#these losers will form a love square in any universe | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

leeknowsredeyeliner · 3 years

Text

break up - choi hyunsuk

hyunsuk x fem reader x yoshi (?)

summary: you finally confront your boyfriend and get everything off your chest. how does it result into a break up?

genre: college au, break up au

word count: 3.8k+

warning: minor cussing, mention of anxiety, minor anxiety attack (passing out), mention of anxiety pills/meds, break up

note: the first sad fanfic i’ve ever written so i hope you enjoy :)

You're trembling at the sight of the audience from backstage, basically the entire university is present. Having anxiety and dreaming of becoming a performer is obviously not the best combination, you always need to have your pills ready in case of an emergency. You're completely used to performing in front of your classmates and a large crowd but they opened the theater until every seat was filled, you can barely see the people in the back.

The only thing that keeps you going is your best friend, he's always front seat at your recitals and other performances. Even when Yoshi's not physically there to cheer you on, you know he's watching from a FaceTime call with your moms. You've been best friends since freshman orientation, you've even thought you would end up together but there was someone else that caught your eye -- your current boyfriend, Hyunsuk.

Most people suspect that Yoshi's your boyfriend because he's always seen around you, but you don't blame them, it logically makes sense. Even you sometimes feel like Yoshi treats you as more than just a best friend. Hyunsuk tends to be busy on weekends which is totally understandable, you just wish he'd make the time and effort to see you perform just once. He's never been to any of your performances or recitals, you wouldn't be surprised if he was unaware of them. Your moms are concerned for your relationship but you repeatedly remind them it's no big deal to you and he's just a busy guy.

"30 seconds," one of the backstage staff whispers passing by you. You mentally prepare yourself for your last performance of the year. 'I can do this.' Is all you repeat in your mind. The only way you can survive is by searching for your silver haired best friend in the audience and he'll give you all the encouragement you need.

"You’re up," the same person from earlier whispers from beside you. You take a deep breath in and out to slightly calm down the rollercoaster of nervousness mixed with puke in your stomach. You make your way on the stage and before the song starts, you don't hesitate to distinctively skim the first row. Your eyes stop near the middle as you see Yoshi with a big smile on his face. He gives you his iconic thumbs up of motivation and the song starts.

You sing your heart out to the audience but caught yourself looking at Yoshi a bit too often. Then again, he's the only one out there that came for you. Not even your moms could make it because of how close the performance is to the holidays.

[7:09pm]

You gather your belongings from the dressing room and speed walk out of the hall. Opening the door to the main hallway, Yoshi is leaning against the wall holding a box of chocolates. You run up to him as his arms open wide, ready for you to tackle him. Your bodies clash together, pulling him into a tight hug. His head nestles into your neck as he mumbles, "You killed it as always, (Y/n)."

"Only because of you. You know I can't do anything without you around," you giggle. You both pull away from the hug then he takes your bag away from you, slinging it over his shoulder.

"What? Am I like your lucky charm?" He jokes and you both laugh but in the back of your mind you take it seriously, he technically is. Whenever he's watching over the phone, you make the slightest mistakes and just pray the audience doesn't notice. His live presence is much more comforting to you. "These are for you. I know you hate flowers because you consider them a waste of space in your apartment." He hands you the box of chocolates -- your favorite box of chocolates.

"Thank you. I'll finish these tonight. Do you wanna go for some cheesecake?" Yoshi and you celebrate after every performance with food or if he's feeling generous, he takes you out to go shopping.

"Ooh, I can't. I'm going out with Asahi and Jihoon. I'll make it up to you tomorrow though."

"There's no need to make up for it, the chocolate's enough." The two of you don't always need to celebrate with food afterwards. Maybe going back to the apartment and spending the rest of the night with Hyunsuk will be better anyway.

"You don't need a ride home?" He asks as you make your way outside of the building.

"It's across the street, I can walk." Perks of living close to the university means saving cash for food.

"Alright, you be safe. And don't forget to take your anxiety meds once he get home," he orders, throwing your bag at you. You say your goodbyes then part ways.

[7:32pm]

You unlock the door to your apartment and while taking your shoes off, you see Hyunsuk's daily pair. It seems like he casually threw them onto the floor with no care in the world. You neatly place them in an available cubby and put your shoes away in their rightful spot.

You walk into your room to see Hyunsuk passed out across the bed. You clean out your bag, putting your belongings away where they belong. While getting dressed into your house clothes, you hear movement from outside the bathroom. Walking out of the bathroom, you throw your hair up into a ponytail.

"When did you get here?" Hyunsuk asks as you join him in the kitchen.

"Around 10 minutes ago? How long have you been home for?"

"I came here straight after school. Where were you?" He casually responds, grabbing a popsicle from the freezer. "Out with Yoshi again?" He asks with a hint of annoyance in his voice, but maybe you're just annoyed with the words that came out his mouth. It's obvious he doesn't listen to a word you say. He really had no idea about your performance? Also, what's the reason for bringing up Yoshi in that way?

"I had my monthly performance," you bluntly say. If he really had no clue, there's no way you'd be able to tolerate his ignorance. The list of things he does that piss you off keeps growing longer and longer.

"Since when do you have monthly performances?" Your eyes follow his body moving from the kitchen to the couch. The TV flickers on and you notice his interest beginning to fade away like in any conversation you've had in the past.

"Can you please turn the TV off when we're talking?" You order him like you're his mother. Does he have even the slightest drop of respect? He treats you like his sidepiece, like you're there to entertainment him whenever he feels like it.

"Don't worry, I'm still listening," he responds with his eyes glued to the TV. His eyes haven't met yours since you've arrived.

Hyunsuk is your first boyfriend. You were never the type to date before college because the only thing occupying your mind was school. Although you started off clueless in relationships, after being with Hyunsuk for a year, you eventually learned the attributes to a toxic relationship and how certain behaviors are formed.

In the beginning, it was never like this, Hyunsuk did anything and everything just to gain your attention for more than 20 seconds, trying to win you over every day. You loved playing hard to get with him, testing his limits. One day, you gave in to him and his constant courting. The two of you became the happy couple everyone aspires to be.

"But I don't want coffee today!" You whine and jump a bit in place to show how desperate you are. "Ice cream please."

"Fine, only because I love you." The word 'no' doesn't exist in his vocabulary, at least when it comes to you. He feels bad when he sees how disappointed you get when things don't go the way you want. You and Yoshi walk through the campus on your way to the ice cream parlor nearby.

Acting like a child is a natural instinct to you. You're the youngest in the family so you were babied the most and those behaviors never faded away. You enjoy your foot to stay in the squares, never touching the lines as you walk along the sidewalks. Yoshi found your actions interesting and would sometimes copy you when he felt like it, other times he'd watch you from behind as your pace quickens.

"Do it with me," you say. It was supposed to come out as an order but the baby side of you stopped yourself. You take Yoshi's hand in yours to line him up to your speed. As you hop over each line, Yoshi walks beside you looking like a loser. "You're so lame. You owe me two ice-"

"Hey, (Y/n)!" Hyunsuk chirps from beside you, cutting you off. Hyunsuk's been convincing you to let him take you on a date for too long. Every day it's the same thing, 'How does this weekend sound?' 'Just one date.' It's not that you didn't want to go out with him, you'd actually enjoy it very much. You just want to test his patience, see how long he can last, and to what extent he'll go to.

You let go of Yoshi's hand and bring your hands to the straps of your backpack. "Uh, hi?" You act totally uninterested. You like to see him stutter and think of ways for you to say more than four words at a time.

"Did you tell Yoshi you want two ice creams? I can buy you two ice cream cones, if that's what you want." If someone is willing to buy you more than one of any kind of food, you're not passing up on that opportunity. Hyunsuk willing to pay for the food just to win you over is quite worrisome though, it's a sign of easy manipulation.

"I guess," you keep your response short.

"It's okay, dude. I can buy for (Y/n)." Yoshi says from the other side of you. He may have not gotten the message that this was a test for Hyunsuk.

"I just got paid, paying for her ice cream won't hurt," Hyunsuk throws a sassy smile at Yoshi. Hyunsuk runs in front of you to get to the ice cream parlor before you and Yoshi.

"You really got him using his money for you, huh?"

"Yup! You know, he seems to like me a lot," you state the obvious.

"Really? Hm, I don't know. To me, it seems like he doesn't even want to be around you," he sarcastically says.

"I kind of like him now," you blurt out.

"A Hyunsuk confession to me? That's a shocker." He's known about who you felt about Hyunsuk for a few days now. He was neither happy nor upset about the news, he must've seen it coming. "What? Are you finally going to answer him today?" He laughs with no idea that you've already created a plan before today.

"Um, yeah." Yoshi stops in his track but you continue to walk, not caring if he gets left behind or not. "Can you walk? I have ice cream waiting for me."

"You're going to tell him? Today?" He sounds absolutely shocked. It's hard to tell whether it's because he's afraid you'd abandon him or maybe he'll feel bad if things don't work the way you'd want.

"Is that not what I just said?" You walk back over to him and wrap your arms together. "Now, let's go."

The two of you walk over to the ice cream parlor and Hyunsuk's already waiting at a table with your two ice cream cones in hand. Yoshi orders his ice cream while you sit with Hyunsuk. "Thanks," you say as he hands you both cones.

"Yeah, no problem. I remember you always had strawberry ice cream at uni so that's what I got you," he flashes a cute smile.

"Do you not have some for yourself?" You ask and he shakes his head. A frown forms on your face, it's unfair that he's bought you dessert but left himself empty-handed. You extend your arm out and force him to take your extra ice cream cone.

"Are you free this Saturday night?" You blurt our before taking a lick of your ice cream.

Hyunsuk's taken by surprise, you're never the one to initiate any conversation that demonstrates interest but you had a sudden burst of boldness. His eyes widen and he begins to stutter, "Oh. I- Well- It's a weekend- Uh-"

You cut him off, his stuttering's cute but you want a straight up answer, "If you're not free, just tell me. We can figure out another day."

"Thursday night?"

"It's a date."

The date is what initiated your relationship, it was a new beginning as a couple and for you as an individual. By the end of the date, Hyunsuk's impatient self had asked you to be his girlfriend and you proudly said yes.

You can't put your finger exactly on when your relationship went downhill, all you know is leading up to your one year anniversary, things changed.

Hyunsuk started off sweet, caring, a whore for your attention but turned into an unsupportive and distant boyfriend. He never takes you out on random dates, walks with you to school in the morning, and most importantly, you don't sleep in the same bed anymore and if you were, there'd be a line of pillows separating you. You're the only person putting in the effort nowadays and it's tiring.

You snatch the remote from beside him and turn off the TV. "What the hell? Give me back the remote!" He slightly raises his voice but it doesn't bother you. He's done it way too many times for it to have any sort of effect you.

"Oh? You want the remote back? Here, take it." You rip the batteries out from the back and slip them into your back pocket. Mercilessly, the remote is thrown onto the couch next to him.

"What the fuck was that for?" He yells yet again. His eyes meet yours for the first time, his eyebrows furrowed and face burning red.

"I can't take this anymore! I've been taking your shit for way too long. What happened to you the past few months, huh? You are a whole 'nother person. You're not the Hyunsuk I met in literature class my freshman year," I scoff. "The old you would do anything to see me, spend time with me. Please, just tel-"

"What do you expect? People change, (Y/n)! Do you want me to stay the same for the rest of my life?" He has a point, people change but never to the extent where they begin to lose interest in their girlfriend's life.

"I expect you to act like my boyfriend! You're never there for me. I'm always at your dance recitals and soccer games but never have you been to one of mine." Your vision becomes blurry because of your teary eyes. "I- I'm so fucking tired. Tired of- of having to look in the crowd and not see my boyfriend's face. Do you know how helpless I feel up on stage? You're supposed to be my number one supporter."

"You have never mentioned your performances before. How was I supposed to know?" This is his excuse? That's the fattest lie ever made on the planet.

"What do you mean?" You raise your voice. Your voice is very unstable and so is your mind, you could break at any second. "I've been bringing it up even before we started dating. I'd tell you every month, 'I have a performance next week. Do you want me to buy you a ticket?' You always have an excuse, it always has to do with work or going out with your friends. Do you just not have time for your girlfriend?"

"No! I don't! I have a social life and I need to pay the bills. All you do is go out with that stupid Yoshi boy!" He had absolutely no business bringing him into this. Is he using Yoshi as an excuse to ignore his own girlfriend?

"Pay the bills?" You quietly say to yourself before repeating it as loud as possible, "Pay the fucking bills? Your money goes straight to drinking with your friends. I am the only one paying the bills here. Me!" His head lowers down from embarrassment because he knows he's wrong. Yes, he makes money, but where does it all go? To food and drinks with his friends the night after earning it. It's a complete waste of money and a complete waste of your time. Because of how much money he spends, you end up working night and morning shifts to earn the money that he's responsible for paying off.

"And what the hell does Yoshi have to do with this? The only reason why the two of us are together so much is because he actually makes the effort to support me. He's my best friend and you're supposed to be my boyfriend. Instead of being a jealous brat, bringing up his name in an argument that has nothing to do with him, why don't you try to act your part?" You say all in one breath.

Just then, you break down into tears. You were holding it all in for too long that the pain and frustration hit you all at once, bringing you down into a ball of tears. Your breathing was obviously uneven as you were crying but it soon became hard to breathe. Hyunsuk stayed quiet the whole time, not knowing what to say or do. Was he supposed to comfort you or let you cry on the floor by yourself? After listening to your constant hiccuping and sobs continuing for god knows how long, he kneels in front of you.

Your cries were longer than usual and from the sound of his voice, he was concerned. "(Y/n)? Di- Did you take your pills when you got home?" You shake your head in response. This is why Yoshi is always there to remind you to take your pills, he knows you tend to forget at night.

"Okay." Hyunsuk disregards everything that's been said the past few minutes to focus on you and your health, "We're going to stand up and get you to the bed." He holds you up from your armpits, lifting you up from the floor. Once all of your weight is on your feet, nothing.

You see absolutely nothing. Pitch black.

[9:12pm]

You open your eyes to face the ceiling and stretch your arms and legs. "You're awake," a voice from beside you says.

"Yo- Yoshi. What are you doing here? What time is it? Where's Hyunsuk?" The questions flood out as you have a hard time remembering what happened to you.

"A lot of questions, huh? It's a bit past 9. Hyunsuk called me and told me about the fight you had and how you passed out. He didn't know how to handle you so he asked me to come over and help. He also didn't know how you'd feel if he was the first person you saw," he lets out a soft giggle at the end.

You forgot about your fight with Hyunsuk. Everything's coming back to you: The annoyance, the slight confusion of his words. You know if he were to walk through the door right now, you wouldn't hesitate to pounce him.

"You forgot to take your medicine when you got home, didn't you?" He breaks your train of thought. He knows you so well.

"Ho- How did you know?"

"Who's the one to call you at 7:40 every night to remind you?" He asks pulling out your phone to show you a missed call from him at exactly 7:40pm. Sometimes, you learn new things about yourself, like how high maintenance you are to the point where you need another person to remind you of what to do every single day.

"I didn't have to take my meds. I just shouldn't have went off on Hyunsuk, then this would've never happened."

Yoshi sighs and gently pats your head, "We both know it was bound to happen. There just needed to be something to trigger it." Again, he knows you so well, a bit too well.

"Can you bring him here? I want to finish my conversation from earlier." Maybe you won't pounce him, you have absolutely no energy for that. But you do need this weight to be lifted off of your shoulders.

"Only if you promise to not attack him or yell at him," he holds out his pinky. You connect your pinkies and do your quick handshake.

"Promise."

Yoshi leaves the room and shortly after, Hyunsuk walks through the door sending you a soft smile. You pat the spot next to you on the bed and he respectfully and quietly sits, waiting for you to say something.

"I think it's time," you softly say. You avoid eye contact with Hyunsuk because you knew if you were to look into his eyes, all it'd reflect is pain. Even though he wasn't the perfect boyfriend, maybe didn't even act like your boyfriend at all, he loves you and no matter how he acts, you both knew that. You never stopped loving him despite how many times he angered and tested you.

"Can we please try again? I swear I'll be the perfect boyfriend to you, (Y/n). I- I was thinking while you were asleep, looking back at the past few months. You put up with so much shit that you shouldn't have had to go through and I'm truly sorry. I want to make it up to you by making things right," he says with hope in his voice. "Please, (Y/n)." You look up at him, he genuinely is sorry. The regret and pain in his teary eyes are strong, no one could see past it.

You take a deep breath to quickly recollect your thoughts, "I'm sorry, Hyunsuk. I'm not happy in this relationship anymore. This could be the time to better ourselves." You keep it short, not wanting to hurt his feelings even more.

"I- I don't get a second chance?" A tear rolls down his face.

"I've given you more than just a second chance these past few months. Maybe in the future we'll have a chance to try again together." You still love Hyunsuk. There's no such thing as a perfect relationship, there's bound to be mistakes and obstacles in the way to drive you apart. If the two of you are truly meant to be then you'll meet again.

"Maybe," he softly says. "Or maybe it's Yoshi that should be given a chance."

84 notes · View notes

littobin · 4 years

Text

sprung

genre: suggestive romantic stuff, with a tiny bit of angst

pairing: tattooist!moonbin x reader.

warnings: none ? just a minimal language, and kinda heavy making out... yeah

- summary: sanha, the well known skater, had an older brother. and maybe his best friend y/n was too in love to proper think.

a/n note: this is kinda long and emo, it's just my first time writing in this genre so hfjbfn sorry in advance. gender neutral, also for a special friend who encouraged me to post on her birthday. planning on do stuff for the other boys soon. :)

...

[1:02AM]

putting a bit of effort into it you open your eyes, tired after waking up from what felt like a long nap.

your head still was unsettled, confused, looking around the place you found yourself at. by some point then you manage to recognize the living room and the nice sofa on which you were lying, such things from nothing less nothing more than the comfy, simple house of your best friend, sanha.

honestly no matter how much you tried to recall it on your mind, nothing reminded you of what could have happened for you to wake up there. despite how it was already one habit of yours to often visit this house where the tall, half black half blonde haired boy used to greet you in with his bubbly smile several times, and of course with his extra peculiar style, ripped pants, bandaids and chaotic printed t-shirts you always thought to be funny.

to be friends with a professional skater since high school days wasn't so bad, after all sanha was indeed one of a kind, such a mature and high spirited boy. he was such a nice goofball, always ready to talk about any topic, share taste on music or learn new things, the actual opposite of what people say about someone like him. sanha has always been an amazing friend, making you feel comfortable and your days a lot lighter every time you went to see him after dealing with responsibilities.

whether your short visits were to spend some time for both of you to help each other with things about studies or just when you missed spending time with him, you were already a common guest. for textbooks and notes purposes or for when it'd all turn into laughs, popcorn and your best friend's favorite games, or even in skate competitions he used to bring you with him at the square down street.

or else, when you'd also come to secretly see the black haired handsome man always on his casual clothes living there with your friend, who at the time he was home would stay sometimes in the kitchen, sometimes doing his works outside at the small desk near the garden, sometimes practicing sketches in his own room.

sanha introduced him as his older brother bin, who unlike him was a lover of all kinds of arts. whom you shouldn't pay so much attention to, but before your mind could go against it all of your thoughts were just as they ended up. constantly filled with him, with the need to see him everyday.

however now instead of going on trying to figure out any other possibilities to what could've brought you there, or even letting your thoughts wander over sanha's brother again, you hear calm footsteps approaching and immediately close your eyes, burying yourself on the sofa's recline. there you pretend to be still asleep, yet not understanding why your first reaction was like this, if it could be just your best friend.

for a few minutes the atmosphere remains monotonous, but soon enough turns tense as you feel someone come too close. two strong muscular arms embrace you carefully, bringing a sweet smell of shampoo you instantly could recognize so well. since the time when, in a game match with your best friend and his brother, both you and sanha attacked him with tickles for being the loser, as a form of punishment. you'd never forget it, for how it was your very first time hearing bin's boyish giggles, and touching his so silky, smooth hair, like a thin fabric tinted by the late night hues.

all of this together sent your heart pounding madly, already knowing who was there with you, especially when his jaw's downy skin brushes against your face for the proximity. at first he made a kind of awkward attempt to put you into his arms, in a position you could be carried comfortably. after one more try he gets to pick you up, and just when he easily manages to hold you firmly in bridal style, taking you off the couch like a light plush on his arms, nervousness started taking over you in silence as you couldn't assimilate where he planned to carry you to.

albeit a bit sudden at times and without much control of his own strength, except when you saw him drawing extremely detailed lines with his tattoo needle for customers at the studio he worked in, to where once sanha took you to bring him lunch, albeit he was too broad and intimidating, and his own homemade food didn’t always come out good for that little rough way of his no matter how hard he tried to do something thinking of you and sanha, albeit it all bin was always too gentle, too loving. it was so much whenever he'd open his mouth to talk with such sweetness and even a tiny bit of timidity to express his thoughts, even though how excellent he is with words, all of his little 'eh?'s when he'd be confused or cute neck scratches, you'd never believe he'd be a professional tattooist for years. he could normally work for all kinds of people, from madams to rockers, and do any type of drawings, from small daises to pretty complicated dragons and skulls. you'd have no clue of it if sanha didn't tell you, also about the fact bin always wanted to be a dancer, but because it was just the two of them and life tends to adapt itself according to necessities, he never thought about doing tattoos, yet casually came to work on it with time.

outside his job bin always took good care of his younger brother, though the troubles sanha would occasionally cause or how mischievous he could be even with him, and bin had to hit his head sometimes. all of his gestures were always docile, humble, treating you as if he was also a friend, and always being a real gentleman. not mentioning the countless times he had his crescent moons smile on up his eyes, just utterly enchanting.

all of this inevitably got you even more lovestruck, and your heart weak, no matter how hard you tried to muffle down those feelings. bin remained as the only man whose your mind and its daydreams for hours never grew tired of, the only one who gave new colors to your days. the more you knew him the more you were sure you couldn't be in any other way than hopelessly in love with him, too affected whenever he'd be around.

before you'd notice it you were thinking about this, about all you kept hidden inside for him. so you just settled yourself to forget what would be going on and let him believe you were really asleep, although in fact tension ran down your nape feeling his body's warmth, heat uncontrollably up your face while you leaned against his large chest.

after a few minutes of more footsteps sounds on stairs and doors opening through he carried you, bin stops at a certain point, slowly placing you carefully over another soft material, which you deduced to be of a bed.

you held yourself static, thinking he'd soon leave you there to rest and go, as you figured out sanha's brother probably would do so by his cordiality. nevertheless almost all at once you were simply taken aback when the male leaned on the bed, and slowly on top of you. his elbows and one knee supported him over, in such a way that made you too weak under his figure covering yours up, as if he was like a huge brown bear in charge. shivers hardened your shoulders, as you feel a heavier breath against your face.

"i know you're awake." he says softly, yet his characteristic boyish voice sounding way huskier than normally. you instantly open your eyes in disbelief over what you've heard, and just so your cheeks turns crimson, realizing how both of you were just few centimeters apart. his stunning almond eyes sparkled brightly into the room, dark and hooded while staring deeply at you. every one of his features on his manly face were lined on a serious expression, seeming concentrated, but almost fatal.

"bin.." all you could do was just mutter his name sheepishly over embarrassment, only to get a sigh from him in response. "shh..." his index finger lightly touches your mouth, tracing its tip to the corner of your lips, your hands starting to sweat cold just by the small contact with his digits.

bin then suddenly towered over you, without removing his intense brown irises from yours and rests his arms around your face, so his long fingers would now caress your hair. solely in this move his body quickly cornered you on the bed by his height. butterfly swarms rush into your stomach, as for a few minutes both of you kept quiet, staring intently at each other.

you swallowed hard. any trivial action like breathing now seemed dull, with him there so close to you as never. bin was like the definition of being drop dead gorgeous, every detail, every fiber of him exuded beauty, to almost seem unreal. through these few seconds watching him you couldn't keep your eyes from wandering, over each one of them. his thin, dainty rosy lips, which looked a little swollen, begging for another one's touches. black hair strands resembling the universe's dark matter hovering messy on his slightly sweaty forehead, and over his expressive frowned eyebrows. soft, milky skin which became a little more flushed as he stared at you, thick neck exposed by his t-shirt colar, wide shoulders covered by his cardigan tucked on his elbows.

oh everything about him was, so breathtaking.

although you couldn't understand why he was doing this, for how in your head you wondered why such an attractive man like him, who anyone would want to have, was there looking this way at someone so simple, still you couldn't hold back such things he made you feel. too many things screaming for you to let them out. and it was just the same for him.

"you know what.. damn it.." you heard bin break down the silence with a shaky whisper, and before you'd realize or question anything he placed your noses together in a soft brush and collided your lips with his eagerly, both of you sighing in the contact.

fear still was the main emotion taking over you, even though you closed your eyes right away and gave in to him, millions of beautiful sensations coursing through your veins at once. you simply didn't have any idea on how to act, what you should do in the first place all because of the frozen state his attitude caused, something you'd hardly come up with in your dreams by how far out of your reach you thought it'd be. however now you just put everything aside, gradually melting away with your knees getting weaker, as you felt bin kissing you in an irresistibly slow, delicate way.

not even through any of your deductions with yourself you'd imagine these little things which had your heart to almost explode now, that his nose would be so soft, and his lips would taste so sweet, velvety in their texture extremely hot and moist, pressing and moving gently as if they were massaging yours. easily you were found anesthetized, like one who reaches the ninth cloud. when they started to move more, just a bit hungrier between small sucks created by him and nibblings on your lower lip, you began to gradually further correspond them into the kiss, wherein he lets out quiet sounds, his pulsations so out of control and his cheeks burning red just as, or perhaps even more than you.

bin was still trying to not lose his composure. still trying to keep the feelings he had hidden for you from being all poured out at once, like a waterfall.

since the first time when sanha introduced you to him as his best friend, after he came home from a rough day at work. since then when you smiled saying your name and he could sense flowers blooming all over his chest, stealing the air on top of his lungs. to every time you locked eyes for too long or your hands accidentally touched his when you'd volunteer to help him in the kitchen. every little conversation, every time you patted his shoulders to encourage him when his brother would as well, never looking intimidated, like most people he knew.

he didn't want to show each drop of his honesty so fast in case you wouldn't flinch, but it was too hard when he had you there kissing him back, only the two of you in this moment, feeling you not repress him but otherwise, just wanting his touches as much as he's been longing for yours. he couldn't help but lose his mind more and more into each of your small actions. your hands timidly plugged on his waist, almost embracing it while his warm, long fingers intertwined with your hair strands, that somes mixed a little in his bangs, or your leg unconsciously poking his. in a way that without noticing bin tightened his arms more around you as well as the pressure of his chest, looking for more and more closure to you.

it didn't take long until the male would part his lips like a bud's petals, and so you shudder with his hot tongue there rubbing your lower lip, asking for entrance. you just give in not even being able to think through all the flustering this new sensation sent on you, and bin slowly deepened the kiss, making it fulfilled by all the so suffocated attachment you had for each other.

little by little his tongue slides in intertwining with yours, as the first thing hitting you was the fresh flavor of his chocolate mint cereal bar, which you were used to always see on bin's hands or pockets, and it just added an even better feeling through you explored his mouth. plenty more touches come up between the two of you so that the male, after staying still in the same position for a little while, suddenly slides one of his arms down. his huge veiny hand grips firmly and gives light squeezes on your side what caused you to jump a few times, running it down in a path of pure shivers to your hips, until he catches your hand still on his waist and without any previous warning pulls it in, under his shirt.

air immediately hitched on your throat out of shock, but bin was immersed, focused on only feeling you more. in the intervals his tongue's tip traced your mouth tilting his head for access, and when he brought it back so he'd press and gently suck your lips with his, the male kept the pace guiding your hand on his large back. slowly he also brought it down to the point of his firm, built up abdomen, which caused chills on himself, and moved your palm to make contact with the warmth of his absurdly soft, fragile bare skin inside the fabric. uncontrollable pulsations took over you the moment you get access to this new touch, your head in a fog of only bin.

this one was indeed a little different from the docile person you knew, with his contagious smile behind gloves and a tattoo needle you were so used to see. instead bin showed to be such an intense man, and why not say sexy, full of alluring gestures you didn't know how to handle, solemnly irresistible. over an impulse you make up a little of courage and start moving your hands by yourself, caressing and feeling his muscles, that have always been apparent on his manly athletic body, as each of his proportions under the shirt.

"god.." he suddenly said under his breath in a way sounding too sensual from his gracious, still husky voice among the kiss, melting completely in sensitivity and a cardiac mess because of you. bin then pressed a few more pecks a few more times on your lips, not wanting to pull away but doing so already for running out of air, through both of you parted trying to catch it.

yet you fail miserably, as soon as you see your best friend's brother face, completely flushed and breathless. his coffee colored eyes dripped fondness and loads of tiny stars all together, eyebrows pressed in such a lovely, affectionate expression you swore you never saw anything so endearing in your life. if it wasn't for another beat skipping your chest when you noticed a small amount of saliva, that you could clearly define as traces of the wonderful kiss of a few seconds ago, in the corner of his mouth.

as soon as he notices your widened eyes, bin's face changes and he cleans it by licking his lips seductively, as if he knew how much it affected you. the cardigan he wore falls from over his shoulders and he removes the cloth piece, dropping it on the floor. a small smile sprouted on his captivating features when he looks over at you watching him, as he lowered himself to your neck, putting his lips near your ear.

"keep going.." bin closed his eyelids, feeling the characteristic and comforting smell of fabric softener on your clothes. this smell which he always had on his memories from that day he shyly hugged you on your birthday, that now made him ask sweetly into whispers for your hands on him again, pressing more of his fine body and chest against yours.

his hips suddenly rolled down in a slow move, stimulating waves of electricity and adrenaline onto your stomach, your state now broke into sighs. you squeezed his waist slightly and involuntarily, moved by your latent feelings as he nuzzled against your neck, like a fluffy cat purring. bin was panting still heavily, sending incessant shivers down your spine.

"bin... you.. you're too much.." losing any lasting control over yourself you buried your face deeply on his shoulder and grabbed his huge biceps, letting out any first thing that would come out of your mind.

he smiled against your skin with a muffled chuckle, light and content for how cute you sounded to him, what got you even weaker as well as over the moisturizer perfume on his exposed collarbones by his shirt, before you went to fulfill his request. soon enough your palms were all over his muscular back once more, massaging them in up and down movements. bin took time to appreciate the feeling of having you into his arms, touching your hair, your nape, your lower back, or your cheeks where he decided to put gentle, tender kisses, that got you forgetting even more about the destination of your fingers under his shirt.

they ran all over his torso, sides, down to his beautiful abdomen once again to trace trembling patterns with your fingers under his stomach, running them up to reach the area of his chest, where you accidentally touch one of his nipples. bin stopped when he felt the stimulus, letting what sounded like a frustrated moan resonate in response, and you move your hands right away. yet you didn't expect him to feel so flustered to the point of, having his weight against you, to this time start distributing wet kisses, full of desire onto your neck and jaw.

in the middle of them bin took pauses where he sucked some of your skin to mark it slightly, or moistened each sensitive spot he left with the way too warm texture of his tongue. his hands also return to be entirely over you, one putting stronger, breath taking grips and squeezes on one side of yours as the other entered under the hem of your sweatshirt, his thumb touching your belly's area. each thing he did left you helplessly more and more of a mess for him, while his hips gave another roll once again in an enticing motion, causing you to feel an inevitable friction you tried to ignore but his moves only made it harder and harder, between his thighs wrapped tight by his jeans and yours pressed in the middle of his from jumping so much with his touches.

"sanha, saw you fell asleep, and asked me to take you to a room.. i went to see you and heard, you mutter my name.. saying that you wanted to have me..." for a moment, your eyes widen in realize, and finally you get how you were there.

your mind gets back remembering how sleepy you were before you'd come to see sanha, something which was again the result of another pulled night thinking about life, studies, and about bin constantly, about how incredible would it be if you had the courage to confess to him. but before you could even die of embarrassment for letting your dreams go too high right at your bestfriend's house, right next to him, bin slowly brings another trail of his warm kisses up your neck, eliciting quiet whimpers from you this time, especially when he stroked your waist skin inside your sweatshirt and reached for your earlobe, instantly capturing it in his mouth to suck on the small cartilage.

"do it now.. do whatever you want." you heard him confess with a bit of difficulty on his tone, for the much any response from you for now would mean to him. therefore he stopped, pulling away as he looked at you with sad traces, insecure.

bin needed to know about you, to get a reassurance from you, one more time of you expressing fully whether you were in love with him as much as he was with you to let yourself stay with him more, or if not, as hard as it could be he'd stop there, despite how reciprocal everything was from your side. he didn't want just a make out with you.

uncertainties still bothered him inside, through several sleepless nights spent on his room's desk among all his draft drawings and work notes, but thinking of the stupid, probably one sided attachment he developed for you, growing everyday because of how regularly he could see you. way too quickly you stole a space on his heart, bigger than the passion for art and colorful designs his job gave him. even when his needle did its work putting on pigment, when he found himself alone before a customer would come, he often wondered about what you'd feel, if you saw him only as your best friend's brother, if it'd be too risky to try and tell you what he felt.

there wasn’t one moment in 24 hours all of this didn't cross bin’s mind for once as the days went by, but he was too afraid of being rejected, to the point of thinking his brother could have much more chances with you. though he left all these things aside when he finally heard you demonstrating something for him as simple as saying his name on your sleep was, losing it all while he held you on his arms.

and so you knew you had to get all that fuss of feelings off your chest at once before the chance slipped from your hands. before you had no option but to go back to your routine of sinking in sighs about what could have been, wanting to be in his arms for a day, when you wanted it to be always.

taking a second to comprehend his eyes you raised your arms around the middle of his back to caringly engulf him on them. it caused bin to unhesitatingly lower himself again, resting his chin on your shoulder and hold onto your lower back, his heart rushing loudly, unsure by your action.

"i want what you want, love.." you confessed as well, still feverish for his previous caresses. then you just rested your face on his shoulder, and with all the sincerity within your heart you tightened your arms in a hug, trying to show your intention of making him feel exactly this, your simple embrace.

love.

as he heard you clearly when you hugged him, the moment you loosened the grip bin pulled his body a little away to look at you again. his serene, loving eyes flickered until they were deeply on yours, oceans overflowing with hope and anticipation into them. "did you say.. love?"

"yes, i.. always wanted to call you like that. can i?" your knees flutter with your own question, just by the idea of being able to call him as something that in so long would describe him so well for you.

bin, however, sighed till the bottom of his lungs, both now filled as everything within into a magical warmth, through every inch of his longing feelings were complete over his exhale. he wondered if he was dreaming, if this was finally the pure and graceful joy of touching clouds, or the lightness of blowing dandelions to the wind, of knowing that you felt the same, despite how he still couldn't believe it at all.

"you're so cute, i adore you so much y/n. if you say it like that, i'll be addicted to you.." the male's palm comes back to find itself cupping your cheeks, as his fingertips against your ear. once again you watch his fascinating gaze and face too close to yours, his irises, his lips to his shoulders, as if it turned into a new habit which would give you life. his voice sounds honeyed, like a blanket on winter, yet intimate, breathy.

almost as an immediate response you blinked repeatedly at the main three words on his first sentence, as of it didn't take long until you blushed violently trying to proccess everything, surprising bin while you placed your wrists at your nose's level to hide your face. you were now too caught up on a mixture of inexplicable waves of euphoria and emotions hitting you, too overwhelmed at all of these extremely heartfluttering things he just said so naturally. god, indeed he was too much to handle, but he still was your favorite.

"don't do this, fool! i adore you too.. a lot.." with your wrists still there your embarrassed expression only increase as you let out, but soon you moved them aside when the sound of his soothing laugh echoed into your ears. "wow.. i guess i'm the happiest fool now."

bin was smiling widely, grinning, perhaps in the most angelic, genuine way among all the days you've seen him do through routine. the crescent moons forming his beaming eyes harmonized as his lashes half closed with the curves on his lips up, giving room for two light dimples, forehead aligned with yours, emotions all over that you still couldn't read, as of relief and affection at the same time on his details. to hear him laughing in a tender and so spontaneous tone, his body seeming relaxed, comfortable, and to be a part of it almost like watching stars at midnight, all of this also made you smile along with him.

without being able to express too many feelings at once or what you'd like to say to him now you simply place your fingers against his face, the small, gelid earring on his ear, touching his bangs between them dearly, as if he'd be made of crystalline glass. another silence raised as you both kept looking at each other, like the night stopped passing around you, until bin draws another small smile and breaks the short distance again.

you took a deep breath, grabbing a certain spot on his shirt when you feel all the coziness of his thin lips pressing more kisses on different points of your face all slowly. on the area next to your nose where he placed the most of them, or on your mouth as he initiated another sweet, luscious round of lips on lips, pulling you closer and closer by your lower back, which seemed to be his best choice for a comfort zone.

but it doesn't take long for his attention to turn back to your neck, stopping to scan and softly trace his thumb on the small crimson hickeys he left there.

"some of them, look like tattoos... sorry, i.." bin whispered, trying to explain himself somehow embarrassed, but gets interrupted by you taking the initiative to hold on his back and get closer.

there you bury your face on his neck and kiss him gently, under his jaw to the beginning of his collarbones, as of every inch of his velvety skin flushed hot and sensitive in goosebumps where you explored. still being a bit taken aback bin shut his lashes and rested his cheeks now tinted in shades of pinkish hues against yours, disarmed by your suddenness. the more he felt your timid lips going so intimate on him, the more unrestrained beats and pantings had the best of him at that moment, bin no longer being able to maintain the same calm. you always had that power to leave him like that, definitely. the only one who ever did.

"there's something i always wanted.. but first tell me, if you want me by your side." one of his thick arms hug your waist, a barely audible moan escaping through he said out without thinking at all, just letting himself upon your guidance, locked on your touches.

the moment you proccess bin's words and what they'd mean your fingers slip from curling the silky strands at his nape, also leaving the curve of his shoulder where you planted more confident kisses, as if by magic your heart was sent on another unbalanced marathon. did he really ask it?

"of course.. of course i do." you answered his doubt with your whole chest, and it was all he ever waited to have you saying.

bin didn't know what exactly made him feel so lost on everything about you, wishing to stick to your side more and more. but he knew it was such a thing way too heavenly for him to not want to dive deep in. one drink, or a way too pure cup of water on thirsty times he'd last there appreciating till the last drop, a room wherein he'd feel better than in any other, or even a necklace he'd carry on himself everyday, a permanent tattoo.

any way it all should be, he wouldn't care. as of the moment he heard you a smile flourished across the corners of his lips again, and in a matter of minutes he held your sides pulling you with him as he sat back among the sheets, placing you onto him all too fastly and strongly in a way you had to look for support by putting your trembling palms on his chest.

you were left once more in a loss of words, swallowing hard over another wave of butterflies when you found yourself held sitting on his lap and facing him, through he gave you such a dangerously charming, sexy smirk, gaze so intense it almost knocked you dizzy like you never thought to be. yet less even would you imagine he'd strip off his t-shirt right in front of your eyes, and reveal his toned, absolutely perfect torso, all of his muscles there totally exposed from collarbones to his lower abdomen, where a black butterfly spreading its wings showed up printed on his skin at his side. bin just let your shocked eyes hover on the sight of his whole sculptural half naked body, before he'd glue your foreheads and squeeze your sides excitedly, also giving attention to your right thigh caressing and gripping it with his other hand through he adjusted you on his lap.

"everything i want is us, y/n..."

he couldn't wait to throw aside his stupid composure with you.

110 notes · View notes

jcmorrigan · 3 years

Note

I saw the tag- I am gonna ask you about the crossover universe- (omg I’m literally gushing about this)

OH, IT IS TIME!

So you can find a lot of this on the “What is the WHAM ARMY?” page on my blog – I’ll try to remember to link it; I’m drafting this in a word processor first so I don’t use it. Essentially, this is the universe I’ve created for my fanfic “Taking Back the Crown,” which is about…basically my favorite villains all moving into the same house and trying to take over the multiverse. And then it got lore. And more lore. Because I cannot write anything normal. The fic is nearing its 150th chapter and I’m nowhere NEAR exhausted of all the ideas I want to put in it – it’s just my big playground for hyperfixation fun. Anyway, here’s a rundown of the major points of it!

THE CAST

The main characters are the eight villains who are the founders of the WHAM ARMY. The faction name is an acronym of their first initials. They’re my ultrafaves, the villains I always get fluttery heart for, and probably the biggest collection of losers you can imagine. I’ll put them in order of the acronym and give you some background on how each entered the team.

Wuya (Xiaolin Showdown) – So the connecting factor between these people is that Mozenrath (his name is a few slots down) is their team leader and the one who decided to build a team in the first place. Wuya was recruited when Mozenrath found her puzzle box in an ancient vault. This is set post-series for XS (and Chronicles is not at all canon), so what had happened is in the big Showdown right after Raimundo was named team leader officially in the finale, the Xiaolin Monks won ALL the Shen Gong Wu to their side and stuffed Wuya in the box. So Mozenrath found her and let her out so they could be pals. A magic potion let her regain human form fairly early on, and her power isn’t even nerfed either the way Chase Young would’ve done.

Huntsman (American Dragon: Jake Long) – ADJL is also post-series in this timeline. Mozenrath has the power to resurrect people from the dead at will because he’s memorized an ancient and incredibly complex ritual that he can execute mentally (note that this means you can remove this ability from him by tampering with his memories). The Huntsman was resurrected so as to show Mozenrath around the old Huntsclan vault (which is where they found Wuya’s puzzle box). No other Huntsclan member survived the purge except Rose (and 88 and 89, but they don’t count and aren’t in this story), so the Huntsman is starting from square one.

Ayam Aghoul (Aladdin: The Animated Series): Basically just got sick of losing. He’d teamed up with a few other rando Aladdin rogues to try and pick a fight with Maleficent, and she sent him packing. So he ended up finding one of the few residents of the Seven Deserts who was powerful enough to match him AND had a similar grudge against Maleficent.

Mozenrath (Aladdin: The Animated Series): The man of the hour and the creator of the entire team. He starts the fic by crashing Maleficent’s KH Disney Villain alliance and trying to add himself to it, but…ends up being such a disrespectful nuisance that Hades just drags him straight down to the Underworld. That moment inspired him to get his OWN band of friends and start making a name for himself.

Archibald Snatcher (The Boxtrolls): Met Mozenrath in the Underworld after his death in film canon. Annoyed Hades one too many times by claiming that he wasn’t actually supposed to die, seeing as he isn’t allergic to dairy (he is), so Hades threw him in the same cell as Mozenrath and…

Roman Torchwick (RWBY): I started writing this fic in 2016, immediately post-V3, so it’s canon-divergent after the last episode of V3 (but I got all the later-game characters to show up eventually). Which means Roman is ALSO dead at the start of this fic. He ALSO comes storming up to Hades insisting he’s not even supposed to be dead. At the same time as Snatcher is already pestering him. Which is how Mozenrath, Snatcher, and Roman end up in the same jail cell in Tartarus and get the idea that maybe they should break back into the world of the living and try to build something BETTER than what any of the three had beforehand.

Mad Madam Mim (The Sword in the Stone): Mozenrath, immediately after breaking out of the Underworld, attempted to take over Arthur’s kingdom by just walking in and throwing magic around. It backfired horribly when Merlin showed up. But then Mim showed up to counter Merlin and realized that maybe she had a potential friend here who was as blackhearted as she.

Yzma (The Emperor’s New Groove): Post-TENG, no KNG or TENS (but I reference things from TENS every now and again). Merlin turned Mozenrath into a rat, so Mim brought him to Yzma’s Secret Lab to change him back. There, they found Yzma as a cat, and she so desperately wanted out of her living situation that she added herself to the team. She was also restored to human form shortly thereafter.

There is a potential ninth member of the core in the form of Vexen (Kingdom Hearts). KH is canon-divergent after DDD and basically ignores almost every game that comes out after Fragmentary Passage. Vexen, as Even, was trying to integrate into life as a hero in Radiant Garden, except everyone annoyed him way too much, so he decided to go be with people that would give right back any insults he dished out. And then realized he was much happier being on the evil team and doing mad science with no ethics. However, he will not be promoted to the upper ranks because 1. it would spoil the acronym and 2. he is unanimously agreed-upon to be the biggest wet blanket of the group and nobody wants him at the founder parties.

(Imagine my disbelief when the actual canon arc for Vexen was THE REVERSE ONE IN WHICH HE JUST DECIDES TO GO LIVE AT RADIANT GARDEN AND NOT BE ANNOYED BY ANYTHING and that’s why JC doesn’t like Kingdom Hearts III)

Anyway, this crew is a bunch of silly friends who enjoy partying, singing, dancing, drag, indulging in vices, causing mayhem, taking over cities, arranging for mass murder, piecing together smear campaigns…but they’re all pretty much ride or die for each other. And that goes double for the ships of the set: Mozenrath/Huntsman, Mim/Aghoul, Wuya/Yzma, and my favorite ship to end all favorites, Roman/Snatcher (RedHatBlackHat is the ship name).

From there, you have a B-Squad of, like, seventy other people based on my faves. Nonnie, I know you saw this because of Vincent Edgeworth, Victor Blake, and Albert Krueger, and they are three of COUNTLESS examples. It’s a found crime family that keeps getting bigger as I get more fave villains and there’s hardly a rhyme or a reason. Currently, they live in a floating fortress designed when they stole Terra Cyclonia (Storm Hawks) and hefted it out into the aether between worlds with crystal technology.

They have a rival hero faction in the form of the Cinnamons: a gathering of people who they’ve wronged who turned out to make pretty good friends themselves. While the WHAM ARMY are the villain-protag team that you feel slightly bad loving the escapades of, the Cinnamons are the rainbows, fluff, sunshine, (secret crippling depression and anxiety), and pep-talkers of the multiverse. They’re the deuteragonist team as opposed to the “villains” of the story. They also have eight “leaders,” but they were picked up a little less quickly than the WHAM ARMY founders, instead coming together over the span of a much longer quest. These people are:

Sora (Kingdom Hearts): Heart of the team and the person who pulled them all together, because Sora loves everyone. He, Riku, and Kairi witnessed the WHAM ARMY wreaking destruction on both Radiant Garden and Disney Castle, and Sora decided no one gets to treat his homes-away-from-home like that and get away with it! Between Mozenrath and the still-looming threats of Maleficent and Xehanort, he’s now collecting pals from all worlds to fight against evil and do as much good as they can do! (While having sleepovers.)

Ruby Rose (RWBY): Before she, Nora, Ren, and Jaune could get into Mistral, Sora interrupted them on their path and directed them right back around to Vale with the news that Roman Torchwick was back in action. After an incident involving the Destiny Trio and Team RNJR having to team up and actually kill the massive Grimm unleashed in the V3 endgame, they all headed out to Radiant Garden together to continue their mission.

Papyrus (Undertale): Sora found him while exploring worlds and they clicked immediately as pals. Then the WHAM ARMY, who was living in Mt. Ebott at the time, sparked an anti-monster racist sentiment through the town, and Papyrus was advised to leave the world for his own safety, so he went traveling with Sora.

Stork (Storm Hawks): Maleficent, who is also an active player in this game, made a power play by destroying the Condor with the entire Storm Hawks team onboard while they were on the Far Side of Atmos (post-series). Stork, believing himself to be the only survivor, attempted to take his own life – only for Sora to show up just in time and offer him something better: hope that his friends survived, and new friends to tag along with until they could prove either way.

Jasmine (Aladdin): The Cinnamons came looking to Agrabah for more information on Mozenrath. When Jasmine heard he was causing chaos, she decided to get personally involved.

Katara (Avatar: The Last Airbender): Post-ATLA, no LoK. Sora made a trip to the Fire Nation to see if he could head off the WHAM ARMY’s latest scheme, and ran into the Gaang along the way. After helping Katara, Aang, and Zuko protect the Fire Nation from a very near miss, Sora invited them to come travel with him. Only Katara accepted at first, the other two wanting to clean things up on their homeworld.

Kazuichi Soda (DanganRonpa): Post-SDR2, no DR3. Xehanort requested Izuru Kamukura be used as a vessel, and Kazuichi went in Izuru/Hajime’s place so his buddy didn’t have to. But the first chance he got, Kazuichi turned and ran from the Castle That Never Was…where Sora had just crash-landed. Kazuichi patched up Sora’s ship, and immediately became part of his crew. (Worth noting: in this AU, the Remnants of Despair were never brainwashed and were completely aware of what they were doing. Kazuichi is basically a redemption story, trying to be a better person to make up for the hell he caused. Also, while on the Despair side, he’d hacked off his leg to sew Junko’s in its place, disabling himself – that leg goes through an arc regarding what prosthesis is in its place.)

Rapunzel (Tangled): After the Vardaros arc of S2 of Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure. Rapunzel was targeted by the WHAM ARMY because she was essentially a living MacGuffin for one of their spells. Sora showed up, and Rapunzel decided to go along with him for safety AND fun, leaving Cassandra to continue the pilgrimage to the Dark Kingdom. (Wrote this before KHIII was out. And before the Evil Cass twist.)

And just like the WHAM ARMY, these folks have a huge B-squad that lives in the Radiant Garden castle and helps them deal with the various tragedies they have to clean up after. Riku, Kairi, and Jaune Arc in particular get a decent amount of stage time.

As you can see, Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty/Kingdom Hearts) and her forces are another big set of chess pieces on the board! After she sent Mozenrath to gay baby jail and it didn’t stick, she’s been trying to continue plans for domination as usual but ALSO wipe the WHAM ARMY off the face of the multiverse. She, Jafar (Aladdin), Ursula (The Little Mermaid), and Hades (Hercules) all came straight here from KH. But I’m working to model that team’s inner circle on the team in “Quite a Glittering Assemblage,” the sister fic by gavillain (it’s basically this premise but Maleficent gets a team to start instead, but similarities end there, his is a whole different, fresh, and fun flavor). I’ve just gotten all these characters intro’d instory, but the other biggies are Loki (Marvel – I based him in the Cinematic Universe but he’s kind of just an amalgamation of Lokis), Dr. Doom (Marvel), Captain Hook (Once Upon a Time), Russell Edgington (True Blood), and Fish Mooney (Gotham). Currently, they operate out of the Forbidden Mountain in the Enchanted Dominion.

There’s also a very new addition as of the 140’s chapters: the Heathens. This is a squad of villains with moral lines in the sand (and some antiheroes or corrupted heroes). Basically, these aren’t your killers for fun. These are the people who steal candy from the gas station and think they’re slick, but the point is they’re enjoying themselves so just let it happen. The four founders of this one are Harley Quinn (DC – based on The Batman but an amalgamation of Harleys that leans sympathetic), Yang Xiao Long (RWBY), Giovanni Potage (Epithet Erased), and Velvet Crowe (Tales of Berseria). Currently, they operate out of the old mansion in Twilight Town.

The Xehanorts are here, and that team is largely who you think it is – though I stripped away Vexen, Demyx, Marluxia, Larxene, and Luxord in order to replace them ALL with Xaldin. More crossover shenanigans to come on this front. This team isn’t very active – they’re waiting for the Keyblade War – but they’re operating out of the World That Never Was.

There’s also another side villain faction: the Morbians, led by Mirage (Aladdin: The Animated Series). These are the demons of fear, the stuff that lurks in your nightmares, and…the villains I really like but who I don’t quite think fit in with the WHAM ARMY or any other more prominent group. But to give you an idea of what the flavor of this team is, she’s recruited not one but TWO Boogeymen – Pitch Black (Rise of the Guardians) and Oogie Boogie (The Nightmare Before Christmas).

There will be more villain factions to come, and I kind of want to splinter the Cinnamons to multiple bases as well. Obviously it’s easier to split villains up because they’re fun to write at war with each other – when I have hero teams come up against each other, usually they end up becoming best buddies instead of fighting, and that’s how I like it, but that’s why there’s just ONE BIG HERO TEAM as opposed to the many villain squads rattling around.

THE SETTING

So as you have probably gleaned, the multiverse setup is largely based on Kingdom Hearts, which is one of my favorite things (in the KH1 through Fragmentary Passage era anyway). There are many worlds that can be visited either by Gummi Ship or Corridor of Darkness. Basically any evil-aligned sorcerer can use Corridors in this ‘verse – they’ve opened their souls to Darkness and have magic, so they can do so.

The implication is that every world represents a separate “story” or part of one. As in if it’s a work of fiction HERE, it’s a world THERE. Some characters are actually savvy enough to know they’re fictional (e.g. Megavolt from Darkwing Duck, Xayide from The Neverending Story). Most of them aren’t built to handle the news, though, and just shrug it off if told. (No, really, the cosmic order prevents them from taking that news seriously if they’re not from something that regularly leans on the fourth wall anyway.)

But sometimes, things get AU’d in without their full worlds. I was inspired by how Final Fantasy is treated in canon KH, and once I started bringing in more FF stuff by the same method, I felt motivated to do that with MORE fandoms if I felt the characters could be divorced from their settings and histories easily. I’ve done it for most Disney Channel non-animated properties as well as Satellite City (ain’t that the worst combo you’ve ever looked at). I’m planning to do it for Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn because I’m coming up on a location I want to delve into the civilization of but don’t have many canon characters for, so guess what, you get the FE cast now.

Major worlds or relevant locations in play are the Cyclonian warship, Radiant Garden, Twilight Town, and occasionally the Enchanted Dominion, but we move from plotline to plotline with journeys to many, many, MANY worlds of things I want to play with the settings and casts of. Also, the Cyclonian warship is about to get replaced with another WHAM ARMY base; we’ll get there.

THE STORY

For the first major “book” of TBTC, the WHAM ARMY has found a spell that they think will let them conquer the entire multiverse by giving them control over Kingdom Hearts itself. All they have do to is collect a bunch of MacGuffins that correspond to twelve elements: fire, water, earth, air, light, darkness, life, death, time, space, entropy, and aether. In order to do this, they visit the worlds of KH, RWBY, Avatar, Storm Hawks, Okami, Undertale, Wakfu, The Legend of Zelda, The Neverending Story, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and many many more. The Cinnamons catch wind of what they’re doing and start assembling. Meanwhile Maleficent is on the hunt for the Book of Prophecies and starts hiring villains on her team as well. After many madcap adventures and some devastating tragedies near endgame, the Cinnamons accidentally put the Book of Prophecies in Maleficent’s hands at the same time that Maleficent finally captures Mozenrath and gets him under heel. The WHAM ARMY and Cinnamons both launch attacks on Maleficent’s forces, and each walks away with what they came for. This is also the part where we slowburn up to the four major WHAM ARMY ships and many Cinnamon ships. In the end, the WHAM ARMY actually gets all the ingredients for their spell, but what they don’t know is it will actually cause the DESTRUCTION of the worlds. So an outside force intervenes (Discord from MLPFIM, who later joins the WHAM ARMY because he wants friends who actually appreciate him as a villain and won’t make him change) to stop them, and the next thing they know, they’re starting from square one.

We’re now in the second “book” of this story. The Cinnamons are gathering up all lost friends – the rest of Team RWBY, the Gaang, the Storm Hawks (who did in fact survive the explosion), the lost KH characters. The WHAM ARMY, on the other hand, is gathering up more villains to bolster their forces for a new evil plan: to conquer the worlds one by one, starting with Atlantis (Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire) and using portals to link to other territories of interest. While the WHAM ARMY is essentially working through a to-do list of what they need before they can launch such a massive invasion, the Cinnamons are finding strength in numbers because the writing’s on the wall that between Mozenrath, Maleficent, Mirage, and Xehanort, things are going to get worse before they get better, and as evil builds, good will need to rise to protect the innocent. As for Maleficent, she’s no longer able to chase the Book of Prophecies, and so, because she’s got Hades, Loki, and Salem (RWBY) there and they’re all like “Even though we’re pretty godlike, we are not that happy with how the gods we knew have run things,” Maleficent’s new goal is to slaughter the gods of all pantheons (minus those in her care) and replace them with her allies.

Anyway, as I had said in the post you saw, Anon – I basically take everything fictional I love and shove it into this AU for daydreams because it lets me imagine my faves having CROSSOVER INTERACTIONS and doing cool epic stuff on a multi-world scale. (But as much as I’ve talked up the epic aspect, a lot of it is just…like…people fucking around and hosting karaoke nights.) Anyway, I hope this gave you a good sense of the madness, and I hope it serves as a reminder to everyone that they can and should just. Make a daydream and/or fanfic universe that’s indulgent as hell. Just do it.

#wham army #tbtc #long post #i considered a read more #but i hate the tiny text on my blog #i need a new blog theme

7 notes · View notes

artificialqueens · 4 years

Text

Crying In My Prom Dress (Cracker x Jujubee) - Mumu

AN: Couldn’t get the Prom Queen Fantasy runway out of my head, so I wrote something for it! Read on AO3 here.

Summary: Jujubee knows she’s not winning prom queen. Brianna makes her night better.

Jujubee is bored out of her mind. Whoever said that prom is the highlight of your life must not have had very much of a life to begin with, because Jujubee has been to basement parties better than this. Then again, school dances are always boring, so maybe she should have known.

She’s been standing at the edge of the dance floor for what feels like hours, swirling a cup of punch in her left hand. Thank the heavens the stoners had the good sense to spike it a few hours before. If not for the alcohol, Jujubee probably would have ditched by now.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Shea, head thrown back in the middle of a laugh. She looks absolutely gorgeous tonight, with red petals clipped into her hair, her pink dress shimmering under the cheap neon lights. She looks like every little girl’s dream.

Jujubee can’t help feeling childish in her own gown, an 80’s inspired tulle number. She loved it when she first picked it out, but now, eyeing Shea’s form-fitting choice, she sort of feels like an over-decorated cupcake. Jujubee’s stomach twists watching Shea, and she chugs the rest of her punch to cover the jealousy. It’s not like Jujubee isn’t popular, or pretty, but every school has a hierarchy. For as long as she can remember, Shea’s been at the top, and Jujubee has been playing second fiddle to her. The worst part is that Shea is genuinely a good person, which makes her impossible to hate.

Jujubee checks her phone again. The screen lights up: 11:55. Five minutes until prom queen is announced, and then Jujubee can slip away and get some real food. She’s been through three cups of punch by now, and all she’s eaten all day is some popcorn because her dress has a built-in corset and she’s not about to test the universe by risking a popped zipper. Maybe her empty stomach has something to do with her sour mood. Regardless, she’s craving fried chicken really bad right now.

“Girl!” Raven stumbles over, grabbing her arm. “You look stunning!”

“Fuck, did you pregame, Rav?” It’s a rhetorical question, given the fact that the girl looks absolutely slammed. It’s a miracle the administration even let her in. “Back up a step, your breath smells like vodka and I’m not tryna get that all on me.”

“Sure did, and fuck you,” Raven giggles. “C’mon, come dance with us!”

That sounds like the last thing Jujubee wants to do, especially cause she can barely breathe in this dress, but she knows it’ll be impossible to convince Raven to let her mope around on her own. Jujubee lets herself be led into the huddle her friends have made in the middle of the dance floor, plastering on a friendly smile.

“Juju!” Shea immediately wraps her in a warm hug, talking at a mile a minute. “Where have you been? This song is such a bop! I love your dress, purple looks so good on you.”

Jujubee feels a flash of guilt, realizing suddenly that she’s kept herself isolated this whole night.

It’s not Shea’s fault, really, that she’s a shoo-in for the prom queen title. It just hurts that Shea doesn’t even care about popularity or crowns and yet she’s constantly winning those things. Jujubee doesn’t trust herself not to be a bitter bitch about the whole thing, so she’d figured it would be best to avoid Shea for the night. It would be completely on-brand for her to make some petty little jab as a way to bring attention back to herself and soothe the blows to her ego. Jujubee doesn’t want to risk ruining the moment for her best friend, no matter how rocky their relationship.

Lucky for her, Shea has the attention span of a goldfish, and the girl is already back to grooving along to whatever the DJ is currently playing without Jujubee having to answer her question. Small mercies.

“Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention?” A voice booms from the DJ booth. Everyone turns to face it. “The time has finally come. It’s my pleasure to announce to you the nominees for this year’s Prom Queen!”

Jujubee feels the bile rise in her throat. Shea grabs her hand and she flinches at the unexpected contact.

Shea shoots a concerned look at her. “You good, girl?”

“Yeah,” Jujubee lies. “Just nervous.”

“Mhmm,” Shea murmurs. “Don’t be, yeah? We got this.”

Easy for you to say, Jujubee wants to snap. She doesn’t. Shea’s done nothing wrong. It’s not her fault that the girl is prettier and nicer and more charismatic than Jujubee can ever hope to be, and it’s certainly not her fault that Jujubee’s being a bitter Betty tonight.

“Farrah Moan!” The DJ bellows.

A light swings over to a pink-haired girl to Jujubee’s left. Jujubee thinks she remembers her from French class last year. All she really recalls about Farrah is the pounds of highlighter she came to school with every day. By the looks of it, nothing has really changed: Farrah is practically metallic under the spotlight.

Jujubee applauds politely and resists the urge to roll her eyes at the girl’s fake smile. Everybody knows Shea’s going to win. Why do they even bother announcing the nominees?

“Shea Coulee!”

Shea shifts, stepping away from Jujubee so the spotlight falls solely on her. She smiles brightly. She looks radiant, and Jujubee feels that pang of jealousy again. It’s not fair that Jujubee has had to try twice as hard to even come close to the level of popularity Shea attained during her first month here. Then again, nothing is ever fair with Shea. The girl is just god’s favourite.

The light swings away from Shea after a few seconds, falling onto Raven next, and Jujubee lets out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding.

“Juju,” Shea says, mistaking her envy for nervousness. “Chill. You’re an amazing person. This doesn’t define you, okay?”

Jujubee doesn’t trust herself to respond over the lump that’s in her throat and the jealousy clawing at her insides, so she just offers the other girl a soft smile and a nod.

“Jujubee Inthyrath!” The light settles on her, finally.

Jujubee tries not to squint against the brightness. She squares her shoulders, flashing her most dazzling smile and blowing a kiss into what she thinks is the general direction of the DJ booth. The direct light is blinding, and Jujubee sees green and red spots at the back of her eyelids when she blinks.

After a few counts, the light shifts back towards the DJ booth again. She tries to recenter herself, shaking her head lightly.

“Bright, right?” Shea laughs good-naturedly at her dazed expression.

“That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen,” Jujubee jokes in response, swallowing over the jealousy that seems to have made a home in her throat tonight.

“Ladies and gentlemen…” The DJ says, dragging out the last word.

God, hurry up, Jujubee wants to complain. She fixes her best ‘runner-up who’s happy for her best friend’ look on her face instead. She’s been practising her graceful loser smile in the mirror for two months, and she’ll be damned if she lets any of her pettiness show now. As much as Jujubee thrives off of attention, she knows she will never be able to forgive herself if she messes this moment up for Shea.

“Your St. Charles Prom Queen is…”

Jujubee digs her nails into her palm.

“Shea Coulee!”

Besides her, Shea gasps, face breaking into a wide smile. The awful part is that Jujubee is absolutely sure she’s genuinely surprised. Shea’s never been one to expect anything to be given to her.

She forces her fake smile even wider, hugging Shea fiercely. “Congrats!”

“Oh my god,” Shea lets out an incredulous laugh. “Oh my god!”

Jujubee feels like her heart is being ripped out of her chest. She wonders if it would be suspicious to start crying. Probably, she decides. She’ll save her tears for later. Her cheeks hurt from maintaining the face-splitting grin she’s glued to her face, but she keeps it there anyways.

Shea shuffles towards the DJ, who drapes the sash around her and places a crown on her head. She still looks absolutely shocked at the outcome, tearing up a bit. Their friends gather around her, squealing their congratulations and crushing Shea in hugs.

Jujubee watches the scene unfold in front of her and can’t suppress the bitter chuckle that passes her lips. Everything is happening in slow motion. The neon lights dance across Shea’s features. Her eyes shiny are shiny with tears, and she’s slightly shaking as her hands go up to touch the crown on her head.

Jujubee gets the feeling that all her friends are having their glorious teenage coming-of-age moment and she’s just an audience member sitting in the theatre. They’re only a few feet away, but they seem to be in a whole different world.

There’s a soreness building at the back of her throat. She has to leave, now, before she ends up having to explain why she’s crying over Shea’s win. Jujubee’s eyes dart around the banquet hall. Everyone seems to be occupied with congratulating the newly crowned queen.

Now is a good time as any, she supposes, so she slips out of the back doors and into the night air.

Jujubee takes a seat on a nearby bench, flinching at the cold steel pressing into her thighs. She shivers as a breeze blows by, suddenly acutely aware of how unpractical her dress is for San Francisco’s late-night weather.

The tears have been building all night, and now that she’s finally out of Shea’s sight, Jujubee lets them fall. Once she starts, she can’t stop, and before long she’s fully sobbing. She grinds the heels of her palms into her eyelids with complete disregard for her eyeshadow. Her hands come away a mess of glitter, mascara and pink pigment.

“Um, are you alright?” A voice asks.

She whips her head around so fast she almost breaks her neck. A girl is standing there, in a hot pink gown. Her platinum blonde hair is piled on top of her head in a voluminous updo. Fuck. This girl fully just witnessed Jujubee having a breakdown. She sniffles, wiping at her eyes and trying to maintain some shred of dignity.

“Yeah, uh-” Jujubee’s voice strains on the word, and, to her horror, she feels another wave of tears coming. She opens her mouth to reassure the girl that yes, she’s totally fine, thank you so much, but ends up bursting into tears again. Her dignity is officially gone. Every bit.

“Oh no, please don’t cry!” The girl slides onto the bench next to her.

She pats Jujubee awkwardly. After Jujubee shows no signs of stopping, she just sits quietly next to her, hand still on the small of Jujubee’s back, letting her cry it out. Jujubee has never hated someone as passionately as this girl right now. Can’t she just leave her alone? This is mortifying.

The girl pulls her hand back from Jujubee like she’s been burned. Fuck. Did she say that out loud? A sidelong glance at the girl’s hurt expression confirms her suspicions.

For what feels like the millionth time tonight, Jujubee feels guilt pooling in her stomach. This time it crawls all the way up, burning as it builds in her throat. Jujubee half-falls off of the bench in her haste, stumbling over to the bushes. She proceeds to hurl her guts out. Well—it’s more of a dry heave, really, since Jujubee hasn’t really eaten anything in the past few hours to throw up, but it’s embarrassing nonetheless.

“Holy shit, are you okay?” The girl rushes to her side, doing her best to hold Jujubee’s hair out of her face.

Despite her condition, Jujubee still manages a sarcastic, “Just peachy, thanks.”

She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, wincing as it comes away smeared with hot pink gloss. The girl helps her back to the bench, taking a seat next to her.

“I’m Brianna,” The girl offers.

“Juju,” Jujubee says.

“Wanna talk about it?” Brianna asks.

Jujubee almost snorts at her. In less than five minutes of meeting this girl, Jujubee’s managed to sob, throw up, and make a bitchy comment towards her. Brianna still wants to play therapist?

“Okay,” She says quietly, surprising herself. That was not what she meant to say, at all. But Brianna brightens considerably next to her, and suddenly Jujubee doesn’t have the heart to take it back. Besides, she sort of owes it to Brianna after being a bitch, Jujubee reasons. It’s not at all about the fact that Brianna’s kind of pretty and Jujubee needs to vent.

“Where do I even start? This night has been a mess.”

Brianna takes her hand gently. Jujubee tenses, but lets Brianna brush her fingers over her own. It’s strangely intimate. It’s also far more comfortable than it should be, given she and Brianna are complete strangers.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you aren’t comfortable,” Brianna whispers.

Jujubee feels something unfamiliar swell in her chest. She almost feels like crying again, but out of a different reason than before. She can’t really remember the last time someone was willing to listen to her feelings, nevermind being as gentle with her as Brianna is being right now. Usually, Jujubee would scoff and call herself pathetic for even considering opening up to this girl, but something about the mess that tonight has been has made her stone-cold exterior crack a bit. She takes a shaky breath in and out.

“No, I want to,” Jujubee says. She feels the other girl’s gaze but doesn’t meet it, staring down at the crystals on her shoes instead. She worries a loose cobblestone with her left heel. “I didn’t win prom queen.”

Brianna makes some kind of shocked noise next to her. When Jujubee peeks up at her, the girl looks like she’s trying her hardest not to laugh and to stay supportive.

“You think it’s ridiculous,” She says, a touch of amusement behind her words. It’s an accusation, but there’s no bite behind it.

“No, I don’t!” Brianna shakes her head. Her updo wobbles dangerously at the movement. Jujubee quirks a brow at her, and Brianna flushes. “It’s just… you look absolutely beautiful. Why let some stupid popularity contest ruin your night?”

“Oh,” Jujubee says, slightly reeling from the compliment. “This old thing?”

Thank god for her quick wit, because otherwise Jujubee definitely would have been stammering some sort of awkward “thank you.” She’s suddenly hyper-aware of how Brianna is pressed close against her side and how their fingers are laced together in the blonde’s lap.

“It’s just, my best friend, Shea? She won, and I know it sounds terrible, but I can’t help but feel super jealous. She’s just perfect, you know? She doesn’t even have to try. And I’m just-”

She laughs self-deprecatingly, gesturing at herself, “Well. You see me.”

“Juju, don’t downplay yourself,” Brianna says. “You’re amazing.”

“How do you know?”

Brianna furrows her brow. “Oh. Oh! Uh, you don’t remember me, do you?”

“Remember you?” Jujubee racks her brain for any memory she might have of Brianna. Nothing. Surely she would have recognized this barbie look-alike if she ever ran into her in school?

“Jesus,” Brianna reddens. “I must have seemed so creepy then, just coming up to you out of nowhere?”

Jujubee must still look confused because Brianna explains further. “We’ve had classes together since seventh grade. I was in your homeroom this year.”

This time it’s Jujubee’s turn to feel embarrassed. God, she’s such a bitch.

“Oh my gosh,” She buries her face into her hands. “I’m so sorry, I-”

“Don’t sweat it,” Brianna laughs. “You know who I am now, so that’s what matters, yeah?”

“Yeah, guess so.”

They sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes. The music leaks out of the banquet hall and wraps around them, bass throbbing. Jujubee breaths in the night air deeply. It’s always the after-party silence that she’s liked the best. That feeling of shivering in the chilly breeze and walking home barefoot, heels in hand. The atmosphere always makes her slightly nostalgic for an experience she’s never had and can’t quite name.

“Do you want to dance?” Brianna asks.

“Hmm? I like it out here,” Jujubee says. “If you don’t mind.”

Brianna smiles at her. She looks pretty when she smiles, Jujubee decides. The corners of her eyes crinkle and her nose scrunches up.

“We don’t have to go back inside,” Brianna says. “We can just dance here.”

“Oh! In that case, uh, sure!” Jujubee stammers. She’s barely gotten through the sentence before she’s mentally kicking herself. Of all the times to be socially awkward, of course it happens to her while talking to a pretty girl.

Brianna stands, brushing down the feathers on her dress. She extends a hand that Jujubee takes. Brianna’s palm is warm, and the skin-to-skin contact makes fireworks go off in her chest. Jujubee meets Brianna’s eyes tentatively, snaking a hand around the blonde girl’s waist.

She hears the song change into something slower, and Brianna guides her into a gentle sway. She can feel her cheeks flushing, and her teeth tug on her bottom lip. It’s quiet, save for the leaves crunching beneath their heels and the faint music leaking from the hall, but Jujubee doesn’t mind. It feels peaceful.

She’s always been hopeless romantic, has dreamt of slow-dancing at prom since she was five. Her younger self watched those Disney channel movies that cumulated with a girl being swept off her feet by the football captain religiously.

This is different from all of the scenes she dreamed up when she was younger. There’s no parting of the crowd, no spotlight illuminating her. There’s no crown on her head. But somehow, Jujubee doesn’t really mind.

“This is so cheesy,” Brianna laughs softly.

“This is our rom-com moment, I guess,” Jujubee agrees, grinning. “I don’t mind though.”

“I’ve liked you since seventh grade,” Brianna admits. “You walked into class with a pink streak in your hair and immediately cracked a joke that made everyone laugh.”

“You remember that?” Jujubee’s impressed. She remembers that hair. It was such a pain to have to re-dye her roots every few weeks that she’d sworn to never touch a semi-permanent colour again.

She tells Brianna this, and the girl laughs, gesturing to her updo. “You’re lucky you don’t touch your hair! I’ve been dying mine this icy platinum forever.”

“What? I totally thought that was natural,” Jujubee marvels. “What’s your normal colour?”

“It’s more of a honey shade,” Brianna explains.

Jujubee cocks her head, trying to imagine Brianna with a warm-toned colour. She’d look nice with it. “That sounds pretty.”

The song playing from inside the hall finishes, and the two girls step away from each other. Jujubee shivers, already missing the warmth of Brianna’s hands around her waist.

“Cold?” Brianna asks sympathetically.

“Yeah, my dress is fluffy but it’s still really thin,” Jujubee answers. Her stomach growls, loudly, and she flushes. “Sorry. I haven’t eaten anything in a while.”

“We can go get Denny’s if you wanna leave?” Brianna offers hesitantly. “I drove.”

Jujubee pauses at the request, considering.

“I’d like that,” She says, finally. “I think we have a few years worth of stuff to catch up on.”

“Yeah, well, conversation always flows easiest over pancakes,” Brianna says with a wink.

The action gives Jujubee butterflies. Yes, she would very much like to get to know Brianna better. Something tells her they’ll be awfully close in the future.

#rpdr fanfiction #jujubee #miz cracker #shea coulee #cracker x jujubee #high school au #lesbian au #crying in my prom dress #mumu #as5 #rare pair

52 notes · View notes

naitiaclo960writings · 4 years

Text

Day 9 - Electric

(Warnings: Graphic depiction of violence. This is a dark one)

The crowd rose up around him, howling its rage and its need for violence. In addition to the smell of blood and cigarettes, he could feel this mixture of adrenaline and excitement filling the place, plunging this old abandoned shed into an atmosphere fit to an arena. And that was one. Not that Dean gives it any importance anymore. What mattered was not what it looked like, but what was happening there.

A new flash of light blinded him while the metallic noise of the audience striking with animosity against the protective wire fence rose in a sinister music to his ears. Here, everything screamed decadence and anarchy and he loved it, to be able to blend with the mass without ever being considered as the freak that he was outside. Being a monster was common in this clandestine universe, it was even greatly encouraged if one wanted to survive it.

As adrenaline pulsed through his veins like an intoxicating electric current, Dean clenched and loosened his fists with apprehension, eager to soon feel bones cracking under his knuckles. Tonight, he was going to be what he was built for, what others made of him year after year. Tonight, he was no longer Dean Winchester, he was nothing but fury and hatred.

* * *

Dean woke up early that morning from a night full of nightmares despite his exhaustion. His eyes were red and ringed, sunk into their sockets after hours spent watching the house of this supposed rugaru. He made a face at the memory of the bitter failure of that night. What was the point of being a hunter if he could not save lives? The rugaru had time to devour his whole family before Dean could intervene, all because he had not taken some essential parameters into consideration. It was a stupid rookie mistake that cost the lives of two little girls and an innocent woman. With his chest already on fire, he had remained lying down looking at the ceiling a few hours before deciding to go out.

It was a bad idea. He didn’t give a shit.

Dean had rushed to the nearest grocery store, had taken meager provisions for form and numerous bottles of alcohol. When he got back to his room—on the ground floor, thank God—, he had barely taken off his shoes that the neck of the bottle was already on his lips. And Dean had been drinking. He had drunk, drunk, emptied a whole bottle and had stretched out himself among the sheets of his unmade bed. In a flash of lucidity, he had turned on his cell phone. Because he couldn’t help himself. Because despite the argument with his brother since the beginning of the week, he was worried.

However, he had not texted Sam, especially not. He did not want his brother to deprive himself of a small respite once again because of his stupid decisions and existential crises. Things were not really easy between them and, if he was honest with himself, they were not anymore for some time already. This was another reason why he had no right to demand any support from him: Sam was better off without him and his carcass full of anger and sadness.

He had not written to Castiel either. He had prayed even less. His best friend had enough to deal with in Heaven, with all these angelic losses and the threat of a new rebellion hovering over the cosmic balance. If another war was coming, then Castiel was more useful up there than with his own pathetic self. In any case, even if he had sent him a quick message asking him how he was doing today, he already knew the answer. Bad. Just like him. It was like a sinister condemnation that kept coming back and pounding in his skull. This mixed with a growing guilt that was now forming one with him.

Then Dean had drowned his too-full-heart in alcohol before spending a good hour in the bathroom vomiting the empty contents of his stomach. He had not eaten at lunch, being too sick — and what was the point anyway? — before feeling this growing anger in his heart again at the end of the day. His telephone remained desperately silent and that did not help despite his desire to be alone. Somewhere deep inside him, maybe he was hoping someone would send a message first to inquire about his health, but nothing. Furiously, tired of turning between the four moldy walls of his motel room, Dean had grabbed his jacket and his car keys before going out towards the first bar.

He had found an enough ill-reputed one to accomplish what he wanted to do tonight in complete discretion. Kansas City was a big city with its dark sides and where no one would ever pay attention to him.

Diving into the noise almost drowned his thoughts. Dean had barely got off two shots before a man hit him on the shoulder. He kept a toxic smile of flowering on his lips knowing exactly that his plan had worked before turning his attention to man. The difficulty of the thing was to look lost and desperate enough to accept any proposal without inspiring too much pity. Dean barely had to pretend. Obviously, the guy turned out to be exactly what he was looking for: a recruiter for clandestine fights that were quietly organized at night in the premises behind the bar. The boss seemed to know since he said nothing more when he heard a few bits of their conversation. Dean had answered each of his questions in a neutral manner before the man finally told him to meet him at two o'clock in the morning behind the bar if he was interested, seeing "potential" in him. Perfect.

His instincts, although sore with alcohol, told him not to take the risk. But this rage… this rage that filled him a little more every moment, this anger that had come to mingle with his guilt and his despair screamed at him to go hit something. Something alive, something that can bleed and take his relentless violence. Dean was like that: he was violent, dangerous and unsavory. He knew how to destroy and that’s it. He knew how to torture and that’s it. It was surely for this reason that he had so much his place in Hell... He needed to be punished for his past mistakes.

At 1:45, Dean was on the sidewalk, facing the dark alley leading to the rendezvous point. His hands were in his pockets, his heart beating in a strangely calm way, still not drowned in vodka. Swallowing his conscience, repeating to himself that he deserved it anyway, Dean plunged into the alley. In the end, he found the meeting place quite easily.

Without him knowing why, the security guards at the entrance recognized him and, after long underground corridors, allowed him to enter what seemed to be a large abandoned shed isolated from the rest of the city center. However, the place was teeming with people, the crowd of junkies and thugs crowding around what looked like an improvised and slightly raised ring. Some whispered cheers, others insulted while two poor fellows were fighting in the square with their bare hands. Dean got closer. One of the men took a particularly violent blow which sent him to the ground. In a rule-bound sport, that was usually when the game ended. But there were no referees here, just a man shouting comments from the top of a high box, and the winner threw himself on his opponent on the ground to beat him. He did not stop until the poor fellow spit so much blood that he choked under him. With a smile of victory, the other stood up and shouted his victory while his opponent lay there half dead, being evacuated by two other men and leaving a trail of blood behind him.

The commentator then screamed into his microphone, asking for a volunteer in the crowd to come and try his luck in the ring. Dean sincerely thought that no one would be crazy enough to say yes when two other losers entered the ring and a new fight ensued. Once again, it was violent, disloyal and bloody. The more the blows resounded in the hangar, the more the crowd seemed to be in effervescence, screaming to animate the fight while the money of the gamblers was circulating from hand to hand.

Dean stayed away for the next two until the commentator announced the last fight. In the audience, a strong man with several metal teeth raised his hand in a raging cry, a smug smile on his lips. He stepped into the ring. In the hangar floated a semblance of hesitation, no opponent reaching the iron jaw. So, while Dean had been waiting all night for this very moment, he raised his hand, approached the ring under the laughter of others, and threw himself into the fray. His opponent looked at him with a mocking and evil look.

That’s how he ended up with this electric atmosphere around him as his heart sent waves of adrenaline into the rest of his body.

What did he have to lose? He came here to hit, no? So, hit or get hit… What was the difference? The only thing that could reassure him was that the opposite man seemed at least as guilty as he was. By the time he took off his jacket and his shirt, Dean was already crushing his fist into that idiot’s jaw.

Immediately, the screams and comments resumed around them, but everything was drowned in a muffled whistle when Dean took two more hits at a steady pace. His breath was taken away. Several minutes passed where the only thought that was imposed on his mind was to be in pain. In addition to needing to vent all this anger, he deserved all the bruises that were accumulating on his body. He deserved to suffer at least as much as he had made others suffer in his life. Blood rolled from his nose into his mouth and Dean spit on the ground.

When he finally seemed to begin to dominate the fight, his strong opponent, but little enduring, he felt a flash of terrible rage pierce his body. With his breath almost cut off by so much blind anger, Dean opened wide eyes filled with a terrifying thirst for blood. He was unrecognizable. The beast in him had awakened. He was no better than all the monsters he hunted, he was worse. In a moment of inattention, this violence took hold of him as effectively as at the time of Cain’s mark, a knee stroke flew into his brow arch and sent him to the ground. His opponent had risen.

Among the repeated violence that his body was undergoing, the man determined to beat him, Dean found it difficult to regain control over himself and a rumble escaped from his lips. What was going on? He became that thing that he swore he would never be again. In one last desperate rush, Dean managed to dodge another punch and rolled on himself, his chest in a vice of pain. Blinded by anger and pain, he succeeded in reversing the situation and projecting the iron jaw to the ground. In an instant, he had mounted his body and struck, struck, and struck until the face under him was nothing more than a bloody and deformed pulp. Dean screamed. Only then did the remaining hatred in his chest fade and he could breathe again, the blood flowing into his brain enough to tell him to stop.

The rest seemed blurry to him, his thoughts muddled and confused, drowned by the cheers and the cries of craze. He remembers, however, the same man who had come to recruit him in the bar coming to congratulate him at the exit, thanking him for the nice money that Dean had allowed him to win. He told him that he had it in his blood. Dean barely replied, not less agreed though.

Once back at the motel and the blood cleaned from his clothes, Dean was again alone with his thoughts. He immediately sent a message to Sam. He needed help. He needed his family to remind him that he was not just a wild animal, that he could exist beyond his rage. Currently he was just… empty. Dean already knew that his dreams would be filled with horrible nightmares tonight and he was tired of it in advance. After several minutes of internal fighting, Dean curled up on himself against a wall in his room. He did not want to sleep. What if the beast came back while he lowered his guard? He didn’t want to sleep. He was in too much pain to sleep. He needed to go back, to resist that dark part of him. Dean could never let it surface again, not like that, ever. He still felt his knuckles suffering, sending waves of pain into the rest of his hand like electric shocks.

He didn’t want to sleep…

* * * @winchester-reload This one was a bit depressing but I’m quiet happy with the general idea. Let me know what you thought about it :)

You can find the whole series on Ao3

Tag list /!\ PLEASE TELL ME IF YOU WANT TO BE ADD TO (or removed from) THE TAG LIST so you won’t miss any updates.

@misha-moose-dean-burger-lover @styggtroll @thanks-tacos @petrichoravellichor @iamcharliebradburylevelperfect @ladywaywarddsc @hellfire37 @destiel-221b-sabriel @aloha-cowgirl @destielhoneybee @dysfunctional-destiel @ozonecologne @doofcas @castielrisingabove @zoerayne2426 @tibbinswrites @vicmc624 @thegirlofstarlight @berrieseveryday @staycejo1 @certaindeanwinchesterforcastiel @bab-spnfamily @lo-mindpalace

25 notes · View notes

queenofallwitches · 4 years

Text

Venus trine MC, my MC lies in Saturn and Saturn is in 9th house Aquarius.

Saturn Return, and my Soul Journey into 12th house Sun conjunct Mercury (in Aries) bound by the 12th house Shadow Secrets. Jupiter is Leo and Mars is softened by my conjunct cancer moon, both in my 3rd house. The kicker is Chiron simultaneously sitting over in my wounded goddess divine feminine Luna moon compelling me to build a home, a base and a clan of like minded souls. cancer and Chiron sit together and Chiron is akin to the wounded healer. I have a complex but alchemical natal make up and its been 6 years of accepting the square and oppositions in difficult places to come to terms to work with my natal astrology in a way I can become creatively involved in.

23/3/20 initiated the formal induction of my Saturn return as saturn transited to Aquarius for the first time since 92/93.

It’s a taste of the full saturnine swing coming up after the December 21st astrology grand conjunction. Saturn will be in Aquarius up to July. before moving briefly back before that grand Conjunction with Pluto/Jupiter later in 21/12/2020. (activity period from 14 April 2020 until mid-July 2020) Venus trine MC

Yeah on a tangent but one day I will be thankful this was forged. I am will using my moonchild manifesto to track the astrology and transits for my own wounded healer journey. I don’t have the consistency of a computer to hoard things as I did before the big brother fascism came full formed this year and cannot freely trust anything can be stored. I will be putting things online purely to keep a record of what may soon be lost, unable to be accessed.

Plus I’m burning my journals after I take the photos of them and upload them for a ritualistic purpose.

It’s part of this creative alchemy and trauma soul retrival quest I’ve found myself on. I note this as my Saturn is returning home for my FIRST Saturn return. I have been formally initiated for the infamous, enigmatic Saturn return that marks the passage from “adolescence into adulthood”. (Funnily last time I heard a university lecture on neuroscience, the latest research noted recent findings that the brain of a fully, functional prefrontal cortex in adult brains don’t become fully formed until age 28-30. This first sparked excitement and also uncertainty about the privilege cast to the “teenage myth”. As kids brains are still developing when things like getting a driving cars, choosing a life career, alcohol privilege and making other major life changes at those critical developmental stages are still as risky when a 12-16 year old does it. So now psychology and neuroscience knows that the adult higher order thinking that marks the turn of a mature and civil adult come in the late 20s. Not the teens. So until after 25 a brain cannot be fully assessing its choices due to underdeveloped prefrontal higher order thought processes This was fascinating in the social science side of things where we look into social constructs of society and how teenager was a made up archetype for a post war period. I remember being in my early 20s at the time and my life was no longer a race as it had been made to be prior.the schools of the latest brain neuroscience confirm my impulsive nature could change before age 30. I was hopeful. Maybe I wasn’t a gifted genius who was highly sensitive and afflicted with the contrasting “ADHD or Attention Deficit Primaily Inattentive” which could only be “treated” (as far as I had experienced), via heavy duty schedule 8 drugs. The kind of medication that calmed me down but other people wound beg me to have. Meaning in the past people in my life around me were constantly trying to turn into their party high by taking advantage of my disdain for psychostimulants. But my love and need for money back in that time. Fuck fake friends I say. Taking advantage or dysregulated prefrontal cortex with or without all my labels was still, after all, a risky business, when it comes to juggling psychopharmacology and a myriad of labels that resulted in other medicines given to me that may or may not be accurate. No brain scan or confirmation has been given that my brain is anything aside from ADHD. So my academic quest in childhood was confounded due to this.I learnt a lot about my childhood and growing up with a long list of multiple mental illness diagnosis, and the medical pharmacology given to me for those things; was beyond measurable.

But my neurochemistry was tweaked ineffably by both psychiatric pills pushed on me from age 9 and for things I may not even need. The end result of what my social science teacher termed “social constructs akin to mental illness medical model DSM labels”. My self pursuit of understanding my own brain was a hard thing to understand in the sense that prior to hearing about this from the side of academic and professional training, I had spend 12 years in expensive and possibly more damaging than beneficial treatment for “mental illnesses”. My life was a focal point for the goal I set to help women with the “borderline stigma” after I had fixed my own borderline.

Clinical psychologist was my end game until I found the trauma truth sweeping me into a existential soul contusion merged with trauma after trauma therapy went into flooding memory. Academic research and the psychology and counseling journals I spent my spare time fine combing. For answers. For my why and how. By the time I found any sense of this it became a painful limbo of dancing with my demons, coping destructively and limbo between the underworld and the reality I found my body and mind entwined in.

Now it’s even more synonymous to my own Saturn return journey and how the Saturn return is the mark of adulthood. This can be a speculative musing I make now on celestial astrology and how it aligns to our inner psychological makeup. (The Jupiter return is age 12, puberty ; and the other inner planets all mark significant development milestones in growing up. I’ll go into that more in later blogs).

Astrology is a map of the soul, psychology makeup, can be so deep too. How does it measure up to statistics? Sun sign horoscope is nothing versus the natal chart and how it corresponds to planetary magick and Kabbalah. I have been seperate in my magick and academic work but it was always my will to merge these at one stage I could research it. But now the sands of time are shifting, and Aquarius Saturn is calling for novel innovation I never could convey due to academic being seperate as spiritual, magickal practice is something I was careful to keep silence on when working with clients, peers and mentors, forget telling my psychologists or doctors who wound dismiss any test as “bipolar mania”. I remember once I read “the difference between the mystic and the mad man is the mystic knows who NOT TO TELL.

Now it’s my time to informally but officially start logging my journey into my own healing, soul mapping, I call it cognitive alchemy, gnostic psychology, soul psychology, metagnosis.. I’ve had many a name for the potential inspiration from my true will calling. But I can now forget about the archaic bonds from the academic world I was schooled to excel in by confirming. I am also a high iq gifted kid and having been labelled gifted but “adhd” simultaneously while having traumatic events left right and center is a mix of confusion for me. Teachers classed adhd as a learning disability, my in attention confused with inability to listen to simple tasks. This meant my mind never adapted to that school conditioning but my education was still installed due to the private school system somehow making my alters succeed without effort. Most of my spare time as a kid that wasn’t dissociative was reading books. By me processing my own literature in my spare time, I knew so much random stuff but hid it in order to seem dumb bc that was accepted. But in private in encyclopaedias and non fictional library quests I’d devour books. for my 10 maximum haul of borrowing books. This was a routine my mum and I went to do each week but my reading speed was beyond anything known, as I read and synthesised up to 10 books mostly in one day, from age 6 onwards.

I also stole books and hid my reading habits at school due to a deep shame of not being liked due to reading being for losers without friends, as girls bullied me over my gifted weird quirks. I was pretty but saw my self as ugly for trauma will deprive the mind of seeing it’s own true perception. I was never understood how my looks became a thing used against me by girls who were jealous until I learnt about this myself. I recently accepted and remembered this all after 3 years of integrated healing. I was doing this all on my own. the spiritual and metaphysical work is my primary tool that was keeping me here. Actually saving my suicide program from self destruct after the March 2017 incident I shall not talk about now. But I’m here now, alive, kicking, Saturn here to shove my shadow to consciousness without prompt and this change can bring me into a 30 year blueprint of setting things right.

Now in order to build a solid and functional framework and foundational life. I have a litany of secrets I need to get off my chest. I think to share my growth, my thoughts and my experiences for my own liberation of my deep dark secrets finally free to be released into the public domain.

I have no choice but to share this.

I do this co consciously as a part of my integrative process.

Maybe One day it might be a guide for someone who was as alone as I feel doing all of this self work without support. Maybe it will fade into the cyber void forever. Maybe I’ll use this as a tool to help clients in the future. Whatever this is means nothing but what the process of alchemy can do to forge my liberation from soul loss and traumatic dissociative trauma.

As a therapist I always wanted to avoid what I went through growing up. Now more so. I never want another lost dissociative mental health client who was also stuck between professional and academic pursuits being my “purpose” and having to sacrifice career and my study and research to sit in my shadow to see the shit.

In order to break the shit therapist mould I list journey through my own shit first. This meant I needed to be away from all therapy both as a client and practitioner and student for awhile. I’ve been off since the end of 2017 and now it’s clear it was neeed, how do I heal without healing my own shit first? Am I not the finest example of how bad therapists can get away with their bullshit and be paid for it but never really know who they are. I’m never doing that. I never was about that. So due to therapeutic negligence. I am finding my gift was the lesson. Those a shitty therapist who are a dime a dozen were the anti mentors I saw too often: but my purpose was to be a therapist. But a therapist who did things the way I never had.

Never did I want another to go into the heavy weight of shame from the secrets of sexual wounds, childhood schemas, mixed up and messed up conditioning made to seem functional to outsiders. But that was all alters. Now it was a spiritual journey as magick and my mystical path entwines to save my soul. The self awakening, trauma revelations, merging with the dark night of soul, and the shadow work. Plus everything else coming out is not a journey I can say is or was at all easy, I suffer more now as a co conscious intergrating my trauma. I feel it all without the dissociative switch to save me from witnessing all the shit. Now I see my entire life and it’s fucked up raw and grim reality and I have to do something because I survived it this far? Again I never suicided or stopped into self destruction when I knew my own inner child’s wounds were no longer blacked out but burning bright longing for love. Symptoms for survival and the survival was part of the dissociative switching making my outside self seem so functional, but never seen. It’s not something they needed to drug me for, but it’s another thing I have to address now. My symptoms they drugged with medications that were mind altering and powerful for anyone let alone a developing child’s brain, were suppressed by many meds. Who knows where that ends and the damage via trauma and other things begin? It’s a mess of some thing I was never aware of but always trying to silence due to the need for people to accept me. But that was many mes all living a life that appeased many people, but not for me. Here we are.

3 notes · View notes

9uk · 5 years

Text

From The Bottom of My Heart

⌲ summary : maybe you and Jungkook, through heaven or hell, have always meant to stay close to each other.

⌲ pairing : bully!jungkook x reader

⌲ word count : 3.6k

⌲ genre : angst, fluff idk

⌲ warnings : mentions of past abuse, xoxo

⌲ a/n : this is what y’all hoes wanted hehe, so here it is. Happy New Year’s in advanced! also, happy birthday taetae <3

**Spin-off from my series Let Me Stay Close To You. If you haven’t read it, I’d suggest you read it first to have a better understanding of the context of this story. Read it here.

It's that time of the year again—where gifts are exchanged and gingerbread houses are made, where evergreen conifers are decorated with ornaments hung by the overly-excited children and the smell of Ceylon tea, baked potatoes and ham fills the kitchen. Everyone gathers around the fireplace and share their strange or ridiculous encounters over the year, laughters bursting and smiles everlasting while the star ornament sits on top of the Christmas tree gently, shining.

At least that's what you think Christmas is like, and should be.

In the sad world of reality, you have always spent the festive occasion coped up in your mother's café, selling log cakes and butterscotch cookies, telling kids to be careful with the hot chocolate you have just created and handed over to them.

It's the season when the shop is exceptionally busy, with overflowing customers who have foam gathered on their upper lips as they chat with joy over a cup of peppermint mocha latte.

It's supposed to be a wonderful period—well at least for you this year.

You are thousands of miles away from that crusty coffee place your mother runs, and you have completely forgotten about everything you've painstakingly memorised on the Christmas menu.

When you first received a hug from Sooyoung in what seemed like decades, the gesture ignited a small thought at the back of your head, that Christmas this year was going to be a little less lonely and spiced with fun instead. Who would have thought that friendships can appear as strong steel bridges of bonds, but yet so easily snap like a wooden plank.

With the money you received from your parents and the pay you get at that greasy restaurant, you were able to rent a not too shabby apartment a few streets from the university. But the fact that you are now living alone, that's the part that creeps into your late night thoughts at times.

You clearly remember Jungkook bugging you with an undefeated persistence to get your ass to the Christmas party Taehyung holds every year.

"C'mon, it will be fun. I promise, you have me!"

He knows what you have in mind, that all your friends have left your side and you would feel like a total loser and loner at the party.

Ex-friends, you mean.

If it weren't for them, you wouldn't have attended a single party at all.

He continues nudging your arm and whining for what seems like the nth time. "Please-"

"Okay, okay."

He looks at you with those big round glossy eyes you can't say no to. "I'll go."

And that is why you are currently freaking out over what to wear to the party. If only Sooyoung was—nevermind, screw that.

You fish out a random black dress from your closet and headed out before you changed your mind.

Being alone is no obstacle to you. It was being alone at a party that frightened you, it was a place where you are supposed to enter with friends—to be able to slowly fit into the crowd and be comfortable with the atmosphere in the house.

However, you were feeling jittery—much more than when you are called out to present your answer in front of the whole class. You didn't realise how accustomed you were to Sooyoung's constant bubbly presence beside you, not until this day. The party had just begun a while ago, and you hoped your entrance would hold the least significance to anyone in there, and you brushed off the thought of everyone's eyes on your weird form. That brat Jungkook had told you that he'd be waiting for you inside, and made you come to the party all by yourself.

What were you so afraid of anyway?

Maybe a couple of rumours had been spread between the ladies, and they would send you judgemental looks—but you were very used to it since the start, so why are you being so self-conscious right now?

Nonetheless, you picked up the phone and decided to dial someone—correction. The only one who you acquainted with in this college and is still on good (but strange) terms with you.

It was clear as day and green as grass that Namjoon has begun to harbour an interest much more than just physical attraction for you. During occasional study dates and the tutoring he offers you, you never once failed to catch him staring at you at least twice. You were pretty sure that there weren't any vegetable stuck between your teeth or crumbs on the corner of your lip though.

"What?" You look up to meet his eyes.

"What?" The both of you chuckle at the same time when he immediately shoots the question back at you.

"Why're you looking at me like that?" Namjoon is rendered speechless, it was almost as if all the excuses for him gawking at you in this manner had transformed into useless brain juice.

You were so far the first and only person who didn't judge or criticise him based on his looks. You even thought he was handsome and told him that straight in his face, and it made him wonder if you had standards lower than hell. "Nothing much, I-I think you look gorgeous today." He quickly averts his gaze to the homework before him, pretending to scribble somehing just to avoid your eyes and hide his blush. You shift your chair closer to him and lean in towards his face. "So...you mean only today?" You purposely pout.

His head shoots up, flabbergasted and he instantly corrects his words. "No! I mean—"

A cheeky smile grows on your face to replace the initial pout and you reassure him, "I'm just kidding, relax."

Namjoon's lips part slightly before he shakes his head and grins at your antics.

Namjoon informs you of his boredom and agrees to go with you to the party.

As expected, the house is filled with people for the alcohol here is free. In the stressful life of books and papers, who wouldn't mind a shot of tequila or two?

Namjoon is the gentleman that he is, offering you a ride to the venue but you politely decline. Instead, you choose to make your way over alone and meet him at the party itself. Having him accompany you was more than enough.

Your hand is on the handle of the front door to Taehyung's house and you cannot help but shift your weight nervously between your two feet. For some reason, the loud noises travelling from the inside are making your breath quicken and the overthinking to get to the better of you. You really hoped that not a single person would be attracted to your tiny appearance at this major party. It was then you realised how much Sooyoung and friends made you feel comfortable attending a huge party like this, they held your hand and gave you the much assurance you needed—that you were not alone.

And now you're back to square one.

What if everyone was playing games and having fun but suddenly upon your arrival the music dies down and all heads would be turned towards the main door with faces glaring at you?

Even though that is something that least likely would happen, you still prepare yourself for an unfortunate event like the aforementioned, or the worst that could happen. Right, just retreat and go home to the comfort of your laptop and bag of chips. And probably never face anyone in school ever again. Jesus Christ, the more of you think about it, your grip on the door handle is beginning to loosen and you would really be in bed in no less than a second. And your hesitance would result in a disappointed Jeon Jungkook.

Wait no, your meekly absence would never disappoint anyone.

You're not that important in such annual affairs.

You're not Regina George or something.

Now you feel stupid in this over-planned outfit and your makeup feels too extra.

You're just a loser with like barely any friends. Get it together. Why did you even agree to come? Just because Jeon Jungkook begged at the minimum? And he's nowhere to be seen. Just text Namjoon you're not feeling well, perfect excuse. You should have just remained at home where-

"Y/N!" The dark oak door suddenly flies open causing you to jump a little. His eyes are wide and shining with excitement, the dimples and wide grin supporting the assumption.

"How long have you been standing there? Come on in!" Namjoon is acting more like the host of the party than Taehyung is with the lovely invitation.

After he takes a proper look at you, his tongue darts out to wet his lips and he reaches out to intertwine his hand with yours to pull you into the house.

To say that you were merely overthinking would be an understatement.

Everybody was minding their own business, whether you stepped foot inside or not.

No one even acknowledged or is aware about your presence.

Except for a certain someone.

Namjoon is still holding your hand in a gentle yet possessive way, and he is different today for an unknown cause.

His confidence is exceptionally striking today and is clearly radiating off him. He is finally able to raise his head to meet the eyes of people with ease.

The way he waves and firmly greets an acquaintance walking past him and makes his way through the group of people in this place— makes you smile involuntarily, for you recall he first time you met him, when he didn't even have the courage to lift his head to face you.

He leads you to an empty spot and cages your head between his both palms fixated onto the wall. Namjoon looks just about ready to devour you whole there and then.

"Someone's...confident tonight." You quirk a brow up and place your hands on his hips to pull him a little closer.

Nothing but an innocent gesture.

Teasing him was fun and you both enjoyed it. Your touch sends him groaning softly to himself and he tries to resist from kissing you there and then.

"Look princess," He calls lowly, "Let's take things slow tonight."

It was the first time he has ever called you by that pet name and you must admit you're rather turned on—no, taken aback, you mean. Right, just surprised.

The feeling of someone intensely staring is doing nothing but growing stronger with every inch Namjoon is gradually closing between your faces. It felt like sharp daggers shooting right at the both of you at that moment and it made whatever you were doing become uncomfortable.

For you were under the predatory gaze of someone.

Suddenly, when Namjoon's lips finally bump into yours, you felt like he was too close for your liking.

You had no idea why you were feeling and acting this way, but you pushed his body away from yours. He panics and questions if he has crossed the line worryingly. "No, no, sorry I need to excuse myself to the washroom. " You desperately wave both hands to assure that it had nothing got to do with him—but you.

It didn't feel right at all.

And with that, you hastily left his side, dashing upstairs to god knows where.

You're in search of a balcony or some sort, a quiet area that gets your fresh air and being alone.

Maybe it was too much to take, with how Namjoon was acting so boldly, and how things would escalate to another level once you give him consent. You also did not wish for the friendship to be left in shattered pieces after the both of you do something friends should not do.

Maybe he was stepping on the line, and you were decisive enough to push him further from it—but not enough to tell him. It would bring his well built self-esteem down. If you were going to reject him, you would have to do it properly and respectfully.

[20:44] Me: hey joon, i'm sorry. i needed to leave because something cropped up at home. the next ben & jerry's will be my treat. see you ard

You switch off your phone and tuck it away into your small bag.

You had just so happen to find a balcony when you randomly entered one of the rooms upstairs. Lucky for you, there weren’t any people banging the life out of each other in the bedroom you selected. You quietly shut the door close behind you as your eyes roam around the four walls.

On the dresser, there is a picture frame of Taehyung with his family at highschool graduation. You waltz your way over to the family portrait and pick it up carefully.

You swipethe layer of dust coating the glass with your finger and Taehyung and his family smiling brightly can be seen clearly.

He hasn’t changed much, boxy grin and cresent eyes still intact.

There is a sense of longing and envy blooming in your heart, and it clenches tightly, sourly.

You never had the blessing to be able to spend your graduation day with your family, the entire school is clueless that you even have a father. You lived your teen years in shame and hiding. It’s a pity because you did not have the opportunity to take pictures like Taehyung did in the open field, throwing his hat up to the sky and receiving flowers from his parents. Placing the frame down gently, you went to the balcony and closed the curtains for privacy in case anyone happened to come in to disrupt your moment of peace.

“What the hell are you doing?” Taehyung snatches his wrist away from Jungkook’s hard grip. He slams the door shut and confronts Taehyung. “Were you the one who invited that Namjoon guy?”

He furrows his brows at his friend, beyond agitated.

“Who?!” Taehyung questions back. “I don’t even know who-”

“Then do you know where Y/N is?” Jungkook prompts again, desperate.

“And how would I know that? You were the one secretly staring at her ever since she came in.” Taehyung had a point. But right when he saw Namjoon approach you, and you willingly went along to wherever he brought you—he couldn’t bear to just watch and not be able to do anything. Just then, a random girl went up to him and tried her luck—but obviously to no avail. After he shrugged her pestering, you were nowhere to be seen. Namjoon too, had disappeared somewhere else and he started growing worried. Had Namjoon managed to get you to his place?

“Ah…” He plops down onto his friend’s bed and tugs at his hair in frustration. The thought of Namjoon having his way with you and all to himself makes him boil in anger. He thinks you don’t deserve Namjoon, who has tried his shot with almost every girl—yet at the same time he thinks he is unworthy of you as well.

There is an inner conflict going on between his heart and mind. Was it really right to have someone he did not deserve at all? Will he even manage to get closer to you, open up your world and heal the both of your broken hearts together? Jungkook is capable at countless things—except you.

You were the enigma in his life, so forbidden and mysterious that he really wants to connect and share a special bond with you. He doesn’t say it aloud, but you meant a lot to him in a way or another.

“Something bothering you?” Taehyung probes, folding his arms trying to figure out his bestfriend.

“How…How do you confess to someone?”

The question comes out as a shocker to Taehyung, but he is willing to help his friend out in a time of crisis for such a matter.

“Ha! You’ve came to the right person.” Taehyungs face beams with delight. “First,” He reaches out to grab Jungkook’s hand and interlace his fingers together with his. “Hold her hand. Properly, tightly. To show that you’re genuine in your confession. Also, to show how serious and certain you are about her.” Jungkook’s face contorts in disgust at the sight of Taehyung being a cheesy romantic. “Then,” He pulls Jungkook up from his bed and leans into his ear. “Look her in the face and tell her every word from the bottom of your heart. The words you’ve been wanting to tell her but never got the chance to..” Jungkook is frozen stiff with his bestfriend demonstrating on him. But Taehyung doesn’t stop.

He leans in close and pulls Jungkook into a tight hug. “Hug her! It must be tight as well, so that she can feel the affection you are trying to show.” Taehyung squeezes Jungkook and squeals happily for him. “Get off me! You’re squashing me dude!” Jungkook almost couldn’t breathe and Taehyung pats his back before stepping away. “That’s about it, there can be bonus if you want.”

“Nope, I’m good.” Jungkook smiles and pushes Taehyung to at least an arm’s length away.

“Back to real talk though, it’s Y/N isn’t it?”

“Did someone call me?” You emerge from the curtains through the balcony sliding doors, pretending to be oblivious. Jungkook presses his lips into a line and looks down at the floor, embarrassed to the sky. Taehyung notices and quickly announces that he has to host the party.

You carried on with your act, seeing as to how flustered Jungkook was becoming.

“I thought Taehyung called me.”

“No.” Jungkook hides his hands into the pockets of his jeans to appear collected, but truth is he was hiding how shaky and nervous he was around you—and the possibility that you had just heard their entire conversation.

“Is that so?” You doubt. Jungkook doesn’t reply, only giving you a nod of affirmation. “Well if that is so, I’ll make my leave.”

You smile at him and head for the door. Jungkook’s mouth open slightly.

“Wait, Y/N!”

The feeling of his fingers softly wrapped around your wrist is unexplainable—unlike the past, this time he holds you with care and a mindfulness to not hurt you in any way.

You spin around to face him.

“Uh, yes?”

Jungkook had always known you were decent looking, but this time you looked extraordinarily beautiful. The way you looked at him through your long lashes, the faded cherry lip tint you had on, your rich long locks falling over your shoulder and the mini black dress that hugged your figure so perfectly your cures were on display—you were the epitome of perfect, looking so endearing in a simple outfit as such and he swore to the heavens he would take immense care of you if you were ever in his arms. The scar doesn’t go unnoticed by him, and his stomach twists in an unpleasant manner at the sight of it. He is still unable to accept how he treated you in the past, and he hates himself more than anything for it—he wishes that you would at least grant him a chance to make up for his wrongdoings.

There is a need surging throughout his body, into his legs; stepping closer to you, into his hands; coming up to run his fingers through your hair and hold your face in place, and his face; diving in recklessly to smash his lips onto yours.

Maybe you thought that he would go according to Taehyung’s plan—confess then give you a a warm hug. But this wasn’t what you were expecting at all.

Jungkook kisses you like it was the last time when it’s only the first, he tilts his head and meld his lips feverishly with yours. It feels like forever with the way he is kissing you, so slow and intimate yet so hasty and desperate. You are able to feel the feelings he is trying to convey through this intimacy—filled with regret, want and a sense of belonging. You belonged to him. Back then, now and in the future. Always.

You wrap your arms around his waist and pull him in closer, mouth opening to grant his tongue access. He smiles into the kiss for a split moment before his tongue is darting out to swirl messily with yours, causing you to moan softly in his mouth. His grasp on your jaw doesn’t loosen and he bites down onto your lower lip before reluctantly pulling away.

A glow of red starts creeping onto his cheeks when the both of you look at each other, faces shy yet hearts pulsating with happiness.

You are the first to break the silence, smiling up at him, “That was…” You couldn’t bring yourself to say it. Everything between you and Jungkook had gone through mountains and seas, but this time—it escalated quickly to a whole new level. It was too much to accept at the moment, but it felt great with him for some reason. The both of you, so unfamiliar with each other’s worlds, yet understanding them to a depth no one outside can reach. There was still much to learn about each other, but you already felt this inseparable connection with the man standing before you.

You allow yourself to bury yourself into his chest and muffle your giggles, and he encases you in his muscular arms in a way never before. Hugging him made you feel complete, like two hearts that were finally pieced together as one. It provided you with a warmth so peculiar and never felt before. It felt surreal, almost akin to a dream.

He strokes your hair lovingly and places a firm yet chaste kiss on the top of your head. “Let me stay close to you Y/N,” He nuzzles his face into the crook of your neck. “For a long, long time…I will love and take care of you all my life.”

You smile and flutter your eyes close, waddling aimlessly around the room with arms around each other basking in the shining moonlight—never wanting to let go of each other.

410 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 2 years

Text

MCU Spider-Man Needs to Get Out of Iron Man’s Shadow

https://ift.tt/3rTfCdg

Peter Parker is a rebel. He’s a high-swinging, hard-kicking, red and blue smartass who never keeps his mouth shut. Spider-Man may have grown up learning the lessons of his dear Aunt May and Uncle Ben, but outside of those ostensible parents, he never has time for anyone over 30. He was the superhero idol of his age in the 1960s: a wiseguy who taunted all the squares that tried to make him respect their authority. Yet whether it was his best mate’s father, Norman Osborn, or Otto Octavius and his ridiculous bowl cut, those stiffs learned just how few webs he had to give.

It feels worthwhile remembering this aspect of the character nowadays. After all, the most popular modern image of Spider-Man—Tom Holland’s affable spaz in the Marvel Cinematic Universe—has largely abandoned this fundamental element of the comic book character in favor of becoming the MCU’s most happy-go-lucky hall monitor. While creative liberties in adaptations are always necessary and should be encouraged, it still feels like a vaguely missed opportunity that such a great performance has been tasked over the course of three films (or six when you count all the Avengers movies Holland has appeared in) with ostensibly playing Tony Stark’s sidekick.

It didn’t have to be this way. Arguably more so than any live-action actor before him, Holland seems to innately understand the character of Peter Parker. While Tobey Maguire captured the earnest side of Parker, and his genuine nobility which drives him to such unhappiness and misery, and Andrew Garfield at least keyed into the hopeless romantic who hides behind the mask, Holland brings a natural playfulness that was missing in those earlier big screen Spideys. Maguire by and large lacked the joy of being Spidey entirely, and Garfield misjudged it as a form of hostile arrogance. Holland’s Peter, meanwhile, loves being Spider-Man.

Even so, in the desire to differentiate this version from the Spider-Men who came before, Marvel Studios has also opted to slowly transform the essence of Peter’s personality. Gone is the nerdy kid from Queens with a chip on his shoulder; in his place is a glorified Avengers mascot—an overeager fanboy who, despite having already saved the world, still idolizes Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark like a god and now gushingly refers to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange as “sir” in the new Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer.

After so many films, and the prospect of Peter apparently getting ready to go to college in No Way Home, it’s becoming somewhat tiring that Holland is still being forced to play the same beat as the kid who worships the system, and who will presumably soon inherit it as Tony Stark’s official successor. While Marvel has made billions by almost preternaturally knowing when to be faithful to the source material and when to update it for the screen, the fact remains they’re turning Peter Parker into something he never was in the comics, which is faintly baffling given this has been their greatest hero for almost 60 years.

As many folks’ understanding of the character is colored by the recent films, the distinction between the comic book version and MCU one is easy to lose. Yes, when Steve Ditko first drew Peter Parker in Amazing Fantasy #15, as well as the first 30-plus issues of The Amazing Spider-Man comic series, the character looked hopelessly uncool. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and sweater vests, for Pete’s sake! But that was of course part of the original power fantasy: loser by day, and winner by night (or at least after school). Parker grew up eating wheatcakes, but after getting bitten by a radioactive spider, he now was a nerd empowered.

When Holland’s first solo film, Spider-Man: Homecoming, was released in 2017, it seemed that director Jon Watts and the larger Marvel Studios braintrust understood this dynamic. Like pretty much every creative since John Romita Sr. took over drawing the character in 1966, they softened the misanthropy that Ditko’s visual storytelling instilled in the character. But Marvel still was savvy enough to put two Ramones songs over their first solo Spidey movie. The character is meant to embody youthful exuberance, including the naivety of youth to feel like they always know best. To folks like Adrian Toomes, he should come off as some sort of punk.

In that way, Homecoming and, to a lesser extent, the shoehorning in of Peter in the earlier Captain America: Civil War (2016) felt like a riff on The Amazing Spider-Man #1 (1963), Stan Lee and Ditko’s first Spider-Man comic book after the character’s origin story the year before. In this inaugural issue, Peter does idolize the original Marvel Comics universe’s coolest heroes—which back then were the Fantastic Four rather than Iron Man and the Avengers. In fact, this first issue is about Spidey trying to join Marvel’s First Family during America’s Camelot years.

And yet, if you go back and read the issue, there’s a prickly standoffishness to Peter that rubs paternal figures like Reed Richards and Ben Grimm the wrong way. This is by design, with the intent of creating a character who is a poor fit for adult-oriented teamwork. Hell, even the reason he tries to join the Fantastic Four is because he’s broke and thinks this is the quickest way to make a little extra bread.

“So now, let’s get down to business,” Peter enthuses in the comic panel you can read below. “How much does the job pay? I figure I’m worth your top salary!” The Fantastic Four respond by mocking him as having “rocks in his head” and hilariously thinking they’re General Motors. In so many words, they tell him to get lost.

Now, granted, Peter’s exceedingly capitalistic motivations in that comic, as well as his self-pitying whine after their rejection is a particularly selfish depiction of the character, and one of those aforementioned rough edges John Romita Sr. and Lee smoothed out when they retooled the template of Spider-Man comics to be a soap opera with fistfights. Nevertheless, Lee and Ditko were still trying to establish a fundamental element about the character that helped catapult him to becoming the most popular superhero in the world: He doesn’t play well with others and as an everyman is somewhat viewed as a schmuck from the outside perspective. That runs the gamut from how the press runs hatchet jobs on him, a la The Daily Bugle, as well as how even other heroes treat him.

While the characters Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, and Hulk were originally teamed up to raise the profile of all these characters in the Avengers comics—much like the films back in the early 2010s when they were still viewed as Marvel Comics’ B-team—Spidey was a bit of a loner. This made him more valuable to the Marvel Comics stable as he was Marvel’s closest answer to the traditional superhero setup of a Batman or Superman, but it also contrasted nicely with those paternal authority figures at DC, as well as Marvel’s own line of role models.

Peter Parker is the same age as “sidekick” characters like Robin, the Boy Wonder who idolizes Batman and does whatever he says, or Bucky, the human shield who idolized Captain America until he died. But when Lee lighted on the idea of Spidey? Here would be a character the age of many of Marvel Comics’ readers in the 1960s—teenagers—but instead of being the complacent and guileless sidekick, he’d be his own man (or a boy trying to be a man) with problems the readers could relate to: money, girls, school, and as the character aged, jobs and a career.

He’s the every kid who hung out with Mary Jane Watson, Gwen Stacy, and Harry Osborn at coffee shops discussing the Beatles more than he ever did the Avengers. When he teamed up with authority figures who might look at him as a presumable protege, the dynamic was usually awkward or even standoffish, with exception to the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four, who was the other most popular Marvel Comics teenage superhero character in the ‘60s.

Movies

Tom Holland Says Spider-Man: No Way Home Introduces ‘Raimi Camera’ Style in MCU

By David Crow

Movies

Doc Ock Is Still the Best Spider-Man Villain On-Screen

By David Crow

Intriguingly, the comics didn’t toy with turning Peter into a team player or sidekick type until the 2000s, when the married Peter and MJ moved into Avengers Tower and Peter basically became Iron Man’s subordinate. Personally, I’d argue that was far more damaging to the character’s appeal than the then-20 year old marriage to MJ. Nonetheless, Marvel EIC Joe Quesada obsessed about those nuptials until he gutted them—partially through the heavily contrived and inexplicable choice of having Tony Stark convince Peter Parker to unmask himself on national television.

For what it’s worth, Marvel Studios and Watts can learn the easy lessons from Marvel Comics’ most boneheaded mistakes. They’re playing in the same sandbox Quesada did 15 years ago, but with much sharper writing, with the choice of having Mysterio reveal Peter’s identity to the world in Spider-Man: Far From Home to create the same dynamic. And whatever happens next in Spider-Man: No Way Home, it can be assumed it’ll be better than the train wreck of an idea to have Peter and MJ sell their marriage (or memory of their marriage) to the Devil, as occurred in the legendarily awful Spider-Man: One More Day storyline.

Be that as it may, Marvel still took the other awful tenet from those late 2000s comics and made it the backbone of their version of the character: Peter is not his own man. He is Tony’s sidekick, who despite his youth is only too happy to toe the line for a dead billionaire, as if he were auditioning to become a member of College Republicans when he gets to university. He’s even deferential to his villains like Jake Gyllenhaal’s Quentin Beck who is able to manipulate his desire to suck up to the older generation.

He’s not a rebel in the movies; he’s the equivalent of Robin on Super-Friends. The kid who’s just thrilled to be in the same room, sir, and thus makes his own identity subservient to the larger cinematic shared universe’s central conceit–which is to be fawningly enamored with all the brands.

It’s fascinating that in 20 years, we went from Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man looking his idols in the eye—be it Willem Dafoe’s Norman or Alfred Molina’s Otto—and telling them what time it is, to a Web-Head who still hides behind his idols’ legs, or at least their billion-dollar drone satellite system and Starks Industries metal suits. In this way, even Jake Johnson’s Old Man Peter in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse captures more of the comic book character’s shaggy individuality and youthful insolence.

Peter will always be more fun when he’s got the passion of youth, not the practicality of a company man.

Listen to our Marvel Standom podcast here or wherever you listen, and subscribe!

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The post MCU Spider-Man Needs to Get Out of Iron Man’s Shadow appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/309NKpK

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

1 note · View note

catholic-character-tournament · 1 year

Text

Round 2 - Resurrect Bracket (Losers Bracket) Side B

ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to [make it to the finals]

Propaganda below ⬇️

Kirei

He fucked up so many people's lives so badly in just one decade (not on purpose) that the universe put him in the summoning pool of all world influencing souls. He doesnt really have any special powers but he does serve as a vessel for rasputin at one point. He's the guy who says "people die when they are killed"

please please please there's literally a type moon character in the gif on the top of this form so it's typemoonphobic if none of them get in but it shouldn't be her it should be kirei bc he's 50x funnier & more iconic than jeanne. funny lil murder priest who's fucking THE gilgamesh (from the epic of) in the church basement and dies in a knife fight w a 17 year old whose dad he wanted to fuck back in '94 before realizing that he was actually kinda lame and he's been bitter abt it ever since. he has an orphan torture factory in his basement but he's also canonically good at being a priest. he's so funny you should def try his mapo tofu i swear it's totally safe for human consumption and not made with any california reapers. did i mention he's a deadbeat dad.

64.media.tumblr.com

View on Twitter

Priest claims to be Pro Life to make Sakura Matou the most miserable girl on the planet, but he dies anyway.

bro became a catholic because he loves suffering

He’s a priest. Kind of. Not a very good priest obviously. There is something seriously wrong and fucked up with that man. It’s so entertaining.

he's gotta be one of the most insane catholic men ever with a very in-depth and interesting relationship with his religion and his relationship with god also he's the sexiest man ever to be conceptualized in the known universe and all of time

Will never forget the 40+ minute monologue in heavens feel being a thinly veiled metaphor for abortion

he wants to torment churchgoers and make them face their failures and suffering but all he ends up doing is motivate them to improve themselves. cringefail moment for him

he's absolutely insane. the coldhearted mercenary that barely reacts to anything is terrified of kirei. he's super fucked up. his ult in stay night is literally him channeling divine power into something called kyrie eleison. he's the vessel of rasputin (on account of being a priest with a huge....no i shant say) the biblical beast in grand order among other things. he gets drunk with and tops gilgamesh from the epic of gilgamesh in the church basement after gilgamesh from the epic of gilgamesh bats his eyes a little too hard at kirei in some of the horniest shot scenes ive ever seen. he also used to be a heretical "fixer" for the church, cleaning up scenes that would expose shit to the public. uhh what else. he holds cool swords between his fingers like a kid pretending to be wolverine but in my favorite route he just squares the hell up with the protagonist and they fight to the death outside planned parenthood

Friar Tuck

If you use the picture of furry friar tuck from the Disney Robin Hood, bless you 🙏

#kirei kotomine #fate series #cct polls #tumblr tournament #tumblr bracket #tumblr polls #fate zero #fate stay night #polls #r2losers #friar tuck #robin hood

42 notes · View notes

cksmart-world · 4 years

Text

The completely unnecessary news analysis

by Christopher Smart

February 25, 2020

GERRYMANDERING FAIR AND SQUARE

Surprise! Republican lawmakers don't like Proposition 4, the anti-gerrymandering ballot initiative approved by Utah voters. See, Republicans know that those stinkin' Democratic voters could actually get representation if the legislature were to install a non-partisan commission to draw legislative district boundaries fairly. And what if that led to something other than a one-party state. OMG. If voting districts were more fairly drawn, elected Democratic legislators — who don't live the Word of Wisdom — would tax and spend on stuff like glasses for poor people and food for hungry children. If that isn't socialism, what is? And another thing: Voters don't seem to realize that changing boundaries is too complicated for them to understand. House Speaker Brad Wilson explained that there are constitutional issues that dimwitted voters can't fathom. You can't just go around redrawing boundaries willy-nilly. Utah could turn into some place like Colorado. And nobody wants that.

HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR AT BYU — OH MY

A recent headline sent some folks into a meltdown, worried that LSD had been slipped into their tea. We're talking about Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), not Latter-day Saint (LDS). It seems impossible that “homosexual behavior” is now legal at Brigham Young University, the perennial winner of “Most Chaste Campus” by Rolling Stone. But on further research by the staff here at Smart Bomb, with a little help from Wilson and the band, we determined it was no hallucination. (A group of stoned band members and a control group of straight staffers went to the Provo campus and came back with the same result.) And despite our well-placed Jack Mormon agents deep within the Tower of Power, we could not discern if the 180-degree policy flip came in the form of a revelation from on high, or was just an effort to blunt the impact of the national reaction to the Broadway play “The Book of Mormon.” It's all a bit confusing. But our crack research team came upon something hiding in pain sight: Heterosexual “behavior” at BYU is still banned. There now, feel better?

GASLIGHTING R US

Republicans want more immigrants and a balanced budget. What? That's the message Mike Mulvaney, Trump's chief of staff, was spewing last week in the UK. Mulvaney never says anything Trump didn't say first, so the staff here at Smart Bomb has to ask, What the F-word? Trump has granted fewer visas, approved fewer refugees and ordered the removal of hundreds of thousands of legal residents. Second, he pushed through a trillion dollar tax cut that sent our national debt into orbit. But this is what Mulvaney said last week: “We are running out of people to fuel the economic growth that we’ve had in our nation over the last four years. We need more immigrants.” And then there was this: "The Republican party is very interested in deficits when there is a Democrat in the White House," Mulvaney said. "Then Donald Trump became president, and we're a lot less interested as a party." Whoa, hold on — either Mulvaney is on a Kamikaze mission, or there is something else at play here. It's like Attorney General Bill Barr's admission that Trump's tweets make his job impossible. As it turns out, you can have your cake and eat it, too. Put another way: We're being played for fools. Well, as Wilson says, “No news there.”

WHY TRUMPERS LOVE TRUMP

1 – Not because he grabs women's crotches.

2 – Not because he pays hush money to porn stars.

3 – Not because he's declared bankruptcy dozens of times.

4 – Not because he calls people sophomoric names.

5 – Not because he has fantasies of a shirtless Vladimir Putin.

6 – Not because he rolled back regulations to allow mine waste dumped into rivers.

7 – Not because he has done everything he can to undermine the justice system.

8 – Not because he started a trade war with China that's screwing farmers.

9 – Not because he disses our allies and made a mess of our foreign policy

10 – No, they Love Him because he's the mythological chosen one who will save us by sabotaging those liberal elites and all their laws and institutions. No, Wilson, he's not Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction. Or wait, on second thought...

Post Script — It was a good week for Bernie Sanders and his Bernie Bros (Can women be bros?). Not so good for the rest of the Dems, who are having a nervous breakdown. There was some other good news: Chris Stewart did not get anointed to the post of national intelligence director after Trump discovered Stewart once referred to him as “Our Mussolini.” All that ass-kissing soul-selling for naught. The bad news: Stewart is still our congressman. (Please, don't say, “Deep State.”) And speaking of brilliance, daredevil “Mad” Mike Hughes was DOA after riding a homemade rocket up and then quickly down near Barstow, California, in effort to prove the Earth is flat. Oh well, one less Trump voter. And from our “Jurisprudence” - file, this: A bill introduced at the Utah Legislature would forbid deadbeat dads from fishing and hunting. So pay up that back child support or kiss that trophy buck goodbye. That'll teach 'em. And speaking of keeping the great unwashed in line, or at least sober, another bill would bar drunks from state liquor stores. It would require implanting a radio-active chip in the forehead of anyone cited for DUI. If said person attempted to buy booze, an alarm would go off and they would get a real bad headache. And then there is the proposed bill that would again make recreational pot illegal. It matters little to our self-righteous lawmakers that marijuana is so ubiquitous that any 14-year-old can get high on demand — there are appearances to keep. Appearances are very big at the Utah State Legislature. And so it goes.

Well, Wilson, wake up the bros and see if they can come up with a little something for Bernie's fans and anyone else who smells blood in the water:

Come writers and critics, who prophesize with your pen / And keep your eyes wide, the chance won't come again / And don't speak too soon, for the wheel's still in spin / And there's no tellin' who that it's namin' / For the loser now will be later to win / For the times they are a-changin'...

0 notes

timalexanderdollery · 5 years

Text

Teens are calling themselves “ugly” on TikTok. It’s not as depressing as you think.

Getty Images

Instagram is a beauty pageant. TikTok is where kids are free to be mediocre.

There’s a TikTok that’s just a boy saying, “I may be ugly, but at least I’m also … dumb and annoying.” Then he dances while Ariana Grande’s “Successful” plays. It’s extremely funny, and a little bit sad, and I think about it every day.

Kids on TikTok call themselves ugly all the time, most of the time as a joke, but not always, and I’m never sure how I’m supposed to feel about it. “Why do I look like this? What’s the reason?” asked the popular TikToker @emmwee in her car without makeup. “Me being shocked at how ugly I look,” wrote Brittany Tomlinson, better known as the kombucha girl, at one moment in an unrelated video. “I like a boy but I’m ugly, what do I do with that?” sings 18-year-old high school senior David Postlewate, in one TikTok about a highly familiar experience.

David isn’t ugly by any means — none of these kids are — but the internet has created a never-ending conveyor belt of people so bafflingly good-looking that everyone else is immediately rendered ugly by comparison. “I know that I’m not going to look like Benji Krol,” says David, referring to the TikToker with a nest of raven hair and 5.6 million followers. “But I’m my own person, and that’s what makes you beautiful,” he says, not consciously referring to the One Direction song.

The thing about TikTok is that as much as it is a place for teenagers to goof off in their bedrooms, it is also the world’s largest beauty pageant. After all, part of the fun about making TikToks is getting to stare at your face for as long as you want, and if you happen to be very, very beautiful, then other people will enjoy staring at your face, too. A stunningly massive portion of the app is devoted to genetically blessed users, e-boys like Benji Krol and human Barbies like Loren Gray. A scroll through the TikTok’s home For You feed will reveal plenty of content where, despite whatever action is going on in the video, the real takeaway is “I’m hot.”

It is against this backdrop that its inverse, “I’m ugly” culture, has proliferated. Rather than trying to compete for views and likes with the genetically gifted, kids are pivoting to self-deprecation in a way that’s less depressing than it might seem to concerned parents: it’s a reclamation of mediocrity in an online space where everyone else is an overachiever.

17-year-old Annie Pham was satirizing TikTok’s culture of hot people and glow-ups when she made her viral video in late August. Using a popular meme where people would show their “before” selves and their “after” selves on the beat drop, Annie’s instead showed her “before” self trying and failing to transform. “Why isn’t it working?” she complains to the camera. “After like, a week, I was reading the comments, and it was really cool to see how much people relate to it,” she says.

Relatable videos are why people like TikTok in the first place, and feeling unattractive on TikTok is one of the most relatable experiences of all. David, of the “I like a boy but I’m ugly” video, for instance, has a TikTok bio that reads “ugly is my only personality trait.”

David only made the video because that’s what was happening in his life: He liked a boy who he thought was out of his league. (“He’s really cute, he goes to my school. We’re both in theater,” he says.) He describes himself as a “really confident person,” by the way. He just doesn’t take himself all that seriously.

Normal kids have created an entire genre of internet comedy devoted to how constantly seeing exceptional talent and beauty go viral makes the rest of us feel like ugly losers. On my feed I see videos of kids turning the shitty aspects of their lives into funny content: their most embarrassing sports mistakes, hideous childhood photos, dilapidated apartments, unfortunate haircuts, leg nipples, imprisoned parents, disproportionately long thumbs, sexual ineptitude, mental illness. And of course, their minor physical insecurities: girls who feel like they’re asymmetrical, girls who hate their smiles, girls who have a cute, pretty face but a body that “looks like a fucking potato.”

The layers of irony on any social media app that young people are using can be difficult for adults to parse, but when it relates to topics like body image and self-esteem, psychologists take it seriously. “I kind of celebrate what they’re doing — they’re trying to push back on the idea that we all look perfect on social media,” says Sara Frischer, a psychiatric nurse practitioner at Union Square Practice in New York City. “But I think it’s just a little misguided in how they’re doing it. It’s deflection, and it’s self-protective to then make a joke about it. It protects people from feeling vulnerable.” She gives the example of being a bad speller. If you say to yourself that you’re the worst speller in the world, that’s protecting yourself from someone else pointing it out.

But what if you’re just objectively a bad speller? What would true acceptance of that fact even look like? “That’s where self-compassion comes in,” she says. “Saying, ‘This is something I really struggle with, and I just happen to not be such a great speller.’ Having compassion for yourself, talking about how hard it is to struggle with this, and all the emotions involved. It’s adding self-compassion instead of self-deprecation. That’s the missing element.”

“I’m ugly” culture has spread so far on TikTok that now even TikTok’s “pretty people” are co-opting sounds and memes meant for those self-described uglies. That’s given way to a wider culture of policing, wherein those users’ comments sections are flooded with fishing rods to signify that they’re fishing for compliments.

In July, Ryan Sterling, a 23-year-old in the Chicago suburbs who has had alopecia since he was in middle school, uploaded a video that begins with a picture of Britney Spears with a shaved head followed by a picture of Mr. Clean, and then himself: “It all started when my mom met my dad, then they fell in love, and they had me. Hi, I’m Ryan,” he says. “And my life? It’s kinda crazy.”

Within a few weeks, the “Hi, I’m Ryan” video had spawned a massive viral meme, even ending up on a segment of Ellen. But whereas Ryan’s original video made fun of the way he looked, iterations that came after — often where a person would show their two very attractive parents and the punchline was their even more attractive self — were little more than excuses to brag. In September, Ryan posted another TikTok directed at them: “Get off my sound, it’s for ugly people!” he says. “All you pretty-ass people with your pretty parents and your perfect genes, get out of here! We uglies and the balds and the grosses and the ickies, we need to fight back!”

Olivia Chesney, a 19-year-old at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, was in the middle of homework when she went into the bathroom to make a random video. She’s standing in front of the mirror and asking, “Why do I be looking so good from the front?” Then she turns to the side and bursts out laughing. The joke is that she looks bigger that way, and the video now has more than 2.5 million views.

That video isn’t the only TikTok she’s made about her body, and not all of them are self-deprecating. There’s one where she shows cute photos her friends have taken of her, and another lip synching to the 1958 swing song “The Bigger the Figure.”

Olivia, like all of us, lives in a world where even if you aren’t born skinny, or distractingly gorgeous, or whatever, you’re still supposed to do everything you possibly can to become those things; to starve your body down and add on some lip fillers until you’re deemed presentable. Americans continue to spend more money on plastic surgery and weight loss plans every year, and one study of UK youth showed that Instagram had the worst effect on body image among any social media site. There are an ever-growing number of billion-dollar industries built upon the profits that come from making people feel awful about themselves, even if those products are shrouded in the aesthetics of positivity and empowerment.

Calling yourself ugly on TikTok, then, is a form of freedom from the expectation of hotness. It’s a self-deprecating in-joke that only excludes the extraordinarily beautiful, who could maybe stand to be excluded from something for once.

“I’m ugly” culture on TikTok also obfuscates its happier subtext: That yeah, it’s okay to be ugly, because now you can focus on more important things. Olivia explains this feeling while talking about a video where she calls herself fat: “People who are ugly, people who are fat, it’s just like, why are we trying to hide it anymore? We can still live our lives and be that way.”

It’s not like “ugly” people don’t happy lives or fall in love or get rich or go viral on TikTok. The boy that David sang about? The one he liked? It’s possible that they’re maybe, sort of in the process of getting together.

“If I’m going to be completely honest, and I don’t know yet because things haven’t really been official,” he tells me, “but I think that stuff is starting to happen with him.” It’s all extremely beautiful.

Sign up for The Goods’ newsletter. Twice a week, we’ll send you the best Goods stories exploring what we buy, why we buy it, and why it matters.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2O9MEAw

#Vox - All

0 notes

gracieyvonnehunter · 5 years

Text

Teens are calling themselves “ugly” on TikTok. It’s not as depressing as you think.

Getty Images

Instagram is a beauty pageant. TikTok is where kids are free to be mediocre.

Sign up for The Goods’ newsletter. Twice a week, we’ll send you the best Goods stories exploring what we buy, why we buy it, and why it matters.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2O9MEAw

#Vox - All

0 notes

corneliusreignallen · 5 years

Text

Teens are calling themselves “ugly” on TikTok. It’s not as depressing as you think.

Getty Images

Instagram is a beauty pageant. TikTok is where kids are free to be mediocre.

Sign up for The Goods’ newsletter. Twice a week, we’ll send you the best Goods stories exploring what we buy, why we buy it, and why it matters.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2O9MEAw

#Vox - All

0 notes