon is finally at peace.
And with that, the miniseries is over! Back to the long wait. Will this be it for Adventure Time? Or is there yet more to come...
1K notes · View notes
hongism · 11 months
Text
BOUNCY. - j. yunho, c. jongho (m)
Tumblr media
➼ genre; smut ➼ pairing; yunho x fem!reader x jongho ➼ au; outlaw/mechanics!2ho, dystopian futurism, lore accurate ateez ➼ warnings; explicit smut, some terribly unfunny mechanic jokes i’m really sorry ➼ rating; m/18+ ➼ wc; 4.9k
‘Two for the price of one!’ the sign outside the shop had read, and well, you’ve never been one to pass up on a good deal.
part of the outlaw miniseries.
────────────
➼ smut warnings; piv, unprotected sex, semi-public sex, fingering, manual stimulation, pussy slapping, spanking, hair pulling, choking, sloppy seconds, creampie, pet names: sugar, sweets, dear & baby, dirty talk, breeding kink, name calling: bitch & slut, voyeurism & exhibitionism, dom/sub dynamics, dom yunho, sub reader, slight bimbofication, spit play, size kink, praise kink
────────────
You pull up to Outlaw Customs, the repair shop that’s become something of a second home for your car, two minutes before closing. If it were anywhere else — and anyone else running the place — you would never dream of being such a terrible customer, but since you know both men inside well enough to have a working relationship outside of this little business they run, you aren’t worried about causing any issues. And, well, if you do, Yunho will surely let you know in his own snarky way.
The garage door is still wide open, with Yunho on full display at the mouth of it as he works on the vehicle that’s always parked front and center. As you cross the threshold into the garage, your eyes catch on a sign propped up outside that you hadn’t seen the last time you were here. Two for the price of one on any repairs! A scoff slips out of you as you eye it, and that noise is what pulls Yunho’s focus from his work to you.
“You didn’t tell me you were running a deal,” you whine, drawing a laugh from the man before you.
“We still gotta make money somehow, sugar!” He nods his head towards the other side of the car, where another familiar face sits on the run-down couch you gave to them when they first opened up shop down the street from your apartment complex. It was something of a trade and an icebreaker: you needed a cracked headlight patched up, and they needed some furniture to fill out the garage and make it more homey for any customers who would come and go. Jongho gets up when you come over though, simply to move from the couch to the desk chair right beside it, and you take the spot where he was just sat.
“What’ll it be this time, sweets?” Jongho arches a brow at you in question and leans back in the chair. He exudes the same natural attractive confidence that he always has, and it shines through in the way he’s sitting with his legs splayed out and how one hand rests on his upper thigh while the other closes into a loose fist against the surface of the desk. He’s changed up his hair since you were last here too, now accentuated with white highlights that frame his head nicely. Your staring doesn’t go unnoticed, however, and he clears his throat gently when you fail to respond after several seconds.
“Oh, um, I’m in desperate need of a new tire. Back left. I think I hit a nail on the road or something, she’s been causing me trouble for weeks now.”
“And you didn’t come in sooner?”
You draw your lips into a firm ‘o’. “I started having issues two days after you demanded to do my oil change! Which I could have done myself really, but now — I can’t see what’s causing the issue, and no matter how many times I pump the damn thing, it still has shit air pressure. Besides, if you wanted to see me sooner, you don’t have to wait around for me to have another car issue to do so.”
Jongho shifts to find something on the desk. The tips of his ears are stained red, and that color bleeds down to his neck. “Yunho is the one who demanded to do the oil change though,” he mumbles, pulling out a clipboard with a blank sheet of paper attached to it. “I’ll go take a look and do a quick inspection to see if anything stands out.”
“Keys are on the dash!” you call after him before he slips out and leaves you somewhat alone with Yunho. Said man is laughing to himself as discreetly as he can manage but says nothing in favor of continuing his fiddling at the car. “Were you really the one to demand that oil change?”
“Technically no. But I did say that if he wanted an excuse to pull you over here then he could offer to do it for you.”
“Despite knowing I always do it myself?” you inquire as you push up from the couch. Your hands come to rest on your hips, chin tilting to match the attitude in your stance, and Yunho’s tongue pokes between his lips. His eyes move over your body in a quick series of glances before he knocks the round of his wrench against the headlight in front of him as though it’s a hammer.
“Um—” he fights to clear his throat but once he starts blushing, it’s impossible to miss against his pale skin. You step closer to where he’s crouched and squat down next to him once you deem yourself close enough — that being within touching distance, that is, where your shoulder can brush against his any time he tries to move even a hair.
“What are you working on?”
Again Yunho’s gaze finds you; this time, he lets it trail over your face first before going any lower, and you grant him a little smile for the bit of unnecessary chivalry.
“You’re too pretty to dirty your hands on me, sugar.”
“You say that every time,” you argue. You never get tired of admiring his side profile, but right now it comes with the added bonus that it watching his throat bob as he swallows hard around nothing but saliva and air.
“You don’t wanna make sure Jongho’s not changing your oil without permission again?” The roll of your eyes is far from subtle by any means, and the dramatization of the gesture brings a snort of laughter out of the man next to you.
“There are other inspections you can do, right? Since I’m a regular here and all.”
“Are you really in need of new tires, dear? From where I’m sitting, it seems like we aren’t the only ones who try to find excuses ‘round these parts.”
Leaning away, you put a hand over your chest and scoff. “The audacity of this man! Jongho, did you hear that?” He’s moving back into the garage as you call out to him, slapping the clipboard against the outside of his thigh. You only get a laugh out of him which seems to you like he agrees with Yunho. He lowers the garage door once safely out of the way and moves back to his seat at the desk. “See, he didn’t say he didn’t find anything.”
“He also didn’t say he did find something, sugar.”
“And, did he?” you prompt, eyes narrowing on Jongho’s back. Even though he can’t see you, he gives you the answer you want to hear with a quiet hum of affirmation, and you flick your chin back to Yunho to send him a smug little grin. “Besides, is there any harm in wanting a good deal?”
“That depends.” Yunho’s voice drawls a little, and he presses the heels of his hands against his thighs to help propel him into a standing position. The wrench in his hand gets tossed back to the cart nearby, bringing an echoing clatter to fill the garage with noise as your eyes lock. “Two for the price of one is a big deal after all.”
“And?” You stand slowly in contrast to how eager Yunho was to stand upright, but he watches your every move with rapt attention. In this game, it’s hard to tell which one of you is stalking the other — both playing the part of a predator so well that it’s indistinguishable. In your humble opinion, Yunho’s resolve is cracking much faster than yours.
“And it comes with lots of nice add-ons but they can be a lot to handle.”
“I never pass up on a good deal though,” you murmur through a pout, deigning to look down to the floor and back up to meet Yunho’s gaze through fluttering lashes. “I like handing big loads too.”
“Oh my god.” Jongho’s voice and the following groan cut through the building tension. “Quit making gross innuendos and just fuck! Making me sit here and agonize through that shit, disgusting.” Your face draws into something close to a scowl, one that matches his expression when you turn to look at him. In a move of childish vengeance, you stick your tongue out at him.
“Let us have our fun!”
“Yeah, yeah, have your fun and fuck.”
“Not joining?” Yunho asks, hand running over the curve of your hip already.
“I’ll sit back and watch you get your fill first then have seconds later. You always feel best after he’s thoroughly used you, sweets.” Your expression is somewhere between bewilderment and a smile, eyes following him as he moves back to the couch and throws himself down to the cushions facing you and Yunho. “What? He leaves you good and loose for me.”
“Jongho.” Your tone is breaching the edge of chastisement, but the words you plan to continue with are knocked out of you in a soft oof as Yunho turns you towards the car and suddenly bends you over the hood without warning.
“He’s right, isn’t he? I do open you up quite nicely.” You brace your hands against the hood, pushing up just enough to send a look back at Yunho over your shoulder. He’s already moved back some, however, and redirected his attention to slipping his fingers between the band of your pants and the skin underneath. “May I, sugar?”
“Go on then,” comes your whispered response as you settle more comfortably against the hood.
“You look pretty splayed out against our gem, baby.” Your view of Jongho is entirely skewed like this, but you watch him as he speaks. Though still fully clothed, you get quite the eyeful of his crotch with the way he’s sitting in that same damned position that makes you want to crawl between his legs and suck him dry.
“Right where she belongs.” Yunho’s fingers are hot against your sex, cupping you through your underwear now that your pants are down to your ankles. He snaps the flat of his hand to the same spot, and the action draws a shiver out of you along with a breathy whine. “Are you up for subbing tonight, y/n?”
“Yes sir.”
“So good and I barely had to lift a finger,” Yunho coos down at you. Once again his fingers trail over the line of your lips and push fabric against your cunt, not enough to give you any sort of true stimulation but it makes your clit throb with want. “Still remember our safeword?”
“Bluebird.”
“There’s my good girl.” Yunho slaps his palm against your mound harder to accentuate his words. You let out a moan that catches you off-guard, but Yunho doesn’t allow you time to adjust to the new sensations. “Count for me, sugar.”
“How many do you think she deserves tonight?” From your perspective, you can see Jongho’s hand move in slow circles against the front of his pants.
“Hm, fifteen to start? She was mouthing off quite a lot with me earlier.” A chilling rush of adrenaline pushes through your body, a whine hanging at your lips and threatening to interrupt their conversation, but you bite it back by sinking your teeth into your lower lip. Jongho catches your slight blunder before you have the chance to hide it.
“Oh? I think she wants to say something, Yun.”
“What is it, sugar? You can count that high still, right? After all my cock isn’t in you yet. Your little head should be perfectly intact still.” Yunho slides a hand down your back and finds a resting place at your tailbone. He takes the fabric of your shirt into his palm before bunching it into his fist and yanking your body along the hood of the car. “Not a dumb cockslut yet, baby, come on and answer the question.”
“I-I can, yeah, I can count that high, sir.”
“Good girl. You sound nice and desperate already. Maybe you shouldn’t wait so long to come see us anymore, hm?”
“I won’t,” you whisper. Yunho’s hand comes down on your ass, slapping against the bare skin exposed by your panties, and the sting comes immediately. “I’ll come sooner next time.” Yunho clicks his tongue though. Your gaze is locked onto Jongho, however, and focused on following his movements as he pulls his pants down his thighs and lets his thick cock spring out fully erect and leaking at the tip already. Yunho tightens his grip on you. The pressure on your body increases tenfold, making it hard to breathe under the weight atop you. You feel hot breath cascading over your ear as Yunho inserts himself into your personal space.
“Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten how to fuckin’ count, sugar,” he hisses into the shell of your ear. His tone is so wildly different than the one he uses in casual conversation — biting and scathing to the point of muddling your thoughts with desire. Nothing quite compares to sex with an angry Yunho, though you rarely can rile him up to that point and even now you don’t have him like that, just the barebones of annoyance that tease something more.
“N-No! One, one, I’m sorry sir.”
“If he’s so distracting, I can send you over to him with no prep, dear.”
“No, it’s okay, I’m — I’m focused, I promise. Please continue?” His response comes in the form of two more slaps over the same spot as the first one, sharp and pointed to make the skin beneath him heat up further. “Three…”
“Now that I’ve got your attention, make sure I keep it, sweetheart.”
There’s no real need for that reminder in your mind because once he starts building a steady rhythm and delivering the spanks to your ass with mere seconds between each one, you have no choice but to focus on him. Jongho is still before you, a sight unfolding gloriously as he strokes at his length with lazy little jerks and no intention of bringing himself much pleasure beyond that. Even Yunho goes quiet in his ministrations behind you, leaving the air to be filled with the sounds of his hand on your skin and whatever broken number you choke out after each one. You want to twist and writhe under him, to alleviate some of the burn that’s so present on your backside, but each time you try to so much as shift an inch, Yunho delivers an extra slap to your cunt. Well-placed and effective too — so close to your clit that it makes your knees buckle and you fall back into the position Yunho wants you in to carry out his task. The first ounce of reprieve comes at eleven, right when you’ve settled to push through the pleasurable punishment to the end.
“You know, sugar, you’re taking this so well that I’m wondering if we should increase the number. You aren’t nearly red enough yet, and we picked an odd number. I can’t show equal love to both sides like that.”
“Twenty?” Jongho chimes in, smile twisting as you shake your head. “Thirty?”
“Twenty is fine, I—” you inhale sharply at the sensation of Yunho running his hand along your skin. His touch is cold now, a welcome balm to the heat that emanates from the spot he’s just been hitting so ruthlessly. Your voice is so shaky that you have to swallow to contain the tremble before continuing. “It’s b-been a bit since we did this, I’m not u-used to it.”
Yunho remains quiet as he rubs his thumb over your warm skin in soothing circles for several more seconds. “One more, baby. Then you’ll be done for tonight.” He’s merciful but not entirely gracious because the last sharp slap he delivers to you feels ten times worse than all the others before, and you roll your head to push it into the hood as you cry out at the impact. He catches you as your knees buckle under you, preventing you from sliding straight down to the floor, and as you’re scrambling to regain your footing, he hooks two fingers under your underwear band. When he yanks at the elastic, it snaps against your body hard enough to make you hiss, and it burns a bit when they slide over your sensitive skin.
“Didn’t she do well, Yun?”
You crack an eye open to look over at the man on the couch and make direct eye contact with Jongho to find his gaze far softer than it was minutes ago.
“Of course she did. I expect nothing less from our pretty lady, dear. And—” Yunho pushes two fingers between your folds and dips right into your hole, bypassing all the arousal that’s begun to leak out of you “—she’s sopping wet to boot. Perfect.” The praise makes your body sing, and Yunho rewards your easy obedience by easing his fingers in and out of you with little resistance thanks to that wetness he mentioned. “You still on the pill?”
“Y-Yeah, as always. Haven’t missed a day.”
“Then I can cum in you?”
“Yes… yes sir.”
Yunho groans, and he moves his hand up from the small of your back to feel at the back of your head. He takes a handful of hair into his hold and grips tight enough to pull your head up from the car hood, but it’s not too terrible that you feel any sort of dramatic pain from the act.
“Gonna breed you fuckin’ full of cum then,” he growls, leaning into your space and knocking his forehead against your temple. “Maybe so well that that damn pill won’t work? If I fuck it into you hard enough then your body won’t have a choice but to take my seed.” A loud moan tumbles from your lips at his words. The hand you have propping your weight up wobbles, and just before your elbow locks, Yunho releases you and grabs for your hips with both hands. You’re close to complaining about the sudden departure of his fingers when he nudges the tip of his cock against your folds, sliding along the wetness in a crude form of lubrication.
“Fuck me, won’t you?” you plead quietly. You hope that if nothing else, the look on your face will convince him to get on with things, but it must be a combination of everything — the heady arousal in the air, your tone and words, even the sight of Jongho jacking off to the two of you only a few feet away. Yunho sinks deep into your cunt then; he buries the full length of his cock deep inside you, stretching you open further until it feels like you can feel him in your stomach. Your body trembles and drops forward as you press your free hand to your abdomen like it’ll help you feel him better. “God, you’re so fucking big, Yun.”
“All the better to breed you with,” he says before planting a hand between your shoulder blades and urging you all the way down once more. Jongho is squeezing the base of his cock with his other hand now, likely to keep himself from cumming too early, and Yunho is notorious for two things: his short refractory period and how long he can go without orgasm no matter what kind of stimulation he’s under.
The initial drag of his cock inside you feels like heaven, and when he thrusts back against your thighs, he does so with such force that your insides churn.
“Is she tight?”
“Insanely,” Yunho responds through gritted teeth. You try to lift your head to look back at his face, eager to see how broken his expression is right now, but he stops you in your tracks. Again, fingers threaded through your hair and locking in close to your scalp to give him the best grip that won’t hurt you too terribly much. He yanks you hard with the next thrust, and it brings your head up at an angle that stretches you hard enough to make your muscles burn with the effort of accommodating to it. “Barely been two weeks and you’re this tight again, sugar, your pussy is fuckin’ insane.”
You would laugh at the absurdity of his comment if you could, but in your current state, the only noise that can escape you are choppy moans. They’re the kind that sounds like they could come straight from an amateur porno, and despite the garage being closed, it doesn’t offer that much privacy. Anyone who walks by will suddenly become privy to what sounds like a home movie being filmed behind the metal door.
“Didn’t expect her to be this tight, fuck, I might cum early.”
You can’t warn Yunho of the same for yourself: between his thrusts, the full weight of his balls slap against your pussy from the sheer force behind how hard he’s fucking you, and the steady rhythm is just enough to stimulate your clit even without head-on contact. He knows your body well, however, and how to play you like a fucking fiddle, so when your walls start pulsing around the thickness of his cock, he shifts the angle and drives his tip so deep into you that you see stars behind your eyelids.
“Fuck, sweets,” Jongho exhales under his breath. Your vision is blurry when you open your eyes, but it snaps back to black a moment later when the orgasm hits you all of a sudden.
“Fuck, fuck, f-fuck!”
“That’s it, sugar,” Yunho coos from behind you, and his hand relaxes to run down to the back of your neck. He presses the pads of his fingers into the flesh there, poking and prodding at the muscles that have suddenly gone tense in the tsunami of sensations sweeping over you, but his thrusts don’t let up even as your walls squeeze hard around his length. Yunho fucks you hard and fast through the brunt of your orgasm. When your body finally relaxes and the waves die down to let you swim in the aftermath of it, he’s still driving his dick along your walls and knocking against your more sensitive spots. “Should I breed you now, dear? Fuck you nice and full of cum then send you to sit on Jongho’s cock?”
Your mouth hangs open enough to let saliva out of it and onto the car, yet it smears across your face when you lose the will to steady yourself against Yunho’s pace.
“Pl-please, sir.”
Yunho lays himself over you and spreads his hands to sit on either side of your head. His hips still against your backside. The fuzz in your brain nearly drowns out the feeling of cum pumping into you, without a doubt filling you to the brim. He’s still in the throes of recovery when you nudge Yunho off and out of you. You would stay longer with him inside, to feel that warmth and fullness for some time longer, but your body moves on its own agenda with a pulsing desire lingering in your gut. Despite the weakness in your muscles, you walk over to the couch where Jongho waits patiently and quietly. His gaze is heavy on you when you drop your hands to his shoulders.
“Baby…”
“Don’t stop her now, babe,” Yunho interjects. You don’t spare him a glance over your shoulder or anything like it — the movements of your body are methodical and calculated, a firm straddle over his hips and spread legs before you reach down to put your hand next to his against the length of his cock. Together, you guide him into your used cunt, pushing him in alongside the cum threatening to drip out of your body. A sigh of relief leaves your lips once he’s securely inside you.
“Feel good?” you whisper close to his face. Jongho’s cheeks are flushed, his pupils blown own so wide that you can barely see the color of his irises, and his lips glisten with spit. You can’t help yourself, you decide. He has the same thought in his mind because he’s the one to kiss you rather than the other way around, lips finding each other in a fit of passion that makes your chest burn.
“I want more,” he mutters into your mouth.
“Greedy.” You lift yourself up from his lap some, enough to let his cock nearly pull all the way out of you, then sink back down with a spine-curling pleasure that makes you throw your head back and moan to the ceiling. Yunho’s form enters your line of sight, and his hand finds the base of your throat. He stands behind you, chin tilted to his chest so that he can stare directly down at you. He’s handsome beyond belief even at this awfully skewed and awkward angle.
“Open,” he commands while tapping along the column of your throat. Your lips part completely to allow him access to whatever it is he wants from you.
Jongho’s firm and strong hands squeeze at your waist at the same moment. He takes the control from your hands, and you hand it over without complaint to let him work your cunt along his length as he sees fit and to chase his pleasure in full. Yunho hooks his thumb on the back of your teeth. It effectively holds you open and steady for the moment he decides to spit down into your mouth. The warmth on your tongue makes you wince, but then Yunho is withdrawing his thumb and pushing up against your chin.
“Close and swallow,” he says in what’s likely to be his last act of dominance for the night. Your eyes remain firmly set on his face as you do so — slow yet deliberate so that he can see your obedience in its full glory. Your reward is the sweetest gift. He lays a kiss to your forehead and taps your cheek gently. “Good girl.”
You right yourself enough to look down at Jongho, sending your focus to the lover beneath you. He lets you take his face between your hands without saying a word, but the second you lean in for a kiss, he bites out his thoughts.
“You take dick like a bitch in heat, sweets.”
“Y-You’re the one—” your voice sounds about as wrecked as you feel “—fucking me dumb.” Jongho slides his hands along the lines of your body until he reaches your ass, where the skin is still sensitive and burning from Yunho’s earlier punishment. He palms the flesh harshly enough to make you cry out. “Want you inside too.”
“One wasn’t enough? How much cum do you need?”
“She’s a proper cumslut, really Jongho. You know this.” It’s unfair that Yunho sounds totally recovered and unbothered by the rough sex you just shared; meanwhile, you’re thoroughly wrecked and still going through the motions, working towards another impending orgasm on Jongho’s cock.
“Close?” he asks with a lilting tease hanging off his tone. You push yourself against him as best you can, close enough to knock your forehead into his.
“I bet you’ll cum first, big boy. Your needy dick is begging to breed me.”
Jongho’s nostrils flare at the accusation, but it’s an accurate one with the way his haphazard thrusts are becoming more and more staggered. Nothing inspires Jongho quite like a small competition though, even if it encourages him to play dirty and reach around to your front. He plunges a hand down alongside where his cock meets your body. Your bubbling complaints about his dirty tactics fall short at the mouth of your next orgasm, and he all but steals the air from your lungs with a few little twists of his fingers on your clit. He cums with you immediately after — but after nonetheless, as you’re certain he’ll note later on. Your body sags atop his even as he drives his length into you a few more times for good measure and to milk himself for all he’s worth, adding another load to what Yunho’s already left in you.
Said man makes another appearance too, with bottles of water in hand as he lowers himself to the couch cushions right beside you and Jongho. You take one of the presented bottles with a quiet murmur of thanks, easing up from your slumped position to take several greedy sips in an effort to soothe your poor throat.
“By the way,” Jongho tilts his head in Yunho’s direction. A moment passes that’s full of silent anticipation, and it’s only when Yunho’s brows start to furrow that Jongho finishes his thought. “Her tires are fine.”
The incredulous look you get from Yunho makes the ruse well worth it, and the small flare of anger that crosses his eyes briefly only serves to make you want to tease him further.
────────────
please like & reblog this work and consider leaving a reply or sharing your thoughts in a reblog or ask!
this work belongs to caly / hongism (2023). do not copy, repost, or plagiarize in any way.
2K notes · View notes
Raphael's First Love—A Talk With Splinter
part of the First Love Talk miniseries!
sfw 💫 word count: 1.2k
Tumblr media
The old metronome in the corner of the dojo ticked on incessantly as Raphael sat in indignant silence with Master Splinter. After four outbursts, a fight with Leonardo, and days of distance, Splinter had put his foot down and called his son in for a talk about his behavior. Beneath his stern exterior, Splinter was concerned.
"Raphael, explain yourself," Splinter demanded with a calm voice, treading a thin line with his angriest son's temper. Not out of fear—Splinter could and would easily put the giant back in his place even as an old rat. That was no issue. "What has gotten into you?"
Weeks of this crap, that's what, thought Raph bitterly. Weeks of feeling sick to his stomach every time she was around, trying to put up a good front and getting embarrassed by himself or his brothers; he felt stupid. Weak. Utterly at her mercy, and she didn't even know. Good. I don't want her to. Splinter gave him a skeptical eye. He shifted his position multiple times, uncomfortable and trying to look casual. Grunted dismissively. But he knew his father was not going to take that for an answer. He let out a scoff, dodging eye contact, "Things gettin' under my shell like usual."
"But not like usual, because you are worse-off than usual," observed Splinter.
His mental health was actively declining the more he deliberated on the pang in his heart he felt when he thought about her. It made his guts twist to think about why he was so angry, why he was even afraid of her, deep down. The last thing he ever wanted to admit to himself, let alone Splinter, was that he cared what she thought. A lot.
Too much.
All of his brothers seemed so confident, and yet he was self-conscious. Why? Why do I gotta be like this?!
Raph shrugged. "You know me, master. Comes with the whole package, whether all of you like it or not." He was already moody, prone to rapidly-changing emotions. That was never a guess, it was a given. "Look, I'll do us a favor and just end this convo now—I ain't in a bad way. And Leo needs to stay in his lane comin' to you over a little fight." He started to get up, leave the terrible silence of the training room and that god awful ticking metronome. Splinter jabbed his cane into his plastron, knocking him back, and then brought it down hard on his foot. Raph yelped and stumbled down, quickly reassuring his seated position.
"Enough!" Splinter barked. "Sit, Raphael."
Splinter had his full attention, now. The top of his foot ached dully.
Raph was seething on the inside. On the outside, he slumped over his knee, hiding his face behind his thick forearm.
This was all her fault. If she hadn't fallen—literally crashed—into their lives, he would be fine. There would be no question about what to do or what he was feeling. It was always them and the shadows—no people, no complications. He always knew that would never be accepted despite craving it with every ounce of his being. Why change that? Why suddenly bring more emotions into the mix? Before her, it was all straightforward. Now, he worried if he was too brutish, too much of a freak, if his normal habits weren't so "normal". He didn't want to feel like he was under one of Donnie's microscopes, with her eye looking through the lens.
Splinter furrowed his gray brow at him, resting his hands on his cane. "This is about your self esteem, is it not?" he questioned carefully. Prying.
"You couldn't know anything about it!" Raph shouted back. He swung his hand as he spoke. "I'm a six-foot turtle, there's no changing it! No changing me!"
Sighing a light breath, Splinter closed his eyes. This was going to be the challenge for the day. No day was without its challenges. He recentered his thoughts, looking for a different angle. He wanted to speak his son's language.
"Correct, there is no changing you."
Raph stuttered on his response as his face fell almost imperceptibly, but Splinter knew every minute expression of his kids.
If she knows, I'm done for. Raphael's mind was swirling and his thoughts were reaching dead-ends left and right. There was no changing. No hope? He couldn't tell. He'd given up before he'd even tried. Because like his weapon, he was defensive, and did everything possible to protect what? Himself. His big, soft heart in there that needed some serious attention. The thought of telling her made him want to hurl. But like a moth to a flame, he kept coming right back to her, torturing himself with "what-if's" and doubts he had all the while.
"What do you want me to say, Splinter?" Raph spat with a low voice.
"I want you to be honest with yourself," Splinter replied.
Raph poked the tip of his sai into the mat before him, digging it into the material. "Okay, I'll bite," he said, "what do you think I'm lyin' about? Huh?"
He already knew the answer to that. It was everything; he rejected the shyness he felt inexplicably when she was around. He felt dirty next to her, or if he accidentally touched her, it was an ordeal. Because he was a mutant and she was a human. Out of all of her pick of people, he never could have been at the top of her list. He doubted he even made the list as an option.
Knowing Raphael was lying then, too, Splinter simply lifted his chin at him, and waited for the real answer.
The silence was getting to be too much for him. He jammed his sai into the mat, stabbing through it. But in his face was sadness, not anger. He finally admitted, "I just want to be accepted. Even just by her." Fiddling with his sai, he averted his eyes to stare at something random next to him, adding quietly, a little bashfully: "Aaaaaand sometimes I think Leo has a…better shot than me. That's why we were fightin'. I went nuts because he was gettin' along with her and it made me feel some stuff I don't want to feel."
There it was, thought Splinter, bingo. "Well, you are certainly not the first young man to make a fool of yourself over a girl."
"Master, I don't even know what to do with myself. How am I ever gonna know what to do with her?"
"The first step would be to stop ruining my mat," Splinter said as he bonked his son's head with the end of his cane, irked that he was creating a hole in it with his sai. Raph quickly tucked his weapon away. He muttered an apology. Splinter cleared his throat before continuing. "The second step would be for you to face your fears, Raphael. Accept them, conquer them. You are as you are—what humanity thinks of you is not your concern. You know who you are. I would like to think that [y/n] does as well."
Raph shifted, uncomfortable. "Yeah, I don't think she does. I don't really…"
She was all too kind, beautiful, and smart; a deadly, terrifying combination, in his predicament. He'd been plagued with dreams of being with her night after night. Not worrying about a single thing until the moment he woke up—he was stressing every morning. His anxieties always seemed to curse him cropping up in his dreams; not even in sleep could he escape her sphere of influence.
Placing a gentle hand on Raphael's shoulder, Splinter looked down at him, "Then, you show her who you really are. Raphael."
1K notes · View notes
jamespotterismydaddy · 10 months
Text
Lord Husband (Chapter 1)
Cregan x reader
A/N: this is just gonna be a miniseries methinks
word count: 1,171
Next chapter
Series Masterlist
Tumblr media
“You look like an angel, my love.” Rhaenyra says as the handmaidens pin back your hair but you don’t feel like an angel; you feel like a pawn.
You have been meeting with suitors for nearly four moons and none have seemed to be good enough for you. Lannisters are too proud, Tullys bore you, and you can’t stand a single person with the name Baratheon. Your mother said that she was showing you a great kindness in allowing you to choose, a kindness that she didn’t appreciate enough when the young queen had the chance. You don’t care. You know you are just like she was when she was younger. You often wear that with pride but you know what it means in this scenario. You’re ‘too stubborn to appreciate what has been given to you’. Rhaenyra gave you the opportunity but she was no longer patient. A husband had to be chosen.
“Winterfell is very far.” Is all you say in response.
“Lord Stark is a good man. I would not have chosen him for you if I wasn’t sure of it.” She presses a kiss to the side of your head. “Just walk through the gardens with him. Get to know the man who will be your husband.” She pets your hair in a loving manner. You can’t seem to understand that she would only have the best for you, her only daughter.
You have yet to meet Cregan Stark but you already hate him, your betrothed, the man who will whisk you away from your family to the cold North. You resent the freedoms he is taking from you. You resent being separated from your family. You resent everything about him.
“He will treat you well, sweet girl. I know it.” You stand up now, wrapped in a silk gown and decorated with jewellery like a lovely little present for him. When you get to the gardens, he is already waiting for you with a blinding smile on his face. You have to admit that he is incredibly handsome. He is tall and his physique looks strong from years of training with the sword. A real Northern man.
“Princess, it is my pleasure to meet you. Our engagement brings great honour to my house.” He walks over to stand in front of you and you let him take your hand up for a kiss, fighting the urge to roll your eyes.
“Lord Stark.” Your voice is cold which seems to surprise him ever so slightly. You don’t give him a chance to say much else as you begin to walk through the gardens, leaving him in your dust. He looks at you in a bit of a stupor before quickly following after his pretty betrothed. 
“Would you like to take my arm, princess?” He politely offers his right arm to you. How proper.
“No.” You say simply as he speeds up a bit to stay in step with you.
“No?” He looks a little confused but chalks it up to teenage girls being a little strange. You give him no other response so he makes another attempt at conversation. “Have you ever visited Winterfell?”
“No.” He awaits to hear a sentiment of your excitement to see it soon but is disappointed when none comes.
“I am sure you will love it. It’s beautiful when there's a fresh dusting of snow on the ground. I’d say it’s the greatest place in all of Westeros but I suppose i’m biased.” He grins, mostly to himself, and then looks at you, hopeful for more of a response.
“Hmm.”  Is all you offer as a reply. Cregan finds himself dejected at his future wife’s lack of interest and he tries his best to shake it off.
“It does get cold of course but you’ll be more than warm enough in the castle. Most actually find it very cozy.” He gives you another smile that likely has most women melting in a puddle at his feet. For some reason it just irritates you more.
“Dragons don’t do well in the cold.” Your curt reply makes him cringe. He can’t understand what has given you such a sense of distaste towards him. Things are silent for a moment. He has no idea how to respond directly to your comment.
“Do you have any hobbies?” Another attempt it seems. The question makes you sigh. What a boring change of subject. 
“We don’t really need to speak.” You shock him with your words, with your bratty attitude. He’d expected you to be entitled but he didn’t expect you to be outright rude. He is a lord after all, the Warden of the North. He deserves some sense of courtesy from you.
“That is going to be difficult seeing as how we are to be wed.” He scoffs and you begin to fiddle with the rings that decorate your fingers.
“The only thing you need from me in this marriage is to fill my belly with your heirs.” You say. You know it’s harsh but it isn’t necessarily untrue. He seems to be taken aback slightly by your words.
“You don’t wish to get to know the man you’re going to marry?” He asks in disbelief. He seems like a romantic. You didn’t think people of nobility were allowed to be romantics. Though, simply knowing your husband better is a sad definition of romanticism.
“You ask many questions.” You roll your eyes and he does his best to hold his tongue and not say something stupid.
“And you answer practically none, princess.” There was a bit of bite in his words. He clearly believes that you’re acting like a spoilt child. 
Awkward silence fills the space between you both. You wonder if he may apologise to you and he earns a bit more of your respect because he doesn’t. It’s quiet for quite some time and you try to walk faster so that you may get to the end of the gardens before he tries to make conversation again. He never does and it isn’t long before the promenade comes to an untimely finish.
“Good day to you, my lord.” Poor Lord Stark looks like he’s rethinking all of his life choices when you say the words to him. What an ill fate for the man, marrying a cold Targaryen princess.
“To you as well, princess.” You don’t lift your hand up for him to kiss again and based on the fact that he looks like a kicked puppy, you know that he wanted to.
You leave quickly. You did your duty… technically. Your mother asked you to walk through the gardens with him and you did. Mayhaps you simply forgot about the getting to know him part. You wonder if he will retract his proposal, but who would ever retract a proposal to a princess? Maybe you’re delaying the inevitable, maybe you’re just full of old fashioned Targaryen spite but you have no wish to create a relationship with the man you’re meant to marry.
taglist(comment to be added): @valeskafics @girlwith-thepearlearring @darylandbethfanforever9 @lovellies
1K notes · View notes
jungshookz · 6 months
Text
smitten: y/n (reluctantly) agrees to go to jimin's big halloween bash and she forgot how much she actually hated parties
Tumblr media
➺ pairing; jeon jungkook x reader
➺ genre; smitten!miniseries!! bff!kook and smitten!y/n!! university!au!! honk honk humour!! the boohoo angsty wattpady fic of your dreams!! the pining and yearning is off the charts!! jimin’s still an asshole but what’s new!! 
➺ wordcount; 9.2k
➺ summary; putting on a smile while watching ji-eun cuddle up to jungkook is already hard enough, but when y/n is (reluctantly) invited to jimin’s massive halloween party, she can’t help but even more out of place. 
➺ what to expect; “you know, you’re my best friend and i wanna make sure that everything is… good between us.”
➺ currently playing on cee.fm; favourite crime [olivia rodrigo]
➺ smitten: part one [the almost confession]; part two [the incriminating note]; part three [the date]
»»————- 👻 ————-««
you’re pretty sure you’re in hell. 
you’re not sure what you did in your past life to have deserved this, but past-life y/n must’ve killed a baby or set an entire village on fire or something to that degree because you’re pretty sure that in this current timeline, you’re in hell 
you stay quiet as you munch on your (slightly soggy, unfortunately) sandwich, scrolling through your phone (but not really paying attention to your instagram feed because apparently you’re a glutton for punishment and you keep wanting to look up and just stare at jungkook and ji-eun in all their coupley glory) while your foot taps anxiously against the ground 
you know that if you say you can sit somewhere else to give the two of them some privacy that jungkook will insist that you stay, but you feel like the longer you sit here the faster the people around you will see that you’re just a big ol’ monster truck sized third wheel
you could lie and say that you have to go to the library to get some work done, but jungkook’s really good at knowing when you’re lying to him (apparently you have VERY obvious tells which you were very unaware of) so that’s not going to be a feasible plan either 
it’s just that being here is incredibly uncomfortable but it seems like the only option you have is to stay and sit through it — which, again, reiterates your point of you being pretty sure you’re being punished for something you did in your past life
“my handsome boy…” ji-eun giggles lightly, reaching over to adjust the collar of jungkook’s jacket before leaning over to kiss him on the cheek, “i like this jacket a lot.” 
“yeah?” he gives his girlfriend a boyish grin, looking down at his jacket before looking back up at her, “lucky for you, you can borrow it anytime you’d like-“ you glance up at them, the little voice in your brain stopping you from interrupting them to say that that is a nice jacket because you chose it for jungkook — and you feel like that comment could potentially lump you into the pick-me-girl-best-friend category which you’d very much like to avoid 
“borrow? no, i’m stealing it-“ 
“no way! i got this thrifted for, like, fifteen bucks, i’m not letting you steal it-“
“alright, then you better sleep with one eye open the next time i stay over at yours because this is a nice jacket-“ 
you can’t help but look over at the empty seat next to you on the bench as you let out a quiet sigh… you have never felt so horribly single in your entire life. 
and it doesn’t help that it’s cuffing szn this cuffing szn that all over your social media — your tiktok feed has not been very friendly to you as of late, the app flooded with countless videos of cute couples bundling up for the colder seasons
if anything you need to be cuffed to the wall before you go crazy and rip your eyelashes out from frustration 
unsurprisingly, jungkook and ji-eun are a couple now, but really, are you surprised? jungkook is great, ji-eun is great, they went on a great first date (thanks to you, let’s be honest) and all the dates after that went well too because it lead to jungkook asking ji-eun if she wanted to be exclusive with him 
you knew that things were going well when jungkook started hanging out with you less and less
and then when they officially got together, you didn’t think it could possibly get any worse but your already puny twice a week hangouts turned into two hours a week before he’d zip off to spend time with ji-eun
in fact, within the last two weeks, he’s only hung out with you once… which is fine, because you understand the honeymoon stage and you understand how giddy people can be when they get into a brand new relationship and just want to spend all their time with this new person 
you know for sure that if you were the one who’d gotten into a new relationship, you’d definitely want to spend as much time with your person because why wouldn’t you want to do that? you really can’t blame the guy 
you have other friends you can hang out with, but it’s just not as fun because even when you’re having a good time with them, your mind keeps wandering back to what jungkook is doing with ji-eun 
and of course, when jungkook mentioned to you over a quick lunch one afternoon that he was planning on asking ji-eun to make things official, it’s not like you could tell him that it was a horrible idea and that he shouldn’t be dating ji-eun without ruffling feathers and raising brows of suspicion 
the only person it would be a horrible idea for would be you, and you’re not enough of a dickhead to ruin a potentially good thing because of your own desires  
and obviously, she said yes because why wouldn’t she say yes?
you know, there really isn’t a way for you to talk about this situation without sounding like the most bitter person on the planet, so perhaps you should move on now  
“okay, i’m putting you two on drinks duty for the party!” jimin seems to appear out of thin air and you turn your head to look at him standing at the front of the table with an armful of flyers and the usual bossy, snarky persona that literally drains you every time you have an interaction with him, “unless you’re too busy making out to handle that.” 
“no, we can handle it-“ ji-eun rolls her eyes playfully, pulling away from jungkook before reaching over and plucking the list from jimin’s slim fingers, “jesus, jimin. twelve bottles of vodka??” 
“i’ll give you my credit card, just put all the charges on it-“ jimin shrugs, sliding in next to you before nudging you over a little, “this is going to be my greatest party yet. i’m charging $10 an admission and i’m renting out this huge house- i don’t think you can even comprehend how massive this party is going to be. it’s gonna be so much better than last year’s one.” 
“i remember hearing about your party last year!” you chime in, offering jimin a polite smile even though he’s not looking at you, “it sounded like it was super fun.” 
“so, you guys are on drinks, so that’s covered-“ jimin makes a tick on his clipboard before nodding to himself, “decor is covered, catering is covered, rent for the night is covered…” 
you poke your tongue against the inside of your cheek, slumping in your seat a little and resisting the urge to roll your eyes
you still have no clue what jimin’s problem is with you, but at this point you’ve gotten used to the way he acts like you literally do not exist at all 
you mentioned it to jungkook one time, wondering if maybe you were just looking too far into it and that there was nothing to take personally to which he responded with an enthusiastic nod and a “no, i also get the vibe that he doesn’t like you and i have no idea why… just let him be an ass if he wants to be one, don’t stoop to his level. life is too short to waste energy on weird people.” 
so if jimin wants to continue being an ass to you, you’re just gonna let it roll off you like water off a duck’s back 
“funny enough, y/n and i were gonna go to your party last year, but the kids in y/n’s building were trick or treating so we decided to stay home and watch horror movies and hand out candy instead-“ jungkook clears his throat, eyes flickering over to you for a brief second, “we also, like, decorated the doorway like it was a haunted apartment to freak the kids out. and y/n had this great idea to have a cauldron filled with warm spaghetti and she told the kids it was brain stew-“ 
“oh my god, i forgot about that-“ you snort, “i feel like we should’ve done, like, warm pudding instead or something, but the spaghetti kinda had the same effect and my kitchen smelled like an italian restaurant for two weeks after that-“ 
“let’s talk costumes!” jimin interrupts you, smacking his palm down on the table before pointing his pen at ji-eun and jungkook, “please don’t show up in anything tacky.” 
“we were thinking barbie and ken!” ji-eun grins, “not tacky, totally trendy — i know we probably won’t be the only barbie and kens in the room, but it’s just so trendy and i loved her pink sequinned cowboy outfit- or if that’s not available, i think the 80s skater costumes were a vibe-“ 
“i can’t whait to talk about horshes and capitahlism wiv a bunch of ovher kensj.” jungkook laughs lightly with a mouthful of sandwich, dabbing his mouth with his napkin before crumpling it up into a ball and tossing it at you
you scowl playfully when it bounces off your forehead and lands on the ground 
“you could go as allen, y/n. that’d be pretty funny.” jungkook swallows his bite, and you want to tell him that he doesn’t have to include you in every part of the conversation because you can practically see the pity for you radiating off of him in waves 
you know for a fact he feels bad that he’s not been able to hang out with you as much lately because every time you do hang out he always brings you a drink or a snack with sympathetic little puppy dog eyes
and every time you have lunch with him and ji-eun he’s always making an effort to include you in the conversation — especially when jimin is around because again, it’s pretty clear the guy doesn’t like you 
you and jungkook spent an entire afternoon trying to figure out why he didn’t like you so much, but you couldn’t come up with any conclusive results, so now whenever jimin is around, jungkook makes even more effort to include you in the conversation 
“allen was my favourite character, so that’s not even a bad idea.” you chirp, pulling out one of the flyers from jimin’s neat pile before looking at it for the details
“oh, right. yeah, you can come too, i guess.” jimin clears his throat quietly, taking the flyer back from you with a chuckle, “…you don’t seem like you’d have anything crazy going on on a friday night.”  
“i can come too? i thought that everyone was invited to this thing?” you raise an eyebrow, pointing to the little note on the flyer, “all it says is general admission.”
“…right.” jimin smiles sweetly at you, “and i suppose i’ll waive the fee for you since you’re… friends with jungkook.” 
“how sweet of you.” you respond curtly, offering a smile just as sweet before letting it drop as soon as he looks away
you are absolutely dreading having to go to this party. 
»»————- 👻 ————-««
“are you sure you don’t want us to come and pick you up? ji-eun has space in her car, you’d just have to sit in the back with all the drinks n stuff-“ 
“i’m good, jungkook, really-“ you mutter, pausing for a second to smudge out your lipstick before leaning back in your chair and turning side to side to look at your finished look 
not that this is jungkook’s fault, but the fact that the two of you really haven’t been hanging out as often gave you a lot of time to think about what you wanted to dress up as for jimin’s halloween costume, and after a solo spooky movie binge the other weekend, you decided that you wanted to dress up as emily from the corpse bride
sure, it’s been done so many times — but you love the movie and you love emily and you had so much time to get everything you needed for this costume so why not dress up as her?? 
you reach up to adjust your blue wig, tugging at it slightly to make sure it’s nice and secure 
“i’m just gonna uber there! plus, my place is kind of out of the way if you guys are already headed to jimin’s.” you clear your throat, “thank you for the offer though. make sure to let ji-eun know i really appreciate the gesture.” 
“okay, i will…” jungkook murmurs, and you can tell by the tone in his voice that he wants to say something but he’s holding himself back, “i guess i’ll see you at the party, then? we’ll probably be there in about forty minutes.” 
“yes, i’ll see you guys at the party.” you nod, wiping the leftover blue lipstick on your fingers on a tissue before reaching over to get ready to press the hangup button 
“y/n?” jungkook’s voice crackling out from your phone speaker makes you pause, and you pull your hand back 
“yea?” 
“we’re- we’re good, right?” the question is somewhat of a surprise to you due to its weirdly serious, non-jungkook nature, your eyes flickering down to look at the contact photo you have set for your friend
he grins like a maniac at the camera, eyes wide and lit up with excitement at the cheesy corn dog he’s holding in front of him 
the corner of your mouth twitches in a fond smile at the memory of that day — jungkook was convinced he’d be able to eat three corn dogs in one sitting and the day ended with him basically destroying your toilet and then refusing to let you use it until the smell cleared out 
“what do you mean?” you clear your throat quietly, lips parting to say something else before you press them together and decide against it
“i mean- i know we haven’t been hanging out a lot lately so i just-“ jungkook coughs, “you know, you’re my best friend and i wanna make sure that everything is… good between us.” 
“i-“ you pause again, gaze averting to the side as you think about his comment 
if you’re being completely honest, you don’t think everything is good between the two of you — the first reason why being the fact that you are still completely and utterly head over heels in love with him, and the second reason being that he’s in a relationship with someone else and you’re really not sure how much more of this you can take before you go insane 
but this isn’t exactly something you can hash out over a crackly phone call, and you’re really not in the mood to potentially destroy two relationships at once 
you really don’t know what you’re going to do about this emotional mess, but what you do know is that you’re going to have to take it day by day until you’re eventually ready to face it head on — and tonight, your only job is to smile, enjoy being young, and have lots of fun at what you’re sure is going to be an amazing party despite it being hosted by someone who hates your guts for no reason 
“we’re- we’re good, kook.” you manage to push out, despite the words practically fighting their way out of your mouth, “you’re my best friend, too.” 
“okay. so i’ll see you soon?” 
“yea.” you look at yourself in the vanity mirror, wondering if the sadness in your eyes will make your costume that much more believable, “i’ll see you soon.” 
»»————- 👻 ————-«« 
the six pack of lime seltzer water (you got the fancy kinds in glass bottles) clinks in their cardboard carrier as you walk on the sidewalk, blue heels clicking against the pavement as you follow the path leading up towards the house that-
“holy shit.” your jaw drops at the sheer size of this literal mansion — what looks to be an endless number of burgundy bricks separated by neat, thin layers of cement that are stacked on top of each other, two large, white columns that cast identical shadows on the curved sidewalk leading up to the large, black front door, and not to mention, the insane halloween decorations: huge spider webs stretched over the door and windows, fairy lights wrapped around the columns, a stack of pumpkins sitting by the front steps kardashian-style 
you don’t like jimin but you have to hand it to him, he sure can throw a party 
“s’cuse us, sorry!” a trio of girls dressed up as sluttier versions of the powerpuff girls brush past you, bubbles turning around to shoot you a grin, “love your costume, by the way!”
“oh, thank you!” your face immediately breaks into a wide grin, “you guys look great, too-“ 
the random compliment lifts your mood up slightly — you know you’re more than capable of making friends anywhere you go, so if jungkook is too busy mingling with the other couples, you know you’ll be fine 
and hopefully jimin will be too busy playing host to give you any attitude tonight 
you lift your dress up as you make your way up the steps, the corners of your mouth lifting in an excited smile when you see taehyung standing by the door greeting people and collecting their $10 by… having them tuck the bills into the waistband of his boxers
“magic mike?” you laugh, taehyung’s right eye dropping in a wink before thrusts his hips towards you 
“you know it, baby-“ he coos, reaching over to pinch the fabric of your dress to pull you towards him, your cheeks flushing when you stumble into his chest, “be nice to me and i’ll give you a lil lap dance in one of the private rooms-“ 
“taehyung, i swear to god, do not let any of those bills fall into your boxers because i’m not touching anything that touched your penis-“ jimin pops up behind taehyung dressed in a veryaccurate joker costume, his usual blonde hair dyed completely green for the look 
“hi, welcome to the party, $10 an admiss-“ the sweet smile immediately drops from his face when he realises it’s you, jimin leaning back slightly, “wow, corpse bride!” jimin nods, looking you up and down, “seems fitting.” he mutters under his breath, watching as taehyung tapes the neon orange bracelet around your wrist 
“nice to see you too, jimin.” you raise an eyebrow, lifting the six pack up with your other hand, “i didn’t want to come empty-handed, so i brought some drinks!”
“you brought six drinks for a house party? six sparkly waters, too… interesting.” jimin scoffs lightly, plucking the carrier from you before offering you a saccharine sweet smile, “how thoughtful of you. drinks are in the kitchen - first two shots are free, and then it’s $15 a shot after that. cocktails are $5 each, mocktails are $3- you seem like a shirley temple girl anyway- and all of it can be paid through venmo. the bartender will answer any other questions you have. bathrooms are upstairs, and the results to the costume competition will be announced at the end of the night. there are fifteen winners, and the votes are made by everyone here, so you might have a shot at winning something here.” jimin steps aside, gesturing towards the party, “have fun!”
“thank you, jimin.” you smile politely, stepping into the house and immediately rolling your eyes as soon as you turn away from him
so you weren’t able to completely avoid his dickheadedness, but hopefully that’ll be your only interaction with him tonight considering he’s probably going to be busy playing businessman all night 
$15 a shot is kind of insane, though 
you keep your phone pressed flush to your chest as you manoeuvre your way through the packed floor, the neon lights flashing and disco ball glimmering from above making it damn near impossible to navigate this place without bumping into backs and stepping on toes  
the DJ pumps his arm up into the air as he continues spinning his fingers against the discs, the crowd going wild as the song builds up to the chorus 
you can already tell that most of the people here are drunk (you can smell it, too) and you know, if you can’t beat ‘em, why not join them? 
you can find jungkook later, and alcohol is definitely going to make this night a little easier to handle 
“hi!” you smack your hands down on the marble countertop when you finally make your way to the bar, the vampire bartender turning to glance at you over his shoulder before tossing a cloth over his shoulder, “i want- something. shots, a drink, anything-“ your voice is already straining from the way you’re basically screaming over the music but this seems to be the proper way to communicate at a party like this 
“wait, y/n?” your eyes light up when you realise that it’s none other than namjoon in charge of the drinks (and you wonder if your friendship with him will mean he gives you more drinks without charging you for it) and you let out a gasp as you lean over the counter to grasp onto his wrist
“namjoon!” you grin, “oh my god, thank god, finally someone i know at this damn party. why didn’t you tell me you were going to be here??”
“why didn’t you tell me you were gonna be here?! i haven’t seen you at the library at all, otherwise i definitely would’ve talked to you about it- what can i get for you?” 
“top-shelf tequila, baby. i saw the list of brands that jimin bought - i want the most expensive one.” you raise an eyebrow, namjoon laughing to himself before nodding 
“alright, i gotcha- you need any chasers with that?” 
“you got cranberry juice?” 
“for you, i’ve got anything-“ namjoon smirks, holding a finger up to excuse himself  
it’s five seconds later that you’re presented with not one, not two, but three shots of tequila, namjoon winking at you as he slides the cranberry juice chasers over to you as well
“you better take these before jimin realises i’ve given you a freebie- i’m about to take a break here, someone else is gonna come in a sec to replace me- you wanna dance?” 
“um, of course i do!” you can’t help but squeal excitedly, “take one with me!” you push a shot glass towards him, namjoon shrugging before picking up the shot and downing it in less than two seconds
you take your second shot, eyes squinting as the burn of alcohol trickles down your throat 
you immediately shudder, reaching for the cranberry juice and tossing it down the hatch 
“oh, jesus-“ you hiss, shuddering against before sticking your tongue out in disgust, “god, that cranberry juice does not help whatsoever-!” you don’t get much of a chance to say anything else before namjoon has his slender fingers wrapped around your wrist, giggles bubbling out of your mouth as he drags you towards the crowded dance floor to join the rest of the drunken crowd 
»»————- 👻 ————-«« 
okay, so maybe this party didn’t turn out to be as bad as you thought it was going to be! 
“that- oh my god-!” you throw your head back in laughter when namjoon pulls out the worst dance moves you’ve ever seen, your eyes pinching shut as you clutch at your stomach 
you’re not sure how much time has passed (to be fair, it’s gonna be hard to tell how much time has passed when you’re at a massive house party with flashing lights and nothing but the sound of speakers booming to guide you) but you know you’ve been having a lot more fun with namjoon than you’ve had with jungkook these last few weeks) ((in fact you’re having so much fun that you almost forgot you were supposed to be heartbroken that the love of your life is with someone else, but also, that could probably be the alcohol taking over)) 
you know at some point you’re going to have to go over and say hi to jungkook eventually because you don’t want him to think that you’re purposely ignoring him or something — after all, it’s not his fault that he likes ji-eun and it’s not something you can pin on him and grill him for — but for now, you’re going to dance a little more, sing a little more, and- 
“i gotta pee!” you gasp all of a sudden, realising that you haven’t peed once since coming here and there’s a lot of tequila sloshing around in your system
“what?” namjoon furrows his brows, reaching up to tap against his ear, “too loud, can’t hear you!” 
“i gotta go pee!” you repeat yourself, pointing towards the staircase leading upstairs, “’m gonna go pee n then ‘m gonna come right back-“ 
“oh, pee?” namjoon nods, finally catching your words before stepping aside a little, “okay, i’ll be right here!” 
»»————- 👻 ————-«« 
the silence of the bathroom is more than welcome as soon as you step in and flick the lights on, not at all surprised to see a pair of elegant looking wall sconces lighting up the space 
you squint your eyes as you lean into the mirror, double checking that your makeup is still somewhat intact and you don’t look insane 
“hm. not bad.” you mutter to yourself, turning your head from side to side before nodding, reaching down to pull the endless amounts of tulle up so you can hopefully not piss all over yourself in your tipsy state 
you set the lid down as the toilet flushes, turning the tap on and rinsing your hands underneath the cool water 
“oh, damn-“ you wince when you realise you’re washing some of the blue body paint away and you quickly turn the tap off, shaking the water off your hands before reaching for a neatly folded cotton towelette of course, because regular paper towels aren’t fancy enough for a park jimin party 
you give yourself one last glance in the mirror (you could use a little more lipstick but it’s dark down there so no one’s going to be able to tell anyway) before flicking the lights off 
“oops! i’m sorry-“ you apologise instinctively when you open the door and stumble right into someone, taking a few steps back before looking up to see that it’s jimin, “oh, hey…” you clear your throat quietly, standing up a little straighter before offering him a meek smile 
you always feel like you’re in trouble when you’re around jimin and it’s the worst feeling in the world 
like he’s the principal and you just got caught cheating on a test and he’s about to call home to tell your parents as punishment 
or he’s an officer and he’s about to test you with the breathalyser and you know you’re going to fail because you definitely can’t walk in a straight line right now 
“why am i not surprised that you clearly don’t know how to handle alcohol?” jimin snorts, holding his hands out in case you fall over, “you better not throw up all over me, this suit is custom made-“
“i wasn’t throwing up in the bathroom, i just went in there to pee-“ you roll your eyes, placing both hands on your hips before shaking your head, “you are ridiculous, you know that? even if i was throwing up in your stupid fancy toilets, the normal thing to do would be to ask if me i was okay and if i needed some water! you- you are just so self-centred and just-“
“yeah, uh-huh-“ jimin reaches up to pat the side of your face with a smile, “by the way, if you were looking for jungkook, he’s at the VIP booth with ji-eun and the rest of us.”
“oh, perfect!” you nod, thankful for the information, “i’ll pop over and say hi in a bit, i think it’d be good to sit down too because my heels are kind of killing me and i wouldn’t be surprised if i had, like, a million blisters right now-“ 
“woah, i never said you were allowed to be in the booth with us.” jimin scoffs, pressing a hand against your shoulder to keep you from moving, “silly girl.” 
your lips part slightly as you look at him, and for a moment the only thing that can be heard is the faint boom and bass of the music playing from downstairs 
“are you… serious?” you ask, unsure if jimin’s joking with you or not
the bored expression on his face tells you that he is indeed, super serious 
all of this just feels so incredibly cliquey and immature and stupid and you know that you’re supposed to be the bigger person because jimin clearly won’t be and you like to think that you’re ten times more emotionally mature than him but he’s making it harder and harder for you to not want to shred up his nice suit with a pair of scissors and cuss him out in front of everyone 
“i’m dead serious. i’m just telling you this so that you don’t embarrass yourself when your drunk ass stumbles over and tries to join us.” jimin says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the entire world, “enjoy the rest of the party, sweetheart.” he brushes past you to head into the washroom and-
“you’re a fucking dickhead, you know that?” you snap, jimin stopping in his tracks before turning his head slightly so you can just make out the side of his face, “i think i’ve been nothing but nice to you ever since i met you, and to be honest, i can’t even think of one reason why you are constantly so fucking rude and overall just unpleasant to me. i don’t say anything when you purposely cut me out of the conversation, i don’t nag when you ignore my questions and comments but respond to everyone else’s, and most importantly, i’ve never called you out for being a jackass when i think i’ve had every chance and opportunity to. if you have a problem with me, then just say so so that we can hash this stupid weird rivalry out and just get along. your best friend and my best friend are in a relationship, and i think it’s in everyone’s best interest that we at least try to get along-“
“oh, shut the fuck up, y/n.” jimin scoffs, turning around to face you, “you know, you always act like you’re better than everyone else, that’s why i don’t like you.”
you feel your shoulders stiffen at the comment before you shrug, crossing your arms over your chest, “well, i’m sorry if i’ve given you that impression but that’s not my intention, i don’t think i’m better than you, i don’t think i’m better than everyone else, and i can’t control how you feel about me but-“ 
“oh my god, even when you’re confronting me about being a dickhead to you you’re still being a sensible goddamn person, it’s like you’re purposely trying to piss me off-“ 
“okay, well, i’m not going to apologise to you for literally being myself because there’s nothing i can do about it. this is a you problem, not a me problem, so if you insist on being such an unreasonable drama queen for however long we’re going to have to spend time together, then i think the solution here is just for you to ignore me — which, you’re already doing a stellar job of, congratulations — and in return, i’ll happily ignore you.”
“i hate when people aren’t themselves. i pick up on that shit right away, and i gotta tell you, y/n, you might be the fakest person of them all.”
“what the hell are you talking about?” 
“i think we both know you’re hiding something from all of us. i think you’re hiding something from yourself, too. i think you’re lying to yourself.” 
there’s a pregnant pause in the conversation and for a second you want to ask him what exactly he’s implying here, but… 
“alright, jimin, well-“ you turn around to head towards the stairs, “you’re fuckin’ being weird, and i’m just trying to have a good time, so i’m just gonna go back down-“ 
“yeah, have a wonderful rest of your evening, corpse bride-“ 
you resist the very strong urge to whip around and literally just strangle the man, but you remind yourself that before you had this little interaction you were actually having a very good time 
“y/n!” jungkook stands at the bottom of the staircase as you make your way down, being careful not to trip over your heels, “hi!” 
“jungkook! oh, there you are- i was wondering where you were-“ you loop an arm with his as you drag him through the hoards of people and towards the bar (you really need a drink and it looks like namjoon is back on the clock)
“there you are!” he laughs lightly, reaching over to tap your hand gently, “i’ve been texting you all night trying to figure out where you were but- is your phone on do not disturb or something?“
“no, it’s not! i’m sorry, i should’ve checked my phone-“ you smile sheepishly, “i’ve been dancing with namjoon this whole time but- where are you guys sitting?”
“i don’t know, some area that jimin squared off for us and a few others- ji-eun’s been asking about you, she wanted to say hi-“ 
“oh! oh my god, yeah, i should probably go say hi to ji-eun-“ you gesture for namjoon to get you some water and he nods, grabbing a cup and filling it up for you, :your ken costume turned out great, by the way-“ you laugh, patting jungkook’s bare chest, “it’s, uh- it’s really giving horses and the patriarchy.”
“thank you, thank you- and your costume turned out so cool too, we should watch corpse bride again when we eventually have another movie night-“ 
“sure! sure, for sure.” you clear your throat quietly, a moment of awkward silence settling in between the two of you 
your friendship feels so… different now 
like there’s this unspoken air of something in between you and jungkook like an invisible brick wall 
and maybe it’s the liquid courage currently sloshing around in your body and the leftover exhilaration from finally calling jimin out on his bullshit, but now you have the urge to talk to jungkook about the weird tension 
“hey, kook, listen-“ you reach up to scratch the back of your neck, “there’s something i’ve been meaning to tell you but i’ve definitely been putting off for a while…” 
all of a sudden, a drum roll begins to boom from the speakers, the spotlights darting around the crowd before shining towards the main stage at the front of the room, whoops and cheers bouncing off the walls as jimin waltzes his way towards the microphone, a cocky smirk on his face as he raises his hand to get people to quiet down 
“oh, shit, the costume competition results!!” jungkook nudges your side as the two of you turn to face the front, “we can talk about it later, i wanna see who won what- i voted myself for best ken costume, so-“ 
you let out a breath you didn’t even know you were holding and you nod, thankful for the interruption 
maybe it’s a good thing you were interrupted 
telling him in the middle of a party probably wasn’t the best idea, anyway
»»————- 👻 ————-«« 
once again, you really have to hand in to jimin 
the man truly knows how to throw a party, because it seems like just about everyone is having the time of their lives — and this costume competition just made things so much more fun
there are definitely a lot of good costumes here tonight and jimin decided to change it up with twenty-five different categories to go through so he’s kind of speed running through the names 
most scary costume, most realistic costume, most well-made costume: he’s got a lot of categories to get through 
you keep a content smile on your face as the costume contest continues to go on, enjoying jimin’s commentary to the point that you nearly forget that the two of you hate each other and he totally just disrespected you like he’s never disrespected you before twenty minutes ago 
“i wonder how that guy made it look like his head was floating… that shit was so cool.” jungkook claps his hands along with the crowd and you nod enthusiastically
“i know, right?! i’m sure he probably took it off tiktok or something - we can definitely look it up after the party and maybe we can try to recreate-“ you stop yourself mid-sentence, suddenly remembering that you guys haven’t exactly been the closest as of late so it feels weird to be offering to do something together, “um-“ you clear your throat, offering a half-hearted shrug, “yeah, we can, like, look it up later or something. maybe you and ji-eun can figure it out and let me know.” 
“yeah! or- you know, you and me-“ jungkook licks over his chapped lips, “like- you know, like- old times or whatever-“
“yeah, yeah- maybe! maybe-“ 
“now, before i announce this special category, i have something to read because-“ jimin sucks in a breath through his teeth before cocking his head to the side, “well, let’s just say it’s some context for the best simp costume of the night.”
you can’t help but frown at the strange category — out of all the halloween costume competitions you’ve been to, “best simp” has certainly never been one that you’ve seen before 
“just wanna remind everyone that this is just a costume competition, everything is based off the costume you’re wearing.” jimin adds, taking a slip of paper out of his back pocket before unfolding it with nimble fingers, “so, uh- you know. don’t take anything seriously, you know? just gotta loosen up and have fun.” 
your brows dip slightly at the weird disclaimer 
something about this doesn’t feel right.  
“dear j, this is something that i’ve wanted to tell you for a while but have never had the courage to until now. throughout our entire friendship, you’ve been so kind and loyal and honest with me, and i think that you deserve the same, so this is me being honest with you.” jimin speaks into the microphone, reading the words off the slip of paper with a tone of amusement laced in his powder-soft voice, “to be honest, i’ve liked you for nearly a year now, and i’ve tried so many times to push those feelings down but it’s clear that my feelings aren’t going anywhere anytime soon…” he recites, a smirk twitching at the corner of his mouth as he puts the piece of paper down, “any thoughts on who the winner could be? or should i keep going?” 
your eyelids flutter slightly at the weird change in mood of the lines and a strange feeling of familiarity of those words
“me at that one hot english professor.” a voice pipes out from the crowd and that gets a round of laughter 
you laugh along politely, but you can’t help but feel as though something is off 
something is off
something is very, very off
“i cherish you as a friend and the last thing i want to do is to make things weird, so… you don’t have to worry about my feelings, you know?” 
oh my god. 
you feel the blood immediately drain from your face when you finally realize why these lines are so familiar — it’s because they’re from the note you wrote for jungkook when you were going to tell him you liked him. 
your brain begins to work overtime to figure out how the hell jimin got his hands on that note and why the hell he’d think it’d be okay to read it aloud to this massive group of people and what the hell he’s even doing right now  
“what i’m trying to say is that i like you, j. i like you so much that i don’t know where to even put my feelings, and i’m sick of holding my feelings back and pretending that i’m fine with being just your friend.” 
you know that jimin’s never really been a fan of you, but even this seems like too much of a dickhead move even for him 
you pluck at the cuff of your sleeve anxiously, tracing your steps all the way back to the day you were going to tell jungkook about your feelings for him and the note that you’d accidentally given him that you were hoping was rotting away somewhere in a dump yard but clearly isn’t 
jungkook said he’d given ji-eun the note to spit her gum out into 
but what if she uncrumpled the paper and saw the note?
and what if jimin was there when she uncrumpled the note? 
and then they read it together and ji-eun mentioned that you were reciting this aloud in the bathroom and-
your heart starts to race in your chest and you feel the hairs prickle on your arms as anxiety begins to bubble in your stomach, and you know that no one’s looking at you but you feel like everyone’s looking at you 
you feel sick
you feel like you’re going to throw up and explode at the same time 
“how could you like someone for a year and not tell ‘em?” jungkook snorts, nudging you with his elbow, “who do you think the poor sucker is who said that?” 
“beats me.” you breathe out, feeling yourself shrink slightly when you notice jimin starting to scan the audience, clearly laser-focused on finding you, “i have to- um, i think i need some fresh air, it’s a little warm in here-“ 
“oh- okay-“ jungkook doesn’t get the chance to say much else before you’re turning around, pushing yourself through the crowd of people and trying your best to stay calm 
just breathe
in and out
in and out 
in and out in and out in and out oh my god HURRY UP MOVE MOVE MOVE-
you’re sure that no one will notice if you slink out through the back
and you can always text namjoon later and say that it was great spending time with him but you had a personal emergency and needed to leave the party earlier 
and if jimin decides to expose you, at least you’ll be gone and out of this house and nowhere near any of these people and you don’t have to look at their stupid sympathetic faces and you don’t have to deal with- 
“and the best simp of the night goes to our lovely corpse bride.” 
you freeze when the spotlight lands on you, your heart going a hundred miles a minute as it starts to beat harder and faster in your chest 
you only manage to turn your head weakly to glance over your right shoulder, catching jimin in your peripheral view before you’re slowly twisting around to face him, feet glued to the ground 
“why don’t you come up here and accept your sash, corpse bride?” jimin smirks, plucking the satin sash from (a shocked looking) taehyung’s arms before raising it up in the air slightly, “congratulations on winning, you get two free drinks from the bar. one for you and one for… well, probably also you. get on up here and claim your coupons!” 
you feel your face burning bright red in humiliation and you’re unable to tear your eyes away from jimin, your hands clenched into tight fists at your sides
this is a nightmare
this is actually a nightmare 
this is traumatising in so many ways 
the music seems to quiet down, a loud silence washing over the room as people look at you with expressions of confusion on their faces, everyone clearly a little thrown off at the weird category 
eyes, there are just a million pairs of eyes on you and you feel like you can’t move or breathe or even do anything but stand still in shock
it’s only then that you notice the calculating look on jungkook’s face, his eyelids fluttering slightly before his eyes widen and his head snaps up and over to look at you
his lips part slightly as his eyes dart over the features of your face and you feel your entire body flushing in humiliation and shame, forcing your eyes away from your friend and back to the dickhead on the stage 
“you are really something else, park jimin.” you manage to mutter out before turning on your heel and pushing your way through the crowd, people stepping aside to let you out 
“aw, where are you going? you had a great costume, that’s all we were trying to say!” jimin laughs, actually laughs into the microphone before shrugging, tossing the sash over his shoulder before moving on, “alright, well, more drinks for me, i guess. the next category is best couple’s costume-“ 
“y/n- y/n, wait!” jungkook’s voice is the one thing you hear among the music and bustle of the crowd but he’s the last person you want to talk to right now so you pick up your pace upon spotting the front door 
tears blur your vision as you finally burst out into the open air, your chin trembling as you try your best to keep your composure and not completely burst into tears
“oh my god, oh my fucking god-“ you whimper, sucking in large breaths of air 
run, run, run, the only instinct you have is to run, and you reach down to yank both heels off before taking off into a sprint, the grass slightly damp beneath your bare feet 
it feels very cliché to be running out of a mansion in a big poofy dress, but you can’t even take the moment to laugh at yourself because the only thing you can focus on is the fact that everything has changed completely and you’re forced to face reality a lot sooner than you would’ve liked 
“y/n, come on!” you turn to glance over your shoulder to see jungkook hot on your trail, “you can’t just run away from a discussion you don’t want to have, we need to talk because we both know that things have been off since i started dating ji-eun and now-“ 
“okay, well, now you know, then!” your chest heaves as you come to a stop to catch your breath (you have no idea why you thought running would be a good idea, you get winded after thirty seconds on the treadmill), spinning around to face your friend who skids to a stop, tripping over his feet a little before standing up straight, “the secret’s out, jungkook. we finally solved the puzzle. i love you. i’ve loved you for so long that i don’t even remember when i started feeling this way, but all i know is i love you. you’re the first person i think of when i wake up and you’re the last person i think about before i fall asleep. i would literally drop everything i was doing if you needed me, and you’re the only person i want to spend my free time with.” all the words that you’ve been holding in for the last who knows how long finally spill out, your mouth running uncontrollably, “i love you so much that i helped you set up your date with ji-eun, i love you so much that i’m willing to run in the rain just to get you a teddy bear and a bouquet that’s not even going to me, jungkook, i-“ you blubber, reaching up to wipe at your eyes, “i don’t know what to do. there is no one else in the world i’d rather be with than you, jungkook, and i- to be honest, maybe it’s a good thing that jimin did what he did because you do deserve to know the truth and you do deserve to know how i really feel about you. if this didn’t happen i think i’d just keep it to myself for the rest of my life, but you deserve to know this. i love you, jungkook. i love you and i don’t know if i can keep being friends with you if you’re dating someone else because it’s actually killing me on the inside-“ 
“i love you, y/n,” jungkook breathes out, and you feel yourself letting out a breath that you didn’t even know you were holding
relief 
for the first time in a long time, you feel relieved, like a massive weight’s just been lifted off your shoulders 
you feel your heart soar in your chest, and suddenly it’s like all the humiliation and shame has completely washed away, and suddenly you have the feeling to run back into the house to thank jimin for doing this because you know you wouldn’t have said anything if it weren’t for this slightly traumatising experience 
“i love you, i do, but… not in that way.” his shoulders droop slightly and you feel your heart beginning to crackle like a delicate glass sculpture, each splinter creating more damage than the last, “i love you like you’re the first person i call when i get good news because i know you’ll be proud of me, or when i get bad news because i know you’ll be there to comfort me. i love you, like i envision you standing next to me at my wedding fixing my tie or calming me down when whoever i end up marrying is walking down the aisle. i love you like you’ll be fun auntie y/n who spoils my kids with shopping sprees at the mall and who allows them an extra scoop of ice cream after dinner. i love you because you make me a better person, i love you because you encourage me to be the best version of myself i can possibly be. i love you because you remind me to be smart and kind and humble and honest and i trust you to be the one to put me in my place if i ever need it but i-“
“stop.” you feel nauseated hearing all of these words coming out of his mouth, telling you that he loves you because and he loves you because but not just i love you too. “just stop, jungkook.” you know that you can’t control someone else’s feelings but you can control your own reactions, and if jungkook would’ve kept rattling on you don’t know what you would’ve said but you know you probably would’ve lashed out at him 
and it’s good that you finally got your answer, right? he loves you, but not in that way — not in the way that you love him 
“y/n, please-“ jungkook whispers, reaching out for you, his eyebrows scrunching together when you take a small step back, wrapping your arms around yourself, “please, i can’t lose you as a friend, you mean so much to me-“ 
“i need some time.” you manage to force out, the sickening feeling of humiliation and shame and embarrassment and disappointment and frustration and anger swirling around in your stomach, “i just need some time.”
“how much time?” 
“you should probably go back to the party.” you clear your throat quietly, offering your friend a weak smile, “i heard you and ji-eun were up for best couple’s costume. not saying that jimin rigged the system or anything, but-“ 
“y/n, how much time?” jungkook’s looking at you with sad puppy-dog eyes, and though it breaks your heart to see him like that, you need to put yourself first for once 
every instinct inside of you screams to console jungkook, to reassure him and let him now that you’ll still be around but you just need some space from him and the whole situation 
your eyes begin to water again as you press your lips together, shaking your head quietly, “i’m gonna go see if i can catch the bus home.” 
»»————- 👻 ————-«« 
(- “the FUCK is wrong with you, huh?!” jungkook barks, slamming jimin up against the wall before grabbing two fistfuls of his shirt, “you sadistic fuck, who in their right mind would ever fucking do that to another human being?!” 
“i’m the sadistic one?” jimin laughs, reaching up to wrap his fingers around jungkook’s wrists, “are you fucking serious? you’re the one whose been dangling yourself in front of y/n like a damn carrot to a starved rabbit-“ 
“what are you talking about?”
“you can’t stand here and honestly say that you didn’t have an inkling that y/n liked you more than a friend. i’ve seen the way you talk to her, i’ve seen the way you look at her, i’ve seen the way you are around her- you think i’m the evil one? at least i don’t take advantage of my friends who are CLEARLY head over heels in love with me and would obviously do anything i wanted them to do and ask them to help me set up a date that i’m taking someone else out on-“ 
“get a fucking life and mind your own damn business for once, you motherf-“) 
🎙️ console y/n or call out jimin because what the hell was that?! (talk to my characters!) 
📚 why not explore the rest of the library while you're here? (go say hi to yoongi and y/n in la vie en bonsai!) 
💫 or perhaps you want something shorter to read? (drabbles and mini series!)
🌟 or something even shorter? (teeny tidbits!) 
586 notes · View notes
americaswritings · 6 months
Text
Voices of Roses and Ruin | Part IV
Warnings: Violence, murder, Coriolanus being himself, his thoughts
Summary: Coriolanus is looking for you- but he is not the only one.
Words: 2k
Pairing: Young Coriolanus Snow x reader
A/N: And we have reached the last part! Thank you so much for reading and I hope you like this miniseries. Also I finished the book and watched the movie again (and it was so freaking goood aaah)!!
If you have ideas for Coriolanus oneshots I would love to hear from you (or if you just feel like ranting about the movie, the world of Panem, the characters, Tom Blyth...lol)
There will be more Coriolanus Snow x reader COMING SOON!
Can be read as Lucy Gray x Coriolanus Snow here
Part I | Part II | Part III | Masterlist
Add yourself to my taglist! (so you don't miss anything) :)
Tumblr media
Coriolanus stared at the bird, watching as it opened its mouth and your paniced voice came out.
“Coriolanus! Tell me where you are!”
Behind him he heard movement, but he was too shellshocked to turn around. He didn‘t need to, he would have recognised that voice anywhere.
"The downfall of a Snow. If that isn‘t something I always wanted to-"
Before the commander could finish his sentence Coriolanus had turned and shot him in the head.
The loud noise startled the bird in its cage and it spread its wings, trying to lift in the air but failing in the closeted space. At least it was quiet now.
Good. If it would have made another sound, used your voice again, he would have wasted a bullet on it.
All of this had been a set-up. A test, to prove his loyality to the capitol. And he had failed. Spectacularly so.
He had chosen you. Your future. And in the same breath he had decided against his own.
Coriolanus was certain in no time more peacekeepers would show up. Perhaps he would know some of them. Maybe he even shared a room and his meals with them and he didn't want to kill him, if he could prevent it.
But if it came down to it, he wouldn't hesitate.
Even though he had never been in the arena, except the time when he had been sent to get Sejanus out, the capitol's games had turned him into a killer too. Or had that always been a part of him, one he had never known existed before?
A violent one, that didn't hesitate to do what needed to be done to save himself. It was scary, but to know his own power felt thrilling too. That if it came down to it he wouldn't just stand around and whine, but act and do what needed to be done, even if it involved getting his hands dirty.
It was true that a desperate man was a dangerous one, because what else did he have to lose? No, there was only you and he would do everything now to save the one thing he had left.
With one last dismissive glance at the dead commander Coriolanus turned and hurried through the corridors. He needed to find you.
Even if you weren't here and he was convinced they had used a recording of you from the arena, he wasn't naive enough to believe it meant you were safe. Unharmed.
What if the capitol had gotten to you?
Maybe you weren't in the district anymore.
Or worse, they had executed you at the hanging tree while they had ordered him here as a distraction.
Both thoughts scared him.
He needed a plan. He couldn't just walk around the district looking for you. Soon they would know what he had done and everyone in the district would be looking for his face.
Then he would end up at the hanging tree and die an undignified death.
But Coriolanus didn't have a better idea. He lacked ressources and power out here and with no ally in his corner he was left to his own.
Keeping his gaze straight ahead and his strides fast and purposeful, he immerged into the bustling streets of the district. He still had no idea where to find you and with each corner he rounded his hope to find you before the capitol did sank.
A turmoil at the market caught his attention and he hurried past the shops until the found a spot that allowed him a good view. A group of peacemakers pushed through the crowd of people, their faces grim and their weapons drawn.
They were searching, no, hunting. For him or for you Coriolanus didn't know.
He pressed himself against the wall when they neared him, lowering his head so they didn't get a glance of his face. "Hey!"
Damn it!
One of the men had noticed him and marched right towards him. Coriolanus was torn between waiting for what was about to happen and ending the man before he got the chance to out him to anyone, but he only had the gun and it would draw too much attention.
"We've got the order to look for the girl that won the games. Come on!"
Coriolanus let out a breath. The man didn't recongize him, not as her mentor and not as a traitor. Word about what he had done hadn't gotten around yet it seemed.
Or this was just another trap.
"What are we supposed to do when we find her?", he asked sternly as he followed the peacekeeper and joined the troop. It was dangerous, being so close to his enemies. If they turned on him now he would stand no chance against them. They outnumbered him.
But it was his best chance to keep an eye on them and it was not like he had a choice.
"For now arrest her. But I suppose she'll have a date with the hanging tree soon." The bastard laughed and Coriolanus wanted to punch him for it until the only sound coming out of his mouth were pleas for forgiveness.
He didn't bother to ask what crime they believed you were guilty of. It didn't matter and too many questions would raise suspicions.
So he followed them raiding the streets and asking shopkeepers and tradesmen about you, relieved about their lack of information regarding your whereabouts, but growing more uneasy with each.
Because with night beginning to set it became clear that they wouldn't stop their search until they had found you and with each minute that ticked by the chance of his actions staying undiscovered slimmed.
"We should seperate", he suggested after another unsuccessful house search. "We stick to the commander's order", the man next to him said and Coriolanus squinted at him in the darkness.
"When did he gave the order?", he asked warily and earned an impatient look. "At dinner time", he said with a shake of his head that openly questioned Corioanus' intelligence, who ignored it.
He was feeling dizzy and the world seemed strangely disorted as he grasped for composure. He had missed dinner time, because he had been ordered to speak to the commander. But if that hadn't been the commander, who had he killed?
"The hell", the man next to him whispered, pushing him roughly forward, "what's going on with you, man?!" Coriolanus had no time to answer.
There was a lump in his throat and a tightness in his chest as control was slipping from his fingers and he felt himself spirraling.
"I got her!"
A loud voice pulled him from his trance and his head snapped into the direction it came from, all air leaving him when he saw you in the grip of a peacemaker.
He had locked his hand around your upper arm and was yanking you roughly towards them. "Thought she could hide", he roared with a laugh and the others joined in.
Coriolanus couldn't bring himself to join. Not even for show.
He was staring at your fearful face, the uncertainity behind your eyes mixing with defiance. "I don't know what you're accusing me of, but I didn't do anything", you stated and he noted with a hint of pride that your voice didn't waver.
That was his girl.
"Shut up or I'll make you!", the man growled and tightened his grip around you. Coriolanus could see the pain reflected on your face, but it gave way to shock and then disbelief as your gaze fell on him.
He couldn't do anything than stare at you, relieved to find you alive and unharmed after he had been witness to your desperate screams, but overwhelmed by his own powerlessness now.
Your eyes travelled his face and he saw a flicker of concern before it turned to an expression of betrayal and hurt.
He half expected an outlash, accusations or insults thrown his way, but you pressed your lips into a thin line, turning away your face. How easily you coud have hurt him now, but had chosen not to.
Interesting...
"Let's go!"
You were thrusted forward and he watched you stumble before you caught yourself again.
"I'll take her!" His own voice sounded far away and he was surprised that he had finally found it again. "We spend almost all night looking for her, I'll hande the rest."
The men exchanged glances. They were all tired, but bound by orders. Temptation fought hesitation and he prayed they would just let him have his way. He didn't want to kill them. It would be messy.
"Nice try, but I won't let you earn yourself all the praise."
With that they continued their way, but Coriolanus hadn't missed your attentive gaze on him. Maybe you finally understood the depths of his feelings.
That he would not let you walk to your own execution, even if all odds spoke against him. But what had he to loose?
Coriolanus waited until they passed another corner. It was late and the streets were empty, the people had gone to bed.
The poor electricty supply finally held an advantage, because there were no streetlamps to provide light and so not one of the other peacekepers noticed when he let his hand wander to his weapon, cautiously closing his fingers around it.
He had given them a chance, but they hadn't taken it.
The first two fell before the others had even noticed something was off. The shots were disturbingly loud in the quiet of the night and he knew he needed to act fast or he would be facing off against far more than just a troop of peacekeepers.
Would the men and women of the district be on his side? But what little could they do to help?
They stood no chance against their weapons, which could be fired more than a hundred times before they needed reloading.
It would be a bloodbath.
And he wasn't sure, if they wouldn't turn against him. In their eyes he was just a peacekeeper. It was all they would see when they looked at him.
As the other men turned he took out another one, but the man who held you in his grip swung you around, using your body as his shield before Coriolanus got the chance to aim his way.
"Lay down your weapon or I'll shoot her!", he yelled and raised his own weapon to press it against your temple.
You flinched, your eyes locked on Coriolanus. There was no fear in your eyes, only defeat and acceptance.
That only made it worse.
"The commander wants her alive. Now give her to me!", Coriolanus demanded, not even thinking about lowering his gun, but the man only narrowed his eyes in response.
"Traitor", he hissed, pressing your body closer to his, when your body suddenly went limp in his arms.
The moment the peacekeeper was distracted Coriolanus placed a bullet right between his eyebrows.
The shooting training had been useful at last.
Your eyes snapped open, confirming his assumption that you had faked the moment of weakness, and you staggered forward and away from the man who fell liveless to the ground.
Your gaze drifted over the dead peacekeepers and then to Coriolanus, shock and dread written all over your face.
"You killed them", you breathed, wavering once more. "You killed all of them."
Coriolanus stepped forward, his hands reaching out for yours. They were cold. Icy.
"I did what needed to be done", he said matter of factly, hiding his pride, because he knew you wouldn't appreicate it. But he had just taken out a number of well-trained men just by himself. Even you would have to admit it had been impressive.
In a shoot-out he wouldn't have stand a chance against them all, but they had underestimated him. Trusted him blindly. And they had paid for it.
You found his gaze, horror slowing fading into understanding. You nodded once, swallowing and straightening.
"I know", you whispered, "you saved my life."
All he wanted was to hold you and relish your skin on his. That he finally had you. That you were save. But there was no time for sentiment now.
"We need to leave."
You caught his gaze, your own questioning. "Where should we go? They will search the whole district for us and-", understanding crossed your face, "you mean you will run away with me?"
He took a breath and nodded. "It's the only choice."
You looked at him, your eyes searching for something he didn't know he could give you. But he could give you his love and devotion. It seemed enough for you, because you squeezed his hands and straightened your shoulders.
"Then it's my pleasure Coriolanus Snow."
"And it's mine."
You didn't let go of his hand as you turned and ran through the streets of the district and towards the line of trees.
Never would he have imagined this to be his fate as he had seen your face on the capitol's tv during the reaping. But he knew you would find a way, together.
Some day you might even tell your children about this. About a love that had ruined his life and rebuild it, stripped him bare and led him to his innermost, darkest parts.
And the birds lining the branches of the trees would be witness to it.
To your every word.
Tags:
PERMANENT
@capkilljoy @fairytalesforever @hamartocado @choke-me-sweet-pea @sleepinginthegarden7 @thenoddingbunny-blog @ttalisa  @hallecarey1 @Not-jay-c @sunwardsss @writingrem-blog @the-pink-petite-princess @wanniiieeee @part-time-patronus @unnuevosoltransformalarealidad  @theshortegg @not-reptilian @msdrpreist @alisonhepps @hallecarey1  @thatfangirl42 @dustyinkpages @ellabellabus07 @iluvjj  @wayward-hunter  @sweet-texas-girl @rosie-posie08 @ @olsensnpm  @meyocoko  @alexxavicry @shhh423  @dumb-fawkin-bitch @jayyeahthatsme @savagemickey03  @alexxavicry @partiallypearl @earthtolottie  @gisobsessedwithfanfiction  @navs-bhat  @AlohaStitch_626 @multi-fandom-lover7667 @xcallmetaniax @esposadomd  @halsteadloversworld @girlintheredscarf  @randomwriter1021 @joyfulfxckery @crazylokonugget @star611 @anjamagra725-blog @queenofspades6 @alohastitch0626 @kkmikayla @savagemickey03 @guacam011y @k-illdarlings @taykorsyogurt @espressopatronum454 @ennycutie @burns-in-the-sun​ @upwritingallnight
Add yourself to my taglist!
500 notes · View notes
blindmagdalena · 23 days
Text
Guilty Pleasures ( chapter three )
Tumblr media
18+ 7.3k homelander x plus size f!reader. workplace harassment, stalking, voyeurism, assault (not perpetrated by HL), violence, smol murder, manipulation/gaslighting, hurt/comfort. nebulously takes place post s1. part 3/4. AO3 link. CH I | CH 2 | CH 4
Homelander will do whatever it takes to convince you that he's the hero you need.
Tumblr media
It’s shortly after one o’clock when Homelander knocks a whimsical melody against your office door, deciding he shouldn’t be precisely on time, lest he look as eager as he feels. He can already smell your perfume wafting through the doorway–the same scent he feverishly pumped his cock to the night before–as a teaser of what’s to come.
“Come in,” you call from the other side.
Homelander takes in a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. He screws his eyes shut, pinching his expression in a tight squeeze before he replaces it with a flashy grin, squaring away his anticipation in favor of his showman persona.
“Goooooood afternoon,” he drawls, strolling in with the same feigned level of confidence he’s entered every other moment of your life since stumbling across you, whether you knew it or not. He’s taken aback almost immediately, slowing in how he closes the door behind him.
You look nicer than usual. Your hair is styled with more conscious effort, and he’s been in show business long enough to recognize the makeup on your face. The shine of your blouse is a quality silk blend, and he can’t hear the scrape of cheap cotton underneath it anymore. No, you’re wearing something nice below, too. His lips slowly spread into a self-satisfied smile. 
You dressed up for him. 
Homelander takes the seat set across from you, sweeping his cape to the side with a flourish. He watches you tuck an empty container–your lunch, presumably–into a side drawer of your desk. His eyes closely track the way you lift your thumb to the corner of your mouth and swipe residue from it, sucking the mess from your digit. A distinct pang of arousal hits him just watching your cheeks hollow.
Imagine what she could do with that mouth.
“And good afternoon to you, Homelander,” you respond, straightening up in your seat. His gaze briefly dips to the swell of your breasts as you adjust yourself, casually dusting away any remnants of your lunch. Saliva gathers on his tongue at the instant memory of you scantily clad in your sleep wear, nothing but a thin sheet of worn fabric between you and his hunger. His eyes snap back up before you can take notice of how they wandered.
Lucky for him, you’re busy splaying out the folder he brought you the day before, scanning over the list of bullet points he’d slapped together for the sake of having enough talking points.
“I wanted to start with your concerns regarding the marketing for your upcoming miniseries,” you say, glancing up at him.
He clicks his tongue. “Wow, alright. Straight to business then,” he says, absently rolling his palms over the ends of the armrests on either side of him.
“I’m very bad at small talk,” you say. Probably to diffuse any notion that you were being rude on purpose.
“Ch’yeah, I’ll say,” he says, smiling thinly. “Lucky that you’re good at your job.”
“Shockingly, I was actually a personality hire. I don’t know what any of this means,” you say, matching his thinly veiled snark while gesturing to the spread of documents in front of you. He snorts softly. You have a knack for using that sharp wit to diffuse, but he doesn’t feel manipulated. You actually are funny. “I was hoping you’d explain your concerns.”
Smooth segue, he thinks, his eyes narrowing appraisingly. He’s worked enough interviews to know when he’s being led, but he takes the bait anyways, widening his smile.
“Sounds great.”
Homelander knows that you’re sharp, good at your job, but he needs to needle you into giving him what he wants. He wants to understand you, and the stack of his films he found hidden in your apartment. What he gets in the meantime is ample taste of your silver tongue, parrying his every jab with an equally sharp counter.
He can’t keep the smile from his face.
Gradually a level of familiarity slips into the air between you. He can see some of that tension in your shoulders easing. He’s steadily wearing down the walls you’ve managed to construct.
“I still think audiences will be confused,” he says, feigning a profound concern, stretching out the time of your little appointment.
“Well, audiences are a lot like celebrities,” you say, the hard candied shell of your professional exterior thinning with every back and forth, poised to crack at any second.  “They’re smarter than we think they are.”
“Oohh, ouch,” he purrs. “Nice backhand you got there.”
A twitch at the corner of your mouth. He knows you’re fighting a smile of your own, and pride blooms warmly in his chest. He likes sparring with you, but he likes pleasing you even more.
“I disagree about market confusion. Your diehard audience will already be up to speed, your broader target audience will show up for anything with your face on it, and anyone more casual than that likely won’t have seen the miniseries anyways, so there’s nothing to confuse it with,” you say, scanning down through one of the pages of the document he gave you.
Perfect opening.
“And which audience is it you fall into, exactly?” He asks, cocking his head a degree. “I mean, given your position, I have to imagine you’ve seen my range of film and television.”
“I’ve done my due diligence,” you say vaguely. You’re good at answering without answering. Normally it would irritate him, but your forced aloofness combined with your closely guarded–and inexplicably secret–veneration of him makes it into tantalizing bait begging for the sharp sink of his teeth.
“So you’ve seen all my movies, then?” He extrapolates, setting a line of his own.
You chuckle, gaze flickering to him before back down to the pages. Too brief a glance to even come close to satisfying his hunger. “I didn’t say that.”
He scoffs lightly. “But you’re a fan of mine?”
“I definitely didn’t say that.” He can sense he’s hit a vein, and like any good predator would, he’s eager to bite into it.
“C’mon. Don’t tell me you’re shy,” he continues to prod, leaning forward slightly in his seat.
You inhale a breath that you barely prevent from sounding too obviously irritated. His grin remains untarnished by the scrutiny of your unwavering stare. There it is, that’s what he wants. The weight of your gaze upon him, evaluating, taking him in fully. He doesn’t care how he gets it, he just knows he wants it.
“You are shy,” he accuses, knowing you aren’t.
“I’m not shy, I’m a professional,” you say curtly, the scratch of your pen scathing while you write notations on the document.
Good, he thinks. More likely to slip up now.
“Jeeze,” he laughs. “You’re wound up tighter than my fictional manager in Darkest Day.”
“You didn’t have a manager in Darkest Day, that was Origins,” you correct. After a beat, your hand stills.
Homelander’s gaze slowly slides to meet yours. He watches your face fall and clicks his tongue. He positively relishes how your mask of indifference slips into subtle dismay at your misstep. Such a simple bit of trivia, and yet it spoke volumes.
Got’cha.
“You do watch my movies,” he said, tone dropping to a near whisper. He revels in the quiet way you groan, leaning back in your chair. 
“Only the ones I was paid to,” you say, straightening up in your chair, but he can hear the defeat in your voice.
“Liar,” he says through his perpetual grin. “Don’t be embarrassed. How long have you been a fan?”
“Stop,” you say, burying your face in your hands. Oh, this is good. Was he your first crush? Your favorite hero? He must be still, judging by the flush of heat moving through you. All that pretense, all that haughty glowering, and beneath it all you’re a fan girl. He almost laughs at the thought of the face you’d make if he called you that. 
“Which was your favorite?” He asks, burying the knife deeper, eager to cut through flesh and muscle and bone to get to the heart of truth beneath. “Bright World? Rise of a Hero? Justice Dawning?”
“I despise you,” you say melodramatically, digging your thumbs into your temples. “Also, Justice Dawning was cheesy, I’m offended you’d even offer it.” You try not to smile, but it happens anyway, and as soon as that secret little smile sneaks onto your lips it brightens Homelander’s eyes, reflecting your amusement back to you. Not just that, but amplifying it.
“You’ll learn to love me,” he tells you with confidence. You drop your hands, looking at him with subtle surprise. He holds your gaze. The earnestness of his words seems to dispel your mortification and replaces it with something more difficult to define, but he likes the shine it brings to your eyes.
The taste of your defeat is sumptuous. He’d prefer licking it straight from your tongue, but he’ll settle for this for the time being. An easiness settles into the air between you, deeper even than before your hackles rose with the lurking reality of your hidden opinion of him. It’s like a bubble has popped, dissipating uncomfortable tension, replacing it with something warmer.
He has every intention of turning up the heat even further.
The meeting moves forward. You work your way through his folder, and during a natural lull in conversation, he finally broaches the topic that’s been plaguing him since he stepped into your office.
“So,” he begins, interlacing his gloved fingers in his lap. “Gonna tell me what you’re all dressed up for?” He asks, wearing the same smile and speaking in the same tone he had when he baited you into admitting your secret love affair with his cinema.
He wants to hear you say that it’s for him, but he’ll settle for a flustered deflection. They’re as good as the same.
“Oh,” you huff with an airy little laugh, the sound like silver bells chiming. “I have a date tonight.”
You say something else, but Homelander doesn’t hear it over the tidal-like rush in his ears. He watches your pretty lips form words that he can’t understand. Everything falls out of focus as he tightly reins in the white hot rush of furious jealousy that floods his gut and erupts up the back of his throat like bile. He swallows the burn of it, jaw tight, and manages a tense smile.
“Great,” he barks, not realizing–or perhaps not caring–that he interrupted you. “First date?”
“First date,” you confirm, your tone less conversational than it had been a beat ago. The walls are going back up, but he’s too fixated on what feels like a stabbing betrayal.
“Exciting,” he says, adjusting his tone and mannerisms until they once more resemble something genuine. Something civil, despite the hostility in his gut. “Someone you know? Going anywhere special?”
“No, and not really,” you say evasively. He loathes how withdrawn you’ve become. You should be pleased he’s put off. Gloating even. It’s proof he cares, isn’t it? “It was his suggestion.” His. The leather of Homelander’s glove creaks subtly in the fist he makes. “I forget the name of the place,” you say, avoiding his gaze.
His right cheek tics. Liar, liar, pants on fire. People always underestimate his ability to read them.
You’ll learn not to lie to him.
“But you have an out if you need it, don’t you? Someone to bail you out in case he turns out to be some kind of freak,” he says, huffing the word with a lick of venom. It takes significant effort to keep the disdain from his face to imagine you as you are now sitting across from some nobody schmuck, lit by candlelight and smiling sweetly for them instead of for him.
“I always do,” you say, smiling thinly. He curates his own tone often enough to hear it in yours, and it pierces his ears like a thistle. He taps his fingers on his thigh, scrounging for something, anything else to needle you for, but your responses don’t give him much to work with.
“Well. If you did need someone–”
“I’m a big girl,” you interrupt, surprising him. He’s rarely interrupted. “I can take care of myself.”
At that, a thought strikes him. The slack line of his lips curls into a thin smile, and his hands relax on the armrests of the chair.
“I’m sure you can.”
Tumblr media
Shaking off the aftermath of your one-on-one with Homelander proves to be more difficult than you’d anticipated. You replay it nearly moment for moment in your mind while freshening up after work. 
Homelander has an uncanny knack for moving through demeanors as though he’s trying hats, determining which one best suits the situation. One moment he’s a slick carnivore licking his chops in anticipation of his meal to come, and the next he’s every ounce the hero they market him as. He’d been relentlessly charming during the meeting, his charismatic smile becoming one you’d wanted to earn again and again. 
Then came the news of your date, and all at once Homelander possessed the ominous calm of a sentient statue. The moment still sends an eerie chill down your spine, even in recollection. How radically his appearance can change with mood or thought alone. You’d hate to ever see him truly angry.
“Get a hold of yourself,” you say to the bathroom mirror. You have a date tonight, and the last thing you need is to bring this kind of nervous energy to it. Powers or not, the commonality of man is easy to rely on, and you’ve developed the tactical mindset of an aloof cat. Never beg for what can be given freely. Never give more than you get. Never settle. “Be the cat,” you tell yourself affirmatively. 
A directive which, unfortunately, winds up being exceedingly easy to follow through the course of your date. James, bless his heart, struggles to wring more than the occasional piteous chuckle from you. Conversation with him is akin to drinking seltzer water–he is neither offensive nor particularly exciting, being only a step above plain water.
Perhaps James’ blandness isn’t entirely his own fault, but rather the basis of comparison he is subjected to. Throughout the night, you find yourself critical of the way he looks at you–or rather, the way he fails to look at you. Your thoughts keep drifting back to your meeting with Homelander and the way he looks at you. The intense ocean-blue caress of his eyes summons a blush to your cheeks even in hindsight.
He looks at you in a way that no one else does. It's as if he's trying to memorize the smallest details in your skin, to uncover every secret trapped behind your guarded gaze. He has a stare determined to lay you entirely bare to him.
James’ wine dulled ogling could hardly hold a candle to that. Looking into his eyes, you see only the planning for whatever dullard comment he was going to make next.
Still, it’s not until the end of your date–an exceptionally long two and a half hours thanks to a mishap with your order–that James displays a behavior unsavory enough to elicit a truly unpleasant feeling in you. He’s quite clingy after a few too many glasses of wine. He walks you out of the restaurant with an arm around your waist, and more than once you have to bat his hand away from the seam where your blouse is tucked into your skirt.
“You in the parking garage or the back lot?” He asks, smiling in a way he must mean to be salacious, eyes half-lidded like he’s lost control of them.
“The back lot.” Parking was a nightmare with how late you arrived after work. “Is that where you are?” You ask, hoping it isn’t.
“No, no, I actually took an Uber in,” he says, and you know immediately by the way he starts tapping your hip with his index finger why he chose to do that.
“Want me to wait for you here until your Uber arrives, then?” You ask, turning out of his grasp to stand face to face with him outside of the restaurant. It’s late enough now that the streets have calmed some, at least by New York’s standards.
James’ expression falters, but he tries for a recovery with a hopeful smile. “Well, you know, I was sort of hoping we might continue this elsewhere,” he says, slipping his hands into his pockets. Is he trying to look suave?
“Oh, no,” you say, putting forth your very best sympathetic head tilt, matched with a well placed brow furrow. “No thank you.”
This time his expression doesn’t recover. His hands lift from his pocket and he makes a helpless gesture with them, very nearly pleading. “Really? I thought we were having a nice time.”
“And I’m so glad for that,” you say, and even you can hear the corporate edge sliding into your tone, which doesn’t seem to soothe him any. “But it’s for the best that we part ways here, James. Thanks for your time.”
“But–” Your inarguable dismissal staggers him. He gropes for recourse. “I paid,” he blurts out, which proves to be his final mistake.
Your polite facade drops. “For what?“ His booze addled panic shifts into confusion. “F…For dinner, but I didn’t mean–”
“And that entitles you to fuck me?” No sense in mincing words now.
His expression morphs again, this time into mortification. “No! No, but–”
“You thought this would be a transaction? God, and here I was thinking your gravest flaw would be how mind-numbingly boring you are. But to be boring and stupid?” You scoff, waving a dismissive hand. “Goodnight, James,” you say, the kindest dismissal you can muster. You turn on your heel before he can sour the evening any further, and luckily for him, he doesn’t pursue you further.
Unbelievable. As if you hadn’t offered to split the check. As if he expected it to be a transaction that he cashed in your bed. As if the cost of dinner was worth anything more than a polite smile from you. As if.
New York doesn’t sleep, but it does grow very, very dark. You’re on a narrow street, not an alley exactly, but not a main road, either. Still riled up, you bring up the parking app on your phone as you walk, swiping through to get ready to pay for your crummy back lot space. A clatter brings your attention up, and that’s when you see them—two men. One wearing a black leather jacket, the other with a kerchief slung around his throat. 
You stop walking, caught between turning around, which would mean putting your back to the men up ahead, or continuing forward, which would mean passing within arm’s reach. They haven’t noticed you yet, or at least they’re pretending not to, but now they look right at you and smile.
The men don’t look dangerous, not like they do in the movies, but you know that means nothing—plenty of the worst people in the world looked safe. Yet the longer you stay put, the more you sense the ill intent wafting off of them like cheap cologne. “Hey, baby,” says one of them, moving toward you. “You lost?”
“No,” you say curtly, taking a step back. “Not lost. Excuse me.”
“You sure? We’re real good with directions,” says the second man, leering. Your eyes snap between them, phone clutched tight in your hand. “Y’look like you could use some.”
“No,” you say again, louder. How loud would you need to be for anyone to hear you over the sounds of the streets? Panic swells in your throat.
You don’t know how they got so close so quickly, but as you turn to run, a hand catches your collar. The guy in the leather jacket wrenches you back against him, one arm wrapping around your shoulders. Your phone clatters to the ground. 
“Hey now, what’s the rush?” He asks, yanking you backwards. “Get off me,” you snarl, but he’s squeezing you tightly across the chest, making it hard to think, let alone breathe. You struggle until you feel something hard dig into your hip. A knife? No. You realize coldly that it’s a gun, the handle of it jutting out from his waistband and digging into you. In a desperate bid, you twist in his grip, trying to grab it.
“Careful,” says the other one, moving in front of you, closing in. “She’s got spirit.”
You kick out at the other guy but he jumps back, laughing at you. They’re both laughing, relishing in your fear. Your fingers skim the gun, but you can’t quite get it.
The first man’s breath is hot and sour on your cheek. “Come on, now, let’s have some fun.” You slam your head back into his nose—or try to, but you only manage to clip his chin. Still, you hit bone, hear the crack of a tooth, and just like that you’re free, stumbling to your hands and knees as the man reels. You hit the ground hard, the shock of landing lancing pain through your arms and legs. The gun tumbles from his waistband. Without thinking twice you lunge for it, fingers successfully closing around the grip right before one of the men grabs your ankle and pulls.
The street bites into your elbows and scrapes your knee bloody as you twist around and raise the gun, barrel leveled at the man’s heart. “LET GO!” You scream, heart hammering against your chest. “Oh shit,” says the man in the kerchief, eyes wide at seeing you armed, but the other one sneers at you, blood spilling from his mouth. There’s fury in his eyes, and the unmistakable intent to hurt you. “You ever held a gun that big, baby?”
“Let go,” you say again, voice firmer than the tremble of your hands. Your finger flexes on the trigger.
“You even know how to use it?” He asks, using his grip on your ankle to pull himself over you, his other hand falling to your thigh. He gives a pointed squeeze as he lifts himself up to tower above you. He reaches to take hold of you again, but you won’t let him. Can’t let him.
“Yes.” You squeeze the trigger as you say it, bracing for the recoil, the bang. It’s always so loud in the movies.
Nothing happens. You panic, looking at the weapon in your hands in dull shock. The safety isn’t on. You pull the trigger again, but the chamber rings hollow. It isn’t loaded. You look up at the man as his shadow falls over you. He bares his teeth at you, painted an ugly dark red with the blood spilling from his mouth. The man laughs, a short barking sound, and knocks the gun from your hands with a harsh slap. It goes skidding away.
“Stupid bitch,” he says, raising his boot as if you were an oversized bug, something to crush. You close your eyes and scream as he brings it down hard.
Or at least, he started to, but his leg locks up halfway, and then he topples, a single horrifying sound leaking from his clenched teeth. Your eyes open just in time to see his body hit the ground, a smoldering wound smoking from his chest. An instant later, the second man falls. This time you see the flash of crimson light that drops him.
Homelander’s cape billows in the wind with all the majesty of the flag it’s designed after as he descends from the sky. He lands in front of you, backlit by the distant street lights that give him an artificial glow. He’s beautiful, a perfectly manufactured angel delivered straight from some market tested Heaven.
“Hey, you hurt?” He asks, reaching for you.
Awestruck, all you can do is stare at his outstretched hand. Tears well in your eyes. Shock is setting in the aftermath of all that adrenaline in your veins crashing your system. Through the blur of your tears, Homelander’s expression shifts from concern to that of determination.
“It’s alright, I’m here now. They can’t hurt you,” he says, bringing your arm around his neck while he slips his own around your waist, effortlessly lifting you from the ground. Before your gaze can drift to the corpses–whose burning flesh you can smell mingling with the acrid city air–Homelander rotates, taking them from your line of sight. 
With a flourish, he unhitches his cape from his shoulders and swings the fabric over yours. It settles on you heavier than you expected it to be, and impossibly warm. Moving back in, Homelader readily takes you back into his arms. He cradles you in his embrace, one hand cupping the back of your head, the other drawing lines up and down your back.
You try to choke out a sound, to ask him, how? How did he find you? How did he know you needed him? But none of the noises you make form any actual words. Your throat is too tight, and your tongue feels too big for your mouth, gnarled silent by panic. Everything is just too much. Your breaths only grow sharper as tears burn hot streaks down your face.
“Sssshhhhhhh,” he shushes by your ear, lifting you just enough to keep you on your feet, but take the weight of your body from you. His hold is compressive, but not oppressive. It takes everything you have left to lift your other arm around his neck while the sobs overtake you. He continues to hush you, whispering a menagerie of honeyed assurances in your ear, the core sentiment always the same.
I’ve got you. You’re safe now. I won’t let anyone hurt you.
You cry harder, coiling your arms tighter around his neck. He lets you cling to him, lets you sob away your makeup and soak the collar of his suit with the mess of it.
You don’t know how much time passes in your addled state of panic, but eventually your breaths begin to even out, though your heart continues to thunder. Your body isn’t convinced that the danger has vanished yet, eager to turn to flight now that your fight has gone.
“That’s it, just like that,” Homelander praises. “Breathe. Breathe. Good… Light as a feather now, okay? Like you can fly,” he tells you. The weightlessness you feel in his arms helps the idea, helps you to feel like you aren’t being crushed by the terrible weight of such a moment of horror. That’s all it had been, a moment–two at most–and yet the torment of it had felt hours long. Exhaustion falls over you in the wake of adrenaline, and you’re glad for Homelander’s arms around you. You doubt you’d be standing without them.
“Home,” you manage to croak. “Please.” You can still smell the man’s sour breath, the memory even more powerful than the stench of reality.
“I can take you home,” he coos, maintaining that same soothing tone of comfort. “Is that what you want?”
You nod, focusing instead on the vetiver fresh smell of him. You’ve never been near enough to him before to notice it, but now you fixate on it. Anything to drown out the stink of the alley. He smells so much cleaner, like fresh linen drying over green grass in the summer sun.
His arms flex around you before he adjusts them, lifting you smoothly into his arms. Your stomach flips the way it does when you go down a hill in the backseat of a car, gravity loosening its hold on you. You can feel the motion all around you, the wind ghosting over you, but Homelander himself feels motionless against you.
Flying. He’s flying. And so are you.
His cape shields you from the night air bite, pulled snug around you and secured where your bodies are pressed together. You haven’t felt like this since you were a child, cradled with such care and strength that feels beyond your comprehension. Homelander serves as both place and person–somewhere safe, someone kind–and you tuck yourself closer into the sanctuary of his arms, hands fisted in the protective fabric of his cape.
“I’ve got’cha,” he assures you, voice warm in your ear. 
Without a shadow of a doubt, you believe him.
Tumblr media
Homelander doesn’t need to ask where you live. It’s an easy detail to brush off if you question him. He doubts you will with the way you’re clinging to him, though. You feel good in his arms, settling so naturally against the contours of them he might convince himself you belong here. He doesn’t mind your weeping when it comes with your arms around him, fingertips brushing the nape of his neck.
A small shiver rolls down his spine.
Of all the ways Homelander expected the evening to unfold, he hadn’t properly anticipated you. While he cradles you, he replays again and again the moment you were snatched. You fought without hesitation. You wrenched the gun free. The fierceness in your eyes as you aimed it had been exquisite. The resolve in your gaze as you fired it even more so.
He’d known you were confident, but that kind of clawing survival can only be learned of a person in action. He’s known many supposedly strong people–supe and human alike–who walk as stone giants, but shatter like glass when faced with any real danger.
You couldn’t have known that you weren’t in any real danger. You couldn’t have known that he’d told those thugs to scare you, but not hurt you. You couldn’t have known he’d ensured the gun wasn’t loaded. You fought as though it was for your life, and it enthralled him.
He hadn’t planned on killing them in front of you. They would have been loose ends to tie up after his heroic rescue, but somewhere along the line that stupid bastard lost the thread. He hurt you, bloodied those pretty knees of yours, and he moved to strike you. To grind you beneath his heel as if you were the vermin instead of him. For that–and for so flagrantly going against Homelander’s own direct order–you witnessed his downfall.
As far as he’s concerned now, everything happened precisely as it needed to. You’re in his arms now, and he’s still half hard from witnessing you choose fight when your instincts kicked in. You’re too fragile to choose it so readily. Your bones feel bird-like compared to the scope of his strength. Hollow and brittle. You would make for a hell of a supe, though.
Still, he won’t break you. He’s spent his entire life learning what it takes to snap bones like party favors, and more crucially, what it takes not to. Yours are safe from him. In fact, you’re the safest person in the whole world now.
Homelander glides down to a soft landing on your driveway. Your car will be an issue for another time. For now, he walks you to your front door before gently placing you on your feet.
“Believe this is you, young lady,” he says, leaving space for plausible deniability. If it occurs to you to interrogate him about it, it doesn’t show on your face. With hands still softly trembling, you fish your keys out of your purse. He watches you fumble with them for only a moment before he steps in behind you, one hand gripping your upper arm to steady and pause you while the other covers your shaking hand, helping you to slide the key into the lock and turn it.
Your hand fits nicely in his.
“Thanks,” you whisper. It’s the first thing you’ve said since asking him to take you home. He takes the liberty of opening the door for you while he’s at it, swinging it wide to allow you in. You grab his forearm, and he thinks you’re only balancing yourself, but when you don’t let go he steps with you, letting you lean on him as you guide him into your home. He closes the door behind the two of you, smiling to himself.
He may not need an invitation to enter, but it’s charming to have one.
Your movements are stiff, a slight limp to your gait. You fell hard, and the delicate flesh of your knee had ripped apart against the concrete when you were dragged. You hesitate at the stairs, but Homelander doesn’t. You inhale sharply  when he scoops you back up into his arms with ease and starts up the stairs. He keeps his gaze ahead, but he can feel yours on him.
“Thanks,” you say again, the word barely more than a hiccup, adjusting his cape over yourself like a blanket.
“It’s what heroes are for.” He smiles. It’s a party line, one he’s said a hundred thousand times before, but you make him mean it. This is what heroes are for. To be worshiped and loved, understood deeper than pop stars and false idols like them. There’s a reverence in your stare that transcends the vapid starstruck way most people look at him. You understand now. You know how much more he is.
He brings you to your bedroom and sets you on the edge of the bed, adjusting his cape back up over your shoulders. You’ve scarcely let go of it since he wrapped you in it. Will you sleep with it tonight? He bets you will. The thought sends a pleasant tingle through him. 
“Alright, let’s get a look at those knees,” he says, crouching in front of you. There’s blood running down your left shin. He lifts the edge of your skirt hem just enough to catch a glimpse of shredded skin. It looks rough, dirty and embedded with bits of debris. He blows out a breath. “Got a first aid kit?”
You nod numbly. “Under the bathroom sink.”
It’s odd to see you so subdued. He forgets sometimes that you humans can be as emotionally fragile as you are physically. Surely the death of two measly thugs isn’t enough to break you.
Rising, he moves to your bathroom. He feels slightly unbalanced without the sway of his cape behind him, the garment as integral to his physicality as any limb. He rummages through until his hand lands on a bright red fabric pack with a zipper. He gives it a little toss and catches it, bringing it back to you, alongside a wetted towel. He gives the pack a victorious little shake.
“H’okay, down to business.” Homelander kneels before you, splaying open the kit and placing it on your lap. He’s never used one of these before, but he’s pretended to do it on set. How different can it be? He cups your leg, thumb absently smoothing back and forth on your skin while he uses the towel to gently wipe up the blood, dirt and debris from your shin and knee.
You flinch, tense a moment before you relax. “Homelander, you really don’t have to–”
“Am I doing a bad job?” He asks, glancing up at you through his lashes. There’s a playful lilt to his voice.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” you say, the smallest hint of exasperation in your voice. He’s pleased to hear it. Perhaps you’re less wilted from the encounter than he thought. “I just mean that I can–”
“I know you can,” he says, and this time he definitely sees a flare of annoyance. You don’t like being interrupted any more than he does, but you don’t protest further. He smiles, triumphant, and focuses back on the task at hand, petting you the same way one might soothe a wild animal.
There’s a novelty in doing this for real that he hadn’t anticipated. It’s entirely unlike wiping away congealed red corn syrup from an actor. Your skin is sweeter, softer. He suddenly resents his gloves for the barrier they provide, despite his usual reliance for that very thing. He’s meticulous in flicking out the little stones embedded in your skin, spotting each one with ease.
Next, he tears open the alcohol wipes with his teeth and uses them to disinfect, rubbing at the sores. You flinch, sucking in a loud breath through your teeth. “Oopsy-daisy,” he says, switching to gently patting. He has no real concept of what you’re feeling right now. He’s never had a scraped knee before. The scientists at Vought had to get much more creative in order to gauge his capacity for healing.
He imagines they were disappointed to realize that, once damaged, he healed as slowly as a human.
“How’d you find me?” You ask, snapping him out of his unpleasant reminiscence. Your shock seems to have worn off entirely. You look more present, alert to his every move.
“Heard you scream,” he answers simply, unraveling a roll of gauze. That much is true.
“But how? How did you know where I was?” You push, watching him wind the white material around your knee.
“I didn’t,” he lies smoothly. He’s followed enough scripts in his life to do so very well. “If I’d known exactly where you were, I would have been there sooner. I was minding my business on 5th Avenue when I heard you. Familiar voices can…” He makes a vague gesture. “Cut through the din. Voices I want to hear.” 
He thinks he catches you flush at that. Just a touch. He bites back a smirk, pleased with himself. Does it matter if it’s true when it makes you look at him like that?
“I didn’t know your hearing worked like that,” you say, fidgeting with the hem of his cape.
His gaze flickers up every so often to watch your finger pick at the seam, inexplicably charmed by it. “Well, there’s some things not even a super fan can glean,” he teases, securing the gauze with tape. He expects to see a familiar indignation in your expression, but when he looks up, he’s caught off guard by the unmistakable fondness in your eyes.
“I was over the moon when I got my job at Vought,” you say quietly, like you’re whispering in a confessional. “I always wanted to work with heroes.”
“With me?” He pushes, lifting his brows.
Very slightly, you smile. “Yeah. With you.”
“Busted,” he says, his own voice equally soft.
You give him a little nudge with your foot. “Gauze won’t stay by itself. Need to use a roll of self-adhesive wrap,” you say, plucking the beige roll from the kit. He likes the shy warmth in your voice. He would have done much worse to see this side of you. Have the intimacy of your pain, fear and relief all to himself. This glowing affection you’re so full of. He feels drunk on the cocktail of it all.
“Right, obviously,” he says, taking the wrapping from you. “I knew that.”
“Probably should have put a gauze pad under it, too,” you continue, eyes heavily lidded, expression soft.
“Everyone’s a critic,” he laments, affixing the textured bandage around the gauze. You laugh, and the sound of it feels like a space he could belong in.
He checks your other knee, your elbows and your palms, but nowhere else on you calls for anything more than some antiseptic and a few bandaids. With the wrappings secure, he shuffles the mess of supplies haphazardly back into the kit, zipping it up much more bulging and misshapen a state than he found it in. He pushes it under the bed with the towel atop it, standing.
“Good as new. Or close to it,” he says, making a small show of dusting off his hands for a job well done. 
You stand, letting his cape slide off of your shoulders for the first time since he put it on you, the fabric pooling on the bed. You step forward, and of all the things he expects in this moment, you blow them out of the water by suddenly wrapping your arms around him, the soft curves of your body slotting against his in a way that trips something primal and needy in him. He puts his arms around you the second the shock wears off, holding you with the barest fraction of his strength.
Tension drains from your body. Were you nervous he wouldn’t reciprocate? It’s an endearing thought. He gives a deeper, brief squeeze. He can’t remember the last time someone held him.
“Thank you,” you say after a long beat, drawing back. He reluctantly loosens his grip, but not by much. He’s loath to relinquish you so soon after he’s gotten hold of you. “It’s not enough, but I don’t know what could ever be.”
I could make a few suggestions, he thinks, but he doesn’t give voice to the lewd thoughts that follow.
“I’ll never forget what you did for me tonight,” you say. Your face is so near to his, it makes it difficult to focus on anything other than the curve of your lips as you speak.
Instead of responding, Homelander leans in, eyes falling shut.
“Oh,” you say sharply, your soft body suddenly going tense in his arms, stopping him in his tracks. Both of your hands are braced against his chest now, creating a distance that feels craterous. 
He blinks, brows furrowed in confusion. “What?” 
“I’m really tired,” you say, tone shifting to mild diffusion. It reminds him of the way you spoke to James, and his ego stings with both the rejection and the comparison. He’d laughed listening to you reject that pathetic, simpering man. It seems less funny now. 
He scoffs an incredulous little huff. But I saved you, he thinks, indignant panic flaring in his chest. To his dismay, however, the thought doesn’t sound like his own voice. It sounds like James’.
But I paid!
Repulsed, Homelander swallows the thought like bile. If the comparison comes so readily to his own mind, there’s no way you won’t make the connection yourself. He feels his skin prickle like there are fire ants crawling beneath his suit. The memory of James’ pathetic begging is the only thing that keeps his composure together.
“Of course you are,” he says tightly. His smile is forced, slightly too wide. “You should sleep. Rest up. Take the day off tomorrow,” he says stiffly, rattling off lines like they’re pre-recorded. Only then does he surrender his hold on you, hands moving to his hips instead. You take a step back, and he stands straighter to disguise the sting of rejection.
“Thank you,” you say, tone indecipherable. It’s full to the brim with something, but nothing Homelander can parse in his current state. “I–”
“No need,” he dismisses, jumping on the opportunity to end the conversation on his terms. “Really. Just doing my job,” he says, tossing you a little two-finger salute off of his brow, already moving towards your balcony door. You don’t move, watching him from the foot of your bed, arms wrapped around yourself.
“Catch you at the office,” he says. He knows he’s speaking too quickly, but it’s all he can do to keep himself in check. Anger and misery broil in him like vinegar and baking soda, the caustic brew threatening to erupt.
“Okay,” you say, which isn’t particularly what he wants to hear. He turns his back to you, and his smile drops, his ego violently stung. With a force that billows wind through your bedroom, he takes off into the night sky.
You just weren’t ready, he tells himself, gritting his teeth. It’s easier to be angry than embarrassed. He wants to make as much distance between himself and your rejection, flying higher and higher until frost begins collecting on his lashes. He flies until there’s no sound, no oxygen, no life but his own. He flies until gravity releases him and he can finally relax, suspended by cold, vast space.
The earth glows beneath him, reflecting the light of the sun where it illuminates a distant portion of the globe.
Closing his eyes, he tips his head back.
He’ll fix this.
( chapter four )
262 notes · View notes
twig-tea · 2 months
Note
With 23.5 finally coming out, the people are rejoicing at finally getting a high profile gl from GMMTV. But there have already been several gls airing this year, including my fav TsukuTabe, that have been flying under the radar with fandom, and in general there are more gls already out there than folks seem to think. I just know you have a list of all the gls we should be watching, please share with the class!
Thank you for the ask! How did you know I had a draft of GL recs to make at some point? [Trick question, I mentioned it to you.]
It may seem like I'm out here hating on GL because i've made a couple of negative reviews of recently airing series recently (Love Senior and Chaser Game W in case you're curious) but I actually have lots of GL that I love and that I wish were better known! Thanks for sending this ask so I am inspired to actually finish it! I've limited myself to series so that I could keep the list and this post to a reasonable length. Where possible I've listed where you can find each of these and included a link. And I've included an 'elevator pitch' summary but I am NOT in marketing for a reason, so please don't roast me too hard for my terrible comparisons. Alright, enough waffling!
Twig's GL Rec List
She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat S1 & 2 (Japan, 2022 & 2024, both seasons fansubbed by @furritsubs; if you need help accessing this show feel free to DM me!)
Tumblr media
Elevator pitch: Our Dining Table with lesbians and an even slower burn. Watch for beautiful food, acespec rep, mental health and therapy rep
What might turn some off: Extremely low heat, and quite slow-moving; warning for a disordered eating and family trauma plot (v gently handled)
Let's start with the one you've already mentioned. This is a heartwarming slice-of-life slow burn in which an autismspec-coded woman who likes to eat is invited by her neighbour, a femme acespec woman who loves to cook, to come and eat her food. It starts from a very practical place (when you love making food you need someone to help eat it), but their relationship grows as they spend more time together. The story follows them as they both move towards self-actualization in several ways: as a lesbian, as asexual, at work, with their families, with their friends, with each other. This show is so careful to say the important words aloud. And there is so much delicious cooking! Each episode highlights a particular recipe, and the food porn is real. Do not watch while hungry, but definitely watch. The found famiy vibes in this one one are also immaculate.
She Makes My Heart Flutter (Korea, 2022, YouTube)
Tumblr media
Elevator pitch: Younger lesbian friend group tries to help out (slightly) older lesbian bar owner with mixed success. I can't think of a good BL equivalent, The Moment Since feels the closest with its similar bartender/patron romance
What might turn some off: Comedic tone; short runtime; struggles with being closeted
This is a gem of a miniseries about a bar owner and an interior designer who smoulder at one another while an intrepid group of younger bar regulars (including the bar owner's neice) meddle. This series is really cute, solid, and full of sapphics! Once again found family vibes are immaculate (you may sense a theme in my faves). Run don't walk.
Fragrance of the First Flower (Taiwan, 2021, GagaOOLala)
Tumblr media
Elevator pitch: Right-person-wrong-time/second chance romance; tonally is a little like We Best Love 2: Fighting Mr. 2nd but with an ambiguous ending.
What might turn you off: Medium heat, second chance romance means they break up once, internalized homophobia, adultery/cheating, at one point there's a creepy dude, child with autism (depicted well), ambiguous ending
At its core this is a story of a woman who can't stop getting in the way of her own happiness. This series is a little more sad than the rest of this rec list but I couldn't not include it because this relationship is so poignant. Plus there's a s2 that supposedly is to come out in 2024 so maybe we'll get our happy ending after all?
Love Greater Than or Equal to 70 Degrees C (Korea, 2019, YouTube)
Tumblr media
Elevator pitch: Ingredients but with lesbians staring at one another over beautiful tea pairings! What more could you ask for?
What might turn you off: Low heat; short runtime; ambiguous ending; like Ingredients this is essentially a long ad for the café it's filmed at.
This is a Korean miniseries about passionate tea sommeliers making really fancy tea while staring at one another a LOT. Perfect sapphic representation, 10/10 no notes. This one packs a lot of the drama tropes into its short runtime, so even though it's short it's full of butterfly-inspiring moments.
Sleep With Me (Philippines, 2022, GagaOOLala/iWantTFC/Netflix w/VPN set to Philippines)
Tumblr media
Elevator pitch: The Truth About Cats and Dogs but the self esteem issues are handled without catfishing. BL equivalent: Hmmm. Closest I can think of is Gaya Sa Pelikula.
What might turn you off: There's some ableism (treated as such) in this show; Open ending.
Stellar GL between a late night radio DJ and an insomniac who listens to her show. One of the main couple is a wheelchair user and the show tackles ablelism and navigating disability in relationship as well as feelings of inadequacy in a relationship and how that manifests as interpersonal conflict.
Our Relationship Ended Before it Began (Korea, 2022, YouTube)
Tumblr media
Elevator Pitch: Along the lines of I Cannot Reach You; the show gives both perspectives and they are held back by queer angst.
What might turn you off: No kiss (but they make it very clear both want to kiss), internalized homophobia
Really sweet miniseries about having a crush and being afraid of being hurt so you don't actually make a move. I really like the way the girl who has not dated a girl before defaults to gender roles and it throws the more experienced lesbian lol I also really like the way this show makes clear that both of them are waiting for a kiss, and that if you get in your head about things, it can get in the way of your own happiness!
Pearl Next Door (Philippines, 2020, Youtube)
Tumblr media
Elevator Pitch: Gameboys but with lesbian vloggers.
What might turn you off: Love triangle, lots of teasing but low heat in the end, a lot of (good) conversations about mental health issues, ambiguous ending
This is the GL spinoff to Gameboys, starring Pearl from Gameboys. Pearl ends up being fought over by the two gorgeous women in the gif, an old love and a new. I love the queer friendships in this story as much as the relationships. I will say it's an open ending (that felt a bit like the showrunners didn't want to decide between ships) and definitely the love triangle features prominently but even in the face of these aspects that would normally turn me off a series I had a good time. The characters and interpersonal conflicts feel very real, and are allowed to be complex even when the show tone is comedic.
Dear Uranus (Taiwan, 2021, YouTube)
Tumblr media
Elevator Pitch: Schoolgirl ensemble GL; a little like My School President but without the singing.
What might turn you off: Short runtime; ambiguous ending; a little bit of bullying; very standard romance trope execution
The first Taiwanese GL miniseries, this series was produced by a Taiwanese lesbian couple (Rabbit & Wolf)! Lots of excellent drama tropes, and incredibly gorgeous women (I think the entire watching audience fell in love with Erol.
Lily Fever (Korea, 2015, YouTube)
Tumblr media
Elevator pitch: Complete crack; YYY but with more kissing and frankly an even less coherent story.
What might turn you off: The lack of coherent plot; less a romance and more a very thirsty lesbian kissing everyone she can
This miniseries is utter chaos. Nothing really makes sense, it's all just random excuses to cause very suggestive moments (and kissing) to happen. I love so much how this series depicts women being so absolutely thirsty for one another (and yes that date isn't a typo, this series is ~9 years old). Not an "happy ever after" ending but it really isn't that kind of story.
Chasing Sunsets (Philippines, 2020, YouTube)
Elevator pitch: Ocean Likes Me with lesbians. Resort romance with a mental health twist.
What might turn you off: Some of the mental health stuff gets intense, this was filmed in 2020 so the pandemic features heavily; hopeful but slightly ambiguous ending.
A complex story from the Philippines covering mental health and finding yourself. A woman shows up to a resort and befriends one of the women running the resort. They get closer as they spend time together, and the resort owner realizes something is off. There's also a BL side couple in this series.
Show Me Love (Thai, 2023, YouTube)
Tumblr media
Elevator pitch: A little like My Day the series with lesbians, in that they work together and fall in love and it's full of tropes
What might turn you off: The advertising for the Miss Grand competition, there is some bullying and cheating (though way less than I was expecting tbh), not a lot actually happens, the editing gets a bit wonky at the end
This is essentially a massive ad for the Miss Grand Thailand competition; this GL was produced by the same company that produces that competition, and the stars are mostly Miss Grand competitors. The main pairing were shipped in the actual competition, and the company decided to make a GL about them. It's very slow paced and low-stakes, and there are better kisses than I expected considering everything I just said about where this show came from. There are a lot of cute moments!
Girlfriend Project (Korea, 2022, YouTube)
Tumblr media
Elevator Pitch: Love Class with lesbians
What might turn you off: One of the leads is kind of mean in that pgitail-pulling way? It ends abruptly (but happily)
This is a short miniseries about two girls paired in a class that are assigned to "date". The chemistry is chemistrying. And there is a kiss (a good kiss, and a tiptoes kiss at that!). This show also has one of my favourite tropes, in which someone who seems like a pushover stands up for themselves and their partner finds it very attractive. For the record, in this show they are watching another GL by the same company, Love Tech.
Lulu (Philippines, 2022, Vivamax/grey)
Tumblr media
Elevator Pitch: Present Perfect with lesbians (but with a better ending).
What might turn you off: Depictions of panic attacks, brief depiction of drowning, pandemic lockdowns, illness, exes, waffling, happy but open ending (which I actually liked for this story)
Two women trying to move on from the garbage in their lives meet at the beach of a B&B (where one saves the other from drowning) and become one another's company during their escape and then something more. They both have baggage that seems determined to keep them apart even as they continue to be drawn together. In the end, they decide to stick it out and see where they end up, with no guarantee of happily ever after, which I found very sweet. Requires either a VivaMax account or searching the grey for it, but it's worth the effort (check MyDramaList comments for suggestions on where to find it). Plus one of the leads has a cactus as a pet.
Welcome to the Lesbian Bar (Korea, 2023, YouTube)
Elevator Pitch: A little like Fudanshi Bartender but without the fudanshi bartender and all of the bar patrons are lesbians lol
What might turn you off: Short, can get a little bit preachy, abrupt ending
Cute short series with different very stories every episode as different patrons visit the bar. The stories range from women who have been together for awhile, to people meeting from an online app for the first time, to someone visiting a lesbian bar for the first time; and yet the story all weaves together in a way that's satisfying though ends abruptly. Includes some solid marriage equality propaganda.
GAP the Series (Thai, 2022, YouTube)
Tumblr media
Elevator Pitch: Kind of the vibes of Together with Me but lesbians and in an office instead of school. Angry boss falls for charming new intern and
What might turn you off: This one is the highest heat of all these recs; homophobia especially amongst family, brief depictions of death by car, brief mentions of suicide, cheating, bullying, abuse of power in the office.
A list would not be complete without this one! Honestly the plot is a bit wobbly but the show is a lot of fun. The girls are very cute, the feelings and tension builds really well between them, the friend group is excellent, and in the special we get a wedding.
---
The rest of these have caveats of one kind or another, but i couldn't leave them off a rec list, so here are the side couples and censored stories that are still worth your time anyway (I might do a separate more detailed post for these, as well as for films, one day if there's interest):
Nevertheless (GL side; Korean, 2021, Netflix) Not sure it's worth watching a whole kdrama for side lesbians? Search soljiwan on youtube. They are great. Even the Netflix account stans them. I watched this (ngl, I watched the SolJiwan cut) as it aired and was constantly braced for it to let us down but it did not! A really good friends-to-lovers story.
Friend Zone 2: Dangerous Area (GL side; Thailand, 2019, YouTube): These sapphics are messy and I love them. Decent conversation about dating someone with mental health issues in this series, and they're one of the only couples in this ensemble to get a happy ending. If you're just watching the lesbian couple (which you can, their story is pretty self-contained) you don't need to have seen s1.
Six Survivors (GL side; Japan, 2022, Viki) This show is a horror comedy and it is SO MUCH FUN. Warning for zombies and blood, but way less than you might think. One of the eponymous 6 survivors is a lesbian who keeps trying to convert them to veganism lol. If you watched Chaser Game W you'll recognize one of the actresses in this, the lead actress is from Kamisama no Ekohiiki, and one of the guys is from the prequel series His as well as I Want to See Only You! And yes there is a kiss. Also a surprising number of Mallrats references. Not for people who can't handle gore or relationships being complicated/not a "true love" story/ambiguous ending.
Kamisama no Ekohiiki (complicated question of is it GL in parts, Japan, 2021, furritsubs once again coming through to save the day) This one is a bit complex because there's bodyswap, but the girl who falls for the bodyswapped boy-in-a-girl's-body is clear that she is only interested in the girl. One of the better bodyswap stories because the bodyswap is not a secret for very long, so instead there's a lot of introspection about what gender means and who/what they are attracted to. Feels wrong to call this GL, necessarily, but it's very queer.
Couple of Mirrors (Censored GL, China, 2021, Viki) Story of a rich girl and her assassin girlfriend. This production did an amazing job getting away with what they could, just don't watch the last five minutes and we've got essentially a happy lesbian family.
Legend of Yunze (Censored GL, China, 2021, @douqi7s) Very cute very low budget xianxia miniseries with two seasons and a special. The special is set in modern times in a future lifetime so if you want a cute censored-but-clearly-a-soulmate-love-story this is the one for you. Don't be thrown off by the weird cuts/abrupt episode endings, that's in line with cdramas in general.
Led Astray by Love (Censored GL, China, 2021, @douqi7s) A very fun and adorable isekai story in which a modern day girl is transported to a wuxia novel setting and has to figure out how to get home, and gets romanced by the princess along the way.
And a few additional links for people who even more content:
My Indian sapphic webseries rec list
My suggestions for content with toms (Thai category that's similar to but not exactly the same as butch lesbians) in response to this post.
This really good GL MyDramaList list (not made by me!) lists what seems to be everything I've mentioned and about 200 more. Even I haven't seen a few of these!
My YouTube playlist of sapphic content: This includes anything I stumble across or find in my searches, a lot of music videos and random shorts as well as some microseries and miniseries that I don't consider GL but are WLW/sapphic in addition to true "GL" content. For serialized content, I add just the first ep. A complete mess, but you can trawl through to find stuff to watch, like Hetero!
SOONOTSUE: The same producers of She Makes My Heart Flutter have other short series on their channel worth checking out; if you liked that one, try Out of Breath!
Shakeshoulder: Thai YouTube producers of very pulpy (read: low budget and dramatic plots) shorts
FuFuKnows: This YouTube channel is owned by a gay Taiwanese couple that produces shorts every week, including some with GL mains and sides. These are very low budget but cover a whole swath of queer themes.
@douqi7s is a godsend providing subtitles for all kinds of content, including sapphic shorts and more series than I've listed here. Check their tumblr for links to all of their content; A Practical Guide to Being a Superstar's Assistant has one of the best setups to giving us great moments in the guise of something else so that they get past censorship I've ever seen; I also recommend The Vampires if you're into genre fiction, as well as Legend of Yunqian if you enjoyed the xianxia parts of Legend of Yunze. @wlwcatalogue did an excellent summary of many of the non-wuxia options here.
Quick pitch for the streaming platform GagaOOLala; it's affordable, has a ton of content, including a whack of GLs (originals, license series, and a ton of shorts), and is run by queer people out of Taiwan who care about good quality queer content being made and having an audience, and using the soft power from those successful series to support social change. And if you can't afford a subscription it's worth checking out what they have for free, they open up temporary free access to some things for various events throughout the year.
In searching for gifs for this post I found fellow tumblr user @drowningparty 's WLW compendium list; they've listed more series and films so check it out if you still need more content!
*wipes sweat off brow* that should be enough to be getting on with, but it's really just the tip of the iceberg! If there's something specific you want to see with sapphics let me know and I can tell you if I know it exists. Anyway, I hope this gives you and everyone else a taste of what all is out there! I of course always want more, I am serious about being a sapphic dragon hoarding every crumb i can get my lizardy hands on, but I do think what we have should also be appreciated more. If I missed one of your faves, please tell me!
289 notes · View notes
ao3cassandraic · 10 months
Text
Kayfabe: A Good Omens meta
"Kayfabe," in wrestling, is the performance (including outside the wrestling ring) of whatever storyline is being woven around the wrestlers. Breaking kayfabe is Serious Business for a wrestler; the illusion is part of the event. If you ever wondered how John Cena could anchor an entire HBO miniseries brilliantly, kayfabe is a big part of the answer.
Because of their histories and how their respective Head Offices treat them, Crowley and Aziraphale approach their version of kayfabe -- their whole "I am an angel! You are a demon! We're hereditary enemies!" schtick, also their "we are good bad proper little footsoldiers, honest, Boss" schtick to their respective Head Offices -- very, very differently.
I promise there's a point to this. I PROMISE. But let me walk through it first.
Both of them know that one awkward question to Upstairs at the wrong moment and its Fallsville. Crowley, however, knows a couple of things that Aziraphale doesn't have to:
Punishment isn't just once; in some ways, the Fall is never over. Beelzebub or Hastur can throw you in the Dung Pits whenever, after all, or feed you to a Hellhound, or zap you like an Eric. Crowley's lot do not send rude notes. (s2: we do not know what happened to Crowley after Hell dragged him back at the end of the Resurrectionists 'sode, but I think it safe to say it was not great for Crowley. Litotes: your key to quality meta.)
Downstairs can and does check in -- or drag Crowley Downstairs for a chat and possibly a bit of idle torture -- whenever they feel like it. Downstairs seems pretty disorganized, especially its leadership, so I'd expect ad-hoc surprise inspections from them. Downstairs can invade Crowley's flat's TV, his Bentley's radio, and his very mind to perform those inspections. Crowley is never, ever safe from this. He can't relax. Ever.
Heaven, on the other hand, has 37 levels of scriveners and zero interest in Earth. Talk of "reprimands" and "miracle budgets" and Michael being a stickler and whatnot suggests a formal review process happening on a schedule, governed largely by the dreaded (but quite possibly fake-able or spinnable) "paperwork" rather than direct observation by Aziraphale's peers or superiors. Otherwise, Aziraphale is usually left to his own devices. Remember how startled he is when Gabriel shows up at the sushi restaurant in s1? This is unusual!
(We also know from Muriel that Heaven's records office doesn't seem to get consulted a whole lot. It's possible this just means that first-through-thirty-sixth-level scriveners handle everything, but in my experience of large bureaucracies, it's the folks at the bottom of the hierarchy who invariably get run off their feet first. Don't see why Heaven would be any different.)
Moreover, Heaven's punishments seem pretty light, on the whole? Our angel is so anxious and so sensitive to slights that I'm sure the reprimands aren't fun, and nobody likes a reduced miracle budget... but Heavenly "needs improvement" reviews don't seem to be a patch on the Dung Pits. The real threat is Falling, which is more than horrible enough to serve as deterrent; Heaven doesn't need to add torments.
Moreover moreover, Aziraphale is mostly aligned with his Head Office in a way that Crowley really, really isn't. I'm sure Aziraphale does a lot of his Heaven assignments with a song in his heart and a skip in his step -- it's mostly not smiting or the like. Crowley... probably spends a lot of his work time figuring out how to obey the letter of Hellish law while defying its spirit. Crowley's in far more danger of angering his bosses.
So Aziraphale doesn't have to keep up kayfabe a lot of the time, not even while interacting with Crowley. He can and does save it for the rare occasions Heaven takes a personal interest. Crowley, however, must keep up kayfabe always, whether Aziraphale's there or not. The courage it must have taken that snake to slither up the wall of Eden!
The way Crowley navigates his permanent need for kayfabe is twofold. First, his all but instinctive refusal to accept any positive word or compliment about himself or his actions from anyone ever -- "I'M NOT NICE!" If Hell were ever to hear someone characterizing Crowley that way... That's also why Crowley is a bit less exercised when Jimbriel calls him nice: "nobody'll ever believe you."
Second, a species of Orwellian doublethink: maintaining a running commentary in his head of how he's going to justify any unHellish actions to Hell, since he can never know exactly when he'll have to or what exactly they'll have a bug up their butt (sorry, Beez) about. Even high as a kite on laudanum in the Edinburgh cemetery, Crowley can explain his current justification (in a curiously sober voice -- is Crowley ever really high in that scene? or is it all kayfabe? I lean toward kayfabe) to Aziraphale, "Not kind! Off my head on laudanum, not responsible for my actions."
We can see the kayfabe mismatch play out a few times, and it does appear that Aziraphale gets more concerned for Crowley's safety and more aware of Crowley's need for kayfabe post-Arrangement. That doesn't mean he always remembers, of course -- he wouldn't, he just doesn't have that same desperate need. And, of course, the ineffable walnuts do not communicate, as s2 went to some lengths to point out. I do think kayfabe is part of that -- it's hard for Crowley to be sincere when he's constantly doublethinking, and Aziraphale's off-and-on involvement with kayfabe (and all his other tendencies toward lying) disincline him to achieve or even learn about honest communication.
One s1 scene I went back and rewatched while thinking about this was the Globe scene, which contains Aziraphale's Saint-Peter-esque three-time denial of Crowley. I find it easy now to read that as Aziraphale going "oh crap do I need to drop back into kayfabe now? I didn't break kayfabe, did I?" and Crowley grinning, at least partly as reassurance. (Partly, of course, because Aziraphale is cute and funny even when kayfabing -- and partly because Aziraphale's sudden drop into kayfabe is Aziraphale trying to protect Crowley, of course Crowley's pleased by that.)
The wall pin, now that I think about it, also gains a little nuance from this. Crowley's fear-laced ire is genuine, but how many times must Aziraphale have heard Crowley snarl at him not to break kayfabe in this way? No surprise he's a little unimpressed. (With Crowley's demand. He's clearly very impressed by Crowley.)
In the s2 Job minisode, Aziraphale hilariously drops kayfabe (and that epic whole-body halo, loved that, great job FX folks) almost immediately. Crowley allows it, because Crowley is on firm ground -- Hell will be just fine with Crowley wrapping the angel in a Chuck-Jones-cartoon amount of scroll parchment and flipping him off.
When angel and demon collude on the con later, of course, they observe kayfabe, improv-style -- Crowley helps Aziraphale deal with the Job's-children situation without giving either of them away to the watching angel posse. Interestingly, it's Aziraphale who de-gecko-izes the kids. That gives Crowley an out, sort of: "look, the mansion collapse missed them because they were in the cellar, I turned them into geckos, totally Hellish thing to do, they'd never survive in the wild, but then this bloody interfering angel went and changed them back!"
And how does Crowley console a distraught angel who thinks he's about to be dragged to Hell? Crowley explains kayfabe in the fewest and clearest words possible. "Well, yeah, you did, but... I'm not going to tell anybody. Are you?"
So yeah. That's kayfabe for the Ineffable Walnuts.
But I promised there was a point to this, didn't I? Yes, I have a point.
My point is...
my POINT is...
my point IS...
(not dolphins, not this time)
My point is, how much of s2's Final Fifteen Minutes is kayfabe?
That's my point.
594 notes · View notes
koimethehorizon · 8 months
Text
Fionna and Cake theory: Simon the Artist
Tumblr media
Nothing like a good old creative panic attack.
Fionna and Cake good. Haven’t been excited about a show like this in a long time, though it being a part of Adventure Time does help quite a bit. I was holding on to some cautious optimism for the show when it was announced as yet another big IP series covering the multiverse (still waiting to groan at THAT scene where Prismo has to explain to us about there being infinite universes), but as usual, Adventure Time’s crew continues to surprise me with its creativity, humor, and thematic resonance.
The most striking part about Fionna and Cake so far is just how deliberately the show wants us to differentiate it from the original Adventure Time.
We’re getting shots where Simon pops an artery from his arm, a theme song that explicitly talks about suicidal ideation, discussions of rent and financial problems, and curses no longer disguised with AT’s usual dialogue. Adventure Time has always had violence, thematic density, and juvenile rating pushers, but they were always reserved at small points. Meanwhile, these are factors that are just casually shown and discussed in Fionna and Cake every 3 minutes or so. This is not an all-ages miniseries, it’s for young adults. (hint: this will be relevant later)
Let’s get right into it. This is much less a speculative lore theory and more on what thematic direction the story may be going.
Before we do, let’s get this out of the way first. This theory assumes that the current Fionna and Cake world is all a part of Simon’s head and not merely a separate multiverse, which… I’m certain is fact for the following reasons.
Tumblr media
The immediately obvious piece is that Fionna and Cake was always the Ice King’s fanfiction. Now if you’re versed in AT’s continuity you’re probably going to be asking about the red light in Fionna and Cake + Fionna and… I’ve no answer for it unfortunately. It’ll probably be relevant later in the series and possibly age this post like milk but for now, we’re not here to focus on the how, but the why.
Tumblr media
Second is that the intro and the ending of Ep 2 literally show Fionna’s world spilling right out of Simon’s head like an animated world out of a frozen brain. If that isn’t clear enough-
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Didn't realize this until writing, but these glasses are just plastic made to look like Betty's
There’s no other explanation for this other than that this world is artificial or influenced by Simon in some sense. Fionna even specifies that the statue went under renovation 12 years ago, but nobody seems to know who it is. Considering how Finn looks in the episode, it’s likely that it’s been that long since Betty’s sacrifice in the finale.
With that out of the way, here it goes.
The reason Fionna and Cake exist in the first place is because the creators found Natasha Allegri’s genderswap designs charming and wanted an in-universe reason to use them the Ice King wanted to create trashy, wish fulfillment through art. It was a phase.
Tumblr media
Definitely changed that image for publishing.
Simon can argue if they’re good or bad but it’s undeniably his art. It’s not just a portfolio he left behind in a closet, it’s an experience that was shared with a larger audience.
Tumblr media
And even if wasn’t liked at first, the citizens of Ooo seemed to have come around to it. And some of them love it!
Whether Simon likes it or not, he has a fan base that is so endeared to the story he made all those years ago that they demand he makes more. Why let a good story, loved by many, go to rest when you still have some life and creativity left in you?
Tumblr media
Can't move on in more ways than one.
Except, the problem is that Simon isn’t Ice King anymore. He’s aged out of it.
His real passion is history, he's an adult who who finds passion in the mundane and antiques from the past. And frankly, there isn’t much room for wish-fulfillment and fantasy anymore. Simon has responsibilities. He has a job and a daughter in a world that is moving faster than he can process.
And where Ice King wrote about looking for love, Simon has already had it.
Tumblr media
And lost it. His mind isn’t focused on the rosiness of finding new love, it’s grieving the one he already thought was the one.
Tumblr media
Wasn't he supposed to be good with kids?
Despite his new life experiences, all his peers seem to want from him is to make more of what they’re familiar with.
A story made from wants and wishes that he doesn’t even have anymore.
A story that was literally made by someone else at a different time. It’s a fiction he cannot connect to anymore, art that he’s embarrassed by. Yet also jealous of. Because at one point, the body Simon used to be in understood what exactly was missing from his life and could express that easily.
Seeing it again is like experiencing a retrospection of a cringey loser you don’t want to imagine having ever been. It’s not you anymore, and you don’t want to be reminded of that.
Tumblr media
Because despite him having a new creative passion, no one seems to care about that. All they want is Fionna and Cake. And what is more lonely than other people misunderstanding what you’re trying to express?
If I failed to make it clear somehow, my theory is that: Simon’s relationship with Fionna and Cake is a metaphor for creators growing out of their art. And this new Fionna and Cake world is still comfort art born out of Simon’s current desires and perceptions.
Tumblr media
The snippet subtitles this “child holding a phone”. I guess I’m wrong. Essay over.
Episode 1 and 2 both have direct parallels with each other. They’re both about a protagonist who are feeling displaced from their world, living a phase of losing a significant other, leaving a thankless job, wearing a mask of stability in front of the people they care for, seeking a guru at the heart of the forest, and concluding that they no longer belong in their current world.
Tumblr media
But more importantly, Fionna and Cake (the characters, the world, and the show) are no longer for an all-ages crowd. Fionna and Cake now feature young adults, curses, gore, alcohol, partial nudity, financial issues, morning routines, mid-life crisis, and overt suicidal ideation. These are the feelings that Simon relates to and possibly desires to express through art. Thus, his story and our new miniseries have warped that way.
Am I overthinking this? No. How dare you assume that.
Is equating the unconscious writings of his dementia-ridden self to Simon as his younger self seem a bit odd? ….Kinda. Again, it’s not the how but the why that matters in this case. I'm NOT crazy, I have proof that there is some acknowledgment of this directly in the show.
Rewatch the bar scene and apply this reading of the episode to what Simon says there:
Tumblr media
“Your old stuff, Fionna and Cake, honest to glob my man, is an inspiration to me.”
“My old stuff, I don’t really want to talk about my old stuff…”
“Why not? You should be proud! You wrote an entire extended universe in a fugue state if you think about it.”
"Simon cringes"
If you have ever shared art with a group of people in the past, you’ve had this conversation.
Not likely, not possibly, no perhapses. You HAVE.
And Fionna and Cake being an epilogue to a massive award-winning, near-decade-spanning, cultural sensation 5 years after it ended, might result in its creators feeling very retrospective about what audiences want from them now.
And how difficult it’s going to be to tell new experiences and tones from what’s come before. Also, come on. “Extended Universe?” That doesn’t sound like Fionna and Cake. That sounds a lot like something else.
Tumblr media
Again, seems bad with this kid.
One of the more profound shots in the main trailer for the show features the inconspicuously Finn-like kid crouching at her Fionna and Cake book in Simon’s trash. I believe this character is going to have a major role in two ways. Convincing Simon to be proud of what he’s accomplished and/or embracing that Simon wants to move away from his original work in order to create something new, or perhaps more likely, reinvent Fionna and Cake into what Simon relates to now.
We’ll just have to see what Simon thinks of his new Fionna next week.
PS. Talking as a fan now, WHAT IS UP WITH THE 1000+ TREEHOUSE IN THE INTRO?!!! ARE WE REVISITING THIS TIMELINE AGAIN?
Tumblr media
SOMEONE TELL ME NOW!!!
558 notes · View notes