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organic-guacamole · 3 years ago

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episode 210 here we go

awww seb doing the intro

congratulations to milky white and her baby chocolate milk😌

seb is so funny

but seriously, clean up that milk fast or else it will smell so bad in there....

was that Lauryn just randomly doing cartwheels? idk any theatre kids irl but that seems like it's a common thing...

is it just me or has ms Jenn been getting more harsh to Ricky and Seb mainly-

like what did they do to her

no because I actually snorted with laughter at the "you came back" WHAT IS THAT VOICE-

AND THE MASK OMG

yeah so my throat hurts now

I'm dying over here

KOURTNEY'S FACE

SAME GIRL SAME

Ricky's fake death got the whole place in tears /s

he looks like an asthmatic walrus

Seb's on piano, I love

we all know if he was the beast we'd all actually be crying✋

ok but I listen to Julia's version of home on Spotify when I want to cry-

right so gimme a second

is Ricky scratching his face.....while he's dying?

"belle i-" *flop*

round of applause to Ashlyn for trying to make Ricky's earthworm seizure look less.... yknow

Kourtney's just dying there

WAIT IS THAT NATALIE

did she really just disappear for 9 episodes just to come back and stare dramatically into the camera

WAIT SCRATCH THAT SHES HERE TO MURDER ASHLYN AND RICKY

oh so Ricky's wearing a gay shirt now too

so that's the real reason why Rini broke up, see y'all next season when Gini and caswen become canon /j

wait that was a long intro scene-

what was that look Carlos-

TALK TO MY BOY OR ELSE

carlos' run is so funny to me

therapist Ashlyn to the rescue

"that is...super" son you good?

ms Jenn call Benjamin, he would willingly put his loved ones on a rocket and blast them into Venus for you....

maybe

"I don't want you kids to be disappointed" girl you do realise you're the one that's most invested in this?

"a smooth opening night" wasn't there just 1 show though-

like their opening night was closing night too

"I think I was Troy at one point" PLEASE THATS THE MOST ACCURATE DESCRIPTION OF THE SEASON 1 FINALE

me Jenn looks like a serial killer during that clap and I'm lowkey scared for zacky

"I have notes"

oo if you're taking suggestions, lemme get my list

"mother is freaking out" uhhhhhh

right....'mother"

"is everyone sitting down?"

*looks around awkwardly*

*big red slowly sits*

"no..."

please seb was the only one sitting-

does that mean Carlos looked at Seb as soon as he walked in and assumed that everyone else was sitting too or am I a seblos clown🤡

"is this about the transformation"

WOW MAYBE OT IS RICKY

WOW HES A DETECTIVE FOR FIGURING THAT OUT SO QUICK🤩

YO WHY IS NATALIE HERE-

she just shows up when it's convenient? is she gonna be at the sleepover too?

Seb's heavy swallow after Carlos shouts at him makes me so sad

"I never learned how to lie but I figure if I keep my mouth closed, I can't tell the truth" *nods and smiles at Nini when she asks*

why are they casually standing up all over the pizza shop, just sit at a big table and talk instead of blocking passageways and blocking off at least 6 tables-

"how about I invite myself" WHY DO PEOPLE ALWAYS FEEL THE NEED TO INVITE THEMSELVES TO ASHLYN'S HOUSE-

YOU CAN ASK BUT JUST FORCE YOUR WAY IN?

so Cash Caswell has a bigger house than... Dennis Caswell.... who would've thought

ah yes there's the good old EJ 1.0

Nini: "boys vs girls"

Gina: *looks devastated and glances longingly at EJ*

way to be inconspicuous

"but north high should be" *cracks her knuckles in the most uncomfortable way*

good for Ashlyn for getting more confident though

oo bossy big red

"i get bossy around the power tools"

is that why Ashlyn was holding up the drill in episode 8 orrrr 🤠

Lily, leave him alone please

she's literally not blinking, is that what makes her creepy?

the diss at big red and his face afterwards is priceless

isn't that similar to what Gina's mom said to her in season 1? hmmmm

but seriously please don't try to redeem lily, let us have a character to hate, or to love because they're evil.

not everyone's a good guy.

"im not liked here and I don't know what to do"

let antoine finish his salad and it'll fix everything

"hug emoji" *gags*

y'all realize Lily's literally 14?

why is she calling a 16/17 year old from another school for personal advice-

"he gets weird around tools"

I shouldn't be laughing so hard

"deja vu maybe?" awkward silence

I'm dying here I love EJ so so so so much

"where's seb"

*cuts to seb being held hostage hoping that they'd notice he's missing and go look for him*

"don't ask"

"oh ok"

"100% real faux fur" as you should queen

sponsored by target

Kourtney is singlehandedly saving the entire show.

Seb making finger guns make me happier than it should

why is this kinda making me want to have a co-ed sleepover with my non-existent theatre friends

YES YOU DO NEED TO TALK/SING TO SEB CARLOS THANK YOU FOR KNOWING THAT

wait what-

you haven't talked to him all WEEK-

Carlos are you stupid /hj

Benjamin is so adorable I can't

he turned around to come back for her instead of going home. you're "what do you want Jenn🙄X act isn't fooling anyone Benjamin 🙃

10101

1+4+16= 21st?

they placed 21st?

or do I just not remember how to convert to base ten

GIRL DON'T BE RUDE TO HIM, HE'S GONNA SAVE YALL

no ms Jenn, the kids are not eccentric 35 year olds.

aww sebby

is he thinking that Carlos is only with him cuz he's the only other openly gay guy at school-

son you are a perfect little bean don't put yourself down

yes they all ship portwell as they should.

they'll be throwing risotto at the wedding.

not the chocolates. stop there are no chocolates. please stop I'm dying.

Gina you don't have to explain yourself to her

it was a misunderstanding and it's in the past

why is Ashlyn still laughing-

exactly it wasn't a big deal please just move on Nini

Kourtney really be out here saving everything

WHY IS ASHLYN STILL LAUGHING

why do I feel like when Gina finally told Ash about it, she didn't think it was that funny but wanted to feel included in the inside joke so now she brings it up randomly to show that she's in on it....I totally don't do that...

"idk, the farmer type" oh son...

Ashlyn and big red are just spilling the secrets back and forth huh?

OOO EJ AND GINA SITTING IN A TREE K-I-S-S-I-

cmon guys don't look at me like that-

"she is the best" and "we're buddies" don't sound right together

"pretty boy" "sweet boy" best ways to describe EJ

I love him.

and aw he's scared of rejection so he'll hold back just to keep her happy and not awkward how sweet

is Ricky wondering if letting her go(literally his song from last episode) was the best thing he did for Nini because he doesn't feel like it now? hmmm this is getting good

why is everyone so invested in Kourtney and Howie's relationship

PACK UP THE LAZY RICKY THING

oh yes Benji, that's exactly what she's doing

she couldn't follow her dream or whatever so now she's using the kids to gain some of the success she craves. why else would she have that massive hsm poster with her name on it in huge letters in her office.

just casually grab his hand with both your hands and stare at him creepily 🥰

ship jennzzara y'all

the first bump was a missed opportunity to do the baymax "falalala" as a reference to the fact that they watched big hero six while committing arson✋

wait so big red and EJ just left Ricky in the basement and now Ricky invited Carlos when they're supposed to be at the stage?

help no Ricky looks like he's about to tell Carlos he likes him (I know it's about writing the song for seb but still, look at his body language and tell me it doesn't look like that)

Ricky is so mature about this, he really just wants Nini to be happy even though he's hurting-

baby you deserve love, maybe Nini isn't the one for you but don't say you don't deserve it

why does he keep adding bro to the end like he doesn't know how to address Carlos

PLEASE CARLOS HAVING TO ADDRESS THE BRO THING

"let's write a song when we have like 45 minutes to get to the place and help our friends possibly win $50000 at the show in 2 weeks"

"can you hit a high C?"

"that's like the bottom of my range"

why am I laughing

this is so cool to see friendship interactions that we don't normally get to see

Nini why are you being like this-

Gina did nothing wrong??

I saw that, EJ and Gina being the only ones going in the same direction👀

right so obviously Kourtney's waiting until after the menkies to get back with Howie just in case he really is just using her as a way in to east high... obviously... right?

CARLOS

OK ITS COMING GET READY YALL

Why is portwell so awkward all of a sudden

OMG EJ

OMG GINA SAY YES or not, do what you want.

the way she doubts that EJ would genuinely ask so she has to make sure it's not Ashlyn behind it

THE "NOT THAT I KNOW OF"

LIKE WHAT GINA SAID TO JACK ABOUT EJ BEING HER BOYFRIEND

GUYS THEY'RE SOULMATES

I want risotto now please

THEY'RE SO SWEET AND ADORABLY AWKWARD ITS LIKEEK LITTLE KIDS

OOOOOOO what is this place that seblos is in, looks fancy....and secluded

oh wait no Ricky's just standing there

wait is it the bomb shelter

it looks so good what

HSKAGSJAGAJAGWISGSKAUASBWKSVAIWBAISBQKSHIQBWOABWOABDOQBZIQBAIAQBSIWBQISVQKSIANSGOQBSAISBKASBKWBAIABQOSBBSJAHAJAVAJSBAJHSKAHSJAHAJAJAAJAHHHHHHHH

@youranxiousnerd ARE YOU OK?

CUZ IM NOT OK

LOOK AT SEBBY'S FACE

LOOK AT HOW ADORABLE IT IS

THE LYRICS ARE KILLING ME

SEBLOS IS KILLING ME

I AM DEAD

PLEASE SEND HELP

I like to imagine that Frankie and Joe practiced this in their apartment and just had a blast with it.

or maybe that Frankie practiced in secret like what Joe did for the climb

OH THE SUITS

THATS WHERE THAT CLIP IN THE PROMO WAS FROM

AWWW SEBBY'S SO CUTE

HE'S A LITTLE MARSHMALLOW

they're still so awkward with the dance I cant

let's appreciate Frankie's voice though

this episode really was made just for the seblos and portwell stans and you gotta love it

BIG RED GET OUT

WHY DOES HE ALWAYS DO THIS

Seb's little "yeah" IS ADORABLE

you can't tell me that wouldn't have been the best time for them to say I love you....IF FREAKIN BIG RED WASN'T THERE

ok but wait Ricky needs more hugs like that, look at his face

the boy needs love

"bro" please don't let Ricky and Carlos go back to not talking because their friendship is amazing

EJ laughing at Ricky sounding like a cat coughing up a furball is so funny to me

RICKY'S FLOP GETS ME EVERYTIME

I knew it was too good to be true

ok so Ricky's dead, next in line please

this episode was so short but I love it so much. this is what I signed up for for season 2✋

#hsmtmts #hsmtmts s2 #hsmtmts season 2 #ej caswell #ricky bowen #gina porter #hsmtmts spoilers #seblos #seb mathew smith #carlos rodriguez #big red #ashlyn caswell #kourtney greene #lily hsmtmts #ms jenn #mr mazzara #natalie bagley #guac's episode text blocks :)

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notachair · 3 years ago

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The role of Mobius and reflections of the viewer

Okay so I’ve had this bastard in my draft for forever but since there’s just a few hours left before the Loki series releases I’ve just tried to make this mess of a post a little *less* of a mess just to have the thoughts out there. Since from almost the beginning I had this thought, and I’ve seen others post similar ideas touching upon it since. Also excuse me for all the "we"'s cause that's an assumption I shouldn't make about all. I have no idea what's gonna happen, but here is me trying to explain why I’ve felt uncomfortable about Mobius’ character. Here we go---

Ok so. You know how:

1. Mobius have been referred to as Loki’s biggest fan?

And

2. Mobius is apparently the all-knower of all things Loki?

Also

3. The Loki promos (as far as I watched them and what I’ve gathered from the ones who *have* watched all the promos) seems to be taking TVA’s perspective?

Well, what came to mind is all of this...

That fanfic trope

You know how we in fics often times have other characters learn some about Loki’s past either through actually talking to Loki, by connecting some dots or through a vision, time travel or literally seeing a movie of his life? How we write and read these things cause we see how there are so many things unaddressed and we want the character who’s been so utterly villified (not an excuse for their actions but a commentary about how the hero/villain coding have affected the treatment of the character both in-universe and by the audience/fandom) to be *seen* in their complexity, and have things questioned and not just buy into the coding in the narrative.

We want to explore how in-universe characters would react if they had all that information they’ve been clueless to. It’s one of the reasons at least I assume. Personally I’ve been waiting for someone, just someone that knows or knows of it. Perhaps Thor could bring it up and they could finally have a proper conversation about things that have been mostly brushed over. But there has been no one. Not even one he could truly talk to. Not even one person asking “what happened?”. Personally that’s something I’ve been desiring, and a character with a role like this has been a big trope within the Loki fandom for good reason. Like how do you move forward with the character making meaningful bonds with people and tackling A1 Loki's current issues without *tackling* the past?

We’ve kept seeing Loki being described and moralized through the lenses of someone else. Not through himself (or themself/herself) without the coding taking the side. Someone being able to see these things like as if a movie, is not something in-universe characters have the ability to do. Really that’s the viewers main ability, and here we have a series and a character who’s conviniently been given that ability and power. I feel like that’s the role they’re putting Mobius in. An in-universe character, outside of the Asgardian drama family, who’s very easily gotten access to the same things as us and even more.

The key of this sentence is *more*. Cause that means he’s someone who more or less *knows* all there is to know, he knows more than any other character in the mcu and the audience. And therefore as the Loki-knower, he’ll have the most credibility in his claims. So when we see this character who claims to have studied most of Loki’s life… we see him reacting in ways unexpected and claim things that contradicts what we’ve gathered from people’s hours of dissect and analysis… the negative weight of so many of the interactions I have personally seen... It’s worrying. Since the trailers so far is coloured by Mobius’ lens, this is what the viewer sees, through the coloured lens. He may not feel included to be kind, but marvel should know how the use of that lens is gonna affect people’s views on Loki. It personally feels like I’m being put in my place like «Oh silly, you don’t know Loki as much as you think you do. Mobius is their biggest fan and the all-knower of all things Loki, and he says you’re wrong in your assesment! Loki is really just some shit, even if he’s smart!»

Mobius (/TVA) and Loki

Obviously as humans (?) they won’t feel inclined to be friendly to Loki. Does Mobius think it’s the right way to treat Loki to manipulate him into doing what they/he wants through goading and other means? I don’t believe Loki will feel too inclined to willingly work with people who sees him as untrustworthy, violates and threatens to kill him (deletion, does TVA have the power to like, throw that variant’s paper in the trash and *delete* him from existence that way? I also thought they were earth’s protectors?). But ye I haven’t liked how he’s (and TVA obviously) treated Loki so far and he better change if they’re really supposed to become buddy-cop friends as they say. And referring to him as "the biggest fan" makes one expect more positive takes than the demeaning vibes I had gotten. Their relationship arc was described as «a love story» so that gotta mean they’ll get quite well along in the end won’t they? Btw… they really gotta find other ways to describe those sort of arcs when it’s not actually gonna involve romance…

Also, when I say I don’t like how Mobius talks about Loki, this is not as a “oh no don’t talk bad about my innocent baby;-;-;” and I shouldn’t have to say that. I’m asking for some nuance, something they have afforded others before, but never really seem to allow properly for Loki. I’m asking for the context of the situations to be acknowledged. I mean since the series is gonna take an exploration of self identity and all that, and how they’ve literally been shown to watch moments from Loki’s past (and future in a different time line) and all those papers that had to be signed? I’d expect the past to be addressed in one way in another, and I’m not gonna be happy if context is just fully ignored.

And just a few more thoughts. You know how those papers were everything Loki had ever said? And how that didn’t include what others said or did? I’m wondering in what way Mobius studied most of Loki’s life. Like with both the papers and the Loki cinema, it’s not like he’s actually privy to Loki’s thoughts and motivations? And if Loki didn’t really have any friends or others he felt he could confide in, then :/// to that perspective. Also, do you think Loki’s life is the longest he’s ever had to review before? How long did that take him to view/read *most* of Loki’s life?Even if the TVA is a place out of time, it must have taken him forever! Perhaps it pissed him off so much he idk skipped from the beginning to the most recent stuff.

Apparently the series is gonna be a little bit of a mix between things, and I read a review saying the lense is more neutral? But… yea not trusting some random reviewer.

THIS POST IS A MESS AND I KNOW THAT. BUT I HAD TO GET IT OUT NOW SINCE I’LL SLEEP THROUGH THE RELEASE AND THIS HAS BEEN IN MY DRAFTS FOR MONTHS AND I JUST NEEDED TO GET IT OUT. If you read this far, many kudos to you!

#my rambles #loki series #loki series speculation #loki series apprehension #long post

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heelwriting · 4 years ago

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Prompt: Argument leading to kiss

Fandom: Wrestling, WWE

Pairing: Adam Cole x Reader

Warnings: None

Genre: Fluff

Word Count: 891

Masterlist | Buy Me coffee

Requested by @your-darkdiva

Working in NXT had been a blast, from day one everything was great, I loved my job as an interviewer, I had a lot of fun doing it, there was only one problem with my job, Adam Cole, he seemed to think he owned the place, and just because he was the NXT champion for a whole year it didn’t meant he could be so rude.

I knew he was only mean to me, I never saw him get worked up with anyone else, it seemed like I was too much for him, maybe we were the same because I couldn’t stand him.

The Undisputed Era even had a white board with the number of days we went without an argument, the record was two whole days and I’m proud of it, I probably still have my nails marked on the palm of my hand from refraining of yelling at him.

When I saw him arrive to the tapings I was going through my notes trying to memorize the questions, the last card had his name on it and it was the last on line because I hated every interview with him, and because of course he was the main event and I would have to interview him after winning.

It had been the same routine for the last year, I feel like his ego it’s three times the size it was last year.

His matches were spectacular there was no doubt about that, I loved seeing him in the ring, not that I would admit it to his face but, he was a total star and no matter how I felt personally about him, he was the perfect superstar.

Adam finally arrived, fashionably late to the interview, it didn’t surprise me, he had a big grin on his face, I made the effort not to roll my eyes, and he smiled even more, I tried my best at interviewing him but he took control of everything undermining my role once again, his promo almost centered around me, how ‘people like me didn’t appreciate his greatness’.

Half way though I stopped listening, I really didn’t care for what he talked but at least he looked pretty doing it, so there was that.

After the interview was over he stayed, everyone walked away but he kept looking at me and i tried to ignore him.

“You know, if you were any good at your job maybe I’d let you talk”

His voice as poisonous as could be, I had to stop myself from slapping his smile off his face, I turned to face him with crossed arms, he really brought the worst in me.

“They hired me because they need someone to put your feet on the ground again”

I said with disdain in my voice, Adam crossed his arms and smiled ironically.

“How cute, if you were in my position you would do the exact same thing”

He says with confidence, I huffed.

“No, because unlike you, I'm not an asshole"

I said while I pointed at him, he raised his eyebrows and put a hand over his chest, faking being offended by my comments.

"Oh I'm the asshole? You are supposed to make me look good in interviews but all you know how to do is stand there and look pretty"

His voice turning to resentment as he talked, he took a step closer.

"You’re the one who looks pretty in the ring and lets his boys take the bumps for him, you should learn to keep your mouth shut more often, maybe I'd even like you"

I said as I took another step towards him.

"If you weren't such a martyr maybe I would have asked you out by now"

He was getting closer to my face, the movement of his hands and his voice were all filled anger, I was surprised by his statement but I didn’t let it faze me.

"In your dreams Cole"

I spat out with disgust, I had enough of this conversation and frankly, I had enough of him in general, I turned my feet around and started walking.

"Are you scared you would like me?"

He says as a threat, I stop walking and turn around to look him in the eyes, his baby blue eyes, the only thing I liked about him, but I was too mad at him to even think.

"You can't ha..."

He interrupted what I was saying by shuting me up with a kiss, passionate, teeth clashing kind of kiss, my hands went to his hair, pulling it a little causing Adam to gasp into the kiss, in response he bit my bottom lip like, he was searching up for blood, he pushed his hips towards mine until I was completely pressed between the wall and his sweaty body.

His tongue made a lot of convincing statements... when he wasn't talking.

We separated gasping for air, his chest raising up and down like he had a match again.

"Maybe you're not that bad after all"

He says touching his lip with his thumb as he started to back off.

"Are you gonna stop being such a jackass?"

I raise my voice as he was getting farther away.

"Don’t get your hopes up, but maybe if you give me more of those…"

He said winking.

"I'll think about it"

Originally posted on October 5, 2020

#adam cole #adam cole imagine #adam cole fanfic #adam cole one shot #nxt imagine #wwe imagine #undisputed era #nxt #writing

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x--daughters-of-darkness--x · 4 years ago

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Amy Lee Dives Into the Tragedies That Inspired Evanescence’s ‘The Bitter Truth’ — Exclusive Interview

Congrats on the release of The Bitter Truth — how are you feeling?

Thank you, I'm feeling so happy that it's out. It's hard to really sum it up — awesome feelings of satisfaction. I'm really happy that it's out there and everybody's listening to it, it's cool to see the fans react to it and dig into it. We're going to be releasing our video for "Better Without You" (which came out on April 16), I'm so excited about the video!

So we're in a good, happy place right now. Looking forward to when we can be together again, for sure.

Obviously this wasn't your first record, but is the first new, original material you guys have put out in about a decade. Do you still find it nerve-wracking when you release new music, especially when fans have been waiting awhile for something new?

(Laughs) Well, I don't find it nerve-wracking as far as anticipating a reaction, I'm mostly just excited for that. It's just getting back into the groove of doing a lot of press and promo, and running around. And it's different nowadays with the pandemic because it's like, "Do your own lighting! Do your own audio! Do your own everything," and like, make it work from home most of the time.

So it's been a lot of work, but when you're working for something that you really love, it's worth it. I mean, it's fun. So I'm feeling good.

Have you seen any fan theories about any of the songs come up at all, and were any of them accurate?

That's a good question. I can't think of something off the top of my brain like that. I don't know, I feel like mostly they're just getting it. But you ask me whatever you want, and I will answer to the best of my comfort zone (laughs).

How did all of the personal tragedies that the band went through, and all of the events that have been happening in the world impact this album?

Those two things are literally the biggest lyrical catalyst for this time and for this album, particularly the grief. That's what started the whole thing. We started writing this album, focused on it, in 2019, at the beginning of the year. And I'm so glad we did, we had a bunch of writing sessions throughout 2019 in between touring, we'd just get together when we could and write. I was writing on my own, but just setting aside time as a band to write.

I lost my brother in 2018 at the beginning of the year, so that was just a really, impossibly hard life change. So I think I've learned, yet again, that the biggest challenges and the biggest pains in my life are usually what lead me to music, and it's hard to admit this, but what tend to make the best work for me. Not just grief, but challenges — things that are hard.

And the whole world has been going through incredible challenges over the last year, the last couple of years actually with everything going on, the pandemic and the fight for democracy in the world. All of that came at the right time, where I was coming out of grief. I'm still living in it, but processing it, and then this fire and this fight became a part of it. So the journey through all of that, that is the majority of what the album's about.

You kind of hit the nail on the head there because I was going to ask if you think that the best art seems like it comes out of a place of sadness and pain, since it is so cathartic for artists. And as you've called it — it's "writing to heal." So do you find yourself gravitating toward music that is more emotional?

You know, I don't even know if I can say it's "the best," but it's the deepest. It's the most meaningful. You have to go through something to have something to say that is going to touch somebody on a deep level. And for me personally, music has always been my therapy, my catharsis, the place to pour it out and spin it into something good that I can love and reflect on.

Instead of running away from all of the hard things in life, if I dive into them through music and really start pouring it out and processing there, it's like you're able to make it worth something. It wasn't just all a waste, because I have seen, over the last 17 years, with interacting with our fans how much that it can mean to them and help them connect and process and be something good in their lives.

Knowing that now, too, was something that pushed me forward in the times when I felt like it was too hard. Knowing that we were all going through something and our fans were down too and hoping for something, we promised we were gonna come out with a new album in 2020. We just all kind of made a pact at the beginning of the year when everything started getting shut down that we weren't gonna let anything stop us.

So how was your experience writing this album versus others in the past, and how do you think you've grown as a songwriter and a musician this time around?

We had to be brave. And you know, I have to say, it's weird to connect it to this, but Synthesis taught us something about being brave and trusting that something would work that we'd never tried before and just going for it.

I have always been the person who over prepares, practices for way too long before we get together, has everything totally run through when we're gonna play a concert that we've done before a lot of times. And I have broken from that routine so much in the past years.

Synthesis was important for us because we had to trust every day, the only way to do it was to work with a different orchestra every night. Having a different group of musicians onstage every single night was the only way to make that happen. You don't have time to have rehearsed the whole entire set with that group that day, and then play that whole concert that night, it's just not possible.

So we were literally playing the majority of our sets on that tour for the very first time with that group of musicians — without a click and everything else — just live in front of the audience. It was literally like a tightrope, like there's no way to know if something's gonna go horribly wrong, and we just had to trust that we were gonna be good enough musicians and performers to handle it and look at each other, and work through it and get to the next place.

Man, it was so satisfying, it was such a good experience, and it was so beautiful and rewarding. Part of the takeaway from that for me was to be confident and not to be afraid, and just to trust that we've got it in us to do what it is that we think we can do, that we dream of.

This year, going into it, we just started breaking rules. Before the pandemic even hit it was like, 'We don't have the whole album written. We just have a few songs and a whole bunch of pieces. We're not going on tour 'til March." That actually didn't happen, but we weren't planning to go on tour until last March (laughs).

Why don't we hit the studio for just a couple of songs and avoid burn out of having to have all of the songs before we go in, "Let's just go in for a couple of songs." It went really well, it turned into four and then we had to be apart for the rest of the album.

It was another one of those moments where it's like, "Okay, we can either have faith and just say 'Fuck it, I don't know what's gonna happen with the pandemic or when we're ever gonna be able to go back and get together again in person. But I have faith that we're gonna find a way to work it out no matter what. So let's go ahead and start putting singles out.'"

It was either that or just wait and go, "Sorry everybody, I know we said we were gonna release music, but we're not going to." I didn't want to be another disappointment. There was so much of it last year, I wanted to be something that was proof that life could go on.

So the decision was just like, "Okay, we're gonna go ahead. We're gonna put out 'Wasted On You' and make a video from home, and then release another one in a couple of months." And it wasn't just about not knowing when we were gonna get back together, it was that the songs weren't written, and for me, that's terrifying. Like, before the songs are written, we're already on a promo schedule and talking about the album, releasing songs already and like, the clock is ticking in a way.

That was a lot of pressure to put on ourselves, but it really was just like, "We're just gonna have to have faith in this. I know we can do it somehow. We always do. In the end it works out, it's gonna work out!" And thank god it did, we finally got to get together, most of us, last end-of-July. Jen [Majura, guitarist], we still haven't seen since those first four songs right before the pandemic lockdown.

That's wild. I mean, it's out now, and it seems like it came just at the turning point in all of this with the vaccine and everything. Everybody's starting to get back on their feet.

Yeah, I think it's working out honestly. Because now, it's just come out and we can at least see the light at the end of the tunnel. Like you said, with the vaccines and stuff and getting back and eventually going on tour. Because the next thing that we're all just looking towards and dying for, is to play these songs live.

Absolutely. How do you think that these songs might translate live differently from anything you guys have done in the past?

It's just going to feel really good to have new material to play live, like so much of it. Because for so long, we've been playing shows a lot over the past, I don't know how many years, during this time that we haven't been putting out new music. So our live show has really just been about picking out hits and our favorites and whatever, and making set lists out of our music that's been there.

We finally have something that represents us now that isn't, there were a couple of songs on Synthesis, but literally since like 2011. We're a new band since then, a lot happened since then. So to put something out now that feels so exactly in tune with who we are, what our tastes are, what our abilities are, is just gonna feel really good. It's gonna be hard to play the old ones, honestly.

So let's dive into the album a little bit. Starting with the opener, I'm not sure if there's an actual significance to this or not, but is there a reason "Artifact" and "The Turn" are split into different parts?

They're different songs in my head, it was kind of a decision about the first bit, the second bit and "Broken Pieces Shine," like where the track markers were gonna go. And that was a tough choice for me because I know the majority of people aren't really listening in order on a CD, a lot of people are just plucking out a song.

So I want you to be able to click to "Broken Pieces Shine" and just hear the song, but it so needs that build-up, that's part of it in my mind. So it really was just a decision about clipping it.

The first part — "Artifact" — that's me in a hotel in the middle of the night on tour in 2019, just recording into my laptop. I just had an idea. We actually kept it and didn't re-record it, which was really weird, and I didn't expect to happen. But it just made sense in the end.

That next portion — "The Turn" — that's a collaboration between Scott Kirkland from the Crystal Method and myself. We just sorta met on tour one day and made friends, and decided, "Hey, send me stuff! I'd love to work with you, okay I'd love to work with you." And he sent me a bunch of stuff, and I sent him stuff. He had that bit of music sort of, and I rearranged it and wrote vocals to it and that turned into that part.

I knew early on that I wanted that into "Broken Pieces Shine" to be the beginning of the album because of the way the lyrics set it up. The first part, "Artifact," lyrically is just a dedication to my brother. I'm just gonna put it that simply — it's a dedication to my brother.

And then when "The Turn" starts, it's sort of just like this calling-us-back, like calling all of the spiritual forces in the universe back to ourselves and collecting all the pieces of who we've been, who we were, who we are and who we're gonna be.

After all this time that we haven't been out, it's like we need to just build into the moment where you finally hear the guitars come in. So that's part of it.

And then when "Broken Pieces Shine" happens... I've always sort of seen this album, the moment, like where it begins and what it's about, is it begins sort of at ground zero of a tragedy. The result of the album is about the journey getting back up.

So when I hear those guitars, and the first line starts, "There's no way back this time / What is real and what is mine / Survival hurts," it's like I see somebody face-down on the ground standing back up again and dusting off, clawing back up and then starting to walk forward and refuse to just lay there and die.

So that's the setup to the beginning of the album, and then the rest is plenty of ups-and-downs, and it's about plenty of things. But that's the beginning of the journey.

"The bitter truth" is a line that's repeated a couple of times throughout "Wasted on You." How did you go about choosing that as the title for the album, as opposed to any other phrase that's repeated throughout the album?

I think it really sums up a theme that we come back to a lot on the album, which is about facing the pain. The only way out is through, not just the pain, but facing the broken pieces, facing the things about ourselves and about our society that aren't perfect, that are flawed, that are broken or that are wounded.

Because we can't heal, we can't improve, we can't change, we can't grow and we can't ever leave the horror of the moment until we first accept the brokenness of ourselves. Until we accept that something's wrong, we can't fix it.

That song, "Wasted on You," that was one of the first ones that was really finished, and it was time to pick the album title and we were still writing songs. But it was already forming and I was like, "This sums up what we're talking about now and what we're going through in a really big way on an outward-in, inward level."

Based on the lyrics in "Wasted on You," do you consider yourself someone who has a hard time getting over things and moving on from things? What advice can you give to people who do struggle to move on from either failed relationships or a loss?

It's hard, because sometimes you're in a relationship that you just need to cut out of your life in order to move on. It's just true. It doesn't make you a bad person for you to just step completely away and cut somebody out of your life, and there are times I've had to do that. It sucks.

But you don't need to feel guilty about it if you're making a choice that's for health and stability and all of those things. But I think that we don't always have to do it that way either, and I do also think it's important to remember it's important not to just stuff stuff down like it never happened deep within yourself. I feel like it's better to hold onto your memories.

And even in those bad relationships, those bad breakups and those moments in time that you've had to move on from, I'm at a place in my life now where I'm not feeling anger anymore really. Not for the most part, even the people that were horrible (laughs). I'm not sitting around thinking about horrible, I wasn't able to actually still remember the good moments, too.

It's weird to say that. It took a really long time. But you only get one life. So I don't know, I try not to be the person who's constantly saying, "Oh that time was terrible, that person was terrible, everything about that was a monster," and flush it all away and forget about the parts about it that were why you were in that situation, too.

There's things that you need to move away from and then there's also things that you need to learn from, as well, so it's better not to forget, I guess is the right way to say it.

In "Yeah, Right," you talk about getting paid. Is that a literal reference to getting paid by an actual job, or is it in allusion to something deeper?

Uh, it's about money (laughs). I've seen money change people more often than I would've liked to. And it's always in a negative way.

Well I guess maybe this follows suit, does "Better Without You" happen to be about the music industry?

Part of it is, but it's not entirely about that. "Better Without You"... so each verse is dedicated to a different person or entity in my life along the way. And they go in order. I don't want to name-call, and I've carefully avoided doing that with this song and it's hard because they're about really specific things to me.

If you know me personally, then you know who it's all about. I don't really want to drag people into things many years later. So it starts out a long time ago (laughs) in the first verse with some battles there — a big one for independence. All of it was really a fight for independence.

The second one is the one that's more for the industry. And then the third one kind of brings us to today, in our world and the world around us. I sang the last few lyrics to "Better Without You," including the bridge, the day they called it for Biden. Not to make it political, because the song isn't really. But that was in my heart. I mean, "It's over. It's over now." Feeling it. And it felt so good to sing it knowing that it was true, at least in regards to Trump

Wow that's cool, I wouldn't have looked at it like that. There were a couple of songs where I was wondering if it was about a relationship or something on the grander scheme, and you letting go of that.

Yeah, it is. And it's funny because I don't want it to seem like it's all about the label. It's really not. That's been part of my journey, but there is stuff that's been way more personal than that, and harder. But when I say "the industry," it does mean more than the label. It's just the whole world of people that surround you when you're doing this.

And there was definitely more to it than the label that I was fighting against and struggling with during my journey, but one of the things that I remember being a threat at times was like, "If you don't do this or you don't do that, then it's just all gonna fall apart. You're not gonna have it. This is all gonna crumble. Everything that you have."

And I'm looking at it and going, "I don't want what I had. I want my future, I have an idea for something more." So the chorus, "As empires fall to pieces / Our ashes twisting in the air / It makes me smile to know that / I'm better without you," going like, "It's okay, go ahead. Let it burn down. Let the old idea of the tiny thing that you thought this could be go ahead and burn down because I have an idea for something bigger."

Can you explain the chorus of "Blind Belief," specifically the lines, "We hold the key to redemption / Let icons fall?"

This is another one that's a little bit in the political zone, or social. Why do we believe what we believe? Why do we do the things we do? Why are the laws that are in place, some of them aren't there for good reasons. Some things are just the way they are because they've always been that way.

And I think we've reached a time where we need to say, "That's not enough. We need to make changes that make sense for how much our world and our awareness has grown, and how we need to be better." We need to improve over time and not just leave things the way that they are.

I was actually writing those lyrics, being inspired by the Confederate statues coming down. We can still love our ancestors even if they made mistakes, and we can actually love them better, we can actually do better for our world. It doesn't have to be a betrayal if your grandparents thought differently than you.

We can only grow by moving forward and making better and better decisions as the generations go on. And if we want this place to get better, then we need to admit that things are wrong!

Saying "We hold the key to redemption" is saying you don't have to stand by something that's wrong. Go ahead and let icons fall! Just because something is the way it is and it's always been that way doesn't make it right. We should be asking those questions, and sometimes change is good. It's nothing to be afraid of.

To wrap up, of all of the topics that you cover on The Bitter Truth, what are you hoping at the end of the day that people will take away from this album as they sit with it?

I hope they feel empowered, I really do. I didn't go into this writing process feeling empowered, I started to feel that way through the process. It starts from feeling human, feeling vulnerable, feeling fragile and feeling broken.

But as I start to work, especially together with my friends, with people that support me and I support them, having a band is a really cool thing. Just having something to work on together last year and the year before, amidst the pain and the loss and the frustration, just made it so much better. It was such a healing thing for all of us, and I'm hoping that that same healing and empowered feeling can spread to those who listen to it. I really do.

Instead of just wallowing in grief, we found a way through the music to feel strength and inspiration and hope for something better in the future. I think, if there's a punchline, the biggest thing is that life is worth living.

I think that's something that people need to hear right now, because there has been so much to just feel sad about, so much to feel depressed and frustrated about and helpless, without a voice. Like, "It doesn't even matter what you do, I'm just one little drop in the bucket." But it's not true, that's a lie. We are strong, and change is happening.

And the greatest losses that we can imagine, we actually can overcome and there can still be good things left in life to experience, you just don't know what they are yet. If it can be empowering and spread hope to people, that's what I would most hope for.

#Amy Lee #Evanescence #2021 interviews

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hopinglimelight · 4 years ago

Text

Sober (D.S)

Welcome to the next episode of: Instead of sleeping, Hope writes a fic at 2 am while watching season four of criminal minds, which she’s been watching for only two weeks (-:

General 1- “I love you.” “Tell me that when you’re sober.”

General 12- “Come back to bed. Please.”

Sunday morning, at 3 am. That’s when Daniel decided to walk in the door. I was up, watching criminal minds. I can never sleep until Daniel comes home from a party. Especially since he always gets wasted. I looked up from the world of Dr. Spencer Reid, staring at my husband. A year ago, I would have been hopeful. Hopeful that just this one night he didn’t drink, that he was simply the Designated Driver and had to wait for the others. I learned better.

“Hi, what are you doing up?”

I turned off the tv, stood up from the couch, and walked over in the direction of the stairs.

“Where are you going?”

I turned around and glared, crossing my arms over my chest.

“Baby, listen-“

“No.” I seethed. “YOU listen. While you spent today partying, I sat at home, sighing every time a fictional character called another fictional character ‘baby girl’. Do you have any idea how big of a toll your absence takes on me?”

He put his head down while I continued.

“You never even take me to these parties? Are you embarrassed by me?”

“No!”

“Then Why? Why do you never pay me any attention? The most amount of affection I hear from you is when you're drunk. I’m not trying to sound controlling or something, but I’m your wife, Daniel James! I deserve a bit of your time. Do you even want to be with me? Do you even love me?”

“I do, baby!” He slurred out. “I’ll prove it to you. I love you.”

I scoffed before shaking my head, going up the stairs. “Tell me that when you're sober.”

since we had a split level house, and I was downstairs, I slipped out of the front door. I called my best friend, and she let me come over. I told her the whole story. The story of tonight (AN: I may not live to see our glory 🥲) and the whole plot leading up to it. I somehow ended up crying from frustration by the end.

“I’m sorry, Kora.” She hugged me, and I could hear the pouty face in her voice. She pulled away and smiled at me. “You want ice cream?”

“Cookie Dough?”

She nodded. “A whole new half-gallon.”

I nodded, and she went to go get it. After I was satisfied with the amount of ice cream I stuffed into my mouth, we went to sleep. Well, she did. I stayed awake that whole night, fidgeting with my rings.

I love Daniel. Our life was perfect. I think the bonus popularity from the release from his new album has gone to his head. He wasn’t like this during his short hiatus from the world (hehe about that-) He’d go to work at the studio at nine, come home by six, and then we’d have time to go out. We’d seen movies together. We went on walks to the beach. Took cute Instagram photos that were drafted and posted later. We’d try our best to avoid the fans, but we usually stayed at home anyway. And then, in March was when everything started to change. They were working 14 hour days at the studio. Planning the tour, doing promo. They had to record a lot. They had started to make the CDs. The boys were signing thousands on the daily. It sucked for them. There were interviews, before and after the album was released. They were on Ellen, James Corden, The Kelly Clarkson Show and so much more.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m super proud of Daniel and everyone else. However, Daniel is married. He has other responsibilities. We’re 21. We should be out partying, but every Saturday? Our marriage was damaged, not ruined. We will work this out and patch it together.

Somehow, when the sun came up, I managed to fall asleep. My best friend sleeps until noon, and today I treated myself to doing the same. As best friends do, I had full access to anything and everything under her roof. So, I showered. I made myself feel pretty for the day. Then she took me out for a girls’ day. We got our nails done, walked around different stores. We went out to lunch and got Starbucks. At some point, I started to miss Daniel. My best friend could tell.

“Go get him, lover girl.”

“Shut up.” I rolled my eyes before leaving.

The drive home made me nervous. Was Dani going to be angry? Would he be drunk? Answer to both of those; no. He was relieved when I walked in the door.

“Where were you?” He calmly asked.

“With Sam. We had a girls day today.”

“Did you have fun?”

“Yeah, but then I started missing you.”

“Kora, I’m sorry. I was stupid with how I was acting. You’re my wife, but I treated you like a dog toy. You deserve better.”

“No, I don’t. You make me so happy Dani. Yeah, I wasn’t expecting all that went with making this album, and that hurt. What matters is that we’re still happy together.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were hurting?”

“You were so happy with your album an-”

“Yeah, the album makes me happy, but you’re my true source of happiness. It’ll always be you baby girl, understand?”

I nodded, before playfully biting my lip. “Yes, sir.”

We both leaned in for a kiss, me crawling over Daniel’s thighs and sitting on his lap. He slowly pulled back from me.

“I love you, Kora.” He whispered, centimeters away from my lips.

I reclosed the gap, and I’ll just say it only got spicier from there.

After a few rounds of makeup sex, our relationship was pretty much back to normal. Our marriage was the way it was before everything fell apart. He took me with him to parties again, he didn’t drink as much, and we told each other our feelings. Now it would be strange if he left the house without telling me he loved me and vice-versa. All was well, for four months at least.

There I lay, awake in bed, for the third time this week. I had enough at two am, and got out of bed and went downstairs to the couch. I pulled the finger-knit blanket I started, and managed to add on a few more rows.

“Whatcha doing, baby?” Daniel’s sleepy morning voice rang out into the living room.

“I can’t sleep.”

“Just come back to bed. Please. I want to cuddle my wife.” He pouted and made grabby hands.

Slowly but surely, I gave in. I was resting my head on Daniel’s bicep, facing him. I took a deep breath in, my last-minute confidence boost.

“I have to tell you something.”

“What is it, Kora?” That was the most serious I think I’ve ever seen him.

“I’m pregnant.”

#daniel seavey #my fic #wdw daniel #daniel seavey fanfic #why don't we #requests #I STILL LOVE YOU FOR THE REQUEST #next one will probably be a sad one #maybe part two??#idk would anyone want that?

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janus-stanus · 4 years ago

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Do you have any Janus headcanons that you want to share?? I seriously love reading peoples' headcanon

You want Janus headcanons? I’ll give you Janus headcanons. All the headcanons.

* Janus came into existence as a Side later than the others, and he wasn’t initially Deceit. More on that here and here (though I have some changes in mind for when I actually write something out of it, hehe)

* He became in charge of keeping Remus out of school things kind of by default, and from there, they bonded.

* He got into spats with Patton often, which he took way more seriously than Patton ever did. Usually everyone else sided with Patton, cause they knew and trust him. Especially Roman.

* Janus learned to fake confidence fairly early on. He figured, he had to convince himself that he knew what he was doing before the others would take him seriously. You know. “I am the first one I deceive”. That. Oh, and “Razzle Dazzle”.

* He’s planted “roots” in Thomas’s mental system, like a network of cables that can transfer information to him almost instantly. He has clusters of roots form around secrets he (or the others) is (are) keeping from Thomas. For the aesthetic, his eyes glow gold when he checks in to it, and the information rings in his ears like hissing.

* As a kid he wore a yellow shirt, with a waistcoat over it to make himself appear more professional. As a teen, he wore a long black coat, a fedora, and a striped yellow scarf. There’s more I want to say about the scarf, but, spoilers.

* ...That being said, I will spoil this from the wip where the sides all find their names: Logan helped Janus find his (ever notice that we didn’t see Logan’s reaction to Janus’s name reveal in POF? I’m running with it). He liked the name, it felt right... but it, at this point, didn’t really tell him anymore about what his purpose was supposed to be.

* It stops being a sore spot for him at a certain point, but then by the time of POF, where his failures have definitely not been getting to him, it kinda sorta is again! Hence, his... reaction, to Roman’s... reaction.

* (Also, it’s just his instinct by this point to be snide and pointedly cruel when he’s hurt or backed into a corner. He knows how to go for the jugular, and sometimes he doesn’t realize - or doesn’t care - just how deep his blows will cut.)

* Since I mentioned Jan originally not being Deceit... here’s a song that basically lays out why he came to take on that role :) (spotify recced this to me a few days ago and I’m still not over it)

* It was only once Janus became Deceit that he started gaining his snake features. First fangs; then the changes to his left eye; then his scales. Right before the other sides found out about the gay, the scales covered his whole face, and probably went below his shoulders too. It was bad. By teen times they’ve receded to mostly one side of his face, but they’re still on his neck for a few years (hence the scarf).

* Jump ahead to Thomas in early high school, and Janus, for reasons that would be Big Time Spoilers (though I may be able to... share some excerpts... if people want...), chose to cut himself and Remus off from Thomas. He keeps their existence a secret, having them only influence Thomas subconsciously, until, well, the series basically. (Virgil joined the “others” shortly after the divide, of his own choice, and thus wasn’t hidden from Thomas like the rest of them were.)

* For all those years, Janus whispered comforting lies to Thomas. Lies that stopped working after he revealed himself in CLBG, because Thomas now recognized that voice as belonging to his deceitful side. I have a wip about this that I’m planning to finish and post for his birthday!

* Janus helped Thomas believe that he was an honest person. A good person, even. Because, that’s what Thomas wanted, as evidenced by the Big Time Spoilers. Even as Janus recognized the long term impacts of the lie. Even as he himself thought the whole moral dilemma was a distraction at best.

* The more Janus dedicated himself to becoming Deceit, the more he came to rely on lies, which is a large part of why his and Virgil’s relationship collapsed. All their conversations became like, to borrow an old metaphor of mine, fencing duels, with Janus always trying to assert his control and distract from his intentions with witty remarks, and Virgil always assuming the worst of him, rapidly switching between offense and defense.

* Janus and Remus’s relationship was, and is, much less hostile. Yes, Remus gets on his nerves, literally every day... but, unlike the others when it comes to Jan, “trust” isn’t a hurdle for Remus. They’re partners in crime; they’re best friends. And that’s enough. It has to be.

* I don’t really have a better place for the following diatribe, so here we go:

Ever since the Big Time Spoilers thing, Janus has done what he can to eliminate and prevent any feelings of regret for the bad things he does. He justifies to himself that it was the best choice he could have made, that it was a necessary evil; or, he convinces himself that what he said or did wasn’t that bad, the blame is on the everyone else for reacting the way they did; or, he simply goes “oopsie, my bad, definitely won’t repeat that mistake” and does everything he can not to think about it again. To quote the song “Devil in the Details” from his playlist again, “I put my past into the ground”.

Speaking of songs, there’s this line from the song “Never Love an Anchor” by The Crane Wives, one of my favorite bands incidentally:

It's a secret I keep tucked inside my chest With this heart of mine that’s guilty not remorseful

Janus will readily admit to being guilty of having made bad decisions, decisions that hurt people (though in the moment he will be unreasonably stubborn about admitting he’s doing something wrong/stupid, to self defeating ends).

But remorseful? No, he’s never remorseful. At least, he’d like to believe he isn’t (because that would just make things so much more complicated).

And when so much of your own conception of yourself is based on lies you’ve told, to feel more confident, to feel like you belong, like you’re doing what you should be doing...

Is there really a difference?

I have No way Of telling The two Apart

Oh hey, “Devil in the Details”, what are you doing here again? It’s almost like I draw half of my entire Janus characterization from you alone /hj

* (This is a deliberate contradictory parallel to Virgil, who seems to keep a full record of every mistake Thomas has made (see ATDH). Anxiety constantly digs up your past mistakes, theoretically to make sure you don’t repeat them. What Thomas needs, as with every dilemma in this series, is a healthy balance between their two perspectives.)

* The last of the pre-canon headcanons I have is this. TL;DR, Janus helps Roman out when Thomas plays villianous roles (their cooperation could perhaps explain why Roman initially described Janus as “very nice”)

* Janus’s plan for CLBG was not to get caught; he was hoping to convince Thomas of his various merits over the course of multiple discussions, before properly revealing himself.

* When PattonJanus asks, “Virgil, it’s me. Aren’t we friends?” That’s like 10% him still trying to keep up the facade, but 90% him asking genuinely. And the fact that Virgil can’t even look at him when he answers implies that he has some doubt too... because it still might be Patton and he doesn’t want to hurt him? Or because, he knows it’s Janus, but his feelings are just that complicated?

* In between CLBG and SvS, Janus realizes the thing I pointed out earlier about his subconscious lies suddenly working not nearly as well on Thomas - specifically, the whole “good person” thing, since it’s currently causing him a lot of stress. Instead of dwelling on the fact that this has kind of undone years and years of work on his end, Janus goes, “You know what? I never believed that bullshit mattered anyway! I should convince Thomas that it doesn’t matter either; it’ll be much better for him in the long term.” And then the wedding vs callback dilemma presents the perfect opportunity. Hence, SvS, parts 1 and 2.

* Janus can read the other sides like open books... but only if they’re acting within the narrow perspective of what Janus would expect from them. The biggest example is with Roman in SvS. Janus knows that Roman wants to go to the callback more than anything. He’s Thomas’s Hopes and Dreams, for Pete’s sake! But what he doesn’t expect, is the extent to which Roman priorities Thomas being good (or believing himself to be good), even at the expense of his actual role as a side. That’s why Roman’s sentencing of Thomas throws him so badly; it’s when he realizes just how much Patton’s unopposed influence has affected Thomas (not that Patton ever meant it that way).

* My thoughts on Janus’s motivations for setting Remus loose in DWIT and his feelings on the matter afterward are covered in this fic (which you’ve commented on, but you know the hustle, gotta self promo where I can)

* So. Putting Others First. I don’t have much to add on top of the wonderful canon content it gave us. But.

“Sometimes I don't know the way. But... When I told you that, you were so scared. I couldn't bear it. So I said to myself, ‘Alright, Patton. Thomas needs you. You're responsible for his morality. You can never not have an answer for him.’

After Patton says this, the cut to Janus?

The Thing his face does after the eyebrow raise?

I live for this shit.

A while ago, my headcanon for this moment was that it was when Janus realized that Thomas wanted to be a good person, as much and as genuinely as he wanted anything else (like, being famous and fulfilling his dreams), and that, as the one who wants what Thomas wants, it’s a drive he should take into consideration. But then I rewatched CLBG, and was struck by this exchange:

[Thomas]: Why didn't I know about him until now? [Virgil]: He had you convinced you're an honest person. [Thomas]: But I... AM an honest person. [Deceit]: Oh, you are, Thomas. You are a good person. Everybody says so.

This is where some fo the earlier stuff about Janus playing into Thomas’s belief that he was a good person came from, and it required a changing of my interpretation of That Look in POF. So now? I take it as the moment Janus realizes that, when he revealed himself like a Scooby Doo villain, the effect wasn’t just that he could no longer use his comforting lies on Thomas. It put the whole responsibility of Thomas believing he’s good, something obviously very important to him, onto Patton, a side he could trust. And Janus knows what kind of toll that burden must have taken on him.

* I have plans now for a Janus & Patton fic set after the Janus & Logan one that’s been in limbo since the summer which will delve more into Janus’s vulnerabilities, going back to the whole idea of him being guilty but not feeling remorseful.

To not give away too much... Like how Logan insists he doesn’t feel things because he’s Logic, because it would get in the way of his function, Janus insists that he doesn’t have any interest in his own morality or how he’s perceived by the other sides, because it would get in the way of his ability to do what’s best for Thomas. He needs to be able to push Thomas to act in his own self-interest in all scenarios, and otherwise manipulate things behind the scenes, even when it requires being immoral. So he, Janus, can’t care about being a good person.

But Janus is a part of Thomas. And he won’t get away with hiding from the implications of that for much longer.

He’ll have to face the mortifying ordeal of being known, and of feeling remorse.

Will this be his arc in canon? Who knows; I’m just having fun :)

...Those last two got kinda long. Sorry about that, lol. Let’s knock some final few ones out.

* Moving on, in FWSA, both Patton and Janus were watching the proceedings, with Janus contributing when called on (something he’s not used to, especially at that frequency). This leads to this post.

* Janus wants to have control, influence, some modicum of power, in any scenario he’s in. He does not like leaving things up to other people. He’s learned he can’t predict Remus and has mostly come to live with that, and he’ll ultimately bow to Thomas’s judgement if it conflicts with his own, but they are the only exceptions.

* This post.

* I don’t think about human AUs much, but, if you’ll allow me some projection: human Janus who’s nonbinary with eczema.

* An UnderTale related thought I posted months ago: A human Janus in that world would be a Determination (Red) soul, who has at times attempted and spectacularly failed at being a Patience soul. Put another way, the boy tries to plan and wait things out, but... you know.

* Lastly, he’s an enneagram type eight. Enjoy the song, and thanks for asking about my thoughts!

#thomas sanders #sanders sides #janus sanders #we have fun here #writing reference

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shabre-legacy · 4 years ago

Note

81? Ocs of your choice!

Ok, so sorry this is so long in writing. I might have had a very busy few weeks and a case of writers block and also might have written this in a hurry so I could get something done before I lost all motivation again. Anyways I wrote a little thing between Aric and Nyaisa taking place after the second time they go to Tatooine but before they get their next set of orders. Enjoy.

81. Sweet Dreams

Nyaisa was still sitting at her desk when Aric returned to the ship. They didn’t get much downtime and he’d long ago learned to take advantage of what time they got. He’d left the ship hours ago. He’d called up a few old friends and went to have a drink in, not quite celebration more like, acknowledgement of finally getting back to his old rank. After the extraction of that SIS agent and working with that obnoxious man, Balker, again, they’d reported in. Balker was annoying as ever, flirting with the Captain constantly, and worse, Shabre flirted back. It grated on his nerves. Once they returned to Coruscant and done with the debriefing, the Captain gave everyone some time off the ship until Garza called with new orders. She’d insisted she had reports instead of taking time herself. The others likely wouldn’t be back until morning. He thought about stopping in and talking with her. Once he’d gotten over his initial bitterness over the demotion, he’d come to find the captain rather interesting. There was no denying that she was an incredible warrior, and a beautiful woman; but it was her spirit he’d been drawn to most. Well, that and somehow she made all that armor look damn good. He’d even tried flirting a bit, unintentionally of course, but still. He wouldn’t lie to himself, he was attracted to her and talking off duty was usually a highlight of his day. She was confident and charming, optimistic and passionate.

She’d been off for a couple weeks though. At first he’d thought it was just the reality of the hunt for Tavus being over. She’d told him a bit about her time with them, about what they’d shared and how it hurt when they turned on her, how each one they took down seemed like another part of her was shot at the same time. They’d managed to save Fuse on Tatooine and keep his bomb plans safe. It was a major victory in his book, but the whole thing seemed to have taken a toll.

She’d gotten a holocall just as she dismissed everyone. Whoever it was from was enough for her to head straight to her quarters. He’d been the last to leave. Maybe slightly hoping to catch a moment alone with her.

Jhasis and Dorne had left together. Seemed like they were becoming close, which might be a problem. He’d need to keep an eye on that, there were regulations and team effectiveness needed to be maintained. Maybe Jhasis just didn’t want the poor girl to spend leave alone on the ship. She didn’t seem to have any friends left. At least none that she mentioned.

He’d finally left when he’d noticed Shabre, in her civvis, pulling on boots in a hurry, while still talking to the Mirialan man on the holocall. She’d broken up with her last partner, he’d seen that. Maybe she’d found a new one. He couldn’t help the stab of jealousy that he felt at that idea. He yanked himself away from staring at her, and the way she bit her lower lip as she focused or how a stray hair escaped from the tight style she kept it in and drifted across her face; gently brushing her lashes with each breath.

He quickly moved to the galley and pulled a bottle of water from a cupboard and promptly dropped it, gripping the countertop and growled in annoyance. It shouldn’t be this hard. He shouldn’t be doing any of this. He’d spent part of his leave at a jewelers commissioning the perfect piece to fit the Captain. Nyaisa, why did she have to have one of those beautiful names that fit perfectly and made him want to say her name. This was ridiculous. There were rules. She was his CO and he was a soldier. He should be able to just push things aside and move on. But he was also Cathar and emotions ran high in his people. She was just so beautiful and stars, but she made him feel invincible just being in her presence. He had to get these feelings under control. He’d call the Jewelers in the morning and cancel his order.

“You’re back early.” He heard an exhausted voice say behind him.

He spun around to see the Captain standing there. She moved past him, grabbing a ration pack, her movements slow and strained, like she was about to fall asleep where she stood. She’d been like this a few times after particularly rough days during their mission. “Did I actually manage to startle you? Where is that famed constant awareness?” She actually laughed. It had been weeks since she laughed. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it.

“You didn’t startle me. I was just lost in thought for a moment. It’s been a long few weeks.”

Nyaisa sighed. “It certainly has.”

Aric immediately regretted bringing down her mood. But any chance to talk to the captain. He gestured over to the table and grabbed his water as they moved over and sat down. “Seemed like you had someone to meet earlier. I would think that’d make the day better.”

Nyaisa giggled at that, actually giggled. It was adorable. “That was my brother!”

Well, that made since, she had mentioned a brother. “He’s a Jedi, right?” That would explain the rush as well. Jedi seemed to get less downtime then soldiers.

She sighed again, “Yes, the famous Hero of Tython, as they’re calling him now. He was on Coruscant for a quick meeting before heading out again. He’s already left. Just fucking saved Tython and avenged Uphrades and the council can’t give him a break.”

“Avenged Uphrades? Didn’t some Sith burn the entire planet?”

“Yes, Angral, I think the name was. He was upset my brother killed his son in a fight and decided to destroy the Jedi and the Republic in vengeance. Like that was ever going to happen. Nic stopped him. He didn’t want to talk much about that.” She fell silent, staring at the table, her eyes suddenly seeming a million lightyears away. “Captain?” no reply “Captain” she was lost in her thoughts and clearly tired. “Shabre.” She blinked and focused on him again. He suppressed a shudder at having the full attention of her gaze on him. “What did your brother tell you that has you this shook up? We’re all mourning Uphrades, but seems more personal than that.” He instantly backpedaled. That was too personal a question to get with his CO. “Sorry, didn’t mean to get that personal, sir.”

This time she glared a bit. “We’ve talked about this, Jorgan. No need to call me Sir when we’re off duty.” She deflated again. “It wasn’t Uphrades. I mean, it's horrible and if Angral wasn’t dead, I’d be trying to kill him myself. It’s yet another reason the empire has to be defeated. But no, he…” another sigh, “He found out about our father and it’s just a lot to deal with.”

That was his Nya. Destruction of planets, Traitors, Plans going to hell, Impossible missions that never stopped, those she could handle without blinking. Personal issues though, that was what shook her. She was a soldier through and through. His Nya? When had he started to think of her as his? Where had that even come from? And since when did he think of her as Nya? This wasn’t good, but he couldn’t seem to find the motivation to leave. Instead, he simply stepped over to the Cafpot and poured her a cup. Setting it down gently in front of her as she began to speak again.

“I think I mentioned that I never knew who my father was. Mother never told us and then the injury, she’s barely ever lucid enough for me to ask when I visit. Apparently, he decided that Tyrenic’s confrontation with Angral was the perfect time to step the hell up and try to be a parent. Not when our village fell. Not when my sisters were dragged away. Not when I spent a year in refugee camp or years on Mirial under imperial occupation. Not when my brother survived the fall of the Coruscant temple and could have used his father. No, never any of those times.” She shook her head and sipped at the caf smiling at him gratefully as she picked at her rations. Why she was eating them when there were thousands of restaurants and cantinas here and many delivered, he’d never know. “Turns out our dad is a Jedi Master. ‘Riqr’, Nic said his name was. Same Jedi who used to come over a lot as kids, same Jedi who took Nic away to the Jedi. That’s our dad and I don’t know... I guess I’m just angry about it and hurt. I know they can’t have families, but still.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. I’ve heard rumor's about lots of Jedi families. Even Jedi getting married. But it seems more like they have to be discreet about it. Guess that makes sense when you’re making personal enemies of Sith all the kriffing time.” That was not the right thing to say. Nyaisa just shrugged and stared into her mug. “He must have had his reasons, even if they aren’t good ones. How is your brother holding up with this?”

“He’s not as angry as me. He said that he talked to Riqr and his reasons made sense. But I’m not a Jedi. I can’t just get over everything the way they do. I’ve already lost everyone else. I can’t lose Nic too, not to some stranger that’s convinced him that he’s somehow not a terrible excuse for a parent.”

That was that, the pain in her voice, it hurt HIM. Thank the force the others weren’t around or they’d have given him so much shit, but he couldn’t let her think she was alone. He reached out and took her hand, squeezing gently. “I doubt you’ll lose your brother. He took the time to come here and tell you right? If you don’t want anything to do with this Riqr, then don’t. I don’t understand what you’re going through. My parents are protective and have always been there. But I know that you’re a strong woman and smart and kriffing good at sorting out messy situations. You’ll get through this and figure out what’s next..” He took a breath himself. “And if you need an ear, I’m always around.”

He’d intended to thank her for the promotion tonight. But it didn’t seem right with everything else going on. Her eyes fluttered, struggling to stay awake as she stared into the mug and gently squeezed his hand back. “Thank you Aric, really. I…” Her head dropped and fell onto her other hand, barely missing the mug. He sat there stunned for a moment. She’d used his name. It was the first time that he could think of that she’d called him Aric. It was always Jorgan, they were in the military after all. But still, it meant something to him, something he was NOT going to think about. He smiled down and shook his head. The Captain was dedicated to her work. Usually falling asleep at her desk or in front of one of the terminals because they’d fought for days and she’d had paperwork for more. But this time, he could do something about it. If she was angry with him in the morning... Well, she was never shy about making her disapproval known.

He stood and gently turned her chair away from the table, glad he hadn’t gotten as drunk as his friends had tried to get him and was mostly sober by now. Aric reached down, picking up his captain and gently carrying her to her quarters. He laid her on the bed, pulling off her boots and covering her with one of the thin blankets that she seemed to prefer. He went to leave, but had a thought and stepped back. Reaching down he quickly undid the tie that secured her hair and placed it by her bed as her hair unraveled. Sleeping with it that tight couldn’t be comfortable. On impulse, he gently brushed the back of his fingers across her forehead as he smiled down at her, she looked relaxed in her sleep, at peace. If only she could always have that kind of peace. “Sweet dreams.” He whispered as he slipped out and sealed her door behind him. At least she’d get a few hours of rest, he thought as he moved towards his own quarters. She deserved at least that much.

#swtor #Nyaisa Shabre #Aric Jorgan #asks #fanfics #my ocs #my writing

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havethetimeofyourstyles · 5 years ago

Text

When Did You Fall Out Of Love?

It was crowded.

The train was crowded and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. People coming from different places and going to different directions. The continuous stops that make the small train seem less crowded, until more people get on and it’s the same as before or maybe even more.

Regardless, I couldn’t breathe.

As more people went and go, I felt a presence staring at me. And that presence was right across from me.

He was wearing sunglasses, even though it was gloomy outside in this London weather, and a baker boy hat, that I have to admit, looks adorable. Perhaps I shall get one myself.

I’m not a shy person. Some may say I’m overly confident, but I don’t agree. I am confident, but I’m not stuck up or in love with myself. I’ve learned to accept my flaws and accept that I can’t change them. I’ve learned to love those flaws and realize that it’s a part of me that will never change. And that’s what makes me, me.

I don’t avoid confrontation. I know how to not make things awkward when confronting someone, and I make sure to have my facts right. Without confrontation, people don’t solve problems. It’s all part of life and I love solving problems. Some people find me rude for some reason.

So, I say something to the man who’s staring at me creepily.

“May I ask what caught your attention that has you staring at me like crazy?” I ask firmly.

The man seems shocked that I actually said something. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out, so he closes it.

“I-I’m sorry. It’s just that, uhm,” he stutters, and I raise my eyebrows for him to continue. He takes off his sunglasses, “it’s just that I think you’re very pretty.”

Scratch that. I’m shy when it comes from gorgeous men that compliment me.

“O-oh, thank you,” I blush. He smiles and nods.

The rest of the train ride was getting to know each other. Luckily I couldn’t stop the conversation in the middle since my stop was practically the last stop of the day.

I’ve come to find out that the man staring at me is named Harry Edward Styles. He’s from Holmes Chapel in Cheshire (which isn’t that far from where I’m from, Doncaster).

“My best mate is from Doncaster!” He said excitedly.

“Really? What’s his name? I might know him.”

“Louis Tomlinson.”

“Hmm. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

His eyes widen a bit and I found that weird.

He also used to work in a bakery before his job right now.

“So you know how to bake?” I question.

“I can make a thing or two,” he smugs.

“Interesting. Might have to take you up on that.”

His mum is named Anne and his sister is named Gemma.

“Yeah, they’re the best. I grew up with just them two around and they’re the best influence I could possibly have in my life.”

His eyes light up as he talks about the most important women in his life. It’s admirable, the way he talks about them.

He was in a band in high school.

“The White Eskimos?”

“That’s the one.”

“Might have to listen to your tape.”

“I’ll be sure to send one out to you.”

I learned that he also moved to London when he was sixteen because of his job.

“What kind of job are you doing that even made you move to London at sixteen?!” I was completely shocked, there was no way my mother would let me move out that young.

Harry chuckled, “well, I sing and perform.” I felt like there was more to it so I stayed silent, hopefully encouraging him to say more. But it seemed like he was waiting for me to say something. “I-I’m in a band, we’re called One Direction.”

Harry seemed like he was completely shocked that I didn’t know who he was or who they were.

“Wow, that must be crazy. Do you perform at little venues? Or bars? I would love to go to one.”

He chuckles nervously, “erm, not really. I wouldn’t say little venues per say. Perhaps bigger places.”

“I’m sorry, but I probably seem so stupid right now as I don’t know who you are. But how big are we talking about?”

He cleared his throat, he seemed nervous.

“Wembley Stadium, a couple times.”

I almost choked, “are you fucking joking?” He shakes his head. “That’s insane!

You must be a pretty big person then!”

He smiles a little, “to each their own.”

“I’d have a listen when I get home because that’s just-“

“This is the last stop of the day, please exit the train and have a lovely day.” The overhead intercom through the speaker is loud and that means that our conversation was over.

We both exit the train quietly and make it out of the tunnel and onto the street.

“Well, I’m this way.” I point behind me.

“I’m this way,” he points behind him, the opposite way of me.

“It was really great talking to you, Harry.” I give him a small smile.

“You as well, love,” he smiles back.

I’m not sure what to do. Do I just walk away now? Say goodbye one more time? I step forward and open my arms, reaching in for a hug. Harry seemed to get the memo and quickly leans in, reciprocating the hug.

The hug was everything I wanted. He’s a very good hugger. Just enough squeeze and not lazy. He runs his hand up and down my back, and I feel like my knees can lock in and I can just melt. There’s nothing else that can top this hug, and I hope he feels the same way.

We eventually let go and pull away, sadly.

“I hope to see you very soon,” he says.

“I hope so too.”

He gives me one last smile and starts backing up and turning around to walk away. I do the same and walk home to my flat.

You think back to the memory that happened nearly four years ago. You smile back to when you and Harry first met and the memory will forever be burned into your head, as it was one of the best days of your life.

After that day, it was four months before you saw each other again. He saw you at a record store and he completely stood still, shocked to see you after what seemed like an eternity.

Again, you felt a presence staring at you, so you turned your head and saw him. It was him. The same guy who was looking at you four months ago and the same guy who was still looking at you four months later.

You slowly walk over to him and he meets you in the middle.

“Hi.”

You’re smiling like crazy, thinking that you weren’t going to see him ever again, but here you are.

“I have to admit, the week after I met you, I went back to the train station, got on at the same station that I did, and waited for you to show up until the very last stop, but you didn’t show.”

Your heart was bursting, to say the least.

“I actually went back to Doncaster for around three months after that day. I decided I needed to see family and friends, so I stayed there and just kind of took that time to reflect.”

“Oh, well, I’m glad you’re back now.”

“I’m back,” you smile at him.

Its been hard. Its been hard waking up every morning to an empty bed. Every morning seemed to get harder and harder. You miss the conversations you had together. The conversations that’ll keep you both up at night and wake you both up first thing in the morning. The mornings that distracted you both from doing stuff outside the bedroom. Those were you favorite mornings.

Now, you just wake up to an empty bed, and it seemed like the bed is getting bigger and bigger, making it seem like your loneliness is expanding. But you won’t tell him that.

You were confident. Until a year ago. Harry’s schedule got busier and more hectic. With filming and promo for Dunkirk, his first solo album, and touring, his life kept going up and his dreams started to come true. But yours seemed like it was falling apart.

You wanted him to hold you and tell you everything was going to be okay. Because when he would say it, everything would actually be fine and things would work out perfectly. But he’s barely home for him to hold you and kiss you.

Every time you talked to him on the phone, you wanted to tell him everything that’s been going on in your mind. Everything that you bottled up, you wanted to unleash it. But you couldn’t. You didn’t want him worrying about you. He’s getting everything he wanted in his life, and you felt as if your problems would ruin his mood. Because all you want is for him to continuously be happy with that gorgeous smile on his face.

You struggled with your emotions and you were never like this before. Your mind is like a bottle. Each thought is so trapped inside that you feel as if your mind is about to combust because of the pressure. You want to talk…but you can’t.

It’s been hard.

Harry is suppose to be home for a bit, so he said on the phone. He has a week off before he flies to the U.S, so he should be home by the afternoon. You’re excited to see him. A bit nervous, but more excited. You talk to him on the phone about twice a week for about thirty minutes or an hour or until he has to hang up. But it’s usually never more than an hour. He’ll send some texts here and there throughout the week, but it’s the basic ‘goodmorning’, ‘goodnight’, or ‘what are you up to?’ and you feel like he’s doing it for the sake of conversation and the fact that it doesn’t make him seem like a bad boyfriend.

Yes, you feel him being distant towards you and you want to figure out why. You haven’t asked him because you’re nervous to, but it may be the fact that he’s touring (obviously, with time zones, it fucks everything up) and he genuinely doesn’t have time to talk. And you get it, he’s tired after the shows or he’d rather celebrate another successful show in a foreign city. But a call more than thirty minutes would be great.

You decide to clean the whole house, light up a candle, and cook a full meal for when he comes home.

You have music on as you sauté up a stir fry, one of Harry’s favorites. You sway your hips a little as your stir up the food vegetables that are sizzling on the stove, until you hear your phone buzz a bunch of times.

You see that it’s from your friend, attached with the massages are screenshots from various articles.

Have you seen these? Isn’t he suppose to be home today? Attachment: 2 images

You feel your heart already dropping as your hands shake to click on the article. Harry Styles out and about in London with stunning actress and looking good doing it! Singer and actor took some time off to go home before he starts the American leg of his 2018 World Tour. Harry was seen with actress getting lunch at Nando’s. Sources have said that Harry and recent girlfriend have split up since she was no where to be seen during his tour. Stick around for more updates to come!

Below the article were pictures of Harry and some beautiful woman at the restaurant. His arms on the table as he watches and listens to her talk. His smile all the way up to his ears and you can’t help but admire his million dollar smile.

But it hurt. It definitely killed you.

You haven’t seen him smile like that in what seems like forever. His calls and text don’t seem enthusiastic or excited to talk to you. And that hurt. Some other woman made him smile like that. She gets to see him smile for her like that. And that hurt.

And you decided not to go on tour with him because of school. You’re getting your masters degree in literature and that contained many essays and reading. You couldn’t drop everything you achieved to watch him on stage, no matter how many times you considered doing so. But he understood, he encouraged you to finish all the way through and you appreciated his understanding.

You feel a few tears stream down your face and you lift your hand up to wipe them. You put your phone down and turn off the stove. You put the food in a container and clean up. You couldn’t think about this anymore.

Harry was the one who said himself to not believe any of the articles that were written about him. And you didn’t. You didn’t believe them for four years and that saved the trouble and energy of arguing. Each article that was written about him with women, you didn’t believe any of them. You didn’t jump into conclusions and you didn’t make a fuss about them, because you trusted him. You trust him so much that no matter how much the pictures and words that correlated to Harry and a new girl hurts you, you didn’t make a big deal out of it. He was the first to say that you shouldn’t trust the media. So you didn’t.

But it still hurts.

A lot.

At 2 o’clock, you decide to pick up your phone and text him.

Hi, what time are you coming home?

You put your phone down and wait for it to buzz. So you decide to pull out your laptop and textbooks. Might as well study while waiting for him. A few hours passed and he still hasn’t shown up. You pick up your phone and check the times of the messages you sent.

Me: Hi, know what time you’ll be home? 3:05 p.m

Me: Are you on your way home? 4:00 p.m

Me: I made dinner, hope you haven’t eaten yet. 6:00 p.m

Me: Are you coming home? 7:00 p.m

Me: I’m heading to bed, wake me up when you come home. Would love to see you 11:00 p.m

You were tired. You waited eight hours for him to come home and the studying definitely put your mind to ease.

You lay in your extremely large bed, tossing and turning. You glance at the clock and see the red numbers reading that it’s 2:23 a.m and there was no sign of Harry next to you. You sigh, until you hear the front door open. Your heart beating fast as you think it may be an intruder, but you hear Harry’s boots click against the flooring.

You decide if you should run out downstairs to see him, but you hear him walking up already and opening the bedroom door. You stay in your position: on your side with the covers up to your neck. Harry can’t see that you’re still awake. You don’t know why you aren’t moving to get up and attack him with kisses, perhaps your nervous for some reason.

Harry makes his way into the bathroom and you decide to sit up and wait for him.

You contemplate what to say to him. You’re not sure why it’s different this time round, but obviously something has changed, way before the recent article that was released.

Once the bathroom door swings open, Harry was about to walk out, but stop immediately, surprised you’re awake.

“Oh, why are you up?”

‘Hi, I missed you’, to you too.

“You told me you were coming home today. I texted you,” you said softly.

“Yeah, I was suppose to, but some of the lads wanted to go out for drinks and my phone was off,” he says as he goes into the walk in closet.

“The lads as in?”

“Lads from the band and tour crew.” You’re completely shocked.

“Harry, I haven’t seen you in at least three months and you see them every single day. Why do you need to hang out with them even more when you said you would be home?”

“Because I fucking wanted to? They’re my friends and I wanted to go out for a drink with them.”

“Yeah, but the purpose of taking a week off was to be at home and not think about anything else.”

“Would you back the fuck off? If I want to go out, then I’ll go out. I don’t need you to tell me what to do,” he rolls his eyes.

“I’m not telling you what to do. I’m just trying to understand your logic.” He doesn’t say anything, but scoff. Tears begin to well up in my eyes as he gets in the covers on the bed. He laid on his side, his back facing me.

“I-I just missed you, is all.” You didn’t hear him say anything, but sigh deeply.

“Missed you too,” he mumbled into the pillow. You took a deep breath and laid back down.

“I love you,” you said softly, but you know he heard you loud and clear. But he doesn’t say anything back and your heart starts to break.

You’re waken by your right arm cramping up from laying on it the entire night. You glance at the clock, reading that it’s 7:00 a.m. You’re also waken by Harry rummaging through his things.

“Harry? What are you doing? Get back in bed,” you said tiredly as you prop your elbow to lean on it.

He ignores you and continues going inside the closet and back out. You adjust your eyes and sit up fully, seeing that he’s packing. Not unpacking, but packing. He’s putting more clothes in his suitcase, if not all. And that’s what fully awakes you. It’s like all the tiredness from the previous night and early morning vanished.

“W-Why are you packing? What are you doing?” You’re panicking as he doesn’t say anything to you. You get out of bed and look inside the closet, most of his clothes are off the hangers and in the suitcase.

“W-Wait, stop. Just stop. Hold on. Why are you packing?” He hears the shakiness in your voice and he feels bad, so he stops for a second to turn around and look at you.

Your eyes are glossy, “what’s going on?”

He sighs deeply before he says, “I’m leaving.”

“What? Why? Where are you going? You have a whole week!” You feel tears at the corner of your eye, threatening to fall down.

“I just need to get out of here. I can’t stay here any longer.”

“But you just got home! Why are you leaving already?!” Tears are now streaming down your face and there’s no way that you can stop it.

“I told you I can’t stay here any longer,” he repeats.

“Is it me? That’s why you’re leaving? I didn’t mean to nag when you got home, I just missed you so much,” you approach him, putting your hands on his shoulders.

“Please, why are you leaving me?” Harry isn’t looking at you. He looks straight ahead as you put your hands on his cheeks, trying to pull them down so he can look at you and you could kiss him, but he wouldn’t bug.

He’s about to say something, but his ringtone is loud on his dresser. He makes a move to get it, but you beat him to it. You don’t want to and you never were one of those girlfriends who looked at their boyfriend’s phone, but you couldn’t help it. The caller id was a woman’s name. One that you recognized from one of the articles.

He watches you as you glance down and looks up at him with sad eyes. “Here,” you say as you hand his phone to him.

You watch him as he looks down at it, realizing who’s calling, and answers it, “hello? Yeah… I know… I’m almost done… just-just wait for me. Bye.” ‘So he is leaving me.’ You think.

You don’t say anything as he hangs up and just looks at you. You can tell he wants you to say something, but what’s there to say?

“I gotta go.”

“So I heard.”

“Look-“

“Are you cheating on me?” You had to ask.

“What?” He questions, not sure if he heard you right.

“You heard me.”

“I-I can’t believe you would think that I would cheat on you,” he says, “but if you need to know, no, I did not cheat on you and I never had.”

You don’t say anything as you watch him zip up his suitcase. He heads for the door before he turns arounds to get a look at you.

“Tell me when,” you say.

“What?” He furrows his eyebrows.

“Tell me, when did you fall out of love with me?” Your eyes are practically a waterfall.

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say when or how or why. He doesn’t even say that he never fell out of love. He just stayed quiet.

“You know, it hurts. Yeah, cheating is horrible and wrong, but knowing that you fell out of love with me and I couldn’t do anything about it? That hurts. A lot. And the fact you’re not even denying it, hurts even more.” You pause. “And if you walk out that door, we’re done.”

He still stays silent as he looks down with guilt. You both hear a honk outside of the door that he is about to walk through. He is about to leave the one place that made you feel safe when he was with you. And he is about to walk out of your life.

The day you met him, you couldn’t breathe. There were so many people on that train, stepping in and out. And you couldn’t breathe. It was crowded. It was so crowded you thought about walking home from five stops away, but you didn’t. You didn’t and it was possibly the best decision you made because you met Harry. And once you started taking to him, it was like the world around you disappeared, and you slowly caught your breath. Being with him for four years, you felt like you were in the wilderness that had crisp air. The one that was so fresh and satisfying.

But now you couldn’t breath again.

You walk towards the stairs, not bearing to see him step on your heart and leave it hopelessly.

“Goodbye, Harry.”

Part two

let me know if you want a part 2 and if you want to be tagged!

#harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles imagine #harry styles one shot #harry styles smut #harry styles x you #harry styles x reader #harry styles angst #angst #romance #older writings

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ffamranxii · 5 years ago

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Okay folks, I am all caught up with Tokyo Mew Mew Au Lait chapters 1-3 and Tokyo Mew Mew 2020 Re-Turn chapters 1 and 2 so I am Doing A Thing! Buckle up, bitches!

MASSIVE SPOILERS IF YOU’RE WAITING FOR THE OFFICIAL ENGLISH RELEASES (whenever the hell those will be). Thanks to @berrychanx, @hikayagami, and @ribbonstrawberrysurprise for the scans, English translation, and hard work putting the translation onto the manga so neatly.

LEADERS

MOMOMIYA ICHIGO AND SHIBUYA AOI

Honestly this is the biggest difference between the 2020 Re-Turn reboot/original series and the magical boy tribute. Aoi is in no way like Ichigo once you get past that they’ve both been injected with Iriomote cat DNA. Whereas Ichigo is cheery and bubbly and cute, Aoi is withdrawn, suffers from low self confidence, and sort of breaks the fourth wall during nearly every fight, freaking out at how catchphrases and such just seem to burst forth from him after he transforms. (It’s honestly a funny highlight.) Their respective crushes are also treated differently, with Aoi falling hard for Anzu (though of course saying nothing) almost immediately, almost a love at first sight sort of deal, and Ichigo already having this crush on this boy when we start vanilla TMM and already deeply committed to him in the reboot. In civilian form, (using vanilla Ichigo here, it’s not fair to compare Aoi to 2020 “been a magical girl for years” Ichigo), Aoi is a lot more unsure of himself, and seems almost to be in this Mew Mew thing for Anzu, whereas Ichigo immediately had a “I’ll do my best” acceptance mindset from the start. (Both freak out over their cat ears appearing at random moments, even Ichigo in the 2020 reboot, and I think I can finally give poor Aoi a point over Ichigo here. It makes him uncomfortable but he just wears a hoodie and hopes no one notices. It makes Ichigo freak out more lol.)

THE LOVE INTEREST / DUNGEON NAVI / SECONDARY PROTAGONIST

AOYAMA MASAYA, HINATA ANZU, SHIROGANE RYOU

Anzu is a precious peach and she occupies such a weird role here that I almost couldn’t make her a neat little graphic. She doesn’t fit neatly into a “oh, they’re a genderbent so and so” like nearly everyone else, and it’s fascinating. On the one hand, several panels in the first chapter of Au Lait make it clear that the writers are setting her up to be Aoi’s love interest. Every magical girl anime has a love interest, so why wouldn’t a magical boy manga? But that’s where she diverges. Unlike Masaya, who is a very clear tribute to Sailor Moon’s Tuxedo Mask (with the exception that he’s a cute bean as a civilian, he’s nearly the same person. No past, gets kidnapped, magical form to protect the magical girl, evil form to fight the magical girl [this happened in PGSM, and he’s been brainwashed several times]), who has always been a secondary character, Anzu actually starts the Au Lait manga. She wasn’t even featured on the promo images, so when I opened the first chapter in a zip file I thought I’d downloaded the wrong one. My rudimentary Japanese confirmed I hadn’t, but I was like “well who tf is this chick?” I waited for an English translation to be sure and yup - Anzu is being treated almost like a secondary protagonist. Well that’s new. It’s as if the Au Lait writers smashed together the characters of Ryou and Masaya and named their love child Hinata Anzu. She’s intelligent, she knows more about this project than she should, and, like Ryou in vanilla, she’s out and about and helping the boys, not just as a civilian, but in every battle. She doesn’t have powers (that we know of), but her smarts and knowledge of animals have served them well time and again. Au Lait seems more like, as one reader put it, Anzu And The Dork Squad than Aoi’s team.

Masaya in 2020 Re-Turn is adorable. He is at odds with Quiche over Ichigo (or more like, he dislikes just how much Quiche likes Ichigo), and in a moment of panic he uses his leftover remnants of Deep Blue’s power to... change his clothes. I’m not sure what actually happened there. (Note: Thanks ribbonstrawberrysurprise: Deep Blue manifested to float the chimera anima/train and its passengers to safety.) But I love that he was so concerned for Ichigo, who at that moment desperately needed help, that the being who created his body and didn’t like Ichigo wanted to protect her. Ryou was his standoffish self, but even he seemed to have a hint of a lingering crush. He organized a party for the Mews and then took over in cafe duties so Ichigo could meet her man at the airport, unable to quiiiiite meet her eye while saying so. I always did like Ryou/Ichigo.

THE SASSY RICH BITCH

AIZAWA MINTO AND YOYOGI SHIZUKA

First of all: SAILOR JUPITER TAUGHT ME THAT PINK EQUALS FLOWER HURRICANES AND CAN I JUST SAY THAT I AM DISAPPOINTED AS FUCK THAT SHIZUKA ISN’T PLANT BASED AND CAN’T DO FLOWER HURRICANES THAT IS ALL.

Admit it. When we saw the promo image, we assumed certain things. One of those things turned out to be true: Aoi would be the Iriomote cat, because of course he would be Ichigo’s counterpart. Shizuka is wearing glasses, and his costume had the little tail, which meant he must have been a fish or a marine mammal and therefore Retasu’s counterpart, right? RIGHT. But also very, very wrong, my friends. Shizuka is indeed water based like Retasu - he’s an Amazon river dolphin (the pink ones!) - and that’s where all his similarities to our gentle green girl end. Instead of making everyone exactly the same but gender flipped, Au Lait is going in a slightly different direction, and I really like it. Shizuka is actually the most similar to our resident princess Minto! They both attend prestigious elite schools and generally act better than everyone else, but the real gem here is their interactions with their leaders. Shizuka has some truly snappy one-liners - such as discovering Ryuusei (”that’s the power of an idiot”) - and his reactions to Aoi are gold. He considers himself a genius, and indeed he’s very intelligent according to Natsume (and his school seems to be for smart people, it’s not prestigious for music or anything like that), and he makes little quips at Aoi all the time about how Aoi isn’t. I could totally see him spending an entire shift reading a book at Cafe Mew Mew while Aoi does all the work, only for him to stand up and someone to scream “HOLY CRAP, SHIZUKA’S UP, SHIT’S ABOUT TO GO DOWN.”

Minto is also full of snappy quips at Ichigo in the reboot, mostly about how Ichigo should handle the biggest, strongest enemies since she’s the leader, and can’t Ichigo even keep them in place so Minto can shoot them down? (And yeah, someone totally said the above comment ^ when Minto stood up at Cafe Mew Mew.) Minto was always one of my favorite characters, and I love that we saw a lot of close ups of her in the reboot, and that she seemed to be second in command.

THE CHILD

FONG PURIN AND KANDA RYUUSEI

Oh my god these two. I refuse to believe they aren’t related. I know Purin is Chinese but you cannot take this headcanon from me.

Purin is my favorite character in OG Mew Mew and Ryuusei claimed my heart the second I saw the Au Lait promo. NEITHER OF THEM DISAPPOINTED ME, I AM SO IN LOVE.

While I WILL say that I in no way care for Mew Pudding’s redesign (I hate literally everything about it. I miss her jumpsuit. I hate the little pigtails at the top of her head. I hate the ribbon. At least she still has her fingerless gloves), I love that she got an entire panel of just her being badass. She stood in the middle of some train tracks, facing a runaway speeding train chimera anima, with that ^ fucking look on her face, and was like “where you going, na no da?” Purin from like, ten years ago wouldn’t have done that. She has matured so much, but she’s still the young, goofy little acrobat monkey who provides for her tea-themed siblings (who criminally do not make an appearance) and I just love her so fucking much, you guys.

RYUUSEI. Guys. He’s an idiot. Oh my god. He’s a cute lovable idiot. “What’s a gomodo dragon? What’s a kodomo dragon? What’s a condo dragon and why does it need a house?” Anzu was in love with him for like five seconds until she learned he’s a dumbass, and Aoi was jealous as fuck, and no one ever told him what his damn animal was, and I laughed my ass off through his entire last couple pages. He also had his jacket hand embroidered with the kanji for dragon, BUT IT’S MISSPELLED. It’s missing a stroke! XD

Ryuusei is the KOMODO dragon (which is Anzu’s favorite animal), and komodos are badass. He also either always had weird animal powers, or just never noticed that he suddenly got super smell. Komodo dragons, by the way, can track their prey for literally MILES by smell alone, for DAYS. It’s absolutely terrifying (thank you for the nightmares, Wild Thornberries), and Au Lait made it fucking comical. I can’t even. HE CAN SMELL THE RED DATA ANIMAL ON PEOPLE. I love it. He’s super strong and super cute, apparently lives with his grandparents, and is Purin’s counterpart in every single way, except I think SHE might be more mature than him. I love him. He is my baby.

Yellow is my favorite color and yellow never disappoints.

THE FAMOUS

FUJIWARA ZAKURO AND ROPPONGI AYATO

Zakuro had next to no presence in the reboot. She occasionally made some panels look pretty. She twice had a half page to herself, one per chapter. I am sad. I love my wolf lesbian. In semi-related news, I feel I have solved the mystery of Zakuro’s red data animal, something that has plagued the TMM community for years. The grey wolf is not endangered at all, yet Zakuro is injected with one, right? I read somewhere (either in a TMM blog or a conservation blog) that there is a subspecies of grey wolf that IS critically endangered. I believe it’s the Mexican grey wolf? I headcanon she was injected with DNA specifically from a Mexican grey wolf.

Moving on. In Chapter 3 (which was a DELIGHT), we met Ayato. Chapter 3 was the most frustrating chapter because let me tell you, Au Lait marks the first time I have ever read a manga chapter by chapter as it was being released in Japan. So I’m waiting Nakayoshi to publish the chapter, then I’m waiting for someone to scan Nakayoshi, then I’m waiting for someone to translate it, over and over and over, and omg I can’t believe this is what people DO. I’ve waited for full volumes before, but CHAPTERS? This is torture. Ayato, I haven’t had enough TIME with you!

Ayato seems to be an actor (in a really... really weird stage play), and has very few lines in his first appearance. I’m not sure what I make of him. He says about six sentences, which is actually a lot for a character introduced on a cliffhanger, but... I can’t decide if he’s said them in a mysterious Sailors Neptune and Uranus way or a flamboyant Sohma Ayame way. I ALSO DON’T KNOW WHAT ANIMAL HE IS AND I AM VERY ANGRY. BB Ryuusei said he smells like yakitori (a type of grilled chicken), which confirms he’s a bird. But. WHICH BIRD, DAMNIT?

CHAPTER FOUR WHERE ARE YOU?

THE FUNDING

AKASAKA KEIICHIRO, HINATA NATSUME, SHIROGANE RYOU

Hello again, Ryou! The boys here were wallpaper (though cute wallpaper) in the reboot. Natsume is 100% a troll. I love her. She admits in chapter 3 she literally just injected hot boys for her Mew Mew project. Even Ryou wasn’t that blunt. I mean, if you gotta save Earth and stare at people while you do it, they better be cute, right?

IF FOUND, PLEASE CALL THE FANDOM

MIDORIKAWA RETASU, SHIRAYUKI BERII, AKAI RINGO

Aside from her two half panels as a Mew Mew per chapter, this is the only good cap of Retasu as a civilian in the reboot. D: I believe Hiroo Taichi will be her counterpart in Au Lait.

I never liked Berii. There, I said it. She got TWO animals. She was some random newbie and she got to be leader just like that? And she was clueless and dumb and the writing in A La Mode wasn’t great. But I really like 2020 Berii. She’s cute, she seems more rabbit than cat, and she seems more intelligent and less of a blonde Ichigo clone. I don’t know if she’ll have an Au Lait counterpart.

WHERE IS RINGO? THE REBOOT WAS THE PERFECT OPPORTUNITY TO PUT HER IN THE STORY FOR REAL AND SHE JUST... WASN’T THERE?! THIS IS BLASPHEMY. RINGO IS THE BEST MEW MEW. BEST GIRL. JUSTICE FOR RINGO.

THE RELATIONSHIPS

MASAYA & ICHIGO VS AOI & ANZU

ZAKURO & MINTO VS AYATO & RYUUSEI

Nearly all of 2020 chapter 1 focused on Ichigo seeing Masaya again. I’m guessing this took place after he left for London. Ichigo left with him after A La Mode, and some time between then and Re-Turn came back to Japan, and now Masaya is back. They are still as lovey as ever, but not as sickeningly cute as Tsukino Usagi and Chiba Mamoru or anything. Phew! Their counterpart in Au Lait seems to Aoi and Anzu. (Look at that height difference! Poor Anzu, her poor neck.) Aoi already has a massive crush on her, but Anzu, bless her, is oblivious.

AND NOW FOR THE GAYS.

I think Zakuro and Minto is probably one of the most popular TMM ships and holy lesbians, Batman, they were well fed with this GORGEOUS panel at the end of chapter 2. Look at it. Zakuro had literally no panels, save for her two intros, to herself, and barely any panels at all in the reboot, and then BA-BAM, this beautiful ending shot. I swear Ikumi did it on purpose. Speaking of gays - is Ayato/Ryuusei the new Zakuro/Minto? Ayato seems to be at least bisexual (he also hit on Anzu), but this was literally his second panel. He is in a (terrible, TERRIBLE) play, and the actors are walking in the audience looking for the villain. Ayato walks into the audience and HITS ON RYUUSEI. His first goddamn words are “Do you want me to keep you, my cute little puppy?” to Ryuusei. He says fuck this acting shit, I see a SNACK. I think I ship it. I think I ship it hard.

THE STORY

*Au Lait is just getting started, so typical magical girl boy anime manga: Let’s find the others! Shenanigans! Some fillers! It’s cute, I love it, go read it.

*2020 Re-Turn is actually REALLY GOOD and chapter 2 reminds me of just how unique Tokyo Mew Mew was and still is among not just magical girl series, but animanga as a whole. Quick, what was the last environmental series you remember? Mine was Captain Planet - in the 90s. Preachy, in your face, after school special about things like pollution and endangered species and littering and honestly it was really cool, but very much a product of its time. Even now, magical girl animanga is still focused on bad guys, but bad guys are generic and represent something created for the series. Here, the bad guys are US, other human beings, who traffic animals, who endanger them, who wreck our planet enough that animals are barely clinging to life. There’s a very poignant scene featuring the adorable snow leopard up there (who’s the secondary protagonist of the reboot) ^, showing his mother being shot and himself being snatched by poachers, and he’s terrified, and has no idea what’s going on or where he is, and Ichigo is terrified for him. We need more series like this - not just of the magical girl genre, but of ALL genres. To make it accessible in this way, for people of all ages, something enjoyable, that people can fangirl over and love and its creators clearly put a lot of love and thought into. We need another Captain Planet, but less preachy, less after school special-y. We don’t want to be like the aliens (who remember, are descendants of humans who fucked up Earth so badly they had to leave it).

Behind all the cute of this manga and its reboot, and its new spinoff, Tokyo Mew Mew has a powerful message that we should all be following. It’s not even subtle. Get yo shit together, peeps.

#tokyo mew mew #tokyo mew mew 2020 re-turn #tokyo mew mew au lait #tokyo mew mew ore

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monsterdoodles · 5 years ago

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Thoughts on Steven Universe Future 3/6/2020

Spoilers Ahead

In dreams: Much different than what I predicted. Not about nightmares, but lucid dreams instead. This episode continues the exploration of Steven’s need to be needed. This is not the first time Steven has sacrificed the comfort of his own dreams and sleep for someone else. Back in Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service he helped Kiki with her nightmares.

The episode opens with Steven’s first dream. He is going to a party at his own home and the gems, the off-colors, Lars, Onion, and Connie are all there. He is ready to join. He’s earned it from saving the galaxy. Steven believes that things like friendship and time to have fun as something he must earn. But Cookie Cat, as the head of Obsidian, tells him that he isn’t needed anymore. The house rejects him. This is apparently not the first time he’s had dreams like this. When Peridot arrives, this gives him a use. He has cable, a vcr, and a vhs tape (again Steven is using outdated technology, another indicator of him holding onto the past). I imagine that Peridot has a way to watch the show without Steven, but because she is his friend and likes watching Camp Pining Hearts with Steven, she will watch it with him.

They don’t like the new show. Steven’s previous dream is broadcasted over it (in-line with his powers exhibited in Maximum Capacity). This gives Peridot the idea for Steven to essentially make new episodes. Here he lets Peridot direct his dreams. He is willing to let his privacy be invaded just to keep her around.

I’m not sure what to make of the dreams in the context of them relating to the show. Peridot wants romantic conflict, drama and character agency. Steven doesn’t have much input on the plot other than adding his foil character “Stephan” that he describes as “hunky life-guard friend with nice muscles and everyone always wants to hang out with him”. It’s very in-line with Steven’s character that he would want to be a life-guard. Someone who saves and heals people. That’s basically what Steven is already in many ways. Perhaps Steven doesn’t realize that he is just as beloved as his oc.

Steven can’t complete an entire episode. His thoughts about the diamonds and the events of the movie get in the way. These are things he needs to talk about with someone, but he has pushed it to the back of his mind.

Peridot is apparently a story-board artist now. In her words “I’m good at everything”. She plans for “Stephan” to kiss Jasmine to make Rodrigo jealous for dramatic purposes. Steven finds the idea unsettling, since he basically is “Stephan”. He relents when it seems that Peridot might leave. When he tries to go through with it, he can’t do it. The idea of kissing someone who isn’t Connie seems to bombard him with guilt, and they aren’t even an item. (At least that’s what I gather from the next episode, they refer to each other as “friends”, and not anything else.) Connie turning into Obsidian and stomping Steven “breaks” the dream. It’s still a dream however. He approaches “Peridot” to tell her that this needs to stop. He turns “her” around, and “her” visor is the universal image indicator of “no signal”. He is feeling disconnected from Peridot. The dream-Peridot approaches the house party from the beginning of the episode. This is the happy-place that everyone but Steven seems to be in right now. While everyone is in a much better place than they were at the beginning of the series, Steven probably thinks he’s the only one struggling. If Peridot joins this place, that leaves Steven alone outside. The whole house is the “no signal” image. He is on a different wave-length than his friends and family. Steven says that he doesn’t know how to be a friend without something to fix. This has been his whole life. He joined the gems because he exhibited powers and was there to help with corrupted gems. Before he became more competent with his powers he was often left alone to his own devices. The most time that gems spent with him was during the Cluster arc at the Barn. This is also where he spent the majority of his time with Peridot. He feels that he has to pull the weight in this friendship and that Peridot has to get something out of it for her to stay.

When Steven wakes up, Peridot is apologetic. Earlier in the episode she did realize that making these dreams was bothering Steven in some way, but she continued anyway. Since Steven was finally honest her, she understands. They don’t need an excuse to hang out together.

Bismuth Casual: I was very wrong on my prediction for this one as well, I thought this would be about a day-in-the-life of Little Homeworld or something else to that affect.

Steven, Connie, Bismuth and Pearl are on their way to go roller-skating. Pearl in under the pretense that Bismuth is here to meet and interact with humans while Bismuth is here to spend time with Pearl.

Pearl, I assume over the past two years or so, has amassed many human friends. She exchanges numbers with them, but it seems that she still thinks this is just a strange ritual rather than a way of communication despite the fact that she has a phone and teaches classes about communicating with phones.

Steven feels highly ostracized. He can only seem to bring up gem stuff in conversation with Connie’s friends. He doesn’t know how to skate or even what grade he’s supposed to be in. He’s no longer that confident and comfortable with himself. Him not knowing a lot about human culture isn’t new. He’s been this way for a long time, but he only seems to notice when he’s around other humans. When Connie’s friends arrive, he feels like he’s a third (or in this case fourth) wheel. To him it seems being less human should make him a less valued friend.

Bismuth has known Pearl for thousands of years, but this Pearl who sings car repair commercials and skates with humans is quite new to her. “I don’t want to take her away from what she’s got”. This is why Bismuth is there with the pretense of meeting new humans. She wants to catch up, but doesn’t want to encroach on what Pearl enjoys. Steven is much the same. But Connie actively reaches out to Steven. That’s what this night is about to her. As Bismuth points out, Steven has always been a Crystal Gem, always been weird and that’s never gotten in the way of their friendship.

So Steven takes a literal leap (and eats it), to tell Connie that he wants to reconnect (and learn how to skate). They form Stevonnie (who wears a very large shoe size know) and tear up the dance floor. They are still in sync. They are still friends and they can be connected.

To reconnect Bismuth and Pearl, Steven and Connie request for the car commercial song to be played. To Pearl’s surprise, Bismuth knows the song now. Everybody skates together.

What a nice pair of episodes. Both with a focus on Steven feeling inadequate and/or left behind in his relationships. It’s not a surprising revelation that Bismuth appears to have some romantic inclinations towards Pearl. Both episodes end on a high note (emotionally) for everyone.

Next Week

My predictions are going to be heavily based on leaks, so look away if you haven’t seen them.

Together Forever: Connie has a very clear vision of her future and Steven wants to make sure he's a part of it. With this new description I am more confident than ever that this is the proposal episode. If that little clip that aired at the end of Bismuth Casual is part of this episode, then I think Steven is going to ask Garnet what it’s like to be fused all the time and how to go about asking Connie. From the small clip, Garnet is comfortable infusing. (Which she appears to be in a scout master’s uniform for some reason. Some kind of Little Homeschool sanctioned camping trip with fusion components maybe??) Not sure if Garnet will be savvy enough about human relationships to give Steven any solid advice. Like from the leak, Connie would like to be her own person. Garnet’s components enjoy being Garnet for the vast majority of the time, would she be able to understand Connie’s perspective on this?

Growing Pains: Steven sees a doctor for the first time. So I was correct in my prediction that the hospital scenes from the promo were indeed real and not part of a dream. In my earlier predictions I said that Steven would go to the doctor because he was stuck in pink mode, but with this plot thread of human things, I think that Steven is going to have some mundane medical issue that he can’t fix with healing spit. Perhaps something like appendicitis, since he holds his side in pain in the promo.

If you all have any thoughts about the new episodes or episode predictions, let me know!

#steven universe #steven universe future #su spoilers #suf spoilers #su leaks #j posts about stuff

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bakagamieru · 5 years ago

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I don't think people are mad because of harry still being sad about zayn or whatever it is between them. Public image or offical narrative you name it but for some reason it's ALWAYS zayn who gets talked shit about and people at their "enough!" point me inclueded. 90% of theblogs I follow here are always critical about what's going on but after 5 years you want somethings to left behind. And at this point I can't help but ask would this mess still going on after all this time if it was not zayn?

General

There is every reason to believe that Zayn leaving is a stunt and that none of the boys ever had a problem with each other. I’ve explained that in many previous posts, and the explanation takes up a lot of space, so I’m not doing it again here. You can check out those posts in my Zayn Stunt Summary here: https://bakagamieru.tumblr.com/post/120840259353/zayn-stunt-summary

I think it helps to visualize this situation as a siege. The human psyche is rather suggestible. Even for strong, confident, self-assured personalities, it can be difficult to hold up against constantly being told the same lie from every quarter. Sooner or later, people who are repeatedly told lies start to believe them, unless they’re very lucky, very aware, and very careful. That’s the whole concept of gaslighting. This has also been shown in psychological experiments where people have eventually been convinced they’ve broken bones that they never have just because they keep being told they have over and over.

That’s why it’s important with this situation to keep reminding ourselves of the hard facts and work through every new development logically. That’s how we survive the siege and stop ourselves from getting hypnotized into believing negative things about the boys just because we’re told negative things over and over again.

Direct Answer

I think the current badmouthing is about a sick and twisted promo strategy that all of their teams seem to share.

I suspect there would be a lot more negativity from Zayn’s side if he had proper promo. No promo, no appearances, no performances, no interviews = no opportunity for badmouthing.

Also, keep in mind that there are 4 people that can potentially badmouth Zayn, while Zayn is only 1 person to badmouth the other boys. That’s obviously going to lead to more vitriol directed at Zayn than at the other boys.

Those two things (lack of promo, 4 v. 1 scenario) are probably part of the reason everything seems so unbalanced.

There’s also the fact that Zayn was cast as the villain from the beginning. In the post I linked, you can find a post I made about why there were multiple reasons for that and why Zayn was actually the only person among the boys that could have been put in that role during this stunt. Is there probably some racism involved in that? Yes. Is part of the reason that people are so willing to believe the worst about Zayn linked to unconscious racism? Quite possibly, yes.

I know it sucks to see other people buying the negativity and feel like there’s nothing you can do about it. The only thing I can say is that if you’re surrounded by negativity, it’s very difficult to see anything but the negative side of a situation.

I prefer to think that most of the fans have been taken in by a targeted psychological strategy that relies more on repetitive misdirection than that most of the fans are blatantly racist. And I really do believe that’s true. I believe a lot of this type of racism is unconscious bias and that one day, hopefully a lot of people with these unconscious biases will at least become aware they have them and work towards trying to fix them.

But no, in general I don’t think this negativity is still going on only because it’s Zayn. I think it’s still going on because old 1DHQ still want it to be going on and keeps stirring the pot to make sure it does. I think this is still going on because old 1DHQ still has some sort of hold on 1D’s public images, because the “feud” drama is being used for promo, and because the situation can’t really be fully resolved until the hiatus ends (and I predicted that before the hiatus began). I had hoped that we might at least get friendly Zayn and 1D even before a reunion, but apparently that’s too much to ask for from the evil 1D overlords.

I, too, feel like shit every time this unnecessary negativity rears its ugly head. However, you have to either find a way to accept and move past it (which I do through reminding myself of the truth via logic) or you might need to remove yourself from the negativity. If it’s dragging you down constantly, consider unfollowing blogs that post the news that upsets you or blocking the most common tags on the posts that upset you. I know being told to ignore a bad situation isn’t the best, but for your mental health, it’s either that or finding a way to fight back that makes you feel better.

Showy = Putting on a Show

To me, the drama of this “feud” is just another reason to believe that nothing IS actually going on between Harry and Zayn. Nothing bad anyway.

When something is constantly being pushed in your face, it’s generally because someone wants you to see it. More often than not, the things that are really scandalous are hidden in the entertainment industry and it’s the huge dramatic “feuds” that are constantly in the news that end up being all an act.

Character

Maybe I wear rose-colored glasses, but I’d like to think I’m a decent judge of character. None of the boys are rude or spiteful enough to keep taking potshots, especially to gang up on one particular person, for years and years after a fight.

It takes a certain maturity to survive with as much grace as the boys have managed in the entertainment industry, and that sort of maturity should also lend itself towards mending a relationship after an argument / learning how to move on from an argument that can’t be fixed.

Former Friend vs. Foe

Yes, there have been a few public scuffles with other celebs in the past, such as the Wanted, but that situation is different simply because no 1D boys were ever close to any of the Wanted. A fight with a near-stranger is very different from a fight with someone you’ve called your brother on multiple occasions.

The closer the people who are fighting are, the more emotional it is and the more hurt people get. Being more emotional means being more likely to be very angry, but being more hurt means that you aren’t as likely to want to broadcast that very vulnerable, private feeling. You’re more likely to want to shun the topic with strangers than vent about it, if you’re any sort of a private person.

If we know nothing else, we at least know for sure that Zayn and the other boys were very, very good friends. You can’t fake the way they were together for the amount of time they were together.

It Was a Single Fight Supposedly

The story is that none of the boys are really in contact with Zayn, so according to that narrative, it’s not like there are ongoing clashes that keep any of the boys feeling like they need to keep commenting negatively about Zayn. If you’re continually butting heads, it might make sense to keep complaining about the situation, but that’s not what we’re being told is happening. We’ve essentially been told that there was 1 fight years ago and that’s been it aside from a small amount of supposed back and forth, almost entirely in print interviews initially.

Time and Common Decency

It’s been almost 5 YEARS. What person with any sense of decency keeps bringing up a fight at every public appearance that happened 5 YEARS ago?

That would be like getting in a fight with your good friend and then badmouthing them publicly at every gathering of your mutual friends for years. No matter who was in the right originally, you’re just a jackass at that point.

Talking about something in private and complaining is one thing, but doing it in public? That’s entirely different. And the more time that passes, the more ridiculous it is.

Relevancy

Zayn isn’t even really relevant to any of the boys’ solo careers, so it doesn’t particularly make sense for him to be brought up over and over.

This might be because the interviewers can’t seem to move on from 5 years ago, asking constantly about when the band is getting back together, if they’re getting back together, how is it different having a solo career, etc. It’s been 5 YEARS. Those questions have been asked and answered ad nauseam and it’s not like those answers have changed over time.

Sorry, got a bit off track complaining about interviewers… Anyway, it might just be the interviewers being unoriginal, but their team clearly hasn’t blacklisted the topic which would be a more sensible and classy way to handle things given the situation and the amount of time that’s passed. There’s no need to talk about Zayn at all really, and yet it keeps coming up. It just makes all of them look bad, which shouldn’t be the image their teams want for them, and yet…apparently something is more important.

The Promo Connection

More than that, it specifically always seems to come up during promo, for better or worse. Sometimes the mentions are more positive, but most of the time the narrative takes a sharp turn to the aggressively negative overnight.

After ranging from positive to neutral when talking about Zayn for years, suddenly during Liam’s first round of promo, things turned quite negative (e.g., wouldn’t save Zayn if he were drowning) and again during this current round of promo (e.g., guess I can talk about this honestly now, etc.).

After supposedly reconciling about 3 different times (while apparently having no contact positive or negative at all during these years?), Louis’ feelings on Zayn are apparently very negative (e.g. we’re too immature to ever make up) during this current round of promo.

After not talking about Zayn at all, Harry was suddenly negative during his first round of promo (I think it was the Rolling Stone print interview, but I’m not sure) and brought it up negatively again, unprompted, during this round of promo on SNL.

It’s not like Zayn ever HAS promo anymore, but when he does have interviews, there’s generally some sort of dig at One Direction somehow (pretty much all print interviews, of course).

The only one to escape the pattern is Niall, but Teflon Niall is a real thing, enough said.

It’s ALWAYS during promo for a single or album that things get nasty again. My best guess is that their teams think that the “feud” = drama = attention = sales. To me, it seems dumb, repetitive, unrealistic, etc., but I guess a casual fan or the general public wouldn’t follow everything they do, so it’s not as repetitive to that type of consumer.

Conclusion

I am 100% aware of how exhausting, frustrating, and infuriating this whole situation is. There’s no need for the negativity, it makes no sense, it paints all of the boys in a bad light, it basically requires someone to assume the worst of Zayn in order to believe any of it, and yet there are tons of people who still do believe all of it without any critical thought.

This is why I still write posts like these over and over again. I have to get those negative emotions out somehow, and the best way for me to feel better is by countering the official narrative by using logic. It reassures me that even though I’m made to feel like crap about the situation, my initial and continuing judgments about the situation haven’t been wrong. If you remind yourself of the actual proven characters of the people involved and work things out logically, it’s not dire like all the negativity makes it feel.

When things are loud, they tend to be for show. That’s what this all is. This negativity is for show, which means it’s not real.

TLDR;

The fact that there’s still so much public negativity between the boys and Zayn is unrealistic, and therefore suspicious, because:

the boys are too good to be acting like this

this supposed fight would be too intimate and painful to bandy about publicly like this

supposedly the boys haven’t been in contact and so all of this is over a single fight that happened 5 years ago

the boys are too smart to not know that acting like this makes them look bad

their teams have to be in favor of the badmouthing because otherwise they could easily have just not talked about it at all

there’s generally a sharp increase in negativity when one of the boys has single or album promo

there’s more badmouthing of Zayn because it’s framed as 4 v. 1 and also Zayn never has any promo

My conclusion from these points (and also from previous facts and experience) is that the badmouthing isn’t because 1D and Zayn want to be badmouthing each other. Rather, the drama of the “feud” is being used for promo and possibly other purposes. I firmly believe that if there were a real falling out, the 1D boys would have handled it far more gracefully than this, given the chance.

I suppose it’s possible that there was a real fight and that the boys were forced to handle it ungracefully by their team, but I would point to Occam’s Razor. The simplest explanation that fits ALL the facts related to this situation (from the time of Zayn leaving through now) is that Zayn was forced out of 1D as a stunt and that there was never an actual feud between Zayn and the rest of the boys.

So yes, this situation sucks, but no, I don’t blame either side for it because there are NO sides when there is no actual fight. I blame old 1DHQ and I blame society in general and I blame the ignorance of the general public. But I’m not here for them, I’m here for 1D, so I keep my head down and keep waiting for things to get good again.

#one direction #zayn leaving #zayn v. 1d feud #speculation #bakagamieru #masterpost #I wrote a massive post again #sob #why do I always do this?#when will I ever learn?#I also can't stay on topic for the life of me #Anonymous

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zankivich · 6 years ago

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Neighbors: Shawn x Plus-Size Reader Chapter 2

a/n: hi friends. Feeling kind of down about all things writing at the moment, don’t know if I’ll continue at all. But this was already written so I figured I might as well post it. If you don’t hate it and feel like letting me know that’d be cool. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday. bye

*Shawn’s pov*

He walked down the hallway jingling his keys and taking his time. Then just in case, he walked back to the other end. If anyone was around to see him, they’d surely think he was crazy. And maybe he was. This is the life that he had been destined for. Walking up and down the hallway of his apartment building in the hopes that the girl next door might pop out.

He’d been doing it for weeks and so far had only been successful twice. Since the night of their first meeting, and the subsequent morning after where they’d puked together for a couple of hours, she’d been stringing him along like she had the carrot and he was a rabbit. At first he’d thought maybe she wasn’t interested, was even going to give up, and try to move on. But, he’d stumbled upon her juggling a whole bunch of groceries one night and the conversation that followed told him that maybe he wasn’t crazy at all.

“Here let me help you.” He’d said reaching for the bag she’d be trying to balance between her knees.

“I had it.” She mumbled in response.

“Just let me help you. Accepting help isn’t the greatest weakness in the world you know.”

She was maybe the most stubborn woman he’d ever met in his life. And Jesus did he love every little bit of it.

“Thanks.” She said begrudgingly.

He followed her into her apartment which was much different than his own. Less bachelor pad, more grown woman with her shit vaguely together. She had a couch and a coffee table, and all of her furniture was mix match and different. It fit her somehow. And the longer he was in there the more he felt like he was learning about her. He peered over at where she stood in her kitchen, hip casually propped against the counter as she stared at him with crossed arms. He stepped further away from the living room, choosing instead to join her at the counter. He thought about the way her waist had felt under his hands when they danced, and the way her laugh sounded as they drank tequila. He wasn’t quite sure what to do about how much he thought about her. And the look on her face wasn’t exactly one of love and adoration. All of the confidence he had felt after the cuddling and the dance had completely washed out of him.

“Can I ask you something?”

He leaned against the other side of her counter, his legs long enough that they rested on either side of hers.

“Sure.”

“Do you like… do you not want me around?” He mumbled eyes on his fingers which were fidgeting with his ring. “Cause I kinda thought that we might of hit it off in my apartment. I mean I know there was alcohol involved so maybe...I just don’t want to bother you if you don’t want that.”

She stared at him for a second, and he got the feeling that she was trying to decide whether or not she was going to be honest with him. When her face softened, it was as if a wall came down, and he had somehow moved on to the next level of knowing her more deeply.

“I… guess I’m just confused on why you want to be around so much.” She shrugged.

He nodded trying to wrap his mind around everything that she was.

“So it’s not that I make you uncomfortable. Or that you don’t like me?”

“No I,” She paused and her cheeks darkened. “I like you.”

He smiled at her, completely incapable of stopping the twitch of his muscles. And maybe she rolled her eyes and tried to play it off, but it didn’t matter. Now he knew.

So he took some extra time every now and then--or every single time he entered the building--to see if she might come around. It was a tuesday night and that meant that she should be getting home from work any minute. He’d landed in Toronto that afternoon for a break after promo, having spent the day with his sister and mom, and all he wanted was to ask her about her day.

When he saw her get off the elevator this time, his heart leaped in his chest. And not just in the way it had been doing since she’d knocked drunkenly on his door at two am looking for salt. There was a man with her this time and his arm was draped casually over her shoulder like it belonged there, and yet he’d never seen anything that looked more wrong. He moved quickly to get into his apartment, not wanting to be found creeping in the hall while her date dropped her off. The saddest part was having to physically restrain himself from staring through the peephole, but his heart already felt broken and he wasn’t in the mood to torture himself more than he already had.

He changed out of the outfit he’d worn, both to show his mother that he wasn’t completely helpless without her, as well as to maybe make the pretty girl next door notice, and grabbed angrily for his guitar. His fingers were itching, he couldn’t get his feet to stay still, and his stupid heart wanted very much to head in the direction of his next door neighbor. It was the perfect combination for a song, and a wounded heart.

*Y/n pov*

You notice when Shawn leaves town. Mostly because you were constantly looking for him. Not in a weird way, you hoped at least, but just in a way of wanting to see him. After he had somehow gotten you to blatantly admit that you liked him--without any discussion of what kind of like that was--there hadn’t been much more development. You didn’t have his number, and he didn’t have yours, and despite the fact that you were literally inches from each other, it felt like he was so far away. He’d admitted to liking you too. That was the craziest part of it all, and yet both of you were just kind of watching from afar wondering what the hell either of you had meant by that.

That was partly why you’d gone out that night. Your best friend, Stu, had watched you sulk long enough apparently, and despite the fact that he didn’t know the crush you had was on the rockstar next door, he’d had enough of your moping. So he transfered you to a bar straight from work where you drank and moped and ate tacos. There were worse ways of moping, you guessed. When he dropped you off, arm wrapped around your waist to balance you in your heels the way only a true best friend would, you stared longingly at the door that you really wanted to be behind.

“You gonna be okay babes?” He asked.

You nodded sullenly. “Don’t mind me. I have a hitachi wand that does everything a man could ever wish to do for me.”

Stu wrinkled his nose and you smiled for the first real time of the night at your best fiend.

“You are just so hopelessly gay. Go home to your boyfriend. Stop worrying about me. I’ll be fine.”

“Fine. If you decide you finally want to talk about something that’s bothering you, you know I’m just a call away.”

You didn’t have the heart to tell him that this particular burden could only be solved by six feet, two inches of pasty Canadian. So, you hugged him and let him get on with his night instead.

You changed back into your oversized t-shirt and shorts, and settled about baking something that would make you forget about Shawn. You found the process of creating something from nothing to be particularly soothing, and thought that maybe it might help. And if not that, certainly the added bottle of wine would do the trick. There was no thinking about Shawn when you made the pie crust. There was no thinking about Shawn when you were sauteing the apples. And there definitely wasn’t any thinking about Shawn on your third glass of wine when you swore you saw his face in your caramel sauce. What a shit show.

The pie was just coming out of the oven when you heard your neighbor blasting some very sad shit. It sounded like maybe it was an alternative band that would once have been a emo/scream-o band in 2008, but had evolved. Shawn happened to look like an innocent puppy with big floppy ears every single time you’d ever seen him, so the music was even more puzzling then it would’ve been for any one else on the planet. Even more puzzling was the conscious understanding that he was home. He had to be… You scolded yourself. Going over to that man’s apartment tipsy for the second time in a row would be absolutely ridiculous. No. Just no.

And that is how you ended up outside of your neighbor’s apartment for a second time, far less done up than when you’d cuddled in his bed. In your fuzzy slippers and oversized tee you knocked hard against his door, hoping that he would be able to hear you over the depressing music.

*Shawn’s pov*

The knock on the door is the last thing in the world he wanted to deal with. He had half a mind to pull the rockstar card and ask for them to fuck off. Despite being twenty-three years old, he felt more like a sappy teenager than ever, and he just wasn’t in the mood to have someone tell him to turn his music down when the woman he liked was probably in love with someone else. They had definitely never defined any sort of relationship; hell, he hadn’t even talked to her more than a couple of times. He had no right to be hurt by her living her own fucking life, but…he was.

When he opened the door and she was standing there in fucking fuzzy slippers with a pie in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other, he thought for sure he must be dreaming. But she had this adorable, awkward grin on her lips that he wanted to kiss, and knew that his brain wasn’t even remotely capable of imagining such a beauty.

“H--Hi.” He mumbled, dazed.

She blinked her annoyingly long lashes at him.

“Hey. I...I didn’t know you were home again.”

His ears perked up at this.

“You noticed that I left?”

Her cheeks reddened and he felt his heart reform itself in his chest. Wow.

“No I--I just…” She stuttered. “I heard the music. Sounded like maybe you could use some pie.”

No one had ever baked for him before. And he didn’t know he wanted it, needed it even until right in this moment.

He smiled at her. “So, you baked me a pie?”

Her lips parted drawing attention to her mouth and his eyes traveled there unwittingly. She was beautiful and he was maybe just a tad bit hopelessly into her already. Her big, brown eyes rolled at him so hard he thought they might pop out of her head. She cocked her hip in the most sassy manner he’d ever seen, but all he could do was remember what it had felt like to hold her hips in his hands, what is had felt like to mold himself to the back of her body. His mouth was suddenly dry.

“I did not bake you a pie. I baked a pie. I bake when I’m stressed, and you are just simply reaping the benefits from my hell of a life.”

“You’re stressed?” He frowned before suddenly moving into action. “What are you doing standing in the hallway? Come in.”

He slid the wine from one of her palms sliding his hand there instead and pulled her into the safe confines of his home. Shawn thought that she looked like she belonged on his couch. And the visual of her tucking her legs under one of the oversized pillows his Mum bought him made his whole chest feel warm. He made a mental note to thank her for buying the pillows again.

He popped the cork on the wine and poured each of them a glass, tucking some plates and silverware under his arm before making his way back to her. When he sat down his knee brushed against both of hers which were folded sideways so that her body was angled towards him. They both looked at each other before awkwardly looking away and take a gulp out of their respective glasses.

“So, what’s bothering you, honey?” He asked propping his arm against the hand he had leaned against the back of the couch.

She shrugged twirling the glass around in her fingers.

“It’s not that I’m bothered by anything. I just went out to dinner with a friend, and he and his boyfriend are like ten years strong, so everytime we go out together it feels like he’s pitying me. But he’s my best friend, and I love him. So even though I don’t really like to bother him; he kinda calls bullshit.”

The guy who dropped her off.

His eyes widened. “Boyfriend? Like...as in a gay boyfriend?”

Her eyes immediately turned to slits and he’d never seen someone’s face change so drastically so quickly.

“Yea? Is that a fucking problem?”

Nice fucking going, moron.

“No! No, no, no. That--That’s wonderful! I mean...I love gay people!! Honest. I--I met the fab five at this netflix event thingy and Tan France totally exposed me to the power of a printed floral shirt.”

She stared at him like maybe she thought he was the dumbest fucker alive, which he most definitely was. Even if she was single, he was going to end up with her hating him before he’d even gotten a chance.

“Hmmm.” She hummed seemingly deciding that he probably wasn’t a homophobic asshole. “What do you say we eat the pie now?”

She set the pie on one of the plates and instead of cutting either of them a slice dug her fork directly into the cripsy center of the pie. The room filled with smells of cinnamon and apples, and his stomach rumbled appreciatively. Then, out of nowhere, she was lifting the fork towards his mouth instead of her own, and he immediately fell even harder. She seemed to stare accusingly at her hand, as if she wasn’t sure why she’d made that decision, so he moved to close the gap between his mouth and the fork lest she change her mind.

“Oh my god.” He groaned around the metal. “You fuckin made that?”

She chuckled at him and the smile on her face nearly did him in more than the pie did.

“Like I said...I like to bake.”

“Will you bake me things all the time? I mean you should be selling this!” He rambled plucking the fork from her fingers to take another bite. “You might just have the cure to cancer in a pie, and no one knows about it.”

“Shawn, I assure you there is no cure for cancer in my pie. There may be connections to heart disease with all the butter, but no cancer.”

Bummer.

“That’s okay. I still support you in all your endeavors.” He assured her.

“Well thank you...As long as you as support me.”

They smiled at each other and all of the tension from the last couple of weeks wasn’t there anymore. He got to just be with her, and it felt absolutely amazing.

They drank wine on his couch and ate her ridiculously incredible pie while catching each other up on their lives. It was wild to think that they’d only spoken a couple of times, because he kind of felt like he could tell her anything. There wasn’t any judgement there. He never knew how good it could feel to just have someone to talk to.

“So this is like...the biggest promo tour you’ve ever done?” She asked.

They’d discarded the pie and had settled close enough to each that their thighs were touching. The wine and the candles he’d lit earlier had each of them feeling warm, and her thighs were poking out of that big t-shirt that he kind of wanted to knot his fingers in and pull her closer. But he didn’t. He liked the idea of just being with her without trying to hit on her, and something about that felt important to him. He liked her that much.

“It’s definitely the most intense. Andrew is working really hard on navigating my cross-over from ‘teen pop star’ to ‘genuine adult artist’. I think the music will speak for itself. He kind of agrees with me, but wants to put me in as many situations as possible to make that happen. It means performing a lot, which is when I’m happiest, so I’m okay with it.”

She did this thing sometimes where she would hum while she thought about something. He had half the mind to call Charlie Puth and ask what key she was humming in because it sounded absolutely beautiful to him.

“Do you get to come home often?”

He nodded watching the way her eyes dipped to her lap. His fingers itched around his wine glass to tug her chin up so he could see them again. It felt like her question might be more layered than either of them was ready to admit

“Yea. I come home as often as I can. I mean...there are definitely times where I’m gone for weeks at a time, and when tour comes around I’d be gone most of the year, but even if it’s only for a couple of days I try to fly home. Toronto feels like a safe space...It--It recharges me.”

It feels like barriers are being broken. Like they’d been standing on opposite sides of the room, but with every passing minute, they were stepping close to each other. And he wanted that, wanted to know her as deeply as she’d let him. He got the feeling that she wasn’t used to opening up, and he wanted nothing more than to change that.

“But uh… What about you?”

She reached for the bottle of wine on his coffee table, refilling both of their glasses for the fourth or fifth time.

“What about me?”

He rolled his eyes and used his head to nudge at her shoulder playfully. What happened instead was that his head just kind of stayed there.

“Well I know you like to bake...I know you like tequila. I know salt on your fries is a must. And I know that you hate the idea of accepting help. I wanna know more.”

She took a deep breath and he felt her shoulder lift as she exhaled. She smelled like cinnamon and lavender. It was intoxicating.

“It’s not that I hate the idea of accepting help,” She mumbled. “I just am used to doing things without it.”

“How come?”

“You ask a lot of questions you know that?”

He nodded. “I figure if I keep asking eventually you’ll answer one of em.”

“Funny. You’re funny.”

He took another sip of wine and maybe he nuzzled his face a little more into her shoulder.

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I’m just here to listen.”

It takes a long while. They sit in silence and drink another full glass. Somehow it’s not awkward between them. He actually feels rather content. He thought that maybe he could sit in silence with her forever, and it’d be okay. Just as long as he could sit beside her with her hair tickling his forehead.

When she speaks it takes him by surprise. Mostly because of the sound starting as a rumble in her chest and hitting pleasantly at his ear. She doesn’t start out deep at all. She just tells him about her family at first. She used to be super close with her mom, but their relationship is complicated apparently.. She has three older brothers, who she thinks made her as tough as she is. But there also wasn’t a lot of time for emotions with four kids and a single mother, so maybe that has something to do with her struggle to let people in. She had a cat growing up that died while she was away at college, and she hasn’t adopted an animal since. One of her favorite albums of all time is The Stranger by Billy Joel. She’s always wanted to visit Amsterdam since she read The Fault in our Stars in high school. Peanut M&Ms are her favorite candy.

He realizes somewhere between the story of her mother taking her to see a scary movie for the first time--and how she’d been braver than any of her brothers--and the story of the time she broke her arm against a bully’s face, that she’s kind of absolutely incredible. And he’s not sure why that makes him smile so much, but it does. And he can’t help it. And he’s not sure that he’d ever want to.

“What is so funny, sir?” She asked when he’d been smiling into her shoulder like a maniac for over ten minutes.

They’ve drunk so much wine that all of his inhibitions are gone, and all that’s left is the truth.

“Nothing’s funny. You’re just insanely wonderful is all.”

He can feel her roll her eyes and before he knows it his wine glass is being pulled from his fingers.

“I think that’s enough for you, bud. Time for bed.”

“What? Nooooo, I wanna hear more about your eighth grade emo phase!” He whined indignantly.

“Another time. I have a feeling if I keep getting you drunk like this, there are gonna be some very angry record execs looking for me.”

She got up off the couch and helped him into a standing position. He was maybe a little more wobbly than he’d like, but it wasn’t as if he was hammered off a little wine. Nonetheless he wrapped his arm around her shoulder and let her drag him towards the bedroom. Maybe because he just wanted to be close to her.

“No one would dare yell at you, ever, sweetheart. I’d fire them on the spot.”

She chuckled and squeezed appreciatively at his hip in a way that shot sparks across his skin.

“It’s nice to know someone’s looking out for me.”

They make it to his bedroom, which isn’t too different from the guest room they slept in last time. It’s just a little bigger, and so is the bed, and he’s got pictures of his family and friends on the dresser. Most of his awards stay in his old bedroom in Pickering, but his first artist of the year award for the MMVAs sits on his desk, because it was from Canada, from home, and it served as a reminder of everything he’d accomplished.

“You okay now?” She asked once he made his way safely into the bed.

He yawned reaching for her hand with his own.

“I’m fine. Come lie with me though.”

“Shawn, I should go back home.”

He sighed squeezing her fingers tightly in his own

“It’s fine, it’s fine. Just for a minute. Please?”

It takes a little tugging before she is lying beside him. He can’t help but hide his face in her hair again, the smell of lavender so calming in his nose. His arm snakes around her waist without ever talking to his brain first and through the haze he recognizes the important of checking in first.

“I--Is this okay? Please tell me if it’s not.”

He’s hold her gently with his hands and they’re not making eye contact, and he just needs to know that it’s not wrong. That she wants it too.

“It’s okay.” She murmured and laid her hand on the arm covering her waist to give it a gentle squeeze.

“Are you sure?”

“I promise. Thank you for asking.”

They fall asleep with their legs intertwined and their bodies pressed together. He sleeps better than he did the entire time he was away.

***

*Y/N’s point of view*

It just becomes a thing that you do all of a sudden. You’ll knock on his door, or he’ll knock on yours and you wind up sitting on his couch for hours. It’s like you’re...friends. Friends who fall asleep holding each other every now and again, or all of the time. He talked to you about music stuff, and it never felt gloaty or pompous. It was his world and he let you into it, because he said it made him feel good to talk to someone outside of it all for a change. Some days he spoke industry talk that went over your head a lot, but you listened anyway. Other days he spoke of melodies and songs and his passion for his work. And those were always your favorite because his eyes lit up and he stammered more and he just had the most perfect look in his eyes to you.

Besides the times when he’s talking to you about record labels and industry mishaps, you find yourself forgetting that he’s not just your neighbor. You get the feeling that he prefers it that way. Neither of you acknowledge what it is exactly that you’re doing. Is it friends? Is there a deeper attraction there? He didn’t seem to want to push you towards any particular decision, and quite honestly you were still having trouble wrapping your mind around everything that he was. But that didn’t stop him from pulling you into his bed at the end of the night and tucking your head under his chin. It didn’t stop him from holding your hand at random times, or insisting on you sharing a blanket despite the multiple ones available. It was a weird sort of limbo that you found yourself in.

It’s another night of hanging out, only this time in your apartment, when the scale tips a little more out of balance. You were sitting criss-cross applesauce beside each other eating takeout with chopsticks when he brought it up.

“So…” He hedged, around a mouthful of lo mein. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“Sure, what’s up?”

“I have to go away for a little while. I’m spending some time in New York. Couple of talk shows, a little recording, some meetings.”

You nodded. “Do you want me to like… water your plants or something?”

“Water my--No! No, why would I...No. I was actually wondering if you wanted to tag along.”

“Tag along? Like go with you...To New York?”

“Yea!” He said eyes bright and puppy like. “Look it’s not that weird. I have friends come visit me on the road all the time. You know how I told you I get lonely when I’m doing those long ass business meetings with all the old folks, it drives me crazy. Come with me.”

It feels weird. And not just because this thing between the two of you keeps festering but because you also haven’t really hung out outside of the confines of your apartment building. Leaving the country feels fast, it feels... like maybe it means something. You’re just not sure what.

“I don’t know Shawn... Can I think about it for a couple days?”

He nods, smile not dimming in the slightest.

“Of course. It’s uh--it’ll probably be next week. Andrew is getting flight information together now so I asked him to get an extra ticket just in case. There’ll be a spot for ya.”

“Okay. Yea, okay.”

You sit in silence for a while each of you munching on noodles. It’s not necessarily awkward, but it lacks the usual comfort that you two had had since the very beginning. Shawn proceeded to fidget with his food sending you random glances over his kung pao chicken. You didn’t know what to say, so you stayed quiet.

“Listen y/n did I--”

A knock on the door interrupts him, and quite frankly you’d never been so happy for unannounced company.

At the door is none other than your best friend, the light of your life, Stu, and suddenly you realized that you’d neglected to have the “my neighbor’s a rockstar” talk with him. So much for welcoming unannounced company.

“Stu!” You gasped. “What’cha doin’ here bud?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Bryan was getting on my nerves, and I needed to come vent. Since when are you so squeaky?”

“Squeaky? Who’s squeaky? I’m not squeaky!”

His eyes slanted closer into slits. He knew you better than anyone and that very rarely played to your advantage.

“Are you fucking someone in there?!”

Very. Rarely.

“Shhh! Would you keep your mouth down, no one is fucking anyone.” You hissed.

“Okay, okay. Sorry, jeez!”

You both took a second to take deep breaths and calm yourselves the fuck down. Shawn thought this might be the perfect time to intervene apparently.

“Is everything okay, sweetheart?”

Those fucking pet names of his would be the death of you.

“Ah ha!”

Your best friend cheered as if he had just cracked the fucking case, and promptly kicked your door open to reveal Shawn sitting on your couch in shorts, black tube socks, and a headband on like he was either about to work out or do a face mask. What a shit show.

He paused, box of lo mein in hand, and a bite of food he was definitely stealing from your container still raised to his mouth.

“Uh...hi?”

“Excuse me?!” Stu exclaimed. “You’re telling me I’ve been at home worried you were falling into a downward spiral and your ass has been sitting up in here canoodling with Canadian treasure, Shawn Mendes?!”

“Canoodling?! We are not canoodling Stu!”

“Why are we yelling?!” Shawn asked.

You sighed. “We’re both pisces and over-dramatic, it’s kind of our thing.”

“Awww, I didn’t know you were a Pisces.”

Jesus.

“Oh this is normal.” Stu nodded sarcastically.

“I’m sorry. Hey man, I’m Shawn. You must be Stu, I’ve heard a lot about you”

Stu stared at Shawn like he had three heads before staring at you like had four of them. There must have been some unofficial best friend rule that said if one were to ever hang out with one of the biggest selling pop acts of the decade and not tell said best friend, you were kind of the worst.

He took a deep breath before rolling his eyes and moving past you to plop down on your couch.

“I’ve heard absolutely nothing about you, Shawn. Please do tell.”

You looked to your couch where the boy you sort of liked and your best friend were suddenly interacting. It felt as if your bubble had been popped. Like it wasn’t your own little secret with Shawn anymore. And you couldn’t help but wonder what New York would like, what it would be like if the whole world knew you were friends. This terrified you beyond belief.

Slowly, and not without difficulty, you make your way back to the couch where the two men are talking about the fact that Shawn lives next door. You picked up your noodles and tried not to freak out at the latest development. Shawn peered over at you as he was talking and seemed to notice that things weren’t a hundred percent okay.

So smoothly you barely noticed yourself, he rearranged himself on the couch ever so slightly so that his shoulder was pressed more soothingly against yours. It was something he’d only done a couple of times before, and it had only been when you were noticeably stressed. But you peered over at Stu and his eyes seemed to be zoned in on the lack of space between the two of you. And your mind imagined that on a grander scale, of hundred of thousands of people scrutinizing your every move, your every atom. It made your skin itch, and your chest feel a little tight. You shifted on the couch, leaning slightly farther away from Shawn so that you were sitting on individual cushions again.

Shawn looked at you, Stu simultaneously looking at the both of you, and you sort of wished you could melt into the couch. It was definitely the most awkward hour of your life, and you had someone manage to go through puberty.

***

By the time Stu leaves, it is after one in the morning, and your body and mind are thoroughly exhausted. The apartment is silent as Shawn and you work to clean up the mess from your dinner. You can feel him peering at you, but you try to ignore it, try to work through the awkwardness that has settled between the two of you. You feel more separated from him than ever and you can’t help but be surprised at how shitty of a feeling that is.

Shawn stood next to the sink as you loaded the dishwasher, leaning his long limbs against the counter. You have your head down by the plates when he brings it up.

“So I feel like I’ve done something wrong.” He murmured.

“You didn't. Everything’s fine.”

“Yea, see the problem is that I don’t believe you.”

You stood up reaching over him for another glass to slot into place never making eye contact.

“Well that’s not my problem. I told you nothing is wrong, just drop it.”

“Hey,” He muttered reaching for your arm gently to stop you. “Why are you angry with me? Talk to me.”

His thumb nips at your chin, titling your eyes upward so that you have no choice but to meet his. When the room is empty and no one else is around, it’s so easy to get lost in this. His thumb sends sparks across your skin, and you want to just nuzzle into his chest and go lie in your bed for a little while. And in moments like this, more than anything, you want to demand that you tell him what all of it means, because his hands on your hips don’t feel friendly ever.

“I can’t…”

“You can’t what? Tell me what’s going on inside your head right now.”

Your eyes flicker down to the tattoo on the back of his hand and you press your thumb against the ink as if it will give your more courage to speak. Maybe it does. Or maybe it’s just the comfort of his skin touching yours.

“I can’t go to New York with you. I--I can’t be seen standing next to you.”

You see the hurt flash in his eyes and your whole body completely rejects the notion that anything could ever be allowed to hurt him, that you yourself could ever be capable of such a thing.

“No. No--shit, Shawn I don’t mean it like that. I’m not embarrassed of you. I just...I don’t think I’m ready to have people stare at me like that. The way Stu was looking at us tonight? He’s never looked at me like that. I’m not ready for that kind of scrutiny.”

Shawn’s eyes dropped, a curl fighting its way from underneath his headband to fall into his eye. You reached hesitantly up to tuck it back into place only for Shawn to wrap his hand around your wrist and keep you there.

“So it’s not that you don’t want to be my friend anymore? Or that I fucked something up talking to Stu?”

“Of course not. You’re actually kind of perfect. I think if Stu wasn’t definitely endgame with Bryan he probably would’ve hit on you tonight.”

Shawn nodded letting your wrist go so that he could wrap his arms around your waist instead. You nestled your head against his chest and sighed a sigh of relief as the tension eased slowly out of the room. He held you close swaying your bodies gently back and forth. You could hear the rhythm of his heart and you worked to match your breathing to his. It calmed you immensely, and made everything else seem insignificant.

“Sorry for overwhelming you, honey.” He mumbled into your hair.

“It’s not your fault. It’s okay.”

“I’ll wait for you ya know? For as long as you need.”

It’s another weighted statement, that neither of you know what it means. Or, maybe you both know what it means and you’re just not willing to admit it yet. But, he lets you wrap your arms around his shoulders, and he lets you hide in his chest for a little while longer. And apparently he’ll wait for you for as long as you need. Even if neither of you quite understand what he’s waiting for. For now, this is enough you suppose.

#shawn mendes blurb #shawn mendes #shawn mendes one shot #shawn mendes fluff #Shawn mendes x reader #Shawn mendes x you #Shawn mendes x y/n #Shawn mendes x female reader #Shawn mendes x plus size reader #Shawn mendes au #Shawn mendes series #shawn mendes smut #shawn mendes fan fiction #shawn mendes fan fic #shawn mendes fic #shawn mendes fanfic #Shawn Mendes Imagine

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nerdy-bookworm-1998 · 5 years ago

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The Arranged Marriage part 9 Aftermath

Pairing: (Royal AU) Prince!Steve Rogers x Princess!Reader Words: 1151 Warnings: Implied smut A/N: If you wish to be tagged in future works feel free to send me an ask. Please leave feedback/reblogs. Feel free to check out my Ko-Fi and Patreon accounts, I’m running a promo on Patreon for the first 20 subscribers. Links are available in my bio.

The aftermath of the battle was chaotic, to say the least. Many of our allies were dead or wounded. Bucky had injured his left arm badly. Thor had suffered a cut to his right eye. Tony had suffered a harsh blow to his chest.

Even though there was much loss to grieve, there were also countless feasts across the lands to celebrate our victory. Once we returned to the capital we were greeted by our parents with open arms and joyous smiles.

"We are so glad that you are safe and sound. We were so worried about you!" Sarah exclaims as she embraces us tightly.

"Yes indeed. We have hardly slept since you left. But now that you have returned, there is something we wish to discuss with both of you," George adds seriously.

"Is everything alright?" Steve asks, concern evident in his voice.

"Everything is perfect. Your mother and I have decided that it is time for us to retire. This whole war situation has made us realize that we are really getting too old for this. We will still live in the palace grounds, but we will be in the manor by the lake while you and your lovely wife will stay in the palace," George explains.

"It is time for a new king and queen to take over. And who better than the crown prince and princess Y/N, the Titan Slayer?" Sarah adds, making heat flood my cheeks at the new moniker the people had bestowed upon me after learning the events of the battle. "So? What do you think?" Sarah asks.

Steve and I share a look before turning back to the older couple. "We would be honored," I smile brightly as I lace my fingers with Steve's, giving them a soft squeeze.

The months that followed were some of the busiest in memory. There was much rebuilding to be done after Thanos' army destroyed so many towns and cities. Then there was moving all my belongings and those of the staff accompanying us on our journey to our new home. There were still small cells devoted to Thanos, but they were dealt with as swiftly as they popped up. Before I knew it nearly three months had passed since vanquishing our enemy, life could not be sweeter. Yet I could not help but feel like there was something missing...

On an afternoon stroll through the gardens with Nat and Wanda at my side, I confide this feeling to them.

"Have you talked to Steve about it?" Wanda asks.

"No, you know how he is. He would try to lay all the blame on himself, and that is the last thing I want him to do," I sigh heavily as I feel the beginnings of a headache creep up.

"Pin him to the bed and keep him there until he has no doubt that he is not to blame," Nat suggests which makes Wanda blush scarlet with a hissed "Nat!"

Suddenly a lightbulb has gone off in my head. I turn quickly to my two best friends. "Nat might actually have a point. If you ladies will excuse me, I must go see my husband urgently." And with that, I'm hurrying off into the palace. I search through all the most likely rooms with no luck. Just as I'm about to give up hope I see Bucky walking further up the corridor.

"Bucky!" I call out causing the man in question to turn around and wait for me to catch up to him. "Do you know where Steve is?" I ask, slightly breathless from all the running.

"He's in your chambers, is everything alright?" Bucky asks, worry coloring his tone.

"Everything's great, thank you!" and with that, I'm sprinting off again in the direction of our chambers. Once I reach the door I take a moment to breathe and calm my nerves before slowly entering the room. Our chambers are large with dark wooden flooring, a few tapestries depicting hunts and battle victories, a door on the far side that leads to the bathing chamber, large oak desks and bookshelves are pushed against the wall with the battle map table next to the window, and on a raised platform in the middle of the room and surrounded by heavy dark blue curtains in the largest and most comfortable bed I have ever slept in with feathered pillows and countless warm fur blankets and a large, blazing fireplace opposite it to keep the room warm.

Steve is bent over some documents on his desk when I enter. His brows are furrowed and he is deep in thought. For a moment I consider abandoning my plan and rather going to sit by the fire with a book. But that plan is flung from the window as soon as he looks up and smiles widely when he sees me. "Hello my darling, I was just wondering where you were," Steve says as he rises from his chair and walks across the room to wrap me in a loving embrace.

Even though I return it he can still feel the tensed way that I hold myself. He pulls back enough to see my face. "What's wrong sweetheart? What troubles that beautiful mind of yours?" he asks softly as he leads me closer to the warmth of the fire.

"I know that you love me, just as I love you. But... what you said that evening before we went into battle, about wanting to start a family once the war was over, was that all just talk?" my voice comes out softer and more hesitant than I would have liked.

"Of course I want to start a family with you sweetheart! Why would you think anything else?" Steve sounds perplexed, his brows furrowing as he tries to coax my chin up to meet his stare. "Wait..." he says softly as if a thought had just dawned on him. "I'm such an idiot! Sweetheart, listen, the reason why I haven't touched you in that way is that I didn't want to rush into something that you might not be ready for. I never meant to hurt you." He cups my face between his warm hands, his eyes begging me to understand.

"I know you didn't sweetheart, it's okay. But, I really do want to start a family with you," I reassure him as I bring my hands up to caress his wrists and turn my face to kiss his palm.

Without warning he sweeps me up into his arms, carrying me towards the curtained platform. "Steve! What on earth are you doing?!" I squeak out through the giggles pealing from my mouth.

"Showing my wife just how much I love her," Steve says just before my back hits the mattress. The look in his eyes tells me that we wouldn't be leaving any time soon if he had anything to say about it.

Tags:

@mcdesij @spiderrrling @arrow-guy @interestedbystanderwrites @murdocksmartinis @gwendelerynan @here2have-fun @bvckys-doll @bookscoffeeandracoons @bambamwolf87 @loricameback @rockrchick51 @love-nakamura @baebeepeach @timelordy-fangirl2 @jewelofwinter @caramell0w @jewels2876 @ladysergeantbarnes @notawritergettingtherethough @patzammit @fanfictionjunkie1112 @lumar014 @kirsty-evans-writes @robertdowneyhiddleston @lil-lex1 @dragonrosegardens @bookgirlunicorn @farfromshawn

#the arranged marriage #marvel #avengers #prince!steve rogers #princess!reader #steve rogers x reader

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jbuffyangel · 6 years ago

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A Better Future: Arrow 7x15 Review (Training Day)

Look out for Episode 7x15!!! She came out dancing like, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner!”

There are so many goodies I don’t know where to start. Well, obviously I know where to start. We’re going to obsess over every detail. But first, I must ask if anyone survived the 7x16 promo? Cause I didn’t. This is Ghost Jen.

Let’s dig in….

Olicity

This pregnancy is waaaaaaay more fun now that Oliver knows. Seriously this episode is straight out of fanfiction.

Oliver mostly just wants to feed Felicity things I can’t even pronounce.

What the heck is a tartine and who sautés broccolini? You know what? I don’t even care. Oliver can cook whatever he wants as long as he’s naked. Yes, those are the marital provisions. You may turn to page 21 in the marriage contract if you need proof. It’s in bold.

Source: olicitygifs

See guys? We’re not the only ones quietly unnerved by fully-realized-Jesus-like-superhero Oliver. He’s giving Felicity the wiggins too.

When was the last time Oliver took orders from anyone? Nope. You can’t say Felicity. She’s the wifey and pregnant. I feel extremely confident if she asked Oliver to nuke a country he’d do it and then roast her a turkey over the fires of destruction.

Oliver is going the extra mile with the SCPD because he wants the partnership to be legitimate for “our baby.”

Is there anything sexier than Oliver talking about the incubating human he put in his wife? NOPE THERE IS NOT.

First time I died. Yes, we’re numbering it.

Immediately, Oliver mentions William and his reasoning for listening to the SCPD’s buffoon orders is understandable.

Oliver missed out on ten years of William’s life and being a vigilante hasn’t made their present day relationship any easier. Re: William got the hell out of dodge and is living with the most evil grandparents in the world. Come on. We know they are kinda evil. WHO ERASES A FATHER’S PHONE MESSAGE? At the very least they are hyper helicopter grandparents, which is a hop, skip and a jump away from Evil Town.

Oliver is extremely glass half full right now.

I guess this is what happens when THE PRINCESS THAT WAS PROMISED is about to arrive. I love Felicity’s mildly exasperated expression as Oliver’s waxes poetically about this partnership. Listen girl, you turned him into this big pile of mushy rainbows. Not us.

Source: olicitygifs

Does anyone else scream, “SPOILER ALERT: EVERYTHING IS AWFUL IN THE FUTURE!!!” every time Oliver talks about making the city safe for their children, so they can live in Star City and be happy? No? Just me? The dude deserves a heads up. The writers sure aren’t giving him one. It’s like salt in an open wound whenever Oliver dreams of Star City becoming Disney World 2.0. WRONG SHOW OLIVER.

This is the show where the writers bludgeon us with misery and only give us joyful moments as a brief respite from our pain and sorrow.

Too bitter?

Felicity gets on board with the glass half full approach because ain’t nothing cuter than her man being all sunshine and rainbows.

Source: olicitygifs

After all, they are a team within and team. Then comes all the smooching and we’re only in the first 5 minutes. Second time I died.

Oliver totally looked at Felicity’s stomach when she said she didn’t want anyone knowing about what’s happening “in here” and his little amused smile was so much I cannot.

Felicity’s right about mum’s the word and not because they are vigilantes, although that is a thing. It’s best to wait until the first trimester is over before making any big announcements.

Source: oliverxfelicity

Oliver agrees, Felicity actually says, “Yay,” and then asks him to make her a tartine.

Source: smoakmonster

Starving and nausea sum up my first trimester too, girl. Third time I died.

Felicity pregnant ratchets up her adorable factor by at least 80%.

Source: felicitysmoakgifs

This woman breathes and I’m like

I also love how Oliver is the only person who knows why her rambling is so extra and reels her in. Team within a team is damn right.

The SCPD pours out Oliver’s half full glass because they are annoying and stupid. The team needs to adhere to protocol or else. Ugh why do we have to listen to the cops? They don’t have cool toys.

Felicity convinces Oliver they simply need to show the SCPD the Team Arrow way and they’ll stop with all the red-tape-need-actual-evidence-court-of-law nonsense.

It sounds good, particularly coming from Felicity. I’m at the same point as Oliver. I think this woman could tell me the sky is purple and I’d rock some “Purple Rain.”

If Arrow wants do a show where Oliver cooks for Felicity while she shares all her pregnancy symptoms as they smooch and be adorable in their little incubating love nest I would be completely fine with that because it's Emmy award winning television.

Source: oliverxfelicity

Why does the show have to be over? It’s perfect. Fourth time I died.

Olicity continues with their team within a team approach and decide to bring James Midas in on their own. They do it the old fashioned way. (HAHAHA that sounds dirty. Sorry. I’m a 10 year old trapped in a 37 year old body.) Oliver goes full on growly, burly man in leather and threatens to melt Midas’ face off in a tub of hydrofluoric acid. Stephen Amell’s facial reactions are hysterical. Oliver is almost bored like, “Come on, come on, I have tartines to make and a baby to name.”

Source: @smoacs

Felicity records the confession while complaining about people like me who don’t click update. I’m perfectly fine with bae owning my ass. Fifth time I died.

But the mayor cuts Midas loose because his confession was coerced. Is that a thing we care about on Arrow now? I guess we’re doing the whole Miranda rights, due process, warrants, evidence, chain of custody thing. Huh. So… how’d they prosecute all the other criminals for the last seven years?

I’m also willing to venture the mayor is slightly evil if she’s big buddies with a guy like Midas. WHO FUNDED HER CAMPAIGN?

Uncle Diggle is wondering why his OTP is going rogue, so he swings by for a little chat. His Yoda senses are on high alert.

This is why they had to make Diggle normal again. Pod Diggle would never suss out an Olicity pregnancy. I love how Oliver and Felicity are all, “WE AREN’T TELLING ANYONE,” and then Diggle shows up, asks one question, and they fold.

You can’t lie to Yoda. Thems the rules.

Diggle ships this ship harder than anybody else. He practically willed this child into existence.

Source: oliverxfelicity

It’s possible he’s more excited than Oliver when Felicity tells him the news. The “we’re having a baby” absolutely includes John Thomas Diggle too. Sixth time I died.

We have to go over this moment in particular because @lyricalarrow mentioned it in a tweet and I cracked up because it is so true.

Where is the lie? Oliver looks at the ground, crosses his arms, and shuffles his feet whenever he feels shy or bashful. It’s like he’s a little embarrassed Diggle knows they have sex.

Meanwhile, the hot little mama over there with her hip wiggle is more than comfortable letting Diggle know his boy knocked her up. Hilarious perfection.

Honestly, I understand Oliver’s reaction here because I felt the same telling my parents I was pregnant. They high fived, but I was a little embarrassed there was physical evidence of my sexual activity with my husband. It’s cool. I feel confident they decided my daughter was the Immaculate Conception. Everyone is very comfortable with that story.

This announcement also leads to Diggle’s rapid understanding of why Oliver and Felicity are acting like they are on a clock, because THEY ARE ON A CLOCK. Their child will be born into Disney World come hell or high water. THY NAME IS OLICITY AND THY WILL BE DONE!

Like I said, it sounds good on paper, but Diggle comes prepared with logic. Oliver and Felicity understandably have baby on the brain, but they aren’t thinking their rogue plan through. It’ll work for a little while, but then Oliver will land in Slabside again. Yeah, I don’t want to go back to Slabside. I want to keep doing all the baby stuff. Whatever keeps us doing the baby stuff is the plan I favor.

The truth is if the Team Arrow way worked 100% then Star City would be saved. Same goes for the SCPD. Yes, let us casually ignore the writers will not allow the city to be saved until the final episode because that’s just details. What needs to happen is a combo approach. Ya know like an actual partnership.

Diggle: You have to find a way to make it work. Comprise. Do whatever you have to do because if you want a new future for this baby of yours it won’t come by doing the same thing we used to do. We have to be something else. Something better.

Is this the first time Diggle has said the, “Be something else” line?” I feel like it is. If so, it’s a momentous occasion. Every part of the OTA trio has officially given a “Be Something Else” speech. Jeez, this show really is ending isn’t it?

After saving the day while working in partnership with the SCPD, Team Arrow reconvenes in their home away from home. BUNKER IS BACK BABY!!!!!!!!!!! Thank goodness. I am so sick of the police department. It lacks flair.

The team wants to grab a beer to celebrate, which feels like the first time this suggestion has ever happened other than Diggle and Oliver tossing back some vodka or scotch. What’s with all the alcohol? Cause Felicity is pregnant, and these writers want to create as many situations as possible where it can be referenced.

I honestly think Oliver just went to the bar to keep the cover. Cue super sweet winking.

Source: lucyyh

Seventh time I died.

Diggle isn’t done being amazing. I MISSED HIM SO MUCH Y’ALL. He brings Felicity ginger candies to help with the morning sickness. In my fic “Broken Pieces” it was saltine crackers. Seriously, how many of us have written fics where A) Diggle figures out Felicity is pregnant and B) he helps her with the morning sickness because he learned a few things while Lyla was pregnant?

Yeah that’s what I thought. Nobody gets to tell me this episode isn’t straight out Olicity Ficville. I. LOVE. IT. Eighth time I died.

He also stokes the Smoak Tech fires by complimenting Felicity on her technology and generally being a total bad ass while pregnant.

SEE? SHE CAN DO BOTH PEOPLE.

Hold up. Rewind. Is that my girl shading Curtis Holt?

HAHAHA! YES IT IS!!!!!!!!!!! THIS EPISODE IS AMAZING!!!!!

We know this DNA security program she’s developed is what eventually becomes the Archer program, so I am very curious to see how it gets up and running.

Source: felicitysmoakgifs

I think one word from Diggle is all it’s going to take.

FELICITY ASKED OLIVER IF SHE’S SHOWING. THE WRITERS HAVE KILLED ME DEAD EIGHT TIMES ALREADY? WHAT IF I ONLY HAVE NINE LIVES? MAYBE I’M REALLY A CAT!!!!!

Source: olicitygifs

Honestly, they’ve nailed the first trimester: nausea, starvation, exhaustion, and wondering if you’re showing when you are absolutely nowhere near showing. Ninth time I died.

And then… Felicity wants to talk baby names. Cue hyperventilation.

Yeah yeah yeah I know we know the baby’s name BUT THEY ARE GONNA TALK ABOUT IT GUYS. That’s a whole other thing.

Oliver had names picked out pretty much since this moment.

This is the face of man naming his babies while staring at his future baby mama.

So, I’m really excited Felicity broached the subject first. She’s been dreaming about little Olivers and Felicities too. She’s just been a little calmer about it instead of My Face Is My Feelings over here.

I am still a firm believer in triplets because it gives us more name permutations, but whatever the writers didn’t listen to me and I won’t get greedy. So here we go. It isn’t going to be a boy so Felicity can name the boy whatever she wants.

LUCAS? SHE PICKED LUCAS?

Why not Tommy or Robert or the plethora of other dead male characters on this show? Lucas is a fine name I guess. Makes me think of Lucas from One Tree Hill, which is equally awful and wonderful. (His character was a mess. Don’t blame me for Lucas Scott being a mess.) Or Luke Skywalker who is also equally a mess. My husband’s cousin is named Luke. He’s an awesome guy. Lucas works. Okay. Lucas. Do we call him Luke? I like Luke.

What say you Twitter?

OH MY GOSH I LOVE LUCAS SO MUCH. Tenth time I died.

P.S.: This is why you don’t tell people your names until after the kid is born and you slapped it on the birth certificate.

Source: olicitygifs

Oliver immediately signs off on Lucas (re: see nuclear bomb analogy). Hell, if Felicity wanted to name the kid Malcolm, Slade, The Demon’s Head, Damien, Adrian or Ricardo I think he’d still sign off. He might even go for Al Sah-him Jr. The boy is gone okay? Oliver made a baby with his woman and life is amazing. Eleventh time I died.

I love how Oliver tries to pretend like he just thought of a name for a baby girl.

Boy, you’ve been spinning out names in that brain of yours every night while you sharpen your arrows. You fool no one sir.

There’s a significant pause before Oliver says the name. He has given this a lot of thought. When he speaks again it’s in the same sweet, gentle and quiet tone he uses for Felicity. Since the beginning, Oliver has instinctively softened his voice around Felicity. It was a way to reassure her; to show she is always safe with him.

But his rage and pain are tempered now. The edges have been softened after seven years of loving this one woman.

Yet, this voice remains almost like a whisper because of how much Oliver feels and the depth he loves. It’s almost overwhelming.

This voice is Oliver at his most earnest and vulnerable.

This is the Oliver only Felicity gets to see.

He’s better at talking about his emotions now. It’s taking a lot of practice and learning, but the voice remains the same. This is how Oliver Queen speaks when the words matter the most.

His special Felicity’s voice is also his special Mia voice. Twelfth time I died.

DID I SAY HER NAME WAS MOIRA? .

YES I DID. Thirteenth time I died.

Felicity’s reaction is perfection because Moira is a slightly controversial choice given her relationship with Oliver’s mother and he knows that.

Sweet and fiery describes all the important women in Oliver’s life- the ones he’s loved the most. These women love deeply and fight fiercely.

Moira

Thea

Felicity

Mia

It describes Oliver as well. There is a gentle bear

underneath the raging bull.

This girl is Smoak, Kuttler, Dearden and Queen. And she’s amazing.

Oliver and Felicity’s baby girl seems destined to become a hero in her own right. Someday Oliver and Felicity will make a better and safer Star City for their children. Maybe they’ll save the city with their children.

Source: olicitygifs

Fifteenth time I died. We haven’t even gotten to the promo yet. Probably not a cat, so I’m totally screwed.

Flash Forward

QUEEN SIBLING TEAM UP!!! Did anyone get major Bratva vibes during these scenes? I sure did. It’s in the blood kids!

Mia and William make the perfect team because they are (seemingly) opposites, but underneath the surface have a lot in common. RING ANY BELLS?

It doesn’t hurt they are basically the familial and platonic reverse of Oliver (Mia) and Felicity (William). Mia is the bad ass from the streets and William is the computer wizard with a whole lotta money. But William is a fighter as well and Mia is extremely smart. Time for some sibling bonding.

They are in search of the mini cassette player, so they can listen to Felicity’s messages. Mia tells William to stay put, but of course he doesn’t listen. Pro tip Mia: The elder sibling will never listen to you even when they should listen to you. Curse of being the youngest. Get used to it.

William procures a mini cassette player after haggling over price. Five hundred dollars??? I’m seriously going to look in the garage for one of those things. In twenty years it might make some bank. Unfortunately, William is scammed like Mia warned and he loses the tape. His plan for getting the tape back, however, works and Mia knocks the lights out of the guy who scammed her brother. I love these two so much. They are sibling perfection.

There’s a lot of mutual appreciation. Mia realizes her brother is a genius aka Mini Felicity and William realizes his sister is Mini Oliver.

It’s a really beautiful moment as William stares at her because it’s been about twenty years since he’s seen his father. She is the closest William has been to Oliver and vice versus.

But Mia thinking “You have failed this city” is a dumb will never not be funny.

Source: oliverxfelicity

It’s difficult for William to hit play on the cassette because it’s been 20 years since he’s heard Felicity’s voice and there’s a fair amount of apprehension about what she’s going to say.

Source: feilcityqueen

Mia gives William the strength to hit play. It reminded so much of all the times Oliver and Felicity gently and lovingly supported each other simply by touching hands, particularly in the beginning of the burgeoning partnership and friendship.

Oliver refused to show any feeling while Felicity wore her heart on her sleeve. They took all the best parts of this beloved couple and put them in their children.

Hearing Felicity’s voice in the flash forwards made me cry and I just need her in this timeline already. She spent twenty years avoiding ever saying William and Mia’s names in the same sentence.

You don’t keep your two precious jewels in the same location. I think it’s safe to say this is the strategy Oliver and Felicity were using.

Are there plot holes with the whole William side of things? Sure. It wasn’t a secret he was Oliver’s son. The kid was photographed. You can easily find out his last name is Clayton and his grandparents aren’t exactly living off the radar. Arrow is either going to have an answer for all these little factoids or they’re gonna blow right past them and leave them in Plot Hole Land.

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But the bigger picture is Oliver and Felicity kept their children apart for a reason. I found it very interesting Felicity said this was a decision they made together. So whatever separation is coming, it was as much Oliver’s choice as it was Felicity’s.

She reads off some coordinates and orders the children not to look for her, which they promptly ignore. I loved Oliver and Thea’s relationship, but I am enjoying Mia and William’s even more. There’s a humor and banter that was missing between Oliver and Thea. Sure, there was the occasional teasing, but it was mostly fighting or crying with the original Queen siblings. It’s fine. It’s what the situations called for and Stephen and Willa acted the hell out of those scenes. It feels like the writers are trying to have more fun with William and Thea. They banter really showcases each actors’ comedic talent too, particularly Ben Lewis.

Mia recognizes the coordinates because it’s inside The Glades. Katherine McNamara tweeted out the perfect reaction because Mia’s tone is very “The North Remembers.” So winter is here friends and we’re going over the wall!

The mere existence of these children is a promise for a better future. I am choosing to remain optimistic about what Oliver and Felicity said. A hero’s journey has to start somewhere. William and Mia’s first act of heroism may very well be saving their parents.

Source: olicitygifs

Team Arrow

Team Arrow being bored to tears and wiping the floor with the SCPD is the realest this show has ever been.

Oliver body slams a fellow officer as a way of “defusing the situation.” Rene puts a gun together at lightning speed and Felicity looks so bored with the tech she’s about to smash her head into a computer.

A significant reason Star City is a crappy place to live is because the police aren’t putting up a strong line of defense. The SCPD’s antiquated procedures hindering the capturing of criminals shocks no one. If things worked at the police department the city wouldn’t need Oliver Queen, his team of bandits, and all their amazing toys. I’ve put up with this Oliver as a police officer for several episodes now, but I draw the line at no suit and no arrows. Screw that.

Dinah is full speed ahead on being captain and draws a hard line in the sand with the team, which of course proves to be disastrous. The reason she is all in on Captain Drake is because she lost her cry and doesn’t feel she can be Bl*ck C*nary anymore. When did the C*nary Cry become a prerequisite?

Sara never had one and we were well into Season 3 before Cisco put that choker around L*urel’s neck. Relax Dinah.

Rene gets in Dinah’s face and defends Oliver because she’s being a b-i-t-c-h.

DID Y’ALL HEAR THAT? RENE DEFENDED OLIVER!!!!! Rene being tolerable, logical and borderline likable is almost as shocking as Zen Oliver.

Oliver apologizes for going rogue. He always apologizes first. We’re taking baby steps with the Newbies. Not everything can get better all at once. Patience. But then DINAH ALSO APOLOGIZES and she acknowledges she was way too hard on Oliver. Umm… hooray! But for real what is happening to this show right now? Everything is amazing.

Oliver FINALLY tells the team to “suit up” and I realized how long it’s been since he’s been the one to say it. The joy of Curtis Holt being gone will never abate. Speaking of Curtis, it feels like a massive difference now that the team is back to four in the field and Felicity in the bunker as Overwatch. God, I missed Overwatch. The trimming of Team Arrow was a smart move for many reasons and I think a five member team is the max capacity this show can handle. Dropping Curtis like the dead weight he is was a fantastic move.

Since Team Arrow is all about the legal now, Felicity hacks whatever SCPD has access to (they aren’t completely in the Stone Age) and it’s all admissible in court. The rest of the team secures evidence and arrests in partnership with the police, which mostly looks like the SCPD rolling in after Team Arrow has done all the work. I don’t really understand how the criminals Team Arrow captured were prosecuted before all this, but whatever.

I’m just happy the team is back in the bunker with their suits, they are the official black ops of the police department, and the mayor is repealing that stupid anti vigilante law. HELLO MY SHOW I HAVE MISSED YOU.

Bl*ck S*ren and Emiko

The “Training Day” writers didn’t check off everything on my wish list. They were close, but unfortunately BS did not kill Diaz. I still think it would’ve been awesome, but it’s okay. You win some and you lose some. I think it’s safe to say our fandom is winning just plenty.

Ben Turner aka Bronze Tiger witnessed Diaz’s murder while he was in solitary and it was someone wearing the Green Arrow suit, which means Emiko. In exchange for this information BS allows Turner to see his son – Connor, his “little hawk.”

I already love this backstory so much more than the one Connor had on the Legends of Tomorrow episode. Connor being Lyla and Diggle’s adopted son makes more sense to me than JJ taking on the random name of Connor Hawke.

BS confronts Emiko and the whole conversation is hysterical hypocrisy.

Bl*ck S*ren: You’re lying about who you really are. You’re not a hero.

STEAL ANYONE’S IDENTITY LATELY L*UREL? I can never decide if the writers are blatantly obtuse in regards to L*urel’s character (any version) or if this is somehow a tongue and cheek/wink wink kind of thing.

It doesn’t really matter. What does matter is I’m fairly certain BS just got Ben Turner killed.

It’s not going to take Emiko and Dante very long to figure out how L*urel came upon this information.

Holy hell lady. Keep your trap shut while you investigate someone. Didn’t you learn anything in law school? OH WAIT THAT’S RIGHT YOU DIDN’T GO!

Since Turner saved Lyla’s life once I believe they’ll adopt Connor as a way of paying it forward. They also can’t let a kid that adorable go. I just want to smush his face.

This also makes Felicity pickle in the middle. Oliver will of course believe Emiko over Bl*ck S*ren and Felicity will have to choose between the two. I’m actually way more interested in seeing how Felicity reacts than I am anything else, so once again BS services her storyline. Suits me just fine.

THE PROMO

I was sick on Monday (hence the delayed review), so my husband didn’t wake me up for Arrow. The nerve of him, I know. So, when I started watching I was about 40 minutes behind and @callistawolf told me to call her after because she was hyperventilating. I was very careful while tweeting not to read any other tweets. So, when Mia said they were going over the wall I thought, “Calm down Cal. It’s not that big of a deal – HOLY SHIT IS THAT A LOVE CABIN?”

THE. PROMO. KILLED. ME. The other fifteen times brought me to the edge and the promo shoved me off the cliff. Don’t mourn for me my friends. I had a good life and it was a good death.

This promo is proof the CW can actually put together great marketing for this show. They just choose not to 99.99% of the time, but at least 7x16 can join the truly great promos of 3x01, 3x20, 4x01 and 5x20.

We hear Felicity screaming as the camera pushes in on the cabin and down the hallway into the bedroom where she is delivering their child. The first image we see of Oliver and Felicity is their hands. Oliver is holding on tight as his wife struggles through labor.

Source: olicitygifs

I remember when I used to hyperventilate over a mere shoulder or hand touch.

Oliver and Felicity’s romance started in the quiet moments.

Their love was in the details.

This image of them holding hands, Felicity’s wedding ring brightly shining in the sun, as she brings Mia into this world is a powerful symbol of where their story began and what their love created.

The reason we wear wedding rings is because they are an endless circles. The commitment we are making with our spouse is forever. We wear our ring on our fourth finger of our left hand because the Romans believed the vein in this finger lead directly to a person’s heart. Love is eternal. The focus on Felicity’s ring, her hand gripping tightly in Oliver’s, symbolizes Mia entering this endless loop of love where she will always be wanted, adored and safe.

Source: sansasnw

Of course, Oliver and Felicity’s child is born in the bright sunshine of morning. We would expect nothing less. It’s always the light. This child is a new beginning for Oliver and Felicity. A new life who can harness her parent’s light and shine her own upon all she loves. I get emotional when I think about where Oliver’s story began. He was a lost soul who believed life was merely about survival and he didn't deserve one worth living for. And now…

Source: olicitygifs

I’m sobbing at the promo y’all. I won’t make it through the episode.

As for this moment...

This is my head canon until the show tells me different.

Source: olicitygifs

Stray Thoughts

Why does Bl*ck S*ren think Oliver and Felicity will be mad Emiko killed Diaz? Nobody is crying over that guy cutie. Oliver and Felicity came to my smore party. They brought the chocolate.

Mia couldn’t put the tape in. I’m still laughing. Katherine McNamara’s comedic timing is gold.

“This is private. Loophole.” Felicity being the most irritated she can’t do things illegally is so on brand.

Mini cassettes were around in the nineties too. Can we stop with the super aging of things, show?

I love Face/Off. Classic Travolta vs. Cage.

We haven't done a good old fashion gang war. After 7 years in a crime fighting show that feels a little odd.

Oliver and Felicity have their baby in a love cabin and many believe it is Ravenspure, which is the cabin Felicity was conceived in. I truly do not remember this detail from Season 4, but I know better than to question my peeps.

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