#I cut a whole paragraph

[dingodad]

i'm really fighting the urge to play editor here like these people know their own story better than i do so i have to just sit back and see LOL but why would you have rose outline the concept of god brain damage and then have jane give basically the exact same exposition only a few pages later.... like i guess my complaint is that i feel like my hand is being held a little bit which has been one of my ongoing gripes with beyond canon. and holding my hand re: character development and interpersonal drama is one thing i appreciate that not everyone has infinite patience for that kind of thing but when it comes to like the fundamental mechanics of the story being told i really don't think there is ever a point at which telling is better than showing

[scionshtola]

a kiss to the inner thigh, for corishtola 🥰

ty azia!! 💗

a kiss to the inner thigh Corisande Ymir x Y'shtola Rhul | 278 words | rated M

In the warmth of their Sharlayan apartment, fire burning in the hearth at the foot of their bed, the silk sheets are cool relief against Corisande’s heated skin. When her legs shift in Y’shtola’s grasp, the sheets soothe her still stinging bottom, where a mark in the shape of Y’shtola’s hand blooms.

“Corisande.” Y’shtola speaks softly, looking up at them from her place between their thighs, and they lift their head from the pillows to meet her gaze. “Are you all right?”

Corisande smiles, not quite ready to put her feelings into words. She is more than all right—comfortable, despite the aches; satisfied; so filled with bliss she could float, were it not for Y’shtola’s hands holding her in place. Her forearm across Corisande’s hips, pressing her to the bed. Her fingers laced through Corisande’s, palm soft and warm against her own. Her free hand smooths lazily over the outside of Corisande’s thigh, and she turns her head to press her lips softly against her skin just above the lace trim of her stockings as she waits for Corisande’s answer.

Corisande draws Y’shtola up gently by their joined hands, but she rises slowly, kissing them as she follows their tugging hand. Across their hips, their stomach, their bare chest—still sensitive from Y’shtola’s earlier fervent attentions. Here she detours for a moment, lips parting over the swell of their breast, but they guide her higher, until their lips meet, and they can wrap their arms around her waist.

Y’shtola settles herself on top of them, sinking into their hold. Every place they touch grounds Corisande in their own body, and they are finally able to speak. “Perfect.”

[fortifice]

[wonder-worker]

Queen Margaret (of Anjou) had written to the Common Council in November when the news of the Duke of York's coup was proclaimed. The letter from the queen was published in modernised English by M.A.E. Wood in 1846, and she dated it to February 1461 because of its opening sentence: ‘And whereas the late Duke of N [York]...." However the rest of the letter, and that of the prince, is in the present tense and clearly indicates that the Duke of York is still alive. The reference to the ‘late duke’ is not to his demise but to the attainder of 1459 when he was stripped of his titles as well as of his lands. If the queen’s letter dates to November 1460, and not February 1461, it make perfect sense. Margaret declared the Duke of York had ‘upon an untrue pretense, feigned a title to my lord’s crown’ and in so doing had broken his oath of fealty. She thanked the Londoners for their loyalty in rejecting his claim. She knew of the rumours, that we and my lords sayd sone and owrs shuld newly drawe toward yow with an vnsome [uncounted] powere of strangars, disposed to robbe and to dispoyle yow of yowr goods and havours, we will that ye knowe for certeyne that . . . . [y]e, nor none of yow, shalbe robbed, dispoyled nor wronged by any parson that at that tyme we or owr sayd sone shalbe accompanied with She entrusted the king's person to the care of the citizens ‘so that thrwghe malice of his sayde enemye he be no more trowbled vexed ne jeoparded.’ In other words the queen was well informed in November 1460 of the propaganda in London concerning the threat posed by a Lancastrian military challenge to the illegal Yorkist proceedings. Margaret assured the Common Council that no harm would come to the citizenry or to their property. Because the letter was initially misdated, it has been assumed that the queen wrote it after she realised the harm her marauding troops were doing to her cause, and to lull London into a false sense of security. This is not the case, and it is a typical example of historians accepting without question Margaret’s character as depicted in Yorkist propaganda. Margaret’s letter was a true statement of her intentions but it made no impact at the time and has made none since. How many people heard of it? The Yorkist council under the Earl of Warwick, in collusion with the Common Council of the city, was in an ideal position to suppress any wide dissemination of the letter, or of its content.

... When Margaret joined the Lancastrian lords it is unlikely that she had Scottish troops with her. It is possible that Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, sent men from Wales but there was no compelling reason why he should, he needed all the forces at his disposal to face Edward Earl of March, now Duke of York following his father’s death at Wakefield, who, in fact, defeated Pembroke at Mortimer’s Cross on 2 February just as the Lancastrian army was marching south. The oft repeated statement that the Lancastrian army was composed of a motley array of Scots, Welsh, other foreigners (French by implication, for it had not been forgotten that René of Anjou, Queen Margaret’s father, had served with the French forces in Nomandy when the English were expelled from the duchy, nor that King Charles VII was her uncle) as well as northern men is based on a single chronicle, the Brief Notes written mainly in Latin in the monastery of Ely, and ending in 1470. It is a compilation of gossip and rumour, some of it wildly inaccurate, but including information not found in any other contemporary source, which accounts for the credence accorded to it. The Dukes of Somerset and Exeter and the Earl of Devon brought men from the south and west. The Earl of Northumberland was not solely reliant on his northern estates; as Lord Poynings he had extensive holdings in the south. The northerners were tenants and retainers of Northumberland, Clifford, Dacre, the Westmorland Nevilles, and Fitzhugh, and accustomed to the discipline of border defence. The continuator of Gregory’s Chronicle, probably our best witness, is emphatic that the second battle of St Albans was won by the ‘howseholde men and feyd men.” Camp followers and auxiliaries of undesirables there undoubtedly were, as there are on the fringes of any army, but the motley rabble the queen is supposed to have loosed on peaceful England owes more to the imagination of Yorkist propagandists than to the actual composition of the Lancastrian army.

... Two differing accounts of the Lancastrian march on London are generally accepted. One is that a large army, moving down the Great North Road, was made up of such disparate and unruly elements that the queen and her commanders were powerless to control it.” Alternatively, Queen Margaret did not wish to curb her army, but encouraged it to ravage all lands south of the Trent, either from sheet spite or because it was the only way she could pay her troops.” Many epithets have been applied to the queen, few of them complimentary, but no one has as yet called her stupid. It would have been an act of crass stupidity wilfully to encourage her forces to loot the very land she was trying to restore to an acceptance of Lancastrian rule, with her son as heir to the throne. On reaching St Albans, so the story goes, the Lancastrian army suddenly became a disciplined force which, by a series of complicated manoeuvres, including a night march and a flank attack, won the second battle of St Albans, even though the Yorkists were commanded by the redoubtable Earl of Warwick. The explanation offered is that the rabble element, loaded down with plunder, had descended before the battle and only the household men remained. Then the rabble reappeared, and London was threatened. To avert a sack of the city the queen decided to withdraw the army, either on her own initiative or urged by the peace-loving King Henry; as it departed it pillaged the Abbey of St Albans, with the king and queen in residence, and retired north, plundering as it went. Nevertheless, it was sufficiently intact a month later to meet and nearly defeat the Yorkist forces at Towton, the bloodiest and hardest fought battle of the civil war thus far. The ‘facts’ as stated make little sense, because they are seen through the distorting glass of Yorkist propaganda.

The ravages allegedly committed by the Lancastrian army are extensively documented in the chronicles, written after the event and under a Yorkist king. They are strong on rhetoric but short on detail. The two accounts most often quoted are by the Croyland Chronicle and Abbott Whethamstede. There is no doubting the note of genuine hysterical fear in both. The inhabitants of the abbey of Crowland were thoroughly frightened by what they believed would happen as the Lancastrians swept south. ‘What do you suppose must have been our fears . . . [w]hen every day rumours of this sad nature were reaching our ears.’ Especially alarming was the threat to church property. The northern men ‘irreverently rushed, in their unbridled and frantic rage into churches . . . [a]nd most nefariously plundered them.’ If anyone resisted ‘they cruelly slaughtered them in the very churches or churchyards.’ People sought shelter for themselves and their goods in the abbey,“ but there is not a single report of refugees seeking succour in the wake of the passage of the army after their homes had been burned and their possessions stolen. The Lancastrians were looting, according to the Crowland Chronicle, on a front thirty miles wide ‘like so many locusts.“ Why, then, did they come within six miles but bypass Crowland? The account as a whole makes it obvious that it was written considerably later than the events it so graphically describes.

The claim that Stamford was subject to a sack from which it did not recover is based on the Tudor antiquary John Leland. His attribution of the damage is speculation; by the time he wrote stories of Lancastrian ravages were well established, but outside living memory. His statement was embellished by the romantic historian Francis Peck in the early eighteenth century. Peck gives a spirited account of Wakefield and the Lancastrian march, influenced by Tudor as well as Yorkist historiography. … As late as 12 February when Warwick moved his troops to St Albans it is claimed that he did not know the whereabouts of the Lancastrians, an odd lack of military intelligence about an army that was supposed to be leaving havoc in its wake. The Lancastrians apparently swerved to the west after passing Royston which has puzzled military historians because they accept that it came down the Great North Road, but on the evidence we have it is impossible to affirm this. If it came from York via Grantham, Leicester, Market Harborough, Northampton and Stony Stratford to Dunstable, where the first engagement took place, there was no necessity to make an inexplicable swerve westwards because its line of march brought it to Dunstable and then to St Albans. The Lancastrians defeated Warwick’s army on 17 February 1461 and Warwick fled the field. In an echo of Wakefield there is a suggestion of treachery. An English Chronicle tells the story of one Thomas Lovelace, a captain of Kent in the Yorkist ranks, who also appears in Waurin. Lovelace, it is claimed, was captured at Wakefield and promised Queen Margaret that he would join Warwick and then betray and desert him, in return for his freedom.

Lt. Colonel Bume, in a rare spirit of chivalry, credits Margaret with the tactical plan that won the victory, although only because it was so unorthodox that it must have been devised by a woman. But there is no evidence that Margaret had any military flair, let alone experience. A more likely candidate is the veteran captain Andrew Trolloppe who served with Warwick when the latter was Captain of Calais, but he refused to fight under the Yorkist banner against his king at Ludford in 1459 when Warwick brought over a contingent of Calais men to defy King Henry in the field. It was Trolloppe’s ‘desertion’ at Ludford, it is claimed, that forced the Yorkists to flee. The most objective and detailed account of the battle of St Albans is by the unknown continuator of Gregory’s Chronicle. The chronicle ends in 1469 and by that time it was safe to criticise Warwick, who was then out of favour. The continuator was a London citizen who may have fought in the Yorkist ranks. He had an interest in military matters and recorded the gathering of the Lancastrian army at Hull, before Wakefield, and the detail that the troops wore the Prince of Wales’ colours and ostrich feathers on their livery together with the insignia of their lords. He had heard the rumours of a large ill-disciplined army, but because he saw only the household men he concluded that the northerners ran away before the battle. Abbot Whethamstede wrote a longer though far less circumstantial account, in which he carefully made no mention of the Earl of Warwick. … Margaret of Anjou had won the battle but she proceeded to lose the war. London lay open to her and she made a fatal political blunder in retreating from St Albans instead of taking possession of the capital.' Although mistaken, her reasons for doing so were cogent. The focus of contemporary accounts is the threat to London from the Lancastrian army. This is repeated in all the standard histories, and even those who credit Margaret with deliberately turning away from London do so for the wrong reasons.

... The uncertainties and delays, as well as the hostility of some citizens, served to reinforce Margaret’s belief that entry to London could be dangerous. It was not what London had to fear from her but what she had to fear from London that made her hesitate. Had she made a show of riding in state into the city with her husband and son in a colourful procession she might have accomplished a Lancastrian restoration, but Margaret had never courted popularity with the Londoners, as Warwick had, and she had kept the court away from the capital for several years in the late 1450s, a move that was naturally resented. Warwick’s propaganda had tarnished her image, associating her irrevocably with the dreaded northern men. There was also the danger that if Warwick and Edward of March reached London with a substantial force she could be trapped inside a hostile city, and she cannot have doubted that once she and Prince Edward were taken prisoner the Lancastrian dynasty would come to an end. Understandably, at the critical moment, Margaret lost her nerve. ... Queen Margaret did not march south in 1461 in order to take possession of London, but to recover the person of the king. She underestimated the importance of the capital to her cause." Although she had attempted to establish the court away from London, the Yorkist lords did not oppose her for taking the government out of the capital, but for excluding them from participation in it. Nevertheless London became the natural and lucrative base for the Yorkists, of which they took full advantage. The author of the Annales was in no doubt that it was Margaret’s failure to enter London that ensured the doom of the Lancastrian dynasty. A view shared, of course, by the continuator of Gregory’s Chronicle, a devoted Londoner:

He that had Londyn for sake Wolde no more to hem take The king, queen and prince had been in residence at the Abbey of St Albans since the Lancastrian victory. Abbot Whethamstede, at his most obscure, conveys a strong impression that St Albans was devastated because the Lancastrian leaders, including Queen Margaret, encouraged plundering south of the Trent in lieu of wages. There must have been some pillaging by an army which had been kept in a state of uncertainty for a week, but whether it was as widespread or as devastating as the good abbot, and later chroniclers, assert is by no means certain. Whethamstede is so admirably obtuse that his rhetoric confuses both the chronology and the facts. So convoluted and uncircumstantial is his account that the eighteenth century historian of the abbey, the Reverend Peter Newcome, was trapped into saying: ‘These followers of the Earl of March were looked on as monsters in barbarity.’ He is echoed by Antonia Gransden who has ‘the conflict between the southemers of Henry’s army and the nonherners of Edward’s. The abbey was not pillaged, but Whethamstede blackened Queen Margaret’s reputation by a vague accusation that she appropriated one of the abbey’s valuable possessions before leaving for the north. This is quite likely, not in a spirit of plunder or avarice, but as a contribution to the Lancastrian war effort, just as she had extorted, or so he later claimed, a loan from the prior of Durham earlier in the year. The majority of the chroniclers content themselves with the laconic statement that the queen and her army withdrew to the north, they are more concerned to record in rapturous detail the reception of Edward IV by ‘his’ people. An English Chronicle, hostile to the last, reports that the Lancastrian army plundered its way north as remorselessly as it had on its journey south. One can only assume that it took a different route. The Lancastrian march ended where it began, in the city of York. Edward of March had himself proclaimed King Edward IV in the capital the queen had abandoned, and advanced north to win the battle of Towton on 29 March. The bid to unseat the government of the Yorkist lords had failed, and that failure brought a new dynasty into being. The Duke of York was dead, but his son was King of England whilst King Henry, Queen Margaret and Prince Edward sought shelter at the Scottish court. The Lancastrian march on London had vindicated its stated purpose, to recover the person of the king so that the crown would not continue to be a pawn in the hands of rebels and traitors, but ultimately it had failed because the Lancastrian leaders, including Queen Margaret, simply did not envisage that Edward of March would have the courage or the capacity to declare himself king. Edward IV had all the attributes that King Henry (and Queen Margaret) lacked: he was young, ruthless, charming, and the best general of his day; and in the end he out-thought as well as out-manoeuvred them.

It cannot be argued that no damage was done by the Lancastrian army. It was mid-winter, when supplies of any kind would have been short, so pillaging, petty theft, and unpaid foraging were inevitable. It kept the field for over a month and, and, as it stayed longest at Dunstable and in the environs of St Albans, both towns suffered from its presence. But the army did not indulge in systematic devastation of the countryside, either on its own account or at the behest of the queen. Nor did it contain contingents of England’s enemies, the Scots and the French, as claimed by Yorkist propaganda. Other armies were on the march that winter: a large Yorkist force moved from London to Towton and back again. There are no records of damage done by it, but equally, it cannot be claimed that there was none.

-B.M Cron, "Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrian March on London, 1461"

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

I'm torn here - I love discussion, I don't want to insulate myself from interesting, nuanced discussion. On the other hand, a takeaway I've had in life lately is sometimes you just have to let it go. You can't change it. You just have to move on. And the constant heavy discussion can be a lot to read and absorb. She also has the unique situation of being a prolific writer, deeply relatable, near universal womanhood experiences and also, because the nature of her image, I don't always want to discuss her how I would an author, especially an author who is long gone. Idk if this makes any sense, I enjoy following you, but I sometimes feel myself getting bogged down by the very discussions I also enjoy.

I understand that, I really do, but I think it's also natural for topics to come up and to respond to them, like you would in conversation with friends in real life. Sometimes you don't talk about things for weeks or months and then your friend says something and it sparks a whole discussion, and I think that's the same way it works on platforms like this. And again with the utmost respect and kindness and gratitude, I think there's a difference between what gets discussed on a platform like, say, tumblr, where the blogging DNA lends itself to longer, more thoughtful and often collaborative discussion, and what may happen on other platforms that are more "soundbite"-y. (I don't know, tumblr is the only social media I use, but I know twitter is a cesspool in general and primed for ragebait for engagement, unlike this hellsite held together by duct tape and spite and cupcakes.)

And I'm the first to admit, I don't delve like this at all into any other musician or author or artist for the most part. The closest analog I can think of are the TV shows I used to love before they were dead to me. But I also think part of that is again, Taylor is uniquely prolific in this day and age so there is so much art to digest, and she's been uniquely honest in sharing her experiences in the past that many of her contemporaries hadn't in the same way, so yes, it drove the whole parasocialism thing to an extent. I personally don't see this as an inability to let go; the conversations I've seen here are mostly thoughtful, nuanced and often borne out of people's own personal experiences as well, and I think there's a difference between jumping into a quasi-literary analysis of her work and like, harassing the "players" involved. (The latter would absolutely be an inability to let go, but luckily I don't see any of that in my little corner here, and I would hope that's an outlier experience.) There's nothing to let go for any of us because it wasn't our "thing" in the first place, and only belonged to the people involved. I think what most of us relate to are the feelings and what that makes us think about our own experience with them. Taylor has written something like over 300 songs, so it feels pretty normal to listen to something you maybe haven't heard in awhile (again, because there are so many) and be like, huh, this kind of jumps back into this other theme we've been talking about lately.

And another thing I'm going to say again with the utmost respect and kindness, and this is not directed at you but at the internet at large (lol) is that: at the end of the day, these are all our own blogs, our own spaces to share what we personally find interesting to talk about. My blog is not a discussion board for all to contribute in equal weight; it's a place for me to engage with content I enjoy with people I enjoy, both personally and from afar, and I sincerely hope everyone else is able to do the same on their own blogs. No blogger here should feel like they have to cater to anyone else but their own interests and enjoyment, the only thing that matters is to do so respectfully towards others and the art with which we interact. (Maybe that's why I'm not an ask blog and occupy a tiny unknown space here lol. Which to be clear is just fine with me.) Sometimes there are great conversations going on the dash and I like to jump in with my own thoughts, other times I'm not interested or don't have the brain space for it and skip. It's whatever you're in the mood for on a given day.

Which again is where curating your experience comes in, whether that's following/unfollowing, filtering, etc. I know I'm guilty of poorly tagging my shit because tumblr is terrible at it in general, but keywords are easy for me to filter at least, and then I can choose if I want to engage or not. (At least, that's how I have my dash curated. There are some topics I just don't care for, so I've filtered the words, and if once in awhile I see a filtered post and I think, hmm, maybe I'm OK with that today, I'll click on it to see what's going on.) Or, I can simply scroll past, too. I'm not at all saying this to be condescending, I'm just saying what works for me personally so I can protect my own peace and navigate what I do and don't want to talk about at a given time, if that's at all helpful to anyone else. At the end of the day, you as a reader don't owe anyone your eyeballs or real estate in your head, so you don't owe it to anyone to keep up with their blogs if they aren't enjoyable to you at that time. If there were a consistent or better way to tag these topics then maybe I could help others in that way, but I don't know that there is. (I can't even keep tags consistent on my own blog in spite of how I tried at first.)

I get that these are heavy topics and heavy times and are not things everyone wants to see. Hell, there are times *I* don't want to see them either. Which again, is where options come in-- not going on tumblr (or whatever platform) to begin with if I am not up for it, using the tools available (e.g. filtering), unfollowing (tbh have never had to do that in the year and a half I've been in the Swiftie tumblr fandom, where everyone here has been lovely, but I have in the past in other fandoms), or disengaging and cooling off. I'm not saying everyone needs to do this, but again just saying what works for me, and why my dash is mostly a pleasant experience that I can tailor to how I'm feeling during different periods of my life.

I hope I haven't caused you grief anon! And if I have, that you're able to find a corner of the fandom that gives you respite from the heaviness and is more in line with the things you find pleasure in if it's not this. Tbh now that Eras is over (and thus surprise songs are no longer driving some of these conversations) and it seems like Taylor is going into a quieter season to rest and recuperate and create, I imagine most of these discussions are going to taper off in the new year anyway, so it will naturally dissipate and move on as we all find new things to fill our time.

(This is why I hesitated to add my thoughts in the first place, and why I won't be adding more to the discussion.)

[dallonwrites]

i try to cut down on a moment -> i successfully cut out the parts that are not needed -> i get ideas on what should replace those parts -> those ideas are so cool because i am a genius and tie the moment together better than what i'd originally written -> i have a fun and beautiful time creating -> the moment is longer than it was originally

[littleoddwriter]

Because I keep questioning my own writing a lot; especially in terms of ending a short story... sometimes, it really is easier to just treat what you write like a movie or a TV show you're watching. Especially if it's a short fic that is basically just a single scene. Like... Would there be a scene change now and it'd feel complete? If yes, then it's an appropriate ending. If no, then either you write one more paragraph or let it rest for a bit, come back to it, and see how you feel. Or you find a spot a little earlier because sometimes scenes can drag on for too long and need to be cut shorter in order to be satisfying and make sense.

[kikuism]

it's imperative to have that one friend you can yap for hours with about jjk

[lab-gr0wn-lambs]

I do just wanna add on to that last reblog on the B*thyl post by saying that Beth was a teenager. There are more categories than Adult and Child. I don't think Daryl and Beth simply drinking together was bad in that way. Sex and Romance: No. Fuck no. Jesus. But just sitting around drinking a little too much moonshine after extreme loss and grief? Idk man, I don't think that's an issue on it's own.

Your parents never let y'all have a drink when you were 17? You never have a screaming match with an older family member that got a little out of hand but then smooth things over? They weren't strangers or weird age-gap friends, they were family. They had legitimate reasons for being close, especially since everybody else they knew was lost or dead. It's not like it was creepy for them to hang out, or unforgivable for Daryl to have that breakdown. He said some shitty things but it wasn't that deep. It's ok that she comforted him, she's capable of understanding other people's emotions and giving someone a hug. Idk man, I just think that characters don't have to always say the right thing all the time, they're allowed to have poor communication and argue and be in the wrong to a certain extent without it being a sin. Dude was in the wrong for being mean to her, that doesn't make it bad writing, people are just wrong sometimes. Idk, am I alone on this? Not thinking that Beth needed to be coddled and treated like a lil kid? She wasn't ''written like an adult'' either, she acted her age, I think. Which is one (1) of the reasons I'm so taken aback to learn that they were intentionally trying to write romantic tension, because they very much wrote her to be a young naive teenager 💀

[hopkei]

Fantastics 100 Questions & Answers! Pt.2

Source: Monthly Exile August 2020 (Part one)

🚨Warning: may contain inaccuracies!🚨 Feel free to share elsewhere but please credit me🌻

~~

Questions 11-20

11. The surprise that made you the most happy so far? Sekai: When I became a member of Exile Taiki: My 20th birthday. Akira-san hosted the TRIBE members and Odake Masato-san and we did a countdown! (tn: Odake Masato is a lyricist, some of the songs he has written for Fantastics include Terminal, Dear Destiny, and Flying Fish, as well as songs for Exile, JSB3, Generations, and more) Sawa: 2018/1/29 when all the members wished me a happy birthday! Leiya: Birthday surprise from my peers/colleagues Hori: Two years ago when FANTASTICS got to join EXILE on their “STAR OF WISH” tour, on the day of rehearsal manager-san led me into Exile’s dressing room but it was completely dark,, then Exile and Fantastics members all celebrated my birthday. It is the memory of a lifetime!! Keito: My 20th birthday Yusei: While shooting the “Supersonic” music video for BOT, Generations senpais and Fantastics members prepared a cake and wished me happy birthday! Sota: When I turned 20, my parents sent me an album they made with a lot of old photos and messages from various people. Honestly, I looked at the messages when I was alone at home and cried a lot. (laughs)

12. What do you do when you’re soaking in the bath? Sekai: I don’t do anything Taiki: I blast music super loudly and sing! Read scripts for work! Sawa: I space out and try to fall asleep. I just barely manage to stay awake Leiya: Make songs Hori: I watch videos on my computer Keito: I watch anime, movies, and dramas on a streaming site. Yusei: I close my eyes and imagine a forest Sota: Lately, I’ve been practicing English by explaining what I did that day or things that happened! By myself. (laughs) Sometimes I’ll ask the wall questions and a chaotic time will pass in the water. As chaotic as it can be when you’re taking a bath

13. In your group, which member has the most amazing gap? Sekai: In Exile, Tetsuya-san. In Fanta, there’s no one lol Taiki: Seguchi Leiya. There is a big difference between when he is ON and when he is OFF. (laughs) Sawa: Yusei (゜∀゜) Leiya: Keito Hori: Sawanatsu-kun Keito: Horinatsu-kun Yusei: Yagi Yusei Sota: Sawamoto Natsuki-kun! Usually he is the laidback type that doesn’t come forward and talk much but in the dressing room or at a restaurant he becomes the most animated and excited! (laugh)

14. When did you decide/want to become an artist? Sekai: Through the experience I had in New York when I was a teenager Taiki: I watched an EXILE concert in 2009! Sawa: When I was dancing support for J SOUL BROTHERS / 「BLUE IMPACT」 Leiya: (I wanted to) ever since I became conscious  Hori: When I had the opportunity to be a support dancer for Sandaime J Soul Brothers LIVE TOUR 2014 "BLUE IMPACT”, and being able to accompany members on stage and see them up close, it seriously made me want to become an artist!  Keito: When I was participating in in the 2010 Exile Stadium Tour Yusei: When I was in middle school and sang in front of other people Sota: I like to sing and play instruments so jokingly my friends and I would sing lots of songs like a band, and it made me happy to see everyone from school watch my Timeline or receive messages, and I even won the singing competition alone at the school festival, then since I declared to the whole school “I will become a singer on the stage!” it became a dream that had to become true! (laugh) (tn: LINE Timeline (since changed to LINE VOOM) was a feature in the LINE app that allows users to post news and photos. it was essentially like facebook within the LINE app)

15. One song that has supported you through life? Sekai: Kageyama Hironobu - WE GOTTA POWER Taiki: Ketsumeishi - Nakama Sawa: EELMAN / 「Simple」 Leiya: Ketsumeishi - Nakama Hori: EXILE / 「Pure」 Keito: Going ON / EXILE, Tenohiranosune / EXILE, Kokoroe / Road of Major Yusei: Utada Hikaru - Hikari Sota: BEGIN ft アホナスターズ - Egao no Manma

16. The qualification do you want to get most right now? Sekai: Game programmer, Manga artist Taiki: Kanken (tn: The Japan Kanji Aptitude Test, it is to test the ability to read, write, and understand kanji) Sawa: Chef Leiya: Large motorcycle license Hori: Diving license (tn: this is not a typo. as in scuba diving.) Keito: Nutritionist Yusei: A teaching license! Sota: Mental health counselor. Because I love people! Please get more scared (laugh)

17. When you eat taiyaki, do you eat it starting from the head or the tail? Sekai: Head Taiki: Head Sawa: Head Leiya: Tail Hori: From the head! Keito: Head Yusei: I eat it from the head! Sota: The head! Did you think it’s the tail? It’s the head! #It's long #This is not something that needs a long answer

18. The strongest memory of shooting or interviewing with “Monthly EXILE”? Sekai: The first time we all came and made the page together by hand for the planned shoot (2017 February edition) Taiki: When we wore colorful shirts and shot a two-page layout. It was fun wearing glasses and colorful shirts like cicadas! (2019 November issue) Sawa: When I shot with Taiki-kun! (2019 May issue) Leiya: Taiki-kun’s individual published “Wanna Be, Wanna Do” Thanks to Taiki-kun’s consideration I was able to shoot something in a style I wanted to do for the first time (2018 December issue) Hori: The time before debut for Taiki’s issue and we did a shoot together with just the two of us. Even now when I think back on it, I think it was the most fun shoot! (2018 October issue) Keito: Fantastics first cover shoot (2019 February issue) Yusei: The shoot for the first time Fantastics was on the cover! (2019 February issue) Sota:The first time you let Fantastics shoot for the cover! (2019 February issue) With all of my might, thank you so much!

19. If you could use magic just once, what would you use it for? Sekai: I would make the number of uses unlimited Taiki: I want to restart my life from when I was 20! Sawa: I want to make a different self  (= ´ ∀ `)人(´ ∀ ` =) Leiya: Go back to a certain time and talk a lot Hori: To fly in the sky Keito: To fly Yusei: I want to fly! Sota: The magic to make a door anywhere #After that you can have a door everywhere

20. What do you want to be your last meal? Sekai: The tastiest thing in the world that I haven’t had the chance to eat yet Taiki: My mom’s homemade cooking Sawa: Grilled eel rice bowl!!! Leiya: My mom’s food Hori: Akadashi Miso soup (tn: miso soup that uses red bean paste) Keito: Yakiniku (grilled meat) Yusei: My mom’s homemade cooking! Sota: A hamburger!

[astrhae]

hi so i just read your hanahaki fic and it ruined me and like i am actually crying it was so so so good but also i read your deleted scene with jespers pov and that was amazing too!! and i saw that you said that you had another deleted scene and i would love to see that too (and any others that you have) if you wanted to share them?

(also i actually adore the entire vibe of your blog it's so pretty)

hi hello thank you so much *slides tissues over* i'm so glad you liked the fic so much and that you liked the deleted scenes too!! there are... quite a lot of them that i literally made an "appendix" section in my word document 😅 this fic truly was a monster to write because of how many scenes and jumps there were, and while that was a whole lot of fun, i also had to test and remove many, many scenes too keep it manageable. most of the deleted scenes are just dialogue without much prose to them though, because i had a Vibe but then realised the fic was going to be too long --- but here's a deleted scene that i polished up just for you 💙 it's in jesper's POV too because you all really are enabling me to write more of that 💕

---------------------------------

“You kept it,” Jesper stared at Wylan.

Wylan’s gaze skittered away, hands clasped behind his back as they stood there, side by side, at the threshold of the mansion’s storeroom. He looked every bit a mercher, now: all the soft lines Jesper used to tease him about were gone, replaced by a gauntness from the sickness.

It had been a month – a month since the embassy, since Wylan had lied still on the bed, and the Shu Princess’ fiancée had come under the cover of the night. Do it, Jesper had told her to save Wylan’s life.

They’ve gone too far for me to save him, she had warned Jesper. This might not work – he might never feel again, never –

Do it, Jesper had repeated. Wylan had wanted this, had counted his own life worth more than his heart, and Jesper had to agree. Jesper had to be grateful that Grisha didn’t get sick: if Wylan came out of this not being able to love, then at least Wylan came out of this.

Then Jesper would still love him, anyway, whatever happened.

So she had done it, and Jesper had watched as a delirious, barely conscious Wylan had coughed and coughed – Wylan wouldn’t remember it, later, feverish and shivering, from both the sickness and the canal waters, and Jesper had promised, over and over again: I love you, I love you, I love you.

And Wylan, eyes clouded with fever, had tipped his head blindly toward Jesper’s voice, and apologized.

Now – now, a month since, Wylan was still recovering. He showed no signs that he remembered any of it. Jesper had been careful not to linger, unsure if Wylan wanted him, but he had stayed in one of the guest rooms that Marya had forced him into.

They ate meals together, Wylan staring at Jesper silently all the while before he disappeared again into his rooms, closing himself off as Kaz scrambled to keep the business afloat and Jesper tried to keep out of the way. With Nikolai and Zoya pleased that things had gone as smoothly as they could, Jesper wasn’t expected back in Ravka anytime soon, and he stayed in Ketterdam to pick up what pieces he could, trying to at last keep his promises.

Marya showed him the cracks in the house – the places where paint had started peeling, floorboards creaking, the carriage rattling, and Jesper placed his hand over them. He placed his hand, and called on his blessings: an act of prayer, an act of penance. He couldn’t heal the places where Wylan’s ribs had cracked from the roots that had wrapped around them, but he could at least fix the foundations. Could at least strengthen them.

He hadn’t known what to expect when Wylan had called for him earlier today.

He certainly hadn’t expected Wylan to lead him up to the attic, to show him a room full of everything he’d left behind. All the coins he’d turned into lopsided keys sitting in a jar by the far end of the room, the bullet fragments and shrapnel from his failed attempts at distracting himself. The mess of a canvas from when Jesper had tried to paint for Wylan, all those years ago, eighteen and too young to understand the weight of it. The weight of this.

His powers reached out to them all, now, the room a riot of metal and memory and color, all his hats and all the ledgers from his debts –

Wylan had kept it: all the good things, and the bad.

“I wanted to burn them,” Wylan spoke to him for the first time in weeks. “I wanted to burn it all.”

Jesper took a step inside, his feet leaving footsteps in the dust. “I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

“I broke some of them,” Wylan admitted, staying at the threshold, gaze shifting toward the broken glasses to their right, the shredded fabric, the shattered frames. “But I – I didn’t have anything left.”

When Jesper had left – so quickly he’d terrified even himself – he hadn’t had to time to bring much. He had thought it was for the better: a new start, without all his things, all his memories trapping him. He turned around to face Wylan, now, their past in scattered pieces around them.

Jesper didn’t need any of this. He just needed –

“I would have come home,” Jesper promised again, confession turned into sin, into vice, because even now, he still loved Wylan like an addiction. Like benediction. “I would have come home, if you asked.”

“And you would have resented me for it,” Wylan’s smile was a knife. Jesper wasn’t sure if it was a knife meant to cut Jesper, or himself. Did it matter? Either way, they both hurt.

His powers itched, needing to reach out, crawling beneath his skin, clawing at it. Grisha didn’t get sick: their fevers just burnt through bone, through soul – their powers demanding more than they could give. Wylan couldn’t love again. Not after the sickness. That was fine: Jesper would love him enough for the both of them.

“I already did, a little,” Jesper admitted, because hadn’t Wylan wanted him honest? “I resented you, but I missed you more.”

Wylan studied the floor. Eyes fixed at the distance between them.

“You stayed,” Wylan whispered.

“Do you want me to?”

He had stayed in Ravka for himself, but for Wylan too. He would stay here for himself, and for Wylan too. He owed it to them both to see whatever was left between them through: Wylan wasn’t a debt to be repaid, or a broken thing for Jesper to fix. He was a chance that Jesper wouldn’t let himself lose. Not again.

A strangled noise escaped Wylan, so similar to the cough that Jesper flinched at it –

“I want you to stop hurting,” Wylan said, just as he had all those years ago, when push became shove became fall. And then – “I want to stop hurting.”

Jesper stumbled forward, stumbled closer, pulled into orbit – pulled out of it, until distance became touch and his hand reached for Wylan’s – and Wylan’s reached for his, trembling, trembling, trying.

“I want you to be happy,” Jesper took the words, and made them his own. Made them his wish. “I want to be happy, too.”

Because he was selfish, because he was certain. Because he was trying, too.

[clenastia]

i dont know why the running joke of this chapter is kakashi fearing for his kidneys. where did that come from. WHY did that come from.

i should probably cut that in editing it's a little ridiculous.

except it makes me giggle every time so maybe i should leave it there.

[shayberri789]

Me finishing writing a paragraph: I'm doing SO good I can totally complete this essay before tomorrow yep. Hehe I got to talk about blorbo in an academic paper

Me trying to start a paragraph: I am in fact, incompetent. How do words work. This is all garbage. I should jsut throw this away. Fuck everything but especially this paragraph. Every word I type is trash.

Me when I FINALLY finish this essay, probably: see now that wasn't so hard, I can totally do this for my next essay

[fencecollapsed]

4, 7, and 12 for nerdy prudes!!

4. Least favorite character? 😠

Officer Bailey get away from my husband you PIG-

7. Song you didn’t like at first that grew on you? 🎵

Go Go Nighthawks, it's no favorite of mine but I like it more than I thought I would when I first heard it, it's funny silly and I like Kyle and Jason's part

12. Favorite headcanon? 💭

I've decided the smoke club is on Max's good side for two reasons: he thinks smoking is inherently cool, and he can't smoke weed and doesn't want anyone to know. he got high with them one time when Ziggs was still at HFH, had way too much and it made him panic, and Ziggs said they wouldn't tell anyone so the smoke club is just automatically cool to him

[hannie-dul-set]

somehow both my giant ass txt fics (love vomit and nabi) have under the table confession scenes (literally, physically) i have no idea how this happened.

[navree]

What is your take on the relationship between Aegon I and his brother Orys Baratheon? How do you think it will be portrayed in the Conquest show? If Orys was half Targaryen, could he have claimed a dragon?

I don't necessarily know how it'll be portrayed in the Conquest show just cuz I haven't seen any information about it yet (ideally HBO will just give me the contract and it'll be whatever I want it to be, come on fellas) but in terms of my take, you know me, I have Thoughts because I love these characters too much.

As with everything about Aegon, this is a lot of conjecture because that man was giving us straight up nothing in terms of his thoughts and feelings, but despite what seems to be a lack of interest in their relationship from most people, it's clear that Orys was important to Aegon. It's likely that Aegon was just searching for a pretext to start war when he offered Orys for Argella's hand after he refused her, but he still cared enough about Orys and valued him enough that he thought that he should get to marry a full princess and have the potential to be a king, as well as valuing his life and safety enough that he was willing to pay an insane ransom just to get him back alive during his captivity in the First Dornish War. It's also clear that Aegon cared in the fact that he created the position of Hand. The Hand of the King is not something that existed before Aegon's attempt at unification, and while yes it does make sense to have some sort of advisor/grand vizier type of person, it's almost unheard of in the ASOIAF world to have a second in command with this much power and influence. The Hand is an incredibly significant position, second only to the king (and during Aegon's reign, the queen, since Visenya and Rhaenys were also administrators and essentially co-monarchs with Aegon, even though he was still at the top and the most powerful), and that is something Aegon came up with and bestowed on Orys because he wanted that to be Orys. That speaks to an insane amount of not just confidence in Orys as a person, but also trust. Considering how reserved Aegon was and how small he kept his circle, the fact that he trusted Orys as much as he did with such responsibility and power, even if it could come back to bite him should Orys have chosen to be a traitor, really speaks to the amount of value and affection he must have had.

I don't think it's one sided affection either. Most people who are given that amount of power and position likely would have tried to make the most of it, even try and supplant the person who gave it to them, and it's notable when that doesn't happen (why do you think Augustus and Agrippa and the way Agrippa never even tried to wrest power for himself even though he absolutely could have make me a bit crazy?). Yeah, Orys might have lost any eventual power grab, just based on the fact that Aegon had Balerion, but it would have severely weakened Aegon's position and probably led to the collapse of the Targaryens as a dynasty and rulers of a unified Seven Kingdoms. But Orys was perfectly contented to serve as Aegon's second fiddle, to go into battle for him and even die for him, to marry who he was asked to marry and rule where he was asked to do and even speak in Aegon's voice rather than his own. He was not only able to do it, but willing to do it, happy to do it even. And maybe some of it can be chalked up to familial obligation, but Orys was not publicly a member of that family. He wasn't ever formally claimed by Aerion, so even if they were raised as siblings, he wouldn't benefit as much from a Targaryen ascension the way Rhaenys and Visenya would (and of course, unlike Rhaenys and Visenya, he wasn't intrinsically tied to Aegon through marriage nor would his children have a vested interest in Aegon's vision working out the way their's would, seeing as they would also be Aegon's children). Orys wasn't motivated by family loyalty or his own personal ambitions or even lofty dreams about a unified world/protection against a greater threat the way the three Conquerors were, he was motivated by what looks like personal loyalty towards Aegon specifically. He was Aegon's before he was the realm's, even before he was House Targaryen's, and he was clearly willing to do whatever needed to be done for Aegon's sake. And not just in the Conquest, but even afterwards in other skirmishes. He didn't necessarily need to be leading armies in Dorne, now that he was the head of a Great House as well as the second most important man in the country (I don't think Jon Arryn or Otto Hightower were fighting on any frontlines while they were Hand) but he did it anyway. It's almost Rhaenys-like, in a fashion, the way that he was willing to put his own life on the line for the vision Aegon believed in, because he believed in it too (though, like I've said several times, Rhaenys had her own motivations for fighting in the Conquest and in Dorne beyond just what her husband wanted) even when he had a perfectly legitimate excuse not to, even though it ended up costing him dearly. And he never blamed Aegon for what happened to him, even though he was clearly embittered and became a crabby nightmare of a man in the aftermath who wasn't necessarily one for seeing things clearly (cut off Deria's hand? really? come on dude) and that's generally a recipe for heaping blame on the undeserving. But there's no record to suggest that Orys was ever angry at Aegon, or ever tried to remove himself from Aegon's life beyond resigning as Hand, or that they had any kind of falling out, that despite everything he was feeling, he never turned his emotions around on Aegon, as if the love he bore Aegon was too great to ever consider blaming him for Orys's misfortunes.

I also like the fact that Orys is actually younger than Aegon. The closest anyone gets to a date is the idea that he might have been born in 20 BC, which would make him seven years younger than his brother, which is actually a pretty significant age gap in terms of childhood development. And yet, they're frequently referred to as childhood companions. In spite of the age gap, Aegon took the time to spend time with Orys, to hang out with him, to engage with him and make the effort in their relationship. And that's not a small thing, because Aegon was probably only used to being around children roughly his own age. He doesn't seem to have had a lot of companions as a boy, and when it comes to his sisters, he was two years younger than Visenya and one to two years older than Rhaenys, which is much closer developmentally than an age gap of seven years. But despite not necessarily being accustomed to interacting with someone that much younger than him, he still tried his hardest, and idk there's something that tugs at the heart to imagine little Aegon, probably a quiet and unobtrusive kid, putting in that amount of attention and care into trying to bond with a baby, a toddler, a little kid even as he was growing well beyond that phase. It's easy to see why Orys would latch onto Aegon as a child, he latched onto his cool older brother, but Aegon was putting in the effort too, enough so that by the time that they were in similar developmental areas they were true friends and companions and so incredibly willing to die for each other. And even if that gap adds an element of sadness to the fact that they both died in 37 AC (Orys just a bit after Aegon I think, considering the Vulture King stuff happened during Aenys's reign) with Orys only being in his late fifties, there's something to the fact that Orys didn't really ever live much of a life without Aegon, that he loved him too much for it, and that Aegon deliberately cultivated that relationship not as an adult looking for an ally, but as a kid who wanted a companion, who loved Orys too and was willing to put in real work to show that almost from day one.

It's also possible that their relationship suffered in their later years. Once again, it all goes back to that most consequential of moments, the First Dornish War. Orys's mutilation happens before Rhaenys is shot down over Hellholt, so he was already a bitter asshole by the time that happened, but it doesn't seem like he tried to move himself out of his own mental funk when it happened either. So Aegon's dealing with grief from the loss of his wife/baby sister, probably even some guilt over not protecting her better, as well as some increasing panic and stress over the problems Aenys, his three year old son and only child, was developing as a result, and who could he go to? Visenya? Visenya was grieving too, and we don't know if their relationship was ever functional enough for Aegon to be any kind of emotionally open with her (I like to think it was, but that's a headcanon from me). Orys? Ideally yeah, you go to your best friend, your stalwart shield, your strong right hand, your brother, when you're hurting and scared and in pain and in need of comfort, but it's entirely possible that Orys was either a bad comfort or had already entrenched himself so deeply in his bitterness that Aegon didn't even look to him as an option for help. After all, Orys had deprived him of a necessary councilor during active wartime, and was more focused on his own issues than anything else, so maybe Aegon just felt that he couldn't rely on him in his most desperate time. That's a huge backslide in trust from what they were in the Conquest, and possibly irrecoverable. I don't think it was as bad or as permanent as the issues that ended up arising between Aegon and Visenya, since, like I said before, there isn't any record of a public falling out or anyone remarking on Orys's lack of influence, and he was at court regularly enough to be included in the group of people who had opinions on how to deal with the Dornish peacemaking delegation. I don't think that Orys did anything unforgivable or something like that, I think that Aegon just decided not to rely on him the way they were both used to, and it created a distance between them exacerbated by what appears to be a natural tendency from Aegon to shut himself off from most people he's not extraordinarily close to.

Man Aegon should have stayed well out of fucking Dorne, is there literally any interpersonal relationship of his other than, idk, the one with Balerion, that escaped even remotely unscathed from that godforsaken war? Christ alive.

Could Orys have claimed a dragon? It's possible. The dragons likely would have accepted him, considering they also accepted half Targaryen children like Velaryons who intermarried and Rhaenys TQWNW, who was herself half-Baratheon, and the Strongs and Alicent's children, both of whom only had half-Targaryen ancestry themselves. Would he have been allowed to, as a bastard? That's harder to say. It doesn't seem like bastardy held the same taint for the Targaryens that it did for the other nobles in Westeros, but it might have still been a Thing enough that, while they were children, Aerion wasn't going to allow a bastard to lay claim to a Targaryen dragon. We know even less about Aerion than we do about Aegon, including when exactly he was supposed to die, so while we know that Aegon might have been inclined to go against his wishes (considering that he brought Rhaenys into his marriage despite what were clear plans to have him only be married to Visenya), we don't know if his moments of rebellion, like the marriage to Rhaenys, happened during Aerion's lifetime or not. So it's entirely possible that Orys was prevented from participating in any dragon culture stuff in his youth, perhaps in spite of a younger Aegon's protestations, and that by the time Aerion was out of the picture, they're all adults and Orys had already decided that he didn't necessarily need or want a dragon when he was a capable fighter in his own right.

TL;DR I think they really loved each other, that Aegon valued Orys incredibly highly and that Orys in return deeply cared for Aegon, and that even if the relationship could have possibly suffered in the aftermath of the accursed First Dornish War, it wasn't anything irreversible and that the love was always there, and it was clearly appreciated and worked towards on both sides. I think Orys could have claimed a dragon if he wanted, but either never saw the need or might have been blocked from doing so by their father, potentially in spite of Aegon trying to make a case for him. And also I love them both very much.