#(cut to the scenes playing vividly in my head) ‘Well‚ at least I can always say that I /told/ her!’

[celestial-toys]

been laying here listening to Lucky by Dermot Kennedy on loop for half an hour while thinking about Everything Stays and crying

[bookishdream]

Could you do a Kaz x reader where the reader have to "cheat on him" (not in relationship but like she goes to another gang) because someone's threatening her and when he discovers she was just trying to protect him and the gang she dies

A/N: Hi! Thank you so much for a request, I've been wanting to write some angst for a really long time! I hope it is as hurtful as you wished, enjoy xx

TW: angst, blood, killing

kaz brekker x reader

Your hands were sweaty and shaking. You crossed your arms on your chest in order to hide that. You didn’t like being threatened, especially by some amateurs. But it wasn’t a threat against you, it was against your family in Novyi Ziem. You had to use your whole will power to not kill them right there and then.

“Why do you think I’d do anything you want me to?” you asked snapping your gaze between a woman and a man in front of you. “You don’t know anything about me and my family you assume I have.”

“Oh, y/n, but we know everything. For instance, your little brother is playing as we talking on your vast field, your parents are watching him with so much love in their eyes,” woman with blonde hair spoke first, describing the scene so vividly that you almost showed an emotion on your face. “maybe they have already forgotten about you? Maybe your mother is pregnant so they could fill a blank you left in their home.”

“Shut up, you think you’re so smart, aren’t you?” you snapped, face blank and mind filling with memories from times when you were as young as your brother was then, playing on the exact same field. “I will never betray Kaz, and you should know that.”

“Oh sweetie,” the guy beside walked closer to you, you made a step, in order to make some distance between you and them. “we’re not asking you to betray him, we’re asking you to leave this silly gang and join us, Pekka Rollins would be really happy if you did.”

“You two are much denser than I thought, if you think I want to make him happy.”

“You don’t have a choice.” Blonde said, making you shiver. “We have someone who would be pleased to kill this little family of yours. I don’t think you want them dead, even though they think you are, in fact, dead.”

You started to think about that. Crows were your friends and you love them. Inej and Nina always found various ways to make you cheerful when your day wasn’t the best, Jesper taught you how to use a pistol and flirted with you like his life depended on it. Wylan was like a sun in rainy days, even if you loved them, you also loved this boy and his stupid jokes. Matthias was funny to tease, he always was saying how awful you and the girls were, but you could also see this little twitch of his lip corner when he tried to suppress his laugh. And there was Kaz, your beginning wasn’t the pleasant one, you nearly killed him when you saw him for the first time, and in revenge he left you in the Barrel for the whole night, all alone. But after that, you started falling for him, and you fell hard. You couldn’t exactly point out when that happened, but you were sure you’d anything to save him from himself. He had tough personality, he cared only for money and how he could invest it to get the whole city only for himself. But he let you do that with him, barley sleeping and when you did it was in the same bed. Arm-length gap but you always were less exhausted than when you were sleeping in your own bed. You loved him and the rest of the Crows, but you loved your family more. And you knew what you had to do.

“Bitch.” You murmured. “Fine, whatever. Just stay the hell out of my family. And the gang.”

“We knew you’d make a right decision. Pekka will send money to Per Haskell in order to buy your contract. You won’t regret that.”

“I already do.”

After that day, you were about to start living with your new gang, family, like Pekka had said to you the previous day, he’d also told you to not worry about your parents and brother, that they were safe as long as you were working with him, willingly.

You wouldn’t call this willingly, but you guessed it was enough to prevent your family from any harm coming from Pekka and his stupid gang. You hated being here, you missed the Crow Club, late night talks with Inej and Nina, and helping Kaz with buying new ships. You wanted nothing more than to escape, but you couldn’t. Kaz and Crows could fight and kill, whereas your family was vulnerable, they couldn’t even hurt a fly. You spent the whole evening in your empty room. Window with grids making you shiver, you felt like a prisoner you were.

“We have a job for you.” The blonde girl who captured you came in, like it was her cell, not yours. “Behave and perhaps we’ll get rid of those grids.”

You wanted to punch her, you didn’t even know her name, it wasn’t even relevant, your hand was itching. You took a long, calming breath and looked at her, frowning. “I thought it was another week until you’d trust me enough to even open my window.”

“You’ve been here for two weeks. Plans have changed, we need you right now, so cut the attitude and come with me.”

You rolled your eyes and went after her, going up the stairs and leaving the place Pekka’s gang lived. You took another deep breath, smelling the awful scent of Ketterdam, smoke and money as Kaz used to say. Gods, you missed him.

“Where are we going?” you asked, falling into step with the girl, there were only the two of you, you assumed the rest will be somewhere where you were going. “What’s the job?”

“Can’t you just shut up? You’ll know when we’re there.”

You really wanted to punch her, still you said nothing, you wouldn’t get anything from her. It was dark on the city’s streets, buildings high enough to cover the moon, didn’t let its shine to light up the roads. You were annoyed and cold, your hair was swaying with the wind, goose bumps poking on your skin.

“Here.” Blonde said, handing you a pistol. “If you kill someone from ours, you’re dead before you take your last breath.”

You rolled your eyes, hiding your gun into the pocket of a coat you had. The metal was cold, making your hands even colder than they were before. Now when you had a real gun, not only your knife, perhaps you’d be able to escape. But where would you go? You were sure Kaz knew where you were, perhaps thinking you betrayed him, that thought only made you feel guilty in your guts, he trusted you and you chose people who you hadn’t seen for years over him. You had to escape, the cost didn’t matter.

When you came to the place, you saw a guy from Pekka’s gang and Kaz. Both of them were talking, but members of both groups had their guns or blades taken out. The Dirtyhands had his black coat, and his walking stick, as always. Jesper also was beside him, hands on his gun belt, ready to take them out and fire. You were more than sure that Inej was also there, somewhere on the roof or in the shadows, waiting and prepared to fight.

“We have men everywhere, two on roofs, one behind the bridge. All of them have guns pointed on you and your previous friends. I hope you know what that means.” The girl said, eyeing you. You only nodded, worrying too much about the Crows to even snap at her. “Good, now go and wait for a signal.”

You did as you were told, you hid somewhere behind a building, trying to recall every piece of information you gathered while snooping on guards or using the fact that they didn’t always close your doors. You had to find someone and tell them, you couldn’t waste any more time.

You poked your head out, searching for Matthias or Wylan. You doubted Nina would be here, since she was still working in the pleasure house. You were sure Wylan was there with his explosion ready to, well, explode. You cursed under your breath, when you couldn’t spot any of them, panic getting out of you with frustration. Someone from the Dime Lions would notice you’re not somewhere where they could spot you.

You crossed the narrow lane, as you noticed Matthias, you whistled hoping he would look into your direction. He turned his head and spotted you, anger on his face visible even in the dark. You cringed, knowing you’d get beaten up.

“You’ve got some nerve,” He said, his voice low. “after you started working with them, you have the audacity to come here.”

“Listen, I didn’t have a choice,” your voice so close to start begging him for forgiveness. “It was about my family.”

He looked at you wordlessly, confusion painting his face. Of course, he didn’t know you had a family, why would he. After a second, the ire came again. “You’re lying.”

“I'm not, I want to help you.”

“Oh, so now you did that to help us?”

“Matthias, I’m begging you, just let me tell you what I learnt.” You pleaded, your voice small. “Pekka wants to kill you as you’re standing, he has those new guns that can shoot you from really long distance.”

“What?” he looked alarmed, “We have to tell Kaz. Come.”

You let out a breath, it wasn’t the best look he sent you, but at least he didn’t leave you here. You told him everything you knew, he listened but his face still didn’t have pleasant expression.

You took out your gun, making your way behind the dumpster, hiding in shadows. You tried to calm your nerves, but the adrenaline had already kicked in. Matthias and you startled when you heard a shot, then another. You sent yourselves a knowing look, taking a step closer to the place where Kaz and the other guy were talking. Jesper had his guns out and Kaz was looking at the boy in front of him with disgust. You saw one of the Dregs were bleeding, you lifted your gun, targeting the closest one from the Dime Lions and fired. The bullet hit the girl in her stomach, making her stumble and fall to the ground. You hid yourself behind the wall and waited. Matthias sent you a look and you only lifted your arms, not knowing what to said.

After that, guns started firing, screams were everywhere. You saw the blonde girl that came here with you, standing with her pistol, aiming Kaz. You shot without looking, trying to hit her in an arm, you heard her scream and saw how the gun was laying on a ground. You looked up and saw that Kaz was looking at you, his face blank and unreadable. Jesper beside him, shooting people and screaming at Wylan to explode. The sound of explosion came from the roof, exactly where members of Lions were, you let out a shaky breath and made a step into the fight. Matthias fighting with his fists, slowly making his way toward Kaz, you tried to help him clear the path by shooting few people either in their heads or legs.

Your hands were tired, your head pounding but you were fighting hard, you had to make this in order to confess Kaz the whole truth. When you were close to him, he locked his eyes into yours.

“We have to talk.” You told him, lowering your tone. “Please.”

“This is not the best time to talk, y/n” the way he said your name made you shivered. It wasn’t an intimate way, it was with so much poison in only one word. “Why aren’t you fighting with your new gang?”

“Kaz, please, I’m trying to help.” You voiced, your eyes burning with sweat that slowly dripped from your forehead.

“Whatever.” He smacked an opponent with his cane, you only heard the sound of cracked bone and a loud thud when the enemy fell to the ground.

You two were fighting as you had before Pekka came into your life. Kaz understood you without any words, knew exactly where he should cover you because you couldn’t. Your movements were precise, keeping people away from Kaz’s vulnerable leg. You were fighting in a harmony, you kept your focus on people you had to kill, you shot them without any hesitation. When your bullets ended, you took out your knife and started stabbing everyone who wanted to stab you.

“I– “you paused, feeling a pain in your abdomen. You looked at Kaz, but he was looking at your lower stomach, you placed your gaze there and you saw blood. A lot of blood, then you felt pain, you stumbled, but Kaz placed his hand on your waist, slowly letting you fall on the ground. Your whole stomach was on fire, slowly burning you with its flame.

“Don’t you even dare dying here, messing my coat with your blood” he said, caressing your cheek. You chuckled, tasting blood on your tongue. “Don’t even think about it, y/n.”

“I’m–, please forgive me, Kaz” you murmured, hoped your words were understandable. “I was trying to save my family, but you’re my family too.”

“Y/n, I forgive you, but I’m begging you, don’t close your eyes” his voice filled with regret, eyes burning with anger, but you knew it wasn’t toward you. “Keep your eyes open.” He yelled at someone, but you couldn’t understand either it was Jesper or Matthias.

“Tell them I love them” you started to give up, your eyelids slowly closing. “I love you, Kaz Brekker.”

“Y/n, please don’t leave me” he tried to keep his voice from cracking, but he failed.

But you didn’t hear that, you had your eyes closed, hand that was laying on your stomach, now laying on the ground. He carefully removed his arm and got up. He spotted a blonde girl, smirking and looking at him, she slowly lifted her pistol, mockingly swaying it. She winked at him and still with a smirk, she left. Kaz made a promise he would kill her, he would do it for him. And for you.

[adenei]

Gryffindor Bonding Tales - The Follow Up

I couldn’t resist. Here’s what happens immediately after Hermione storms out of the truth or dare game! This WIP is closer to being Complete!

*************************************

Hermione made her way swiftly back to the Common Room. It wasn’t that she was embarrassed by kissing someone in front of her classmates. No, it was because she kissed her best friend who she’d been harboring feelings for, and had been too afraid to tell. It was just a dare, though. You don’t have to tell him anything unless you want to. 

She’d taken the cowardly way out again, leaving the game before it was over, but she couldn’t bear to see his reaction. So she entered the common room and made her way halfway up the girls staircase before realizing that she’d left her books in the boy’s dorm because they were running late earlier.

********************

“Ginny! Ginny, wait up, will you!” Harry was calling down the corridor. It was hard to move quickly  in clothes so tight without worrying he was going to tear something.

She finally paused long enough to turn around, “You should have stayed back!” she hissed at him.

“What? Why?” Harry was confused.

“I can’t explain it now, I need to go find Hermione!” Ginny said as she turned around and continued on her way. 

“Okay, but can we at least change back first? No offense, but your clothes are kind of uncomfortable,” Harry said.

Ginny sent a smirk his way, “What? Don’t like women’s clothing?”

“Not on me, I don’t,” he muttered as she laughed.

They turned the corner to climb the last staircase to the common room, when they saw Professor McGonagall walking down the staircase towards them. “What on earth…?” she looked bewildered as she saw Harry and Ginny clearly wearing each other’s clothes.

Harry was trying to look anywhere but McGonagall, while Ginny embraced the scene. “Hi, Professor! Just an innocent dare for some Gryffindor fun!” They kept going before she could stop them and possibly take any points away for...indecency? Harry wasn’t really sure.

The Fat Lady gave them an amused look as they gave the password and entered the portrait hole, and much to Harry’s chagrin all eyes were on them when they entered the common room. It was still quite full considering it was barely eight o’clock.

“Uh, Harry,” Colin Creevey called, “I don’t think girl’s clothes really suit you, but Ginny could definitely pull off the boyish look!”

“Thanks, Colin,” Ginny waved him off, “I’d like to thank my six brothers who helped with this success.” Always the witty one, Harry thought, as she grabbed his hand and pulled him up the boy’s staircase.

Harry could hear Romilda Vane say, “..But I thought she already had a boyfriend!” in a clear tone of dismay.

**********************

Hermione was in the boy’s 6th year dorm retrieving her bag from Ron’s bed where she’d left it. Her hands were still shaking, which caused her to drop the bag, the contents spilling everywhere. Hermione groaned and knelt down to retrieve everything. When she was putting the last book in the bag, she heard voices on the staircase.

In a moment’s panic, she jumped onto Ron’s bed with the bag and quickly shut the curtains around it so she wouldn’t be seen. She’d just finished in time as Harry and Ginny stormed into the room.

“What is all the rush for? Am I missing something?” Harry asked as they entered.

“Yes! Of course you are! Now, quick, we’ll get back into our own clothes and then I can go find Hermione.” Ginny lifted Harry’s shirt over her head and tossed it to him. He froze and stared at her, she was only wearing a bra and thin vest. They’d changed in the stalls of the bathroom and threw their clothes over the wall before.

“What are you staring at? I’m still wearing more than I would in the Quidditch locker room, which you might want to get used to since I’m planning on making the team this year,” she said.

That snapped Harry out of it. “Oh, you are, are you?” he said as he peeled her shirt off of himself and tossed it back in kind. “Sorry if it got stretched out a bit,” he said, putting his own shirt back on.

“It’s fine. Not like I’m a witch or anything to set it back to its original fit,” she said, taking off his trousers. It took a bit longer to switch the bottoms back because Harry had to peel her jeans off himself. They were so tight that he couldn’t remember how he even got them on in the first place.

Once they were decent and in their own clothes again, Harry said, “Now, what is going on?”

“Alright, alright! Remember when Hermione was fixated on the heart that Lavender put on Ron’s letter this summer?” Harry nodded. “Well, Lavender and Parvati had been planning this whole thing out, and they recruited Seamus and Dean to ask certain questions that would result in Lavender kissing Ron in the game because she fancies him.”

“She does?” Harry asked.

“Have you not noticed all her annoying giggling and girlishness when she’s around him? It’s revolting,” So, anyways, when I was on the train with Seamus and Dean, they were telling me about it. That’s why I asked to join the game. Once Lavender said yes, I worked with Seamus behind her back and convinced him to ask Hermione the question he was supposed to ask for Lavender.”

“So you’re the reason Hermione kissed Ron?” Harry was trying to make sense of it all.

“Try and keep up, will you? It wasn’t all me. Seamus didn’t like that Lavender was rigging the game, and he vividly remembered Hermione storming out in fourth year, so it was fairly simple to get him on board,” Ginny explained some more.

“Have you told Hermione yet?” Harry asked.

“No! I didn’t get a chance to before the game! That’s why I was trying to get to her.”

“But why’d you want me to stay?”

“Because I don’t know if Lavender was going to retaliate, and if Ron’s still down there, she may still find a way to kiss him, too!”

“Yeah, but he wouldn’t pick her over Hermione….”

“One would hope so,” Ginny said, rolling her eyes. 

“..but he said he liked it when Neville asked.” Harry was going through all of the evidence against that happening.

“Yes, I know, but you don’t know how manipulative girls can be when they want something!” Ginny protested. “Now, let’s go down and you check the common room, and I’ll check her dorm.”

They bumped into Ron who was entering the dorm. Neither heard him approach. “Hey, have you guys seen Hermione?” Ginny and Harry both stopped dead in their tracks.

“Is the game over?” Harry asked.

“Dunno, but it was getting weird. Lavender was having a major meltdown, so Neville and I bowed out.” Ron looked over towards his bed and noticed his curtains were drawn. He hadn’t left them like that.

“Oh, er no we haven’t. I was just going to check the girls dorm,” Ginny explained.

“You didn’t do that first?” Ron asked her.

“No. Someone wanted to change clothes back first,” Ginny rolled her eyes. “Come on, Harry let’s go.” Ginny once again pulled him along as Ron walked over towards his bed, verbalizing what he’d thought moments before. 

“Huh. I don’t remember these being closed when I left earlier.” Ron flicked his wand and the curtains were immediately pulled back.

“Shite,” said Hermione, covering her mouth at the uncharacteristically offensive word.

Ron laughed and sat down next to her. It was an awkward silence before Ron finally broke it. “So….you kissed me.”

Hermione made a small nodding motion with her head. A small smile played at her lips. “And you liked it?”

“You heard about Neville’s truth after you left then?” Ron cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Harry and Ginny weren’t as observant as you, so yes, I heard their whole conversation, including how Lavender tried to rig the game so she could kiss you.”

Ron stared at her. “Oh. Well, I’m glad that didn’t happen.”

“You are?” Hermione asked, trying not to get her hopes up.

“Well, yeah, the way it played out was way better,” he flashed his lopsided grin at her.

Hermione was feeling braver now, “So, does that mean you’d like it if I kissed you again?”

“That depends,” Ron said slowly.

“Oh?” Hermione’s breath hitched in her throat as he moved closer.

“Only if I didn’t do it first,” he said as he closed the gap between them. His lips met hers as she finally let herself feel him kissing her this time, and she was kissing him back. 

When they pulled apart, neither could suppress the shy happiness on their faces. “So, does that mean we’re-” Hermione started to say.

Ron cut her off with a “Yes.”

Hermione leaned in again to kiss him because she could do that now. It wasn’t just in her dreams!

“As much as I like this, we should probably head downstairs before Ginny loses her mind,” Ron told her.

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.” Hermione said as Ron stood up. He held his hand out which she gladly took, and they made their way back to the common room.

[fnafslinky]

Fazbear Frights 1-9 review.

Into The Pit:

Slow and meandering during the first half but picks up speed after Spring Bonnie shows up. Good message and good idea, but the execution could be better. 6/10

To Be Beautiful:

This story is so full of fluff, you can cut out like 60% of it and lose nothing. I know it's going for a fairy tale thing with the repetition and all, but fairy tales do that because it's made for children. Repetition is to train a child's brain to remember better. These books are aimed at teenagers, so this narrative device is not needed. On top of that, it has unfortunate implications of "Not like other girls" memes that we don't need to revisit. Only saved by its creepy af ending. 3/10

Count The Ways:

Legitimately my favorite story out of FNAF and one of my favorites of all time. It fixed the previous story's Not Like Other Girls problems by having the goth main character hate the pretty blonde and being called out for not even knowing her and being shallow. It is actually surprising to have these two stories be back to back.

The narrative device of switching back and forth between the MC facing her death and how she got up to that point means it keeps your interest throughout that the previous two stories had problems with. It makes for great drama and tension.

The main reason I love this story in particular is because of this exchange near the end:

“Silly Millie, for someone who doesn’t want to die you sure spent a lot of time talking about it,” the voice surrounding her said. “But that’s the way of things, isn’t it? Talk is always easier than action.”

“I think,” Millie said, sniffling, “that when I said I wanted to die, what I really wanted was to escape. I didn’t want death. I just wanted my life to be different.”

“Oh, but that really takes action, doesn’t it?”

And, if I can be real for a minute: I feel like that kinda changed my life. Or very least, my point of view.

As someone who has made attempts on his life before and frequently battles depression- It made my problems so much less overwhelming. Of course I didn't want to die. I wanted my life my life to improve. And now whenever the thought of suicide passes through my head, I just remember this phrase and it helps me keep it together and calm down.

And also F.Freddy's follow up with having to work for happiness is spot on too. Misery is comfortable, that's why so many people prefer it. Happiness takes effort. 10/10

Fetch:

I'm in the minority for not caring for this one. I felt like there wasn't any direction or character arc, I didn't find Fetch particularly scary or interesting, and the MC makes a lot of dumb decisions in it.

That being said, I love how it jumps right into the action instead of taking awhile to get to it like the other stories did. The stories tend to play out like a different book and then FNAF characters are slapped in at the end. This one gets right to it and makes it integral to its plot. 6/10

Lonely Freddy:

Another one I really love. The Frights series has a good traction with its tragedies and this one is no exception. I really connected with the feeling of being pitted against your siblings, usually by accident and circumstance with your parents. Particularly this line:

“Maybe you’ve made them what they are,” Aunt Gigi said, pausing for a moment before adding: “Hazel’s the easy one. Alec is the hard one. It’s like you put them on their own little islands.”

I wasn't Alec, but Hazel in this situation. And it made me realize what my sibling went through because of it.

And this is another story where Freddy's is more integral to the plot too, and one of the few times it's not already abandoned.

I really like how well done Alec's back and forth he had with himself whether to befriend his sister or not. It's a believable character arc when he realizes his mistake at the end unlike another story that we'll get to.

And the fact they made a God damn teddy bear legitimately creepy is a mastery of horror writing that I can only ever hope to strive for. Definitely the scariest in Frights 2. 9/10

Out Of Stock:

I agree with Dawko that this one feels best to make a 30 minute special out of. It feels like a Halloween special or creepypasta you would watch/read as a preteen. Old enough to want to explore more mature stuff, but young enough to still have more cartoony stuff be familiar. And I mean that as 100% a positive.

I also like how this one is a bit more comedy based. Like the scene where the MC gets thrown across the room after electrocuting himself and his friends dont even notice. I can picture that bit so clearly.

The climax is the best part of having a dire game of Red Light, Green Light with the Plushtrap Chaser. It's very energized and exciting that the other stories don't have as often because the subject matter doesn't lend itself to it.

The trend in these stories of kids learning to appreciate their parents, and they're parents realizing they have to sacrifice some stuff to make their child happy is very sweet. And it's no different here. 8/10

1:35 AM

What I like about this series is that you never know where its gonna go from story to story. I though for certain this story was about how the doll was gonna have an evil spirit possessing it.

But no, what actually happened is that it's never made clear if the MC is losing her mind, being haunted, or just seeing stuff because she's sleep deprived. That ambiguity makes the book a lot creepier and sadder because you don't know how this poor woman should be helped. And it ends without any clarification. That's great and a perfect idea for horror story.

That being said, Scott's writing quirks (and it's definitely Scott doing it, I can tell) of front loading info, constantly stopping the flow to have backstory and over explaining things that don't need makes it frustrating to read after several books of it. And we're not done with that either. 9/10

Room For One More:

I skipped over all the dream sequences because it adds nothing to the story. Its great you remember Sister Location, but it feels like you don't trust your audience to read a FNAF story if there isn't animatronics every couple pages. And honestly? Understandable.

I do know based on my own FNAF comic, pages featuring humans is a lot less popular than the ones featuring animatronics. And I get it, you're a bunch of furries it's more interesting to visualize. And you can go in the opposite direction and have very little FNAF stuff when they're needs to be more. The New Kid doesn't even bring it up til the last third.

But I digress. The strongest qualities in Room For One More is three points.

The location is very vividly described. The underground security office with steel walls, the radiation disposals, the musky scent. It paints a clear and unique picture.

The main character's fallen arc of self care and distrust of others is a well done cautionary tale. It goes hand in hand with the speech before of having to work for happiness, and the difficulties there are from even trying. But you still need to do it.

The body horror is not as visually disgusting as it could've been, and more conceptually horrifying. But if you have a fear of bugs in your skin or crawling in your mouth, prepare for something so much worse! And no, that's not a spoiler, it's pretty obvious where its going from the beginning. 7/10

The New Kid:

This one was disappointing. This is not the way to do a tragedy, because I don't care about the MC.

Throughout the entire story, the main character has literal sociopath tendencies. He is controlling of other people, he doesn't have any empathy, he sees other people as tools to use, he kills a bird and doesn't care- So at the end when he accidentally kills someone, I don't believe him feeling bad about it. And I sure as shit don't care about his death after him leaving his victim to die, while he was still breathing, and not coming back for a week.

Also the twist at the end makes no God damn sense and I'm not even gonna dignify it.

A better tragedy would've been his friend, Mick, getting into trouble for the murder after refusing to ever stand up to the MC. Or even the MC being betrayed by him last minute for him to learn how his shit behavior really screwed him over. But the end result ended up being an unsatisfying mess. 2/10

I'll review the 4th's books with 5 and 6, since I'm sticking with a three at a time theme and because I haven't read 4 yet.

[sketchy-saram]

Wanted to write something, so since I had Kiwren on the brain, I opted for their first meeting! Wren comes face-to-face with a harsh truth, and she doesn’t take it well...however, as a result, she will fall onto another path to happily-ever-after. ☀️

Can you actually die from a broken heart? Wren wondered, as the pain from hers caused her to clutch at her chest with one hand. The other was shoved against her mouth, so that her sobs were muffled from beyond the stable doors. It hurt. It hurt more than anything she had ever felt in eighteen years. Even when everyone told her it was impossible, even when they’d almost forbidden her feelings, that had only been a fraction of this pain she felt now.

She wanted to slide down the wood of the stall; to curl up into a ball and disappear into the floor. She wished she had never come here in the first place, but what then? That wouldn’t make it any less true.

Maybe it hurt--maybe it was killing her--but at least she knew. Wren hated to feel like a fool, and the idea that he might think she was one added just another layer to her utter misery.

She couldn’t stay there, that much was obvious. Who knew when they would come in from the paddock and notice her? There was no way she could talk to them; not like this, not now. If he saw her like this, she might die for real, she thought. And while there was some solace in that idea, the horror of it won out and had her scrubbing off her face and adjusting her clothes. A quick glance assured her that no one was standing near the front of the barn and so, clutching her sketchbook to her chest, Wren made her way down the cobbled path back to the large gates of Vesuvia’s palace grounds.

No one stopped her, and, she hoped, no one looked too close at her splotchy skin or red-rimmed eyes. Stray tears spilled over every time her focus slipped, allowing an errant thought of him to sneak in, scattering her emotions all over again like children tossing rocks at precariously-stacked milk bottles. Her eyes stung from the salt, her sleeves wet from mopping up her face. The sun was high in the noon-time sky, making her sweaty and more miserable as she nodded at the gate-guards on duty.

They nodded back without looking twice. Maybe they charitably blamed her appearance on the heat.

Once she was at the bottom of the steps, back into Vesuvia proper, she realized she had no idea where to go or what to do next. There didn’t seem to be any ideas for what should happen now, and there was no one she could talk to who hadn’t made it clear that this was the way it ought to be. There was never meant to be a ‘them’--they were cousins, no matter that they weren’t blood-related--and that was the end of that. Mom, Dad, Felix. All of them told her again and again that she needed to let go of these feelings. That she was young, and they would fade with time.

She hated that.

Am I so young that I don’t know what my own feelings are? she thought vehemently, but that anger dissolved quickly as her bottom lip trembled, more tears threatening to spill forth. And now she was in the Heart District, and there were people passing all around, and someone was bound to take notice of her if she broke down sobbing in the streets. She would look dirty and sweaty and poor; shabby against all the finery of this classiest district, and they would whisper about her.

Even the thought was a nightmare.

And so she refused to let herself think about anything as she forced herself to walk, marching numbly through the streets like a mannequin given life. No thoughts. No feelings. Only action, with one directive: and, as the day was beginning to hit evening, she arrived at her vague destination.

The Rowdy Raven.

The Raven wasn’t exactly a classy joint, but she breathed a sigh of relief being in the South End where the people wouldn’t jeer at her rumpled appearance. If anything, she was probably dressed too *neatly* for the Raven, but that would assume most of the patrons weren’t already three or four Salty Bitters into the night and remained capable of seeing clearly.

At last, with a reluctantly-bought mug of the stuff in hand, Wren settled into a seat in the back, where the sheer adrenaline began to wear off again in favor of the painful thud in her chest that reminded her she was still alive, and still capable of feeling this loss.

He never even knew how I felt about him, she thought, her face falling into her hands as it crumpled again, her shoulders shuddering under the weight of emotion. The music, a live ensemble of only-slightly-drunk South-Enders who happened to own instruments, drowned out some of the sounds of her sorrow. The drunkenness of those around her handled the rest. I never even got the chance to tell him. Would it have made a difference? That was part of what killed her, the scene replaying in her mind.

Walking into the stable, breathless from hurrying, eager to show off some new drawings. Looking around, confused, wondering where he was. He was always at the stables this time of day. Almost calling out as she started to step outside--then seeing them. A smile starting across her face, and then falling steeply as she realized he was with someone. A gorgeous someone, with miles of summer-sun blonde hair, blue eyes, apricot-tan skin, and curves for days. She stepped back into the shadow of the barn, afraid that they might have noticed; afraid that they wouldn’t notice. That they were trapped in a private world all their own. Seeing how happy they looked together. How natural. The way she gently wrapped an arm around his waist; the way he had to lean down from his tall height, an embarrassed-yet-pleased flush on his face as he pressed lips to the top of her head. Wren couldn’t look away; she stared with intensity at this intimate display even though she didn’t want to. Even though it felt wrong to spy on something so tender. The only sound in her ears was the blood rushing through them, and the heavy sound of her heart dropping and crumbling into her stomach.

All of that played across her closed eyes again and again, vividly re-lived, and she felt her heart break at the end every time like it was the first.

It isn’t fair, she thought between hiccupping sobs, how can he love her? How can he know he likes her when he doesn’t know about me? I could be...I could have been the one. He doesn’t know.

At some point, her cup was empty, and without paying much attention, someone came by her table to refill it. That happened a few more times, and suddenly it hurt less. Her stomach hurt more, but that was a preferable pain. When she finally stood up, everything ached from crying, and her vision blurred a bit. Maybe one too many Salty Bitters, but numbing the pain helped her to think. As she stepped out into the night air, she felt refreshed.

She had also come up with a plan.

It was a good plan, she thought; by the time she had reached South End Market, empty now in the dead of night, she was convinced it was a great plan. She would go home now and pack, and the next day she was going to run away. Well. ‘Run away’ made it sound juvenile and petty. She wasn’t going to run away, per say. She was an adult! She was moving on with her life, somewhere else. Away from Vesuvia, and the palace, and those stables.

She would go somewhere far--maybe Venterre, or Zadith, or even Prakra!--and start fresh. She’d find a job as a tailor’s apprentice, or a seamstress, and she would work her way up. She’d find someone to show her sketches to who would appreciate her design talent, and she would become the fashion designer for someone important. They would debut her clothes to the whole world, and then at last Wren would finally become the kind of woman he had always seemed to admire--someone elegant, poised, commanding and beautiful. Someone rich, someone with standing. Someone who was somebody.

That thought occupied and comforted her as she cut through the market, but her drunken mind missed a step, and in the dark she went spilling across the dirt and stone of the square, her sketchbook falling open and pictures flying every which-way.

It hurt, she knew, but the indignity of the whole day hurt worse. Wasn’t there anything that could go her way? Cut her some slack? Hadn’t the world dealt her a harsh enough blow for one lifetime? She wanted to cry again, but she didn’t have time to do more than whimper at her scratched-up knees and palms before she had to jump up, chasing her pictures before they could be blown away.

As inebriated as she was, it was a struggle--the sketchbook pages spun away from her, and more than once she had to stop and hold her head to keep from feeling like she was falling off the surface of the world. Snot and tears ran down her face, and were smudged with blood and dirt and she frantically tried to brush the hair from her face as it escaped from her braid. At last she had secured all but one of the pictures, but that one was a doozy--the late-night summer breeze had picked it up and carried it up into the thatch of a rooftop, where there was no way Wren, at all of five-foot-nine, was going to be able to reach it.

She knew she should just give up. A small, tired voice of reason stamped its foot and screamed that at her from the back of her mind even as she stumbled around, dragging a box from an alley and arranged it underneath the eaves of the building. It wasn’t quite enough, so she huffed and puffed to drag over one more milk crate and a mostly-empty wine cask, hoisting them up onto the box with no small amount of effort. By this point her stomach heaved dangerously, but she was so close…

And so Wren climbed up the box. She scrambled up the crate and barrel, her hands walking over themselves as she used the wall for support. She stretched out one arm...and was still just out of reach. She bit her lip, her mouth dry, and stretched on her toes. The sketch fluttered, as if taunting her, and she let out a curse and stretched out further.

Almost…

And then she felt a tug as her shoe snagged the edge of her skirt.

She wobbled, violently jerking to right herself, and she felt her precarious tower pitch over in response. Throwing out her hands, she tried to grab the eave of the roof, but it slipped through her grasping fingers.

Then...there was the sensation of falling into something solid. Not like a body hitting the ground, but instead, Wren felt two extremely sturdy arms practically pluck her from the air like a ragdoll, swinging her up and out of the way of the clattering mess of barrels and boxes. It reminded her, oddly enough, of the sensation she used to get when her father would swing her over his head when she was a toddler, pretending that she was a bird flying through the sky.

“Fly, Ren! Fly!” he would say, chuckling all the while, as her mother stood in the doorway of their cabin quarters, shaking her head but smiling. Then mom would wave her hand and do the magic, and both Wren and her father would suddenly be floating through the air, weightless and free and laughing.

“--you okay? Hey, can you hear me? Did you hit your head, or…?” vaguely, Wren was aware of someone talking to her; that her feet had touched solid ground again, but she couldn’t seem to do much more than loll her head upwards to blink at whoever it was. She didn’t recognize the brawny, muscular man with a face full of freckles that was staring down at her in concern. She opened her mouth to reassure him that she was fine…

...And promptly bent forward, vomiting all over the street.

I hate salty bitters, she thought as she did; they burn even worse coming back up than they do going down.

It was her last conscious thought, for which she was exceedingly grateful. She had, quite frankly, had enough of that day to last a lifetime.

[another-blog-bites-the-dust]

Not in the script.

Summary: While working alongside Gwilym in 'Hamlet', the final performance has everyone's emotions running high- especially his.

Warnings: swearing, lil bit of angst, fluff, ugh Gwil in period clothing tho 😩🙌

A/N: Okay I'm a sucker for Shakespeare and Gwilym so I combined them together in a Gwilxfem!reader fic. The lines of 'Hamlet' and other plays are in bold italic! I hope you enjoy! 💖

You died in his arms every night and occasionally some afternoons.

Like heaven itself was cradling you, and for your character it was. You were starring in 'Hamlet' playing the title role for the last four months in the west end with an incredible cast. The whole show was dubbed as controversial from the start because Hamlet was going to be played by a woman with everything else, including the pronouns in the script, staying the same. But that's why you and everyone else in the show were so excited to do it. It made the old play fresh and new.

But tonight was the final night and you were all reminiscing of the very first rehearsals before you all headed off to get ready for the last performance. You all started this journey six months ago and it was coming to an end in a matter of hours.

"Remember when Daisy dropped the prop skull when she was taking a look at it on the first day and it shattered everywhere!" You giggled, knees to your chest sipping away at a coffee while sitting next to your Horatio. You didn't know until you turned up to rehearsals that Gwilym Lee was cast as Horatio.

"Ugh that's going to haunt me forever!" Daisy playfully groaned. She was Ophelia and had quickly became a wonderful close friend of yours. "Oh Y/N! Remember you kept accidentally calling Gwilym 'Brian' at the start!" She giggled and you went bright red, Gwilym gently poked your side with a grin on his face.

You could vividly remember the day you stepped into the rehearsal room and gasped when Gwilym came up and shook your hand. You were a huge fan of Queen and Bohemian Rhapsody. "Holy shit! Brian May!" You had said before slapping your head in realisation "No! Gwilym! God! Sorry! You're Gwilym Lee!" Gwilym took it on the chin and laughed about it. In fact, he was rather flattered.

Hugh, who was playing Claudius, clapped his hands together. "Well we better get ready! Final night!" It was bittersweet for you all. But it was going to be especially painful for Gwilym to say goodbye to the show and the cast...and to you. He'd miss you the most. He had spent practically every single day of the last six months with you. Two months rehearsing and then four months performing. He had grown very close to you, especially as your two characters were so close and intimate and emotionally invested in one another. Gwilym found it hard not to fall for you.

"Y/N..." Gwilym gently said you name as he stood, nervously twiddling his fingers.

"Ye-" you were cut off by the sound engineer regarding your troublesome microphone. You turned back to Gwilym "Oh..."

He waved his hands "I'll speak to you after, it's alright. It can wait." He tightly smiled.

You grinned and let out a small sigh of relief. "Thanks, Gwil!" You squeezed his arm and he felt his whole body heat up at the brief contact. Like every other time you touched him or hugged him. He loudly and deeply sighed. Daisy noticed.

"Gwilym...why don't you just tell her already?" She quietly asked. Daisy had noticed for the last few months the tension building between you both. It was confirmed when Gwilym had confessed to her after a few drinks how he really felt about you. The next day he practically begged her to keep it to herself- he didn't want to jeopardise the professionalism between the both of you. "I know she would be over the moon if you told her how you felt."

"It's just so hard to convey into words how much- ugh I can't even do it now!" He ran a hand through his hair "I'll tell her tonight at some point. Tonight's my last chance."

Daisy pointed a finger at him "You better, Lee! And you better treat my beautiful, yet troubled, Hamlet, good!" He chuckled at her words. She smirked to herself "Make tonight count, Gwil. Go get your girl!" They both parted ways when they went to get changed. Where Gwilym's dressing room was meant he always passed yours, your door was shut over but he could see light and shadow seeping out of it at the bottom and he could hear you going over your lines aloud. Gwilym knew you'd probably be in your black dress, the one he could barely take is eyes off of when you wore it in the first few scenes.

He hesitated, bringing his fist up so it was hovering beside your door. But he couldn't chap it. He decided to just get through the final performance and try to keep his untamed feelings reined in for now.

•••

Everyone gathered at the righthand wing of the stage and huddled around. The whole cast was wearing their traditional clothes and you had to physically tear your eyes of Gwilym in his outfit. He always looked so good in it. "Last night everyone!" You ecstatically grinned "Hands in!" Everyone put their hands in the centre, Gwilym's was on top of yours and you swore he gently stroked it before all the the other hands landed on top. You all chanted and pulled back with a cheer.

"Final night- let's smash this!" Harry, who was playing Laertes, roared out and everyone giggled. "Go easy on me tonight, Y/N!" He joked, you knew how much your final fight scene exhausted him despite the many times doing it and the lengthy sword rehearsals before that.

"You don't know how much joy I'm going to get kicking your ass again, Harry. Until you stab me, of course." You playfully jabbed his side and he let out a chuckle. Gwilym tried not to let jealously bubble away inside him, in fact, it melted away when he felt your hands on his lower arms. He glanced up and found you looking at him with a smile. "My darling Horatio," he happily grunted as a response "One final time."

Gwilym nodded "My darling Hamlet." He squeezed your hands. "One final time," you went to walk away but he held onto your hands "Although working with you, Y/N...I feel like this whole experience will never die inside my heart." He whispered and you felt your own flutter and wildly beat as a response.

"Gwilym...that's so lovely of you to say! I've really loved working with you. So much! So, so much." You sent him a toothy smile and he opened his mouth to say something but was called to take his place. "We'll talk after?" You suggested and he nodded, leaning forward and giving you a quick kiss on the forehead. You stood in shock while he dashed off, he had never done that before. But it was the final night and everyone's emotions were running high. At least that was what you told yourself.

You had just finished a scene with Daisy, one where you spun Ophelia in your arms before she gave you a sweet, lovestruck kiss. She made you clutch a flower in your hand before she giddily dashed off after her father, Polonius. When she left, you had to toss away the flower to the side with a sigh and tried to be all melancholy.

That was until Gwilym hesitantly entered onto the stage like he was directed to. He walked over to you, your back facing him before tapping your shoulder. "Hail to your lordship!" He said and you turned around ecstatically gasping with a huge smile on your face. He picked you up in his arms while giving you a huge hug, spinning you one-eighty degrees before putting you down and holding you close.

You placed your hands on his cheeks and Gwilym gulped- like he always did. It was getting worse every single time. All he wanted to do was lean in and kiss you. Tonight he felt himself doing so and almost did until you spoke your line. "I am glad to see you well Horatio, or do I forget myself?"

Gwilym snapped out his little trance "The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever." You scoffed and tapped his cheek and then made the mistake of looking into his eyes. Those deadly eyes. They had put you off and distracted you more times than you knew. A timed clearing throat from Marcellus broke your characters apart from their moment. It was supposed to be intimate but perhaps not that intimate.

You shared a small, unscripted smile with Gwilym before focusing on the scene.

A few scenes later, you were on stage with him again along with Andy who played Marcellus. The three of you had spotted the ghost of your father and you were supposed to follow it but the two boys had to keep you back. Marcellus stood behind Gwilym with his hands held out as if to invisibly push you back while Horatio actually had his hands on you to try and keep you in the one place while you wriggled and writhed to escape and go to the ghost.

You didn't really want to leave Gwilym's hold- you never did. Anyone who wanted to would have been out of their mind. He held you so tenderly and gently but it looked like he was brutally trying to keep you away from the entity.

As an actor, and as just Gwil, he always amazed you.

"It waves me still," you clawed at the air. "Go on; I'll follow thee."

"You shall not go, my lord!" Marcellus warned.

You found yourself almost being picked up by Gwilym you were pushing forward so much. His hand unintentionally moved to the top of the back of your thigh and you jumped a little, sending him a small look as if to say 'That's not meant to be there.' He moved his hand back to your waist, slightly to your dismay. "Hold off your hands!" You said in a demanding tone. Time after time Gwilym almost moaned at that voice.

He looked down at you, he was at a perfect angle to just reach up and let your lips cra- "Be ruled," he said authoritatively and you crashed back into reality "you shall not go."

The scene carried on and after speaking to the ghost of your father, Marcellus and Horatio returned after catching up to you and questioned you about the spirt. You were on your knees staring off passed the heads of those in the audience with glossy eyes. Gwilym kneeled down next to you and tenderly took your hand in his and comfortingly squeezed and stroked it. He didn't used to do that when you first started, it happened over time. It made you wonder if he was acting out his movements or allowed them to flow freely. After a few more seconds of staring you turned to him and managed to let a fake tear fall. He reached up and slowly wiped it away- you could hear sniffles from the audience.

You looked into those delightful, dastardly eyes again, your heart leaping in your chest. His eyes held something a little different in them. There was a twinkle- something you never saw before.

You reached up and placed a hand on his cheek before slightly hunching over while releasing a sigh and then returned to your original position. He moved his hand from your face and placed it on top of yours that was on his cheek- something he hadn't done before. Andy raised a subtle, inconspicuous eyebrow at the interaction. Gwilym noticed your eyebrows creasing ever so slightly but he was too engrossed with you to care. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy..." you perfectly recited and Gwilym found himself press his head further into your hand. He loved the contact of your skin on his. You continued on and wrapped up the scene "So, gentlemen," you stood up "With all my love I do commend me to you: And what so poor a man as Hamlet is mat do, to express his love and friending to you, god willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together;" you took Gwilym's and Andy's hand "still your fingers on your lips, I pray." You placed your finger on their lips like you always did. Andy was unfazed by it but it always sent Gwil into overdrive. "The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right! Nay, come, let's go together." You pulled them off stage with you and then the next scene began. You dusted off your knees with a delighted smile "That was so good!"

Gwilym nodded "One of my favourite scenes...I mean, all of my scenes with you are my favourite." He bashfully confessed and you felt yourself blush, luckily the wings were dimly lit so he didn't really notice. "I've got to get changed," you did too "See you in a bit!" He smiled and headed off to his dressing room.

You let out a small, adoring sigh with a massive grin and then noticed Andy sending you a knowing smirk "Oh be quiet..." you nervously grumbled feeling his teasing glare. He had always asked when you were going to finally bite the bullet and ask Gwilym out. You never found the confidence to. Gwilym was gorgeous and such a sweetheart- he could have any person he wanted.

That's why you always questioned and doubted yourself- Gwilym could have anyone so why would he pick you?

Gwil watched in awe like he always did seeing you perfectly recite the infamous 'To be, or not to be' soliloquy. He quickly brushed away a rouge tear that slipped down his cheek. "She's incredible," he whispered to Daisy who was standing next to him watching, ready to jump on in a moment. She looked between you and Gwilym and fondly smiled at you both before lightly gasping and practically throwing herself on stage, too focused on her two friends who were mad about one another than the scene she was about to act in.

A little while later, everyone was getting ready to watch the reenactment of Hamlet's fathers murder. You called for Horatio and Gwilym walked on stage with a smile on his face "Here, sweet lord, at your service." You gave him a hug and he hesitated to let go.

Placing a hand on his jawline you let out a breathy chortle, then you had to rest your head against his chest while he held you. "Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man as e'er my conversation coped withal."

Gwilym had to act all flustered, but that wasn't an issue with you in his arms and his chin being tickled by your hair. "O, my dear lord..."

You chuckled and pulled back, patting his cheek and pointing at him "Nay, do not think I flatter." You smirked and sent him a wink before continuing on with your lines. Gwilym was helplessly smiling at you, being taken away momentary with your voice saying such poetic things. Continuing on, you all watched the players perform their parts and then the scenes carried on and you eventually, accidentally, killed Polonius.

Then you were sent off to England and a small interval began, giving everyone a little break and time to change. You practically flung on your clothes, the next scene you were in was mainly with Gwilym. You didn't see him again until you met by the wings and wrapped your arms around one of his, holding onto him tightly as you walked into a graveyard together. Your head rested against his bicep and Gwilym wondered if he'd still get the same kind of butterflies if you clutched onto him like that when you weren't performing.

He had a funny feeling that he would.

The two of you then had to hide away, but still in sight to the audience, as you watched Ophelia's burial. Gwilym's eyes flickered across to you as you stared intensely at the scene unfolding in front of you. There was only half an hour of performance time left. He didn't want it to end.

After causing a scene in the grave with Laertes- him fighting his fathers and sisters honour while you were fighting to declare your love for her- the final, tragic, scene finally arrived.

As everyone poured in and stood to the side of the stage to watch Hamlet and Laertes fence, Harry had one of the Lords assist him with putting on fencing gear while Gwilym helped you put on yours. His hands brushed against your waist and thighs as he secured the velcro of the padded fabric to you. You sent him a brief smile before he placed on your helmet and you got into position.

You and Harry fenced back and fourth until you got injured by Laertes' poisoned fencing sword and then you stabbed him back after getting into a fight with him. Then you had to throw away your helmet and run to your mother after she had been poisoned, holding her in your arms with false tears flowing until she died. You placed her down gently and stood up then started to act out the effects of the poison, clutching your 'wound' and you stomach.

Laertes then tells you that you have been poisoned and that Claudius was behind everything. You kill Claudius before letting out a pained wail, stumbling into Gwilym before he slowly fell to the ground cradling you. "Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee. I am dead, Horatio. Wretched queen, adieu! You that look pale and tremble at this chance that are but mutes or audience to this act." You writhed in his hold and cried out in pain. Gwilym was choking up- but he wasn't acting. This scene always moved him to tears, even more so because of you. "Had I but time as this fell sergeant, death, is strict in his arrest. O, I could tell you...but let it be. Horatio, I am dead; Thou livest; report me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied." You weakly begged and traced your fingers tenderly across his jaw.

Gwilym shook his head, propping you up a little but still lovingly holding you. "Never believe it. I am more an antique Roman than a Dane! Here's yet some liquor left." He tried to drink the rest of the poisoned wine that your mother had drank.

"As thou'rt a man, give me the cup: let go; by heaven, I'll have't!" You snatched it before he could drink it and downed it all, letting the bright, crimson liquid stain your lips. He let out a sob as you let out an antagonising cry- you could hear more sniffles from the audience. "O good Horatio, what a wounded name, things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!" His character was supposed to lean forward and attempt to capture your lips to try and derive some of the poison from him but before he could, Hamlet pressed his fingers to Horatio's lips to stop him. But Gwilym was a little too fast for you tonight and his lips just caught your own. That certainly was not in the script. You both froze with shock for a moment- you were certain you had heard Daisy gasp before you blinked back into reality and carried on with your lines. "If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart," you shakily spoke, a slight buzz flowing through your veins and nerves. Gwilym was looking at you with wide eyes as if to silently appologise for doing that. "Absent thee from felicity awhile, and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, to tell my story." He seemed just as shocked as you that he gave you a ghost of a kiss. But a part of him was overwhelmed with joy that he finally managed to feel your lips- even though it was very brief and faint. But it was no less magical. "O, I die, Horatio; The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit: I cannot live to hear the news from England; But I do prophesy the election lights on Fortinbras: he has my dying voice; So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less, which have solicited." You cupped his face and brightly smiled through your 'pain'. "The rest is silence."

Then you died in Gwilym's arms once more for the final time. A death you were happy to endure.

Gwilym hugged you, rocking you back and forth while crying. "Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!" He kissed your forehead- that kiss was scripted. Horatio and Fortinbras then talk of what had happened and then, as quick as it had begun, it was finally over.

Gwilym helped you upright and everyone took a bow as the audience clapped and cheered. All your cast mates then turned to you and clapped, you bashfully hid your face in your hands and chuckled. Then Hugh emerged with a bunch of flowers for you and you almost burst into tears. You reached up and kissed his cheek and then turned to Daisy and gave her platonic pecks on her cheeks, giving your Ophelia a flower from the bouquet before you all took a final bow and disappeared from the stage.

You didn't see Gwilym after coming off the stage, you were drowning in a sea of people congratulating you. But you managed to escape back to your dressing room and shed Hamlet's clothes then changed into your own. Daisy appeared and told you they were all heading to the afterparty. "I'll meet you all there soon," you tiredly smiled from your chair, your leg tucked underneath yourself. "I just need to organise my stuff out- I'll be an hour tops."

Daisy nodded "Alrighty! You were incredible, Y/N. It's been an absolute joy being your Ophelia. You and I are going to discuss that little delightful hiccup of Gwilym's earlier!" She pointed, referring to the kiss and you shook your head with a grin. "See you soon!" She blew you kisses then shut the door behind her, but not completely.

You sighed and picked up your bloodied fencing gear and sadly smiled. Gwilym was passing with his backpack thrown over his shoulder, he noticed the faint yellow glow pouring out of your dressing room door that was left ajar. He delicately chapped it with his knuckles before peering around the door. You looked up and silently encouraged him to come in, he did and shut the door over behind him, placing down his backpack and sitting across from you on another chair. You were still holding your fencing outfit.

"Just saying goodbye..." you admitted and half heartedly folded the outfit. Gwilym had a crooked smile on his face. Being immersed in such a pivotal and intense role was going to be hard to let go of- Gwilym had Horatio withdrawls already. You reached down to your bag and pulled out a script. "And then hello to Lady Macbeth." You couldn't hold back a wide, ecstatic smile.

Gwilym went wide-eyed and gasped "You got the part?! That's amazing! I'm so happy for you!" He was almost as excited as you. You had told him how much you wanted the role since you auditioned for it two months ago.

"Thank you," you placed down the script, looking at it while you spoke to him. "Macbeth hasn't been cast yet- still holding auditions. Maybe you should go?" You suggested "You'd probably get the part."

You saw out of the corner of your eye Gwilym shrugging his shoulders. "I don't know..." he did hear the part was up for grabs.

You turned to look at him "If you do get it you'd get to properly kiss me on stage..." You saw his whole body tense and he opened his mouth, desperately trying to say something but all his mouth could do was open and snap shut over and over again. "It's alright!" You softly laughed and took his hand, lacing your fingers with his. Gwilym was wondering if this was all a dream- that he'd fallen asleep in his dressing room. You squeezed his hand and he then knew he wasn't dreaming. "You know, if you wanted to kiss me...you could have just asked."

Without a second of hesitation Gwilym moved forward "From the moment I met you, Y/N, I have adored and admired you with all my heart. I like you, so much more than you'll ever know. Can I kiss you?"

"Yes," you smiled and felt his lips perfectly- and a little desperately- crash against yours before starting to move in sync.

He pulled back after a few moments, cupping your face with his soft hands "I have wanted to do that for so long- I swear I've almost kissed you on stage a hundred times!" You both laughed. You rested your forehead against his and looked in each other's eyes before peppering one another's lips with kisses.

"They aren't expecting me to turn up for a little while and I've got a perfectly good bottle of champagne in my mini-fridge that I was saving for tonight." Your suggestion made Gwilym grin. "The only thing is I've got no glasses, only teacups."

"That's alright," Gwilym softly laughed and kissed you again "You have whichcraft in your lips..." he lowly murmured before hotly kissing you, sending a wave of ecstasy and a jolt of electricity through your body.

"We're onto Henry V now are we?" You teased and stood up, popping open the champagne and pouring it into teacups. You clinked them together and took a sip. Gwilym sat down on the sofa that was against the wall of the dressing room and then reached out to you, pulling you towards him and onto his lap. One of his hands rubbed your thighs and you contently sighed.

"I’ll make my heaven in a lady’s lap..." You playfully rolled his eyes at yet another Shakespeare quote- this time from Henry VI part three. He placed down your cups and you both shared another kiss. "I feel like I'm in heaven here with you." You wrapped your arms around one another and remained like that on the couch for a little while until you had to go to the party.

You had died in his arms again only this time in way that made you feel more alive than ever.

———————–————

Tags- (Tag list is open! Just let me know if you want to be tagged or not or if I've forgotten to tag you!)

@rrrogah-tayluhh @rogerofmylife @phantom-fangirl-stuff @pyrotechnic789 @deacytits @mercurys-bike @happy-at-home @mhftrs @dannydelay @queenismylifenow @whitequeen-blackqueen @stateofloveandvedder @blondyfel @mespetitestortues @trickster-may @xtrashmammalstefx @the-garnet-rain @makapaka11 @killerqueenbucky @hodgepodge-of-rog @fredthelegend @killerqueen-gunpowdergelatine @bowiequeen @princessleiaqueen @okdeaky @mizzallfandomz @fangirlofeverythingme @ellee677 @the-killer-queenie @bucket-of-kittens @jamiethewallflower @rogernroll @queen-irl-af @freddie-malek @deakysgirl @little-miss-queenie

[misstinfoilhat]

The Boy in the Belfry Pt. 12, a Bungo Stray Dogs fic.

Yeeeah so, sorry. I forgot I was posting this here.  ...

The unison exclamations from the ADA alerted the Preacher of their presence as soon as the surroundings of his display had calmed down.

"Ah, my worshipers have returned," the Preacher's voice echoed through the large room, gloating in front of the newly entered crowd. "Welcome back, my blessed herd."

"This preacher isn't like the one we have at home," Kenji whispered wearily.

"I can guarantee you that he is not," Chuuya grunted before taking a step forward.

"Wait, Chuuya, what are you-" Kunikida tried to hold him back. They needed to assess the situation and make a plan before they could proceed with any kind of attack. They had no idea what was going on, but he was blatantly ignored.

"Chuuya, I'm glad you finally arrived at the party," Mori's voice singsonged down the nave. He gestured with his hand towards the scene in front of them. Chuuya walked resolutely over the carpeted aisle.

"I'm sorry I'm late. I only just heard from this mötley crew that we had begun the final stages. You could have given me a call," he snarled irritably.

"Chu..." Atsushi gasped and reached his arm out to grab at Chuuya's jacket, but Kunikida's arm blocked him protectively, shaking his head at the teen.

"This is what's called betrayal, Atsushi. You might as well learn that now. You can never trust the mafia," Kunikida said darkly. "Especially not that coward," he sneered towards Chuuya.

Chuuya stopped and looked back. Seemingly amused, he scoffed. "I would have thought that was the 101 of the Armed Detective Agency instruction manual."

His jacket swayed lightly behind him as he proceeded the walk, but stopped for a moment and watched Dazai's mangled form.

"I always imagined-" Dazai rasped, interrupted by a couple of weak coughs, "that I'd wait... for you as you walked down the aisle someday."

The redhead sneered in disgust, and spit on the ground near Dazai, "stuff it, toothpick."

He gave a short nod to the Preacher, feeling sick by his mere presence, as he joined Elise in standing slightly behind Mori. ...

Dazai was bearly able to comprehend what was going on around him. He recognized the familiar fogginess and throbbing headache of a concussion when the gloomy room started to dance around in his vision.

‘Chuuya is here too,’ he thought but wasn't entirely sure if it was a good or a bad thing. He decided that concussions were one of his least favorite things. It made him so dazed and confused.

But he couldn't help but smile. No matter how much his body pulsated with pain and his head hurt, or how the bile in his throat from the concussion-induced nausea was threatening to spill out, there was no denying the fact that he sat there- face to face with his father's ability once again.

That night in the belfry a couple of weeks ago finally made complete sense to him now.

After first arriving at the church- and before it all happened, he had a short black-out. When he came too, he thought he was having a vividly real flashback to one of his many horrifying hours up there. It used to happen a lot when he was younger, to a point where he didn't know what was real or not anymore. It would only make sense that being back in that place would trigger all of that to come back.

Standing there in the belfry, looking down at his ten-year-old self, he felt the skin on his scarred back freeze. Every old wound came to life under their dressings, inflamed to a point where he could almost make out the words of damnation that had been carved into his shoulder blades, facing himself- he and his own apparition looked deep into each other's eyes, back in there, inside of their torture chamber where the seed of what would become the monster that was Osamu Dazai, had first been planted.

But, the ghost of his past self seemed so real, he needed to be sure that it was- in fact- just his mind playing tricks on him. It was almost as if he could reach out and touch it.

That was when it launched itself at him.

It wasn't more than a heavy push, but it was enough. The surprise of the attack made him tumble back, toppling over that same latch he had let himself fall from- twelve years ago.

Yes, it really did make sense. He had always been his own worst enemy.

A forceful tug at the bandages around his neck made him snap back into the moment. He could faintly hear his father's menacing laughter somewhere in the room, and some unclear and vague bickering even further away, but he was more intrigued by what he was holding in his hand. Well, 'he' as in his father's ability. What his father's ability held in its hand.

A knife.

A knife he knew very well. A wooden handle bearing a golden cross, and a needlepoint blade engraved with the words 'blows that wound, cleanses away evil'. It was the very same knife that had penetrated his skin more times then any blade ever had (and it was quite a few) and written passages and sacrileges words amongst each other all over his body- which he had spent a lifetime trying to clean off by excessively washing his skin raw and bloody, before turning to more ruthless methods when it proved fruitless.

His ten-year-old self placed the knife to his wrapped throat.

"Looks like you're finally going to be able to kill yourself," Mori chuckled, keeping his calm smile.

In a swift motion, it made the incision.

Droplets of blood slipped down Dazai's chest. His eyes grew wide with shock and his body dropped to the floor.

The silence that ensued was nothing more than unnerving.

At the sight of the Preacher's ability, lashing out at Dazai's throat, made it seem like the world had stopped turning. The slightly dirtied bandages on Dazai's chest was quickly colored by the warm crimson red.

But, he was still moving. He lay folded in on himself, shoulders slightly trembling. His raspy and shallow breaths sounded exaggerated by the reverb of the church.

It was the only thing that could be heard until the Preacher hummed with satisfaction, walking behind his son and grasping the cut bandaging from around Dazai's throat, ripping it all the way off.

"Why are you hiding, my son?" he asked in a sickly soft voice and proceeded to grab a hold on Dazai's hair, yanking his head up, showcasing his unprotected throat.

"No..." Dazai's exasperated in an instant of panic, but couldn't prevent his shame from being exposed.

The sides of Dazai's neck was covered in old and new scars from burns, slashes, ropes, chains or whatever he could have gotten his hands on whenever the urge would hit him, cutting mercilessly into the skin and leaving the grim reminders of his demons- but that was the expected part.

What really paralyzed all the on-lookers, was the large inverted pentagram that had been sliced roughly into the skin, leaving a horrendously ugly scar carved into the delicate flesh of Dazai’s throat.

"The boy with a soul as black as his eyes needs salvation," the Preacher told his congregation, a small crowd of stunned ADA agents. Dazai's face was twisted in pain and humiliation, or, chagrin.

"I know you tried, my son, I know you did. But you were never one of God's children. I should have known the day you were born. Your mother's body rejected you into the fifth month of her pregnancy. Each month her fatigued body was able to carry you represented the five points of the pentagram. You weren't meant to be born into this world. I should never let the doctor resurrect you, or anywhere near you. The world was doomed the second you drew your first breath. A breath of air that was never meant for you." 

He gave Dazai a swift kick in the back, making him tumble spill over to his stomach.

Caught in the moment, no one had even realized that the apparition of Dazai had disappeared and the Preacher was now holding the dagger. He let it slide up Dazai's back, making the bandages slide off his chest and abdomen. Then, he went on to his arms and legs.

Completely unraveled from the thin fabric that had been used as armor for Dazai for the majority of his life had come undone. All of the wounds, the scarred words and prayers, and religious symbols, the burns from the rod and the ones that Mori had left while he was undergoing training, bite marks and surgical scars and stab wounds and gunshot wounds and then the ones he had gotten from battles, and then there were the ones inflicted by himself.

There was hardly an inch of skin left on his body that hadn't been mutilated one way or another.

And now, he lay there, bare, feeling as naked and fragile as the day he was born. The day he was also supposed to have died.

The day he took a spot in the world never meant for him. Overcrowding the planet all by himself.

At the exact moment the last thought entered his mind, a blurred force flung itself in an inhumane speed behind him.

The Preacher was hurled from his position behind Dazai and crashed into the stone wall several feet behind them.

Tainted..? Chuuya!

Atsushi took advantage of the moment of full confusion and ran for Dazai's aid, followed shortly by the rest of the agency.

"Step away!" Mori's voice roared and Elise innocently stepped in front of Dazai, preventing anyone from passing her.

They would have tried if it wasn't for the fact that Mori had a gun pointed at Dazai's head.

The Preacher was pinned to the wall by tightly gripped gloved hands, and a thin streak of blood dripped from the back of his head as Chuuya growled intimidatingly at him.

"Do you have the preacher under control, Chuuya-kun?" Mori asked, not moving his gaze from Dazai.

"No problem," Chuuya smiled venomously as he moved his forearm to press against the old man's throat.

Mori scoffed. "Good," he mumbled under his breath, slowly stepping closer to Dazai, standing in front of him so the half-conscious man could see him.

Dazai struggled to keep his head up but did so to the best of his abilities. His head slowly drooping down from time to time, but watching and listening intently as Mori spoke.

"I don't think I've been more proud of anything I've ever accomplished, than what I made you," he told Dazai. 

"You were the perfect composition of everything. Of good and evil. Caring and violent. Apathetic and manic. Alive and dead... I know, I wasn't much of a father figure, but I truly did look upon you as my own flesh and blood. Some of the things I had to do to you, I-" he sighed, "I truly didn't want to do."

Something in his eyes as he met Dazai's, looked sincere and contrite. Dazai wasn't able to respond at this time though. He had to keep his concentration on staying conscious. He knew what was coming.

"That first day when I took you in after your very first suicide attempt… Such a milestone," he added bitterly as a joke. "I knew what you were. And what you were was-" he looked at the preacher. "-yes, a demonic prodigy. A potentially truly great future executive of the port mafia. And I was right. I stayed up days on end to make sure you wouldn't leave this world, because, you were close. Closer than my pride would like to admit. But, you pulled through. Just like you have, every time. Yes, you truly were my greatest achievement. And my absolute biggest disappointment." 

His finger lay resting on the trigger of the gun.

"I've spent many nights, lying awake and thinking of the most effective way to end you. I have quite a few good ideas, actually." Mori looked at his gun and shrugged. "This wasn't really one of them," he added.

"No, they were more... creative. Because, unfortunately, you're like a cockroach. Impossible to kill. No matter how many times you, I or anyone else, try to... you just won't stay dead!"

He took a deep breath. "Just like your father." 

Still pointing his gun at Dazai, he slowly moved closer. Elise was still keeping the ADA at bay, quickly reacting to any and all movements from the group.

Mori smirked. "I don’t like to leave a job half-done, so now, I want to finish what I started."

He lowered his gun and carefully picked Dazai off the ground, helping him slowly to stand up.

Dazai moaned silently, losing his breath for a moment as the pain of the new positioning shot through his back. He leaned heavily against Mori's strong shoulders, dragging his injured leg as he was supported towards Chuuya and his father.

Mori gave Dazai the gun. "I think you deserve to finish it, once and for all."

Chuuya finally released his grip on the preacher, letting him slide down the wall, but being ready to intervene if he would regain his strength and try anything stupid.

Dazai accepted the gun and pointed it shakingly towards his father, who let out breathless pleads as he sat against the wall.

To everyone's surprise, Dazai lowered the gun. Even if it hurt, he took a deep breath and gave it back to Mori. No words were shared between the two, but they understood each other better than any of them would like to admit.

Mori aided Dazai carefully back to the floor, close to the preacher and Chuuya. Then, he walked back, picking up the dagger that the preacher had lost in the midst of Chuuya's attack and gave it to Dazai.

At that point, Dazai had forgotten all about anyone around him. He only felt the weight of the knife in his hand.

With great difficulty, he dragged himself closer, repeating the words that were engraved on the knife again and again inside his mind, until he sat, leveled with his father and abuser, looking intently into his eyes.

He raised the dagger with the very last bit of strength he had in his body.

"Forgive me father, for I have sinned," he said hoarsely in a voice as dead as his eyes. "I'm about to take a man of God's life... A man who has taken advantage of your name and abused the power you hold over your disciples. A man who killed his wife and several daughters, taking your place as the prosecutor, judge, and executor of what he deemed to be unworthy life... I stand before you as my father's son... and his shadow weighs a ton. So, please, do listen to a fucking sinners chagrin, and forgive me for the sin I'm about to commit."

Dazai thrust himself forward, unfeeling, uncaring and completely blinded by the immense power of rage and hate. The blood spatter didn't even register as he lunged the knife into the soft flesh of his father again and again and again and again- until his body shut off, and he collapsed in a pool of his own and his father's blood, hyperventilating and unable to move.

Once again everything around him stopped making a single sound. He wasn't sure if there simply wasn't any, or if he had fainted.

His last hypothesis was proven wrong as he recognized Chuuya's legs, settling by his side, placing a bag in front of him.

He recognized the tan coat that was being retrieved from the bag. Oda's coat- his coat. Chuuya gently placed it over his shoulders, carefully helping Dazai to rest his head on the softness of the redhead's lap, reassuringly caressing his blood-soaked mop of dark, unruly hair.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered in Dazai's ear. Several familiar voices morphing into nothing but unnecessary noise as Dazai closed his eyes.

An then, he was unable to open them again.

[movedyourchair505]

Napule Nights - cinque 

- chapter navigation -

x

Upon arrival back at the headquarters, two more men stepped out to start unloading Jade's stuff from the car, Helders accompanying Miles to meet with Turner, while the other security guard gestured for her to follow him, to be taken to meet with Serena.

"W-What about my things?" Jade questioned, turning around worriedly to look over her shoulder and see the men carrying her bags inside not very carefully.

"It's all gonna be taken care of" the man informed her, seemingly annoyed at her questions and she went on to follow him silently, knowing that despite having felt rather at ease in Serena's company, she wasn't going to feel as safe now, knowing what was at stake because now she'd had a taste of this, was inside and getting somewhere, and she wasn't ready to give it all up again right away.

"What's your name?" She asked, regretting the additional question to the security guard the second it left her lips, but she was desperate for any sort of distraction, even if it meant getting on bad terms with yet another of Turner's men.

"Cook" the man grunted.

She nodded slowly, fiddling with her bracelet, falling behind as she couldn't stand feeling like a prisoner being escorted to their hearing, a hearing that would decide it all, and that's probably how this man right now saw her, like nothing more than a prisoner, someone who might just be gone by tomorrow to be never heard from again. "C-Can you tell me what's going to happen?" She asked, another attempt to communicate, this time to ease her mind rather than sway it.

He shrugged, unlocking a door at the end of the corridor and holding it open for her to go through before following, the crash of it shutting making her jump. "Yeh're gonna give Serena the information she needs" he said, his voice surprisingly soft now, a raw edge to it, but he didn't seem as restrictive to talk now, was at least giving her something to work with.

"What if it isn't enough?" She asked. She supposed she could ask him, because what was the worst he could do? If she was right with her assumptions, her telling him in advance about her worries would not have any impact on the outcome of the situation, if she didn't know enough, it wouldn't matter anyway and if she did, he would probably not speak against her.

But once again, she was merely guessing, Turner and his whole team were unpredictable without exception.

"That's up to her to decide" he shrugged. "She will expect a certain level of confidential information, to start training you."

Her eyes widened. "Training me?" She repeated in disbelief.

Cook shrugged. "Yeh, teh work, be useful teh Turner, find out more on the enemeh, do jobs for 'im. Wha' did yeh fink yeh was goin' teh do for 'im?"

"I just didn't know it was going to be this fast, that she was going to train me so to speak."

He stopped, looked at her over the edge of his sunglasses, then knocked on the door they'd reached at the end of the corridor.

"Si?" Serena's voice rang through the door and Cook pushed it open, once again holding it for Jade, giving her somewhat of a reassuring look, if she squinted and tilted her head a bit, and then he was gone, the door fell shut, and she was alone with Serena.

She'd expected another office type room, Serena's office perhaps, if she had one, but the dark space she'd entered now looked like an interrogation room at a police station, drawing up memories Jade would've preferred to forget. It had been a while, but being interrogated in the middle of the night, being taken in just stepping down from the pole and dressed for the occasion, a girl didn't forget that as easily.

"Sit down, Jade."

Her voice was professional, formal, not as understanding and helpful as when she'd explained things to her previously, given her advice, and as attracted as she was to Turner, Jade wouldn't have enjoyed sweating under his gaze, him asking her questions, expecting her to tell him certain things, him being the one that decided her fate.

The room was significantly colder than the rest of the hallways and rooms she had been in so far and she shivered as she approached the seat opposite Serena's, the echo of her heels clicking on the ground keeping her mind from wandering. She had to focus now, observe, no overthinking, no assumptions, more than just winning Serena over was at stake.

She wondered if Mancini had been in here, or if she wasn't regarded quite as low as him just yet, desperately hoping it would stay that way.

"I'm going to record our conversation."

Serena's voice snapped her out of it, already catching her mind drifting, thinking when she'd just sworn to focus but it was always too much, so many things she noticed and wanted to explore, so she wouldn't be surprised, would figure it out beforehand.

There was no friendly introduction now, no easing her into it, she was just another informant, just another puppet in their game, and Serena was treating her as such, no trace of the woman she'd met before. And that, that was even more worrying.

Before Jade could give any sort of response, Serena pressed the button on the recording device and leaned back in her chair, one leg resting on the other, eyes staring Jade down in a way she'd only seen from Turner. She had learned from the best.

"At what time did you enter Alfonso's club last night?" She questioned.

Jade had carried the information, the memory of the night before with her for less than twenty-four hours, she remembered it all vividly, especially right now when it mattered the most. "After my shift" she stated. "So ... I must've been inside twenty minutes to one."

Serena gave a nod of approval. "This was Buio, yes?"

"Yes" Jade confirmed. "Alfonso's biggest and oldest club."

She expected amusement, some comment about how specific she was, that she'd done her research but no such thing came back, Serena simply gave another nod. "Who did you interact with besides Mancini?"

"I tried to get everyone's enough" Jade assured her quickly, just so she wouldn't think her work was sloppy. "Some seemed rather unimportant, I didn't recognise them, but those were the ones that slipped up the most, they..."

"Stop" Serena cut in. "I doubt that anyone who would let anything slip, any nobody would have information I'm interested in. Who did you talk to that actually is somebody?"

Jade swallowed, her heart starting to race at the tone of the other women, disappointment and impatience ringing through, the mask of calm crumbling slowly, she really was Turner's right hand and it was making more and more sense. "I talked to Mancini. And Salvestro. He bought me a drink."

Serena raised an eyebrow, placing both her feet on the ground again and shuffling closer to the table with her chair, elbows resting on the surface as she leaned in to look closer at Jade, the name had sparked her interest. "Salvestro" she repeated. "He had no suspicions about you?"

Jade smirked. "Honestly, I have no idea. He barely looked at my face, was too busy eyefucking me, but he really lost track of what he was saying. Thought I was just some bimbo so he didn't watch his tongue, assumed I wouldn't understand anyway. I tried to make it seem like I was one of Mancini's girls, because I'd talked to him earlier."

The other woman nodded, the corner of her mouth twitching upward. "Right" she said. "What did you find out?"

"I gave him a bit of a lap dance while he was on the phone" Jade went on. "He was talking to this man called Paolo, but I think it was the Blade."

Serena seemed impressed, Jade could see it flicker across her face for a brief second, and it eased her mind at least slightly, brought her some peace. "The Blade?" Serena questioned. "You know who you're talking about there?"

Jade gave a nod, now trying to seem as nonchalant as she could. "I do" she stated. "Alfonso's inofficial assassin."

Serena cocked an eyebrow, nodding slowly. "Indeed. You've really done your homework, Jade. Are you sure you're really as independent as you make yourself out to be?"

And there it was, the accusation she'd been worried about, that the research she'd done, all the intel she'd gathered in the scene would be her downfall. She tried to play it cool, standing her ground. "Would I really lay out all this information if I wasn't?"

"Well, that's how spies operate" she said, shrugging. "Making it seem like they're trust-worthy by sacrificing something."

"Sacrificing Mancini? And myself? Would be a bit too much, don't you think?"

Serena sighed. "Alfonso doesn't shy away from great risks" she said, standing up slowly, her flat hands pressed to the table's surface.

Jade swallowed, she hadn't thought through how to prove she wasn't working for anyone, so she tried to stir the conversation back to her information. "Don't you want to know what the Blade and Salvestro were talking about?"

"What if they figured you out and gave you fake information?"

Jade squinted, leaning back and crossing her arms in front of her chest, her breasts pushed up from the position and she held Serena's gaze. "I thought I was supposed to give you helpful information. This isn't something they'd just make up."

"Then how is it something they'll discuss in front of some stripper?"

She sighed, knowing the comment was rather directed at her insignificance to Alfonso's men than her occupation it itself. "I know more."

Serena bit her lip. "Go on then" she nodded, sitting back down.

"He told the Blade to meet Alfonso tonight, that he'd arranged for them to meet, that they were going to carry out an attack. As you said, Alfonso is quite fond of risk, so why not have someone like Salvestro chedule their meeting?"

The woman opposite her gave another nod, approving for her to continue, now clearly intrigued as Jade pieced the puzzle together, demonstrating that she was in fact not just some stripper.

"They'll meet in neutral territory, if you want to send someone, to make sure it's none of Turner's that they're planning to attack, especially because you have Mancini here."

Her eyes widened visibly, something Jade hadn't expected. "Right" she said, playing it off quickly  and hoping Jade hadn't noticed. "What else?"

"Next week they're receiving a large delivery down by the Box."

Serena swallowed. "What's in it?"

"They didn't specify" Jade said. "They said midnight, they said the Box, but no date and not the delivery's content. I assume it's the new drug they've been selling, though."

Serena glared back at her. "How do you know about that?"

"Unimportant."

"No" she disagreed firmly. "Everything is important."

"I cannot say" she insisted, already regretting having mentioned it, the desire to impress her and be useful so strong, but now her conscience was catching up with her. "I can't."

Serena gritted her teeth, once again standing up, leaning over the table and down over Jade. She wasn't much taller than her, didn't tower over her like Turner or Helders, but was intimidating nonetheless. "You can. And you will."

She swallowed, now she'd made things even worse. "What if I don't?"

"I ask the questions."

She bit her lip. "Will it stay confidential?"

"Between me and Alexander."

Jade knew she had no other option than to trust her, knowing that she would only have her word anyway if she would get out of this with Serena on her side. "One of the girls down at the club tried it and she's been in the hospital for a week."

Serena swallowed hard. "Is she safe?" She asked instantly.

"None of us have gone to see her, we knew it would only be a matter of time until Alfonso found out, and they'd get rid of witnesses."

"This is brilliant" Serena said. "And do not worry about her. I'm going to send someone to make sure she's safe as soon as we're done. We're going to use this, if you don't mind. As soon as she is safe, of course" she added, the Serena she'd met, that had helped her visible for just a second.

Jade bit her bottom lip worriedly. "Will you put her safety first? I cannot take responsibility if something happens to her, I..."

"This is what you wanted though, isn't it?" She asked, her eyes cold again. "You knew we could use this to harm Alfonso. And we will. Alexander is going to love this."

The other woman had gone quiet now, as confident as ever, but worried too.

"Is there anything else you haven't told me that could be of use?"

Jade shook her head, in complete disbelief at this whole conversation. She had not expected it to turn out this way, thinking deeper and deeper about what she maybe had done wrong, what consequences sharing this information with this family would have, she didn't feel capable of continuing, but she knew Serena would ask more, demand more. When the door opened, she froze, expecting the worst.

"Yeh're done 'ere."

Her head snapped around and she looked at Turner over her shoulder, the look in his eyes sent shivers down her spine and he held gestured for Jade to stand up, then holding his hand out for her.

She glanced back at Serena for just a second who looked anything but amused and crossed her arms in front of her chest and Jade noticed her gaze flicker up, the only thing she could make out against the dark ceiling a small blinking light so Jade quickly rose to her feet, following Turner out of the room, the heavy door falling shut behind them. Jade was confused, couldn't quite put her finger on what'd just happened.

As soon as they stepped into the corridor, Helders and Cook were by their sides, a third man staying behind by the doors, presumably waiting for Serena to step out, whenever that would be, and however she was supposed to interpret that moment back there.

"Where are we going?" Jade questioned, biting her bottom lip instantly at her own question as she watched Turner subtly from the side, his large hands rolling up the sleeves of his silky plum coloured shirt, more rings accentuating his fingers than before.

"I told yeh I'm gunna take yeh teh me club."

Her heart skipped a beat as she realised what this meant, she couldn't speak, just focused on the men's heavy steps, how close Turner was to her side as they walked, the way the corridor didn't seem so cold anymore.

"Do you want me to escort Miss Rivera?" Cook asked.

Turner shook his head without turning to look at the man behind him. "No" he said firmly. "She's wif meh."

[im-the-king-of-the-ocean]

For ficlet-athon. Could you please write a talk between Morgana and Walt after she changes sides? Maybe with Morganbarb in the background.

I hope you don’t mind, but one of the reasons this one took so long was because I’m actually planning on having a scene like this in that long form Morgana redemption fic I’m putting together, so I decided to use this as an opportunity to experiment with how it would go.

*though that entire project will be written in Morgana’s POV, so this was also me playing around with whether or not I could write from Strickler’s POV since he’s a hard character for me.

The window shade is pulled down, but Walter can see the illumination of light behind it.  That’s good, it means Barbara is indeed home.  As he just came from checking the hospital, he knows she isn’t there either.  Quite frankly, he doesn’t know where else she would be if not home or work.

Walter stares at his steering wheel.  Fortune seems to be working in his favor.  Now all he has to do is get out of his car, walk to her door, and knock.  All with the knowledge this visit is both unexpected and unplanned.  Barbara doesn’t necessarily hate him, or, at least, he doesn’t think she does.  But she hasn’t exactly reached out to him these past few weeks either.  The potential meaning to be gleaned there being she doesn’t want to see him.  That is entirely within her right of course.  He just…he needs to hear it from her lips.

With a long sigh, Walter takes the key out of the ignition, exits and locks his car, and approaches the house.  If he doesn’t do this tonight, he’d likely be back some other night.  It would be best to just do it now and stop avoiding.

He knocks on her door.

It takes Barbara the time he needs to run through another internal debate about his course of action to answer the door.

Walter can’t help but smile when he sees her.  Something about her presence makes everything better.

“Oh, Walter, hi,” Barbara speaks.  “Is there something I can do for you?”

“I was hoping we could talk.  I know things haven’t been, errr…well, the best between us and—” He cuts off at her sharp sigh.

“Look, Walter, this isn’t a good time.”  Barbara pinches the bridge of her nose.  “You still have my number, right?  Shoot me a text tomorrow.  We can work something out then, alright?”

“Oh…of course, yes.  I understand.”  Walter lets out a false laugh.  “Tomorrow.  I will send you a text.  Good.”

Barbara smiles apologetically at him.  “Goodnight, Walter.”

Mentally berating himself for his folly, Walter turns to go, but then he spots a woman observing them from the entryway into Barbara’s sitting area.  Oh, of course, Barbara already company.  That was why she—wait, those eyes.

Even with the distance between them, the woman’s green eyes stand out vividly and the way they gaze at him, almost like they know him.  Wait…

Walter lunges forward, grabs Barbara by the arm, and yanks her out of the house.  “Get behind me!  That’s—she’s—Morgana—the Pale Lady!”

“Let go of—Walter, I know!”  Barbara protests, but he ignores her.  

“Whatever she’s done to you, I will not rest until I find a way to reverse the effects.”  Walter unfurls his wings.  He needs to get them out of here.

“Stop it!  Walter, listen to me.  Listen to me.  I know who she is!  I’ve always known!  I—”

He takes off.  His wings beat against the night.  He has Barbara.  No harm can come to her while he—

The rock hits him squarely between the wings.  Sweet Pale Lady, the pain.  He freezes mid-wing beat.

Then he falls.

Everything goes black.

When Walter regains consciousness, he’s lying on a couch inside Barbara’s house.  He aches, but not too badly.  He sits up and looks around.  Neither of the women are in his immediate line of sight.  That’s troubling.  He goes looking.

At the top of the stairs, Walter stops and sees the door to Barbara’s room is open.  Inside, Barbara is lying down and Morgana sits on the edge of the bed.  He watches as the sorceress leans over and tenderly strokes Barbara’s hair away from her face and Barbara places her hand overtop Morgana’s.

He’s torn between relief that Barbara doesn’t seem too injured after their fall and perturbed at the intimacy he sees between her and Morgana.  How long has this been going on?  If some type of spell is involved, he’ll have to use finesse to break it.

Walter continues to observe as Morgana leans over and applies a damp cloth to Barbara’s forehead.  It’s…strange.  Morgana has no audience.  Well, unless she knows he’s watching, and even then, after what transpired, he can’t see reason for her to put on a show for him.  Yet, here she is being soft.  Gentle, even.

Waltolomew Stricklander, most changelings know, was one of the first.  Fewer know that, technically, he was The First.  If you consider those who came before him were the last failures of Morgana’s experimental stage in creating her changelings.  He, therefore, has the privilege of understanding the Pale Lady better than any of his brethren.  Or, at least, he has some ancient (barely ever revisited) memories of her, that others could only hope to dream of.

He, more than anyone, could recognize when she was acting genuinely, and not just acting.

She is acting genuinely now.

Morgana looks up and sees him.  Quietly, she gets up, leaves Barbara’s room, and closes the door behind her.  She stops directly between Walter and the door, blocking his path to it.

“Waltolomew.  It’s been a while, has it not?”  Morgana speaks.  “If you wanted to meet, there are better ways than the ones you’ve gone about tonight.”

“You must understand my concern, Morgana,” Walter replies.  “I know you.”

“Do you?”  Morgana flexes her fingers and examines her nails.  “As I recall, the last we met, it was I who knew more of you.”  She smirks at him.  “Your desires haven’t changed at all.  Should I advise you not to endanger the object of your affections?”

“Barbara never would have been in that situation if you—”

“If I what?”  Morgana interrupts.  “We were having a peaceful evening until you showed up.  Let me clarify.  I will advise you not to put Barbara in harm’s way again.  If you do, I will not leave you without punishment.  I may not have the powers I once did, but that is of little consequence.”

Walter’s eyes widen.  “You care for her?  I don’t believe this.  What reason could the Pale Lady possibly have—”

“What reason could the oldest and perhaps most cunning of my changelings have to betray his purpose since his creation?”  Morgana speaks over him.  “You and I aren’t so different, Waltolomew.”

“I disagree.”  Walter glowers.  “I may not know what your machinations are, but I will not let you hurt Barbara.”

“I have no intention of doing so.  Perhaps I did once, but, over the course of our time together, I have come to care deeply for Barbara.  You wouldn’t perchance know what that’s like, would you?”  Morgana grins.  “Did you not hear me when I said I would not tolerate you hurting her a moment ago?  Are we not both threatening each other for the same person?”  She chuckles.  “It’s almost cute how you’ve deluded yourself, Waltolomew.  You want to see distance between us.  Separation.  A divide.”  She cocks her head curiously.  “You’ve convinced yourself you cannot be evil if I am so much worse than you.  Yet, I am becoming good.  Can you say the same for yourself, I wonder?”

“Enough!”  Walter snaps.  “Forgive me, but trust is not something I’d consider giving to you.”

“What about me?”

Both Walter and Morgana turn at Barbara’s entrance.

“Walter, I know this must seem weird, but trust me when I say Morgana is on our side,” Barbara continues.  “She’s had numerous opportunities to prove otherwise to me and she hasn’t.  She wants to be a better person.  I’m helping her do just that.  Trust me.”

Walter stares at Barbara, the determined expression on her face.  A part of him whispers to grab her and take her far away from here, to somewhere he knows is secure.  But that would not solve anything.  Probably not.  At the very least, it would create a few new problems.  His best best was to…

Trust Barbara.

“I do,” Walter says.  “Trust you.  But this concerns me.”

“Alright.  We can meet under better circumstances to talk more.”  Barbara looks to him, and then to Morgana.  “But that’s enough for tonight I think.”  Her expression leaves no room for arguments from either of them.

[twotwinks]

benthan for 001, and benji for 002

I hope you realize what you’ve unleashed here- It’s so ungodly long that I’m adding a cut to save your dashes.

001 | Benthan

When I Started Shipping Them

So I went back through my posts because I very vividly remember when I realized I’d fallen for this ship. I first mentioned that I might have started shipping them in the tags of a post on September 15, 2018, and after I acknowledged it, I was sold on it. So I’ve shipped these precious soft boys for just a little shy of two months!

My Thoughts

This is so vague and mean, I don’t even know where to begin… I just… I love them a lot. I don’t think I’ve ever really felt this strongly for a ship before. I mean, I’ve had OTPs before, but never an OTP that actively made me want to rip my heart out because I just can’t handle the emotions it causes, positive or negative. It’s also the first ship I’ve ever written fic for, and it honestly just feels so natural, it’s so easy to write romantic stuff for them and virtually impossible to write something platonic. Plus, without this ship, I never would’ve made any tumblr friends. I’d still just be sitting on the outskirts, randomly reblogging stuff and trying desperately to come up with decent content for my fandom blog. Now I know Ruth and Cassidy and Stanislas and everybody else, and I have so much fun seeing everyone’s posts and participating when I’m brave enough (even though I still sometimes wonder if I fit in, and even if I don’t, I’m just grateful everyone still plays along with me) and honestly it’s one of the brightest parts of my life right now. I see a note or a message or someone tags me in something and sometimes it makes me want to cry because people are thinking about me. So I love this ship even more for that.

What Makes Me Happy About Them

There’s just so much. There’s so much to be happy about them. I love the way they smile at each other. I love how loyal they are to each other. I feel like they fit the “I’d follow you to the ends of the earth with only mild complaining” better than anyone else, because they would, they’d do anything for each other. And even if you look at their relationship as platonic, that’s an incredibly strong friendship, and it just warms my heart.

What Makes Me Sad About Them

The fact that one day one of them is probably going to end up dying trying to save the other one. I’d really like for them to leave fieldwork so they can live happy and safe together for the rest of their days, but I know that Ethan would never be able to live like that. Fallout told us that much. And you can bet that as long as Ethan is in the field, Benji’s going to be right by his side.

Things Done in Fanfic that Annoy Me

I dunno, really. Most of the Benthan fic we’ve got is pretty solid. Some of the smut’s a little weak, but I only occasionally venture there, so it’s not too big of a deal. One thing that does sometimes bug me, even though it’s literally the most nonsensical and ridiculous thing to be bothered by, is when they’re referred to as boyfriends or use terms of endearment on each other. I have no idea why it bothers me, it’s such a perfectly reasonable thing!!! I guess maybe I feel like they’ve just been friends with each other for so long and they know each other so well that they wouldn’t bother labeling it. At the end of the day, they’re still just Ethan and Benji, just like they’ve always been. I don’t know. I know it’s stupid, but it can still sometimes throw off the whole vibe of the fic for me. Which is ridiculous. I’m ridiculous.

Things I Look for in Fanfic

Good characterization. That’s such a big thing for me, especially now that Ethan and Benji have been my daydreaming muses for so long now. Their voices are so strong in my head, especially Benji’s. So a fic has to have really good characterization for me to love it. I also really like reading (and writing!) anything that deals with Benji’s trauma and hurt/comfort with Benji as the victim. He just deserves to be taken care of. Poor guy’s earned a hug or ten.

Who I’d be Comfortable Them Ending Up With, If Not Each Other

I suppose I’d be okay if Ethan and Ilsa ended up together. I really don’t want Ilsa to be demoted to the love interest, though. She’s such a good character, and Fallout already did her so dirty. But she’s the only other person I could see Ethan having a chance of being happy with. As for Benji, well… I think I’d just prefer him to stay a Single Pringle. If Ethan (or I!) can’t have him, no one can! I know Benji/Brandt is also a pretty popular ship, but it’s honestly just not my cup of tea. I can’t see it (or maybe I’m just too blinded by shipping Benthan so strongly).

My Happily Ever After for Them

Preferably for them to never ever set foot in the field again and buy a little house together where they host cozy holiday dinners and snuggle together on the couch after long days of training new agents and teaching them about the importance of the team dynamic. But, as I explained earlier, that’s unrealistic for these two. So, if they must remain in fieldwork, I pray that either they both manage to last long enough that they’re forced to retire (and then Benji will have to help Ethan cope with not being able to prevent bad things, so not exactly ideal) or that they both die together in the field, at the same time, so that neither of them will have to live with the guilt of losing the other (again, not ideal because then they’ll be DEAD).

Who is the Big Spoon/Little Spoon

Benji is the little spoon I don’t care if he’s taller I WILL FIGHT YOU ON THIS. Benji likes being held. It makes him feel safe after all he’s been through. Grounds him, you know? Gives him a sense of security. And Ethan likes holding Benji, because he knows that no one can hurt Benji when he’s there in Ethan’s arms, and even if Benji has nightmares, Ethan’s already right there to help him.

What is Their Favorite Non-sexual Activity

They are cuddlebugs. They snuggle everywhere, every chance they get. I don’t know if cuddling counts as an activity, though. I think they also like reading to each other. While cuddling. Because I can’t imagine a scenario where they could reasonably be in physical contact and yet wouldn’t be. So yeah. They like to cuddle.

002 | Benji

How I Feel About This Character

I… I love him. So much. Probably more than I should. Rogue Nation was the first M:I movie I saw, and I’d been kinda passively watching it until the high speed chase scene. I’d looked up from my crochet enough to notice Simon Pegg (who, at the time, was still just Scotty to me – can you believe that???), but then he started screaming during the chase, and I started paying attention, because hey, that’s exactly what I’d probably do in that situation, I like this guy. And then by the end of it Benji owned my heart, because Simon Pegg is a phenomenal actor and made me feel all of the emotions when Benji was strapped to the bomb. Mostly because Simon’s eyes are incredibly expressive, something I first noticed towards the end of Star Trek Into Darkness and still notice in most of his films. Then I went back and watched all the films, and I made small involuntary happy noises when he showed up in M:I:III. And he was so cute in Ghost Protocol. I nearly had a breakdown in the theater towards the end of Fallout (you know when I mean!) because I’m so attached to him. I actually legitimately said “Oh thank god” in the theater when it all worked out. I might have even cried a little. I was so worked up that I didn’t even fall for the bait-and-switch at the end. I didn’t have the emotional capacity to even process it as a possibility. So yeah, I think I’m unhealthily obsessed with Benji Dunn.

All the People I Ship Romantically with This Character

Ethan. It’s literally just Ethan. Ethan or bust.

My Non-romantic OTP for This Character

Benji and Ilsa are bros. Fire-forged friends. They’ve both gone against each other once or twice, but now they know where their loyalties lie, and they’ll help each other out when they need it. Total bros.

My Unpopular Opinion About This Character

I don’t know if I have one, really. Although I always kinda imagined Benji as a really good baker, or that he at least enjoys baking in his free time, but then I discovered that apparently a lot of people headcanon him as an awful cook? So maybe that’s one.

One Thing I Wish Would Happen/Had Happened with This Character in Canon

I just want his trauma to be addressed. He tries to talk about it in Ghost Protocol, and Jane and Ethan both look kinda worried, but then Brandt just jumps in and SHUTS HIM DOWN, and nothing more is said about it. And he’s been through much worse since then. Even if it’s just a simple, “Hey, you okay?” from LITERALLY ANYBODY. I’d take it. (I’d prefer it even more if Benji got a hug out of the deal. He needs a hug, poor baby.)

My OTP

Benthan. In case you haven’t figured it out by now.

My Crossover Ship

I have never actually considered this. And I’m not sure I will. I’m just so invested in Benthan, I don’t think I have the capacity to ship Benji with anybody else. I can’t even think of anyone he’d click so well with. (I’ve always been bad at the crackship thing anyway.) Maybe a lone Nick Frost character somewhere. Those always make for good ships, right?

A Headcanon Fact

Hmm… I’m really bad at this stuff, aren’t I? I either give away my answers way ahead of time or can’t come up with anything. Well, outside of Benji being a baker and my fun-to-think-about idea that all Simon Pegg characters are actually related to each other, I usually headcanon Benji as a pretty panicky sort. When I write his internal monologues, I usually get going with these long, looping, drawn-out sentences that all circle back and compound on each other and just make everything so much worse for him. He’s a worst-case-scenario kind of person. Even when things work out, he drives himself mad constantly running through the what-ifs. That’s probably me just projecting onto him a little, but I feel like it’s worked out okay in the few fics I’ve written. I also headcanon that he’s a big-time stargazer, especially when he feels overwhelmed, something that I originally chucked into a fic because I needed something for Benji to do (and also as a I’m-probably-the-only-one-who-got-it nod to Star Trek) but now I firmly stand by it as something he does.

There. That’s that. I started this two hours ago. I probably should’ve been in bed an hour and a half ago. This is ridiculously long. I hope someone finds my obsessive ramblings enjoyable instead of just irritating.

Thank you for giving me the chance to gush like this, Ruth! It feels like I never get to talk about the things I love often enough. At least not to people who actually want to hear me gush about them!

[xmanicpanicx]

One of the most important rules of writing: show, don’t tell

In my Writer’s Craft class in my senior year of high school, I had to write about a vacation I had taken. I know that sounds very third-grade, but my instructor told me that if I were to write about a vacation, I really had to make it my own, make it unique — it couldn’t just be a week-long vacay to the Caribbean where I did nothing but sit on the beach.

“What made this vacation special?” my teacher asked me.

“It didn’t always feel like a vacation,” I joked. “It was me, my two grandparents, my aunt and uncle, and my two cousins, plus our luggage crammed into a nine-seat van. We drove all over Italy like that.”

He smiled at me. “You just made it your own.”

Now I had to do it justice, which was no easy feat, especially when I only had a couple pages to work with. My piece got good reception from the class and my teacher for the most part. But one line I wrote was that my family and I took “cheesy tourist pictures.” When my classmates raised their hands to give their critiques, one girl said to me, “Cheesy tourist pictures… I don’t really know what that means.” At first, I thought, Pffft. Everyone knows what a cheesy tourist picture is.

That’s not entirely true, though, is it?

Because “cheesy tourist picture” is a broad, general term. Sure, most people probably get the concept of a cheesy tourist picture, but not the exact image. And the exact image, or damn near close to it, is crucial in creative writing. A cheesy tourist picture could mean zillions of different things. There are so many different combinations of monuments, tourists, meme poses, and so on.

So what was my particular cheesy tourist picture? Well, my family and I were at the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and we saw dozens of people posing as if they were holding up the tower, keeping it from toppling over. My uncle had the idea for my two cousins and I to line up before the tower in order of height. I was the tallest, so I was closest to the tower. He told me to put my hands up and push toward the tower like it was about to collapse on me, then told my younger cousin to push against my back like he was helping me, and then told my youngest cousin to push against his back to help him. The result was that, from the correct angle, the three of us looked like we were struggling to hold the tower up together. And I should have described that when I wrote this writer’s craft assignment. I should have made it my own.

Of course, I was working with a word limit at the time, which makes it difficult to describe an entire vacation in detail. But in real life, we don’t use such strict word limits in our creative writing. Chances are that our work will be longer than the two single-spaced pages I was allowed for the assignment.

So don’t gloss over important details with “telling” statements. Show the reader what’s going on. Make it play out in their mind like they’re watching it on the big screen or, better yet, in person.

How can you do this?

By using the five senses and concrete nouns in your descriptions.

A concrete noun is something you can process with at least one of your five senses. An abstract noun, on the other hand, is just something you understand intellectually. Examples include emotions like sadness and happiness.

But we don’t just understand happiness and sadness, you might say. We feel them.

Yes, indeed we do. We feel the physical sensations that go with them. We feel the effects that they have on our bodies and minds. That’s where the meat is. For example, if you want to portray that someone is nervous, don’t just write “So and so felt nervous.” Write the churning of their stomach. Write their cold, numb, tingly skin. Write their shortness of breath or their feelings of lightheadedness. This is how you make a reader feel alongside your character. Emotions may be almost universally understood, but that doesn’t mean that when people read the words “sad,” “happy,” or “nervous,” they’ll automatically feel those things. It’s easy to become detached from commonplace words, so our job as writers is to bring what those words represent to life for our readers.

It is so, so tricky to write emotion in a way that shows rather than tells, especially because writing emotions vividly can bring us to some pretty dark places. It’s something that we, as writers, might always have to struggle with.

However, there are some other things that are easier to show, such as appearance and action.

Writers often love to describe the way someone or something looks, so chances are you’re already in pretty good shape for this. Just in case, though, I’ll tell you that you need specifics. For example, don’t just write “So and so looked awful.” Awful how? Like they’ve been up all night tossing and turning? Describe their baggy, bloodshot eyes. Have they just gotten into a fight? Give a brief rundown of their bruises and cuts. Was it just a botched makeover? That’s hilarious. Describe what makes that makeover horrible.

In terms of action, I’ll give you another true-to-life example. Someone I had a Creative Writing class with (this person will remain anonymous) tried to describe a two-person fall through the wooden planks of a porch. But that’s basically all the detail they gave about it. That and “This character got the brunt of it.”

“What do you mean by ‘got the brunt of it’?” I asked this person in class. What part of the body, how badly? It could have meant that the character was knocked unconscious, broke a limb, or got a huge cut lined with splinters. Or it could simply have meant that Character One got the worst of the fall because Character Two fell on top of them — Character Two gets a nice, soft human body to land on, but Character One hits all the wood and solid ground underneath and has to deal with the bones and weight of Character Two landing on them. The story in question had great dialogue, but it was also a slapstick comedy, so showing techniques really needed to be present.

Here’s a good exercise to practice showing instead of telling: Any time you’re tempted to write a general or abstract statement, instead brainstorm ten ways you could make this statement visual, tangible, auditory, or otherwise concrete. What, specifically, does happiness (for instance) feel like for the five senses and in terms of internal bodily sensations? What does someone say or do when they feel happy? Feel free to make these actions and quirks specific to your character.

Be careful not to overdo it, though. Describing something in too much detail is as much of a turnoff as describing it in too little detail. A reader should not have to plow through more description than is truly necessary to get the image and feeling of the scene into their mind. It will pull them out of the story just as surely as plain telling text that is dead on the page. Keep descriptions concise.

Let’s go back to the “So and so looked awful” example. If you specifically want to convey that this person looks like they’ve been up all night, you could just say, “So and so’s eyes were baggy and bloodshot, her hair tangled like brambles around her head.” Don’t go writing, “So and so’s eyes had multiple little rivers of red snaking through their whites, and they were puffy underneath like hot air balloons. One lock of her hair fell in a scraggly curl down her face, another lock was tucked back, barely held in place by her ear, while yet another stuck out from the side of her head like a protruding tongue, etc., etc.” That is WAY too much. It’s okay to leave some of the image up to the imagination. That’s part of the fun of reading after all. The challenge of writing is finding that perfect middle ground — not dull, but not dialed up to 11 either.

One final note: It doesn’t matter which point of view you’re writing from, from first-person to third-person omniscient (meaning the narrator knows all). Showing just the right amount is always important. If you don’t immerse your reader in the story to the point where they feel like they’re experiencing it themselves, you may lose their attention, and you’ll have a hard time getting it back.

[wozman23]

Ode to Elf

Today, Netflix released a new miniseries, The Holiday Movies That Made Us, which features 45 minutes of insight into the creation and making of Elf. It’s worth the watch for any Elf fan. I made plans today to watch it, and immediately chased it with the full length film. I’ve always been a ginormous Elf fan! I think it is debatably Will Ferrell’s best film - rivaled possibly by Step Brothers, and with a few others close on its heels. But I’ll even one up that statement by saying it is easily the greatest Christmas movie, as well as one of the greatest movies of all time. (My Top 3 are probably The Jerk, Billy Madison, and Elf.)

The mini-documentary is the perfect supplement, really putting a bow on what makes Elf so great. I encourage everyone to go watch it, but I'll be bringing up just a few of the things discussed in it, and elsewhere, for the sake of further proving that Elf is a classic.

As is seen in many Hollywood cases, there was some trepidation going in. The screenplay was written ten years prior in 1993, with Jim Carrey in mind. At one point, there were talks to feature Chris Farley, but writer, David Berenbaum, did not like that direction, citing it would have been a very different movie. And as much as I love Farley, and wish he were still around making movies, I agree. Both he and Jim would probably have been great playing their own version of the character in their own unique way, but, while I may be biased since Will Ferrell is my favorite comedic actor, I think the role ultimately found the perfect Buddy with Will. He just hits perfectly on playing the sweet, naive, innocent yet clueless fish-out-of-water. It’s also what makes Step Brothers so good. Even many of his other characters, like Ron Burgundy, have a little bit of that DNA dipped into contrastingly more vain, reckless, foolish personality traits. I think there’s no greater type of comedic hero than the innocently stupid comedic hero. It’s pretty apparent from my Top 3, as well as my love for similar archetypes like Will Forte’s MacGruber, Joe Dirt, or Conan himself.

Now I’ve been on the Ferrell Train since the mid-90s, growing up on that generation of SNL and Night at the Roxbury. In college, not long before Elf, I went to a screener for Old School, which was one of Will’s early big screen breakout performances. Yet apparently, in the process of getting Elf greenlit in the early 2000s, prior to Old School, there weren’t many executives willing to take a shot on a movie where Will played the lead. What a bunch of cottonheaded ninnymuggins!

But those involved stuck to their guns, and they eventually convinced someone to hand them 30 million dollars to make the film. From there, an incredible string of smart decisions were made as talent was brought on board.

Writer, David Berenbaum, and his team of relative unknowns at the time had some key qualities that they wanted Elf to have. David took a lot of inspiration from the Rankin/Bass stop motion classic, Rudolph - which if you know much about me, you know how much I love it as well, being a misfit and all. (I wrote about it here six years ago.) Yet I never really realized just how much Rudolph inspired it, so it was a joy to see the documentary explain just how much of Rudolph permeates Elf’s story, themes, presentation, costumes, and set design.

When director Jon Favreau signed on, he shared some input that really cemented him as the perfect director. He too wanted to double down on the Rankin/Bass homage. He also wanted it to be a nice family Christmas movie, one that you could share with your kids, as well as a timeless Christmas classic. Check, check, and check! Mission accomplished!

There were some other interesting facts I didn’t know as well. The casting feels perfect. However, the original casting choice for Walter, Buddy’s dad, was for Garry Shandling. With great respect to Garry Shandling, I think their back up, James Caan was a much better fit. Caan really brings home the qualities of a cold, isolated businessman that a likeable Garry would have had to really sell. You need that non-comedic straight character for that role. Ed Asner plays a perfect Santa, as we’ve seen multiple times. And Bob Newheart is a terrific Papa Elf. Plus, this brilliant pairing of Will and Mary Steenburgen was just a hint of what was to come via Step Brothers and The Last Man on Earth. There are a lot of great supporting actors as well, like the writing duo of Andy Richter and Kyle Gass, and the secretary, Amy Sedaris. And last but not least, Zooey Deschanel. She’s been my muse for years now, but Elf was the moment I fell in love with her. Her character was pitched as everything under the sun, but finding a singer just complements everything so well. The one thing that’s always seemed weird to me is the shower scene. What kind of department store has a full locker room with a shower?! But when logistics is your only complaint about a movie, you know it must be good. One other interesting casting tidbit involves Jovie’s boss, played by comedian Faizon Love. He was a last minute add. They thought they had Wanda Sykes onboard, so much so that they already had the Wanda name tag for the costume. Faizon stuck with it, donning the name tag, so the character remains Wanda. I don’t know that I ever noticed that.

Early in production, the decision was made to avoid using CGI. Effects with actors were all achieved via some trickery with perspective. And the stop motion characters duties were handled by The Chiodo Brothers, who I oddly just learned about a few months back when I stumbled upon the 1988 cult classic, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, tucked deep in my Netflix recommendations. (If you enjoy campy horror films, I highly recommend it.) Growing up on the works of Jim Henson, I’ve always appreciated the use of analog means over digital options. Choosing that route for Elf paid off immediately, and will go a long way at allowing the film to maintain that timeless quality. As with any movie, there were conflicts. When the movie was originally screened, execs thought it would be smart to cut the final heartwarming singing scene and just end with Santa flying away - once again adding to a tremendous pile of dumb ideas that the suits have had over the years when it comes to controlling creative projects. The team was a bit taken aback by it, but apparently with Will Ferrell’s recent box office success with Old School, there were thoughts of cutting the film differently, favoring a style similar to Will’s Frank the Tank character instead of the lovably innocent Buddy. Cooler heads eventually prevailed when they realized that would be impossible given the footage, and we got the film as it stands today, as intended.

I vividly remember anticipating the movie. It’s probably one of my most anticipated films of all time. It felt like every week there was a new preview, a new cut chocked full of new jokes and gags. After what seemed like a dozen of them, I was growing a bit concerned that there would be nothing new left to see when the film found its way to theaters. Then release time came, I paraded myself off to the theater, and I was dumbfounded by just how much comedy was packed into that 90 minutes. The quantity and quality of the humor is impressive. Every scene feels important, and was iterated on for maximum humor. Will’s improvisation constantly enhances scenes. Like many of Ferrell’s movies, it’s an insanely quotable movie, but it’s not all just written jokes and physical comedy. There are some great silent parts, like just capturing Buddy’s reactions. And one of my favorite moments can easily be missed, when Buddy is caught on the evening news, traipsing through Central Park. It’s staged exactly like Patterson–Gimlin Bigfoot footage, with a similar gait, a peek over the shoulder, and somewhat blurry camera footage.

Little details like that are precisely the things that make Elf the classic is set out to be. It feels like it was written for a misfit like me, catering to my loves for Bigfoot, Rudolph, and a lovably naive comedic hero. It’s funny and silly, yet heartwarming and endearing. And its a film I’d happily sit down and watch with any kid from one to ninety-two, regardless of whether it’s the month of December, or some time in early April. P.S. There have been talks about a sequel. James Caan recently conjectured that it never happened because Ferrell and Favreau “didn’t get along very well.” Those two are both far more successful these days, and could easily back the project if they wanted to. But as much as I love Elf, sometimes things are just too good to risk repeating with lackluster results. Look no further than the last franchise I wrote about, Ghostbusters. An Elf 2 would probably easily make a profit, regardless of quality. It could even be a good movie. But there’s probably a greater chance that it wouldn’t hold a candle to the original. The story is perfect, and contains itself well. There’s no need for a continuation. It’s really hard to top something when the bar was set so stratospherically high the first time. And attempting to do so could easily diminish the efforts of the original, sabotaging everything Berenbaum, Favreau, and the team achieved. Elf is the Rudolph of this generation: a timeless classic with a tremendous amount of heart. Let’s just appreciate it for that, and leave it as it is, for everyone to enjoy with everyone they enjoy.

[scribeofred]

ALL OF EM

fine fine, bully me into it

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

As spacespirit and I were hashing out ideas and writing the outline, we settled on a four-scene system for each chapter: the first one year ago in past tense, second present time in present tense, a cut to the next chapter’s main POV to foreshadow, then a return to the main POV. It seemed like an effective way to tell the story we wanted to share, although it did mean we weren’t able to flesh out certain areas (our antagonist) as much as we wanted, which is why we began a sequel.

 2: What scene did you first put down?

This is technically SS’s area, since she wrote the first draft, but this is sitting at the very top of our outline and the only line we prewrote:

“Virgil, I just had my screaming brother’s body bleeding out under my hands. Do you think I’m okay?”

 3: What’s your favorite line of narration?

HRMMM. I haven’t actually finished re-reading the last two chapters they’re long, okay, so I’m not certain, but I’ve always liked ‘Bits of glass twinkle in her dark, curly hair and spread across her shoulders like droplets of starlight.’ But also: ‘Virgil’s eyes flicker between him and Scott, glinting like coals under pressure as they catch the light.’ Because Virgil has pretty eyes.

 4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

No specific line comes to mind, but again, that might change as I finish proofreading. The final chapter has some fantastic conversations. Out of the stuff I’ve read so far, SS has always written a killer Gordon, such as this passage from chapter two:

“I’m on messenger duty,” Gordon announces, as though International Rescue has a ground runner instead of the world’s most advanced comms system. “Apparently I’m a pawn now, because they’ve had me racing between buildings ever since—well. You know. Anyway, I came to tell you that more firefighters have arrived and are on their way now. Heading to Virg’s position first, I’m afraid—the hospital has priority, which means this baby’s going to have to burn a little while longer. Scott and John are practically finished.” A grin stretches beneath worried eyes. “They demanded I check on you.”

 5: What part was hardest to write?

Only SS knows. I got the unbelievable pleasure of merely rewriting the whole story. Apparently John gave her quite a bit of trouble, iirc.

 6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?

SS and I wrote it together, so that was a novel—ha—experience. I didn’t have to do, what is for me, the extremely difficult process of writing the first draft, I just had to rewrite it into a tighter and/or expanded version.

 7: Where did the title come from?

The idea of mirrors and the dual nature of all the scenes, the fact that everything seems to be happening a second time. The duology was going to be called Fractured and the second fic Diffraction. We spent a whole evening flicking through Wikipedia pages trying to settle on the right trio of names, because writers. and I may post the sequel chapters here who knows

 8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?

Not on my part, but I was merely rewriting, not writing

 9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

There was an alternate idea we were playing with for chapters four and five, which would have required we rewrite baaaaasically everything, and maybe we might have gone through with it if we could’ve made it work. It would have required huge effort, though, and I didn’t feel up to undertaking the process by myself.

 10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?

nonapplicable.

 11: What do you like best about this fic?

Probably the fact that we successfully blended the worlds of TOS and TAG into the ideal combination we both had existing in our heads prior to writing Reflection, and that we agreed on far, far more elements than we argued over. The whole process was surprisingly easy, which made it really enjoyable to work on. It was far more fun than it was frustrating.

 12: What do you like least about this fic?

The emotions are A Bit Dramatic sometimes; maybe one day I’ll do a large-scale edit and tone them down.

 13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

Oh! I mostly listen to instrumental music while reading/writing/editing, but I very vividly remember reading the first draft of Virgil’s chapter and listening to Mr Fijiwiji’s “We Are the Lights”. I also listened to it on a loop during the seven hour drive home from my grandpa’s funeral and managed to rewrite almost all of Virgil’s chapter during that time. I always think of that day and this story when I hear it now. Aside from that, no, Reflection doesn’t have a single song or a playlist associated with it, not for me. I remember the images I used in Scrivener for each chapter more than the music.

 14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

I know I didn’t set out with any sort of learning-driven agenda, and SS and I never discussed including a moral or anything of the sort. We just wanted to write an entertaining story, foremost for ourselves, but hopefully something the fandom at large could enjoy.

 15: What did you learn from writing this fic?

I learned that SS writes INCREDIBLY FAST FIRST DRAFTS. Seriously, it’s mind-boggling. Seven thousand words would drop into my lap, and I’d just stare. Regarding myself… I learned that having a co-author is the way I prefer to write, and that it’s very, very, very difficult to find another co-author who’s on the same level as her. Writing Reflection was an experience I can only describe as having an author-soulmate.

[azure-platter-writes]

Goodbye chapter one: It Was Just a Party

This is the story of our adventure, if you could even call it that, on the Isle of Avila-- you know, the abandoned one just a little ways out, you can see it clearly on a nice night. I prefer to call it my trip to Hell. Well anyway, it was the summer of, I think ‘09. I was around sixteen and my best friend, Roxy, invited me and some people from school to a beach party. I didn’t really want to go, but she made me anyway. Kept saying I needed to get out of the house. She went to this kind of party the year before with the guy she was dating and it turned into an oversized kegger, till the cops showed up and most of the kids got arrested for underage drinking. Apparently, the whole school was there and everyone talked about it for the next week. I vaguely remember someone mentioning it.

A week before the party, my mom, who was on the ‘hunt’ since my dad left, sat me down and told me she was getting married and I’d have a new brother. I met the two at dinner the following day. They had been staying in a hotel for the past three weeks until mom made the revelation to me. I don’t know why she didn’t introduce them to me before they came to town. Turns out my soon-to-be brother was the new guy in town Roxy had been crushing on since he showed up and started working at the coffee shop near our school, so I invited him to the party. Roxy was over the moon when I told her.

The rest of that week was spent moving my mom’s new fiance, Theodore, and his son in. They didn’t have a lot of stuff, just clothes and my brother had some mementos of his mother. She had passed away two years before. Roxy was a big help making them feel welcome. She spent every moment she could flirting. When the day of the party rolled around, Roxy came over and we spent the day picking out clothes to wear. She did most of the picking and a lot of flirting. We ended up deciding ripped jeans along with our favorite t-shirts, hers a band t-shirt, mine a galaxy design. Around seven, the three of us left for the beach. Roxy said the others would be waiting with the drinks and food. One of the guys, Jake, had a fake ID and bought us booze. I had met him before the party, but we weren’t really friends. He wasn’t the type to really have too many friends. He was a bit of a loner.

We got to the beach and there were only six people there. The Rollin twins, Alice and Dorothy, Jake Peters, and us. Jake had started a fire and we sat around it drinking. It was super awkward since Alice dated Jake the year before when Dorothy had a major crush on him, but so did Roxy, and they didn’t talk to each other till they broke up.

Back to the relevant story, we all started to get bored, we had been playing a rather boring game of never have I ever when Roxy had the brilliant idea of showing my brother around the supposedly haunted, Kira Island. In hindsight, it wasn’t such a good idea. Of course, she knew we couldn’t swim there. So again her brilliant brain came up with another idea: take a boat. At the time it sounded like a great idea, of course. That was after we all had a little too much to drink-- except my brother, who hadn’t had a drop. We crept as quietly as we could, which wasn’t quiet at all until we found a   just able to hold six people, the oars inside. Lucky us. As I look back I think we were meant to find that boat and oars. Just another way for those wretched things to get their claws in us.

When we got to the island, Roxy led us to the outside of an old cave. The most haunted part of the island, if you believed the tales. She said that a big cruise liner crashed there years ago, like in the nineteen hundreds or something. Apparently hundreds or maybe it was thousands died when it sunk. No one survived, but it’s not like we believed her.

I had my phone with me, in case of emergency, and I got it out to take a picture of Roxy in front of the cave mouth. Right after the picture was taken, it started to ring.

Doing what any drunken teenager would do, I answered it. It started as morse code, then a radio broadcast. The guy talking was weird, to say the least. He wasn’t making any sense. First, he said something about the S.S. Perry, then about a mass funeral. It shifted to another guy yelling about rescue being pointless. Then about water flooding the bridge. I can’t remember. It hurts to remember. They don’t want me to remember, but I do.

Josh grabbed my phone and hung up. Roxy and the Rollin twins were panicking. My brother kept yelling at me, but I couldn’t hear him. All I could hear was static and screaming. The screams weren’t from our group. Hundreds of screams pierced my ears. I couldn’t take it.

The next thing I knew, they had all faded out. I was on the beach, it was sunny out. A few kids were playing in the ocean, their parents sunbathing. I was sitting on a beach towel, a book in my hands. My sister pulled it out of my hands.

“You need to go swimming,” she’d always say, “that’s why we came here.”

Her voice was always so soft and sweet. I remember it so vividly. While everything else turns to hazy memories. She’s always clear, her smile, the games we used to play. She always took care of me.

My brother sat next to me. Josh was tending the fire, and the girls had calmed down. My brother helped me sit up and leaned me against a rock. The cave was giving off a soft blue, almost white light, but I guess I was the only one that saw it. My brother sat next to me.

“How are you feeling?” his voice was soft like hers once was. “You fainted. Josh and I moved you over here so you wouldn’t overheat while unconscious.” I leaned against the rock, wiping the tears from my cheeks.

I was feeling like crap, but I’d never tell him that. My phone was in his hand, he kept flipping it back and forth. He looked me in the eye, his big amber eyes boring into my tear-stained baby blues. He handed me back my phone.

“The number didn’t save in the call log. What happened?” He ran his hand through his chestnut hair.

Before I could answer, Roxy joined us. She was worried, that was obvious. She sat down and the floodgates opened. Question after question flew out of her mouth with no filter. I can’t even remember them all, but she was relentless.

When the questions did finally stop, the twins were falling asleep and Josh had almost burnt himself twice. My brother was staring vacantly at the wall in front of us. Roxy was trying not to squeal at, in her own words, the most adorable sight ever. Gross, right? She should’ve been more serious. It was her life on the line anyway. Roxy eventually left us alone, the silence making me a bit uncomfortable. He looked me in the eye once more. There was this mischievous glint in them. I should’ve never gone to this freakin island. He grabbed my hand and dragged me deep into the cave.

“Let’s go,” he whispered.

We stopped in front of a smaller opening. It was glowing so brightly I had to cover my eyes. He pulled me deeper. As we passed the threshold, my phone began to ring. It was Roxy’s number. Forgetting she didn’t have her phone, I answered it.

A dark voice was on the line. He was speaking in different voices. Like he had taken several radio broadcasts and cut them together to create sentences. My brother must’ve gotten worried because he tore my phone away and hung up. He pulled me into a hug and asked if I was okay. I was fine though. Wasn’t I? He sat me down, my body shaking. I felt his arms around me, but that was it. I couldn’t feel myself, or the rocks around us. The ground seemed to fade away. I was floating. Reality began to float away. The walls melted. All that was left was myself and Him. A flash of red blurred my vision. Then the dark voice, clearer this time. It spoke of my friends and how there was no escape for us or them. How we were stuck there till the end of time with them. How we’d never see our families again. The sounds shifted. It was two people now. They were screaming that our lives, as well as theirs, were over. The screams hurt. My ears were bleeding. His arms were no longer around me. He wasn’t there. I was alone. The voices left too. I was alone drifting through empty space.

I woke up on the cave floor. He was sitting next to me, holding His bleeding head. I sat up, pain in my back and head. I groaned, catching His attention. He released His head and help me sit up. He tore His shirt into strips. He tied a strip around my head and one around Him. To help stop the bleeding, was what He said.

While we rested, my head was pounding and his humming wasn’t helping. I had rested my head back on his legs. For his athleticness, he was quite soft. He started to thread his fingers in my hair, softly and tenderly, lulling me to sleep.

    The bright lights hurt my eyes. I was back on the beach, but it was sunny and children were playing. I was about four or five, my father was there. I was playing in the sand, with a young boy. He couldn’t have been much older than me. My mother was sitting in a beach chair drinking something. It was strange, like deja vu. My hair was long and tied up in pigtails. I don’t remember the boy ever being in my life. He had this golden hair and eyes that shone as bright as the ocean. He looked like me, like dad. The scene faded, he started fading, “No” I screamed, I didn’t want it to go away. I didn’t want to go back to that hell.    

When I woke up, we went on. As we went deeper into the cave, the light was getting brighter. As though the rocks themselves were glowing. The bright blue had become white and was now dulling to a soft pink as my head throbbed and the world spun. He helped me sit down, leaning me gently against a rock. I was shaking. He was strong. Like He would have carried me if He wanted to. Probably from all the sport’s He played. Captain of the football, basketball, and track teams at his old school. He must’ve been really popular. It must’ve sucked to be forced to move here. Away from His friends and daunting fans. At least he’d be accepted at school. If He ever got to see it.

@delvsum @reeseweston @missrobinswritings @ghost-possum @fannistwrites @infinitebadashianqueen

[mjxartbox]

Assignment 1 – Interactive Disney Cube (03/09/2017)

As I am finally starting with our Creative Thinking Skills classes, our first project was assigned to us which was the Disney Interactive Cube at around Week 4, although the lecturers had told us about it way beforehand, we only started getting the briefing during that time of the month. Like what the cube is called, we had to make something out with the theme of Disney cartoons and I was in glee and full of excitement as I am a cartoon geek, I technically grow up watching Disney.

Mr Choy, our tutor, assigned us to be in groups of 5 to 6 people and I am blessed to join a group of teammates that are hardworking and accepted me whole heartedly although I joined in late (got change to another tutorial class that’s why). During tutorial classes, we got a quick briefing from Mr Choy in how we can create our cubes and also our IDJ. IDJ stands for Idea Journal and it is where we jot down our ideas, inspiration and anything related to the project, you will hear a lot of this throughout the blog. After briefing, Mr Choy picked a designated Disney movie to each group, I was not worried that much since, like I said, I love anything Disney, but still got a bit nervous upon what movie will we get. Some groups got really interesting movies like Frozen and Monster Inc, finger crossing we will get something similar, we ended up with Pinocchio, yes that Pinocchio that came out during the 1940s, well before all of us were born. I did not want to think that it is an impossible movie to interpret into a cube, and it really help cause I got an idea really fast on how I wanted the cube to look like.

After the classes, my teammates and I immediately started doing meet ups to discuss about how we want the cube to look like. Natasha was our group leader and I can say she did a great job in making sure all of our ideas are being used in the project and not just merely focusing on someone’s idea. This is something crucial as it is a team oriented project, teamwork is really important and I am glad she took all our idea in account. We finalized on how we wanted the cube to be, we wanted it to be a more story narration with interactive element for children to play around. It was a rough start since we were all clueless of how the cube will really look like as we bombarded a lot of different ideas on it, never thinking how limited we are actually if we were to create that certain element in the box. But making sure our ideas do not go to a waste, we have them written down to refer it back. I was beyond happy to do most of the sketches so we can see our model more vividly through the drawings. Without wasting a single second, we collected all sorts of materials we can use for the project, although I felt bad for not providing that much material because I just moved in to the university dorm and got insufficient material with me.

Since we have prepared our materials, every moment started becoming more precious to us as the time we were left to make the cube out with was getting lesser and lesser. To make sure we get to have our cube submitted on time, we gathered up almost every day after our classes to start building it up from scratch. Trust me, it was NOT easy, Natasha and Esther had to spend around 4 hours to just make the base shape of the cube (shout out to both of them!) because we wanted it to be a “exploding box” cube, which was inspired by the exploding box card where the flaps of the box will fall down to reveal a flat surface. I was in charge on most of the drawings and brainstorming I assume since I contributed some ideas that made it into the cube (YAY). Our main idea for how the box will work was that the lid will be removed so the flaps on the box will fall flat, appearing in the middle is another smaller box so we can paste the scenes on it. But what is more surprising for this part is, we will take away the middle box at the end of the presentation as the inside is the ending of the Pinocchio story, that Pinocchio turned into a real boy! We first started with the 4 main scenes, which is the puppet making scene, circus scene, pleasure island scene and last but not least the climax, the whale scene. Looking at the idea that was not as interesting, we came up with an idea of adding another scene in it, which was cooperating the circus scene with the prison scene, where Pinocchio were trapped in a bird cage. We wanted the circus scene to drop down and show out the prison scene at the back. We painted the box with base colours and have our pieces of printed background pasted on it. When everything was glued together, it was so satisfying because it felt like we are getting somewhere.

The scenes were done so we went on with making small elements. Since we wanted a story telling base interactive cube, we made small little elements to write story lines on it. And to make things interesting, we made the characters out into puppets as an interpretation of what Pinocchio is -a puppet! Well, more precisely, a marionette but we were short of time to figure out how we can manage to make a real marionette out, thus leading us to make the puppet cut outs. We also thought of explaining how the whole box is Pinocchio’s head and the inside is all his thoughts, and the characters are all puppets since he thought of so! (Shout out to Jolene for the fantastic idea!) Having to prepare al the small details was one of the toughest as we need to make sure that everything fits nicely in place as we need to close the box. Not only so, we have to make sure every elements are not boring, and from there we have to start up with more creative way to make the interactive parts more doable. Since we wanted to rush everything before the dateline, we have to stay over on Saturday to finish up most of the thing. We managed to finish up about 80% of the cube, having to make the miniature pool table, sticking on the miniature Pinocchio, pasted on the whale to the box, making sure all the mechanics work and just almost everything. It was a hectic day because we spent about 6 to 7 hours straight that day to complete most of the task. Glad that everyone took the effort to come to campus although they are busy that day.

We continued our project after classes and there was only a few days left before the due date. Lucky enough, we only have a few things to do before we completely end our interactive cube. We also manage to get our hands with some leftover Perspex to make a “display box” for our miniature Pinocchio. Since we are done with the inside of the box, we finally got to focus on the outside of it more. Having to already paint the head of Pinocchio, we were only left with his eyes and his hat, which will be a decoration for the lid. We have our ping pong ball cut into two to be the eyes of Pinocchio, and as for the hat, we rolled yellow cards together to form into a cone. We also painted a white colour feather that we have on hand into red to fit as the feather on his hat. As everything was assembled together, we finally got the chance to try it out. We were really happy at how the outcome turned out since we poured our hard work in, although we were also worried at the same time whether can we meet our lecturers and tutors expectation. But still, we were relieved as we did the cube on time.

In between the making of the cube, I also managed to do a few parts of my IDJ. At the end of the cube making, we all discussed on how we wanted to interpret the box for the last part of our IDJ. From there, everyone was busy working on their IDJ to make sure we can submit the PDF version on time. I had already printed out and pasted most of the pictures on the IDJ so I was only left with the writings and drawings. As I finally completed the IDJ, my first assignment finally came to an end, and there is left is the presentation. I had a lot of fun from this project, especially getting to meet all the nice teammates I have and letting me be a part of it. I am not the type that likes group works as I am always being neglected but I would love to work with them again if I had the chance to!

Signed, MJ

[murasaki-murasame]

Monogatari Series Rewatch Part 1: Bakemonogatari [Hitagi Crab]

I was planning to keep up with the rewatch going on over at the anime subreddit, in preparation for Owari S2 coming out, but I got sidetracked and now it’s been going on for like a month and a half. Hoo boy. Let’s try and get this done before the next season starts. This whole thing is just gonna me my vague unplanned ramblings as I rewatch each arc. I’m caught up on the anime, outside of the Kizu films, so I’m not really gonna avoid spoiling later stuff. Keep that in mind.

More under the cut. [This got a bit longer than expected. Huh]

So here we are. Owari S2 is finally approaching and so now I’m finally getting around to rewatching the entire series. Woo. Truth be told, I haven’t actually rewatched this series at all since I first saw it around 2013 or so, outside of stuff like the OPs/EDs and a few random good scenes I could find on youtube. So it’s been a while since I first watched this arc, to put it lightly.

Probably the most surreal part of this was just how much I actually remember quite vividly. But that’s largely due to having seen like a thousand screenshots and reaction images from the show over the last few years. I’m almost more used to seeing this show in static image form rather than in motion, so this took some getting used to. It made it feel pretty nostalgic, at least.

I’d definitely forgotten the extent of how bizarre and sort of creepy and tense the early parts of the show were. It definitely gets toned down a little in later seasons. It makes a lot of sense in hindsight that the director of this season worked on Kizu after this and someone else took up work on the rest of the series. I kinda wish that some of the artistic decisions from this point were used more/at all later in the series. Like that really Sayonaya Zetsubou Sensei-esque part of Araragi having his head ripped off and spaghetti flying everywhere. I completely forgot that happened, so that threw me off a bit. I kinda loved it, though.

On the topic of artistic elements, it’s interesting to me how ambitious and dense this still feels even though you can tell how Shaft was probably falling apart at the seams as a company behind the scenes. It still feels remarkably similar to later parts of the series, just less polished. It probably helps that the version I’m watching seems to be the BD version. Not sure how that’ll hold up for future seasons. Anyway, I love the attention to detail with how all the characters move and pose and talk. This show really knows how to sell you on it’s characters immediately. The whole first-person POV scene of Araragi talking to Hanekawaw and fidgeting with his pen, with it almost always covering her eyes, was a pretty fantastic scene in general, with setting up the dynamic they have, and his personality. I kinda wish there were more scenes like that, but even in Bake I don’t remember there being any others. It’s fitting that it’s one of the first proper scenes we get of Araragi, though, since it helps to immediately set up the idea of us seeing things through his eyes, both literally and metaphorically. The way that this show plays with concepts of unreliable narration in a visual way really is amazing, even if most people, including me, tend to not notice it before we start getting arcs from the POV of other characters. But I’ll get into that when the time comes. Which won’t be until the SS arcs, really.

I read this arc in LN form a few months ago when it came out, and seeing this arc again in anime form, it just makes me more and more surprised at how much Shaft added to the experience. Logically I knew that the LN wasn’t exactly gonna have art or music or voice acting, but it surprised me how relatively . . . barren it felt, and how much slower the pacing seemed. But I’ll talk about that more if/when I do a big review post of the three Bake LNs.

The relative plainness of the LN’s tone made it even more surreal and interesting to be reminded just how dark and creepy and sinister and fast-paced this arc in particular feels in the anime. I really love it. Especially the weird little Kizu recap at the start [which was kinda odd to watch when we now have the Kizu films to compare it with]. And the rapid text flashes and such. It’s a great example of how much artistic direction can affect the atmosphere of something like this.

It feels weird to talk about the actual story of this arc, at least since I don’t want to literally recap the entire thing or anything. And I don’t want to get ahead of myself and talk about how this plays into other arcs, especially Kizu. I guess I’ll work it out as I go along. Anyway, one thing I definitely want to talk about is that I’d somehow forgotten, at least before I read the LN version of this arc, that Senjougahara was a victim of sexual assault. Since it’s basically never mentioned again after this arc. I really appreciate how this series can touch upon some surprisingly serious, real-life stuff in realistic and nuanced ways, while still having such a bombastic, comedic atmosphere most of the time. It’s neat. It makes me appreciate that she’s depicted almost always as being completely in control of herself and her body, and that she’s the one who tends to be romantically forward with Araragi. Obviously this is part of the unreliable narration and everyone else sees her as being way more ‘normal’, so to say, but still. Sometimes the fanservice in this series is a bit . . . iffy, but as a whole the story avoids handling Senjougahara in too gross of a manner, in the context of what happened to her in the past.

Which reminds me, it still surprises me how much I like their relationship, considering how much I tend to be turned off by perverted male MCs and tsundere female love interests. I honestly can’t really fully explain WHY I like them so much, but I do. It’s actually one of the few m/f ships I genuinely really like, instead of feeling sorta ambivalent toward [or outright disliking]. Who would have thought?

I don’t have a lot to say about Araragi at this very moment, at least since the more interesting parts of his character play out in later arcs. But I do really, really like Senjougahara, and I wish she appeared more in later arcs. She’s just immediately compelling as a character. I love how weighty and overwhelming and sharp her presence in so many scenes feel, as Araragi tries to keep up with her. And I quite like her softer side, which we see at the end of the arc.

I also still really love basically every OP and ED in this entire series, even though I feel like I never quite liked this arc’s OP and Bake’s ED as much as most people do. I feel like a lot of the later OPs feel more interesting and memorable, and I tend to find all the EDs in this series to be a bit forgettable for some reason. Oh well. I still love the art in the ED though, and I appreciate that they kept that style intact for the later ones.

I feel like this post in particular might end up being longer than later ones since there’s a lot to get off my chest right at the start. Hah. My other ramble posts will probably be shorter. Dunno about the review posts I might do for each entire season, though.

P.S: If there’s anything I’d like to get across in this entire rewatch, it’s that, even if there’s some iffy elements that I sorta ignore, there’s still a whole list of elements to this series that I adore, which have nothing to do with fanservice. As a gay man, it sometimes bugs me when people act like this series is nothing but cute girls, as if there’d be no room to like the series at all if cute girls aren’t your thing. So I want to let myself ramble about all the other parts of the show and how much I love them. [Though, ironically enough, there’s actually some elements to the fanservice that I genuinely appreciate, which I’ll probably mention as they appear. Which I already sorta did a bit in this post. Sometimes people go a little overboard about acting like the fanservice in this show is pure art and that all of it has purpose and meaning outside of, ya know, fanservice. There’s definitely parts of it worth discussing and praising, but lol let’s not kid ourselves, this series is definitely aimed largely at people who like cute girls, and that’s fine.]