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k-p-p-d · 7 years ago

Text

Eyes on Me V (M)

Warnings: Daddy kink, D/s dynamics, DDlg, whipping, humiliation, degradation, overstimulation, orgasm denial, sex toys, cockwarming (oral)

Length: 5.5k

A/N: Shall we end the year with a big bang, @chanyeolspout?

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Seunghyun rose from his sable throne, haphazardly discarding his phone, and strode towards the grandiose canopy bed. Upon removing his suit jacket and his silken tie, his slender fingers deftly made quick work of the buttons straining to conceal his flesh. A faint whimper slipped from you as his shirt slid from his shoulders to join the other discarded garments on the dark bedlinen, eyes feasting on the magnificent expanse of bronzed skin stretched taut over rippling muscle. "Silence," he snapped icily without so much as turning an inch towards you. "Make another sound and I will fuck your throat raw until you're hoarse for weeks to come." Your heart froze at the tempting threat just as a cruel smirk stretched across his refined features. He turned just slightly on his heel to face you, wicked glint in his charcoal eyes burning brightly. "Or perhaps you'd quite enjoy that, wouldn't you? Sluts like you always do."

You bit your lip hard in a desperate attempt to keep silent. Seunghyun took your silence not as compliance, but as a blatant challenge. He knew you knew he needed you to disobey now more than ever; and he would be damned if you denied him this right. You thrived off his sadistic urges as much as he did, both of you craving the intoxicatingly intense rush of ecstasy each distinctly cruel act brought. "Oh, what is this? Is the little slut trying to be an obedient little girl?" He calmly strode back towards you until his long, powerful legs were all that filled your vision. "Look at me." Instinctively, your eyes snapped up to face him. He disapprovingly clicked his teeth; yet another failed chance to give him what he needed, such a shame. Slowly, he knelt down in front of you, sharp umber eyes boring deep, burning holes into your very soul and making your exhausted yet excited core thrum painfully hard with anticipation and need. “I’m going to release you now. You will have ten seconds to present yourself on the bed. You will not make a single noise. You will not make any unnecessary movement. If you disobey me…” His voice trailed off as he ghosted the backside of his hand along your cheek and down your neck. He tangled his fingers in the gold chain of your necklace and pulled it sharply to jerk your face closer to his, his lips close enough to yours for you to feel the warmth of his breath and taste the musky aftertaste of his cigarettes on your tongue yet still far enough away to make you crave the addicting rush only his lips could provide far more than normal. A quiet pant escaped your lips involuntarily. Seunghyun’s smirk deepened as the vulnerable noise flitted through his ears. You could feel the reverberations of his voice vibrating through his chest against your prickled skin as he sneered, “There will be hell to pay.”

Swiftly, his fingers undid the hooks connecting the cuffs encircling your wrists to the lengthy chains looped into the steel clamps embedded into the walls before clamping a much shorter connector chain between them. Your shoulders immediately dropped, sweet relief coursing through the tired muscles finally being allowed to rest if but for the briefest moment. “Move,” he barked callously, deep voice booming menacingly spurring you into action. Swiftly, you scrambled to your feet and lurched forward to rush to the bed. A sharp sting emanated from the backs of your trembling thighs, the sudden pain rooting you to the spot, as you let out a surprised yelp. Another sting had you whirring around to face him. Your dazed eyes darted about wildly to find the source of the stings but before they could find the culprit, another a stinging blaze burned across the fronts of your thighs, the unexpected blow knocked the air out of your lungs as you collapsed to the floor. It was then that your eyes landed on the unfurled leather thong of the bullwhip, its scarlet popper flicking dangerously against the floor. “Have you forgotten proper etiquette, slut?” Seunghyun sneered. You didn’t dare look at him. He scoffed, “Of course you did. Sluts have no sense of decorum or respect. Let me teach you some manners then.” He wound his wrist in slow circles, steadily working up momentum, “Only my equals are on my level. Are you my equal, little slut?”

You shook your head quickly.

Crack!

“When I ask you a question—” crack! “—I expect a verbal answer,” he stated coldly.

“Y-yes, Sir,” you panted in acknowledgement, eyes lowered and trained on the leather cuffs still encircling your wrists.

Crack!

“Eyes. On. Me,” he growled through clenched teeth as he dealt three successive blows across your outer thighs. Timidly, you lifted your eyes to meet his. “You are to always remain beneath me. Know your place, little slut, and stay where you belong.” He flicked his wrist just slightly to make the whip slither menacingly—almost snakelike—toward you and making you flinch. He smirked before smoothly gliding backward to the bed. He patted the plush comforter, sardonically beckoning for you to join him, “Crawl.”

“Yes, Sir!” Bending over, you pressed your palms flat against the polished, dark hickory flooring and carefully shifted your weight until you were certain your trembling arms wouldn’t collapse as you made the humiliating trek to the bed. Slowly, you slid a hand and knee forward, trying your hardest to keep your breathing even and your eyes trained on him.

Crack!

The sound of the leather slicing through the air was enough to spur you on. Balance and awkward grace be damned, you practically scampered across the floor until you were sat on the floor beside his legs. Seunghyun ghosted the leather handle of the whip along your jaw, uncharacteristically gentle while nudging your head up to look at him. “Baby girl,” he purred velvety and rich and you swore your heart skidded to a halt, “why am I still dressed?” Immediately, your fingers flew up to grab at the buckle of his belt; but a sharp tug to the connector chain of your cuffs had you reeling forward until your face was flush against his lap. He tsked distastefully, “You’re so impatient, did you know that? You can’t even wait for my command. Do I really need break you and retrain you?”

“No, Sir, I’m sorry, I just thought—“

“You shouldn’t be thinking,” he scoffed. “You should be listening, paying attention to my every word as if it were holy writ because it is holy writ. Do you understand that, little one?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

He released the connector chain and leaned back on his hands, carelessly jostling you out of his lap. He lazily waved a hand over his lower half, “Then undress me.”

“Yes, Sir.” Your hands flew to his buckle once more, but this time you kept your eyes trained to his, watching his every move carefully to see if he was dissatisfied further with you as you fished his belt out of the loops before thoughtlessly flinging the offensive leather strap over your shoulder. He grunted causing you to tense in preparation for a blow that never came, lips set to issue an apology for your disregard for the designer accessory and swear you’d purchase him two new ones to make up for any scuffing or other damage done to it. After an anxiety-ridden second ticked by, you relaxed enough to flick open the button and slowly pull down the zipper of the crisp tuxedo pants. You hooked your fingers over the waistband of both his pants and silken boxer briefs before carefully dragging them down and off him. Saliva pooled in your mouth as you came face to face with his half hardened member, blatant hunger sparking in your blown pupils and intense need surging through you to riddle your skin in chills. You gulped far louder than you once thought possible as you forced yourself to sit back on your heels and folded your hands into your lap.

Seunghyun smirked. Patience was certainly a virtue; and tonight, your virtuousness would be tested. He reached down to curl his fingers under your chin to force your head up so you could look at him. A predatory gleam flickered in the depths of his umber eyes. “You want it, don’t you, baby girl?” A softly purred ‘yes, Daddy,’ slipped from your lips. “I want to give it to you, sweetheart; however, I don’t think you’ve earned it yet.” You opened your mouth to plead your case that you most certainly had earned it, but you were silenced with a single look from him as he rose from the bed. He strode leisurely, his strides long and even and reeking of power, to the oversized ebony armoire sat in the corner in the far side of the room. He hummed low in his chest as he perused the contents of the various padded drawers. “Shall we keep things simple tonight or shall we up the ante?” he mused aloud, his fingertips brushing over the plethora of toys that lay before him. He paused a moment, internally weighing the pros and cons of each approach, before an ingenious idea floated into his mind. “Simple it is,” he announced with a nod as he made his selection. “Tell me something, little one: Have you figured out what lesson you’re to learn tonight?”

“Yes, Daddy, I have.”

“Oh, you have?” Seunghyun glanced over his shoulder, a devilishly amused expression painted over his normally stoic features. “Tell me what it is then.”

You shifted uneasily beneath his intense stare. If you misspoke now, there was a chance whatever he had up his metaphorical sleeve would be exchanged for something far more foreboding and less...simple, as he had put it. A shiver ran down your spine at the thought of what it could be. You wanted and needed to be so good, so perfect for him. Yet... He wanted and needed you to not be good or perfect. You needed to make a mistake, a big enough one to grant him his long-awaited opportunity to enact the final phase of his masterplan. Despite the uneasy anticipation making your heart race, you found yourself firmly stating, “I needed to learn that I am yours, and yours alone. No one else is to see me like this because no one else is capable of making me like this.”

Seunghyun blinked. A long moment of silence passed between you before he snorted derisively. “Little girl, how can an already known universal truth between us be a lesson needing to be learned?” He clicked his teeth and shrugged, “No, that’s not it at all.” Smoothly, he turned on his heel to reveal an oblong, cream-colored acrylic box in his left hand and a significantly smaller, square scarlet velvet box in his right. He stepped forward, that same undeniable air of power underlining his smooth glide, and calmly commanded, “Hands and knees.”

Immediately, you obeyed, shifting your weight forward onto your hands almost reflexively. “So she can be good,” he remarked sardonically. You bristled at the comment but didn’t dare think of firing back your own defensive quip. You’d already misspoken and that had clearly been all he needed. There was no need to make things worse for the sake of your pride. After all, in this room, in his domain, on this night, your pride meant nothing. You were there for his pleasure alone, subject to his whims alone, his alone. You swallowed thickly as you felt his warmth radiating along the backs of your thighs as he knelt behind you. He slowly dragged his thumb through your folds, the unexpected and highly intimate contact sprinkling gasoline on the fire of arousal that’d been burning deep in your belly throughout the evening. You had to bite your tongue to keep from moaning out. He chuckled darkly. “I’ve barely touched you and you’re fucking soaked. I don’t even have to work your slutty little hole open, do I? I could just shove my dick inside you right now with no warning and you wouldn’t even feel an ounce of pain, would you? No, I bet you’d probably even thank me...” He dragged his thumb up through your folds once more, this time far slower with less pressure—a phantom sensation almost—before he pulled back away from you to watch you attempt to stifle another moan. “...wouldn’t you?” he finished his earlier thought in that deep, velvety raspy purr that never failed to make you come undone. Clicking open the cream case, he removed the silicone replica of his member and unceremoniously posited it on the floor directly in front of its original, fleshy prototype laid half awake in his lap.

You heard the unmistakable muted pop! of the suction cupped base and a fresh wave of chills rippled over your skin as countless memories of many lonely nights spent riding and writhing, sucking and sliding, clutching and clenching the lifelike dildo (specially commissioned by Seunghyun just for you) as you wished desperately it was actually him dragging you over the edge instead of on some far away stage. Admittedly, it was a highly acceptable substitute and had served you very well; yet it was not and would never be him. Him, the one and only man who indulged you in your every whim and desire, no matter how depraved or demure they might be. God, he was just so—

“Sit,” he ordered. Shifting slightly to spread your thighs open, you carefully and painstakingly lowered yourself onto the already lubed toy. You took a few steadying breaths as you willed yourself to remain calm once it was fully seated in you. You wriggled your hips a little to get into a more comfortable position, absentmindedly remarking to yourself that it somehow felt...different before chalking it up to the lack of proper preparation. When it appeared you were adjusted, he instructed, “Stay.” You ceased all movement immediately, not even daring to blink lest he somehow catch the movement. “Good girl,” he hummed appreciatively as moved to sit on the edge of the bed in front of you. He raked his smoldering eyes over your form, appraising every inch of your flushed flesh all while you tried your damnedest to keep from rocking your hips to chase any sort of desperately wanted friction. He loved it, loved knowing that he was the only capable of making you like this. “Thank me,” Seunghyun said smoothly.

You snapped your head up. “T-thank you, Daddy,” you stammered, voice lifting high on the last syllable.

“What are you thanking me for, little girl?”

“T-thank you for making me l-like this, f-for making me y-yours. T-thank you for being p-patient with me and t-teaching me this lesson.”

Seunghyun cocked an immaculately groomed brow, “But you don’t even know the lesson you’re being taught yet. How can you thank me for something you’re unaware of?”

You bit your lip. “I— Daddy always knows w-what’s best for me so I t-trust him. That’s w-why I can thank Daddy.”

Had the mood of the evening been lighter, he might have cracked a smile because it was the best answer you’d given him yet. However, things being as they were, he merely leaned back onto his palms. “It’s a bit too cold in here for my liking. Be a good little girl and warm Daddy’s cock, will you?” You lifted your hands to reach for him, but he pulled them down by stepping on the chain connecting your cuffs. “No, not like that. I didn’t fuck your gag reflex away for nothing.”

Without a second thought and with far more enthusiasm than your pride would recover from, you immediately leaned forward and slid his length into your mouth, not stopping until every last inch of it was snugly resting inside of you. You flared your nostrils as you inhaled through your nose all while silently praising yourself for practically swallowing him whole, just like he liked. Seunghyun hummed low in his throat in the closest thing to genuine approval you’d gotten all night. You were practically beaming with pride, high off the praise and the sudden rush of endorphins it had caused. You were so caught up in your own little bubble that you missed Seunghyun sliding his right hand further behind himself to dig into the plush comforter only to return with a tiny remote barely the length of his thumb.

A strangled noise gurgled up from your throat before being muted by the rapidly hardened dick resting peacefully in it when a distinct and intense vibration abruptly exploded inside your core, the waves of it licking at the edge of your g-spot in an agonizing, teasing kiss. Seunghyun simply smirked down at you, “Are you surprised, baby girl? You know Daddy loves surprising you.” You lifted your brows pleadingly to silently beg him to turn it off. “Daddy has another surprise for you. Are you ready for it?”

You wanted to shake your head, but the dick in your mouth proved that impossible. You blinked hard twice, wordlessly signaling to him that you most certainly not ready for it. Seunghyun’s thumb hovered over the remote. As per the long established rules of playtime, he waited the full minute for you to draw an ‘X’ on his thigh to signal that your limit had been reached and you needed out. You could practically see him counting down the seconds in his mind. Yet, you never shook your head. You both had been in far more intense situations than this over the course of your relationship, and while this was quite new, it wasn’t something you were incapable of handling. You just needed a moment to adjust and gather yourself; and Seunghyun, being the consummate caring and considerate Dominant and partner, had allowed you to have that moment rather than selfishly seeking his own pleasure above your needs and safety. “Okay, baby girl,” he rumbled low in his chest, “Daddy will wait a little bit longer to give you the next surprise.” Your heart swelled with love and pride, and you wanted nothing more than to pull off his member and kiss him senseless but you stayed put. No, you’d have to show him your love and adoration by enduring this most erotic torture.

Seunghyun shifted his hips as he stretched out his beautiful, long legs, the movement pushing him further down your throat. He sighed contentedly. “You’re the perfect glove for my dick. You fit it so perfectly tight and keep me warm. If I could, I’d have you like this every hour of every day.” You almost snorted at the ridiculousness of his statement but he shifted again, this time angling his hips down to press down hard on your tongue. You realized then he was baiting you: Saying things to get a rise out of you, only to remind you who was really in charge. He kept up this bait-switch as he watched you steadily unravel as the vibrations from the cock ring snuggled tight round the base of the dildo slowly but surely took its toll on you. Beads of sweat trickled down the sides of your forehead and your hands were balled into tight fights. In that moment, you wanted nothing more than to plant your hands on the floor in front of you, spread your thighs open a little farther, and roll your hips as you rode your way to orgasm. But somehow you managed to keep a hold on yourself. “Is my baby girl going to cum?” Seunghyun teased huskily. The word alone had you barreling toward completion, arousal spiking through you like ice picks. “Don’t.”

Reflexively, you clenched your thighs shut and squeezed your walls hard to dam the oncoming floodwaters of orgasmic bliss. You breathed heavily through your nose, eyes slipping shut, in an attempt to concentrate on anything but the spoiled orgasm he’d just denied you. In an act of what you perceived to be mercy, Seunghyun turned the vibrations off. Your shoulders immediately dropped as the tension seeped out of your body. “Have you figured your lesson out yet, baby girl?” You snapped your eyes up to a smirking Seunghyun. “I’m teaching you self-restraint, something you seem to so desperately lack. You are not to make a sound, move a muscle, or cum until I say so. You’re to sit on that dick while you wish the real one wasn’t buried down your throat but instead in that tight little pussy of yours. Do you understand?”

You blinked hard three times. ‘Yes, Daddy.’ More resolved than ever to be the picture of obedience, your rested your hands on your knees and focused on not moving a single muscle or making a single sound, and, most of all, to not cum.

“Good girl.” He turned the vibrations on and moved to lean back again on his but stopped himself. You swallowed in apprehension. He didn’t even bat an eye at the extra sensation along his shaft. Instead, he lifted the remote to turn it around so you could see its four buttons. “I almost forgot your other surprise.” A wolfish grin spread menacingly across his lips as his umber eyes seemed to shift color to a rich, bottomless sea of obsidian. He gently pressed the top right button.

Your resolve almost immediately dissolved as another, far more intense vibration surged through you. It was nestled much deeper and higher than its counterpart and you swore you could feel it all the way in your stomach. You wanted to cry out and thrash about at all the stimulation. Where the base ring vibrated in a slow, steady, predictable pattern, the one wrapped around the head of the dildo had a much faster, more sporadic pattern; the combination making it impossible for you to adjust to either sensation, let alone their combined efforts. All you could do was sit there and take it.

It wasn’t long before you rushing toward the precipice of yet another orgasm; Seunghyun seemed to sense how close you were as he once more turned off the vibrations until the danger of your climax had passed before switching them on again. You could barely hear Seunghyun’s deep voice rumbling tauntingly as he resumed his bait-switch—tossing out dirty observations coupled with little jabs meant to prickle your nerves and send you down a path of disobedience you might never recover from—over the intense drumming of your heart as it thundered away in your chest. The torturous lesson dragged on for a small eternity, you long since having lost track of how many times you had come close to barreling over the edge. Everything was a blur—a buzzing, deep-seated, hot, intense whirlwind of sensations and undying arousal. You were so overstimulated and dazed you hadn’t realized you had begun to purr and moan around Seunghyun’s cock as you rutted your hips along the dildo, desperately searching for any kind of sweet yet agonizingly elusive relief.

But Seunghyun was very aware of your dazed actions; and truthfully, they had chipped away bit by bit at his own stoic resolve. He wasn’t desperate, no, far from it actually. Yet. The unrelenting urge to dominate you and purge every trace element of any past lover you might have had from your very soul was surging forward so suddenly and intensely that he felt as if he were practically drowning in the choppy waters of his jealousy and possessiveness. The straw that broke his own restraint happened when you inadvertently swallowed around him as you released a high, needy whine. Overcome with his need for you, he dug his fingers into your scalp and pulled your dangerously talented mouth off his cock before he reached down to curl his arms under your shoulders to yank you off the floor and onto the bed. The sudden brute force he exerted shocked you so much that you reflexively clenched down hard on the toy, causing its suction cupped bottom to rip from the floor with a loud pop!

“Fuck, that’s hot!” Seunghyun grunted as he reached down to fish the toy from your folds. A needy whine escaped your lips as he carefully pried the silicone stand-in for his dick out of you, haphazardly tossing it over his shoulder where it landed somewhere across the room. He somehow managed to produce a half-empty bottle of lube from somewhere out of your sight and reach, sloppily slicking his dick up with just enough to keep the friction you both so desperately needed to hurt. “Eyes on me,” he growled commandingly before he slid home in one long stroke. Ten seconds (he counted) elapsed before he pulled all the way out and rammed in again. The pace he set was brutal at best, ferocious at worst. You cried out something between a scream and a moan as you clung to him, wanting nothing more than to dissolve until you were a sheen of sweat clinging to his skin. He kept slamming hard into you—the sounds of slick skin slapping sharply against slicker skin echoing throughout the room and mixing with the harmonious moans being crooned by the both of you—until your walls clenched tight as your orgasm threatened to drown you in ecstasy. “P-p-please—“ you panted, eyes onto his.

“Not yet,” he groaned, pushing harder into you as he managed to slow down his pace just enough.

“Y-yes, D-daddy,” you hiccuped, willing your exhausted and overstimulated body to hold on for a little longer.

His head dipped to nuzzle in the juncture between your neck and shoulder, lips no longer drawn into a taut line but fervently littering chaste, gentle pecks across your skin. His grip over the tops of your spread thighs tightened as he forcefully dragged your hips flush with his as he snapped forward on a particularly hard thrust, punching a guttural moan up from the very depths of you he was currently so snugly buried within. He loosened his grip slightly while he allowed himself to swivel his hips in one, two, three slow circles, the movement so pronounced you could feel every single one of his veins thrumming hotly against your caving walls. You gasped as his blunt nails dug into your thighs once more before he slid almost all the way out just to snap his hips forward and swivel them. He repeated this pattern over and over, the cadence quickly becoming familiar yet still thrilling to you, until you were practically panting for him to let you finish: “Just this once, Daddy, I promise I’ll be good, so good for you for the rest of the night, for the rest of forever... P-please, Daddy, I just— God, please, I’m s-so clos—”

Seunghyun couldn’t speak, didn’t trust himself to speak. So he pulled back to look you in your eyes—pupils blown wide with lust—and shook his head once. It was a nonverbal command you immediately understood and wordlessly willed yourself to endure. You had gone this long without losing yourself to the tempting clutches of orgasmic bliss, you could go for longer if it meant satisfying the man you so deeply loved. “Y-yes, Sir,” you hummed, dragging your fingertips along his muscular arms to lock them behind his neck at the same time your hooked your ankles together around his waist, latching onto him as if he were the sole lifesaving buoy rocking steadily and steadfast in this tumultuous sea of pleasure you had all but been drowning in. “Anything for you, Daddy.”

Those words so ripe with unwavering commitment, trust, love, and loyalty so easily spoken with no hints of reluctance or regret broke him. The carefully constructed dam he erected for these scenes and had specifically reinforced it today with his jealousy, fury, insecurity, guilt, and fear came crumbling down as if each of your words were laced with a metric fuckton of C4. A low, gravelly groan rumbled through him, the vibrations radiating from his chest spread over you in a pleasant buzzing wave, as he leaned forward and hitched your hips higher onto his, the new angle allowing him to plunge deeper into your velvet-lined core with renewed vigor. The pace he set was maddening, a fierce and unrelenting barrage against the trembling doors guarding the hidden sanctuary that was your orgasm as if he were a Viking come to plumage everything you held sacred and dear. You dug your fingertips into his shoulders, the stinging bite of your nails into the sinewy muscle only spurring him on further and harder. He was desperate do give you the mind-shattering and planet-shifting climax you had so diligently earned and so rightfully deserved. You had given him everything and more; now it was his turn. It wasn't much longer until the breathy moans and frenzied pants spilling from your lips turned into incoherent babbling, the words streaming so swiftly from your parted lips that they tumbled over one another in a mixture that was something between an incantation and a prayer. Whatever it was, it had Seunghyun's heart racing as he brushed his lips against your ear: “Cum.”

The gently whispered command severed the delicate thread of restraint on which you so desperately clung. His body curving along and caressing every inch of your skin set your inner circuitry alight, all the nerve endings in your overworked body flaring up instantaneously and intensely as the brilliant blue blazes of bliss consumed your flesh whole. Your skin prickled with chills as your muscles locked your body tight in a rigid upward arch as every sense so freely surrendered to the inescapable clutches of your orgasm, the sudden surge of tidal force blinding you until you only saw white and only felt that familiar yet elusive peaceful warmth of satiation that only ever emerged when your body was entwined with his in the most intimate of knots as it was now. For that brief, climatic moment, it was as if you two existed on a narrow pinhead and any slight movement would destroy the impossible balance you both had struck and the world could come crashing down around you in shambles. All you felt, knew, heard, believed, loved, wanted, needed was him. Just him. Just Seunghyun. Only him. Always and forever just him. Him, him, him: “Just you, only you, always you, I love you, I love you, I love you, just you, you—”

The words bubbled forth from you like a babbling brook so freely that you were wholly unaware of your sudden earnest confession. But Seunghyun was wholly aware. He heard every resounding syllable, felt every erratic beat of your racing heart punctuating each space, believed each unadulterated declaration. And just like that, the scene was broken.

His shoulders drooped with the weight of his guilt and shame as he scooped you up into his arms and clutched you tight against him, not daring to do much else but rub soothing circles along your back as you rode the waves of aftershock from your intense high. He forced himself to keep his breathing even to keep from splintering the warmth and safety of your subspace as you came down. He needed to keep himself together for you, his goddess’ sake lest he lose you and himself completely. He tightened his grip on you before burrowing his head into the side of your neck, inhaling the soothing base notes of your lingering perfume to keep himself grounded.

Slowly, steadily, you descended from your peak after what seemed like an indeterminable amount of time. Being with him always had that effect on you: Time became less of a construct as it just seemed to cease existing as a whole. It could go fuck itself for all you cared because the only thing that ever mattered in moments like these was the center of your universe, the godlike man who indulged and loved you like none had ever before, the stoic beauty whom you had the pleasure of holding tight in your arms as you were solely privy to his most vulnerable and fragile yet stunningly brilliant true self. Just like now. You sighed deeply as you pulled your head back just so to gaze at him, your arms instinctually tightening around his shoulders. He was so beautiful like this, he was—

“I love you,” Seunghyun whispered.

“I love you, too,” you answered just as softly, dipping down to press a chaste kiss against his lips.

He sat upright—the movement pushing him impossibly deeper into your sensitive yet still yearning loins—as he brushed his fingertips along your cheek. “Are you okay?” he murmured, brows knitting together slightly with concern.

“I’m perfect,” you reassured him. Wait— “You’re perfect,” you corrected with a sweet smile.

Seunghyun pressed a kiss to your forehead before resting his own against yours as he swiftly undid the hooks of the leather cuffs still encircling your wrist. You hummed contentedly as he massaged the slightly reddened flesh for a few moments, fingers carefully working to ensure you regained all sensation and bloodflow returned to normal. Once he was certain you were okay—which you confirmed you were due to a series of little routine tests he always had you complete after scenes ended—he kissed you deeply, all his love and care and devotion and dedication and loyalty and adoration speaking for themselves as his lips pushed, guided, and molded against yours. You were both breathless when he finally pulled away. Reaching up, he stroked your slightly swollen bottom lip almost reverently with his thumb. “Marry me.”

—Admin Lily

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mageinabarrel · 7 years ago

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On the radiance of a certain anime.

At the end of Star Driver‘s premiere, the first closing theme, 9nine’s “CROSS OVER,” begins to play over the final moments of the episode. Takuto and Wako rest together in a giant stone hand, looking at each other. It’s the start of a crush. Wako’s stomach growls. The two teens laugh. Following on the heels of the show’s first mecha battle—lavishly animated by the perennially entertaining Yutaka Nakamura, infused with just enough feathery effect animation during the magical girl henshin-inspired stock footage, and fueled by glorious “Dazzling the Stage,” it’s a surprising moment in how it pivots from the grandeur of a giant robot underneath a rainbow sky into a much quieter, more intimate moment.

The ending sequence that follows, which serves as the show’s ending through episode 13, is magical. Fresh, warm, and (again) intimate, it serves as a model of characterization through peripheral storytelling. The sequence’s depictions of Takuto, Sugata, and Wako’s mundane after-school adventures simultaneously endear the audience to the characters and establish the closeness of their relationship—all without needing to take extra screentime during the episode proper. The repetition of this for episode after episode only serves to enhance the effect. It’s Wako’s can of soda, the summer rain, falling into the water together…

https://my.mixtape.moe/wpccxd.webm

“CROSS OVER” and the accompanying visuals are more than this, though. They are also—in tandem with the first opening—a very, very powerful statement of Star Driver‘s visual, sonic, and atmospheric aesthetic priorities. Star Driver is a well-told and well-written narrative, but it is also absurdly consistent in its aesthetic storytelling. Together, in written scene construction and visual direction and musical accompaniment, director Takuya Igarashi and scriptwriter Yoji Enokido have created a masterpiece evocation of the “summer of youth.” And while the show’s first OP and ED are, by nature, concentrated doses of this aesthetic, what is most impressive—and immersive—about Star Driver is the way it succeeds at maintaining this aesthetic code even in the midst of the world-ending adult machinations and mecha duels of its plot.

Forgive me if I’m a bit starry-eyed about this, but I was amazed. After all, this is a hope I’ve had for many anime in the past—that they would live up to the aesthetics of their opening and ending themes. Few, if any, have done it—but Star Driver does, and does so consistently throughout the entire series. I’m still agog, weeks later. It is one thing for a minute-and-a-half music video give the viewer the feeling of having been drenched in the lush tones of a passionate, gentle, and melancholic youth. It is another entirely for a 25-episode television anime to do the same alongside all of its other responsibilities. And to be clear, it’s not that Star Driver is so unique in its ability to maintain a consistent atmosphere, but that the actual show so perfectly resembles the sparkling aesthetics of its opening and ending sequences.

Obviously, the question is: How does Star Driver accomplish this?

An accidentally rhetorical question, since I’ve already given my answer: through scene construction, through visual direction, and through a gorgeous and well-used soundtrack.

The first of these—scene construction—is the most difficult to explain of the three. It would probably be easier to talk about how the setting of Star Driver, a closed system on a semi-tropical island in a perpetual summer, is a perfect choice. But I find it more interesting to consider how the way Enokido and Igarashi craft the episodes outside of the ritualized episodic beats (the shift into Zero Time, the ensuing duel, the aftermath). Consider, for example, all the times we’re shown scenes of Takuto, Sugata, and Wako eating together at Sugata’s place, or of Takuto and Sugata in the bath together with Wako talking to them from outside, or the encounters between Head and Sugata at sunset. The fireworks party. Going to karaoke. Walking on the beach under a star-studded sky. Meeting in the cafe, again and again. Eating in the school cafeteria. Or just hanging out around town after school.

There’s a recognizable coherency to all of these scenes, to the way they all fit together to illustrate the character’s lives through the tropes of a carefree high school life. They are typical high school things, shot through with that anxious sort of energy that possess the summers where you’re free, mostly, but not entirely. I have fond memories of meeting up with high school friends to play soccer at parks during the summer, and then going to get ice cream afterwards. The kind of feeling that you could stay out all day and into the night, with nothing you have to do. The repetitive, but comfortable feeling of doing the same things with the same people over and over again. Star Driver uses the common, mundane scenes of that kind of life. They form the foundation of the aesthetic.

Igarashi’s visual direction in Star Driver, then, builds off of this base—or, rather, works in conjunction with it. While I could write an essay just on how much I’ve come to like the way Igarashi’s style impacts the shows he directs (even when he only does the storyboards for a few episodes), the biggest thing that strikes me about Star Driver‘s visual personality is its use of color. Starting (but certainly not ending) with the primary colors of the main trio’s hair, Star Driver‘s color palette is delightfully bold.

Some of this is connected directly to the scene construction. Sunsets abound, and thus we get beautiful oranges (accompanied by dramatic lighting). A plethora of nighttime scenes on a tropical island mean we get the gorgeous deep blues of night, complimented by the sparkling stars. Shots during the day are often composed to highlight the rich colors in the sky and the plant life of the island. And this is to say nothing of the even more absurdly colored worlds of Zero Time, which are like the colors of the regular world in overdrive. The visual aesthetics of Zero Time sell the pattern. If Zero Time is then dramatized, metaphorized climax of the regular world’s story, then it ought to be the most visually charged as well.

Which is merely to say that the richness of the world’s color serves Star Driver‘s core aesthetic: A summer of youth, in which everything in life—love, sadness, tragedy, triumph—is vibrant, colorful, and alive.

So we come to the music, the thing that ties it all together. Star Driver‘s soundtrack is a fantastic, wondrously symphonic piece of work, a collection which grasps the sparkling essence of wonder, the comfortable rhythms of just hanging out, the grandiose explosions of mecha duels, and even the comedically theatrical mood of Kiraboshi. I’m no music critic, but even I can tell when a soundtrack is perfectly matched to a show—and the keyword is “richness.” The layers of instruments and even the sweeping scope of the overall sound all return to the same aesthetic the scenes and visuals offer.

Even as Star Driver‘s soundtrack ranges from acoustic guitars to organ solos to full-blown symphonies to dense echoing vibraphones (probably vibraphones), it maintains that core. Through sad scenes and happy scenes, dramatic scenes and mundane scenes, this remains true. No matter the variation, that same sort central feeling remains—that, even if a true “summer of youth” doesn’t always sound exactly the same, there is a lushness that ought to be there, a brightness. It’s intangible, almost impossible to explain properly. But it’s there.

I did say this was all “among other things,” right? How about our oft-maligned writer-director duo actually pulling a genuinely coherently thematic statement out of the show’s mess of character arcs, individual thematic threads, and randomly excellent throwaway life lessons? How about the sheer force of quantity of stunning animation, episode after episode? How about the the unbelievably charismatic cast—villains and heroes alike? The amazing emotional gravity of the love triangle between Takuto, Wako, and Sugata? The clever way layers to characters are slowly revealed, one by one, beneath their surface-level archetype?

All these qualities, and more, could be counted among Star Driver‘s merits. Certainly, these things were key to the enjoyment I had watched the show—and the enduring love for it I suspect I will continue to have. But, in the end, it is the way the aesthetics of Star Driver so perfectly evoke the summer of youth its first OP and ED imply that I have the most love for. To watch Star Driver is to be immersed, not just in the story, but in the feeling of its characters’ world. It is a fleeting experience that passes away after 25 episodes. But somewhere in there is a certain kind of light, a certain kind of passionate joy.

One might even call it “radiance.”

On the radiance of a certain anime. On the radiance of a certain anime.

#Aesthetics #Star Driver #Storytelling #Takuya Igarashi #Yoji Enokido

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

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Top New YA Books in February 2020

Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland

Type: Novel

Publisher: Balzer + Bray

Release date: 2/4/20

Den of Geek says: Justina Ireland's Dread Nation was a buzzy historical zombie novel with a keen awareness of racial dynamics in Civil War-era America. The sequel looks to be just as intense as the first.

Publisher's summary: The sequel to the New York Times bestselling epic Dread Nation is an unforgettable journey of revenge and salvation across a divided America.

After the fall of Summerland, Jane McKeene hoped her life would get simpler: Get out of town, stay alive, and head west to California to find her mother.

But nothing is easy when you’re a girl trained in putting down the restless dead, and a devastating loss on the road to a protected village called Nicodemus has Jane questioning everything she thought she knew about surviving in 1880s America.

What’s more, this safe haven is not what it appears—as Jane discovers when she sees familiar faces from Summerland amid this new society. Caught between mysteries and lies, the undead, and her own inner demons, Jane soon finds herself on a dark path of blood and violence that threatens to consume her.

But she won’t be in it alone.

Katherine Deveraux never expected to be allied with Jane McKeene. But after the hell she has endured, she knows friends are hard to come by—and that Jane needs her too, whether Jane wants to admit it or not.

Watching Jane’s back, however, is more than she bargained for, and when they both reach a breaking point, it’s up to Katherine to keep hope alive—even as she begins to fear that there is no happily-ever-after for girls like her.

Buy Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland

Cast Away: Poems for Our Time by Naomi Shihab Nye

Type: Poetry

Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Release date: 2/11/2020

Den of Geek says: This unique book of poetry seems perfectly suited to today's environmental and humanitarian issues. What happens to the things we throw away? What happens to the people who aren't wanted? The metaphor is rich.

Publisher's summary: Acclaimed poet and Young People’s Poet Laureate Naomi Shihab Nye shines a spotlight on the things we cast away, from plastic water bottles to those less fortunate, in this collection of more than eighty original and never-before-published poems. A deeply moving, sometimes funny, and always provocative poetry collection for all ages.

“Nye at her engaging, insightful best.”―Kirkus (starred review)

“How much have you thrown away in your lifetime already? Do you ever think about it? Where does this plethora of leavings come from? How long does it take you, even one little you, to fill the can by your desk?”―Naomi Shihab Nye

National Book Award Finalist, Young People’s Poet Laureate, and devoted trash-picker-upper Naomi Shihab Nye explores these questions and more in this original collection of poetry that features more than eighty new poems. “I couldn’t save the world, but I could pick up trash,” she says in her introduction to this stunning volume.

With poems about food wrappers, lost mittens, plastic straws, refugee children, trashy talk, the environment, connection, community, responsibility to the planet, politics, immigration, time, junk mail, trash collectors, garbage trucks, all that we carry and all that we discard, this is a rich, engaging, moving, and sometimes humorous collection for readers ages twelve to adult.

Buy Cast Away: Poems for Our Time

Rebelwing by Andrea Tang

Type: Novel

Publisher: Razorbill

Release date: 2/25/20

Den of Geek says: Robot dragons? What more to say? The fantastical war story setting and high-energy cast of characters looks like it'll make this one a good read for fans of Pacific Rim.

Publisher's summary: Things just got weird for Prudence Wu.

One minute, she's cashing in on a routine smuggling deal. The next, she's escaping enforcers on the wings of what very much appears to be a sentient cybernetic dragon.

Pru is used to life throwing her some unpleasant surprises--she goes to prep school, after all, and selling banned media across the border in a country with a ruthless corporate government obviously has its risks. But a cybernetic dragon? That's new.

She tries to forget about the fact that the only reason she's not in jail is because some sort of robot saved her, and that she's going to have to get a new side job now that enforcers are on to her. So she's not exactly thrilled when Rebelwing shows up again.

Even worse, it's become increasingly clear that the rogue machine has imprinted on her permanently, which means she'd better figure out this whole piloting-a-dragon thing--fast. Because Rebelwing just happens to be the ridiculously expensive weapon her government needs in a brewing war with its neighbor, and Pru's the only one who can fly it.

Set in a wonderfully inventive near-future Washington, D.C., this hilarious, defiant debut sparkles with wit and wisdom, deftly exploring media consumption, personal freedoms, and the weight of one life as Pru, rather reluctantly, takes to the skies.

Buy Rebelwing by Andrea Tang

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Books

Megan Crouse

Feb 11, 2020

Young Adult

from Books https://ift.tt/2w9sf9i

#aion-rsa #Books

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iandeleonwrites · 4 years ago

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“Slam Your Doors in Golden Silence”: Marxist Applications and the Democratization of Comedy in Jacques Tati’s Playtime

In 1936 Charlie Chaplin dealt the first great cinematic blow to the modern industrial age with his celebrated American classic Modern Times. In 1967 the next decisive blow was thrown by a less canonized French comic director, Jacques Tati, with his quietly incisive epic Playtime.

In the case of Chaplin, his Modern Times thrusts the beloved “Little Tramp” character in an increasingly de-humanized and alienating American workforce transitioning from the Great Depression to the pre-WWII industrial boom.

Tati, who despite not being a household name in America had been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1956 and won the Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1958, channeled the international goodwill of “Monsieur Hulot” into a subtle exploration of isolation and conformity in the rapidly globalizing postwar Western society.

Interestingly, both films also reflect the attempts by their creators to retire the immensely popular characters they had given birth to years earlier. This could account for the initial unenthusiastic reception at the domestic box office for both films, as well as their creators’ struggle to fully let the characters go. Chaplin would go on to include a Tramp-esque character in The Great Dictator (1940), while Tati would reluctantly return to Hulot one final time in Trafic (1971).

Countless parallels may be drawn between these two great clowns of international cinema, but it is also worthwhile to discuss the point at which both artists most differ. In a 1976 BBC Omnibus program pointedly titled Jacques Tati in Monsieur Hulot’s Work, the director speaks about the signature Chaplin and Tati styles in terms of “active” and “passive” comedy.

While Chaplin would often be the active instigator of a gag, usually thinking he’s had “a marvelous idea”, Tati claims that his own approach with Hulot relies on other parties misinterpreting some important element of the action, resulting in the oblivious Hulot’s genuine surprise at the conclusion of the gag. In this way, Tati’s Hulot becomes less of a classic fool and more of an everyman, struggling to understand his place amidst the ever-changing rules and expectations of modern life.

Tati’s is indeed a comedy of inclusion, of democracy, and in no film was that given greater expression than in his ambitious folly Playtime, which the director concedes “will always be my last film”. Through the embrace of the 70mm widescreen format, his eschewing of technical directorial flares, and his radical approach to narrative storytelling, Tati’s Playtime embodies a style of filmmaking that is at once celebratory and critical of the emphasis on uniformity and collectivism that came to define the postwar Capitalist system in the West and the Soviet system in the East.

In The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama wrote about the erosion of political dichotomies in the post-Cold War era and the emergence of a new, global synthesis of ideologies that found its expression in Western-style liberal democracy, the “final form of human government”.

Crafting Playtime in the midst of Cold War tensions, Jacques Tati must have come to a similar insight as to the future of the individual in the larger schema of modern society. Tati’s entirely built set of the Paris of the future is a clean, efficient and transparent cipher of international commerce. It is a world that is non-specific, infinitely translatable, and highly inflexible. In this functioning Tativille of a set, the director is able to articulate his vision of a product-driven world in which uniformity and cooperation have conversely lead to alienation and isolation.

To begin describing Playtime, we must first talk about its groundbreaking use of the high resolution, 70 mm widescreen format. Before 1967, the majority of motion pictures shot in 70mm were musicals, historical dramas, westerns, and high octane action films. While there was the occasional 70mm comedy, these films tended to use the wide format to emphasize a particularly lavish location that merited the photographing of such panoramic vistas. Never before had the format been used to such an extent in the presentation of an office building.

Tati understood the format to belong to the future, and he employed it, along with a stereophonic sound track, in the service of the viewer of tomorrow. Tati’s camera is so wide that the film has been described as one you don’t simply watch, but browse. The director himself discussed his aspirations in true egalitarian terms, stating his desire for the audience to “watch, look, appreciate the people all around you, who serve you”. Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has said that “The richness of the film is not accessible in a single viewing.” Theorist Noel Burch takes this a step further arguing that Playtime is “the first film in the history of cinema that not only must be seen several times, but from several different distances”.

On the topic of distances, Tati felt quite strongly that the question of cinematic focal lengths was a crucial part of his democratic plan for comedy. The film rarely tells the audience where in the frame to look. At times, sound cues, employing the sophisticated directionality of stereo systems, are used in place of camera work to direct the viewer’s attention. But generally, the film allows viewers to look about the frame wheresoever they please, with no wrong answers, no correct thread to follow.

“I don’t do close ups or tracking shots to show you what a good director I am.” Indeed, there is a plethora of evidence to suggest that Tati deplored the use of close ups, finding them garish. Playtime itself provides many examples of this negation. But his decision to use primarily wide frame compositions has as much to do with the democratization of the frame as it does with challenging the concept of the individual.

As mentioned before, by this time in Tati’s career, he was looking to distance himself from the character of Hulot, which had become an international celebrity. Portrayed by Tati, the character of Hulot would thus be relegated to the margins of the narrative, and often to the margins of the frame itself in order for the film to approach a more authentic representation of the everyman comedian. “What I am trying to do is defend the people [...] look at them long enough, and anyone is funny.”

Actually, the majority of the people within Playtime’s frames are non-actors/non-comedians, There are even more than a few cardboard cutouts as stand ins for the fully articulated human automatons of the business office and the trade show. Occasionally, Tati even finds ways of broadening the authenticity of his comedic situations by letting an extra be themselves. In other words, a businessman plays a businessman, a group of American Army wives play hokey tourists, and a carpenter plays the carpenter. For Tati, these true-to-life congruences provided countless comedic possibilities, imbuing the film with the sense of “naturalism” he so desired.

The film is also a pioneer in the free-flowing ways it plays with the accepted narrative conventions of its day. In terms of plot, there is barely one to speak of, with film historian Philip Kemp offering his own abstract interpretation, “[it’s about] how the curve comes to reassert itself over the straight line”. This geometric distillation of the plot goes a long way to describing the film’s relationship to architecture and its impositions.

During the film’s first section, the characters are all victims of the tyranny of the architect. For all its postulation of simplicity, openness, and transparency, the film focuses on the ways in which Modernist architecture can also alienate, obfuscate, and isolate. Walking in the proscribed method of straight lines and sharp right angles, the characters in this first part of the film are governed by the layout of the architecture. All of that glass, concrete, and steel, rather than liberating the masses, has created an environment that feels impenetrable and immutable. To use a late twentieth century term, this design is not user friendly.

Prisoners within this labyrinth of reflective surfaces, Hulot and the others spend a great deal of time dealing with missed connections and mis-recognitions. A seemingly infinite number of mirror images (or doppelgangers) and deceptive spatial relationships cause more than a few violent collisions with the architecture. Indeed, the motif of birds, prone to flying into such Modernist sky traps, is repeated several times throughout the film, not the least of which is the visual gag that ends with Hulot crashing into the glass entrance door of the Royal Garden nightclub.

It is this nightclub/restaurant set piece that concerns the greater part of the film’s final section. While noticeably smaller in scale to the previous sets, the level of complex choreography present within these scenes has prompted Rosenbaum to call it “the most formidable example of mise-en-scene in the history of cinema”. Here is when the straight lines start to become curved, when the people begin to strike back against the tyranny of over-design.

In fact, one of the principal characters in this section is the architect of the restaurant himself, who in the diegesis of the film is on hand to troubleshoot any last minute problems during the club’s grand opening. As it will turn out, the poorly designed restaurant will prove entirely inadequate for the needs of its waitstaff and its guests. Improvising on the fly, the workers and patrons of this establishment begin to find ways to circumvent the failings of the design by performing an escalating number of tweaks and modifications to suit their needs, a near-literal invocation of Marx’s “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” To return to the technological metaphors of the present, the restaurant undergoes a transformation from a proprietary system to an open-sourced one.

Hulot, the consummate klutz, manages, during an act of kindness, to bring down a large section of the restaurant’s interior facade, causing a chain reaction that ends with the restaurant’s total transformation from a chic nightclub to a classic Parisian cafe. Hulot is sarcastically dubbed the venue’s new architect, and with the pretentious illusions of the restaurant’s designers shattered, the location is able to play host to a vastly more colorful and diverse cast of characters from the city streets. The old world of Tati’s memories making a tiny encroachment into modern society’s relentless drive towards alienation and stratification.

By the last shots of the film, the characters who we’ve come to follow literally become circular in their patterns of behaviour as the day begins anew with a vast, crawling traffic jam swirling endlessly around a rotary as a carnivalesque theme takes over the musical score, cementing the necessity of play in the great, turbulent carousel of life. In his own way, Tati has been able to take his meticulously constructed faux reproduction of a Parisian financial district and couch it with such an honest sense of realism and refusal of sensationalism that Truffaut felt compelled to describe it as “a film that comes from another planet, where they make films differently”.

True to its name, the film is an invitation to the audience, to discover, but also to create. “After you see the picture two or three times, it stops to be my film, and it starts to be your film.” With its immense depth, monumental scale, and plurality of protagonists, the presentation of Playtime in its original widescreen format represents a high point in emancipatory filmmaking. By ceeding the control of the linear narrative over to the filmgoer, Tati has succeeded in creating a galvanizing experience in which “the movie starts when you leave the cinema”.

- Ian Deleón Summer ‘19

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