#All Caste and had previously been trained by professionals

[akai-nezumi]

The only thing that bothered me about this issue and the most recent representations of Jason.

I'm really tired of Jason being seen as stupid.

And I think this has had a lot to do with Fanon as well. If you ask someone who is the Robin who hates school and studying and other bad examples. They'll tell you "it's definitely Jason, he hates all that because he's the bad, tough guy and for that reason he's also the dumbest of the Robins."

[sunriseverse]

What are you uh...what are you salty about? (I'm nosy as hell, give me the tea)

okay SO. disclaimer before i start: if anyone seeing this likes the youtuber mentioned, understand i am not calling her a bad person; i have some very specific umbrage with her, and i will detail why. you don't have to agree with me, but if you, in any way, inform this youtuber of this post and what i'm saying, you will be blocked, because this is meant to be on my personal blog only and a severe violation of my boundaries to tell her about this.

let's begin, shall we? (below the cut, since this got a bit long; my apologies.)

for context, since i started watching zmyx, i have been periodically checking youtube for amvs of the show so i can add them to my playlist. while doing so, i stumbled across this video by AvenueX. i had watched a video by her previously on the show under the skin, and mostly enjoyed it. i love hearing people react to batshit cdrama, well, drama, and "this show was up for bare hours before being taken down" definitely counts as something i like hearing reactions to.

i cannot directly upload the clip into this post, but i'll put the subtitles in for the relevant section, which begins at the 12:25 mark and ends at 14:59.

AX: Basically, there is a BL drama that was made quite a few years ago and hasn't come out like all the BL dramas, Zhiming Youxi. It's based on a novel called Wanghuatong [sic] and is a clear BL drama. The platform was iQiyi, and they cast Huang Junjie and Xia Zhiguang. These two guys have been multiple other stuff ever since then, and if you watch a lot of Chinese dramas, you probably have an impression of who they are. Neither of them are considered to be good actors, very young, and not really coming from professional sort of trained actor background[...]I'm not so interested in the story to start with and not interested in these two actors either, because BL dramas is hard to do well; you have to be good actors to pull it off, and you actually have to know what type of acting you need to be doing. You're not actually playing realistic gay people, you're playing imagined version of [here she makes a sound i can only transcribe as the auditory equivalent of tilting your hand back and forth], that whole complicated psychological thing on the back end, and if you're not clever and experienced enough actor you actually easily make a mess. Based on the leaked out footage I see on the internet, it's embarrassing, in terms of the acting, and they stole the most important line from Word of Honor, which is 'there's light on you and I want to grab it and take a look'. Every BL drama has a classic line[...]and this drama shamelessly took a completely, and that part of the video is online. I've watched it, and I'm like, 'oh my god, oh my god, just because you're another BL doesn't qualify you for stealing literally the line from another BL drama[...]just because of that I'm like, oh, okay, now I can make fun with other people together on this drama being living [sic] on the internet for like, what, three-four hours[...]it's a good thing this drama is buried now, and please don't show up again. I don't want to see it. It's embarrassing, it's embarrassing, okay.

bolding mine; these are the portions i have umbrage with.

let's go through the points she makes, shall we?

this show is "embarrassing", in terms of acting; presumably, this is connected to the earlier line about the actors not being known as "good actors", and not having professional acting backgrounds.

it stole a line from shl.

she thinks this drama deserves to be made fun of for "being embarrassing" because, presumably, the actors don't play bl roles the way she thinks they should, and "make a mess of it".

i must reiterate: she can have these opinions. these are opinions she is entitled to. i disagree with them, but i respect her right to have them. however, because i also have the right to my own opinion, i am allowed to be pissed about these opinions she has.

i will go through a point by point breakdown of my responses and thoughts on each point.

i think it's really stupid to judge an actor based simply on them having a professional background or not. when it comes down to it, the most important thing for actors, especially co-leads, in a show, is their ability to do their job and create believable dynamics with their co-actors. in my opinion, xia zhiguang and huang junjie do this very well in zmyx. their dynamic feels natural and realistic to me, and, more importantly than that, it compels me. i don't say this as a "fan" of either actor; it was a nice bonus to me that hjj had also played another character i like, but even if he hadn't, i would be judging this performance as lin qiushi based on its own merits. i have never seen xzg in anything, and again, i am judging his acting in this show on its own merits. also, i should add there's something hilarious about her holding up shl as a "good" bl, when you could argue that those leads aren't "good" actors, either. i mean, look at advancing bravely! or, maybe, i don't know, it's possible for actors to improve over time and do better in certain projects than others? and someone doesn't have to be the "best" in all areas of their field, just the right choice for the role they're playing??

this is just stupid, in my opinion. the line is not stolen; it is altered and becomes its own line in zmyx. in shl, the line is, as she says, "there's light on you and i want to grab it and take a look". in zmyx, the line is "there's a light on you that i don't see on others". this is, at most, a reference—and zmyx isn't the only bl that references other media! this is a silly, petty argument, in my opinion, and frankly annoying as hell. if it were a crime to reference any other media in the same genre as the media doing the referencing, we'd miss out on so much. to me, this reference doesn't read as an appropriation, but as a nod of appreciation to another bl which was heavily censored. also, if her claims are anything to go by, and zmyx did film "years ago", it's possible that, actually, zmyx used the line before shl did. even if that isn't the case, who fucking cares? genuinely, i think this is a stupid point and i hate it.

she thinks the actors made a mess of the show by not playing the roles in the specific way bl roles are "meant" to be played. we could spend years arguing about the "right" way to play a bl role, but to me, it sounds like she has a very specific idea of the roles bl actors must fit into and fulfil—specifically, that they must play an exaggerated, unrealistic mimicry of gay male relationships, or else it's a "bad" bl. i don't know AvenueX's sexuality, but as a person of the homosexual persuasion myself, if not one attracted to men, i personally don't like exaggerated mimicries of gay relationships, and i would wager a guess that many gay and bisexual men are probably in this same boat. when i watch a bl show, i prefer that the dynamics are driven not by the idea of what gay people should act like, but by 1. the plot, 2. their own characterisations and character motives, and 3. their relationships and dynamics with each other. in this regard, while zmyx isn't a "good bl", i think it's a good depiction of the relationship between two characters. i don't say this to be holier-than-thou, or to claim i'm somehow "better" than other people who do like specific exaggerated tropes in bl; i say this because i feel like AvenueX entirely disregards the possibility that the thing that she doesn't like about zmyx are things that other people will.

(additionally, while she never says this, i get the impression that one of the things she doesn't like is that the chemistry between the characters isn't the "typical" bl chemistry. i, frankly, don't give a fuck. i think the leads have fantastic chemistry, and it annoys me that she thinks they "made a mess" just because they don't fit the idea she has for what a bl "should" look like. i, for one, think it's a good thing that we're moving away from caricatured depictions of gay people in media, especially danmei and dangai. myself and other asian gay people, especially east asian gay people, have pointed out how harmful caricatured versions of gay asian characters are.)

(also, as an unrelated, and petty aside, if i remember correctly, she's a british film school grad, and not to be judgemental, but, yeah, i can fucking see it.)

so, yeah. that's my two fen and indignance on this. but, hey, what do i know, i'm just some random tumblr user ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[hoperays-song]

Character Deep Dive: Klaus, Ryan and the Dance Troupe

Finally, it is done! I hope y’all enjoy this deep dive!! Just please read the trigger warnings first. Seriously, read the trigger warnings first. Cannot stress that enough. Also shout out to my beta readers, y’all are amazing!!!

- <3 Gooseless

Character Deep Dive: Klaus, Ryan and the Dance Troupe

*TW: This deep dive will mention abuse, grooming, misuse of power, and manipulation. All the events and actions mentioned are based on real world events told to me by friends in the dance industry and my personal experience and research into the industry as well. However, this is just a theory based on my analysis and the analysis done by others. No hate to the people who actually like this character. Again, just a theory. Also, there were two attempted murders on screen as well as implying other murders had taken place in the second movie, so I feel like this theory (while very dark) isn’t the darkest the series could go and is therefore not that out of place. DO NOT READ IF SENSITIVE TO ANYTHING PREVIOUSLY MENTIONED. Also, no, this is not Klaus friendly. What about anything I’ve ever posted would make you think it is? That man gave me multiple panic attacks and made me go back to therapy for a bit because it reminded me of stuff, so nope, not going to be friendly. *

 As someone who was in dance my entire childhood and was raised by someone who was a dancer for 14 years, I always enjoy watching the representation of the dance world in media. I’m constantly looking for small details that allude to the real-world dance culture and I was ecstatic to note that in Sing 2 we got to see some of those cultural aspects as well as a wide range of diversity within the dance class itself. However, less than forty seconds in, I noticed what would become my main issue with the movie itself, the character Klaus. 

Klaus’s actions were shown to be antagonistic and cruel, yes, but the fact that they were brushed off at the end of the movie to allow him to continue to work with a student he was shown on screen to physically, verbally, and emotionally abuse for the simple reason of “he now knows what he’s capable of and won’t underestimate him again after that performance”. The thing with Klaus is that the major issue wasn’t his underestimating of Johnny’s abilities, it was the very blatant abuse and belittlement that was a constant part of his class. It was bad enough to cause Johnny to have at least one panic attack, and that’s Johnny. A kid who was raised in an extremely high stress situation and is used to being dragged through Buster’s bad and typically very dangerous ideas. Within the course of the first movie, we saw him chased by cops, trapped in a flooding building, and face down a group of potentially dangerous gang members. And while he seemed more than slightly worried and a good bit scared in some of those scenes, it was never enough to cause him to have a panic attack (at least not onscreen).

Yet, when you put him in Klaus’s class for two weeks and he ends up having panic attacks and is clearly extremely burnt out to the point other characters start to notice. You have to ask, what is going on there? Well, after analyzing (probably way too much) everything about Klaus and the dancers I could and doing a ton of research, this is the conclusion I’ve drawn.

 Analysis and Allegations

The actions we see from the character Klaus are far from just concerning. Not only do we see Klaus verbally berate and belittle his students, but we also see him physically hit them. No matter what modern media tells you, these are not normal in the dance world. That’s just blatant verbal, emotional, and physical abuse> It should not be tolerated or seen as normal under any circumstances. And, what’s worse is Johnny’s almost definitely not the youngest in that room. One of them, yes, but most likely not the absolute youngest. Most professional dancers report their first official contract at the age of 18. However, troupes are known to have members as young as 15 years old. And since Klaus was hired as choreographer and was able to produce a troupe on such short notice (literally canonically overnight), those are probably all his current students, meaning those kids could be as young as 12 (the age when most professional dancers report starting to circle the professional sphere, however dance classes can start as young as 2 years old). That is further backed up by the fact that every student stayed.

Now I understand that that statement itself might seem weird, however, contrary to popular opinion, dancers are some of the most terrifying people I have ever had the genuine pleasure of meeting. It’s a cut-throat industry and dancers are a lot of times forced to learn to stand up for themselves against abusive choreographers and directors that don’t actually value them. Most dancers I know would have just walked out the moment they saw how Klaus was treating the others, let alone if he started treating them that way. It’s very much an industry based on self-worth to survive. So, the fact that everyone in that class stayed told me that not only were they used to Klaus’s abuse, but they were also more than likely conditioned to take it. 

Like I said, most dancers tend to be extremely good at sticking up for themselves. Sadly however, as in the majority of athletics industries, grooming is a huge problem in dance. As I previously mentioned, dance classes can start as young as 2 years old with most professional dancers reporting to have started seriously training at the 4–6-year-old range. That means that young children, I can’t emphasize that enough that these are children, are being exposed to Klaus’s abuse on a daily basis (Choreographers typically are also teachers at a dance school and since anyone with common sense would fire him to avoid a lawsuit, I would believe that Klaus owns the school). And as anyone who has interacted with a child before can attest, they are incredibly trusting. So, if they were told by an authority figure that they’ve been told they can trust, like say a teacher, that something is normal and not a big deal and they’re lucky enough to have a nice teacher as others are worse, they’re going to believe it.

Even if as they get older and realize that they were lied to and are in fact being mistreated, a lot of times they feel trapped or have no support systems outside of the people involved in the bad situation. Especially if you have been going to a specialized school where everyone around you has been going through the same thing and your contact with people outside it is extremely limited. This can be made worse by the power held by higher ups in the dance industry (choreographers, casting directors, etc.). Those higher ups completely control the lifeline of everything in the industry. One bad word from one can seriously be a career ender. Not only that, but those people tend to be more successful, more in the public eye, and therefore can sway public opinion against whoever might have spoken up with ease as well as making court cases where poor dancers are going up against vastly successful higher ups a literal nightmare for the dancers. A lot of times they cannot afford a good attorney and will end up losing the case or being hushed by settlements that they desperately need due to a lack of work.  

         Therefore, I believe that even if Klaus’s abuse of his students has been brought to light before, it more than likely was swept under the rug. And I believe his abuse of Johnny was evidence proving that theory. Why? Well, Johnny is different than every other student in that room. Not just because he’s never danced before, but because he is not a permeant member of Klaus’s Troupe. He’s only there for the run of the show. And if you are struggling to see why that might be important, let me explain. Johnny has no stake in Klaus’s success. He will not be affected if Klaus’s name is dragged through the mud. He will not be out of a job if Klaus is fired. What Johnny is, as Klaus and every member of that Troupe must know, is a close, personal friend of the director and absolutely can affect their employment status if he wants. He can have them fired and replaced with a different group the next day if he really wanted to beg Buster for a new teacher. Klaus knew this and still chose to target and abuse Johnny. He knew how risky that was and he still did it. That shows to me that he’s gotten away with that kind of thing before. He’s more than likely done this to several other rookies and not faced consequences. And if he’s willing to do it to them, people with no reliance on his success, he definitely is willing to do it to his students, who are relying on him for essentially everything. If Klaus’s reputation is ruined, so is theirs and their resume will probably not get them as far. If Klaus goes under, they suddenly are out of jobs in a city known for its competitive performing job market. If they speak up, they’ll be fired, and Klaus’s reputation will absolutely carry him through any court case they may try. They are very likely end up homeless and hungry if they lose their jobs with him. Klaus has all the power. And he knows it.

         Those are the primary reasons I believe that not only did Klaus physically, verbally, emotionally, and mentally abuse his students, he more than likely is guilty of several much more sinister crimes like grooming and misuse of power.

 Ryan, The Primary Victim

          This part of my theory is where it gets a little more intricate. In dance, there’s a role in most organizations known as the Principal Dancer. The Principal Dancer is the top dancer in that company and frequently are given not only solos but starring roles in shows the company is hired to perform. Starting to sound familiar? That’s because that’s exactly what we see happen to Ryan. Ryan is given the role of being Johnny’s dance partner in the duet, one of the starring roles in the scene of a show being put on by a head of the entertainment industry. However, when we look at the students during this announcement, none of them look surprised. Ryan seems to have been the choice that everyone was expecting. On top of that, Ryan is the only one of Klaus’s students to publicly receive praise in front of the others, something that again doesn’t seem to surprise anyone. Klaus wasn’t doing that just to make Johnny feel bad (he would have pointed out how other students were doing better than him too), he clearly has praised Ryan before. Ryan is Klaus’s Principal Dancer. And upon realizing that, I immediately started to worry for him.

         Principal Dancers are often used as the example for all other students to follow. They stand at the head of the barre during warmups and help other students during practice. They can even help the teacher/choreographer with the choreography and the class overall. Essentially, they can tend to take on the role of a teaching assistant. And rather unsurprisingly at this point, we see Ryan doing just that during the practice scenes. While we never see them doing group warmups on barre, we do see Ryan seemingly helping another student correct their pose when Johnny shows up late for class. In fact, he’s the only student not doing those poses and is instead walking between the others as if checking what they’re doing. He also then proceeds to do the fight scene choreography perfectly. And while we might be meant to brush that off as “oh, he’s a talented dancer, of course he can do the choreo perfectly”, I’m here to tell you that essentially no one can do choreo absolutely perfectly on their first full run through. And that’s what it’s hinted at being, especially for Ryan. Johnny might have learned bits and pieces of the fight scene choreo before that point, however, Ryan’s role was announced in that very scene, and he was still able to do the choreography perfectly. That means that Ryan had practiced that choreo before, more than likely numerous times till he was able to do it flawlessly. And that means, he was more than likely practicing alone, or at least without Johnny (a neutral third party who would note and potentially protest any abuse), with Klaus.

         We know that Klaus has hit his students before, hell we see him do it multiple times in the movie itself, and we know that he also verbally and emotionally berates his students on the regular. We can see by how his students react to this, how scared they look, that they too are targets. And statistically, the person closest to the abuser is typically their primary victim. In this instance, we know the person closest to Klaus within the troupe is Ryan.

         What’s more, the behaviors of Ryan and Klaus within the movie hint to this fact as well (this is probably where I go into over analysis but I’m too far deep in this rabbit hole now so). For starters, let’s look at the scene where Johnny, Buster, and Gunter enter the training room. The first thought that blared through my mind was their shoes. If you didn’t know, street shoes are not allowed on practice room floors, like ever. It can wear down the flooring and therefore make it extremely dangerous for the dancers. So, the fact that the dancers didn’t say anything in of itself was odd, but then again, the Principal Dancer might have been the one expected to speak up in that instance since it involved the show’s director. Speaking of the Principal Dancer, Ryan is the one dancer we do not see in that opening scene. He’s nowhere to be found and neither is Klaus. Now, Klaus being gone on the first day of a show isn’t that surprising. Choreographers have a lot of people they have to talk to such as the director, the publicity manager, the wardrobe department, etc. but Ryan being missing is odd. For one, he would technically be, at least honorarily judging by the troupe’s dynamic, in charge while Klaus is gone, and two, there’s no way they didn’t know they would be getting their new dancer (Johnny) that morning. Having no one there to formally met him or tell him the expectations would spell disaster to a cohesive first practice. And yet Ryan is missing. He could have just stepped out for a moment, true, or been helping Klaus with something, but we never see him being treated as an assistant choreographer so that seems a bit far-fetched to me. Therefore, I have chosen to believe theory three: he wasn’t allowed to be there.

         Now some of you might realize where this theory is headed, but still, let’s keep going. Why wouldn’t a Principal Dancer, the top performer in the company, be allowed to be there when the new student was introduced for the first time? I don’t think it was due to the new student, it was due to who would be there with him. Johnny didn’t walk into that practice studio alone, he walked in with the director and the screen writer, two people of power on set. What’s more is that those two are currently being backed by one of the heads of the biggest entertainment industries in what’s hinted at being the world. They have power and they can use it. If Ryan would have said something to them, perhaps warning them of what Klaus is like or asking for help, they would immediately have them removed from the show and done anything in their power to help Ryan. Therefore, Klaus kept Ryan close or might have even sent him out to do something to avoid him saying anything that could hurt his image. And what’s more, I think Ryan would have. Let’s look at Ryan’s behaviors throughout the movie now, shall we?

         First off, I will admit Ryan is a character with one to two lines and a surprisingly limited amount of screen time for actually being decently important to the plot (though he might have more/close to the same amount screen time than Alfonso if I remember correctly. I’ll have to check.). The first time we actually see Ryan, it’s at Crystal’s Auditions. However, he’s not auditioning. From what I can see (and common fan theories) he’s there to support someone, maybe a friend, maybe a child of a sponsor of the dance company. And he’s also more than likely supposed to be networking for the company as well, getting these potential rich sponsors to like him enough to support Klaus’s company. That is a job assigned to Principal Dancers at certain companies after all. In the scene where we see Ryan, we actually notice him mostly paying attention to Johnny (yes, I do ship them, no, that is not where this is going, nice try). In fact, we see him look him up and down and watch him the entire time he’s in the room. Why is that important for non-shipping reasons? Because there is no way Ryan did not recognize Johnny the next day when he showed up in Klaus’s class. He saw him as a janitor and the next time he sees him apparently his director is friends with Clay Calloway, and they can put on an award-winning show with only three weeks of prep? Yeah, there’s no way Ryan didn’t know that wasn’t a lie. He knew they snuck in. And he didn’t say anything. Klaus would have absolutely used that as ammo against Johnny if he knew and we don’t know enough about the other troupe members to know if they would have told him if Ryan had mentioned it, so it’s a decently safe assumption that he didn’t say a word. He was willing to protect them and their secrets, no questions asked.                                                                                           

         Now, onto where we actually see a fair bit of Ryan, the dance classes. This is where we finally see Ryan being acknowledged as the Principal Dancer as well as a surprising amount of his personality. For starters, we can tell he’s extremely patient and dedicated. He never seems annoyed or upset that Johnny’s struggling so much to the point they have to go long. He is just calm and steady, doing the choreo over and over again the exact same way so Johnny can get used to the same movements. He also has clearly been dancing since he was a kid to reach the rank of Principal Dancer when he’s as young as he is (I always though he and Johnny were close in age, 18-19 years old). So, what do we now know about Ryan? That he’s trustworthy, patient, and very dedicated.

         Now on to why this personality we see hints to Ryan actually being a threat to Klaus’s reputation. Ryan doesn’t act like Klaus. And why does that mean Ryan doesn’t agree with Klaus’s views? Well, a lot of times when people of similar ideologies and behaviors are together, they amplify those traits in each other (think about things like political rallies or groups of friends). Or think of how couples who have been together a long time develop the same habits or how kids mimic their caretakers (and since Ryan is Klaus’s Principal Dancer and probably been training with him for years that probably the closest fit). However, Ryan’s mannerisms and personality seem to be the exact opposites of his teacher’s. He’s even willing to sneak into Crystal Theatre to help them put on the show apparently behind Klaus’s back, seeming to lead the other students there. He doesn’t align himself with his teacher’s ideology towards Johnny at all. In fact, we see him being extremely supportive of the other boy during the show and practices. At this point, it’s pretty clear to me that Ryan has definitely grown disillusioned with whatever Klaus probably told him as a young student and in fact seems to rebel against his teacher’s wishes constantly. He wouldn’t have held back if he had been alone with Buster and Gunter that day. He would have warned them.

         You might be asking “So if this is the case, why hasn’t Klaus fired him then?” Well, simple, sponsors. Remember how I said earlier that Principal Dancers are commonly used for networking between different troupes? Well, as we can observe, Ryan seems to be a very friendly and outgoing guy. He seems like the kind of person who can make friends quickly and easily. And while that is great for making those networking connections, it also means those connections are more than likely fonder of Ryan, a cheerful and friendly young adult, then Klaus, who is shown to be a perfectionist and egotistical. If Klaus was to fire Ryan (especially since I don’t think Ryan would sign an NDA), Ryan would more than likely go to those sponsors and ask for help. He likely could financially cripple the troupe if he wanted to. Klaus is kinda stuck with him at this point.

         And that being stuck with him, especially since Ryan is almost definitely under contract, spells worse news for Ryan. If he leaves and breaks contract, he can be sued, and that lawsuit would probably destroy his future in the dance industry. And if he stays, Klaus more than likely is going to target him even more to try to eliminate the chances of Ryan saying anything (gaslighting, scarily common these days). Ryan is trapped between abuse and essentially financial desolation for the foreseeable future.

        That wraps up by deep dive into the theory that sprung to life after watching the interactions and behaviors of the dance troupe and Klaus in Sing 2. And in the case of a TL:DR scenario, I believe that Klaus has committed much worse crimes than what we’re shown on screen and I believe that Ryan is his primary victim.

[hunxi-after-hours]

Hi Hunxi, I got on the audiodrama train because of your recommendations, and I wonder if you have a) voice actors with performances you really like and b) separately, found performers with a voice you really like (but sadly they may not done have a lot of work in that voice)?

ANON!!! YOU'RE REALLY OUT HERE ASKING THE QUESTIONS OF MY DREAMS!!!

first of all, deeply flattered that you've taken my incoherent yelling as recommendation and joined me on this train. I spend all my time here now and I'm pretty unbearable to talk to because unfortunately all I care about are Chinese voice actors these days

secondly, I feel like I should also mention the 综艺 variety show 《我是特优声》 / Voice Monster on bilibili because this show really sent me off the deep end when it came to voice actor fandom. previously I was like “oh yeah audiodramas are neat!” and after watching this show I stopped caring about anything else oops. since is the first variety show of its kind (they were trying to figure out what competitive voice acting should look like as they went rip), it’s definitely got its rough patches (and no money) but the contestants are hilarious and the judges lovely and there’s generally a wonderful atmosphere of mutual support and dedication to their art

a list of some of my favorite voice actors who were contestants on season 1 of 《特优声》:

锦鲤 Jin Li: this man’s RANGE. I think about his dub-over performance of 《罗小黑战记》 / The Legend of Hei constantly, and I love his (team’s) version of 《金乌》! I also loved him in the AD of 《师弟还不杀我灭口》, the donghua of 《天宝伏妖录》 (he’s in the AD too, I just haven’t gotten around to it), and as Aluojin in both the donghua and AD of 《烈火浇愁》. I’m currently debating on whether I want to go in on one of his currently-airing AD’s 《深渊巨龙苏醒以后》... look I’m aware I have a problem, and it’s that I love him

歪歪 (张福正）Waiwai (Zhang Fuzheng): what a sweet devilish chaos agent. my favorite performances of his are  《穿越火线》, which is was all sorts of stupid cute, and my jaw literally dropped when watching his 《黑白无双》 because I didn’t know he had that range?? I’ve been trying to find an AD of his to listen to but haven’t found one to my taste quite yet

赵乾景 Zhao Qianjing: when he showed up on 《特优声》, all the other contestants were like “why is HE here, he should be a judge” and honestly? they weren’t wrong. my favorite performance of his is definitely 《热情似火》, and my favorite AD of his is 《哏儿》 where he and Xie Tiantian LITERALLY do 相声. also, he can sing

亚捷 Ya Jie: used to be a professional backup dancer before switching over into voice acting?? how is he so cool?? 亚捷 has such a unique, gravelly voice that makes it hard for him to be cast as main roles (but REALLY easy to identify whenever he voices side characters). I’m holding out hope for him to get a good role!!!

a list of industry greats, who most people have heard before even if they don’t know their names:

边江 Bian Jiang: most people know him as the voice director of 《陈情令》 and the voice of CQL!Lan Wangji, among many, many other leading roles. what most people might not know is that he’s really good at comedy! haven’t explored his works in depth, but I did enjoy him in the donghua of 《天宝伏妖录》 and the AD  《问鹿三千》

姜广涛 Jiang Guangtao: also a VERY distinctive voice in the industry; most people probably know him as the voice of donghua Xie Lian in 《天官赐福》, though I personally prefer his Sheng Lingyuan in the donghua adaptation of 《烈火浇愁》. He’s also in the AD 《问鹿三千》, which is really a wildly stacked audiodrama

夏磊 Xia Lei, 谢添天 Xie Tiantian, 柯暮卿 Ke Muqing, and 鹏小胖 Peng Xiaopang: putting the 音熊联萌 VoiceBear Alliance mischief-makers together — Xia Lei has a lovely, distinctive voice (check him out in the 《千秋》 or 《天涯客》 AD’s), and Xie Tiantian is incredibly versatile (check him out in 《天涯客》  or 《哏儿》, also doing 相声). I have a special soft spot for Ke Muqing: he is, hands down, my favorite voice director and he has such a gremlin laugh behind the scenes (check him out in 《千秋》  or 《双杀》). meanwhile, Peng Xiaopang isn’t as well-known as the previous three, but his voice is truly very soothing (you can also spot him in 《双杀》, and as secondary characters in 《千秋》 and 《哏儿》). VoiceBear Alliance is one of my favorite voice acting studios because they’re all gremlins. all of them

吴磊 Wu Lei: THE 低音炮 baritone of the industry, you probably know him as Yan Wushi from 《千秋》 or Shen Qingqiu from the 《人渣》 donghua. also plays Chen Budao in the 《判官》 AD to Zhao Qianjing’s Wen Shi. he’s actually such a sweet person, the 反差萌 at play is really funny

刘琮 Liu Cong: the smoky voice of the industry, I’ve heard him around here and there, usually playing parental or grandparental roles asdlfkajsd. meanwhile, the 《默读》 AD is one of the best adaptations in existence and I will happily die on this hill

杨天翔 Yang Tianxiang: he’s a recent discovery of mine despite being very well-established in the industry! his performance as Fei Du in 《默读》 is absolutely outstanding, and I recently binged (and I don’t. binge. shows) the microseries 《你好喵室友》 just because he was in it. I haven’t explored his oeuvre but it’s only a matter of time because as far as I’m concerned he can do whatever he wants and I’d probably go for it

金弦 Jin Xian: okay I REALLY haven’t gone into his AD’s much but I heard him as 诗人 / the Poet in the 《小蘑菇》 AD and I’ve been obsessed with his voice since. WHAT the heck

anyway, these voice actors are pretty established in the industry; if you threw a rock, you’d probably hit at least three of their roles aldkfjaldskj

lastly, some of my favorite voice actors I’ve run into just by blundering around 猫耳FM:

路扬 (路扬君) Lu Yang: so far I haven’t found any AD’s with him as the lead, but this man’s range??? you can spot him in supporting roles in both the AD’s 《师弟还不杀我灭口》 and 《督主有病》, and his 直播间 livestreams on 猫耳 are fun too

倒霉死勒 (吴韬) Dao Mei Si Le / Wu Tao: this boy can ACT, my god. I’ve listened to 《督主有病》 and 《海中爵》, and he’s phenomenal in both!

瀚墨 Han Mo: I think I’m late to Han Mo because he’s more on the film side of things, but I enjoyed his performance thoroughly in 《师弟还不杀我灭口》, and if I’m not mistaken he plays Ao Bing in 《哪吒之魔童降世》 (haven’t seen it, keep meaning to, you know how it goes)

there’s a dearth of ladies in this post, and while I could gush about 季冠霖 Ji Guanlin and 冯俊华 Feng Junhua and 龟娘 Gui Niang, I want to finish watching 《我是特优声·剧团季》 the second season of Voice Monster first, because there are a lot more voice actors there and I want to learn about more of their work!!

[gacmediadaily]

Danica McKellar and co-star David Haydn-Jones sat down to discuss the complex dances in their upcoming Great American Family movie, SWING INTO ROMANCE.

Both McKellar and Haydn-Jones were grateful they filmed the big dance scene first “to get it out of the way.”

“There’s this huge dance number at the end, like serious fast swing jive dance that is no joke,” McKellar shared, adding that her time on DANCING WITH THE STARS helped her prepare.

“DANCING WITH THE STARS prepped me for [this], and it was nine years ago. But psychologically knowing how much that takes and how much of an athlete you have to be. Ballroom dancing is a sport. It’s athletic and very demanding,” she explained.

“But I really only had three weeks to rehearse this,” Haydn-Jones added.

“…he took it upon himself to get coaching and was really proactive. He said ‘Give me tools.’ And I’m like ‘Okay, I’ll give you tools,’” McKellar continued. “So, I sent him a video of the dance but also a breakdown in an Excel document of all the moves according to the count of eight. And this guy just took it and ran with it and did a great job.”

Haydn-Jones responded, “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done as an actor. I had some dance training, but I was just basically a choral, singer, dancer and musical theater guy. I had never done partner dancing. And that energy and the lead and the touch and the signaling, it is such a specific skill set. But I think I got there.”

They shared that the filming is wrapping up and SWING INTO ROMANCE will premiere this fall.

A brief synopsis of the movie reads, “In SWING INTO ROMANCE, when former dancer Christine Sims (McKellar) temporarily returns to her hometown in time for the town’s Fall Festival, she discovers her family’s General Store is in trouble. In her efforts to save the business, Christine will need to dust off those dancing shoes one more time, face her ex-fiancé and maybe even find love.”

Movieguide® previously reported on McKellar’s involvement in the movie:

“I’ve been wanting to dance in a movie since I was on DANCING WITH THE STARS in 2014, but I’ve always loved dancing,” McKellar shared. “My mom was a professional dancer before I was born, so the love of dance is in my genes…” SWINGING INTO ROMANCE hasn’t cast McKellar’s co-star or added a choreographer yet, but the actress is already preparing for her role  “I have been training anyway,” she laughed. “Not specific dance moves, but in general, with a coach. Because, let’s face it, it’s nine years after DANCING WITH THE STARS — so I’m nine years older — and it’s not something I do every day. But I love it so much and I want to do a good job. So, like anything else, I’m doing my best to prepare.”

[froggie-recs-fics]

Fic Roundup (up to 9/26/21)

I'm gonna start collecting fics I've read recently to recommend them, because making trope lists takes too long and many fics fall by the wayside. Let me know if you like this new format!

The fandoms in this list are as follows: Marvel (SamBucky, HTP, SpideyPool, WinterHawk, WinterIron, Stony, Stucky, SpiderShield), DCU (Bane/Blake), Inception (Arthur/Eames), Teen Wolf (Sterek).

A * signifies a particular favorite (though I love all these fics)

Marvel

Sam/Bucky

double back by flowermasters (E, 12K, Post-Endgame, Time Loop, Time Travel)

Sam gets stuck in a time loop. In 1943.

Things could be worse, but they could certainly be better.

Companion piece here: quick time

I'll explain everything to the geese by napricot (Post-Endgame, E, 50K, Sam can talk to birds)

Bucky is so competent that it hurts my feelings is not a rational complaint to have about a person, and yet, after a year of being Captain America and partnering up with Bucky for the new and improved, post-Blip Avengers, that’s kinda how Sam’s feeling.

It’s not great. It maybe leads to Sam making some rash, ill-advised decisions like claiming he has a previously undisclosed superpower, and then getting caught in a web of lies when he ends up actually developing that surprisingly inconvenient superpower. Talking to birds had seemed like a harmless superpower, but it turns out that birds have a lot of opinions, and they don’t hesitate to tell Sam about them, especially when it comes to his supposedly subpar courting skills. Which is ridiculous, because Sam isn’t courting Bucky. Right?

Rumlow/Bucky

**blueprints for a better world series by itallstartedwithdefenestration @astralhux (CATWS, Post-CATWS, Noncon, E, 115K, Dark Main Character)

When Pierce discovers the asset is no longer capable of getting himself hard during recreational use, he tells Rumlow to figure out what the problem is, and to fix it. The solution turns out to be more complicated than anyone expected.

I can't recommend this series enough

Peter/Wade

*Dead Men Walking series by doctorestranged @lazystrawberrymilkshakes (E, 235K, Identity Porn, Slow Burn)

When a series of murders take place, Peter Parker goes undercover in Sister Margaret’s to get intel on Tony Stark’s prime suspect: Deadpool. Peter goes in hoping to get enough information so that Spider-Man can save the day, but like everything in Peter’s life, it becomes a bit more complicated than that and it soon becomes apparent that he might not be the best fit for the job.

All About Chemistry by TwiceBakedPotato @sedatedkoala (No Powers AU, M, CNTW, 74K, Teacher-Student Relationship, Slow Build)

After serving his 20 years in the Marine Corps, Wade Wilson is cashing in his GI Bill and going back to college. He feels like the old man on campus, but that doesn't matter. He likes his classes. He likes learning. And he especially likes his Chemistry professor with the messy brown hair.

Clint/Bucky

Making Me A Habit by Kangofu_CB @kangofu-cb (No Powers AU, T, 20K, Pet Store, Slow Burn, Pining, Misunderstandings)

Bucky is a disabled vet struggling with reintegrating into civilian life. He has a routine and a rhythm, and he doesn't like to let anything - big or small - disrupt it. That all changes the day Bucky finds himself inside CATastrophe, the local pet rescue, recovering from a panic attack in the back room of the shop.

He’s used to walking by the place, not visiting, but the next thing Bucky knows, he’s hanging signs and being used as a climbing tree for a bunch of freshly-acquired kittens. And he just...keeps going back. First for the kittens, then for the disaster shop owner who rescues actual kittens from actual trees and teaches archery as a side-gig, and eventually because he’s hopelessly in love.

(Clint was in love before Bucky ever walked in the door.)

*Nameless by AvaKelly (Post-CATWS, M, 101K, Time Travel, Time Loop, Slow Burn)

A gun is pointed at him before he can even move from his position, the Soldier's metal arm steady in its aim. Clint sighs.

"Nemo," Clint says. "It's tattooed on your wrist, right here," he lifts his right hand and taps his left index finger where his palm ends.

The Soldier's eyes widen. "How do you know this?"

"I put it there."

Glitter, G-Strings and Other Mission Hazards by flawedamythyst @flawedamythyst (T, 16K, Undercover, Stripper Clint)

“Which is why you need me to shake my booty for cash,” said Clint.

“Precisely,” said Coulson. “You’re the only agent we have who wouldn’t need additional training in the skills of an exotic dancer to take on the mission, and we want to get someone in there as soon as possible.”

Clint nodded, shutting the file. “Okay, awesome. I’ll dig out my sequined g-string.”

“You’ll have full access to requisition any costumes you might need,” said Coulson.

A mission requires Bucky to be Clint's back-up as he goes undercover as a stripper, which gets more difficult with every new costume he comes out in.

Paternal Error by EVVS @skylarkevanson (Post-CATWS, T, 33K, Kid Fic, Established Relationship)

Bucky has never once thought of being a parent. Not since the Winter Solider happened.

Until he falls in love with Clint Barton. And that idiot just keeps collecting children for his flock.

Now Bucky has to pretend like he's good at parenting.

Bucky/Tony

Forms of Love by bear_bell (Post-CACW, E, 33K, Split Personalities)

Months after the Avengers' dispute in Germany, the team returns to the US and moves back into the tower. As always, everyone pretends that nothing happened. Tony is just fine with this. He's used to pretending, and he'll be damned if he lets any of them see him flinch.

Tony's the bad guy, after all. He's used to it. He's fine with it. He's good at it.

Only now, there's something far worse loitering around the tower - The Winter Soldier. No one notices the guy at first, but when they do, Tony figures that he should have the soldier's back.

Birds of a feather should flock together, and the bad guys should start a book club.

Steve/Tony

While You Were Sleeping by betheflame @betheflame (No Powers AU, M, 65K, While You Were Sleeping AU)

It's been years since Steve Grant Rogers Drysdale has spoken to his twin, Ransom. So it was quite a shock when he was summoned to a hospital and found out that Ransom was in a coma.

Even more shocking? That Ransom is engaged. To Tony Stark.

Steve/Bucky

The Road Goes Ever On And On by PipGraham (Omegaverse AU, M, Noncon, Graphic Violence, 20K, Road Trip, Pre-Serum Steve, Past Domestic Violence)

When Brock's continued domestic abuse puts not only Steve's life in danger, but also that of his unborn pup, he flees into the night with just a small backpack of clothes and almost no money to his name.

Steve quickly runs into trouble as he tries to embark on a 3-day cross-country bus journey back home to New York City.

He meets a kind veteran when he most needs a helping hand.

Just Words by LadyRazzle (crimegimp) @ladyrazzle (Pre-CATFA, Soulmate AU, T, 2K, Fluff)

Inspired by that now legendary post: "soulmate AU where you wake up on your 18th birthday with the first words your soulmate will say to you tattooed on your body so you’ll know them when you meet them." Well what if they appear the moment you turn 18, rather than just the day? And what if by the time you turn 18, you'd already fallen in love?

Bucky wasn’t eager to discover what the words said. He already knew what he wanted them to say. He always had.

Peter/Steve

Forgetting It's There by spinstitcher (stygian) (NR, 8K, Crack, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Porn)

“You’re Captain America,” he blurts out.

“What?” says Captain America, looking a little wide-eyed. He casts a nervous glance at the girl at the counter – he has nothing to worry about there, she’s rocking out to her iPod and could care less what they’re talking about – and says, “No, uh, Steve, it’s just, I’m Steve.”

“Right,” says Peter, and then because his brain-to-mouth filter had apparently been completely destroyed in the fight on Oscorp Tower: “Hey, your butt really is as tight as it looks on TV.”

DCU

Bane/Blake

7 Deadly Ass(as)sins by teacuphuman @teacuphuman09 (AU, E, 23K, BDSM)

Bane and Barsad own a sex shop and John needs a job.

Straws by Menirva (Bane/Blake/Barsad, AU, E, 38K, BDSM)

John works in a smoothie shop.

He has a knack, a second sense if you will, for being able to look at a person and know what they're going to order. It's not the most spectacular gift in the world but he likes being able to figure people out and he's never wrong.

Except for this scruffy asshole who is clearly just ordering the wrong thing to fuck with him.

How is he even finishing an extra-large?

Inception

Aurthur/Eames

Rough Trade by Whisky (whiskyrunner) @whiskyrunner (AU, E, 23K, Internalized Homophobia)

Arthur is an investment banker. He is professional and efficient. He's a halfway decent cook. He's totally independent and has been since the age of eighteen. Maybe he's tired all the time because he works about ninety hours a week which is twice what normal people do, but he's rich and he's competent at his job. He's almost thirty, and already a success.

And there are some things Arthur is not. For instance: Arthur is not gay.

Lucky by earlgreytea68 @earlgreytea68 (M, 37K, Kid fic)

Arthur finds a baby.

Teen Wolf

Stiles/Derek

Cut to the Bone by standinginanicedress (Omegaverse AU, E, 112K, Secret Relationship, Enemies to Lovers kinda)

“Not that it’s any of your god damn business, but my name is Stiles. Do you need something?”

The alpha grins. All teeth, shiny white, straight as an arrow. He’s got this sculpted perfection to him that Stiles is sure has worked on all the omegas he’s ever encountered before, but Stiles stands his ground and narrows his eyes. “A date.”

Stiles looks him up and down, slowly, from the black shoes on his feet, to his uniform khakis and blazer littered with pins, to his face. He frowns, makes a face, and says, “pass.”

Cornerstone by Vendelin (Human AU, E, 83K, Marine Derek, Blind Stiles, Friends to Lovers)

Suffering from PTSD, ex-Marine Derek Hale moves back to Beacon Hills to open a bookshop and find a calmer life. That’s where he meets Stiles, completely by accident. Stiles is talkative, charming and curious. Somehow, despite the fact that he’s blind, he’s able to read Derek like no one else.

Stand Fast in Your Enchantments by DevilDoll, Rahciach (AU, Graphic Violence, E, 76K, Captivity, Feral Derek)

"Stiles knew damn well what a pissed-off wolf sounded like, and every hair on the back of his neck was telling him that somewhere in this room was a very pissed-off werewolf." An AU in which Derek is feral, Stiles is magical, and they eat a lot of fast food.

The Payoff Pitch by Leslie_Knope (Sports AU, E, 83K, Coming Out, Friends to Lovers)

Derek is on the cusp of his second season with the LA Dodgers, and as the reigning runner-up Rookie of the Year, the pressure’s on him to become the team’s star pitcher and lead them to the playoffs for the first time in five years. He’s trying to deal with the burden of expectations and really has zero desire to spend any extra time or energy on anything that isn’t baseball.

But then he meets Stiles.

[stephspurs]

A Family Affair | Euro 2020 Football Fanfiction

here is the second last part besties wahhh I'm so sad its coming to an end!! I'm also so sorry about this part, it'll break a few hearts :'( Love always, Steph xx

Part 11 | parte undicesima

warnings; heartbreak, swearing & angst - i'm sorry in advance. word count; 2185 writing tools; third person until dashed line, first person thereafter. final update; Wednesday 18/08 5pm AEST. tags (as requested by users); @footballffbarbiex @obsesseds-world @abysshaven link to fic masterlist here

A few days had passed since the Villa match and Amelia had heard from Jack when he returned to Birmingham. He sent her a simple text to let her know he made it home. That’s it. The two went from previously not going more than 24 hours between FaceTimes or calls or memes to a simple made it home a few hours ago, thanks for a good time x.

No “speak soon”, no promise of a FaceTime , no double kiss at the end of the text that would have typically been there otherwise. If anything, she was more mad that he made her feel like a side piece; like one of his instagram girls that she knew he entertained throughout the week. Amelia knew that she, for lack of better terms, fucked up. She fucked up their friendship, and was praying to all of the Gods that would listen to help her not fuck things up with Ben, too. However, the fact that she didn’t go to church as often as she should have is probably the reason that Ben refused to make eye contact with the girl. It was either that or…he already knew.

“Benj, hey, wait up.” She called as he walked out to his car after a particularly long day at Cobham.

“Don’t call me Benj,” he coldly stated without turning around, continuing his stride.

“Okay fine, Chilly. Wait up will you!”

“Don’t call me Chilly either, that's reserved for friends.”

“Okay, if I can’t call you Benj, or Chilly, what can I call you?”

“The best mate of the guy you fucked multiple times on Saturday night” He spat out at her, as he finally turned around, ready to see the shocked look cast over Amelia’s face as she stood a couple feet away from him. He wasn’t expecting to see Mason at his car, just across the way or Jorgi at his, a few cars down. But they were there and it didn’t matter; they were going to find out sooner or later, anyway.

“He told you.”

“He told the group chat, Amelia. The fucking group chat! How does that make you feel? He’s already bragging about it. Your bed isn't even cold yet! It probably doesn’t bother you that much though - you’re just like him.”

“He fucked you when he knew exactly how I felt about you, having gone to him for advice as to how to apologise to you. I called him on Friday after I left your house and gushed to him like a bloody little girl because I was so happy you forgave me, and that we had kissed. And then, just like that, you let him weasel his way between your legs.”

“I know I should be taking this out on him, and I will don’t worry, but you knew what you were doing also. You knew exactly how I felt about you. I was ready to commit to you that night and you said you wanted to be friends, that you needed time to heal or whatever. So I hope you’re happy and are healing, because I take it all back.” With that, Ben turned around and got in his car, driving away from the girl who felt remorse worse than she ever has in her life.

Witnessing the whole exchange, Jorgi gave Mason a nod to say “go check on Ben, I’ll look after Amelia” and walked up to the girl from behind. Without scaring her, he firmly grabbed her around the shoulders and pulled her to his chest where she let go of all of the emotions she had been keeping inside. With every stab of the knife that was Ben’s words, she felt herself becoming more vulnerable and exposed than ever before. She refused to let him see her cry. That wasn’t something she was willing to let anyone see; she didn’t realise all she had been holding together until she no longer had to, until she had the physical support of Jorgi holding her up in the middle of the training ground car park.

Ushering her to his car - she could collect her own another day - Jorgi  put her inside before any other first team members - or worse, staff members - could see the distraught girl and drove them both back to her place where he spent the rest of the evening comforting the girl and letting her know she wasn’t alone. He had even made a desperate call to Fede, asking for advice on how to cheer the girl up. Of course, her Italian ex-lover had been worried the moment his national teammate had told him that the girl was inconsolable and was just about ready to board a flight to her, but Jorgi had calmed him down too. Fede’s advice of coffee, warm pyjamas and clean sheets had done the trick of putting the girl to sleep for the night.

The next few days had come and gone, and the two heartbroken almost-lovers were back to the beginning - Ben ignoring Amelia and Amelia trying to get Ben in a room. But it wasn’t to be. Towards the end of the week, Amelia had received a phone call from Mr Mancini, formally inviting her back to the Italian National Team staff for the upcoming friendly matches and preparation for the 2022 World Cup. Without any hesitation, she accepted her role and began to prepare the necessary procedures that would need to be implemented or maintained during her time away with the Italian side.

Sharing the news with her fellow Italians, Jorgi and Emerson, she decided that she wanted to be the one to tell Ben. She wanted him to know, whether he cared or not, that she wasn’t running away from him and that she would see him soon.

“Chilwell, please stay behind after the session.” She decided it was best if she requested it in the company of the rest of the first team and also the staff members. She was being selfish but she didn’t want him to run away from her again.

He remained sat in his seat as the rest of the team and professional staff left for the evening. Arms crossed, slouched down, looking at everything else in the room but the girl who was nervously wringing her hands together.

“I’m leaving for international duties tomorrow morning.” With that sentence, he stopped tapping his left leg and looking at the cornice details. Instead, his attention was focused on her.

“But we don’t break up for internationals for another week.”

“I know, but Mancini has requested I come earlier to settle back into things over there.”

“It’s only an hour flight away, how difficult could it be?”

“I thought you’d be happy to see me go.”

Silence. Ben didn’t have an answer for her. Of course he didn’t want to see her around Cobham on the day-to-day basis they currently had to endure, but that doesn’t mean he wants her to go back to Italy. Even if it was only for a couple of weeks. Especially if it meant she was around Fede again.

“Well, much to your dismay I'll be back here in 3 weeks. And, Italy are playing England in the last friendly match of the break.”

With a slight nod of his head, Amelia presumed that their conversation was done with. She turned to gather her paperwork and heard the chairs behind her move, followed by the sound of the door opening and closing. She sighed into her hands. How did she let this happen? She preached to Ben how much she didn’t want to be selfish with his heart, and that's exactly what she did. But hey, it takes two to tango. Deciding there was no time like the present, she dialed the contact that once made her smirk but instead only made her furious to look at.

“Amelia, hey, how are you? Sorry it’s been a hectic couple of weeks.”

“Cut the crap Jack, you never intended to keep this friendship after you got what you were after.”

“Excuse me? You wanted it just as bad as I did.”

“You’re right about that, I thought I wanted it. Now, though, all I feel is regret. You know Jack, I knew from the moment we met that you were just my type, the kind that only calls me late at night. I knew a guy like you, and he treated me more or less the same. I gave myself to him, over and over for the better part of 3 years, and it was only when I left that he decided I might have been worth it... worth him.”

“But not you, you couldn’t help but run to your group chat and brag about your latest conquest, about how you made me feel wanted, only to rip it all out from under me the next morning and every day since. Honestly Jack, I think it's time you grew up a little. For Ben to confide in you how he was feeling and for you to just have blatant disregard for your so-called best mate. I can’t believe you would stoop so low. I know I'm in the wrong here too, but you are his best mate for crying out loud! How could you do this to him?”

“I don’t even want to hear what you have to say, I just needed to get that off my chest. Lose my number Jack, find some other hopeless girl that you can lure in with your foolish words and sweet nothings because I’m done. I’m done with whatever this was to you.”

______________________________________________________________

“You’re probably not going to believe me, but you have no idea how happy I am to see you here,” I heard from behind me, spinning around on my heels to see the ever-charming, boyish grin I used to love with my whole heart. This time, it's a different kind of love - it's an unconditional love shared between two people that are glad to exist together in the same crazy world.

“Federico, amore mio.” (Federico, my love) I stood up from my place on the bench at the Technical Headquarters and Training Ground of the Italian Football Federation, bringing the taller, heavily tattooed man into my arms. A gentle rock from him, side to side, to let me know that he can feel the weight of my moral compass.

“Vieni, cammina con me” (come, walk with me) He looped our arms together, and we strolled around the perimeter of the pitch that I was using to visualise my plays for the upcoming games. By the time we made it to the first set of goals, Fede had had enough of letting me mull over my own thoughts.

“Tesoro, Jorgi called one night a couple weeks ago. As smart as he is, it turns out he is hopeless at calming down an emotional female. While I'm not proud of knowing exactly how to calm you down, being that it was more often than not my fault you were inconsolable in the first place, I had to get some information out of him as to who upset my favourite girl in all of England.”

So I launched into the story, telling him everything from Mykonos to that fateful night a few weeks ago. Fede being Fede, he wanted to know everything, but I stopped just short of letting him know how many times Jack took me to paradise (much to his dismay). By the time I had wrapped up, we must have walked the pitch at least 3 times in its entirety, before retiring to the centre circle where we sat on opposite sides of the half way line staring at each other.

“I’m sorry that I ruined you for any other man,” Fede spoke solemnly.

“Fede, no - it was my stupid mistake to sleep with Jack.”

“No, let me finish amore. I’m sorry that I made you love me so deeply, and convinced you that the way I treated you was the right way, that the way I was with you was what you expect in every man to come after me. This Jack, he sounds just like me about 5 years ago - before I met you. But Ben, he sounds like the man I am trying to better myself to be, to be the man that deserves the kind of love you have to give.”

“I want you to listen to me. You need to fight for Ben. From what I have heard from both yourself and Jorgi-”

“That boy cannot keep his mouth shut to save himself,” I muttered under my breath.

“Amelia, you have a heart that deserves to be loved. Open yourself up to Ben. Tell him how you feel. From experience, you are very hard to ignore when you’re so vulnerable. Be honest with him, apologise, make him feel wanted, not like a second choice. Let him know how much you care for him, and equally how much you want him to care for you. He will see your sincerity and realise just how truly irresistible you are.”

Part 12. | la parte finale

[seb-owns-these-tatas]

7th Dimension (Chapter 7.3)

PREVIOUSLY ON CHAPTER 7.2

7TH DIMENSION MASTERLIST

7TH DIMENSION WATTPAD LINK (I’m always 1-2 chapters ahead in this site) (Head on to it and don’t be shy to introduce yourselves or leave a comment! <3 Love y'all! <3) (I'm about to post chapter 7.7 there by the way. Heehee.)

Characters: Gojo Satoru x Small!Naive!Fem!Foreign!Reader | THIS IS A MULTI-CHAPTER FIC. THIS IS AN X READER FANFIC WHO HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO THE DIMENSION OF JUJUTSU KAISEN | (Trust me, you'll live. I hope?)

Summary: (Part 4) Mind Training with Gojo Satoru had been beneficial to the both of you. You were given a mission to bake him sweets and in return of earning a 10/10 rating from the Great Teacher Gojo would result for a Shopping Spree treat from the Strongest Jujutsu Sorcerer alive.| Additional Summary for this chapter: Gojo Satoru knew himself that he was attractive. Hence, it didn't help that he had somehow caught to be in a heap of women surrounding him from the moment you've entered the store. Howbeit, this didn't stop how he'd notice that you've been casted to the side, a woman who intentionally bumped upon your shoulders. The simple stroll away from you churning an intolerable feeling inside that made him apprehensive somehow.

Warnings: The word 'fuck'. Brief mention of Geto. Women just hating your existence because 'y/n' is one lucky bish. Satoru being loud as heck. This chapter made me squeal somehow because...Satoru? (I don't wanna spoil anything. Just go read this chapter. Heehee.) FLUFFY because of certain scenes?

A/N: My back is hurting right now for writing advance chapters. Heehee. Also, THIS HAS BEEN ONE OF MY FAVORITE PARTS IN THIS LONG CHAPTER. ENJOY! (I'm wondering why I can't copy and paste words anymore from my own Tumblr posts. What is this update?)

REBLOGS AND COMMENTS ARE SUPER-DUPER HIGHLY APPRECIATED! IT GIVES ME SO MUCH MOTIVATION! SORRY IF THERE ARE LOTS OF TYPOS AND GRAMMAR ERRORS! I ain't a professional writer! I'm just a potato-hoe! LMAO. 🤣

Words: 5.4k+

Disclaimer: PNG's or pictures used in edits are not mine. I only own the plot of 7th Dimension. But, not Jujutsu Kaisen's storyline and the characters themselves. I apologize for the typos or grammatical errors by the way! English isn't my first language so I'm so sorry in advance! Character development and personalities are based from my understanding and how I want them to be.

TO SAY THAT SATORU IS ATTRACTIVE MIGHT HAVE BEEN AN UNDERSTATEMENT. Without all the exclamation point highlighting symbols that should've been included in the phrase diminished the whole notion like a homespun verdict because the amount of attention that people has been giving towards the man whom you were with apt to have the expletives that surrounded the scale of enchantment that Gojo Satoru held for his existence.

The man made it entirely obvious that he had been accustomed to the profound attention just by strolling around the mall, reveling in the recognition from the amount of people who were sustaining his deep-seated self-esteem which catered a lot of his piled up pomposity over the gospel truth with every nanosecond and every ogle.

He was damn enticing to have everyone's heed on him, it went faraway enough to have women---a herd of them suddenly girdling around to have his attention on them alone as they began to offer him their numbers straight from the shoulder as if you haven't existed to their line of sight. Perhaps, their intrusion were of the definite time to be apprised of how you were clutching onto his hand like a lassie who was bound to get lost in the mall.

It made you suddenly self-aware of how you acted upon your spontaneity. The chumminess of deed you've somehow reacted on a whim.

The realization dawned on you when you've cleverly slithered passed through the flocks of women, your existence shrinking from the beautiful dames who made it clear that they did not want you around when one had to collide upon your shoulder, casting a shadow upon being there.

Although, the antipathy of that particular woman---which ended with you, apologizing for her intentional actions instead that Gojo heard and detested for your deprecatory talk of rot. She actually had implicated a volitional act towards the idea that Satoru came in with you---her petty hostility actually hadn't been overlooked by the white-haired sorcerer because from the moment you've squirmed out of the palsy-walsy physical contact that he obviously felt; the absence of your fingers buried against his large ones---his detailed line of vision had him following; supervising on which section of the store you've sought after and chose to bask in your own solitude rather than be the murk on his reign of spotlight.

Each step you took as you strolled away to be shrouded from the crowd, he found it suddenly intolerable---repellant over the mental picture as if it had been a moment he'd already experienced before and detested his companions' turning their backs away from him.

Satoru's beam momentarily went minimal at that, thoroughly reckoning and holding his gaze for you in sight. But, he regained his composure once again when a newfangled, bonny, foxy damsel had endeavored for his attention, striving to not leave the store without slipping her details nor making an impression for Gojo that she was daring enough and desired to have him around---well, for the most part, this sultry dame wanted to have her way with him.

The woman was attractive. Single. Pretty from head to toe who seemed to be debauched for one night stands.

Gojo was a man whom had his own needs as well.

Of course, they had to exchange numbers. That was what he always does---it was what he needed to do. A chore that was expectant from the Sensei himself. The corybantic repetitive routines that he gladly associates and delights himself whenever he had the time and whenever he wanted.

Back on the days, he would. Those juvenile times, the prurient curiosities that he had most during his heydays or the days that could be considered as the best years of his life with Suguru Geto on his side.

Yet, this present time; the one considered to be his on top of his prime. Those dalliances he had and have been having gradually decreased. Though, in all aspects does he not revel in every once in a while.

You knew he'd entertained each and every one of them. Much as you've assessed, critically judged and interpreted his character in a much more on the unfettered side because of the perception of personality and sense of aggression and virility he rejoices in.

Albeit, despite accepting the reality that Satoru would and eventually give heed to them. Your mind was celebrating for finally being away from the man himself even if it would've been painstakingly just a minute or so. This subconsciousness you had---that inner voices were telling you how horrid and disrespectful these women were for shunning you away like trash when you were the one whom Satoru had obviously came in with.

The audacity they had.

Unbeknownst to you, the scowl etched to your face says how your mind and subconsciousness had an exchange of views when you started searching for what you wanted until Gojo finally realizes it was time to make your hackle's rise once again.

"Tiny-Chan," Gojo stated flatly, sounding downright bored to heck when he instantly knew where you were hiding like a dum-dum, just behind a rack filled of multi-colored checkered long sleeved polo shirts. He concealed his amusement through a feigned undertone of his voice. Even without opening an eye, Satoru could sense where you were hiding and he had surprisingly yanked the clothing away from your face, igniting a high-pitch squeak from the moment you were welcomed by those special Stygian sunglasses he wore.

"Is this how you really pick your clothing? You hide behind them? Is this the new trend?"

Your mouth twitched in displeasure when you've noticed a pair of high-school students intentionally pass by Satoru behind him. They were thinking that you were trying to act adorable for the Jujutsu Sorcerer which is why you've gained a stink-eye.

Oh, they were really annoying.

This has been the most memorable---dreadful day where people had given you a thoroughgoing recognition over your own existence. Back in your dimension, it wasn't entirely exaggerated to the point that it felt too unrealistic to gain their vituperations just by being accompanied by a guy---a male who was as pretty as a picture. It was scathing to a degree that you would technically know that their opinions they held for you were either critical over your physical aspects or adjudicating who you actually were for the Jujutsu Sorcerer.

One could conclude that some of their prudence had the notion that you were his step-child, considering the sweeping height-differences and Satoru's evident scale of charm that filled the bucket beyond normal, filling it over through one's highest scale of marketability.

It also didn't help that he was salient and garish over acting as a financer, haphazardly throwing sets of clothes towards you, downright disinterested if it could consist an arm or a leg. It didn't go unnoticed by Gojo but he'd seen you be on the sly for hanging the clothing back---the ones you obviously would like but chewed over the price tag because it was an overpriced one.

People made it obvious that they weren't hypercritical enough to presume that you were his sugar-baby, making it clear that the kind of amorous entanglement didn't seem to fit for you. Hence, which is why they've settled into thinking that you were a stepdaughter or his stepsister.

"Whenever you're near me. They're also around." you huffed, tugging the clothing back from Satoru and encircling them around your body to melt from the softness of it. Maybe, you would want a piece because of the soft fabric that it actually gives.

You pulled a face before stepping out under the racks, checking the price tag and smiling one you've estimated the digits inside your head as the pricing where in the amount of Japanese Yen. "---Can't you make them stop?"

Satoru stood alongside, his phone on his other hand as he twirled it around his fingers, aimlessly spinning it out of ennui, "Thought you wanted me around?" his reply was curt, eyeing you pick what color you were of penchant of. He'd glossed over his gauges to his own head, guessing you would choose the black and white one and the latter had been on the right track for that. You were solely heedless that he was mindlessly doing it because of how his mouth constantly blathered what he wanted to say, no matter how churlish or unambiguous it was.

"---I wasn't the one pulling my own hand from the moment we got here, so you might as well deal with it."

You've wandered through an aisle, momentarily drifting your gaze from the hanging pile of clothing and peering up towards Gojo from time to time. Those blest beauty of orbs already on you as if he was intent onto giving all his ears for you after being neglected a while ago due to the hamper of women that practically threw themselves on his feet from the moment they'd seen him. You've swallowed the ball of self-consciousness that started picking up once again when he made it seem like you were apprising him a story that he was dead interested for. Or it was because you were giving him the perception of mindlessly nourishing his self-image without even being aware of it.

"Well, you're attracting a lot of customers. Herds of them. I can't actually pick what I want when I could get a hold of their explicative buzzes of unintelligible language and non-verbal death stares. "

Your neck strained to actually give him your attention, his entirety; his lanky, gargantuan height actually stressing you down. Your subconsciousness wanting to ask him how the weather was up there, yet you've resisted the urge to speak it out because you knew he would rise to the bait upon giving you a 'how's the weather down there, Tiny-Chan? You havin' fun down in hell?' in hopes of kindling a scowl off your face that he would surely take a rowdy laugh through it all.

Satoru's tone was idly quelled for the first time, modulated to the point that it sounded pleasant and that it felt like he was at one's ease with the time he was spending with you, "Which is why I've told you to choose the expensive shops then. It has lesser people there. You would've strolled freely then," he genially admonished, an irregular timbre that held a tinge of softness that made you blink twice because of how random he suddenly seemed.

The way he softly scolded through your dogged determination of choosing a reasonable mid-range store got the best of you that it had your mind skipping through a trap that made you go absentminded. It sounded pleasant---utterly as nice as pie. You knew it was probably just a delusion of his physical existence because Gojo started to blow his own trumpet for the next words that slipped out of his mouth, "Also, It can't be helped when you're with a very attractive man---," he smugly grinned before he continued, snapping a finger over your face which has gotten you to cease from your aimless wandering in the middle of the aisle, "---You had the privilege to choose anything you wanted. You're wasting the opportunity, I say."

You've shook your head, declining the persuasion and not wanting to indulge yourself from the immoderate chain stores that Gojo has been enticing you in. Being entirely sheepish of the prices it offered. "It's making me uncomfortable. Go entertain them again or something."

Much to your dismay, Satoru was already hell-bent on keeping you company and decided that this time was intended for you instead. He gave a resolute purse of his lips, pretending to think about it before a cordial smile lifted his face in which you haven't seen because of how concentrated you were upon what catches your eye.

"Eh. You might as well ignore them."

"Satoru~?" In the midst upon searching through hangered racks of clothes, you've halted betwixt your torpid rummages. Somehow, the greeting seemed to be of a coltish drawl from you. Yet, this reached his ears in a treacly cadence which had been highly perceptible to his hearing. You were caught uttering it surprisingly soft-spoken enough for him to see this through an unusual finding that stirred a zany response of a hum that vibrated through his chest---it sounded cloying which was difficult to bear especially when he'd surprised you by bending over to your side and acted upon the caprices of his comprehension, leaning down closer to you and literally lending his ear to hear you better.

"Hm?~ What is it?"

A clandestine instance that got the Strongest Jujutsu Sorcerer over his mindless reasoning that had been unforthcoming. Satoru wanted to hear it again from you, secretively eager as he was thoughtless for this odd discovery that he never realized that his responses had been---affectionate.

Howbeit, the abrupt amicable rapport had been ruined from the moment he'd felt you gesturing to wear his blindfolds. Satoru didn't even need to look at you just for him to know that you were hopeful he would wear his blindfolds again. Was it the fact that you hated how everyone seemed to grant their heed to the both of you or was it simply because of how your knees felt like jelly whenever he provides you the attention that everybody desperately desired from him?

Gojo quickly straightened his back like he'd been cauterized. His face expressive as he pulled a face, taking a dim view of the idea you wanted. This was a turn up for the books because you had never seen him entirely scowl until this time of the day, openly stating as clear as day that your pigheaded demands actually displeased him. He hadn't came into his senses that he brought his fingers through his hair in an attempt to brush them off away from his face as he responded thickly, "No, no and no. How many times should I say no?" the latter pressed on, spinning on his heels to at least purposelessly provide you a definite amount of space that he has been consuming from you.

"---You hated how I was blindfolded all the time. I figured you would want me using my sunglasses while I guide you around Tokyo,"

"Well, that was before I never believed you with the...sketches you were telling me," The ends of your words were trailed off, skeptical that you wanted to admit it to the man. With each word that passed by sounded distant as you took this as an opportunity to walk through the other section of the aisle, briskly wandering with the random clothes that hung over your arms.

You actually believed him now then?

Satoru heard it loud and clear, crystal. He had to turn around to see that you weren't there anymore. As luck would have it, his height made it easier to find you through the heaps of customers that began to abundantly grow since the moment you've both entered the establishment. "Wait, wait. You actually believe me now?"

"---OI! TINY-CHAN!~" Gojo shamelessly hollered, grinning like a maniac as he was enthusiastically snapping his head from left to right. The latter was cock-a-hoop over your immediate admission. This was the initial sign of defeat. A big K.O. This sudden admittance from the attempts of refusing to be bested by Satoru's smooth talking and impractical ways of showing you evidences that he was exactly the person drawn on those papers you had.

He was quick to find you on the other aisle and actually took a run for it like a bonehead. His smile consisting of his pearly whites that shone through the store's light, reflecting in a way that brightened up his face as he resoundingly chanted his nickname for you out loud. Satoru's mirthful calling that resonated all around the store that people obviously heard made you awkwardly scratch your temple in an attempt to cover yourself from his own garishness.

A woman began eyeing you from the side, perceiving that she knew you were the person whom Gojo was trying to having your attention on. This member of the fair sex who was also fetching enough for any man but had her personality crafted from hell---the woman who had been stalking around for some time now in which you were oblivious from her surreptitious tailings by dint of Satoru's talks of draw aways.

You were entirely ignorant that this was the woman who'd intentionally bumped you hard enough when you've slithered out of Satoru's hold. Albeit, this resulted with Satoru who'd completely intendedly ignored her futile attempts of gaining his attention.

Which is why she was giving you the mental eye rolls right now, glaring at you from the sides as she was arm-to-arm away, grabbing this opportunity to be a chatter through you as she plastered a phony smile in attempts to probably be the bridge to acquire what she wanted from the white-haired sorcerer.

Women. Satoru silently thought to himself, his posture poised and firm, leaning his weight on both of his feet with his hands inside his pockets. Observing the scene from the other end of the aisle with a smirk on his face and over his deep Stygian sunglasses, absolutely finding this as an opportunity for levity.

He'd taken another run for it; another run for you as he called for your sobriquet at the top of his voice, his tee-hees escaping here and there, "Hi, Tiny-Chaaaaan! You know you're never getting rid of me after what I just heard from you! Hehehe!"

Satoru's overdramatic venture and war cries churned a more thorough veiling of your palms enclosed around your face as if you weren't accompanied by the guy. He made it obvious. The raucous attitude that he also has was already written inside that invisible note inside your mind, ticking the imaginary box that Satoru was indeed a loud guy that even his actions were thespian---dramatic to the point that if he wanted to act this certain way, he will and he would. Wordlessly, Satoru made it limpid that there was no stopping him no matter what happens even in times like this.

His muscled, compact weight and height took a dramatic slide, his priceless Adidas squeaking along the waxed, shiny floors of the store as if he skated on ice. Gojo's sudden next move making your heart freeze; your lungs opted to make you breathless from the bolt of surprise. An acute eye-opener that has gotten your palms sweaty and those strident drum beats crawling out of your chest from such an intimate gesture that you did not anticipate of.

Satoru sprinted from the side and halted once he could glide along. His lanky limbs threaded across your hips with all possible haste before you could even say knife. He'd acted like a bat out of hell as he had surrounded and occupied all possible personal space that you considered to be unbearable.

Gojo-feckin'-Satoru did that. He really did.

The Strongest Jujutsu Sorcerer acted upon his frolic impulse to get that bitch away from you without even thinking the position that he brought you both in.

He went on clutching onto you as if you were a piece of confectionery that he ought not to share merely because of the inane triumph that signaled and fed onto his mirth.

This has been like the moment that Itadori had told them that Megumi was being hit on by a woman that they've acted upon their foolish reflexes without even thinking of the consequences.

Gojo's arms engulfed you from the side. It was evident that he was a tall, vigorous man as lanky as he may seem through the clothing he wore. There was definite robust muscles that were veiled beneath his smothered uniform that he always have been garbed in. His arms were firm like adamantine chains, shocking you to say the least when your reflexes reached for what enveloped around you---for who was wrapping you up in a jolting embrace.

"Oof! Fuck!" The only time---this was the only damned time that you had cursed out loud while using your native language and it was because of Gojo Satoru.

You were beyond knocked for six because of the deed. Thus, the senses you've felt that were heightened since the time he'd tightly grasped onto that forbidden personal proximity that he seemed to not restrict himself in was not helping either because your mind was caught in a haywire of bliss and daze, feeling him even get to point that Satoru had wholly bent his height to recite your nickname like a chirpy prayer over your ear, his warm breath skimming pass your skin like a leaf swaying in the balmy days of late summer. The all-familiar fragrance that drafted through your nose, established upon your intuits by now because of the faint traces it left around Satoru's dormitory room which haunts you in a daydream each night.

What came with those intangible sensory of realization was also a considerable amount of shame because of how you were caught with his weight when he managed to slide to catch you in his arms. Unbeknownst to you, Gojo was intent upon it---bumping unto the bitch using his infinity so the collision was more compressed and solidified. A petty thought of disrelishing the fact that his body would touch hers as if she was a microbe to him gave Satoru the grimace.

This experience for her was rather much of a stone being thrown to a brick wall.

"S-Satoru! What the heck is wrong with you!" you whisper-shouted, utterly startled by his rash behavior as you tried to stare at the racks of clothing that hung before you. Choosing the front line of your vision because if you looked anywhere, it was either you're choosing to face the woman from hell who stumbled as far as to falling her ass to the ground due to Gojo's heavy weight that collided with hers or his face that was in a dangerous proximity which would surely keep you awake at night.

"---Y-You've made me bump into her!"

Gojo mouth has been a thumb away from your ear. His tone of reassurance downright mischievous and sham like he had been aware of it. Thus, his silvery Japanese lilt danced along his intentional ignorance as he spoke along your ear, breath fanning against your skin which has thrown you more off- balance.

"Ah. Hold on. Did we really?" He gave a low-chuckle, the vibrations of his sonorous titters hurtled straight to your ears, passing straight to your wake and heedless reverie, prior as he went on with his act, "---Where is she? I didn't see her, though."

Satoru pretended to be oblivious and went all the way into standing tall again, unbending his height to a degree that made him look out in the line of aisles as if he couldn't find the hell-cat who was scrambling onto her feet, utmost mortified for the disgrace brought to her. She'd only plummeted right in front of you both and Gojo behaved as if she wasn't there at all. His lanky arms were still persistent from wounding it around you but loosening in the slightest. Yet, still keeping you close and in his arms. All the blood rushing from your fidgeting toes till the affixed staggered expression on your face; eyes unblinking with a mind that went straight to Disneyland at once.

You were entirely avoiding all eye-contact.

His heavenly eyes apathetically landed on her, the intensity of his gaze turned intimidating for a normal person to handle especially that she had been in the middle of being browbeaten by the Jujutsu Sorcerer's unequivocal, curt responses that went along his prearranged dramaturgy. Eventually, Satoru brought your rigid body and dumbfounded state to his side, snaking an audacious arm around your shoulders that felt leaden from the amount of weight he had.

Gojo yanked you closer, being the shepherd along his playacts as he wanted you to be the sheep. He'd sluggishly given her his gaze, giving her the attention that she desired from him but has obviously been the opposite of what she yearned for. She was a lot taller than you. Hence, Satoru only had to cock his head, channeling a lot more of his hubristic side to this woman as he reckoned her appearance by lowering his Stygian Sunglasses to reveal the acuity he was giving for her pompous acts.

"Get lost then?" the latter spoke nonchalantly, a cheeky grin from ear to ear as he added with a wink, "---you're standing way too close anyway."

She wasn't needed to be told twice after undergoing the intensity of his hectors. The hasty switch that women hardly ever encounter as they were blinded by his outstanding magnetism. Those terse, derogatory statements that were exclusively for the elders that stresses the fuck out of him all the time.

The woman was not needed to be told twice like an idiot. She heard him loud and clear. He even had to made it apparent to the people who passed by that he was as flagrant as he always was.

"T-That was rude. Did you really have to say that to her?" you've stammered and finally stumbled out of your own trance, still highly sensible of Satoru's arm that hung loosely around your shoulder like a bag of rice. The woman's words perceptible enough to tell that she probably called him an 'asshole' underneath her breath as she shunned away with shame that will haunt her forever like a cursed-spirit lulling her to sleep for tonight. Gojo was bold enough to bid her a mirthful sayonara, waving his large palms at her while he watched her go, giggling to himself.

He'd heard you grouse for treading the boards of her perpetual maneuverings to get him.

Satoru blew a raspberry like a child as he was beginning to grow weary over taking a lot of time through your garment reconsiderations, "What. I have a lousy personality---," he started to stroll, taking you with him as his arm was still stuck to your side. You were contemplating if he planned to even wretch them away already since the whole playing pretend had been already done for. Yet, Gojo was disregardful of your mindless fidgets here and there. He seemed to be restful enough to flout the new position he hurdled you in, "---She couldn't get the hint. You also told me to make them stop so you could choose whatever you want and we could get the hell outta' here."

Passing along an aisle he noticed that you had already wandered through, Satoru surveyed the racks of clothing till he halted before an apparel that you've taken a second look at---probably the fourth already for some time now. It was prior to this certain moment that he'd caught you mentally calculating how much it was worth, the attire being put back along the racks because of your diffidence towards the extravagant pricing. You pondered why he half way took a pause upon his ambles and realized you've stopped before the garment you have been eyeing for a while now.

Straightaway, he'd chosen the color that you've wanted andhad a fancy for. His odd attentiveness leaving you speechless because he was already well-informed to the tones that you were penchant of. Satoru did not seem to be like a man who was conscious and thoughtful of the smallest details, he conveyed that he did not seem to care a lot for anything. In fact, he seemed to put an appearance of a guy that was a walking redflag because of his hostility on the subject of commitments.

"After this, we're choosing the higher ends." the white-haired sorcerer casually stated out in the open, sounding like it was of ordinance. He threw the clothing over your head, covering your sole vision and having the perspective of darkness from his haphazard toss, "---I'm putting you on blindfolds. You've been taking a whole lotta' time upon choosing which is which when I don't care about the price anyway."

"N-No! I'm still choosing the cheap ones and I'm not using your blindfolds!" you've declared and complained under the clothing, shaking your head and shrinking at the thought that you'll actually be strolling along luxury retail stores that probably costed the earth. There was no visual of Satoru who was mischievously grinning to himself. However, you knew he was through the taunting pitch of his voice that laced along the words, "Oh, the irony. Don't you think? You want me blindfolded while you, Tiny-Chan---" he took a breather, sniggering at the sides. "---Don't want to be blindfolded. How unfair of you."

Satoru was a damned mystery in your life. The rarity of the condition where his physical, newfangled advances that leaves your skin tingling in hanker for more or anxious for such an unfamiliar warmth that was bothersome to your whole being. Throughout such a short time, he could turn it amicable if he wanted to like a port in a storm of raging, disparate desires that you never knew could be experienced nor felt.

You must have been color-blinded then for stepping over the red tiles.

"IT'S BECAUSE I'LL LITERALLY BE BLIND IF I DO, UNLIKE YOU!"

You loudly scoffed to his impractical suggestion, tugging off the garment that covered your line of sight with a glower. You've tried your hardest to free yourself from the heavy arm that hung around your shoulder. Thus far, he never allowed you to and wanted to cross the other end of the rainbow, provoking you further and further till he could see the peeved leprechauns that would've been galled of the naked truth that he had probably stole the gold.

Satoru had a puckish toothy grin, chuckling here and there when he'd felt you whirl over his loosening hold, a brow raised to his utter glee from how rankled you've guised to be. He knew he was deriving satisfaction from the exasperation running through your veins, those once stiff muscles modified into the fellow feeling that he opted for you to have for him.

Notwithstanding that you had to open your precious, refractory, little mouth in spitting down another set of bundled native comments that pulled a gurn off his grin, sounding absolutely like a flippant remark without even getting to understand everything. You were striving to be of valiant. Downright bold to lift a reprimanding finger right on his clothed chest as you murmured in a whispering spat.

"Tch. You're a walking red flag who's been playing with my head and heart. How dare you."

Did he read the tone right?

Satoru had to raise a questioning brow. He was utmost wary that he wanted you to repeat what you just said to him and he was hating over how this was making him look like a fool and also building the urge---a vehement urge some type of way that made him grumble beneath his chest.

He swiftly held onto your reprimanding finger that he obviously permitted for you to touch, his hand thoroughly engulfing yours as he gently swatted them away with a raised brow, "Aren't you just so stubborn?" he lowly quipped, skeptical that you would use it for the fourth time today before he went on with his playful chides, "---I told you not to speak your native language while I'm around! What did you just say now? Tell me---!" Satoru reached down to pinch your cheeks with his thumb and forefinger, the constant usage of your native language driving him to distraction as he added more vigor to the gesture. He even added a little pull of your skin which has gotten you kicking up a fuss because it actually hurts.

"---Tell me, Tiny-Chan! I'm not going to shut up until you do!"

You were loudly whining in pain, pushing his hands away but never finding the definite amount of strength to as Satoru has given you the verdict that your intentional, balky chaffs were in actuality, bothering the strongest. The Gojo Satoru. "You never shut up anyway!" you've exclaimed with a sally, feeling his fingers tighten on your cheek a lot more than he could ever, making you wince because you knew it was bound to be swollen anytime now.

"S-Satoru! It's Nothing! Seriously! Ah--! Stop it! It hurts!"

He'd pulled the skin further, his eyes lighting up as it crinkled along the edges. A warmhearted laugh escaping his chest as he was unaware of how hearty it sounded to be. His gaze glinted in fascination as he feasted one's eye upon your beseeching squirms through his touch.

"You just look exactly like those Mochi Ice cream you've made for me. So cute!"

I'm not used to the new update that Tumblr has given us via desktop version. AAAAAAAAAAAAAH. Anyway, hope anyone's enjoying this! FEEDBACKS ARE SO SO MUCH APPRECIATED!

[bloghcom305]

Boku no Hero Should Just Use Guns

Seriously, logically it makes sense to use guns, while not all characters are susceptible to them, a large part of the cast are.

Many of the most deadly villains wouldn’t stand a change against a wave of bullets or a long range snipe out of sight. And if the villains had them too, then a large part of the main cast shouldn’t even be heroes. And yes, I am aware of Japan’s gun laws, which I will go over later in the blog. However, guns are still seen in the show, so why don’t they use them more. 

And to put it simply, it makes the show boring. If guns were accessible and acted as effectively as they did the real world, there wouldn’t be a show. The concept of heroes and villains wouldn’t really exist. Its why in military movies, the military are presented as being extremely powerful, while in super hero movies, the military is weak in comparison, as to shine more light onto the main focus, the heroes. Same thing applies to Boku no Hero. If the heroes had them, then like I said, most of the main threats of the show could be taken out by guns. Stain wouldn’t have a chance against a swarm of heavily armed police, let alone heroes with guns, Shigaraki and his goons would lose to a similar swarm, and while Overhauls group might bring more trouble. A large swarm with a trained professionals, armed with military-type weapons, would easily take them out especially if maybe few of the strongest heroes tagged along. Especially if the heroes that accompanied them in the raid, were also armed. Imagine instead of sending a bunch of heroes, a navy seal like team just pulls up, its literally over. 

Not to mention snipers as well. Seriously, what are any of the character gonna do against a snipe from out of sight, they can’t, its literally just gg. There’s a reason Deadshot was mentioned by Talia al Ghul to be someone that scared the Injustice League even if he's technically cannon fodder because even in DC one good sniper shot can take out 60% of the cast. 95% of these characters aren’t fast enough or are durable enough to live waves of bullets or a snipe to the head. If the villains were to attack UA, like they did multiple times with guns, especially assault rifles, the villains would be done for. 

Most of these characters are honestly kind of weak, they can only be considered decently strong when you compare them to other people fighting with only their quirks. There would be no 1 million percent Deku if roid rage over had a Glock, it’d be just dead Deku. 

And no, this doesn’t make the show bad, I’m just pointing out something I think might have crossed people’s minds. I can feel your salt from here, so dw, I’m going to be addressing some of the main counter arguments towards the end of the blog.

However, I want to at least address the most common counter argument here, being Japan’s gun laws being too strict to even acquire guns. And if you live in America like me, you may or may not be aware that other countries have very strict gun laws in comparison. Attempting to acquire a gun in Japan is significantly more difficult when compared to the US. In 2017 the estimate of civilian firearms was .3 for every 100 people in Japan, while in the US it was 120.5 for every 100 people. So it’s unrealistic that every hero and villain will own a gun. However, it isn’t unrealistic that many of the villains would have these guns

Having these weapons, as I mentioned previously, makes many of the heroes obsolete. I see no reason for why these murderous villains would shy away from illegally owning guns to use to commit crimes. Overhaul and his men can be considered the anime equivalent to the real life Yakuza... who use guns. Anything from hand guns to full automatic weapons, have been used as seen in relatively recent Japanese news reports surrounding gang violence.

Now in terms of the good guys having them, the police are equipped with hand guns, as seen in the show. However, knowing the threats that Japan deals with because of these villains, it isn’t out of the question to equip the police with more powerful weapons. I understand that Japan in the real world doesn’t have a need for such fire power, but in a world like Boku no Hero's, I think that's reasonable. *interview*. Which is why I think I have a solution to adding guns in their world. And surprisingly enough, I agree with stain. 

Let me explain, there are too many fodder heroes who can call themselves heroes, there's a huge power gap from I can make rock float in air to I can punch down a building. So knowing which heroes are qualified to give guns out to would be a real mess. The concept of heroes, should no longer exist. Instead, I think that the more reasonable option is to bulk up the Japanese military and police force. Arm the local police better so that they can deal with threats without the need of heroes. And for more serious threats send a SWAT or even Navy Seal like specialist team of well trained and efficient soldiers armed all the needed weaponry to take down the enemy.

Now, this is where “heroes” can come it. Those with quirks that can support and are just as useful as powerful weaponry can be part of a squad as well. Imagine Aizawa with a gun against someone who relies on their quirk, basically bringing fists to a gun fight. There won’t be any big fun battle, its in, and out, get the job done. And its mainly for that reason why guns aren’t as prevalent, cuz that's boring

Now, for the counter arguments, I’m not gonna spend too much time on each one because there’s a lot.

Lets start

Characters can out speed or are too durable to be hurt by bullets.

No, that isn’t true, I don’t think the majority of you have seen a live bullet fire, they are faster than sound and do crazy damage, especially if we’re talking about fully or semi automatic rifles.

People brought up power feats by some of the heroes and villains, however, 95% of the villains would go down to our previously mentioned specialist teams by a snipe to the head or rounds of bullets.

There’s armor that can block bullets and Momo can make them.

Unless your Tony Stark, I don’t know what type of armor is going to survive a wave of bullets that is also able to move swiftly in and you can use your quirk with.

What about Nomu?

I’m certain if Japan equipped its special forces as strong as the US, like they should if they live in a world like this, Nomu would struggle. And even if he did beat them, the special forces I mentioned earlier still include heroes, just the strongest ones like all might and endeavor, and its shown that they can solo Nomus.

Toya has the ability to take any equipment the enemy has so guns could be used against them.

When raiding overhaul, police switched to shields and batons instead of guns because of Toya,  but against a large amount of people with assault rifles, they don’t have much chance. Also it was shown that other members had guns.

Mustard used a gun, and he still lost. 

He used a revolver in combination with his quirk, which can be effective, but if he was just carrying around an smg type gun, then he would have for sure won

How come pro hero snipe isn’t just destroying everyone?

I don’t know, if I'm going to be honest, that just feels like an oversight by the writer

And that’s about it. I’m not saying that guns are the key to everything, since a solid amounts of characters will be able to counter the usage of guns

However, I still feel like the points I made stand. The police and certain villains should realistically have guns, guns of varying levels can eliminate most of the cast, the Japanese police force and military should be reworked, and if they did this it would be more effective, but definitely significantly less interesting to watch

And also no, not having guns does not lower the quality of the show

Hope you enjoyed.

[chalkrevelations]

Leading actresses Zhao Wei and Zheng Shuang are the latest victims of the Chinese government’s ongoing crackdown on the entertainment industry and the excesses of celebrity fan culture.

On Thursday, all entries related to Zhao on Chinese social media platforms such as Weibo were removed, her name was scrubbed from the credits of films and TV shows, and all content featuring her — including film, TV, chat show appearances and more — was removed from major streaming sites like Tencent Video and iQiyi.

All discussion of Zhao on social media was also censored.

Zhao, who is also known as Vicky or Vicki Zhao and notably starred in My Fair Princess, Shaolin Soccer and Lost in Hong Kong, is a popular star turned billionaire investor and is the face of Italian fashion house Fendi in China.

Chinese state newspaper The Global Times reported that no official reason had been given for the moves to erase Zhao’s presence and work from the Internet, but it did resurface historical allegations of financial impropriety and a number of other scandals*. Most notably, in 2018, the Shanghai Stock Exchange banned Zhao and her husband Huang Youlong from acting as listed company executives for five years due to issues and irregularities related to a failed takeover bid in 2016.

A close friend of Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Zhao and her husband were early investors in Alibaba Pictures Group, buying a $400 million stake in 2015. Once China’s highest-profile billionaire, Ma’s star has dimmed after spectacularly falling out of favor with Beijing**.

The downfall of Zhao comes a few weeks after a professional and business acquaintance of hers, the actor Zhang Zhehan was similarly banned and scrubbed from the Internet after pictures surfaced of him at Japan’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine to war dead.

On Friday, tax authorities in Shanghai fined actress Zheng Shuang $46.1 million for tax evasion.

Zheng, the star of the hit series Meteor Shower and a popular celebrity, was fined for failing to report income between 2019 and 2020 while filming a TV series.

The AFP reported that China’s state broadcasting regulator, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, reiterated it had a “zero tolerance” policy on tax evasion. The regulator pulled the show in question from streaming sites and asked production companies to not work with Zheng in the future.

* “Chinese Nationalists Blast Director Vicki Zhao for Casting Taiwanese Actor“ (July 2016)

Nationalists on Chinese social media have set their sights on actress-turned-director Vicki Zhao after she cast a well-known Taiwanese actor in the lead role of her next film.

The Communist Youth League, long a training ground for elite positions within the Chinese Communist Party, has waged a coordinated social media campaign over the past week criticizing Zhao (also known as Zhao Wei) for casting Leon Dai (Assassin, Double Vision) in the lead of her upcoming romance No Other Love.

In an article entitled “Zhao Wei’s New Film Met with Universal Boycott by Internet Users,” the nationalist organization has alleged that Dai is a supporter of Taiwanese independence and Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Umbrella Movement — political issues of particular consternation among the Chinese Communist Party.

“The state interests come before idol worship. I have liked you for many years, but you should have known better,” wrote one Weibo user, according to the South China Morning Post.

** “Billionaire Jack Ma Disappears From Public View After China’s Crackdown on Alibaba” (January 2021)

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, famous for his love of the spotlight, hasn’t been seen in public in over two months following Beijing’s aggressive crackdown on his Alibaba business empire.

The celebrated entrepreneur was slated to appear as a star judge on the season finale of Africa’s Business Heroes, a reality TV show created by his own philanthropic organization. But Ma dropped out of the appearance and the show’s broadcast was postponed, the Financial Times was the first to report. Ma’s image and name, previously the program’s biggest selling point, have since been removed from promotional materials related to the finale.

... The celebrated entrepreneur’s retreat from the public eye in China follows an official fall from grace that has been swift and stunning. Formerly known for his cozy government connections and rare outspokenness, Ma has found himself on the receiving end of a sudden reassessment of his celebrated tech conglomerate’s reach and power.The trouble began in early November when Beijing canceled the IPO of Alibaba’s fintech behemoth Ant Financial, which was set to raise $34 billion in the biggest stock-market debut in history. The sudden regulatory halt came after Ma gave a speech criticizing China’s regulators and state-owned banks for their backwardness. His remarks are said to have infuriated Beijing’s party brass, leading Chinese president Xi Jinping to personally order an end to Ant’s offering.

The clouds darkened further for Ma and Alibaba in late December when Chinese regulators issued a bluntly worded set of statements indicating they would be launching an antitrust investigation into Alibaba’s flagship e-commerce business, as well as enforcing new rules constraining Ant’s business activities. Government investigators were reported to have entered Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou shortly after.

Just FYI, Alibaba owns Youku, which is the platform that produced WoH.

Stuff is just starting to trickle out, but it sounds like there’s also a big anti-LGBTQ crackdown coming down the pike as part of government efforts to “clean up” C-ent and its effects on The Youth.

Competitors might have taken advantage of a perfect storm of events to push our guy in front of an oncoming train, but what happened to him was just the shot across the bow, and the butcher’s bill is going to be coming due. It was never really about the shrine. It was a convenient excuse to start a purge.

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/12/2021: BOARDINGHOUSE (1982)

Yesterday was a day of trying to confront certain trending topics in horror discourse that I find continuously challenging, to see what I could find to say about them. I'm not sure if I've come up with anything of value to contribute, but at least no one can say I didn't try!

When the Nightstream festival came around this year, the AGFA logo hypnotized me into grabbing a virtual seat at a rep screening of BOARDINGHOUSE, soon to be honored with a two-disc blu-ray release. I've seen this 1982 LA production referred to as the first shot-on-video horror feature, and also more specifically as the first shot-on-video horror film to be blown up to 35mm and released theatrically; I can't tell if these two claims are equally true, or if the latter amends the former, but the point seems to be that it is historically important. Whether it is also artistically important is a highly subjective matter. Writer-director-makeup artist John Wintergate (who looks alarmingly like Malcolm McDowell to me) stars as a telekinetic gigolo who converts the site of a mysterious tragedy into "a bachelor's paradise" where he rents rooms exclusively to "beautiful women with no ties". Their never-ending pool party activates the entity that previously drenched the boarding house in blood, and then everybody's in trouble. And not just because of the cheapo party magician who appears at the end, though if HACKOLANTERN and TERROR TRAIN have taught me anything, it's that variety performers can be a huge red flag for a movie.

In many ways, BOARDINGHOUSE typifies how I think of SOV horror. Its visual language is unpredictable and at times incomprehensible, with ill-framed inserts of random images and unsteady zooming in and out on mundane details. The effects are a mix of the surprisingly ambitious and the insultingly lazy. The cast is mostly made up of women who appear to be professional hot chicks of one stripe or another, and men with a cartoonishly sleazy or "hardboiled" disposition; some people have awful made-up accents, for some reason, clashing with the completely flat affect of others. The movie feels less like a story with a beginning middle and end, than like collection of random scenes and genre elements; strands of science fiction mix with gory slasher gestures in what is ultimately a supernatural situation with incestuous underpinnings. Or something.

Re: my intro, I don't meant to call this 40 year old form of production a "trend". But, I think it's fair to call it a trending topic, with serious analysis of shot-on-video genre movies being a recent development, relative to how long they've been around. The SOV-focused journal Bleeding Skull has been gaining volume and visibility since 2004, with further validation coming from their participation in the Alamo Drafthouse's Video Vortex programming series, and their collaboration with the American Genre Film Archive on meticulous restorations and deluxe disc releases of select SOV titles. For their 2018 relaunch, Fangoria gave bad boy S. Craig Zahler an all-SOV review column called "Malignant Growths"; it was big of them to do so, as in the first half of the first page, Zahler decries Fango as a slight, shallow rag he stopped reading when it had nothing left to teach him. In the same long blowhard breath, he also equates viewers who don't enjoy SOV production with philistines too stupid to understand modern art, and takes down Bleeding Skull for being too glib and ironic to really give these movies their due. Essentially, he positions himself as being exactly what genre journalism has been missing, and perhaps the only person qualified to speak about SOV fare appropriately...and if that's true, maybe I'd just rather not hear about SOV at all.

Wintergate with his co-starring spouse Kalassu, and her band 33 1/3 who also feature in BOARDINGHOUSE.

But on that note! PHEW. Ahem. I didn't come here to talk about Zahler, who should stick to the lucrative business of selling "a lot of screenplays to the Hollywood machine", which he finds time to brag about in his column about deep-underground movies. I came to say that in spite of the amount of reasonably intellectual attention that has come to SOV in the recent past, I think I still don't completely "get it", and I'm in a constant struggle to explain to myself why that is. I keep my ears open; I think the work Bleeding Skull does is great, and even important. (Their more qualified review of BOARDINGHOUSE is here) I read Zahler's column, even when I felt like using it for toilet paper (the actual discussion of the movies seems generally useful). I try to listen to fans...although a dip into SOV reviews on Letterboxd is not always that revealing, sometimes it only increases my confusion when they start passionately listing qualities they don't care about—storytelling, acting, production design, sound and image quality, et al—without really clarifying what they DO care about, and I have to stop exploring when I hit randomly-inserted hot takes about how like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is actually a vampire movie, not a zombie movie, and this universal misunderstanding is a result of filmgoers being too lazy and uneducated to know the difference. ...OK, so I'm unfairly picking on a crazy outlier, but that actually leads me to what I *think* is my point: The average SOV fan just has different DNA than I do. They feel different things for different reasons, than what moves me. They are an entirely different kind of viewer.

That said, can I really generalize about what I think moves this breed of movie lover? Not all SOV movies are as chaotic and incoherent as BOARDINGHOUSE. (And of course, I do like plenty of movies that are legitimately chaotic and incoherent) Some of them are colorful and inventive enough to hold my attention, like Pat Bishow's THE SOULTANGLER, while some have real focus and rigor, like J.R. Bookwalter's OZONE. It's embarrassing to admit that some of what keeps me at arm's length from SOV cinema has simply to do with the texture of early video images themselves, which always gives me a sense of extreme artificiality. And that may feed into the larger issue for me: My personal desire, as a viewer, is to feel at least somewhat absorbed into the picture. There has to be some level of illusionism for me to feel satisfied. I feel that this is NOT a matter of budgetary resources, as movies from MARTIN to EVIL DEAD can attest, but the ethereal glow of celluloid is a part of what draws me in, for better or worse. There is something about video that gives me a feeling of distance and abstraction; maybe it's the obvious homemade-ness of most video production, no matter how seriously the filmmakers take their work, that makes me feel constantly aware of who is pulling what strings. My focus on such work is inexorably drawn away from its fictional and metaphorical content and toward the backend of things, as if I were watching a complicated stunt or magic trick. It's like the difference between traditional theater, and performance art. One isn't necessarily superior to the other—and possibly, the two aren't even fairly comparable, in spite of their use of essentially the same materials. Connoisseurs of one form won't necessarily be satisfied by the achievements of the other, and that doesn't not constitute a condemnation, only a contextual problem.

Full disclosure: I first encountered SOV horror when I didn't even know it was a whole thing, through THIS movie, which at the time made me so angry I thought I might become violent. Maybe Mary Whitehouse was right, horror CAN turn you into a murderer.

If any SOV fans are reading this, they might be thinking of how limited my analysis is. It might apply to some types of "homemade" or "backyard" video features, and there might be scores of others that really do compete successfully at the same game as more traditionally illusory feature films. And you know what? I'd love to hear about it! Feel free to reach out with your recommendations and alternative theories. I am still puzzling over this, and I hope you find that the present article is more frankly about my own ignorance and subjectivity, than it is about these movies themselves. I recently took in a Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies lecture by perennial SOV hype man Anne Choi, in which she discussed her work with Bleeding Skull to illuminate her favorite form of filmmaking. During the Q&A, some brave soul asked what movie or movies were the biggest chore during the completion of Bleeding Skull's new book, and while she was appropriately reserved in her answer, she allowed that the hardest thing about her gig is watching movies where "guys in trench coats play vampires". During a certain internship, I saw a LOT of movies of that description—Why are there so many of them? Why are they all exactly the same?? And why are they all fifty hours long???—and the pain in Ms. Choi's voice let me know that, despite all my consternation and confusion, maybe I'm not so different from SOV fans after all.

[imsurethisisprobablyabadidea]

The Beginning.

The beginning of the fanfic with no name. 

No warnings here. It is, after all, just the beginning!

Word Count: 1,276 (I told you this series would be long)

Mornings suck. We can all agree on that. However, we can probably also agree that mornings suck even harder after sleepless nights. You’ve been having a lot of those recently. Do you remember the feeling of anticipation right before a big vacation as a child? Or Christmas? Christmas Eve is the most difficult time to sleep. You used to lie in bed counting the hours in your head. 

If I go to sleep now, do I think Mom and Dad will let me wake them up in 5 hours and start the festivities?! 

The past week worth of nights have felt like that. That feeling when you are 100% assured something big and exciting in the morning, when the sleep, for a change, isn’t relaxing, but an obstacle keeping you from the true prize. You’d honestly like to give a shoutout to coffee for keeping you coherent recently. It’s through the grace of God and Arabica that you even made it to this dreary Monday morning. Which, as you hope we can all agree on again, is the worst kind of Morning. But today, you don’t even care. you’re awake, and it is Christmas morning, time to depart on your much awaited vacation, the day you win the lottery...whatever you want to call it. Either way, you’re done with the anticipatory sleepless nights today.

Even mornings here are warm. When your alarm clock goes off, that’s the first thing you notice, rolling over. Well, shifting over. This tiny twin bed doesn’t allow for a glamorous amount of room. Your body seems to be radiating heat already. The feeling of the humid air is what finally causes you to snap out of your sleepy stupor. You sit up in bed, wiping an embarrassing amount of drool off my chin. With a generous stretch, you swing my legs over the bed and sigh. The walk to the tiny bathroom in your tiny apartment is, if you can believe it, short. Once the shower begins to run, the small space is even more sweltering than your bed. Perhaps some people would take a cold shower to even out the weather, rather than complaining about the temperature as they make it worse, but not you. If anyone ever catches you taking a cold shower, send the ambulance. After all, this is a very important shower. It’s a big day, and you want to make a good first impression. When you work this closely and hands-on with people, shaving your legs becomes a pretty high priority. With such a lengthy shower, you had certainly cooled off by the end. Hey, guess that means the size of the water heater compliments the rest of the loft! You towel off quickly, brush your teeth, and run a comb and some product through your hair and leave it to dry of its own accord. When the air is this thick, there’s no sense in trying to tame the curly mane. While the Atlanta air saves you time on your hair, it’s the lengthy work day that cuts down the makeup time. A quick swipe of mascara and concealer will do, getting you out the door quicker too. Which is good, cause you’re already running late and, as previously mentioned, first impressions are everything. 

Regardless of how late you am, you cannot skip coffee. So you throw on a pair of black leggings and a tank top, and race out the door. Starbucks, here you come. One trenta caramel macchiato later, and you’re feeling much more ready to face the day. We can pretend it was the block you jogged to the cafe and back, but we all know it was the unhealthy amount of caffeine. Trying to avoid rush hour traffic at this ungodly early hour, you begin my trek to the studio. Since it’s the beginning of production, today will be one of the easiest for you. It’ll begin with a script read through which, with the projected runtime of this film, will take a good bit, and then, after lunch, begin to work on some costuming, makeup, and fight choreography. You could not be more grateful for the scenery today. Though it is very fun to be on location, the air conditioning in the studio feels like kisses from heaven on this scorcher of a day.

People are already bustling around when you walk in the door. 

Maybe I got the call times wrong.

You fret. Luckily, a quick swipe through your email assuages my fears. All these PAs must be eager to impress. Weaving through the masses, you make it to a much calmer room. It’s fairly plain, just tables, chairs and scripts, but then you notice the bagel spread against the wall. You love a good bagel. So, you grab yourself breakfast and take your seat, facing the open “U” the tables create. Only a few of the talent are here yet, sitting calmly in front of their nameplates, quietly reading through their scripts for what you are sure is the millionth time. By the time production makes it to this stage, most actors have their lines almost completely memorized. And with the quality of actors on this film, you’d be willing to bet your tiny apartment, for all it’s worth, that most of them would only use their printed scripts to make notes, not to read.

Though you’ve never worked with this cast before, a quick scan of the room confirms that those present are who you would assume the usual “early birds” are. Anthony Mackie sits calmly, although he isn’t reading his script like the others. Just staring at his phone. From the looks of his finger swiping...playing Tetris? Scarlett Johannson, however, is trained on her lines, her lips moving slightly as she runs through them. A laugh draws your eyes to the last two people at the tables. Mark Ruffalo smiles, script forgotten as his costar tells him what you have to surmise is a hilarious story. His eyes meet yours and he offers a slight wave of his hand. You smile and wave your fingers back. Chris Evans, his conversation partner, turns over his shoulder to meet your eyes as well, a smile lifting the corner of his lips.

You smile at him as well, with, you’ll admit it, a bit more heat on your cheeks than could be attributed to the Georgia humidity outside. Because, come on, we’ve all seen the man! He shifts back around, continuing his chat with Mark. You turn to your phone, people filtering into the room steadily now, deciding to spend the next few minutes responding to emails. When you look up next, the table is full, Robert Downey Jr, Sebastian Stan, Chris Hemsworth, and Jeremy Renner having joined the fray. Clearly, with a Marvel project, it’s nearly impossible to have the entire universe in the same room, so this script read will only feature the original six, plus Mackie and Sebastian, of course. The rest of the parts will be read by production staff. As the last stragglers file into the reading, Anthony Russo stands to address the room. With some passing comments about how important this film is to bring the MCU’s Phase 3 to a head, and jokes about the professionalism of his beloved cast, You settle into your seat as Russo begins by reading the movie’s title, “Avengers: Infinity War”. 

[swanlake1998]

Article: The Black Ballet Celeb Taking On Racism in Dance

Date: June 21, 2021

By: Mary Scott Manning

With a raft of Instagram followers and a modeling contract, the Washington Ballet’s Nardia Boodoo is as close as it gets to a pop celeb in the rarefied world of ballet. Now she’s trying to make that world more fair.

A ballerina, by definition, does not speak—at least not with words. The body is her language, and she spends her life mastering its vocabulary, usually at others’ direction: a casting list on the wall, a choreographer’s instructions, a critic’s review. For dancers of color, this fact has been doubly true.

But last year, after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, and organizations across the professional spectrum were called out by people of color for furthering systemic racism, the overwhelmingly white world of ballet wasn’t spared. One of the most influential voices in that conversation was a dancer with the Washington Ballet, 27-year-old Nardia Boodoo.

You may have seen her onstage, one of the company’s five Black dancers, or in the pages of Marie Claire—she’s a model repped by Wilhelmina who has starred in campaigns for Tory Burch, Chanel Beauty, and Nike. She began dancing only 13 years ago, but Boodoo, whose roots are Indo-Trinidadian, has soared into the pantheon of ballet celebrities, the object of teen worship and the subject of fan art (plus at least one look-alike doll).

What was never visible was the racism she endured on the way up. “Despite the fact that I work hard in rehearsal, throw myself into my art form and perform on international stages,” as she put it on Instagram on May 31, 2020, “when I return home”—to Bethesda—”I’m still most likely to be questioned and harassed for walking my dog late at night in an affluent area…that I reside in.”

This month, Boodoo appears in one of the Washington Ballet’s latest productions, choreographed by the renowned Black dancer Silas Farely. Yet some of her most important recent work has occurred behind the scenes over the past year as she pushed the company to own ballet’s history of prejudice and its responsibility to change. “She’s just been a really, really important voice in helping us to galvanize and discuss all very important issues,” says Julie Kent, the company’s artistic director, issues that “haven’t really been addressed previously, and not just at the Washington Ballet but in ballet as an art form.”

When Boodoo started training at 14, Misty Copeland was making history as American Ballet Theatre’s first Black soloist in two decades, following trailblazing Black ballerinas such as Lauren Anderson and Raven Wilkinson. Boodoo’s peers at the Baltimore School for the Arts, meanwhile, were majority-African American, a “strong base,” she says, for a young artist of color. Boodoo earned a scholarship to Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet, then landed a coveted sport in the Washington Ballet’s studio company while still a teenager.

Leaving home, though, occasioned her first experiences with racial bias in ballet. “I’ve had someone who holds power say to me, ‘Well, because you stick out so much in the corps, you have to work so much harder, because everyone’s going to be looking at you,'” she says. “That’s not my fault that you only have one Black girl in the corps.”

It was the classic conundrum of a second generation. She wasn’t the one who broke down the door. But she still had to contend with an environment that was less than welcoming. And the pressure to fit a stereotype needled her. Virtually every professional Black dancer feels it: having to straighten curly hair, receiving costumes with mesh that doesn’t match their skin tone, wearing the pink tights that make light-skinned dancers look lithe but appear to chop inches off those with darker complexions. Sometimes Boodoo’s colleagues would make hurtful comments. “Stupid things,” she recalls, “like ‘Your hair smells like Black-girl hair.'”

Rachael Parini, a friend and the only other Black dancer when Boodoo joined the company, remembers when they were asked to wear white powder in Giselle, a tradition in the ballet but a loaded proposition for Black performers. At a rehearsal, the stager hollered over the loudspeaker: “Rachael and Nardia, why are you blue?” The powder apparently had turned their brown skin another hue under the cool stage lights.

Parini describes her friend as a force—”not one to back down from a fight.” But back then, the women endured the routine microaggression quietly. For all its glamour, a ballet company is a workplace like any other, governed by hierarchies and unwritten social codes. With one big difference: There’s usually no formal human-resources department. “You sort of get this vibe that this is how it is,” says Boodoo. “The more subservient you are…the better and the more instruction you’ll receive…the further your career will go on.”

After starting to model, Boodoo met a photographer who was perplexed by her acquiescence. He described how the New York dancers he knew were much more assertive. It was a revelation: Boodoo’s confidence and following grew. She became an apprentice at the Pennsylvania Ballet, then returned to DC, becoming a full company member in 2019.

By the time the country was protesting for racial justice and dancers of color began organizing over Zoom, she was ready to speak out. “To all the dancers that don’t feel supported by their companies,” she posted to Instagram on June 1, 2020, “I think it’s time to make some changes and to hold them accountable.” Andrea Long-Naidu, a former New York ballet star and a past teacher of Boodoo’s, looked on with pride: “When I had her at Dance Theatre of Harlem, she wasn’t aware of her powers yet.”

Seeing her staff in pain after George Floyd’s Killing, Kent convened an all-company Zoom. Voice cracking, Boodoo recounted her experiences, explaining that the bias often presented itself as overtly as it did implicitly: The problem wasn’t simply getting passed over for a role but also being told her face looked “too ethnic” for the part.

Kent, who is white, listened on the other side of the screen, distinctly aware of the vulnerability on display among her dancers. A former principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, she performed on global stages and had a part in the beloved 2000 movie Center Stage. “I have a unique role and responsibility in order to move [the art form] forward,” she says, “and allow for the kind of career and love that I had to be possible for as many people as possible.”

Kent inherited one of the country’s most diverse companies from her predecessor, Septime Webre, who had recruited worldwide and electrified the institution’s cultural cachet. She had added 16 dancers to the corps, almost half of whom identify as BIPOC—and now they were hurting. There’s also the matter of competition. The Ballet has to compete with bigger acts imported by the Kennedy Center. In some ways, its relevance hinges on broadening ballet’s historically older, white audience with admirers whose woke-ness won’t tolerate notions of “diversity” that predate Black Lives Matter—or that feel performative.

Kent formed a working group with members from every department to tackle issues of inclusion and equity, and an outside consultant has been guiding their monthly meetings and homework. Boodoo, who represents the performers along with Oscar Sanchez, a Cuban dancer, had expected pushback. But her fan base and platform—a social-media audience that, at nearly 50,000 on Instagram, is within striking distance of some top New York ballerinas’—would have been tough for the company to ignore.

As wider discussions started, though, it became clear that white privilege was a new concept to some. Boodoo was dismayed that some colleagues were unfamiliar with certain civil-rights leaders, so she helped organize a remote study of the book The New Jim Crow. To prod management, she and fellow colleagues of color met privately to hash out ideas for the company at large. It’s been exhausting to divide her energy between institutional matters and the rigors of performing: “You want to just focus on your art form, you just want to focus on being beautiful, being a strong dancer, and contributing to the task at hand.”

Partly because of Covid limits on gatherings and partly because they had to start with building a shared vocabulary, the working group’s progress has felt slow. But they’re in the process of finalizing recommendations to address the places where inequity creeps in. Money, donors, time, and institutional commitment, meanwhile, all could limit their progress. The group, for instance, envisions a Nutcracker free of racist tropes—in particular, the traditional Arabian and Chinese dances, which play up offensive cultural stereotypes. But ticket sales help fund the annual budget. Will the public support changes to the beloved show? Can the company handle that financial risk?

The stakes—Black dancers continually being overlooked or leaving ballet—feel higher now that the work has begun. Still, Boodoo says she feels hopeful that the company will evolve. “She’ll be someone,” says Long-Naidu, “that’ll go down in the history books of Black ballerinas.” An artist who championed a new act for the ballet, or at least one who tried.

[tinalbion]

Since ya like experimenting (I think): Headcanons for The Phantom (from the 1989 movie) and a Reader who takes Christine's place in the story?

Ahhh yes! Dude this movie was interesting and I loved Robert as a more horror-based version of Eric. I will do my absolute best for you and I hope this is close to what you wanted! ♡ 'Composer by day, serial killer by night'. After rewatching it, I popped tf off and I am not sorry. 

Christine had been a gift to the opera house, he was her teacher, her angel of music. She felt something for him, but once she knew who he was, what he was, she wanted to be as far from him as she possibly could. Eric would have retaliated badly if it weren't for an odd glimmer in the crowd that caught his eye, but maybe it was nothing. He was distraught by his beloved's outburst. Maybe she just needed time and maybe he did too, but no matter how enraged he felt by Christine's rejection, there was still something that perplexed him.

You were in awe of those who were on stage ever since you were a young child, you had always wanted to perform, but the fear of becoming something like that, it was amazing and terrifying. You'd walk the empty halls there sometimes, singing the composed words the stage held previously, the beautiful melodies resounding in your mind. It wasn’t quite possible to do since your family had no status to get in good graces with the right people, but you were happy enough to afford the opera with your family when you could. It was the only thing that really kept you going through life. 

This evening after the show, which was a complication on its own, you had once again taken your usual routine to walk the empty halls to admire the architectural beauties and play pretend, if only for a little while. Your humming turned to full-on singing a tune as you looked up at the wonders of the stage, imagining what it would be like to be where the greats have stood. You imagined a beautiful ensemble to wear upon that golden stage, the bright lights shining down on you, filling you with a warmth that overtook you.

Your thoughts were short-lived as the sound of an organ took over and filled the room with the melody of the song you sang, chills running up your arms as you fell into the soul of the music. You sang along louder this time, picking up where you left off as you mindlessly belted out the words. If only you could see who had been playing so beautifully! The music they played felt so passionate, so beautiful. As much as you were enjoying this shared moment between this mysterious stranger, you longed to know their identity to praise their musical abilities. 

As the tune ended and you smiled wide to yourself, your eyes scanned the room for the person who accompanied you in the grand theater, but no one was there. "Please," you'd call out, "let me see you. Your playing was incredible." They would remain silent as you continued on, rambling off until either they revealed themselves or you found them. You never would have guessed the Opera Ghost was incredibly real, but those were all just stories made up to spook the people who would wander the halls alone. 

You were resilient, you wouldn't give up to see the person who played so beautifully, so filled with pain, but he wouldn't show himself. "I’m afraid you cannot see me," the voice echoed hauntingly, “you will be afraid.” His words were pained and sincere, but he didn’t know you and he surely didn’t know how you would react to someone like him. You were confident that you could withstand the sight of someone like the Phantom. Again, you urged him to reveal himself, and he secretly adored your tenaciousness, but he was still wary, still hurting, he couldn’t bear to scare you away. He couldn’t take it again, he wouldn’t know how he’d react to it, but you were alone…

He circled you without giving away his position, his eyes upon you like a lion keeping its prey within its gaze as he watches your every move. The way your chest rose with each breath, but your breathing was steady despite being in such a dangerous situation, he was intrigued with you. Your eyes wandered, no idea of the real threat lurking around you. Eric was slowly becoming more and more interested in you, the memory of Christine still fresh but fading, because you were here. He was so tempted to call you to him like he would have for the singer, to pull you into the depths where he poured his heart and soul into his music, where he could feel at ease with himself. Whether you would accept him or not, that didn't bother him, not now. All that mattered right now was this moment. 

"If you see me, do you promise not to run?" He asked, his words soft-spoken as you noticed his words had sounded closer. You whipped your head around, searching, the acoustics of the room were throwing you off, but you kept on searching until it led you behind the curtains and within the darkness. Here was where you would have your first brush with the phantom and the sense of excitement that you had never felt before, but that wouldn't be the only time you would feel the thrill. "I promise," you would say shyly, unable to hide the smile that grew across your face. 

When you had seen a glimpse of him, his cape fluttered around his legs as he stood a safe distance away from you, mainly for his own regard and how he was feeling. "What's your name?" He asked you, his voice deep and soothing. You immediately didn't know what to say or how to say it, but you had to start with your name. "Y/N," you responded as you tilted your head to the side, unable to hide your excitement. He noted the way your face lit up and he could see you in a new light the more he spoke to you, and all he wanted was to show you his music and hear you sing his words. "Your voice is quite beautiful, Y/N," he said sweetly, "have you ever thought of singing professionally?" The mere thought of it made your stomach twist and you felt the butterflies within you start to dance. "I've thought about it," you responded carefully. 

Eric wanted so desperately to take you under his wing and teach you to become the best of yourself, to see you take flight with his music, oh it would be a dream. He would make sure not to fail you like he did with Christine, he would be more careful this time around. If you'd agree, things would be different. You had been self-taught, the things you needed now would be discipline and direction. He could teach you these things. "What if i said I could make that happen for you? Become your teacher, help you spread your wings and fly?" The thought of it was insane! Could he really do this for you and make you into a star? Whatever he had done, whatever magic he cast, you fell hard for it and nodded your head eagerly. "Yes, please, I want nothing more," you cried out in excitement, your hands clasped together. "Please, who are you? Are you the Phantom? I'm not afraid, you know." 

That's when Eric couldn't help but press forward to see you closer, he wanted to show you just what you would get into if you were to train with someone like him, although he was still terrified to scare you off. The light hit him just right and you had seen his eye, his beautiful orb staring at you, the other half of his face covered by some sort of scarf. 'So mysterious,' you thought. Either way, his presence didn't invoke fear, he brought you an odd sense of comfort.  He held out his hand to you, offering for a reason you wanted to take so desperately, you needed this, otherwise, it may never happen again. You hesitated, naturally, but with a deep breath and placed your delicate hand in his gloved one, a growl of satisfaction emerged from his mouth as he pulled you close to him. You could now smell him, earthly, smoke, and a waft of something soft. You could smell that and die with a smile on your face. Eric was feeling quite similar, that familiar bubbly feeling happening within the pit of his stomach, almost like when he was with Christine. He wouldn't hide things from you, in due time, you'd know all there was to know about Eric Destler. 

When he pulled you down into the darkness of the underground, beneath the opera floors, you weren't expecting another world down there. He had made it his home, although it had been partially destroyed from an accident. He was making do with how things were, though he was still distraught, you could tell with the way he carried himself. Once he removed the wrapping on his face, you were amazed by him, not frightened as he said you would be, and you took a bolder step like no one else had before. Your hand was placed on him, cupping his cheek as he looked at you with surprise, not expecting a beautiful creature like you to show him any affection of any kind. He gasped, his eyes watered as he closed them quickly, afraid to show you just how weak he was for your touch and just how we had wished Christine would have accepted him like this. He would die protecting you, there was no doubt now. You smiled at him, happy to see him feel at ease with you. 

Your days were spent training with him, teaching you to sing until you were able to become an understudy for the diva herself if it was possible with everything that had happened. You knew Eric was different from the moment you laid your eyes on him, but it didn't bother you in the slightest, all people were unique in their own way and that never bothered you. He would give you longing glances as you read the sheet music to his works, touched by how beautifully written they had been, the music touched a part of you that was only brought out within the depths of under the opera house. You and Eric had slowly begun to feel comfortable around each other, though you took quicker to the situation than he had, hile was always on edge and somewhat distant. You didn't blame him, especially when you found out about his former student, whom he felt so much love and affection for. It was difficult for him to mention her because he felt that there would always be a part of himself with her, but he was doubting that now with you here. Maybe having him as your dark angel wouldn't be so bad.

[tmntxreader-fics]

TMNT Leo x Reader: Warming Up To You

Summary: You had long dismissed the idea of becoming friends with the icy leader in blue as it seemed to be an impossible mission. Finally, both of your frustrations lead to an explosive encounter; providing you both the opportunity to warm up to each other.

Find Raph’s Version HERE!

A/N: I HAVEN’T WRITTEN IN A WHILE I’M SUPER RUSTY.  Yeehaw we got a LEO version of this fic!!! We stan a tsundere king. He’s almost got a predatory vibe to him and I’m not exactly sure where it came from but I think it’s kinda hot so here we go. 

WARNINGS: Cursing, Leo scaring the reader half to death during a sparring match, AND TYPOS!

You’d think that Raphael would be the unapproachable one. 

In fact, even Donatello had the potential to be unreachable when any one of his projects were involved. 

But the leader of the group? You’d have figured that at least he would be someone who had qualities relating to friendliness. The success of his role depends on being communicative; surely he would carry that trait off the battlefield?

You were so wrong. 

When you had first arrived you’d assumed his indifference to you was simply because of your unfamiliarity. You were, of course, a stranger. He had a duty to protect his family and you were obviously a threat to that; there was no way he’d give you the opportunity to ruin the life they had set up for themselves. 

However, as the months rolled by, he never came around. 

Each attempt to conversate was blown off with a polite exit or an awkwardly executed excuse to avoid talking. You were literally only asking about the weather, not attempting to uncover his family secrets. 

You watched the way he interacted with April and Casey, maybe he was simply a quiet person. Lo and behold, he had absolutely no issue speaking to them. He spoke, he joked, asked them to join him when eating and hung around them fairly often when not attending to his duties or training. 

Something in your chest stung with each rejection and you couldn’t help but become slightly bitter with the attitude he held towards you- simply because you knew it was you that he was avoiding. After a few days of digesting this new revelation, you decided that if you genuinely made him uncomfortable with your attempts of friendliness then you would step back completely and remain professional. 

Each time he asked you a question when mapping out a mission, you’d begun to clip your tone just as he had been. Each word was stiff and your sentences were minimal. While the others were a little confused by the change, Leo refused to pay you any attention. He probably appreciated the intangible distance you had put between you and him. 

The third time you’d done this, it was clear that he, in fact, was not appreciative. At the strange silence that stretched across the table, you looked up from the sheet beneath you to catch eye contact with Leo. His gaze was narrowed, the piercing blue was almost suffocating. Your heart leaped into your throat and you stood frozen in place when his bottom lip curled a little; a clear implication of frustration. He leaned back and opened his mouth as if he were preparing to say something or question you. 

Then he closed it. 

There was absolutely no logical reason for him to be irritated with you. You weren’t withholding information from him and you were effectively communicating your points. 

Raising an eyebrow, you rested a hand on your hips; daring him to make a comment. Instead, the leader grit his teeth, exhaling slowly before returning his gaze to the strategy splayed across the table. There’s a long silence before he continued to talk- but at that point, your heart was beating too loud for you to focus on his words. 

Raphael glanced between his brother and yourself, a picture of bewilderment. You ignored him. 

Just as you had ignored Leo for the entirety of the following week. 

Well, perhaps ignore is the incorrect term; rather, you were indifferent to his presence. 

Each time you were alone in the kitchen together, you made no effort to spark a conversation with him. Instead, you’d nod your acknowledgment before making a swift exit- just as he had done to you countless times. 

What had piqued your curiosity was the fact that all of a sudden, the number of times you’d been caught in a situation alone with Leo has risen significantly. He had begun to appear in places that you’d otherwise never see him, at times that were completely off from his usual schedule. 

The most drastic example would be today’s training session. You had swaggered into the room, ready to provoke Raph until he snapped and kicked your ass. It had become a sort of unorthodox tradition, one that left you sore but you’d look forward to it nonetheless. It was the only time for you to really test your skills without him worrying too much about being careful with you. 

However, this particular session made you halt your steps, suspended in motion within the doorway. 

Leonardo was there. 

You blinked. 

He’s still there. Brandishing his katanas with lethal grace and performing his kata’s flawlessly. Raphael was nowhere to be seen and you’re just about to turn tail and escape before you make eye contact with the turtle in the center of the room. His gaze was intense and the air felt different, as if it were alight with a thick tension. 

Leonardo didn’t avert his stare like he usually did; instead, he lowered his arms to his side and straightened his stance. You gulped and your brain worked to churn out an excuse to leave, the last thing you wanted was to have the leader judge your training routine. 

“I’ll just come back later then,” you blurted, shattering the silence with a small wince. To your surprise, he had shaken his head almost immediately. 

“No,” he began, eyeing you carefully. “I’ll stay to my side of the room while you train.” 

Your breath hitched and it felt as though someone had stuffed cotton into your mouth. “Uh,” you desperately searched for another excuse, “I usually spar with Raph. I’ll just come back another time.” 

You thought you had him, there’s no way he could come up with a rebuttal unless he planned to bring in Raphael. However, when his reply was almost instantaneous, your heart thrashed in your chest. 

“Spar with me.” 

You blinked at him. “What?”

He spun a sword in his hand before moving to rest his weapons against the wall. Leonardo turned back to you with a raised eyebrow ridge. “Spar. With. Me.” 

“I can’t,” you heard yourself say, your voice almost a whisper as you took an involuntary step back. Your heart pounded beneath your rib cage at the mere thought of training with the blue-clad turtle. 

“Sure you can,” he said with a slight shrug, slowly advancing towards you. Each step he took made you want to flinch away. 

Raphael was an intensely brutish opponent but his techniques were very straight forward. Everything about him was bared for you to see, unashamed in his temperamental disposition and foul language. Leonardo was a completely different story, the idea of being put against him in a sparring session genuinely terrified you. 

Especially with the new demeanor he had obtained, one that was almost predatory in nature. He was frustrated and you could clearly sense it. 

“It’s fine I’ll just wait for Raph,” your voice was a breathy whisper as he came to a stop only a couple feet before you. That was the closest he had ever been to you voluntarily, usually opting to steer clear of you as if you were the plague. 

His eyes flashed an electric blue, crackling with an energy that you had never seen from him previously. He reached for the bag in your hand, maintaining eye contact as he gripped it tightly, skin brushing against yours. “I insist.” 

You swallowed heavily when you realized he was no longer asking you.

After nodding quickly, you're finally able to catch your breath when he leaned back with your gym bag in his hold. 

Following him further into the room, he placed down your things and met you in the center. He didn’t say anything for a long moment, simply taking to observing you. 

“How do you want to do this?” You questioned, nervousness rattling around your stomach as he rolls his shoulders lightly. 

“Win by submission.”

The simple statement had you grimacing.  

"I really don't think this is a good idea," you muttered, casting your gaze to the floor.

"Then stop thinking," he said, supplying a solution you would never enact. You rolled your eyes, glancing at him with a bemused expression.

"For someone who's meant to be wise, you're not exactly adept at giving good advice," you snarked, fuelled by the growing stress and pressure of your current situation. You were in uncharted waters with your new opponent; someone you had spent so long playing against with an unrecognized advantage on your side. Now that he had finally given you what you wanted, you realized that maybe gaining his attention wasn't as satisfying as you'd originally thought. More like terrifying.

His eyes hardened at your words and you immediately knew you had made a mistake by jabbing at his position. "Get into your stance," he ordered with a narrowed gaze, "now."

"I really don't-" you began, heart thrashing with panic when he cut you off.

"Now," he repeated.

Hesitantly, you shifted your feet into the correct position, raising your shaking hands to guard your face. You felt as though you were going to be sick when he bowed, a sign that the sparring session had begun.

He returned his gaze to meet yours as he straightened up and you could hear the blood rushing through your ears. Yes, you thought, puking could definitely be an option here. Your bottom lip quivered on par with your trembling hands guarding your face.

This was not right. 

You had sparred with Raphael, of all people, multiple times. You never feared an ass whooping from the temperamental turtle; so, why are you afraid of the leader? Someone who has constantly exercised restraint where his brothers would usually indulge? Out of all of them, he would be the least likely to hurt you. Hell, Raphael had fractured bones every now and then.  

The leader launched forward, breaking you from your chain of thought as you sloppily dodged a reaching fist. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. 

You stumbled backward, forced to be on the defense. There was no time to even attempt an offense with the speed that Leonardo was operating at. He was a flurry of kicks and well-placed punches and you knew that you were immediately being overwhelmed. 

“Leonardo,” you rasped desperately, squeaking when he answered only with a sweeping leg in which you barely escaped. The intensity of this fight was way too high for a spar that had only begun 20 seconds ago. 

“Just hold on!” You cried out after a failed attempt to throw your own punch. Another right jab on your behalf had only resulted in you almost being snatched up by the blue-clad whirlwind. 

Each attack that he executed had built in the force behind it, forcing you back with each blow. You were quickly realizing that physically blocking his moves was not going to work out well for you and you opted to jump out of the way instead. 

All of a sudden you felt like this was less of a sparring match and more of a slaughter-to-be. 

“Press pause!” Your screech was reinforced by sheer panic when he feigned right and you fell right into his trap as you twisted your body away from him. Leo moved with you and you squeaked when he finally caught a tight grip on your arm. 

In that split-moment, your eyes met his, an electric blue that made your wildly racing heart just stop. His hooded gaze was steely and the pent up frustration was thinly veiled, boiling beneath his skin and communicated through his movements. 

You suddenly realized that this fight was about to end very, very quickly. 

With a flash of his teeth, Leonardo wrenched you towards him. 

You can’t breathe as your splayed palms connect with his chest, your body pressed against his. His hands moved down to your waist and you want to puke when you instantly realize he’s about to launch a very painful maneuver on you. 

It felt as though everything was suddenly in slow motion as his fingers tightened above your hips, bringing you off the ground. You had no idea how to stop him, how to save yourself from what was about to occur. Racking your brain, you screamed the only words that came to mind and prayed that they would work. 

“I submit!” 

Leo’s entire body froze as if someone had pressed the pause button on his remote controller. You could hear the blood rushing through your ears, mingled with his unusually labored breathing. 

“I’m sorry, okay?” Your words were nothing but a breathless whimper and you squeezed your eyes shut in an attempt to stop your body from trembling. “I submit.” 

There’s a pregnant pause, in which neither of you moved. You were vaguely aware of your face buried in his chest, latching onto his shell as if that would’ve stopped the further attacks. The feel of his body rhythmically rising and falling beneath you with each breath felt strange, you would have almost described it as intimate if it weren’t for the current situation. You only noticed that you were suspended a few inches off the ground when Leo, ever so gently, lowered you back down. 

“I’m sorry,” you repeated quietly, heart pounding in your chest. “I don’t know what you want from me.” 

And it was out. 

Leo’s fingers tightened fractionally on your waist and you heard him take a sharp breath. 

Then he sighed. 

“I’m the one who should be apologizing,” he murmured, his voice rumbling in his chest against your ear. 

You don’t know why but for some reason you weren’t actually expecting a response from him. You’d almost expected him to disappear in a puff of smoke, something he had done many times in your presence when you confronted him with conversations. 

“I tried to keep a respectful distance,” Leo began, faltering slightly in his words. You held your breath. “I didn’t mean for it to become like this.” 

You assumed that “this” meant growing bitter and resentful towards each other for absolutely no logical reason with no visible end. 

“Respectful?” You couldn’t help but scoff softly, pulling your face away from his shell. You turned your gaze upwards to meet his, startled by the close proximity. “You gave me the complete cold shoulder. Ostracized me.” 

Leo’s gaze narrowed slightly, electric blue gaze searching your own for an answer to a question only he knew. “You certainly weren’t innocent, either.” 

You felt the heat rush to your face, indignation building in your chest as you hissed, “don’t make me say “you started it”. Don’t make me do it.” 

He sighed through his nose and glanced away for a brief moment before turning back to you, “I know, I’m sorry. I was avoiding distraction by avoiding you and it was the wrong choice to make.” 

You frowned lightly, “distraction?” You scoffed as you glared up at him with guarded eyes, “You’re fine with April O’Neil but I’m the distraction?” 

You watched as his jaw moved while he grit his teeth. That electric gaze flickered away from you, suddenly seeming insecure. “You’re different,” he muttered finally, voice softer than you had ever heard it. 

Suddenly you’re very aware of his gentle but firm grip on your waist, his thumb subconsciously rubbing lightly against your skin. His hands were hot, setting alight every place that they touched. 

It seemed you were not the only one suddenly aware of your compromising position. 

Leo was observing you intently, lips parting when his gaze traveled to where your hands rested against his shell. You couldn’t bring yourself to correct your position even when under his study. 

“Let’s start over,” you whispered, watching him snap his attention back to you at the words. 

There’s silence between you both until Leo swallowed thickly, exhaling a shaky breath. Extending an olive branch would be your final attempt, your last hurrah. The air was charged with energy you couldn’t decipher as you leaned into him, meeting his bewildered stare imploringly. He doesn’t budge other than the grip on your body tightening a fraction. 

You’re almost prepared for rejection until you catch the corner of his mouth shifting upward ever so slightly. 

“I’m Leonardo,” he said, and your hearth thrashed in your chest as a charming smile stretched against his full lips. “It’s really nice to meet you.”