#I did find the notes for my critical introduction which thank god | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hardskz · 4 years

Text

bow down.

pairing — bang chan x genderneutral! reader

genre — modern royalty au, drama-ish, smut; sexual tension-ish, hand kink, brat tamer! chan, degradation, leg humping, humiliation

synopsis — you have eyes. prince bang chan is a whole snack. but you also have too high of an ego and can’t seem to accept that prince chan isn’t full of himself unlike the other dozen members of any royal family you’ve met before. alternatively, this is the disney channel movie ‘princess protection program’ but make it porn only.

note — this fic with a wc of 7k+ does not include any spoilers to the movie and you don’t even have to know what the movie is about you’ll get the gist as you read. ngl half of this is from one of my drafts from like 3 years ago and i never continued it so here i am turning it into filth hahahah (and i needed a fresh idea for brat tamer chan and hence why i think the sfw part is better written than the nsfw lmao) rip also pls accept this as the follower milestone gift and 1 year anniversary special :’)

“I’m pretty sure I asked for a puppy for my birthday — which was three months ago may I add — not for a new roommate?”

You look back and forth between Youngjae and the stranger sitting on the couch who is staring back at you with a curious expression. He looks around your age and you admit, his face isn’t the kind of face that makes you thank your parents that genetics did a decent job on you. It’s quite the opposite, actually.

His face is the type of face that makes you ask your parents why genetics didn’t do a better job on yours. Okay, you haven’t reached that stage of visual inferiority yet but that’s mainly because he is dressed in clothes that were trendy in the 15th century or something. The garments clinging to his skin look like a bad fusion of a suit (which college student wears a suit in their free time?) and the ridiculous costume the marching band at your former high school had worn whenever a football game was up. And those weird golden pins clipped on the blazer makes it seem as if he used to be in the marines or comes from a royal bloodline or—

Oh.

“Don’t mind my cousin, your Highness. (y/n)’s humor has always been questionable.” Youngjae sends you a glare before he puts on his sweetest smile — you know, the act he puts on whenever he tries to negotiate a bonus with his boss or woo his date — and opts to ignore your presence. “Anyway, since we are dealing with a more serious issue at hand than originally expected, we need to give you a makeover to—“

Before he gets to finish his sentence, you violently tug him away from the prince and despite Youngjae thrashing around and complaining, you manage to send the guest a forced smile and leave his vision. The moment you let go of Youngjae in the neighboring room, he readjusts his collar. “What? Couldn’t you have waited once I was done? Also, was it necessary to crinkle my collar this much?” he hisses but you get straight to the point.

“What is he doing here?”

“Uh, sitting on the couch?”

“That’s not what I mean.” you grit your teeth and land a punch on his arm. “What is he doing here?”

Youngjae looks over your shoulder, making sure that what he’s about to say next is only heard by you. “Prince Chan is,” he hesitates, unsure how to approach his topic. You know it’s taking up his last nerves to conclude a logical explanation as the tip of his tongue pokes out of the corner of his lips; a habit he has adapted ever since he stopped chewing on his bottom lip. “The predicament he’s in is worse than we expected. Well, his dad is partially at fault because he forgot to tell us this not-so-small critical detail that—“

“Youngjae, you’re rambling.”

“The point is.” he sighs and gives you a distressed look as if he already knows you’re not going to like the information at all. “We can’t send him to the family in Goyang, the place he was originally going to stay in. He’s one of the more extreme cases and the Board agreed that he had to live with one of the active combatants to ensure his safety.”

Silence engulfs the kitchen and you know he’s waiting for you to count two and two together.

“He’s going to live here,” you deadpan eventually and Youngjae nods in confirmation.

“I know you’re not very happy—“

“Not very happy is underwhelming.” You earn a flick against your forehead and yelp in pain as you over the spot he just hit. “Ow! I was just stating the truth!”

“Will you stop interrupting me? Geez. Yes, I know that you’re not happy at all. I know that you’re not a huge fan of the majority of our family working in this business. But please do me this one favor or so help me God— try to be nice to him for the next year.”

“He’s staying for a year?” you shriek and in the blink of an eye, Youngjae clamps your mouth shut.

“Can you keep it down?!” he whisper-yells, then retreats his hand and reverts to a conversational tone with a frown. “It’s just a year, okay? Y’know, just... say hi to him whenever you see him. Act civilized.”

You grimace as he stresses his last words like you didn’t know what human decency was. The longer you keep the petrified expression on your face, the more it turns into a staring contest between the two of you. Just as if you were each other’s reflection, you mimic his actions and vice versa. When Youngjae squints, you squint. When you shoot him a glare, he returns it. It all boils down to the final blink that Youngjae feints and you’re the first to look away.

“Okay fine! I’ll try to behave,” you mumble in defeat.

A satisfied smile makes its way on Youngjae’s lips. “It’s always nice negotiating with you.”

Being born into a family where the majority works for the royalty protection program (short: RPP or as you like to stylize it: argh-pee-pee), also known as the secret service for people with crowns on their heads, comes with many perks. In your eyes, this privilege comes with many, many downsides that aren’t worth the advantages. Sure, there is the one or other occasion where you can waltz around in fancy evening attire and attend an actual ball, but overall, it’s a pain in the ass.

Even though it’s prohibited to openly declare that you work for the RPP, the news always finds its way out. Usually, it takes approximately a week for pretty much half of the neighborhood to find out. And it certainly isn’t nice hearing whispers about your dad being that guy working for the program whenever you step out of your house, which is ultimately why you moved in with your cousin Youngjae. (Housing in your small town wasn’t really affordable for a dirt poor college student after all!)

Youngjae has always been your favorite cousin out of the... whatever number of cousins you have. But here’s the thing. He also works for the RPP.

However, somehow he managed to — and up to this day it still remains a mystery to you how on earth he did that — keep his job a secret. Especially with his tendency to dish out the worst kinds of secrets when he’s slightly tipsy. Frankly, you once considered printing out the image of a trophy for that remarkable feat.

With your dad and cousin both active in that business (because organization sounds too shady), it’s not the first time you meet a prince, so you already know how the entire thing works. The concept is quite simple; they get sent to a household but before they settle in and take on a fake identity until their circumstances have improved, they undergo a makeover. Most of the time, it ends up in the glow up you secretly crave but in Prince Chan’s case, you suppose he can’t get any more attractive.

Oh boy. You’re in for a ride.

You’re busy slicing bell peppers for the meal you were cooking when both your cousin and the prince enter the kitchen and Youngjae explicitly demands you to pay them attention. You don’t react immediately, but the moment he threatens to swipe the knife away from you, you perk up and set your desire to prepare your fried rice aside.

“(y/n), uh, hi? I’m Bang Chan and I’ll be your new housemate for a year. I hope we can get along.” Chan recites his introduction without any mistakes and earns a way too brotherly pat on the back from Youngjae, considering that they just met this morning. It’s truly amazing how fast Youngjae can get people to warm up to him.

Chan is stripped out of his weird clothes and instead, looks like he threw on the next best thing lying around in his room. Nonetheless, despite the seemingly little effort that was put into the outfit, it looks oddly good. The stylists didn’t seem to do much to his hair and just parted his bangs a little, so one could catch a slight glimpse of his forehead. It’s just a small detail, but you find yourself liking his current appearance much more appealing than before, though you’re pretty sure his clothes played a major part in your previous distaste.

“Remember Jihyo?” Youngjae interrupts your train of thought. “She’s Chan’s relative. And because I’m the genuine friend who loves to help her out, I decided to agree to this after she went down on her knees and begged me to let Chan live with us for a while—“

“I’m not interested in your blown up, fictional background stories, thank you very much.” you backtrack. “Wait. Did you say Jihyo? Seriously? Jihyo is his alibi?” Of course, you remember Jihyo. It’s quite difficult to forget her when Youngjae used to swoon about her at every hour of the day, back when they were a thing. Besides, she still stops by every few months.

“C’mon, you have to admit there is a similar vibe between them!”

You furrow your brows and inspect Chan a second time. Your gaze wanders back to Youngjae and then returns to Chan anew. It’s obvious that the latter is feeling as if he were up for auction and you can’t really blame him for feeling so uncomfortable. You’ve heard from a few friends that if looks could kill, you’d have the highest killing record.

There’s no similar vibe in your view, but for the sake of entertaining Youngjae’s thoughts: “He does seem similar to Jihyo.”

“Told ya. But back to more important matters,” Youngjae coughs and wraps his arm around your shoulder to pull you closer, but it somehow seems as if he’s opting to strangle you. “My duties are calling, so I won’t be back until late. You look like you could need some help with cooking, by the way. I’m sure Chan right here is willing to help you!”

“I’m almost done though—“ you choke when he tightens his embrace. By now, his arm is no longer hugging your shoulder, but rather crushing your throat.

“You look like you could need some help,” he repeats, this time with added urgency. “It’d be a great opportunity for you to bond since you’ll also share pretty much all classes at uni. Did you know, he has the same major as you! Besides, it’d be a very useful life experience for him if he helped you with cooking.”

“Of course, how fun!” you hiss, voice going an octave higher from the lack of oxygen. “I already said that I’m painfully delighted about that, so you can let me go now, Youngjae!”

A sneer and a jab in his arm later, Youngjae finally takes his leave. That nasty liar, leaving an hour earlier than his schedule stated. You know that silently cursing at him isn’t going to make your problems dissolve because that’d be a dream come true.

“Listen, let me get things straight.” you sigh, picking up the knife to resume chopping your vegetables. Youngjae may have ordered you to act civilized, but having eye contact with Chan when you’ve been starving for the past hour isn’t your priority. Food doesn’t make itself. “I don’t have any intention of getting close to you and I expect the same from you. Don’t step a foot into my room, don’t talk to me unless absolutely necessary, and don’t think I’ll run around and do your chores or cook your meals like one of your little servants. Just because you’re a prince doesn’t mean you’ll be treated like one under this roof.”

“We live in the 21st century, not the renaissance. Your idea of royal families is very dated.” Chan chuckles dryly.

“Baron Yoon Jeonghan from the seven islands is a stuck-up prick and out of touch with the world. It took him several visits to the slums, multiple voluntary hours at the kindergarten, and stripping him off his bank card to make him see reason,” you deadpan. Fuck Baron Jeonghan. Just thinking about your first and last encounter with that entitled douchebag almost makes you slice your finger instead of the bell pepper. “Duchess Yoo Shiah threw a hissy fit when she found out her clothes weren’t dry cleaned and bought from Zara instead of fucking Dior. The one who takes the cake when it comes to privilege is Princess Kim Min—”

“Everyone knows they are problematic,” Chan interjects. True, he has a point. There’s nobody out there who doesn’t know about Baron Jeonghan or Duchess Shiah but he’s also missing the entire point.

“And guess who gets stuck under the care of the RPP?” you raise a brow at him. He blanches at the realization as if he got struck with lightning. Perhaps you should give him more credit because he seems to own more brain cells than Baron Jeonghan. “Exactly. Everyone problematic.”

Chan’s jaw is clenched as he racks his brain to come up with a smart comeback. The sight of him stumbling on his words is nothing but pitiful, so you turn back to the cutting board and grab an onion to slice in half. “I’m not interested in your sob story, your Highness. I don’t care why you’re under the protection of the RPP. The only thing I care about is that you stay out of my business.”

“Chan is fine. No need for the title,” he sighs with a strain. “Perhaps I should’ve been more considerate with my first comment. Youngjae already told me about your… negative attitude towards the entire setup. It wasn’t my intention to anger you. Sorry.”

Well, that’s new. Out of the dozens of aristocrats you’ve met (and sadly also shared a house with back when you were 16 years old and still living with your dad), he’s the first to drop his title within five minutes for the sake of the disguise and apologize.

“We live under the same roof so we should get along with each other. If there’s something you need help with, just ask me, (y/n).”

“Thanks for the offer,” you reply nonchalantly because act civilized unless you want to suffer from a late-night sneak attack from Youngjae if he finds out. “But no thanks. I don’t need your help.”

You find yourself in need of help a few weeks later, right before the dreaded exam season.

“No. Forget it, Bam. I’m not going out clubbing with you tonight. In fact, I won’t do that anytime soon.” you let out an exasperated sigh as you try to break down to your friend that you prioritize your grades over his need of getting wasted.

“C’mon!” he whines so loudly that you have to put your phone farther away from your ear. “You’re not in that much stress yet! You have to make the most out of it before you drown in your exams.”

“Things are different for engineering students like, uh, me for example!” you hiss. “I fell behind and need to catch up. Ask Yugyeom or Changbin.”

“First of all, Yugyeom is always at the bar doing his job. And Changbin never picks up his phone. There’s nobody who’d dance with me!”

“You abandoned me at the bar for some chick the last time,” you deadpan. “I’m very sure you’ll find someone.”

Bambam finally gets the gist and gives up. “Fine then. Your loss. Have fun dying in numbers and variables instead of living in the moment. You’re going to regret it—”

You end the call and set your phone on mute before throwing it on the bed. Sometimes you wonder whether you were on drugs when you decided to major in engineering. The longer you stare at the jumble of numbers and letters — some of them in Greek too — the more you think your brain cells are decaying.

That’s how you find yourself in the kitchen, complaining at Youngjae’s expense and telling him how much you’d rather drown in bleach than subjecting yourself to Algebra II.

“You know there’s someone you can ask for help and he’s right here,” Youngjae drawls before chugging down the rest of his beer. If he’s going to be a victim to your temper tantrum about a major that you chose yourself, he might as well get a drink so he won’t go insane from your monologue about numbers and graphs and formulas he’s forgotten since he graduated from high school.

You gawk at him. “You? Are you hearing yourself? You almost failed maths. Twice!”

“Because I didn’t mean myself, dipshit,” he says blankly and his eyes flit over your shoulder, “Speaking of the devil. There comes the man of honor.”

You whip your head back to the door to see Chan enter confusedly. “Uh, did I interrupt something?”

“Yes.”

“No, we were just talking about you!”

You send Youngjae a death glare which he casually shrugs off. “(y/n) here is bitching about her Statistics I class and needs a tutor!”

“It’s actually Algebra II if you bothered to pay attention—”

“(y/n) needs a tutor!” Youngjae exclaims and nearly trips on his feet when he gets up from his chair. “Channie, I heard you’re good with numbers. Didn’t you get accepted into all Ivy Leagues in the States for all engineering programs?”

“You didn’t have to word it like that,” Chan laughs it off and nervously rubs the back of his head. He’s not denying it though.

“Obviously he would. He’s loaded and lives in a castle,” you mutter under your breath, but everyone catches it.

“Hey,” Youngjae warns. “That wasn’t necessary.”

“It’s alright,” Chan says casually. “I just wanted to get myself a snack. But if you have some questions, don’t hesitate to knock on my door. The offer still stands, y’know.” He digs through the cabinet until he finds two packs of the strawberry flavored Pocky knockoff that is 1) apparently his favorite thing to eat and 2) half the price of the Pocky version. He gives Youngjae a thumbs up before he returns to his room.

The moment Chan is out of sight, Youngjae whips his head to you, nostrils flaring. All that’s missing is steam coming out of his ears and his face running red and then he looks like the impetuous brother in every kids cartoon ever. “Really? He’s been staying with us for how long now? Four weeks? Five? Yet you’re still acting as if he murdered you in your dreams or something.”

“I don’t like him,” you state coldly. Youngjae looks like he’s about to rip his hair out.

“Look, I get that you don’t like me being active in this field of work, and I get that you have some hatred against the royal families. But you know you signed up for this when you decided to move in with me.” Youngjae pauses to get a breather and pop a new beer bottle open. “Besides, Chan isn’t like Baron Jeonghan or Duchess Shiah. I have eyes, (y/n), and I’ve seen you two avoiding each other as much as possible. And he doesn’t just laze around — he does the fucking chores and cooks dinner too! Chan is good, (y/n).”

The last words make you snap. “Good? Are you fucking serious? Because that’s why the press in his kingdom is depicting him as a tyrant who cares more about building his sick harem instead of helping the poor. And wasn’t he diagnosed for having anger management issues?!”

All the color leaves Youngjae’s face. This is obviously something you shouldn’t know. While he’s scrambling for words, you take the chance to add, “Dunno why you’re protecting him when he’s making headlines as a prince who can’t keep his dick in his pants.”

“Chan isn’t just a prince,” Youngjae says quietly. “He’s the crown prince.”

Your eyes widen at the confession. “What? Isn’t that even worse with that reputation he has?”

“It’s all propaganda,” he sighs and takes a swig, “The ministers are doing everything they can to finish him off. You see, Chan is the only child of the current king of the seven islands, and if he’s wiped out, it’ll be utter chaos. Chan’s smart and I admit, he used to have anger issues, but he’s worked on them. Though I guess he’s resorted to bottling up his feelings when push comes to pull. The point is, all the higher-ups don’t want him as their future king because they know that Chan is very much capable of pulling through with his own ideas and that doesn’t sit well with them. And a supposedly impulsive future king is the last thing anyone wants, hence why his people are eating up the news.”

“Oh.” you’d be lying if you said you didn’t feel an ounce of remorse. However, it’s not the first time you’ve heard such stories.

“Yeah. Oh,” Youngjae mocks, “If that’s the main reason why you don’t want to talk to him, now you know better. He might have power, but he’s not a monster. And for the record, he got into all Ivy Leagues and elite schools all over the world through his intelligence, not his status.”

Although you can see it in his eyes that Youngjae is done with the heated discussion, he’s still waiting for you to say something. You frown. “So… you think he’s a good tutor?”

“He’s your only shot.” Youngjae says nonchalantly, then adds with a warning tone, “But remember: Act. Civilized. Oh, and don’t tell him I told you about his circumstances. It’s supposed to be confidential information.”

You roll your eyes. How the fuck hasn’t Youngjae been busted yet?

Nonetheless, you’re trudging to Chan’s door a few minutes later, your fat binder of incomprehensible math formulas and (Greek) letter heavy in your arm. Chan opens the door with surprise etched on his face after you knocked, but it settles to warmth when you begrudgingly ask him to help you understand Algebra II.

“Sorry, it’s a little messy here,” he chuckles airily once he lets you in. It’s not messy per se, just a few clothes piled up in a corner of the room and some books and messily written notes lying on his bed. Still, it’s by far cleaner than the pig stall that is Youngjae’s room (and yours when you’re having a very bad day).

Chan clears his desk and drags his other chair to the table before plopping down on it. “So, what’s the problem?” Instead of answering, you just shove a sheet of paper up his face. “Y’know, you can talk to me. If this is about earlier, it’s really alright. I’m not mad or anything,” he says with the same friendly tone you’ve been hearing ever since he moved in, yet he still takes the sheet from you. You watch his brows scrunch together the more he reads on, and you can already see the question forming in his mind.

“(y/n), you do know this is the basis to understand—”

“I was absent when the professor covered it and everyone I asked couldn’t quite explain it to me,” you respond before he can finish speaking out his thoughts. “All my friends were like—” you gesture with your hands, “—you just do this and that and then hope your hunch is right. Before you say it, yes I know that I don’t get the material of one entire unit and the exam is two weeks away.”

“Then let’s not waste any time,” Chan says before grabbing his iPad. You stare at him blankly as he writes something on his tablet. The last thing you expected from him was to accept it and try to hammer as much of missing information as he can into your brain, but then again, you’ve never seen him backtrack whenever Youngjae asks him something. Speaking of Youngjae, perhaps he is right. Chan does seem to know what he’s talking about.

“You have to subtract X first, then replace it with Y,” he explains as he circles said letters in different colors. By now, you’ve leaned closer to him to get a better view on what he’s writing (his handwriting isn’t the worst you’ve ever had to decode; refer to Youngjae who you’ve internally awarded with the worst handwriting of the decade).

Chan is exceptionally good at explaining. You feel like you’ve figured out a secret of the world that not even Pythagoras found out as you slowly understand what on Earth you are supposed to calculate with the formula. Chan is patient, always asking if you got it or if you needed another clarification, and takes the time to draw colorful graphs to visualize the jumble of numbers. His voice is pleasing to the ear too, soft and gentle to the point where you’ve blurred everything out except Chan. Chan’s voice. Chan’s hand.

You didn’t mean to stare, but with him always adding something new every five seconds as he goes on with his monologue, you can’t help but do so. His fingers aren’t long — that’ll always be courtesy of Hyunjin from Subway and yes, his very pretty hands might be the sole reason you only insist on going to that one specific Subway at the intersection next to KFC — but just one glance at Chan’s hand and you know that he’s strong.

He’s barely applying pressure to the pen, but you can see the veins slightly protruding. Chan’s sleeves are pushed back and if you move your head a bit, you’re more than certain that veins are bulging out from his forearms too. However, you don’t muster up the courage to do that because Chan will definitely notice and the last thing you want on your platter is to tell him that you were too busy checking out his arms instead of listening to him talk about Algebra II.

Eventually, Chan sets the pen down to stretch his hand. He says something, but you don’t pick up what exactly. Not that it’d matter much anyway since you’re too busy admiring his hand—

“(y/n), you there? I called out your name several times but you didn’t react.” Chan’s breath hitches and surprise flashes in his eyes for a split second when his gaze meets yours. You don’t understand his hesitation, but then horror bubbles in you once you realize that his hand is firmly gripping your chin and keeping your head pointed at his direction. The very same hand you’ve been staring at for God knows how long.

“I’m good. Just a little tired, but I’m good,” you stutter, though it comes out very breathlessly as if you just finished a marathon.

“Tired?” Chan echoes, concern settling into his features. “You should’ve said so, then I would’ve stopped talking. You need something?”

Now that you think about it, you’ve never got a close look at Chan. Sure, he’s handsome, the countless pictures of Google prove that he’s also too photogenic for his own good (goddamnit, why didn’t your parents make you just as photogenic?) but in person, he’s something else. His lips are plush and look very inviting to kiss, and the lower your eyes wander, the more you see a toned chest hidden underneath that damn shit that hugs him in all the right places.

Fine, his hands aren’t the only attractive thing about him. Then again, he’s a prince.

“I said I’m good.” you snap out of your thoughts and finally gather enough control over your nerves to tear his hand away. “And I caught everything you said.” Of course, you know that’s a blatant lie and he knows so too from the way he’s looking at you. That is until he quirks a brow.

“Okay, then what did I say before I called you?”

Your mouth feels dry. It’s almost as if he knew the reason for your distress. “I caught everything relevant to this,” you mutter, suddenly finding his curtains much more interesting. What an interesting design, maybe you should get yourself new curtains too—

“Then you wouldn’t mind solving these questions, right? Just so I can make sure that you got everything down.”

“Sure,” you reply because that’s the only thing you could say without hurting your ego and straining your vocal cords. Chan doesn’t comment any further and looks for some practice questions before sliding the iPad to you. Already the first question makes your head spin in disdain. Numbers? Variables? Never heard of them.

Chan is watching you like a hawk as you fiddle with the pen, unable to write down anything that makes remote sense. Feeling his eyes on you makes you feel helpless and you shift around in your seat. “What are you staring at?” you glare at him once you give up for good, and you just hope that your look is as intimidating as you pictured in your head.

“You’re definitely exhausted. You’re shaking,” Chan points out. Your eyes widen as you stare down and realize that your thighs are shaking, and it’s then and there when you realize that you’re feeling hot. Seems like Chan doesn’t realize that because the worry written on his face is genuine. “You say the exam’s in two weeks right? We can stop for today and work on this tomorrow. That is if you still want my help.”

You nod and add in a tiny voice, “Yes, please.”

You’re too busy ignoring the heat building between your thighs to notice the borderline feral sound that leaves Chan.

“And here I thought you had quality bonding time.” Youngjae gives a disappointed look. “You’re acting even colder towards him than before your exam meltdown. Your prick level can only stoop down so low.”

You ended up getting tutor lessons from Chan every day before the dreaded day of judgment: the exam in Algebra II. You spent more hours in his room than on your own if you were completely honest, and the results were fruitful. While you did manage to pass the exam with a fairly high score, the price you had to pay was hell.

It’s almost as if Chan caught up on your hand fixation. Sometimes he twirled the pen in his fingers, sometimes it was the simple bracelet dangling on his wrist. Just when you thought he had you figured out, he asks you if you’re alright, visibly oblivious to his effect on you. Such duality in a person should be illegal, you conclude. If you die from whiplash, you know who the perpetrator is.

“You were the one who pretty much pressured me into asking him for help,” you drawl.

“I had good intentions only! You can’t keep up the I-hate-royal-families-blah-blah mentality the entire time!” Youngjae wails before stuffing a handful of chips in his mouth.

“Watch me.” You internally cringe at the loud crunching sounds he’s making and add vigorously, “And stop chewing so loudly.”

“You’ll get around or so help me God—” he groans when his phone buzzes. He doesn’t spare a glance at the caller ID because there’s only one person who has set his ringtone to the baby shark song specifically for when he’s calling. “I gotta go, Jinyoung’s being a bitch again. Don’t murder somebody. Thanks.” You only watch him shuffle for his bag and grab a handful of chips before he’s out the door. Groaning, you clean up the mess he’s made on the table.

Just as you’re done wiping the crumbs off the surface, Chan pads into the room.

“Hey, can we talk?”

“I established right at the beginning that you should only talk to me when absolutely necessary.” you scowl, trying to walk past him.

“Well, this is important,” he urges and blocks the doorway, effectively stopping you from fleeing. “And I do deserve one conversation with you after I helped you out.”

“You offered on your own. That’s not the same as asking for a favor.” You successfully push your way past him, but in the next moment, he spins you around and pins you against the wall.

“We’re going to talk, whether you like it or not.” The sudden coldness of his tone has shivers running down your spine. Chan holds your wrist in an iron grip and if he clutched on any tighter, you wouldn’t put it past him to break your bones. Out of options, you comply and give him a curt nod before he lets go and takes a step back.

“I don’t understand you, (y/n). I genuinely thought you would put your prejudices aside but instead, all I get are mixed signals from you.”

It’s your turn to gawk. “Me? Mixed signals? What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about how you keep looking at me as if you want me to fuck your brains out.” If the color hasn’t drained from your face yet, it has now. Chan smiles wickedly at your horrified reaction but doesn’t stop there. “I’m talking about how you talk like you don’t want anything to do with me but act as if you’re begging for my attention.” He takes a step closer to you, and you wish you could morph with the wall. “I’m talking about how you keep staring at my hands and think I don’t notice it.” You wince when he rests his hands against the wall on each side of your face, leaning closer so that you can feel his breath on your lips. “So, you have a thing for my hands?” Bullseye.

“You’re so full of yourself. No wonder your ministers want to get rid of you,” you snap because you’d rather suffer from food poisoning than admitting that you want Chan’s fingers in you.

Something shifts within Chan. He gapes at you, clearly not expecting you to even know about the ministers. His demeanor darkens in a blink of an eye, and you feel like your legs are about to give up on you when you meet his eyes, black and feral.

“You’re playing with fire. Don’t anger me,” he warns, voice low and rough.

“So it’s true that you resorted to bottling up your feelings, your Highness?” you cock your head to the side. Chan clenches his jaw at the mention of his title, struggling to keep his anger in check. You laugh through your nose, then grab one of his hands and force it away from the wall. If he already knows that you’re thirsting after him, might as well go for it. “It’s funny how your ministers aren’t able to string you around like a puppet yet here you are, unable to do anything against a commoner. You know you have nice hands and you know my weakness and yet, you’re not using them on me.” He gulps when you fumble with his fingers.

And then he understands.

“Unless I misread the situation,” he says darkly, though you distinguish the slight tremor his voice carries. “Do you really want this? I’m not going to go easy on you.” Chan is dead serious, judging by the way he’s looking at you expectantly.

“The safe word is petunia.” You don’t take your eyes off him and add in a louder tone, “Now try me, do your worst.”

“You’re going to regret wanting me at my worst,” Chan growls and before you know it, he crashes his lips against yours. The kiss is anything but sweet, more of a clash of teeth and tongues and saliva dribbling down your chins, yet it leaves you boiling hot and wobbly on your feet. He presses you up against the wall and forces his leg between yours, the sudden contact making you hunch forward. You moan against his mouth when he tugs harshly on your hair, the sting making your nerves go haywire. In the meantime, your hands roam his upper body, blunt nails digging into his shoulders as you try to buck your hips against his leg. While he doesn’t budge, you manage to elicit a groan out of him.

When you pull away, you’re both gasping for air. Chan’s hair is disheveled from the way you’ve been pulling on them, lips pink and glossy. One look in his eyes is enough to make your heart stop beating. They’re dark and animalistic and set ablaze with unfiltered lust. You’re such in a daze from a simple kiss that you nearly stumble when Chan drags you to his room.

He manhandles you on his bed with ease before his lips latch on yours once more. You nearly sob when he rids you off your pants, putting pressure in all the right places to have you losing your mind. As you’re about to gain back some dominance in the kiss, he breaks it off. His fingers that were once ghosting over your underwear are now tracing patterns all over the material, making you spasm. “You’re such a brat, all bark but no bite. All it takes is one kiss and you’ve lost all your fight. Can you get any more pathetic?” he mocks as he focuses his fingertips directly on the wet patch of your underwear. Your eyes roll back as he rubs on the same spot, the broken moans leaving you eerily similar to cries. “Don’t tell me you’re about to come like this. How sensitive are you?”

“Am n-not—” you cut yourself off with a whimper when he lets the waistband snap against your skin.

“Yeah, you sure about that?” he grins and that’s when you break, feeling your high approaching at lightning speed.

“Don’t wanna come like this—”

“But I thought you’re not sensitive?” the satisfied grin just widens with every syllable that leaves his lips. “If you don’t want to come like this, all over your underwear, beg.”

Chan applies even more force to your sensitive spots, and you struggle to have a clear thought. The smirk he delivers is lethal, and you couldn’t be any more convinced that he’s the devil’s incarnate.

“I’ll do anything, please. Don’t let me come like this, that’s all I’m a-aah-asking for,” you weep, your blood nearly boiling at its climax, “I’ll even take a punishment!”

“Say my name,” he orders, fingers still drawing circles.

“Your—”

“My name, not my title.”

Your breath hitches as you finally realize what he’s aiming for. He wants you to remember that it’s him who’s reducing you into this illiterate mess. Him, the one you’ve been despising since before you even met. If you still had any ounce of dignity left, you’d try to fix the power imbalance until you’re left with no choice but to obey, but now you’re so close and the last thing you want to do is come with your pants on.

“Please, Chan,” your voice breaks towards the end and in an instant, he pulls away. As you’re letting you’re basking in the break from his brutal tempo, not too affected by how your upcoming orgasm is fading away, Chan observes you.

And then out of nowhere, he flips you on your stomach and delivers a hard smack to your ass that has you screaming into the pillows.

“You said you’d take any punishment too, right?” You twitch as he rubs the small of your back. You can already imagine the handprints on your ass he continued to slap you with such force that has you moving up the bed. The pain that’s going to haunt you for days. Before you know it, you try to arch your back to lift your ass, but then the bed shifts. “But if you really think I’m going to spank you as a punishment, then you’re really fucking dumb. As if I’ll use my hands on you when we both know you love my hands.”

With that, he drops himself on his chair, spreading his legs that you can see the prominent tent forming in his pants. He orders you over with a flick of his finger, and just as you get up from the bed, a new wave of horror flushes over you.

“Crawl.”

The look you send him is priceless. There’s no fucking way you can do it. It’s just a few meters, nothing you can’t handle, but he’s there sitting on his Ikea swivel chair as if it’s his throne made of gold, watching your every movement like a predator. And then there’s you, only in a shirt and underwear, being forced to go on all fours as if you were his fucking dog—

The difference in power display couldn’t get any more visible. He really is the fucking worst.

“You’d really do anything, huh…” he muses as you drop on your hands and knees and crawl to him, never looking up. It’s only when he beckons you to stand up that you look at him with nothing but rage and shame in your eyes. Chan has always been slightly terrified with your death stare but right now, he can’t take it seriously and it shows. It shows in the way he smiles lopsidedly, in the way his brows quirk in amusement. “Now hump my leg.”

Humiliation runs through your body all over. Your fists are clenched as he waits for you to act, even pats his thigh in case you didn’t get the memo. But oh you do, and his thigh does look inviting.

“Hump my leg like the brainless bitch you are. If you want my hands or my cock, you earn it first. Especially since you treated me like shit ever since I moved in.” The last sentence burns you badly because he has a point. But then there’s the prospect of his hands and dick that’s bulging out of his pants.

Pushing all thoughts away, you settle on his leg. Taking a moment to gather yourself, you tell yourself it’s all good and then you move. The first thrust knocks all air out of your lungs and you grab onto his shoulders for support. You didn’t even move that much, but Chan’s looking at you as if he’s about to fucking devour you and knowing that he is very much capable of moving you around, you’re starting to become overwhelmed.

Eventually, you lose yourself in the feeling of his rough jeans against your drenched underwear, humping on his thigh as your orgasm builds up. It’s silent, save for your pants, and the countless whimpers flying past your lips as your movements gradually become sloppier. You’re almost there and you know it. But so does Chan, and the moment he’s got it figured out, he lunges from your hips and forces you to pick up the pace.

“Oh no, you’re going to come,” he growls, ignoring your pleas and sobs. Adrenaline courses in your blood and you know it isn’t long until you fall apart. You try to make him stop, even put your hands on his, but you don’t have the energy to actively push him away.

“Chan, please— I’m gonna—”

“You’re gonna come? Then fucking come on my thigh, (y/n),” he snaps, and then adds, “You hear that? You’re about to come from humping my thigh.”

Maybe it’s the realization that he’s right, maybe it’s the way he’s worded it. Either way, it’s the last straw to make you spasm as you come, soaking your underwear and even managing to make a mess out of his pants. Chan makes sure you ride through your orgasm, only stopping to move your hips once you’re all spent and resting your head on his shoulder. Your eyes are glassy, vision foggy, but the only thing you can envision clearly is Chan.

Chan jolts when your hand grazes over his bulge. You’re about to undo his pants, but he’s quick to stop you and restrict your hands behind your back.

“You think you deserve my cock? Dream on. As if I would fuck any commoner, especially those who don’t respect me,” he spits, and you flinch at his choice of words, clearly recalling that you used the exact same terms and he’s now using it against you. “You said you’d take any punishment. Well, guess what? This was just punishment number one.”

#yes the ending is rushed oops sue me #may consider part 2 so heads up #stray kids smut #skz smut #bang chan smut #chan smut #smut.mine #dom!chan #sub!reader #crispy.txt

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j-pankratz · 3 years

Text

The Slumber that Creeps to Me

Geraskefer. 7208 Words. Rated T. Jaskier pulls an extreme all-nighter (read: 60+ hours) to finish a paper he procrastinated on, and finds at the end of it that sleep does not come as easily as he’d hoped. Tags for: Sleep Deprivation, Self Destruction/Lack of Self Care, Hallucinations, Nightmares, Overstimulation, Hurt/Comfort, Whumping the Bard, very loving partners, and a happy ending. <3 AO3 link in the reblog!

As with most disasters spurned by his own cockiness, Jaskier felt as thought that all in all, the situation could have been worse.

The idea to have Geralt and Yennefer spend the spring holiday break at Oxenfurt was, in his defense, ingenious. His students weren’t around, the weather was gorgeous, they all had varying degrees of business in the city, and they could fuck each other senseless at any hour of the day. In a bed. A nice one, provided he was a legitimate professor, now. Well, visiting. Well, it was complicated. But they were his rooms, and that’s what mattered.

When Jaskier gotten the prestigious offer to write the season’s main article for the Continent’s most respected Bardic Journal, he’d just sort of figured he’d… fit it in, somewhere. He had seventeen months, which was plenty enough for him. Then he’d just work with the editors, and have a centerfold piece. It was an honor. He was excited about it! He’d meant to get to it sooner, but decided the summer before that he’d devote the winter to it. But… he’d… he’d been distracted. It wasn’t often the entire family gathered at Kaer Morhen. So, he thought, he’d do it later.

But the first few weeks after winter were, of course, spent with Geralt. And the week after that, a trip to the coast, where he’d played a festival and met up with Ciri, who was becoming an amateur critic herself. And then by pure, absolute happenstance, after 3 more weeks of travel he happened to end up at an inn that he definitely hadn’t heard Yennefer was staying at. So that more time gone. And then he’d arrived in Oxenfurt, and he’d really meant to get to work on it, but there was so much to prepare for! He wanted things to be right for them.

And then Yennefer and Geralt had actually arrived, and the idea of anything possibly being more important than their presence flew his mind.

And now, here he was. If he wanted to get it in on time (unfortunately, that wasn’t a suggestion in this case, more of an actual, terrifying requirement,) he’d need to submit it in… gods above, less than three days. 60 hours, if he was doing the math.

There was no word limit, nor a minimum. But, ever the maximalist, he knew it was going to be… long, if he was going to do it right. They’d edit it down, but it was the focal point of the journal, they’d been leading up to it for ages now. Ahh. Well. There was only one thing for it, he supposed.

“I’m working through the night on my paper!” He’d announced that morning, sitting straight up in bed, jostling his sleepy lovers. “No one bother me! I will be at the dining table until further notice!” He swung himself out of bed and made for the door.

“Pants,” his lovers chorused together.

“Right!” he'd said, and marched back into the room.

He’d pulled all-nighters in his youth. In fact, he couldn’t count the times he’d worked through the night, deposited a composition or essay on his professor’s desk with some polite conversation and maybe a wink, and then promptly fallen asleep during the lecture itself. Just a 15-minute power nap, really! Then he’d be back up and at it again, working through another night just to sleep through the weekend. He’d done it before, he could do it again.

Well, it’d been 25 years ago, but that didn’t change much, did it? He still felt spry, agile, hearty— hell, he’d spent the better part of the last twenty odd years chasing after a Witcher, and later an additional princess and mage— surely he should be in better health now!

This was completely accomplishable. Admittedly, he could have written this sooner… but he hadn’t, and here he was.

Geralt and Yennefer both set out early on different errands, leaving the bard to some peace and quiet. Relatively.

He spread his work and references out before him. 7 books, 4 pamphlets, his favorite quills, a hundred fresh pieces of parchments, his lute at his knee. “Alright,” he said aloud to his empty Oxenfurt apartment, “Just sit down and write the damn thing. Sitting part, definitely done. Writing next. Just… write.”

He stared at the page.

“No! No, no, do not be impossible about this. Just start the thing.”

The page stared back.

“Ah, blast,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. This was fine. Just… do the awful, disgusting part of beginning, and then he’d be off. The sooner he started, the sooner he’d finish, after all! He took a breath, and put his pen to paper.

Yennefer returned a few hours later, a book and small parcel in hand. Jaskier looked up to see her sweep through the room, a commanding presence, though she didn’t acknowledge him yet. A few waves of her hands and a pot of tea was put on to boil, her hair was put in a bun, and three mugs were floating down from a shelf.

“Lovely to see you too,” he smiled as Yennefer poked through the tea collection. He could practically hear her fond eye roll. She neatly plucked two from one box and looked back at him in question. “Ah… peppermint, if we’ve got it?” and she turned back to the cupboard grab it.

“Any progress?” She finally asked.

“A bit, actually!” Jaskier said cheerfully. It didn’t look like much, but he’d done half a page with almost no errors, and he’d made plenty of notes in the margins of the books he’d need later. It was better than he’d hoped it’d be going by this point, at least. He was kicking academia’s ass. Or, he would be.

The kettle whistled and Yennefer poured the tea, bobbing all three of the tea bags up and down as they steeped. He watched her lean against the counter, casual, relaxed, gorgeous, before realizing she was staring back at him. “Um! Yes, no, definitely good. Got a lot of… those words, you know, they are definitely here. Looking very sexy. The words! The writing is looking… very sexy, very curvy… letters. Sensuous words, you know.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Sensuous words.”

“Yeah, yes. Like… contemporaneous… and… iguana.”

“Iguana.” She let out a little huff of a laugh and something in Jaskier’s chest tightened and loosened in quick succession. And in a moment she was there, sliding him a large mug with the carving of a rather playful looking bear on one side, batting at a butterfly.

“Oh! My favorite. Thank you, thank you.”

“Mmm,” she said before waving a hand to cool down their tea a bit. She took a seat opposite him, scanning an eye over the table. “Think you’ll be done by tonight?”

Jaskier laughed. “Darling, I’ll be lucky to be done by tomorrow morning.”

“You’re planning to stay up all night, bard?”

“Unfortunately.” He took a sip. “Should be done by tomorrow afternoon, if I keep steady at it.”

“After tea, of course.”

“Of course.”

Yennefer stretched out a bit, kicking her feet onto Jaskier’s lap and rolling her neck. They sat there a moment, sipping, pausing, drinking in each other. There was something nice about taking a moment of stillness with someone just as frenetic as he was, someone who was usually just as itching for something to do, even if she went about it differently. The grace of choosing stillness, he thought, was not something to ignore.

Yennefer reached the end of her mug and tapped its ceramic walls lightly.

“What’s next for you?”

“I have to refresh my potion stock, so I’ll be at the market for supplies. You sure you don’t want to take a break and join?”

Rat’s ass. He fucking loved the Oxenfurt markets. “I’m afraid I can’t. Academia calls.”

“Who does it call for, exactly? What’s that I hear…” She cocked her head and listened intently. “Who is it calling for… is that… V… Val… Valdo?” Jaskier hefted her feet off of his lap in protest, and she laughed. He plucked his quill from its stopper, and went back to hovering over his paper. Introduction mostly accomplished, now he had to really lead in to his point, give some proper context. He flipped through a book beside him.

Yennefer rose smoothly from the table and went to move her mug to the sink. “When Geralt gets in, tell him I need toadflax and bluebells from him? Might as well put him to use.”

Jaskier flipped through the pages, thumbing through for a note he’d sworn he’d made ages ago, when he belatedly tried to register his mage’s words. He could have his fun, too.

“Blue…Yennefer, you want me to tell Geralt that you need blue balls from him?”

“Bells! Bells, you absolute child!” she said. “Honestly. Blue balls? Really, Jaskier?” He was giggling. “I don’t need to ask to give either of you blue balls.”

“Exactly, Yennefer, you provide that service for us anyway, free of charge!” A balled-up napkin hit him in the head and he laughed joyfully.

“I can’t stand you. I’m leaving, you’ll never see me again.”

Jaskier looked up through his grin and met her twinkling, happy eyes. “Tonight then?”

“Tonight,” she agreed, and left with a quick ruffle of his hair.

“Still working?” Geralt said as greeting later in the afternoon. The desk was neater than Jaskier expected it to be this far in, only a few books open, dog eared and marked in colored ink. He’d written a page and a half since Yennefer left, and it was good, it was, but he’d need to go back and make edits later. His long empty mug of tea sat far across him.

“Mm,” he agreed, continuing to write. “Ah, Yennefer came through earlier,” giving a gesture to the waiting mug of tea on the counter. Geralt made his way over to the mug, and gave it a small igni to warm it. He smiled fondly down at the drink—what a terribly lovely sight he was. Warm here, and safe. Couldn’t it be like this always? The three of them here, comfortable and happy? No, he supposed, but gods how he wanted it.

“She’s at the market now,” Jaskier continued, “wanted me to ask you about...” He lifted his pen and squinted. “Ah, toadflax and bluebells.” He looked up at Geralt, smiling. “Blue balls,” they said together, sporting matching shit-eating grins, Geralt’s albeit much smaller. “I made the same joke myself,” Jaskier added.

Geralt snorted. “How’d she take that?”

“Oh, as well as you’d hope. We’ll never see her again, of course.” He turned back to his work, reading over the last paragraph. He could feel Geralt approach to stand behind him, and while he’d normally shoo his witcher off, he was too deep in concentration to bother.

How long was too long to linger on the progression of oral storytelling to bardship? It’s not like he could ignore it, (Geralt’s hand came to grip his shoulder, a thumb rubbing against it tenderly) as it was a crucial tenant of the argument— but there was plenty to be said for assuming the literacy and foreknowledge of the reader. (He leaned in to get a closer look at Jaskier’s page, the soft warmth of the tea in his other hand bouncing off his chest) But this was to be in a journal often referenced by first years, and he knew how much he would have loved a paper that had everything all in one—

“How’s it going?” Geralt asked softly in his ear.

Jaskier waved a hand over the mess before him. “You know. It’s fine, I’m just not sure at what point I’m lingering on points to excess.”

“Mm,” Geralt hummed understandingly. “Tell the story. Trust your gut.” He gave Jaskier a nuzzle and light kiss against his cheek before taking up the empty mug off the table and walking off further into the apartment.

“I always do!” Jaskier called back. Mm, if only this were as simple as telling a story. Well…Oh—if he spent this paragraph referencing the progression it would end up taking up more room, be a run of the mill lead-in, but if he wrote the actual history as a short story itself, now there was an idea, he could make his point and give the context. Oh, fuck, brilliant—

“Back soon,” Geralt was saying as the front door slipped shut, but the bard was too lost in his work to do more than give a small nod of his head.

The sun was falling, making a graceful bow into the horizon. Warm light spread out over the streets of Oxenfurt like the last pushes of tide, ebbing, and flowing, and sinking back into night.

“Ah, fuck,” Jaskier muttered, crossing out a spelling error with a snarl.

His shoulders ached, and his lower back was going to be the death of him. He was on page 7. All he could see was the work ahead of him, winding off ad infinitum. If he didn’t pick up the pace, he might have to go 60 hours straight—he shivered. Not ideal. He took a breath, stood up and stretched a bit, his muscles groaning in thanks. A quick bathroom break later and he was sliding back into his chair, still warm, his papers grinning up at him, sardonic.

He’d take a meal break at 10 pages, he told himself.

He stood to stretch and his head swam. Well. Plenty of reason to stay seated, he supposed.

Geralt and Yennefer returned at 12 and a half pages. He turned his head in greeting, and when he looked back he got the first real look at the table in hours—it was a disaster, crumbled pieces of parchment, empty quills, and little notes strewn everywhere. Some books propped open, the pile of parchment looking more like a mountain slope, an empty glass from when he’d chugged water hours ago.

His loves were clearly a few drinks deep as they came through the door, and completely unmarred by the woes of academia. Bastards, honestly.

“Hi, hello, hope you had a good evening, I—”

“Come to bed,” Yennefer said, suddenly right behind him. Two small but firm hands came to his shoulders, rubbing deeply.

“Ah! Oh, fuck—oh, yes, darling, right there—”

Geralt came to his other side, tipping his head up for a kiss, which he moaned into. His witcher’s tongue was soft, pleading, tempting him—his mage’s hands pushing almost painfully against his aching muscles. He wanted to cry, it was so good. It was so different than the last… however many hours it had been that he had been sitting here. Geralt pulled away, and Yennefer’s hands came to rest as well.

“So?” Geralt asked, his voice deep and velvety. “Bed?”

“I…” gods, who had he become? “I can’t. I want to, I just—”

Yennefer placed a kiss to the top of his head. “It’s fine,” she said, and he knew it was, but he hated denying them something they all wanted. “Have you eaten?”

Jaskier frowned. “Fuck. Not really.”

Geralt sighed and went to the pantry. “You’re getting a sandwich,” he grumbled.

“Ooo, Geralt, dear heart, would you heat it up? Use some of your,” he wiggled his fingers “your witchery magic?”

Geralt turned and glared. “You’re getting a sandwich.”

“He’s so mean to me,” Jaskier muttered to Yennefer, “I can’t believe he’s so mean to me.”

His mage snorted a laugh into his hair. “You’re really staying up all night, then?” She waved a hand and the curtains around the room swept shut, and his lantern began to burn steadily.

“Looks like it,” he sighed. Geralt retuned a moment later, plated warm sandwich and glass of water in hand.

“Fuck. Thank you.” He took it and took a bite, suddenly ravenous. He looked up at both of them, staring down in fond amusement. “Fank—” he swallowed his mouthful of sandwich. “Thank you both, truly. I’ll be up a bit. If you need something, call, yes?”

They rolled their eyes. “He tells us to call if we need anything,” Yennefer muttered. “Don’t get into any trouble,” she said, and with a peck on the cheek from both of them, they disappeared into the bedroom.

He looked back at his work.

Okay. 12 ½ pages in. He could do this.

At 15 pages, he felt ravenous again, and made a second sandwich. Not as good as Geralt’s. Geralt’s sandwiches weren’t even that good, but they were made by Geralt, which added a certain kick, a novelty he adored.

He drank another glass of water and shook his head. Back to work.

At 17 pages, sometimes the world swam before him. He gripped the edge of the table. Fuck.

He was so tired. 23 pages. He kept writing.

It was terrible. The whole paper was a mess. Nothing made sense and people were going to laugh at him. 25 pages.

He heard a sound. Was that Geralt rising for the bathroom? Was it an intruder? Light crept in through the window. 27 pages.

There was a ringing in his ear. His writing was getting increasingly larger. 27 ½ pages.

Geralt gave him a soft nuzzle to the top of his head before padding through to the kitchen. Jaskier’s heart ached. His bones ached. Writing was hard but right then it felt impossible. 27 ¾ pages.

Geralt lingered, and Jaskier felt his nose twitch. He tapped his foot impatiently, waiting for him to leave. He couldn’t have any distractions right now. He shut his eyes tight until he heard the bedroom door close once more.

Yennefer entered hours later, sweeping the curtains over with a flick of her hand. Bright light flooded the room, painting the desk in all its full, disgustingly messy glory. “Well—”

“Could you ask next time?!” Jaskier snapped. “Some of us need consistency to concentrate!”

Yennefer raised an eyebrow, and they stared at each other. Some part of him wanted to slap himself but the rest was just so irritated. Who’d she think she was, anyway?

After a moment, the mage turned and left with a flick of her hand to sweep the curtains shut again.

“Headed out,” Geralt said at 30 pages. “Contract.”

“Good,” Jaskier muttered. “I mean. Good that you’re—fuck. Whatever.”

Geralt stared. “You need rest. It’s been more than 24 hours.”

“I need to fucking finish.”

“Yen said—”

“I’m sure she did,” Jaskier muttered, driving his heels into his eyes. Gods, his eyes burned. Silence hung.

“She portaled out this morning.”

Jaskier rolled his eyes. “Great. Love that. I’m a fucking disaster, thank you for the reminder, Geralt.” He waved toward the door. “Don’t you have a contract?”

He turned back to his papers, shifting around to look for page 11, and didn’t think about how long it took before Geralt left the apartment.

His hand was shaking but he was at 34 pages. He still had so much to say. Fuck. But he was in it now.

He scarfed down some soup that was mostly broth at some point, and he’d under-salted it, but it was something. His eyes kept going blurry; traitorous things.

The bear on his mug was plotting his downfall.

38 pages and Jaskier felt like the gods themselves had gifted him with the knowledge he now bestowed onto meager commoners. He was a genius.

At 43 pages, he had stopped to lay out the entire essay on the ground, so he could see it all. The words sometimes swam before him, and he had trouble remembering what he was meant to say next. Once, he looked up, confused as to where he was. And then, at 44 pages, the guilt of snapping at his dearest loves, the weight of this behemoth paper he wasn’t even sure he could finish, and his own self-doubt crept in and seized him up, leaving him breathless and in tears for… awhile. Everything hurt. He had to keep going.

At 48 pages, he saw a griffon fly through his window, and he named it Kalvin. He turned whatever color Jaskier wanted him to turn, which was very considerate of him. Kalvin was his only friend now, and with a little convincing, might become his editor, too.

At 55 pages his chest seized, and it was hard to breathe for a moment. He closed his eyes but—no, no, couldn’t do that. If he fell asleep now, he’d never finish in time. He tried to relax, got some water, leaned against the counter. Everything was a mess.

He sat back on the floor, his work around him. Keep going.

“I don’t think there’s anything about anything that I have to be doing right now. Kalvin, you’ve… you’ve got to understand, this could be my finest work! It’s good. It’s pretty good here in… in this part, here. In that other part it’s just okay, but that’s why you come in with your big claws and you’re gonna. Rip up the bad parts. Don’t rip up the good parts. Right? Yeah. Do you think they’ve forgotten about me by now?”

He looked down. 57 pages. Took a long blink.

“Yeah,” he said softly, “That’s fair.

He had to write two extra pages so that he could skirt around referencing Valdo Marx’s work as anything other than a contradictory point. Maybe it would have been fun to use his own writing against him but he didn’t want to give the satisfaction of being referenced positively in a centerfold piece.

He lost the essay.

“Fuck—oh, gods, where did—”

He turned around, looked down. Oh, there it was.

“Thank fuck.”

The curtains were still closed and the charmed lantern was still burning, but Jaskier knew it was night by the time he reached 63 pages and Geralt came in.

Jaskier looked up from his spot kneeling on the floor. Geralt looked fine. He was a little dirty. There were some gushy bits. Probably blood. He was tired. Or just mad. Maybe he hated Jaskier.

“You’re still—?!” Geralt asked, looking at Jaskier like he’d just said a griffon named Kalvin had flown in the window earlier and now they were friends.

“I met a griffon,” Jaskier heard himself say. Geralt stared. “We’re friends now.”

“…You need to fucking sleep.”

“No.” Jaskier went back to the margin he’d devoted to drawing circles in. “Sorry ‘bout earlier.”

Geralt sighed. He might have talked but Jaskier didn’t hear, just kept writing.

“How often has that been happening?” he heard Geralt ask.

“What happening?”

“Where you fall asleep for a moment.”

“I haven’t! Fallen asleep.”

“Fuck,” Geralt said. He looked very nice, except for the goop all over him. Well. Even that wasn’t so bad, when the underneath bits were Geralt. His Geralt. Looked so warm, so strong, so able to carry him.

“Later,” Jaskier replied, and went back to his words. The familiar pop of a portal sounded in the bedroom. Their eyes lingered on the direction it came from, but Yennefer didn’t open the door. They looked at each other, and then back at the door which remained very much shut. “She’s mad.”

“Yep.”

“At me.”

“Yep.”

There was a pause. “Are you covered in blood?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Oh.”

“Not mine.”

“That,” he said pointing to the Witcher, “is good.”

“Mmm.”

“Sticky though.”

“Definitely sticky.”

Yennefer came out of the doorway, and Jaskier blinked. When he opened his eyes again she was much closer than she’d been and was in the middle of talking. Magic, he assumed.

“—yourself very lucky, bard.”

“Yeahh,” he said. “Sorry. ‘Bout… Sorry.”

She huffed and crossed her arms. There was a look in her face. Eyes? And her mouth. It was hard to name. Words were hard, when they weren’t the words he desperately needed to write.

“—for a while,” Geralt was saying. “Jaskier. How close are you to finishing.”

“Soon!” Jaskier said. “Soon! Soon. Due… 1pm tomorrow. What time is it?”

“10pm.”

“Fuck. Psshhh. I can… I can do it.” He looked up at Yennefer. “Sorry. Really. I… I’m just tired,” he admitted. “Shouldn’t have snapped. Not fair to you.”

Yennefer stood there, arms folded, emanating some emotion Jaskier had lost the concept of around page 41. Geralt walked further into the apartment, into the bedroom. Oh right. Blood armor. Ick.

He went back to writing and tried to ignore the desire to cry again, and then suddenly Yennefer’s shoes were in his line of vision.

“Let me read it,” she said.

“Oh.”

They stared at one another. She had such a pretty face. He might have been smiling. She rolled her eyes and then came to sit next to him. She quickly found the first page and began.

Halfway through it, he spilled ink on the bottom half of page 64, and wept. Yennefer gave him an attempt at a comforting pat on the back.

Yennefer had read the pages and risen; “It’s good. You need edits, but it’s somehow decent. Good. Whatever. A little… loose, toward the end, though,” made herself a cup of tea, and entered the bedroom.

Either a few moments, or 20 minutes later, Geralt emerged.

“What are you at now?”

“69 pages.”

“Nice,” Geralt said.

“Ha. Yeahhh,” Jaskier agreed.

“That’s not what I—” Geralt sighed the sigh that meant his face was going all pinch-y. “Close to the end?”

“Mmm. What is the end, really?” Geralt made a different pinch-y face. “Soon.”

“Come to bed tonight, Jaskier.”

“I’ll try,” he said. He blinked, and Geralt was gone.

There are a lot of words in an essay that are very hard to spell.

Jaskier ate the rest of a loaf of bread.

For a while, he swore he walked the streets of Oxenfurt while still warm in his professorial housing.

Kalvin’s accent changed three times and at one point he was on fire.

85 pages.

Geralt woke first, as always; There he was! That was his love. So much of his heart.

With shaking hands, Jaskier had brought himself up to sit in his chair, and sat staring down at his work. He looked up at Geralt with a lopsided grin. “I did it,” he said weakly.

“Need help putting it together?”

The tears fell so quickly he didn’t realize it was happening. “Really?”

Geralt sighed softly and knelt down, organizing the papers.

Yennefer emerged a bit later—There she was! His love, a chunk of him was hers entirely. He smiled. “Look!”

“Mmm. And now you can sleep.”

“NO!” Jaskier cried and leapt to his feet, “No, no, now… now is presenting time. To… the editors. Not Kalvin. But I turn it in… and then sleep,”

He had a sudden burst of energy, and tried to step over Geralt and the papers, but fell into the table instead, before the Witcher steadied him from below.

“Ohhhh, thank you dear. It’s time for… presentation! Mm.” He leaned into Yennefer’s warmth at his side, though she did not wrap her arms around him as he’d hoped. “Help me pick out an outfit.”

He blinked. Yennefer was in front of him now, looking at him with a frown, her hands around his waist. Geralt’s hand was against his forehead. “No! Stop that! I’m fine. I’m fine! See me! Fine. It’s action time. Let’s go!” and he marched off to the bedroom.

The floor was suddenly very close to his face.

“Did I—”

“You fell on your face.”

“Have I—”

“You’ve asked three times now, yes.”

There should have been fanfare when he turned it in, but there was only the grateful smile of Edmond, the young new assistant, a firm handshake, and a promise he’d hear back from them very soon, for a quick summarization of their initial thoughts. Or, he’d used all those words, Jaskier forgot which order they’d come in.

The three returned to the apartment, and everything happened very slowly and so quickly he found it hard to keep track. There was definitely a bath drawn for him—gods, it had been days, hadn’t it— oh, fuck, he was gross, wasn’t he—a full meal, and a celebratory drink. He’d made a few good jokes, and all he could see were Geralt and Yennefer, smiling at him. An empty glass. A bar of soap. A long quill. A messy table. A pile of books and an empty mug. They deposited him on the bed for sleep, and left together.

Jaskier lay there, waiting for sleep to take him.

It did not.

He was so tired he could cry. He did, a few times. He couldn’t think straight. All of it, everything, hurt. His body ached. He tried to soothe himself down alone, rocking himself in the hopes it would work. But nothing.

What if he could never sleep again? What if he would always be awake, forever? What if this was how he died?! Oh gods, he didn’t want to die! He still had edits to approve!

Eventually, he could feel himself getting closer. He adjusted himself, lay on his back and took deep, measured breaths, kept his eyes closed but relaxed. Okay. Okay. Sleep.

He was falling, so violently and so fast that when he jolted awake, he forgot he’d been lying on a bed in the first place.

Fuck.

He tried again. It happened sometimes, it was fine. He’d be fine.

He tried breathing deeply once more, trying to let the distant scents of Yennefer and Geralt now embedded in his pillows overtake him.

A fear so powerful it gripped his heart and twisted, whispered to him, ‘this is what dying is, you’re going to die’ and he once again jolted awake. He threw his head back against the pillow and winced; even that hurt.

Fuck. Fuck.

He kept trying. Over, and over, he’d get so close to sleep and then right at the precipice, something would yank him out of it.

Once, he saw Yennefer falling off a cliff. Another time, he saw Geralt stabbed through the chest. At some point, he saw Ciri screaming, and his hands flew out to pull her close, only to find nothing there. Sometimes it was himself falling, and sometimes it was the world below him falling instead.

He’d really done it this time. Stayed awake so long, sleep had abandoned him entirely.

It felt like twelve years before Yennefer and Geralt returned, slipping into the room quietly. He sat up in bed, startling them both.

“Please,” he said quietly, “I can’t. I don’t know why I can’t I just—I can’t. My body won’t let me, I want to but I can’t—”

“How the hell—” Yennefer started, walking over to him with a palm out to check for a curse, maybe? It didn’t matter. He wrapped her hand in his and clutched it to himself, desperate for her. She was so warm. So alive.

“Fuck,” Geralt sighed, “It’s been nearly 70 hours already, Jaskier.”

“Let me just put him down with magic,” Yennefer started, but Geralt put a hand up.

“We can’t. It’s a temporary fix. if he can’t fall asleep on his own without magic, it’ll get harder and harder for him. We need to get him to fall asleep without it.” They looked down at him. What a disgrace he must look like, how pathetic he was. He turned his face away in abject shame. He couldn’t even fall asleep right.

While he looked away, Yennefer tore her hand from his as she and Geralt discarded their clothes into heaps beside the bed, crawled beneath the covers on either side of Jaskier. They hated him. They must. How could they not?

“It’s fine, you don’t—fuck, sorry—”

Geralt shrugged. “Don’t be. I know how bad it gets. It’s different for a Witcher, but no sleep is the whole reason we met Yennefer.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jaskier said softly.

“As I recall, the solution then was to have vigorous sex on the floor.” Yennefer ran a finger along Jaskier’s chest. “Sound appealing?”

“I—yes, Yennefer, it sounds appealing.” He fidgeted, tried to focus on the feeling of Yennefer’s delicate touch. He was oversensitive enough that it felt like fire, but nothing… stirred, and each word he spoke felt like he was pulling honey from his tongue. “I don’t… much as I’d like, I’m not sure I’d be... up for it right now.” Yennefer’s head fell against the pillow and she flattened her hand, ran the palm up his chest to rest above his heart. Pressed a kiss there.

He closed his eyes and tried to breathe deeply, but they were looking at him, he could feel every inch of their gazes and it was all too much. He whined in agony. “I can’t do this. Fuck. I can’t, just put me out. We try it again tomorrow, I—”

“Jaskier. You can. Tell us what you need and we can help you,” Yennefer said, sweet but firm. And that was her, wasn’t it?

He couldn’t think. Wanted to. Wanted so much. Wanted to be asleep.

Jaskier curled up on his side, exhausted of being exhausted, when he felt Geralt slide up closer behind him. “Can I hold you?” he murmured into the bard’s shoulder. Jaskier nodded, and felt Geralt’s arm come around him and under his own arm, felt it slide up his chest and cross it protectively.

“Feel good?” Jaskier nodded, and then cracked his eyes open, met Yennefer’s, concern palpable.

He lifted one arm just slightly. “C’mere?” And she did, curled into his arms and around him, tucked her head under his, kissed the top of Geralt’s fingers. He held her close, and was held by the two in turn. Breathing, somehow, felt easier between them.

“Breathe, bard,” Yennefer urged him softly. Geralt buried his nose in Jaskier’s hair, took in a deep breath, and Jaskier tried to follow.

They breathed softly, all together, slow and safe. Soon, he was drifting into sweet oblivion.

‘You,’ Fear said, wrapped around his sternum, ‘will crumble, the moment you let go of wakefulness.’ It gripped him, and tugged him back to reality.

He jolted again. “Fuck, dammit, cock wringing—”

Yennefer pulled back to look at him worriedly. “Is that what’s been keeping you up?” she asked.

“It’s, I don’t know, something just pulls me back, I try to fight it but…”

“Mmm,” Geralt agreed. “Sleep starts. Happens sometimes.”

“The hell are sleep starts?”

“They’re… when you’re too on edge to sleep, or just haven’t in too long, brains… fizzle. Keep you awake. It’s a survival instinct—it makes you think you’ve got to stay awake to stay alive. Feels like falling? Or… a shock. Sometimes other things. Hallucinations.” Geralt pressed a kiss to the back of his head. “It’s scary. It’s meant to be. Your body thinks it’s fighting for its life.”

“I am never letting you doom yourself like this ever again,” Yennefer said, and while it was probably meant to come out angry, she just sounded worried.

Geralt hummed and agreement. “Try again, we’ve got you. We’re not letting go.” Jaskier took a breath. They had him. They had him.

Yennefer lifted a hand to Jaskier��s temple. “May I?” And he let her in, easier than breathing. She gave him Ciri laughing, wind chimes on the breeze, the soft roar of the coast. Geralt hugged him tight, ran his other hand through Jaskier’s hair, tried to keep the bard’s breathing aligned. Now, what had he ever done to earn these two?

Soon, sleep came to him again, and he could feel Yennefer ready to soothe anything that came for him in his mind, Geralt ready to defend against anything that dared hurt his resting body. The darkness crept in, and he felt peace.

Geralt was reaching for him, falling, bleeding, screaming.

“FUCK!”

“Shh,” the real Geralt hushed him. “We’ve got you.”

“Fuck, there’s got to be something else,” Yennefer groaned. “What’ve you tried so far?”

“I have tried… to fall asleep.”

Yennefer and Geralt both huffed small laughs. “No. Positions—”

“Only the good ones.”

“Meditating?” Geralt asked.

“Darling, I haven’t had a thought in my head in hours. This is meditation.”

“Drugs?” Yennefer asked.

“I will try the drugs!” Jaskier said with a drowsy cheerfulness, as Geralt replied “No drugs. No.”

“Ugh,” Jaskier groaned, and shifted to lie on his stomach. Oh. This was… better. He nestled into the pillows, and a soft contented sigh drifted from him.

“That feel better?” Geralt asked as he ran a hand up and down Jaskier’s back. “Mmm,” Jaskier replied. Yennefer’s hand joined Geralt over his chest. Oh, they were going to make him cry.

And then it was too much, too much feeling, like his brain couldn’t handle all the sensation, and he felt Yennefer come to pause, and a moment later, Geralt’s hand as well. ‘That better?’ Yennefer asked in his mind. Jaskier gave her the memory of his favorite hug with her, warm and happy as her legs wrapped around his waist, and his favorite with Geralt, crushing and firm and full of too many emotions to speak aloud.

“Could…” he said softly, “Just. Talk? Not to me. Just… to each other. Just wanna hear you.” He could almost hear their smiles, and felt as they settled in on the pillows beside him, arms and hands intertwining on his back. Yennefer’s head on his shoulder, the gentle planes of Geralt’s chest on his other side. “If you need us, Yennefer and I are here. We’ve got you. You’re safe.”

He nodded into the mattress, cool and soft below him.

“Goodnight, Jaskier.”

“G’night Yennefer.”

“Goodnight, Jaskier.”

"G’night, Geralt.”

He started to fade into oblivion, but stopped himself before he got too far. Not fear, not anxiety, a conscious stopping. Somewhere above him, Geralt was telling Yennefer about the contract from… sometime in the past few days, and Yennefer was telling her own story about some town gossip with a woman and her hens, which, it might have been a metaphor, but he’d basically forgotten what those were by now. He breathed deeply, felt their words flow through him, and when he felt brave enough, he let go, trusting they would catch him.

He could have sworn he heard wind chimes, somewhere.

The small amount of light filtering in through the curtains was golden when he awoke. His head both ached and felt light as a feather, his muscles screamed and cried but half of it was in relief. He gave a small stretch and yawned. “G’morning,” an amused Geralt said to him, lounging in a chair he’d brought beside the bed, reading a book. His legs were propped up on the bed beside the bard’s and Jaskier stretched to bump their toes together.

“What time…?”

“You slept 13 hours.”

“Fuck.”

“You probably need more.”

“Yeahhhh.”

“Feel alright?”

“Like a real human being,” he said. “Hungry, though.”

“Mmm.”

Yennefer slipped in the door, but, noticing Jaskier was awake, rose a hand. “May I?” she asked, voice dripping in sarcasm, gesturing to the curtains.

“You may,” Jaskier offered, covering his face with his hands. “Ohhhh, gods, how bad was I?”

“Genuinely awful,” Yennefer said, as Geralt was saying, “There’s been worse.”

“Normally I’d withhold this,” the mage said, withdrawing a small envelope from her pocket. “But, under the circumstances…” she cleared her throat.

“To one Julian Alfred Pankratz. We were extremely pleased to receive your manuscript yesterday afternoon. Our editors are will have their notes to you by the weekend, but we wanted to reach out and extend our most sincere compliments on your work. It is—oh, a flood of adjectives, I’m skipping these. Etcetera, etcetera, sucking your dick, etcetera alright, here—and meticulous in construction. We can tell,” Yennefer said, dragging out the final sentence, “you made good use of your year of writing time to complete the work.” Jaskier and Geralt by this point were holding back true howls of laughter.

“And won’t you believe it, there’s more. Ahem; we have a number of suggestions and questions already, but encourage you to get your well-deserved rest as we prepare our feedback. We are grateful to work with you, and thank you again for your stunning entry. There’s a postscript,” Yennefer added. “As a quick and personal note, we cannot have helped but notice the nature of your penmanship; we mean no offence, but would encourage you to see a doctor of the eye to fit you with some spectacles.”

“My—my penman…? What’d—” and Yennefer, who had clearly been waiting for this moment, brought out a rather crumpled piece of parchment with an ink stain at the bottom—ah, yes, the original page 64— and showed it to him. His eyes were… gods, they were aching, but he was clear minded enough now to see that each line had become at least twice it’s normal size. The lines were far from straight, dipping and bending toward the edge of the paper, the letters changed directions at random points, and a fair amount of the words were smudged so completely they were hard to make out.”

Jaskier stared in horror.

“They. Is that. Is that what it looked like? Really?”

“It’s worse than most of the ones that made it in,” Geralt said, carefully.

“Most?!”

“You drew pictures on one of them,” Yennefer said.

“Oh my god. They…they must…”

“Adore it, clearly,” Yennefer said, setting aside the paper. “It wasn’t worth the strain, and you’ve definitely firmly embarrassed yourself, but they’re either embarrassing themselves by fawning praise on you,” she said, sliding onto the bed, “Or you’re actually just… very knowledgeable and talented, even when addled by sleep deprivation.”

There was a pause, Jaskier soaking this in; it hadn’t been worth it, exactly, but it wasn’t all bad. In fact, it was quite good, and Yennefer was complimenting him outright, so, very good.

“Or both,” Geralt added.

“Definitely both,” Yennefer agreed.

Jaskier groaned. “You can’t be mean to me. You’re in my house and I am extremely tired, which means that you, by law, must kiss me and tell me nice things about myself.”

Geralt laughed, light and free, and Yennefer slunk slower down into the bed. “You get no kisses,” she said, “You get sleep and rest.” She grabbed a pillow from under her head and plopped it delicately onto Jaskier’s face.

“Boo,” Jaskier said, muffled beneath the thing. He closed his eyes. Geralt muttered something, and Yennefer gave a snort of laughter, and then there was silence.

“Are you two kissing up there?!”

More silence.

“UGH,” he groaned, and sunk into his soft, sweet mattress. Oh, beautiful mattress. How he adored it, how he adored his two loves on top of it. He listened to their kissing, soft, and sweet, and knew he’d join them soon. But it was so warm down here. Even as one of them removed the pillow, he could only bring himself to open his eyes for a moment, to see them both leaning to kiss his face gently, before returning to each other. He took a long, deep breath, and listened to them swirl around him, until all he could feel was their love and the sweet caress of his pillow.

#Geraskefer #Jaskier Whump #Soft Geralt #Soft Yennefer #The Witcher #Witcher Fic #jaskier #geralt #yennfer of vengerberg #sleep deprivation #insomnia #hurt/comfort #Witcher Whump #Butterbard's Fics

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laufire · 4 years

Text

Supernatural s1

my dash: decries Supernatural every five posts.

me: time to watch it seriously for the first time in my life.

-First thing first: it’s an amazingly well-crafted season of tv. I’m a character-focused watcher, not a plot-focused one; I never connected emotionally to the Winchesters (still haven’t and likely never will, as interesting I might find them as character constructs), so I feared I’d be bored and would want to skip scenes. Nuh huh. I was many things, but none of them were bored xDD. Each episode was a lesson in good pacing and the entire season another in proper build-up. There are one or two or a few dozen tv-writers I would like to show it to, ngl.

-Another thing it excelled at was in its portrayal in abusive family dynamics. The way Dean went mellow and so unlike himself when John gave an order (and what a SHOCK it is in the later episodes when he finally stands up to him!!). How Sam said HE would apologize to his father when they saw each other again, or how he made apologies for his father because “it could have been worse” (at least John didn’t beat them up, like it happened to that poor kid!). John showing Sam more “““respect””” (as far as he’s able at least) simply because Sam already proved he’s capable of leaving him; the way John controls the information he gives them and when and how and how much and how small they feel when they reunite with him. Dean knowing his father had been possessed by a demon because it wasn’t reprimanding him and belittling him. Dean’s psychic shapeshifter (?) expressing his resentment towards Sam for getting to escape. Dean’s quickness to resort to violence when Sam says something that makes him angry, or how he tries to severe ties between Sam and his college friends, or how he guilt trips him when Sam says he plans on returning to his studies, or how he minimizes Sam’s experiences with John or how Sam criticizes Dean’s compliance... (I don’t think Dean’s being consciously manipulative. I think it’s intuitive. Which is far, far scarier. He’s the Elena Gilbert of Supernatural and a walking red flag for controlling behavior). How it’s paired with ~honeymoon periods. The way they use the families around them to highlight their issues. It’s... chilling and terrifying and I can’t look away. I won’t get into the shit John pulls in 2x01 because that’s for the s2 POV, but oh my god I’m so happy he’s dead.

I wasn’t all that sure of how self-aware the creators were about this trend (especially because of how centralized and validated Dean’s POV is in his conflicts with Sam IMO. OTOH... characters like Dean and actors like Ackles are the type to take over a show by charisma alone tbf. The way he swoops in in the pilot and starts disrupting everything, including Sam’s relationship, reminding me of both Angel in BTVS and Chuck in Gossip Girl, Doylist-wise. This comparison is going to make sense to like three people I talk with regularly xDD). At least on early seasons, since certain spoilers about the later ones make me think it grew over time. I’m still unsure but I think they are a little self-aware because of this quote:

Eric Kripke said of Buffy: “I loved ‘Hush’ and ‘Once More, With Feeling,’ but overall, Buffy really taught me about effectively using metaphor in genre. For Buffy, it was ‘high school is hell (literally),’ and Joss Whedon did such a masterful job of grounding his horror and fantasy concepts in this notion, and ultimately telling allegories about high school, which turned what could’ve been B-Movie material into an all-time classic. I used that same philosophy on my run of Supernatural, with the mantra ‘family is hell (literally),’ and always grounded my horror episodes around the notion of families, to the show’s benefit. So thanks, Joss Whedon. I owe you a beer. (Credit: The WB)

everyone wants to be Buffy lol.

-My absolute favourite thing was how competent the Winchesters are (I’m even reluctantly including John here. That bastard). They’re sneaky with local authorities, crafty about fake IDs, credit scams, research abilities, DIY supernatural detectors xDD... I loved the lack of an audience proxy, the fact that the story throws you into the deep end with people that already know their shit. And that the other side is competent too, like when Meg & YED’s plan to trap John relied on the Winchester being competent; on Sam immediately going into the defensive because, what are the chances of finding that cute weird girl a second time, miles away?; on John suspecting it was a trap and only revealing himself after Meg appears to be dead... Another scene that I loved in that sense, from 2x01 (I watched until 2x03, I wanted to see Sterling K. Brown’s first appearance lol) was how upon discovering Reapers are shapeshifters, Dean immediately knew that cute ghost he’d befriended was the one after him. I get the feeling this aspect will get lost in future season and it’s a pity, tbh.

-Related to that, some of my favourite moments: Sam straight up bribing a guy to get into the morgue when Dean’s arguments are failing (with Dean’s money!); Dean’s plan of “well, if this guy is haunting the house and there’s no other way to kill him, we burn the house. No house no haunting”; Dean telling that kid to fake appendicitis to get his parents out of the house; John blessing the tank of water knowing he’s walking into a trap with demons... I dig this stuff.

-I get whiplash sometimes, with the show making a point of (very briefly) telling you racism, homophobia or pro-life attitudes are Bad(TM) and the brothers are Against them (the Racist Truck episode, the one where a woman used a Reaper to exchange “virtuous” lives for those of sinners...), when the rest of the show is err... what it is lol. Dean is toxic masculinity’s poster boy (I was so disgusted by how he acted with Jess omfg), in s2 we don’t get the monsters’ perspective on hunters until we’ve conveniently met our first black one (I love the episode AND the character but it’s fucking true)...

-I need to make a note of paying attention to the writers credits/Bts stuff because I find this show’s progression fascinating on a metatextual level. The only problem is that audience reaction seems to have played a big role (which is a problem on one or two different levels imo xD), and tracking that down is sliiiiightly more difficult lol. Oh well (I don’t even think I want to see too much of this fandom, even to satisfy my curiosity. Some of the glimpses I’ve caught of it are disturbing to the extreme).

-The detail about dead people’s blood being toxic to vampires is SO COOL OMG. I’m tempted to steal it xD

Some random stuff:

-The monsters of the week were some legit creepy stuff.

-I love that Meg has her own hellhounds. Is that still a thing when she returns?

-Dean: you and dad are reckless and I’m going to have to be the one that buries you. / Me, with the power of foresight: 👀

-Also Dean: sometimes it scares me how good I am at killing. / Me: it scares the shit out of me how good you are at killing, too, fam.

-I get the impression Sam loses his demonic-in-origin powers later on, right? What a waste, I love those.

-I’m pretty sure at one point it’s implied John used Dean to honeytrap monsters (when he sends him as a trap for the lady vampire that stole the Colt) and I really don’t know what to do with this information.

-Cassie was GORGEOUS and even make Dean likeable for me while they lasted xDD. But given this show’s track record I’m considering the lack of more appearances a blessing.

-So many guest stars. Everyone’s been on SPN. Especially if they were on the Buffyverse first (I totally get the impulse of casting Buffy actor after Buffy actor lmfao).

-Funny how Luther Hargreeves is exactly who a lot of fans think Dean was (Dean is far, far colder imo), and yet one is constantly called pathetic and evil and the other woobified. Very Funny Indeed *coughs* (funnier still that the character I often see Dean compared to is Wynonna Earp when the parallels are kids-pool deep at best and offensive at worst. Dean is not a Wynonna. Again, Dean is an Elena Gilbert xDD).

-The two paranormal investigators were dumb as rocks, but their motto was “What Would Buffy Do” so I like them (if they ever change that to What Would the Winchesters Do or something like that I’m going to be furious lmao).

-When I want to ~chill I dress about exactly like Dean (minus the flannel I’ve seen in later seasons, you can’t pay me to wear flannel). Like, I think I have a couple of shirts that look exactly like ones of his. I don’t know how I feel about this xDD

-IDK how I’ll feel about Bobby later on (I get the impression every long-term character on this show has their hateful phases xD), but in his introduction he said the last time he saw John he threatened to shoot him (“he causes that reaction in people”), so he’s so far the most relatable character around lol.

#talking to the void #my thoughts #spn thoughts #the writing tm #sam winchester #dean winchester #john winchester #and others #abuse mention cw #here be negativity warning lol #spn s1 #the winchesters get to have a tag I GUESS

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margridarnauds · 4 years

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I know you prefer a-cast, but what are some pros to buying m-cast instead? There's a bit of a war going on abt which is better. I heard m-cast is better bc the cast is more senior and experienced, but I don't know what to believe. Is a-cast or m-cast just a taste thing, or is it abt smthing else? Would you mind making a chart or smthing for the pros and cons of both versions? Maybe ratings per category? I know you have a preference, but I just think you are quite nuanced. Thanks in advance!

I am very honored that you would think of me as someone who’s fair and nuanced!

Before I begin, I’m going to say one thing that might or might not be considered....well. Very American of me, from the perspective of Japanese fandom: I do not believe, when it comes to spending the amount of money that these cost, on holding back information in order to appear diplomatic. I’ll try to be diplomatic, for the sake of people who might like anyone I criticize, but, also, if I dislike an aspect, I will try to find SOME way of making said displeasure known, because, again: The amount of money required to buy one DVD, let alone two, is quite a lot. I personally like to buy both, since it lets me compare and contrast, but my God, is it a bit of money (and this year, with the exception of the 2016 Elisabeth, I’ve had to cut down quite a bit while I’ve been abroad: I haven’t touched Frankenstein or Phantom...at least not yet.)

Also, I am always willing to arrange streams of either/both casts, since this musical is my baby, so that anyone reading this now can see whether what I say is true or not, as well as in order to determine your own preferences.

Alright, so that disclaimer out of the way, let’s start off:

I kind of disagree that M cast is more experienced, as a whole. Let’s compare:

Marie

Rena Sasamato (A Cast) - Had her debut when she was ten years old, in 1995. She is a Toho veteran with many, many musicals under her belt, including The Woman in White, Love Never Dies, Jekyll and Hyde, Les Miserables, West Side Story, Rudolf, Fiddler on the Roof, and, of course, the original 2006 production of Marie Antoinette, where she played Margrid Arnaud.

Hanafusa Mari (M Cast) - Almost needs no introduction, such is the fame that she has. And I say this as a detractor. My personal feelings about her personality, acting, and singing aside, I can admit that Hanafusa Mari is a living legend in the Japanese musical industry. She certainly lives up to her title of “Empress”, in all senses of the term. She had her debut in 1991 (after, admittedly, undergoing the training of the Takarazuka Revue, so I will give her that she had experience beforehand, just not in acting and singing on stage), and remained there until 2006, when she retired in conjunction with her fellow top star, Yoka Wao. From 2010 onward, she appeared in non-Takarazuka roles, including my very first exposure to Japanese theatre, Dracula, in 2011.

Now, of the two of them, I won’t deny that Hanafusa has more experience, however I also feel like saying that Rena has less experience is making it sound almost like she was some starving waif that Toho picked off the side of the streets in order to star in their new musical, as opposed to a seasoned actress in her own right who, on top of having an impressive number of musicals under her belt, also has experience in the musical itself. Hanafusa, when it comes down to it, only has four years’ more experience than Rena, though she is almost a decade older and undoubtedly, when she premiered, had more polish than 10 year old Rena. But, on the other hand, she DID remain with the Revue an impressively long time, which is very intense as far as how many musicals they perform on a yearly basis (most Top Musumeyaku only last about...2-3 years or so), she was the original Elisabeth in Takarazuka (a legendary role in its own right), and, my snark about her having the best career money can buy aside, I am willing to say that, for the most part, she’s earned her status as a legend.

And I want to say that I’m not ripping YOU apart when I say this, I want to make that absolutely clear. You’re asking me a very good question, but it is something I tend to find quite a bit of when I talk Japanese musicals, in the sense that there is often this...assumption that actresses who started off in non-Takarazuka musicals (also a moment of silence for the Shiki actresses, who I almost never talk about but who are kicking ass as Disney Princesses) are somehow...lesser, or that they have less training. Takarazuka is and remains very prestigious, but it’s hardly the be-all, end-all of all musical theatre, and, in many ways, I would argue that Rena has more experience than Hanafusa, in terms of the world of Toho musicals, which require a different style of acting and singing: Less stylized, less affected, more what you would expect from a Broadway or West End show. It’s actually something that I find quite a few Takarazuka actresses struggle with when they come to Toho, as they have to adjust how they’ve done things for a new audience.

Now, what does this have to do with the overall point? Well, a lot of people bought Marie Antoinette FOR Hanafusa to begin with, since she does have a huge following. I have seen plenty of people admit that they only bought it for her in the first place and didn’t bother with the other cast. I have even seen, in the past, people argue with me on the idea of a musical that DOESN’T have Hanafusa in it getting a proshot, simply because, for them, she IS the world of Japanese musical theatre. Coming from that perspective, of course Rena is less experienced, because she, simply put, isn’t Hanafusa.

In terms of their overall presentation of the characters, I found that their respective training really impacted how they portrayed the characters: Rena played Antoinette as being very elegant, with a pride that could turn to haughtiness. It made for an Antoinette that is interesting in her own right to watch, which is tricky, since I find that Antoinettes tend to be overshadowed by the other characters, especially Margrid, Fersen, and Orléans. She did include certain aspects of a Takarazuka performance in her performance, since her mother was a Takarazuka star in her own right, such as how to properly use an 18th century fan, but, for the most part, I’m willing to say that she played it much more naturalistically.

Hanafusa, meanwhile, emphasized the tragedy of Marie’s life. Throughout a decent portion of the musical, she can be seen crying, especially during the trial (which Rena played straightfaced, playing a Marie that is totally numbed by grief), and expresses her happy, joyful moments in a very exaggerated, almost forceful way, more what I would expect from a Zuka actress given that Zuka performances tend to emphasize extremes of sadness and happiness. (Keeping in mind, of course, that traditionally, it’s expected for musical/opera singers to act in an exaggerated way in order to be seen from the back.) If you are used to Hanafusa, then you’ll LOVE it, because she is very much there, and it’s very much what you’ve been accustomed to. She does show her training; she doesn’t miss a single note in the entire production, but I do find that, in this one area, her added age over Rena might be to her detriment, as I find that her voice has thinned somewhat with age, comparing her now to where she was in Dracula or during her Takarazuka days. Her vibrato also isn’t quite to my taste. Not BAD, but not for me. She isn’t UNPLEASANT to listen to, and again, if you are buying it to hear Hanafusa Mari’s voice, that is exactly what you’ll get, but I also do think the luster of it has faded.

So, in terms of overall ratings, here is what I would put them:

Rena:

Year of Debut: 1995

Acting: 9/10

Singing: 10/10

Hanafusa:

Year of Debut: 1991

Acting: 4/10

Singing: 6/10

Margrid

Sonim (A Cast) - Sonim’s history has been gone into detail here by my friend, @chibimyumi who, unlike me, has a native speaker’s understanding of Japanese (as opposed to getting lucky with Google Translate), so I’ll leave it to her. But, suffice it to say, Sonim had her musical debut about...2007 or so (she was involved in other stage projects, but for sanity’s sake I’m marking her appearance as Johanna in Sweeney Todd as her musical debut) after the idol industry decided to be cowards and kicked her out because she didn’t conform to their pretty pink princess dreams, was offered the title of Ogosho IMMEDIATELY upon her joining up with Toho, and, since then, has distinguished herself as one of their undisputed leading ladies. She has appeared, to my knowledge, on three proshots, two of which I own: Mozart, 1789, and Marie Antoinette, and has also appeared in Kinky Boots, Tanz der Vampire, FACTORY GIRLS, and Rent.

Natsumi Kon (M Cast) - Natsumi Kon is, admittedly, also no slouch in the world of Japanese musical theatre: She had her debut in 2011, with the coveted role of Juliette Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, and has since been in Les Miserables, Grand Hotel, the Addams Family, The Fiddler on the Roof, and The Secret Garden, as well as being the voice actress for Belle in the 2017 Beauty and the Beast. She has been praised as essentially being “the next generation of the musical world”.

By the same standard I’ve set re: Hanafusa and Rena, there isn’t THAT much in terms of their ages, since they have the same difference in debut time (though in this case, it’s in Sonim’s favor, and I also think that it’s much more dramatic in terms of younger musical performers as opposed to older ones.)

I feel like, of the two of them, more people would have come for Sonim, since she is an Ogosho herself, being at the same level of ranking as Furukawa and Hanafusa. What I suspect, in fact, is that Toho, in a CLASSIC Toho move, split the cast that most people would have wanted, with Hanafusa, Furukawa, and Sonim, but I can’t confirm and, honestly, I feel like Hanafusa’s very expressive Antoinette would have clashed with Furukawa’s more aloof Fersen, but that will be dealt with down the line. As it is, M cast has Hanafusa, and A cast has two Ogosho-level performers for the price of one with Sonim and Furukawa. (Meaning that, on a purely technical level, it has the most starpower behind it.)

Sonim has a strong belt and has a reputation for playing scrappy girls, possibly because she herself easily qualifies as a bit of a “scrappy girl” herself. Her Margrid is bitter and cynical, not necessarily kind. The years on the streets have warped her into someone who is primarily motivated by herself and her own personal revenge. She uses “the people” as a self-justification to pursue her own vendetta, only realizing by the end what it’s done and cost her. She doesn’t care for social norms AT ALL, and would be the exact type of person that you would see on a tabletop counter at 2 AM, legs spread out, trying to stuff an entire pizza down her mouth. She’s distrustful, especially towards men and, even for those that she trusts, she has a low level of tolerance for. She is, frankly, a bit of a bitch. And I adore her for it, because it’s more realistic to what I think someone would be like after undergoing what she has. She’s a kind of female character we get relatively little of, really. I do think that, on a few occasions, Sonim perhaps outbelts herself here but, in general, I feel like it suits Margrid’s personality more.

Natsumi Kon took a more tragic bent to the character. Her Margrid IS a good person, at heart, but she lets her desire for justice, along with her own revenge, steer her towards a course that just causes more suffering. She is more like an 18th century Eponine from Les Miserables, the street girl who, if she’d JUST had the upbringing that Antoinette had, could have been a great lady like her. She seems to play up the love triangle with Fersen more, getting a little closer to him at different times, giving him more longing looks, while also seeming to have...some sort of dynamic with Orléans, with the two of them often touching and laughing with one another. She does have a very smooth, strong voice, though I feel like, on some level, she has never quite escaped playing ingenues, and, rewatching it with a critical eye, I think that, as the musical continues, her voice starts getting a little breathy and strained. I don’t really know whether this is by intent or simply because of the musical being very vocally demanding for the Margrids, but I do think that, if Sonim overbelts at times at the beginning, Natsumi has some issues by the end; the notes aren’t coming out quite as clear or as strong as they should be. Her Margrid has a little bit more of a polish to her and, in general, seems a little younger and more naive compared to Sonim’s. I do give her credit for really being willing to go UP CLOSE to her fellow actors in stand-offs, giving her Margrid the sense of being a little bit of a bull in a China shop; during the duet that Marie and Margrid share, there’s one point where it seems like Natsumi is only INCHES away from her face. I know that it’s out of style to make Harry Potter analogies, but Sonim plays Margrid as a Slytherin; Natsumi as a Gryffindor. She didn’t do a BAD job as an actress, and in fact adds some nice touches to Margrid that I do like, but she doesn’t really do anything too new with the character.

Now, why does THIS matter? Well, for one, I think that, if you go in expecting the best of everyone, Sonim’s Margrid can be like a dose of cold water. Natsumi is more...palatable. Less conflict, less difficult questions, especially since it becomes that much easier to separate Orléans-As-Villain from Margrid-As-Heroine.

Overall:

Sonim:

Year of Debut: 2007

Acting: 10/10

Singing: 9/10.

Natsumi:

Year of Debut: 2011

Acting: 8/10

Singing: 8/10

Fersen

Furukawa Yuta (A Cast) - Probably one of Toho’s most bankable male leads at the moment. His presence in a musical is generally a VERY good sign to me that Toho is planning on a proshot, since they know that fans will buy anything he’s in. (To illustrate: I wasn’t PLANNING on buying Marie Antoinette, I had more than my fair share of doubts after the disastrous German run, but then I saw Furukawa Yuta and Sonim were signed on and I promptly got both casts. Best insanely rash move I’ve ever made in my life.) He had his stage debut in 2007 with The Prince of Tennis series, and since then he’s played in the Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji) musicals, Elisabeth, 1789, Romeo and Juliet, and Mozart. Though he initially made his name with his dancing and acting abilities, along with his personal charisma, he has since worked on his singing, putting himself through Hell and back to earn his spot as Ogosho. While Mozart was his official debut, I would argue that, in some ways, it was as Fersen and then, later, Romeo that he REALLY got to demonstrate what made him star material.

Mario Tashiro (M Cast) - Mario Tashiro, like Natsumi Kon, is absolutely no slouch either. He has a full, operatic voice that he uses to excellent effect, making him very recognizable even if you don’t know who exactly he is. Plenty of times, I’ll be listening to a trailer on Youtube and hear this BOOMING voice and go “MARIO TASHIRO?” He has been very prolific on the Toho scene, taking roles in Sunset Boulevard, Chess, Love Never Dies, Elisabeth (marking the first time in known history that Fersen is locked in a love triangle with Fersen for Marie Antoinette and then seduces Fersen’s son, Fersen), The Great Gatsby, Jekyll and Hyde, and Sweeney Todd, among others.

In terms of approach, both men took very different approaches to their role. Furukawa played Fersen as much more aloof and distant, which makes for a contrast with Marie’s sunny, naive personality. He has a dry sense of humor and has a long-running cat and mouse game with Orléans where both understand, on some level, that they’re on equal ground. His love of Marie, while definitely a real, true love, is also very idealistic: Marie represents a world that, for Fersen, is slowly dying out, she represents the best part of humanity for him, especially after being gone during the war. I do not believe, looking at Furukawa’s Fersen, that he and Antoinette ever actually slept together, rather that it was very much a courtly love. He cares for Margrid, entreating her to have compassion, but there’s just enough wiggle room to wonder how MUCH of it is genuine VS him needing something from her at the time, and he’s very aware of his status as an aristocrat and makes use of it. It’s really unlike any other take on Fersen I’ve seen, in any media, and it’s part of why I ended up leaning towards this production, since it’s generally a MASSIVE feat to make me like Fersen. Furukawa’s voice in the role is softer, lacking the strength of Tashiro’s but still making for some very impressive low notes.

Mario Tashiro, on the other hand, focuses more on Fersen as a romantic hero, full of dash and daring. He has a notably dramatic take on Fersen, with flourishes and exaggerated movements, which, as an opera singer, are probably part and parcel of his acting training. If he’s aware of Orléans’ general presence, he doesn’t seem bothered by him, with their being really little sign that Orléans has any respect for him at all. He loves Marie as well, but it is much more of a sort of fairytale, Rose of Versailles love. There’s not as much moral gray areas to his Fersen, even though he makes the exact same decisions as Furukawa’s and, like Hanafusa Mari’s Marie, tends to go through extreme emotions. His voice was, as always, phenomenal, I give him full and complete credit for it, however, unfortunately, when put up against Hanafusa Mari, I found that the two of them had the tendency of trying to outbelt one another, leading to a distinct lack of chemistry during romantic scenes. (And you’ll notice that, despite generally being weighted against Hanafusa, I am NOT giving her the full blame for this one.)

Furukawa Yuta (A Cast)

Year of Debut: 2007

Acting - 10/10

Singing - 9/10

Mario Tashiro (M Cast)

Year of Debut: 2009 (He had his singing debut in 2007, but his overall musical debut was 2009)

Acting - 7/10

Singing - 10/10

Louis

Takanori Sato (A Cast) - Probably the baby of the group, in the sense that he had his own debut a little while after the others, in 2015. In his case, and his case alone, would I say that there was a REALLY strong case for him not having as much experience compared to his counterpart. He has played in Titanic, Elisabeth, the Scarlet Pimpernel (the one with Kazutaka Ishi), Mata Hari, Legally Blonde, and Chess, the latter possibly most impressively since he did the entire thing in English.

Yuichi Harada (M Cast) - I’ll be honest, I’ve never in my life been tempted to look up his biography before, but when I did, I was impressed to find that he’s actually been working in the world of musicals since 1992, when he was in Anne of Green Gables and then again in Les Miserables as Gavroche. He has had a long career with Toho, too, being in musicals such as Les Miserables, The Sound of Music, Titanic, the Beggar’s Opera, and La Cage Aux Folles, none of which I literally had any idea about until today, but that is very impressive. Massive props to him, honestly, as well as working as a director for Bare: The Musical, which...well. Props to him for branching out. I will never understand the love for Bare worldwide, but you know what? Almost all musicals deserved to be loved by SOMEONE. He has an impressive track record, I’ll give him that. One of these days, I’ll probably have to dig deeper, since I suspect that there’s a lot more to him than meets the eye.

Takanori has a very smooth, strong voice, without the projection of Mario Tashiro. I found that his take on Louis was quite charming, tender to his wife, a normal man who Marie respects even if she doesn’t love him in the same way as she loves Fersen. (Honestly, can I just say: While we all know that Orléans has my entire heart....if Takanori’s Louis asked me to marry him....#PhilippeWho.) He’s a steady man, not really dumb, but well-intentioned and occasionally oblivious to the real danger, and it’s that that kills him, in the end.

Yuichi’s Louis is much more...confused throughout the thing and, while I think Antoinette has some compassion for him, I don’t really feel like it’s love so much as...affection, mixed with a certain amount of pity. He does show moments where it looks like he knows a lot more than he lets on, but in general, I think he did play it as much more humorous, a lot more...well, dumb, at least until the second act. He does have a solid voice, I give him that, but in general, it felt like there was a little less subtlety in how he interpreted the role. There’s something almost childish about the way that he grasps Orléans’ hands when he’s asking him to intercede for them, whereas in Takanori’s case, it’s more him realizing that his cousin is...well. Orléans, but knowing that he has to do a little bit of crawling if he’s going to survive.

Yuichi’s Louis DOES still get sympathy from me, but it’s in a way that is kind of insulting to him as a character, mainly because it’s less about HIM and more like “......god. Killing him is a bit like kicking a puppy. Like, you could do it, but my God, why would you?” Like, I do kind of want to write a fanfic where he can just......be safe........far, far away from everything, because I’m not sure if he would notice if they took him any place else, but it does kind of...take away his complexity? I will say, in his defense, looking over his entire performance, that seeing him constantly trying to smile as he’s being led while Marie panics, trying to let her know this is all going to be alright, is a tearjerker, though I still feel like his Louis is played a bit too much like the caricature of Louis that, at this point, I’m kind of used to seeing. That being said, while I don’t necessarily like all of the DIRECTION he took Louis, I can see that he put genuine thought into constructing the role, so I’m not going to nuke him too much in the acting category.

This one, more than any of the others, is probably YMMV, because I know people who were genuinely shocked to realize Louis is double-cast at all. Mainly because it isn’t like the role leaves THAT much of an impact, overall, having only one major song. I honestly think that the 2021 cast is making the right call in splitting Orléans and giving Louis one role, all things considered.

Takanori Sato

Year of Debut: 2015

Acting - 10/10

Singing - 10/10

Yuichi Harada

Year of Debut: 1992

Acting - 8/10

Singing - 8/10

The Case for M Cast

Now that we’ve gone through the rankings, it’s time for the original question: What are the pros of M Cast? And, if you just listened to me laying all this out, you would think that I wouldn’t have much positive to say. That being said, when I was back in the States and could spend an hour or two watching musicals every day, a LOT of the time, I would watch M Cast. There has never really been a point where I said “You know? I regret getting that cast, I wish I’d just had A the entire time.” If I was dangling off a cliff and I could only save one cast recording, I would HAVE to choose A (and then promptly sob), but I do, genuinely, like M on its own and would recommend getting both simply to compare.

- Mitsuo Yoshihara. Now, this is going to be odd for anyone reading, because I can hear it now: “But he wasn’t double cast! Wouldn’t you get him on A too?” Yes, you definitely would. But he is a very unique type of Toho actor in the sense that he changed up his performance for EACH cast he was in. If you look at M cast, he has a much warmer dynamic with Natsumi’s Margrid, either as a paternal substitute (making up for her own aristocratic father) or as a prospective love interest. He is MUCH more hurt in the final court scene, very clearly viewing Margrid’s decision as a personal betrayal. As the admitted and confessed Morléans shipper, I have to eat the angst up like it’s candy. The two of them have a nice amount of familiarity and chemistry with one another, presumably due to having worked with one another on other projects before.

- Mario Tashiro’s voice. This deserves its own section because it is REALLY, REALLY phenomenal. You know whenever you’re seeing Mario Tashiro in something simply because that voice is VERY distinctive and is totally overwhelming each time you hear it. I noted my misgivings in his section, but overall? It is very much worth the price of admission just to hear him.

- Different shots. I’m still figuring out exactly WHAT shots dramatically change from each cast, but M cast does contain some shots that A doesn’t have and vice versa. M cast doesn’t have this shot of Margrid and Antoinette, and A cast doesn’t have the one here of Antoinette and Fersen’s hands touching, which is a wonderful little bit of cinematography. I do think that, depending on the shot, you can get more or less of a character’s motivations in that moment. A personal favorite is Hébert trying to get Margrid alone during the scene just before the ball and Margrid shoving him off, which foreshadows what happens near the end of the second act.

-Hanafusa and Natsumi’s voices actually do go quite nicely together at the end.

-Mario Tashiro does make for a very splashy Fersen; yeah, you might not spend too long dissecting what he’s doing when he’s on stage, but he is fun to watch swish around in his 18th century officer’s outfit.

-My griping on Natsumi’s Margrid aside, I do think she has a lot of charm. No, it isn’t my FAVORITE take on the role, but I do actually like what she does, she adds quite a few nice touches to it, and she does make the song “Enough is Enough”, near the end of the first act, her actual bitch, adding her own riffs onto it to give it a sense of individuality. The parts where she’s smiling, hanging onto Orléans’ arm, make even my wrinkled, shriveled heart grow three sizes. I’ll be genuinely excited to see her return to the role in 2021 to see if there’s anything she changes, though I doubt I’ll be able to see any part of it in person.

-If you’re a Hanafusa Mari fan, you get to see the kind of performance from her that you’ve grown to expect and appreciate. If you’re not, you get to see her get splashed in the face with champagne. Win, win, win.

Overall, I think that it will depend on what you’re looking for. I really enjoyed the realism and the grit of the A cast, but not everyone WANTS grit, and in that case...I suppose M cast would appeal more, since M cast relies on everyone involved being much better human beings than A cast, though I do want to emphasize that everyone in A cast is still redeemable. (Except Hébert. Because fuck Hébert.) M cast is....easier to digest, in many ways. There’s a good queen, a stupid-yet-sweet king, a dashing hero, and a misunderstood-yet-angry-poor girl, manipulated by the siren’s song of the Revolution and her unrequited love for Fersen, who bullies the poor, downtrodden queen when she gets a chance before realizing the error of her ways. I think that, for many people, that’s perfectly fine, and that’s what they wanted, especially if they’re already used to Rose of Versailles. I do still LIKE it, because it’s a production of one of my top 2 favorite musicals, but I do think that, if it was the ONLY version of the musical available, I wouldn’t have spent so much time picking it apart. (Though I still would have thought it a MASSIVE improvement on the German.)

I do put a lot of it on Hanafusa Mari’s influence, though, because of the prevalence of her fanbase and the general belief that no one could ever come close to their star, so why bother getting another cast. Especially given how....devoted the Takarazuka fanbase is in comparison to the Toho fanbase, and the Thing I’ve noticed where fans try to argue that there is some sort of empirical reason for their bias as opposed to simply liking one more than the other.

#Anonymous #long post #toho stage #jmusicals

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starryevermore · 4 years

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paradise island: a review

A note before we begin: everything above the cut will be spoiler free and will just be my general feelings about the story as a whole, the writing, and if I’d recommend it. Everything below the cut will include spoilers to explain my feelings about the story.

Rating: 3/5 stars

Visiting the North Shore had been a bizarre and unsettling experience, to say the least, but when they got home after vacation was over, he was going to suggest to Colby that they make a video about it.

Hell, no. Even better. Write a book. Videos melted away after a while, but a book? Books and stories solidified on the conscious mind forever. (91-92)

Overall, I enjoyed this book. I generally enjoy stories like this, but there were a few moments throughout the novel where things just fell a bit flat.

While I was reading, I made a few notes, the first being that there was a weird juxtaposition between talking about more adult topics (drinking, women, sex, etc.) but in an odd, almost kid-friendly way. Some of the word choices were interesting, such as constant use of “fancy-pants”, “hottie”, “goofball”, “oddball”, and “doofus”, as well as the one moment where Colby said he hated “dicky” people and the moment where Sam said Colby was about to have an “emo-ruption”. (Though I did laugh a lot longer than I should have at “emo-ruption”.) It felt like they were still trying to make the story appropriate for their younger fans by using more kid-friendly language, while also appealing to their older fans by being like “look!! we drink!! and ooh look, we talked about smoking weed 👀🤪”. I wish they would’ve committed to one or the other, because it added an odd sense of disjointedness to the story that could’ve been easily resolved.

The other big thing I made note of was that there was a lot of “tell, not show” throughout. There’s a heavy focus on dialogue to progress the story rather than seeing into the boys’ inner thoughts and using other means to find out information. (I’m not one to talk, though, since I also focus more on dialogue than description.) It sometimes made it difficult to fully get into the story. I struggled with developing a picture of what the Belle Estate looked like, or what the other characters (beside SNC, Nate, and Alex) looked like. In terms of the boys, it seemed very reliant on us knowing who Sam and Colby are and what they’re all about (which is fair, since probably 99.9% of people who bought the book are fans of them but, if they want success outside of their audience, it could’ve been more descriptive in that regard).

As for the big twist at the end, it was a bit lackluster. I’ll go more in detail on this in the “spoiler section”, but it kind of diminished everything that had happened throughout the story and left me wondering “what was the point?”.

I was excited when I’d heard that the story was told through both Sam and Colby’s POVs, but, I’ll be honest, I saw little difference between Sam’s chapters than Colby’s chapters. The most difference was the almost stereotypical portrayal of Sam being the logical one while Colby being the emotional one. Aside from that, they were almost indistinguishable from me and I often had to flip back to the start of a chapter to remind myself of who’s head I was in.

Since that was all critical, here’s some things I did like:

I feel like, while the inner monologues were a bit lacking, Gaby did make up for it by making the dialogue between the boys really realistic to them. In this regard, she really nailed the portrayal of them.

The depiction of the paranormal things was really great. I feel like those parts were the ones I could get most into the story. The way Gaby wrote them was so interesting and pulled me in. I wish there was more of these moments throughout the story, because I think they really showcased who Gaby is as a writer.

The convo where Colby called Sam “Velma” and then Nate asked if Colby was “Fred”? I really enjoyed that because (a) Scooby is my favorite thing in the whole world and (b) I chose Sam and Colby be Velma and Fred in my moodboards a month ago so just a lil fun moment for me.

Just how meta the book was. Like, the quote I included at the top? I laughed for way too long when I read that.

There was a nice sense of nostalgia throughout, specifically when they brought up their YouTube channel, their Vine days, them being arrested, wining a Teen Choice Award, and Corey and the Shadowman. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and reminded me of how proud I am for how far they’ve come.

*slight spoiler here* Speaking of being arrested, there was a moment where SNC were contemplating escaping to the beach and they had a conversation if it was worth being arrested again. I really loved that, especially with how much fans joke about them inevitably being arrested again.

This is more for the person who designed the cover, but holy shit?? I loved it so much??

I don’t know if I would have picked this book up if it didn’t have Sam and Colby’s name attached to it. I will say, though, I finished the book in one sitting, which is pretty rare for me nowadays, so it was engaging. I think, overall, it was a great story with a great concept but it could’ve been fleshed out more. In some ways, it almost felt like this was a draft rather than a completed novel.

That being said, for SNC’s first book and Gaby’s first time working with the boys, it exceeded my expectations. If they were to continue writing books together, I imagine it will get better and better as they get more used to each other and potentially open up more so that their characters become a more accurate depiction of them.

Overall, the book’s not something you really need to race out to get. I think, if you have a gift card or there’s some sort of deal or you need to spend a little more to get free shipping, it wouldn’t hurt to pick up Paradise Island. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t a great, top-tier novel in my opinion. That being said, if you do pick it up, I think you will enjoy the book.

Spoiler Avenue

The characterization of all four of the boys is a bit 2D. Sam’s logical and wants to keep the peace, Colby’s emotional and more of a wildcard, Nate’s focused on his schoolwork and flexing his vocabulary, and Alex? Well, I couldn’t get a good read on Alex until he sells out SNC at the end of the novel and even then, he didn’t feel so much like his own character, more like someone just present to further the plot.

Speaking of characters, the introduction of Trey was...meh. I wish we could’ve gotten more insight on why Colby was so adamant about not liking Trey and why Nate was so gung ho to ditch their plans to go to the North side of the island for this guy they barely knew. Finding out that Colby didn’t like Trey because he said college was the only way to success was such an odd thing? Like, undoubtedly there’s been many people who would’ve said that, so does Colby also dislike everyone who’s said that or is there a more specific reason he didn’t like Trey? Just...👏🏻 more 👏🏻 inner 👏🏻 thoughts 👏🏻 please 👏🏻 and 👏🏻 thank 👏🏻 you 👏🏻

@golbrocklovely brought this up in her review but Colby’s fixation on the mermaid statue of a 16-year-old was really odd. It probably wouldn’t have been as odd if Amy was aged up a bit to 18, but as a 16-year-old with the descriptions that were given? Yeah...not the vibe.

I also wasn’t a fan of how so many things plot-wise was just...told to the boys. They could’ve found some newspaper clippings or something, anything to make them put in a little bit of detective work. But for so much information to just be handed to them? It got old, and almost lazy.

The big twist being that all of the paranormal stuff they’d encountered being a hallucination? God, that was so fucking annoying (though I did go back afterwards from the moment that they first arrived at the Belle Estate—starting as early as page 36—and it felt incredibly obvious knowing now that it was all drugs, so props to Gaby for dropping that many hints early on). To spend so much time making all of this scary shit happen just to turn around and say “HAHA JK THE BOYS WERE JUST TRIPPING BALLS” was such a cop out. It would’ve been more terrifying for it all to be real, make the boys question their beliefs and the reality of there being something out there that they didn’t quite understand. Though, there is something terrifying about not knowing you’ve been drugged and having hallucinated that vividly, but I feel like it didn’t quite fit in with the story.

Alex betraying the boys? So interesting! This was one of the few things that made sense in terms of them being drugged. But then when he was betrayed when Pauahi (who’s name was misspelled a few different times in the book) escaped? Ugh, amazing. We love instant karma like that.

Going back to the “tell not show” thing, I wish the sacrifice at the end would’ve been more detailed. For all of the paranormal stuff to be written off as a drug-induced hallucination, I would’ve loved if Gaby had leaned more into the horror of being used in a human sacrifice. There was more of a focus on Colby bargaining for his life, which is fair, but I would’ve loved to see more of the pure terror there.

That being said, the way Trey finally snapped out of it? *chef’s kiss* Loved that shit so much. And I loved the fact that Trey stayed behind in the end. It added a nice eeriness to the story that had been lacking since they debunked the paranormal shit as being hallucinations.

Again, going back to my overall, thoughts, I enjoyed the book in general. Some things could’ve been fleshed out a bit more to reach its full potential. I wish they leaned more into the paranormal aspect and had more descriptions to balance out all of the dialogue, but other than that, I did enjoy the book and don’t regret buying it.

#sam and colby #sam golbach #colby brock #snc #xplr #paradise island #starrybrock #a review

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vmheadquarters · 4 years

Text

We’re still playing our game of written hot potato! Dozens of your favorite authors are taking turns to tell a Veronica Mars mystery story. Each writer crafts their chapter and then “tosses” the story to the next person to continue the tale. No one knows what will happen, so expect the unexpected!

Follow the “vmhq presents” and “murder we wrote” tags for all the installments, or read the story as it develops on AO3. --Chapter Twenty-Six of MURDER, WE WROTE is written by @jeanie205. And stayed tuned next week for Ch.27 from @nevertothethird - tag, you’re it!

_____________________________________________________________

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX by @jeanie205

Business hadn’t exactly been booming at Mars Investigations lately, and even though she knew her dad was right, that the PI business, like almost everything else, was cyclical, Veronica still chafed under the inactivity.

She’d filled in her time the past few days with a flurry of office organization and some paperwork she’d been putting off for weeks, interspersed with a couple of bread-and-butter infidelity stakeouts. But either the unfaithful spouses had gotten stupider over the years, or Veronica had just gotten a lot better at sussing them out. Because while the pay had been good - great, in fact - it hadn’t taken her long to come up with the Money Shots.

So now she was at loose ends again. Even Mac had taken the day off after completing her update of the MI website, which she’d told Veronica was “a disaster.”

“They aren’t going to hire you if your site looks like it was designed in a high school IT class,” Mac had said, shaking her head.

For as much good as it’s done so far, Veronica thought, sitting alone in her office with nothing to do.

Her glance fell unconsciously to her bottom right-hand desk drawer. The deep one.

Well, maybe she didn't exactly have nothing to do.

There was a case of sorts, if she wanted to count guessing the ending of a whodunit written by the least likely mystery writer she could ever have imagined. An activity that Veronica had so far found not particularly entertaining. Mostly because the plot was already so convoluted that she doubted the eventual reveal could ever make much sense.

On the other hand, she’d become rather fond of Ruby Jetson, and knew they probably owed her for helping to exonerate Logan of murder. Besides which, she had promised.

With a guilty sigh, Veronica pulled open the drawer and hefted out a thick envelope.

Ruby had brought her the manuscript nearly a week earlier, eager to know if the story was good enough to “fool” the seasoned detective. Although she’d shown up without an appointment, Veronica had taken the time to read several chapters, Ruby smiling delightedly whenever she’d frowned in puzzlement.

“I knew it was a good mystery,” Ruby had boasted gleefully. “That even you wouldn’t be able to figure it out.”

By then, it had become apparent that Ruby expected her to read the whole damn book right then and there! Thank god Mac had soon caught on and poked her head in the office door, reminding Veronica about “her appointment.”

Ruby had looked disappointed when Veronica carefully re-stacked the loose manuscript pages and slipped them into the large envelope, stowing everything away in her bottom drawer.

“I’ll finish it soon,” she’d promised faithfully.

But she never had, although Ruby had called every day, looking for an update.

“Hurry up, Veronica,” she’d complained only the day before, the exasperation clear in her voice. “I need to send it to my publisher.”

Veronica had been surprised. Ruby already had a publisher?

As she slipped the manuscript out of the envelope, quickly flipping to the red post-it she’d left to hold her place, she fleetingly wondered who in hell might actually want to publish Ruby’s novel.

Picking up where she’d left off, Veronica noted the same peculiarity that had struck her the week before. Ruby’s chapters often varied so wildly in both style and format that it was almost like they’d been written by different people. She paused in her reading, considered for a moment if Ruby might have some kind of dual personality disorder. After all, the woman did have two names.

Or... maybe the answer was much simpler. Maybe Ruby had a collaborator, the same person, Veronica thought with growing certainty, who’d passed along all the personal information that Ruby could never have dug up, no matter how much “research” she’d done.

And that was another thing. Veronica’s annoyance rose as she came across yet another intimate-sounding encounter between book-Veronica and book-Logan. Ruby had promised her faithfully that the names in her roman a clef-slash-murder mystery would definitely be changed in the next draft. Veronica sure as hell hoped she followed through. Otherwise, the fledgling author was going to be bombarded with lawsuits. And Veronica Mars would be at the head of the line.

She sighed, turning back to the story just in time to find that... Ruby had killed herself off!

Or at least, she’d killed off Della Pugh.

Veronica’s eyes narrowed in surprise at this fictional turn of events. Was this some sort of symbolic “killing” of her original self so that her Ruby persona could thrive? She shook her head, finally deciding she was no better as a psychologist than she was a literary critic. She flipped quickly to the next chapter and soon wished she hadn’t. A delusional, Veronica-obsessed Duncan Kane was not exactly pleasant company.

Veronica was considering with wry amusement how the man himself might view his portrayal (should he ever see it) when she was startled by the ringing of a phone. Not the office land line but the cell phone that she had to dig out from the depths of her well-loved but totally inconvenient studded black leather bag.

She might not have even bothered had the sounds of the Perishers’ “Sway” not told her it was Logan calling. She’d assigned him that ringtone in a burst of nostalgia the same day she’d updated his photo from pukka beads to dress blues.

The fact that he was calling was in itself unnerving. If Logan wanted to communicate with her during the day, he almost always texted. So of course her mind went immediately to the worst-case scenario.

“Logan! Is everything okay? Is my dad...”

“Veronica!” Logan cut in on her abruptly. “Are you watching the news? Turn on the news!”

“Wh-what? You mean, like... CNN?”

“No. The local news. It’s a breaking story on a continuous loop.”

“Okay.” Mystified, she grabbed the remote from a drawer and powered up the wall TV that she hardly ever used.

And there was that creepy newscaster, the one who invariably reminded her of Vinnie Van Lowe.

“... a tragedy right here in Neptune last night when promising new writer Ruby Jetson was murdered in her own home.”

Veronica gasped. It couldn’t be!

“Veronica! You still there?”

“Yeah, Logan, I’m here. I can’t... I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it. And there’s more. Keep watching.”

Onscreen, the newscaster was just beginning the introduction of an “important witness” to the tragedy.

“We’re fortunate to have with us here in the studio the man who discovered the body of Ms. Jetson. Neptune’s very own school principal turned book publisher, Mr. Van Clemmons.”

Veronica nearly fell off her chair. Holy shit! Clemmons was Ruby’s publisher?

She quickly turned up the volume, desperate to hear every word.

“I understand you were about to publish Ms. Jetson’s first novel, Mr. Clemmons?” the Vinnie-clone asked in that fake tone of sympathetic interest that all newscasters somehow managed to perfect.

Clemmons nodded.

“That’s right. Of course, I’d known her as Della Pugh back when she was at Neptune High, but she’d made some changes in her life, and if she preferred to be Ruby Jetson, who was I to say she shouldn’t?”

Veronica rolled her eyes. Right, Van. You were always so forward-thinking.

“And the book?” the newscaster encouraged, refusing to be shifted off-topic by anything about the actual victim herself.

“Well, ah, Ruby came to me with the idea. Some kind of murder mystery. Very popular genre, of course. But the story was to be based on people she’d known in high school. I thought it sounded... promising. And she was just about to deliver the first draft. Said she’d finished it but was waiting for some feedback from a trusted friend.”

Veronica blinked. A trusted friend?

She wrenched her mind away from dwelling on the sheer... unexpectedness of Ruby regarding her as a friend, because Clemmons was still talking and she didn’t want to miss a word.

“Ruby kept delaying turning in the first draft, so I stopped by last night to see if I could... hurry her along.”

Clemmons paused briefly, and for the first time looked visibly shaken.

“And that’s when I... found her.”

The newscaster nodded slowly. “Not a pleasant experience.”

“No, indeed,” Clemmons agreed.

“And the book?” Vinnie’s doppelgänger was not to be thwarted.

Clemmons shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid that’s not going to happen after all. Only Ruby had copies of the manuscript, but there weren’t any in her apartment. And her laptop was missing, too.”

“The police...?”

“Didn’t find anything, either.”

“So the book won’t be published.”

Clemmons shrugged. “I can’t publish what I don’t have.”

The newscaster paused to make sure that viewers caught the significance of his next question.

“Do you think it’s possible that poor Ruby was killed because of something in that book?”

Clemmons hesitated. “I suppose it could be,” he said finally. “But I guess we’ll never know. If there ever was a manuscript, it’s gone forever.”

Veronica stared at the screen for long seconds before she muttered the words under her breath.

“No, Van. Not quite fucking gone.”

She switched off the television and picked up her phone. “You still there, Logan?”

“No, I’m here,” he said, appearing suddenly in the office doorway. “Thought maybe I should come by.”

She nodded, and as one their eyes fell on the loose pages still sitting in the middle of Veronica’s desk.

In seconds, she’d scooped them up and shoved them back into the envelope. But this time, the manuscript wasn’t crammed unceremoniously back into that deep bottom drawer. This time, Veronica opened their rarely-used safe and locked the thick envelope securely inside.

Veronica thought Logan must have sensed how shaken she suddenly felt because he was across the room like a shot, and in seconds she was wrapped in his arms.

“I’m sorry, Veronica,” Logan said softly, breathing the words into her hair.

“Yeah, me, too,” she murmured into his shoulder.

Then she took a deep breath and stepped back from Logan’s arms, determination stiffening her spine as she gazed up at him.

“Somebody killed Ruby over that damn book, Logan. And we’re gonna figure out who the hell did it.”

#veronica mars #veronica mars fanfic #vm fanfic #vmhq presents #murder we wrote #round robin

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luckystarchild · 4 years

Text

INUYASHA Volume 01, Scroll 01: “The Accursed Youth”

Welcome to Lucky’s INUYASHA recap—a recap of the Inuyasha manga by me, Lucky, an anime fan who has somehow never read it or seen the anime before.

Over the course of these posts, I’ll be recapping and reacting to the events of a chapter (or series of chapters) of the Inuyasha manga. I’ll be using the official VIZ manga volumes as my source material. References to Not Quite Kagome (“NQKagome”) pertain to my ongoing fanfiction series, Lucky Child.

And without further ado... chapter 01 of Inuyasha (or volume 01, “Scroll 1,” as VIZ titles the manga chapters.)

We begin in media res; Inuyasha has stolen the Jewel of Four Souls (the “Shikon Jewel”) and is rampaging through a village. He wants to use the jewel to become “a true demon.” Kikyo, mortally wounded, shoots him with an arrow and pins him to a tree. Her body is burnt along with the jewel by her young sister, Kaede.

I don’t generally like prologues that employ flashbacks in writing, as they sometimes seem like a way to shoehorn in backstory that either isn’t necessary OR backstory that could be imparted through the reader more organically. (They’re all-too-often lazy, basically.) But this is a manga, so maybe it’s not so bad. Not sure how I feel TBH.

Was sort of surprised we learned what Inuyasha’s goal concerning the jewel is so soon; thought maybe that would get dragged out a bit longer, though IDK why I got that impression exactly. I’ve seen a few random eps of the anime and know he isn’t fond of his own half-demon status. Perhaps I feel like we should’ve earned this revelation during the narrative and on Inuyasha’s terms, rather than have it handed to us right off the bat by a faceless narrator. But that’s me being overly critical, perhaps.

Flash forward to 1997. The day before Kagome’s 15th birthday. Her grandfather tries to tell her a legend about the Shikon Jewel, but she shrugs it off.

Kagome’s family lives inside a big temple, and everything has a legend attached to it (including the massive 500-year-old Go-Shinboku God Tree), but Kagome never pays attention to them. Later, her brother loses their cat in the mini-shrine, specifically in the well house (which a sign declares the home of the Bone-Eater’s Well). Kagome bravely ventures inside to search for the cat.

Right off the bat, we get the impression that Kagome is a pretty average teenage girl—a bit of an airhead with a sharp sense of humor who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty or shy away from a dark and spooky well house. Nice bit of characterization in just a few panels. Well done, author-san.

NQKagome Bonus: She’d probably pay more attention to all the legends her grandfather tells, which could give her an edge in the Feudal Era.

Kagome hears odd noises coming from the covered well; the cover pops off the well and a horrible, Noh-mask-faced women with a skeletal snake body to leap out and drag Kagome into the darkness.

Her body regenerates, turning into a... centipede body. Not a snake. D’oh. Frightened as they fall, Kagome emits a light from her hands, breaking off the woman’s arm and sending her careening away into the dark as she cries something cryptic about the Jewel of Four Souls.

Soon Kagome stops falling and finds herself at the bottom of the well, but upon emerging, she’s lost in an unfamiliar forest.

I gotta say that as far as first-chapters go, this one is pretty good! We immediately know who Kagome is, where she’s from, what she’s like as a person, and this introduction to the supernatural is spooky and interesting. The stakes are high and the action is fast-paced, without an overload of exposition.

Kagome spots the God-Tree and hurries toward it, noting that she always used it to find her way home in the past, but she does not find her familiar home at its base. Instead she finds Inuyasha pinned to the God-Tree.

We’re treated to this gorgeous two-panel spread:

She notes that the boy pinned to the tree has inhuman ears before some villagers find her in “Inuyasha’s forbidden forest” and bring her to Kaede, the younger sister of Kikyo (who is much older than she appeared in the earlier flashback). Kagome realizes she is in the Sengoku Period (1467 to 1615 CE). The villagers theorize that she’s a spy, a kitsune, and similar before Kaede realizes that Kagome looks identical to the deceased Kikyo.

Kaede tells Kagome briefly who Kikyo was before the centipede woman attacks the village.

That bit where Kaede tells Kagome about Kikyo is where I would’ve placed the flashback from the start of the chapter, FYI. Would’ve given the earlier parts of the chapter more mystery to withhold some information from the reader.

Also we have TOO MANY K-NAMES. Already three of the four named characters start with K, and two even start with the “ka” sound in Japanese. We have this problem with YYH and I foresee it being a problem as I type these names a ton, LMAO 🤣

So... Kagome realizing what time period she’s been magically dropped into after approximately seven seconds seems… IDK, kind of handy? Easy? The only info she has to go on are the vague references to “battles” a few villagers shout at her, and maybe the way they’re dressed. She supposedly doesn’t pay attention to old legends, so it doesn’t seem plausible that she’d pay enough attention in history class to discern what period she’s in now based on the cut of a kimono.

(Disclaimer: I’m American and the American education system is notoriously horrible at teaching the subjects of history and science with any accuracy, so I might be projecting my experience onto hers to some degree. Maybe Japan is better about this stuff. IDK, but thought I’d mention it.)

ALSO, Kagome jumps to the possibility of time travel really fast. I would jump to “this is a dream” or “I have fallen into a historical reenactment amusement park in which no one will break character” (a special hell of its own) first. Again, though, this chapter is moving quickly to draw in readers, so I can see why they didn’t give her confusion more screen-time. Especially with serialized manga, you have a handful of chapters (if that) to grab readers, so it’s gotta move fast as a matter of necessity.

I appreciate that some of the villagers mentioned “kitsune” in this section (and not just because it reminds me of all the reasons Yu Yu Hakusho is so easy to cross over with this manga). It shows that the supernatural is something the locals consider on a daily basis, which helps with worldbuilding.

Also, I wasn’t expecting the nipples on the centipede woman??? In her first panels, her breasts were covered up a bit, but now we’ve got detailed nipples. I’m guessing the scant few episodes of the series I watched were censored quite a bit. I’m wondering if there’s going to be more fanservice in this series than I expected, especially after reading that the series’ author, Rumiko Takahashi, advised the anime team to avoid using Kagome for any pantie-shots…

The centipede claims Kagome has the Shikon Jewel, and Kagome flees the village (toward “that light” in the east, which Kaede notes she shouldn’t be able to see) as the centipede woman gives chase. Elsewhere, Inuyasha wakes, stating he can smell the scent of the woman who killed him.

So I know a few things about this series already thanks to the research I did for Lucky Child, and chief among these things is that Kagome is Kikyo’s reincarnation. We can already see this tidbit coming through in obvious ways: Kagome’s resemblance to Kikyo, the Jewel being connected to her somehow, etc. Kagome seeing that light is probably a power she got from Kikyo, too.

It’s interesting that these connections are as physical as her having the same scent as Kikyo, though; scent is informed quite a bit by genetics. Obviously we’re dealing with magic and not science in this story, so I’m not looking for infallible logic when it comes to this reincarnation plot device… but it’s almost like the magic here overrides things like genetics and the extreme differences in what Kagome and Kikyo must’ve eaten in their respective times when determining their scent and appearance. The soul is more important than the body, etc. Wondering how consistent that will remain over the course of this admittedly massive story.

And that’s it for chapter 1. This was super fun! I’m guessing I’ll have more to say once we get past the set-up and are introduced to more characters, but overall I think this was a really strong start to this feudal fairy tale.

If you enjoyed this recap, feel free to buy me a Ko-Fi☕, and subscribe to the tag “lucky’s inuyasha recap” to see more!

NEXT CHAPTER

#lucky's inuyasha recap #inuyasha recap #inuyasha manga recap #inuyasha manga #inuyasha anime #inuyasha #kagome #higurashi kagome #kagome higurashi #kaede #kikyo #luckychildfanfic

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sophrosinn · 4 years

Text

indescribable

synopsis: Fashion photographer Bakugou Katsuki’s world got irrevocably changed when he inadvertently met Uraraka Ochako, whose fiery eyes are strangely familiar to him for some reason.

prompt: je ne sais quoi, a French phrase which literally translates to “I do not know what.” It is commonly used to describe a certain quality that cannot be adequately put into words.

word count: 1,628 words

note: Shout-out to @vanaera and @senfleurs for being the bestest friends a girl could ever ask for. Seriously, I hope you both realize just how much your words have motivated me to continue writing.

If you have noticed any inaccuracies, please let me know. Also, I am unsure as to whether or not to continue this. I guess we’ll see in time. Comments and constructive criticisms are highly appreciated! ❤️

—

Under the bright stage lights, as if it was only natural, Katsuki’s eyes found hers immediately among the sea of hopeful faces. She, with her soft pink ensemble, doe eyed look, and short but curvy physique, stood out in the crowd of skinny figures dressed in the fanciest clothes with practiced smiles and brimming with confidence. It was ironic, to say the least, that it seemed that his eyes automatically singled her out when there was nothing remarkable about her appearance: a simple white buttoned top with cut-out shoulders tucked into her pastel green flowing skirt. Her eyes, though, were different from her otherwise inconspicuous get-up. They sparkled with unflinching determination, almost breaking through the surface of her fragile mask of composure. It was a look of pure challenge, taunting and daring, and fuck, it looked really good on her cherub face. Not one to back down from challenges, Katsuki stared right back, unable to stop the feral grin from breaking out on his face.

This should be interesting, he thought.

“You, round face, at the back,” he called out, resolutely, as if there could never be any other choice than her (and perhaps, there never was). His voice reverberated against the four walls of the studio room, halting all the quiet conversations and nervous ramblings among the participants at once. “With the orange headband and grass skirt.”

Everyone turned to look at him, for this was the first time he had spoken after he was introduced ten minutes ago. not that he needed any kind of introduction. He was Katsuki Bakugou, a photographer whose name has long been circulating in the fashion industry for having featured in and worked with various famous magazines. His parents have long since established the family’s reputation by creating the most glamorous and avant-garde designs to grace the catwalk. While Katsuki chose a path for himself, opting instead to work behind a camera, he did not stray too far from his parents’ influence.

Nonetheless, in spite of his wish to separate his career from his parents’ connections, he quickly rose to fame for being a Bakugou. Katsuki, being his usual self, did not bother to prove himself to anyone else. After all, his photographs, which were more than enough to showcase his abilities, never failed to capture the candidness and reality beyond the fabricated portrayal of the world of fashion.

And now there he was, inside a spare atelier in his parents’ building, searching for a suitable candidate for his next project. Given his work history, it was not unusual that out of all the stunning women occupying the same room as him, he chose her.

She, who must have been unconsciously looking at him, but was actually intensely focused on something else. Because the second he pointed at her form, she froze. As did everyone else, and a beat of unnerving silence passed.

Her eyes went wide in bewilderment, surprised at the sudden attention. When she answered, it was meek and hesitant. “M-me?” She pointed at herself, and under the scrutinizing eyes of the other hopeful attendees, she reminded him of a gazelle about to be preyed upon by a pack of hungry lions.

It was fucking hilarious to Katsuki, the duality with which the girl held herself. Just a moment ago, he glimpsed a vexed goddess, looking every bit as someone rudely awakened from her eternal slumber. Now, it’s gone, and there’s barely a trace of her left in this fragile girl.

“Yes, you,” he replied, “what’s your name, round face?”

Ah, there it fucking was, he thought as he was regarded with that same blazing look in her eyes. But as quickly as it came, it was gone underneath her lids as she closed her eyes. She took a deep breath before replying in a steady voice, “Ochako Uraraka, sir!”

Although he was expecting it, he had to admit that he was surprised to hear the strength in her voice. From that distance, he can almost see her fists clenched at her sides.

“Uraraka,” he breathed, amused at how strangely natural it seemed to roll off his tongue. “Follow me then.”

Uraraka immediately nodded, squeezing in between the women standing in front of her, before following Bakugou who’s almost out the door. However, Kirishima, Bakugou’s optimistic friend and close companion, stopped him from leaving by asking: “but what of the other girls?”

“Escort them to the exit, and make sure they don’t loiter and find any of the old hag’s stuff lying around. It’s almost fashion week, you know how fucking chaotic it gets.”

“Got it, Bakubro.” Kirishima saluted him, about to turn the other way when he immediately stopped. “Even if I’m so not your assistant.”

Smirking, Bakugou crossed his arms and raised one of his eyebrows at Kirishima. In return, Kirishima stared at him unnervingly, and by the looks of it, it seemed like an unspoken conversation was ongoing between the two men.

In the end, Kirishima sighed good-naturedly, putting his hand on Bakugou’s shoulder. “This is why they say you run your assistants dry,” Kirishima quipped, shaking his head at Bakugou before he turned to the side, smiling brightly at Uraraka. “Nice to meet ya, Ms. Uraraka! I’m Kirishima! Play nice, Bakubro!”

With that, he winked at Bakugou and took off.

“That dumbass,” Bakugou muttered, walking out the door and motioning for Uraraka to follow him.

In the silent hallway, Uraraka cleared her throat awkwardly. “Uh, Bakugou-san? Sir?”

He grunted in response.

“I just want to say thank you for choosing me. I know I’m not that pretty as all those other girls, and given that I just came from the province, I probably wouldn’t know what to do but I promise I will do—”

“Tsk.” He clicked his tongue and ran a hand over his hair in frustration. Apparently, this girl has not seen any of his works; when did he ever choose a conventionally pretty model? He, honest to God, never cared for looks; his photographs attest to that fact. “Don’t be fucking daft, I didn’t choose you because you’re pretty.” He paused and turned around, intending to let his words sink in.

At the same time, he also took the chance to look over her form (average height, chopped angled bob cut for her brown hair, functional clothes), which, as he noted beforehand, were nothing out of the ordinary. He gazed at her face, and as he did, he was once again greeted by those fiery eyes—that same look which demanded his attention. There was a fire burning just beyond the surface of her brown irises, as bright and dazzling as the afternoon sun, when her face twisted in irritation. He was pleasantly surprised to see that. But in just a blink of an eye, the look was gone, replaced instead by embarrassment as she averted her gaze away.

Bakugou internally groaned. Dumbass wears her fucking heart on her sleeve. How. Wonderful.

“You’re right, I'm not pretty,” she eventually whispered, quite dejectedly if he must note.

“Listen, it’s because I am not looking for someone pretty—if I were, you wouldn’t be my first choice. And goddamn, are you blind or something? You are pretty.” At that, she jolted in surprise and stared at him, dumbfounded at the sudden compliment. Fuck, even he was shocked at himself. “Not beautiful, just, pretty, urgh, fuck off,” he immediately amended which earned him a giggle.

“Really?” she cheekily replied, and he ignored her in favor of maintaining his cool.

“Here’s the thing, the fact that you’re here means that you thought you’ve got what it fucking takes to succeed in this line of work.” She nodded, opening her mouth, perhaps intending to contradict him but he wasn’t quite finished chiding her. “And goddamn, you do. Don’t waste my time and my fucking trust, which I don’t freely give to just some random extra, if you’re just gonna spout some nonsensical bullshit about your appearance or whatever fucking absurd things you’ve got going inside that head. I’ll say this only once: this industry is not for the bitch ass whiny pissbabies, and if you think you are one of those, then fuck off and don’t return.”

Fucking hell! So much for cool.

He took a deep breath, releasing the tension in his shoulders, before he turned to look at the round-faced newbie whose face’s—wait, what the fuck, are his eyes deceiving him or does she really have the guts to outright laugh at his face?

“What’s so funny, huh?”

Uraraka spluttered, covering her mouth to stifle her giggles but it was for moot. He watched dumbly as she tried to stop her laughter, eyes crinkled with tears flowing down to her rosy cheeks. Frozen still, immobilized by the ringing sound of her carefree laughter in his ears, Bakugou had the sudden urge to reach for his camera and immortalize the breathtaking moment.

“You, Mr. Bakugou, sir! Thank you for your words, as harsh as they may seem, I mean—that was your attempt at bolstering my confidence, right?”

“Fucking—call me Bakugou. Don’t add any ‘sir,’ makes me feel goddamn old.”

“Well, your scowl certainly makes you look like a grump,” she offhandedly commented.

“What?!” he barked. This chick was really testing the limitations of his short fuse, huh?

She immediately jerked upright at the tone of his voice. “Nothing, si—I mean, Bakugou! E-he.”

He exhaled through his nose. “What-the-fuck ever, I’m out of here. Tell that red-headed idiot,” he pointed at Kirishima who’s running to catch up to them, “your contact details. Or don’t, see if I care.”

“Don’t worry, Bakugou,” she called out behind him, “I won’t give in! I'll have you know I'm tough!”

He didn’t doubt her one bit.

#boku no hero academia #bnha #mha #katsuki bakugou #ochako uraraka #bakugou x uraraka #kacchako #bakuraka #kacchako fluff #bakugou imagines #bakugou scenarios

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thepriceofbeingaroseisloneliness · 5 years

Text

The Freedom of Expression #2 6th March (Notes/Translation)

“The radio program with the concept of “ask for freedom of expression in the world” is back in YouTube! We will reveal the hot topics and the news related to the concept of Freedom of Expression.

Appearance:

Kaoru (DIR EN GREY direngrey.co.jp/)

Joe Yokomizo (Writer / DJ)

Tasai Reporter (Tokyo Sports)

God ?

You can watch this program here The Freedom of Expression #1 translation/notes here

Notes before reading: This is the second episode of The Freedom of expression in its new format as a YouTube weekly program. You can find the translation/notes for the first one in my Tumblr clicking in the tag. Today’s main topic is Carlos Ghosn’s case so I highly recommend you to read a bit about it even if I’m going to provide some context in case you know nothing at all about it. Then, the discussion will lead to the Japanese Justice System.

Be aware that at some parts, their talk is really random and there are edited cuts that sometimes lead to a sudden change of topic. Please don’t forget to subscribe to their channel and watch their actual video to support the program.

Feel free to correct me if you spot any mistake or any confusing as they are talking so casually and relaxed that it’s hard to get some parts. Thanks to those who help me with some lines of this translation :)

---

(Intro The Freedom of Expression)

Kaoru: Hello, it’s Kaoru from Dir en grey... it’s the second time…

Joe: Yes

Kaoru: Joe-san....

Joe: Yes

Kaoru: Tasai-san......

Tasai: Yes

*Kaoru laughs*

Joe: Why are you laughing?

Kaoru: Nonono…. nothing in particular… the introduction…. I just introduce you two but…the third person…no, the 4th one… I was thinking while saying your names if I should or not introduce him too.

Joe: I see I see.... Kaoru: I’m going to leave it like this…

Joe: That’s it.

God: No, don’t leave it like that!

Joe: As expected, if you ignore him, he will come out! (laughs)

Kaoru: But the first time he was fairly left alone too!

Joe: For sure!

God: No, I was silent!

Everyone: I see, I see *nods*

God: Yes, I was waiting until the end to see if I would come or not for sure….it turned out just as I wanted*….(God uses “思うつぼ”, which can also be translated as “play into someone’s hands)

Everyone laughs.

Joe: As you wanted (laughs) God’s nature/character is bad (laughs) God said “as I wanted” right?

God: Because it is said that God’s nature/character is bad right? As expected, …

Joe: Surprisingly, God is not very forgiving/tolerant…

---

“A radio program in which Kaoru (Dir en grey) was the main host aired from 2015 to 2016 at InterFM.” (Top left on screen)

Kaoru: Based on a radio program with the concept of freedom of expression now we are doing it in YouTube...last time, we did it for the first time… how do you think that it was? For the people who watched it…

Joe: I wonder how it was…

Tasai: True…. I’m curious about the response…

Joe: Yes, we are curious about the response, right? I want them to spread it through SNS…

Kaoru: I agree

Joe: I certainly hope that you all spread it!

Kaoru: Well, first topic of today....Tasai-san...

Tasai: Well, it’s from Tokyo Sports newspaper....

Joe: I feel like when it is news from Tokyo Sports is somehow about a Kappa or a UFO....

Tasai: That’s true but today’s is not about a Kappa...

Joe: Is it something different?

Tasai: It’s about Ghosn....

Joe: Is it about Ghosh being a Kappa?

“The defendant Ghosn escapes to Lebanon” (on top of the screen)

*Carlos Ghosn is a former Nissan boss arrested in November 2018 when he arrived to Japan. Ghosn has served as the CEO of Michelin North America, chairman and CEO of Renault, chairman of AvtoVAZ, chairman and CEO of Nissan, and chairman of Mitsubishi Motors. Ghosn was also chairman and CEO of the Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi Alliance. He was initially accused of under-reporting his salary from 2010 and 2015. Nissan ceased him as president two days later of his arrest. Six days later of his arrest, he was also ceased by Mitsubishi Motors. Ghosn claims to be a victim of “victim of a complot” against him orchestrated by Nissan.

The thing is, during the 13 months from his arrest to escaping to Lebanon, Ghosn was going in and out from jail until the point that in April 2019, he had spent 108 days in jail. Japanese justice system allows to arrest someone and be in jail for 10-20 days each time charges are presented before having the option of bailing. In Ghosn’s case, each time he was released, new charges were presented that allowed to arrest him again. He paid several bails until the end of April where he was confined to strict house arrest during four months with no contact with his wife. On December 2019, it was reported that Ghosn had escaped from Japan to Lebanon. *

Tasai: No, no, no (laughs) it’s not that, it’s not that....it was a big news last year’s summer... the defendant Ghosn escaped to Lebanon....what do you think about it?

Joe: Me? I think that Japanese Justice System is harsh. I think as he is alone, it’s possible. Of course the choices you make can be illegal...but probably....well, he make the money go out too as well (laughs)

“Do the deterioration of the relations between Iran and USA disadvantages Ghosn?” (top screen)

*Now they start discussion about the relationship of Iran and The United States. Joe exclaims “wow how serious this is (the topic)”. Tasai recalls the killing of Qasem Soleimani, a major general from the Iranian forces in a bombing. He was considered to be the second most powerful person in the country. He adds that Iran’s act of retaliation could have lead to the Third World War. “Third World War outbreak?” appears on top of the screen. Tasai says the relationship between countries is tense. It seems that Soleimani was related to some armed Lebanon groups such as Hellbollah, which built a giant statue of the deceased general in a town closet o the Israel border. “Lebanon has the potential to become a battlefield” says Tasai and the line appears in the screen too. Going back to Ghosn talk, as he is now in Lebanon, Tasai comments he can’t go out of the country or he could be arrested (Japan doesn’t have an extradition agreement with Lebanon.*

Tasai: In this unexpected situation, Ghosn would be in a critical situation too. This talk was about that.

Joe: Tokyo sports went straight to it!

Tasai: It looks like a film plot right?

Kaoru: That’s true.

Tasai: Then the hiding in the instrument thing…

Joe: For sure!

Kaoru: A band that came right?

Joe: There was a party right?

*Carlos Ghosh allegedly escaped from Japan in a musical instrument case. A Gregorian music band played at his home where he was confined. It seems that when the performance ended, he hid himself in one of the larger instruments case, being take to the airport inside it and being boarded to a private jet which take him to Lebanon”

Kaoru: Going inside an instrument’s case and hiding….it’s really fascinating right?

They all laugh.

Tasai: It was inside a big instrument’s case. If you had such a case with nothing inside…. please be careful.

Joe: Nobody flees abroad….

Kaoru: It’s amusing right?... it really looks like a film.

Tasai: Moreover, a film adaption is going to be out…

Joe: Kaoru, are you especially worried after watching the news about Ghosn?

Kaoru: Well, as it is simple…to do this plan at this scale…it’s too amazing. How much could it cost?

Joe: You surely are spending a substantial amount of money….somewhat it is said that his fortune seems to have decreased but even with this, you could say it’s dauntless.

Tasai: On bail…..he paid 15 billion yens* as bail…that is being confiscated too but Ghosn doesn’t care a bit about it.

*Around 128 million EUR/140 million USD

Joe: He doesn’t right?

Kaoru: When he came out, he disguised himself right? That part is also interesting…

Tasai: It seems he did as a janitor….

(cut)

Joe: Japanese Justice system is said to be a “Hostage justice” (practice of keeping a suspect in police custody in an attempt to force a confession)

He keeps on commenting how in Japan, prosecutors have the exclusive right to indict. They also have the right to drop charges. Japanese prosecutors’ power is being highly discussed nowadays as court follows the prosecutor’s decisions. Joe says that in Japan’s conviction rate is 99.9%. Joe keeps on explaining the prosecutor’s role and how the “hostage justice” is a result of the power of them. Also mentions that lawyers restricted role in order to help the defendant. Japanese trials tend to regard confession as a strong evidence. Defendants are pressured to confess and are offered lesser sentences if they confess. So, escaping comes as a choice if the options are the ones previously given.

Kaoru: It would be better to stay quietly in Japan, right? (about Ghosn)

Joe: That is. Because the place he fled to, it’s going to become a front in battle…. maybe it would have been safer to stay in Japan.

Tasai: Which option would you choose? Being in place where a war is going to breakout but you are free, or a place where you are safe but they are going to take you to court.

Kaoru: It’s most likely to be a movie….

Joe: It’s going to be a movie right...

Joe talks about who would play the role of Ghosn in case that it becomes a movie or even a drama.

(cut)

Joe: Japan takes excessive measures in comparison with the rest of the world. If something happens in Japan, measures against it are taken. It becomes “too much”.

He talks about how when he discusses it with foreign people the impressions and thoughts about topics are different. He talks about France. He says that for example, there is an accident and someone dies. If this happens in Japan, they will take measures as doing a report put a traffic light and that’s not necessarily bad. If that happens overseas, that someone dies in an accident, the first thing that happens is that people is going to be more careful at that place and pay more attention, in Japan, the action relies in the measures taken. Kaoru says that if you put the blame on things or people, we lost our sense of being careful. Joe says something like if it is always blamed on that, the same things will keep happening again and again.

(Cut)

God: Well…. I wonder if being Ghosn’s ally would be bad…

Tasai: Would it be good?

Kaoru: That’s comes to you.

Tasai: It’s an opinion.

God: If I am Ghosn’s ally, he would give me money, like the so-called tips…

Everyone laughs.

Tasai: That’s an amazing way of view it…

Joe: After all, God works for money right?

God: No, but If I were rich, it would be like “everyone, don’t scape” kind of…

God: For example, Tasai san, if they say, “can’t you write a good article for me?” and they offer you some money for it…

Tasai: I’m shaking (grinning)

God: Something like “Ghosn is right!” that kind of article…depends of the mood….even, “the news from the media are a joke”, if they tell you “How about giving you a billion yen for writing that”, I think that maybe it’s better that you quit your job....

Joe: For sure…

Tasai: 1 billion yen…. that’s so cool…

*1 billion yen is approx. 8,5 million euros or 9 million USD:

God: That’s what you think …. but God doesn’t think that way, because for God is better a small amount of money…

Joe: How much would you ask for helping him to escape, God?

God: Maybe 10.000 yen…. *

*Around 80 euros/90 dollars

Tasai: Cheap!

Joe: That’s so cheap! (Laughs)

God: Because I have to know what can be done right?

Tasai: Isn’t God omniscience and omnipotence?

God: I can’t do anything.

Joe: A god that can’t do anything is really amazing right?

God: Just for praying…

Joe: Ah, I see…. Just pray…

Kaoru: Isn’t he just a regular old man? (Laughs)

Joe: I thought about saying something deep…. but…. just a regular old man (laughs)

God: God knows one deep thing about this talk…. About Ghosn…in an interview....suddenly in an interview, the minister of Justice said during it “Ghosh must prove his innocence” *.

*This goes against the Presumption of Innocence principle (Innocent until proven guilty), a human right.

Joe: That’s wrong…

God: Once he said so, the international media criticized the statemen and say “Japan is awful” …

Joe: Moreover, because that person was originally a lawyer…I don’t know if people watching this know about this, but the defendant doesn’t have to prove anything…it’s the prosecutor who has to prove that you are guilty…so there is no need to prove that they are innocent..

(cut)

Joe: Because the Minister of Justice said that Ghosn must prove that he is innocent, I think that this caused a scornful laughter around the world…

God: About what the Minister of Justice said?

Joe: Someone of that level, such as Minister of Justice saying that…. I think that for Global ideal idea of Justice, this country doesn’t pass for it. It’s a strange talk but…the press around the world was laughing (at those words)

Joe makes a question for God, but he seems to be gone.

Joe: Eh? God has disappeared.

God: I was listening attentively (laughs) I think that I listened to it but, having to escape from Japan is not a good thing…

Joe: Is that so?

Tasai: I see

God: Having to escape is really a bad thing….it seems that the consumption tax is going up…

They comment about having seen this new in the internet (?). Kaoru makes a comment about it.

God: God is packed with money….No, I really am running short of money…

Joe: Are you really a poor God?

They all burst into laugh.

God: Don’t say that!

Kaoru: At this point…. this second episode…

Tasai:….has finished.

Kaoru: Until the next time….

Everyone: Thanks for watching….

God: Thank you!

#dir en grey #kaoru #the freedom of expression #translation #thefreedomofexpression #Joe Yokomizo #Tasai

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itsomgitsgreenblogging · 4 years

Text

Syllabus Day: A Critical Role Fanfic

For day 5 of @essek-week I just couldn’t resist a little Professor!AU, just the aesthetics of it all are just totally outstanding. Plus I am such a sucker for the “students ship it” trope, I just had to find a way to put it in.

Read the collection on AO3

Enjoy!

Caleb’s first day as an official professor at Rosohna University had marked down in his memory as hectic, according to his personal journal. He had just managed to get into the country by the skin of his teeth the day before the term was set to start, his lecture notes had been stained by tea by a very apologetic undergrad, and to top it all off there had been technical difficulties with the microphone as he had given the lecture. He also wasn’t looking forward to unpacking both this office and his new apartment as soon as he got home.

But it wasn’t to say that all of the things that had happened that day were bad. All of the kids he had taught had loved Frumpkin (who was very lovable if you asked Caleb), and were all excited to put Find Familiar in their brand new spellbooks. Caleb found that Find Familiar always made for a great icebreaker lesson, and good first week as opposed to spending a whole lecture on the syllabus. Thankfully he had been told by a few of the undergrads that they were looking forward to the course and to summoning their own familiars next class. Caleb has also had actual thoughtful questions on the material, so though he felt beaten Caleb was not defeated. Sometimes teaching was just a measure in flexibility which was something he was working on.

When he got back to his office, he was content to move in his important things and then go home to a new apartment to decompress. He had decided that unpacking his apartment could wait until he stopped feeling like his brain was going to steam right out of his ears. It was also a lot of work to unwrap each individually packaged porcelain cat sculpture and place them just right on the bookshelf. He was just about finished with that and ready to call it quits when a knock startled him out of his focus.

"You are Dr. Widogast then?"

The voice was calm, authoritative. Caleb looked up to see the most handsome man he had ever laid eyes on in his whole life. He was drow, as were many of the professors who guest lectured at Zadash University from Roshanna College. His hair was white, his skin an attractive dark-lilac, his eyes a glinting silver. He was lithe and shorter than Caleb, and wearing a meticulously pressed slate grey wool-and-cashmere trench coat with shiny buttons that had to cost thousands of dollars. And, by the gods, was that collar velvet? He was really wearing an ascot too, and shiny shoes and black leather gloves. Caleb had never felt so grungy in his whole life, in his cat fur covered thrift shop sweater, crinkled khakis and bargain-bin boots. Caleb had the insane urge to cringe and apologize for breathing in the same air as him.

"I am," Caleb said, holding out his hand in spite of himself. "I'm Caleb Widogast, and you are…?"

"Dr. Essek Theylss, I run the fall semester Advanced Dunamantic Theory seminar and the Introduction to Graviturgy," he introduced, taking his hand lightly. Caleb couldn't help but gape. Essek Theylss, he knew the name Essek Theylss. Anyone in academia with even the slightest interest in dunamancy knew who Essek Theylss was, and yet somehow this man was talking to him.

"Yes of course," Caleb said, his brain and excitement running ahead of his decorum. "I read your essay on influencing gravity with magic. You created a levitation spell that is rooted in dunamancy that can last for hours! It was an incredible piece of work."

"I see my reputation has preceded me," Dr. Theylss said, mouth curling up in a half-smile. "And here I was thinking I was alone in admiration."

"What?" Caleb asked dumbly, as Essek ran a gloved finger over the desk, he inspected his finger before continuing to gaze upon his surroundings with a thoughtful look. For a moment it looked like Essek was considering the environment before he returned to look at Caleb with an intense expression.

"Your work on spell modification is truly something. I was extremely pleased to hear that you were joining the faculty especially considering your work with Bigby's Hand. What's the name of the spell you developed?" Essek asked, turning sharply and so quickly that Caleb barely processed that he did.

"Oh...Cat's Ire."

"Yes, it's very clever, I'm sure a good many students will benefit from your instruction,” Essek said, and though it was a commonplace nicety somehow it felt genuine in a way that touched Caleb.

"Well, thank you Dr. Theylss--"

"Just Essek will do," he corrected, straightening his already immaculate collar.

"Then you must call me Caleb," Caleb managed beyond his tongue, which felt nearly swollen in his dry mouth.

"Then I shall,” Essek said. He smiled, and he could see just the barest flash of elongated canines. “Caleb it is then. I cannot tell you how truly excited I am to be teaching with you this year. I look forward to it, truly, from the bottom of my heart. I’m sure I will learn a good many things from you.”

“Me as well,” Caleb croaked.

With another airy smile, Dr. Essek Theylss left Caleb speechless in his own office. Behind him the air was scented with the slightest bit of peppermint, like he had dabbed on some expensive cologne before he walked in the room. Caleb sagged against the wall, attempting to take deep breaths and calm the pounding of his heart. He hadn’t felt so affected by anyone since...well, in a very long time. Longer than he would probably like to admit. Attractive people like that lived their own strange and storied lives that people like Caleb simply couldn’t understand. Though...he wanted to. Mentally he was already calculating how long it would be until it stopped being weird to visit in one of Dr. Theyl--Essek’s lectures. He was sure that Essek certainly had a lot to teach him.

“Meow?” Frumpkin asked from the top of the bookshelf, blinking down at him with wide yellow eyes. His ears were alert, like he had just caught Caleb with his hand in a treat jar. Greedy thing, Caleb broadcasted across their mutual bond. Caleb got the distinct feeling of playtime, bored, now sent back to him.

“Ja, I know. What a day,” Caleb agreed before watching his familiar jump from the bookshelf onto his desk, scattering papers and knocking over his books and sending a paperweight tumbling to the flood. “Ach! Frumpkin! It’s not play time now! I’ll play with you when we get home!”

A new year, a new adventure, and more things to learn. Caleb just wasn’t sure he was ready for it.

___________________

“What do you think of Dr. Widogast, Luc?”

“What do you mean, what do I think? I mean, like, he’s a good teacher. He’s my mom’s friend so I knew him before but like, when we all didn’t do well on the quiz he threw it out and retaught us..that was pretty nice.”

“No, no, no! I mean about him and Dr. Theylss?”

“Oh! That. Caliana was talking to me about the Dunamancy Major kids’ theories on that whole thing. I think it’s just bullshit.”

“Go fuck yourself!”

“No, go fuck yourself, Kiri. And hey! Stop messing with Nugget and actually throw the ball please. Twiggy can you tell Trixie not to try to break nuts on Nugget’s head.”

“Trixie don’t do that, be nice to Nugget! But seriously, Luc, you don’t think anything is going on between them?”

“I didn’t say that, I just think that Uncle Caleb is too awkward to ever make the first move. Plus, Dr. Theylss is so intimidating. I heard he glared at a kid so hard once that they passed out in the lecture hall.”

“Well I think it’s happening, and you wanna know why I think it’s happening?”

“Why?”

“I saw them together the other day, outside of campus!”

“No you did not, you are just bullshitting me right now.”

“I am not! I totally did. I was having a girls night out with Reani and Keg and Caliana and Kiri and we went to the restaurant with the awesome fried calamari-you know the place right?”

“I know the place. Also, hey, why did you guys all go out and not invite me? I’m insulted.”

“That was the night you went on that date with the cute half-orc. How did that work out by the way?”

“Oh, got you. No luck unfortunately, all they wanted to do was talk about was how the War of 836 PD should be called the War of Xhorhassian Aggression and how good it was for the economy. Barf. I hate Merchant Majors. But anyways back to what you were saying…?”

“They were in a booth talking, they had wine, and they were sitting real close together. Right, Kiri?”

“Yes, I am very sweet.”

“Dr. Widogast and Dr. Theylss were totally playing footsies under the table, it was definitely happening. They are totally in love and are dating, I am absolutely sure of it!”

“Well, who would’ve thunk it. Uncle Caleb’s got game, maybe he could teach me a thing or two.”

“You’ll shoot your eye out!”

“Seriously, Kiri, wanna fight?”

#critical role #critical role fanfic #shadowgast #caleb widogast #essek theylss #professors au

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atalana · 5 years

Text

Alright, I’ve just spent 17 hours absorbing the epilogue, and in true Dirk Strider fashion, I have Thoughts.

I had plenty of responses I’ve been considering to this, about two hours ago I was honestly thinking of just dropping in with a fuckin one liner like “So Dirk Three wrote the epilogue” (Dirk Three kinda did write the epilogue, and I’ll explain that too), but we’re on the fucking essay train now and no one’s getting off it any time soon so it’s time to dive into this fucker and get it all off my chest.

Under the cut you will find essays on Dirk, cherubs, ultimate selves, both major Dirk fics (Detective Pony and Theatre of Coolty), a bunch of story bullshit, and my severe love for all Homestuck characters

(But very little criticism of the epilogue, I am no longer about that life)

So the prologue is important here. It’s the main bit of accurate information we have, not tainted by an unreliable narrator. (Well, it is, but less so). The prologue tells us that, with the characters outside of canon, they are becoming their ultimate selves, particularly the characters most susceptible to such knowledge, like seers, or heart players.

Now Homestuck wrestles a lot with the idea of the ultimate self. It is, as defined by the text, the true thing a person is, an amalgamation of every possible version of themselves. It is not a viable human being, because that’s not how human beings work. It basically amounts to Hussie’s character rules, like, there are some ways that these characters will be always, some things they’re prone to, things they like, decisions they’re likely to make, but who the person is within that is subject to extreme change depending on circumstance. The four people who embody this narrative most clearly are Vriska, Terezi, Davepeta, and Dirk.

I’m still not 100% sure on why the ultimate selves outside of canon thing is, but my best guess would be this - within the story, there’s a definite timeline, right? Like, these are the things that are written down, this is what you can see, the word of god (loaded phrase, thanks Dirk), the things that you look at when trying to apply death of the author (even more loaded phrase, thanks Hussie, also thanks Calliope). There’s more than one timeline, sure, but that’s the point, everyone is who they are within that timeline, affected by what happened to make them who they became. Outside of canon is, well, outside of the story. They’re not affected by the story here, they’re just characters. This is a fanfiction site. And what does fanfic do best? It takes the characters, takes who they are, pulls them out of the story, and shoves them in wherever it likes, to become whoever it is they become. And thus who the character is exactly becomes murky and confusing if you’re trying to jam them all into one thing, and it all gives Rose Lalonde a headache. Ultimate selves.

Davepeta liked their ultimate self, it helped two kids who were otherwise struggling with unsatisfying ultimate selves to become a better whole.

Vriska took the proactive approach, by which I mean bullying her other selves into letting her become the ultimate Vriska, which was ultimately useless and gave her no ultimate self at all

Terezi saw her ultimate self, and is still processing what that means for her (but also Terezi is still in canon, so she’s immune to epilogue bullshit)

And Dirk, god, poor Dirk. Dirk was terrified of it. Because he could see his ultimate self and he knew that’s not the kind of person he wanted to become. (And this is where I start using the Theatre of Coolty numbers because there’s no other way to get through this, if you haven’t read/seen it you 100% should, but as a general note, Dirk One is the main Dirk we know, Dirk Two is Brain Ghost Dirk, Dirk Three is “Trickster Dirk” but actually revealed later to be Hussie, Dirk Four is Hal)

Because here’s the thing. Dirk’s ultimate self is him, but it’s also Hal. It’s also BGD. It’s also Bro. And Dirk One was never as bad as he thought he was, but he surrounded himself with copies of himself, so he knew how bad he could be, and tried everything he could to avoid it. We have actual canon confirmation on multiple occasions that Dirk would so much rather kill himself than become the kind of person capable of hurting his friends. Which only got worse after he met Dave and realised Bro existed, like, that just doubled his resolve to Never Be That Person.

(Hey, fun hypothetical, if you kill yourself to stop yourself becoming a bad person because you know it’s inevitable but you’re too good a person to want to go through with it, is it heroic or just? Because I would like to have a lengthy discussion with the god tier clock!)

God, there’s so much I can write on the subject of Dirk’s ultimate self. Because you can see every version of him inside there, there’s Bro in his possessiveness, Hal in his need to fuck with people for no real reason, BGD in his hyper critical nature (beyond what is normal for all Dirks), Dirk One in his desire to never let anyone hurt him again. (God, the “I’ll never let you break my heart again” line hurt so much, because like… I can feel Dirk One in that line, but it’s delivered by ultimate Dirk, and ultimate Dirk isn’t the kind of person who would have even been heartbroken by Jake’s actions. Dirk One poured his soul into that relationship and Jake responded by ignoring him, and like, this isn’t a dig on Jake, because that did make Dirk very intense and hard to deal with, but as Calliope so beautifully put, the children left alone are those who most despair at being ignored. And every version of Dirk was so very alone.)

When sending initial thoughts to my friend, I wrote “Ultidirk is Dirk One but without the compassion or empathy and with an apparently infinite supply of horse tranquilizers”. Which was mostly a joke, but does get down to the core of the problem. Dirk One and Ultidirk aren’t really that different, when it comes down to it. But there’s one crucial element that makes all the difference. Dirk One’s life philosophy is “This is a me problem, so I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure you don’t have to deal with that problem, at any cost”. Ultidirk’s life philosophy is “This is a me problem, so I’m going to make it everyone else’s problem. And it turns out that without basic human empathy and morality holding him back, Ultidirk will just… fucking declare himself God, and use that alongside his powers of manipulation to just write a new story in which he is the villain. Very little changes in the scale of things.

(The other main difference is that Dirk One is scared to exist, whereas every other Dirk is scared to not exist, that’s the stuff, good callback, etc etc, that line fucking killed me, and also killed whatever remnant of Dirk One was still lurking inside Ultidirk and god I want to hug him)

(I also want to extract him from Ultidirk and bring him on an Ultidirk murdering quest bc he would be 100% down for that without a second’s hesitation but that’s a bit hard to do)

Now you may be wondering why I brought up Theatre of Coolty if I was only gonna refer to Dirk One as Dirk One and not touch on any of the others. Well, it’s true, saying Dirk Two and Dirk Four when I have simple three letter names for both of them is a bit ridiculous. But then we get to Dirk Three.

Now here’s the thing about Theatre of Coolty. Dirk One appears in Homestuck, as alpha Dirk, in Dirk’s usual shirt with the orange hat. Dirk Two appears in Homestuck, as brain ghost Dirk in god tier pyjamas. Dirk Four appears in Homestuck as Hal, and he wears a red hat because he’s Dirk in a different colour scheme, also because the sprite Hussie eventually made for him based on fanon had a red hat, all’s sorted there.

But Dirk Three? Trickster Dirk? Never appeared in Homestuck. They tried, but it was still Dirk One. Dirk is immune to cherubic influence (remember this point too, it’s important), because his concept of self is so present (and also because he’s depressed as fuck, but that doesn’t necessarily exclude you, it’s just the presence of both at once). And who does Dirk Three turn out to be? Well, they said it from the start, Theatre of Coolty is about the presence or absence of god, who definitely will show up at some point. Dirk Three is Hussie in a Dirk costume, Dirk Three is God, Dirk Three is The Author.

Dirk Three is Ultidirk. Congrats, all four Dirks have officially shown up in Homestuck, to whatever extent this counts as Homestuck, an extent which has been thoroughly documented by its own existence bc this is Homestuck (kinda) and you gotta lean into the bullshit or you’ll drown in it.

So yes, this was penned by Dirk Three. Who is also Lord English in two different metaphorical ways now (The trickster element, and also the fact that the epilogues insist on making Jane a second Condesce, which in this analogy puts Dave as himself and Dirk as, you guessed it, Cherub Master of All. Which is additionally insulting as fuck because Dirk grew up in that apocalypse and would never contribute to recreating it, if Jane ever was inclined to, which she isn’t, but you know).

And LE’s major force of opposition? Adult Calliope. (Also, like, Vriska, but symbolically it’s the other cherub.)

Which brings me to the main point of this essay, and that is that all of this? It’s a cherub fic. And we knew this, from the moment we were offered that choice. Meat or Candy? Well, neither of them are sustainable food sources for humans, not with the meat uncooked like that. They’re not satisfying endings for us either. But it’s all cherubs eat. (Well, that and special stardust, but that was Caliborn’s intermission. This is Calliope’s offering.)

Which again feeds back into the AO3 metaphor because from their introduction, Caliborn and Calliope have been fandom inserts, representing all of us, for better or worse. They read the story, come up with the theories, they write the fanfic.

And Calliope’s trying so hard. But she’s not human. She doesn’t get it, not on a way that connects with the characters, only with the text. Cherubs spend their lifetime alone. Cherubs only have black romance. Cherubs think trickster mode is an acceptable way to solve problems.

And, as Dirk pointed out back when he was still himself, everyone getting married and having a bunch of babies for no reason doesn’t solve shit.

Without a solid timeline, everyone became susceptible to becoming their ultimate selves. Ultidirk is a dick with the powers of actual capital g God, and none of the remorse of Dirk One, so he took control of the narrative. And so Calliope, the fanfic author, the one with the power to write a new story (with the exception of Dirk, as previously mentioned, he’s immune to cherub bullshit, and John and Terezi, who are still in canon), tried to help everyone realise their full potential.

But she made them selfish. She made them solitary. She doesn’t understand how humans work, so they became parodies of themselves. In meat, there’s a plot, but it’s insubstantial, because no one is truly themselves, facing a Dirk who lost himself years ago. In candy, it’s fluff with, again, no substance. It’s trickster mode calmed down. Everyone gets married and has babies, but it makes no sense, and everyone’s miserable.

And John Dirk and Terezi are the only ones who see it, because they’re the ones who haven’t been given to Calliope. But what’s the point, when they’ve lost their power over the story? What’s the point of gaining power if you’re not yourself anymore? (And one way or another, they all die in the end.)

The rest of them… Well, they do the things the narrative implied they would do, but usually in the worst possible way.

(Aradia and Sollux have been canon neutral since 2011 and they like it that way)

And now we go back to Detective Pony, like everyone and their mother have analysed already. Because yeah, these two things have so much in common, but also, some really crucial differences.

Both are stories in which Dirk takes control of the narrative, in which he is fought for control by another author figure, in which he considers his own role in the story, what he’s created, who’s got the authority (I still love that pun so much), and eventually forces the characters to come to the conclusion that he needs to be defeated, because at the end of the day Dirk is still hopelessly suicidal and like most problems the kids have, this is never addressed outside of ironic bullshit. (Not to him anyway, it’s kinda addressed in candy but I think if you’re talking about someone’s suicidal tendencies at their funeral it’s too fucking late).

But Detective Pony is ultimately a heavily veiled love letter to his friends. Detective Pony is Dirk exploring what he fears becoming, it’s him learning to let go, and eventually he relinquishes control of the book to the characters in it (as does Jeanne Betancourt).

Meat is Dirk’s notice of ownership over his friends. It’s him glorifying having become that thing he used to fear, it’s holding even tighter to everything he fears losing, and ultimately neither he nor Calliope trust the characters enough to pull back. They’re both obsessed with it, in both iterations, this battle between the two of them, even though it was never supposed to be about either of them.

But Detective Pony has an original story, with a timeline. It even has a second solid story for Dirk to come from, since Homestuck itself explicitly states when and why Dirk made it. When Detective Pony sits down to analyse which version of the text is better, it has that substance to fall back on. Jeanne Betancourt’s version is boring but kind. Dirk’s is interesting but cruel. And because the characters are all solid people, not their hazy ultimate selves, they have agency too, and can decide their own fate.

When Dirk analyses whose version is better in the epilogue, his whole reasoning is that neither is good. The characters rarely have any agency. Even the few moments, between Roxy’s void powers and Dave’s ability to stand up to Bro (which, by the way, so proud of him, how many people do you know who, in a situation where their childhood guardian and abuser literally became god and tried to thought influence them into doing something they kinda wanted to do already, would have the mental resilience to say “no, this isn’t me, stop that” and stand by that? Dave is the strongest goddamn character in this whole comic, holy shit), are only hints of who they were as real characters in the story. Dirk takes control, in one version, because he’s lost himself to Ultidirk, who’s overly concerned with how stories are supposed to be written, and tries to wrestle Homestuck into a shape he finds interesting. In the other, Dirk kills himself before he can hurt anyone. (And before anyone gets on my case about Dirk’s reasoning being he’s lost his purpose, his purpose was always protecting his friends.)

But Calliope’s not helping them either, just piling them full of romance and fluff and selfish parodies of themselves and thinking that’ll work out. Giving the villains “redemption” without ever actually letting them redeem themselves. Explaining all about their tragic backstories without doing anything with it. To bring back a very old quote, it’s like when Mario gets the star. He wins, but he’s denying himself many powerful moments of catharsis.

Just with less happiness, more death, and a bunch of weirdly political teen drama. And then when Calliope gets distracted by Ultidirk and gives up, everything unravels completely, but it also lets them live a life which does let some of the characters be happy, in a weird roundabout way. It’s dysfunctional as fuck, but these characters care so much for each other, not even being in a weird self melting fanon bubble could erase that completely. (And then things get buck fucking wild because this is still Homestuck we’re talking about)

(Though seriously, I could have done without the Jane is a fascist thing, she deserves better than that. Like what was the point of decrockertiering her if she was just gonna go right back to that? Also I love Dave but he barely has a leg to stand on in most of those political arguments anyway given how he completely destroyed LoHaC’s economy and once accused Karkat of communism for captchaloguing a chair. And while I’m complaining, Jake English is still not being allowed to consent to fucking anything.)

I’m not sure why this was written. I’m not sure why a lot of things in Homestuck were written, honestly. It’s certainly not a satisfying ending, but I don’t think it was supposed to be. It’s not disappointing either, and it’s definitely interesting, with all of Homestuck’s trademark humor.

When I first wrote this halfway through candy, I’d written the following as an ending:

“But if we’re going to triple kill the author, I think this is just ultimately validating everyone’s own interpretation of the ending. You can’t write everyone’s fanfic at once. You can’t be a cherub, or a god, we don’t write fic about people’s ultimate selves. What you can do is provide a timeline for them to exist in, and a better one, where they have a chance to be the people they have the potential to be. And just to be happy, in a way that feels real.”

But honestly, now? I think the point was just to fuck with us, and also do a fuckton of exposition about canon and the nature of reality

So fuck it, let’s end on a relevant Dirk quote

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vhenadahls · 5 years

Note

Share excerpt (or two, or three!) of writing you're really proud of?

Oh, wow, thank you for this question and giving me a chance to read back through some of my old fic - I knew that I had, at some point, written Clara/TARDIS fic, but reading it again was an A+ experience.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, all the excerpts I found that I want to share are Dragon Age :P

found the fire in the rain, Nainsí and Briala friendship.

Briala still isn’t used to how up-front these Fereldans are. They don’t couch their true meaning in layers of intrigue and a few dollops of lies, and yet she finds them more difficult to interpret than she expected. But the question is simple enough, and she inclines her head towards the elven Fereldan chancellor, choosing to be honest herself despite her better judgement. “Briala. The empress’s handmaid.”

Well, honest to a point. She sheathes her daggers and stands up straight, holding out her hands away from her body in a gesture of peace. The Fereldan chancellor eyes her suspiciously for long moments before straightening as well, but does not let go of her own daggers. They don’t catch the light as Briala’s own do - made of steel, she thinks, or possibly veridium - but they are obviously well cared for, and held comfortably in hands that know how to use them. Not a gift from the queen, Briala decides, but a different kind of important.

“Nainsí,” the chancellor says, and Briala did not need the introduction but nods anyways. “And do all handmaids of the Empress carry daggers of silverite?”

“Good eye,” Briala says, and does not elaborate. “How are you enjoying Val Royeaux?”

Nainsí’s grip on her daggers does not slacken, Briala notes, even as her face draws in surprise and confusion. A Grey Warden’s mastery of her weapons, but oh so Fereldan even so. She takes a breath, weighing her options: a diplomat at heart, too.

NAINSÍ. MY GIRL. I really love how I wrote Briala here, and Nainsí comes across so well even though she’s not the point of this excerpt, and holy crap I’m proud of the metaphor of the daggers. And Briala’s caginess especially, honest and not, and Nainsí being 100% honest even when she’s not trying to be.

the map that leads me home to you, Merrill/Esther, with a side of Esther and Varric friendship.

A hand brushes her elbow, and she jumps before realizing who it is. “Varric! I know you probably won’t have, but have you seen the…” She looks up at him, surprised that he’s also quiet, but he just shakes his head and points at the doorway. Following his gaze, she finds there’s someone standing there, silhouetted against the setting sun - a human woman, in raggedy traveling clothes with a staff strapped to her back, black hair tied away from her face in a messy ponytail.

Esther.

“Oh,” Merrill manages to gasp out, and then she’s running, trying not to trip on anything as everyone jumps out of her way. She slams into Esther with such force that the taller woman staggers backwards, her arms wrapping around Merrill to hold them both upright and as a promise.

“I’ve missed you,” she says, and her voice is so sweet in Merrill’s ears that tears well in her eyes. It’s going to take too long to get her voice under control, so instead of trying to talk she just wraps her arms tightly around her girlfriend and squeezes. They stand that way, tied up in each other, for so long that Merrill isn’t sure it’s been minutes or hours.

It is, of course, Varric’s voice that breaks the moment. “Really, Shorebird, no hug for me?” He sidles up next to them, completing their pretty picture - dwarf, elf, and absurdly tall human - and Esther’s musical laugh rings out as she disentangles one arm from Merrill and clasps hands with Varric.

“Good to see you too, Varric,” she says, and he nods in agreement, turning his face away so quickly that Merrill thinks he must be trying to hide his own tears.

This one makes me feel like I’m going to cry every time, because oh my god they’re back together, and I just. Love it.

Two more under the cut, because I couldn’t resist!

in the stillness of remembering, Fiona character study

A few years later, as Fiona studies for her enchanter exams and begins to teach the apprentices, a pair of Grey Wardens appear in the Great Hall. Everyone - from the senior enchanters and the templars down to the newest apprentice - crowds into the balconies to watch the Knight-Commander and First Enchanter’s meeting with these figures of legend. When their purpose comes out, and everyone hears that they are looking to recruit mages into their ranks, such a buzz starts that the templars herd everyone back to their lessons and research.

Fiona bides her time, waiting until the perfect moment - and then one of her apprentices returns from her Harrowing with a sunburst tattoo blending into her dark skin. Unable to wait any longer, Fiona creeps through the darkened hallways to the guest quarters and strides into the Wardens’ room, holding herself as tall as her tiny frame will allow. They seem confused at first, but she begs to be allowed to join them with rage in her heart, fire in her bones, and tears in her eyes.

They say yes.

I’m really proud of this fic as a whole. Most of my fic is heavy on dialogue, and there’s actually zero dialogue in this fic! And there’s some intense repeating imagery, and other sorts of threads, and it’s an important one to me.

and we’re tried and true, Esther and Varric friendship.

With another screech, the man tries to aim a punch at Varric, but his own inebriation and Varric’s lack of height mean he misses by a mile. Varric ducks even so, sliding out from the bench.

Esther does, too. “Hey!” she shouts. The angry man turns toward her and raises his fist again, but she sidesteps it and drives a mana-enhanced punch into his gut. He slumps over, heaving, and she spins to face his friends trying to disentangle themselves from the bench.

“So, my good men, you’ll find that I can more than hold my own in a fight. And if you don’t want to end up like your friend over here,” she points her foot backward at the man still gasping for breath, “you’re going to let me just walk on out of here with my winnings and we’ll forget all about this. How’s that sound?”

One of the man’s friends looks like he’s considering the offer, but the other winds up for another punch. Esther lets him get it in - he’s so drunk it feels more like a mild shove - and follows with another punch of her own, softer than the last but in the shoulder.

A number of Fereldans from the next table over stand up as the reluctant one advances on her, and she tips an imaginary hat to them in thanks before he grabs at her arm. He’s stronger than his friends, and it’s more of a fight for a few moments. One of the incoming Fereldans throws a wild punch that makes him loosen his grip and she wriggles away from him, heading for the door with Varric on her heels.

There’s a lot of Esther’s personality here, which is why I’m really proud of it. Mana-enhanced punches? Egging people on when they’re literally about to punch her? Tipping imaginary hats? CHECK.

THANK YOU AGAIN, this was so very fun to do, going back through my old fic with an excited eye rather than a critical one.

#THANK YOU THANK YOU #dragon age #nainsí tabris: all i've got is two hands #briala #esther hawke: ringing joyful and triumphant #fiona #varric tethras #swaps55

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whoopsimwritingagain · 5 years

Note

Can I request a clace fanfic? Maybe when they are married or engaged idk quite a bit into their relationship. Maybe jace gets jealous of clary joking with another boy and you can decide what happens. 💙

A/N: I’m sorry if this is a weird mix of TV/ book universe I’m just kind of going for it and I’ve been re-reading and watching the TV show so my wires are a bit crossed. Also, this is an AU where Simon remembers everything and can be with Izzie and apparently vampires can have children now! There are no rules. Also oops you’re getting a long-ass proposal flashback as well (two for the price of one!) because as stated before, there are no rules. I wrote this in 4.5 hours after midnight in my bed so hopefully, it still has a plotline in the morning. I really hope you like it! Give me notes or criticisms or requests!!!

Category: Fluff with angst peppered in

Warnings: Suggestive humor, angst, rare cursing, and not really adultery but jealousy I suppose???

Word Count: 3706

- 3 years after City of Heavenly Fire -

*Clary’s POV*

The early March snow falls lightly from a grey New York sky. Jace, Isabelle, Simon, and I sit in our regular booth at Taki’s on a double date. Well… it was less of a date and more of a meeting. After all, I had been dubbed Isabelle’s amatuer baby shower planner, and she, my wedding planner. Wedding. that word still sends my head spinning. It isn’t that I’m not ready, or that I don’t want this. I mean, after all, I’m living my dream! I had always known I would marry Jace, but something about this is so surreal and I can’t quite put my finger on it.

Still, a wedding! I try to ground myself as Izzy explains what she had in mind for the floral arrangements, but, as can be expected, I find myself daydreaming instead. Jace popped the question the night of Izzy and Simon’s wedding. We were driving home from the reception as they had portaled to Idris for their honeymoon, and while I napped in the passenger seat Jace had driven us out of the city to Luke’s farm in the countryside. I imagine his grip on the wheel was a little tighter than usual as he ran over his speech in his head and the jewelry box burned a hole in his pocket. He let me sleep until just before sunrise when he started to lightly trace the runes that swirled across my arms. The less-than-comfortable car seat, combined with the introduction of sunlight, and the touch of my love had all awoken me. He told me he had a surprise for me and carried me bridal-style a few hundred yards until I tapped him on the shoulder to signal that I could make it the rest of the way to wherever this “surprise” was on my own. He laid out a blanket on the side of a big hill where I used to play tag with Simon while my mother painted. I had brought him out here the night of her wedding - it is one of my favorite places. He laid down and I laid on his chest as the stars dimmed and the sky transitioned from muted blues into various shades of pastels. After several minutes of laying there in silence, I twisted around and kissed him gently, at first, and then deeper. We stayed like this for a while, until I noticed a dampness on his cheeks. He wasn’t crying per se… but he was teary. I wiped some of the moisture away with my thumb. “Jace, what’s wrong?” He bit his lip and gently shook his head regaining his composure “S’nothin.” He pulled my leg over his torso and I straddled him as we continued to kiss. Things got more heated, though he was moving at a slower pace than I was used to, so I pressed my body closer to him and grinned. “Do you have something in your pocket, or are you excited to see me?” I questioned. Little did I know how intensely my cheesy jibe was going to backfire. My then-boyfriend chuckled, almost sadly, under my weight. “Jace… what’s wrong?” he glanced to the wildflowers scattered about the field next to us. “I’m nervous Clary,” he confessed. Now it was my turn to giggle, “Why would you be nervous silly?” I ran my fingers through his hair and gazed in wonder at the morning sky reflected in his eyes which were just a bit watery now and he flashed his classic smirk. “Well, this isn’t how I had planned on this going at all!” He exclaimed as he ran his hands up and down my sides slowly, “I’m not complaining though… it’s just a little less traditional than I had wanted.” I raised one eyebrow, “Since when have you ever wanted to do anything traditionally?” He smiled up at me knowingly and held both of my hands in his, “Well typically I would ask your father first, but that one seemed out of the question so I asked Jocelyn and Luke. And, well, normally instead of you straddling me I would get down on one knee in front of you. But! Here we are, and I did get one thing right.” He dropped my left hand to dig in his pocket and pulled out a dazzling emerald ring set amongst tiny diamonds and my vision went blurry. “You’re a size six and a half right?” he questioned feigning confidence, but I heard his voice waver. “Isn’t there something else you should ask me?” I struggled to say attempting to match his wit but instead meeting his emotional vulnerability. “Clarissa… Clarissa Fairchild,” he spoke softly now, his eyes locked with mine, “you know beyond a shadow of a doubt how absolutely madly in love with you I am, and somehow you feel the same way,” he was really crying at this point, “to me you are the most important thing in this world and I will never turn my back on you unless you ask me to, so would you do me the pleasure of marrying me?” No words left my mouth so I met him with a small yet unspeakably meaningful kiss instead. When the kiss subsided I nodded gently our faces centimeters apart. “I can’t wait to marry you.”

“Clary!” Isabelle snaps, pulling me out of my daydreams. “I swear to god if you keep on doing this it’s neon Gerber daisies the whole night!” Izzy gripes at me “and I’m allergic!” Simon pipes in eliciting a blushing eye roll from Isabelle. “Sorry” I blush as Jace looks at me quizzically. Before he has a chance to question me Isabelle’s necklace starts to glow red causing the hair on my neck to stand up. “Oh no” Simon whispers. Izzy begins to get up “Well?! Let’s go!” she insists. “Not so fast!” Jace interjects, “Isabelle if you think you are going on a mission anytime in the next year you’re even crazier than I thought you were.” He turns to Simon now “Simon you take her home. Clary and I will take care of this.” Izzy looks like she is going to protest for a split second but instead thinks better of it. As Simon reaches for her wrist to take her away from the danger she puts on hand up to unclasp her necklace and hands it to me. “Clary, I have a feeling you’ll be needing this more than I for the foreseeable future.” I grasp it firmly, “Thank you, Isabelle.” Jace grabs my shoulder and I turn to face him “Let’s go” he suggests “Let’s” I answer.

We run out into the alleyway together where we see a teen girl’s limp body lying against a building about 50 yards away. We run in the direction of the body when we catch sight of the culprit, a possessed young man with light hair, running East. Jace and I communicate nearly telepathically as he runs over a block to try and cut the demonic boy off as I tail him. I had nearly caught up when Jace burst out of an alleyway tackling the boy to the ground and holding his arms behind his back, presenting his chest to me. But it can’t be. I can’t be seeing what I’m seeing. Then again if I’m not seeing what I’m seeing the boy would have been dead. The boy in front of me was the spitting image of Jonathan. But the Jonathan this boy is bringing to my eyes now is not the one who tried to kill all of my loved ones, held me hostage, and had a strange obsession with me. The boy in front of me transforms instantly into the Jonathan who died in my arms, finally freed of his impurities, the only real brother I ever had. “Clary! What are you doing! Kill him he’s strong.” Jace’s yelling interrupts my thoughts, but the boy still seems so innocent. I have an irresistible urge to save him, to set him free. I kneel in front of the boy, the demon admittedly, and I do the unthinkable. I kiss him. Not on his mouth but on his forehead, his cheek, his nose. I’m not in my right mind as I whisper, “please, please come back. Make it alright again.” Jace recoils in disgust and the demon, a lesser one, is set free leaving a gash in my arm as he leaves the boys body and flies off into the night and the boy, now dead, collapses onto the sidewalk. I’m shaking and the world doesn’t feel quite real yet. I feel nothing and everything all at the same time and when I finally look up to my fiance for reassurance Jace is fuming. Oh. Oh my god, what have I done? Why did I do that? I put him at risk, I put myself at risk. I kissed the face of a demon. What am I doing? “Jace -I” I realize my face is wet with tears. “You’re hurt,” he states. He walks over to me and inspects my wound, taking off his jacket to place over my torn one. “I’m taking you back to the institute” but his voice carries no emotion.

In the car his knuckles are white on the steering wheel and though we are three-fourths of the way to the institute he hasn’t said a word to me. “Jace I- I’m so sorry,” I choke out “I don’t know what came over me I really d-” “Stop,” he interrupts. “But I-” I try again. “I can’t do this right now!” he runs a red light and continues driving determinately in the direction of his institute.

As we arrive he asks no one in particular for a medic to accompany me to the infirmary. And then he just… leaves. He walks to the stairwell and I catch my last glimpse of him for the next few hours as the door swings shut. Sitting in the infirmary without him there stings. It stings more than the antiseptic and the stitches the two medics at my bedside work at. Although I’m sure that my actions outside of the diner hurt worse, and shocked him more. As much as I tell myself that it doesn’t lessen my pain, it focuses it. Jace is the love of my life and I can’t believe I hurt him in such a stupid and irrational fashion. It’s been three years since Johnathan died. Since we killed the only part of him strong enough to sustain life. With Jace being promoted to head of the institute a meer six months later after Alec moved to Idris to serve on the council and restart with Magnus life had gotten so inexplicably busy. That’s when I had stopped going to therapy. I truly believed I was over this, but I suppose I proved myself wrong tonight. I would talk to the psychiatrist at the institute in the morning about getting back on the schedule before I have a psychotic break at the altar. Wedding. Oh… wedding, my fiance. betrayal… ouch.

Then Isabelle and Simon walk through the door and Isabelle informs the medics that Jace would like to know if my wounds have any severity to them. Yikes, he won’t even come in here himself to ask about me. God, I hate myself right now. She sends me a sympathetic and intense look as they reassure her I will be fine after a few hours of rest with my treatment and turns assumedly to report back to Jace. Simon, however, leaves her side and walks over to sit on the cot across from me. Tears start to spill out of the corners of my eyes and Simons eyes are almost painfully fill with sympathy as he sees my own. “I don’t know very much,” he says “do you need to talk? Or would you rather be distracted by the story of Passover with my nana meeting my pregnant nineteen-year-old wife?” This is the first thing all night that has lifted my spirits at all. I even giggle a little causing the medics to chastise Simon. “You have to tell me that one soon, but, Simon, I really screwed up.” My voice cracks as the tears start to spill down my cheeks. “My ears are yours Fray,” Simon reassures. So I tell him. I tell him everything that funneled into what happened tonight. And he is maybe the best best-friend/ ex-boyfriend anyone could ask for because he listens, attentively, and actively to all of my hot mess. “Well Clary, It isn’t the most ideal situation you could have gotten yourself into.” I nod as he responds to my ramblings. “But, after the past five years we’ve had, it’s certainly not the worst. If I were Jace I would be hurt. You’re an easy person to get jealous over. But you and Jace have overcome so many odds and you know each other so well. You need to talk this out but I’m sure you’ll be on the other end of this in no time.” The medics ask Simon to leave and explaining to my uninterested ears that I need to sleep for a couple of hours for the salve to take effect. “I need to speak to Jace I don’t have time to sleep right now,” I argue. “The gaping wound on your arm says otherwise Ms. Fairchild, don’t you have a sleeveless wedding gown to put on in a few months?” one medic claps back. At this moment I realize just how exhausted I am from all of this. “Thank you, Simon, I love you,” I state before he closes the door behind him. I lay my head down on the pillow and fall into an uneasy sleep within minutes.

Nearly three hours later I wake up with a single-mindedness to confront Jace and be back in his arms. I don’t wait for the medics to talk to me. I just get up and head to the training room, where I know he’ll be if he needs to burn off steam. I was right, he was there, but when I show up to the training room a young shadowhunter informs me that I’ve just missed him. I run up the stairs to our shared suite, which is probably ill-advised as it makes my arm throb, but I’m far too impatient for the elevator right now. I open and close the door quietly to discover that he’s in the shower. Nothing has ever stopped me from interrupting him there before. However, this is different, I haven’t messed up this badly before. I haven’t hurt him like this before. So instead I pull a barstool out from our counter and wait. Somehow this waiting is worse than the overthinking earlier while I got stitches. I think it has something to do with the fact that he’s right there, in the next room. Additionally, I know he’s thinking about me. I sit there for a few minutes and let more tears fall as they may. But now he’s turned the water off and I know I only have a matter of seconds to regain my composure. I wipe my last tear away and tuck a stray strand of hair back as he opens the door. Steam rolls from the opening and he walks out with a towel tied dangerously low on his waist. It’s nothing I haven’t seen a thousand times before, but it’s still just as mouthwatering, again, this is not the time. He, of course, is unsurprised by my presence with his catlike reflexes. However, he is looking at me with a pain in his eyes I haven’t seen in years. I have never felt this responsible for his pain, and feeling it is horrible.

Finally, the silence is broken. “Hi,” he says after a few beats. Good. It’s good that he wants to talk. That’s step one. I can’t force this on him. “Hello Jace” I respond and I sound like a child confessing to their parents that they did eat the last cookie and the dog didn’t knock over Grandma’s vase. I want normal us so badly right now. “So… “ Jace says. “Yeah” is all I can say. How do I do this? “I’m going to get dressed,” he states. He walks over to his drawer to pull on sweats and a v neck as I stare at the counter. “I know what I did was wrong.” I begin. “I would take it back if I could, I would do almost anything in the world to take it back… but I can’t.” I look up to gauge his reaction, I can’t read him right now but I decide to continue. “I can say that I’m really, really sorry. I’ll never do anything like that again, I promise.” He’s looking me in the eye now which makes this nearly unbearable. I stand up from my barstool but remain across the room. “I know I hurt you,” my voice cracks. Goddammit, I’m crying now “And I know you don’t owe me forgiveness or anything, but I want you to know how very very sorry I am. Because I love you so much, Jace. If I had to set one goal for the rest of my life I would just want to never hurt you again.” After about a minute he breaks his silence. “You shouldn’t want that,” I look up at him confused “What on earth do you mean?” “I don’t want you to not hurt me, screw being hurt, I want you to love me! That’s what’s important here and it bothers me that you don’t see that. That you not only wanted to kiss another guy but then you did yeah that hurts Clary. That lack of love really f*cking hurts.” My jaw drops. How can he question my loyalty? I know I messed up but I can’t believe he said that. That that’s what he’s thought about how I feel for him for the last several hours. A fresh set of hot tears invade my already salty cheeks. “Jace, I’m sorry, I know I messed up but I can’t believe after all we’ve been through that you would ever think even for a second that I ever loved you even slightly less than all that is god damned humanly possible and then some! I mean we chased this demon after a meeting where we were planning our wedding where I couldn’t focus on what Izzy was saying about flowers because you had your hand on my thigh or I was thinking about how much I love you.” He scoffs which sends a salt spray into my metaphorical wound. “I’m sorry,” he says sardonically, “I didn’t realize you wanted to kiss a demon because you’re just so in love with me!” Now it finally clicks. I can’t believe I missed this the whole time! He even said it earlier. “Wait! You think that I wanted to kiss him because I was attracted???? To a demon???” Jace is unwavering, “what other explanation is there?!” I sit back down for this one. “I’m sorry I didn’t explain it earlier,” you sigh, “I didn’t even necessarily want to kiss him. I wanted to save him. I guess that was just how it manifested.” Jace blinks, “Clary you’ve been hunting for five years you know that we can’t save possessed humans. You should be used to this by now? I was sure you were.” I shake my head, “No, not because he was human. Because he… he reminded me so much of Jonathan.” Jace’s whole body stiffens and he stands up from the bed as if he’s trying to securely bodyguard me from across the room.

He gets it! Thank god I just didn’t know how to explain it. Thank god he understands.”I just wanted to save my brother, it was like I was back in that same moment three years ago. I- I’m going to go back to therapy,” I try to elaborate. Everything about Jace softens and he approaches me quickly but cautiously, gauging my reaction to his proximity. He takes me in his warm, strong arms, and everything in the world is fixed. I let out a few residual tears from the stress of tonight’s conversation. But I feel… whole again. He is rubbing my back and calming me and he smells like soap and I love this man. I could stay here forever. But he steps back and holds me away and studies me. “Clary, I owe you an apology.” he starts but instead of letting him continue I close the distance between us and kiss him. He pushes me away and tries again but I hold a finger up to his lips. “You don’t owe me anything! Ever. I’m still sorry for what I did. I put you in danger! And I should have explained.” “But!” he starts to say against my finger. “No! Jace. Thank you. Thank you for listening to me and understanding and still wanting to talk even when you were angry and for being… here” my voice cracks. “I’m so in love with you… and the same way we got through tonight is how we’re going to get through the rest of our lives.” His eyes light up as I say this and my heart does victory hurdles at the glorious sight. He kisses my hand, and up my arm, and my neck - which I giggle at -, finally across my jaw up to the corner of my mouth. “I am so completely addicted to you, Clary Fairchild-Wayland,” he says just before kissing my mouth. “Not quite yet mister!” I object and he smiles back at me. “Fine… Fairchild… for now,” he halfway concedes “but can we please never do that fighting thing again? I hated every second of not being able to think about how madly in love with you I am.” “Deal!” I grin back at him. Jace kisses me and I almost forget to come back up for air, he is so intoxicating. “Come to bed with me,” Jace whispers against my ear. And I am all too happy to oblige.

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theonyxpath · 5 years

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Of course, the big news is how fast the Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition Kickstarter funded!

We’ve passed the first Stretch Goal, for the Storyteller Screen as a physical project, and the second, the start of the HtV2e Companion book! And are darn close to the third!

Besides dropping the Hunter 2e text for backers throughout the KS, James and KS crew are also releasing the fiction sections from the book. Developer Monica Valentinelli has brought on renowned writer Cassandra Khaw to create spot-on and compelling fiction vignettes that run the gamut of the eerie experiences of our hunters!

Thanks to all of you who have backer this project, and who continue to converse about it both on the KS page in the Comments and Update Comments sections, as well as on other social media.

Please, keep it up!

We appreciate so much when our awesome community speaks up about what they like about what we are doing, and even when there are criticisms sprinkled in – so long as they are respectful of our talented and awesome creators. We’ve never claimed to be perfect, and can use to know where we can do better!

And for a Kickstarter, getting out there and talking about it is the second-most important and supportive thing any backer can do after they’ve backed the project (which is the number one supportive thing, of course).

Every time you mention the Hunter: The Vigil 2e KS, a hunter gets a new candle!

Vampire: The Requiem 1e art by Cathy Wilkins

If you scroll down to our Media section below, you’ll note that we’ve given you links to, I think, the largest number of Actual Play Streams, Podcasts, YouTube Vids, and our usual jam-packed with goodness Twitch schedule for this week that we’ve ever posted here. (In fact, there are two schedules, the text and the visual, for easy reading no matter your preferred info-graphic style).

So what do you think of that?

Do you enjoy the links we’ve been posting every week; do you click on them? Basically, has our including them helped you further enjoy the many game worlds (One Path) that we offer?

There’s a school of thought that says that new and younger gamers are far more likely to view Twitch streams and YouTube vids for their method of getting into games, rather than older fans who first picked up their books in game stores.

Do you think that’s accurate? I know that when I watch them, and quality can vary, but when I do, I enjoy them. But they aren’t my personal best way of finding out about new games or getting a feel for them. I do know that watching others play is a good intermediate step between just reading game books and actually playing myself – which remains my best way of really digging into a game, personally.

Pugmire art by Cathy Wilkins

We at Onyx Path, as you might imagine, remain dedicated to trying to present our worlds in all the venues that folks use to enjoy this hobby of ours. In fact, you can probably dig up an MMN blog post from when I first started doing these and I’ll be saying that exact thing. So, we keep pushing to get our books into stores in ways that work for us, as well as trying to provide access to more and better streaming events.

We have folks who are extremely engaged with both, and even more, methods of presenting our game lines and worlds. Great looking books, great setting, great game rules, engaging actual play – all of it is important to our collective crew. So we have most of our community’s interests covered, we think.

Really, it all comes down to a fantastic time “at the table” and these are all ways to get there.

Hunters Hunted 2 art by Cathy Wilkins

At the Monday Lunch Meeting today, we did an extra bit of follow-up on company-wide improvements first reviewed during our Onyx Path Summit in January. Some of those are things like further pay increases for our creators, and others are productivity processes that we want to implement.

Not a lot of creative fun stuff, but things that we do that we want to improve as we move forward.

Vampire: The Requiem 2e art by Cathy Wilkins

One of things we are looking at is to further explain just what we are doing with our Community Content sites: The StoryPath Nexus – currently for Scion and Trinity Continuum projects, The Slarecian Vault for Scarred Land projects, and Canis Minor for Realms of Pugmire stuff.

We have created the sites, provided templates, made up art-packs, and set up the rules for what can and can’t go up on the sites. But, and this is a biggie, the projects up there are not our projects. They are not official, they are not “canon”.

Except as much as they are useful for your gaming group, or are useful and fun to read through. More options, more ideas = great!

Our hope is that Community Content creators try and keep to the tone and intention we use in the official projects we ourselves are creating, while being able to explore subjects and parts of the worlds we aren’t able or interested in delving into.

If that doesn’t happen, well, we’re looking to have a pretty standardized set of responses that we’ll go through. We want Community Content creators to feel like they have the freedom to create, not that we are looking over their shoulders. We also have a responsibility to each of the game lines, and Onyx Path as a whole, as well as our community. So, it’s not cut and dried. Expect that there’ll be some bumpier parts to the ride as we get things figured out.

But we will. We always do.

Vampire: The Requiem 1e art by Cathy Wilkins

One other thing that came up. Up above I named the three Community Content sites we have currently. That’s all of them. We have no connection and derive no direct payments or benefits from the Storytellers Vault for the White Wolf IPs. Even for projects based on game lines we created. So, if you do have issues with the SV, ya gotta reach out to Paradox/WW.

Yep, there sure are a lot of ways to get your gaming goodness these days. And yep, it can be confusing, we know. If you don’t know what we’re doing vs somebody else, I suggest reaching out on our social media. Our Facebook page, our Twitter, our official Discord channels. We have folks there that can help you. We even have handy graphics created by Ian Watson or Meredith Gerber that break down what we are publishing by whether we own it, are working with folks, or license it.

It is indeed a brave new world in terms of TTRPG gaming. And in our case it’s a brave:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition for Chronicles of Darkness is on the hunt! We funded and shot right through the Storyteller Screen Stretch Goal and through Tending the Flame: Cells chapter PDF Stretch Goal for the Hunter Players’ Companion all in 5 days!

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast features the recording of the LIVE! PATHCAST! that will run on Wednesday the 12th at 5pm Eastern US time! You can listen in on Wednesday, and even call in and chat with the Titanic Trio ON THE PATHCAST! Check out the LIVE PATHCAST direct on Podbean, and then as always the Friday version will be on Podbean or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

What a damn schedule we have on Twitch this week! You can look forward to Vampire: The Masquerade, Chronicles of Darkness, Pugmire, Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition, even more Vampire: The Masquerade, Changeling: The Lost, Changeling: The Dreaming, Mage: The Awakening, Scarred Lands, and yet another Vampire: The Masquerade game! We even have a return to Eddy’s Development Workshop!

A special shout-out to the Hunter: The Vigil game that ran last week, which may rank as our most watched stream so far! You can subscribe to our channel over on twitch.tv/theonyxpath to catch up with any episodes you missed!

Come take a look at our YouTube channel, youtube.com/user/theonyxpath, where you can find the following videos uploaded last week alone:

Pugmire: Paws & Claws: https://youtu.be/vuLz5nnm20A

Mummy: The Curse Q&A: https://youtu.be/14b8FtpOhsE

Blood City: Chicago by Night: https://youtu.be/ih6gCS_QlGM

Changeling: The Lost – Littlebrook Reunion: https://youtu.be/Bb2W3YXVOa0

Changeling: The Dreaming – Gifted & Talented: https://youtu.be/PI1DOGqxKZs

A special shout-out to the Primogen‘s long-running Changeling: The Lost game over on our channel. He’s an excellent Storyteller and we really recommend you check out his work!

Ekorren gives us a fantastic deep dive into the Trinity Continuum here in this excellent video: https://youtu.be/Vk0UJbWijtg

Some new Occultists Anonymous for all you Mage: The Awakening lovers out there:

Episode 78: Ghosts, Spirits, & Coffee While Songbird is under the care of Tasos, Wyrd and Atratus see to their own personal connections back at the Leaf Theater and the Puck Building. https://youtu.be/bWM3ioUrVlM

Episode 79: MGN2: Electric Boogaloo Wyrd and Atratus take Titus and Jimmy to meet some werewolves, as way of introduction and apology. Then new plans are laid for their journey into the Astral Realm of the Temenos.https://youtu.be/q2A7MrIo2fY

Check out the Botch Pit‘s Beginner’s Guide to Changeling: The Lost’s courts right here: https://youtu.be/A_huXzRyghY

Red Moon Roleplaying continue their actual play of V5 Cults of the Blood Gods, on their YouTube channel, Spotify, their website redmoonroleplaying.com and everywhere else good podcasts might be found! https://youtu.be/oeavJcCQ9vw

In case you missed it, the Story Told Podcast have commenced a new Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition actual play right here: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/the-78-laments-1

Do check out Matthew Dawkins’ naughty interview for the 25 Years of Vampire: The Masquerade podcast right here. https://utilitymuffinlabs.com/25-years-of-vampire-the-masquerade/2020/1/30/cults-of-the-blood-gods-interview-episode-153

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero AND Trinity Continuum Core and Trinity Continuum: Aeon are available to order!

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we will be releasing the Advance PDF for Spilled Blood for Vampire: The Requiem 2e on DTRPG!

This book includes antagonists for both Vampire: The Requiem and other Chronicles of Darkness games. Including: • Ten new bloodlines to serve as both antagonists and player character options. • Two new antagonistic covenants. • Several lost clans with reasons to both hate and work with Kindred. • Myriad antagonists who prey on vampires, either as diseases or those who need Vitae.

Conventions!

More conventions will be listed for 2020 in the weeks to come-

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

RUST (Working Title) (Scarred Lands)

Under Alien Suns (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Mission Statements (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Adversaries of the Righteous (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hundred Devil’s Night Parade (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Novas Worldwide (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Exalted Essence Edition (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Clades Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

The Devoted Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

Saints and Monsters (Scion 2nd Edition)

Redlines

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Duke Rollo fiction (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Second Draft

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Development

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

Manuscript Approval

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

Post-Approval Development

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Editing

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Mythical Denizens (Creatures of the World Bestiary) (Scion 2nd Edition)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Buried Bones: Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Post-Editing Development

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Indexing

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant

Hunter: The Vigil 2e (KS) – Running on KS.

Ex3 Lunars – Art is in.

Cults of the Blood God (KS)

Mummy 2 (KS)

City of the Towered Tombs – Recontracted.

Let the Streets Run Red – Contracted, using three new artists.

CtL Oak Ash and Thorn – Contracted.

Deviant

Legendlore (KS) – Pulling assets, getting new art for KS.

Technocracy Reloaded (KS) – More KS art contracted.

Scion Companion – Contacting artists with Meredith.

TC: Aeon Terra Firma – Contracted.

WoD: Ghost Stories (KS) – Cover contracted.

Tales of Aquatic Terror

In Layout

Pirates of Pugmire – With Aileen.

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad – Ongoing.

Scion Mythical Denizens – In proofing but need some full page art to come in.

Contagion Chronicle – With Josh.

Vigil Watch – Getting first release ready for this month.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed

Proofing

Dark Eras 2 – Errata being annotated and then back to Aileen.

Trinity Continuum Aeon Jumpstart

They Came from Beneath the Sea! – Inputting errata.

Chicago Folio – Approved by WW, out to backers this week for errata.

Wraith20 Anthology – Errata from backers ending.

Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds – Going to dev.

At Press

V5: Chicago – Shipping to stores, scheduled to go on sale this month.

Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition) – Shipping to backers, PoD files uploaded.

Geist 2e Screen – Shipping to backers.

DR:E – At fulfillment shippers, PoD files uploaded.

DRE Screen – At fulfillment shippers.

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties

Memento Mori – PoD files uploaded.

Trinity Continuum: Aeon RMCs – PoD files uploaded.

VtR Spilled Blood – Advance PDF on sale this Wednesday on DTRPG.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Today we celebrate the creative life of one of our favorite artists, Cathy Wilkins, who passed away last week. She was one of the nicest people Mike and I have had the pleasure to art direct, and as nice as she was, her talent was even greater. I knew that when I scrambled to get art for our early CofD (nWoD) projects that having Cathy working on the project guaranteed beautiful illustrations – and that she would make the extra effort to follow up on details that tied to the text she was given. We will all miss her, and as a small memorial, all the art inside this weeks MMN blog is work she did for us in the past.

#Onyx Path Publishing

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