#ALSO YES I KNOW TECHNICALLY THE SONG WOULD MAKE MORE SENSE WITH RED WITHIN THE ORIGINAL CONTEXT
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bffsoobin · 4 years ago
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33
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➤ soobin x reader, fluff, very slight angst, idiot best friends oblivious to their mutual pining
↳ prompt 33: “Are you SURE I can’t punch him in the face?” “Yes.” “What if I just break his nose a little?
requested?: yes
warnings: swearing, mentions of small injury
A/N: I’m sorry if you were expecting more explicit romance but I feel like this prompt worked better as a mutual pining idiots plot. Also apologies if this is lack luster, it’s been a few months since I wrote anything non-academic! 
•:•.•:•.•:•:•:•:•:•:•:•☾☼☽•:•.•:•.•:•:•:•:•:•:•:••:•.•
You huddle underneath your comically large black umbrella as sheets of torrential rain pound down on it, washing across the pavement below your feet as if following the tide of the ocean. Your sneakers are soaked, squeaking pathetically as you shift your weight from foot to foot and grimace at the feeling of your socks soggy between your toes. Normally you would have been huddled in your dorm room, working on homework from the morning’s classes or watching reruns of Catfish just to grumble about how stupid a person could be.
But your best friend had texted you with a code blue, so you found yourself in the back parking lot of the campus library, enduring the rain that could only mean Noah’s Arc was due to float by any second. Wind whips your hair into your face cruelly and temporarily blinds you, as if mocking you for daring to brave the storm. You can do little more than scrunch your face oddly and shake your head from side to side in a desperate bid to get the locks away from you since there was no way in hell you were taking a hand off of your umbrella just to push your hair back. A car peels into the parking lot just as you clear your vision. It’s a humble silver sedan, a Hyundai of almost 20 years old, with streaks of rust on the back bumper and a sun-faded license plate. Even in the rain you can make out the litany of decals covering the back end, especially your favorite which boasts the term “MILF: Man I Love Frogs” in bold green letters.
There’s no hesitation in your step as you slosh through the rain to yank at the passenger’s side door, jiggling it several times until the telltale click of the unlock allows you to heave it open fully. Suddenly worried about the state of the car-which is littered with coffee cups, extra clothing, loose notebooks and sheet music and fast food receipts- you shake the umbrella off outside of the car before snapping it shut and closing the door. Beside you Soobin laughs, short and low.
“Thanks for shaking off your umbrella. Really counteracts the gallons of water your brought in with your shoes and pants.” He glances pointedly at where your feet soak the tan carpet into a dark brown and you bristle.
“Thanks for calling a code blue in the middle of a rainstorm. I wouldn’t have fucked your car up if you didn’t have an emergency.” Your voice softens at the reminder of why you’re here, and you finally turn to face him better after you buckle up. He’s devastatingly handsome, as always, but you feel your heart stutter at the fact that he’s wearing the hoodie you bought him for Christmas, the one he had almost slapped you for spending so much money on. It’s slightly damp from the rain and it casts his face in shadows along with the shitty weather and for once you hate the way it looks on him. He drives without asking, already knowing exactly where he wanted to go to talk out whatever had happened.
“I wouldn’t call it a total emergency,” he begins as Spotify takes a few seconds to switch between songs. “Just something I needed you to be in the loop for ASAP.” He looks your way again, eyes calculating for a few moments before the light turns green and he’s making the all too familiar right turn into the tasty and underrated diner that you discovered as freshmen. The rain has not slowed at all and the two of you run into the building to avoiding getting too wet, although your feet squelch with renewed vigor on the red and white tiled floor.
The lighting is much better at your favorite table, and after you place your order you’re able to finally get a good look at Soobin. His soft eyes are rimmed red and puffy, and you can’t tell if it’s the weather, the lack of sleep or his persistent allergies that are the cause. Maybe all three, or maybe something new entirely. He’s staring back at you just as clearly, studying your own face and mannerisms even though it had been years since anything about him was new to you. Of course, other than the day he casually pulled you into his chest and you realized just how tall and broad and handsome he had become.
The thought leaves as scarily quick as it enters, as Soobin turns his face to smile up at the waitress delivering drinks and you catch a glimpse of reddened, mottled looking skin just beneath the seam of the hood. As soon as the waitress retreats you lean across the rickety table and paw at the cotton. Soobin puts up almost no fight, knowing he’s about to lose a battle that hadn’t even begun. The delicate skin of his cheek is alarmingly bright red and looks angry to the touch. Bruises had already begun to form around the outer ring of the graze and your heart clenches when you realize that what you first thought was a circular bruise looks suspiciously similar to a fist. A symphony of anger and concern rise within your chest and your eyes prickle with tears that you know Soobin will wipe away for you if you let them fall. 
“What-” you swallow, saliva suddenly feeling like it’s made of cotton, “Who did that?” 
He smiles shyly, ducking away from your touch but you gently grab at his cheek, keeping him from moving too far. His eyes bore into yours, flicking down to your lips before bringing them back up. Slowly, as if scared to spook you, he encloses his palm around your wrist.
“Promise you won’t yell and disturb everyone else that’s eating?” You nod eagerly even though both you and Soobin know that it was a promise likely to be broken. His hand, steady and radiating warmth into the skin of your wrist tugs tighter, hooking on to you like a life line. 
“That asshole Braden. I was passing him in the lobby of the math building and he was talking to his friends about how-” Soobin stops to swallow an invisible lump in his throat- “how he worked with you on some project and he kept talking about how stupid you were the whole time.” 
Your face twists into a grimace at the reminder of that exact project and then the image of Braden, tall and wide with an angry round face; but then a laugh bubbled from the depths of your chest. 
“To be fair, I was useless for that project. It was film class and it was about that stupid French movie I didn’t watch. So he’s not technically wrong.” Soobin’s frown twitched and then, to your surprise, deepened. Heart dropping at the sight, you felt a chill creep up the back of your neck. For as long as you’d known him, there was always a good chance that a well timed joke could curb his anger or sadness or frustration. 
“It wasn’t that that got me, well, this. After he said that, he said that even though you were stupid he wouldn’t mind seeing you on your knees.” You sucked in a simultaneous breath with Soobin, whose moody look finally transfered to you. It made too much sense now; why your joke hadn’t shifted his mood, why he was so vague about why he needed to talk to you, why he had that bruise. Your heart races as you begin to imagine how the skin will turn deep purples and greens, going sickly yellow around the edges. “It just pissed me off so bad. So I yelled at him and he squared up with me and before I knew it I was on the floor.”
To be honest, you were angrier that Soobin had come out of the altercation hurt than anything. You were used to the comments, the snide bullshit that falls from the mouths of your less kind peers.
“I’m going to kill him.” Soobin laughs, finally, as you clench your fingers into a tight fist around your innocent glass of strawberry lemonade.
“No, you’re not. I’m fine.” He finally removes the hood from his head, and if it weren’t for the bruise- which you now could see spread almost all the way to his ear- you would have been more interested in the fact that his shaggy hair had gotten even longer since the last time you’d seen it this close. You open your mouth to protest just as the waitress approaches again, this time balancing two hot plates of food on her arms. You flash her a sweet smile at the same time she notices the state of Soobin’s face and squints. She doesn’t say anything, though, and leaves almost as quickly as she showed up.
“Are you sure I can’t punch him in the face?” You ask as soon as she’s out of earshot. 
“Yes.” Soobin playfully scowls at you around a mouthful of french fries. Your heart skips at the adorable way his eyebrows knit and his dimples press deeper into his cheeks. Despite yourself, you smile, feeling the tension in the air dissipate around the pair of you. Soobin gestures loosely to the plate in front of you, wordlessly encouraging you to eat.
The pancakes you ordered are just as delicious as you remember them to be every time; fluffy and syrupy with just enough butter. Halfway through a chew, a new idea pops in your head and you struggle to keep chunks of batter from spewing onto the table as you speak.
“What if I just break his nose a little?”
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beyondspaceandstars · 3 years ago
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Renegade
Relationship: Din Djarin x Reader Warnings: N/A Summary: [based off the song Renegade by Big Red Machine feat. Taylor Swift] You're a shopkeeper in a remote corner of the galaxy just trying to get by. For some reason, every now and then a certain Mandalorian pops into town. He comes and goes as he pleases until one day you finally get the courage to confront him on his drifter habits. Unexpected confessions spill out. A/N: I haven’t written something for The Mandalorian in a long time but i just had this idea for a while and i wanted to actually try to execute it. Idk if this came out good but i think it’s still sweet. I hope someone enjoys it :)
Masterlist
You never knew when he was coming into town.
It would happen pretty much in the blink of an eye. You’d shut down your store for the day, retire to your home, then he’d be there, in the middle of the village, bright and early. The Mandalorian kept no schedule it seemed but his surprise visits were always welcomed by you. 
He’d make it a point to stop at your store first. He never really bought anything, just browsed the fabric and clothing you had to offer. The Mandalorian seemed to appreciate your craftsmanship, always taking time on his stay to ask about your newer items or what your plans were for your next collection. Your shop was modest but it helped bring in some kind of income which was very valuable as the fate of the galaxy hung in limbo.
You built up some kind of rapport with the masked man but feelings have been shifting within you for a while. You didn’t really understand how it was possible. You had begun falling for a man that never even gave you the courtesy of saying goodbye. But at the same time, the hours you would spend chatting meant everything to you. It felt so good to confide in someone as a life as a solo storekeeper could be quite a lonely one. He also seemed to be no stranger to loneliness as a man roaming the galaxy, taking odd bounty jobs. Nowhere to really call his own. 
A deep, deep part of you wished he would call this village his home. He seemed to enjoy it here, evident by his numerous stops. When he’d come and go from your shop, he was always bringing back new treasures. The woman down the road would be testing a new stew recipe or the jewelry maker at the end of the block had talked him into buying something. Most of the time, he’d just give the items to you, claiming he couldn’t resist the shopkeeper but had no use for the trinkets. The pseudo-gift giving was a little ridiculous to you but it couldn’t help but fuel your burning crush. You always accepted and wore whatever the Mandalorian presented. 
Yes, you two definitely had formed a relationship over time. You didn’t know really what to call it and you two never seemed to want to speak about it but it was no secret that it was there, and you were a bit thankful for it. No matter where he had gone or how long he had left for, you were always there to welcome him back to the village with open arms.
As many times before, the Mandalorian arrived unexpectedly one beautiful, clear morning. He was hovering around your shop, seemingly waiting. His armor shined so loudly in the daylight, it was nearly blinding, but you appreciated how powerful he was. He may show you his soft side in the village but you’d heard plenty about his hunts. If the truth was even half as alarming as the gossip, you were impressed he could have such a gentle side. 
“You’re early,” you called out, pulling your shawl tighter around you as you walked towards the passing bounty hunter. He stopped dead in his tracks upon hearing your voice. 
“It would appear I am,” he said, letting out a breathy laugh. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize the time.”
You came to stop right in front of him. You peered up at his helmeted face. You certainly couldn’t see anything through that insane gear but some part of you still felt him staring into your eyes, deeply. Instinctively, you fiddled with the necklace resting on your lower neck. The charm was a piece of some dark crystal. You didn’t know what it was and you were slightly too nervous to inquire the jewelry maker about it but the Mandalorian standing before you had given it to you the last time he was here. He simply said he thought it would look nicer on you. You didn’t ask anymore.
“It’s alright,” you smiled. “I’m just glad to see you back here in one piece.”
He seemed a bit taken back by that. You worried you had overstepped the boundary between flirting and kindness but then he tilted his head, curiously. “Yeah?”
Oh, you felt yourself blushing a bit. You ducked your head and stepped around him, beginning to work on the lock of your shop. 
“Yeah,” you shrugged and opened the door. The Mandalorian followed closely behind. “I’ve heard your work can be demanding. Lots of opportunities for you to get hurt.”
“Does that worry you?”
You stopped in front of the pile of new fabrics you had just woven. You sighed. “I’ve come to think of us as a little bit more than acquaintances. It’s normal to worry about others.”
You swore you heard him let out a low chuckle at that but he didn’t acknowledge it. Or your statement. You chose to do the same. You walked around to the counter and began prepping the logbooks for the day. The Mandalorian continued to hang around, gaze and hands roaming the new pieces you had set up last night. You were hoping this new collection you were previewing was going to bring in some hefty credits. Maybe allow you to take a holiday.
The Mandalorian broke the tense silence with the most unexpected comment. “I worry about you too, you know.” 
Your finger stopped abruptly as it scanned your list of sales for the week. When you had offered your care, you had never expected it back. You two technically weren’t on that level, at least not verbally. In other formats of gift-giving and worried looks, it was a different story. 
“You worry about me?” You inquired, brows raised in surprise. 
He gave a very Mandalorian-like shrug, his gaze still fixated on your for-sale items. Something in you was crushed when it looked like you weren’t getting any more from him. Maybe he’d disappear tonight, embarrassed by this exchange. But then by some miracle, he spoke again.
“Of course,” he said it like it was so obvious. “You’re a very kind shopowner living out in this village alone. This galaxy, no matter what corner you hide in, can be dangerous.”
You smiled to yourself. “I’ve done this for many years, Mandalorian. I think I will be alright.”
He hummed in acknwoeldgement. “I’m sure,” he mumbled. “But can you blame me for having concerns?”
This conversation sure was going to a funny place, you thought, but you were along for the ride. If he was going to talk about concerns, you could for sure rattle off yours. He was worried about your safety in this little village while you worried for his health. It cannot be good for a human, assuming he was human under all that gear, to be wandering the galaxy with no rhyme or reason besides the bounties strung about this galaxy. You never thought you’d express these things to him but the Mandalorian appeared to be a talkative one today. And you felt you two were beyond strangers. 
“Well, I’m flattered you think of me,” you admitted. “But I fear it’s you who faces more dangers than me.”
The helmeted man gave a little scoff at that comment. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
Sure, you didn’t doubt that, but that wasn’t what was on your mind. “I’m not talking about bounty hunting. I’m talking about your habit of being a drifter.”
The words didn’t feel very impactful in your brain but when they hit the open shop it was like you had dropped a bomb. The Mandalorian stilled, his gloved hand letting go of one of the scarves you had laying on a table. He began making his way suddenly towards where you still stood behind the counter. You frowned.
“A drifter?”
His eye gaze wasn’t seen but it was sure felt. You shrugged. “I’m not a fool. I know you bounce around from planet to planet throughout this galaxy. Maker knows why you keep coming back here but... I just worry you don’t have a home-,”
“I don’t,” he confirmed. Your heart all about stopped. Well, you didn’t exactly want to be right.
“Oh,” you said, averting your eyes to the wood counter. “And that doesn’t bother you? You must want someone waiting for you. Someone to just spend...moments with.”
“Don’t I have you?”
The question hung in the air between you two like a heavy pendulum. You couldn’t believe what you were hearing. He… He thought of you like that? Of this village? But why would he… Oh, but didn’t it make some kind of sense? The reappearing? The coming and going… He waltzed in and tried to get to know everyone. Got to know you.
Your head was a jumbled mess, so much so the only thing you could get out was a soft, “Me?”
The Mandalorian nodded. He wasn’t looking anywhere near you, finding such interest in the wall of your shop. But you noted his stiff stance. Maybe he hadn’t meant to say that… Except he had. And now it was out there. Something in the mysterious bounty hunter made him let out such a grand confession.
“Yes,” he eventually confirmed. “You. This village. I have that. I have this to come back to.”
With thoughts swimming violently, you had to ask, “But why don’t you stay?”
“I have jobs to do.” He almost sounded offended you had asked that. You shook your head.
“N-No, I mean… Get a place for yourself. You’re always sleeping on that ship. Maybe accept the invites to dinners the sweet lady down the path invites you to. Or you and I could…” Your words faded fast, slightly scared of what was going to slip out. But the Mandalorian wasn’t letting it go.
He turned his gaze back to you. “We could what?”
“S-Spend time together or something,” you mumbled. Real smooth, you thought. Just the perfect way to flirt. You expected him to now be so offended, maybe even storm out such a suggestion, but the armored man didn’t move. Instead, he cocked his head, curious.
“You’d want to do that?”
You sighed. “I want you to start a life somewhere. Really start it. Drifting around this galaxy cannot be very promising. You deserve this. You deserve a home, Mando.”
“Din.”
Your brows furrowed. Now it was your turn to be curious. “What?”
“My name is Din,” he explained. “You don’t have to call me Mando.”
If a heart could sing, yours would be a full chorus. He finally told you his name. After collecting jewelry and stories, he had finally opened somewhat to you. That was a good sign, a great sign. 
“Din,” you said, testing the name. It rolled off your lips easily. “We’d love to have you around.” A beat. “I’d love it, especially.” It was a bold declaration but he had given you something, the least you could do was make your intentions more obvious.
“Thank you,” Din said. 
“Of course,” you shrugged. “We all need to find the place where we belong.”
Din let out a bit of a chuckle. You frowned at that.
“You think I belong here?” He asked, amused. 
You didn’t like that he wasn’t taking you seriously but it would be okay. Just gave you more of a reason to show him everything this place had to offer. From the nice shopkeepers to the lovely food. This would be some kind of home for him or at least a place where he’d always be welcomed. Your heart fluttered at the idea of him leaving less, maybe even never leaving. He could train people on fighting or - or… 
You had to stop yourself as your brain was getting beyond reality. You shot the Mandalorian a smile.
“I think you’ve always belonged.”
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thequibblah · 3 years ago
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hi so i'm looking for some new music to listen to and i thought you could help because you have great taste!
if this helps, i'll tell you what i normally listen to, which is very basic & basically the same few artists over and over lol
- mostly just taylor swift, she makes up 70+% of my listening probably haha and if i had to pick a favorite genre of hers it would be the folkmore style
- some other pop, like olivia rodrigo and conan gray and lorde & some doja cat but i'm not a huge fan of doja's lyrics
- lyrics are really big for me, so is having a pretty voice and nice melodies
- i love your playlists but the old songs are usually not my style (there's been some though that i really like, ty for that !! <3)
- ceremonials is my favorite florence album
- liability is my favorite lorde song
no problem if u don't want to!
OH i basically recommend things for a living so why not music, eh?
so. what i'm getting from this is that you have three big listening buckets: soft acoustic and indie pop and just plain old pop. so i will divide my recs by those broad genres! i too prefer singable music so i will try to lay off on especially dissonant artists, or mark them as such so you can be prepared (LOL)
acoustic/folksy (i'll admit i am a big indie pop girl so this stuff will be a bit sparser)
phoebe bridgers — admittedly she is more alt-rocky, but see garden song, savior complex, moon song, graceland too, prayer in open D
waxahatchee — can't do much (GOD THIS SONG), lilacs, st. cloud
lucy dacus — also more alt-rocky, but here r some softer jams: hot & heavy, christine, green eyes, red face (a jily song)
anything by first aid kit! start with stay gold and the lion's roar
hozier — i feel like most people on the internet have listened to SOME hozier but check out wasteland, baby! (i tried to pick individual songs and ended up listing most of the album LOL)
kacey musgraves — another artist you've probably listened to already, but try golden hour
brittany howard — stay high must be the sweetest song in existence, and basically all of her album jaime
arlo parks — the whole album but especially caroline, hurt, and black dog
lake street dive — i can change, good kisser (a mary song if i've ever heard one), and i adore their hall & oates cover!
anya marina — this whole album has had me by the throat since like 2013
lucius — just the whole album wildewoman, h/t @figg-anon for putting me onto this!
idk what tf genre fiona apple is but try her out as well!
artists i listen to less of but are in this vein: the lumineers, bon iver, vance joy
u know i had to rec some old people shit (LOLLLL), so in this vein, joni mitchell, heart, judee sills, emmylou harris, joan baez, vashti bunyan
one-off songs you might like: hold you now by vampire weekend, big wheel by samia, i eat boys by chloe moriondo, strawberry blond by mitski (i worship at the altar of mitski but she might not be your speed haha), like i used to (acoustic) by sharon van etten & angel olsen, body by julia jacklin, jackie onassis by sammy rae and the friends, cowgirl bebop by HANA
indie pop BELOVED
maggie rogers — ok i cannot recommend this higher like if u like lorde and conan gray drop everything now and mainline maggie's brilliant debut album
HAIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! — they've got poppier songs like want you back and more mellow songs like summer girl, but honestly i would just recommend a deep dive because they have a pretty surprising breadth within their own alt-rock/pop niche
caroline polachek — can sometimes get way out n weird in the pop sense but so hot you're hurting my feelings is a very listenable pop standard (also it's so funny she's such a clever lyricist also this is irrelevant here but she sounds amazing live), also love look at me now and her cover of breathless
charli xcx is more experimental pop but would rec trying out warm (FT HAIM!!!), blame it on your love (FT LIZZO!!), and official
rina sawayama — technically her album is all sorts of genres but especially XS, comme des garcons, paradisin', bad friend, and tokyo love hotel
orla gartland is a lil softer and i love more like you, oh GOD, and did it to myself
king princess — especially cheap queen, 1950, holy, but basically all of cheap queen
more one-offs: kansas by ashe, comeback by CRJ (full paean in her honour to come in the pop section), i am a big fan of other people covering the bleachers (LOL) especially rollercoaster by charli xcx and i wanna get better by tinashe (full tinashe praise to come too), saturdays by twin shadow (FT HAIM!!!), the kiss of venus and 3 nights by dominic fike (also his interlude on halsey's album), aute cuture and milionària by rosalía, young lover by st. vincent (i love her but again might not be for u haha), good days by sza, backyard boy by claire rosinkranz, slow dancing by aly & aj, hot sugar by glass animals
if ur down to try out something weird witchy and cool, kate bush is like the originator of 9 billion pop and rock genres and hounds of love is a masterpiece
pure pop (we can split hairs on what makes pure pop LOL but basically everything here is based on ur enjoyment of doja)
carly rae jepsen — ok if u haven't listened to her non-radio-hits u may be like "what?? call me maybe lady???" to which i say YES, especially window, stay away, no drug like me, and too much
victoria monet — this may or may not be a selling point to you, but victoria is a frequent ariana grande collaborator and you can absolutely hear it in her music (see also: the mattress spring background noises in dive JUST like they are in positions...), and i love experience, go there with you, and we might even be falling in love, and why not throw in her ariana grande collab monopoly
magdalena bay — how to get physical which i am destined, nay, contractually bound, to put in a jily modern AU someday, killshot, stop & go
tinashe — basically ALL of her new album!!! SO good. i also love rascal (superstar), esther, and old jams like company (and i JUST found out she has a chaka khan cover!)
chloe x halle have the most angelic vocals in the world
this might sound actually demented because WHO hasn't heard love on the brain but rly... go give ANTI a re-listen...
tove lo — especially are u gonna tell her, mateo, and jacques
WAIT I FORGOT TO SAY ROBYN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! EVERY ROBYN SONG!!!!!!!
for that throwback poppy sound u may as well go real throwback KJAHKJA and check out donna summer!
one-offs: right to it by louis the child n ashe, serial lover by kehlani (also more by her but im getting lazy now kdjfhgk), missed calls by max n hayley kiyoko, peppers and onions by tierra whack, idk who hasnt heard this song but circles by meg, todo de ti by rauw alejandro (the way i wanted this to be song of the summer so bad ;___;)
hope you enjoy and pls come back and tell me if you really liked any of these!!!! xoxo
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crystalirises · 4 years ago
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in regards to ur recent post—i have been waiting so so long for someone to mention that song in relation to Fundy and i wanna hear u elaborate on how well it fits cuz ur thoughts are interesting 👀👀
Hello anon! And yeah I tried to explain why the song fits although I might not get some points across since I'm not ver articulate with my thoughts. I also apologize for responding so late since I actually posted my post at like... Past midnight so I wasn't able to respond immediately. But anyway, here's the sort of lyric analysis (??? Is this right lol) of why Not Your Seed is a Fundy song. And I mean Character Fundy not the actual person. So the Fundy mentioned here is the character.
This is long because it's me lol.
TW: brief mention of drugs, brief mention of sex (cause it's literally part of a song lyric and quite honestly I don't even want to talk about that kinda stuff), a lot of parental neglect, insane!Wilbur Soot, and possible cheating (cause Fundywastaken is mentioned). Stay safe everyone and please read the trigger warnings.
I'm not your girl anymore
I'm not that tween that you drove here for
I'm not your girl anymore
I overtook her body with an infectious spore
Okay, first of the first part of the song doesn't make sense out of the context of the musical (obviously). However if we kinda try to look at this in a "metaphorical" sense, it just gives off the message of Fundy not being the person who he used to be. If we were to say that Fundy was a kid during the first war, it's like a way to saying that he's no longer than innocent kid that he used to be. And for the "infectious spore" thing, if taken metaphorically, could mean the bitterness and anger that Fundy feels against the rest of the server (or at least against Wilbur) for the way they've treated him. Those bitter feelings have led him to just doing things that he would have never done (such as the 'blowing up L'Manburg's supply thing before the Doomsday War').
Also AU where Fundy gets infected the red egg and Wilbur gets ressurected I guess.
You left me out of your sight for one second
And look what happens, nightmare time
It's worse than you could imagine
Not sex and not drugs
Just alien invading minds
Okay for the first two lyrics, we all know very well that Wilbur did not look away for a second (he looked away for an entire damn arc is what he did lol). So essentially, from that first line it just implies that Wilbur (and I say Wilbur mostly cause 'Not Your Seed' is literally a daughter singing this to her father song) looked away from Fundy. Except, Wilbur looked away or ignored Fundy for a very long time, enough so that the last time Fundy saw Wilbur alive was Wilbur pretty much calling him a traitor and then promptly ignoring until he can back as Ghostbur. Which then leads to the second line since that neglect left some impressions on Fundy even after Wilbur was gone.
For the next three lines, combining the first two lines together, the usual fears that a parent would have regarding their children are well... Them engaging in sex and drugs (well the drugs is debatable cause Wilbur literally made a drug van so). However, Wilbur's issues regarding were never those matters but instead he had to deal with the aftermath of his emotional neglect that Fundy gained from Wilbur's parenting. As for the last line "Just alien invading minds," again does not make sense out of the context of the musical. However, metaphorically it could be seen as like... "alien" as in "different/outside emotions" that Fundy had never felt before (am I reaching XD). Essentially, negative emotions that Fundy had never felt before (or at least witheld for a very long time) have pretty much engulfed Fundy's mind and kinda led him down a terrible path.
No more family vacays together
'Cause your only daughter's under the weather
And if you actually paid attention to me
Okay, I have to admit that the first two lines are kinda out of the Fundy interpretation thing and I guess if someone wanted to, just alternate the family vacays to family hangouts since... They never took vacays lol. As for the second line, one could interpret it as just well Fundy drifting away from Wilbur... Essentially, he's sick of Wilbur. (This is reaching and I know that XD).
But it's the third line here that's definitely a Fundy line. "And if you actually paid attention to me," is a line that I believe embodies Fundy to an extent. Yes, Wilbur was there for Fundy and one could argue that whe was a doting father but that does not necessarily mean he was a good one. Wilbur was there for Fundy but he never paid attention to him, if anything, he babied Fundy. During the war? Babied him. During the time L'Manburg gained independence? Babied him. During the election arc? Babied him. Wilbur was there but he never listened to Fundy, he never saw Fundy as anything more than a child. There are many ways that a parent could be neglectful towards their children and I believe that though Wilbur was very doting he was not very attentive towards what Fundy had to say (and this is only hitting the beginning, I haven't even gotten to the "I despise you" part of the Pogtopia Arc.)
You'd see, I'm not your seed
I'm not your angsty teen
No matter what you believe
The apple's fallen far from the tree
Alright so for the first two lines, these could easily be equated to the fact that Wilbur, again, babies Fundy. What especially strikes me is the fact that Wilbur refers to Fundy's creation of Coconut 2020 and his sudden change of clothes to Fundy being in his teenage rebellious phase. Wilbur thinks that Fundy is just being rebellious and it's really just Fundy trying to separate himself from just being Wilbur's son and finding a way to make his dad proud via his own accomplishments, essentially finding something to get Wilbur's acknowledgement or approval while also doing something for himself. This line is like Fundy refuting the idea that everything he's done is just him going through an angsty teenage rebellious phase when he wasn't going through one in the first place.
For the third and fourth lines, I honestly think this represents Fundy's way of trying to separate himself as being known as Wilbur's son. He doesn't want to just be acknowledged as that, he wants to be more than his father's son. He wants to be his own person. In all honesty, I'd like to think that this is Fundy actually saying this to himself. He truly wants to believe that he's being independent but at the same time he's still looking for Wilbur's approval. No matter how much he wants to be his own man, he still looks to Wilbur because at the end of the day he wants to prove himself to Wilbur while also wanting to be independent. It's odd but it's kind of understandable. It's difficult to try and step out of somebody's shadow without turning around to see if they actually notice what you're doing. Fundy is like that. At least he was, and probably still is (with Phil before the whole breakdown arc).
It's not my fault anymore
No more curfews to be late for
It's not my fault anymore
No more being worried and waiting by the door
Again, these four lines are essentially just normal parent-child stuff. Children usually have curfews on when they should be home and parents tend to wait by the doors everytime their kid is a little bit late to arriving home. The thing about this kind of thing tho, if it was something that happened during the L'Manburg war, Fundy would have definitely felt constricted within the walls of L'Manburg. It wouldn't have been easy to just leave the safety of L'Manburg since the enemy could literally be waiting outside to ambush anyone they could. So, if character Fundy were the type of person to occasionally leave L'Manburg (and I believe he would be), he'd definitely feel guilty at times since it would have been very stressful for Wilbur. It's the middle of a war, Wilbur's a general and a father (tho he definitely he focused on one more than the other) and the least Fundy should be doing is to just stay within the walls. So, in a scenario where Fundy occasionally leaves L'Manburg, he would definitely feel guilty and blame himself for adding any unnecessary stress to Wilbur...
Again tho, this is an imagined scenario since this never really occured within the actual storyline... But then again Wilbur did claim the walls as "The wall I built to keep him (Fundy) safe." So it probably did happen and Fundy would have probably felt guilty for just leaving every now and then. Although Wilbur would have a point (it's literally the middle of a war), Fundy would have wanted to see the outside world and not have been forced to stay within the confines of L'Manburg (Fundy would have some slight fault here, that should be noted.)
Like I said, this is more of an imagined scenario that may or may not have occured.
Did you know that I wanted to live with you? (Look what happens, nightmare time)
O-ooh
And when you needed to fight, you gave her that too (aliens invading minds)
Ah-ooh
Alright so the first line really hits me since "live" could almost sound like "leave" (I know they're pronounced different don't @ me). For this piece of line, it sounds like a confrontation between Fundy and insane!Wilbur (Wilbur in Pogtopia Arc). At the very beginning of Schlatt's Administration, Fundy had always made it clear to at least himself (and Eret) that he was a spy on the inside. Fundy - at the beginning - didn't support Schlatt's administration at all. So if one were to think of the line with the word "leave" instead of "live," it gives off the context that Fundy wanted to go with Wilbur and Tommy when they were exiled... But he didn't because he wanted to be a spy for them. Technically, you don't have to change "live" with "leave" cause it essentially means the same thing, it just feels more painful this way cause it implies that Fundy forced himself to stay even if he didn't want to. Tis sad times for Fundy's hidden spy arc.
As for the third line, in the context of the musical this is referring to Bill (the father) essentially giving up custody of his daughter Alice to her mother. Of course in Fundy's case that doesn't work. But if this line were to be though of in a metaphorical way, it could come out as something else. "And when you needed to fight, you gave her that too." Think of it as Wilbur choosing L'Manburg over Fundy. Wilbur never "fought" for Fundy. Pet war? Nope. Tommy publicly disowning him? Nope. People calling Fundy a furry despite him being an anthromorphic fox (and as far as I'm aware, this is canon)? Nope. Schlatt hitting Fundy with a bottle during the November 16th war? Nope. Wilbur never cared enough to defend his son, but he was always ready to fight for L'Manburg.
Did you know mom let Deb sleep over?
And you're right about Deb - she's a hardcore stoner
And if you wonder what led your daughter astray
Well, daddy wasn't here to stay
... listen *gets bonked* Okay, serious interpretation first before I make the crack joke. This line really doesn't work cause this is essentially Alice (the daughter) talking about Deb (her girlfriend) who Bill (the father) does not really like. If anything, I'd like to say that... Change these lines to Fundy admitting that Schlatt is actually doing a great job as president? (Let's all be honest, Fundy at one point did express that he thought Schlatt was a good president). So yeah just Fundy admitting that Schlatt is a good president even though he is an alcoholic.
("Did you know Schlatt let Dre sleep over?
And you were right about Dre - he's a hardcore liar.")
For the last two lines. I imagine this could be said to two versions of Wilbur. If we're talking about insane!Wilbur then this is just a confrontation of how Wilbur pretty much just left Fundy in a hostile country where he was forced to adapt unless he wanted to get executed like Tubbo or imprisoned like Niki. There's a reason why Schlatt asked Fundy about his parentage and his association with Wilbur. As such, Fundy had to learn how to be another person because Wilbur left.
Another way to interpret this is Fundy telling it to Ghostbur. The reason why Fundy is bitter and the way he is is because Wilbur left him... Both emotionally and physically, the man died and they were never able to resolve their issues before Wilbur died. Fundy is the way he is because Wilbur never stayed to resolve their issues. The line "Well, daddy wasn't here to stay" really hits how Fundy is influenced by what Wilbur did, and Fundy is still looking for that one person - the one person - who would stay for him. His dad didn't stay for him, his grandfather stay, Eret did not go to the adoption, and his best friend (Ranboo???) didn't stay... Everyone has left him and that hurts him since that is exactly what Wilbur did and it still continues to haunt him even after Wilbur is dead and gone.
Not your seed
I'm not your perfect teen
I'm fucking sevente-en
At least I was before you left me
With the first two lines, I suppose one could say that this is how Wilbur saw Fundy. "I'm not your perfect teen," is one way that Wilbur could've seen Fundy or at least how he forced himself to see Fundy as. Since the beginning of the L'Manburg War, he regarded Fundy as a child and during the Election Arc he regarded Fundy as a rebellious teenager... But with slight endearment. Like he's honestly amused by Fundy's sudden show of rebellion... It's only when Fundy sides with Quackity that Wilbur begins to realize that Fundy is serious about the whole separating-himself-from-Wilbur thing and even then continues to look at Fundy condescendingly, especially when Fundy ran for presidency. And, although this is my own interpretation, that part of the Election Arc where Fundy wanted to run for the presidency too and Wilbur just allowed it after a moment of awkward silence, feels like a parent who just decided to concede with their child's wishes cause it's amusing and "hey, what's the harm in letting the kid have what he wants?" But... Fundy is not the kid that Wilbur sees him as at all, but Wilbur can't get over that and it even translates over to the way Ghostbur looks and regards Fundy as.
As for the last two lines, there are two ways this could be interpreted as. In the first interpretation, don't look at the age but at the context. Fundy was a kid who was born and grew up in a war-torn country, Wilbur may have been there physically but he had long since emotionally left Fundy since Wilbur was busy with the war effort to really be there for Fundy. Fundy, like Tommy and Tubbo, was forced to grow up because it was a war and they had no choice but to grow if they wanted to survive. The second interpretation is... A bit sadder. I don't really know what Fundy's age is. Like... Is he older than Tommy or Tubbo but how was he born in L'Manburg then??? But confusion aside. If we were to assume that Fundy was 14 during the Election Arc (as Ghostbur said but he's unreliable) or at least Fundy was a teen at that point of time, Wilbur left his son in an enemy country (though of course not any initial fault of his own since he was exiled XD). Fundy - like in the first interpretation - was forced to grow up and adapt because Schlatt could have literally just killed him for being Wilbur's son.
Why does it hurt to love you?
Why am I in pain?
Why does it hurt to know you?
You'll let me down again
If I turned my insides out, would you even know that I was there?
Ah ;-; the lines that make me cry.
Alright so I can definitely say that all of these lines are just relatable to Fundy. "Why does it hurt to love you?" Fundy does probably care a whole lot about Wilbur but with this care and love comes the pain of how Wilbur emotionally neglected and disrespected him. Fundy loves Wilbur. He does. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt. He still recognizes Wilbur as his father to some degree and does love the Wilbur that was his dad, but with everything that's happened, loving Wilbur has become too painful for him to bear. Everytime he tries, it just feels like a stab to the heart since he's reminded of how absent Wilbur truly was in his life.... Even if Ghostbur tried to be there for Fundy, it doesn't erase the pain that Wilbur inflicted when he was alive.
For the second line, "Why am I in pain?" Fundy's character is undeniably one of the most tragic characters (at least from my perspective). The guy has been through a lot and even if this line isn't supported by the first, it still indicates that Fundy has suffered a lot (and yes a lot of characters have suffered too and I am not invalidating any of the other characters). He's hurting. And to be honest, they're all hurting. Everyone has their own ways of coping, and Fundy is honestly quite lost in what he should be doing. He's still reeling from everything, enough so that he canonically took a break and left the DSMP altogether (yes it was canonised that his character had taken a break).
For the following lines, I'd like to think this is directed to Ghostbur. "Why does it hurt to know you?" It feels like Fundy meeting Wilbur - or at least a version of Wilbur - after everything that's happened. He knows the real Wilbur and although Ghostbur reminds him of the father that he used to have, he can't just forget what the real Wilbur did. It hurts to not be able to move on even though he has a second chance with Ghostbur. It hurts because everytime he sees Ghostbur he'll just be reminded that Ghostbur is nothing more than a remnant of a once broken man. He knows Wilbur, he knew the real Wilbur. And it hurts to not be able to move on from the real Wilbur. The reason why it feels like something Fundy would say to Ghostbur is furthe remphasized by the next line in the song.
"You'll let me down again." That is definitely something that Fundy would say or at least feel towards Ghostbur. He wants to get to know this new version of his father, he wants to... But he can't. Cause again there's still that underlying fear of Ghostbur just messing up again and further hurting Fundy. In a way, Ghostbur did in fact hurt Fundy and he did in fact let Fundy down again. The issue with Ghostbur is that he refused to acknowledged the problems that he inflicted to everyone around him. When Fundy confronted him, Ghostbur ignored it. He ran away. So yeah, Fundy couldn't let himself know Ghostbur because Ghostbur would have and did let him down again.
Finally, the last line, "If I turned my insides out, would you even know that I was there?" As we've already seen, Fundy has tried to gain Wilbur's attention and acknowledgement in the past. First, with the running for presidency and secondly, with the spying for Pogtopia thing. Fundy has gone - and would have possibly gone to even worse - to great lengths just to gain Wilbur's approval. This line just shows the desperation that Fundy had just so he could get his father's approval. He tried to be independent, but it didn't work. He tried to help his father against Schlatt, it didn't work. He went so far as to burn the flag down since he wanted to get into Schlatt's good graces so he could be a better spy. He went to great lengths for Wilbur's acknowledgement... But he never got it, at least, not in the way that he wanted to.
Why does it hurt to love you?
Why does it hurt to love?
For the first line, "Why does it hurt to love you?" it just really shows how painful it is for Fundy to try and love a father who was barely even there for him. He does love Wilbur - as I said before - but loving Wilbur comes with a lot of pain (as I'm sure even other characters affiliated with Wilbur can attest). Wilbur went crazy before he died and he wasn't the best father towards Fundy and though Fundy still holds on to some semblance of love for the man he once saw as his dad, he still feels hurt over everything that's happened. Wilbur is a sore and touchy subject for many people within the story, not even just Fundy. They all suffer at the thought of Wilbur... At least, Alivebur.
Ohhhh... Like...this is obvious. The second line is obvious for Fundy XD. Because: his father was barely there, his possible last words to Fundy were "I despise you," and then he died and came back as a ghost who straight up ignores all the problems that he caused when he was alive, his grandfather disowned him, his fiancé broke up and possibly cheated on him (if you consider fwt canon), his best friend called him a coward and left, his home got destroyed thrice, Eret never showed up for the adoption, and he went through a breakdown arc in which it was so bad that he left to take a break from everything that happened. Everything that he's ever loved just finds a way to hurt him.
I'm not your seed (not your girl, not your girl)
Now maybe you'll listen to me (listen to me, listen to me)
Or do you let me bleed? (let me bleed)
Now your daughter's not a girl no more (girl no more, girl no more)
Now that Fundy's gone through a possible recovery arc (since he canonically left the server for one year or was it fours years?), he's probably more well-adjusted to everything else. If Wilbur does indeed get ressurected at some point. This is a way of like showing how Wilbur and Fundy may interact. (Also, I know it could also sound like Villain Fundy but I honestly have moved on from that particular thing and just want Fundy to recover). "Now maybe you'll listen to me," is just Fundy trying to confront Wilbur after everything except this time Fundy has recovered enough to actually speak to Wilbur without getting mad or upset once Wilbur refuses to acknowledge anything's wrong. Still, this is just in the case where Wilbur is ressurected and Fundy is recovered enough to confront Wilbur for everything that's happened.
So for these last lines, I'll only focus on the third line which is "Or do you let me bleed?" If Fundy and ressurected!Wilbur do interact, there are two possible ways for that to go. Wilbur either acknowledges and apologizes for what he did wrong, Fundy apologizes for the things he also did (come on, burning the flag, tearing down the walls, and disowning Wilbur is very painful regardless of what Fundy was trying to accomplish), and they both learn to accept the past and move on so they can beat that stupid egg (red egg, my beloved) and maybe Dream. Or... Wilbur could just ignore Fundy all over again and refuse to acknowledge what he did wrong. Hopefully this time, Fundy would be recovered enough to just realize that Wilbur is never gonna change and that Fundy needs to move on from Wilbur. So, yes. In this possible scenario, Wilbur and Fundy could either make up ("Now maybe you'll listen to me") or Wilbur refuses to acknowledge anything that went wrong and Fundy moves on by himself ("Or do you let me bleed?") Again, this is just a possible scenario.
Not at all your seed!
Cause I'm not your girl anymore
Just, well, further emphasis that Fundy isn't the same person he used to be and he never will be again. Like everyone else, he's gone through a lot. He's different, he's changed.
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So yeah... I am so sorry to the anon if this is just so confusing or me rambling and I'm pretty sure you didn't ask for a damn essay. But ye... Have this... Sorry if it’s not the analysis you wanted tho ;-;
Apologies tho if this seems confusing and I would gladly clear things up if there's some points that are confusing.
So...ye... Have fun with this
(what do I tag this as, pls help—)
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sparklesparklekoushi · 4 years ago
Text
Choose Your Glucose Guardian! (Sawamura Daichi Ver.)
💕Hello! This is the first part to a fic in my captains series. I hope you like it. I really love this story and treasure it a lot, I hope that you enjoy it as much as I do! 
Minor Spoiler for the episode, The Flight of the Spineless. 
You can find the other parts of this series here: Ushijima Wakatoshi 
Tagginng @ceo-of-daichi because its Daichi 🥺💕
Without further ado, here it is!!
If y/n could turn back time, she would go back to her first year of high school. She would’ve lived  without regrets and did all the things she wanted to do. She would’ve joined the dance team earlier, she would’ve entered more competitions. She would’ve hung out with her friends more, supported them in every game they had. And most of all she would’ve followed her heart. She would’ve said yes to a boy from her high school, the muse of all her dance performances to this day. 
Oh how she wished she had let go of her fears, how she wished that she just said those simple words; “yes, I like you too.” Who knows, maybe she would be happier then than now… But, those days were in the past, but her days were nothing but downhill from high school, sadly. Sure, y/n was a good dancer, but then, the theme of longing in her dances never really made her reach her full potential. She was always stuck with the same feel, the same aura, no change, no variety. This made her somewhat, a boring dancer… something many dancers feared. As a student at a dance academy, she was once the top of her class… and now she isn’t the best. Her dances looked the same, her instructor would even suggest that she would go out and spend more time with the people around her, than to stay cooped up in the studio practicing to get better. 
Sure, she could do that, do better technical moves, have a better flow, be a lot more flexible. But that was never the problem. The problem has always been her lack of adventure and her lack of personal vibrancy. So here she sat, in front of the dance studio, waiting for her friend to walk her home as it was late at night. Sure it would’ve been a short walk or so, but she lived outside of the campus… and her best friend Hinata wouldn’t allow her to go out alone on a night like this. 
You see, y/n didn’t have enough money to get a dorm room on campus. She was raised by a single mother and she was ill. Y/n also worked part time at a local bakeshop on weekends and when she had off days or afternoons without classes to pay for her mother’s hospital bills. Not only did she have this on her plate, she also had an 8 year old sister to take care of… So at the age of 22, y/n is the only source of income for her family. 
At first she did really well, she won competitions and was even the talk of the town, but eventually she really did lose everything. She had to stay positive however, for her mother and her sister. 
“y/n!” A male voice calls out to her, snapping her out of her thoughts, Hinata Shoyo was there, panting heavily as he stood in front of her. 
She smiled “Hinata!”
He smiled widely putting his arm around her while taking her bag, “Now, let’s get you home! Your sister is waiting.”  
It was always like this, they would start on the path to her house, hand in hand as he held her things. They were both scholarship students at this school, but Hinata had so much potential, so he got a dorm room with a friend of theirs from high school, Miya Atsumu, a boy who was a year older than the two. 
Hinata was as bright as the sun, a promising and current volleyball player for a team in Japan. He was reliable, sweet, energetic and an all around sweetheart you would want to be with. He was the highlight of everyone’s days, everyone in their friend group loved him ever since they were in high school. 
First year, Karasuno High School, Class 1-5. This was a big step into the world of high school for you. First year, it left a sense of adventure and curiosity light up within you. This would be the best years of your life, you had hoped. You weren’t one to shy away from the sun, but you weren’t too reckless either. You were smart and kind, but that wasn’t the only thing that was great about you. You were born to dance, a star, a spark of joy on the stage. You couldn’t live without the music. You had always been able to dance to any type of song, any genre and you could do it. But, since it was your first year, you decided to play it safe and focus on your grades for the first semester.
So there you sat, with your headphones on as you listened to another song to choreograph for. Your feet tapping to the rhythm as your hands moved in small motions that symbolized dance moves. It was too early for most students to be there, but you wanted to get out of the house as soon as possible as it was your first day at high school. 
You eventually stood up, immersed in the music dancing to it and closing your eyes as the music flowed throughout your soul. The song was beautiful and light, a bright but sweet song that felt like the taste of first love. You danced and danced feeling the happiness flowing through the song, and eventually, it came to a stop. 
You opened your eyes to see a classmate of yours, so she seems, standing a few meters away from you, clapping. She had a beautiful smile and blonde hair, she smiled at you and clapped once more. 
You turned away to hide your blush and used your headphones as an excuse since you put them on your desk. 
The blonde girl, who is a little bit shorter than you, walked up to you and smiled, “You dance beautifully.” 
You smiled back, still a little bit flustered, “Thank you… I’m l/n y/n by the way.” 
“Yachi Hitoka, I’m from this class too.”
Eventually you learned that you two had a lot of things in common, and that you were seatmates. As the day went by, you and Yachi had become fast friends, despite her being shy when other people started coming in. 
Everyday would consist of you and Yachi hanging out happily together… all until she came rushing back to the classroom with two application forms in her hand. Both of you still didn’t have any clubs or orgs you joined so you were confused and excited that she had forms in her hands. 
“What is it Yacchan?” you asked her as you studied her worried features.
“y/n-chan they want us to be managers for the boys’ volleyball team!!!” She sighs sadly.
“What was I thinking? But then the senpai giving me instructions was so pretty that I got distracted…. If you were awake we could’ve talked to her together and maybe…”
You laughed slightly as Yachi kept going on about how she doesn’t know what to do or what she had gotten both of you into. You thought of it for a while, maybe this was the sign you needed to do things and stop studying 24/7… so it was one of the risks you actually took.
“Let’s do it, Yacchan!” You said, taking a form from her and filling it up. 
She looks at you shocked, “Eh? I thought you were going to apply to the dance team?”
You thought about it once more, “Eh, I’ll do it next year, I have 2 years left after that you know!”
She sighed and filled up her own form, knowing that she will never be able to convince you not to join. 
So on that fateful day, you became friends with the people who stand with you now. 
Hinata noticed that you had stopped replying to him about how your day was only to see you in deep thought.
“y/n? y/n-chan~~” he knew that if he called you that, there was a higher possibility that you would snap out of it and show him that cute flustered face of yours. He lived for that reaction of yours… but he would never tell you that. Or at least, he hoped, not for now. 
True enough what Hinata wished for had happened, "Yeah? Oh sorry…" your face was awfully red and you both knew it. 
He shakes his head, "It's fine, what were you thinking of?"
You sighed as puffs of clouds formed due to the cold, "I was thinking of how I first met all of you…"
He smiled a little, hiding a bit of pain that came with those memories. Because he knew that no matter what memory you had of high school you were thinking of… you would always backtrack to him. 
The person he wished would leave you and your thoughts. But he knew that he would always have a chance, as long as he was there with you and not with that man. 
"I see, were you thinking of how good looking I was then, up until now?" He joked as you made a face. 
"I swear, Atsumu is rubbing off on you." 
"Oh but that makes me funnier!" He held your hand tighter. 
Your face brightened once more in a rosy hue as you both found yourselves at your doorstep.
He smiled again and handed you your gym bag, "I'll see you on Sunday?"
"Yeah, you will. Don't worry Hinata, I'm not going anywhere."
He nodded as you said this and kissed your forehead. "Sleep well, y/n."
He watched you enter your house as you waved bye to him. He eventually walks down the street, back to the school dorms. 
You enter the house to see that your little sister had eaten the food you left for her to reheat. She left a note saying that she did not have hw and that you should rest. Your heart felt happier at the gesture. This made your resolve to do what you were about to do stronger.
But for a split second, you had thought of Hinata. 'What would he say?'
You didn't really understand how you felt about him. Whether you actually loved him or not the latter part being more confusing since you knew you were not over that person.
But either way, none of that would matter anymore. Funds were not getting easier to come by and you didn't want your friends to keep worrying and giving you money they needed as well… so you did what you thought was best. You signed up on a sugar baby app. 
You had been putting off checking the app in order to not sound desperate and to see who would actually wait. You honestly found this somewhat difficult to do at first, but your friend f/n had suggested it as a last resort. You didn’t really want to do this but she reassured you that the men on this specific app were not creeps and that they were pretty young and knew how to respect boundaries.
As you logged onto your phone you noticed one specific message that seemed to be interesting and mysterious. The man had the username onceavolleydad and he had no pictures of his actual face and name, but he had credentials and the app to prove his age and status. He was rich as he owned a chain of gyms around Japan. He also looked pretty attractive, or well, his body did. But that wasn’t what you were there for, it was his message that caught your eye. 
“(l/n) (y/n), what a pretty name for a girl who has the beauty of a lilac. I would love to know more about you and if you would at least, become someone I could talk to? I’d love to meet you on Friday night, 8pm, at a small coffee shop? I will be sending the address in the next message.”
You were interested, one because he seemed nice, and two because he mentioned your favorite flower. It could all be by chance, but you were one of those people who were interested in signs every now and then. You took a deep breath and nodded your head, you were going to do this, he was the one you were going to reply to. 
“ Hello, onceavolleydad. I would be delighted to meet with you then, maybe we could talk a little about the boundaries I have set and see where this goes?”
Within 3 minutes you get a reply; “Sure, I’ll see you later then.”
Wait… later??? You looked at your phone and noticed that it was indeed, Friday7:20 pm. With that you rushed to your room and got ready to go to the said address. You wore your best clothes, the ones that were cute and in season and penned a note to your sister saying that you had gone out with friends for a bit. 
As you walked down the street, you carried your pepper spray in your coat pocket and your phone in your other hand. You walked down street after street until you passed by your university and some other places you would normally go to. Eventually you had found the cafe, and were about to cross when some high school students started hitting on you. 
“Hey, pretty girl, mind giving me your number?” a student in their uniform smirked as they blocked your way. 
“No thanks, I’m not interested.” you said pushing them away as you try to make your way away from them. 
“C’mon beautiful lady,” one of them grabbed onto your arm as you let go of your pepper spray. 
“Let me go!” you struggled as they got closer to you. 
“Didn’t she say to let her go?” A deep voice said, you knew that voice. 
The boys let go of you and there you stood, face to face with him. 
The one and only, Sawamura Daichi.
The boy you loved and said no to in high school. 
“D-daichi-senpai?” You looked like you had seen a ghost. 
“Y/n, can I talk to you for a minute? Preferably in my car…?” he rubbed the back of his neck. 
“Sure, but I’m meeting someone tonight.” You mumbled, slightly ashamed.
“I know.”
You looked up at him, “What do you mean, senpai?”
“Well for one, I’m onceavolleydad…”
You couldn’t believe what you had just heard. Sawamura Daichi, your senior, wanted you as his sugar baby. You were confused, not even mad or anything, but confused. 
“Were you stalking me? Who told you I was on the app? You don’t even know (f/n)...oh god, what if Hinata knows?” 
Your questions made you fall only for Daichi to catch you. As he was always calm, he asked you to follow him to his car. You reluctantly agreed and you both sat there, silent at first. Why, why was he doing this?
You thought he pitied you, but when you looked at his eyes, that wasn’t the emotion they held. His eyes had this unreadable emotion, or at least in that moment, it felt that way. 
He was the first to speak, “Look, (y/n) I know this is weird, but no I wasn’t stalking you. I signed up for the app the same way you did, upon the recommendation of a friend. I happened to see you and thought, I thought I should give it a shot.”
You stared straight into his eyes, something he honestly loved about you. He knew better than to shy away from your stare. He knew that if he wanted you to know he was sincere, he would have to keep eye contact with you. He still loved you, he knew that you were just scared back then, and that you didn’t want to risk anything because of your family. 
And here you were, risking everything for them once again, something he admired you for. He didn’t know how bad your circumstances were, nor was he sure that you would actually tell him. But he truly did want to reconnect with you, even if it were to be just as a friend. He wanted to befriend you once again, step by step, no matter how long it took. 
As you looked into his eyes, you could see that he was telling the truth, there was no pity in his eyes, but his eyes did hold a warmth to them. They felt so calming, they felt sweet and full of love. He’s as genuine as he ever was. And this was one of the things that drew you to him, something that you loved about the once captain of your high school volleyball team. But you didn’t want to be attached once more. After all, wasn’t this a business thing? But if it was, wouldn’t he be looking at you with pity? 
You stopped staring into his eyes and looked down at your lap, as your hands fiddled with your coat ties. Daichi stared, thinking about how you haven’t changed as much as you were in high school. He still saw you as the woman he liked, the beautiful dancer he saw that day…
Daichi was walking down the first years’ hallway in Karasuno, looking for the other second years classrooms on the same floor when he saw you. There you were, in an empty classroom, dancing with grace and poise. He wasn’t going to stare long, he was going to leave. But, he couldn’t stop, he kept staring at you, enthralled by your beauty as you felt the song. Eventually, a girl who was in the same class started watching you dance and he pretended to do something. 
“Thank you...I’m (l/n) (y/n) by the way.”
He hears you say this as he walks away, hmm, (l/n) (y/n). Maybe I'll see her around. 
Your dance shook him and consumed his nights, he wanted to get to know you and how you could have such an effect on him. 
He eventually got the chance when Kiyoko had come in one day with you and your friend, Yachi and introduced you both as the new first year managers. He was over the moon and he almost lost his composure, something the other third years were quick to notice. As you studied what to do with Yachi, he couldn’t help but stare. 
Sugawara nudged him, “Hey, Daichi… do you know the first years? You keep staring at (y/n)-chan~” 
He abruptly stopped staring, as the older setter and ace laughed, “Shut it, both of you.”
“Daichi’s got a crush~” Sugawara teases as Asahi tries to calm down a stressed Daichi.
Eventually, you did become close friends. You were there when he got that injury from crashing into Tanaka. He could remember you crying over it as you were the one sent to watch over him. 
“Don’t cry (y/n)-chan”
You started crying more as he reassured you that he was okay, “B-but you g-got hurt Daichi-senpai. You’re bleeding, it must hurt a lot.”
He tried to laugh but winced as soon as he did, “Don’t worry (y/n)-chan, I’ll be fine. You’re here aren't you? So that means I’ll get better because you care for me!” 
You had finally stopped crying and you gave him a weak smile, “Okay Daichi-senpai, I’ll be here!”
Once you two had returned he felt content that you were feeling better, it even made him forget about the pain in his face and the tooth he lost. 
“You wanted to talk about your boundaries?” He said as his voice snapped you out of your own thoughts. 
You stared at him with wide eyes, “...Well that is, if you would still accept?”
You didn’t know what to say, you didn’t exactly think that you were going to reconnect in such a way. “Daichi-senpai I know you mean well but I-”
“But what? You don’t want to feel like you’re leeching off someone you know? (y/n) I chose you because I wanted to see you again, no matter what the circumstances were. I don’t know if you’re with anyone or anything but I can be a friend. Just a friend, I can be a shoulder to lean on” Daichi put a hand on top of one of yours.
There was a moment of silence, he knew you were conflicted. 
“Okay, I know I must’ve overwhelmed you, but I hope you know I'm alway-”
“I’ll do it. I’ll be your friend.” you held onto his hand for a bit and smiled.
He smiled back, he wanted to kiss you right then and there, but he knew that he would be a friend in your eyes. Hopefully, only for now and not in the future. 
He let go of your hand when your grip loosened, not wanting to make things awkward, “Alright, why don’t we talk about the boundaries we’ll set in the cafe over some tea?” 
Once you woke up the next day, you had a scarf on your bed next to your coat, a scarf that wasn’t yours…
You were on your way to the park as you and Daichi felt that it would be better to get some fresh air as the cafe was teeming with high school students trying to study for their classes. The air was cold, and you shivered a little. Soon enough Daichi had taken off his scarf. 
“No, Daichi-senpai, you don’t have to do this, it's completely fine.” you try giving him back the scarf but he starts wrapping it around you.
Once you had given up he gives you a bright smile, “There we go. That’s better isn’t it?”
He tucked the strands of hair away from your face and you both turned red as he realized what he had done. “Ah (y/n) I’m sorry I didn’t mean to…”
As he heard your dorky laugh he was met with confusion, “It’s okay senpai. You didn’t mean any harm, I know.”
He laughed the awkwardness away as you two sat a little bit apart on a park bench. The air was awkward, but somehow calming at the same time. You didn’t know what to say but eventually you started talking about uni and other things, and you felt at ease… just like the way you felt with Hinata… 
You shook your head, he’s your friend, that's all there is to it. It was a Saturday and you were getting ready to work at the local bakeshop when you got a text from Hinata. 
“Hey (y/n)! Are you free after your shifts at the bakeshop today? Kenma and Akaashi-san are going to be visiting today.” 
You smiled, it had been a while since you’ve seen those two and you were always happy to see them. Akaashi and Kenma have been some of your most supportive friends, sure they were quiet, but they were always there for you. They were there for you when your mom slipped into her coma, they were there when you first failed a dance recital… but of course, someone who has been there since the beginning would be Hinata. To spend a day with your favorite boys would be wonderful.
“Yeah, I’ll be free by around 3:00pm, is that fine?”  you reply to him.
Soon enough the next reply comes in as you wave goodbye to your sister and leave the house. You had already arranged for a cousin to pick up your little sis to watch her for the day and she was on her way to your place. 
“Alright! We’ll come to get you then, wear something nice to work okay ;>” 
As you looked down at your skirt and sweater you chuckled and sent a selfie to him, “Is this good enough? xD”
You got a reply almost immediately, “No fair, why’d you send a picture?”
You put your phone in your bag after replying to him and head on to your workplace ready to start the day.
Work was tiring but fun at the same time. There were times that you would be serving the customers and times that you would be behind the cash register or even times when you would create latte art or frosting art to help the bakers. The cute uniform you wore at work was a plus too. It was one of those fun days when you would be serving customers. Most of the customers at the bakeshop you worked at were nice people. 
There was this nice high school couple who were now your friends, they went to a school nearby and they loved sharing stories with you, their senior. There was also the grandmother who loved stopping by to buy the best meat buns for her grandkids. There are so many nice people who come to your shop on a regular basis that it's like you all have this small community together. 
Today however, wasn’t one of those days. There was one customer that had found you cute and wouldn’t stop asking you for your number. Your manager had even tried to intervene by changing servers from you to a male co-worker but this customer would not budge. He would still try to get you to stop when you would pass by his table. You didn’t think that he would actually do anything, but you were wrong. As you passed by with an empty tray he grabbed your arm and smiled sweetly, something you found sickening.
“C’mon sweet cheeks, a number is all I ask for.” his grip tightened. 
You tried to get away from him as your co-workers were on alert, “I’m sorry would you please let me go? I’m not interested.”
He was about to pull you closer when someone stepped in front of you, “She said she wasn’t interested, so let her go.”
It was Daichi, he had saved you once more. 
Little did you know, someone else had wanted to save you…
Your three friends, Hinata, Kenma and Akaashi were on the way to the bakeshop you worked at. They were walking down the street when Kenma asked HInata about how you were. 
“She’s doing fine, but she still has the same feel, nothing has actually changed…” Hinata sighed  deeply, wishing you would notice his feelings. 
Akaashi looked up from his phone, “You do know, that she’s changed a little, right?”
Kenma nods in agreement as they kept walking, “She wouldn’t send you random pictures before. How could you have not noticed, Shoyo?” 
Hinata stopped in his tracks, and smiled as wide as he could. “She does do that now!” 
He then starts talking about how pretty you are and how much he loves you. You were the brightest light in his life, no matter what they would say. He wanted to be there with you, every step of the way. He was there when you felt like the world was against you. You were his inspiration during volleyball games. Whenever you had time to visit his games he would look at you and play the best he could. 
They walked down to the corner of the street and turned left, only for Kenma and Akaashi to stop walking in front of the bakeshop as Hinata kept going on about you.
“Hey, what-” He freezes when he sees you being held onto by a man who clearly is making you uncomfortable. He was about to step in when Akaashi stops him, he would’ve hit Akaashi if it weren’t for Kenma pointing to the direction of the bakeshop door, the one person Hinata couldn’t help but not want near you, no matter how selfish it sounded, was there, and he saved you instead of him.  
Sawamura Daichi was back into your life somehow, and he knew that it was going to be something that might hurt one of you in the end.
Daichi had stood in front of you and the customer, his other hand holding yours, it gave you a sense of comfort. He smiled at the customer, not a nice one, but a smile that asserted power the customer tried to put on a strong front but eventually muttered an apology. 
“Sorry, did you say anything? I believe this lady deserves a proper apology.” He said as your coworkers blocked off the man from leaving. 
The man looked down, “Okay, I’m sorry! I won’t be bothering her again…”
Daichi nodded and smiled at you before glaring at the man once more, “If you touch or try to harass my girlfriend one more time, I won’t be as nice.”
You blushed a little at his words and looked at him wide eyed, he only winked at you as the customer left the bakeshop. 
Soon enough you two were seated near the cash register, “Are you alright (y/n)? I’m sorry if I went too far I only wanted him to stop bothering you.” 
“It's okay senpai,” you reassured him, “I know you mean to keep me safe.”
“You know you can call me Daichi, we aren’t in high school anymore, and I preferred if you called me that…” his cheeks turned into a reddish hue. 
You hid your somewhat excitement and agreed, “Alright, Daichi.”
You then see Kenma, Akaashi, and Hinata enter the bakeshop and you waved them over with a smile. 
“(y/n)!” Akaashi gives you one of his rare smiles as he hugs you, “it’s been a while.”
Kenma gave you a nod and you did your weird handshake as Akaashi laughed and Hinata gave a weaker one. 
“Oh, I hope you don’t mind that Daichi is here?” you smile at your friends who were also friends with Daichi once. 
“I hope I’m not intruding,” he smiled as he caught up with Akaashi and Kenma, Hinata staying off to the side a little, wanting to talk to you about how this all happened. 
“So... How did you guys reconnect?” Hinata asked you with curious eyes. 
“Oh, we saw each other yesterday when I needed to go out for a bit.” You weren’t lying to him, technically. 
He nodded, “I see, I see. How did he find this place?”
Daichi overheard and smiled at Hinata, “I was recommended this place by some friends, Kuroo and Bokuto to be exact.” 
Hinata smiled weakly, still conflicted by the feeling of hating his former captain, or accepting the fate that has brought them to reconnect and hopefully be friends again. But then, he knew that the latter had more risks than merits. But he knew that Daichi never really meant harm towards anyone. In fact, Hinata has always admired Daichi for this, but he knew that this would mean that he could take you away…
You, Hinata and the rest of the boys spent the whole afternoon together at the park after your shifts were over. You enjoyed doing the simple things like getting ice cream together and going to bookstores and other small shops. When the day was over, Kenma and Akaashi bid the rest of you goodbye as you now walked with Daichi and Hinata on either of your sides. The silence felt slightly awkward but calming to you. But on the inside, you were panicking internally as these were the boys you loved beyond the bounds of friendship. 
“I should probably get home,” you chuckle lightly. 
“I’ll drive you-”
“I’ll walk you-” 
They both say at the same time as you laughed at them both. 
“Hmm, who should I have escort me home~?” you teased. 
The three of you laughed together, your laugh less tension filled than theirs. Once the laughter died down you stared out a bit, thinking of who you would choose. 
“Ah, I know, how about a game of rock paper scissors?” you set them up for a challenge and neither man wanted to fail. 
They both nodded, Daichi extending his arm out to make a fist, Hinata following suit. 
“Rock” 
“Paper” you put your hands on theirs, 
“Scissors…” both of them are now even more determined to hear your laugh and the words good night said to one of them and only one of them. 
You let go and they choose their stances once you say “Shoot!”
Daichi wins with rock, over Hinata’s scissors. 
Hinata pouts as Daichi laughs a little, and for a moment, it felt as if you were back in high school… Hinata felt like it was just yesterday when he had figured things out. 
“Oi, Hinata! Quit slacking off watching y/n & Yachi. We need to get this right!” a frustrated first year Kageyama Tobio yells to the orange-haired boy a few spots away from him on the court.
Hinata gets hit by a flying volleyball to his head, “Kageyama, you’re just like Iwaizumi san!”
The three girls on the side of the court laugh as they take notes and help the others. y/n looks up from her notes and smiles at him, giving him a thumbs up. 
Hinata turned red a little, he never understood why he felt this way, or why he would turn red whenever y/n smiled at him. Turning away to focus, he seemed more fired up than ever to those on and off the court. 
Daichi had gone up to you after the game and was joking around with you and Ennoshita. Hinata felt a weird growing feeling of annoyance in him every time you would laugh at Daichi’s jokes. He hated it the most when he would ruffle your hair and you would become flustered. 
“Oi, stop staring daggers into our Captain idiot!” Kageyama said as Yachi handed him his water bottle. 
Yachi looked into the direction the two boys were staring at and she chuckled. Hinata looked at the blonde and tilted his head in confusion. The girl just kept laughing as his growing annoyance still stayed, as if it was going to eat him up. 
She looked at Hinata and stopped laughing. Yachi took a deep breath and stared Hinata in the eye, “You need to listen to what I say, okay Hinata-kun?”
He looked even more puzzled but looked to y/n and Daichi once more…”Alright Yacchan what is it?”
“...Have you ever considered that you may be crushing on y/n-chan?” 
Hinata felt like he was hit with a volleyball of realization...and ever since then, his feelings have not changed. 
“Hinata, is it alright for me to take y/n home? Would you want a ride too?” Daichi asked as you and him stared at the tangerine haired boy. 
He smiled and shook his head, “No it’s okay senpai, I’m meeting Kageyama today.”
Technically not a lie, since he would call his close friend out tonight after all this. 
You pout and Hinata swore that he would’ve melted, “You didn’t tell me you were meeting Kageyama-kun.”
He laughed it off, “It was sort of last minute…” 
“It's okay!” you assure him “But you have to tell kageyama that we should all meet soon okay?”
He nods and you leave with Daichi after the older male waves and smiles to Hinata. 
He could already feel some of high school’s pain come creeping up at him. 
“Hey Kageyama, can we go drinking tonight?” He asks on the phone and Kageyama already knows what's up. 
44 notes · View notes
witchfall · 4 years ago
Text
old souls
summary: When the act of want feels like a risk, what happens when you get everything you asked for?
A Crystal Exarch x Warrior of Light fic Word count: 6431 Rating: M (implied sexual content)
Also on AO3. Technically a sequel to ‘hard is the heart that feels no fear’, though it can be enjoyed standalone.
Thank you to @vaniccio for betaing!!!
Copious Shadowbringers: 5.3 Reflections in Crystal spoilers within. You have been warned!
-
For a blistering moment, Izzie sees meteors flicker in his crystal body.
He’s not there anymore. She knows that. She grips the crystalline vial of blood memories so hard she fears it will crack. The sadness Alisaie spoke of when she saw the star showers -- loss that leaves yawning gaps, writhing and vile -- creeps up her throat. She remembers when she had her first vision from Hydaelyn on that trip to Ul'dah long ago; she feels more grounded in it, now. The pain is lived in. Understood.
The rains have ceased, but you are not here to see it.
The Scions join her at the seat of sacrifice. They stare at her, alarmed, as she strides past and says nothing. She will risk nothing sullying her hope; she will hold it like candle flame, close to her chest, until she is certain it will not go out.
---
Y’shtola lifts a single, elegant brow. “You still have to take the Exarch to Nabaath Arang?” 
“Yes.” Izzie tries not to snap. Y’shtola, of all of them, is most likely to examine Izzie down to the quick and question what she finds there.
“Showing him the realm, are you?”
Izzie crosses her arms. Rain in the Greatwood has unsettled the ancient greenery. Her nose twitches at the heavy scent of damp moss. “What of it?” 
Something changes in the air, then. Y’shtola pauses, recalculating, and Izzie’s tail stands on end from the tension. “It simply has...been awhile, since you have taken a flight of fancy like this.”
Izzie digs her toe into the mud. She huffs. For a bard, she’s extraordinarily bad when it comes to talking about herself. “It’s nice. To pretend.”
You are death.
“Pretend?”
“That I’m just a traveler, anymore.” 
Y’shtola gives her a small smile, but there’s something deeper there that spooks Izzie, like she’s looking at something private. “Is that not among your brightest qualities? Your penchant for adventure, vast and mundane?” She places a gentle hand on Izzie’s shoulder. “You are not so unknown.”
Izzie says nothing, even as Y’shtola shakes her lightly.
“I am not one to make prognostications I don’t fully believe in. You know this. I do, in fact, think this has more than a passing chance of working.”
Izzie nods. She refuses to cry.
“You could do worse." Y'shtola brushes an invisible piece of dirt off Izzie’s tunic, as if oblivious to the effect she had on her younger counterpart. "Though...were the two of you anyone else, I would call you both unspeakably obsessed..." 
Izzie's breath stutters as Y’shtola’s cloudy eyes sharpen upon her. She lets up for nothing. But before Izzie can struggle to defend herself, the woman gives a dazzling smile. 
“Do keep heart. My life and happiness depends on this working, too, you know."
Izzie glances pointedly to Runar, who is speaking with a woman by one of the Slitherbough gardens, and Y’shtola, perhaps sensing her intent through the aether, finally graces Izzie with silence.
---
The Scions’ crystals shimmer and everything clicks into its right place; Izzie feels settled for a bare moment, as if she had stepped onto a ferry in just the nick of time. Her beloved family rises one by one, greeting the new day, groaning as they stretch out waxy muscles. But as they each turn to appraise her, Izzie fidgets and fidgets.
They each gaze upon her expectantly. We will leave the rest to you, Y’shtola says, smiling with rare maternal kindness. It sends cold water down Izzie’s back. Urianger’s softness has never been a mystery to her, even in his most shadowed; his words are complex but their meaning is simple. It will work, he reminds her. The doors will unseal because G’raha’s blood is in her satchel. 
(How many years has she dreamed of saving his blood under her fingernails, of forcing those golden doors open with a furious pouring of her own essence?)
The realization scares her: they all know what she wants. And not a single person in the room dissuades her.  
Her stomach roils. Her blood feels electric. The hope of fulfillment alone may devour her. She runs and does not look back, not even when Tataru shouts. Not even when she feels Alisaie look after her strangely, like a confirmation that something is changed forever.
---
The ground shakes as those massive doors, the Dossal Gates, open. The stale air tastes split by lightning. She had just been standing before these same gates a few moments ago, but the difference between the worlds hollows her out. Unlike in the First, where the doors herald the hope of a city, these doors are dusty and hidden. Sealed purposefully against the various evils of mankind.
She grips the crystal tighter; perhaps it is his present soul that makes her own memories feel suddenly, painfully vibrant. His broad shoulders square as he seeks to leave her behind forever -- but then he turns just slightly, as if considering looking back, and his mouth moves as the doors close, the words lost forever to the sound of doors roaring shut. 
I love you. That’s what he said. She knows that now. The crystal is warm under her fingers, confirming it. It gives her the will to keep walking, up vaunted staircases that once stunned her with their beauty. Now they are just another obstacle. She barely registers the imperial stature of the architecture or the distant, yawning sounds of monsters that could still be lurking in its eternal spire. She follows a well-tread path to the Umbilicus and she knows it is right; the crystal near thrums with an affectionate, overbearing knowing.
So like him.
And then, after she throws one last door open with a breathless, heavy creak, her journey ends. She takes in a sharp breath. Dust stings her nose.
There he is.
He sleeps upon little more than a tiny dais with some red blankets thrown over it for bare comfort. His head lays upon what must be an old shirt of his balled up to serve as a pillow; his hands rest, open palmed, upon his chest. This cannot be what he thought an Allagan princeling would look like. She nearly laughs, lightheaded. 
Still...
Despite everything, his face is the picture of a lazy Mor Dhona afternoon. Even under the cold blue-gold light, his handsomeness is gutting. 
He is exactly as preserved in her memory, save his hair spreading loose like red vines across his makeshift bed. His youth, unburdened by a century of waiting, springs tears into her eyes. How many years does she bear on her back, despite the star merely going round twice? Will she look too different in his younger eyes? (This body is still older than her, she notes. But barely anymore. What a strange pair they make.)
She feels stupid, standing there staring with the crystal in her hands. She wonders if perhaps she should have brought Krile along. But, in theory, this should work the same as with the Scions, so before she can overthink it she places the crystal carefully, lovingly, beneath his palms. She jolts when she touches his skin— cold as the air in the tower — and for a moment she actually fears waking him, like she doesn’t want to upset his sleep. Even though that is exactly what she is doing.
What the fuck even is her life, a tiny part of her whispers.
The seconds drag on. Her tail twitches behind her in restless energy. Should she practice a speech or something? Should she talk to him to encourage his soul to accept itself? What words would even suffice? She spent two years wondering after him, yet it all feels short compared to this moment.
“I’m here,” she announces quietly and her hand lingers on his for just a moment. When he doesn’t respond, she sinks to the floor beside him, her back against his strangely warm dais-bed, her head between her knees. Words are no good. Whatever she says could easily be for naught.
She sings instead.
It’s a silly song the dragons taught her that does not translate well, but she liked the challenge of it in her mouth. It was once a courtship song, she was told. The meaning behind the deeply intricate symbols had been lost to time and the traversal of new stars. Now they just liked the ditty.
Care to forget the deep warm wells of another life?
The slow love of water beneath the sand?
Stupid questions I can't answer.
She hears the crackling sparkle of aether and pointedly does not look. She digs her eyes into her knees, seized with fear, and keeps singing, even though it’s muffled by her legs. Her torso is bent just enough that her voice feels weak, but she doesn’t adjust.
She will need to give him space. He will need time to come to terms with this world. She will not press him. She will not.
you're bold and bright, the sun star's last breath.
me?
at least the dark magic is mine
and I will keep it to myself this time.
Her song smothers the groaning sounds of his waking. She doesn’t notice him take a few silent moments to watch her, all curled up and heartbreakingly girlish again in her waiting. Her feet tap the floor. Her hands grip her ankles. Her ears twitch, and then…
She sees feet hit the floor in the corner of her eye and…
She shoots up to standing so fast that her vision tunnels for a moment. She doesn’t breathe. She could pass out standing there. She might well have, watching him as he watches her, his mouth popped slightly open…those red eyes...
She stumbles back a tiny step at the weight of seeing him. His breath catches. 
“I remember,” he says. His throat works to swallow. Her eyes hone in on it. “I remember everything.”
"Oh.” Breathe. Her heart is in her mouth. “That’s…”
Well, not entirely good, is it? Don’t think about it.
She scans him as clinically as she can manage. The Allagan technology did well by him, at least. His skin is clear and pale. His tattoos stand out like void bites. His lithe frame had retained its old musculature, though she imagines it must be disorienting regardless. His aether situation -- she would leave the specifics to Krile -- must be very confusing.
But then his eyes fill with tears.
She panics, and against her earlier desire for restraint, she closes the distance between them in a step. Her hands fly to his face (no crystal coming to claim him, simply the edge of an archon's tattoo...). She cups his jaw, resting her thumbs on his cheeks. The tears she can't catch fall into the webbing of her fingers.
"It's okay," she says softly. She squashes her own tears down, down, down. His face still feels too cool beneath her hands and she thinks for a moment about what it would be like to wrap him up in a scarf and keep him like a trophy. "The worst is over now."
He leans his mouth into her palm. When he speaks, his lips brush her heart lines and she fears she may combust. "You're real, aren't you?" he croaks out. Voice unused for years. "You aren't some strange ghost created out of the hope of two souls?" 
Her throat tightens. She forgets how to speak like someone kind. “Of course I’m real, you idiot. Of course I'm--”
He seizes her, then, in a crushing embrace, his arms as strong as the day they said goodbye. They snake around her waist. She is crushed between her leather armor and his stupid ugly tunic and the haleness of his body, and all she wants is to wink out of time and live in this moment. Still, a part of her resists. He has much to remember. Hundreds of years to consider.
He whispers into her ear. “My star. Izzie. My love.” Naming her, as if to anchor her to him. He pulls back only so their foreheads meet. She struggles to focus on the radiance of his gaze. “Are you alright?”
“Am I--” She nearly growls at him in her flummoxed state. Tears slip down her cheeks, too, and it makes her angry and proud and happy and destroyed. “I should be asking you that!”
Perhaps he didn’t hear her; but then, it is more likely he did and saw through her. He tucks her head under his chin and rocks her back and forth. He holds her tightly until her shoulders finally lose their tension and she gives a keening sob against his chest. His breath catches again. And then they collapse to the gold filigree floor, grappling with the sudden collision -- and end -- of too many painful years apart.
---
She feels a bit like a child bringing home a stray, even though that doesn’t make sense. Her Scions know him and he’d lived in Mor Dhona for a not insignificant amount of time. But nothing explains the bizarre embarrassment and desolation she feels when they arrive at the Rising Stones and everyone stares for a second. Don’t look, she wants to scream. Everything is fine and normal and not at all a miracle that shouldn’t have happened.
But then Krile marches forward and points a terrifying finger at G’raha. “Raha. Just because this all worked out well does not mean you are forgiven for being an idealistic fool. To bed. Now.”
Izzie grins so brightly her eyes water as G’raha’s ears flatten against his head. Her mother would like Krile very much; the resemblance strikes her fiercely in that moment. 
“Don’t let him leave your sight, Izzie,” she grumbles as they enter Dawn’s Respite. G’raha leans into Izzie as she half carries him, and she wonders if he’s dramatizing a little to stay close to her and hide from Krile. “I can’t believe how angry I still am with you after all these years. You ridiculous fool. You’re lucky your decision quite literally prevented a calamity…”
G’raha, to his credit, bows to her scolding. “You’re right, of course.”
Krile harrumphs. But Izzie doesn’t miss the soft, sidelong glance she gives the younger scholar before she near pushes him to bed.
--- 
Izzie brings G’raha everything Krile says he needs and more. She fetches food and blankets and washcloths. She holds weird aether scanning tools at just right angles. She cleans medical tools and sweeps floors and folds sheets when Krile runs out of things for her to do. At one point, she notices G’raha keeps brushing his bangs out of his eyes. She silently marches up to his bedside, fishes out a few pins from her pocket, and waves them in front of his face.
He reaches forward to take them. "Thank you--"
"Let me do it," she whispers, and before he can protest, her fingers brush against his crown, pinning his soft hair out of his beautiful eyes. He takes the faintest breath before he wraps a hand around her wrist, gentle and pleading.
"You haven't sat down."
She feels like she has hornets under her skin. "Lots to do."
He quirks a smile. “No there isn’t.”
She glances to where his fingers grip her. She glances around the spotless Respite. Her ears flatten. “...well. There was.”
So she sits in the chair Krile pointedly left beside him and collapses her body forward until her forehead lays on the mattress. She is tired. Not for the first time, she wishes she wasn’t like this. Wishes she didn’t feel driven to do until she can’t think anymore.
But then G’raha gently rubs her head between her ears and she decides she can just opt out of thinking, if she wants. She allows herself the affection; from the way his hands don’t leave her, he seems desperate to give it. She snaps out her own hand, letting it wander the mattress and muss away the sheets until she finds his thigh and she feels better, touching him back. He softly hums some old tune and she relaxes there in relative quiet for who knows how long.
In her warm drifting, she eventually realizes she dreads nightfall. She should let him sleep the recuperative sleep of a mortal man. She should not hover or oppress him into what she wants. But just as before, as in the old days and the new, he speaks as if he can read her like a book.
"If it isn't any trouble, my dear one," he starts, "would you be willing to stay with me tonight?"
She nods at once, relieved, and settles harder into her chair. He smiles, lopsided.
"You can have a bed, if you'd like."
"I want to be closer," she admits, and already her face burns, even though she has not lifted her hand from his thigh for hours, maybe. "So here is fine, I've slept in a chair before, a lot actually--"
He reaches up and tugs on one of the frazzled locks of hair framing her face, just like Before. Her lip quivers. "You can have a bed," he says, cutely commandeering in a way he never let himself be as Exarch, and he pats his mattress.
She blinks at him. In the next moment, she is peeling off her boots, avoiding his resplendent gaze as she does so. She pulls back his covers and slips in beside him, her legs sliding against his warm, bare skin as he tucks her in against his chest. She entwines their limbs and throws an arm over his waist. She digs her nose into his chest, smelling his clean skin; even now his scent reminds her of their old campfires. He rubs small circles into the back of her neck with his thumb.
Why had she been so afraid to ask for this?
"Finally," he sighs into her hair. "My dark and dastardly plans may commence."
He brushes his fingers on her exposed waist. She squeaks at his touch -- he was tickling her, the fiend -- and whaps him with her palm. He laughs. She feels at home.
---
G'raha awakens first. He blinks heavily at the weight lying against him and looks down, and only then does he accept he is not dreaming. 
Izzie snores against him, her mouth open. Her chin shines with drool. Her hair is a tangle of red knots under her sweaty neck, but her face is so relaxed that he thinks to keep her there, forever. His reverie only ends because Krile enters -- and she stops suddenly, seeing the pair.
He can only describe her expression as wistful. But she schools her face into more familiar, sly watchfulness when she notices his gaze upon her.
"You would ensnare the Warrior of Light," Krile says, as if exhausted of him already.
"I assure you," he says, quiet as a whisper, "that it was entirely the other way around."
Krile smirks. She oozes sarcasm as she sweeps over to them, but when her gaze shifts to Izzie’s still miraculously sleeping form, he remembers how badly he missed Krile’s softness, too. 
“Oh, Raha.” She lays the back of her hand on Izzie’s forehead, testing for fever (it was apparently that unusual for her to sleep like this), but her twinkling eyes land on him. “You haven’t changed at all.”
---
And then the strangest thing of all happens: The Scions of the Seventh Dawn have nothing to do. Nothing so pressing the world won’t wait a few days for them to catch up to it.
G’raha learns the limits of his new old body. He falls asleep on their picnic blanket and during a card game and even, to Izzie's sickening panic, once on the edge of a balcony wall where he had perched with a book. He devours whole meals so quickly she watches him in careful awe. He weaves spells and gets tired enough to faint; she has so far been able to catch him before he hits the ground, but she ponders letting him do so, once, if it teaches him a lesson.
Izzie enjoys playing witness. It’s like watching her favorite dreams depicted on stage for her amusement.
"I like your hair like that," she says in passing one day. His hand flutters up to the pins he had kept and his ears flick -- more expressive than she had ever seen, even in the old days. He smiles brightly.
"I'm glad," he says. "I like it too."
Tataru gifts him new clothes, and that is when it truly feels like the beginning of an era. He steps out of a side room to model them for the Scion family, smiling sheepishly, and Izzie stares for a moment too long. She feels Feo Ul's hand in this. The Fae King reached through time and space to design this outfit specifically to slap her in the face. My dear sapling will have to thank me in person later! She can nearly hear the words -- and indeed, Izzie would.
The design is a perfect blend of old and new. His sharp red half-robe is ridiculously him, honoring the Exarch and young scholar both. The gold accents shimmer under the light. He is adorned with so many necklaces she is struck with the desire to bring him another, as if in tribute. 
She steps close and adjusts his black scarf, letting her fingers drift down to the tassles and linger on the sumptuous fabric just over his collarbones, before she realizes what she is doing. 
G'raha's grin is blinding in the corner of her eye. 
"It wasn't even," she grumbles at him.
"And the rest of it?"
"It's a good look," Thancred says. His tone indicates more than just the clothes. Alphinaud poorly stifles a giggle.
Izzie turns back to glare at them, but they are all looking at her, like she is the twist in the tale they've been waiting for. Urianger smiles gently. Y'shtola raises a brow. I knew it to be so. Even Alisaie looks strangely triumphant, like she'd won a bet.
She blushes furiously and lets it slide.
Despite this -- despite the offer for him to join the Scions and the work he does to re-seal the tower and the fact he is never far from arm's reach, much less out of sight -- she still feels out of sorts. And then one day, as they sit together in the Rising Stones cafe picking over finger sandwiches, her mouth does the thing where it asks a stupid question before she realizes it's happening. 
She stares at him as he places a fifth sandwich in his mouth and she asks: "Are we together?"
He glances to her, alarmed, but his tone remains steady and teasing. "Did you teleport somewhere on accident? You look corporeal enough."
"No. I mean. Are we...are…" Well, no, now it feels really stupid. She turns away. She stuffs a whole sandwich in her mouth in one go, and he waits patiently the whole time. She says, once she swallows the food down: "Is this happening? For real this time?"
She isn't sure what she means. Physically? A proposal of marriage? All of it makes her feel like she just stuck her head in an oven.
His brows turn downward. "Why wouldn't it be, my love?"
Yes, this is very stupid indeed. His love is near impossible to avoid. But since he received his own room at the Stones, they function otherwise like they intend to live completely separate lives. Like colleagues.
Which they are. Which is fine.
It’s not.
"Can we...go on a trip? An adventure maybe? Or something? Alone. Just us two. Without...any of the other Scions…?”
She bites her lip and lays her head on the table and covers her scalp with her hands. She wants to die for some reason. 
He laughs, warm and true, and he leans in until his forehead rests on her temple. She still hides in shame, even as he whispers just for her to hear. "How many times do I have to tell you you're my guiding star? Before you believe me?"
Her face is so flushed she feels sweat break on her brow. "Maybe another time would help," she mutters into the table.
He laughs again and gently kisses her on the corner of her mouth. "I will wait for you to come to me, alright?" When she looks at him with wide eyes, stricken by a terror she struggles to name, he smiles at her. Love freely given. "You could never disappoint me. As ever, I follow in your light."
---
She takes him up on it that night.
She was never confident in these affairs. Their first time in the tower on the First she was seized by reckless abandon. He was already seeing everything. Why hide? Their time, she sensed, had been limited once again. The tower loomed over everything. A judge in cold absentia.
Now, if she knocks on this door in the Rising Stones, she will be stepping into forever. Her body shakes. She feels 19 again, afraid of how powerfully certain she is -- afraid of the pain she may invite into her life, if she loses him. But this time, she has already lost him twice. No god, if they exist, would be cruel or stupid enough to make an enemy of her this time.
She knocks. He opens the door. He stares, bewildered. 
"Hi," she says flatly.
A blinding smile lights his face. She has to look away a moment. Her heart thuds so strongly she is certain he can hear it. He stands there, staring.
"Move, would you?" Her voice feels harsh and unsteady. "Before the gossipmongers see."
He steps back. She steps in. And then, in one fluid movement, he pulls her against him and pushes the door closed behind her. Suddenly her back is pressed against the harsh wood and she is kissing him, melting into his muscled chest and his moan of satisfaction as her tongue darts into his mouth. She isn't sure who moved first. It doesn't matter now. They're together, against the literal forces of time and space. 
She pulls back just enough that their lips are only a hair apart. Heat thrums between them.
"I hope you know," she breathes, "that this time I mean to keep you."
He grins. The boy she had dreamed of. "This time I intend to be kept."
She laughs before he quiets her with his mouth against hers. 
For all its drama, the reconnection is quiet. He carries her to the bed. They undress each other slowly, limbs entangled, smiling into each other's skin, until they lay together naked beneath the blankets. He won't stop kissing her, pressing his lips against old injuries, her ears, her collarbones, her stomach. 
“So much to catch up on,” he says. “And I will know all of it, again.”
She takes a deep breath and shreds her last bit of armor. Do what you like with me. Mark me. Make it real. 
He holds her fast when she says this. He trembles, looming over her, within her. She wants to be disappeared by his shadow. She wants to be consumed.
His mouth and tongue slide down her neck. "You are everything.” His teeth graze the top of her shoulder. “I will answer your every prayer.” His hand slides over the bony curve of her hip. “For what I want...is to see you beloved.”
---
And yet.
She wakes curled into his side, his arm circled around her shoulders. She moves until she can hear his heart, beating and alive. 
The shadow of night sparks cruel questions: Will he be kept? Will he be fighting fate's designs upon his life? Can she survive another loss? Can she afford to try? They circle in her head until she takes a sharp breath. She utters his true name. "Raha…"
Perhaps he had already been awake. Immediately, he circles his arms around her in a protective vice. “What’s wrong?”
Her voice catches in her throat and G’raha pulls her up. He sits against the headboard and cradles her against him, bringing the blankets up to keep her warm. “I don’t know,” she says. She smothers her ear against his chest. Lets the sound of his lifeblood calm her. “I don’t know what happens next.”
He strokes her back. Her fingertips slip against his chest as she balls her hands into fists. And then he sucks in a breath. She tilts her head up at him.
"...I just want you to know where I stand," he says, and she gets the feeling he has practiced this speech. "I...I had seen the reports of your death in the future that now will never be. I saw...memorials to you in every camp. Every small group carried something of you. A picture. A carving. A song they thought you wrote…"
He sighs. She hears a century of pain in it.
"Your death in the abstract was untenable. You were everywhere. And...I knew, I knew when I woke that I would be confronted with your death, even in an ideal world. But it was...I felt so immeasurably stupid. To think that I would be able to survive it. I could barely tolerate giving up adventuring with you, much less..."
She stops him with a finger to his lips. No need to relive these hurts for her sake. "What's the short version, Raha?"
The use of his true name sends another contented shudder through his lungs. He takes her raised hand and pulls until he can press his lips against the inside of her wrist.
"I had a century to come to terms with what I want. And now I have her, despite my every expectation.” His tail curls around her hip. "You haven't had that time. I didn't want to press it. But I also know...sometimes you experience more pain doing nothing out of fear of what the something will bring."
She hears the silent mercy he is granting her. It’s okay to want. It’s okay to struggle with it. 
“And,” he adds, “you lose a shocking amount of time, thinking not of the present.”
He presses a kiss to the pulsing vein in her wrist. She taps his chest with her thumb.
"What did the pictures even look like?"
His other hand slides lazily down her back. "Not even the slightest bit like you."
"Not even a little?"
"It was you if you were at least a fulm taller and had much meaner brows. Maybe."
"Hmm…"
He squeezes the base of her tail and she jumps. His chuckling breath tickles her ear. "I much prefer this version."
---
G’raha taps the charcoal against the blank drawing parchment as he watches Izzie experience the consequences of her actions. 
On the path into Rowena’s Splendors below, the Warrior of Light and Darkness hummed, fully distracted by the contents of her bag while she walked -- leaving her utterly unprepared for Thancred to hold out his arm and nearly clothesline her. She stumbles with incredible drama. Her arms flap. Her feet dance to keep her aloft, and just barely do they succeed.
“Hey!” she shouts.
“Your bag,” Thancred insists.
“You-”
“Your bag.”
Izzie growls in frustration before shoving it at him with a leathery thunk.
Thancred makes a show of rifling through it. Some knives wrapped in burlap. The remnants of a cheesecloth. A few glamour prisms. G’raha knows Thancred wouldn’t find anything in there. He knows, also, that Thancred wouldn’t even be down there if it wasn’t for him. He tipped the man off because he knew Izzie would find it funny.
He rather enjoys Izzie’s little cons -- when they aren’t directed at him. 
Thancred hands back the satchel. “If I find any more of that Mord grub in our coldbox, I will confine you to quarters, warrior of two worlds or no.” Despite his words, his tone is largely...endeared. Relieved, and not just because her bag was empty.
Izzie grins at him. “Gaia didn’t send any with me this time.”
Thancred ignores her. “And you!” he shouts up at G’raha. “Stop enabling her!”
G’raha raises his hands to proclaim innocence, laughing, and he wipes off the charcoal lingering on his fingers. He turns his eyes toward the door to the balcony upon which he sits. His heart floats, knowing it’ll be mere moments before Izzie will be ambushing him.
The scions -- his fellow scions -- hadn’t missed the changes within her. She smiles more. She even plays music in the tavern sometimes, which always brings a full house. I’ll deal with the frustrating practical jokes if it means she’s doing alright, Thancred admitted to him over beer not so long ago.
He hears her before he sees her, but only because he seeks out her quiet footfalls. She jumps from the threshold of the door and makes it half-way; she twirl-steps the last half to dramatically throw her arm over his shoulders. She lands hard enough to thump the air out of him. The whole of her leans playfully into his side, her chest nearly against his own. “Ready to see Ma?”
He grins before her happy radiance, never one to resist her call to adventure -- not even when he fears what it will bring. Meeting her adoptive mother, for instance. He settles his arm around her lower back. “As ready as one can be.”
---
The Thanalan heat stifles him. Dust seeps into his clothes and sand flies into his eyes no matter which way he turns when the winds blow across the desert. Izzie's ma, Sheshena Shena, takes one look at G’raha’s pale, wind-chapped skin and insists he take tea with her on the covered porch.
"Izzie can set up the carriage herself," she declares. Izzie glances to him and nods encouragement, but she acquiesces at once to her Ma's will. Lady Shena, G'raha thinks, has a power all of Garlemald wishes it could wield.
But he knows that this gesture is not solely for his benefit. She allows him a few moments of polite, worthless conversation over an aromatic chai before her glassy eyes pin him in place.
"Not too many moons ago," Sheshena says, "I was going to ask her to quit."
G'raha lets that register for a moment. "Her work with the Scions?"
Sheshena inclines her head. "She wouldn't have. She can no less quit being the warrior of light than I can quit being her mother. But I thought...perhaps it would help her notice just how bad the misery weighed on her shoulders."
She purses her lips and turns away, toward Izzie. She lingers there a moment. 
"She would have just been angry with me." Her gaze slides back to him. "But I have watched my daughter carefully, G'raha Tia. And much of this started not long after you disappeared from her life."
He understands now. She is warning him. She is telling him the stories that wouldn't be in any tomes.
"...it wasn't all your fault," she allows. "Her time in Ishgard would have crushed her were it not for dear Edmont." He forgets she is on first name terms with Izzie's Ishgardian family -- that she is part of it, too. "And then her father died."
G'raha closes his eyes, punched in the gut. 
Her voice hollows. "It never quite stopped after that."
He realizes this is not just a tribunal for his crimes against her daughter, but a confessional. An unmooring of pain, old and new. 
"She stopped allowing herself things. Her silly songs ended. Her visits slowed. I knew she needed the space. But she was drifting into the middle of a lake with no paddle. She was letting it happen." Her silver eyes sharpen into knives. "And I sought to blame someone. And I decided it was you. You, who had broken her heart first. You, who had left her behind. You were...it was easier."
She sets down her tea cup with a shaky clink and turns away from him.
"She told me what happened on this...other world. How she found you again."
He stares down into his half-sipped tea. His fingers slip upon the stone table. He would take this punishment. It was small, in the scheme of things, and necessary.
"She told me, had it not happened...had you made a different choice, that she would be dead."
So would the whole world, he thinks to say, but on this he and Sheshena agreed: without her, none of it matters, anyway.
"That you survived years and years to set things right and make sure she didn't die."
He nods, though his neck feels stiff.
"So I wanted to apologize. And thank you."
His heart stutters. He looks up at her in shock.
"Come off it," she says, sly and perhaps embarrassed. "Look at her. Look at her." Her lip trembles. "She's humming again."
They both look out to her, softly brushing her chocobo. The 'bo chirps conversationally at her. She laughs and coos at her stalwart friend. And there, in her laughter…
Where the desert sun left him weak and wan, she is painted in one thousand colors of light. Her sea green eyes shine. Her skin reddens like a canyon at noon. The sun adores her as its own, and perhaps she is. 
This is the crystal of Azem. I think that it was meant for me. Can you believe it? Emet-selch, making this for me, once upon a time...
The Sun. The Shepherd of the Stars. When he touched the crystal, he felt a strange sort of awe.
He tastes cloves and the fruit of oasis when he thinks about her aether whipping around him. He thinks of life where there should be misery -- of how desire can twist but also carefully caress.
"Ma! Where'd you put Bonbon's sun hat?"
Sheshena answers, her voice no longer weighed down, and he realizes again why Izzie was so afraid at first. He would learn the realness of her again. He would see her pain and be there at her Da’s grave with her. He would make it impossible for her to forget that she is loved. 
Sheshena turns back to him and the light in her eyes shifts. 
"So." Sheshena regards him regally. "You're Allagan royalty, are you?" She raises a single brow to his flummoxed expression and sighs as she lifts her tea cup to her lips. "I suppose she could do worse."
The sun scalds bright pictures behind his eyelids as he laughs.
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toshis-puppycat · 4 years ago
Text
Hello Again Part Three
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A/n: Ahhh i have no excuse as to why it took me so long with writing, my inspiration was there with part four of Unfortunately but for this one it was *poof* 'I'm gone' and I'm very sorry about that but here is now! Also watch how the next part of this is gonna be short. I'll be embarrassed considering how long this one is lol. Anyways, I hope yall enjoy!!
Summary: You've missed about twenty years with Endeavor and All Might, that's so much to catch up on. Its exciting to see whats been going on! But well... there's always a negative isn't there?
Word Count: 7k (Jesus christ)
Part Three
You found out for sure that you missed about two decades with Toshi and Enji. Or well, you couldn't really call them that anymore. All Might and Endeavor. Their Hero Names. It was so trippy. All Might became the number one hero when he came back from America, which is when he found out you "died". You didn't even want to ask why he wasn't told sooner, hero work was tiresome in the states when he was over there. Endeavor was the number two hero. Now promoted to number one and he had children! And one of them was currently going to U.A. it was all so exciting! And the teachers here now were hilarious. Present Mic was obnoxiously loud, slightly reminded you of a Cockatiel which was kinda funny. Eraserhead or rather Aizawa Shouto was interesting, he was quiet, and seemed to be friends with Present Mic and he had a really fucking cool quirk, and God would it have been useful when you were younger. At that thought it was a little depressing, you missed everything. All those important life events for both Toshi and Enji and- You pushed the thought away, it was nicer to know the teachers you'd mainly be working with. Speaking of that there was one that scared the shit out of you. She was very open about herself, and really how would you say it? Sexy? Alluring? She was very flirty, seeing you look away all flustered apparently had become a favorite pass time of hers. But that didn't matter, because she was one of the first ones willing to jump at saying you could stay at U.A as a Teachers Assistant instead of just being a seemingly random civilian. Being apart of the faculty would be way easier, and with a push from a retired All Might backing you, along with the faculty at U.A itself you were allowed to stay. When you had to inform the parents you were a bundle of nerves. What if they didn't want you here? Was the only thought you had. But when you actually met them and then immediately drenched a pro-hero in water, not just any pro-hero, Endeavor your childhood friend. It was okay though, because one of the parents cackled and said she was completely fine having you stay. Her son apparently had a quirk called explosion which happened to deal with his sweat being able to well… explode, and he is a true hothead. Seeing Enji was jaring at the time but he was a father, his son is currently attending U.A. you didn't know why you were so surprised seeing him. Maybe you were still stuck on when youd last seen him? Falling from that He was just married when you left, and you'd recently found out he had children from All Might, so of course he would attend the meeting. Later when you finally settled for the night, you realized something. Toshi was refusing to be left alone with you the whole day, even when you were literally grabbing at him and trying to hold him. It left an unfamiliar feeling in your gut. You had gotten past some difficult things in your life already, just please let it be this once something would go right. Because despite you being thrown about 20 years into a future which was definatly exciting, you knew something would probably go wrong. You could always feel it, you speculated it was something from your quirk, too much good came with the bad. Healing, water manipulation, being able to turn into a literal mermaid, having your voice enchant people when you sing. There had to be some negative. With you there always was. You knew it was gonna hit you one way or another. No matter how much you hoped it wouldn't.
☆☆☆☆☆
You forgot what it was like having a nightmare. You moved on from your childhood as best as possible, having Enji's help along with having All Might made it so much easier when you were in your own time. You assumed that the only reason it was hitting you now was because you were thrown into the future. Despite the excitement, it was difficult for you to feel okay. You wished you could call Toshi or Enji. But Enji had to patrol tomorrow and Toshi already looked dead on his feet. Plus he was avoiding you, which you supposed was also kind of the trigger for you. That deep rooted worry that you had within yourself. One that always questioned whether or not you deserved to be No, no. Everything… everything would be okay. It had to be okay. It would hurt having it any other way.
☆☆☆☆☆
You decided the night before that you'd ask him, about his life. You had questions that needed answers but all that came out when you saw him was, "Did you ever get married, All Might?" It made sense to ask him sure, but just throwing it out there like some weirdo? But if he wasn't married he could be single. That was the only part your brain focused on. You knew he was a different man now, it would be impossible for him to have not changed in the time you've been gone, but you could still see the one you confessed to, the shocked red faced look, the first kiss... He was just so cute, and it didn't matter to you he was technically older, he made your heart race now just as much as he did then. It was like you were confessing all over again, the butterflies never left.
"No, y/n. I did not get married." He said, giving you a strange look. "Why?" 
"I was just curious." You said, but inside you felt giddy, all of your other questions were forgotten. Not married. For now at least.
☆☆☆☆☆
The next day you were going to work with Aizawa, and you were finally going to meet the newest batch of heros that were trying out for thir provisional license. And you were going to go with them, the principal Nezu had agreed with you when you brought up your concerns about being a hero again. And when you suggested that you take the exam as well, he was all for it. Especially since you'd said that your Hero License had expired years ago. You only missed the first fews day of their continued training, something about them missing the rest of their summer training camp because of a kidnapping, and it made U.A become a boarding school. This was good though, a good distraction.
"Uh Mr. Aizawa? Who's she?" A timid voice called out. It snapped you out of your train of thought. Aizawa gestured for you to introduce yourself. 
"Oh, hi! I'm y/n l/n." You smiled. "Sorry to just drop in on you guys. I'm going to be assisting Mr. Aizawa and the other teachers a part of the hero course from now on." You explained. 
"Why? We are already living on campus." A boy called out. He was a little… stiff, you just smiled at the class. 
"We thought it'd be best if I joined. Principle Nezu already introduced me to your parents." You said. 
"We need to be going now." Aizawa said. The class quickly stood up and began to follow, you lagged behind to make sure everyone could stay together. The student who asked who you were, the one who wondered why you were there and a young girl were in front of you.
"My apologies ma'am! I realized I may have insulted you" He exclaimed, you blinked in response to his excited demeanor. "My name is Tenya, Iida! And these are my fellow classmates Midoryia, Izuku and Ochaco, Uraraka!" He yelled. 
"Iida! You're startling her!" The girl, Ochaco exclaimed, she let out a sigh. "Sorry, he's just very excited that we're working on getting our license." She said. You smiled at the three. 
"We can talk more at gym gamma." You said, gently pushing the trio forward. And you all quickly made your way to the gym to practice. "I remember when I tried for the Provisional Hero License Exam." You stated, musing with the three teens. Midoryia's eyes lit up.
"You took the Provisional Hero Licenses Exam?" He questioned excitedly. You awkwardly smiled at him. 
"Yeah I did, they change it every year though-" you began but he cut you off in an excited tangent. You couldn't make out any of the beginning but you did hear the last part because he yelled it out in his excitement. 
"So that means you have a great quirk for hero work!" He yelled out, unfortunately you were already at the gym, and it echoed a little. You flinched a little, and saw Midnight making her way towards you. 
"Y/n! Come here!" She yelled at you. You gave the three students a polite but awkward goodbye and made your way over to the R-rated hero. "Its good that you came in with them! Getting all acquainted with the students." She purred out, you felt your face heat up in embarrassment. 
"Midnight please don't." Was all you managed to say. 
She gave you a look, then said "Its good you're getting acquainted with them because I have a favor to ask you."
You tilted your head at her. "A favor?"
"Yes! Now- I've already seen the proof so you can't deny it- I need you to do something for an assignment I'm going to be giving these kids." She said. You nodded hesitantly, encouraging her to continue, noticing a slight predatory look in her eye. Wait...proof of? Oh. Oh no. "I'm going to need you to perform a song in front of the class. I already know that voice of yours gets affected by your quirk when you sing so it'll throw'em off guard a little. Let them know that art is everywhere and its amplified by quirks. It'll be a good lesson." She says. You feel your eye twitch a little and sigh. She already knew you did something before, so why not. 
"Okay." You said. Then you started watching the students after they came out in their hero costumes. And they looked amazing! God these kids were going to be great heros, you could feel it. Working with these kids would be a trip.
☆☆☆☆☆
It was four days after you met these wonderful kids that it hit you. Why Toshinori wasn't interacting with you much. It started normally. Him walking in and talking to Aizawa as you happily made your way to the two. Midoryia excitedly told you about his costume upgrades earlier. Braces that were added to reduce the strain on his arms and knee pads that were extended up to his thighs. He was a smart kid, you were glad that he was able to figure out what he needed. You were watching Fumikage work on his special move, "Abyssal Black Body". Dark Shadow covered his form, God these kids were cool. 
"Some of them have finally solidified their fighting styles. And there are those already putting together multiple special moves." Aizawa said, you saw All Might walk towards the area the angry blonde was in, Bakugou. You learned his name quickly a few days prior. You saw him do a form of his special move and at the time you didn't know his name and yelled out the only one you'd heard, which was from Izuku. 
"Good job, Kachaan!" You screamed out, the blonde turned to you furiously, glaring at you.
"Oi, hag don't fucking call me that!" He called out. Four of his classmates were howling with laughter before one of them called out to you and told you that he preferred to be called Bakugou. And apparently you were lucky, because despite being a part of the staff he would've hit you with his quirk if he was angry enough. Explosion. Ah, his mother told you about him when you'd met. You apologized to the snarling blonde, but not before taking away some of his sweat in response. 
"Listen Bakugou, I'm sorry I called you the only name I've heard so far. It won't happen again." You said. It left him sputtering in response at the lack of his quirk. He scowled at you after noticing you essentially holding the sweat away from him. It held no malice though, you could tell that. He was just frustrated most likely, you knew he was the one that was kidnapped. He could probably be scared too. You pushed the thoughts away. You'd ask Aizawa about it later.
You saw him curl one hand into a small circle, and place it in front of his other hand then a bright blast came through, his special move. It blasted a hole through the obstacle that he was practicing on, and you saw it crumble a bit as he screamed about how he did it in excitement. Pure happiness was coming off him in waves. Despite his grouch attitude, you felt yourself smiling. 
"No surprise that young Bakugou is doing well. As usual." You heard All Might say. The wall behind him was crumbling, you saw it and you felt your body moving forward on its own before you knew it, hearing a faint call from Bakugou for All Might to watch out. He was going to get hurt. Toshinori was going to get hurt. Water quickly flowed towards him, to keep him protected from the large rock falling towards him when you saw him. Izuku came in out of nowhere, green lightning surrounding his form as he twisted his body to kick. You saw All Mights face in that moment. An impressed, proud smile on his face that made your heart seize on itself. Like a father looking at his son. Izuku yelled a resounding "Smash!" You felt everything shatter in that moment. 
"You did it kid." All Might said, you weren't sure if Aizawa heard that. But Izuku did, he was smiling widely at him. 
"Hey Aizawa, I completely spaced out on telling Principle Nezu something!" You could hear yourself call out, your cheeks were hurting a bit. You could vaguely feel it and you could barely hear Bakugou calling out to All Might to "watch himself". Aizawa nodded at you, and you made your way to the exit. Toshinori gave you an odd look, before offering to walk you. You gave him a tight lipped smile, and said "Nah, you wanted to watch these kids! I'll get to him safely." You were glad that you didn't have any water surrounding you at the moment. It made it hard to be ignored like you were right now. You asked him if he ever married anyone. You didn't ask if he had any children. And somehow, even though he wasn't with anyone now. It felt like a punch to the gut. He didn't tell you he moved on and had a child. You avoided being near him after that.
☆☆☆☆☆
That night you had to make sure that the girls would be getting ready for bed. You walked towards the common room area and heard a student, you think is Asui "Its not good to force an investigation."
"She's right. More importantly, it's late. We should call it a night." You heard another say, Yaoyorozu you saw her stand up.
The pink girl, Ashido looked absolutely outraged for a moment, and then you noticed Ochaco floating in the air. Hearing Ashido say "Ugh! No! I wanna hear everything!" Made you look at the group that still had their gravity, they were a cute bunch.
"Girls, its getting late. You should be heading to bed now." You said. It shocked all of them into looking in your direction. 
"Ah, yes Y/n sensei!" Yaoyorozu said. You chuckled at the still obvious pout Ashido was giving.
"Ashido, I hope you're not too focused on romance right now. First worry about getting your hero license, then you can worry about romance." You said. She smiled brightly at you. 
"Wait y/n sensei, do you like someone?" She asks. You give an awkward look. But she looked so hopeful you'd say something. 
"Yes, Ashido. But look at that time! You all need to be getting sleep!" You cheered, she pouted again. But she seemed to accept it, the group started walking away.
These kids… are going to be great heros. You looked out the window, and saw Midoryia perfecting his movements, and you felt a small sad smile come up. I'm… I'm really glad he has a son like you Midoryia. You thought, feeling a treacherous tear coming down your cheek and furiously wiped it away. Thankfully, the girls already left for their rooms. Now, you just had to make sure he came in to sleep.
☆☆☆☆☆
Before anyone knew it the day of the exam was here. You went with the class on the bus with your own bag, getting shocked stairs from the students. You shrugged your shoulders and smiled. "What? You think I'm here for moral support? All that practice I did with all of you and you thought I'd just be here as a moral boost?" Only two people didn't jump out of their seats in excitement,  one being Bakugou, which you expected. The other being Todoroki, you figured one didn't care and the other understood you from before. You'd told the class the day before about your previous connections but you guess it didn't click for them that you'd want to be a hero again. 
"Oh man do I have stories about my time here." You said, the students were looking at you eagerly. "It was the first sparing session we had after our internship, and I threw Endeavor on his ass. It was glorious. He was so shocked I did it and it was fueled by pure spite." You explained, Todoroki gave an interesting expression to that. "When our first sparing session happened though it was my favorite, that man really almost lit the surrounding area on fire and I just drenched him in water. He was a lot less everything then he is now, so he kinda looked like a wet rat. Again, glorious moment." You said to the class, they all laughed. It was a good moment with them. 
You noticed that you made it to the building for the test and shook away the memories and just felt excitement. The test was different every year! You couldn't wait to see what they came up with this time around! You could hear the student's mixed reactions, to the few saying they felt nervous to the others saying "I wonder what they're gonna make us do." You sighed, this was going to be fun. 
"If you can pass this test and get your provisional license, then you novice eggs will hatch into chicks. You'll be semi-pros. I expect your best." You heard Aizawa say. "And you," he started turning towards you. "You've done this before. Don't fail."he finished. You beamed at him.
"Don't worry Aizawa! I got this!" You said, voice full of cheer. You could ignore what you learned before, just for today. You could hear Kirishima call out to the class to say their signature catch phrase "Plus Ultra!" When another student caught everyone off guard. Even you jumped a little in response to his enthusiastic "Ultra!" Todoroki only startled a little, recognition barely in his eyes at the other boy.
"Y'know, its pretty rude to barge into other people's huddles like that, Inasa." You heard his classmate say.
"What? Pardon me." He began, body immediately bending forwards in a violent enough manner that he literally bashed his head on the ground. "I am so… very… extremely… sorry!" He yelled. You winced, as Izuku yelled in surprise. 
"Who is this guy? I do not trust his enthusiasm." You heard Kaminari say in panic, you quickly made your way to the other student. Barely paying attention to Aizawa and the others as they recognized the uniforms from the other school. Shiketsu. The school in the western part of Japan. 
"I wanted to say it just once. Plus Ultra!" He yelled, quickly standing tall. "See, I really love UA High School. I am extremely honored to compete against such incredible students. I'm so looking forward to it." He exclaimed, his forehead was bleeding. You ignored Aizawa explaining who he was. Only hearing his name, Inasa Yoarashi.
"Do you need me to heal you, Yoarashi?" You asked him, voice quiet. He looked startled for a moment before some flicker of recognition was in his eyes.
"Its you! Pro-hero Siren!" He yelled out. You winced at the amount of blood that came pouring out from his wound. You didn't bother trying to ignore the other students shock at the name, you registered Kirishima stating your name was so manly. Other than Yoarashi, only Izuku knew who you were it seemed, and he was muttering to himself that he should have known that's who you were. The others were just grateful knowing your hero name it seemed.
"That I did. Now you should get going. Your classmates are waiting." You said calmly. He walked off after thanking you and your students clamored around you.
"Wait, you worked with Todoroki's father? Like, as in not just at UA?" Ashido asked.
"Yes, but it's been, give or take 20 years since I've worked with him. It was decided that I need to re-earn my hero license in order to do hero work." You said, you didn't actually explain you worked with Endeavor. Just that you worked with a now, well known flame hero in school. You heard Kirishima mutter something about "being manly" again and felt very fond all of a sudden, the whole manly spirit reminded you of the man you interned under. "Kirishima, do you happen to be a fan of Crimson Riot?" You asked, and his face lit up.
"Yeah! He's my hero! My name is kinda inspired by his too!" He exclaimed, but another voice interrupted the conversation.
"Eraser?" You heard a voice call out, Aizawa flinched at it. "I'd know that scowl anywhere!" You looked over to see a light green haired woman, smiling and waving, walking over to the class, mainly Aizawa though. "I saw you on TV at the Sports Festival. But its been a while since we were this close in person." She said, Aizawas eye twitched in annoyance. 
"She looks familiar." You heard Izuku say.
"Let's get married." The woman says smiling and gesturing between herself and Aizawa. 
"No." Deadpan expression and all. You hear Ashido squeak in disappointment, and can practically see the little hearts around her break. 
The woman bent over laughing in joy and say, "Ha, ha! You're a real laugh-riot, buddy." 
"As usual, you're impossible, Joke." Aizawa said, as the woman continued laughing. 
Izuku exclaimed in surprise, "Oh, thats Ms. Joke! The smile hero! Her quirk is outburst!" He had a wide smile on his face, and you had to look away for a second. He was quite literally the physical embodiment of sunshine. Just like someone else you knew. You could hear him explain her quirk and it made you snap out of your revere. "She forces people around her to laugh, which affects their ability to think and keeps them from being able to move. Her fights against villains are always full of insanity!" He exclaimed.
"Come on, imagine it! If I was your wife, you'd have a future full of constant laughter." She said.
"That sounds like an actual nightmare." Aizawa stated, she burst out laughing again. As the class contemplated their closeness, she gave an explanation, "Our agencies were near each other. As young heros striving to make a difference in the world, a mutual love bloomed." She said, clasping her hands together and blushing. 
"No, it didn't." Ouch, instant rejection. But she didn't seem to notice it.
"I do miss your quick retorts." She said, pointing at him before placing her hands on her hips and continuing, "You're my favorite person to tease, future husband." She smiled, Aizawa closed his eyes.
"So, Joke. If you're here, then that must mean…"
"That's right. Over here, everyone. This is UA." She called out to a class just behind her.
One student exclaimed in fake wonder at the students and you as the others were genuinely happy.
"Oh, whoa. It really is Class A!" 
"Wow, that's so amazing. I've seen them on TV before." 
"Second years from Ketsubutsu Academy. This is Class 2. They're my students." She said happily. 
You saw a student of hers grab Izuku's hand. "Hey, I'm Shindo! Seems like UA's has a lotta trouble this year, musta been tough for you." He said, smiling. 
"Uh, yeah." Izuku awkwardly said, Shindo moved on, grasping the other student's hands and continued. 
"But even so, you're all still aiming to become pro-heros, despite those hardships. It's wonderful! Hearts full of fortitude." He said, smiling, looking like the perfect pretty boy image. "I believe that's whatever hero in the world needs to have." He was sparkling and you saw some of the girls in the class begin to fawn over him a little. You could practically hear Izuku think that this kid was "too nice" nope. "And Bakugou. It must've been hard for you, what with that whole kidnapping incident." You did a double take at that. It didnt matter that you already knew he was kidnapped, it was still jaring.
"Huh?" Bakugou responded.
"You have an especially strong will, don't you? Today, I'm going to do my best to learn from you. I really hope you don't mind." He said, attempting to shake his hand. Bakugou slapped it away.
"Stop pretending. What you say doesn't match the look in your eyes." He said, turning away from the other boy. You saw that flash of anger in the other students eyes. Good. Bakugou could see it, a valuable skill. 
"Hey, man, don't be so rude!" Kirishima exclaimed. "Sorry, he's just like that." He finished, awkwardly rubbing the back of his head and looking bashful. 
"Its fine. It proves how tough his heart is." Shindo said, Bakugou scoffed at that. Another classmate of his ran up to Todoroki, asking for his autograph, to which he said, 
"Uhh…"
Another student just told her to stop fangirling. Minoru said hed be happy to sign something for the girl, she ignored him. A good idea.
"Hey. Get your costumes and head to orientation. There's no time to waste." Aizawa said, a resounding "yes, sir" from the class made you follow close behind him, holding your bag close. You heard Kaminari brag about being apart of a famous elite school, and winced. Man, did this kid forget everyone knew their quirks and they didn't know anything about anyone else? You all quickly made your way inside and changed. It was time for the exam. 
☆☆☆☆☆
You heard a groan, then "Okay then. Let's do this exam thing. I'm from, uh, the Heroes Public Safety Commission. Name's Mera. My Circadian Rhythm is so screwed up." He moaned out. "Ah, man." Damn he looked dead on his feet. "I've been swamped lately and I haven't gotten much rest. We're too short staffed. I'm so tired." He said, laying his head on his hand. "With that confession. I'll now begin orientation." You looked over at the students. Midoryia, Tenya and Ochaco looked a little worried for the man. Probably thinking he needs a break. "So, about the content of this license thing. Basically 1,540 examinees compete in a free-for-all exercise or whatever we're calling it this year." Mera said. You could hear Hanta complaining about the lack of information. But Mera continued, "See. We've got a lot of pros around, and since Stain was arrested, many people've expressed doubts about the status of heros in society." You winced, vaguely recalling what Toshinori told you about Stain's convictions before you started avoiding him. "But, when you really think about it, getting paid makes sense. If you're going to risk your life to save someone, why shouldn't you ask for a reward, huh? That's just the way the world works. God, I could use a coffee. Anyway, whether they're in it for compensation or out of a sense of duty, we've got too many beros working together in the streets these days to keep villains at bay. Honestly, the time between an incident begins and when it's resolved is ridiculously short. You are all here trying to receive your provisional licenses, minus one, who is renewing theirs. So you'll be swept up in this tiresome mess yourselves pretty soon." Almost everyone startled at the "minus one" part of his speech, the exception being the students of class 1-A along with Yoarashi, you almost groaned. "Those of you who don't have the speed, frankly, just won't cut it." He said looking down. "Which is why that's what you'll be tested on." He said looking up at the crowd. A board flashed on behind him showing 'Number to Pass 1st Test: 100 people' "The first 100 students to fulfill the requirements will pass today." You could hear Yaoyorozu exclaim how many students there currently were. You could feel their nervousness now. 
"You will do great. Don't panic about it." You said, voice quiet out of respect for Mera. They all looked over at you. You gave them a reassuring smile. "I believe in you guys."
"Well, the world can be pretty crappy. I suppose I should say something about luck." Mera said, still slouched over but standing. "So, anyway, here are the basic rules." He showed the everyone how the first test would proceed, explaining how you all would put on targets and they would have to be in an exposed area, and said each participant would have six balls made for this task so they could strike out the opponents. If all three targets are hit, they'd be out and to pass they had to take out two people. They passed out the materials and opened the arena. Talking about how they were sure that they all had an area where their quirks would work best. You looked over to the stands and saw Aizawa sitting with Ms. Joke. He looked so agitated, unfortunate for him. You quickly put on the three targets and grabbed your six balls. You weren't going to fail this. It simply wasn't an option. 
"Everyone!" Izuku exclaimed, "Stay close together. We'll fight them as a group." Ochaco nodded and Tenya said "got it." You smiled. Good. These kids would do fine. Bakugou left immediately, Kirishima and Kaminari running behind him. 
"I'm going on my own, too." Todoroki said. "Its hard for me to use my power safely when a big group's around." He ran off. Izuku quickly attempting to dissuade him. But you quickly followed behind him.
"Don't worry kids. I got him. He'll be fine!" You yelled, quickly catching up to the duel haired boy. "Todoroki! I can help you with controlling your fire!" You called out. He kept running ahead. "I know you might have a problem with me Todoroki, but I can help a little with your fire." You said, he slowed down to a stop, enough for you to catch up. He gave you an odd look.
"Water quirk, correct?" He asked. 
"Yes." 
"Thank you. For offering, I'll accept for now." He said. And you both began running again. Quickly coming to a steel labyrinth like arena. 
"So Todoroki, whats it like being related to that old man?" You asked, he startled, gave you a deadpan expression.
"Terrible." Was all he said in response, but it was the look in his eye that made you falter. You'd seen a look like that before. On Endeavor's face when you were young, and on your own before you were able to leave your own home situation. You didn’t joke with him about it again. Before either of you knew it, you both could hear that over 50 students have already passed and that 50 failed. It forced the two of you to move into action quickly. You two ran from the hiding spot you were in. 
"Todoroki look out!" You yelled, he quickly blocked the ball that was thrown at him, you did the same for the one thrown at you. Quickly slowing it down with water around you. 
"That was pretty good!" A student yelled, they were from Seijin. "Just what I'd expect from a runner-up of the UA Sports Festival. Not sure what to expect from you though." He said gesturing to you. Ten students, more than enough for the two of you. "The name's Todoroki, right?" He asked looking at the younger boy. You narrowed your eyes. "I can't believe you two are running around here like this, all by yourselves. You both must be really confident."
"Even if you both are from UA High, acting like this is just asking for trouble." Another student says.
"A ten-on-two fight. You two don't stand a chance!" Another yells out. You gave a look to Todoroki. 
"This is great." He said, turning to you. "Now we don't have to find opponents." He turned slightly and raised his right arm over to his face. You turned as well, left arm protecting your own face. 
The main Seijin student chucked. "Aren't you two cool." He says, then all of them are rushing you, balls flying in your direction. Todoroki uses the ice aspect of his quirk to block them while you do the same with your water. Then he quickly freezes their feet to the ground, also using the extra water you provided from your quirk. The other students gasp. Quickly exclaiming their outrage at being unable to move.
"You're surprised? I thought you said you watched the sports festival." Todoroki said, you smirked. 
"I am kind of an unknown though, Todoroki. They didn't know you could use my water." You said. The students were obviously scowling at you two, glaring. 
"Don't be cocky, were prepared!" The leader exclaimed, throwing something at you two, it quickly grew in size and you used your quirk to help Todoroki block the now giant object. You two gave each other a look. 'A quirk that makes things bigger.' "That's not all I brought with me!" He yelled again, throwing more objects. Todoroki's ice seemed to be at least a little stronger as you provided more water for him. You could see him question himself for a moment, contemplating. He turned to give you a look that said "wait to see if there are more." You nodded at him. Then the ice cover shattered, and you both saw a projectile coming toward you. He quickly fired at it, but it didn't stop. You were able to move him and yourself out of the way. The other student quickly escaped the ice trap Todoroki put him in. "Your fire won't work against any of my tools. Tungsten has a super-high melting point!" He yelled out, quickly throwing smaller projectiles at the feet of his allies. "I'm afraid I told you so, Todoroki. And you. Even if you two are the top UA students, if you think you can pass this exam with such a little group… Well, then, your pride will be your downfalls." He said, staring the two of you down.
"You fools." Todoroki said quickly aiming fire at the group. 
"Do it!" The other student yelled, two others jumped up and aimed at you two. Water based quirks, damn. You quickly created a barrier between you two using the water they provided to strengthen the flow covering you and Todoroki. You two jumped out of the way at the projectiles being thrown. "Keep attacking. Don't let up!" He yelled again. You two manage to get away, as steam filled the area as his flames met the water of the other students. You were both running, and he turned towards you.
"The Heroes Public Safety Commission must have constructed this factory to be as realistic as possible." He said. You nodded at him.
"Its why they told us to choose a terrain that would suit our style." You responded. He nodded in agreement. Then quickly held a flame. You two were on the same page then. You could hear the other student yell that you were found and to be surround by his allies. Todoroki quickly bend down, placing his palm on the ground and creating ice shards upwards towards a tank, he burst it and you two quickly made your way to a higher point and saw the other students shocked faces. Todoroki then aimed at the tank with ice piercing it and proceeded to light it on fire, as you two hid behind an ice barrier he created to not be blown away as the other screamed. 
"Well it looks like the commission kept the force of the explosion from being too damaging." Todoroki said as you two came out from the smoke. 
"You bastards."
"Apologies. But I simply cannot afford to fail." Todoroki said. You nodded in agreement.
"I really do wanna get back to hero work." You said simply. Their eyes widened.
"Its you! You're the one thats not just getting your provisional license!" One of them shouted, you smiled. 
"Yeah, I wish he didn't say that but it's alright." You said, grabbing a ball walking over to one of the other students quickly catching at least three of the students. "I believe you guys will be great heroes though. You all have got some seriously strong quirks!" You exclaimed as Todoroki quickly got his own points. "Just make sure to plan for something like that, just in case." You called out. Walking away with Todoroki. You could tell he was contemplating his quirk, probably thinking he should work to using both at once with more ease. You heard a beep and looked down at the area you put the targets.
"Students who have passed the exam should congregate in the anteroom. Chop, chop." The announcers' voice yelled out. You two quickly made your way to the waiting area. You saw the excitable student from earlier look over when you and Todoroki walked in. Though he was focusing more on Todoroki, you saw him glaring. It almost shocked you, but you already assumed from the look he gave earlier, that he didn't like Todoroki at all. You looked at the younger duel haired boy. 
"So Todoroki, the problem?" You asked, he looked slightly shocked. 
"You know the problem." He stated simply, you shot him a confused look.
"I obviously don't. If its something from before, I haven't been here for around 20 years, kid. It's kind of hard to keep up with grievances if I wasn't there." You said. He gave you a steady gaze. 
"My father, was not good to me. Nor to my siblings. I… don't wish to blame you. He's not a good man. But hearing you speak about him in such a manner. It's insulting to hear you say he's a good man." He states, he looks frustrated for a moment and you feel your heart soften,.
"Todoroki… the man that I knew, he was a good man. And if he's been acting like that..." You began, placing your hand on his shoulder before sighing, "We can have a further discussion after the exam about this, it'll be easier." He nodded in response.
"I'll be waiting then." He said. You gave your own nod before walking away, you really needed to rehydrate and eat something. This was going to be a long exam. 
☆☆☆☆☆
You found out all the students from Class 1-A passed when you met up with them. Exclaiming your own pride at the students. They all grinned widely. "I'm proud of you kids!" You said. Izuku, Kaminari and Minoru were talking to each other. 
"Oh, right. For the 100 of you who passed the first test, please turn your attention to the screen." You heard Mera say from the speakers. Everyone turned to face the screen. It showed different parts of the arena being destroyed. They all gasped in shock. "There's only one more round to the exam. Your goal is simple: undertake rescue exercises and save the bystanders who are trapped in these disaster sites."
"A rescue mission." Izuku says, his eyes taking on a determined look. You tried to ignore it. But he really did remind you of Toshinori in that moment, and you felt the sharp sting in your heart. Damn it. Ignore for now. You thought. He moved on, what did you expect after being gone for over 20 years? You shot another look in his direction. Izuku's mother… was a very lucky woman. 
"Use this time to show us how you will carry out successful rescue procedures once you receive your provisional licenses, again minus the one renewing theirs." He continued. "Treat this as though it were the real thing."
The students looking at the screen suddenly looked very shocked. 
"On the screen."
A gasp, "Little kids and old people?"
"That's so dangerous- why are they here?" 
Mera continued on, "These specialists have been trained as profesional "persons in need of rescue" they're very popular. Introducing the "Help Us Company," also known as HUC for short."
"So they're basically actors, I guess?" Sero questioned. You looked over and nodded in affirmation. 
"Its the kind of job you never think about." Tsuyu says.
"But a necessary one in our world, since they support our hero training." Mashirao finishes. You smiled. These kids… God how many times would you think this? They were going to be great heroes. 
"The HUC bystanders have dressed up like injured victims and will be located throughout the disaster site. We'll be judging how well you keep them safe as you go about your mission. Oh, by the way. We'll be scoring you on a point system. If you gave more points than the benchmark at the time the exercise comes to an end, then you pass the exam. We'll start in 10 minutes. Take care of any necessary preparations now." Mera finished. You could barely hear the conversation between Izuku and Tenya, them comparing the damage being shown to the one in Kamino Ward. Where All Might fought All for One for the last time. You didn’t know much about All for One, all you knew was that he was the one to send the villain that attacked that day, that he planned your demise. It was confusing though. Why did he want to kill you? At the time he was nothing more than the boogeyman of the hero world. You had no connection to him prior to that besides Toshinori, but even then no real reason to kill you. Maybe I should meet with that detective that found me after this.' You thought. 'I've been putting it off too long already. I'm going to find you Kotaro. I'm sorry I took so long.
☆☆☆☆☆
The exam was exhausting, way more exhausting than you remembered. But you supposed that was because you were bordering on being sleep deprived and running on nothing but your own willpower. And maybe a little spite but you're not really sure where that could be from so you just ignore it. You saw the students of U.A. interact with the other top school, you interacted with a rather... interesting young girl from there as well. Apparently she talked with Izuku and well Minoru and Kaminari didn't like that for some odd reason, neither did Uraraka but you could see why at this point. Her crush, was rather cute. As the test continued on you only felt pride, these students. They were doing well, saving the civilians from the wreckage, although Izuku no Deku had experienced a little speed bump in the beginning. You offered your healing expertise with the triage area, assessing the 'injuries' of the HUC. Then they threw all of them in for a loop. Villains. Not real ones of course but acting Villains. You quickly ensured that the others were able to collect the supplies and 'victims', following Shindo and quickly dealing with the sidekicks. But then you saw Gang Orca, the screech was jarring, it made you unsteady. So, you couldn't imagine how Shindo was feeling. He must have been paralyzed because you couldn't see him moving, he looked like he was knocked out too. You heard Deku yell out Todoroki's name and felt some relief, Gang Orca needed to stay well hydrated and Todoroki's quirk was perfect for this fight to dry him out. Then you saw the other students Ashido,Ojiro, and Tokoyami. You were glad for the extra help, but then you felt the wind pick up in the area.
"I'm gonna blow you evildoers away!" You heard Yoarashi yell.
It didn't matter at the moment, you had to evacuate these people from the area, you had to protect them.
☆☆☆☆☆
Taglist: @saratour, @yukiimanic, @theygottheircages, @itsallmightbitch, @toobsessedsstuff, @quirkyfandoms, @anxious-cat-with-cheesesticks, @traqicalromance, @waitwhatsrealityagain
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discovisiondreams · 4 years ago
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Top 15 First Watches of 2020
I’ve never been good at staying current on pop culture, and that became especially pronounced in 2020. A year where most of the anticipated theatrical releases were pushed to VOD (and the price nearly tripled) meant that a lot of flicks I was excited for got added to the end of the “Maybe Someday” watchlist. 
But in this strange year, I did manage to watch 245 movies- and 195 of those were first-time watches. Some were new, only available on the (virtual) festival circuit. Some were Criterion mainstays, films I’m horrified to admit I hadn’t seen before. But this year, when movies cemented themself as my biggest joy, I began to really track what I watched- including a “top 5 first watches of the month” roundup for every month. These top 5s weren’t ranked, and weren’t even based on technical ability, strength of dialogue, or critical acclaim. They were just the 5 I loved the best. 
So without further ado, here are my top 15 of the year- one selected from the top 5 of each month, with some bonus entries thrown in as well. As a general rule, I only included features on this list- I was fortunate enough to catch shorts that streamed at Chattanooga Film Fest, Celebration of Fantastic Fest, and more, but to add them to the running would have made writing this listicle absolutely impossible. 
HONORABLE Honorable Mention: The Holiday. Inspired by the fine folks at Super Yaki, I finally watched this Nancy Meyers classic. Why is it two and a half hours long?! Why is that two and a half hours so significantly lacking in Jack Black?! The scenes that Black is in, though, really shine. This one is going to be a Christmas mainstay in the Disco household (and not just because I spent money on the DVD).
15: The Love Witch (Honorable Mention, April). This one came highly recommended to me by friends of all sorts, and like most of my 2020 first watches, I’m deeply embarrassed that it took me this long to get to it. Upon finally watching it, on a rainy Sunday, I described the movie in general (and the color palette, specifically) as “sumptuous,” which is one of the most complimentary visual descriptors I can bestow upon a movie. The plot felt a little convoluted at times, but I still found The Love Witch incredibly enjoyable and am hoping to explore more of writer-director Anna Biller’s filmography in 2021.
14: The Guest (Honorable Mention, October). The Guest is one of the few movies I watched multiple times this year- and the only one I watched twice in one week. From the sultry industrial soundtrack selections to the numerous visual nods to Halloween III: Season of the Witch, The guest was Extremely My Shit. The casting here is truly tremendous- especially Maika Monroe, who was similarly brilliant in It Follows. Also of note: Lance Reddick, one of my current favourite character actors. 
13: The Fast and The Furious (Honorable Mention, May). 2 Fast 2 Furious (and its bespoke theme song, Act A Fool, by Ludacris) came out when I was in the 6th grade. Do you remember the music and movies that entered the world when you were in 6th grade? Do you have an inexplicable zealous love for them? 2F2F was the only film in the Fast Cinematic Universe I had seen for a long, long time. Then I saw Fate of the Furious. Then I bought the series box set, as a joke?? And then, slowly but then also all at once, I genuinely started to love this franchise. Some of them are truly ridiculous. Some of them are genuinely bad. But the first one? The Fast and The Furious (2001)? Timeless. Point Break updated and adapted for the early-aughts, The Fast and the Furious walked so The Italian Job (2003) could run. Without The Fast and The Furious, Paul Walker would just be “the guy from Tammy and The T-Rex” to millions of casual cinemagoers. The cultural impact of The Fast and The Furious simply cannot be denied!! 
12: Come to Daddy (Top 5, July). Honestly, this is the exact flavor of bonkers bullshit I’ve grown to expect from Elijah Wood, and that is not an indictment. Wood’s genuine love for genre film is evident here, in what can only be described as an uncomfortable film of family, reunion, and redemption. The tense and abrasive first half gives way to a surprisingly relieving wave of violence and exposition in this critically-acclaimed flick. 
11: The Stylist (Top 5, September). The feature-length debut of writer-director Jill Gevargizian, based off her short of the same name, is female-led horror that pays homage to genre mainstays like Maniac and Psycho while still being decidedly singular. Not only shot in Kansas City, but set in Kansas City, The Stylist made my midwestern heart happy. This is one that I really, really would have loved to see in a crowded theater auditorium, were this year a different one. 
10: In The Mouth of Madness (Top 5, March). Despite being the beginning of pandemic awareness, March was a slow month for me, movie-wise (even though it’s not like I had anything else going on??). But I finally made time for this Carpenter classic, and I’m so happy I did. I’ve long been fascinated by stories about stories, and the people who find themselves trapped within those stories, and this one is truly, in the most basic sense of the word, horrifying. Sam Neill proves that he belongs in horror here, making his role in Event Horizon seem like a natural fit. Also a highlight: noted character actor David Warner, best known (to me) as “Billy Zane’s bodyguard guy in Titanic,” who never ever fails to be unsettling. 
9: Profondo Rosso (Top 5, April). Before this year, my only Argento exposure was Suspiria (which is phenomenal), but Deep Red goes off the deep end in all the best ways. The score (by frequent Argento collaborators Goblin) is truly groovy. The number of twists and turns the plot takes is kind of mind-boggling, but also delightful. Daria Nicolodi (RIP)  is at the top of her acting game here. This quickly became one of my beloved background movies- if I opened Shudder and Profondo Rosso was playing on one of their live-streaming channels, it stayed on while I was cleaning or cooking or paying bills. Profondo Rosso is a must-watch for those hoping to get into giallo.
8: Crimson Peak (Top 5, November). This one was definitely not what I was expecting, but it was GORGEOUS. I loved the world immediately (a Del Toro trademark, to be honest). As a longtime Pacific Rim stan, it made my heart happy to see Charlie Hunnam and Burn Gorman reunited under Guillermo Del Toro’s vision. 
7: Palm Springs (Top 5, August). I am not typically a time-travel movie enthusiast- but I am a sucker for witty repartee and Andy Samberg. This one made me ugly-cry, which I should probably be a bit more ashamed to admit. August had a lot of really great first watches, but the Hulu exclusive takes the cake due to its novel premise, some truly heart-wrenching reveals, and the amazing casting (is there anything JK Simmons cant do?). 
6: Scare Package (Top 5, May). Is there any format I love more than the horror anthology? While there have been so many over the years (Creepshow, All the Creatures Were Stirring), Scare Package might be my favourite of them all. A variety of fun and inventive stories combined with a genre-lovers dream of an overarching narrative make this one a must-see- in fact, it was the whole reason I bought a pass to this year’s online version of Chattanooga Film Fest. There’s a cameo here that absolutely knocked my socks off (and continued to do so even on repeat viewings). While the scares here are honestly minimal, Scare Package is a great love letter to the genre at large.
5: Do The Right Thing (Top 5, June). Yes, it took me until 2020 to watch Do The Right Thing for the first time. The palpable tension, the interwoven stories of Bed-Stuy’s residents, all seem timeless. Giancarlo Esposito is, as always, a joy to watch. 
4: Knives Out (Top 5, February). “It’s a Rian Johnson whodunnit, duh,” states the SuperYaki! T-shirt famously worn by Jamie Lee Curtis, star of Knives Out (2019). This one has received worlds of critical acclaim, I truly do not know what I could even hope to add to the conversation. I want more old-school murder mystery cinema.
3: The VelociPastor (Top 5, January). It should be testimonial enough that The VelociPastor beat out Miss Americana, Netflix’s Taylor Swift documentary, as the top pick for January- but in case it isn’t, let me end 2020 the way I began it; by evangelizing the HECK out of this movie. Written and directed by up-and-coming triple-threat (Director/songwriter/prolific cat-photo-poster) Brendan Steere, The VelociPastor is a true love letter to genre cinema, complete with a big wink to the criminally underloved Miami Connection. Alyssa Kempinski shines as Carol, a doctor/lawyer/hooker with a heart of gold. The VelociPastor premiered in 2019 but gained tons of attention in 2020 (thanks in part to YouTube sensation Cody Ko)- attention that it truly deserves. A sequel is rumored to be in the works, but mark my words, anything to come from the imagination of Brendan Steere will be worth a watch. 
2: Dinner in America (Top 5, October). I genuinely feel sorry for the other movies I watched in October (there were a lot) (they were all SO GOOD). Dinner in America, which I caught during the Nightstream hybrid festival, was not at all what I was expecting. While the other features were all very solidly genre flicks, this was…. A comedy? A modern love story?? I’mn honestly still not exactly sure, but I do know I loved every second of it. I laughed. I cried. I threw my hands up in the air exuberantly (in front of my laptop, looking like a true fool). I did not shut up about this movie online for weeks. I told anyone and everyone that Kyle Gallner is the most underrated actor of my generation and I still believe it! Dinner in America, the story of a punk band frontman who unwittingly takes refuge from the police in the home of his biggest fan, was an unexpectedly heartwarming tale of family, young love, and arson. Watch it as soon as you can. 
1: Promising Young Woman (Top 5, December). This last-minute debut from Emerald Fennell, originally scheduled to hit theaters in April of this year, finally made its way to the big screen on Christmas Day, and became the 2020 entry on my annual “Christmas Day Trip to the Theater” list.* Carey Mulligan is an icon and deserves all of the awards for this. The soundtrack is sublime. The casting choices are truly incredible. While I have no doubt that the general themes of the movie will be polarizing, I absolutely loved this one- I sat in my car in the theater parking lot for a WHILE, considering just buying a ticket for the next showtime- that’s how badly I felt like I needed to see it again immediately. I look forward to writing its inevitable Criterion essay.
*Nobody else in rural iowa was interested in seeing this movie at noon on Christmas Day. I’m shocked.
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not-the-cleavers · 5 years ago
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Target II - Chapter 5
I’m back with another chapter - still on alert for evacuation here but writing takes my mind off all the anxiety around this fire. 
Underneath the chapter I have a little snippet of pure friendship that came up while writing this chapter! 
Tags; @adrenaline-roulette​ and @amy-brooklyn99​ - if you would like to be tagged just let me know
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Pairing; Four x Eight (female reader) Fandom; 6 Underground Warnings; Swearing, smoking, drinking, reader kissing a girl (read that how you’d like in terms of sexuality), mentions of sexual acts (including non-consensual but only briefly I promise), mention of arousal and hinting at masturbation.  Word count; 1.6k (total so far 7.9k)
Also I used an answer from this Ben Hardy interview in this chapter!
Summary; The team has moved onto their next target after dealing with Rovach Alimov, a war criminal named John Dough. Eight has just joined the team and is dying to show how much she deserves to be there
Catch up; Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4
“You first, your number is lower than mine” I laughed. Four ran his hands through his hair again as a smile broke out across his face. “Alright I’ll start easy. What’s your favourite movie or movie series?” he asked. “Super easy! I love the Saw franchise” He laughed at my response “Hey I know that it’s not the best horror series but I love them” I said pushing his shoulder a bit. “If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?” “Led Zeppelin ‘Thank You’ because it’s a beautiful love song, and everyone loves a beautiful love song.” “That’s kind of adorable” I sighed, why did he have to be so damn cute? “It’s super adorable I’ll have you know!” he laughed After a few easy questions surrounding hobbies, he blurted out “Tell me about your first kiss” “Not a question, but I’ll roll with it” I said gently mocking him “I was 14 at it was at a school camp a bunch of kids all entered our cabin and we played spin the bottle…” “Oh so a pretty boring story” Four interrupted “Will you let me finish? Mary King spun, and it landed on me, I thought she would just spin again, as were the rules laid out by the boys in the room, but instead she pulled me up and we kissed.” The look on Four’s face said it all. His mouth was slightly open and he looked like he was far off in thought. I waited patiently, sipping at my drink until he snapped out of it, finally he shook his head slightly and downed the last of the beer in his bottle before cracking open another one. “Tell me about your first kiss” I said lighting another cigarette, not giving him time to say anything in regards to my story. “Um, well, I was 15, down at the pub back home with some mates, drinking and smoking, being stupid kids really. In walked Ashley Reid, she was easily the prettiest girl in school and I had the biggest crush on her. We started dancing and having a good time and then all of a sudden she kissed me.” He said with a shrug, seemingly past the whole I kissed a girl thing. “What was your first sexual encounter?” he asked hesitantly, maybe testing the waters to see how I’d respond. But seeing as I’m a woman with zero shame I had no issue answering him. “Do you mean sex or messing around, those are two very different things.” “I guess just messing around” he shrugged. “I was 16 and I was at a high school party, I had been chatting with Scott Davis for quite some time and one thing led to another and I ended up giving him a blow job in the bathroom of this persons’ house.” I said sipping my drink, leaving out the fact I was blind drunk and he had basically taken advantage of me, I was trying to keep things as light as I could. “So…you’re not gay?” he asked, again very hesitantly “No” I laughed, ‘you have a shot with me’ I thought to myself. “Same question right back at you” “No, I’m not gay” he replied, laughing when he saw my pissed off expression. “You know what I meant” I half yelled, his laugher only making me angrier “You need to be specific love, and now you’ve lost a question” he patted my leg “Did ‘Jack and Jill’ ruin Adam Sandler’s career?” he asked, trying to calm me down by asking a pointless question. “Did he ever really have a good career?” I replied with a grimace, I couldn’t stand the guy. “Wait that’s not my next question!” I shouted, not about to lose another question to a technicality. “Good point, I guess you’re right there” he laughed. “Now you can ask the question you really wanted me to answer.” “Alright, have you ever done anything sexual in public?” I asked, slightly changing the question to catch him off guard. “Honestly, Ashley Reid when I was 15…” “C’mon don’t fuck with me, you can’t be serious” I slapped his bicep but his face told me he was in fact, being serious. “Yeah, after she kissed me we danced some more. When we got tired we sat down in a booth and she gave me a handy under the table. I had to run to the bathroom shortly afterwards and ditch my boxers. Went the rest of the night commando” he said jerking his head to the side slightly before taking another sip of his beer. Honestly was not expecting that response.
We kept going back and forth asking each other questions, going well and truly over the twenty question limit, but we were having fun. Our questions kept getting sexual and then easing back into being light hearted and funny and then back again, but as we got drunker the sexual questions became more heated. I could see Four was holding back so I piped up “I can see you have a question, I have no shame so go ahead and ask me” “Alright, do you have any kinks?” he asked, his eyes darkening slightly just waiting for my response. “Domination, tie me up and choke me…” I started rattling off a few things bound to get me hot and bothered while looking at my hands. I felt Four shift slightly to reposition himself on the bed next to me as I talked ‘am I turning him on?’ “Oh and I’m into pegging” I joked, which caused him to tense up. “Oh…” did he think that last comment was serious? I wonder how far I could take this, so I kept a straight face and asked him “what about you, what gets you going?” “Uhhh…” he scratched the back of his neck, seemingly considering whether or not to answer “You don’t have to say if you don’t want to” I told him, rubbing his arm. I didn’t want him to feel uncomfortable. “No it’s not that. I just haven’t really developed any kinks. I’m a pretty vanilla guy” he said shyly, his cheeks flushed in embarrassment. “Well there’s still time to work on that” I told him, trying to put his mind at ease. “How? I’m dead remember?” “There’s some people out there into that” I joked, causing us to collapse in a fit of laughter. My side felt like it was on fire but I didn’t care, I felt a complete sense of relaxation with Four that I had never felt with anyone else in my life. I found myself leaning against his chest, my body seemingly melting into his chiselled one. I had never noticed just how muscular he was, he was always wearing his hoodies, hiding his figure.
He eventually stopped laughing, and I felt his hand find its way under my chin, lifting it up so I was looking straight into his jade eyes. My eyes darted towards his lips right before those exact lips gently collided with mine. My hands flew up and my fingers knotted themselves into his blond locks. A slight moan escaped his lips. Without him breaking the kiss, he started to slide his leg underneath me and leant backwards so he ended up on his back. I rolled on top of him so that my chest was flush with his. His hands played at the hem of my hoodie, and I became acutely aware that I still had no shirt on underneath, but even with this sudden realisation, I didn’t stop him from snaking his hands underneath. The rough calloused skin on his hands felt unusually comforting against my hips. He only broke the kiss long enough for us to catch our breath and allowing me to steady myself above him, before crashing his lips back into mine. His urgency grew at the same rate as mine, and then I felt it, right against my thigh through both of our sweatpants, he was hard. His hands started to slowly travel up my back and I was loving every moment, that was until his hands made their way to my sides, causing one to land right on my healing bullet wound, causing me to jolt in pain breaking the kiss. “Fuck!” my eyes stung and the room felt like it was moving, I sat upright and moved myself off his lap. Four took a moment of realisation, before scurrying to check I was ok. “Shit Eight I’m so sorry, I don’t know what came over me” he said hurriedly, hiding his head in his hands, his face turning bright red in embarrassment. “Y/N” was my only response. “Sorry?” he lifted his head to search my face for some kind of clue. “That’s my name, I think we’re well beyond calling each other our numbers” I laughed weakly “Billy” he introduced himself “and I’m sorry, I crossed a line” he said sheepishly “Don’t be sorry, it’s just this fucking bullet wound. I was having the time of my life” I winked at him, causing his eyes to darken. “Look I, um, I think I should call it a night” Billy stammered. What the hell was he talking about? One quick look out the window confirmed that it was indeed late. “Holy shit, alright” I planted a quick kiss on his cheek “sleep well. Come see me again soon” I muttered. Within moments he was out the door, probably needing to go ‘take care’ of things.
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And that’s chapter 5! I promise there will be more about John Dough in the next chapter, and again I don’t know when it’ll be out but I’ll release it as soon as I can! I hope you enjoyed this little chapter all about Four and Eight getting to know one another, maybe a little more than they were expecting! I’d love to hear from you guys!!
Also huge props to @adrenaline-roulette​ for all her help and for this glorious moment when I realised I’m shit at 20 questions!
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Also yes I forgot the term “straight people” and went with non bi, you are allowed to judge me for that - also before anyone asks, the best way to describe my sexuality is Bi or maybe Pan (I don’t fucking know honestly, everyone is attractive to me!)...Anywho...This post has gone on for long enough, enjoy and I’ll catch ya in the next chapter!
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Why Does He Endure?
Last Sunday evening was the 90th Birthday Celebration Concert for Stephen Sondheim - put together and produced by Raul Esparza, and starring a jaw-dropping list of Broadway celebrities and personalities.
Despite the technical glitches - which had Twitter abuzz with some excellent Sondheim-related humor - the evening was beautiful.
The performers had recorded their songs ahead of time from their quarantined homes and still, somehow, the music and performances were just as emotional, raw, delightful, and revealing as they might have been with more theatrical conditions.
Why?
The music, the lyrics, and the marriage of the two.
Stephen Sondheim has to be one of the most polarizing musical theatre writers, having been lauded as the most important to live and also berated for being too high-brow and difficult to perform or understand. And yet, he is known as “the master.” Not a master - and we do have many - but the master.
Why? What is this legacy? Why does Stephen Sondheim endure?
Content Dictates Form
Now, I could write an entire life-long dissertation on Stephen Sondheim and the brilliance of his work (and some of my friends and family would probably say I’ve been doing it verbally for years), but I want to boil this argument down to its basics.
In his lyric anthology Finishing The Hat, Sondheim writes of the three writing principle truisms:
"In no particular order, and to be written in stone: Content Dictates Form Less Is More God Is in the Details all in the service of Clarity without which nothing else matters."  -- Stephen Sondheim in "Finishing The Hat"
Let’s begin with “Content Dictates Form.”
What does that mean?
One of the reasons that Sondheim’s music endures - and specifically within the context of the shows for which it was written - is because of this first principle.
You cannot easily remove one of his songs to be performed outside of its show for an audience that is unaware of its context. Sure, they may enjoy the music or find the piece entertaining, but the song would not have its full impact outside of the show. And this is something that used to be common with theatre music, but (with the exception of “Send In The Clowns”) not with Sondheim’s music.
Why is this?
The content of Sondheim’s writing - the time, the setting, the plot, the storyline placement, the characters and their individual personalities, the opinions, and the messages of the piece - define the formation of the songs. Every piece of music he writes is entirely wrapped up within the world of the play, and taking it out of its context can therefore be quite difficult.
You can absolutely, out of context, have:
A group perform “Sunday” from Sunday In The Park With George
Two people duet on “A Little Priest” from Sweeney Todd
A devastating rendition of “Send In The Clowns” from A Little Night Music
You can do these things out of context and have them be appreciated for their craft and beauty. But something will be missed.
There are layers of enrichment that come from knowing:
“Sunday” is a musical representation of the pure beauty and tranquility that George Seurat finally feels in blocking out the chaos to finish his masterpiece painting.
“A Little Priest” is the unadulterated and insane giddiness of two brilliant, yet disturbed, people figuring out how to bring their goals into alignment - aka murder barber customers for practice and bake them into pies for money.
“Send In The Clowns” is a moment of stillness and deep self-reflection for a character who has never faced what she has always known, which is after we’ve watched her flail around her desires for two hours.
Sondheim takes these moments in the stories and crafts them into music perfectly appropriate for the situations and characters:
“Sunday” is a brief group vocal number based mostly upon quiet unison, which blossoms briefly into exuberant dissonance before returning to a quieted and major harmony in the end.
“A Little Priest” is a seven minute comedy number based in grotesque wit and delightful one-up-man-ship.
“Send In The Clowns” is a conversational, lilting, and dynamic solo ballad, which purposefully does not develop in either melody or harmonic structure.
Extraordinarily different pieces. All very Sondheim, but all utterly specific to their content.
Less Is More
I already hear some of you at home saying:
“But Michael, he’s known for his complexity and wordiness! How can Sondheim believe in Less Is More?”
Well, believing in and succeeding at are two entirely different things. And Sondheim acknowledges all over the place that he strives for these principles, knowing that he often falls short (as do we all).
But if you were to look at the songs of his that most endure - the ones that really cut to our emotional and intellectual centers - these are often the ones that follow this mantra the most.
Every Sondheim show is filled to the brim (if not overflowing) with music and lyrics, and many of these are immediately forgotten upon leaving the theater or skipped when listening to the albums. But the ones that cut through universally for performers and audiences alike tend to be wrapped up in the simplest of ideas:
Finishing The Hat
No One Is Alone
A Weekend In The Country
By The Sea
Anyone Can Whistle
Being Alive
Everybody’s Got The Right
I’m Still Here
And this is but a tiny fraction.
If you know any of these songs, their titles alone will evoke a sense of time, character, emotional state, and a wonderfully tuneful hook. And everything else about each of these songs is built specifically around these simple and effective ideas.
Do the lyrics often spin off into ambitious wordplay, complexity, and depth? Yes. But all of it centered around these simplistic and easy-to-follow ideas - he never strays.
God Is in the Details
Details come in all shapes and sizes, so it would be difficult to discuss the full breadth of the kinds of details Sondheim has mastered. There are too many.
So I will leave you with a few.
1. Correct Stress
One of the reasons performers love to sing Sondheim music - and audiences are able to take in as much information from his wordiness as they can - is because Sondheim takes great care to place words on his melodies so they are stressed precisely as we would say them.
There are many songs out there in the world that people say are difficult to sing - “it’s almost like it’s impossible to sing it well!” Usually, this is because of mis-stressed words. They’re tricky to spit out.
But when they stress is correct, you can speed through an insanely wordy line and still be entirely understandable (see “Getting Married Today” from Company).
2. Musical Development
I wrote a 10 page paper in college about the first half of one song in Sweeney Todd, dissecting the musical development and how it related to the characters and tone of the piece. And I had much more to say.
Sondheim takes great care to build a musical world, build a tune off a singular idea, and then to break his own rules only when the story calls for further movement or development. And every time he does it, it’s wildly effective.
For just a minuscule example, in Into The Woods, Little Red sings a song called “I Know Things Now,” which is the story of her encounter with the Wolf. The main melody is almost garishly major, since Red is both a kid and dreadfully annoying.
But when she gets to the part of the story where she starts feeling fear, Sondheim alters two notes in her now-familiar melody to make them minor. Just two. And then we understand her state of mind clearly.
Details.
3. Wit
A lot of people are witty. But few people are as appropriately witty as Sondheim.
It’s one thing to write your face off and be clever at any and all times - this is a great showcase of the writer and their talents. But it’s an entirely different thing to be witty in a way that’s 100% appropriate to the character, their language, and their situation.
My favorite example of this is in Sweeney Todd during “A Little Priest.”
Mrs. Lovett is a cooky delight of a character who is clever, insane, and good at wordplay and word association. However, all of this gets kicked up a huge notch during “A Little Priest” when Sweeney starts playing the word games as well. Suddenly, she has to up her game.
Prior to “A Little Priest,” in which they wittily discuss how they could cook different people into pies to sell, Mrs. Lovett would likely not have gotten to the point of being able to put together:
“Or we’ve got some Shepherd’s Pie peppered with actual shepherd on top”
A brilliantly witty line, but also perfect to Lovett in this one moment in the show.
Clarity
So why does Sondheim endure?
Whether you love him or hate him, or are somewhere in between, Sondheim’s mastery of the craft of musical theatre writing is both capturing and stirring.
His craftsmanship is the rock on which his talent sits, and it has made for some of the most exciting and interesting musical storytelling for performers and audiences alike.
Sondheim is who inspired me to do what I do. His principles guide me in everything I write. And all I can hope is that, at the end of the day, I have achieved a level of excitement and clarity that Mr. Sondheim could be proud of.
Stay safe, stay healthy, stay home. Cheers everyone!
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templeofulchtar · 5 years ago
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On Connecting with Starscream
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So, true story:
The first time I tried to perform a ritual for Ghost Season, I had no idea what I was doing. None. Which makes sense, since I may have been the first person ever to attempt such a thing. I set up an altar on my apartment balcony using various things that felt “Starscreamian” to me, and when the night of August 22 arrived, I nervously cast my circle. I invited Starscream to enter into the circle, and… waited.
And waited.
For what, you might ask? Well, I have always had a sense of what his presence ‘feels’ like. It’s a little hard to describe, but I’ve made an attempt in the section below, titled Sensing Starscream’s Presence. I’ve included comments from a couple of other people who work with him so you can compare your experiences to ours and, perhaps, have some idea of what to expect.
In any case, I was getting nothing. Not a tingle, not a flicker, not a mental image; nothing. I began to feel ridiculous. Why was I sitting here in the dark waiting for a cartoon robot to speak to me? I’m pretty sure that’s not something normal people do. Not that I’ve ever aspired to be normal, but… well. It wasn’t working. I packed up and went to bed, feeling embarrassed and ashamed. As I burrowed under the covers, though, a car roared past outside with an old AC/DC song blasting out the windows:
You told me to come, but I was already there.
For those who know that song, yes, I do realize that’s a slight misquote. But that’s how I heard the lyrics in that moment, and their message couldn’t have been clearer:
I am always with you. You don’t have to summon me.
For this message to have been delivered in a voice that’s always reminded me of Starscream’s made it seem incredibly personal and real. And yes, it’s wrapped up a double entendre. If you work with Starscream, you’ll likely discover his ribald sense of humor for yourself.
Why am I telling you this?
Because if you turned to this post wondering how to establish a connection with Starscream, this might be your answer. If you love him, he’s probably already with you. If you feel drawn to Starscream, admire him and would love a deeper connection, there's an excellent chance that he'd be open to working with you as well. If you've been having dreams about him or finding that he, or things you associate with him are ‘coincidentally’ popping up in your life, he may be reaching out to you.
If you’re still not sure, though, you can try this exercise:
Connection Excercise
Open your journal to a fresh page and give some thought to the questions below. You don’t have to answer all of them. Pick the ones that resonate, and write down whatever comes up:
★ Does Starscream provoke strong emotions in you (positive or negative)?
★ Does he show up in your dreams?
★ Do you daydream about him?
★ Are you inspired to create works that feature him, such as fanfic, fanart, cosplay, and so on?
★ Are there certain songs that remind you of Starscream?
★ Do you have favorite quotes by or about Starscream?
★ Do you, at times, catch yourself ‘talking’ to him in your inner dialogue?
★ Do you ever wish you could talk to him?
★ Do you identify with Starscream and see yourself in him? In what way(s)?
★ Have you taken on new interests because of him? (Example: jets.)
★ Do you imagine yourself as Starscream in some way, either physically (eg. Having null-rays, ability to fly), or in terms of your personality or life situation?
★ If you were part of the TF Universe, would you want to know him personally and be part of his life in some way?
★ Has he inspired your life in some way?
★ Have you changed how you dress (say, by wearing more red) because of him?
Those are just a few examples of the ways Starscream could be showing up in your life. You might think of others. If you do, note those down as well. Now, you might be thinking these are simply examples of fannish obsession. You may even have found some of the questions embarrassing. That’s very natural. These questions touch on some very intimate, sensitive aspects of being a fan, and there’s good reason for that.
These questions are embarrassing because they bring up feelings of vulnerability. When we love something, we open ourselves to being hurt. The mockery that’s so often aimed at fans is motivated by people’s desire not to feel vulnerable themselves. They try make themselves feel safe by ridiculing others, but in doing so, they cut themselves off from the source of their own magick.
Yes, you read that right. Your magick, and your spiritual connection to Starscream, flows from that intimate space within. It’s that vulnerable, awkward, geeky place where you innocently, unabashedly adore a character and are totally obsessed with them. Treasure that place. It’s your inner temple. Guard it with care, because it’s where your magick resides.
But, you might be asking, are the ‘symptoms’ on this list actually signs of a spiritual connection? I’m going to say yes. I believe they are, and if you’re open to the possibility of deepening that connection, you can begin to make it a two-way street. Starscream is many things, but ‘shy’ is not one of them. He will show up if you make space for him, and the place where he’ll meet you is within the heart of your magick; your inner temple.
Sensing Starscream’s Presence
So what can you expect? What does Starscream’s presence feel like? It’s hard to give a definite answer, since everyone is different. Your experience will be your own, and in many ways incomparable to anyone else’s. In case it helps, though, I’ve included commentaries by three different people who work with Starscream, including yours truly, to give you an idea of what you might experience...
Starshadow writes:
I think I first became aware of [Starscream] as such while I was in high school. I was initially drawn to his character on the animated show, and at first that was all he was. But I quickly became intensely invested in his story, especially when I started to follow him in other media (comics, etc) as well. He became more to me, and began to transcend the stories and art presented. He literally seemed to take on a life of his own. I started to feel (and sometimes see) him in my dreams encouraging me and telling me to be strong.
His presence is distinctly strong. It sometimes borders on aggressive, but it is not threatening to me. I think he just has a particularly powerful presence. It's very fiery and passionate, which makes it distinct from other entities I sense which are more calm and protective. I will often "see" in my mind's eye his red eyes and wings as well when I feel he is near.
Occasionally [he communicates through] dreams, but much more often I will "hear" his "voice" in my mind, often giving advice and emotional input. As I mentioned before, he has from time to time actually yelled (screamed? ;)) at me, but only at times when I really needed it. Sometimes his colors will show up in combination and songs I associate with him will be played out of nowhere when he is taking a more subtle approach.
[My sense of his presence has] waned at times. For a while it seems like he is just hovering on the fringes, but he never completely goes away. His means of communication hasn't changed much though.
He has made me braver than I probably would have been. He is still working on my self-confidence, though. He's been back again recently encouraging me with that. He has also definitely influenced my creativity and aspirations. He has helped me be driven enough to pursue my desires for so long and explore creative work beyond the "traditional female" expectations.
He [also] does sometimes seem to share aspects with other entities I've communed with, like my [wolf guides]. He will almost seem to "combine" with them, or share their energy, and sometimes they with him. I haven't quite figured out why this happens or for what purpose yet, but I am very curious!
Dark Star of Chaos writes:
It’s no exaggeration to say I spent my whole life looking for Starscream. If you want to get technical I first “met” him as a kid watching Transformers Armada, but though he became my favorite character, that was all he was to me then: A character. I loved him, but what I really wanted at that time was an imaginary friend. Not a real one; an imaginary one. The catch was, I didn’t want to invent one. That, in my mind, was not how it worked. The imaginary friends in cartoons all interacted with their humans as though they were real, and that was what I wanted. I didn’t see how a thing invented from my own head could ever take on that kind of life.
When I was older - after Starscream had slipped off my radar - I came across a book called “The Fire Within”, about an aspiring author and his clay dragon Muse. That book, and those which followed, completely redefined what I was after. I wanted to be a part of this world of dragons and shamans, where words held magic and transdimensional aliens “commingled” (merged consciousnesses) with Earth creatures. And I wanted a Muse of my own; always just a thought away, and always ready with some flash of inspiration to offer.
Looking back on it, I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Starscream reappeared in my life within a few months of that series ending. Our reintroduction came via the original cartoon, and after only a few episodes - specifically, by the end of “Fire in the Sky” - I had already decided I had to write about him. I couldn’t say exactly when I began to perceive him as an entity separate from his cartoon portrayal, but when the idea was suggested to me, it didn’t sound strange or crazy. It sounded right.
Starscream’s energy has always been subtle for me. I’ve never had much luck “feeling” his presence, though I’ve come to trust that he’s there. I only have to talk to him to get proof of that, because he always replies. Sometimes there are words, but more often it’s emotions and concepts, and it can take a while for me to figure out what he means. He also appears in my dreams rather frequently, and we’ve had more than one “face-to-face” meeting that way.
His influence on my life, on the other hand, has been anything but subtle. In addition to inspiring me creatively, he helped me overcome embarrassment about sex, played a role in my moving from a small desert town to a big city, and most recently, he’s come down on me about my abysmal self-care habits. He can be pushy sometimes, but it’s never harsh, and I always end up happier for having listened to him.
In short, Starscream is the friend and Muse I’d been searching for all those years, and I’m endlessly grateful for his presence in my life. After all, how many people get to make dreams of magick a reality?
Grayseeker writes:
I first became aware of Starscream’s presence when I got a call from work asking me to come in, even though it was my night off. The idea of going in made me sick, but I felt I had to. It wasn’t just that I was afraid of getting fired; I also had a strong impulse to obey authority figures. I didn’t know how to say no. But on that particular night, a voice spoke inside my mind:
You don't have to do anything you don't want to.
It was a voice I recognized, and the words were accompanied by what I can only describe as a ‘feeling image’ of myself as a sovereign being with full authority over my own life. I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to, and I didn’t go in to work that night. I told my supervisor I’d had some drinks (untrue, but effective) and after that, they stopped calling me on my nights off. Maybe they sensed that something in me had changed. It had.
I believe Starscream has always been with me, but that incident, over three decades ago, is the moment I became consciously aware of his presence. My sense of him has remained pretty consistent over time. I still ‘hear’ him as a voice inside my head. Usually it’s just a few words, but they’re always imbued with a sense of meaning that goes beyond the words themselves. I also get physical sensations, such as warmth or tingling, emotional communication (which is hard to describe!), dreams and synchronicities, usually involving numbers, colors, and/or song lyrics.
To me, Starscream’s presence feels warm, welcoming, comforting, affectionate, and… amused. His communications with me are typically laced with a certain wry humor, and the observations he makes are often phrased in sardonic, even sarcastic terms, though they’re somehow never hurtful. I always feel the warmth behind them, and they make me feel loved. I always feel like he’s on my side, even when he’s pointing out ways that I could improve.
On very rare occasions, he will get serious. That’s when I know to pay extra attention, because it usually means there’s some danger to me, or that I’m venturing into territory that isn’t healthy. I’ve learned (the hard way!) that he’s always right. He’s immensely wise, and I’ve learned to listen when he says ‘no.’ He doesn’t say it often, and he always has a good reason.
Starscream has influenced my life in countless ways. He’s my creative Muse, and has been the impetus for my desire to write. He’s also my main guide, my teacher and spiritual awakener. I think of him as more a friend, and more than family. I love, trust and respect him, and feel that I receive the same in return. I hope these words will find their way to someone who is starting on the same path, or a similar one. If I can offer any reassurance or inspiration, perhaps it’s just to say trust you heart. I’m glad I trusted mine.
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I know he’s sad because he couldn’t blow up the Earth, but kinda want to hug him anyway...
A Few Last Thoughts
You might be wondering how to make sense of all this. In particular, you may wonder how to distinguish what’s real from what’s a product of your imagination. And what am I trying to say, anyway? Am I, in fact, suggesting that Starscream is real?
Why yes, I am. Now before you decide that I'm nuts and walk away, let me explain what I mean. I am not necessarily implying that Starscream is a physical entity. I'm not saying that if you were to hop into a really fast spaceship and fly far enough and in the right direction, you would arrive at a metallic world named Cybertron, populated by living robots who are able to transform into various types of vehicles and other machines, and that among those Cybertronian entities you would find an individual named Starscream.
Of course, I'm not ruling that out, either. Our universe is too vast and strange to rule out much of anything. But what I am saying, based on several decades of personal experience, is that there is a real, non-physical entity named Starscream, with whom it's possible to communicate and have real interactions.
Can I prove this? Nope! There is no tangible, objective phenomenon I could point to as "proof" of his existence, but for me, that's beside the point. I feel Starscream as a constant presence in my life. He is my guide, teacher, healer and dearest friend, and his impact on my life has been very real indeed. I hope that the personal examples given above will provide a starting point for you to begin having your own experiences, if you desire them, and that your relationship with Starscream will be as rewarding as mine has always been.
Blessed be, Grayseeker
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svt-writers-club · 5 years ago
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Ask games #5: last one I promise!!! 28,30,33 for jihan I’m hopeless supernaturals AU. also yes everyone thinks you’re a hoe for jihan bc I keep requesting them. Muahahhaahhahahaha
you have absolutely no self-control you know that? but i guess it is about time i write jihan for hopeless supernaturals au >_>
#28: “Stop poking me!”#30: “Could you be like…a little less idiotic?”#33: “Do you trust me?”
There’s a running bet for how long it’ll take Seungkwan and Hansol to get their shit together. It ranges from three months (Jihoon and Soonyoung) to four years (Minghao – but only because he’s not allowed to say never). Jisoo and Jeonghan are hoping they’ll get together within the month so they can collect on the pot that’s growing outrageously. The current amount is somewhere in the high three hundred thousands.
Jeonghan wants it.
He sighs loudly, cheek pressed against his hand as he watches the lunch crowd pass by the window. The cafe is bustling, but he has a not-date with Jisoo in ten minutes.
Jisoo, the absolute walking dream, walks in with pastries and an innocuously filled flask in hand, as well as Jeonghan’s favourite mug of tea.
“What’re you thinking about?” Jisoo inquires, sliding into the empty seat with a serene smile.
Slipping a love potion into Jisoo’s drink is totally unethical, Jeonghan reminds himself. He takes a loud slurp of his drink so he has time to compose himself. “Love potions,” he answers honestly. “Our time limit for Operation VernKwan is coming up soon. I don’t wanna lose out on three hundred thousand won.”
Jisoo quirks an eyebrow, delicately biting into a mini apple tart. His elongated fang glints in the afternoon light and Jeonghan has to resist the urge to run his fingers over it like he wants to. Yeah, he’s kinda got it bad, but it could be worse. Unlike someone (Jihoon), he can at least admit when he has a crush. It’s exhausting being friends with a pack of werewolves that have no sense of emotional maturity.
“I don’t think that’s ethical,” Jisoo muses. There’s a slight sheen of caramelised sugar on his lips and Jeonghan aches.
“Who cares about ethical? I want my money.”
Even as Jeonghan says that, he softens the announcement with a cheeky grin. Of course it’s not ethical; what’s the point of being in love if it’s not real? He hums thoughtfully, eyeing Jisoo over the rim of his mug as the vampire finishes off his tart.
Jisoo meets his gaze, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he smiles. “Penny for your thoughts?”
“I think it’s at least worth ten bucks.” Jeonghan reaches over – giving into his own urges – and swipes the crystallised sugar from Jisoo’s lips. He lets his thumb linger. Maybe if he pretends hard enough, he doesn’t have to act like he’s being that pathetic.
Jisoo’s cheeks are red in the sunlight streaming through the windows. With the bustle of people around them, Jeonghan can almost trick himself into thinking that Jisoo might feel the same way.
“I was thinking that maybe we should lock Hansol and Seungkwan in a room and make them work it out,” Jeonghan says eventually, absently licking the sugar off his thumb. (Jisoo’s eyes follows his tongue hungrily, but Jeonghan is too deep in his thoughts to notice.)
Jisoo clears his throat. “Minghao already tried. Seungkwan ended up crying and Hansol ended up biting Mingyu.”
“Oh.” Jeonghan wrinkles his nose. “What a crybaby.”
“Jeonghan!” Jisoo admonishes, poking Jeonghan’s arm. “Be nice. Sirens don’t do well in enclosed spaces.”
“Let’s just handcuff them together,” the witch suggests.
Jisoo pokes him again, a little harder this time.
“No! That’s not nice. What if they have to go to the bathroom?”
Jeonghan waggles his eyebrows in response. He earns another poke, this time to his bottom rib. He chuckles, slapping Jisoo’s hand away.
“Are you sure a love potion is off the table?” Jeonghan says, almost genuine. It’s so pathetic to see Hansol mooning after Seungkwan the way he does.
Jisoo rolls his eyes, an exasperated sigh leaving his lips. “Could you be, like, a little less… idiotic?” He punctuates his statement with another poke, this time higher up on Jeonghan’s ribs.
Jeonghan barks out a surprised laugh, curling away from the vampire’s evil fingers. “Stop poking me! You’re making it hard to think.”
Jisoo raises his eyebrows, mischief glinting in his amber eyes. “Oh, are you ticklish?”
He wriggles his fingers threateningly. Jeonghan flinches away out of self preservation. He narrows his eyes at Jisoo.
“If you tickle me again,” Jeonghan states, “I’ll hex you. Don’t think I won’t, bitch.”
“No, you won’t,” Jisoo says confidently. There’s a smirk on his lips and Jeonghan wishes he didn’t find it so attractive.
Jeonghan huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, I won’t.”
Jisoo hums under his breath, a wordless song that was probably around longer than Jeonghan has been alive. In times like these, Jisoo feels like something ethereal – like something he isn’t fit to touch.
“I wouldn’t give them a love potion. It wouldn’t work,” Jeonghan says after watching Jisoo pluck at another mini tart sitting between them. It’s technically Jeonghan’s, but he doesn’t really like sweets, so he slides the treat over to Jisoo just to watch his face light up. “There’s already love between them.”
Yeah, Jeonghan’s bad at a lot of spellcasting. He can’t do hexes or curses, nor is he particularly good at potions. He can’t do herbal magic, nor crystal magic. He has a wand, but it’s gathering dusk in his bedside drawer, since he doesn’t do duelling magic that well and most potions already have the magic imbued in the ingredients. He’s not the best witch, but he can sense love and there’s more than enough of it between Hansol and Seungkwan. They just need to get their heads out of their asses.
“Can you see it?” Jisoo asks, tilting his head curiously. He looks like a cat, curling up contentedly in the class across from Jeonghan.
“See what?” Jeonghan laughs, sipping his tea. “The love? Yeah, sometimes. When it’s strong enough.”
Jisoo’s eyes are razor sharp as he leans forward. “Do you trust me?” he says abruptly.
Jeonghan raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, sure,” he snorts, fiddling with his mug absently.
“Close your eyes.”
There’s a weird emotion flashing through Jisoo’s eyes. “I don’t know if I should,” Jeonghan jokes nervously, but shuts his eyes anyway. He doesn’t have anything to be nervous about.
The cafe is a lot quieter now. The lunch crowd has come and gone, staying only long enough to get their food and drinks before leaving. The scent of coffee permeates the very walls, probably too saturated with the scent to ever be washed away.
And the lips pressed against Jeonghan’s are soft and cold.
Jeonghan gasps, eyes flying open. Jisoo is right there, eyes dark and unsure. He’s only mere inches away, his breath brushing Jeonghan’s lips. He’s like marble and art and everything Jeonghan doesn’t deserve.
“Is this okay?” Jisoo whispers. His eyelashes kiss his cheekbones as he blinks.
Love potions would never work on me, Jeonghan thinks, helpless lost. I’m too in love with you.
“Yeah, it’s okay,” Jeonghan breathes, leaning forward to capture Jisoo’s lips once more.
Hansol and Seungkwan can figure themselves out.
Feel free to ask me more of these ship asks here!
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reallylonglies · 5 years ago
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Taylor Swift - Demon Hunter: Part 1
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It was when she had me in the headlock that I began to wonder if I might have struck a nerve.
Was it something I said?
I thought back through everything I had said to her that day.
“You look nice today.”
Wasn’t that.
“Have you done something different with your hair?” 
Pretty standard conversational fare, shouldn’t provoke this kind of reaction.
“Your boyfriend is a fire demon, and you need to exorcise him.”
I thought it might be that but then who can tell with teen girls, honestly? 
“Why are you mad?” I asked her, or at least tried to ask her. My voice was a little strained because her elbow was tightening on my throat and her hair was hanging over my face so that every time I inhaled I got a mouthful of it. 
“Why are you in my dressing room?” 
Oh, yeah. Maybe it wasn’t even the fire demon thing, maybe I was just intruding. Suddenly it all made sense. Mystery solved. Case closed. 
I made some strangled noises and tried to spit out a clump of blondeness but it wasn’t going to work. Country singers have big hair and now a good solid third of hers was clogging my airways. She was going to have to let me go if I was going to explain.
“You’re going to have to let me go for me to explain,” I whispered gently into her thoughts. It’s just mild telepathy, nothing fancy. I don’t have a nosebleed whenever I do it or anything.
She dropped me and shouted an expletive. It was uncouth, I was shocked and taken aback. You don’t hear that kind of language in the other realms.
“You can’t be shocked and taken aback, you’re the one who broke into my dressing room,” she shouted, her eyes had narrowed to thin slits of rage.
Perfect, I thought, we can use this.
“Use what? Who the hell are you?”
“See, this is why I don’t use the telepathy thing - once I get into the swing of it I start sharing thoughts I don’t want to and before long everyone knows where I’m going for lunch and there’s a queue for the burrito bar. It’s like inception. Suddenly everyone wants a burrito and I’m left at the back of the queue where the burritos are just wet tortillas filled with cold rice and the memory of beef.”
She kicked me in the face. She has really long limbs. 
“I will admit I should have explained myself better.”
“Yes.” 
She folded her arms and looked at me. There was an awkward silence before I realised it was now time to explain myself better.
“Have you ever heard of muses?” 
“Like the Greek myth?” 
“No, not the band. The Greek myth, you know, this is why my job has been hell since 1994… Oh, wait, you said myth didn’t you? That is the correct answer… That doesn’t happen often. Imagine if those muses were like the Greek myth except also they’re fire demons that possess men of influence and try to trick them into forming a global government of badness that will bring about the fall of mankind.”
“So not really like the muses at all then?” I liked her sarcasm, it was spunky, she’d need that in the hellscape. Demons love spunkiness.
“There are nine of them, plus assorted demons and servants. Can I move on to the good part?” 
“Is that the part where you leave my dressing room before I call the cops?” 
“No. It’s the part where I tell you that you, Taylor Alison Swift, are a Lightning Rod.” 
They never react the way that I want them to. It’s not like telling someone they’re a wizard and they get to go to wizard school. Tell someone that and suddenly you’re like their best friend in the world: it’s all fun and laughter and shopping for owls. Tell someone they’re a kind of magical exorcist and the fate of the world depends on them and suddenly you’re the bad guy. 
“Yeah, I’m calling security.” 
“Wait, wait, wait!”
She paused, her hand hovering over the phone. 
“Listen.” 
She did, I saw her eyes, once angry slashes of rage, grow wide. 
“What is that?” 
“That’s me. You can hear me.”
“No, it’s like music. Like a melody.”
“It’s the sound of me disturbing the dimensions by being here, you can hear it because you’re a Lightning Rod, Taylor,” I always feel weird about this bit, sometimes they can smell us, sometimes they can taste us on the air, but every once in a million years there’s one that can hear it. Every one of us, demons, sprites whatever, we have our own little tune. We know each other’s, but Lightning Rods don’t have them because they’re technically mortal. It’s like having someone who hates the internet scroll through your Instagram and tut. I think that’s what it’s like. I don’t show up in photos so Instagram’s not really my bag. Stupid demon laws. 
“What’s a lightning...thing?” she asked, her eyes a little misted as she concentrated on my tune. 
“It’s a kind of exorcist. The muses are drawn to you. You’re like catnip...Demon-nip if you will.”
Her gaze snapped back to me, fire in her eyes again.
“What does that mean, am I in danger?” she asked. She didn’t sound afraid, more angry, like this whole thing was just some big inconvenience to her.
“No danger,” I said, “If you let me train you.” 
“Ugh,” she sank into a chair, “Fine.”
********************************
New York, midnight. Rain falls. 
He cracks open his hotel room door and stumbles in. He doesn’t feel good. Who would, in his condition? 
“Hello John,” she whispers gently as the storm outside throws light across her face. She’s draped in a chair with it’s back to the corner of the room. The dress he left her in is gone, and she’s dressed all in black. A hood obscures most of her face. 
“I thought I just…” his drunken vision swirls to the hotel door. His memory takes him back on a stumbling journey through the lobby, out into the street, crying girl in a dress. 
“You left me to make my own way home, John,” she said. Her lips were blood red. 
“How did you…” he was on the 20th floor. The elevator had taken ten minutes. 
“I’m in good shape, John,” she looked at him, she was holding something silver and small. He wanted to look at her, and at the same time he wanted to close his eyes tight until she was gone.  
“What do you want?” with a sudden wave of discomfort he realised how much she was scaring him, this wide-eyed nineteen year old girl whose heart he’d been toying with. He looked around the room, she’d taken the mirror off of the wall above the mantlepiece, it was leaning against the fireplace. She’d scratched something into its surface. “What did you do with the mirror?”
“Do you remember when he came to you? He said he’d help you and you shook his hand, and you never saw him again.”
“What are you talking about?” he didn’t like her voice, it sounded different: powerful.
“And even though you never knew his name, you always remember that after that encounter everything started going right,” she stood up, her clothes were wet from the rain. She held out her hand, her nails sparkled. 
He didn’t want to touch her but something in him was compelled to reach out. 
Before he knew what was happening he was on his knees, her arm was tight around his throat and she was pressing something cold against his head. 
“Look up,” she said, wrenching his neck so his face was opposite the mirror. He did not expect what he saw. Two faces fought against each other on the surface of his skull. One moment he recognised his own deep set eyes, his square jaw. The next second, a different face, rounder, with odd, taught features seemed to pull against his skin and try to gain prominence. 
“Get out,” she said, but as he tried to get away from her she wrenched his body back into position, “Not you John.” 
She pressed the silver object harder into his skin, it hurt like hell. Something inside him was tearing. To his horror, the face in the mirror began to speak. 
“You can’t beat me Swift, they’ve all tried - even Aniston gave it her best shot, he likes having me here.”
“Sure,” she said, her grip tightening, “But how many of them knew your tune.”
She whistled. Two brief, one long, and then two more quick notes. Rising and descending in pitch like a small hill of sound. 
Something felt like it was splitting within him. Like his skin was pulling away from his whole body and falling backwards. In the mirror he watched as something horrifying emerged from his limp frame. She let him fall to the ground like a sack of rotten potatoes.  
“You’ve had your fun with him, asshole,” she said, and kicked the mirror hard. It shattered and burst into flames. 
He woke in a cold sweat. The mirror hung above the fireplace. 
A nightmare.
**************
“I just don’t think it’s fair to name-check him,” I said, reclining in an armchair. I liked her home studio. It was warm, my office in the Inbetween is cold and damp and the demon who sits next to me smells of actual brimstone. 
“Why?” she said, strumming her guitar pensively, “His demon, his song. Doesn’t the world get to know what he did?” 
“The demon or the man?”
“Both,” she stopped strumming and bowed her head, “Is it the muses that make them all assholes or do I have just awful taste.” 
“Look,” I said, putting on my most authoritative voice, “You’re the best in the business. You’re a talented exorcist. I hear back at the office they’re even making a pamphlet about you for us to give to the next generation of Rods. You’ll be an inspiration.”
“That is not an answer to my question,” she said, putting her guitar back into its stand and spinning around in her chair, “I’ve heard of guys battling their inner demons but I never knew I would be the one that had to do all the vanquishing. It’s exhausting.”
I always came to watch her record the songs. There was something exciting about watching the lights flicker and the room shake as she trapped a demon in a melody. She was the first aural Rod since the invention of recorded sound, this innovation was helping us keep some real pieces of work at bay in her pieces of work. 
As she hit that first line of the chorus I felt the ground quiver below me. Fabulous, a real spectacle. Something worth manifesting for. 
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cantusecho-archive · 5 years ago
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(Episode 5 thoughtsssss.
OKAY. I took forever to write this one up since I couldn’t process my thoughts correctly, and still can’t. But going to try!
Episode starts with the government taking over S.O.N.G headquarters.
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Thing about this is, it’s clear that Fudou is using his power and influence to stop them, but why? That’s at the end of the episode it seems and the reason I think is hinted here;
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Honestly, the second he said this, it made me think of him wanting to make it into a sword for Tsubasa to use it. However, she clearly shouldn’t be able to handle it since she can’t wield divine power? Maybe Fudou thinks he can wield the power instead? He’s crazy strong, but does he believe he can handle it? It’s possible he does but his exact ideas/plans are still fairly in the dark.
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And Noble Red really are just pawns for him. So, if they didn’t agree to his terms, then they would die since that blood is the only way they could live. Basically, this humanizes our villains, as to be expected, since they’ve been abused and experimented on against their will.
However, I’d still be happy with them not being forgiven for their actions (Millaarc especially) because of how much it’s effected everyone, especially Tsubasa. But that’s later on in the episode.
(also it’s interesting that they’re hiding within the remains of Carol’s Chateau)
Now the scene between Genjurou and Yatsuhiro is actually really really nice. It’s nice to see the two of them interacting more, but they’ve also come to a conclusion that it’s pretty much clear that Fudou may be behind Noble Red’s actions. Yatsuhiro says that they can’t jump to conclusions just yet despite being suspicious. Of course WE as the audience already knows that Fudou is behind it. But in terms of the characters, who don’t see what we do, it makes sense.
Also heard a small tidbit about this scene on twitter; according to people who actually know Japanese, one of the documents on Yatsuhiro’s desk is basically hinting to another name in the Kazanari family. The people who could read this made all the connections about Genjurou and Yatsuhiro’s names (they have characters in their names that mean numbers? I can’t remember them offhand but I think Genjurou at least means ten) and said that it’s very possible that Fudou has like...ten+ children. LOL.
Like, he had sooooo many kids, probably hoping one would fight for him, until Tsubasa was born. I can’t find the twitter posts that actually explain all this in much better words so yeah, sorry. Just some interesting stuff.
Moving on! Because of all this investigation stuff, all the Gear users are on standby and are literally left with nothing to do whatsoever.
Eventually, this gives everyone the idea to at least take a break. And so what Hibiki decides to do is invite Tsubasa, as well as Elfnein, to have fun in the town. This is really just a huge callback to S1 episode 9 where Hibiki and Miku take Tsubasa on a date. Lmao.
What’s cute about this is that Elfnein ACTUALLY TAKES A DAY OFF LOL. 
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AND SHE SINGS.  ABOUT CAROL PRETTY MUCH.
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But what’s clashing in this scene is that while Elfnein is singing and literally having fun, Tsubasa finally opens up and admits how she’s been feeling lately.
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This is particularly sad because she literally said in episode 2 how much she loves singing. Before all the chaos in the concert and Fudou tearing down something she loves doing, Tsubasa was happy to sing and enjoy herself by spreading her music throughout the world. It’s taken a long time for Tsubasa to get to this point, even after the Zwei Wing disaster. So for her to feel this way is just really sad to hear and see.
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And this sets up the brief argument between Hibiki and Miku. 
Now my feelings on this scene is a lot but I’ll try to be brief as possible; personally, I don’t think Miku was in the wrong. This has been building up within her ever since season 1. However, was her outburst at the best time? No, it wasn’t. Miku isn’t a perfect person (in my opinion), no one is, but that’s what makes her interesting to me.
Even before S1, she’s been dealing with this guilt of hers for so long, so many years. And because she related to Tsubasa’s feelings of guilt and fear, it all came bursting out all at once...so she calls Hibiki selfish. I can see if people think this is rushed or literally came out of nowhere, or Miku’s wrong but it’s not as if Hibiki hasn’t done things wrong too.
Hibiki’s heart is always in the right place, yes, but she’s not perfect either. Normally, pulling people into her rhythm or ideas is fine and ends up working out really well. Her energy is enough to brighten those around her...but not all the time. Sometimes pulling people into doing something you think might help might end up hurting them instead. If you ask a person how they feel, maybe that way you’d be able to figure things out more. 
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But Hibiki didn’t ask Tsubasa. This isn’t to say that Hibiki doesn’t care about Tsubasa’s feelings, she cares deeply for Tsubasa, but she technically pulled her along into something that’s really only reminding her that she can’t enjoy songs. It’s hard to explain what I mean haha.
So even though Miku calls Hibiki selfish, which is debatable within itself but I don’t have time to explain it all lmao, I can kinda see her point. I don’t think Hibiki nor Miku are right or wrong here. It’s really just a clash of emotions and miscommunication. At least in my opinion.
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And then having Hibiki ask her this question finally gets Miku to openly admit how she’s been feeling for years.
Can I say as a side note how crazy it is for Hibiki to raise her voice back, like she’s actually frustrated so she stresses the words? It made me feel so uneasy, no joke haha.
Moving on, Miku finally admits her guilt, and I think it’s a legit worry. A lot of things wouldn’t have happened in Hibiki’s life if she didn’t invite her to that concert. She wouldn’t have almost died. She wouldn’t have been harassed. Her family wouldn’t be as broken as it is. She wouldn’t nearly be dying all the time from fighting. Hibiki probably wouldn’t be fighting at all.
It may sound unreasonable for Miku to blame herself for all of this, but I can understand that blame somewhat so I guess I’m a bit biased in that regard lol.
Hibiki, who didn’t see all this guilt Miku’s been having, is surprised by her admission. Again, I don’t see anyone in the wrong for this exchange because of the miscommunication; Miku was too afraid to admit her feelings because she thought it would be a burden.
Hibiki, in my opinion, never once blamed Miku for the incident or never saw it in that light before, so she didn’t think Miku would have feelings like this.
I don’t intend to ever write Hibiki doing things right all the time. I enjoy writing her making mistakes and learning from those mistakes.
So I’ll leave it at that. After this, there’s Alca-Noise summoned into the city, so everyone separates. Hibiki tells Miku they’ll talk later as Miku takes Elfnein and herself away to safety. 
Now this whole fight just shows how unstable Tsubasa is and possibly what that ability Millaarc used is effecting her still.
Side note: her song and transformation are REALLY good. Tsubasa’s transformation is really high if I had to rate them because it’s so beautifully animated. I love how special each transformation feels for each character this season. They’ve always been special and unique, but these intensify that to the max and I love it.
ALSO, during this scene, Hibiki makes a comment of thinking that the Alca-Noise are possibly a distraction. However, due to these other people from the government that took over, they don’t take her gut feeling seriously, which I think plays a part in the end.  My child was being smart for once and they didn’t listen FFFFFFFFFF
Okay, but Tsubasa fighting.
She starts seeing Millaarc as her and Hibiki are fighting the Alca-Noise.
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This is where Tsubasa starts attacking relentlessly.
Tsubasa is the most experienced out of them all, and to see her lose control over herself and nearly do all these huge attacks that start destroying the town instead is really the thing to see.
And all it really is is Tsubasa seeing the Alca-Noise as Millaarc. This is concerning because what if she ends up seeing one of her friends as Millaarc instead, and possibly ends up hurting them? I honestly was really worried that she would end up hurting someone with all these attacks. Luckily not. And she created a lot of damage to the city because of this.
It really feels possible that Tsubasa will have to sit out of fighting for a while. Not sure if they’d actually do that in the show, but it seems fitting. It may not make her feel any better though.
Now the cliffhanger;
Miku and Elfnein are still making their escape before being cornered by Millaarc and that same government man from earlier. Their goal was clearly to get Elfnein out of HQ so they could take her. I could be wrong, but I assume it’s because Fudou needs her help possibly to help turn the Vambrace into a sword? Or whatever else he wants done to it.
But they didn’t come for Miku, and Millaarc wonders what she should do with her before getting a “call” from Vanessa.
There’s no telling what Vanessa told her until probably the next episode I assume, but it ends on a large geyser of blood, making it seem as if Millaarc killed Miku. 
I HIGHLY HIGHLY doubt this for multiple reasons; ---It’s just like episode 8 in G where people probably thought Miku died when the explosion at the tower happened. ---That random dude was there and it’s more than likely him being killed and seems the most obvious choice. ---Killing Elfnein seems pointless (unless she ran out in front of Miku even though Miku was protecting her at first) because they needed her. ---Would they really kill a main character only 5 episodes in?
I think that if Miku got hurt, they wouldn’t be showing so much blood coming out because that seems excessive. Or if she was actually hurt, I think it would have been sooooo much better if they actually showed Miku getting hit. That would make for a better cliffhanger in my opinion. But oh well. If they actually hurt Miku, I’ll be surprised. But for right now, unless the episode proves me otherwise, I don’t believe it at all.
What happens after this is a mystery; because if it’s actually the dude Millaarc killed, then what does that mean for Miku and Elfnein? Will they still hurt Miku another way? Possibly take her with them or just Elfnein? Would they get away? 
I kinda doubt about them getting away because Hibiki literally saying “we’ll talk later” feels like “We’ll try to talk later but we won’t really because shizz goes down to prevent us from talking for a while” LOL.
But yeah, two more days until the episode to see how it all went down. Preview will be tomorrow so that can help stir some thoughts. 
That’s really all I got haha.)
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tannie-bell · 6 years ago
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100 Questions!
thanks to the lovely @chioo92 for sending this my way~! 💕💕💕
edit: putting this under read more bc it’s looooong 😂😂
1. What is you middle name?
Elizabeth
2. How old are you?
18
3. What is your birthday?
october 16
4. What is your zodiac sign?
libra
5. What is your favorite color?
in general black, but i do really like teal and deep greens
6. What’s your lucky number?
i don't really have one, but i like 13 and 16 and 3116
7. Do you have any pets?
yep! two dogs~
8. Where are you from?
a little italian town in the lower half of illinois
9. How tall are you?
technically 5' 1&¾". please feel free to round up to 5'2"
10. What shoe size are you?
depends on the brand, mostly between 8 and 9 u.s. sizes—they have to be wide though, or i have to get bigger sizes and just deal with the looseness 😅
11. How many pairs of shoes do you own?
i think 8?? but i only actually wear like 4
12. What was your last dream about?
in the last dream i *actually* remember, i was a character from my wip and she was with her husband in like this cozy, dim-lit room filled with furs and ancient pieces and neat stuff and she was moderately pregnant so i just remember feeling so warm and loved inside. looking back it's kind of weird bc i've never been pregnant or in love romantically, but it's still heartwarming
13. What talents do you have?
um, I bake well i think 😂 so far i haven't had any bad feedback...😅
14. Are you psychic in any way?
nope.
15. Favorite song?
gaaaaaaah why is this always so hard mikrokosmos ~ bts or lucid dream ~ monogram
16. Favorite movie?
singin' in the rain, howl's moving castle, moana, all mcu movies i've seen so far
17. Who would be your ideal partner?
someone who shares my beliefs/morals and who supports my passions/interests (and i would do the same for him). has a few quirks he needs a few to survive me lol and is musical, respectful, and romantic. also has a sense of humor i appreciate and vice versa. there are other qualities, but that's the gist 😂
18. Do you want children?
yes! not necessarily biological though, i am very open to adoption
19. Do you want a church wedding?
most likely yes
20. Are you religious?
it depends on your definition of religious. in the sense of believing in a particular faith/religion, then yes
21. Have you ever been to the hospital?
yes 😫
22. Have you ever got in trouble with the law?
nope!
23. Have you ever met any celebrities?
if you count the drummer from a now-disbanded band, then yes 
24. Baths or showers?
showers most times
25. What color socks are you wearing?
plain white—they're extra thick ones though! 😁
26. Have you ever been famous?
in what sense? 😂 locally or within a specific community of people, then i think so??
27. Would you like to be a big celebrity?
nope. i used to dream about what it would be like, but i seriously value my privacy and i would feel like i had none if i was famous
28. What type of music do you like?
pretty much anything and everything—except country 😅😂
29. Have you ever been skinny dipping?
nope...
30. How many pillows do you sleep with?
three
31. What position do you usually sleep in?
this weird twisted position on my side. it usually ends with my shoulders hurting 😅😅
32. How big is your house?
it's decently large, but we just updated our tiny two bedroom, one bathroom house (for five people for 15+ years 😳) to a five bed, two bath with an open living area/dining room/kitchen. we made it big enough to accommodate both sides of my family around the holidays (bc we have a decently large family that's only growing 😂)
33. What do you typically have for breakfast?
cereal or a fruit smoothie with either coffee or black tea (preferably earl grey) assuming i even eat breakfast
34. Have you ever fired a gun?
not yet, but i would eventually like to! thinking about a concealed carry permit as well depending on circumstances
35. Have you ever tried archery?
yess, and i love it!! it always makes me feel like some woodland elf heroine or something 😂
36. Favorite clean word?
like just regular words? pretty much any soft-sounding, flowy word with l’s, like melody or lucent
37. Favorite swear word?
i don't swear so none
38. What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleep?
like 36-ish hours
39. Do you have any scars?
yep
40. Have you ever had a secret admirer?
...not that I'm aware of??
41. Are you a good liar?
.....i do my best to be honest, but.....i can be....😅 just don't tell my mom
42. Are you a good judge of character?
i think so? i'm not going to be right 100% obviously, but most of the time i think i am
43. Can you do any other accents other than your own?
yeah, but they're not very good 😂
44. Do you have a strong accent?
depends on where you're from tbh
45. What is your favorite accent?
i reeeaaally like australian accents...
46. What is your personality type?
INFP-T
47. What is your most expensive piece of clothing?
a top and skirt set someone i know bought for a wedding and never wore again. i think she paid $100+ for it?? so i got it for nothing which was amazing
48. Can you curl your tongue?
yep!
49. Are you an innie or an outie?
innie~
50. Left or right handed?
right~
51. Are you scared of spiders?
most of the time no
52. Favorite food?
i'm just gonna go with italian beef with mozzarella bc it always sounds good
53. Favorite foreign food?
ramen, bingsu, turkish delight, gulab jamun, and this one chicken rice dish that i have no idea what it's called but it's a.maz.ing.
54. Are you a clean or messy person?
in general? clean. my room? the best way to describe it is definitely-not-so-organized chaos
55. Most used phrase?
oh my goodness or oh my word
56. Most used word?
like or eyyy
57. How long does it take for you to get ready?
......depends. literally anywhere from 5 to 45+ mins...
58. Do you have much of an ego?
i don't think so
59. Do you suck or bite lollipops?
both
60. Do you talk to yourself?
if i didn't i'd go insane
61. Do you sing to yourself?
^ see above
62. Are you a good singer?
i'm decent if my vocal chords are warmed up enough 😂
63. Biggest Fear?
failing/disappointing others. that and falling from heights
64. Are you a gossip?
no. i do my best not to be, anyway
65. Best dramatic movie you’ve seen?
i literally don't know what's considered dramatic anymore
66. Do you like long or short hair?
for my hair? long
67. Can you name all 50 states of America?
give me a piece of paper and a pen and yeah 😂
68. Favorite school subject?
english and music
69. Extrovert or Introvert?
introvert~
70. Have you ever been scuba diving?
nope
71. What makes you nervous?
being put on the spot
72. Are you scared of the dark?
not really, but it also depends on where i'm at and who's around
73. Do you correct people when they make mistakes?
if it's one of my really close friends I'll jokingly correct their grammar, but that's it
74. Are you ticklish?
.......sometimes.
75. Have you ever started a rumor?
no
76. Have you ever been in a position of authority?
a couple times, yeah
77. Have you ever drank underage?
no
78. Have you ever done drugs?
no
79. Who was your first real crush?
this one kid when i was like four or five. his name is tyler. he actually just got married! random i know
80. How many piercings do you have?
none
81. Can you roll your Rs?”
no 😥
82. How fast can you type?
not terribly
83. How fast can you run?
slower than my 70 lb. dog
84. What color is your hair?
dark brown with some blonde and red hints
85. What color is your eyes?
dark chocolate so brown
86. What are you allergic to?
pollen 😥 i think i also have oral allergy syndrome (but that's purely self-diagnosed 😂), so there's that too
87. Do you keep a journal?
i have the past couple weeks for a class, but otherwise no
88. What do your parents do?
my mom is a nurse and my dad is a letter carrier
89. Do you like your age?
ehh, ish
90. What makes you angry?
things taken out of context of conversations, situations, etc. and twisted to portray something else entirely
91. Do you like your own name?
yes~
92. Have you already thought of baby names, and if so what are they?
yes! these are just some of my favorites
for girls: lacie everest, elizabeth marie, roselyn chae (or chaela rose)
for boys: vincent alexandre, killian gray, quinton james
93. Do you want a boy a girl for a child?
both~!
94. What are you strengths?
um....i'm very musical 😂
95. What are your weaknesses?
i procrastinate too much and i don't really know how to work on a project with a group
96. How did you get your name?
my mom knew someone with the name (but they shortened it). she later found out that my dad's great- or great-great-grandmother had the same name
97. Were your ancestors royalty?
like seeeeeeeeveral hundred years back, but yes
98. Do you have any scars?
some
99. Color of your bedspread?
off-white/cream and a purple-y maroon
100. Color of your room?
off-white/cream
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
not tagging anyone bc this is like super long 😂😂 if you see this and want to fill it out, go ahead! you brave soul  😂
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letterboxd · 6 years ago
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Most Picture.
There are many ways to predict how the Oscars will go. How much money is the studio spending on the campaign? How highly rated are the nominated films? How much work have nominees put in during the awards season? Is it simply their time?
For this 2019 horse race, we thought it would be fun to go for a different metric. A fool-proof statistical analysis to find not what is the Best Picture, but what is the Most. And with that, we set about investigating the stats on rewatches of the eight films nominated for Best Picture.
It turns out that plenty in the Letterboxd community have logged the Best Picture nominees more than once, and in some obsessive cases, well into double figures. We had a feeling, based on anecdotal mood and general noise, that A Star Is Born and Bohemian Rhapsody would be right up there in the stanning stakes. And they are (read on for our Q&A with Letterboxd’s most obsessive A Star Is Born fan). But also: The Favourite made the top three, and the film you have rewatched the most left the other seven in the dust.
Without further ado, Letterboxd presents the 2019 “Most” Picture Awards, ranked by the number of members who’ve watched the 2019 Academy Award Best Picture nominees two or more times (total in brackets, as of today).
Each film features a review from its greatest fan, i.e. the Letterboxd member who has logged the film more than any other (at the time of writing).
And the 2019 “Most” Picture Awards go to…
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1. Black Panther (13,268)
“Would I see this movie a personal record high of seven times in theaters? For Wakanda? Without question.” —Krys (12 watches, seven in cinemas)
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2. A Star Is Born (5,943)
“TIRED: discourse about whether or not the film hates pop music, all think pieces about whether the film thinks Ally is a sell out and what that means for feminism, discourse on whether Why Did You Do That? is a bop or not.
WIRED: discourse about whether or not Jackson Maine even had an ass good enough to inspire such pop perfection.” —Juliette (16 watches)
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3. The Favourite (5,378)
“I miss this so much I dreamt it. Instead of riding, Sarah was doing cartwheels.” —CBotty (15 watches)
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4. Bohemian Rhapsody (4,928)
“The critics can go fuck themselves. THIS IS THE BEST MOVIE I HAVE SEEN! (for the fifth time).” —Iain (16 watches)
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5. Roma (4,270)
“Yes I’ve seen this twice today, yes i cried like a bitch both times, yes this is the only movie.” —Eve (7 watches)
“My feelings regarding Roma are complicated to say the least. It’s like dating the girl of your dreams, only to realize that you are completely incompatible, which ends in desperate clinginess for an ideal that was never true to begin with. It’s been a strange journey of love, disappointment, and eventual acceptance, where I’ve come to terms with my feelings. I still admire the hell out of it, and I hope it wins all the awards in the world.” —Orrin (7 watches, admittedly more times than they have actually seen it)
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6. BlacKkKlansman (3,669)
“This movie is so fucking powerful, and I loved every second of it.” —Kota (6 watches)
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7. Green Book (1,370)
“OK what a way to start the new year. I love this movie so much. Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali are for sure going to get nominated (and it’s well deserved).” —Anthony (5 watches)
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8. Vice (1,164)
“8.4/10” —Harrison (4 watches)
Unpacking the re-watchability of A Star Is Born.
“I just expect it to be exactly what it is and to be there.”
Of the eight Best Picture finalists, Black Panther has been out the longest, had the largest budget, and has done the rounds of the streaming services. It was always gonna take the top spot in a rewatch match. But to figure out the rewatchability of second-place-getter A Star Is Born, we went to the film’s hardest stanner, Juliette, to help us understand why fans keep coming back even though it’s a complicated watch.
While Juliette’s multiple reviews are meme-tastic, quippy, punctuation-free gems of observation, when we asked her to explain herself, she went remarkably deep. Her replies may just make you want to take another look at Ally and Jack. [Note: this interview contains spoilers for the film’s plot.]
How many times do you think you have seen A Star Is Born? Juliette: I think I have seen the film sixteen times? I know for certain I have seen it fourteen times in theaters, but I’m not sure how many times I’ve watched it in the comfort of my own home since it’s been released on digital. There’s just something about the energy in a theater while this film is being screened. It gives me chills just thinking about it!
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What keeps you coming back to it? It's so hard to pinpoint what exactly it is that draws me back to this film time and time again. I love a good love story when properly executed! I’m kind of obsessed with celebrity culture! I love a great musical! And like many people, the subjects of this film: alcoholism, mental illness, suicide, self-doubt, the cultivation of the self, love, mentorship, and reconciliation of one’s experiences with a flawed parental figure are all things that have permeated my life. Some of these things, I understand and have a firm grasp on, they feel definitive and their impacts are a tangible output. Some of these things, I still grapple with daily. There is little definition, largely just confusion and sporadic outbursts of pain.
When I return to this film, which I often do, the thing I don’t expect it to give me is answers. I don’t expect the film to be able to define for me what I must come to define for myself. I don’t expect it to clarify my confusion. I don’t expect it to eradicate the pain. I just expect it to be exactly what it is and to be there.
There’s a scene towards the end of this film where, while mourning the loss of his brother, Bobby explains how he heard one of Jackson’s songs performed at a bar. At first, it angers him. He feels like no one really knew Jackson. But then, something shifts and just hearing the song begins to soothe him. It reminds him that, in spite of their trauma and their turmoil, it isn’t all for nothing.
That’s what this film is for me. It soothes me. It reminds me that the facilitation of our healing can come through art. It reminds me that for people, who once felt broken and irreparable, it is possible to find love and happiness not just with another person, but within one’s self. It reminds me that our pain and our devastation can be met in equal measure with (and even maybe be overcome by) our brilliance, our triumph, and our devotion to one another.
What have you noticed with each rewatch? What I notice most with each subsequent rewatch of the film is what a massive undertaking the sound editing and mixing for this film must have been. I have such deep and profound respect and admiration for all the work that went into crafting the audio for this film! The film is such a visceral experience, one that truly engages all of the senses. I remember physically recoiling in the theater the first time I heard the sound of Jackson’s tinnitus. I remember feeling my entire seat shake in time with the music during the concert sequences.
I also have a sincere recommendation! Once you watch the film a few times, I really encourage you to watch the film just through the lens of watching Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real in the background of the pivotal scenes. It adds so much dimension to scenes you thought you already knew!
What is the single greatest scene in this version of A Star Is Born? As clichéd or “basic” as it may seem to say, there is no denying that the greatest scene in this film is when Ally joins Jackson on stage and the two perform Shallow together. It’s a cataclysmic and mesmerizing moment.
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It’s the way Jackson physically steps back and acquiesces his spotlight to new talent. It’s the combination of awe and support in Jackson’s eyes as he watches Ally assume center-stage. It’s the way Ally assumes her place at the mic for the first time. It’s how Ally—all at once terrified, shocked, overwhelmed, empowered, and free—finds a version of herself she had long thought impossible to access under the stage lights. The arc of which is punctuated by Gaga’s impeccable performance in this scene, most noticeably by the shift in her physicality, from her hands covering her eyes, unable to make eye contact, to grabbing the mic and belting her now patented cathartic wail.
It’s the way, two artists—no, two people—are separated physically on the stage singing into their individual microphones, but slowly find their way to meet in the middle and sing as one. In itself, this scene is the film in miniature. If this scene hadn’t worked, it’s very unlikely the rest of the film would have worked.
Not to mention, the scene is just absolutely stunning. Of course, the music is heavenly, that’s a given. In terms of the composition, I love how the camera moves around and captures each protagonist in different ways. And the color palette is gorgeous. The way that blue and red light dance around our protagonists throughout the sequence is just jaw-dropping. It’s the kind of high an artist, and in a turn a viewer, could spend their whole life chasing.
What do you wish haters understood about the film’s greatness? My first priority would be to tell the haters that Lady Gaga is not playing herself in A Star Is Born! Just because Gaga is a singer playing a singer, doesn’t mean she isn’t acting!
Furthermore, to me, it feels unfair that the power of her performance is sometimes diminished just because she sings in the film. Anyone can sing in a way that is technically proficient with enough training, but to tell a story through song? To act a song? To perform with every iota of your being musically? That’s a whole other skill and it is just as worthy of recognition and respect as any other leading performance this year.
Secondly, I would like to convey that just because something is a remake doesn’t mean that it lacks value or that it lacks something to say. I can’t pinpoint what exactly it is about this story that seems to capture the collective imagination every few decades, but I think it has something to do with how it presents ascension at the expense of descent, art as both artifice and freedom of authentic expression, and love in spite of sacrifice and self-destruction. There’s something about that cocktail that becomes the perfect receptacle for the expression and examination of our cultural anxieties.
Its malleable formula allows for questions to be asked about how we think about celebrity and fame, the self-identification process, and the value of art. In that sense, a remake of A Star Is Born is vital and refreshing, and certainly not tired and uninspired, and most importantly, it doesn’t lack something to say. It’s inherently reflective of the culture it was created in by its very nature. It allows us to ponder not just how Hollywood tells stories about itself, but also how we tell stories about ourselves. And if you ask me, there’s so much value in that.
What do you think should win Best Picture at this year’s Oscars? Well, I’m clearly biased towards A Star Is Born, but I would not be mad to see Roma or The Favourite walk off with the evening’s top prize!
What do you think will win Best Picture? My heart says Roma, my head says Green Book.
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