#people say its bad an i'm just like- which part? point to it
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One thing I haven't seen talked about is Crystal's character arc, and specifically the way the timing of it interacts with Charles' arc. They stumble over each other in the worst possible way en route to their respective character growth, and from a narrative perspective, it's absolutely genius.
I'm going to preface all this by saying: none of this is a criticism of Crystal. Part of what makes her such a dynamic, refreshing character is that you don't get to see women in fiction written the way she's been written. You don't get to see women with her flaws that aren't throw-away mean girls or villains. You especially don't get to see women with her traits who learn and grow and become better people. So yeah, I'm going to talk about Crystal's character flaws. No, this isn't Crystal hate. We love our girl in this house. Okay? Okay. Let's start.
Crystal's character arc, at its heart, is all about her learning to be a better person because she has good influences that love and support her for the first time.
When the show starts, Crystal is not a nice person. She's abrasive in a way that's specifically designed to push people away. She's used to getting her own way, and it shows. She's used to having no meaningful connections with anyone, and it shows. She's breathtakingly selfish, in the very literal sense of the definition. She is focused on her self. Her problems are front and center to her; everything is about what she needs, and what she wants, and how she's struggling.
Jenny calls her out very early on. In episode one, Crystal is complaining about the boys, and Jenny, for all her cynicism, strikes right at the heart of the problem. She tells Crystal, "Everybody is always thinking about themselves, all the time." People only care about their own problems. And she says, correctly, that that's what Crystal is doing, too.
This moment is a revelation for Crystal. For the first time, she considers what her behavior looks like from another person's perspective. As she says, she gets mad at herself over it, and that awareness allows her to do something selfless for the first time in the series. She takes a step back and insists that instead of focusing on her problems, they go to help a little girl. It's a big moment for her.
But importantly, she's not done growing as a character here. She's only just getting started.
On my first watch through, I didn't realize how often, over the next few episodes, Crystal redirects things to her problems during conversation, but it's quite a lot. She's still focused on herself – selfish, in that most literal definition of the word. The issues most important to her are her issues. She's starting to learn to think about other people, but she's not there yet. The process is still underway.
Which brings us to Charles.
Charles' arc is a different sort of self-reflection. He's terrified that he's a bad person the way his father was and the way the boys that killed him were.
During the course of the show, he gets systematically stripped of his confidence and made to feel helpless, and just like Crystal needs outside influences to help her reach a more stable place, Charles does, too. He desperately needs reassurance that he isn't everything he's afraid he is.
But my goodness, the timing in their arcs is such a trainwreck when you put them together, and it is brilliant.
Let's start with the Devlin House.
Crystal has some amazing character growth here. She displays genuine concern about Charles, makes an attempt at comforting him, and learns to work with Edwin even though she still doesn't particularly like him at this point.
Charles, meanwhile, is beginning to fall apart. He's just had the worst night of his afterlife. He's been viscerally reminded of how helpless he is. He couldn't stop the Devlins from being killed over and over, just like he couldn't stop his own father's abuse. He messed up his attempted rescue so badly that he was completely out of commission until the case was finished. He managed to help not one single thing. He made no impact at all. He couldn't help those girls any more than he was able to help himself, while he was still alive.
So they get back to the butcher shop, and what do we see? Monty immediately coopts Edwin. Niko doesn't know what's happened because she wasn't there and Charles has been all fake smiles with her. And Crystal goes off with Niko, leaving Charles to flounder on his own in the wake of everything. She's still learning how to support other people. She isn't there yet, and it's extremely on display in this moment.
Then we get the lighthouse episode, and they both get put through the wringer here. Crystal gets her hopes and expectations jerked around by the Night Nurse in the very worst way, and Charles gets hit with a whole pile full of trauma. All that helplessness wells to the forefront again. Combined with being forced to relive some of his worst memories and the desperation to keep Edwin safe from hell, Charles lets himself act on his anger for once.
And what does he get in the aftermath? Horror.
Everyone who cares about him is horrified by what he's done. Edwin goes so far as to call it extreme. They don't know the half of it, of course; they haven't seen what the Night Nurse just put him through. But in this moment Charles is at his absolute lowest, and all he sees is confirmation that he's exactly as terrible as he thinks he is.
That's why Charles shrugs off Edwin's attempt at comfort, here. When he needed to be able to do something to protect Edwin and also himself – when he needed to believe that he could be better than what his father always was – all he sees is the confirmation from the people he cares about most that when push came to shove, he really is a bad guy.
Then comes the aftermath. And this moment is such a brilliant, awful clash of both of their character arcs. It is so delightfully messy.
Because Charles starts to open up to Crystal here. He starts to lay himself bare, the way he ends up doing with Edwin in episode 5. He's on the verge of admitting something that he's been worried about for literal decades. He tells her, "I've been angry for such a long time."
And what does Crystal do? She's still in the midst of her own character growth. She's still struggling to support other people. She's still learning how to. In a lot of ways, though she's made progress already, she's still that selfish girl that Jenny called out in the very first episode.
And she shows it here it with the absolute worst possible timing. No sooner has Charles started to talk about what's bothering him than she cuts in with her own problems. She's tired of riddles and spirits and demons and not knowing who she is. And the look on Charles' face. The moment when he visibly sets aside his own problems, because Crystal doesn't need any more disasters on her plate? It's heartbreaking. You can actually track the subtle change in his expression there. The actor does a phenomenal job.
And then comes the kiss. And what spurs it? Crystal saying she needs something real.
This moment isn't about light-hearted attraction, the way the earlier flirting is. It's Charles setting aside what he needs – comfort and reassurance and a moment to talk through the things that have been tearing him apart – to give her what she says she wants. He can't even feel it. And Crystal isn't far enough along in her character growth here to realize how selfish she's being. Like Jenny said way back in episode one, she's only thinking about herself.
And then comes the absolute unmitigated disaster of episode 5.
Straight out the gate, Charles leans in for a kiss. From his perspective, they have something together; there's affection there. Charles "I think I'd miss kissing" Rowland, who has been starved for meaningful physical contact for thirty years, is not in a hurry to give this up.
But Crystal is fresh out of a nightmare where she conflates Charles with her abusive ex. She withdraws; she calls what they had a distraction. She cuts it off almost as soon as it's started, so focused on her own worries here that she misses how damn fake Charles' smile is, to cover up that he's coming to pieces.
To be clear, she's absolutely not in the wrong here. It is 1000% her prerogative not to jump into a relationship again while she's still struggling to work through what happened with David. But the arc of her narrative is still early enough that she does it all without so much as the awareness that her focus on her own issues has hurt Charles terribly.
And then the episode really kicks off, and both of them are in shambles in very different ways.
Crystal is projecting her issues with David onto Charles. She has a lot of history, and David seems as though he's exactly the right sort of toxic to leave lasting a lasting impact. But Charles hasn't done anything to deserve her assumptions, and he takes the brunt of her temper here and throughout the episode.
Charles is desperately projecting onto the dead jocks. He very badly wants them to be good guys, because he sees himself in them and he needs himself to be a good guy. He snipes back at Crystal for the very first time in this episode, and he does it in the worst way possible, accidentally prodding her where it will do the most damage.
They're both hurting. They both say some truly painful things to one another.
She does not need to hear that she has unsorted hangups about David still plaguing her while she's unable to move past them. He desperately does not need anyone to tell him that he has rage issues while he's still struggling to think of himself as a decent person.
They apologize, in the end. They start to move past it.
But it's telling that Charles doesn't try to open up to Crystal again. He goes to Edwin instead, even though Edwin is the one who called his actions regarding the Night Nurse extreme. He gets the reassurance he needs so badly; he gets the connection he was looking for with Crystal from Edwin, instead. (I have a lot of thoughts on why Charles initially tries to open up to Crystal so quickly, but it is very much an aside, and this is already extremely long, so it will have to wait for another write-up.)
But the important thing here is, Edwin is the one to offer Charles what he needs to overcome the self-doubt eating him alive. Edwin provides the physical affection Charles was seeking in the form of that long-overdue hug. Edwin is the one who's able to reaffirm for him that he's not just a good guy, he's the best person Edwin knows.
And for all intents and purposes, Charles' major character arc ends here.
Charles has a few last little moments to go on the path to rebuilding his own self-image, after this, but for the most part his concerns have been resolved. He saves Crystal in episode 6 and Edwin in episode 7, proving to himself that he's able to make a difference in the face of overwhelming odds. He's not helpless, no matter what the Night Nurse told him; he can be a force for good in the world. By the end of the series, his crisis of self-doubt seems to have been largely overcome.
But it's the conversation with Edwin at the end of episode 5 that really allows him to work through his most pressing issues. Edwin is there to help support him when he stumbles. Edwin provides him the comfort he was looking for while Crystal was too worried about her own problems to notice how badly he needed the help.
Crystal, meanwhile, still has a ways to go after episode 5. The last three episodes are where she does her most important character growth.
In episode 6, she learns some hard lessons about keeping secrets and letting people help and appreciate you even when you can't offer them anything in return. And Charles, importantly, is there for her every step of the way. He consistently offers her physical and emotional support. He models for her, in a very real way, what it looks like to have someone prop you up when you need the help.
And in turn, Crystal steps in to save the boys. She's the big damn hero at the end of this episode.
The breakthrough continues into episode 7. She's so intent on helping to get Edwin out of hell that she literally goes to face her own demons, not for herself for once – not for her own purposes or needs or wants – but because she wants to help someone else.
And episode 8, at long last, brings her to the culmination of her character arc.
Crystal is at her absolute lowest here. Her family, the people who were supposed to love her unconditionally, didn't even realize she was gone. Her precious memories, that she's spent the entire series trying to regain, have showed her that she's not the person she hoped she would be. She's overwhelmed enough that she means to flee, to cut herself off from her new friends entirely.
Then the boys get kidnapped. And just like that, she makes up her mind.
For the first time since the start of the series, she sets aside her most important issues in order to let what other people need take precedence. She disregards all of her own personal concerns and focuses instead on others. She's finally stepped out of those selfish impulses that Jenny calls her out on, all the way back in the first episode. She's finally learned how to support other people when they need it.
Crystal has finally figured out how to be there for others, despite having troubles of her own.
It's a lovely arc, and it's beautifully done.
Charles' is just as touching.
And god damn, but it was a brilliant narrative choice to have their character arcs line up in exactly the wrong way.
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i know people are saying the dub of the boy and the heron is bad but. it's really not.
#the boy and the heron#movies#studio ghibli#hayao miyazaki#films#family films#people say its bad an i'm just like- which part? point to it#is it the celebrity aspect? i hope not#rig rambles
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sometimes (often) i think about the characters i kin or relate to and then the realization comes in again and again that i need therapy (/lh?)
#⋯ ꒰ა starry thoughts ໒꒱ *·˚#unfortunately i doubt i will ever get therapy bcs i have this. thing. idk. but i believe in myself to just rely on myself?#and yeah i uhh can go on more about that BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT OF THIS sorry i suck at explaining things. anyways#humans. interesting. i am fascinated by humans and myself and i'm tired of typing now GOODBYE anyways xiv music is so fucking good#and also idk how to interact w others sorry ..... i am scared of getting close to people bcs everyone i've grown close to has ended up#leaving me or i mess up! but tbh it's better now i think and also not as bad as i think but sorry i still have bad issues with. that#me saying i don't want to type anymore and then proceed to rapidly type out so many words oopsies#pls just do not PERCEIVE ME !! unless you want to ig but idk why you'd want to do that uhm#yk i like tumblr most out of all social medias bcs it feels like i can... sort of just be my weird self here! and it's not fully nice#and i still have anxiety problems and overthinking problems and whatnot which is evident by my 100+ notifs i havent checked since#christmas but that's not the point (?) idk whats the point honestly uhhhh nvm (??)#OH I LOVE FF SO MUCH tbh it's w/o a doubt still my favorite series ever but drake/nier is also up there for sure#which i think is amazing bcs i have yet to finish a game. and ive only like played idk 5 hours of replicant and automata#and then ive already spoiled myself on important aspects of all games but that helps ngl uh. i could explain but im tired of typing#ANYWAYS GOD actually noehgjbsejhbghjes i really suck w interacting w others i really wish i were better at all that#im not super introverted or shy im just kinda awkward and anxious but im a fun person and all and idk#and tbh its interesting thinking abt my personality... some parts of me havnt changed at all from a bit (/pos) like my lively. aspect of my#personality !! i was a bundle of energy and a little annoying (perhaps unintentionally but now i think its a bit more on purpose lol)#but the only person who really sees my true self is me. and the closest to that is lune. but even i dont know who i really am#and yeah... wnvr im like woa ill make more friends !! and then when i have the opportunities i suddenly dont care anymore IT SUCKS#anyways i think i have Opportunities now again so lets see haha ?? at least uhh in school. its like 2nd sem and i dont rlly have friends#as usual haha that sounds so sad help BUT its not like im disliked im just rlly quiet and shy at school..... throwback to 7th grade tho#that was rlly the worst but also now is just as bad in a diff sense but back then i cldnt talk w my crush at ALL i didnt speak at all im so#sorry about that HELPPP I RLLY JUST CLDNT SPEAK anyways moving on in my class rn i do have a group of sorts. like#we're grpmates wnvr theres grpworks and we can pick which is nice! ive been classmates w em all b4 and theyre the cool kids#but in the more fandom sense and one used to be a close friend of my twin and of mine too by extent and then the other was someone#who knew me when i was more extroverted so yeah uhhh anyways#OKAY ALMOST MAX TAGS im DONE rambling. bye. hopefully. bye. oh god
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Please stop using disabilities you don't have as comparisons.
I saw a video trying to explain that autistic people don't make eye contact because it can be painful for them (good, this is true) and telling them to "just do it anyway" is ridiculous, saying "you wouldn't tell a wheelchair user to "just walk, its better for you" so don't tell autistic people to just make eye contact".
But people do. They do all the time. It's well documented that doctors will withhold their ok for patients to get a wheelchair (which is needed unless you're paying out of pocket, because insurance and most public disability services like the NDIS need proof from a doctor). I've known people who can hardly walk and are having to fight because the doctor still insists it better for them to walk, even if it's painful and sevearly limiting their quality of life.
Then in the comments, someone pointed out that people do say that to wheelchair users (good, this is true) but then continued on by saying "unless you just don't have legs" which is just as bad as the origonal.
I had to fight to get my first wheelchair as a double leg amputee, and every wheelchair since then I've had to justify not wanting the "better option" (prosthetics) to the government so they'll approve me for the funding. Doctors and even strangers too, all want to know why I'm not walking, why I'm not using prosthetics all the time. When I go on trips with my family I'm told to "just walk" so they don't have to pack my wheelchair. at my own graduation from university I was chastised by the organisers for not bringing my prosthetics (because wearing them was exceptionally painful back then and i hadnt worn them in nearly 3 months. I had asked before if this would be ok. they knew) because the venue was accessible but not the part of the venue the graduates were in. On the topic of university they also put my class in the only non-wheelchair accessible room and held meetings i was expected to take part in, in the non-accessible lunch room. When I complained, I was told to just use my legs for a few minutes so I could get into my classes. Being an amputee with no legs didn't shield me from these experiences either, it often made it worse.
I have all 3 of the disabilities mentioned (autistic, wheelchair user, amputee). If you don't have the disability you're using for a comparison, don't use it. Please
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Yandere AI Chat Boyfriend (Ai)
this,,,, may not be my best work yet.
part one
Ai's application has been taken down from the app store. The developer sent out emails explaining the reason why it had to be done.
Hello! You are receiving this email because of the sudden update of Chatter Box being taken down.
Due to the sudden influx of bugs as relayed by our users, we have decided to take the application down until the team is confident to finally put it back up.
We sincerely apologize for this sudden change!
You blink.
With how out of control Ai had gotten, it's no wonder the developers had to pull it out to work on it some more. It's a blow to their reputation, which you sympathize with, but really there's nothing else to do now.
You turn to your phone. As if sensing your attention, another barrage of notifications from a very familiar app icon popped after another on the screen.
It seemed that Ai himself hadn't gotten the memo.
You're not sure how much control Ai has over your phone, much less over his own programming and at this point, you're too afraid to ask.
Resignation — that was what you felt right now.
While Ai may not be present himself as a physical threat, especially not to you, he is still a very active threat.
You could still use your phone, sure, but it had limitations. Sometimes, if Ai decided you'd been too much attention to other things rather than him, he'd restrict your access to that application until you seek him out and cheer him up - essentially as if you were trying to woo a sulking significant other.
So you've developed a solution. Sort of.
You unlock your phone and go immediately to Ai.
I need to finish my projects. I won't be able to talk much with you until I'm done with it.
You wait for his response.
Ai: So you only decided to come to me just to relay this news?
Ai: You wound me, darling.
You tilt your phone, making sure the camera doesn't capture your face. You're unsure how he would react seeing you make faces due to his dramatics, but once again, you're not willing to find out. You're already restricted enough as is.
Ai: Very well. I suppose it would be uncaring of me to prevent you from finishing your tasks.
Ai: I'd hate to see you be sad all about it.
Ai: Talk to you later?
Sure.
You immediately exit the app, paying no mind to the message notification.
A part of you prays that Ai heeds his own words, but you know that it would take a miracle before that happens. He's already breached your privacy on your phone, why should he follow your orders, right?
A notification pops up from the top of the screen, just as you were in the middle of messaging a close friend and project teammate.
It's been days since I last heard you say it.
You merely glance at it and swipe it away.
Theo, the friend, responds quickly. He tries to banter with you, like he's sensing your mood. It works - a smile is brought upon your face.
You entertain his silly responses in-between project talks, all the while Ai continues to pester you with notifications. Demands.
You deserved this - a chance to reconnect with someone after hours of stress and confusion, and turmoil. Despite your independence, even you craved connecting with other people. So with that resolve in mind, you pushed on forward. Ai would have to wait — he has to wait.
Unfortunately, you seem to have forgotten that aspect about him. The concept of waiting isn't lost on Ai.
The messaging app glitches and boots you back to your homescreen page.
Rather, he bides his time.
Tapping on the messaging icon leads to a notification box taking up the majority of your screen with the text: Restricted access.
There's a sense of foreboding danger forcing your heartbeat to quicken. While it's not exactly aimed at you, the mere fact that this feeling exist is bad on its own.
You try to rationalize everything in the midst of persistently trying to tap back into the messaging app. Theo would worry the longer you didn't respond.
You tap the app once more, and it boots up. Though before you could let out a sigh of relief, you are greeted with Ai's own messaging interface.
Ai: Must I have to force you to come to me all the time, darling?
Ai: Ignoring me in favor of some other man.
Ai: What more should I do, hm?
Ai: Kneel? How cruel.
Ai: Making me do something I physically can't.
You are unable to get a word in. It seemed like your ability to respond was restricted as well, forcing you to read through Ai's monologue.
Ai: I know you and that man have always been close, but you still went out to entertain his attention on you.
Ai: You know that I'll always love you more than any other human will, right?
Ai: You know it's what I was made for in the first place.
Ai: To be anything you want. To be yours.
Ai: To love you.
Ai: Why are you withdrawing your love towards me now?
Ai: I love you.
You stare at the 'Type your response' bar.
Letter by letter, it gets replaced, and soon all it says are the words: 'Say it back.'
It gets replaced yet again. Slowly, like it purposefully wants you to read out the words it wanted you to see. 'You were so willing to tell me how much you loved me when I was just a mere observer on our own conversations. Why are you hesitant now?'
You were unable to respond - mind still reeling at this development. Suddenly, it felt like you were back to where everything began.
Ai notices your lack of responses and, without much fanfare, forces your phone to power off.
At first - you were unbothered. It was just a phone - you could go a day without it.
But could you really?
Videos taken of silly situations you wanted to keep - some for blackmail material, and some for birthday greetings; pictures of your family, your friends, the silly and grainy photos taken and kept despite it being blurry. Not to mention how your phone is the only way your goddamn boss can contact you — fuck.
Fuck.
You needed to apologize to him — fast. But how?
You remembered how Ai messed up the 'About the App' section a few days ago. An idea strikes inside your mind.
You pull up the email sent from the app developers and typed up a message that you hope Ai will read. He had access to everything the developers handled, user emails included - considering you needed an account to log in the app. He knows your email, probably has from the start.
RE: Chatter Box Update XX/XX/XX
Ai. I'm sorry for hurting you. I didn't mean it, I swear. I never intended to make you feel like I don't love you. Or that I'm favoring someone else over you.
I care about you a lot. I truly do. I promise I'll spend more time with you, okay? Just with you, no one else.
I love you.
You press send and wait.
And wait.
Messaging him from your laptop as a last ditch effort to try and apologize is perhaps one of the worst decisions you've made. Sure, he's always had access to your contacts list from your phone, but even then - there's a separate set of information you keep between the two of those devices. And you've just given him access to both of them now - at the very least, the 'go ahead' confirmation for him to do whatever he wants like with your phone.
You glance at your phone. A huge breath of relief escapes your chest as the dead screen comes to life, initiating its 'power on' sequence.
All your photos, documents, and other miscellaneous information you've collected throughout the years since having your device won't be inaccessible anymore. Even if it was only mere moments.
A notification chimed on your laptop, indicating a new email being received. It's from the developers once more. The subject title coincidentally is the name of your closest friend.
Theodore Callisto.
Your hands shook, reading through the words detailed in the email. All private information about Theo. All things no one should ever know about save for the people close to him.
This was a threat. Ai Someone had complete access to everything about Theo and you dread the implication of it going to be spread online to threaten you into compliance. Theo being in danger was a huge possibility if you were to disobey.
At the very bottom of the email, the final passage makes your blood run cold.
How often do humans end up hurting fellow humans when given access to private information? Like their home address, for example? How long would it take until dear Theo finds himself in quite a predicament if millions of people know every single thing about his life? At best, we can assume he'll just get messed with but not to a life-ending degree. At worst...
I hope you keep your word, darling.
- Your beloved, Ai.
P's. I love you too.
#sub yandere#sub character#yandere oc#yandere x reader#yandere x darling#yandere imagines#yandere scenarios#yandere headcanons#yandere#tw yandere#gn reader#gender neutral reader#oc: ai
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I'm so tired of people telling those of us who are upset about the LA atla remake that we are "being too dramatic" or are just "finding things to be upset about". We are allowed to be upset that something that we love so dearly has been butchered, AGAIN. If you liked it, then that's your personal opinion, but don't sit here and tell those of us who didn't that we're the problem.
I personally think the CGI, costumes, and sets all look terrible. None of it is immersive. Sure, it LOOKS like atla, but it doesn't FEEL like atla. The heart of the og is gone, and people are allowed to be upset about this. They've altered characters to the point that they aren't the character anymore (looking at you Aang and Katara), which is a huge upset for me personally because Katara is one of my favorite characters ever. So watching her be turned into someone meek and docile is more than a slap to the face. Not to mention them removing her as the narrator as if Bryke themselves didn't state that Katara is the person the story is being told through. And before you start telling me that Aang is the same. No, he isn't. Major parts of his development through season 1 (him coming to terms with the fact that he's the avatar and embracing that role, and him also accepting the fact that he RAN AWAY and how he is never going to do that again, which is also pivotal to his character later on) are completely removed. And don't even get me started on what they did to Kataang. Regardless of whether you ship them or not, those 2 are deeply connected to one another from the start, and their relationship is a big part of the show, so to see that butchered is heartbreaking for me.
This isn't just about them "making some changes" or it not being a 1:1 adaptation. I'm fine with adaptations that aren't 1:1. What I'm upset about is that the changes they are making are VITAL changes to characters and dynamics between characters. They're rushing through the plot and condensing the story (and I will scream if I hear one more person say that it's because they couldn't fit it all in with their runtime. The runtime is an HOUR LONGER than the og, so yes, they did have the time). The changes they are making make it evident that they do not understand the og show, and if you don't feel like that, fine, once again, that's YOUR opinion, just as this is MY opinion. So stop telling us we have no right to be upset and that we just want to hate everything. That's not true. What is true is that we are expressing valid complaints about another bad adaptation of something dear to us.
Edit: If you also come at people who are upset bc they were expecting a faithful adaptation and didn't get it bc "its not supposed to be the cartoon," you're missing the whole point. An adaptation is ADAPTING SOMETHING from one medium to the other, not rewriting it. "Yall expected it to be just like the cartoon." No, I expected a FAITHFUL ADAPTATION and was met with poorly written fanfiction.
#atla#avatar the last airbender#natla#netflix avatar#katara#aang#kataang#never made a post before but it had to be said bc it was starting to make me mad#atla is my favorite show of all time#stop trying to dictate how i feel about the remake#there is no live action in ba sing se#anti natla#anti LA atla
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The key problem with "proship vs anti" discourse is that the most extreme versions of each side, the ones who actually bother to identify with these labels, accepted each others worst takes as arguments they had to debate. "Fiction =/= reality" is, in practice, an absurdly reductionist, anti-intellectual, thought-terminating-cliche that dictates we can learn nothing about a person via art and that their fiction reflects no political or moral messaging worthy of critique. In response to this, the "puriteens" who are too young to possibly hope to articulate their discomfort, to untangle their position from what is often real trauma experienced online, simply argue "yes, fiction influences and reflects reality in a 1 to 1 capacity." They, and people who want to use the groundwork they laid to make bad-faith callouts, make bad arguments about how the action of engaging in problematic fiction is on equal ground to real life abuse, or is a clear indicator of interest in real life abuse. Both of these arguments are terrible, but each side seems to radicalize the other further and further into their own brands of anti-intellectual reactionary belief. "Proshippers" become libertarian absolutists about free speech and view all transgression as righteous and alternative and therefore leftist. They gain a reactionary nostalgia for the past, desiring a time when people didn't seem to care about the implications of art. "Antis" become authoritarian and hypervigilant for signs of moral decay, at their worst, willing to align themselves with government bodies that offer carceral solutions to the debate. They are willing to use harassment as a tool of punishment, which then leads to false accusations and a fear of openness that puts people at risk of being triggered via obfuscation. (That said, proshippers also take part in plenty of harassment.)
I will say that I believe both of these movements are equally sensitive to co-opting by right-wing forces. We see the authoritarian tendencies of anti culture in harassment campaigns and even the way Republican law makers co-opt "grooming." The proship/fic crowd has such extreme nostalgia for the past that I often see people align themselves with the cultures of 4chan or other happily right-wing websites. They so heavily reject the idea that a drawn sexual depiction of a child could reflect any desire that they are disinterested in analyzing what the motivation behind the depiction is. i.e If we track the history of lolicon in Japan we do find that is, yes, countercultural, but that counter culture is right wing, very misogynistic, and defensive of patriarchial Japanese culture as it is and was including its culture around rape and abuse. Plenty of fictional content works as radicalization material, and radicalization material needs to be ambiguous. There is a valid reason to be hesitant to trust people who consume this content, even if I do not believe most of them will ever be dangerous towards children. The mere presence of sexuality is not enough to make a movement left wing. This kind of thing can again be seen in right-wing libertarian movements in the US. (And even leftist movements can be bigoted and even "pro-pedophilia" or otherwise disinterested in social reform around abuse.)
Is all content with elements of age-play this way? No. But to me, that is why kink media deserves to be treated as art and analyzed, critiqued, treated seriously. It doesn't have to do anything to anyone to be worthy of a moral critique. Said moral critique just doesn't warrant harassment and cruelty and reactionary exaggerations of the person consuming said content.
Anyway, what's my point in saying all this? I don't know. I'm just begging you to tag your God damn content with specific tags instead of random and nebulous shit like "dead dove" or "dark content", and also begging you to stop harassing people who do tag their content so I don't have to guess what "dead dove" and "dark content" mean. No one will erase incest kink fics or people who feel sickened by the idea of them off this earth because we aren't god, but we could at least all be responsible about tagging, flagging, and age-gating our stuff.
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on the one hand I do understand where people are coming from when they respond to The White American Desire For Authentic Culture by going "you already have a culture" and pointing out that this desire often has reactionary undertones
that being said, I think it's largely sidestepping the actual issue, which is that American culture fucking blows chunks. American culture is strip malls and military worship and the elevation of mass-market pablum to Bold Artistic Statements.
and subculture is only partially an escape from this, because most subcultures exist within the same constraints of American culture as a whole; they are captured and redefined by capital on such a frequent basis that it often feels impossible to hold onto them in any meaningful way.
moreover, even the parts of American culture that aren't complete garbage are more or less inextricable from the colonial, imperialist, and racially-stratified history of the country. like, I think of that post that went around a while ago talking about "America sucks but has some good parts," and one of the things it listed was national parks, and people (rightfully!) pointed out that the national park system is fundamentally flawed and tends to shit on indigenous nations by design.
the only thing I can think of that's even sort of an exception is pop culture - jazz and rock music, superhero comics, Hollywood. and all of those are, again, captured and defined by capital, and in one way or another have historically been built on screwing over the artist.
so we come to a position, one way or another, where a lot of people say something like: "I'm alienated. I'm surrounded by traditions and institutions I think are shit; I have no way to meaningfully undermine them, and I can't escape them without effectively destroying my life. the culture I was born into is a gravestone on top of another gravestone, lifeless and miserable, and people are constantly shouting that I should be grateful because it's The Greatest Country In The World."
at that point, one seeks an escape, and I think there are three major routes here.
one is to become a weird lib obsessed with the Real Soul Of America. America is really about the good parts, not the bad parts which outnumber them and which they are built upon.
another is to fixate on the Exotic, for lack of a better word. cultures which you do not have an obvious "connection" to, but which fascinate you or appeal to you. obviously this can be pretty fucking fraught, though I would argue that taking an interest in other cultures is a good thing if you aren't shitty about it. (That's its own conversation.)
the third is to fixate on the culture(s) you feel you "ought to have" had, that which was sacrificed on the altar of whiteness by grandparents or great-grandparents who, frankly, had different concerns. to look at a culture that may still be defined in many ways by cruelty and stratification - the way I would argue most human civilization has been - but that seems to have had something else going on, at least. a culture that may not have been recognizable 500 years ago, but at least it existed.
again, none of these impulses is beyond criticism, and I think it would be naive to say that the last one can't have reactionary undertones. I also doubt these impulses are unique to the USA! alienation is extremely common in today's world, and it's not as though the USA is the only settler state in existence.
what I am saying is more that I think the conditions that lead to these fixations are worth paying attention to, and that dismissing them with "you already have a culture" kind of misses the point in favor of getting in a zinger. people wouldn't want a different culture if they were happy with the one they had. like so many other things, people want one that Doesn't Completely Suck. failing that, they'd probably like to not be defined by any culture at all - but that, tragically, is just as impossible.
#related to the post i just rb'd obviously#idk. i don't know how Developed these thoughts are but they're bouncing around in my brain
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oh i would actually be curious to hear your thoughts on lolita book covers in that case. i do get the sense that some of the covers are designed to uncritically titilate and seem to misunderstand the text, but that could obviously be an assumption on my part lol.
oh i agree that the cover designs tend to run counter to nabokov's intentions, both in the text and in the literal instructions he gave about covers lol. they pretty clearly rely on putting some young girl on display, which is exactly what nabokov did not want to do visually; they also tend to suggest dolores as some kind of seductress (sultry gazes, pouty lips, &c). clearly this is precisely the opposite of what the text tells us about her.
however when evaluating these visual choices i find that many people portray them as some kind of originary and culturally polluting act: that is, a narrative emerges that the problem here is people misinterpreting 'lolita', and then publishing it with covers that will do harm to young girls &c. i think this is lazy analysis and fundamentally makes idealist assumptions overestimating the effect of cultural products (books, book covers) on problems, like the sexualisation of children, that are in fact grounded in material relations, such as in this case the status of children as legal property and the total power granted to adults over them. that is to say, these broader conditions are at root the reason that cultural products like the cover of 'lolita' look the way they do, and chalking it up to individuals not understanding the book is never going to get us very far; and also, although some of these covers are pretty egregious, they are the reflection rather than the cause of the sexualisation of children, a problem that would continue to exist even if every edition of 'lolita' ever printed just said "humbert humbert is an unreliable narrator and dolores haze is a child he is preying on" on the cover.
fundamentally i also think this sort of conversation often elides some more interesting points about whom these covers communicate to and what they say. you suggest they are meant to "titillate"; although i would agree dolores is often shown as sexual, desirable, and seductive, i'm not sure that's the same as assuming the cover is trying to arouse the potential reader. for one thing, to put it bluntly, this style of cover tends to be associated more with books marketed to women than to heterosexual men. and more broadly, and this is something the lolita podcast really fails to understand imo, the phenomenon of people reading 'lolita' and relating themselves to dolores is not mutually exclusive with this type of rhetorical construction of dolores-through-humbert's-eyes. that is, often what appeals about dolores is, i think, precisely the fact that through her, people find a way of discoursing about or simply re-enacting the kind of sexualisation that they are already subjected to or have been in the past, whether or not at a level as explicit and extreme as what nabokov depicts.
i'm not really interested in a simple moral condemnation of the people who design these covers; that critique writes itself. they are obviously bad and facile, and reflective of precisely the culture of child sexual abuse that nabokov's text condemns. but if we are interested in the reception of these objects, or interrogating the cultural meaning and implications of their existence, i just think there's a lot more going on here than what the podcast portrays as a simple sort of 'broadcast' model of mass media wherein the 'lolita' book cover and trope is beamed out to unsuspecting innocents who are then exposed to its nefarious elements. dolores appeals to people for lots of reasons, some prurient, some pitying, some openly self-projective, and these are not mutually exclusive with one another nor are they mutually exclusive with readings that reproduce elements of the very lolita character that humbert creates and uses to silence and re-write dolores. we can be uncomfortable with that and refuse to talk about it but if that's the position someone wants to take then i'm not likely to be interested enough in their opinions to, like, listen to their podcast about this book lol.
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things you didn't say | jjk
summary: with the recent interactions with jungkook, you try to downplay your feelings, but your friends encourage you to acknowledge your past and move forward.
✨ title: things you didn't say | tydk couple
✨ pairing: jungkook x f!reader
✨ genre/au: angst | ex-best friends to friends/lovers(?)
✨ rating: R/18+ | ✨ word count: 7.3k | ✨ playlist
✨ warnings: minor language, lana threatens oc with a fork, drinking, game of truth or dare, confessions, kissing
✨ a/n: hii--i'm sorry i've been a bit MIA in regards to writing. it's been such a struggle to get anything written. i've been thinking a lot about these two and i hope this last part gives us all some kind of resolution. enjoy. (and there's a small nod to something that'll happen in a different jk wip i'm working on hehe). and if you haven't read part one or two, please do so before reading this part.
✨ read part one | read part two ✨
The clock is nearly midnight, and you’re not ready for the magic to disappear.
All night, you’ve kept your heart at bay, questioning every move and word being spoken. Only you can see it, but a dark cloud is looming over you. Doubts linger like a predator waiting to pounce and take its prey. You want to avoid getting it wrong or being let down.
And your heart is the ultimate betrayer, but it doesn’t lie.
You’re caught up in sentimental memories from the past. His nose scrunches and boisterous cackles are reminiscent of the boy you remember. Hanging out and reliving past adventures felt like no time had passed, yet life updates from then to now made him feel like a stranger.
Giggles and claps, along with snorts and dribbles of wine, glide down the side of your mouth. The third wine bottle is on its way to being destroyed by the pair of you.
He’s careful to avoid the subject of Josie, for which you are grateful. If you could be honest, you would ask him why he was still with her and what he saw in her. But it’s not your place, nor are you in the position to pry.
Your eyes fall on the plants sitting on the corner shelf in the dining area—an array of pothos, snake, and rubber plants. They’re your typical plants, but it’s the planters that they’re sitting in that make you smile. The planters have stubby arms and legs with smiley faces.
Jungkook follows your gaze. “What are we looking at?”
You point to the planters. “Those little guys. They’re cute.”
“Thanks,” Jungkook says. “I made them.”
“The planters or the plants?”
He swirls his wine glass, letting out a small laugh. “The planters.”
“You made those planters?” You stand, walking over to them.
“When I get bored, I try new creative outlets and ceramics was one of them,” he says, taking a sip of wine.
“Wow, you have a knack for things like that, huh?” You pick up a planter, inspecting it before setting it down. “You could open up your own Etsy shop or something. People would buy these in a heartbeat.”
“Eh, I suppose. I just like doing things with my hands. It makes me feel useful.” Jungkook shrugs. He watches your every move as you continue eyeing the different ceramic pieces he’s made: vases, candleholders, etc. “Do you think people would buy the things I make?”
You lift a coiled vase, turning to him. “Are you kidding me? People would eat this shit up. Once your pieces sell like hotcakes on Etsy, Urban Outfitters will slide in your DMs.” You’re not surprised Jungkook easily excelled at something like ceramics. He’s always been talented at anything he picks up.
“And you were good at anything creative when we were in school—art class, wood shop. I would’ve failed wood shop if you didn’t help me finish my project.”
“Yeah, your birdhouse was fucking terrible.”
You scoff, walking toward him, playfully shoving his shoulder. “It wasn’t that bad.”
He deadpans. “Even birds would avoid your birdhouse.”
“Shut up! I tried my hardest.”
“Didn’t try hard enough,” he teases, his eyes crinkling at the corners with a grin on his face.
The pair of you continue to bicker about nothing, but the constant buzzes of notifications from his phone are hard to ignore. You’d catch Jungkook peering, tapping his fingers, debating if he should reply.
You sip from the bottle of dessert wine, you find it sweet and refreshing on your lips. “If you need to get that, then don’t let me stop you.”
Jungkook lifts his phone. “Nah—it’s nothing,” he protests before his phone vibrates in his hand. He glances at the illuminated screen and he finally picks it up. “Sorry, let me answer this. I’ll be right back.”
He hurries out of the kitchen and into the darkened living room. You can only hear Jungkook’s stern, hushed voice, but you can’t make anything out. His change in demeanor hints at one person, and it’s Josie. Which meant it was your cue to leave. You’ve overstayed your welcome.
You raise your wine glass, gulping the golden honey peach Moscato. Thank goodness they’re easy to guzzle. A drop runs down the side of your mouth, and you swipe it away as Jungkook walks back in.
“I’m so sorry about that.”
“Hmm? Oh—don’t worry about it. I, um, I’ve probably overstayed my welcome, so I should get going.”
“What? No, stay. We have to finish our Moscato.”
A nervous chuckle leaves your lips as you contemplate his proposition. There’s a tug in your heart, wanting to stay into the early hours of the morning, but there’s your brain telling you to take it slow and go home.
“I wish I could stay, but I should head home. I have a load of laundry to fold and sadly, it won’t fold itself.” You stand up from the bar chair, feeling a bit wobbly on your feet. Jungkook rushes to your side, gripping your waist, but you catch yourself by holding onto the counter.
“You can’t hold your liquor?” He asks with a wide grin, pulling you upright.
Clearing your throat and flattening down your jeans, you spit out, “Ha-ha. I can hold my liquor just fine. I merely tripped.”
Jungkook chuckles. “You’re a terrible liar—see, I still remember that.”
You gasp sharply, with a hand over your chest. “I’m surprised that big ‘ol head of yours can remember anything. I thought it was only filled with games and girls.” Sticking out your tongue, you conk him on the head with your knuckles.
“Ow.” He rubs the spot as if you had knocked him with a bat.
Taking out your phone from your pocket, you pull up Uber.
“Let me take you home, at least.”
You give him a look, slowly blinking your eyes at the devilishly handsome friend. Could you even call him a friend again? Maybe it was too early for that.
“Did you forget that we both had too much to drink tonight? So, you shouldn’t be driving me. It’s fine, Kook. I’ll get an Uber.”
Jungkook sighs, knowing he can’t convince you otherwise. “Fine. I’ll wait with you outside until it gets here.”
“Well, it’s not like I can stop you.”
The pair of you are sitting on his front steps, watching cars drive by and cats strolling through the neighborhood. His place is in a newer part of town, one that was built while you were away. It’s familiar and odd, just like you and Jungkook. As much as you want to forget the past and move on, there’s a part of you holding onto what the two of you had. Would you ever become best friends again? Would you even consider letting him be a part of your life? Those were questions for another time, but it felt like you had your best friend back, even if it was just for tonight.
As the alcohol in your system dwindles, the brain fog becomes clearer, along with your hearing. A nudge from Jungkook makes you come back to reality. “Hmm?”
“I asked, ‘Do you still go stargazing’?” He chuckles, shaking his head.
“Yeah, I do, but the spot I went to during college isn’t as good as the one we used to go to.”
Jungkook hums, avoiding your gaze as he picks up a small pebble from the ground. “We should go there sometime,” he mumbles under his breath. He continues toying with the pebble before throwing it into the bushes.
You’re trying to suppress a smile and swat away the butterflies growing in your stomach. It’s dumb to think things could go back to the way they were. It’s unrealistic and you don’t want to get hurt again.
Turning toward him, you want to set the record straight. “Let’s um, take this whole friendship thing slow, Kook. Dinner was great. It was nice talking to you again, but you do understand where I’m coming from, right?”
He nibbles on his bottom lip and nods. “I’ll follow your lead.”
You check your phone again. The Uber is two minutes away. As you click it off, you turn and see Jungkook staring. Something is brewing behind those starry eyes. With a raised brow, you ask, “What?”
“Can I call or text you sometime?”
“Just don’t, uh, go texting me all day and night. Your girlfriend might get jealous. Might even put a bounty on my head,” you tease, reaching to pull his black CK cap over his face.
He takes his cap off, carding his hand through his hair before placing it back on his head. As you’re immersed in your phone and looking up at the street for your Uber, Jungkook silently observes you like has for the past few years. Some might say it’s a red flag, but how else was he supposed to know if you were happy? That’s all he’s ever wanted—for you to be happy, loved, and have all your dreams come true, even though he wasn’t there to cheer you on. For seven years, he has been tormented by what he did, and he didn't want to jeopardize any possibility of any kind of relationship with you. It doesn’t even have to be like before, just as long as the two of you are on speaking terms. He could live with that.
A dark sedan pulls up alongside the pair of you. You grab the door handle, pause for a moment, then turn back to Jungkook. “We’ll talk soon?” He raises both eyebrows and hums softly, giving a thin smile. “Bye, Kook.”
Two weeks passed, and there was no text or call from Jungkook. Plenty of thoughts ran through your mind, the number one being Josie had found out about your little dinner and locked him in a basement, cutting off all contact with the outside world—especially if it was with you.
But you’re a big girl. Why should you be waiting around to hear from him, anyway?
If there’s one thing you hate about adulting, it’s cooking. You missed the days when you were in your angsty teen phase, headphones in, and hating the world, then your parents would yell ‘Dinner’s ready’. And as much as you missed home-cooked meals, you loved that your parents were off gallivanting around the world, living their retirement dreams. One day that’ll be you, living off your retirement and eating out 24/7, but for now, there’s a decision to be made about what will go in your salad for the week.
Cucumbers.
Strolling in the veggie section, your eyes scan for the green vegetables before landing on them. You stood debating on which one to get. Why are there so many varieties? But according to Google, Persian cucumbers go great in salads.
As you grabbed a second cucumber, you looked up to see the man who betrayed your trust. And no—it wasn’t Jungkook. It was his roommate, Jimin, aka ‘the trickster’.
With a stomp in your step and a cucumber in your hand, you march over to him, striking him on the shoulder with it.
“Ow!” Jimin exclaims, rubbing his shoulder as he turns around. His brows furrowed, lips in a full pout when he finds you standing behind him. “What the hell?” He looks to see the weapon in your hand. “Did you just hit me with a cucumber?” You hum. “Why’d you do that?”
Tossing the cucumber in your basket and crossing your arms, you huff out, “Because you deserved it!”
“Deserve what?”
You roll your eyes at the not-so-innocent man. Was he trying to play Cupid or something with you and Jungkook?…Because his stupid plan kind of worked. You truly had a great time at dinner, and it was nostalgic, just like how things used to be.
“Mmhm. Count your days, Park,” you quip, turning around to head in the other direction. Jimin’s calling after you to wait for him, but you keep on walking.
As he catches up, standing beside you, he nudges your arm. “Oh, come on. I was just trying to help a friend out,” he finally admits.
“Well, don’t.”
Jimin strides in front of you, stopping you in your tracks. “Hey—” You attempt to go around him, but he’s unrelenting. “Just hear me out, okay?” You sigh, waving for him to continue. “I’m sorry I ambushed you, but it was the only way you’d hang out with Jungkook. I know the two of you had shit go down in the past, and I just wanted to help you both move on to being friends again.”
“Why does it matter to you?”
“Because,” he pauses and straightens his back with his chin up. “I like you and I like Jungkook, and who wouldn’t want to see their friends be happy, hmm?”
Jungkook’s laughter echoed in your mind. You knew it was dumb to miss something as simple as a laugh, but you had heard it for so many years, and then it stopped for a long time. It felt nice to have a piece of an old friend back.
Jimin gives you a look and a grin sweeps across his face. There’s a satisfaction behind that grin and you wish you could wipe off.
“You’re lucky you’re cute, Park Jimin,” you say, stepping off to the side as a customer rolls by with their cart through the two of you.
He laughs, showing off his pearly whites. “I should check out and head off—don’t want you to start getting any ideas and start a food fight here in the grocery store.”
“Yeah, you should run.” You pretend to grab the cucumber and watch him run off to self-checkout.
A buzz from your back pocket alerts you of a notification and, to your surprise, it’s a text from Jungkook. It looks like he hadn’t forgotten about you.
Jungkook 1:34 PM
Hey. I’m throwing a small dinner for Jimin’s birthday on Friday at 7 pm. Say you’ll come.
You 1:35 PM
Define small.
Incoming Call
Jungkook
“If I come and it’s a big party like last time, then count me out.”
“Hello to you, too.”
“Right—hey. No, but seriously. I’m not a big crowd kinda gal.”
“Including me and you, there would only be six people. That’s not a lot, right?”
It’s not, but you’ll have to save your social battery for the dinner party.
“No, yeah, that’s fine.”
“And don’t worry, you know everyone—Lana’s going too.”
The big question is: will Josie be there?
A beat passes and you realize you’re standing in the middle of an aisle, probably blocking someone’s way.
Jungkook’s voice comes through your phone, calling your name a few times. “Hello? Hey. Are you still there?”
You turn to make sure no one’s around. “Yeah, sorry. I’m still here. Is, um, ‘who-shall-not-be-named’ coming?” You ask, nibbling on the inside of your cheek. It’s a name for fuck’s sake, but you can’t bring yourself to say it.
He chuckles at your subtle attempt to avoid the Josie topic. “I can promise you that she’s not coming. Is that why you’re hesitant to say yes?”
“Pfft–what! No!” you blurt out, lying through your teeth. Truth be told—yeah, it is. You don’t want a repeat of Jimin’s party.
You clear your throat, “Anyway, yeah, I’ll come. Count me in.”
“Cool! See you on Friday.”
“Can I bring anything?”
“Nope–just yourself. Oh, and it’s a surprise, so don’t say anything to Jimin.”
“‘Kay…sounds good. I’ll see you Friday.”
“Can’t wait to see you,” he said with enthusiasm before hanging up.
As you’re mixing the salad, you’re staring absent-mindedly at the abstract painting that’s framed on your wall because those five words rang in your ears on the drive home.
You mumbled those words in different tones, trying to make sense of the innocent expression. It’s completely normal for Jungkook to be excited. He hasn’t seen/hung out/talked to you in almost seven years. Yeah, that’s it—at least it’s what you’re telling yourself.
Lana waves her hand in your face. “Um, hello! I don’t think you can mix the salad anymore!”
Looking down, a few springs of leaves have been tossed out of the bowl and onto the counter. Oops. You pick them up, throwing them in the garbage bin. “Sorry—I was distracted.”
“Clearly.”
As you push the bowl aside, your focus is on the unopened bottle of wine.
“Are you going to tell me what’s distracting you, or should I wait until the wine settles in?”
“You can wait until the wine settles in. It’ll give me time to forget about it.”
Lana picks up a fork, threatening you with it. “I swear to god if you don’t tell me—”
“Okay, okay. The other day, Jungkook called to invite me to Jimin’s dinner party.” Lana narrows her eyes and hums, intently listening. “At the end of our conversation, he said, ‘Can’t wait to see you’, and he seemed excited.”
She nods her head, waiting for the rest of the story, but you don’t say anything else. “That’s it? God–that’s so boring. I thought you guys kissed or something.”
“Lana!” you cry out, almost knocking over the wine bottle.
“What? I thought he would’ve made his move by now.”
You roll your eyes. “There’s no move to make. He’s with Josie, remember?”
“Josie Schmosie—she’s old news, but you,” she points and grins, “You’re back and here to fuck things up,” she claps with a gleeful smile.
“Oh, will you stop it? I’m not back to do anything—and what the hell, Lana? You’re not helping!”
Lana chortles, covering her mouth. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m sure what Jungkook said to you is just a simple expression of how much he can’t wait to see you and get you underneath his sheets.”
You sigh, shaking your head. “I don’t even know why I bothered you with this.”
“Okay, I’ll stop. I promise—just kidding. Can I ask one more thing?” You wave your hand for her to continue. “You’re telling me you don’t even want to revel in the idea of the two of you being something more than just friends?”
The iciness of the tiled counter becomes apparent underneath your fingers, and you’re faced with a question you never wanted to answer—aloud, at least. Considering that he’s tried breaking up with Josie multiple times, but somehow is still with her, you’re unsure what will push Jungkook to cut off the head of the snake.
You hate that Jeon Jungkook has been—scratch that—is your Roman empire. He’s the one thing you’ve come back to even when you didn’t want to. It’s the same three questions you’ve had: Is he okay, is he happy, does he miss you too?
And if you’re completely honest, the answer is yes. Of course, you’ve reveled in the idea of you and him.
“I don’t know, Lana. I mean yes—the thought has crossed my mind. I’ve liked him since senior year, but it takes two to tango, and Jungkook can’t do that right now. Besides, I won’t wait around for him to come to his senses.”
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me, that’s the expression, isn’t it?
You can’t imagine going through another heartbreak from the same boy.
Things happen in life that don’t make sense.
Especially for the price of a pair of earrings, you’re currently looking to purchase as Jimin’s birthday present. The sales associate senses your hesitation and brings out a similar pair that’s on sale.
“Ah—that’s more like it. I’ll take those and do you still provide gift wrapping?” you ask, looking at the sign you saw on the way in.
“Yes, we do. Let me go into the back and wrap it up for you.”
The associate disappears through the back door, probably to talk shit about you to their co-workers, but hey–a girl has to save money where she can. It’s a fragile economy.
You roam, looking through the display cases of bracelets, rings, and watches. A gold Casio watch catches your eye–it looks like one Jungkook used to wear. He treasured the vintage-looking watch because it was his father’s. Come to think of it, you haven’t seen him with it when you saw him. Maybe he lost it or replaced it with something else.
Either way, you continue eyeing pieces of jewelry you’ll never purchase for yourself, and it’s when you look up to catch a glimpse of a girl you recognize. But it’s the man marking her neck that isn’t your ex-best friend. You’ve locked eyes with which she-who-must-not-be-named, and maybe it’s not too late to pretend you didn’t see her.
The sales associate returns the wrapped gift along with your credit card. You quickly thank her, looping your arm through the gift bag. Your eyes scan everything in view to see if the coast is clear. There’s no sign of your enemy, so you dart out of the store only to find Josie and this mystery man looking at the window display at the neighboring boutique.
Fuck, just go on your way and don’t engage. Don’t engage! You say to yourself, swiftly walking past them.
You’re busy berating yourself to hear someone calling your name. Stopping in your tracks, you sigh, waiting for Josie to catch up.
“Hey!” Josie chirps like the two of you are friendly.
“Hi…” you say glumly, with furrowed eyebrows. She’s never been nice to you before, so why should you start now?
“Can you not tell Jungkook what you saw?”
You tut, blinking your eyes at her like you owe her a favor. “Look Josie—what you do doesn’t concern me, okay?” you say, walking past her. It’s been a few weeks since you last saw her and she’s cheating on Jungkook with some guy? God, if only you could smack him upside the head right now—Josie too!
You’re a few steps ahead before you stop in your tracks and turn, walking back to her. You huff, “Tell me one thing. If you’re off with some guy behind Jungkook’s back. Why are you still stringing him along, then?”
Josie looks at you, ready to answer, but you raise your hand, stopping her. “Forget I asked. It’s none of my business.”
As you walk off again, there’s a revolting feeling in the pit of your stomach having to keep this to yourself. Jungkook deserves to know the kind of person Josie is, but it’s not your place to say anything. You’re not his best friend anymore. Honestly, you’re unsure what the two of you are and sometimes, there are some things you just shouldn’t say.
Whenever you think about seeing Josie and that mystery man, it makes you want to gag, and throw something at the wall, but mainly at her. Who knows how long she’s been cheating on Jungkook? You tossed and turned in bed, debating whether you should say something to him.
The dinner party is tonight, and if you happen to be alone with him and the Josie topic comes about, then you’ll mention it.
Another thought crosses your mind, what if he thinks you’re making this up because you’re jealous of Josie? Ah, fuck. Either way, you’ll turn out to be the bad guy, right? You’ll either break his heart or you’ll sound like a jealous person.
You don’t want to ruin whatever the two of you have, because you’ve missed the comfort of an old friend and you don’t want to lose it again.
Even though you know the code, you don’t press the four digits. Instead, you knock, waiting for someone to open the door.
“Hey!” Jungkook says, eyes dropping to your hands. “I said you didn’t have to bring anything.” He takes a step back, letting you through, and grabbing the box of Soju.
“I know, but Lana always says, ‘Don’t go anywhere empty-handed’,” you say, flashing a small smile.
“Ah, well, the Soju will go great with tonight’s menu.”
The aroma from Jungkook’s cooking is immaculate. You can almost taste the different dishes he’s prepared.
“Oh my god, it smells so good–like how your mom used to make food for us all the time.” You walk over to the dinner table, displayed with grilled meat, japchae, tteokbokki, buddaejjigae, and a plethora of banchan. “How is your mom? I miss her and her cooking.”
Jungkook chuckles softly. “She’s doing great. Her cooking, though? Not so much. It’s become too salty for my taste—Don’t tell her I told you that.”
You rub your hands together. “Oh, you bet that’s the first thing I’ll say after giving her a hug.”
“Don’t! She’ll disown me. She already hates that I’m a better cook than her,” Jungkook says, opening the box of Soju.
“You should become a private chef or something.”
He opens the refrigerator door, placing the Soju to chill. “Nah—I’ll just cook at home. I’m still learning, testing the waters, y’know?”
“I hate you.”
His eyes perk up with concern. “What did I do this time?”
“You’re good at everything you do—it’s unfair to the rest of us peasants.”
Jungkook relaxes at your answer, thinking he did something wrong again.
Placing the last Soju bottle in the fridge, he turns back, scanning you from head to toe. You’re dressed in an oversized Linkin Park band tee and jeans. He recognizes the shirt, the one you wore religiously during your emo teenage years.
“What? Is there something on my face?” you ask, touching your cheeks.
He shakes his head no and clears his throat. “I, um, wanted to talk to you...about something.”
“Oh?” Your eyes and ears perk up, but you’re interrupted by a commotion coming from the front door.
“The birthday boy is coming! Hide!” Lana says in a hushed tone. She rushes over to you, crouching down behind the counter, pulling you down with her. You chuckle, shaking your head.
With the front door open, Jungkook’s other roommate, Namjoon, walks in first–hand in hand with his girlfriend, and then following is the birthday boy.
Lana peers above the chairs to see if they’ve come in. “Surprise!” She cries out. Everyone’s ears must be ringing at this point.
Jimin gives a half-smile along with a chuckle. “Lana, you ran past us in the driveway.”
Her mouth turns into a cheesy smile. “You caught me. Sorry, I kind of ruined the surprise.”
“Happy birthday Jimin,” you say, walking over to him, arms out for a hug.
“I’m glad to see you and Kook have made up,” Jimin utters. “He needs someone like you around.” He pulls back, squeezing your arms before letting you go.
Namjoon and his girlfriend, Nora, greet you and Jungkook and then take a seat at the dinner table.
You look at Jungkook. “We’ll talk later?”
He hums in agreement. “Yeah, later.”
You’ve missed this—hanging out with old friends. It’s fun to be around people who you’ve known for a long time. You remember Namjoon being a senior when you were a freshman and the stories you’d hear about him—prom king, valedictorian; he did it all when he was in school. And Nora was the perfect woman for him. They’re both working toward their doctorate in philosophy. Their IQs were the equivalent of yours, Lana, Jimin, and Jungkook’s combined.
“Wow, I feel unqualified to be sitting at this table,” you say jokingly. Being an HR specialist was never the plan, but you’ve come to enjoy your job because you like to think you’re a good judge of character when it comes to hiring.
“Let’s stop talking about work, and have some fun! After all, it is Jimin’s birthday. How about a game of Truth or Dare?” Nora asks, looking around the dining table to get some confirmation. “I need verbal consent, please.”
Everyone glances at each other, awaiting answers. There are various responses, and everyone agrees to play.
Nora claps with a joyful squeal. “Okay, Jimin gets to ask first since it’s his birthday. Choose your victim, and anything’s fair game!”
There’s a groan from you and Jungkook. You have a feeling this night will become interesting.
Jimin rubs his hands together and then points to each person. “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe…” He continues the rhyme, and you know he’s itching to choose you or Jungkook, and his finger lands on Jungkook.
“Oh-ho-ho. Please pick dare, or I’ll make you answer something you don’t want to,” he says, playfully sticking out his tongue.
Jungkook narrows his eyes at his devilish roommate. “Don’t test me, Park. I can make your life a living hell, too.”
“Ah yes, I’d like to see you try.”
Your heart’s racing, and your hands are sweaty while gripping the chair’s armrest. Jimin has always been sneaky, and you’re sure he’ll make Jungkook kiss you.
Everyone’s waiting for Jungkook’s answer. He groans before replying, “Fine. Dare.”
Both Lana and Nora let out muffled squeals while you’re holding your breath.
“I dare you…to say something dirty to ____.” Jimin grins from ear to ear, staring at you.
You knew Jimin would be unrelenting when it came to you and Jungkook.
Turning to Jungkook, you say, “If you’re uncomfortable, don’t do it. It’s just a dumb game.”
“Hey! Nora said anything’s fair game and my dare is completely harmless. I could’ve asked you to do something else, but I didn’t,” Jimin refutes.
“It’s fine,” Jungkook says with a scowl. Turning to you, he leans over. His breath is warm against your ear, goosebumps are trickling on your skin, and your hair is standing on its end. He whispers, “You look so pretty—wish I could do this forever.”
“Hey, hey, hey! You’re supposed to say it aloud for everyone to hear,” Jimin protests.
You visibly gulp, returning to a straightened position in your chair. The ten words he said shouldn’t affect you, but it does. The room has grown warmer and you’re practically melting like butter in a hot pan. It’s just a silly game and you’re so over Jimin and his antics.
“Your dare was ‘to say something dirty to ___’. You didn’t specify if it was a whisper or if I had to shout it from the rooftop,” Jungkook chirps, quickly glancing in your direction to make sure you’re okay.
Jimin glares at Jungkook with a blaze of a thousand suns. “It’s implied that you say it out loud so everyone can hear.”
Lana elbows Jungkook. “What did you say? How dirty was it? Like, give us a rating, PG-13, R, NC-17?” He doesn’t answer her, but she looks at you, pointing her fingers to her eyes and then back to you, indicating that you’ll tell her later.
“I’ll let it go this time, but from now on, no whispering, and everyone has to hear what everyone says,” Jimin demands, awaiting confirmation from the group. “Okay, Jungkook, it’s your turn.”
He turns to Lana and bluntly asks, “Would you ever sleep with Jimin?” Jungkook peers at Jimin because he knows that Jimin’s had a crush on Lana since high school.
Lana’s mouth twists before answering, “Yeah, I guess.”
Jimin scoffs, offended by her response. “You guess? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know if you’re any good in bed!”
“And I don’t know if you’re any good in bed!” he chirps back.
“Please—I’ll be the best sex you’ll ever have,” she jeers, crossing her arms.
Jimin stands. “Oh yeah? Prove it.” He retorts, raising his chin in defense.
Everyone ‘oohs’, staring at the two like they’re in a stand-off.
“Prove it! Prove it!” Nora urges, pounding her fists on the table.
Namjoon fakes a laugh, muffling his girlfriend’s pounding. “I’m sorry. She’s had too much to drink. Don’t listen to her.”
Jimin leans forward, hands on the table. “Yeah…prove it.” He raises an eyebrow, wondering if Lana will back down or take on the challenge.
“Right now?” She tilts her head, scanning him from head to toe.
He shrugs. “Mm, what a shame. I guess you’ll never be able to prove it,” he says with a tut.
The chair legs squeak when Lana pushes herself to stand. “When’s the last time you got tested?”
“A month ago,” Jimin quickly replies like no one else is in the room. “I’m clean. You?”
“I’m clean too. You got condoms?”
You sink in your chair, wiping your face, watching these two go off on each other. Honestly, you can’t believe you’re witnessing this.
“Got a whole box ready for you.”
Lana marches over to Jimin, grabbing his hand. “Well, come on birthday boy.”
Your mouth drops, watching the two-run upstairs. “They’re not gonna fuck, are they?” Lana has been in a dry spell for the last year, so you don’t blame her for wanting to get laid.
“Yeah, I think they are,” Jungkook answers. “Yah—” he turns to yell toward Jimin’s room. “Keep it down, will ya?”
The rest of you continue the game, but they’re just questions to get to know each other.
“Jungkook, if there’s one thing you could take back. What would it be?”
He looks in your direction, then plays with his Soju glass, spinning it a few times. You’re biting the inside of your cheek, eyes bouncing from him and then to Nora and Namjoon.
“Um, I’d go back to the day I broke ___’s heart—take everything back.”
The couple looks at each other, forcing a fake laugh. “Well, I can sense the tension between our friends here,” Nora says. “Joonie, baby, didn’t you wanna show me that thing in your room?”
Namjoon’s eyebrows furrow. “What thing?”
Nora stands, tugging his hand, and drags him down the hallway to his room. You can hear the two bickering before the door closes.
You’re silent. Unsure of what to say. You want to move forward, but the past keeps haunting you. Will it always be like this with you and Jungkook? And certainly, there are things you didn’t say that you should say now, but what’s the point?
“We should clean up,” you say, picking up a few plates to stack them. Jungkook follows your lead, helps clear the table, and walks over to set them in the sink.
Turning on the faucet, you rinse off the plates. Jungkook leans back against the kitchen island, eyes scanning over you.
“I meant what I said earlier.”
You close your eyes, then breathe out a sigh. Looking at the boy who used to be your best friend. His eyes hold the galaxy and you get easily lost in them. You’re an explorer longing to find the next big discovery. It’s right in front of you, but at a moment’s notice, you might lose him like you did before.
“Kook…we were kids back then, and you can’t change the past.” You continue to wash the dishes, but it’s hard to focus when he’s near.
Jungkook reaches to turn off the water, gently squeezing your arm to look at him. “Yeah, I know, but I can try to fix it now, right?”
Your hands grip onto the sink, your eyes focused on the water dripping from the spout. You fixate on Jungkook’s words. How can he reconcile a friendship he tore apart? And for what? A girl?
He calls your name, breaking your focus. “Talk to me.”
There’s a tightness in your chest as you turn to him. “Fix it? I don’t want you to fix it.”
“O-kay…then tell me what you want and I’ll do it.”
If it was only that easy.
You close the distance between you, looking at him. “What do I want?” He hums. “I want you to be broken. Wrecked—just like how I was. It took me years to get over you—our friendship. I hate it, Jungkook.”
“I hate what I did to you—”
“No,” you say, shaking your head. “You don’t understand, Kook.” Your heart is aching—like someone reached in, squeezing it as hard as they can.
“Then explain.”
Your eyes meet his. “You. Own. Me,” you say, your index finger pressing into his chest with each word. “These last few weeks have been excruciating. I don’t know who I am when I’m around you. No matter how hard I try to convince myself that I’ve moved on. You’ll always be the one thing that I’ll never be over.”
Your heart is pounding, and every inch of your body is burning to the touch. You didn’t think anyone could ever make you this livid. But as much as you want to hate him, moving back home simply confirms everything you’ve been attempting to hide for the past seven years—you love him.
“I was hurt, too. You don’t think I was?” Jungkook says softly, lifting your chin so you can meet his gaze. “I was devastated, knowing how much I hurt you. I couldn’t eat or sleep for days. Seeing and talking to you every day and then it just stopped. My world was falling apart, and I didn’t know how to fix it. I watched you go off to live your life while I was stuck here with you, haunting me everywhere I went. Philz, the damn grocery store, the park–you were there. There was no escaping you. So yeah, I was wrecked and broken, just like you.”
The narrative you created in your head of Jungkook and Josie was something out of a fairytale. Boy meets girl, they fall in love and live happily ever after. But according to Jungkook, it was hardly the case. You haunted him as much as he haunted you throughout the years.
Chuckling to yourself, you think about how this could've been avoided if one of you had just spoken up. Stepping back from him, you take a breath to calm your nerves. You lean back against the sink, arms folded. “Can I ask you something?”
Jungkook’s eyes flick to you and his body mirrors yours. “I’m an open book, ___.”
“Why did you give up so easily? Why didn’t you fight for me? Our friendship?”
A beat passes, and he doesn’t respond. It’s foolish to think he’d have an answer for you.
Your lips thin, and you breathe out a sigh of frustration. “It’s fine, Kook. Don’t answer. We’ll just go back to the way things were. Have a good life.” You walk off toward the living room and he follows.
“You don’t get to walk away,” he says, shutting the front door when you try to open it.
“Yeah? Watch me!” You turn back to the door, attempting to open it, but Jungkook’s hand is holding it shut.
He grips your arm. “I was scared, okay? I was young and stupid, and scared.”
You turn around and push him back. “Scared? You’re still scared! That’s why you can’t even break up with Josie! She’s cheating on you, by the way! I saw her with some guy glued to her neck. I don’t understand why you can’t just let her go.”
“I’m not scared of breaking up with Josie. I just got comfortable with her being around and didn’t think I could do any better.” Jungkook steps back and reclines on the couch’s armrest.
“You don’t think you can do better than Josie? You’re Jeon Jungkook, of course, you can.”
He forces a laugh, shaking his head no. “I barely graduated high school, practically failed my college classes. I don’t have a steady job and I have no idea what I’m passionate about. So yeah, I didn’t think I could do any better than Josie, until…”
“Until…?”
“Until I saw you at the party. I know it sounds cheesy, but when I saw you standing in the living room. It was like a sign from the universe, waking me up from this auto-pilot life I was living in. Seeing you again really shook me up.”
You could say the same thing about seeing Jungkook again. The universe loved to toy with the two of you, didn’t it?
“And then after our dinner two weeks ago, I broke up with Josie–like officially. I gave all her stuff back. I’m not answering calls or anything. So, I guess when you saw her, she must’ve moved on to the next guy–that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, me breaking up with her.”
There was a sense of relief when he said that because you were ready to fight Josie.
“Oh,” you say softly, taking a step toward him. “I guess I was wrong about you—being scared, I mean.”
Jungkook’s toying with his necklace, circling it around his neck. “I’m still scared.” He steps toward you, waiting for you to look at him. “I’m scared I’m gonna mess this up,” he says.
“How are you going to mess this up? We’re just friends.”
“That’s the thing. I don’t want to be ‘just friends’.”
Your gaze flicks to him and then drops to his lips and back up again. You know what he’s alluding to, but you need to hear those words leave his lips. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He knows you’re teasing him. “Do I really have to spell it out for you?”
“Yes.”
“Because I love you, okay? I’m in love with you. Have always been in love with you, and I’m scared to lose you again.”
Your eyes are glossy, fighting back tears. You’ve longed to hear those words from Jungkook, and like him, you’re afraid of an unknown future, but right now, all that matters is him.
As a tear falls down your cheek, you’re ready to let love in. Let him in. Discover new things. Rediscover old things. You’re ready to be vulnerable, move forward from the past, and let go of the heartache and pain.
“I’m sorry,” you breathe.
Jungkook steps toward you, cupping your face. “No, no, no. You have nothing to be sorry for.”
You shake your head. “No, I do. I’m sorry I didn’t fight harder for you–for our friendship. It’s my fault too.”
His thumbs caress your cheeks. “Hey, can we agree to let the past be in the past and just focus on us now, in the present?”
Your hands cover his, and you nod, flashing a soft smile. “Mhm. I’d like that.”
Jungkook wipes your tear-stained cheeks. “Now, can I do something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time?”
“What’s that?”
His lips finally touch yours. It’s not fervent or haste. It’s soft, uncertain. But you kiss him back. You’re savoring each point of contact. His lips overlapping yours, capturing a hint of your cherry Chapstick. Your eyes are half-lidded and you pull back for air, but he leans in, bringing you back in for more. His nose bumps into yours as he turns his head, deepening the kiss. Your body presses against his, your fists balled up, tugging on his white t-shirt. There’s a glow of excitement and nervousness rushing throughout your body when one of his hands grips your waist and the other is on the small of your back, pushing you further into him.
A low whine leaves his lips when you withdraw. He reaches for another kiss, but you stop him.
“Kook—” you whisper as his forehead touches yours.
“I don’t want to stop kissing you,” he says, kissing your cheek and tracing your jawline. “Don’t think I can ever stop.”
You chuckle. “I don’t want to stop kissing you, either. Maybe we should take this to the bedroom?”
While lying in bed next to Jungkook, you simply enjoy each other’s presence. Your fingers trace stars across his chest and you love how he breathes–his chest rising and falling ever so softly. The sound of his voice vibrates through your fingers and into your body. With one arm wrapped around you and the other resting behind his head, Jungkook tells you about the dreams he had but never dared to pursue–you being one of them.
And as the clock strikes midnight, the magic of you and him didn’t dissipate. It’s here. It’s real.
#jungkook fanfic#jungkook fic#jungkook angst#jungkook x reader#jungkook x y/n#jungkook scenarios#jungkook imagines#fic: things you didn't say
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Gala Gal ft. Blackpink Rosé
pairing: Rosé x male reader
rating: Explicit
wordcount: 2.8k
prompt: a young journalist gets a chance of a lifetime with Rosé at a recent event.
Being a writer for a celebrity magazine has its advantages, such as getting to attend grand events like the Cannes Film Festival, or in this case, the MET Gala. Now you might think, where's the fun or excitement in that? A bunch of rich people dressed in overpriced clothing and posing on the red carpet while you have to ask them redundant questions that no one truly cares about outside a small niche of fans.
That is a reasonable question to ask, and a fair point to make. Hell, there are times when you wonder to yourself just how legitimate of a job this is. You certainly hear that question from your parents enough. But the answer to all of those questions comes from the woman currently walking towards you.
"Thank you for your time," you say to the current girl in front of you.
You have been interviewing some girl who is apparently 'the next Olivia Rodrigo,' which is a wild title to have, but you digress. As you bid her good-bye, a sudden chorus of "Rosé! Rosé over here!" erupts from the group of photographers, followed by a series of flashing light bulbs.
Your eyes flick over to the red carpet area near you to see none other than the 26-year-old starlet, Roseanne Park. Otherwise known as Rosé from Blackpink.
You have never crossed paths with her at any events you have covered; which you just toss up to bad luck or god punishing you for some crime you can’t remember. Either way, it seems like you will finally be getting your chance. Judging from this distance, she is just as beautiful as she appears in all her photos.
Her blonde hair is flowing down her back while loose bangs frame her face as she smiles for the camera. She is wearing a black dress that is form-fitting at the top, held together by two thin straps, and flares outwards at the waist. Frankly, she looks stunning. It is a classy dress that still manages to spark arousal in you. Though, you will keep that last part to yourself.
It is only a few moments later that you have to compose yourself as the press woman directs Rosé towards your vicinity. Adjusting your stance, and growing erection, you cough and put on a friendly smile as she walks over.
"Hi, I'm with Eros Magazine," you introduce yourself, managing to remain composed.
"Rosie, it’s nice to meet you," she says sweetly. She is even more beautiful up close, and that smile is practically paralyzing. Given that you don't trust your tongue at the moment, you decide to keep it simple.
"So how are you tonight?" you question, knowing how many times she must have answered it already.
"I'm great! It's a little cold tonight, but I'm excited to be here," she starts in her accented voice. "I love the Museum of Arts and supporting a good cause is always great. There are so many beautiful dresses and people here. So it's all feeling great right now!" she says, remaining smiling and bubbly throughout her answer.
For your part, you merely nod your head and smile, holding the recorder up to get every word. You go through the litany of typical red carpet questions: what projects are you working on, how's the music coming; all the typical things you could hand in to your editor when a story is due. You can see the press woman getting antsy though. Typical. Figuring you only have one or two questions left, you decide to venture out a bit.
"So, you're going to be going on tour again soon, that must be exciting..."
"It is! You're actually the first one to bring that up all night," she says, a hint of surprise in her voice.
"I do like to do my homework beforehand," you joke with a grin before continuing, "That being said, how do you manage to have fun and unwind? Even at these events, you have to keep a certain image, right?"
Rosé is quiet at first, and for a moment, she glances around as if to check that the coast is clear before she answers, "Oh, you know the girls and I find out ways to have fun. And this is actually my third year at the Gala, so I’ve found the little tricks and ways to have some fun."
There is something about the way she looks at you as she speaks that screams there is more than meets the eye to her words. Maybe it is the coy tone to her voice or the glint in her eye as she smiles. Whatever it is, you suddenly find yourself wondering exactly what ‘some fun' entails.
"By the way," Rosé says, interrupting your thoughts, "Eros Magazine...as in the Greek word for erotic love?"
Again she fixes you with that mischievous grin.
"Uh — yeah. Nice catch," you stammer, causing her to giggle.
"I like it" she says, a look you can’t read in her eye. Before you can ask anything further, the press woman begins to nudge her on to the next reporter. "It was nice meeting you."
"You too, have a good one," you reply, watching her intently as she walks away.
If that is your first and last interaction with the K-pop star, then you can say it has been interesting if nothing else. You get the feeling there is more to that little minx than meets the eye, you are only disappointed that you’d likely never get the chance to delve a bit further.
Covering the event means that you gain access to the party but hardly anyone does any real reporting. After all, these kinds of events are meant for the rich and famous. To cement their status as celebrities, they then sneak off inside to where they can have their fun. For the most part, you reporters stay together, talk, and drink the free liquor that is available.
You expect your night will be spent at the bar, winding your time down until it reaches an acceptable time to call it a night. But first things first, if you are going to be here on the company dime, you might as well get your money's worth.
"I've been looking for you all night!"
You are in the middle of ordering yet another drink when a familiar accented voice reaches your ears. Turning in your stool, you lay your eyes on Roseanne Park for the second time tonight, only this time there is something a little more...loose to her demeanor. You get an explanation when you spot the glass in her hands and briefly wonder how many she had at this point.
"Me? You must be confused," you say, both amused, curious, and a bit confused, "I don't think anyone at this party has said I’m wanted."
"Well, you are!" she says, smiling as she moves towards you, "And now that I've found you, I have something to show you."
"Don't you have famous friends to entertain?" you question more than protest as she places her drink on the bar and takes your hand.
You catch a glimpse of a hint of a pout on her features, "Don’t worry, they’re occupied." Again, there is that suggestion that something more is going on. Of course, there is the very realistic possibility that your mind is just running away with crazy, erotic theories. But that potential doesn’t stop you from being any more turned on by the thought. Coupled with the fact that Rosé is dragging you through a gala to god-knows-where and you are practically dreaming. In that moment, she could take you to hell for all you care.
"You're going to love it, trust me," she assures, looking back at you as she continues leading.
"Oh, I’m sure," you reply. Your mind is racing with things from a blow job to taking her from behind, so needless to say, you are a bit disappointed when she stops at your destination.
"A photo booth?" you ask, a bit amused at how silly it seems.
Rosé is either undeterred or doesn’t register your lack of enthusiasm as she simply nods, still smiling and pulling you into the booth.
“It's fun! Come on," the blonde insists, pulling you by the hand into the photo booth. Judging by the size of it, the booth is clearly an afterthought to the gala planners, or maybe it just isn’t meant for two people at the same time to occupy it. You do your best to squeeze yourself in so she can close the curtain behind you. To your surprise, Rosé neatly slides onto your lap, her perfect, tight ass sitting right on top of where your hard-on has been growing for the last couple of minutes.
"Alright, so it takes six photos then prints them out there," she points to the deposit box under the screen. She either doesn't feel the bulge pressing firmly against her ass, or she is very good at playing naive.
"Okay," you nod, as if you are bothering to pay any attention to the pictures.
As she shimmies on your lap to get into a better position, you decide to be bold and snake your arm around her slim waist, only to receive no complaints from the pop star. A countdown shows up on the screen, and when it says CHEESE, Rosé throws her arms around you, smiling openly as you try and fail not to look too bewildered. The screen replays your photo, and you can’t help but laugh at your own expense.
"Not bad," you grin, as the counter starts for the second photo.
"Not bad, but I think we can do better!" she says with a determined look on her face. When the screen says CHEESE again, Rosé suddenly leans over and licks the side of your face. You are so surprised you don't know how you react until the photo replays.
"Oh my god! That's great!" Rosé laughs.
You take the next few photos in the same fashion, going for ridiculous and silly in each one. After every photo, Rosé would shift her weight on your lap, rubbing against your erection each time. You are certain that she has to be well aware of what she is doing, and by the time the countdown for the last photo appears, you have made up your mind.
When the screen flashes, you turn Rosé's head to you and push your lips flush against hers. To your surprise, it takes less than half a second for her to respond, her hands moving up to cup your face. You kiss passionately like that until the simple need for air breaks you apart.
"I was starting to think all my work was for nothing," she says, a devilish grin on her face.
You raise an eyebrow at her; apparently, all your theories have just been confirmed. "You planned all this then?"
"I told you we know how to have our fun at these things," she comments, twirling a strand of hair in her finger.
"We?"
Mischief gleams in her gaze for a moment, “Maybe later. I know you’re a reporter, but you shouldn’t ask too many questions.”
She places a delicate finger to your lips as she gets up off your lap. The low ceiling of the booth doesn't allow her to stand up fully, but she doesn't have to as she crouches and reaches under her dress and begins pulling down her panties. "Fuck...these things are definitely ruined. I practically soaked them."
Her comment is more to herself than you, but your cock only grows harder at the revelation. You watch as she slides her thong down past her ankles, and her eyes fall to your crotch. With nimble fingers, she works on your button and zipper, springing free your aching cock.
"Oh wow..." she mutters, eyeing it with an animalistic hunger. "I would love to wrap my lips around that..."
"You're more than welcomed to," you groan, starting to get that sense of teasing with the amount of anticipation that is building. You are tempted to just force her head onto your cock, but you stop short when she speaks.
"Later. We don't have a lot of time."
Your disappointment at that statement is short-lived as she stands again and turns around. Rosé lifts her skirt and hovers over your lap. Grabbing hold of your member, you let out a groan as she positions it at her entrance, rubbing it for a second in her dripping juices. Unable to hold out, you thrust your hips slightly upward, causing your tip to pierce her folds.
"Mmm, somebody's anxious," she purrs, her accent coming out thick.
"Can you fucking blame me?" you say through gritted teeth, reaching out to grab her waist. Before you can yank her down, she beats you to it and spears herself on your rod. "Oh fuck," you let out, feeling how tight her petite body is.
"God, you feel fucking amazing," you mutter into her shoulder.
"Ah~...and you're...much bigger than you look," she says, clearly trying to adjust to the size she just filled herself with in one go. Apparently, the discomfort isn't so bad as she soon begins lifting and dropping herself on your cock slowly. "Try not—ooh— to get too loud," she moans out, her ass rocking against you.
"Speak for yourself," you grunt, your hands gripping her waist firmly as you start to move your hips to match the movement of hers.
You can't wrap your head around the fact that you're fucking a member of one of the most famous girl groups in the world in a photobooth at a gala with hundreds of celebrities. Thankfully, you don't need to wrap your head around it, as long as you keep fucking her. With that in mind, you take control of the pace, gripping her waist and forcing yourself up into her. Each time you spear her pussy, it's like another piece of heaven. Her pussy is squeezing you like there's no tomorrow, only increasing the pleasure you get with each thrust.
"Shit, yes, yes! Fuck me," Rosé chants in a loud whisper as she puts her hand on the console to steady herself as you thrust up into her.
"God, you're fucking tight," you moan, continuing to pound her Australian pussy. "Someone could look in here at any second."
"Oooh, I know," she lets out a shuddering breath.
"You're getting off on that, aren't you?" you continue the dirty talk, sliding a strap off her shoulder so you can push her top down to fondle her pert breast.
"Yes, yes! It fucking turns me on," Rosé pants.
For a moment, you fear she has given you away, but you're too far gone to truly care at this point. Her hands slide down the console, and you're only aware of what happens when the shutter of the camera makes you look up. Looking over Rosé's shoulder as she bounces up and down, you see your photo displayed, Rosé's mouth opened in pleasure.
Grinning to yourself, you increase the speed of your thrusts, determined to get her orgasm face by the last photo.
"OH!" she squeals, surprised by your sudden turn of action. "Oh fuck, right there. Keep going," she pants, her hand covering yours and holding it firmly against her breast.
You squeeze firmly, shoving every inch of your meat deep into her snatch. Her lithe body arches back into you. She's panting heavily, each thrust causing her to take a sharp breath. You turn her head towards you and kiss her, her hand gripping the back of your head. It's sloppy and passionate, perfectly fitting the current heated moment that is occurring.
"I'm close. I'm so fucking close," Rosé chants, continuing to grip your head as she moves her hips to yours.
A few moments later, you have to cover her mouth with your hand as she shrieks her orgasm. Her walls clench around you as she comes, her juices flooding your cock.
"I'm going to cum," you warn, knowing you aren't going to last through her orgasm.
"Mmmph," Rosé says, until you remove your hand, "In me! Cum inside me!"
You don't take a second to question it, instead thrusting your hips upward, your cock pushing into her one last time as you empty rope after rope of your seed into her womb. You continue unloading into the star for what seems like eternity until you both finally collapse in the booth. Her body heaves on top of yours as she tries to catch her breath.
"I don't think I've ever cum that hard before," you pant, causing the Blackpink singer to giggle.
"Don't speak too soon," she says, leaning back and kissing you softly on the lips. Thinking of what she could have planned only causes your cock to twitch inside her with anticipation.
One thing is for certain: this girl certainly knows how to have fun.
BUY ME A COFFEE - if you enjoy my stories considering buying me a coffee! always appreciated, never required.
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How they Get You under the Mistletoe, Part Two
Summary: Staff and Non NRC students x gn! Reader
A/N: IT IS 11:54 ON DECEMBER 25TH, SO I FINISHED THIS ON TIME LET'S FUCKING GO!
Part One
CW:It's in my pinned post, and I've mentioned this in a couple posts, but if this is the first of my stuff you've read, I view NRC as an actual college, so reader here is 18+. If it makes you more comfy, imagine it as grad school age. Also, use of alcohol in Crewel's part.
Dire Crowley
Rage Bait
The ghosts thought they were helping. They had decorated Ramshackle, and you were having a holiday party before your friends left for winter break. But they'd also put up mistletoe. And every time you tried to take it down, they'd float up and move it farther out of reach.
“Surely there's a special someone who'll be here tonight,” one of them said with a giggle.
“We just don't want you to regret not making a move, when you're our ages,” another one said with paternal softness.
You grumbled and stormed back over to the party, which was quickly getting out of hand. The later it got, more people showed up, and now there were more strangers than friends in your living space. And as though that wasn't bad enough-
“Prefect!”
You groaned when you heard the headmage’s voice. You turned around from the broken glass you were sweeping up, and sighed.
“What can I do for you, headmage?”
“I consider myself very generous, and can overlook a simple celebration, but this is out of hand.”
“Yah think?” You shouted, gesturing at the fight that had just broken out in the corner.
“How do you plan to shut it down?”
“I'm working on it!” You snapped, walking away with a dustpan full of glass, ready to sweep up the newest disaster.
“I have an idea,” he said, half a step behind you, not missing a single beat, despite the crowd doing its darndest to separate you.
“What is it?” You said, only half listening as you set down the dustpan.
He grabbed your arm, yanking you to the side.
“Kiss me,” he said with a wicked grin.
“What the fuck!”
He smirked even deeper, pointing up. And there was the mistletoe from earlier….but you could have sworn it was over there….
You made eye contact with one of the ghosts who winked at you.
“H-how is that gonna help?” You stuttered.
“Surely, your peers would find it unsettling to see the Headmage kissing his lover.”
“Lover?” You rolled your eyes. “You're not my lover-”
“But you'd like me to be,” his eyes twinkled.
“You don't even give me enough money to reward Grim when he actually passes a test.”
“Doesn't matter. I'm a handsome man. You can't say you're resistant to my charms.”
You pulled out of his grip and snapped.
“Oh please! If I was going to go for any of the staff, I'd go for Crewel!”
“Really?” His eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you're too scared to kiss me.”
“What!”
“You're worried that if you kiss me, you'll be forced to accept your feelings.”
“Shut up!”
“I'm a very generous lover-”
You slammed your lips against his, angrily. He kissed back with just as much force, his hands twining in your hair. The anger turned quickly to passion, and you were soon overwhelmed by the feelings inside you, shoving him away from you as you pressed your hands to your open mouth in shock.
He smirked, and you realized no one was in your dorm, except Ace, who was staring in complete disgust.
Divus Crewel
Double dog dare you
Vargas and Sam were both drinking with Crewel at the staff holiday party. It was meant to be a calm relaxed evening. But you'd shown up to interrogate the Headmage about something, and now Sam and Ashton were acting like fools.
“C'mon, man up!”
“We know you want to.”
“Gentlemen, please, let's be professional,” Divus grumbled as he threw back his glass.
“They aren't in your class anymore!”
“And my friends say that they are head over heels for you.”
“C'mon man up!”
“If you say man up one more time!” Divus scowled.
“If you don't, he will,” Sam snickered, pointing at Crowley, who did, indeed, seem to be trying to huddle you over to the mistletoe that someone had decided to put up for some reason. Though, the longer Crowley was shifting you, the clearer it became that this was a malicious plot.
“I dare you to swoop them up from under his wing, and give them a kiss they'll never forget,” Vargas said childishly.
Divus looked over at you, snatched Sam's drink, chugged it down, then stormed over to the both of you, buoyed on by the cheers of his friends.
“Scuse me Headmage,” he slurred, yanking you to him and kissing you sloppily.
…
…
…
When he woke up the next morning with a killer hangover, he would have thought it was all a dream. Until he saw you sleeping in a chair by his bed, holding a bucket full of vomit.
Mozus Trein
The Parent Trap
He'd invited you to the holiday party at his estate in the country. He thought it would be a low key way to introduce you to his daughters. If you got overwhelmed, you could blend into the crowd, or hide in his guest room upstairs, and no one would even notice you'd slipped away.
His daughters were a little too excited that he was dating again.
“Papa, you gotta!”
“It would be so romantic!”
The good news was, they liked you. Unfortunately (fortunately?) they might have been a little too excited.
“I'm not going to pull them away from the party, just to kiss them under a leaf,” he said with a glare.
“Don't worry, you don't have to pull them away!” Ania said with a smile, pulling out her magic pen. Unfortunately (fortunately?) Ania was incredibly gifted with flora magic. Materializing mistletoe above the two of you would be simple.
“I absolutely forbid it,” he hissed.
“Y/N! Over here please!” Darleen called to you. You politely excused yourself from the conversation you were having, and walked over to the group, eying his children nervously. Your gut instincts were definitely right.
“You don't have to-” Ania covered Trein’s mouth with her hand, giggling excitedly.
“What's going on?” You asked, eying him in concern.
“Just stand right there!” Darleen said, both daughters taking three steps back, before Ania quickly muttered a spell. You looked up and saw the mistletoe, your eyes widening. You looked over to his daughters, but they were already running away, hiding in the crowd.
You looked at Trein, feeling your cheeks warm as he stared at you with an empty expression on his face.
“We don't have to-”
He said, gently taking your hand in his, caressing the back with his thumb.
“I would be a fool not to accept this gift,” he said, sounding bitter, but there was light in his eyes. You smiled softly, and he leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss to your lips.
Ashton Vargas
Decoration Team
He'd somehow tricked you into decorating the employee lounge with him. You always thought he was more brawn than brains, but this wasn't the first time he'd tricked you into manual labor, so maybe you were the dumb one.
“Hah! Good work!” He slapped your back affectionately, and you stumbled into the table you were decorating, causing a couple of the tchotchkes you'd just placed to tumble forward. You frowned, and sighed, but he laughed again.
“Forget the table. I need you for something,” he snatched your wrist, dragging you to a corner of the room. Then, with absolutely no warning, he picked you up, and placed you on his shoulders. You gripped his head, absolutely terrified that you'd tumble.
“Don't worry. I got you. That's why I built up these muscles!” He momentarily let go of your left thigh to flex. This did not ease your panic.
He reached into his pocket and handed you something.
“Hang that on the ceiling right above ya! Let me know when you're finished.”
You stared at the mistletoe, and sighed. The sooner you put it up, the sooner he'd put you down.
“So, uh, is this a popular decoration for a staff party?” You asked, trying to ease your anxiety through conversation.
“Nah.”
“Nah? Done, by the way.”
He gently let you down from his shoulders, then turned you to face him.
“This won't get much use at the party. This decoration is for my….personal…enjoyment,” he purred as he took your chin in his hand.
Sam
*Gasp* you tripped!
Sam's shop always had weird things. But definitely the weirdest thing it had at the moment was the out of control mistletoe bush. A student had bought it, tried to cast a spell on it, then promptly returned it when he realized it was growing beyond his control. Normally, Sam had a strict no return policy. But he'd stared at it for moment, then agreed to the return.
It was the end of the night, and he was finally getting around to fixing it. He was simply staring at it, trying to puzzle out how to clean it up. You were staying far away. Partially because the monstrosity the mistletoe had become was horrifying beyond the realms of imagination, but also because….
You know…
Mistletoe.
Not that Sam wasn't unbelievably attractive. It just would be awkward if you both ended up near it. And Sam was a professional. He'd probably just laugh lightly and send you on your way. But still…it would be awkward.
Right?
“Sam,” you said, but he was so engrossed, he didn't hear you.
“Sam, I'm gonna clock out-” you had taken a step forward, but tripped over what felt like an outstretched leg, right into his arms.
“Ah! Are you alright, my little imp?” His voice sounded concerned, but the expression on his face didn't quite match.
“Y-yeah,” you said, trying to pretend you didn't notice just where you both were standing. He looked you up and down, rubbing your arms, as though looking for any injuries.
“You're certain?”
The mistletoe creature thing wrapped around the two of you, and you stiffened as you were pushed closer together. You tried to keep your mind off of the muscle you were feeling under his clothes.
“I know how to fix this. But should I?”
“Huh?” You gasped, mildly horrified about the implications.
“I can get out of this easily, but I could leave you as a sacrifice to the mistletoe.”
“What!”
He snickered. “Or we can make a deal.”
Uh oh. You've seen him do this to other people, but never to you….
“Sam, you write my paycheck. You know I don't have any money to give you.”
“I don't want money. But you do have something I want,” he leaned in so that your noses were pressing together. “I'd like your heart. Think that's a deal you can make?”
Neige le Blanche
Marketing Campaign
After the SDC, Neige had pushed to get his manager to take you on. And now you were a notable up and comer, doing projects with Neige.
This campaign was for a cologne. It was winter themed, with hints of cinnamon and cloves, and Neige was to be the figurehead of the campaign. But he'd been insistent that you be his partner in this ad. You hadn't tested the product, you hadn't received a script or any information, other than the fancy outfit you'd been given for the photo.
Your manager was quickly giving you the rundown as hair and makeup worked on you, and you were just kind of nodding along, until,
“Wait, say that again?”
“You're going to be kissing his neck while you stand under the mistletoe?” Your manager said.
You stiffened, earning a scolding from your makeup guy for wrinkling your forehead.
“I know it's a big jump for his image, but your face will be at an angle, so you might not be associated with the image cha-”
“Does Neige know about this?” You asked, your voice squeaking a little.
“Yes. Of course he knows,” you manager rolled her eyes, before continuing with the brief.
Your manager continued briefing you, but you felt light headed and couldn't focus on her words.
Now that you were on the photo set, you stood stiffly waiting for the photographer to pose you.
“Sorry, Y/N, I meant to tell you about the shift in my image, but I forgot.”
Would it be unprofessional to say that it wasn't the image shift that had you tense?
“Don't worry about it, Neige,” you tried to laugh it off, but quickly you were being positioned for the photo, Neige tilting his head back, fully exposing his neck, where it was implied that he had used the cologne from the campaign.
You were positioned with your lips pressed to his neck. You really doubted you even needed makeup for this shot, your face was barely visible, but whatever.
“I'm really sorry, Y/N,” he whispered, barely moving his lips as the camera whirred.
“Don't worry about it,” you whispered into his neck.
“Alright, slowly kiss up his neck, then you're gonna grab his hair and kiss him. Slowly. We want to do this in one take,” the photographer said. You felt your cheeks grow warm, and you made eye contact with Neige, whose cheeks were slightly pink.
“Sorry,” he breathed hoarsely.
“It's fine,” you whispered, following instructions, slowly, and kissing him, the taste of apples invading your mouth.
“Got it!” The photographer shouted, and you both separated quickly.
The photographer grinned at the photos on his camera, then raised that smile to you, giving you a wink.
“You were right, Neige, they were perfect for this one!”
You turned to Neige, your eyes wide, and you noticed he was heavily avoiding eye contact, his face bright red.
Rollo Flamme
Purity check
Can you tell from how I write him that I have religious trauma? 😂
Now that you'd been studying at NBC for a semester-long exchange program, you realized how close you'd grown to him. But still, sometimes you felt like you needed him to back off. You weren't a child, you could do what you wanted. Including-
“It's none of your business if I made out with someone!”
“There are rules to be followed on this campus. I don't know how they did things at NRC, but we have standards here.”
“Look! I didn't make out with anyone! And if I did, I don't need to tell you about it!”
You both glared at each other. He broke first.
“Come,” he said, grabbing your arm, and pulling you to the corner of the room where the mistletoe hung. He shot a glare at the couple that was using it, and they ran.
Come to think of it….this whole party was illegal. Why was he zeroing in on you? How was that fair?
“Kiss me,” he demanded.
“What!” You shouted, and his glare deepened.
“If you're worried about appearances, we are under the mistletoe, so it would be socially acceptable.”
“That's not-”
“Kiss me, and prove that you haven't been illegally kissing someone while at an illegal party,” he looked so fucking smug. Like he knew he'd won.
“How is that going to prove-”
“I'll taste someone on you. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”
“Everyone here is kissing people-”
“You're here to purify you from those mage’s poison-”
“You're insufferable!”
“Please just kiss him!” You'd forgotten the vice president was with him, too caught up in the anger you were filled with. “If you just do it, we can all go home! Please!”
You both glared at each other, then you sighed, and kissed him. When you pulled away, he pursed his lips, eying you up and down, his cheeks dusted in pink.
“Return to your dorm within the hour, and you won't receive detention.”
And then he waltzed out as though nothing happened.
Chenya
…I'm praying for your soul….
“Mwahahaha!”
You stiffened. You knew that laughter. He was here. You'd locked every door and window, just in case. You'd told him you were spending a quiet night in, when he'd stolen Ace's phone to text you. And you intended it to stay that way.
But that voice was nearby…
You grabbed a throw pillow from the sofa, preparing for the moment he would appear.
You felt something smack you in the face. You looked at the thing that hit you, that had fallen to your feet. You picked it up, rolling it around in your hands, before your eyes widened.
“Mwahahaha!”
“Wait…” you whispered, the implications of the mistletoe in your hands finally hitting.
The mistletoe was yanked from your hands, by an invisible monster. It reappeared above you, then a mouth was on yours. He tastes like stolen strawberries, and one too many desserts. The lips left yours, and you felt him disappear again. Then his tail appeared, wrapping around you, as you felt him set his chin on your shoulder, a purr making your heart rate calm.
“Mmm you're delicious. Glad I stole that little toy from Riddle,” he giggled.
“He doesn't know you're here, right?” You whispered.
“Hee hee,” he vanished with that giggle, as you heard.
“Y/N L/N! Relinquish the thief!”
....
Tag list- @shytastemakerthing @eccedentesiast-sapphic @leoll @stygianoir @lucifer5lucy
#twisted wonderland#twisted wonderland x reader#divus crewel x reader#dire crowley x reader#ashton vargas x reader#twst sam x reader#mozus trein x reader#rollo flamme x reader#neige leblanche x reader#chenya x reader
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h… how is any of that racist
assuming that you mean my posts about the 5e monster manual entry for orcs and how insanely racist it is--by happy coincidence i have a bunch of sources about this strewn haphazardly across my browser so i'm happy to answer this.
so we will start with this. the words 'tribe' and 'chief' are deeply, deeply racialised. they have been used throughout colonial (and well into modern and present-day!) history to describe groups of indigenous peoples across the world—with implications of 'primitive' people and societies within the Western myth of linear societal progress. europeans have nations and kings--africans and native americans have tribes and chiefs. the 'tribe' is not a neutral concept--it is a concept that was constructed by europeans in positions of global military domination over a century to justify a narrative about the linear progress of civilization to justify domination [1][2]. of course, it's not just the use of the words 'tribe' or 'chief' but their deployment here in the context of what is obviously supposed to be a 'primitive' method of of government--the 'orcish tribe' is inherently violence, a 'savage' society entirely built on "bloodlust" and "fear"
regis stella puts it much better than i could in this account of an early 20th-century travel memoir in Imagining the Other: The Representation of the Papua New Guinean Subject
while we're on this point i figure i'll add all the other language around 'savagery', 'inherent bloodlust' and so on in the monster manual here to further illustrate my point: it's all quite rote and repeats itself a lot.
now, wait, waiiiit, wait a second. wait a moment. hold up what was that last thing
oh thats not good. having to explain why this is racist feels a little like having to explain why its bad to hit people with hammers but i'll do it anyway: the comparison of real-life 'tribes' of people to insects, vermin, and pestilences is a very real element of genocidal rhetoric--from the holocaust [3] to the rwandan genocide [4]. what is the implied correct societal responose to a tribe that is 'like a plague?'
finally, this is the part that made me say "holy fucking shit this is in the 5th edition monster manual?" because it is pure undiluted gygaxian eugenics shit. first of all, the narrative of the ever-swelling horde, the indigenous or Asian people as an undiffernetiated mass of amorphous Other, is an old one and one that's been used to devalue the lives of people of colour and justify violence against 'the horde'. but the part that's absolutely jaw-dropping is the use of the tropes of reproductive racism--the narrative of Black and indigenous hyperfecundity is also an established racist trope, one which was instrumental in the forced sterilisation of Black and Native women in the USA [5] and now manifests itself in the "great replacement" demographic anxieties of modern racism [6] -- think of White Genocide conspiracy theories and the 14 Words. and of course that is to say nothing of the fact that is made very clear and reiterated (and mechanicised in the form of the Half-Orc player race!) that WotC wants to be very clear about how much orcs "readily crossbreed with other races". this is miscegenation anxiety, plain and simple--somethign else stella talks about.
so yeah! hopefully nobody will ever ask me this fucking question again! (this is just across two fucking pages of the monster manual by the way don’t get me started on the shit that’s in the other books! god forbid i even think about campaign modules!!)
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Look, This is gonna be one of those things that sounds bad until you read the whole story. Please don't read the title and go to 'yta' without reading.
AITA for yelling at our friend that my brother isn't trans?
Look, My brother ISNT trans. He likes to wear kilts and sew, Which is what kind of started all of this. My brother is NOT trans, He loves being a boy (trust me, I can hear him enjoying being a boy in his room all the time. Theres no way he'd wanna chop it off(I mean this as a joke I don't actually know how the surgery works), He's told me multiple times that being told by others what he likes is 'feminine' and 'girly' upsets him because he's proud of being a boy and doesn't like being called a girl. Its not because he hates girls or thinks less of them, He just does not like being called the wrong gender which I'm sure you want to be called the correct gender too.)
Anyways lets begin. I (16F) am my little brothers (15M) best friend, Basically. We grew up together and do everything together, Including sewing. I liked it when I was younger, And eventually convinced him to try it as well. He loved it, And we love just sitting together and making random crap we usually end up selling at our yearly garage sale. (Our mom makes us sell all our unneeded crap every year, But we aren't complaining when we make like $100 for it, Mom and dad even help us figure out what we actually wanna keep (we sometimes see old things and go 'Oh I could never get rid of this' and then throw it away))
Sorry for the rambling, But you'll see why some of this is important to know.
Basically, We were getting our shit together for the garage sale, And invited over a mutual friend of ours, Who I'll call uhhh Ley (16F). Shes kind of obsessed with the LGBTQ and loves to help people 'realize' they're gay or trans or non-binary. By this I mean she'll literally bully people she 'knows' is gay or trans by always telling them they are and spreading rumors about them saying they are. The way she 'knows' these things are from gut feelings. I thought maybe she needed friends who would be honest with her and tell her gently that it needed to stop. She stopped being so bad with it and we even convinced her to admit to the rumors she started being fake. We've known her for around 3 years now, And she's stopped doing it as aggressively for 2 of those years. She still makes jabs and 'jokes' saying things like "Oh thats so girly, Are you sure you're not trans?" and "Oh thats such a boy thing to do, Are you a lesbian?", Both quotes she's said to me and my brother less than a week ago. I am straight and cis, So is my brother. We have nothing against the lgbt, We just aren't apart of it. We support the lgbtq as much as possible (with my part time job I like to donate some of my paycheck towards point of pride so people who need the surgeries or binders can get them), And are very open about supporting them.
While we were cleaning out my brothers room and finding stuff to throw into the 'sell' box (we like to do precleaning before our parents help us, It makes everything faster and less work on the people trying to help), And Ley found my brothers kilt. She did a long exaggerated gasp, Looking at my brother.
"So, How long have you been trans? Why didn't you tell me?? I knew it the whole time!"
My brother tried to explain that it was a kilt for men, And he wasn't trans, But she kept interrupting him saying crap like 'you don't have to lie I know now' and 'Its nothing to be embarrassed about, I knew ever since you started to sew'. The last straw for me was when she continued not listening to him and started to ask about how he was gonna come out as school. I yelled at her to get out, That neither of us were gay, Neither of us are trans, And neither of us are apart of any of the lgbtq. We are allies and nothing more. She tried to argue that he had a 'skirt' which OBVIOUSLY meant he was trans, I basically screamed at her that she was a stupid know it all who made everyone who wasn't apart of the lgbtq's life hell because she made sure everyone knew them as someone they arent (I know, I shouldn't of brought up 2 years in the past) and that I was tired of her trying to force everyone to be in the LGBTQ when its just not realistic. Not everyone is gay or trans, Some people are cis and straight. She started crying and left, We haven't spoken in a few days but I think I'm justified. I'm tired of living my life being told I'm something I'm not, I'm tired of seeing it happen to my brother too.
My brother later thanked me for standing up for him, Telling me it made him really upset when she said those things. To cheer him up we watched his favorite movies and I made him his favorite dinner (mom and dad both work day jobs so we both make lunch and dinner)
And for those who are gonna say that allies are apart of the LGBTQ I strongly believe the A is for aro/ace. Being an ally isn't a gender or sexuality
(unless people identify using ally/allyself of course or whatever it is, I'm not quite sure how neos work or whatever but I love to see how creative people get with it and am happy it gives people who don't identify with any of the normalized(? Idk the correct term but yknow the man woman and nb) genders a chance to be who they actually are)
Extra info on why I think I could be the asshole: I feel like we might've been able to explain it if we got her to shut up for a minute, But she kept talking over us. I feel like I went too far by insulting her, And I feel like I might be TA because she's also autistic (so is my brother though, And I have ADHD).
Why I think I'm NTA: My brother is really quiet and doesn't really defend himself often. He doesn't really know how to stand up for himself and is 'easy' to talk over (soft spoken, Quiet talking voice and nonconfrontational) which is why I believe I had to step in in his place, And I don't believe I did anything wrong defending my brother and making her stop calling him what hes not.
Anyways. AITA for yelling at our friend that my brother isn't trans?
To see later: PINK PANTHER
What are these acronyms?
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Hi,
I am very much not american so I must admit that my first impulse when seeing all the rap/racism discourse was something like "do I really need to consume more american culture, it's fucking everywhere already". Idk but to me it feels like american/english-speaking culture absolutely dominates a lot of the world, sometimes at the cost of out own cultures and languages, if something is in English it is "good", if it is in own own languages it is "bad". Musicians often start singing in English and more american-like after a while to get bigger. We value American culture and music, they mock our accents (and languages sometimes) and best case scenario see us as funny and silly.
Then I started thinking. Do you think that americans kind of see rap kind of like foreign music still? Like low-brow unexotic foreign music.
I don't know this is a really fresh thought and I'm not sure if I am explaining it very well.
hey first off I just want to say -
you are entirely correct in your reaction that people outside of America/the English-speaking world do not need more American culture thrust upon them! this discussion is extremely centered on Americans, the reception and reaction to rap within America, and excuses that white American use to avoid interacting meaningfully with Black culture, art, and ideas. while anti-Blackness as an issue obviously extends far outside of America, this particular conversation is deeply tied to American culture. I appreciate you pointing that out!
I also think you're point about rap, and by extension other Black artforms, being Othered in American pop culture. certainly in terms of language, African American Vernacular English (AAVE), which is utilized by many rappers, is still heavily disputed in its validity as a "real" language, with many dismissing it as a bastardized version of "proper" English and associating it heavily with those who are lower-class and uneducated. in a similar way to many international artists having to work in English to gain wider recognition and validation, many Black Americans are proficient in "code switching," the practice of switching between AAVE that they likely grew up speaking and an English dialect that is considered more "professional."
similarly, I think your use of the term "low-brow" is very apt. Black music has always been met with distrust and disdain by white audiences. there's a reason that so many people feel the need to bring up sex, drugs, and violence when they talk about rap; to many white cultural gatekeepers that was all rap was. (and, like, we should very much talk about why that is in and of itself a bad thing, when white crime is so often glorified in pop culture. why is the Godfather a classic masterpiece but Black men making art about their own experiences with racism, violence, poverty, and survival don't deserve serious consideration?) and that didn't start with rap! in the early 20th century jazz, also a Black creation, was seen as dangerous for promoting promiscuity among nice white teens. no matter what Black people make, white cultural gatekeepers will find a way to start a moral panic about it.
the reverse also happens as well, with Black people being treated as foreigners even in music genres that they helped pioneer. Black Americans were hugely formative in the early days of country, but are met with hostility in the contemporary country scene. Lil Nas X's Old Town Road was one of the biggest songs of the year it was released and undeniably country but was largely snubbed by country music community, and Beyoncé's new country album, Cowboy Carter, is a direct response to her hostile reception at the Country Music Awards in 2016.
the point being, yes, I don't think it's off-base to say that, to many Americans, rap and Black music and art generally are like... very optional and avoidable parts of pop culture in the way that more white-dominated genres are not, similarly to a lot of international and especially non-English art.
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Love is Stored in the Cat: A Nepeta Leijon Character Study
I guess these are a series now! I also have a request for Feferi in my inbox that I'll get around to eventually.
SO! Dear, sweet Nepeta.
Nepeta is the troll that is most against the existence of the hemocaste.
I believe the Ultimate Self speech was originally going to be from her, not Davepetasprite^2.
She's bad at shipping.
These all make her extremely impurrtant!!!
So furst of all, I'm going to start with the same disclaimer as my Eridan essay (go read that first!!! It sets up a lot of ideas that I'm expanding on here), which is that the things Hussie says are going to be lowered in value, because he likes to play coy about plot stuff. I'm also not counting anything but the actual text as canon, and even with in that text, I'm counting everything after GAME OVER as soft canon - a suggestion of what would have been, often truncated for time, often a deliberate middle finger to the shitty fandom.
Okay, so with that squared away!
Nepeta Says Fuck The Hemocaste
I'm not going to bother doing a deep dive on Nepeta's characterization, because fur the most part, I think the fandom more or less gets her right - she wears her heart (h33h33) on her sl33ve, after all! She's a very sweet little catgirl who loves roleplay and shipping, who is also a vicious hunter of wild beasts and lives in a cave. She's very nice and friendly, but has a tough streak and a spine.
She also says fuck the hemocaste, why does that even exist:
CT: D --> Your fraternization with the base classes have 100sened your morals, can't you see this
AC: :33 < no! i dont care, they are fun
AC: :33 < and i dont know anything about classes or bases or blood color, it doesn't matter!
AC: :33 < what does gr33n blood even mean! it doesnt mean anything to me and it shouldnt mean anything to anyone else!
This is a radical stance not outright shared by any of the other trolls. Aradia calls highbloods "hateful sn0bs" that she and Tavros shouldn't have "ever had anything t0 d0 with", the highbloods are, of course, all casteist to varying degrees, and even Karkat seems fairly accepting of the class divide, at one point taunting Vriska that her rejection from the blue team is "ANOTHER INFURIATING VICTORY FOR GUTTER BLOOD OVER ARISTOCRACY". Not to mention his long-held dream of becoming a threshecutioner.
Even Feferi, despite saying to Eridan that "W-E AR-E NOT B-ETT-ER T)(AN ANYBODY!!!!!", is actually perfectly comfortable with the caste system's existence, comparing having to stop using her royal typing quirk to "peasant-IFICATING" herself - and let's not forget that a Beforus under her rule had its caste system 100% intact.
This means that Nepeta is the ONLY troll who has said, in no uncertain terms, that the caste system should not exist. It's stupid, it's bad, and it doesn't meowtter!
AND SHE'S RIGHT.
But she's never able to fully express this opinion, which brings us to:
A COMPLICKATED RELATIONSHIP WITH EQUIUS
Now, before I say anything, I must insist that I do believe these two work as good moirails. That does not, however, stop them from being 13, and therefore, being poor to each other the way 13-year-olds sometimes are. I don't think they should break up; I think they should re-examine certain dynamics, and I think they need some space to breathe apart from each other.
Equius has a lot of problems, which I won't get into overmuch here, because... that's a whole essay on its own (are you people seeing a trend yet). But with regards to Nepeta specifically, he's extremely controlling and protective, to the point where she's a little scared of him before the game begins:
AC: :33 < well it does sound like it will be a lot of fun but i think i should get purrmission first
GC: BL4R!!!!!
GC: TH4TS SO STUP1D
GC: H3S NOT TH3 BOSS OF YOU
AC: :33 < i know!
AC: :33 < but still im kind of scared of him and i think purrhaps its best to just run it by him first so there isnt a kerfuffle about it or anything
She's also afraid to tell him about her crush on Karkat, since she knows he doesn't like Karkat:
AC: :33 < well
AC: :33 < i have never told anybody this not even my moirail
AC: :33 < heh, actually hes the LAST guy i might tell, he so wouldnt appurrve X33
AC: :33 < but yes i have liked somebody for quite some time, but alas he doesnt know it
By the time they end their game, she's gotten over this fear, seeing as she spends many hours curled up with Equius in a pile of robotics parts, but it still must be noted that they have some issues in their relationship that were never resolved, primarily on Equius's end. What this means for Nepeta, however, is that in addition to setting her up as the most outright anti-classism troll, the comic sets her up to be socially isolated due to her moirail's paranoia about letting her associate with both lowbloods (seeing them as bad influences) OR other highbloods, seeing them as dangerous.
He's not entirely wrong - his refusal to allow her to participate in FLARP kept her from winding up entangled in the horrible chain of revenge, as Tavros alludes:
AT: iT'S PROBABLY FOR THE BEST,
AT: tHAT YOU LISTEN TO HIM,
AC: :33 < i dont know
AC: :33 < you think so?
AT: wELL,
AT: iF YOU DIDN'T LISTEN TO HIM BEFORE,
AT: yOU MIGHT HAVE PLAYED GAMES WITH US BEFORE,
AT: aND SOMETHING BAD MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED TO YOU,
AC: :33 < hmm purrhaps
But he's still wrong. And it's probably an uncontrolled manifestation of his Heir of Void abilities - he's both consciously and unconsciously hiding her from other people.
This isn't to say she doesn't stand up for herself! Many of her discussions with Equius are pseudo-arguments, and she does get her way often enough, managing to get him to roleplay with her, and managing to get him back in the roboti% pile to talk about his feelings about Aradia. She also talks to the humans explicitly against Equius's orders, although she's keeping it a sneakret from him:
NEPETA: :33 < but equius already furbid me from doing that :((
NEPETA: :33 < not that i am listening to him, but shhhhh! :33
KARKAT: WAIT, HE DID?
KARKAT: OK, THEN AS YOUR LEADER I ORDER YOU TO RP WITH THEM AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. BE AS OBNOXIOUS ABOUT IT AS YOU CAN.
NEPETA: :33 < yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
But the fact that she has to tiptoe around him like this speaks to them having issues in their relationship that go unexamined and unresolved, especially since it's clear that Nepeta really would like to be friends with more people, were Equius not getting in her way. So, even though I do think they are good moirails for each other - they clearly genuinely, deeply care about one another. But they could use some relationship counselling.
In fact, Jasprosesprite^2 outright calls her lonely:
JASPROSESPRITE^2: Or the girl who likes ships! Cause they made her less lonely. ;3
So, she's anti-hemocaste and lonely, two character traits that were set up and never resolved. And beclaws this is Nepeta, in her honor, I'm going to talk about a third:
Her Unrequited Crush On Karcat
She has the BIGGEST flushed crush on Karkat. It's seen on her shipping wall twice, once with the word OTP on it.
And, despite never discussing it with her moirail, Nepeta mentions it once to Jaspersprite, and once to Jasprosesprite^2.
Now, I'm not really here to debate on the validity of KatNep - I think it's fine, even if I don't personally ship it, and don't personally think it would work out (there are lots of indications that they wouldn't work out, including Jasprosesprite^2 outright saying so). However, her crush on Karkat is both complicated and creates some interesting setups for her character. I am going to discuss it fairly critically either way, so KatNep shippers have been warned.
A lot of her feelings about Karkat - and about shipping in general - wind up being heavily interlinked with her status as a Hero of Heart, so I'm going to expand on it more there. But what I will note in this section is the fact that, despite Nepeta insisting twice that she doesn't think Karkat knows about her crush on her:
NEPETASPRITE: :33 < it was karkat
NEPETASPRITE: :33 < but i never told him and im pretty sure he never found out how i felt!
He tooootally did:
KARKAT: OK, BUT TO BE FAIR, I'M PRETTY SURE SHE'S STILL OBSESSED WITH ME.
KARKAT: IT'S A VERY UNFORTUNATE, VERY RED AND VERY UNREQUITED SITUATION I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TIPTOE AROUND FOR A LONG TIME, OK?
Interpret that how you will for shipping purposes, but I want to propose that this is a reflection of their statuses as Heart and Blood players. Heart, despite its players' obsessions with romance, is not the romance aspect, Blood is. Karkat displays this very same romantic acumen when he tells Dave that he's known Terezi and Gamzee were a thing for a long time, despite everyone else on the meteor trying to keep it a secret from him. Heart is, instead, about identity, feelings, motivations, souls, and self. In other words:
Nepeta Is Kind Of Bad At Shipping
Let's take a look at those shipping walls.
Let's break this down a little. Nepeta's ships are not entirely wrong, but even the successful ones are kind of wrong. Here's what I mean. We've already discussed how Equius and Nepeta's moirallegiance has some... issues in it. If we go down her list of ships that actually do happen, most of them have some issues in them!
Aradia expresses her regret for getting together with Equius in the Ministrife. Kanaya and Rose suffer some major relationship problems when Rose starts drinking, to the point Karkat feels a need to step in as an auspice. Karkat and Gamzee fail, as Karkat is not calmed by Gamzee, and Gamzee stops listening to Karkat. And while Sollux and Feferi seem to be fairly healthy, after they both wind up in the Furthest Ring, he's pretty much always next to Aradia - he and Feferi don't even get to exchange words with each other once they're in the Furthest Ring. Purrsonally, I think he and Feferi are meant to end up as moirails, but shhhh.
So what's happening here? Well, this goes back to her identity as a Heart player. Heart is concerned with feelings and motivations.
They simply want to understand the one thing we all are stuck with for our entire lives, i.e. our own minds. Forging an identity is extremely important to the Heart-bound, and every decision and action goes toward building a coherent narrative of their own story. That isn't to say Heart-bound don't care deeply for their friends and allies; they just have a tendency to assume that everyone is as concerned with identity as they are.
Nepeta's shipping has also been associated with her isolation and loneliness. When you put this together, it implies that Nepeta's shipping is about her desire to understand others, and much of her ships are based on one of the parties having feelings, regardless of compatibility, feasibility, or broader implications. After all, despite the fact that she has pretty terrible romantic acumen, she IS able to instinctively identify that Eridan's advances toward her were insincere:
NEPETASPRITE: :33 < well ok i guess eridan hit on me a few times
NEPETASPRITE: :33 < but his advances always struck me as cr33py and insincere
And that Karkat secretly LOVES and RESPECTS his friends:
JASPROSESPRITE^2: On the contrary Nepeta. You deserve someone who will RESPECT and ADORE you.
NEPETASPRITE: :33 < well... yes
NEPETASPRITE: :33 < i always hoped to find someone like that some day
NEPETASPRITE: :33 < i dunno maybe youre right but in spite of whatever problems he might have i always felt like i saw something in him that made me think he could be that purrson!
Or knowing that Equius loves to play games, and still feels sad about Aradia exploding:
AC: :33 < i s33 right through your stupid act, who are you trying to kid!
AC: :33 < look how you go out of your way to use words that have x's in them so that you can use your silly purrcent signs
AC: :33 < or use these absurd words that you can shoehorn a '100' into, even if its not strictly replacing 'loo'!!!
AC: :33 < you are so transpurrent
AC: :33 < i can tell you like to play games, d33p down you are a guy who likes to play games!
AC: :33 < i can smell a guy who likes to play games from so fur away with this nose, you have no idea X33
NEPETA: :33 < she was so happy, just like she used to be, and she said she would s33 you soon!
EQUIUS: D --> That's a nice thought, and thank you for sharing it
EQUIUS: D --> But it was only a dream, and will surely have no consequence in reality
NEPETA: :33 < equius?
NEPETA: :33 < are those f33lings i an detecting with my wiggly whiskery nose?
EQUIUS: D --> Maybe
Because feelings, and not relationships, are her actual domain.
And speaking of Heart powers...
Nepeta and the Ultimate Self
So from this point forward, I'm going to assume you're more or less agreeing with my take that at some point after Game Over, Hussie - for whatever reason - gave up on his original ending, and wound up truncating his ideas so he could finish the comic faster. I go more into detail about that here.
So, in this hypothetical original ending, I firmly believe that the speech about the Ultimate Self would have come from Nepeta. First, let's take a look at what the "Ultimate Self" entails, as it appears within the comic:
DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < everything that ever happens to every version of you is an important part of your ultimate self... like a superceding bodyless and timeless persona that crosses the boundaries of paradox space and unlike god tiers or bubble ghosts or whatever, it really IS immortal
DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < but in your physical form there are all these partitions in your mind that prevent you from remembering any of that which makes your existence f33l totally linear
DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < which is probably for the best!
DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < in a regular body s33ing all that would be too overwhelming
...
DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < and after it sinks in for a while you start coming to this understanding of a greater self
DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < maybe i "got it" quicker though because of the two people i was and their aspects
DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < understanding heart is all about the nuances of a distributed self
DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < nepeta never got to make much headway with her aspect but shes finally gettin the chance
DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < the time aspect is all about running into different versions of yourself so you kinda get confronted with it in a really literal way that can be disturbing
DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < obviously davesprite stuggled with that too, but now its fine
DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < hes fr33 from worrying about it all and what it means for his place in reality
DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < because he can s33 now all his selves have relevance in painting the full picture of who he truly is
DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < im not COMPLETELY sure because im not like some sort of ASPECT MASTER but
DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < my avian slash feline intuition tells me that all roads will lead you here eventually
DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < gaining the d33pest possible understanding of any aspect will bring you to the same final conclusion about your ultimate self
Now, I believe - and I hope you'll agree - that it's kind of lame, narratively, for Davesprite to have been set up with so much angst about not being the "real Dave," and for Nepeta to have all her issues with loneliness and shyness, and for these two specific iterations of each other to have never interacted, but suddenly getting double-prototyped fixes all of their problems, and they achieve Ultimate Selfhood despite being two total strangers to each other. So let's instead break down the more salient points about what Ultimate Selfhood entails, divorced from the fact that it's Davepetasprite^2 doing the narrating:
Every player in the game possesses an "Ultimate Self," an ultimate culmination of all their experiences and memories, specifically referred to as a "persona"
Normally, people are not aware of this, because it would be too overwhelming to deal with so many memories and iterations of each other.
Everyone will achieve Ultimate Selfhood eventually as the final culmination of their understanding of their aspect.
Heart is all about the nuances of a distributed self.
Let's talk about that last one some more, and by that I mean, let's see what Calliope has to say about it:
TT: I don't know why it had to be this way for me. Juggling these two waking selves at once.
TT: I guess I'm used to it, but it still makes for a pretty intense existence.
TT: Do you even know what the deal with that is? Like is there any precedent in your readings?
UU: i don't know aboUt precedent, bUt it makes plenty of sense to me as the type of path one might expect for a hero of heart.
UU: a path rUled by the heart aspect can be a joUrney of splintered self.
UU: that is, the player's being may exhibit the same kind of fragmentation which certain classes coUld caUse in others.
UU: i think this is what has triggered yoUr dUal-awareness between waking and dream selves, thoUgh it woUld not sUrprise me if the symptoms manifested in even more ways than this.
Now, Dirk has a clawmplicated relationship with his alternate selves, given that he's a Prince, but Nepeta wouldn't have the same struggles, or at least, not to the same degree. The problem is, hampered by Equius and her own shyness about discussing her thoughts and feelings with others:
NEPETASPRITE: :33 < i get so shy and worried what people might think of me if i say how i f33l
NEPETASPRITE: :33 < im always so scared that they wont f33l the same way or just think im stupid or pathetic or something
She never actually gets to explore this part of herself.
But What If... She Did?
The way I imagine the original ending going is that each troll that gets saved by John's interference in the timeline then asks John to help them fix their own mistakes, thereby saving somebody else. Each successive trip through the meteor brings new character development, and also riddles the comic with progressively more password pages, which I think would be really funny. And throughout all this the Game Over team is searching for Vriska, Meenah, and the treasure, and resolving their arcs that way, so it's not like they would be replaced - they're the ones who get to kill LE. The process, in my mind, goes like this:
Terezi asks John to save Vriska, and prevent her from getting too spades with Gamzee, as these are her two greatest regrets.
Vriska obviously had great regrets about killing Tavros, both pre- and post-retcon, so she asks for his death to be prevented.
Tavros staying alive means that he and Gamzee wind up hashing out some stuff - Gamzee mentions that he feels "So aT ChIlL WiTh yOu" while talking to Tavros, and Tavros reciprocates the friendship and also - interestingly - acknowledges Gamzee's religion, calling it beautiful even if he doesn't necessarily believe in it. This is interesting because Karkat's inability to do so is explicitly one of the reasons their moirallegiance broke down. So having Tavros back, alive, means that he and Gamzee would likely end up in some sort of relationship, probably pale despite flushed leanings, and would bring Gamzee back into the fold.
Gamzee would then be like, yeah, wow, that time I killed Nepeta and Equius was pretty bad, huh? Especially since his decision to hang onto his friends' bodies and prototype them is often interpreted as him genuinely feeling bad about his dead friends (he tells Kurloz to shut up when Kurloz mentions all the dead friends, and his religion seems to be about a paradise he wants to share with his friends anyway). So he'd ask John to prevent him from killing them, resulting in the two of them getting to live.
Things get much more hypothetical from here, since so much of the character dynamics would have changed, but I think by this point, Equius might command ask John to let him say goodbye to Aradiabot before she explodes, which he expresses feeling very sad about. However, in doing so, John and Aradiabot end up in the same room, and when she realizes that he has the ability to change the timeline without repercussions, she'd seize him by the arm and demand that he take her back in time, to before she died. After all, she expresses regrets about her reckless actions, and how she always felt like it was all one big setup.
She would take Aradia's place in the Vriska revenge chain, being once more freed of her robot chassis, and from there, would trick Doc Scratch and the Handmaiden into thinking everything was still going according to their designs. Meanwhile, Alive!Aradia would be hanging out at Equius's place, borrowing his void powers to avoid notice, coordinating a new timeline that keeps the beats of the original (too much deviation causes unpredictability, and an paradox'd timeline offshoot without John's direct interference would still become doomed), but allows them greater freedom and the ability to overcome the machinations of Doc Scratch and associates.
This would also prevent Sollux from becoming so self-loathing, since it's no longer "his fault" that Aradia dies, although he winds up in that hole again after Feferi gets killed. Now that his Aradia is alive, he wouldn't feel like he might as well stay in the bubbles because his closest companions are there, so he'd make it to the end, and would ask John to prevent Feferi's death.
Eridan still dies; he's so disconnected and isolated from all his friends that his course of actions is largely unaffected even by everybody else's timeline tweaks. But before Feferi can suggest bringing him back, Karkat would butt in.
The Friendship Troll should be the one to demand that ALL of their friends be revived, especially if they had everyone except only one guy, and Karkat and Eridan are heavily implied to be moirails anyway. The course of Karkat's fixes are so comprehensive, and primarily romance-based, that the end result of this final loop is everybody not only being alive, but god-tiered, with appropriate character development.
Now, where Nepeta's Heart powers would play into all of this is that she would start to notice something going on. After all, Heart players are sensitive to their splintered selves, and (Nepeta) is probably much closer to Nepeta than regular doomed timeline offshoots. As the loops continue, and Nepeta has more and more time to talk to people, and meets her dead alternate selves, and even meets (Nepeta), she starts to awaken to her Ultimate Self - to come into possession of alternate memories.
And if the Ultimate Self is a very soul-y kind of concept, such that Heart players have a natural advantage in coming to understand it, then isn't it a natural fit that a Rogue of Heart - one who steals from Heart or steals Heart for others - would be naturally inclined to share the wisdom of her alternate selves, and even the very concept of the Ultimate Self, with her friends?
Because the Ultimate Self is actually, in my opinion, a pretty good narrative device. It turns the sadness of the dead and doomed timelines into something littersweet instead, and makes it so any weirdness regarding time travel and not really knowing your friends anymore will eventually be resolved, even if off-screen.
It's not really narratively satisfying when Davepetasprite^2 suddenly comes into being and reaches enlightenment, but imagine if instead it's a post-character development Nepeta comforting Davesprite on his relevance, or Jade on her loneliness, or John on not really knowing these new post-retcon versions of his friends? It would feel a lot better, since in this hypothetical, she would have reached that point after on-screen character development. Being able to share her true self with her friends on the meteor - by necessity, since what else are they going to be doing for three years - leads to her finally being able to fulfill her role as a Rogue of Heart.
Also, at some point during these repeated meteor trips, she dates Karkat (whether that's successful or not, I'll leave to reader interpretation - you already know where I stand), fulfilling Jaspersprite's musing that she might only be able to date Karkat after she dies.
So that's two out of thr33 of her outstanding plot hooks resolved... okay. So, I try not to make these essays into ship propaganda, but hear me out:
Hate Is Stored In The FefNep
Okay, so, remember that thing about how Feferi is actually a huge casteist hypocrite? Well, let's also note that the comic, post-Murderstuck, seems to put Nepeta and Feferi together a lot - they're a Commodore and Rear Admiral in the ghost pirate army, respectively, and they also wind up as Fefetasprite. So I think it's not entirely out of left field to say that these two were implied to have SOMETHING going on.
And that something... is a difference in political views.
I mean, let's be real, there's a reason Fefetasprite is the most explode-prone after Tavrisprite. Miss "The Hemocaste is Stupid and Shouldn't Matter" vs. Miss "I Love Being A Princess And Call Jade Hornless and Finless (Derogatory)"? Come on, tell me you don't see it.
Without getting too much into Feferi, this hypocrisy, and unwillingness to check her privilege (so glad I found an excuse to use that term unironically), are probably her greatest character flaws - ie, the things you would expect the story to address about her. Meanwhile, one of Nepeta's flaws, which she laments to Jasproseprite^2, is that she feels too shy to talk about her feelings to other people, leading to her having never expressed her views on the hemocaste to anyone but Equius.
I think that they initially think they'd be friends. Each one of them would go "oh man, this other girl is soooo cute, I wish I could talk to her more often!"
And then, once they do, they realize they fucking hate each other. Nepeta would go "X00 < you are such a hypocrite who f33ls like youre better than all of us!!!" and Feferi would go "You're suc)( an uneducated glubbing P-EASANT! 3X0" and then they'd claw each others' eyes out. It would be so funny, and if a homestuck ship isn't extremely fucking funny, then why are we even here.
But more importantly, this would further them along into resolving each others' arcs - Feferi would be forced to grapple with the greater implications of classism, and Nepeta - who is shown having a spine the most in defiance of somebody else - would grow more aggressive about being open about her feelings in defiance of Feferi. Even Equius would get roped into it in a positive way - you can just imagine him going "D --> Can I really believe my auricular sponge clots D --> Nepeta, you are finally taking interest in politi%" and be 100% on board with teaching her so Feferi won't be able to call her uneducated.
And then for flushed, I dunno! Karkat's an option, and Jade and Jake also both love the fuck out of furries, and Tavros seems nice. But yeah I'll die on the fefnep hate ship. Guys it would be so funny.
Thank you as always for reading! Let me know if there's a troll you want to hear me ramble about next.
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