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here-but-forgotten · 2 months

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tolerate losing me. /Valeria/wife!reader.

part one | fight. toxic yuri. emotional not goodness. mentions of infidelity. Alejandro mention. a bit toxic.

this was the only time you were wishing she would ignore you— ever intense eyes peering to meet yours. The kitchen light is off. They’re all off. And she stands there— the woman who used to make your heart flutter like a childhood crush, who pulled you from your pain like a savior, whose eyes used to soften when they met yours like a too perfect love novel,

“you’re losing me.”

You repeat, your eyes at the counter. Her hands resting on the counter. her body leaning forward. The counter separating the two of you. and it was still.

everything was. is. valeria. you. the night. the house. the house she tried to claim was a home. but it wasn’t still like water, not like a safely ignored puddle that floated little leaves like a lake, no. it is like a too-tight sweater that would choke you if you moved wrong, a mouthful off too much food that would choke you, water going down your throat wrong.

“I know, I never give you enough time,” Valeria starts— slow, poisonous, cold— “I know it’s always my fault.”

“I never said it was.”

“You don’t have to say it, you act like it. I know you act like this whole life I’ve given you has been a waste. I know all my time I gave you has been a waste in your eyes. I know I can’t do enough for you.” Snappy. Cruel.

“I know my pain is an imposition,” You murmur.

Your eyes stay on the stone.

“I’ve slaughtered men to give you this— do you think i’ll just let you leave?” her voice cracks, words too rushed to be confident.

“Maybe it would have been more efficient if you married them.”

She breathes in, a sort of shocked sound.

“You’re actually serious?”

“You’re just never here, and when you are, I feel like I’m just a burden, like a chore you don’t look forward to.”

“With you acting like this, you are.”

Your chest twists, like pulling your leg in the wrong direction.

“I wouldn’t have married me either,” You whisper, “And I wish you hadn’t.”

Still. Again. Air thick. Night dark. Eyes locked on stone like it would be something to save you, something to get you out.

You breathe in, a shaky breath, lip trembling,

“I know you don’t understand, and I don’t really expect you to anymore,” You try to keep your voice even, throat scratching.

“You’re right, I don’t understand how you’re acting like such a brat after what I’ve given you. I’ve given you everything you could have wanted— you have money, you’re safe, you can get whatever you want— and you still bitch and whine like I don’t do anything for you.”

Your lip wobbles.

“I just wanted you. I wanted to be yours, and I wanted you to be mine. I just wanted to be your equal. I gave you the best version of me. I tried,”

You breathe in deep, finally gazing at her hands,

“I tried to be your strongest, I tried to be the best little me, I tried to take up as little space, I tried to give you all my empathy,”

You shift on your feet; her empty ring finger is tapping impatiently on the counter,

“I know I loved you. And i convinced myself you loved me. But I don’t think that’s true anymore.”

“I’ve come back in fucking stitches for you.” She hissed, seething.

“Did you tell him that too?”

“I did that for my job—“

“But you lied about that too.”

“I love you and this is what I get,” Valeria lowers her voice, speaking through her teeth.

“How can you say you love me when you haven’t noticed anything wrong?” You ask, voice soft. Small.

That’s how she makes you feel. Made you feel. Small. She takes your being and she crumbles it down until she can fit you in her pocket and forget about you long enough to forget what’s digging into her skin.

“You’re always moody.”

“I mess up and I know that, I don’t know why you can’t admit you mess up sometimes too.”

“I’m not here long enough to need to do that.”

“I know.”

Your heartbeat is the only noise for a while. Beating in your ears. If you had counted the rhythm, maybe you would have known how much time had passed.

“Why?”

“Why what?” Valeria snaps, a little too quickly.

“Why were you with him? What about ‘work’ would need you to be with him?”

“There are things you don’t understand—“

“I fucking know that, that’s why I’m asking,” You snap, a little too quickly, the words leaving you before you had the chance to catch them.

Valeria stops. And normally you would pick your words back up, hide them again, try to tell her you didn’t mean it, yet,

“I don’t know anything about what you do. I know barely anymore about you. I know what you have crafted for me, but that’s it.”

“I’m trying to keep you safe, but if you want to get yourself killed—”

“—I don’t know how fucking your colonel is a part of that—”

“—Then i’ll let you do it.”

Her words fall into place in your head after a moment, your eyes stinging.

“What?”

Valeria is quiet.

“You want me to die?”

“No— I didn’t mean it like that—“

“How else do you mean that?”

Valeria is quiet.

“Why do you even keep me around then? Just to be convenient? Just to be able to have someone to talk at?”

Valeria is quiet.

“Do you just want a toy? To keep around?”

Valeria is quiet.

“You’re losing me and you don’t care to fight for it.”

“I never said that.”

“You don’t have to say that, you act like it.“

Valeria is quiet.

You might just have dealt the final blow.

“I’m only here when you want it. Some days I get two sentences out of you before you go away again. If i’m lucky I get a ‘good night’. I’m lucky if I get to see you on the weekend. But I normally don’t.”

Valeria is quiet.

“You left your phone here. One of them.”

Valeria shifts.

“You seem to be able to talk to everyone except me.”

“It’s not like that—“

“I don’t know how flirting with a man you’re not married to, who is your superior, who you’ve apparently known your whole life, how fucking a man you’re not married to because you asked him to, isn’t like that.”

“Why would you invade my space like that?”

“It’s not invading when you’ve given me explicit permission. I suppose I just found the one that was the worst to find.”

She shifts again, turning away from the counter.

“It was for work.”

Her voice is finally soft. Not commanding. Not booming. Not snapping.

“You can flirt for work but ignore your wife for years?”

“I haven’t been ignoring you.”

“What would you call it then? Not paying me any attention no matter how much I reach for you, no matter how much I beg, no matter how much I strip myself back into the most raw, vulnerable pieces of me, no matter what I do not being good enough for you— what else is that?”

“It’s ignoring you.”

That’s an argument you wish you hadn’t won.

“I knew you had a couple of phones, for work,” you start, moving away from the counter, “But I didn’t know about that grey one.”

Valeria goes still.

“Who is Judith?”

“You’re playing a dangerous game.”

“I’m not too scared. You’ve already killed me.”

Valeria sighs.

“She has nice tits but she’s not who you’re married to. Unless this whole ‘married’ thing was a lie. I might believe you if it was.”

Valeria is quiet.

“Please just fucking say something.”

“I loved you.”

You nod, to yourself. She isn’t looking at you.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t enough to keep around. But I wish you had let me go sooner.”

“you were enough.”

Your lip trembles. Again.

“I don’t believe many of the words coming out of your mouth anymore.”

“Did you tell Alejandro?”

“Who?”

She sighs.

“The man.”

“I wouldn’t know his name. I just found out about it.”

She sighs.

“I don’t appreciate the accusation but, I suppose that type of thing doesn’t matter anymore.”

“I know I talk to you everyday like you need but I do care about you.”

“I find that hard to believe,” You murmur, soft, “I don’t need everyday, I just needed more than twice a month when you’re horny.”

She scoffs, but doesn’t say anything.

Valeria is quiet.

You are quiet.

The house is quiet.

“I need to go out,” Valeria finally says, moving towards the door, “I’m sorry I’m leaving you alone.”

“I’m used to it.”

“I don’t need your snark.”

“That wasn’t snark.”

She stops for a moment, pulling something out of her pocket, resting it on the counter with a soft clink.

“You… I want you to keep this place,” She whispers, her voice wobbling, “And you can burn all my shit. I won’t come back… if you don’t want me to.”

“Okay.”

“That’s it?” Her voice turns towards you, your eyes lost in a corner of the room, “I get ‘okay’?”

“I’ve already done a lot of talking.”

She pauses.

“I suppose you have.”

She steps, pulling the door open silently, slamming it behind her.

A pot on the wall jumps, hitting the wall.

And the house is quiet.

And your heartbeat has softened.

And it is quiet, as usual, but there’s a weight lifted.

You move, walking through the house silently—

“Burn all my shit— you already took it,” You murmur to yourself, finally turning on a light, warm light filling the room. There was nothing of hers left. Nothing that mattered. A pair of socks. An undershirt. A receipt. One of her burner phones. Moving without thought, you pick the phone up; caller id’s in Spanish or code, nothing particular sticking out, only that the man seemed to have had the same fight you just did. There’s a couple of angry voice mails. In Spanish. A mans voice. You hear the name Valeria but don’t listen too hard. A lot of aggressive “¿Que?”’s thrown in there. You put the phone down, looking at the rather dumb caller I.D. “CAV”. One word. All caps.

But you listen. You throw the clothes outside. You throw the receipt in the trash. But you keep that phone. And you watch it. And the pain sets into your chest— hollow and painful, twisting, like an open gash where the blood is only making it worse.

The phone is in terrible condition. Looks like it went through war. The screen is partially shattered, only being held together with a screen protector and a layer of clear tape. Dust. Gun powder, probably.

I don’t know why there would be gun powder. She didn’t make her own bullets. She never filled her own cartridges

You adjust, a moment of.. calm, taking over your mind. Finally. After so long. Just calm. No nagging. No words echoing. Just quiet in your head.

Why would she take her phone into active areas? Can’t you easily track a phone?

You watch the phone, opening it again, the settings set for most tracking permissions.

That’s a stupid decision. A deadly one, really.

You place the phone down. The screen lights up.

I.D.- CAV.

#valeria garza x reader #valeria cod #angst #valeria mw2 #valeria x reader #valeria garza x fem!reader #valeria garza #valeria call of duty #call of duty #modern warfare 2 #cod mw2 #cod #these have been my vent fics #and yes CAV is colonel alejandro vargas #tolerate it.

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ladyloveandjustice · 4 months

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My Favorite Continuing Manga I Read in 2023

I went into the brand new manga I read in this post, but here's an update on some great continuing series!

Shout out to She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat for having phenomenal storyline about find the courage to cut toxic family members off, which is pretty rare to see (in manga especially)! The story explores how your family can impose a relationship with food that harms you in many different ways, and how finding acceptance of your food habits helps you heal. It also continues to be a lovely exploration of queer adults finding themselves that makes the point that your experiences don't have to fit in a box. And I appreciate that they included a character who doesn't like eating that much for me to relate to! See my first review here,

Now for a quick word about the other great continuing manga I read:

- I Want to be a Wall really upped it's game and included a nuanced discussion about asexuality that I loved seeing. See first review here.

- Yuri is My Job is still the best lesbian drama manga around and hits hard. See previous discussion here,

- A Man and His Cat is still the sweetest and Yona of the Dawn is as action packed and intriguing as ever...I feel a climax slowly coming!

- A Bride’s Story is still wonderfully done historical fiction with lush art while How Do We Relationship continues to develop its web of queer relationships nicely.

- Witch Hat Atelier is still a wondrous story of magic, creativity, accessibility, and struggling under unfair systems, all told in a fascinating fantasy setting with loveable, complex characters and incredible art.

A lot of manga I like concluded this year too, so let's take a slightly longer look at the conclusions!

Dungeon Meshi- The conclusion to one of my favorite fantasy manga ever was fittingly bombastically weird and fully satisfying. It filled you up like good food should. Live well instead of being consumed by fear of death and loss. Eat well instead of working yourself to the bone and neglecting your needs. Follow your own path, but cherish your connections and get together for a good meal. This series and its intricate world and wonderful characters will stay with me for a long time.

Catch These Hands- See my first review here. I enjoyed the cute conclusion to this series, and it was nice to see a little ace rep and a message about not conforming to society's expectations of "adulthood". It's an ode to delinquent girls that a sukeban stan like me can get behind! A lot of the stuff that annoyed me in the second volume was mostly dropped for the third and fourth, so that's also nice.

Run Away With Me Girl- See my first review here. I wish this had been a little longer, but the conclusion worked well and was cathartic.

Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon- See my first review here. A nice conclusion to a cute, slow-paced little romance series, with yet more ace rep!

The Two of Them are Pretty Much Like This- see my first review here. This conclusion felt a bit rushed, with plot lines still dangling, like it was cancelled early or something. But the series is still good overall, and I'll miss it.

My Love Mix Up -This sweet-as-pie series about cute gay misunderstandings leading to romance comes to a fittingly sweet conclusion. It's sad waving goodbye to these silly, good-hearted kids, but I'm satisfied with where they ended up.

#year in comics #manga #yuri #dungeon meshi #yuri is my job #witch hat atelier #she loves to cook and she loves to eat #a man and his cat #a bride's story #how do we relationship #doughnuts under a crescent moon #the two of them are pretty much like this #run away with me girl #my love mix up #akatsuki no yona #yona of the dawn #my reviews

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jariten · 3 months

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Recurring themes in 2023: my year of lesbian and yuriful manga

Doing this a little different when summarizing 2023. Since I stuck to my decision to not start buying any new licensed series and mainly did cultural catchup for both english and japanese manga I didn't really read enough hot new releases in 2023 for them to warrant a list of their own as they usually do. So to catch up on the months without a roundup as well as a year end summary I will do some themed lists!

The first came to easy since a noticeable trend was how much lesbian and yuri manga i made time for. For clarity I make a subjective distinction of lesbian and yuri works, just as some works I'm more inclined to describe as a Gay or LGBT story rather than a BL if it wasn't published in a BL imprint or invests time to do cultural or social commentary. Now to the list:

Among my favorite lesbian manga read in 2023 are: The Girl That Can't Get A Girlfriend by Mieri Hiranishi Moonlight Flowers by Mutsumi Tsukumo Indigo Blue by Ebine Yamaji Umibe no Kain by Minori Kimura

I won't reiterate too much as I already talked about it in a roundup but Hiranishi gave an extremely refreshing perspective on being a woman who loves masculine women, the dark story of her first heartbreak and the path forward. Love that Viz took the initiative to give her a graphic novel edition and promote her platform by licensing The Girl That Can't Get a Girlfriend. I've always found women's manga to be a not that secret treasure trove of lesbian stories yet I hadn't read the classic that is Moonlight Flowers... Just a truly suspenseful and romantic story of lesbian love as liberation and freedom that I can't recommend enough. Just with a clear warning of depictions of intimate partner violence that could be upsetting.

Yamaji has a well known track record of exploring lesbianism as well as bisexuality and I think Indigo Blue was extremely interesting in its explooration of the protagonist and her journey to figuring out what she wants as she's caught between two relationships. Another story of a woman's journey to confront who she is and what she wants: Umibe no Cain was a rather heartbreaking story of a young woman seeking refuge with a woman older than herself and as they start forming a frienfdship she begins to face the hurt and trauma she faced from her mother. But as the two women grow closer their relationship might take a turn that they can't come back from.

In the yuri-ish category: Kimi no Kureru Mazui Ame by Kaiko Fuyumushi OL to Ningyo by Mai Shiba

Won't reiterate too much of Kimi no Kureru Mazui Ame as I already talked about it in a roundup but love bite sized depictions of a miserable adolescence and toxic yuri but not quite. And if you found yourself taken by the more supernatural stories in this collection then may I recommend OL to Ningyo? Described by the author themselves as yuri-ish this collection depicts the bonds of human girls and their non-human counterparts. Humans, vampires, tengu, mermaid, and oni all face their own challenges and conflicts both romantic and otherwise.

In the Now That's What I Call Yuri category: Natsu to Lemon to Overlay by Ru & Miyako Miyahara Ki ni Natteru Hito ga Otoko Janakatta (The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy At All) by Sumiko Arai Sukeban to Tenkousei by Fujichika

Natsu to Lemon to Overlay is the manga adaption of a yuri award winning novel novel that I picked kind of at random. An aspiring voice actress struggling to make any career moves are requested by a mysterious woman to read the obituary at her own funeral. What happens next will warm your heart. The Guy She Liked is one where I'm just going to assume most if not all of you are aware of so I'm just going to say that I like it and am looking forward to the next volume 👍 And last but not least: an adorable 80's throwback with some truly heartwarming moments and developments not to mention very funny: Sukeban to Tenkousei by Fujichika

#recommendation corner #roundup #my scans #long post

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sarcastic--metaphor · 8 months

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Vampire!Simon AU

I'm not going to call this a Part 1 to an overarching fic or anything. This is more like a rough proof of concept to see if I'm really willing to devote more time to this AU over my toxic yuri butchblegum/Star!Marcy AU. (Bc i wanna write both but I have to start managing my time better)

Basically:

Simon found Marcy but got turned into a vampire before he went fully mad

Marcy is still the Star

Simon has been forced to act as the Vampire King's advisor for 1000 years

he finds and wants to save baby Finn

Word count: ~1700

+++

The Vampire King seldom hunted his own meals anymore. True, when he was a thousand years younger, he adored the hunt. He savored the screams and the pleading. Listening for the rush of spilled blood and the dwindling voices. But he was a true king now, he had a castle and a legion at his disposal. His ward. And nowadays, he quite enjoyed his food being delivered fresh at his feet.

Perhaps it was because he could no longer enjoy the hunt with his court. Over the years, he lost his jester, his advisors. All of his inner circle save for his dearest Star.

And his Temperance.

As he heard the lesser vampire drones come in with that night’s catch, his daughter drifted in from one of the many tunnels overhead his throne. Her fangs glinted in the low light.

“I wonder what’s for dinner.”

“I told them to bring you some women,” the King said. He knew his daughter was partial to the company and blood of females.

The Star giggled in delight as the drones came in, pairs of them carrying their captured prey and dropping them before their masters.

Three men, two women. A fine enough meal.

The Vampire King rose from his throne, stretching his maw wide to flex his jaw. The humans shook and cried in their fears. Some prayed, some closed their eyes. It made no difference in the end. They’d been exhausted or injured from the hunt and knew their fates were sealed.

Then the most foul sound imaginable cut through the air.

The King hissed, eyes narrowing. It seemed he was mistaken. There was a small lump on the ground among the humans, a dirtied blanket writhing in a slow, grotesque fashion. His attention shifted to the dozen or so minions who brought him dinner.

“I told you you could eat those little things out there, but you can’t bring them in here! It’s already making such a ruckus.”

The drones quaked as much as the food, shivering as they hovered above the humans and pleaded for forgiveness. The King had half a mind to slay a few to set an example, but his shoulders stiffened at the sound of incoming footsteps.

His feline ears flattened against his skull as he let out a sharp growl.

“Dad?” Star asked.

“Quickly, baby girl,” he said, pointing at the lump on the floor, “Eat that wretched thing, he’s coming!”

She understood without another word. The Star dashed for the humans, scattering them and making them scream. But they were not her targets yet. Instead, she grabbed the baby and peeled the blanket back, fangs bared.

Too late.

The King turned to spot Temperance appear at the base of the steps to his left. He seemed out of breath, clutching the entryway as he adjusted his glasses. Damn it all, he had heard the cries from a distance and came running.

“Star!” he said.

Her shoulders slumped as she retracted her fangs. “Temperance. Come on, let me have this one. It’s giving Dad a headache.”

Temperance approached The Star, smoothing over his pure white hair as he examined the bundle in her arms. She allowed him, as the King knew she would.

Temperance took the infant from her and cradled it in his arms. He already had that look on his face, that expression of pure pity. He always had such a soft spot for human children.

It was a blessing long ago, that compassion. It was what saved The Star from an early grave. But there was no place for it here, now. And they all knew it.

Temperance looked to the King, lips parted.

He held up a hand and his sole surviving advisor fell quiet. The baby still bellowed. The Vampire King pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. He didn’t want to argue like the last time. Temperance was mostly a man of reason, so he tried to appeal to that part of him.

“It won’t survive long, you know this,” he said quietly. As great and terrible as he was, it gave the King no pleasure to see the pinched expression on his advisor’s face.

“They’ll fare better this time.” Temperance said. “I’ve learned from my past mistakes.”

That didn’t say much. Disease, malnutrition, and the stray, hungry minion had ended each and every one of Temperance’s past wards. They just didn’t have the protection that the king, the most absolute authority, had given to his own daughter, though Temperance was loath to admit this.

The King regarded his advisor. “How long has it been since your last pet?”

Temperance said, averting his gaze, “About a hundred years.”

He was jostling the little thing now. Rocking it. At least it was growing a little more silent.

And wasn’t that the thing about Temperance?

His endless patience, his endless devotion?

The Vampire King had praised it so highly in the past.

“Dad,” The Star said. She drifted over to him and put her hand on his shoulder, “Let him try again.”

He scoffed, surprising even himself. “You of all people want a human infant in the hive?”

She grimaced. “Not really. But it’d mean a lot to him.”

“Please,” Temperance said. He was holding that little thing so close to his chest, his heart. As if he were already fond of it. He asked, “Haven’t I served you well all these years?”

The King sighed. Temperance was a good caretaker. He taught The Star to read and write, and helped take care of her for the past thousand years.

It was true that while Temperance has always been painfully sentimental, he had been good to them.

“Very well,” the Vampire King said. He pointed at Temperance. “Keep the child. But I don’t want to hear it cry.”

Relief flooded Temperance’s face, making him seem much younger than he was. He exhaled softly and bowed.

“Thank you, my lord.”

“However,” the King said.

In half a second, he’d crossed the gap between himself and Temperance. His advisor hardly flinched.

The Vampire King said, “I am not scared of some little blood bag. But humans are savage things. It’ll grow up to be a nuisance without proper discipline. And the moment it so much as threatens The Star,” he took Temperance’s chin in his clawed hand and forced him to meet his King’s eye, “the moment it ever threatens you, I will rip its throat out. Do you understand, Temperance?”

“Yes, I do,” Temperance said, a resigned look in his eyes. “Thank you.”

He began to leave, that child almost quiet now.

“You won’t stay for dinner?” Star asked.

He paused at the bottom of the steps and smiled over his shoulder. “I’m not really hungry.”

Typical. He never ate from live meals, only the bottled stuff. Well, not that it mattered much to the King. More for him and his baby girl.

+++

Temperance fled up the stairs before he could hear the crush of bones and the ripping sound of flesh being cleaved. After a millennium, it still made him sick.

The baby in his arms began to warble a fresh bout of cries.

“No, no. Hush, now,” Temperance whispered. He knew what he needed to do.

He stopped by his library only briefly, just to pick up a tattered red scarf from a box beneath his desk. Away from the eyes of the vampire drones and the rest of the court, he sated his hunger by sucking the red from the fabric.

A small hand pawed at the air before landing on the now-white scarf, bunching it up in one little fist.

“Oh, you want it?” Temperance asked. He let the baby hold it as he continued on his way. His wing of the vampiric castle consisted of a sprawling, multistory library, his private baths, his bedchambers, and one small adjoining room that hadn’t been used in a hundred years.

But everything was as he left it. The minions kept it clean of dust for him as per his request, but they didn’t move or touch anything.

Temperance sat in the rocking chair by the crib, undoing the baby’s dirtied blanket to reveal the little body within.

“Oh!”

The baby’s face was ruddy from his bout of crying. But he was chubby and healthy. No motley coloring to the skin, no signs of injury or infection. What was even more fascinating, however, was his white hat. Despite the lack of distinct eyes or a nose, the little ears were emblematic of an animal. Perhaps a dog or a bear.

It’d been a while since he’d seen a human with an animal hat, he thought this tradition died out a century or two ago. Many vampires nowadays, even the most simple-minded and animalistic ones, knew how to circumvent an animal hat. Temperance took off the baby’s hat and turned it inside out.

And yes, there on the inner brim was a handsewn name.

“Finn,” he said aloud. “Is that you, baby Finn?”

He smiled, replacing the child’s hat and watching his curious eyes wander the room.

Then it dawned upon him. He felt a terrible weight upon his chest, a crippling guilt.

“Oh… you poor thing.”

If Finn had a name sewn into his hat, it must have meant he came from someone who remembered the old ways of humans. Someone still in tune with human culture.

His culture. Temperance’s chest ached.

None of the adults that were brought in with the child tried to fight for him. Perhaps he didn’t belong to any of them, that he was taken from his true parents. If they were even alive, that was.

“I’m sorry,” Temperance said, “I’m so sorry.”

He wrapped Finn in the white scarf and held him close.

“Listen to me, Finn.” he said gently, “I’m going to take good care of you, I promise.”

Finn cooed and popped his lips. Simon laughed softly despite himself. He knew he was weak in comparison to the other vampiric royals. But he was even more so when it came to children.

“My name is Temperance, but you can call me Simon.”

#fionna and cake #fionna and cake spoilers #simon petrikov #the vampire king #marceline #vampire AU #toxic marcy AU #finally simon gets to be a daddy #its what he deserves!!!!#also i know the vampires in AT can float #but simon will always prefer walking #it reminds him of how he used to be human

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kinokoshoujoart · 24 days

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is it really toxic yuri if she doesn’t demand you cut off your fingers for her happiness???

”You have given me gifts over 10,000 times. Congratulations!” haha happy wife happy life…. (my fingers are stumps)

as some of you may or may not have realized i am powerless to the siren call of the ultimate devilish blond Harvest Moon Scum Man, and given that the Japanese version of DS Cute gives you TWO saveslots and TWO hands and the ability to to be in a literal toxic lesbian best friendrriage with ultimate devilish mischievous blonde Harvest Moon Scum Woman i have no choice but to meet all of the Witch Princess’s super reasonable honey do list!!

so one of those fun little non negotiable requests from majo-sama is that you need to give her presents 10,000 times before she’ll even consider marrying you, even if you meet all the marriage requirements!

i don’t mean 10,000 items total— even if you give her a stack of 99 items, it only counts as +1 towards the “items given to witch” counter. you have to give her 10,000 items individually…

in normal gameplay (giving her 1 gift a day, accounting for the holidays when her house is closed) you’ll eventually reach 10,000 gifts!…in your 95th year!

you COULD give her 100 gifts a day every day and knock it out in less than a year, and this was my strategy at first! i quickly realized adding another tedious daily chore to a pile of tedious daily chores slowed the game loop to a crawl and splitting items out was really fucking annoying actually

on the other hand, in 5 IRL hours, you can just get it all done in one visit to her house and never worry about it ever again.

“wow, that sounds like a really great use of my limited time on god’s green earth! how can i too win my future wife’s heart through button mashing my fingers into a pulp?” you ask?

˚✧₊⁎optimized pro gamer technique for breaking your fingers yuri style!!٩(๑❛ᴗ❛๑)۶⁎⁺˳✧༚

you will need

dog (each time you show your pet, this adds +1 to the gift counter the same way a gift would)

the bottom screen should be the map screen (reduces loading time between conversations compared to having your rucksack open)

cast endurance on fingers (wait this is redundant, you saw yuri in the title…)

ideal but not required

sometimes when you enter her house, she’s facing the side and her walk cycle never starts. it’s great if you get this glitch because then you can just stand in place for the entire duration without having to look at the screen, and even like watch a movie or whatever while you do all this, instead of accidentally dropping your dog every time she walks to the other bookshelf

if you’re wondering “wait, doesn’t Witch Princess hate dogs and love cats? why are you showing her your dog?” you are absolutely correct! she yells at you to get that stupid beast away from her every time you show your dog to her! her FP goes down by 3 each time! however, since her response to the dog is shorter than her response to the cat, you end up saving like .6 seconds per conversation, saving over 1.5 hours total, so the dog is what she gets

anyway, in true Karen HM64 tradition, after being repeatedly harassed by having a dog she isn’t fond of shoved in her face ten thousand times in a row for like five hours straight, naturally this makes her want to marry you! who said good old fashioned courtly love is dead?!

* as a small note, if you care enough to keep track and give her an actual gift at the 10th, 100th, 1000th, and 10000th mark, you’ll get 4 of the limited Witch Photos early on, which each give you +1 sweet sweet farm degree points every day… honestly that’s not much, but the pain of being told “your hands are full soooo no reward for you lmaoooo sucks to be you” was too much to bear, so i kept track and used a normal present for the 10th, 100th, 1000th, and 10000th…

#my pony has TWO HANDS and they are both MANGLED!!!#i’m normal about hmds i play hmds in. a normal way #i have a walkthrough that i wrote for my own playthroughs because i like to do things in a certain order #half tempted to post it sometime to see if anyone has more efficient ways of doing things #queue tea pie #bokumono #harvest moon #harvest moon ds cute #harvest moon ds #hmds #hmds cute #witch princess #hmds witch princess

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blaithnne · 1 month

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ok i forgot that goldie isnt canonically 5'1 on a good day so i have to restructure this ask

1) thoughts on short goldie

2) is heron short also

3) (contingent on answers 1 and 2) thoughts on scrooge and beakley both falling for tiny evil women

1) & 2)

I think the toxic yuri polycule height chart is something like this—!

They all wear heels so it’s not exact (also I whipped this up in like 5 minutes lol)

Huifen is tall, she’s a black heron after all, and though they’re not the tallest birds ever they’re still pretty long! But she looks short standing next to Beakley, because everyone does (also I undersized her a little bit in my first human drawing by accident, whoops). Goldie is a short queen LMAO, she’s not minuscule, only slightly shorter than the average person, but she looks tiny next to these two (she might be slightly shorter than I drew her here, idk, I struggled to scale her LOL). Scrooge, for the record, is around the same height as Goldie!

In terms of their builds btw, Beakley is, obviously, very muscular! Though she might seem like a tank, she’s actually very soft — big ol squishy teddy bear! Heron on the other hand is a gangly mf, long, skinny, and sharp. Goldie is sort of in between them, an hourglass build like Huifen, but with more muscle on her (not half as much as Beakley, though).

Heron might not be tiny but Beakley treats her like she is, picks her up like a feral cat when she’s being too much 😌 Scrooge and Goldie only have a very slight height difference, but I think he’s very smug about it lol

Also, my funniest headcanon ever is that Beakley has a thing for bad girls, and she HATES IT. She’s so embarrassed about it and fully intends to take it to her grave. This also leads to her hating the aforementioned bad girls even more, bc she’s so frustrated with herself for liking the in the first place. So Beakley can spend 24 hours a day ranting about how much she hates someone, and be blushing the entire time. All this to say, Beakley might not technically have a leg to stand on when it comes to criticising Scrooge’s relationship, but that doesn’t stop her.

I think they’re both massive hypocrites about it, bc they wanna protect eachother despite the other really not needing the help. They’re also endlessly frustrated with eachother’s toxic Yuri partners. Beakley to a much bigger degree because she definitely has a thing for Goldie, which only makes her hate her even more. Scrooge is more annoyed by Beakley and Heron than anything else bc he just does not understand what the hell is going on there, but he’ll also occasionally be all,

In conclusion, Beakley and Scrooge being a disaster sibling duo is my favourite thing ever. Scrooge is practically immortal, nothing can take him down. Beakley is a walking tank, she could walk off a bullet. They looked at eachother and went “that idiot needs me to protect them from their own love life” and they were kind of right??

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justsomeoneintoomanyfandoms · 1 month

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Would you be willing to do relationship hcs with any of the following from Blue Exorcist? :0

Juzo Shima, Satan, Shiro Fujimoto, Yuri Egin, Mephisto?

Hi Anon! Thank you for your request! I hope you like the headcanons.

Fandom: Blue Exorcist

Characters: Juzo Shima, Satan, Shiro Fujimoto, Yuri Egin, Mephisto Pheles x gn! Reader (separate)

Juzo is an interesting balance between a super caring partner who would never hurt a fly and someone who would fight entire wars if you asked him to.

In the same vein, he’s more than willing to do anything you ask of him, even if it’s something as simple as getting rid of a bug.

A really good listener. Anything you want to talk about, he’s setting aside whatever he reasonably can to put all of his focus on you.

I feel like he can be a bit overprotective at times, even to the point of smothering you but if you ask him to back off and let you do your thing, he’ll respect your wishes.

Juzo just doesn’t want anything to happen to you. He’s already lost a lot of his friends and family to demons, he couldn’t bear the thought of losing you too.

Satan’s a challenging one to write relationship headcanons for, mostly because the only “relationship” we ever saw him in was his obsession with Yuri. So I’ll try to write these as accurately as possible without making them completely toxic.

Very willing to learn from you and listen. He’s a curious being after all and, while the number of people he trusts or cares about is very small, he does value their opinions.

Definitely the kind of person (can I call him a person if he’s a demon?) to cherish quality time. He can be a bit clingy sometimes, but he just wants to spend time with the person he cares about most.

He’s also very into gift giving but be warned, his gifts may be a bit erratic at first. He’s sort of like a stray cat that’s taken a liking to you. You might end up with dead bugs and sticks beside your bed.

All of that being said, a relationship with Satan is almost certain to be toxic in some way shape or form. He’s never had a “normal” relationship and doesn’t know where to start since he doesn’t see anything wrong with his way of thinking.

Shiro is a lot like Juzo in that he’s got two sides to him in a relationship. And I don’t mean this in a bad way!

On one hand, he’s the most caring and protective partner you could hope for. He’s always paying attention to what you’re talking about and will do his best to support you in everything you do.

On the other hand, he will tease you mercilessly and play minor pranks at every possible moment. It’s one of his love languages.

Having said that, he respects you deeply and will always back off with his teasing if you’ve had a bad day or ask him to stop.

He’s also amazing at helping you relax after a long day. He’s drawing you a relaxing bath, adding some decorations (if the Vatican didn’t want him using those exorcism candles and salt for baths, why did they work so well for just that?) and cooking your favourite meal. It’s really the least he can do.

Yuri is a very caring partner. She was able to show kindness to Satan, even after everything he did so she’s certainly capable of caring deeply about someone so close to her.

She loves spending quality time with you. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, as long as you’re able to sit together.

As part of this, she loves twining one leg around yours while you’re sitting together if that’s something you’re comfortable with.

She didn’t have the best childhood, so she does sometimes have doubts about your relationship. Just give her some words of reassurance (or acts of affection if words aren’t your thing) and she’ll be feeling better in no time.

Yuri would love it if you’re interested in exorcism. She’s got a lot she wants so talk about, especially regarding demons not being as bad as everyone makes them out to be, so please let her ramble about her thoughts.

Mephisto is an interesting case. If you’re in a relationship, that means you’ve caught his attention. And that means he’s going to protect you with all of his demonic powers.

However, sometimes he can seem as though he’s only with you because he sees you as a curiosity.

If this ever gets too much or you’re doubting the sincerity of your relationship, just tell him and he’ll set aside his piles of paperwork to talk to you about his behaviour.

He loves entertaining you with his magic, as well as going on fun dates. Mephy Land is always a hit and, since he owns the place, you’ll never have to pay for any of the food or rides.

He’s surprisingly attentive when you’re talking about your day. He wants to learn more about humans and their behaviours and what better way than to study the person he cares about most.

#writing #fanfic #headcanons #headcanon request #request #blue exorcist #blue exorcist x reader #juzo shima #juzo shima x reader #satan #satan x reader #shiro fujimoto #shiro fujimoto x reader #mephisto pheles #mephisto pheles x reader

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sammy-deserves-better · 5 months

Text

Hey people who definitely didn’t follow me for my AUs here’s another AU I thought up on the spot!!!

Fantasy/Royalty AU bam lets get into it

Julia and Bowie are the princess and prince of the kingdom, as you do, it’s gay and lesbian hostility in that castle every day

Axel, Wayne, Raj and Emma are knights with Axel being the head of the knights, Emma is also secretly a florist because why not

Priya is the head of the guards while Caleb is the personal guard/advisor to the king

Chase is a travelling bard who loves to talk about his ‘amazing’ adventures of ‘helping’ people

Nichelle is still a famous actress but instead of movies she’s like, famous from plays and all that jazz

Ripper’s a barbarian that’s pretty good at his job, unfortunately he is not taken very seriously

Millie is a famous writer but she’s so damn difficult to find at times and only a few people know where she actually lives

Damien is a wizard’s apprentice, he’s still learning but he’s got some real talent within him

Zee is the court jester, he didn’t even like try out for the role he just started talking one time and the king thought he was hilarious

Scary Girl is a famous necromancer because she is, funnily enough, scarily good at her job

And MK, silly ol’ MK, is a master thief who is wanted all over the world, but can never be located, always managing to escape at the last moment

Alright here’s some more details yippee

Raj and Bowie are like, in love, obviously, knight x prince romance! Forbidden love that isn’t really forbidden but like it’s super cute and Raj is so smitten and Bowie just loves this handsome knight that would do anything for him

Wayne and Emma are friends here because I also think they’re silly, Wayne’s the only one who knows Emma’s secret florist job because she trusts him enough and also he accidentally found out but it’s fine!! But he also nearly gives away Emma’s secret so many damn times because he’s just a little bit stupid

‘Man I wish I could get Bowie a nice bouquet…’

‘Oh well Emma is actually a fl-‘

And then Wayne gets elbowed so hard he can’t breath for 2 minutes

Emma also definitely has a thing for the cute court jester but she has no idea on how to actually approach Zee so she just sends him flowers anonymously and sighs while looking at him lovingly

Julia and MK meet because MK climbs up the damn castle walls at 2am and sneaks into Julia’s room just to rob her, gets absolutely slammed by the princess, wakes up and is tied to a damn chair with Julia right up in her face about to rip her to shreds and all MK can say is ‘you are REALLY attractive oh my gods’

This throws Julia off, they start talking, Julia realises that despite the fact she is holding one of the most wanted criminals hostage in her room, she wants to keep seeing MK because she’s entertaining and mean and just slightly pathetic, so she lets MK go on the promise that the thief will come back every night and so she does and yadda yadda lesbians toxic yuri wins

Millie’s stories actually come to life because shocker she’s actually a wizard in disguise and she needs to be really careful about what she writes so that’s why she hides herself away and is so hard to track down because if the wrong people knew about her magic capabilities oh no that’s a lot of blood and injury and angst and 10k words every chapter

Millie’s parents also had this ability to create anything from mere writing, they shared this ability with the kingdom, and so if an important figure asked them to say…make a protector of the kingdom, they would do so, and they did, and that’s where our villain/antagonist comes in but that’s a story for another day

The older gens are also involved in this one way or another as well, most are just backgrounders but some hold important to the story

Damien is the wizard apprentice to Leonard and Tammy, two great and powerful sages who spend their time helping the world

DJ is the one who taught Emma how to be a florist, he’s kind and understanding and always helps Emma choose the right flowers to give to Zee

Eva trains Ripper under her watchful eye, she’s proud of how far he’s come, but feels he can do just a bit more

Aleheather are the king and queen of the kingdom, Bowie and Julia are their adopted children

And that’s all I got for now uhhhh add whatever you want to this it’s just a silly time

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i-am-baechu · 8 months

Text

❥・Title: Passenger

❥・Paring: Namjoon x reader

❥・ Summary: Meeting a cute boy at the bookstore wasn’t new to Y/N. What was new was when the said cute boy asks her out and he’s Kim fucking Namjoon. Why would an idol want to be with someone in a wheelchair or someone who uses a cane?

❥・ Rating: Explicit (18+)

❥・ Genre: Idol! Namjoon, bookstore worker! Y/N, disabled reader, toxic ex-friends, musician Y/N, fluff, romance, angst, comedy, and smut

❥・Author's Note: I had this done yesterday but I didn't like the story so, I re-did the story

❥・ Playlist: Passenger - Candice Glover ♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ ﾟ

“Mom, can I please have this?”

L/N Y/N glanced at the mom with a curious look as she put books on her cart. It was a normal Thursday afternoon, some kids were just getting off of school and coming in to study or looking for books. Y/N smiled at the scene as the mom got down to her daughter's level, “What is it?”

“It's a koala. Well, it's bt21 Koya. I don’t have this one.”

The mom glanced at the keychain and smiled, “Sure, you passed your math test. You deserve something.”

“Really Mom!? Thank you!”

Y/N watched them walk away, “How cute.”

Yuri walked over to her and smiled down at her, “It is cute. Wait, are you talking about the scene or the keychain?”

“Both. Both are good.” Y/N pushed the cart slowly as she turned her wheel on the chair, “Where does this cart go?”

“It goes in the back. I heard that Maria is leaving on Friday.”

Y/N scoffed at this as she stopped moving, “Good. After what she did to me, I’m glad she got fired.”

Yuri nodded her head as she stood next to her, “I am too. I am scared that she’ll do something. Maria and Chae were close, Chae might come after you.”

Y/N rolled her eyes and shook her head, “This isn’t high school...why do they want to act like it is?”

“Because that’s when they peaked. Just be careful, I’ll keep an eye on them too. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“What more can they do to me? I already have nerve damage.”

Namjoon leaned back in his chair and stared at his screen with a blank expression. It’s been two hours and nothing. Every time he typed something out, he deleted it. He just wanted to write a simple poem to get his thoughts flowing and so far, nothing. He cracked his neck and ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. A knock on the door made him glance at the dark wood and rub his forehead, “Come in.”

The door opened to reveal Yoongi leaning against the door frame with a raised eyebrow, “It’s bad that I’m checking on you.”

Namjoon sighed with a chuckle escaping, “Yeah, I know. I’ve been trying to get inspiration but nothing.”

“Why don’t you go to that bookstore?”

“That narrows it down.”

Yoongi rolled his eyes and took his phone out of his pocket. He typed something in his phone and turned it towards his leader, “It's called Sea of Hope. It’s by a park and a cafe, I think it will be beneficial for you.”

“Sea of Hope...I’ll check it out. Will you go with me?”

“Sure, I have nothing else to do. Plus, Hae wants me to get her a new sketchbook.”

Namjoon nodded his head and took out his phone with a sigh. Yoongi raised his eyebrow with a small smirk, “Waiting for her?”

“I don’t think she's going to text me back.”

“You don’t know that.”

I do...I do, “Do you want to get a drink with me?”

“Sure, let me get Hoseok too. He needs a break too.”

“Alright sounds like a plan.”

Namjoon watched Yoongi leave his studio and he leaned back in his chair staring at his phone. He sighed to himself and felt annoyed. Why did she ask about him if she wasn’t going to communicate with him? He was interested but clearly she wasn’t. How many times is he going to get ghosted?

Y/N brushed her hair as she glanced at herself in the glass leaning against her cane for stability. She was in her late twenties with her wheelchair and cane to get around. She was born with nerve damage and there wasn’t much she could do but to live with it. There were days where she wished she could’ve ended it all but there was always something stopping her. It was her mother's smile and her father's laugh that kept her grounded throughout her life. Then she met her best friend in high school, Jung Ae-Cha. Just their simple love kept her moving forward in life.

She pushed some hair back and smiled to herself, “Okay.”

She opened the door and called for a car, saying goodbye to her orange and white cat, Sonia. She locked her door and put her keys in her pocket when the cold air touched her warm cheeks. She had a small shiver and shook her head, it’s so cold but I do love fall... The drive there was short but it was enough time to watch the leaves fall from the branches. It was a sight to see. Watching a leaf dance with the wind was like watching a married couple take their first dance, it was always special no matter how many times you’ve seen it.

The cafe was like any other cafe, it felt warm and it wasn’t just the tea. The windows showcased the large park with the flowers touching the cold glass. She sat next to the window and watched the kids play with one another. She couldn’t help but feel some sadness watching them run across the grass without a care in the world.

“You shouldn’t think too hard, Y/N.”

She turned her head and saw Ae-Cha giving her a soft smile holding two cups, “I guess. Sometimes thinking is good for the soul.”

“It can be good but it can also be bad depending on the thoughts. Knowing you, the thoughts are bad.”

“Not necessary...what kind of tea did you get?”

Ae-Cha set the cups down on the small table as she pulled out her chair, “I got myself a London fog and I got you a green tea with cream.”

“Thank you. How was the trip here?”

Ae-Cha sighed and shook her head, “I know moving to Italy would be exciting but my god, the flight here. I feel so exhausted.”

“I thought your boyfriend got you first class?”

“He did but the people around weren’t so nice. How’s work?”

Y/N rolled her eyes and put her cup back on the table, “You remember that girl I was telling you about?”

“Maria? Or was it Chae?”

“Technically both but the story is focusing on Maria.”

Ae-Cha nodded her head and took a sip of her tea, “I thought you liked her? What happened?”

“She got mad that I was getting more hours than her so she tried to trip me and then she got Chae to make my life harder. She said, “We only need her to make the company look good.”

“I’ll slap her for you.”

“You could get sued.”

“You should sue the company for letting the manager discriminate against you. It’s not right.”

Y/N sighed and glassed at the park, “I know...but sadly I need this job.”

Ae-Cha shook her head and gave her a stern look (something Y/N was avoiding), “No job is worth the abuse.”

“Tell that to the economy. I was already looking at another job.”

“That’s good. You need to leave that toxic place.”

“I’ll try.”

Namjoon sat down on the grass and stared out into the neverending grass fields. He looked down and gently touched the daisies that were around him. Each flower was a different color but the petals felt the same. He placed his backpack behind him and laid down staring up at the clear sky with the cold air touching his skin.

It was another day with no work getting done and another day without getting a text. Maybe this online dating wasn’t meant for him. Maybe he should go look for someone without someone helping him. It was time to take matters into his own hands. He was going to find a girl.

He glanced at the cafe and smiled, “Neverland..that sounds cute.” Namjoon had a small shiver when she felt the breeze again but it didn’t bother him. He actually loved fall.

⋅˚₊‧ ୨୧ ‧₊˚ ⋅

It was early morning and Y/N was opening up the store. Chae was on the schedule with her but she knew she wasn’t going to show up. Why would she? Her parents owned the bookstore and she hated her guts, it makes sense. She didn’t understand why Maria or Chae hated her. They were friends in the beginning but then something shifted and she didn’t know what it was. She’s tried talking to Maria (the more civilized one at least that’s what she thought) but she got ignored.

Maria was someone that Y/N knew back in college. They only talked when they needed to but the conversations were never malicious. They were the opposite. Maria was kind and gentle to her whenever she saw her. Obviously, something changed. When she met her in the bookstore things were going well. She would go out to dinner with her or they would hang out at the cafe. Once she started to hang out with Chae, she changed.

Maria was fired because Y/N laid everything on the table to Chae’s parents. She only mentioned Maria because she was scared to even mention Chae. Maria would make everything harder for her. She would make sure all the books she needed were higher than usual or she would make sure there was stuff on the floor whenever she had her wheelchair. Y/N tried letting it go because it was just childish and she didn’t need to be angry. It wasn’t until she had an accident. Maria tripped her and she fell. She asked Maria for help but she got laughed at. Chae was there and recorded everything. Their laughs clouded her brain that day and a decision was made. Now she was the target of Chae but she wasn’t going down without a fight.

Y/N watched as people made their way into the store. Talking amongst each other with small voices that would make a mouse jealous. She was always jealous seeing groups of friends, she never really had a group. Sure she had friends throughout high school and college but they never stayed. Ae-Cha was the only that stayed but even with her, it gets lonely at times. This is one of those times.

The way the girls laughed with each other and hit their shoulders as they laughed, it made her smile in green. She sighed to herself and picked up the go-backs, it was a small stack of books so it was manageable. She leaned against her cane putting some books back on the shelves. She turned her and her eyes landed on a group of guys. It was four of them but they had masks with sunglasses. She squinted her eyes at them because this wouldn’t be the first time someone stole from the store. She made a mental note about them but headed back to her desk to finish her morning paperwork.

Namjoon felt her eyes and glanced at her, her curious eyes were bright as her lips were shining under the light. She was cute but that's all he thought. In his mind, she knew he was famous because of the stare. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone stared at him in public when he had a mask on, so much for the mask to cover his face. At least she didn’t come up to him to ask questions or anything like that.

Jin raised his eyebrow and glanced at him, “Are you okay?”

Namjoon nodded his head and glanced over his shoulder to see her leaving, “That girl was staring...I think she knew we were famous.”

Yoongi rolled his eyes and shook his head, “I think you're paranoid. She probably was just checking in on us or something like that. We are wearing masks, sunglasses and black hoodies. She probably thinks we're going to steal.”

“I didn’t think of that...”

Hoseok let out a small laugh, “See, don’t assume someone knows you're famous. She’s just doing her job, that’s all.”

Namjoon sighed and nodded his head, “I know, I know. You just never know with people and I want to make sure we're safe in public.”

Jin nodded his head and put the book back on the shelf, “I get it Joon. I saw you looking at her though, you think she's cute?”

Namjoon rolled his eyes at him and put the book in his basket, “Do you have your books?”

“You ignored the question, you think she's cute.”

“I want to look at more books, I’ll be in the back.”

The three older men let out a small chuckle watching him leave, annoyance with each step he took. Y/N signed off her last paper and looked up to see the guy with the mask and glasses. She tilted her head at him as he headed towards the back. He had an interesting aura but it was probably because he was going to steal or something. Some people came up with their purchases and she looked away from him.

Namjoon grabbed the book that he wanted and smiled underneath the black material. He ignored his members and went to the front. He waited in line but he heard her soft voice, “This book is really good. The poems are kinda dark but it's still good.”

“Oh really. I’ve read the other works of his but they weren’t dark. So this one is dark?”

Y/N nodded her head and gave her a smile, “It is but it's really good. I’ve read it.”

The younger girl smiled at this and took out her cash, “Thank you for helping, I appreciate it.”

“Of course and if you don’t like it, you can always return it.”

“Thank you again.”

Namjoon smiled to himself as he watched the girl smile. Her smile was gentle and her voice sounded like the gentle wind in spring. She was cute, “I can help who's next.”

Namjoon snapped out of his thoughts and bowed his head at the girl. He placed the basket on the counter, “Hello, how's your day?”

Y/N smiled at him as she put the books on the counter (happy that he didn’t steal anything), “It’s been going good. Do you like history?”

Namjoon smiled (even though she couldn't see it) and nodded his head, “Yeah, it’s a story about a feminist leader and I’ve been interested in it for a while.”

He’s interested in a feminist leader...it could be a way to pick up girls. He could be one of those guys.... “My co-worker read this book and liked it. You should get the other volumes.”

“I thought about it but it gives me another reason to come back.”

She raised her eyebrow but nodded her head, “That will be ₩ 88,077. Will that be cash or card?”

“Oh, card.”

“Alright, let me set up the card reader and when it’s ready just hover your card over the corner to have it read.”

Namjoon nodded his head as he took out his card to do what she said. She doubled his bag and clicked the tender on the computer. She pushed some hair behind her ear as he glanced at her. She smiled and took the receipt and put it in the bag, “You have a good day.”

“Y-You too, bye.”

“Bye-bye.”

Y/N watched him leave and tilted her head. “How strange.”

After her shift, Y/N went to the music store next door. She waved her hand at the owner, Kim Jin-Young, and walked up to him, “How’s your day so far, Mr. Kim.”

Jin-Young let out a small laugh and shook his head, “I told you to call me Jin-Young, Y/N.”

“I know but it's fun calling you Mr. Kim, makes you feel older.”

Jin-Young rolled his eyes and glanced at the back door, “Do you want your guitar?”

“Yeah, I was checking in on it.”

Jin-Young smiled at this and went to the back room. He came out with a brand new acoustic guitar with flowers on the side, “I tuned it for you but you might want to do it yourself. Are you performing this weekend?”

Y/N smiled and nodded her head. She set the cane against the counter to take the guitar with a smile, “Yeah, Ae-Cha signed me up a month ago. I had no idea but she thought it would be good for me.”

“I think it would be. You have really good lyrics and a beautiful voice.”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head, “Shut up, I’m nothing like those K-pop idols.”

“Some of them lip sync. Be proud of your talent.”

“I suppose. Thank you for this, I appreciate it.”

“No problem, Y/N. I’ll be cheering you on Saturday.”

“I’ll see you later, Mr. Kim.”

Jin-Young rolled his eyes and watched the girl leave with the guitar on her back, “Yah! It’s Jin-Young to you!”

Namjoon leaned back in his chair and stared at his ceiling with a blank expression. His blank expression matched his computer screen and he sighed to himself. He glanced at his couch and saw the bag from the bookstore and smiled to himself. He got up from his desk and took out the book he got. He smiled to himself when he thought of the cashier but he shook his head. Maybe reading the book could give him a break from life.

Namjoon finished the book that night and he came back to the bookstore the next day. Y/N recognized him because of his voice and the pair of sunglasses he had on. She didn’t check him out at the register but she did talk to him when he was walking around the store. She realized that he wasn’t using a feminist leader to flirt but he was actually interested in it. She smiled at this as he went on tangents about the leader. He even recommended books to her. He was interested and he read pretty fast because he’s back again today.

“You read pretty fast.”

Namjoon jumped at the voice and looked at her. She was wearing a simple white short-sleeved shirt with her work vest and her hair was in a low ponytail. The vest had different buttons of things that she was interested in and he held in a laugh when he noticed a Koya on the dark green vest. He nodded and showed her a random book on the shelf, “I was looking at a different genre this time.”

She tilted her head at the book and let out a small laugh, “You want to read a teen fantasy about a vampire falling in love with a wizard?”

Namjoon glanced at the cover and back at her, “I-I...”

“If you're into that then go right ahead.”

Namjoon put the book back and shook his head, “No-No, I just grabbed a random book. I-I-”

“I can put that in the front for you.”

Namjoon felt his face get hot and he wanted to slap his forehead, “I want some poetry books.”

“So, why did you grab that book?”

“I just grabbed a random book to talk to you.”

“To talk to me?”

“I like talking to you...is that weird? It is weird, I’m sorry.”

Y/N felt flattered and she ignored her heart fluttering, “I like talking to you too. I can show you the-”

“I’ll show him the poetry section. Y/N, you should be in the front. Not walking around.”

Y/N held in a sigh and turned around to see Chae glaring at her. She nodded her head and looked back at Namjoon with a small smile, “I’ll see you in the front.”

Namjoon watched Y/N leave and he frowned at the scene. Whoever this girl was, it was clear she didn’t like the girl. The one thing he was happy about was that he knew her name, Y/N. It matched her perfectly. Namjoon turned towards the girl and smiled at her under the mask, “I can find it, thank you.”

“Are you sure? I would love to help.”

Namjoon fought back the urge to roll his eyes but shook his head, “No, it’s okay. Thank you.”

Namjoon left her standing there before she could say anything to him. He quickly went into the poetry section and sighed to himself, “Y/N...pretty name.”

Y/N signed off some return receipts and when she turned around Chae was standing there with her arms crossed. The glare she was giving her made her skin feel like it was on fire, “Hi, Chae”

“Why weren’t you in the front? That’s your task for today.”

Y/N glanced at the paper in her hands and then back at her with a tensed smile, “No one was on the floor with me so, I had to walk around the store to make sure everyone was helped.”

“Walk? You barely do that. You're slow, that's why you stay in the front.”

“I have my cane, I can walk around-”

“I don’t care what you can do, you stay in the front. You’ll just get in my way and it's annoying.”

She knew she shouldn’t feel hurt by her words but it was hard, “Okay.”

“Okay? Is that all you can say? You should-”

“I’m ready.”

Y/N glanced over Chae’s shoulder and saw the mystery standing there with his books. She was grateful for him because she felt saved at this moment. Chae gave him a fake smile and nodded her head, “Y/N will be happy to help you.”

And with that, Chae left. Y/N let out the sigh that she was holding in and smiled at him, “Thank you for that...you know my name, what’s yours?”

Namjoon let out a small laugh and put the books on the counter, “Now why would you want to know my name?”

“Because...I like talking to you.”

Namjoon smiled at this and nodded his head. He took off his sunglasses and looked around before pulling down his mask, “My name is Namjoon.”

Her eyes widened at this when she saw who it was, “Kim Namjoon? Like from Bts?”

“Yeah...don’t tell anyone, please.”

“I wouldn’t dare to do so. It would mean other people talk to you and I wouldn’t want competition.”

Namjoon let out a laugh and put everything back on, “It wouldn’t be a competition. I would only talk to you anyways.”

“That’s good to know, Mr. Idol.”

“Mr. Idol? That feels weird, just call me Namjoon or if people are around Nam.”

She let out a small laugh as she scanned the last book, “Nam? That’s not very creative of you.”

“Hey, I’m trying here.”

“I see that. That will be ₩ 94,248, Mr. Nam.”

Namjoon rolled his eyes and took his card out, “I regret saying that now.”

“I don’t...I was wondering...We have this festival tomorrow and it would be cool if you came. You don’t have either.”

“A festival?”

Y/N nodded and put the receipt in his bag, “Yeah, it's a small music one. You said you’ve been having trouble at work. Now that I know it's music...I thought it would be beneficial for you.”

Namjoon smiled and nodded his head, “Are you asking me out on a date?”

Y/N’s face felt warm and she shook her head, “It’s not a date. A hang-out if you will.”

“Then I’ll come to that hang-out, Y/N.”

“Good, Mr. Nam...I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She watched him leave the store and she couldn’t help but smile to herself. He was interesting and she couldn’t wait to know more about him.

Namjoon sat on the grass with Yoongi sitting next to him as he stared at the empty stage. Y/N already met Yoongi and Yoongi thought it was funny that Namjoon was interested in her. She was the opposite of him, she was more blunt with her comments while Namjoon wasn’t but it was clear they were both interested in each other. Y/N told them that she had to do something and walked away. The last thing that he saw was the rose gold cane shining.

“You like her?”

Namjoon glanced at Yoongi and took a sip of his water, “She’s interesting...”

“Just say you like her. You're not waiting for the other girl, right?”

“I deleted her number. She wasn’t worth the wait.”

“What was her name again? Hae told me that she wasn’t good news so I blocked it out.”

Namjoon sighed and looked at Yoongi, “Hae, knew she wasn’t good? Why didn’t she tell me?”

“She wanted you to learn your lesson, I guess. What was her name so I can keep an eye out.”

“Maria.”

“The next performer is my good friend, L/N Y/N.”

Namjoon snapped his head to the stage and watched Y/N go to the microphone with a guitar and without her cane. She sent a smile to the crowd and gave a small wave to Namjoon. Namjoon returned it as Yoongi watched on the sidelines with a smirk on his face. Yoongi leaned towards Namjoon and whispered in his ear, “Did you know she was performing?”

“No...”

She played a few cords and smiled to herself as the melody echoed throughout the park, Raindrops make me think of you, Fragments of you in them. Each drop is our memories. Good or bad, there are no outliers. Especially with you. I think that’s why I like rainy days. You're always with me, even in an empty room.”

The sad melody played and for Namjoon everything was at a standstill as he stared at the girl in front of him. She was playing the guitar and her soft voice pierced his ears. It was beautiful but it was so sad. The words to the song were poetic and they held the pain of the past. Anyone can relate to her words and he thinks that’s why he liked it so much.

When she finished everyone applauded her and bowed. She headed off the stage making Namjoon run towards it, ignoring the stare from his member. He entered backstage and saw Y/N looking down at the ground with tears in her eyes as two girls stood in front of her, “Why would anyone like your song?”

“They probably felt pity for you because I mean look at you. Disabled and you barely can walk.”

Namjoon glared at this and let out a small cough behind the mask as his glasses hid his glare. The two girls turned around and looked him up and down with confused looks, “What do you want?”

“I’m here for Y/N. I don’t appreciate you saying all those things to her.”

“It’s true and it's time she learned. She’s just a headache to everyone.”

Namjoon took off his glasses and sent a hard glare that made the girl take a step back, “You're a headache by just talking. Now move.”

She scoffed at this and glanced at Y/N, “He only did that because he felt bad for you. Remember that.”

The two girls left while Y/N stared at the dirty wood with a blank expression. Namjoon shook his head at their behavior and tilted her chin with his thumb, “Don’t listen to them. Idiots just echo each other to feel heard.”

Y/N let out a sad chuckle and shook her head, “Sometimes Idiots say the truth....”

“Y/N, they're wrong. You're beautiful inside and out, no matter what people say. Everyone is different, and that makes everyone unique in their own way.”

“Beautiful?”

She tilted her head at him and let out a small cough as he looked away, “Just don’t listen to them.”

“Should I listen to you then?”

“If that makes you happy, then yes.”

They stared into each other's eyes and she let out a small laugh, “Thank you...we should get back to Yoongi.”

“Y-Yeah, where’s your cane?”

“In my dressing room. Can you help me?”

“Always...”

⋅˚₊‧ ୨୧ ‧₊˚ ⋅

Fall came and passed. It was spring when the flowers bloomed from slumber from the cold winter. Y/N opened her window to let the semi-warm air into her room. She glanced outside to see the bush that was near her house was already blooming with small pink flowers. She smiled to herself and pushed some hair back as she relished in the morning sun.

She had known Namjoon for a while now and everything was good. In her dark thoughts, it was too good. He would always make time for her and come visit her and her cat. He would bring her favorite food and drinks while they sat in her living room talking about poetry. It was as if he understood everything she was saying and vice versa. It was lovely but again her mind loved playing tricks on her.

Namjoon was building up the courage to ask her out but every time he wanted to, it didn’t feel right. The rest of the members were threatening him at this point to ask her out but he was nervous. He never really liked anyone before her, they were only flings. Y/N was different and he didn’t want to ruin anything between them. It would devastate him if he lost her. If he had to keep his feelings hidden longer then he would do so.

Y/N got ready for another day at work and she was already dreading going in. She didn’t want to see Chae but at least she worked with Yuri today. She laid back on her back staring at her ceiling with a frown. It wasn’t until she felt softness at her fingertips and she smiled. She glanced and saw Sonias with her bright green eyes. Y/N softly scratched Sonia’s head, “Sonia, I wish I could stay home all day with you. Nothing to worry about, just cuddles.”

Sonia let out a loud meow and cuddled into her side making Y/N melt, “I love you too but I have to go. You be a good girl. Namjoon is coming by later, he’ll have your treats. You know how he is. Always spoiling you.”

Another meow left her lips and she smiled to herself. She leaned down and kissed the top of Sonia’s head. She gently got off the bed and frowned when she felt pain in her leg. It was going to be a long day and she wasn’t ready for it. She walked down the stairs carefully as Sonia went beside her, slowing down when Y/N did. When she finally reached the last step she grabbed her wheelchair and slowly sat in it. A sigh left her lips as she tried to be positive for the day. It’s so hard to feel anything when you feel nothing.

A knock at the door caused her to raise her eyebrow, “Who is it?”

“It’s Namjoon! Can I come in?”

Y/N rolled her eyes and a small laugh, “You know the code.”

Namjoon opened the door and saw that she was in the wheelchair and frowned, “Is your leg acting up?”

“When is it not acting up? It’s just a wheelchair kind of day. Why are you here?”

“I wanted to drop you off.”

Y/N smiled at this and looked down at her feet, “You want to drive your disabled friend to work?”

“I want to drive Y/N to work. You're much more than being disabled.”

“Wait, you can’t drive though.”

Namjoon rubbed the back of his neck and let out a nervous chuckle, “That’s why I asked Hyung to help me.”

“Which one-”

“Y/N~!”

She smiled and watched the door open wider to see Hoseok giving her a wide smile, “Hello, oppa. Thank you for driving me.”

“It’s no problem Y/N. Namjoon woke me up early to-”

Namjoon hit Hoseok's shoulder and let out a nervous laugh, “Let’s get you to work.”

“Thank you, Nam.”

Namjoon rolled his eyes and let out a huff of air, “I told you not to call me that when it's just us.”

“When do I listen to you? It’s fun making you mad.”

The ride there was filled with soft music bouncing off the leather fabric. Y/N stared outside looking at the flowers with a softness in her heart. She loved spring, it was the time when things that were hidden away from the cold appeared. It was a metaphor for life and she wanted to stick to that.

Namjoon saw that she was looking out the glass and smiled at her gentle look. He let out a small cough that made her look at him and raised an eyebrow, “Tonight I was wondering if we can write together again.”

Y/N smiled at this and nodded her head, “That sounds fun. Are you going to spoil Sonia?”

“She deserves it. She’s the only cat that behaves well and loves cuddles.”

“Does this exclude Yoongi?”

Namjoon let out a small laugh and shook his head, “You know what I mean. Who do you work with today?”

“With Chae and Yuri.”

Namjoon scoffed at this, “I don’t like Chae. She needs to be put in her place.”

“I don’t have to deal with her any longer. Next week is my last week, so no worries.”

Namjoon smiled at this and nodded his head, “Where are you going to work?”

“With Jin-Young. It felt right to move to the music store and it's near the cafe.”

“I’m glad you're leaving that bookstore. It was toxic.”

She nodded her head as she looked out the window, “Ae-Chae, asked her boyfriend to sue Chae and wants me to go forward with it.”

Hoseok nodded his head at this as he gently stopped the car, “You should go forward with it. She discriminated against you.”

“I just don’t like conflict...it’s so much money too. Ae-Chae said she would pay for it but I feel bad for that. I don’t think I’ll go forward with it because well I’m scared...”

“That’s understandable, Y/N. If you want to go forward, I’ll be happy to help you.”

She turned towards Namjoon with her eyes widened, “You would help me?”

“I told you. I’ll always help you.”

That night, Jin picked her up with Namjoon and the tension in the car was different. Namjoon was nervous while Jin was smiling to himself, it was clear that he had done something to him. They sat in her bedroom typing away on their laptops. Namjoon kept glancing at her over his screen while Y/N was typing and petting Sonia in her lap.

“Nam, what did you write?”

“I-I...I want you to go first.”

“Okay...Falling snow with secrets of winter linger. Springtime is when the truth is revealed

Warmth is replaced in the summer with your touch, But when fall comes loneliness returns. Four seasons isn’t enough to heal. A lifetime will do.”

Namjoon nodded his head and smiled, “That was pretty. I liked the mention of the different seasons.”

“I thought about it because it's the first day of spring.”

“Ah, you were excited about the flowers blooming.”

“I was, now what did you write?”

Namjoon nodded his head and let a nervous sigh out, “I wrote this from the heart...I hope you like it.”

“If it’s from the heart then how could I hate it?”

“The moment we met, I knew. Somehow the truth always comes out with you. The reason I survive is one of the reasons for my rebirth. My meaning of life. Hold me, with tears escaping into the abyss. Something so pure and true. Can even make the strongest whimper. My summer sky in the harsh winter, the first raindrop in a drought, a crumble in a famine. My strength, my clarity, and my heaven...Y/N will you be my girlfriend?”

Her eyes widened at this and stared at him with a shocked look, “Y-You want me to be your girlfriend?”

“I do...I really do.”

Y/N glanced down at Sonia as she continued to pet her, “You want me even though I have so many things wrong with me?”

“Y/N, I don’t give a shit if you have problems. I love you for you. Every little thing about you I’m in love with. Regardless of how you see yourself. I love you.”

“You-You love me?”

“I do.”

She gently touched Sonia’s butt to have her jump off her lap. She leaned against the table and gently placed her lips on his. His eyes widened but he closed his eyes and tilted his head to deepen the kiss. He gently pushed the table away and grabbed her hips, picking her up effortlessly. His hand moved to the back of her neck and he pulled her closer. When they leaned away he pushed some hair away from her face and truly looked at her face. She tried to look away from his intense eyes but he would let her budge. He kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose, her cheeks, and then the edge of her lips, “I love you Y/N.”

“I love you too...Nam.”

He let out a deep chuckle and kissed her neck as her fingers went through his hair, “Always the one that likes to annoy.”

“I think it gives you excitement.”

“It does.”

He gently pushed her down on the floor as he towered over her. Her hair perfectly framed her face as the nervousness in her eyes became clear to him. He leaned down and kissed her lips again and this time it was more passionate than before. She wrapped her arms around his neck and brought him in closer. He happily accepted it. Nervous as she was, she couldn’t help the feeling in her stomach that erupted because of his touch. His thighs slowly separated hers as he got into a better position.

He was perfect and she was the greatest treasure that he could ever acquire. He lifted up her skirt and gave her a small smile, “Is this okay?”

“This is everything I want...”

It happened so fast but so slow at the same time. He buried his face into her neck, panting as he placed kisses on her sweaty skin. The thrusting that started off slow was no faster with each passing second. He leaned away and looked down at her pleasured-out face. Her lips shined under the light with her eyes closed tightly. Her moans became louder as she felt her body moving forward with each thrust. Her arms reached up to him and he knew what she wanted. He leaned down and gave her another deep kiss as she arched her back when she felt her orgasm approaching.

Keeping his mind focused, he continued to focus on her. Lifting up her shirt and kissing the tops of her breasts. He was losing himself and he couldn’t stop, “I’m going to come, Y/N.”

“T-That’s okay.”

“Where do you want me to come?”

“You can just do it on my thigh or stomach.”

He nodded his head and pulled himself out with a low groan coming out of his mouth. He started rubbing himself and a white substance touched her the inside of her thigh. She felt it drip down and out of curiosity, she brought her fingertips to it and gently touched it. She brought it to her mouth and tasted it. Namjoon's blissed-out expression registers what just happened and lets out a moan at the sight.

“You’ll be the death of me.”

“That’s good to know.”

He leaned to kiss her left shoulder and back at her with a smile, “I love you regardless of what’s happening. You're my everything. The moment I saw you with your cane in the bookstore I fell in love with you. I love you for you. Nothing less.”

A small tear escaped as she gently touched his face, “Even if I can’t walk some days.”

“I’ll carry you.”

“Even on days that I can feel anything.”

“I’ll become your nurse.”

She smiled at him and kissed the tip of his nose, “Then I’m yours.”

⋅˚₊‧ ୨୧ ‧₊˚ ⋅

Two Years Later

“Y/N! Are you ready?”

She turned around and smiled at Namjoon, “You think Army would accept me? I mean it’s me...”

Namjoon let out a small laugh and sat next to her. He kissed the side of her head and pushed some hair from her forehead, “Why wouldn’t they?”

“I’m not normal...”

“Y/N, you're the greatest thing that has happened to me. I love you. Remember what I said to you.”

She let out a laugh and kissed his cheek, “Call me Nam.”

He rolled his eyes and kissed her forehead, “My strength, my clarity, and my heaven. I would do anything for you.”

“I would do anything for you too...Let’s tell the world about us. I’ll stand by you no matter what. I’ll be your passenger through life.”

He smiled at this and intertwined their fingers together as a diamond sparkled in the light, “Forever.”

#bts reactions #bts scenarios #bts imagines #bts jungkook #bts namjoon #bts seokjin #bts taehyung #bts jimin #bts yoongi #bts x reader #bts hosoek #Bts #namjoon fanfic #bts namjoon x reader #namjoon x reader

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phantasmalduelist · 1 month

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Thanks for the tag @i-mybrunettelady!!!😊 I did it for both my commander and wayfinder & if you're reading this and want to do it, you're tagged (and please tag me in your post! So I can read).

-- B A S I C S

name: Penelope Starbinder (formerly Ry). age: 34. She was born on November 1 (Season of the Colossus/Scorpio. I picture her with an Aquarius moon and an Aries rising!). race: She had two mothers, one is Canthan and the other was a Mist Being with draconic blood. gender: NB femme (she/her). orientation: Lesbian. profession: Holosmith and Commander/Champion of Aurene.

-- P H Y S I C A L A S P E C T S

hair: Currently a copper orange. eyes: Right now her eyes have a purple and yellow hue which is impossible in-game, but that's the kind of shade. skin: Tanned. tattoos/scars: She has a tattoo on the base of her neck, it's supposed to represent her title of Starbinder. I haven't designed it yet because I haven't had the opportunity to draw her back AJKFJSF but yeah. Scars: one on her left breast/shoulder from when Bangar shot her.

-- F A M I L Y

parents: Mimi Ry (deceased) and Nvaa (deceased). siblings: Her twin sister Deanna Starlighter (formerly Ry). grandparents: Unknown. Her human mother had no family of note. in laws and others: Jormag - not officially married, but… honestly they have 6 children together so. It makes the Elder Dragons family ig. LMFAOOO. pets: Starry shiba inu.

-- S K I L L S

abilities: Proficient in engineering and holosmith skills; on the same level of Canthan engineering. She would be classified as a genius (she just doesn't use it like asura do, so it's never really commercialized). Great eye for strategy and making small talk with just about anyone. Good at solving things quickly and has a stellar sense of direction. She can't cook good food or sew or anything like that; that's Jormag's thing lol. She doesn't have a hobby or other skills that aren't related to being a commander and she should rethink that. The burnout is real.

-- T R A I T S

most positive trait: Easygoing, extremely loyal, dependable. most negative trait: Martyrdom, impulsiveness, speaks without thinking at times.

-- L I K E S

colors: Purple, gold, cyan. smells: Lavender, coconut, beach. textures: Soft fur/hair, warm skin, weighted blanket. drinks: Energy drinks, cocktails, fizzy soda.

-- O T H E R D E T A I L S

smokes: Not usually, but she has. drinks: Yes. drugs: Nope. been arrested: Well yes, canonically so. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

-- B A S I C S

name: Badri the Starstorm (alter ego: The Starfall Ego). age: Unknown, but definitely over 150. race: Unknown. gender: Cis lady (she/her). orientation: Lesbian. profession: Wizard and Wayfinder. Chronomancer. (Alter ego: crazily powerful elemental cosmic magic).

-- P H Y S I C A L A S P E C T S

hair: Mousy blonde, very soft and shiny. (Alter ego: very light lavender/iridescent). eyes: Pale with a golden sparkle. skin: Pale purple-blue. tattoos/scars: None.

-- F A M I L Y

parents: Unknown. siblings: Unknown. grandparents: Unknown. in laws and others: Isgarren is her father figure and Peitha is her toxic yuri. Isak and her share a pretty strong sibling bond even if they are not related at all. pets: Her moth skyscale, Belle, is very much like a cat to her.

-- S K I L L S

abilities: Learned chronomancy from her teacher Basira & her skills are pretty good. She learns any kind of magic pretty easily and with efficiency. She can cook, sew, dance, play instruments, sing, and many other stuff. She's like a swiss army knife of skills. She devoted most of her time to hobbies and reading because she wasn't allowed outside the tower.

-- T R A I T S

most positive trait: Cheerful, tooth-rotting sweet and attentive, caring. most negative trait: Selfish, passive-aggressive, sheltered.

-- L I K E S

colors: Jade, lipstick, periwinkle. smells: Strawberry cake, peppermint, scented candles. textures: Velvet, encrusted gems, embroidery. drinks: Green tea, cocoa with chunky marshmallows, smoothies.

-- O T H E R D E T A I L S

smokes: Nope. drinks: Nope. drugs: Nope. been arrested: Nope.

#guild wars 2 #gw2 #Penelope Starbinder #Badri the Starstorm

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pix3lplays · 5 months

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-Yuri Leclerc relationship hcs that nobody asked for because I am Down BAD-

Cw! Suggestive. It’s Yuri. Violence and Blood, unwanted touching, Yuri is a little bit…unhealthy? Toxic? Manipulative? Not exactly sure what to put but he’s not the healthiest partner, kidnapping

“You strike me as the naive type. Best be careful around someone like me~”

He likes naivety in a person. He thinks it’s cute. Charming. Definitely a man who’ll lead you around by the nose at first, sizing you up, testing to see if you really are that naive or if you’re just trying to lead him around too-

He’s not one to just…let his guard down. Even if you ARE that naive. No, he’d rather start taking advantage of all that sweet naivety in you~

Making you do things for him…he’ll tease you relentlessly, rather directly or by the way he strokes your face with his gloved hand, guiding your chin gently up, your lips centimeters away from each other and you’re practically Begging him for a kiss, but he’ll never indulge you. Not yet at least. It’s just fun to see you flustered, desperate for his love and attention and affection.

But even if he is just toying with you like a cat with a mouse, he becomes genuinely protective of you. You’re one of his people, after all.

You remember it vividly. Your first exposure to the true nature of the Savage Mockingbird.

A man. He put his hands on you. And Yuri saw and didn’t hesitate to spill the contents of the offender’s throat with a pretty, gleaming dagger. Right in front of you, too…

He turns to you with his sharp, purple eyes while the man chokes on his own bleeding throat on the floor.

“Did he hurt you?” Yuri asks, looking you up and down for injuries.

“No…” you say, staring in horror at the man dying on the ground.

“Good. Then I guess I’ll make this quick,” he says, turning to the dying man. With a swift, aggressive stomp of his boot that makes you jolt at the suddenness and intensity, Yuri finishes the man off, then turns all his attention back to you.

“You need to be more careful. Don’t let people touch you, or THIS-“ he gestures to the man he murdered , “-will happen. I’ll keep you safe. But you need to do your part too,” he says it coolly and matter-of-factly, wiping blood from his face.

Truthfully Yuri didn’t typically Want to kill people in these scenarios, but there was something different when it was you. Something that stabbed a deep and red-hot jealousy into his stomach when he saw another man touching you however he pleased. Something told him this murder was justified. He was defending your honor, after all. And a part of him just wanted to.

I think Yuri would take it upon himself to teach you to defend yourself. He gifts you a dagger. An ornate, silver blade, just as deadly as it is beautiful.

You don’t want to take it. You don’t want to hurt people. But something about the way Yuri’s eyes as he closes his fingers around yours, making you grip the dagger’s hilt…it tells you that you better do what he says.

So you begin training with Yuri. At least twice a week, in the evenings, or what you assumed was the evenings in the Abyss…

You spent your evenings with Yuri’s hands on your wrists, showing you how to conceal the dagger, showing you how to defend yourself, showing you how to disembowel a man twice your size in just a few swift motions.

It worries you to see Yuri like this. So determined to teach you how to kill. Even with the gentle way his hands find your wrist, or the gentle look in his eye as he congratulates you for learning yet another deadly technique…

You couldn’t help but wonder. Why was Yuri so determined to teach you to fight? To kill?

One day he decides it’s time for a Serious duel between the two of you.

Which ends with you pinned to the ground, his boot on your shoulder, his dagger at your throat.

You thought he’d be mad at you, for being so weak despite all your training.

Instead, he smiles at you beautifully, and laughs.

“Don’t have the heart to really strike at me?” he smirks, removing his boot from your shoulder and helping you to your feet. “I suppose I should be flattered…”

You don’t know if he’s just teasing you again or if he’s being serious.

Truthfully you were just too weak. You really did give the duel your all, but you were no match for the Savage Mockingbird.

You see the moment it dawns on him that the truth of the matter is you really just can’t fight very well.

He lets out a whistle. “I guess I’ll have to keep you close then, if you’re incapable of protecting yourself from bad men like me…”

Something about Yuri considering himself a bad man strikes a nerve with you. You had known him long enough to know he wasn’t a bad man. You had heard him softly sing the children of the Abyss to sleep.

But before you can protest, he’s leaning close to you, his lips hovering over yours. “Do you want this?” he says, sounding serious all of a sudden. “Because you do know what you’re getting into, right? If you become involved with me?”

And you respond by tasting his lips, and his hands move to your cheeks to help deepen the kiss.

“I really can’t tell with you…” he murmurs against your lips. “If you’re really this naive…or if you just want something from me…”

“Time will tell,” you say with quick wit…and he kinda likes that response. He pulls back and smiles at you.

“I think that, right now, I’d be happy either way.”

Yuri walks you home that night, a hand on your shoulder, just in case anyone should get any ideas. He kisses you goodnight, and promises that you’ll meet again soon.

You try to return the dagger, since he’s labeled you a terrible fighter, but he insists you keep it.

‘A gift from him’ is what he says.

That night you sleep with the dagger in your hands. You’ve never slept so securely.

Becoming the Savage Mockingbird’s lover came with more risks than you realized…

You knew Yuri had a bit of a reputation…but somehow you didn’t realize it was because he was Literally the leader of a gang-

This put a target on your back.

“Yuri’s little bird,” is what you became known as.

Of course, you weren’t aware of any of this. You could only wonder why Yuri kept you so close. Quite literally.

He was almost always nearby.

He never gave you the impression that you were in danger though. He was always calm. Almost relaxing to be around. You never really had the feeling you were in danger.

Until you got kidnapped, and held for ransom by a rival Abyssian gang.

When Yuri found out…

You had never really…seen him angry before. Until that confrontation. And you had LEARNED from past experience that Yuri could be violent, but you didn’t realize just How violent-

You had to look away as he made the leader of the rival gang SUFFER before he died.

You were shaking, terrified, your vision going black until you felt two hands rubbing either of your arms.

Yuri.

You look up, into his face, covered in blood, and he wipes some of the droplets off your cheeks. The ones that got on you during the massacre.

“I’m so sorry…” he says. And he’s not apologizing for the way he traumatized you. He’s apologizing for the fact that he’s not quite ready to let you go.

He walked you home, like he always did, the two of you soaked in blood to varying degrees. And he asked if he could stay the night with you.

He was worried about you. Afraid members of the rival gang might come and kill you in revenge.

So you prepared him a little spot in the living room, but it wasn’t long before you were hearing noises and seeing shadows and you realized you wanted the Savage Mockingbird with you in the bedroom.

He doesn’t sleep at first.

Just watches over you, staring out the window or sitting on the edge of your bed.

But when you wake up that morning your forehead is pressed to his and your arms wrapped around his bare shoulders.

When he wakes up, he swings his legs over the bed, and you’re left staring at your boyfriend’s scarred back. You imagine all the things he must’ve done to earn those, and it makes you shiver a bit.

He glances over his shoulder at you, and you don’t bother with pretending to be asleep. You just gaze right back.

“I want you by my side today, and the next one…just in case.”

And even though you’re horrified at this man’s capacity for violence, you can’t help but agree that that would be for the best…

You can have the discussion about his violence later.

Yuri’s probably not really the type who can Truly settle down. Not while there’s injustice to be solved.

So maybe he will marry you. But his work isn’t done. Don’t expect him to become some sort of househusband for you.

His proposal is direct. He tells you right there the reasons why you SHOULDN’T marry him, while he’s in the middle of offering you a ring. You accept the ring anyways, despite your better judgment, and he kisses you and the next thing you know you’ve had a modest Abyssian wedding ceremony and now you were married.

Yuri as a husband, unfortunately has to do many unsavory things to keep you healthy and happy and taken care of. At least, in his eyes.

You don’t know where the money is coming from.

He’s always brushing off your concerns with ease. And before you know it, you’re not worried about where the money is coming from, because Yuri’s home, and you missed him so, so much.

If he’s confident that a meeting won’t turn sour, he’ll actually bring you with him. He’ll sit you on his lap or have you curled up in his side while he listens to the meeting.

In a way, having an attractive thing like you on his arm is a status symbol. But also…you help keep him calm.

But if there’s even a hint that things might take a turn for the worse, he makes it Clear no one’s to mess with you. He’ll tear out their throat if anyone so much as looks at you wrong.

Yuri’s singing voice…it is truly beautiful, but for reasons unknown to you, he never sings for you, or anyone, beyond the children.

Sometimes you sneakily listen to him singing the children to sleep, fearful of what would happen if he caught you.

One day he did.

He told you to just…keep it to yourself. Please. You promised him you would.

Only when you’re seriously sick, and you ask that he sing for you will he indulge you. He doesn’t want to lose you, but if his voice is really what you want to hear before you potentially slip through his fingers then fine. He can get over it and sing for you.

He’s always grateful that you recover, but now you won’t stop talking about his voice…

Alright end of part 1, I’ll. Probably write more later.

#fire emblem #fire emblem x reader #fire emblem three houses #fire emblem three houses x reader #fire emblem Yuri x reader #fire emblem three houses Yuri x reader #Yuri Leclerc x reader #fire emblem Yuri Leclerc x reader #fire emblem three houses Yuri Leclerc x reader

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nymphadora7 · 1 year

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yuri and kitty make sense. it did not come out of nowhere. the rom com meet cute? all of the tension while yuri was “dating” dae and how easily that tension transfers to romantic tension after kitty’s dream? that doesn’t come out of nowhere. kitty and yuri in the beginning of the show are two people who are at odds but don’t really want to be at odds. once the dae situation is mostly resolved, they become fast friends, which it’s foreshadowed they can be in episode 1. moreover, kitty has been with dae since she was 12. she clearly has been focused on him and not herself, and her interest in yuri is allowed to flourish because she is not with dae when it begins. she does not think she will be with dae. and she is in fact actively looking for someone to kiss. moreover, even if it was out of nowhere (which it isn’t) kitty is 17 (16?). at that age, crushes appear out of nowhere all. the. time. and while it might not have been the best idea to tell yuri about her feelings, kitty thought she would never see her again. sometimes the right thing for you, the thing that will let you keep going, is going to hurt someone else. doesn’t make it okay, just is. and on top of that, she didn’t fully confess anyway. and kitty’s not known for making good decisions, since literally the first tatbilb movie. it’s up to yuri now to decide what to do with this information. she clearly has wanted juliana to come back, and it is unlikely she will drop juliana because of kitty’s aborted confession. additionally, the few times we’ve seen juliana have been 1) the flashback, 2) the kiss in the janitor’s closet (neither of which reveal much about her), 3) the phone call in the tent, 4) the phone call in kitty/yuri/q’s room, and 5) the scene at the airport. in 2 and 3, juliana seems to have resigned herself to a life without yuri, and seems honestly shocked that yuri cared enough to go to such lengths to find her. what does that say about what juliana thinks of the relationship that yuri is so invested in? in 4 and 5, 4 explicitly, juliana is worried about yuri’s friendship with kitty, and jealous of it, and pushes the fact that she doesn’t quite trust yuri’s telling her the truth about the platonic nature of their friendship. to be clear, i have absolutely nothing against juliana. i am interested and curious to see her as a full character in season 2, and i do, in fact, desperately hope that they do not villainize a black queer female character. on the other hand, black queer women can be toxic partners. limiting othered people to only heroic, savior-like, positive roles, is also not great. and exhibiting jealous and mistrusting behavior already when we have so few, brief scenes of her is to me an orange flag. i’m not worried about it yet, but i have noticed it. and often, people who imply that they don’t trust their partner not to cheat, have already cheated themselves. once again, i hope this is untrue, i hope i’m wrong. finally, kitty was not in the right to almost confess to yuri, but it is not the cardinal sin some people are pretending it is. yuri and juliana may continue, they may not. whatever happens, it won’t be kitty’s fault. it is not inherently homophobic if you don’t ship kittyuri, or if you ship minty. it is homophobic to perpetuate this idea that the ship came out of nowhere simply because you don’t ship it and have refused to see what the show is explicitly showing.

in this same vein, min ho and kitty make sense. it did not come out of nowhere. and while min ho might not have had the best timing with telling kitty his feelings, he did in fact wait until he had confirmation that she was no longer with dae. he might have said something further had the PA not interrupted, but he did not appear to expect anything from her in return after he told her (just as kitty did not appear to expect anything in return from yuri when she almost confessed). kitty is shocked, but very clearly not upset about the information. to us, it is clear that min ho has liked kitty for a while, probably longer than he knew or let on. sometimes so called “hatred” for someone is genuinely that, but as demonstrated in xo kitty, it is often the exact opposite. (i am of course talking about disliking someone interpersonally for muddled reasons, not disliking someone for genuine reasons, i.e. they’re a harmful person.) dislike for someone is often based on someone protecting themselves for whatever reason. based on all that we know about min ho, he has a lot of family related issues, and a lot of reason to put up walls in order to protect himself. he is initially “anti-kitty” because he thinks dae should explore his options with someone he is in the same country with and then because he thinks yuri is a better option. a lot of this quite clearly stems from the way he was raised, the fact that his father is on wife #3, and the classism that very much exists in korea (as it does in many places) and honestly probably because kitty is half-white (i am not saying there is racism against white people, there isn’t. i’m saying that there is often unfortunate biases against mixed kids from both/all of their communities). in the chuseok episode, he says “my parents thought they were true love, and then had the messiest divorce ever” (or something to that effect). that line is so telling: min ho doesn’t believe in true love, or maybe even love at all. he looks at it as transactional, what can i get from them and what can they get from me? it’s evident in his failed (i think?) tryst with the k pop star whose name is escaping me, and in his situationship with madison. but spending so much time around kitty specifically changes his mind about these things. slowly, at first, and then much more rapidly. he’s still cocky, arrogant min ho, but he chills out a lot over those first few episodes. i think he appreciates that kitty actually responds to his teasing and one ups him oftentimes. and when he calls her his saesang, it’s so funny bc he is so clearly the one obsessed with her at all times throughout season 1. also, the dream happens after the chuseok episode, where they noticeably get closer. there is buildup! he thinks she’s beautiful when she enters his party, and is actively trying to resist his crush on her (because he thinks he shouldn’t have a crush on his friend’s girlfriend) when he reacts to it being her. he respects that he thinks she and dae are still into each other and moves his attention to madison. he knows her order in the detention episode. he is upset for her when he finds out yuri and dae lied. he saves her from the fireworks. he does not fight back against dae after dae attacks him because he thinks dae has the right to. he looks visibly shattered when kitty says min ho isn’t the one she was talking about. also, min ho would not have made the effort to sweet talk some flight attendant to find kitty’s seat and sit in coach because of nothing.

with both kittyuri, and with minty, they are one sided crushes (at least at the moment) with potential to be reciprocated, and i think people are misinterpreting them because of that. neither of them came out of nowhere, neither of them are toxic, and neither of the two ships involving teenagers include characters who are morally bad.

in conclusion, let people ship things. ship things yourself! and most of all, do not take things that seriously. shipping should never be a war. even if you personally don’t like a ship, it is shitty to go and actively hate the ship, especially if the ship is not doing you any harm, especially if you go into the positive spaces for that ship to spread your hate. if you don’t ship something, do not interact with content for that ship. it is not that hard. it is 2023, not 2013. ship whatever the hell you want.

#xo kitty #xo kitty spoiler #xo kitty spoilers #spoilers #spoiler #kittyuri #minty #kitty x yuri #yuri x kitty #min ho x kitty #kitty x min ho #kitty song covey #yuri han #min ho

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the-conversation-pod · 10 days

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Let's Go, Lesbians! (A Japanese GL Episode)

And we're back! This week we're back with @ginnymoonbeam to talk about Toxic Yuri in Chaser Game W and Food Yuri in She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat. Join us as we talk about pouring champagne on your ex's head, slapping your mean boss and her big ass red outfit into next week, choosing yourself over your cruel family, becoming the best gay you can be, and marshmallow parties.

Also, because we did not talk about it in the recording, we want to repost Rina Sawayama's Chosen Family song because this scene was so powerful in SLTCSLTE.

youtube

Timestamps

The timestamps will now correspond with chapters on Spotify for easier navigation.

00:00:00 - Welcome 00:01:15 - Introduction 00:02:45 - Chaser Game W: A Flop 00:18:31 - She Loves To Cook, and She Loves To Eat 00:23:14 - SLTCSLTE: The Women 00:34:18 - SLTCSLTE: Yako and The New House 00:39:17 - SLTCSLTE: The Food and Nagumo 00:43:02 - SLTCSLTE: Depictions of Intimacy 00:50:53 - SLTCSLTE Ratings and Outro

The Conversation Transcripts!

Thanks to the continued efforts of @ginnymoonbeam as transcriber, and @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader, we are able to bring you transcripts of the episodes.

We will endeavor to make the transcripts available when the episodes launch, and it is our goal to make them available for past episodes (Coming soon thanks to @wen-kexing-apologist). When transcripts are available, we will attach them to the episode post (like this one) and put the transcript behind a Read More cut to cut down on scrolling.

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

00:00:00 - Welcome

NiNi

Welcome to The Conversation About BL, aka The Brown Liquor Podcast.

Ben

And there it is. I’m Ben.

NiNi

I’m NiNi.

Ben

And we’re your drunk Caribbean uncle and auntie here sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs.

NiNi

Four times a year we pop in to talk about what’s going on in the BL world.

Ben

We shoot the shit about stories and all the drama going into them. I review from a queer media lens.

NiNi

And I review from a romance and drama lens.

Ben

So if you like cracked-out takes and really intense emotional analysis…

NiNi

If you like talking about artistry, industry, and the discourse…

Ben

And if you generally just love simping…

NiNi

There is a lot of simping on this podcast…

Ben

We are the show for you!

00:01:15 - Introduction

Ben

And we're back. This week, we're talking about lesbians, finally! And we brought a friend along.

NiNi

Say hi Ginny.

Ginny

Hello!

NiNi

Ginny is here with us and we are going to talk two Japanese GLs, Chaser Game W and She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat.

Ben, what did you think, like, sort of overarching about these two before we delve into the nitty gritty?

Ben

I thought Chaser Game W gave us a lot to anticipate early on, and unfortunately went in the direction we did not want it to go. Ended up being kind of a mess toward the end? I did not end up walking away too happy with it.

With She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat season 2, this time we had twenty 15-minute episodes and they had things to do and say with that time and I have a lot of things to say about that show. [laughs]

NiNi

Ginny, what are your overarching thoughts about these two shows?

Ginny

I had high hopes for Chaser Game W because I always want more toxic lesbians. [NiNi laughs] I want to see the girls get to be messy, I want to see complicated dynamics. And I did really enjoy the first couple episodes, but it kind of felt like the characterizations really fell apart as the series progressed, which was a big disappointment.

She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat was a delight. Every time I sat down to watch it, my heart was full and happy and warm.

00:02:45 - Chaser Game W: A Flop

NiNi

We always go from worst to first on this show, so let's start with Chaser Game W.

Ben, what is Chaser Game W about?

Ben

Chaser Game W is about a team of women at a game development studio in Japan who have been contracted to develop basically a demo for a GL adaptation, by a Chinese company named Vincent. It gets complicated by their project manager from the Chinese team, who clearly has beef with one of their team members and just spends most of the early show fucking with her because she's mad that they broke up in college. And then a bunch of other shit happens that is kind of weird.

NiNi

Okay, that's a hell of a description [laughs].

Ben

I'm sorry! Like, it starts off being a show that looks like it's playing into the complex dynamics about workplace power and possibly sexual harassment, and then kind of loses its way because it wants to be this mess of a story about lesbians with families and the difficult choices they have to make, and where do the husbands and children fit in this, and how does this play into career expectations? Bosses who might also be queer but evil queers?

And it's not necessarily a very coherent experience. There's a lot of ideas that sound good when you describe them to people, but in practice really weren't that satisfying to watch. This was not the Japanese GL experience I was hoping for.

NiNi

Ginny, what about you? What are your thoughts on Chaser Game W?

Ginny

It did seem like it was setting up to have some messages about not only the sexuality components, but also things about women in the workplace and being a mother and balancing those expectations… dealing with sexual harassment… all of that. But it didn't end up saying much that was meaningful to me about it, it just was like, ‘these are issues!’ If you try to draw any kind of conclusion from what the show is doing, you end up with some really messy messages.

The way that the evil queer boss came in was so funny to me. One of the selling points of this show is this strong femdom, woman in power exacting humiliation dynamic. But halfway through the show, we're resolving the relationship between the two women, so Fuyu, our previous femdom power boss, is not going to be that anymore. So we have to bring in a new one — and it just did not work for me.

NiNi

It was the dom getting dommed. It was like an inception of domming. It was a little strange. There were definitely some Chinese-Japanese dynamics in there. I don't have the cultural competency to pick up on entirely what they were doing, but it was pretty clear from the way that the show was operating. I don't know if it's stereotype, but it was clear that there was something going on there; my cultural competency in this area is not enough to figure out exactly what was going on there.

Ben

It was kind of weird seeing a Japanese show complaining about unrealistic expectations of Chinese developers? This is not a uniquely Chinese problem.

NiNi

I feel like it being set in gaming almost didn't matter to that side of things? They wanted to have this difference the show sees in working cultures be stark and to say something about that difference. But the supposed center of this, aside from the game and the development of the game, is a relationship between Fuyu and Itsuki. It's an extremely convoluted central story that just seems to serve as an excuse for why Fuyu, when she comes back to Japan, hates Itsuki so much.

The writing feels slightly unnecessarily complicated, but I actually rather enjoyed quite a lot of bits of this. I enjoyed, for example, the direction. I thought the camera was very assured, I thought it was very clear. I don't know if this is an original story or if it's coming from manga, but the direction is very very clear to me. I really enjoyed watching the camera move. The shots are really effective. But the story itself? It's not like I thought necessarily that… the story was badly told? I'm just not sure that it was the story that I wanted. Where we're going in the beginning with Fuyu, a mean lesbian comes back and is mean to her ex-girlfriend, I felt like, okay, that's where we're going. And then, suddenly, Fuyu is married and Fuyu has a daughter and there's all this stuff around the husband and Fuyu’s feelings, or not-feelings, about the husband. It got a little muddy.

But even with all of that, I think I probably enjoyed it more than you guys did. And I think part of the reason is that I binged it? So I didn't sit with a lot of these feelings or a lot of the confusion for very long.

Ben

It was not a fun week to week watch. As it started to deviate and get lost in itself, it was not fun to be like, 'oh right, this is where we were, all right, let's go and see how this week goes. Ohh… no. Okay.'

You asked about whether it's original or an adaptation. It is an adaptation. The original work is about power harassment, but I believe Itsuki’s character is a man? A lot about the show made sense once we realized that it was not an original queer story being adapted. A lot of it felt really tacked on to justify the drama and not really something that the writing really contextualized or dwelled on, at all.

Ginny

There were a lot of big character turns and big decisions made without a lot of grounding in why this character would make this choice. Once the mystery of their past is explained, you do understand why they reconcile suddenly, but then all of their choices afterwards just felt baffling to me. I'm not getting any kind of character journey. The show is like, well, this happens now, and then this happens now, and then they do this thing that you didn't expect. And I want to know why!

NiNi

I… feel like in some bits I was cottoning onto it, and then in some bits I was not. For example, when Itsuki starts to take care of Fuyu’s daughter, when she comes over and realizes that the husband's left and her daughter needs taking care of. I followed that bit of the character journey. I understood in some ways why, when the husband came back, Fuyu felt maybe guilty?

There was also, like, a little thing which I was really surprised didn't go anywhere. Early in the show the husband was video chatting with, I think his mother. And she says something like, 'you know, you have to be good to Fuyu. You're so lacking, and she is with you anyway.' that made me think that their marriage was lavender? I genuinely thought that they had some kind of arrangement or agreement — and then to find out later down the line that the husband actually was in love with her and was jealous of the thing that she had with Itsuki? That came out of nowhere for me. And then everything that followed on from there kind of didn't track, almost.

Did either of you get that feeling initially from the husband and were surprised or was that just me?

Ginny

My sense was that the husband had been perceived as not a good marriage prospect. Probably it was not earning a lot of money and had other loserish qualities or something. So my sense from the conversation was that that was what she was talking about. I certainly didn't ever get the sense that he was in love with her, exactly? Even when he's upset, it felt more to me kind of about pride. You can't have your wife sleeping around. That's an embarrassment. I don't think there were any deep feelings in that marriage.

NiNi

I don't even think either of them really had extremely deep feelings for their daughter. Like I think Fuyu loves her daughter, but in a distracted kind of way, almost? The only depth of feeling that I felt anywhere was between Fuyu and Itsuki, and even that was tied up in all this anger and bitterness and guilt and whatever else. That's a direction to go in for sure, but it really didn't make me understand why they wanted to be together, and then why they decided not to be together… and then in the end, why Fuyu comes back out of nowhere.

It's all muddled and mixed for me, especially the closer that we get to the end. But like I said, I don't think that I had as bad a time with it as other people might have.

Ben

I had a very bad time. [Ben and NiNi laugh]

This show was aggravating. We've been talking about this a lot on the show lately about how much work we think we should do for a show to like, meet them emotionally, where they're trying to take us. There are times when either the writing or the performance doesn't necessarily get you all the way there? And you kind of have to just feel it for the show. But this show just does not feel complete. There are a bunch of ideas that are fine on their own, like, ‘and then she comes in here and then she pours a fucking champagne on her head.’ That's an unhinged lesbian behavior that I have seen happen in person! So like, I totally believed that.

NiNi

Oh yeah.

Ben

But then Fuyu’s turn where she’s suddenly nice to other women in the company that they're in and stops being a huge dick to the other moms, that just doesn't really track? Like, what changed in that moment? I don't really know how we went there. They had her suddenly start being nice to them so they could be on the same team against Big Red.

NiNi

I'm so mad that you called her Big Red, but it kinda works. [Ben and NiNi laugh] I'm not gonna call her anything except Big Red now.

Ben

I did not remember what her character name was. Her name was Big Red.

Ginny

That's her name now, yep [laughs].

Ben

Like it was funny when Itsuki was like, 'Fuck off, Big Red' and knocked her ass down. [all laugh]

All these moments are like, well, that was amusing on its own, but it doesn't really come together as a coherent story unto itself. There’s this huge branching point later on where it's basically the supporting cast trying to seduce a guy to give them information to save the game, and that's happening separately from the drama with Itsuki, Fuyu, Fuyu’s husband, Big Red and all the drama going on there.

NiNi

I want to talk a little bit about the actual game development plot, because that stuff was wild. They're preparing whatever they have to do to develop this game, and along the way they're going through literal sexual harassment. There's a point in time that they're trying to get information from this artist. And this guy is a caricature of a sexual harasser, like at one point there are five of these female game developers in his house, and they're literally peeling this guy off of each other as he gropes them. And I'm just like, is this normal or is this exaggerated? I don't even know?

Ben

Actually, it felt like most of that was actually normal.

NiNi

That is terrifying.

Ben

The drama with the team felt pretty straightforward for me. You had women in the team having varied responses to the sexual harassment. One of them was like, 'I will absolutely not compromise myself and use sex to get ahead' and another one was like, 'I will, I got this for us.' [Ben and NiNi laugh] I thought that was fine. I didn't mind there being a character who is willing to use men's desire to advance her goals and her team’s goals. I liked that it wasn't required only for her to do that, that there were other people who didn't want to do it that way accomplishing things for their team. The up and down of, ‘is this game going to get developed or not, the expectations of our client keep changing, it seems to be for reasons well beyond us and other drama’ — that felt fairly normal for trying to get any sort of major creative endeavor with the expensive team off the ground. Most of the game development stuff tracked normally for me. Even the whole plot line about poaching talent and then dumping talent: that is a real problem right now. That sort of stuff mostly tracked for me. I wasn't that fussed about the game development stuff and the workplace conditions that they were working under.

It was the stuff about Fuyu and Itsuki's relationship and the motivations around them romantically, and other characters’ reactions to it, that is where I struggled the most with this. It wasn't a show that left you in a cool place at the end of an episode and picked up in a great place with the next episode. Spending two months watching this was not a great experience.

NiNi

I think my rating’s definitely going to be higher than you guys, so I'll go first.

Ben

Okay.

NiNi

I'm gonna say 7. To me, bits are cool and I can follow generally where this is going, and the bits that I thought were weird were not offensive. It wasn’t very good, but it wasn't terrible.

Ben

Ginny?

Ginny

I gave it a 5.5. 6 is my mad-I-watched-it threshold. Anything 6 or higher might be very bad, but I'm not mad I watched it. Below a 6 I'm kind of mad that I watched it. That's where this one landed for me.

Fuyu was very beautiful, and I did enjoy watching her every week. But when that's the nicest thing I have to say about a show, it's not good.

Ben

It gave this a 4. It is not recommended. I don't think this is a good lesbian story. I don't think this is a good game development story. I don't think it's a good workplace story. It is a mess. This was developed by the same person who made His the movie, so I am very confused how we ended up with something that absolutely failed on the queer front like this. I do not get it. When this show was confused, it lands on the wrong side of the coin a lot. And it felt like at the very last five minutes they were doing a shit ton of clean up. I don't think this show is worthwhile.

NiNi

That's gonna land us somewhere in the 5ish range overall?

Ben

Round it down, because it sucks! [all laugh] It gets a 5 from The Conversation.

NiNi

So that is officially a chop.

00:18:31 - She Loves To Cook, and She Loves To Eat

NiNi

All right. So we're gonna leave that behind and we're going to move on to She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat.

Ben, give us the synopsis. What is She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat about?

Ben

Okay, let me be much nicer now because this is one of my favorite shows now. So, [laughs] She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat is like the lesbian neighbor of What Did You Eat Yesterday? We have a young woman who's a programmer. She feels like she's like late 20s, early 30s. Her name is Nomoto. She runs like a food account on Instagram, and whenever she's in a bad mood and needs to work through some stuff, she ends up making too much food, and she has a small appetite, so it goes to waste. She has a neighbor who is a taller, bigger woman, and on a whim one night she invites her over to share food with her. And this is the beginning of their friendship that eventually becomes a more serious relationship.

Second season picks up with twice as many episodes, and boy did they need them. We spend this season with Nomoto and Kasuga befriending their new, younger woman neighbor. Nomoto becomes a full-time employee at her work and develops a more reliable friendship with Sayama. She also befriends her Twitter friend Yako, who is basically one of us. She loves her stories, she loves her little food, and she loves hearing about other people's drama and poking them to get their shit together. I love her so much.

It was a really delightful season watching these two grow closer, figure out what their relationship was going to be, and develop that into more as they dealt with some of their real personal and professional issues. I really, truly loved the season.

Ginny, you were fairly recent to watching this, so you watched the first and second season basically as one dedicated viewing experience. What was your experience engaging with this for the first time in the last month or so?

Ginny

It was very fun. I did this as my unwinding as I was moving in with my girlfriend who is the loves to eat in our relationship, where I'm the loves to cook. So it was a lovely experience. The two seasons flow so seamlessly into each other. Season 2 picks up right where season 1 left off so I'm kind of glad I did it this way. I think I might have been a little frustrated at the end of season 1, especially having to wait and not knowing if we'd get more, because they don't entirely confirm their relationship by the end of that? It's understood that they're very important to each other and they have this very meaningful place in each other's lives, celebrating holidays together, but they don't even start to have conversations about what their relationship is until we're a little ways into season 2. So I'm glad that I got to watch it all unfold as a single story.

So many details of, just the way that that develops between them felt so realistic to journeys that I've seen between two women who are close friends and realize that they might have romantic feelings for each other. All of the angsting you do about that, and the 'what does this mean' and the 'what does it even mean to love someone romantically instead of as just this very special, most importantest friend in the world,' — just so many little details were perfectly done and extremely relatable. It was just gorgeous.

Ben

NiNi, since you watched the first season and angsted with the rest of us about whether or not it was going to come back, and whether or not that second season was gonna be good, what were your overall impressions of the second season after you walked away from it?

NiNi

I loved it, but I knew I was going to love it. I had some angst in the middle of the season that we're probably gonna get to, not bad angst. Just, ‘oh, I wonder if they're doing this thing that I think that they're doing.’ But I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I love so much how the show expands in this season. The first season is very tightly focused, mostly on Nomoto and Kasuga, whereas this season expands outward to show you some of the other people in their life and show you them developing their relationships with these other people, some new, some not. I always love stories that show you the life that these people are living. So I thoroughly enjoyed this season, had a great time with it.

00:23:14 - SLTCSLTE: The Women

Ben

There were a lot of presentations of various women's issues that played out this season. Do the two of you have particular storylines that you especially enjoyed, or connected to?

Ginny

I love Nagumo's story. I think the one I connected to most was probably Kasuga, but I thought bringing in Nagumo as someone who could receive some mentorship from these two women and also [laughs] kind of help coach Kasuga through her feelings revelation, and relationship transition… it was a beautiful relationship and a wonderful addition, and the way that her character brings a different perspective on the whole nature of food and communal eating was also just a gorgeous touch.

Ben

What about you, NiNi? Did you have a particular plot line that you enjoyed or connected to?

NiNi

We got some stuff on the fringes about Sayama trying to date and looking to potentially get married, realizing and talking to Nomoto that she can't get married if she wants to, and then that leading Sayama to think about whether she even wants to get married. That resonated in a particular kind of way. It was a quiet little side runner, it didn't take up a lot of space in the story, but it did hit me. We end the season without really an answer from Sayama on that, but the fact that she started thinking about it? That resonated with me, for sure.

Ben

What I love about Sayama as a straight character in this narrative is: queer people don't fit the heterosexual mold, and loving queer people forces you to reckon with why we don't. And then that can often open up things for you, as well. I really loved her apology scene with Nomoto. Recognizing that her working through her own ambivalence about marriage is dismissive of the fact that it's not even an option available for Nomoto.

Ginny

You also have Kasuga's coworker, who's older and is getting a divorce after her children have grown up. Getting a divorce is extremely liberating for her. It really does show this kind of 360 view of heterosexual marriage not necessarily being right for all heterosexual women.

Ben

I think it's notable that when they show multiple older women working at this grocery store, they're all like, 'mm-mm, divorce was the right call for me, because I don't think it's right that I'm expected to take care of my husband's family and everybody else does nothing, and that's gonna be my entire existence.' And I love how explicit she was, she told Kasuga straight up: if you were my own daughter, who I do have, I would tell her the same thing, and I would say please live your life. Do not sacrifice your life for a bunch of other people who do not appreciate what you want for your life. Because Kasuga decided to sever ties with her family, because they did not respect her and they wanted her to just take care of them, and sacrifice anything she wanted for her life. It was really lovely that the show went out of its way to be explicit about that.

NiNi

Since we're already sort of diving into it, let's lean into that storyline. Kasuga left home a long time ago and decided to live her life. Kasuga has a brother who is the favored child, but Kasuga’s brother does nothing. Now Kasuga's parents are older and ill, and her grandparents are older and ill and need taking care of. And so Kasuga's dad has started looking for her now. He's like, 'Well, you're not married, whatever you're doing isn't important, you gotta come home and take care of everybody.' It only comes to her doorstep because her aunt gives her father both her number and address, because 'oh, you’re a family, you shouldn’t not talk to each other.' Her aunt thinks she's doing the right thing, but this is definitely not the right thing for Kasuga. Kasuga's father has never appreciated her as a person, has never cared about her as a person, has only focused on his son. And now he wants Kasuga to take care of him essentially until he dies. Kasuga really struggles with this. She wonders, is this my responsibility? Is this something that I have to do? Is she a bad daughter if she doesn't do this? What does this mean for her? Fujita tells her, 'Look, if you were my daughter, I would tell you do not go. You don't have a responsibility to give up your life for somebody else.'

All the conversations that Kasuga has with her father, she has them in her car. She does not talk to him when she is in her house, her safe space? She does not speak to her father in there. When she has decided that she's not going home, not just not going home, but never going home again, she sits in the car and has the conversation where she tells him, 'I'm not ever coming home. Don't contact me again.' And then she goes from the car straight to Nomoto. And Nomoto gets so furious on her behalf that she starts to cry. She's like, 'I can't believe that this man made you feel this way about yourself. He's a horrible person.' Basically, everything that Kasuga needed to hear, she got from Nomoto in that moment.

I am an eldest daughter. I have a fantastic relationship with my family. And any caregiving I do is of my own volition, and I am happy to do it. It is still tiring. It is still exhausting. Even when it is received with gratitude and happiness and love, it is hard to do. If you have to take care of people who don't care about you? You can feel like you're dying. I am certain about it. That expectation being placed on you is hard enough. To do it for people [who] do not love you — because I do not think Kasuga’s father loves her — is impossible. And so I had a lot of feelings about it while it was happening, but watching her say, 'No, I am not going to just let go of my entire life and everything that I want for this person.'

And then to have Fujita tell her, 'if you were my daughter,' which releases her from that burden of thinking about her mother — because that's the other part of the guilt that she's feeling. Not necessarily guilt towards her father, but the fact that if she doesn't come home, her mother's gonna have to do all of this. And she thinks about her mother all the time. It's just, it's so much. It's so deep. It's so intense. It's so delicious. And it's not what you expect to get out of a story that's told in little 15-minute episodes! It really isn't.

Ginny

I'm also an eldest daughter and feel so much of that. I spent my childhood, really, like Kasuga, very aware that there were a lot of things I was expected to give up. The way that that sinks into your brain… you just feel like, 'I am worth what I can do for people.'

What struck me the most in that conversation with Nomoto when Kasuga first tells her what she's done, is Nomoto begs her to keep living her life here where she's thriving, and to keep being happy. Through their whole relationship, Nomoto has taken such joy in Kasuga’s love of eating and just celebrated that this gives you pleasure and you're taking pleasure, and that's a wonderful thing. And in this moment, she kind of expands it to Kasuga's whole life. And she says, please don't ever go somewhere where you can't thrive, where you can't feel joy, where you can't feel loved, and yourself. To hear someone say that? I think I did cry in that scene. You need to hear someone say that. Someone who grew up like Kasuga needs someone who loves you begging you to take care of yourself and to do what brings you joy. The heart of their relationship and what draws them together is how deeply Nomoto celebrates Kasuga taking care of herself and being taken care of and experiencing pleasure. It's beautiful.

Ben

I really enjoyed the way that continued in the whole strawberry debacle.

NiNi

[laughs] The strawberry thing. It was so funny. [Ginny laughs] It was so cute, too. It was really cute. This is after they've started dating, but their relationship hasn't changed very much. And so she asked Nagumo, is there something that she should be doing? Which I found adorable.

Ginny

It's so real.

Ben

It's funny, too, because Nagumo admits she doesn't have much experience either [Ginny laughs], and is like, 'You could, like, go do things you both like doing? Together? That sounds right.' [all laugh]

NiNi

It’s so funny. And that's when she sees this flyer for the strawberry picking. And she's like, 'Oh, okay, I like strawberry picking. I should ask Nomoto to go strawberry picking with me. That's like the kind of thing that people do when they're in relationships, right?'

Ben

'That's, like, a food thing. She likes to make food. This might be fun!' Kasuga doesn't really say what she wants to do, she just hands it to Nomoto and is like, 'Hey, I thought this might be fun for us to do' and Nomoto’s like, 'Oh, yeah, that sounds great. We can maybe go vegetable picking and then make some stuff afterwards.' And Kasuga doesn't really speak up about what she maybe wanted.

Late in the day Nomoto realizes Kasuga maybe wanted to go check out a restaurant in the area, and wanted to maybe do strawberry picking instead. And Nomoto ends up feeling so bad about this, feeling like she was not really receptive to what Kasuga actually wanted, and like she was steamrolling her. This plays out across almost two or three episodes, but the culmination is Nomoto saying very clearly to Kasuga, 'I want you to be selfish with me. I want you to feel like you can want things and express them. It's really important to me that you are doing the things you enjoy.'

Ginny

And Kasuga admits that that's hard for her. Another moment that rang so true for me, for both of them.

Ben

So much of their relationship is Nomoto getting intense pleasure [laughs] out of watching Kasuga enjoy herself.

00:34:18 - SLTCSLTE: Yako and The New House

Ben

I'd like to talk about my favorite character of the season.

NiNi

Ben wants to talk about Yako. Let's go.

Ben

Yako is the best thing that has happened to BL and GL in the last two years. [laughs]

NiNi

She's really just like us. [laughs]

Ben

No character’s been a better audience stand in than an asexual lesbian enjoying her wine and her takeout, watching gay movies with other girls, and then hearing about their relationship drama and giving completely reasonable advice by just asking questions.

Ginny

Best life.

Ben

I love her so much. She is everything that I am trying to be every day. [NiNi laughs] And she's good at it! [laughs] She never tells anybody, 'Just do it.' She's just like, 'What are you feeling? How do you feel if you don't do it? Well, there you go.’

And then they have the curry party? That looked like so much fun. They all go over to Yako's house and meet her properly. Nomoto and Kasuga take Nagumo with them. And they make a bunch of different curry, and naan, and some fancy juice, and they have themselves a good-ass time. And this leads to Yako becoming friends with Nagumo, and she ends up becoming a confidante to Nagumo as well. She recognizes after the girls reveal they're gonna move out that somebody should check on Nagumo, who has probably gotten used to having two really reliable neighbors who care about her, and how Nagumo might be anxious about saying, like, she misses them and still wants to see them. Even as Nagumo admits, moving out is the right call for them, I love that Yako gave Nagumo space to admit that she was a bit bummed that she was gonna not be living next to two solid friends anymore.

I love Yako so much. She is in competition for blorbo of the year.

NiNi

Yako has the best ideas for parties, too, like the first time she had the watch party with Nomoto, they've both got snacks and drinks, and they're talking about what they've got for their snacks and their drinks and then they watch a lesbian movie and they cry. [Ben and Ginny laugh] It’s so good. Literally, Yako is really just like us.

The only thing I'm sad about in this entire season is that Sayama hasn't yet become a part of this whole little group that they have, but she will. I know she will.

Ben

They just moved in together. They got a big space. There's room for Fujita and Sayama to show up for another party they're gonna have. These two could host all six major female characters at their new place.

Let's talk about the new place while we're here. Where…?

[all laugh]

NiNi

Go ahead. I know you want to.

Ben

I love Kasuga. I love everything about her. I love her big chair, I love her big bed, I love her big TV. I need to know where these things are going to go in the new space. [NiNi laughs] Nomoto is totally fine to just use her iPad as her fill-in device for all of her tech needs and entertainment needs. I understand Kasuga. When I moved out, I got myself two big-ass TVs! I need to know where this goes in their new space.

NiNi

[laughs] Doing it real big, right?

Ben

Mhmm! Her car real big. Shoes real big. TV real big. Everything real big.

NiNi

We can talk a little bit about the new space. It looks really good. I like the way that it feels like both of them, which is exactly what you want in a place where you’re gonna be moving in together. But can we just talk about how U-Haul lesbian it is of them to get together and immediately start talking about moving in together?

Ginny

Hang on, they started talking about moving in together [Ben laughs] and then got together. That was the order! [NiNi laughs] They were like—

NiNi

That is true, that is fair.

Ginny

—'I’m gonna move.'

'Oh my God. I can't bear the thought of you leaving, but I understand why you have to.'

'Well, it's okay ‘cause I was going to ask if you wanted to move in. Also, are we in love with each other?'

Like, that was the conversation. [NiNi laughs]

Ben

'And we finally picked a place to live. Do you wanna make out for the first time?'

NiNi

[laughs] And the other good part of it is that before any of this, they somehow adopted a child together.

Ben

Right?

Ginny

Yeah! This all tracks. This is all very typical.

NiNi

Mmhmm. This felt like the correct order of things for lesbians.

00:39:17 - SLTCSLTE: The Food and Nagumo

NiNi

Okay, we need to talk about food.

Ben

Okay.

NiNi

Because Ben started talking about the curry party and I got excited.

Ben

I got hungry, I need to go make food after this. [Ben and Ginny laugh]

NiNi

We didn't even talk yet about the takoyaki party. I am not a huge fan of takoyaki, but that looked really good.

Ben

All right, as we go into the food, let's talk about Nagumo's eating disorder, because I think that this is one of my favorite food plots in a food show in a long time.

NiNi

One of the things about these food shows is that it's about the communal experience of food. Nagumo has a social anxiety disorder where she can't eat in front of other people. The way that this is brought to the surface, and then the way that Kasuga and Nomoto figure out how to include her in the communal experience without trying to force her to eat or making it an anxious space for her where other people are eating… There's something about Kasuga that just reads incredibly reliable from the off. So when Nagumo first meets Kasuga, she very quickly gets very comfortable and feels like she can tell this woman anything. And Kasuga is just so forthright and so understanding about things, that when Nagumo tells her, you know, 'I really can't eat in front of other people,' the first thing she asks her is 'oh, well, can you drink something? Can I make you a cup of tea?' And that sort of becomes a jumping off point for the way that they interact when they're having these communal experiences around food, and the way that Kasuga explains to other people for Nagumo, but without giving too many details of Nagumo's private business. The way that these women make a comfortable space for her to still have the community of meals together without forcing her to eat, drives Nagumo to say, 'I want to go and get myself treated because I want to be able to eat with these women, because I care about them.'

Ben

I really love the arc of that. In a show about two people bonding over food, they met somebody who they couldn't necessarily do that with right away, they had to work into it. And I love the way that they slowly built that out — like the donut party was so satisfying.

NiNi

Donut party was fantastic.

Ben

There’s the donut party. There's the marshmallow party.

NiNi

Don't get me started on Nomoto and her, like, zoning out thinking about Kasuga with these marshmallows. [laughs] It was almost erotic but not in a male gaze erotic kind of way. She's got a comically large number of bags of marshmallows in Nomoto’s mind that she's hugging to her, and then she starts eating the marshmallows with a smile on her face. [laughs] All this is happening in Nomoto’s imagination and I'm just like, 'Yes, girl. Yeah, I understand what is happening to you right now.' [laughs] She's zoning out thinking about Kasuga and these marshmallows and I am cracking up. I'm having a whale of a—Oh, it's so good.

Okay. I'm gonna get over Kasuga and marshmallows, but [laughs] not immediately. So good, so funny. No notes.

00:43:02 - SLTCSLTE: Depictions of Intimacy

Ben

You had a little bit of hesitation in the middle of the second season. Do you want to talk about that on the show? And do you feel resolved by the way they played it out?

NiNi

Not resolved, but more… comforted, I guess. Part of the agita, I think that I was having, is that I was working through myself. Yako and Nomoto are watching these lesbian films. Yako is introducing Nomoto to these lesbian movies, and they're watching them together. And Nomoto is saying she's watching these movies and all these women are so passionate, and she knows that she likes Kasuga in a romantic way, but she doesn't think that she has these passionate feelings like these women in these films. That's when Yako tells her, 'Well, you know, I'm asexual, this is how I feel about these things.'

And in the middle of the season when this is happening, I had a bit of a moment where I'm just like, okay, is it that they're doing this purity thing where it's fine to be a lesbian if you don't have sex or sexual feelings? It was something that I was worried about. I think it was a little bit of burden of representation stuff that I was maybe putting on the show? That I felt like it was important to show female sexuality as being good and okay and fine, and not to wrap female sexuality and women loving women up in this thing of it being somehow chaste and pure. That was something that was coming from my own thoughts about it. There's not a lot of ace spectrum rep out there in terms of media and dramas in this field, so intellectually I felt like, oh, well, this is fine. But emotionally, I was having a hard time with. Intellectually, I'm like, okay, yes, if it is that this is an ace lesbian story, this is fine because there's not a lot of representation of that, either. But then I was also, like, feeling that even if it was ace lesbian representation, it was being done in this weird binary where you're either sexual or you're not, when acespec is just a whole spectrum of things. I was getting tied up in my own feelings about a lot of this, and it was giving me a little bit of grief and a little bit of gripe.

But when we come down through the season and come down towards the end of the season, it starts to feel more like a journey of discovery, of Nomoto figuring out what labels that she would apply to herself that make her feel comfortable with the relationship, and understanding how she feels about Kasuga and in what ways they want to proceed with their relationship and the things that they want to try or not try, and having those conversations with Kasuga, as well. And that eased me in the way that I was feeling about it. I fully admit that I got tied up in my own feelings about this, because it didn't have anything to do with what the show was doing. It works out well. I feel comfortable and comforted by the way that the story goes down through to the end. I'm good with where they've decided to take Nomoto, and Nomoto and Kasuga’s relationship, and where they have hopefully paused, not stopped.

Ginny

I understand that feeling completely. I feel some kind of meta regret that the two lesbian shows we’re talking about, the horny kinky concept one was bad, and the very chaste, ace spectrum one was good. I would love more horny kinky concept lesbians that are also actually well done. But as you said, that's not a problem with this show as it is just sort of with the bigger media landscape, and the show is giving also voice to really important, very representative experiences.

I love where they land on the question of physical intimacy, because I was wondering what they were going to do having gotten so far into the season. They hardly ever touch each other. There is this sensuality in their relationship around food, and I don't think it functions as a metaphor or a substitute for sex — it's just a different kind and source of pleasure that is important to their relationship, and that's so cool and I love it! But I love where they end up on the question of touch. Kasuga saying, 'yes, I would like to try things out one by one with you.' That's such a lovely way to say, we don't know where this ends. We don't know how we're going to feel about it, but we trust each other enough and we want to explore together at whatever pace feels right for both of us.

Ben

I am less concerned, I think, with certain styles of Japanese shows delving into onscreen depictions of sex and sexuality because of the space those shows fill. Zenra Meshi, What Did You Eat Yesterday?, and this show. The ton of sensuality in the food stuff supports the thinking around sex and intimacy, and I'm really glad they had the hug and kiss scene to make sure that we didn't skip that? But I don't necessarily need to see it in the show, in the sense that I'm okay with just confirming that it's gonna happen, or it is happening. What I do need NHK and TV Tokyo to figure out is: how does the cast of this show meet the cast of What Did You Eat Yesterday? There has to be a way to get these two stories a crossover.

NiNi

It does feel like there needs to be a crossover between these two stories. The new place that they've moved into, I'm pretty sure it's in Shiro and Kenji's building, like it has to be. That's the only thing that makes any sense to me in my head. [laughs]

What you were saying about seeing it on screen, it's not necessarily that I need to see their physical intimacy on screen, or whether there is physical intimacy on screen. I just need to understand, I think, if it was something that they were even gonna talk about or discuss, or if it was something that they wanted or not wanted. I think that it's fine for me for them to have the conversation and say, 'Okay, let's figure this out.' And if that lands upon them not being physically intimate that's fine, if it lands up on them being physically intimate, that's fine, but I think what I was worried about, and maybe I shouldn't have been, was that they were not going to talk about it at all.

Ben

I'm very glad that they had a conversation about it before they moved out, and established that it is something that they want, even if it's something they're gonna have to figure it out.

NiNi

Most definitely, but let's move back to the part where they're moving into Shiro and Kenji's building, because I feel like somehow that has to happen. And I feel like somebody needs to slip Nishijima and Uchino a note that says, 'Hey. Y'all are good at making stuff happen. Make this happen, too. Find a way.'

Ben

It's just difficult because it's an NHK adaptation versus TV Tokyo and I don't know how that plays out because one is a for-profit broadcaster and the other is explicitly a public entity.

NiNi

Figure it out. [Ben and NiNi laugh] I don't care if it's a movie, I don't care if it's a special, I don't care what it is. They need to figure this out, because there's no way that these two shows are not existing in the same universe. They have to.

00:50:53 - SLTCSLTE Ratings and Outro

Ben

I think that's it. This show is excellent. I guess we should rate it. Let's go around.

Ginny, you're newest to this. What's your rating for this?

Ginny

I gave season one a 9 and season two a 10. Season one felt a little incomplete to me, but season two sewed it up. If I was rating them together, I would give them a 10 as a single experience.

Ben

What about you, NiNi?

NiNi

Why you even asking me? You know my answer. This is a 10.

Ben

It's a 10! 10s across the board. Go watch it right now and then when you're finished, go show it to a friend, and then make them show it to a friend. I'm not even kidding. This is excellent. This is going to have to get a new supercut for me on the show. I’m gonna have to mention this every goddamn recording we do after this. [Ginny and NiNi laugh]

NiNi

It's a good thing Ginny's here because now she goes, she's like, okay, so I'm looking for What Did You Eat Yesterday? and then She Loves to Cook, She Loves to Eat.

Ginny

Making notes.

Ben

It was really just so lovely. One of the things I really enjoy in my queer stories is realistic and believable-feeling friend groups around them. It's really important for me, not just that I believe in the integrity of the couple, but also the integrity of their network. And I really like when queer friend groups grow as a result of two other people finding something in each other, that was really important for me. And it's why this particular show is so special to me. I really love this show, so much. Please go watch it.

NiNi

And with that, that's all she wrote. That is going to wrap us up, say bye to the people.

Say bye Ginny!

Ginny

Bye!

NiNi

Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben

Peace.

#chaser game w #she loves to cook and she loves to eat #tsukuritai onna to tabetai onna #japanese gl #gl series #ben and nini's conversations #the conversation #lgbtq #podcast #spring series #spring 2024

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