#one specific thing that i KNOW is going to be contentious is that i like johnny more than butch | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

effortandmore · 2 years

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you, after all | knj x reader (18+)

summary: your break up hadn't been angry or contentious. he wanted to go, you never asked him to stay. it was simple, really. but when namjoon shows back up after three years, things don't seem so simple anymore

pairing: namjoon x f!reader

rating: explicit (18+ please)

genre: exes to lovers, smut, fluff (because of who i am as a person)

warnings: smut, a little swearing, here are the specific smut tags: kissing, penetrative sex, oral sex (f receiving), fingering, maybe a whisper of a hand job, namjoon has a big dick (i had to)... it's really pretty soft—they're just in love without saying so

word count: 6.8k

a/n: i haven't been able to write the things i need to write (sorry jin and yoongi), so here i am with some namjoon fluff & smut. thank you, as always, to @ugh-yoongi who is helpful and kind with reading these things. apologies for the banner quality; idk how to make it look nice on tumblr. this is posted to ao3 here if you like to read fics there.

There’s this thing about awkward silences—they’re not inherently awkward because of the absence of sound, they’re awkward precisely because you become acutely aware of every little sound around you that isn’t the one you were expecting or wanting to hear.

The tap of his heel against the floor, muted by the thin cork flooring and then enhanced again by the way the fabric of his jeans whooshes when he jiggles his knee. The almost white-noise din of the other conversations around you, loud enough that you can pick out words but not meaning. The tinkling of silverware and chopsticks on ceramic and glass as people (including you) swallow things they think to say down with some glass noodles or spoonfuls of soup.

No, you decide. Awkward silences are anything but quiet, they’re terrifyingly fucking loud.

“So…” you finally start, “are you going to tell me what you’re actually doing here?”

Namjoon looks up from his food at you as you speak, his eyes wide like they get when he’s been startled out of some (probably depressing) train of thought, eyebrows raised in crescents that sit like shadows above the rim of his glasses. Noodles trail out of his lips and hang there, resting on his chopsticks, waiting for him to act.

It’s a perfect visual representation of the pause you feel in your whole body waiting for him to respond. Maybe somehow you are like a noodle, you think.

You try not to laugh at the thought because you know it will send him back into some sort of overthinking spiral of dismal self-worth. You know he’ll think you’re laughing at him. Sometimes, back then, you were. But not usually.

(And he’s not the only one prone to existential crises.

Perhaps that’s why you two had always gotten on so well. You’ve had plenty of time to think about how the two of you started and stopped, and being aligned in this sort of… well, thoughtfulness is maybe a generous way to put it… being alike in that way a little bit probably drew you together as much as it split you apart. One overthinker is enough for any relationship. Two is… two is probably one too many).

With a slurp, he sits up and sets his chopsticks down. He’s still regarding you, his eyes haven’t left your face, you’re pretty sure. But now, it’s with the careful consideration he’s known amongst your friends for, not the surprise you clocked on him a moment prior.

He’s still fidgeting. You can feel the vibrations of his legs when they brush the underside of the table because he’s too tall to keep his limbs to himself and too polite to stretch them out in a violation (would it really be? You’re not sure) of your space. For a moment, you think it’s out of character, and then you start to recall every difficult conversation you’ve ever had with this man in front of you. The way he would twist up his face into a scowl almost involuntarily, the pulling on his hair, the crumpling up of whatever paper was in reach, the peeling of countless labels off of beer bottles… No, you decide, the fidgeting is perfectly in sync with what you know of Kim Namjoon when he thinks he’s going to say something someone doesn’t want to hear (and also when someone’s telling him something he doesn’t).

If you didn’t know him as well, you’d think he was stalling. Or unsure of himself. And he might be those things to some degree, but this version of him, you’re sure, is trying to figure out how to say what he wants to say in a way that you’ll accept.

The problem is, you’ve been broken up for almost three years. You’re not sure what he could say that would even affect you like that any more.

So, this is all a little frightening, this awkward loud silence between the two of you.

You point the blunt end of a chopstick at him. “Joon, just spit it out. We haven’t seen each other in ages, I don’t want to waste this watching you think.”

At that, he grins, and at least some of what you loved about him rears its head. He’s gorgeous when he’s happy—it’s contagious, too. His dimples appear, his cheeks push up into his eyes and his lips spread so wide they almost cover the span of his face. He’s really, truly beautiful like this, and when you see it now for a split second, you’re reminded of how much you used to love making him smile, how much pride you took in being the one who could almost always make him laugh.

“Sorry,” he mutters as his grin turns from bright to sheepish. “You know how I can be.”

That, you certainly do.

“Well, you said you wanted to catch up, and we’ve done that, so now are you gonna tell me what you’re doing back here?”

“I’ve been thinking,” he says, eyes dropping down to his bowl.

“Uh-oh.” You mean it to tease, not to be cruel, but his face falls a little anyway. You suppose it’s two sides of the same coin—being able to make him laugh and having enough influence to disappoint him with your words… they’re essentially the same thing and you know it. “Sorry,” you add, tapping his foot under the table with yours. “I was just teasing… Trying to make this less weird, I guess.”

“It was never weird with us, was it?” He’s asking you, for what you’re not sure. Reassurance? Absolution?

“No,” you reply softly. “It was a lot of things with us, but it was never weird.”

And it wasn’t. Not when you fought about stupid shit late-night in the kitchen of your crappy apartment. Not when he took off to the city to do “big things” after uni and you just sort of… let him go. Not when your friends “didn’t take sides” but took careful measures to not invite you to the same parties, and not when he called you earlier today, totally out of the blue, telling you he was around and he wanted to see you.

In order, it was frustrating, disappointing, lonely, and surprising, but none of it was weird. Not weird standing in his empty living room, leaning against a stack of his moving boxes and watching him pack the last of his belongings into a duffel. Not weird to wrap your arms around his neck and pull him closer to you as he fucked you into the mattress that last night before he left, whispering that he loved you and needed you. Not weird after, when you spilled tears on his chest and told him you were scared for what life would be like without him while he ran fingertips up and down your spine and reassured you that no matter what, you were going to have an incredible life.

It wasn’t weird when the next morning, he promised you’d always be friends.

It wasn’t weird when you both eventually stopped texting.

It wasn’t weird when he never came back.

But now he’s here, sitting in front of you in the same grungy noodle shop you used to have your cheap college date nights at, and things are absolutely, inarguably weird.

Namjoon’s staring at you, still hasn’t answered your question, when the server comes with your check. He snags it before you can argue and gives you a distracted sort-of-grin when he gets up to find the cashier.

Everything about this is so familiar and different at the same time. In your past life with Namjoon, he’d never just leave the table to pay with noodles left in his bowl, he’d never forget his manners and ignore asking whether or not you were ready to go. But him getting distracted by his own thoughts is on brand… So is the way he knocks over the cashier’s pencil cup when he tries to return the pen he used to sign the receipt. The most familiar thing is the glance he throws your way when he does it, rolling his eyes affectionately when he sees you stifling a laugh.

It makes your stomach tumble.

There isn’t a discussion when you leave the noodle shop, thank god. No asking if it’s okay if he walks with you, no awkward first date bullshit. Which of course there isn’t, you remind your nervous system, because this isn’t a date and it’s not a first anything really. First time you’ve seen him in a while maybe, but even that feeling’s been fading since you saw him through the window of the restaurant, sitting alone (waiting for you with his knee bouncing) at your usual table a couple hours prior.

“Why do you think we call it a pencil cup?” he asks quietly. You can barely hear him over the car that happens to pass as he speaks.

“Huh?”

“We always call it a pencil cup, but everyone keeps pens in them, you know?”

You smile softly in spite of yourself. “I don’t know, Joon-ah.” It’s a nickname you haven’t used or thought of in a long time. It feels too affectionate for what you are to each other now (you feel a little too affectionate toward him for what you are now, so you suppose it fits), but he doesn’t seem to notice, leaving you thankful for the universe’s small favors. “Humans are quirky. Language is worse,” you finish.

He hums in response. “You’re right. You’re always right,” he agrees.

Suddenly he stills, footsteps halting as he grabs your hand. The surprise you feel absolutely accounts (you hope) for the stupid swoop of your stomach; not the first one you’ve felt since the sun went down. “Can we?” he says, tugging on your hand like a ridiculously strong kid.

It takes a second for you to realize what he means, but when you do, you readily agree. “Of course we can.” You move first, pulling him behind you, and it’s not lost on you when you look over your shoulder that he looks happier than you think you’ve seen him maybe ever, and that you’re still holding hands.

You hop up onto the metal platform, letting him go, and he grabs one of the bars and starts to pull it behind him as he jogs. Your world literally spins. Arms out, you tilt your head back and puff out a long breath. It’s cold enough that you can see the smoky trail of it float above you, tendrils of steam looking like they’re curling around the stars.

With a thud, Namjoon lands across from you on the merry-go-round, sitting to face you, legs sprawled out in front of him. You sit, too, and the metal wheel spins a little more slowly with each revolution until it’s barely moving millimeters, all of the momentum from Namjoon’s effort petering out.

It’s weird, you think, that staring at him across from you, it still feels like the ground is moving.

“I left.” He breaks the silence with a simple statement and you’re not sure what he expects you to say in return, so you just nod. “But I don’t know why you let me.”

He doesn’t look at you when he says the last part, his head tilts off to the side and he leans it against one of the cold, metal railings. If he was anyone else, you’d think he hadn’t meant to say it out loud. But you know him, and you know he rarely says things he doesn’t mean.

The first response in your chest feels like anger. He left you after all. He walked away. Of course you let him, what the fuck else were you supposed to do? Beg him to stay? You were basically kids. You still are. He had opportunities, you had a sick mom… it wouldn’t have been fair to ask him to stay.

And then there was this: the insecure part of you didn’t want to give him the opportunity to tell you he couldn’t. Wouldn’t. That you weren’t worth it.

Maybe you should have taken that chance. You’ve learned a lot since then. Grown up and gotten more confident, surely. Made new friends, had other partners. “Lovers,” as Taehyung likes to call them (just to see you roll your eyes at him in response).

He keeps talking before you can let the angry thoughts have a voice. “I love being here,” he says softly, still not looking at you. “I love how you can see the stars, I love that the air smells better. I love the sea and the way it makes you feel small…” he sighs before he continues, “but I’ve been back for a week and I didn’t love any of it as much as I love this right now.” His voice gets quieter with each word. You barely hear him tack on, “with you.” You might even be imagining it, he’s that quiet.

It almost makes you sick to not know what he’s getting at, to wish he would just be straight with you. All of this nostalgia… what amounts to a recreation of all your college dates… It’s just so much.

“Are you pregnant?”

“What?” Namjoon’s eyes look like they’re about to pop out of his skull.

You let yourself laugh when you respond. “I don’t know! This just feels like the lead up to something big, you know? You’re pregnant, you have cancer, you’re moving to another country…” You trail off and then sit up straight, letting yourself get a little more serious. “What’s all this about? It feels like you have big news or… to be honest, it kind of feels like a date, Joon-ah.”

“Feels like a date good or feels like a date bad?” he asks.

“Feels like a date confusing,” you answer pointedly. “I don’t even know what you’re doing in town.”

“Can I walk you home?”

“That’s not an answer.”

He stands then, and reaches a hand out to you to help you up. You let him even though you don’t need it, and he pulls you into a hug. Tight against his chest, things feel a little less confusing and this seaside town feels a little more like home than it has in a really long time. It’s distressing how right it feels to be close to him like this, how he smells just like he always has, how soft his stupid sweater is under your cheek. You do everything you can not to nuzzle against him in a complete violation of any boundaries that both of you might have. It’s all you want to do though, and that’s disconcerting in and of itself.

“Yeah,” you mumble into his collar. “You can walk me home.”

You give him some grace as you walk, not repeating yourself for the millionth time with your request to know just exactly what he thinks he’s doing crashing back into your life with a half day’s notice. Then it occurs to you that he’s leading you home, which is fine except… you’re not sure how he seems to know where you live.

“Joon? How do you know where we’re going?”

“Huh?” He gives you a distracted glance like he didn’t quite intake your question.

“My apartment, how do you know where it is?”

“Oh…” His cheeks flush the prettiest rose color. “Ah… you were at that art show in the city a few nights ago, right when I got to town, and Tae invited everyone over. We’d been drinking and the bar was closing and he said you wouldn’t be there…” He gives you a pained sort of smile. “He said you wouldn’t mind. Said you’d be staying with friends.”

The idea that your ex was in your apartment without you knowing it is… well, it should be infuriating. But it’s not. It’s more like you want to know what he thought, if he liked it. If it felt like the you that he knew or a new version of you. If it felt familiar and different at the same time the way he does to you right now.

“So… you’ve been in our apartment then…” It’s not a question, but Namjoon answers anyway, rushing the words out.

“No! No.” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t do it. We got there and I… It felt like sneaking around and I couldn’t do that to you. I went back to Hoseok’s and crashed on his couch.”

“Oh… okay.” You can’t figure out why you’re almost disappointed. “You can see it now. If you want. If that’s something you’d be interested in, you know…” The words spill out in a rambly jumble.

Namjoon stops to consider you, head tilted like he’s trying to listen to words you’re not saying. He must find whatever he’s looking for, because he responds quickly. “Yeah, okay. I’d like that.”

“Okay.” You nod but don’t move.

“This is it, right?”

And it is, indeed. You’re standing in the middle of the sidewalk in front of your own building, too distracted by whatever this thing is with the two of you to notice where you are.

“Yeah, yeah. Come on up.” You punch the door code in and hold the door for him, bowing a little and giving an exaggerated gesture for him to enter to lighten the mood.

Taehyung, the world's most interesting roommate, is working an overnight shift, so you know he’s not home, but you pray he hasn’t left anything strange out in the living room. You’ve walked into your apartment to find it perfectly spotless except for a trumpet and a dildo sitting side-by-side on the coffee table before, and though you’ve never really discussed it for obvious reasons, you’re fairly confident it won’t happen again. But not one hundred percent.

“Tae’s working tonight,” you explain for some unknown reason as you unlock your door. It’s not like Namjoon is some third date here to fuck you for the first time, so it doesn’t matter if Tae’s there or not and he probably knows your roommate (his friend, too) is working, anyway.

“I heard,” he mumbles behind you.

To your extraordinary relief, nothing odd or personal is strewn around the living room or the kitchen, so you say a silent prayer of gratitude and slide your shoes off, motioning for Namjoon to do the same.

“This is it,” you say, in your most uncreative moment of the night. “It’s nicer than the last place you saw me living,” you joke. It is, though. Much nicer. Having Tae to split the costs helps, and your art has actually been selling for the past couple of years, so that’s afforded you a little more than the old studio with a leaky shower and what was probably mold around the windows.

“Mmm,” he murmurs as he looks around the open space. “It was nice ‘cos it was yours. It felt like you. But this does, too.”

“Water?” you offer.

“Sure, thanks.”

You fill up two glasses from the pitcher in the fridge and pad back into the living room where Namjoon is looking at the art on one of your walls. It’s a combination of your paintings and Tae’s photographs that the two of you thought complemented one another.

“Your art.”

“Yes…?”

“No…” Joon shakes his head and sets his water down on your coffee table. “Your art. It’s why I came back. That's why I’m here.”

“Oh,” you squeak. It’s not what you expected—you didn’t expect an answer to your question, and even if you’d hypothetically received one, ‘your art’ wasn’t what you’d thought it would be. “I don’t think I understand. You want to buy one or something? You can just have a painting, Joon-ah... Friends and family discount. You didn’t have to come here for that.”

He frowns and shakes his head again before he carefully takes your water glass and sets it on the table next to his. Then he reaches for your hand, and when you offer it to him, he guides you to your own sofa to sit.

This time, sitting too close like you were in the noodle shop, you’re the one who’s nervous. Something’s up with him, and you’re not connecting the dots.

“I saw your show. The solo one. Congratulations,” he says. His smile is warm like his hand that’s still wrapped around yours and it feels like you could maybe let your nerves settle a little bit.

“Thanks. It was a lot of work, but worth it. I’m still a little surprised at how well it was received.”

“I’m not.” He says it with conviction, and you love it. The hint of praise laced with his belief in you has always been a driver of your confidence; you don’t love that you need the external validation, but it’s nice, regardless.

“It reminded me of home,” he continues. “Made me sick for it. Like I couldn’t stand to be away from it for another minute. So, I told my work I needed some time off, and I came home.”

“Oh… Okay. Well, I’m glad you felt something… I hope being home has been what you wanted.”

“You don’t get it,” he says, frustrated. “I haven’t been home, not really. Not until tonight.”

“Joon-ah…”

“Please? Can I get this out?”

And there are so many things to feel, you’re not even sure where to begin, so you just listen. It’s not easy to ignore the feeling of being on edge, the idea that you think you know where he’s headed with this. Since you’ve never even let yourself consider it (you’ve really not let yourself think about him much since he left. Certainly not recently), you have no idea what to think. So you focus on him instead; the tendons that run from his hands up his forearms that you used to love to trace with your fingertips, the way he’s filled out some since you last saw him—his chest and shoulders are broader, his jeans hug his thighs tighter than you remember… He looks good. Great, even. Everything you remember but a little bit more. Like he’s become the person he was always meant to be.

“I’ve dated a lot of people since I left,” he starts. And maybe this isn’t going where you thought it was. You scoff involuntarily, and he rolls his eyes at you. “Can you just listen to me?” he asks.

You nod. “Sorry.”

“Not at first. I missed you. I couldn’t figure out why you never… I don’t know… Tried to talk me out of it, never asked me to stay. I thought it meant that maybe you didn’t love me the way I loved you. After a while, a few months maybe, Yoongi told me I was depressing to be around, that I should try and make friends, meet people. He reminded me that I was the one who left, not you. And he was right.”

“I remember,” you say. It comes out a little harsher than you’d intended, but maybe not ever letting yourself think too much about him (especially about him leaving) has left you with some unresolved feelings you weren’t totally aware of. Namjoon’s jaw tightens, but other than that, he doesn’t react. Maybe he knows he deserves you being a little upset. Things ended oddly fine between the two of you, it was amicable, but if you’d let yourself feel everything back then, it might not have been that way.

“I’m sorry,” he says, voice softer now. “I needed to go, though. You know I did.” He looks at you, waiting for you to give him some reassurance you think, so you squeeze his hand.

“Yeah, you did, Joon-ah. It’s okay.”

His fingertips trace patterns across your wrist and you can almost feel his body get looser when you give the small peace offering. “So,” he says, “I tried. I met people, I dated people, I moved to new apartments with new roommates to new parts of the city. I tried to get that feeling back. Not to… I don’t know. Not to replace you, but to feel like I was home. But nothing worked. Nobody worked. And then I saw your show.”

“Oh…” It’s not much, but it’s the only thing you can think to say as he pulls you closer to him on the couch and runs a thumb across your cheekbone. It’s so much, it’s such a private thing for him to touch you like you're something breakable. Like you’re his, still. It’s making you short-circuit.

“Home,” he says in a whisper. “I needed to come home.”

“Home.” You repeat it like he’s taken all the words you used to know and pulled them out of your head to scatter on the floor in a mess.

His lips are on yours before you have time to process, and you hear a whimper that you quickly realize must have come from your own throat as he kisses you more tentatively than you ever remember him kissing you before. You know this is him testing the waters, giving you time to decide if you want this—sort of—and maybe this is a one-night nostalgia thing for him, or maybe this is what forgiveness tastes like, and maybe it’s a terrible idea, but Namjoon’s lips on yours feel like home to you, too, and you don’t want to talk yourself out of something that feels so fucking right. You didn’t even let yourself remember that you missed him until now, and your chest aches with something like longing even though he’s here, he’s real, he’s kissing you.

Kiss back, you remember suddenly. So you do. A slightly shaking hand moves to his thigh as you let him slip his tongue between your lips and lick into your mouth slowly. He’s firmer than you remember when you squeeze over his jeans and tilt your head to give him a little bit better access. The kiss, which started out so sweet, soon turns into something else entirely, and before you know it, you’re out of breath and letting out another whine when his hand drops from your cheek to around your waist and he tugs you even closer to him. You can feel him smile against your mouth when you pause to breathe.

“Is this okay?” he asks, cheeks flushed, dimples out, and hair mussed. He looks like a dream.

He looks like he’s yours again, and you want to let yourself have this, even if it’s temporary.

“Yeah.” You nod too furiously to even look remotely cool or in control of the situation, and he laughs. It’s not like he looks much better off with his swollen lips and the stars in his eyes. “Bedroom.” You’re up and pulling him up with you before he can argue, practically dragging him behind you past Tae’s room and the bathroom to yours at the end of the hall.

You move into your room and barely get the door closed before you’re being pushed back up against it, Namjoon moving his mouth down your neck, over your pulse point– all his attention focused on seeing what might make you shiver and whine. So much hasn’t changed.

It’s odd, you think, as he finds the perfect spot, to have to learn this all over with someone. Does he remember all your places and all the things you like? Will he still be patient like he used to be, content to watch you get worked up because of his touch before he lets you focus on him? Will he have new things that make him moan, are there new things he likes that he learned from someone else? All these questions float through your head as Namjoon slowly slips his hands under your shirt and pulls it over your head.

With your back against the wall, Namjoon drops to his knees in front of you and carefully unbuttons your jeans, slipping them down your legs with your underwear, groaning and face flushing when he finally gets you undressed.

“You… are… incredible,” he mutters against your skin in between leaving hot, wet kisses across your pelvic bone. “I’ve missed you so much,” he adds as he hooks one of your legs and rests it on his shoulder. His breath is hot on your skin and it’s like you can feel it everywhere—he’s barely even touching you and every nerve ending in your body is responding, wanting more.

As he brings his tongue to your clit, you let your head fall back against the door with a soft thud. He was always so good at this, he still is. His stubble brushes against you and makes shivers run up your spine. He’d probably not shaved that morning—you wonder if he did on purpose, remembering how you used to brush your cheek along his chin and tell him you liked it, how it made you feel soft and delicate when he wasn’t.

His tongue works you over in long strokes, dipping inside on occasion and you hear him practically whine when he really tastes you. There’s never been anything hotter, you decide, than his deep voice so fucked out and turned on because of you. If you could get off on sound alone for the rest of your life, that might be the one you’d pick.

When he finally slides a finger inside you, you moan—you’re so much louder than you’d meant to be, louder than you have been for anyone in so long, but he knows you. Knows your body, knows just how fast to move his tongue, how deeply you like to feel him inside you.

Namjoon’s lips form into a smile against you as he pauses, asking in a whisper, “Can I make you do that again?” before curling his finger inside you and taking your clit back between his lips.

“Oh, fuck…” you whine. And yes, the answer is definitely yes. “Keep going,” you say as he fucks into you, giving you space to roll your hips away from the door and into his face.

It doesn’t take much longer for you to come—Namjoon puts a large hand to your waist and helps support you as you tremble around him and your knee buckles. With a lot of effort, you ignore the quiet, private voice in the back of your mind that tells you that you don’t deserve this—that you shouldn’t be doing this, that you’ll get hurt again. Finally, your shaking subsides, and he moves your leg off of his shoulder and to the ground, keeping a grasp on you to help you stay upright.

“You’re… still very good at that,” you say breathily.

“Thank you. I’m pretty good at a lot of things, I think,” he says with a wink as he stands.

You love when he’s cheeky like this, confident in a way that you remember being one of his best traits. Like he knows exactly what he’s capable of. It’s the first time you’ve seen him like this tonight and it makes you ache for things you don’t think you can have, for the past. He’s suddenly close again, so fucking close, and you can smell yourself on his lips and you can feel that he’s hard in his jeans. He leans in, even closer, bringing his lips to yours but not doing anything with them, and running a single fingertip across your jaw to hold your face in place—no place to look except at him, square in the eyes.

“Are there things you’re still good at?”

Oh, holy shit.

And you’d remained upright this whole time, but fuck if your knees aren’t ready to give in now. You swallow audibly and struggle to form an answer in your post-orgasmic haze, turned on by the nostalgia and the way he’s half-whispering, half-rasping. The intimate way he speaks to you makes you almost drip again with desire.

“Well, if you’re not going to tell me, I guess I’ll find out for myself,” he says. Namjoon grabs your hand and squeezes, then leads you to your own bed. “Do you want me to find out? Do you want… me?”

It should be something you have to think about longer, should be more of a consideration. But it isn’t at all. Your head is bobbing a ‘yes’ of its own accord and you’re slowly unbuttoning his jeans and pulling his sweater off before you really realize you’re doing it, before you can think about what it might mean in the morning. Before he slips out of his pants, he pulls a condom out of his wallet in the pocket and tosses it on the bed.

The simple action has you a little nervous now, like suddenly this is real, and this is Namjoon, the actual love of your fucking life who left you, and he must see it on your face as you stand next to the bed, naked, facing one another, and unmoving.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

“Yeah… I’m nervous. It’s been so long and it’s… you.”

Namjoon cups your cheek and brings his lips softly to yours. His other arm snakes around your waist and pulls your body into his—skin to skin everywhere, and it feels so good. His body really is different than you remember: firmer, broader, bigger, and you like it. It’s different, but just as good, you decide. Familiar and different at the same time, just like everything else about him. When he breaks the kiss, he finally speaks.

“We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“I do,” you say resolutely, convincing him and yourself at the same time. You bend over to grab the condom and feel his hands on your ass, so you stay, dropping to your elbows on the mattress, remembering how he’s always appreciated the view from that angle. “Do you still like it this way, Joon-ah?” you ask as you push your hips back toward him a little, leaning into the familiar to calm any lingering nerves.

And instead of answering, Namjoon slides his hands up your back and down your arms, pulling you up at the elbows and pressing your back into his chest. “Yes,” he replies. “But not this time. I want to see you, I want to know I’m taking care of you. I want to remember.”

He starts kissing you then, lips on your neck, across your shoulders, hands wrapped around you—one teasing at your nipples, one firm around your waist. You do feel taken care of, and it’s nice, you decide, to be with him again. This part hasn’t changed. You meant what you said—he’s really good at this.

Eventually, you move to the bed, and you become a little more brave, letting yourself explore his body. As you lay facing each other, you run your fingers along the ridges of the muscles in his abdomen, stroke his cheekbones, let one arm snake around his ribs and then fall to his ass. He really is firm all over, and you find yourself more attracted to that than you’d anticipated. You murmur appreciations into his skin, telling him he’s worked hard, that he looks incredible, that you want to take your time and appreciate everything he’s tried to build.

Namjoon watches you as you test the waters, carefully mapping the ridges and planes until you take his length in your palm and start stroking him. The first time he breaks eye contact with you is when you bring your other hand down and palm his balls, softly squeezing as his eyes roll back in his head and he lets out a long, low moan.

Maybe things aren’t so different than you remember, after all.

You touch and kiss and whisper until you know he’s been hard long enough and you’ve been stalling long enough, and his hand makes lazy circles over your clit, no problem getting you wet again. Namjoon rolls the condom on and pulls your leg up over his hip. He’s careful in a manner that’s completely him (but you’re no longer used to from your recent hookups) as he slowly pushes into you. And you’ve been in a lot of… positions in the last few years, but nothing quite this intimate: chests pressed together, arms wrapped around each other, noses touching, and Namjoon so deep inside you, moving so, so slowly. You’re almost not moving at all, and you had no idea something like that could feel so fucking good.

It’s slow and sweet, and he kisses and caresses you, and you realize that this is was what people are talking about when they talk about the difference between making love and fucking.

Namjoon is quiet, quieter than you remember, but the look on his face is reverent, like he can’t believe you’re letting him do this, like he can’t believe you’re real. And you know how he feels, and you want to reassure him and whisper how much you care about him and how you think you could still love him, but it’s all too much for the moment. So, instead, you just let out soft moans of approval when he rolls his hips in just the right way and otherwise try to focus on him and the way he’s making you feel, cock buried in you, better than anything has been since the night before he left all those years ago.

Your second peak comes steadily and seems to last a while as Namjoon whispers how beautiful you look and how lucky he is. The praise has you clenching around him and pulling his climax out of him, too.

You stay intertwined as your breathing slows, kissing and smiling with pink cheeks and tired limbs. When you’re sure you can move, you slowly push back from him and roll off the side of the bed, grabbing his undershirt. “You mind?” you ask, holding it up. “I thought I’d grab water and if there’s anything else you want…”

“Sounds great,” Namjoon replies, a sleepy smile on his face, obvious in his preening over you wearing his clothes again.

You try not to let yourself think too much about what just happened as you retrieve your water glasses and fill them up again. You find your phone on the counter, next to Namjoon’s, and you shoot a quick text to Tae telling him you brought someone home and you don’t know if they’ll still be there in the morning. You don’t want your roommate to be surprised by a visitor. But you know if Namjoon’s still there when he gets home, Tae will definitely be surprised.

When you pad back to your bedroom and click the door shut behind you, you realize Namjoon’s already fallen asleep, snoring softly. He looks ridiculous on top of your sheet with the duvet kicked down to the end of the bed, his big cock soft against his big thigh and his hair sticking up in fifty different directions all over your pillow. His lips have fallen open to let his stupid snores out, and you have never been more endeared to anyone in your life.

Like a thunderbolt, it comes suddenly, the realization that you think you probably never stopped loving this man.

You set the water down on your nightstand and crawl into bed next to him, careful not to wake him up, even though unless something’s changed, you know he’s a fairly deep sleeper. You pull the duvet up over both of you and settle into your pillow, thoughts of unresolved and maybe unrequited feelings still clouding your mind.

He wakes up enough to roll over and sling an arm around you, possessive in a way you like. You miss being his, you miss the quiet way he loved you before. All folded up love notes and kind gestures and small gifts for no reason. You almost let yourself tear up thinking about how big your love for him used to feel—maybe still does.

You’re fully spiraling, deciding this was probably a massive mistake, when Namjoon strokes his thumb over your stomach and nuzzles into the back of your neck.

“Baby? You awake?” he mumbles, half-asleep.

And fuck, you’ve missed the casual endearment from him. “Yeah.”

“Do you want me to go?” he asks.

And you know three years ago, if you would have said it, it wouldn’t have mattered. That’s the real truth of it. Because if you’d asked him to stay then, he wouldn’t have, and he would have been making the right choice to leave, anyway. So letting him go without putting up a fight was easier on both of you. It was the right decision then to not ask him to stay.

But now? Now, after tonight, you know things aren’t the same as back then. Some of them, yes. But not the ones that matter, not the ones you’re thinking about when you reply.

“No, Joon-ah… I want you to stay this time.”

You feel him smile against your shoulder and pull you tighter into him. Neither of you says anything more, and it’s only a few minutes before he starts his snuffling snores into your hair again. It feels nice, you think as you finally start to drift off. It feels like home.

#bts imagines #bts fic #bts fanfic #btswritingcafe #namjoon fic #namjoon smut #namjoon x reader #namjoon imagine #bts smut #namjoon #namjoon x you

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writingwithcolor · 10 months

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Running Commentary: What is “ok to do” in Mixed-Culture Supernatural Fiction?

Dear readers:

Today we are trying something new. To give you some insight into our process in the Japanese moderator section, we are presenting our response in the form of running commentary to show you how we dissect and answer long asks. We hope this makes clear what points are useful and not useful when sending us a query. As always, this is for learning purposes, not callouts. Be prepared: this is a long one.

To summarize: the asker is looking to create a comic drawn in Japanese manga style, and has provided a long summary of the story and worldbuilding which involves a mix of “reimagined” Japanese yokai mythos and cultural symbols from many other sources. They have questions with respect to cultural appropriation, coding etiquette, and “what is and isn’t ok.”

Opening Comments

I know a common advice when it comes to the thing I am about to ask is to talk to people involved in __, but I struggle with opening up to strangers for reasons I'm uncomfortable explaining.

Marika (M): This is already a red flag. If you want to engage with another culture without talking to people from that culture, then research is going to be very challenging. You won’t have members of that culture to guide you towards sources and perspectives they feel most accurately represents public opinion. If I were in your shoes, I might start with tackling my discomfort when engaging with other people, if only to improve my work. If you aren’t ready to engage with a culture and its people directly, then I think you should wait until you are.

I should note, reaching out to the Japanese mod team at WWC does count as engagement, but WWC should not and cannot be the only point of contact because there is no single, legitimate cultural perspective.

Rina (R): Also, you don’t need to “open up” to strangers or talk to them in person to get perspectives. Asking specific research questions anonymously to a forum or on social media requires very little vulnerability. You managed to do it here on WWC. So give it a try!

Anyway, my question basically amounts to the what is and isn't ok [sic] in terms of depicting fantasy creatures and concepts outside of their respective culture.

R: So, the reason why we turn away rubber stamp questions by that ask “is XYZ okay?” is because “okay” & “not okay” 1) is vague and 2) creates a dichotomy where there isn’t one.

When we say something is “not okay,” do we mean:

It’s offensive to the general majority of XYZ group?

It’s contentious among people who ID in the group?

It has a potential to be interpreted in a certain negative way, but may not be a red flag to everyone?

Insetad try asking:

What are the reasons this subject is offensive?

What makes cultural appropriation bad?

When might it be “okay” to intentionally discuss a difficult or controversial topic?

What is your reason for including something that may be interpreted as offensive and can it be sufficiently justified?

What stereotypes or tropes might it be consistently identified as or associated with, and why?

When might it be justified to bring up these tropes?

With That In Mind...

Let’s get into the rest of the ask below.

…a story I've been working on in recent times is largely inspired off the Japanese yokai, and the setting is basically Earth in the far future, as far as when the next supercontinent may form. These yokai, although portrayed differently here, do retain their main characteristics [...] Included in this world are two goddesses of my own creation, primarily representing the sun and the moon. [...] There will be thirteen nations, named and based after the Chinese Zodiac, and the life force found in the living things in this world, called qi, comes in two forms that are always opposing each other but can never fully overpower the other, this being based off yin and yang. They're even directly named this; yin qi and yang qi.

M: This reads more like using Japanese and Chinese culture for the “aesthetics”, not the cultures themselves, which I personally feel falls under cultural appropriation. From a world-building/ coding standpoint, the actual use of concepts is workable, and, dare I say, typical, given how Chinese cosmology influences Japanese culture. However, naming a concept “yin qi” or “yang qi” is the equivalent of naming something “- charge” or “+ charge”, respectively. That you don’t seem aware of this tells me you are pretty early in your research phase. In that vein, we’ve covered translating terms and names from foreign languages in fantasy before. See the following article linked here for our recommendation against using RL terms outright but instead encouraging people to create their own conlangs.

R: Worldbuilding-wise, I think you would have to figure out the chicken-or-egg of the zodiac nations. Did the nations come first, and the zodiac later as an origin folk story (which you would have to rewrite to serve the nation-building narrative)? Did the zodiac come first, and the nations named (most likely re-named) by a political entity? What is the justification? Otherwise, again, it’s a shoehorning of aesthetics.

There is also a third, lesser known god based off of fox spirits and trickery and I imagined he's the patron deity of a family that honors and worships him, but his influence on them has transformed them into Kitsune-tsuki, which I depict as fox-like anthros.

M: Not related to this ask directly, but I have jokingly ranted about how often non-Japanese people prefer using imagery related to kitsune-tsuki in Japanese coded world-building (link). This makes me feel the same level of petty irritation. See my troll answer below for a similar experience.

R: Same. It’s boring tbh.

M: Troll Answer: I get that kitsune-tsuki are very sexy furries, but Japanese folklore has other sexy furries too! These underrepresented demographics also deserve recognition and appreciation!!

The plot of the story is this; modernization has left the goddesses neglected of their worship and forgotten, something that is necessary in this world to stop them from fighting each other. The Moon Goddess awakens first, punishing the humans by unleashing the yokai. Then the Sun Goddess wakes up to fight in humanity's defense…

M: This could feel rather like Shinto-like coding (Ex. the myth of Amaterasu and the Cave, or Tsukuyomi slaying Ukemochi), but something about this scenario feels a bit too binary in terms of themes of good v. evil, light v. dark to be Shinto. The plot also feels more Gaelic/ Nordic in influence for me as a person raised in a Japanese Buddhist and Hindu household. I imagine this dissonance could have been fixed with better guided research.

…but their fighting has caused a perma-eclipse and this world is in danger of ending. The yokai have run rampant; some are loyal to the Moon Goddess, and some aren't, and it lies to the main characters to bring balance back to Midgard. Yeah... the name of this future Earth is Midgard. I debate changing it since it and some other things I will mention sorta feel out of place.

R: Marika, looks like you were right on the Gaelic/Nordic influence /j

Also, worldbuilding question: if the Earth is in the far geologic future, how long has it been since modernization (19th-20th century)? Centuries? Millennia? How long has this fighting gone on for? What triggered the perma-eclipse, and why now? Why is this time depth necessary?

One of the main characters in question is a humanoid woman with wolf features named Ling, and she is a descendant of the dynasty that had first ruled the one of the nations, particularly the one based off the dragon zodiac. She accidentally summons the other main character to this world as she's praying at a shrine, a humanoid with dragon features--I call them drakon--named Angelynn.

[on the names of characters] is it appropriating by not having the world entirely based on [Chinese, Japanese, and Indian] influence? it's a little weird to me how worldwide the creatures are referred to as yokai, implying a strong Japanese influence not unlike how it is today with Western culture being so dominant, yet there are still names like Keith and Kiara.

M: I will give you credit for recognizing you have unconsciously veered towards white-washing/ race-bending: either presenting European cultural influences (drakons, Angelynn, Keith, Kiara, Midgard) as default or utilizing general E. Asian cultural influences and aesthetics for a Western-style story (Ling, qi, Chinese zodiac, yokai). I agree with you that this creates a sense of cultural dissonance. At this point, I’d say you have a clear choice: write a Western-style high fantasy using a background with which you have more familiarity, or get some better guidance on research with East Asian cultures so you can code the story more effectively.

The focus of this story is centered around meeting all these yokai and showing that there's more nuance to them than Ling believes, all while saving the world. But I worry if I'm appropriating these concepts and creatures by 1, drawing from more than one culture--I initially imagined that there would be a mix of Chinese, Japanese and Indian influence because according to a website I am getting the info on yokai from, the yokai in question already draw inspiration from or have been based on something in Chinese mythology or Hinduism [...]

R: Sure, some yokai have Chinese or Hindu parallels as that tends to happen with folk tales. But not all–some are unique to Japan, and some are more modern. Sometimes it’s very political–some people consider the Ainu Korpokkur as being a “Yokai of Japan” despite it belonging to the indigenous culture. It’s up to you to research, untangle, and understand these influences.

The fact that you bring up that the Asian continent has seen a lot of cultural exchange is not a sufficient reason to randomly combine influences for the sake of visual appeal or “coolness.” That is appropriation. These influences must be understood in their historical context so that you know how/why certain things combined or morphed into another, and what makes sense to combine/morph.

M: This also indicates that the character views the yokai as evil/inherently bad, which I would argue is not a typical stance for much Japanese folklore. Again, this shows a deficit in research.

2, reimagining these yokai in a new context even though I have done the research on them, because one thing I kept seeing in regards to cultural appropriation is that it's bad to do that […]

R: Refer above to my note on “okay” and “not okay.” The thing with folklore and fairy tales is that every–and I mean every–folk tale is reinterpreted with every new iteration of it. Reimagining in a new context is what people do every time they pass on a story or tell a story with the same plot or characters. Do not think of folklore as an “original” that is altered and rebooted, but rather a living document that gets added to. Reimagining is not the inherent issue. HOW you reimagine something matters.

So I suppose my question is...if someone were to do research upon the creature they want to use, given they are allowed to use it, and gained an understanding of what the creature or concept stood for, are they allowed to pick it apart and reimagine it? Alternatively, is it ok if it's explicitly pointed out that it is derivative of the original?

It has actually become my biggest fear that I may have internalized something that could both continue to do harm long after the fact and attract the wrong people to me work. I don't wanna let people down!

M: As Rina has noted several times, I think the problem is in trying to ID a set of specific variables and circumstances that make a thing “okay” or “not okay.” I want to recommend that you read my joking response about writing in secret rooms while wearing a disguise (Linked here). Who can you hurt if no one knows what you are doing? There’s a difference between creating for oneself and creating to share.

You have internalized a message incorrectly, but not the one you cite. The goal of many recommendations against cultural appropriation is to avoid causing direct harm to people who have seen their cultures demeaned, discredited and devalued, especially in shared spaces. Assessing cultural engagement, whether we are talking about appropriation, appreciation or exchange is not a measure of personal virtue or a collection of commandment style do’s and don’t’s. Rather, I believe engaging with other cultures is the state of mind of acknowledging that when using these cultures’ in one’s own work, there is value in consulting members of that culture and giving credit where credit is due. This will be challenging if you are only comfortable engaging with all of these cultures in a distanced, minimal capacity.

FWIW, I’ve written stories that probably will offend people from other cultures and backgrounds, but I don’t show them off. I don’t think writing these makes me a bad person, but I also don’t see the need to give unnecessary offense, so those stories are just for me, to be written and read in my own secret room. However, I’m not ashamed of having written them, and I’m also comfortable to “let people down” provided that my own shared work reflects my personal principles of what I consider to be sufficient research and engagement with other cultures, As a creator, my work wouldn’t be mine if I didn’t first please myself. I think the trick to the creator role is deciding what to keep private, what to share and what constitutes sufficient engagement.

P.S.

We’ve referenced the need for research multiple times in this ask, and in some of the other asks that have gone up this week, so we thought this would be a good place to plug a beginner’s guide to academic research created by the mod team.. Look for it soon under WWC’s pinned posts!

#japanese #chinese #fantasy #cultural appropriation #coding #worldbuilding #names #mythology #folklore #fairy tales #asks #running commentary #writeblr

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olderthannetfic · 1 year

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i was listening to the fanficmaverick podcast episode you did on fanfiction history, in which you mentioned (~55 min in) that you were one of the main people writing the terms of service for AO3 and bringing up the types of "would this be allowed" test cases, that these were not "oh it's a slightly problematic kink" but "violent snuff porn of gillian anderson, not scully, but gillian anderson" — and that you all eventually landed on "kinda gross, but legal in the US, and therefore would host." question: was this the most contentious case? any other memorable/notable test cases, or other interesting discussions you can remember?

i'd also love to hear more about how the major archive warnings were decided on — on what basis were these chosen? which others were considered? — if you happen to know!

sincerest thank you for all the work you've done for fandom and the preservation of fandom history. ❤️ seriously, such a feat, and so interesting!

I think even then my personal level of wallowing in annoying wank or looking at horrifying fic was vastly higher than everyone else's, so this was pretty much the example we looked at.

Though, if you want to laugh, astolat's original post is still up on LJ with the comments, and there were totally people going "I'd be interested in this new archive project, but not if it includes RPF!" or "Not if it includes any underage fic at all!" etc.

On usenet in the 90s, there was somebody or somebodies who were reaaaaally into that specific type of snuff story. I remember noticing how many of them involved not only hangings but very specific imagery of one high heel falling off. I was 13, so I really couldn't tell you if it was one dude with a specific fetish or genuinely super widespread. But it made an impression.

The alt.sex.stories hierarchy was a wild time.

Anyway, in practice, badwrong RPF of female celebs that sounds like it's aimed at straight dudes ends up on fetish sites for whatever the fetish is, not on fic archives for the most part, but I thought it was a useful example because it was so far into actually offensive to AO3y types. We're not talking the weaksauce shit people are always asking me about on here like "Oooh, what if someone posted [bog standard slash trope] to AO3?" as though it's a gotcha.

Man... were there other test cases? I'm trying to remember. This was all in like 2008, and of course, I didn't keep internal documents when I left OTW. Not that half of this was stuff I'd have had documented on my computer anyway.

My memory is that the general shape of the content policy had been decided by the founding Board before Content Policy started up. I don't think we were actually making the ruling on RPF ourselves.

I'm pretty sure most of what we were up to was looking at wank and trying to determine how to head off shitty behavior with the ToS. Trying to define harassment is a mega pain in the ass, let me tell you.

One major internal wank there was was deciding whether to allow Original Work. I was the one who'd been in anime fandom, and I was very used to archives that have an original section, often for the "original slash" and "original yaoi" that had nowhere else to go at the time. (These days, you'd just become a "m/m romance" author, as I in fact have.) Fanfiction.net had spun off its original years ago at that point, but a lot of the non-English archives and a lot of the archives in other parts of English-speaking fandom found fannish-but-original to be a normal thing.

I am a grudgy bitch, and I am still not over how much pushback I got on this.

AO3 went live with a ban on original work, but the policy never ended up being heavily enforced. We waited to see what would happen with posting, and it was predictably that people from those backgrounds outside of US Media Fandom posted some original without even thinking it might be banned, but they didn't post so much it overwhelmed the archive.

The big fears had been that #1 people would flood AO3 and drown out the fic. This was predicated on the idiotic notion that original = inherently not fannish, so there's no dividing line. In reality, the people who were used to posting original to fic archives had an internal sense of what belongs and what doesn't. Fear #2 was that people would try to post chapter 1 of a commercial story and then go "See here to buy the rest". Little did we know that this would soon be a problem with fucking fan fiction itself. (Also, commercial spam was always against the rules and needed no extra anti-original work rule.)

People didn't just disagree with me: they looked at me blankly.

Pretty sure I vented about this on that podcast too though. Anyway, most of the shit people find contentious now was already decided before we started writing the ToS, I think... though I don't really remember clearly. We were more looking to plug up holes in the rules that nitpicking trolls could use to harass.

The kinds of things we were deciding were often like the policy that AO3 doesn't necessarily tell you if someone reported you. If they need info, they'll contact you, and if they decide you broke the ToS, you'll hear about it, but obviously bogus reports don't get passed on. This is to remove the temptation to use the team as a proxy to harass a target. An official e-mail, even if it's "You're fine, actually", can be disturbing.

Re the warnings themselves, I know I'd done a survey of what archives were out there at the time and had come up with a list of a few dozen. This was early on in OTW's development process, not just for Content Policy. You can still find the list somewhere on that LJ group. Anyway, for the ToS writing, we looked at the commonplace warnings from archives past, which were basically character death, character death, and also character death.

It always cracks me up when people are like "Um, rape makes sense, but how dare they downplay these other bad things with a character death warning?" Old fandom places were full of unwarned for rape, but woe betide the person who posted surprise character death of a main ship!

We needed an under-18 warning because we had a lot of Australian fans who were like "Dude, my government is a bitch, and I cannot use this archive at all if I can't filter that out". Past archives had mostly just banned it entirely or been full of death eaters raping teenage Harry Potter characters with nary an underage warning in sight.

I don't remember why we picked the violence one. It really wasn't common, but maybe we wanted to make a philosophical point that sex doesn't have more cooties than violence.

CNTW was a compromise with older fandom standards where people objected to literally any warnings existing. A lot of the really oldschool warnings debates aren't about which ones you should have but about whether you should have them at all.

I think people around here miss how non-universal warnings are and how many other communities and spaces even today don't think you need all that.

I don't recall if we seriously considered any specific others. I don't think we had a big list, then ruled them out. It's more like we accreted a few must-haves as we went along. We probably looked at the metadata for the eFiction archives that actually had ticky boxes for search (as opposed to the very low-metadata norm on many archives). But a lot of those filters would have been fandom-specific or redundant or hella vague.

One thing to keep in mind is that this was an Era of Archives, so there were fucktons of examples to look at, though only a few flavors of example since a bunch used eFiction or otherwise copied each other's design. It was possible to make some judgements about past norms on archives, not just go "Are we copying FFN or not?" A lot of fans now see fic hosting as the big three or see AO3 as the only option, but we were used to having many archives with many designs.

I know we wanted a short and manageable list of warnings, and we wanted unambiguous things that could be effectively enforced. If I'm populating my hard-coded 90s website with other people's fics, I can go through each for dubcon before I post it (not that you'd ever have warned for dubcon in the 90s). On a big fic archive, making judgement calls on vague ass categories like dubcon is a nightmare.

We did do some focus groups where other interested fans came in and critiqued our work. I can't recall how much was about our ToS wording and how much was about the actual policies. But we did workshop this shit extensively with people who were around at the time. I think many of the whiners now assume it wasn't enough of a community effort (since we didn't decide things they like). But actually, a bunch of people weighed in. Maybe elf remembers what we actually asked them. I think she was in a focus group.

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ramblesbiab · 4 months

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i desperately need to be the leader of a human uprising against a world which has been largely overtaken by robots and there's one specific robot girl who's a prominent leader in the robot forces. She hates me, I hate her, and years go by as we keep fighting each other. I think we're getting closer, we have to be. We can't let those things win.

Then, finally, it comes. Our largest scale attack. We charge, all at once, on the largest base of operations for the robots, running on adrenaline and hope, desperate, desperate hope, for the future of humanity.

And they obliterate us. They obliterate me, leaving me bloody and barely alive, lying on the battlefield knowing we'd failed. Then, a figure stands over me, and as I blackout, I can feel myself being picked up.

When I wake up, something feels wrong. I'm in pain, sure, but not nearly enough for the abuse I just took, and I assume I must be dead. Then I see her. The robot girl leader, at a work table across the room. Humming a softly digital tune to herself, until I make the surface I'm on creak and she startles.

She explains that I was in critical condition. That I was going to die if I didn't have parts of me replaced, so she did it. I can't think about the disgust of being part machine now from the sheer surprise that she - helped me? My worst enemy saved my fucking life?!

Like she's reading my thoughts, she snaps at me to shut up before I can ever say anything. It's unclear what happens next. If I can leave, if the other robots know I'm here. If her goal is to torture me, so dying wasn't an option, or if there's some other strange reason she wants me alive.

I spend a few unbearably contentious nights in the workshop I woke up in, sleeping on the same table my operation took place. Feeling the machines moving inside me so unnaturally every time I close my eyes. She keeps not saying anything, only giving me glances from the side, not saying I can go but not telling me to stay, either.

One day, I move closer to her worktable. Watching the way her robotic fingers move with such grace. It's mesmerizing.

She finally speaks up to tell me it's rude to stare. But I keep watching, and she does nothing to prevent it. I swear there's a soft smirk on those grey lips of hers.

It's odd to me, how I know what she's working on. About all the devices she's always tinkering with, from all the observing I did while planning the uprising. I know so much about a robot woman I've yet to have a conversation with, at least one that wasn't yelled over the sounds of gunfire and explosions.

I can't bear the silence, nor the occasional sarcastic remarks. So I crack. "What are we?" I ask after another few days. She freezes perfectly in place, or so I think, until I notice the shake to her hand, such an oddly human response to the question. More human then most of the monsters who were willing to join my uprising.

"I'm still figuring that out," she whispers. She goes back to work. After a few minutes, she starts to hum, like I'm not here. Or - like it's okay that I'm here. I let a smile creep onto my face.

We're getting somewhere.

( if it's not obvious this is very inspired by portal 2 and also this portal 2 fanfic: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8896805/27/Of-Robots-and-Women )

#robots #robot girl #I needed to get this out of my system #i need a robot girl so bad #like damn #portal 2 #writing #yuri #robot yuri #also im way too squishy to ever lead an uprising #but it works better in the story #for them to be direct rivals #so yay

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dropouttvpollbrackets · 6 days

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Most Unhinged Dropout Cast Member Poll Bracket - Round 2!!!

Round 1 has officially wrapped up, and that can only mean one thing: time for even more polls! Thanks to everyone who has participated in my wacky li'l bracket so far, and I hope to see even more voters in the upcoming rounds! I also fully expect the decisions to only get more difficult from here, so buckle up!

Before moving on, I thought I'd share some fun stats from round 1:

The poll with the most votes in round 1 was Brian vs. Siobhan, with 1,133 votes

The contestant who received the most votes was Brennan, with approximately 1,026 votes

The most contentious poll was Siobhan (57%) vs Brian (43%)

The most unanimous poll was Lou (93.4%) vs Murph (6.6%)

The winners of this round received, on average, 80% of the votes in their polls

Also, there's just a quick thing I'd like to clarify before round 2: though I envisioned these polls as primarily judging people on their behavior in Dropout content, I understand that many of you might know some contestants from outside of Dropout, and obviously I can't expect you to ignore that when deciding how to cast your votes. Also, just in general, I have no control whatsoever about how anyone is voting in this, and as I said before round 1, the criteria you choose to judge people on are really up to you. What I do have control over, however, is what I post. So I've decided, in the interest of keeping this blog on theme, that going forward I will only post or reblog propaganda that primarily features Dropout content (if you want to throw in a little external recommendation, that's fine, but any videos, images, gifs, or specific quotes or stories should come from Dropout). Hope that clears things up a bit!

Alright folks, time to start thinking about which cast members have "senses of humor that regularly make you feel like you're going insane," (quote from @narcissistcookbook) or frequently get "that insane glint in their eye of a door that has fully lost contact with the adjacent wall" (quote from @cloudprincesslady), because it is time for round 2, baby!!!!

#unhinged poll #unhinged round 2 #unhinged poll masterpost #dropout #dropout tv #polls #poll #poll bracket #bracket tournament #poll tournament

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omegalomania · 1 year

Text

everything is lit, except my serotonin

"what a time to be alive" is probably one of my favorite songs on the new record. that's not really a hard sell, though; i struggle to pick favorites at the best of times and by this time tomorrow, my favorite track will likely be a different one. but there's something about this track that i keep circling back to, for a multitude of reasons.

this one has proven a little contentious. critics don't quite get it, and even people who love the song will say that it's a little off-putting lyrically, primarily because of those lines in the chorus: "everything is lit, except my serotonin / everything is lit but my lightning-bolt brain". i'm not going to say outright that critics scoffing at the obvious earth, wind, and fire influence is one of those delightful instances of antiblack racism that's so common in music criticism, but i'd be lying if i said i didn't suspect that was a factor. but more to the point, that line in the chorus hit me a little harder than i expected it to.

patrick has stressed repeatedly that the majority of "what a time to be alive" was written before the pandemic. the lyrics to the bridge are the only parts that reference the pandemic specifically, but the rest of the song feels oddly prescient as it discusses how it feels like the end of the world...probably because in 2019, for some of us, especially those on the west coast, it did feel like the end of the world. pete wentz lives in los angeles, and thus probably got a very clear picture of this as it happened in real time. wildfires have always been an issue on the west coast, but by 2017, they started picking up in speed and scope, in large part due to the effects of climate change. the year after that, they got worse. the third year in a row this happened, it cemented that this was going to be a pattern, which is exactly what happened. today, the last third or so of the year is generally regarded as "fire season," when risk of wildfires becomes extremely high, power outages are common, and evacuations are anticipated.

i live in a fire zone. every year since 2017, i've had to evacuate my home regularly, or i know someone else who has. at this point, it's pretty well-established as routine. the first time this happened, it felt like the end of the world - watching neighbors' houses go up in smoke, housing displaced family members or friends who'd been evacuated themselves or actually lost their homes. by the time the pandemic happened, fire season hadn't actually died, either; we were carrying out evacuations while masked, and often without power (and thus no easy way to get news as to what was happening).

here's a thing about living in a fire zone. there are nights when you're going off no sleep and you're watching the ember-glow on the horizon at the early hours of the morning and thinking that it could almost be considered pretty, in a dark and dismal kind of way. there are days when the smoke haze is so heavy that you never get to see the sun but it makes the air hot and thick and it burns in your lungs. the smell of smoke becomes choking and omnipresent.

everything is lit, except my serotonin. everything is lit but my lightning-bolt brain.

i don't know if these lines were written about the wildfires in particular. it wouldn't surprise me if they were. there are a lot of moments in the song, the parts written pre-pandemic, that make me think that could've been the case: neon in the night-time and not caring if it's pretty because the view's so pretty from the deck of a sinking ship. livestreaming the apocalypse, because twitter feeds were literally the best way to get your news on whether your house might be next - if you had power and internet, that is. and not everyone did.

everything is lit but my lightning-bolt brain. it's kind of a silly line, and i understand being put off by it. it took me some time to warm to it too (pun absolutely intended). it's also a quadruple-entendre. everything is "lit" in the colloquial sense of being cool and exciting, sure, but it's also more or less how the human brain works. our brains are really just electricity, passing little bursts between all the neurons and synapses. on top of that, the sensation of feeling like electric shocks are passing through your skull, or "brain zaps," are a common symptom of withdrawal from antidepressants (which, among other things, are used to regulate someone's serotonin levels). and then there's the case of the world being on fire, literally. everything is lit except my serotonin. my lightning-bolt brain.

a memory:

i never actually stopped working through the pandemic, as i was considered an essential worker. the fires didn't let up either. a particularly horrible fire tore through a nearby area and that's the thing about fires: they turn the whole fucking sky vivid orange. i drove to work on a chilly autumn morning, the whole sky lit up in an orange glare. i stood for a minute in the freezing parking lot while flakes of ash overhead settled like snow onto my car, my hair, my clothes. somewhere, people's homes and livelihoods were burning, and in a matter of days or hours the wind could change and my home and friends could be next. so i walked through the falling ash and the sickly orange glow of the sky and did my temperature check at the door with my mask pulled up over the lower half of my face, and i got to work.

i remember that moment vividly because it was strange and surreal and eerie and it was probably the moment that felt most like the end of the world to me, or at least it did then. driving through town with the sky on fire and a disease tearing through the world and having to walk into work anyway. that's what this track reminds me of: the sheer, staggering surreality of watching everything fall apart, and then...you go to work, because what else are you supposed to do? you go to work. the world is ending. you go to work.

what a time to be alive.

#*making poasts #*writing #i dont think ive ever used that tag but i guess this counts. its a bit more prosey/personal than my standard stuff #just thoughts i was thonking about this song....lines that hit different when u have lived in a fire zone #its such a bright happy-sounding song but jesus christ. jesus christ.#anyway u are free to rb this or reply whatever i dont care

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fortheloveofwonderland · 1 year

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Hello, I would like to make a request for your lyrics Spencer reid stories. I would like Spencer Reid and reader and the song She will be loved. Thank you.

This was really cute and more angsty than I meant it to be 😅 also let’s just pretend Spencer’s addiction didn’t happen for the next 2700 words.

She Will Be Loved

Gif does not depict the appearance of reader. Spencer Reid x Fem! Reader

Summary - Spencer knows your pain as well as you know it yourself and he’ll do anything to shoulder some of the burden for you. Even if you’ll never reciprocate his feelings, as long as he’s alive you will always be loved.

CW - reader is very troubled, mentions of past trauma but nothing specific, heavy drinking, mentions of casual sexual encounters but nothing explicit, friends with benefits, kinda unrequited feelings, drug use, drunk and disorderly, jail cells, mentions of Spencer’s knee injury and Haley’s death, accidental confessions of feelings, hopeful ending.

WC - 2.7k

Spencer knew, as much he would like to deny it, that your heart was never going to belong to him. Not the ways his own did to you anyway.

You’d been just a couple of eighteen years old when you’d first met, you were an undergrad and he was working on his second PhD.

Your eyes locked across a questionable looking bowl of punch at a party that Spencer had been entirely reluctant to go to in the first place.

But then you smiled at him over the strange coloured concoction and he’d been instantly glad to be in attendance.

He soon came to learn you were a troubled soul with a tormented past for which you found yourself trusting Spencer enough to tell. You liked to drink a little more than you liked to apply yourself in school, preferring parties to libraries.

On paper the two of you had nothing in common but yet you still gravitated towards one another.

Spencer knew he wasn’t your first but you were his. He’d even told you as much as you’d been helping him out of his clothes that night.

You’d simply smiled at him before continuing to undo his buttons and placing kisses on the exposed skin of his neck.

Admittedly he probably fell in love with you that very first night. But somehow even then he knew you would never belong to him.

There were always other guys in the picture, a string of one night stands you always complained about to Spencer after.

And then you’d kiss him and he’d succumb to you and the two of you would fall into bed once more.

It became a vicious cycle that he couldn’t break. For years he would sit by and watch as other men took advantage of you and then have to hear all about it before allowing you back into his own bed.

Even after he moved to DC to work at the BAU it continued. You’d narrowly managed to graduate college with a lot of help from Spencer but had no plan for the rest of your life.

So you followed him across the country. And somehow things went from bad to worse.

Instead of having one night stands with idiot guys you started dating them. You told him you were looking for something real, and he wished he could tell you that you were looking in all the wrong places.

Your choice in men was contentious at best. The guys you dated were jerks, not a single one ever treating you the way you deserved.

He knew it was a reflection of how you saw yourself, you didn’t believe you were worthy of love and you picked guys who would never give it to you.

But still, once one relationship ended, you would crawl back to Spencer. Every damn time.

You’d show up at his door ranting about your latest break up whilst working on undoing his shirt or his pants and leading him to his bedroom.

Spencer knew what a complete idiot it made him, and it stripped away more and more of his soul every time he took you to bed knowing that was all he was ever going to be to you.

But no matter what, he would always be there for you. Even when you belonged to someone else. Love made everyone a little crazy in its own way.

He wasn’t sure exactly when the drug use started. Maybe if he hadn’t been so wrapped up in work he would have noticed it sooner.

Perhaps if he wasn’t still recovering from being shot in the knee and maybe if that hadn’t then coincided with Hotch losing Hayley at the hands of The Reaper, he would have seen the signs earlier.

It was possible he had noticed it sooner but chosen to ignore it for whatever reason.

But when he got a call in the middle of the night from a New York police officer telling him you’d been detained, he wished he hadn’t buried his head in the sand for long.

He should not have gone. How were you ever going to learn if Spencer was always there to make all the bad things go away?

He shouldn’t have gone. But he did.

He drove for miles and miles in the dead of night just to be there for you again and inevitably receive nothing in return. He was a fool alright. A fool in love with a woman who would never feel the same about him.

Your bleary eyes and skittish demeanour when he arrived told him everything he needed to know. He would barely look at you as you were released from your holding cell or when you were filling out the paperwork in the police precinct.

He didn’t look at you until the two of you were sitting in his car outside the station. When he did finally glance over at you, you were looking sheepishly at your lap, tugging at an errant thread in your dress.

“Drunk and disorderly? Really Y/N?” He sighed as he spoke, not necessarily angry but certainly not happy.

“That cop was an ass.” You rolled your eyes.

“He said he was trying to break up a fight between you and some guy and you got belligerent.” Spencer watched the side of your face. “So I can only assume you were fighting with Charlie?”

Charlie was the latest in a string of unsavoury boyfriends. Spencer had the pleasure of meeting him once and he’d spent all night sending snide remarks Spencer’s way.

“He was flirting with another girl. It pissed me off.” You grumbled.

“So you got in a fight and he just left you? In a holding cell miles from home?”

“I told him to.” You shrugged. “I broke up with him. He’s probably off banging the slut he was flirting with.”

“I really don’t relish being dragged out of bed and having to drive two hundred miles in the middle of the night.” He sighed as he started the engine.

“No one forced you to come.” You scoffed with a roll of your eyes.

“So you propose I should have just left you here to spend the night in a cell?”

You finally turned to look at him and it was your eyes that gave you away, probably why you hadn’t been looking at him in the first place.

Your pupils were so constricted he could barely separate them from your irises. The whites of your eyes were entirely bloodshot.

You were high. As if his night couldn’t get any worse.

“Spencer I don’t care what you do, quite frankly.” You spat, harsher than he’d ever heard you. “You wanna leave me in New York? Be my guest.”

He didn’t reply, there wasn’t much point. Instead he put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb in silence.

***

It was a long drive back to DC and the sun was starting to peak over the horizon by the time he finally pulled up in front of your apartment. A glance at his watch told it was a little after five am.

Neither of you had spoken another word since leaving New York and still didn’t speak now as you both exited his car and wordless he followed you inside.

You ignored him, pretended he wasn’t even there. You kicked your shoes off and tossed your bag on the couch whilst making your way to your bedroom.

You got halfway to the door before Spencer finally broke the silence.

“What are you on?” His voice was tired, exhausted from years of being your unwanted saviour.

You slowly turned back to face him, rolling your lip guilty between your teeth. But you didn’t speak, and so he spoke again.

“What drugs are you on, Y/N?”

“I just smoked a little bit of pot.” You shrugged.

“I thought the drinking was bad enough.”

“It’s just weed, Spence. It’s not a big deal.”

“Tonight it was just weed. It isn’t always though, is it?” He folded his arms across his chest, looking like a father about to scold his child.

To his surprise you smirked at him, fishing inside of your pocket and pulling out a pre-rolled joint. You cradled it between your lips before taking out a lighter.

You kept eye contact with him, almost daring him to stop you. You watched his jaw clench tightly as you flicked the lighter and took a heavy pull on the joint.

“You know, you should try it. It might loosen you up, dislodge that stick in your ass.” You exhaled the smoke into the room, the smell of the weed immediately washing over him.

“I’m an FBI Agent.” He shook his head, his back straightening as you started towards him.

“Your knee still giving you grief? I noticed you limping up the stairs. It’ll help you know, with the pain. Physical and mental.” You took another drag as you got closer.

“What pain are you trying to alleviate?” He tried to switch the conversation, arms dropping back to his sides.

“You know my past, do you even have to ask? You know exactly what pain I’m trying to ease.” You scoffed, right in front of him now.

The smell of the pot was almost overwhelming and you purposefully wafted the joint in front of his face. He swallowed, trying to ignore it.

“I don’t know how long I can sit back and watch you ruin your life.” He shook his head sadly.

“It’s my life to ruin.” You shrugged.

“I don’t mind spending every day out on your corner in the pouring rain if that’s what it takes. But you need to want my help, and recently I feel more like I’m forcing it on you.” He tried to ignore another strong scent as you took another drag, eyeing him up curiously.

It wasn’t hard for him to find the broken smile, the one you'd worn for as many years as he’d known you. All you needed to do was ask him to stay a while and he’d stay forever.

But he couldn’t keep twisting your arm to let him help you.

“I’ve never wanted your help, Spencer.” You sighed. “Since the moment I met you I’ve been like some kind of project to you. The poor broken girl who needed someone to lift her from the darkness. You’ve got some kind of hero complex and you’ve been hell bent on saving me since we were eighteen years old. Did it ever occur to you that I don’t want saving?”

“And did it ever occur to you that I want to help you because I’m in love with you!” He surprised himself with his words, not meaning them to come out here and now, or ever for that matter.

Your eyes widened and you stumbled a little on your feet, hand holding the joint falling to your sides. You looked as though you’d been hit by a freight train as you fell back to the couch, dropping the joint in the ashtray on the coffee table.

A horrible, deafening silence encompassed the room. Spencer didn’t know if there were words that existed in any language that could make this better.

He slowly padded closer to you, dropping down to the floor in the front of the couch despite how much it hurt his knee.

He moved between your legs, looking up at you with large doe eyes, begging you to speak. Your lip was quivering and he swore he saw tears in your eyes.

“You think you love me? Spencer, you don’t even know me.” Your voice was trembling.

“Are you kidding me? You think I don’t know you?” He frowned at you. “I know you hide alone in your car when you get overwhelmed. I know you pick men that you think you deserve because you don’t believe you’re worthy of love.

I know you put on a front but you’re actually deeply insecure. I know you use alcohol and drugs to mask the pain you’ve suffered. I know all of the things that make you who you are. And I know you’re going to try and push me away because you pretend that goodbyes mean nothing to you. But if I was to walk out of that door I know you would come back and beg me to catch you every time you fall.”

At some point during his speech your tears overflowed and Spencer instinctively cupped your face in his hands and wiped them with his thumbs.

“Y/N I sometimes think I know you better than I know myself. Maybe I do have a hero complex, maybe that’s not so far out of the realms of possibility. But all I have ever wanted is to make you feel beautiful. And for you to know that you will always be loved.”

He’d kept these words to himself for so many years, hidden away in a dark recess of his brain never to see the light of day. His feelings for you made him feel foolish, they made him feel so stupid he sometimes questioned his own IQ.

But if those words could help now, in any small way to make you smile, then he’d happily feel stupid in order to help you.

Your tears continued to fall as you stared at him, disbelieving. Your cynicism showed on your features, your doubt in the idea that anyone could truly love you, let alone the incredible Spencer Reid.

“I’m not good enough for your love, Spencer.” You meekly replied.

“Yet here I am, giving it to you anyway. Because I think you’re good enough. You, my love, are good enough just the way you are. It doesn’t matter how many times you push me away, how many times you choose another man over me. I will love you through it all. Loving you is as inherent to me as breathing. I couldn’t stop even if I tried.” He was speaking from the heart, that much you could tell.

His eyes held a kind of sincerity you’d never witnessed before. His smile was small but genuine. And you didn’t how you’d never seen it before, but at that moment you had absolutely no doubts about Spencer’s love for you.

“I…I don’t know what to say.” You sniffed, nuzzling against his hand gently holding your cheek. “No one has ever told me they love me before.”

“And that is one of the world's greatest tragedies.” He whispered his reply. “I don’t need you to say anything. All I need from you is a will to let me help you, to let me be there for you. I don’t need you to love me back, I’d rather it if you tried loving yourself first.”

“I…I’ll try.” You nodded as he continued to wipe away each and every tear that fell from your eyes. “And maybe once I learn to love myself, I’ll be in a position to love someone else.”

Spencer nodded his understanding as he got up and sat next to you on the couch. You fell into his open arms, burying your head against his chest.

Perhaps there was always a part of you that loved Spencer, a feeling you’d never really understood until right at the moment. Maybe once you had a better appreciation for what exactly love was you would realise it was what you’d felt for him all along.

You’d always taken Spencer for granted, relied on him to be there for you through thick and thin. On the surface you’d belonged to others, but in your heart you always belonged to him.

It was only now you were able to start to see that clearly. And like he accepted you into his arms, you would in return finally learn to accept his love.

He held you firmly enough that you knew he’d never leave but gently enough so as not to stifle you. Every now and again he placed a tender kiss on the top of your head.

As he held you, Spencer closed his eyes and made wordless vows to faceless deity’s he didn’t believe in. But if anyone was listening he needed them to hear his pledge.

Don’t worry, I got this, he whispered out into the cosmos, sending the universe his silent promise to look out for you. Don’t worry, she will be loved.

#milestone celebration #spencer reid #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds

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psshaw · 3 months

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You have been one of the most unapologetically yourself artists Ive come across and I dont mean that in the cliche way I mean like... your idiosyncrasies seem particularly unstifled. Your art is purely yourself and the mainstream isnt gonna go for it but the audience you do speak to gets to feel like an alien finding someone else from their homeland. AI image gen feels like a beautiful cake with flowery frosting and when you cut into it its actually frosting all the way down and has nothing of substance. I obviously can speak only in metaphors lol so I just wanted to say I appreciate reading your thoughts on AI and tho I feel strongly abt it I have a hard time putting exacting words to what about it is so worrying to me. As an artist it energizes me when I see artists who are wildly unique and expressing themselves without a care to their skill limitations or personal strangenesses (read: mainstream unmarketability). Manga artist ONE and his charming and funky style is a great example. Anyway I love your thoughts and wanted to say thanks and also throw words at you

FUCKIGN DAMN DUDE, ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE ME CRY? Why is the weather getting misty on my face specifically. Thank you. My most contentious trait is that I keep forgetting to care what people want from me.

It's really interesting following people who are very honest but more mathy than me, because the way they talk about art and AI lately has gotten... increasingly callous. Even bitter. It's partly justified, because artists tend to suck at defending themselves charismatically. ("AI art isn't real art"; the "AI can't do hands" thing was always destined to age badly) But also, I can't stand the sheer selfishness of people who claim to be rational but don't seem know how to investigate what art at its best is for and why they view it the way they do. When I read "AI is great for hobbyists" I'm like. 95% of the time, I'M A HOBBYIST... I would never generate a script, or music... javascript maybe, but I'd feel guilty about it... but the excitement? I think some guys are just looking to suckle on a feeding tube. Cos they were done a disservice by thinking they had to stop visual art after fingerpainting!

I don't think AI NEVER has substance, but the type of person who gets excited about AI doesn't tend to do interesting things with it. And what really bothers me is that I can never tell exactly WHAT they did, versus how much was a coin flip. This is useless for understanding your voice as an artist. I don't care to see more by you.

ONE is a perfect example. His style MAKES that story. The manga and the anime feel so different. That's why I hate when people say that hating AI is discriminating against people who can't draw, cos like... if you can't make something intentional and real without using what's functionally a search engine, why would I believe you're having ideas worth the cliche conceptartdotcom overrendered AI polish at all? Not to be a dick, but like. In terms of rate of return on my attention investment, so far I'd do better by sitting at a craps table.

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vodika-vibes · 5 months

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just curious, would you ever consider writing how alpha and fordo fell in love with the reader in your poly piece? and how they both found out the other was in love with the reader too?

Communication is Important

Summary: You're concerned when you realize that Alpha and Fordo have a contentious relationship. And when you return from being away for three weeks, and their relationship has improved, you're curious, and surprised.

Pairing: Alpha-17 x Reader x Fordo

Word Count: 1457

Warnings: Discussion of sex, but this is pretty tame. Reader is easily flustered, but, like, in her specific situation, I would be too, tbh

Tagging: @trixie2023 @n0vqni

A/N: So this isn't exactly what the request was, but I think it's pretty solid. I decided that the reader is either oblivious, or she's just decided that anything she's seeing is just her imagination.

You didn’t notice anything unusual, at first.

Alpha-17 has always kept a close eye on you, when he can, and it’s never a surprise when he’s there to help you with something heavy, or just some light chores that you need to perform for your work. He’s always there, after all. It’s weirder when he isn’t.

When you think of Alpha, you think of safety and a helping hand.

And Fordo is much the same way. Not so much keeping an eye on you, but making sure that you’re comfortable, that you feel safe. He’s the one who manages to get you to confess that you miss your favorite meal, and he’s the one who makes it for you for your name day.

Warm and kind, that’s what you think of when you think of Fordo.

You’re impossibly fond of both men, and you’re not surprised when you develop a crush on both of them.

How could you not?

It’s a silly thing, really. You know that they’re not going to be willing to share you. And, really, you’re a bit worried that together they might be a bit much for you.

Of course, that’s just castles in the air, really. Little more than fantasies that linger in your mind when you're hovering between wakefulness and sleep.

And you’re already so, impossibly, fond of them that you don’t notice when they start treating you a little differently. Fordo has always been a little touchy, so you’re not surprised when his fingers glide against the back of your neck, or when his hand slides down your spine.

And Alpha has always been fiercely protective of you, so you don’t really notice when he takes to placing his hand on the small of your back when you’re walking together, or when he wraps an arm around your waist to pull you out of the way of something.

It’s normal.

Natural, even.

You do, however, notice when Fordo starts making comments about how much time Alpha spends with you. And you notice when Alpha starts snipping about how touchy Fordo is with you.

And you notice when they glower at each other when they’re both in the same room as you.

And you notice when they talk to each other it’s little more than barely veiled threats and insults.

And you worry. Because you are so fond of them both.

But you’re unsure as to how you’re supposed to bring this up to them. How do you have a conversation like this, when the two men you’re so fond of can’t even be in the same room as the other without it devolving into insults and threats.

In the end, you don’t have to do anything.

You go away for something, off of Kamino for three weeks, and when you return, Alpha and Fordo are able to work together. In fact, they’re outright friendly to each other. Sure, there’s an air of smugness around them, but honestly, that’s not terribly abnormal for them, so you don’t question it.

You don’t question it as they’re standing at your apartment door, together. You don’t question it as they make you dinner, together, as though they’ve been working on it.

You don’t question it as they sit you between them at the table and you eat a meal, like a family.

You don’t question it…until you do.

Fordo guides you to your couch, and his touch is so gentle, and his gaze so warm, that you can’t help but smile up at him as he encourages you to sit on the middle cushion. Though your smile becomes confused as he steps back and stands next to Alpha in front of you.

“We need to talk to you, mesh’la.” Alpha says in his deep voice.

“Okay,” You agree curiously, your gaze darting from one man to the next, “You have my attention.”

“We’ve been talking, since you’ve been gone,” Fordo says in his quiet voice, “And we’ve come to a realization.”

You tilt your head to the side, and wait.

“We’re both in love with you.” Alpha says, “And we were going to fight about it, over which one of us gets to claim you-”

Fordo makes a face at the terminology, “But we then decided, after beating the shit out of each other, that it isn’t fair of us to decide this on our own. Not when your own opinion has even more weight than ours.”

You blink at them, still slightly reeling from the confession, “Wait…my opinion?” You ask.

“Which one of us do you want more?” Alpha clarifies.

Your jaw drops, “Wait! You want me to pick? I can’t do that!” You blurt, as you scramble to your feet.

But neither Fordo nor Alpha look surprised by your words, in fact, they look amused, “I told you she wouldn’t.” Fordo says lightly to his brother.

“Well, you’re right,” Alpha agrees, “There is another option, one that we’ve already discussed fully.”

“...another option?” You ask.

“We are willing,” Fordo says slowly, “To share you, so long as you agree to certain rules to keep anyone’s feelings from getting hurt.”

You blink at them as you process his words.

Share.

Your face burns hot and you slam your hands over your face as your embarrassment threatens to overwhelm you, “I need a minute.” You squeak out.

You hear Alpha chuckle and your face burns even more. You’re a full grown adult, you should be able to have a conversation about relationships with blushing like a teenager. Of course, your teenage years never prepared you for the notion of being…uh…of being in a relationship with the two men you care about most in the world.

Wow, you can’t even think of the word, that’s how bad it is.

“Would you like a pillow to hide behind, cyare?” Fordo asks, he also sounds amused.

You take a deep breath, and peek at them from behind your fingers, and then, shield your eyes again, “Yes. Please. I can listen without looking at you, if you want to continue.”

There’s silence for a moment, and one of them, Fordo probably, hands you a couch pillow to hide your face in. Which you do, happily.

“We don’t want to continue with the rules we determined until we know that you actually want to be shared.” Alpha says slowly, “And I would appreciate it if you would look at us when you give the answer.”

You don’t move for a moment, and then you rip the pillow away from your face, and you, red faced and flustered, meet Alpha’s gaze, “Yes please. I would like that. Can I hide again?”

He grins at you, “But then I won’t be able to see your pretty face.”

“Mean. You’re mean.” You whine, but you don’t lift the pillow again. “You said you had rules.”

Fordo has a small, pleased smile on his face, “We want to alternate days, so one day you’ll be with me, the next you’ll be with Alpha, and the third day-”

“You’ll be with both of us.” Alpha picks up the thought smoothly, “We’d like it if you let us sleep in here with you, we can arrange for a larger mattress.”

“We’d take turns cooking, neither of us have much cooking skill, but we’re willing to learn.” Fordo says easily, “As for sex-” He pauses when your face somehow burns even hotter, “huh…I didn’t know that people could turn that shade of red.”

Alpha snickers, “We’ll work up to the sex,” He says, “But alternating days seems like it’ll work the best.” He eyes you curiously, “Ideally, we’ll work you up to being able to take both of us in one night. Or at the same time.”

You slam the pillow back over your face, “I think I’m done for the night. Can we be done for the night?”

“Yeah, cyare. We can be done for the night.” Fordo chuckles, “But we do need to finish this conversation.”

“Later,” You ask, as you peek at him over the pillow.

“Later.” Alpha agrees, as he drops on the couch next to you, and tugs the pillow away from your face, and then crashes his lips against yours.

He kisses you like he’s starved for attention, for your affection. He kisses you like he wants nothing more than for you to submit to him.

As soon as Alpha releases you, Fordo’s lips are on yours. His kiss is soft and probing, as though he’s searching for any weakness for him to exploit.

And when he releases you and settles on the couch next to you, you press your flaming face back into your hands. It’s going to take you some time to get used to this.

#star wars #tcw #alpha-17 x reader x arc captain fordo #star wars fanfiction #x reader fanfiction #answered asks

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blindmagdalena · 7 months

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What do you think Homelander’s attraction to Becca was? It’s not like at the Christmas party she was the only woman there, and by that point he had no idea who Butcher was. The actress that plays her is attractive, but the later scenes (season two and even just their initial introduction) between them suggest there’s something more to his attraction.

It’s obvious in the season two scenes that Homelander and Becca have, he has some lingering attraction. I think that’s primarily led by the fact that they have a son together and Homelander desperately wants a family, and also that Homelander is looking for a new woman to attach himself onto since Madelyn died. Perhaps he just wants what he can’t have especially knowing that she’s still in love with Butcher and he wants someone to love him that unconditionally. The main reason I thought of this is because in my opinion, Homelander isn’t the type of character to do something without a reason. Usually he has one even if it’s not a good reason.

ah yes, potentially one of the most contentious/controversial plot points in the fandom. canon gives us VERY little to go on here, so excuse me while I just ramble my take on the whole situation. i extrapolate a good amount. everyone you ask is going to have a different answer, and each one is as valid as any other. this is simply mine!

Homelander's greatest sin isn't wrath or pride. It's envy. He is a bottomless well of yearning for what he doesn't have, and he is viciously covetous. We see this play out most plainly in his one sided beef with a literal baby.

When he meets Becca, she's beautiful, quick witted, strong willed and independent. A career woman. Not only that, she's helping manage his career by handing his social media, which is part of his public perception. Very important to him! He already has a ton of wires crossed when it comes to the women in his life acting as both coworkers/Vought employees and emotional surrogates, i.e. Maeve, Madelyn and Vogelbaum. Plus who knows how many nanny mommies.

At this point, we don't know how long he's been with Maeve, but we have at least another 6 years before the pair breaks up. He's enjoying Maeve, but he wants more. He always wants more. Maybe he wants a wife, and she's refusing him that.

But Becca is a wife. He sees that ring on her finger and it boils his blood that he doesn't have that classic, romantic symbol of commitment. Of love. Worse yet when he meets her husband! The figurative boogeyman. The baby stealing his mommy and her milk. We're not there in the story yet, but we do see a trend here. It likely didn't start here: imagine what it was like for him to find out Vogelbaum had kids. Kids he loved. I bet that gutted Homelander. It should have been him.

Homelander, in his mind, can never win. Can never have enough. Anyone else having means they are directly taking away what should be his. It could be that it was never really about Becca specifically so much as the archetype she represented.

That carries us into season 2 where Becca takes on an additional archetype that Homelander is now lacking: mother. I think you're right on the money that a good amount of his attraction comes from the fact she's the mother of his son.

He falls pretty deep down the fantasy family rabbit hole with Becca, though. He not only inserts himself into their lives and routine, he takes a renewed interest in Becca. He snoops through her things, smells her clothes, and engages with her well beyond just interacting with Ryan. Then comes the scene where he finds her hidden stash of Billy merch, and the fantasy is shattered. She's still in love with another man. She's a wife, but she's not his wife. She's the mother to his son, but she's not someone who will fulfill those emotional needs for him. I've made this comparison before, but it's very reminiscent to the breakdown he has when he sees his baby blanket in his fake childhood home. He moves on VERY easily to Stormfront when she not only presents herself as a mother to her own child, but a potential mother for his child.

I'm backtracking a little here, but when Maeve called Homelander over from Billy and Becca at the party, I always got the vibe she was doing so quite purposefully. I wonder how much of their early relationship was Maeve feeling like she was performing damage control. Managing him, curbing his destructive behaviors. Did she see that covetous edge in his eye when he would look at Becca, at her ring? Did she try to tell him to leave her alone, play it like a joke?

We have the deleted scene where Maeve says the reason they broke up was because he couldn't keep it in his tights, but we don't really have any other explicit instances or even mentions of Homelander liberally sleeping around. Did she know about Becca, or at the very least did she make an educated guess when the woman disappeared? Maybe she felt like he did it to spite her. Did she know about Madelyn?

Ultimately we know Maeve becomes complicit in his crimes. She feels her hands are dirty with the same blood. She becomes jaded, she's no longer the hero. She's just an accessory. I definitely don't think it started that way, though.

anyways, I hope this somewhat answered your question! I have a tendency to jump around a lot and word vomit, but this generally covers my take on why that all went down the way it did.

Honestly, I would love to write a fic someday that digs more into my thoughts here. Becca deserves so much more than what she got from the narrative.

#the boys meta #homelander meta #becca butcher #homelander #queen maeve #darling anon #ask and you shall receive #god i rambled sooo much here i'm sorry lol

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tonyglowheart · 2 months

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Thinking again (more, lmao) about The Contentious Chapter 45, and my Why It Needed to Happen thesis, so here are some more semi-organized thoughts on this topic:

Why It Needed to Happen: Yan Wushi edition. So, we don't ever really know what specifically Yan Wushi went through/experienced in his life and more specifically his childhood - we get hints here and there that seem to imply or can be interpreted to be that he's gone through some shit as Xie Ling, and that's (partly? mostly?) what led him to reinvent himself as Yan Wushi, and then there's also the New Years Extra that has a line about how he'd (already) witnessed countless evils borne of the human heart - but the text does tell us he has this belief that human nature is wicked, slash humans can be pushed to do wicked things no matter how "good" they may think themselves to be. As far as YWS knew by Chap 45, SQ was no different -- he'd received no proof yet that SQ was different, he just hadn't found SQ's bottom line. This is sort of similar to the abused child or abused dog thing, where they will lash out to try to provoke the abuse they're expecting either to "get it over with" or so they know where the line is with this new person (except these are purposeful tests that YWS is doing and not like a reactionary mechanism). Basically, this needed to happen for YWS to know/believe that Shen Qiao is different from what he's observed of human nature -- he needed this proof of concept that the world isn't just rival(/rival peers) -- the closest to equals he has, and rabble. This needed to happen to show/prove - to him and the reader - that there may be a thousand Chen Gong's in the world, but there is only one Shen Qiao.

Why It Needed to Happen: Shen Qiao edition. Shen Qiao is a good guy, but he WAS very sheltered and naive. He holds his beliefs firmly, but his worldly experience was limited and so his character was untried. It's the "it's easy to be a good person when you're rich" idea -- he doesn't know if he has a bottom line yet if he would snap. It's easy to say that you will stay true to your principles when they're not tested - it's when they're put under the stress test that you can truly say that you know yourself and your character. Yan Wushi threw him into a fire, yes, but in many ways this was a tempering of his character, much as one would temper steel. This whole experience very much was an absolute low for Shen Qiao, and it's easy to see fire (analogy) as only destructive, but fire can also be a creative force -- e.g. the forging/tempering analogy from earlier, fires used to clear out brush and weeds choking up the land so that new growth can germinate in the new fire-enriched soil, that kind of thing. This isn't to say that Shen Qiao doesn't experience agony in this metaphoric fire, but he also very much textually experiences a sort of epiphany and rebirth. This is both a spiritual (character-based) sort of rebirth, as well as a rebirth of his wugong. It's after this and after traveling with Yan Wushi that we see Shen Qiao exhibiting much more wisdom when it comes to people, where he's not just naively believing and expecting the good in everyone (I don't have specific citations but iirc this is textual, there's whole parts where it's like, before he might have thought x, but now having traveled with YWS he knows xyz, etc.) Yes this was "bad," maybe, but it tempered Shen Qiao, catalyzed his recovery/"rebirth," and overall led to the strengthening of his wugong and his character. (The conversation they have in Chapter 124 underscores this point, actually.)

Why It Needed to Happen: Yanshen edition. Or maybe more like, what does it do for us from a yanshen perspective lol. Cuz imo, it does a lot. I've posted about this elsewhere before lol, but like aside from the above for the YWS side of things, an argument can also be made that this was YWS going "wait. oh shit, I'm experiencing... feelings? for him" (narrator voice: that feeling was friendship, although he had never experienced it before) and like, lashing out at Shen Qiao like "that'll show you for thinking of me as a friend (and maybe making me feel friend-like feelings towards you..)" -- he was already softening before this (him digging that grave for the dead boy unasked, for example), and the way he's like. ....so you think of me as a... friend? before he pulls the rug from under SQ's feet. But this is important because it tells us that YWS *does* care. He's flippant and teasing and gives the impression that he does it for personal amusement and not really out of affection or anything, so really Shen Qiao may be his latest target of amusement, but it could be anyone. But the fact that he reacted like this to Shen Qiao declaring him a friend instead of just dismissing him as not being worthy of being his friend, not being on his level, etc (I mean he does also do that, but it's not the FIRST thing he does, and also I'd argue that when he Declared it contextually he was purposefully trying to hurt Shen Qiao's feelings), or like, just laughing at him and ridiculing SQ for something so preposterous -- this tells us that he IS feeling some kind of way about Shen Qiao already, that something HAS changed and Shen Qiao went from "latest disposable amusement" to at least "point of fascination." We're not in the endgame yet with this, but it does show that for all that Yan Wushi is trying to influence and "experiment" on Shen Qiao, traveling with Shen Qiao/being around him is conversely having an effect on him, too. That he's not just some unchangeable flat "evil" archetype but is also a complex character that responds to stimulus/reacts to his environment and is capable of being influenced by Shen Qiao. Theirs isn't just a one-sided relationship of one influencing the other or one trying to change the other-- it already by this point is a mutual communion between the opposing but complementary worldviews they hold and embody. They're already like if the taijitu were people (sans the dots in each section-- that comes through the course of the story with their mutual temperings). The same or similar actually holds for the SQ side of things too. Actually, the very fact that he feels anguish from this act and finds it a betrayal is also a very huge indication that Shen Qiao also already cares. I mean, yes, he declared YWS his friend, but like YWS said when they were burying the boy - you didn't even cry when your shidi Yu Ai betrayed you - or later when YWS was about to face Hulugu and SQ says if he were to do it, it would seem natural, but if a friend were to do it, he'd worry. and YWS is like, a friend? If LQY were to face Hulugu would you feel the same way? -- Basically, a similar idea holds here. Would you feel the same way if it were someone else? Yu Ai betrayed him, we didn't see him experience this level of individual, personal anguish. Chen Gong betrayed him, he just kind of sighed and moved on. But coming from Yan Wushi... he reflects on how much it hurt, actually. I still hold to my theory that SQ fell first and by this point was already at least kind of in love with YWS, but even that aside, the very fact that this "betrayal" hurt SQ shows that Shen Qiao, like Yan Wushi, despite seeming above worldly/petty matters slash is disconnected from such normal-people-problems like getting your feelings hurt or, godforbid, heartbreak -- are very much not above that, at least, not when it comes to each other. They're not just two ships passing each other in the night -- they're already mutually entangled together, and this growing bond will only grow stronger as they travel more together

#qian qiu #thousand autumns #qian qiu meta #qianqiu #yanshen #yan wushi #shen qiao #edit: o yeah got all the way to the end posted and then later realized. o I never did a conclusion or sth like that lol #anyway. this is why ch45 is important and needed to happen and is like. nbd stop making a big deal out of it #it happened. it needed to happen. get over the like getting so caught up over it #now with textual justifications and not just 'you just hate yws's toxic yuri swag'!

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