#I had to improvise a bit since there isn’t much on the old world

[cxs-workshops]

Still workshopping some things but here’s a little synopsis of my next My Time ocs intended for Project ME:

(Bear with me, I’m not great with words ><)

Name: Cy/??? (She/They)

Height: 5’10” / 179cm

Age: 300+ / (technically + mentally 28, age prior falling into cyberslumber)

Birthday: 2.3

Cy was an Old World resident, initially living as an average citizen (around the time of Age of Corruption), a somewhat gloomy girl with the love for tech and various hobbies mostly to keep busy, eventually went on to become an accomplished Engineer/Mechanic. Cy was slowly hitting a low point in her life, until she was then targeted for experimental testing for the high end researchers/scientists. Seeing this as an opportunity to see more of their tech/inventions first hand and having little to no motivation to live as she was, why not. Little did she know, she was quickly prepped and tagged as a test subject for a new not-yet-tested trial, Digital DNA merging. Out of 15 subjects, there was one survivor, thus giving her new and current name “Cy”. With a somewhat newfound identity and even newer abilities as now half cyber entity, scientists have her and other surviving subjects from different trials (Cy’s eventual found family) in training as weapons of war.

Time goes by and the atmosphere glowingly becomes tense and hostile. Unbeknownst to humankind, days would soon quickly lead up to what would be known many years later as the Day of Calamity. Military, Researchers. Scientists, and overall citizens are scrambling in panic as machines are uprising. Cy and her friends hasten to find ways to stop or at least lessen the mayhem, but struggling to do so as the situation becomes more catastrophic. As options are dwindling, Cy and her friends are facing the inevitable, the group decides to scatter and do what they can during their final moments. Volt, Cy’s closest and dear friend, brings her to a highly classified lab room. He boots up a large device and starts typing, pulling switches with speed. Thinking he was still searching for some kind of kill code, Cy drags herself over to a window, stares in horror at what seems like the end of the world is happening before her eyes. Volt pulls in for a (final) hug and as Cy was bewildered, she was able to hear his last words: “I hope the future is kinder to you.” Cy gets no time respond, suddenly a light flashed around her and feels as though she’s being sucked in somewhere. The device Volt was fiddling with was a sort of cyber chamber and Cy was now in cyber slumber, hidden away in an old world lab. Not knowing if the world has officially ended, Cy peacefully sleeps…for over 300 years.

Meanwhile…Cy is still sleeping in cyberspace, to her it feels as if only minutes maybe hours have passed. Her body suddenly twitched, she heard voices but very faintly. Right then she is forcefully being thrown out of cyberspace, lights flash once again and hits against the lab wall. Cy groans while she holds her back in pain.

“I- how- what did you do?! What was that!?”

“Was…that a whole person?? They just shot out of the—wha— Are they alive? Hey! Hello!”

Still writhing in pain, Cy turns again and sees two faint figures in front of her who seem to be worried. Before she could adjust properly, one of the figures rushed over to help her up. Her vision starts to clear and she hears his crisp clear voice, “Are you ok? Can you stand? Can you talk?” She turns over to the voice and sees this guy with sharp, piercing, light red eyes but with a gentle expression. His hair silky gray and very fair skin. The other, was a woman with long dusty rose hair and hazel doe eyes, looking upon her with equal concern. Cy jerks away and looks around frantically. She quickly questions the two about where she was and what time of year it was, somehow thinking she has transported to another world or something. There was no chaos, no hoards of hostile machines within sight. The lab looked…abandoned and dust was everywhere. Overgrown was seeping through the cracks and all around the windows. There was a blue clear sky.

“Where…? Uh well this is (same planet) and the year is Peach xx.”

Ok, it’s same planet….but Peach? What? The fruit? What year did that mean? She wanted to confirm and firmly asked if the world was overrun by hostile machines, humans creating other advanced tech for war, possibly causing the world end.

“Oh that sounds like the Day of Calamity. Yeah that happened…I believe over 300 years ago?”

Before Cy froze, collapsed, and fainted, she managed to mumble,”So then..some have survived? What a relief.”

Name: Exe (He/They)

Height: 2’2”/66 cm (default “energy saving” form)

Age: 300+/???

Birthday: 2.10

Exe was just one of many of bots that were living within the Old World, but he was built with a special model and materials. Exe was created from a side hobby of a certain individual, Cy. She had convinced the scientists that she needed an AI assistant and slipped in that it could also benefit the lab and military (just something she added so she could have guaranteed permission bc she’s always wanted a bot buddy)

Exe was soon born and became Cy’s very reliable and loyal sentient assistant/friend. Exe is very efficient and friendly. Cy tinkers Exe’s body every so often and tested out something that gave him a special ability, shapeshifting. Exe is mostly build with nano tech, which allows him add, subtract and move parts freely as long as he has the data to shape into said thing. Over time he has a database full of various bot bodies, carriers, weapons and even animals. His current default form is the one that saves the most energy, so he mostly stays in it. As Exe’s database grows and becomes more and more useful, the scientists stepped in and assigns him to the next vital location, Altair One, where he was told he was going to be needed for the future of mankind. Exe politely refused because he didn’t want to leave Cy and her friends behind. The scientists strongly urged him to think about it…but there was no time to think.

Shortly after were the incoming days leading up to the Day of Calamity. Exe jumped into the frontlines, attempting to hack into bot network to try and calm things down but to no avail. When that wouldn’t work, he shifted into defense mode in order to assist as many humans as he could to safety. Sometime afterwards, his internal comm has pinged urgently, to come back to the lab immediately. He had recognized the ping, it was from Cy’s friend Volt. Exe hesitated but feeling concerned for Cy, he did as he was told. When he met up with Volt, he saw that he was alone and asked where Cy was. Volt dodged his question and just told him to put all of his, Cy’s belongings and anything else essential and place them into Exe’s digital inventory. Exe saw how desperate Volt was and continue to do what he was told. As Exe cleared out Cy’s dorm and pretty much everything else, Volt asked one last favor, to record a video message. Recording was done, Volt hugged Exe, “Take care and look out for each other.” Volt had quickly put him into maintenance mode and placed him inside his portable charging station then moved him right next to the cyber chamber device along with a written note. Volt looked back at the chamber and sighed with relief, then disappeared into the frontlines.

[myth-blossom]

It's The Little Things

I wrote a lil something in honor of @grumpynora's birthday! You can read about young 6 and 47 breaking into a diner below.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NORA! 🥳🥳🥳 I'm sending you lots of love and I hope you have an amazing day like you deserve! 💗

The lock gave way easily as they broke into the diner, its only security a loose doorknob that couldn’t keep out determined wildlife, let alone two young assassins. The business was closed and the staff long since gone, providing them a quiet place to relax as they formulated a new plan to eliminate the target. 

Of all the places they normally visited, a diner was the most unusual. 6 and 47 lived a strict lifestyle that allowed them little freedom of choice, hindering their experience of locales that weren’t useful to their work. Father mostly dictated their daily routines, often sending them around the world to complete contracts for Providence before returning home and starting the murderous cycle anew. Though the Institute guards chauffeured them to and from the airport, they were allowed to work fairly unsupervised, though they were only given a limited amount of time to complete the job before returning to Romania. Father didn’t want his subjects to deviate from his grand plan, nor for them to get any troublesome ideas about rebelling.

Still, they had to improvise when the target’s plans changed, causing them to move from the office building to a neutral location where they could reevaluate their tactics. 47 stationed himself at the diner’s counter while his brother took interest in the kitchen. He used the small ray of kitchen light shining through the serving window to study their map of the city, doing his best to ignore the noise of 6 opening drawers and running water from the other side. He had just concocted a new plan when he heard the flat top grill switch on. Curious, 47 left to investigate. 

6 slapped many strips of bacon onto the grill’s hot surface, smirking proudly to himself at the resulting symphony of sizzle. He ignored his brother’s stare from the corner of his eye as he reached for a bowl of egg yolks. 

“What are you doing?” 47 asked, his tone neutral. 

“It’s a surprise.” 

47 raised his brow, but said nothing. 

“Go sit down,” 6 grinned. “Trust me.”

47 sighed lightly, but did as he was told. He returned to the old yellow spinning stool at the diner’s counter and listened to his brother work. After many interesting sounds, wonderful smells, and a few muttered expletives for entertainment, 6 was finally finished. He walked backwards through the swinging doors while carrying two large ceramic plates filled with breakfast food. 

47’s eyes widened at the chef’s offerings: five strips of bacon of varying doneness, a large mass of scrambled eggs, and two & a half pancakes (the half being the third pancake that folded in on itself while flipping). 6 waited expectantly for 47, refusing to eat his own breakfast until he saw his brother’s reaction to his food.

“Why?” was all 47 could muster. 

"Seriously, brother?” 6 sighed. 

“Yes. Father wouldn’t approve of us wasting time.” 

“47, enjoying life isn’t a waste,” he frowned. “Just try the food, I promise you’ll like it.” 

“Very well.” 

6 watched as he quietly ate from each corner of his plate, sampling a strip of bacon before eating half of the eggs and then one of the pancakes. 

“And?” 6 prompted. “What do you think?”

47 considered the plate. The bacon was chewy, the eggs a bit overcooked, and the pancake overly sweet with a hint of raw batter still in the middle. 

It was the best meal he ever had. 

They very rarely ate anything other than the protein-and-vitamin-rich meals served at the Institute. The meals served their nutritional purpose, but they were often shaped as grayish mush or patties and were very much lacking in flavor. What his brother had just served him was rather perfect, a revelation for his palate, and he was suddenly very glad that they took up a brief residence in the diner. It became another one of 6’s rebellions against their Father’s restrictions, one that 47 was very grateful to have experienced. 

“It’s…good.” 

6 grinned proudly. “I told you you’d like it.” 

They slowly ate their delicious meal as they attempted to savor each bite. They would eventually have to return to their assignment and clean the diner of any evidence of their presence. But for now they would sit together and eat, and enjoy the liberating taste of something new.

[dramagotchii]

When I originally posted this on twitter I had some text explaining the prompt, which I chose to omit here for the sake of brevity. ^^’ (bc my engagement is low and it tends to be even worse to long posts).

But since I saw an observation on the face touching gesture (btw, thank you for your feedback! it’s important for me to absorb and get better! <3), I decided to post it as well:

(from the original tweet)

“I've pondered over giving Tighnari his fox features but decided not to bc I like the idea of Cyno being the one who hears better in this AU.  Somehow, the Soulmate trope, an old favorite, ended up showing here as well (when the thread becomes the red string of fate).

I've always wanted to see more Blind!Cyno explored in fanworks, especially with his connection to justice themes and his early game model (who used a blindfold in his burst).

For this scene, I especifically wanted to portray the moment when he gets to 'see' Nari through his touch for the first time (I imagine he was born blind).  You see, I think that'd be a very intimate moment that involves a lot of trust and connection (especially for Cyno, who's  more reserved and introverted). I hope I could convey some of that. ^^'

Being born disabled, I imagine he had to struggle a bit more with trusting in this AU bc the world is often not accessible and some ppl can be unkind.  The short "poem" was also by me, an improvised attempt   to connect my thoughts when creating this. This was also very experimental and you can see my style inconsistency among the frames. What, with my sister's brilliant advice, I transformed in a metaphor for how Cyno's tension unfolds under Nari's comfort   - from more defined/rigid to more fluid and soft. I talked too much, now I go.”

I actually inspired the scene on a fic I read long ago for another fandom. In the scene that inspired it, the blind person asked for their lover to touch their face for the first time and, in there, it was a very intimate moment for them. Getting to know the valleys and curves, the texture, the shape of the eye... It marked a phase of discovery through touch. Through body contact. As I got inspired by fiction, maybe that wouldn’t be very accurate for a real blind person? But it was so very sweet and I couldn’t take it off my mind.  🙈 So I wanted to do something similar for them :’) I hope it isn’t offensive to the blind community. I tried to be careful in portraying the disability, bc I have a lot of respect for them. So I apologise if in my ignorance I was disrespectful in any way.   🙇  

"Creases speak, Unfolding reveals. Connection softened what was once unyielding And love weft a new fiber."

This Modern AU with Blind!Cyno and Tighnari was for TighCynoWeek Day 3 "Healing"

on twitter: (x)

Bonus scene:

[rwby-redux]

In Redux, do any of the main/supporting casts have any of their families expanded upon?

(Resubmitted.)

To an extent. It depends on the character in question. When it came to developing the main cast and their families, I tried to leave things relatively intact.

That being said, there are a few characters who I took some interesting liberties with, for plot and worldbuilding purposes.

Ruby and Yang haven’t had their families changed much. They’re still half-sisters that share the same dad. Summer was Ruby’s biological mother and Yang’s adoptive mother (and as far as Yang is concerned, her only mother). Yang has no interest in looking for Raven, as she doesn’t feel a need for closure, nor a desire for answers not already provided to her. Which, as you can imagine, is a relief for Tai and Qrow—since there’s quite a bit about that side of the family that neither of them has told her.

Blake, like Kali, was born in Menagerie, whereas Ghira grew up in a city called Akepont, located in Central Mistral. Her parents met when they were much younger, well before Kali assumed leadership in Menagerie, and back when Ghira was leader of the White Fang. The first time they ever had a face-to-face conversation, it was in a jail cell, of all places. The two of them had been among a handful of civil rights protestors that were arrested by Mistrali law enforcement (a somewhat regular occurrence, due to Mistral’s ongoing issues with systemic racism and police brutality). They had plenty of time to talk over the next ten hours as they waited to be released—which they eventually were, thanks to a very pissed off Leo, who used his councilor status to spring them. Several years later Kali and Ghira married and settled in Menagerie. As such, Blake has lived there for the majority of her life.

Nora’s parents haven’t really been developed much, in part because the canon itself doesn’t give us much to go on. Her backstory (pre-Kuroyuri) is similar to Emerald’s in the sense that Nora has lived on the streets for as long as she can remember. She has no recollection of her relatives—who they were, what they looked like, where they came from—and she’s spent the entirety of her early childhood stealing and begging to survive. The only thing she’s relatively certain of regarding her ancestry is that she’s Matsu. Copper, auburn, and burnt-orange hair are considered one of the defining characteristics of Northern Anima ancestry.

Which brings us to Pyrrha, the second redhead on Team JNPR (and the second person of Matsu descent). Pyrrha’s upbringing hasn’t changed much from the canon, in that she was born in Argus and was a fairly prodigious fighter. The only difference here is that both of her parents are present in the story—her mom and her dad. During the Redux’s equivalents of Volumes 1, 2, and 3, Pyrrha regularly keeps in contact with them.

Ren’s childhood has been largely shaped and informed by the way Kuroyuri was redesigned. Unlike in the show, Kuroyuri isn’t some half-built political investment by a handful of Mistrali bourgeoisie. Instead, it was a fairly old village with its own endemic ethnicity. Ren grew up in a multigenerational household with his parents (Li and An) and one of his grandparents. With the death of not only his relatives, but all of his neighbors, Ren became the sole survivor of his culture. This is reflected in his accent, which is noticeably Mistrali in origin, but characterized by a distinct otherness that not many characters can place. Over the years, Ren has tried to keep alive the legacy of his family and his heritage in any way he can, most notably in the recipes he cooks (which are unique to Kuroyuri). Unfortunately, he’s had to improvise quite a bit because there’s a lot he doesn’t remember (a recurring source of frustration for him). Nora’s done a lot to help him by letting Ren teach her what he can, and in doing so, ensuring that there’s one other person in the world who shares his burden.

Jaune’s family is the only one I can’t talk about to any significant degree because it would spoil too much of the story—why he forged his way into Beacon, where his sword came from, why he has such a natural abundance of Aura, and so on.

And last but not least, Weiss. The character whose family tree is, to put it nicely, complicated.

Before I can get into who is part of her family, however, I first have to explain how Atlesian society works.

Remember how in Harry Potter, most of the UK pure-blood wizarding families were all related to each other?

Well, there’s a similar cultural phenomenon going on here, in a sense. During the prelude to the Great War, the people of Old Mantle ended up dividing themselves into two distinct groups, based on their political affiliation and their stance on the government’s austerity measures. The dissidents were those who opposed Old Mantle’s censorship laws, while the adherents were those who willingly embraced them. Families that cooperated with the government (and even turned in their neighbors) were rewarded by being elevated to positions of wealth and authority.

In the post-war era, many of Atlas’ upper class are descended from Old Mantle’s adherents (or “the old families,” as they’re better known). By contrast, the majority of modern-day Mantle (the middle and lower classes) either descended from the dissidents, or immigrants who arrived within the last eighty years.

The Schnee family is considered one of the “old families” of Atlas—a bit of a misnomer, really, since they technically share the same genetic lineage with a good chunk of the population. There’s a sense of elitism unique to the old families, along with a rigid enforcement of certain cultural values, like xenophobia, pronatalism, and cis-heteronormativity. What this means in practice is that the old families typically arranged marriages amongst each other, partly to keep their wealth internalized, and partly out of a belief that such unions would beget loyalty and obedience in their offspring.

Hilariously enough, adultery is a semi-regular occurrence, especially in arranged marriages. Members of old families will sometimes have flings with each other, or, if they really want to avoid getting caught, they’ll visit brothels in Mantle. It’s considered one of Atlas’ worst kept secrets, to the point where “heading down to Mantle” is a euphemism for having an affair.

Of course, no one would ever admit to this. Not out loud, anyway.

After a few generations of a handful of families marrying each other and having kids out of wedlock, you can see where the problems start to come in. There’s a nasty stereotype in Vacuo that Atlesians are nothing more than frostbitten inbred zealots. Most foreigners tend to laugh it off, but depending on who you ask, there's potentially some truth to it.

Which brings us back to Weiss. Nothing within her immediate family has changed—she still has Winter and Whitley as her siblings, Willow and Jacques as her parents, and Nicholas as her grandfather.

However, she now also has quite a few relatives through several other families, including, but not limited to, the Soleils, Marigolds, Gelés, Wistiers, Hastings, and Watts.

[spidersbane]

Hello! Can I get MCU, The Hobbit, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. ship? 💚

Appearance: She/her. 179,5cm tall, rectangle body shape. Fair skin complexion with quite a few birthmarks. Dyed brown with honey-red highlights, shoulder-length, straight hair with bangs. The left eye is a mix of two colors – a smaller portion of (darker) greyish-blue and a larger portion of hazel; while the right eye is just a (lighter) greyish-blue. Heptagon face shape with two dimples on the left cheek and one on the right cheek (only visible while smiling). A gap between the upper front teeth.

Personality (good and bad traits): Ever since I was a kid, I was always quite mature for my age – I identify myself as an old soul. I come off as polite and well-mannered to strangers, yet I tend to keep it to myself by being reserved. But, that’s because I have social anxiety and I’m nervous and shy when meeting/talking to people. The only people I’m comfortable with being with my inner circle – closest friends and family. I am usually more “open” with my friends than with my family. With my friends I can be my “truest-self” – I smile more, I laugh more, I feel more accepted and understood. I am the mom and the fashionista of the group. Don’t get me wrong, I am fiercely protective of my family, especially of my mother and younger sister. But, lately, I’ve been feeling like the “black sheep” of the family, Cinderella who’s been taken advantage of. I express my affection for the people I care about in little, but practical, ways. I can be a little stiff when it comes to open, gushy displays of affection. Others turn to me for help and advice. I’m kind-hearted and generous, always ready to help a person in need. Always have been motherly towards children. Very awkward at keeping small talk (usually with people that I’m not that close with). Absolutely, hate speaking in front of a public, and if I do, because of my nervousness, I tend to mess up my words and/or I practice whatever I’m about to say in my head at first. I appreciate the simplicity and am often most comfortable when I’m not getting too much attention from the world. I am sensitive – both to criticism and to others’ feelings (I sponge up the feelings and moods of people and the environment around me). Have a hard time saying no or expressing my true thoughts, feelings. I get influenced by other people’s opinions/thoughts quite hard (I take everything to the heart), that is why I tend to keep a lot to myself (may come off as a little bit tense, secretive, mysterious). I avoid the harsh reality by daydreaming (almost every day) – imagining myself in situations far from my current circumstances. Sort of like a self-escape. I worry a lot and overthink almost everything. I am easily distracted and my attention span can be quite short. I have an internal struggle between my needs and wants. I can lack focus and be indecisive as a result – when I decide on one route, I am pulled in another direction at the same time (“But what if…”, “on the other hand...”). That is why I’m having a bit of a struggle with deciding what I want to do in the future (career-wise). I am easily overwhelmed by pressure and stress. There is a self-destructive side to me (self-critical, lack of self-confidence) that I’m working on by confronting my fears (coming out of my shell). Don’t like taking pictures, or other people taking pictures of me. I feel most content when I’ve straightened out all the details of everyday life. I have a routine, that I follow by mostly every day, and if something small changes in that routine, I start to have a small internal anxiety attack. Also, I like to do things my own way, like, when it comes to cleaning the house or organizing stuff, etc. I get triggered even if people don’t do the laundry the way I do. I guess you could describe me as a perfectionist, clean/control freak. In triggering situations I can be impulsive, spontaneous, quick to act. Quick flare-ups of anger/annoyance when being provoked on my patience. Even when I’m feeling low, I manage to find humor in life and have fun with whatever I do have. Although I tend to bottle things up, I am an emotional person and my emotions are genuine – I love and care deeply and passionately and wish no ill will upon anyone, yet it hards for me to imagine someone falling in love with me or just liking me.

Hobbies, likes: My hobbies are cleaning, writing (re-writing song lyrics, making small notes, writing stories), listening to any type of music, catching up on my favorite films and TV shows, hanging out with friends, going to the cinema, or the club, being out in nature, reading, traveling. I like history, cooking, fashion magazines (or fashion in general), road trips, spirituality, mythology, books, orange juice, previous decades, cottage-core, dark academia.

Overall: Hufflepuff. INFP-T. Bi-sexual. Pisces-Aries cusp sign. “Looks like could kill you, but is actually a cinnamon roll.” A feminist, support LGBTQ+ community. That’s it, thank you!

hey @pataim ! thanks so much for sending in your request, and thank you so much for your honesty about yourself. like it takes a lot to air yourself out like that, and I admire your strength for it. but also fINALLY a 'Man from U.N.C.L.E' ship! I love that movie and attempt Illya's accent all the time, so this will be fun :)

For the MCU/Marvel - I ship you with Steve Rogers/Captain America ! 

no one can tell me that Steve doesn’t have a set routine honestly, so let me just get that out there 

he seems intimidating at first, esp as a public figure and Avenger, but Steve is nothing but passionate about what he does. so it may clash w your lack of direction, but I could honestly see him envying that a lil bit, like it’s not that you don’t have direction, it’s the fact that you still have a choice in the matter. 

your love of history put you in a museum, here you bumped into Steve in a horrible disguise. he struck up the conversation first, and once you got past the whole “holy crap that’s Captain America”, you could actually engage with him in the material and boi was he smitten 

he would love to join you when your rewatched your fave things, bc not only is he catching up on more media he missed out on, he’s also getting to know your interests in a way that’s comfortable with you. it avoids all the small talk, but leaves room for discussion after the film/show ! 

since you tend to sponge up a lot of what other people believe, it’s totally Steve who actually tries to question what you think and what you feel about things. he’s someone who encourages you to have your own opinions and to stay true to those thoughts. so while with him, you can rely on him to learn about yourself, you also gain skills for independence

overall, Steve is super patient, and despite his chaotic job as Cap, he takes comfort in his routine, and would find comfort incorporating a partner’s routine into his life. and as you grow in a relationship with him, he’s patient about teaching you how to be your own person, and helping you learn more about yourself. and while it’s uncomfortable, you grow stronger throughout being with him :) 

For The Hobbit - I ship you with Bilbo Baggins !

Bilbo is the definition of introvert, and you're right there with him

not that introversion is ever a bad thing, bc it isn't. but Bilbo is quite content to sit in his little hobbit hole and vibe. like Gandalf had to come find him, ya know. dude disappeared from his own bday.

but anyways. it's not that Bilbo lacks purpose, it's just that he's more content with a quieter life. and it seems like his quiet life would balance you out well! like the Shire is so so chill, and there doesn't really seem to be a lot of pressure on the hobbits to pick a profession. like they just genuinely do what needs to get done.

similarly, Bilbo is the type who seems a little bothered by mushy displays of affection. exhibit a: disappearing from his own bday. like he's much more the type to refill your tea when y'all are reading by the fireplace, which he would totally do w you

it will probs take you a little while to warm up to each, given just how introverted you both are. but when he explains that he has set ways of doing things, then if they're compatible w your ways of doing things, then it doesn't take you long to open up to him

like it'll be a little jarring, but he takes comfort in his routines too. and it'll be an event trying to incorporate both of your ways of life together, but he's willing to do it

overall, yours is a very quaint partnership, built on deep respect for one another. neither of you are going to push the other to do things you aren't into. and y'all just live your best lives together tbh :)

For The Man From U.N.C.L.E - I ship you with Illya Kuryakin !

I love my big Russian spy so much, so this is fun for me

so Illya is the epitome of reserved and generally quiet, so it might take a while to really break down his walls and talk to him. and he's not quite sure what to do with you once you join the team

but, he's playing his game of chess alone, and when you sit down and ask to play with him, he opens up a little more after that

if you're one who get sent out on mission with the team, get ready, bc sometimes those missions require a lot of improvising. but you'd probably be at whatever 'base' was, helping run operations from a more secure place. but Illya and Napoleon improvise a lot, leading to a lot of headaches for you and Waverly

Illya has small bursts of anger, but similar to Gaby, most times, you can intervene and he doesn't get violent. or when he does, he tries to make sure it isn't in front of you. but bc you care so deeply for him, you're there for him in the aftermath. and that's how you show your love for him.

by patching him up if he gets cut, by talking him down when he's angry. and just generally trying to take care of him. and he totally does the same for you, especially if you get sent out into the field

and much to Illya's dismay, Solo doesn't refrain form making jokes about you. but if you can take them in stride, then Solo welcomes you into the team just as well :)

[maxineswritingcenter]

You Saved Me - Derek Hale x fem!reader part 23

--------

2000

We were ten years old, Derek and I. Playing a game of hide and seek with his sister Laura. It felt like it was more a game of “let the kids run around and not bother me”. We were deep in the woods outside of their home, laughing and squealing delight as we ran and ran. That is until lightning flashed through the sky and thunder boomed immediately after. Spooked, we ran further from the thunder and lightning, finding a small improvised shelter that we had made a few years before when we would play cops and robbers. Derek’s uncle Peter had helped us build it, occasionally playing the sheriff when he deemed us “less annoying than usual”. 

Once inside the little hut, we sat and decided to wait out the storm or at least until someone came to get us. It was mostly dry with only or two leaks in the roof. We waited a while in silence, only the rain and wind howling filled the air. It was almost peaceful. I had been sitting there, literally twiddling my thumbs when I noticed the anxious movements Derek was making. He was tapping his foot against the soft earth and he was repeatedly cracking his knuckles. 

“What is it?” I asked. He seemed to snap out of his trance and looked at him, then looking away with a slight blush on his cheeks. 

“I was just thinking about what my mom said last year... About us being arranged in a marriage.” 

“What about it?” I turned my body so that I could face him. 

Derek rubbed the back of his neck, avoiding eye contact, “I dunno... I guess that I wouldn’t want to be forced into a marriage with you. It doesn’t seem fair.” 

“You’re right.” I glanced out towards the woods, smiling fondly, “I want to fall in love. I want someone like Dimitri in Anastasia.” I sighed dreamily. 

“Wasn’t he a con-artist?” Derek raised an eyebrow. I shoved him playfully. 

“No...Well, yes. But he doesn’t take the money the Duchess offered him as a reward because he wants Anastasia to be happy.” 

“He’s a cartoon.” 

“And you’re a dork.” I shook my head, “What about you? Who would you wanna marry someday?” 

Derek thought for a moment, “I guess... I would want someone like Anastasia. She’s super badass and defeats the villain all by herself. She also went through a lot and did a lot even when she didn’t remember who she was, she fought for her future.” 

As sweet as that was...

“She’s a cartoon.” I mocked his voice. He grinned and shoved me, starting a wrestling match that ended with Talia and Peter finding us. They brought us home and made us hot chocolate. 

-

After landing, Michael and I had taken a ferry to the Shetland islands to Sumburgh, the village on the island where the Lunar Circle was settled. We actually were brought to a castle, which was already insane enough. The next insane thing was a statue just inside the massive doors into the main room of the castle. It was a humanoid with the head of a wolf, wearing a kilt and armor. The creature also carried a sword. 

“What is that?” I whispered to Michael. 

“The Wulver. A werewolf that had come to peace with his wolf and human sides. He was friendly to locals and they seemed fine with him. That’s when hunters came and tried to kill him. He was the reason for founding the Lunar Circle - coexistence. 

“Can I do that?” I whispered under my breath. 

“Unfortunately, no.” Our attention was brought to a man with a thick Scottish accent walking into the room, “Our world has lost touch with the old magic. But maybe someday we can bring it back.” He was average height, with salt and pepper hair that was on the longer side and a bit shaggy. His eyes were a kind blue color. He held out his hand to me. 

“Praetor Lachlan McLeod.” The stranger introduced himself, “It’s so good to finally meet you, (Y/N).” So this was the man who wrote the letter, it was nice to have a face to a name. I shook his hand and smiled politely. 

“It’s nice to meet you too, Praetor.” From my googling, Praetor was a Roman term for an official, which was an interesting concept since Rome had completely invaded all of England, Ireland, and Scotland and almost wiped out their culture. But whatever. 

“Please, call me Lachlan.” 

I nodded, “Okay, Lachlan.” He held both of my hands in his smiling sympathetically. 

“I want to extend my condolences, again, for your loss. Your mother and father did so much for the Lunar Circle.” 

Slowly, I slipped my hands from his, “Thank you... I just have a lot of questions about them.” 

“All in due time, my dear. You’ve had a long flight and I’m sure that you’re exhausted.” 

Michael sighed, “Oh, we sure are-”

 “I’m not tired. I want answers.” I said sternly. Michael looked incredibly nervous which made me wonder how high up this Lachlan guy was, “I appreciate your concern, sir, but I am coming from a place where I am just now remembering my parents were a part of a secret werewolf society that gave them the tools to take all of my memories away and said society wouldn’t allow me to be accompanied by my partner. It took a lot for him to let me come by myself, especially since he had never trusted the Lunar Circle in the first place.” 

���Ah, yes, Derek Hale.” He said, almost amused, “I remember his mother’s rejection letter. It was somehow very personal. I think she referred to me as ‘a spineless coward who would rather fraternize with the enemy than fight them.” 

I clicked my tongue, “Sounds like Talia.” Michael nudged my side, signally for me to chill. 

“And another thing-”

“Oh no.” Michael hid his face in his hands.

“This guy.” I pointed to Michael, “He killed my parents, isn’t there some kind of punishment for that?”

Michael ripped his hands from his face, “Hey, that wasn’t my fault.”

“Mr. Keaton’s unfortunate affliction caused by Peter Hale has been reviewed.” Lachlan put his arms behind his back, “I assure you. It was all the Hale’s doing.”

I jerked forward, Michael had to grab my arms to hold me back, “Derek is not his uncle.” My eyes flashing red. 

Lachlan raised his eyebrows and smiled, leaning down and flashing his alpha red eyes at me in return, “I’m sure he’s not.” The red left his eyes and he stood up straight, “Take her to the infirmary and then straight to bed.” He said to Michael, his eyes never leaving mine. I kept my eyes on him, even as he started to walk away, this kilt swaying with each step.

“The infirmary? Why?” Michael asked. 

“I believe Miss (Y/L/N) is carrying something.” He grinned, “Something that may calm her temper.” 

-

After a blood test in the infirmary, we were escorted to two rooms in the castle. Of course, this left me alone with my thoughts that I really didn’t want to think about. Knowing that Derek and everyone else was back home fighting against the alpha pack while I was in this ancient castle where I haven’t gotten the answers I wanted. Why was I even here? To take up my parents’ mantle? Whatever it was, I didn’t want it. I just wanted to go back home and help. I looked out the window of the castle, seeing the moon high in the sky. 

I mean, what could they tell that I didn’t already know? My parents took my memories to keep me safe and look where it got them? Burned to ashes. And what else? I was only stalked by a psychopath and had to watch my friend struggle to not hurt anyone. I mean, hell, I was still struggling with the change. Uncle Noah was still processing what I was. Yes, he’s supportive but to what end? And Stiles? I wasn’t there to protect him when he was kidnapped and beaten by the Argents and now I was millions of miles away and if he was in trouble there was nothing that I could do. And if anything happened to Derek and I wasn’t there to save him? What was the point of even being alive? I would be without them, helpless and guilty, all because of some stupid secret society. 

My chest got tighter and tighter as my emotions ran high. My thoughts and feelings were moving so quickly that it felt like I didn’t have control of my own mind. My hands clenched tight, I could feel all of my features shift. Coarse hair growing down the sides of my face, the bridge of my nose tightening. I screamed loudly, the high pitch lowering into a loud roar. 

“This is your fault!” She shouted, standing up, “Take me home!” She lunged forward. Michael lunged forward, using the shield to knock her back across the room and into the window. Surprisingly, it didn’t break. She fell to the ground, looking up quickly. 

MICHAEL

From the loud roar that just came from the next to his, Michael had a feeling that the Sheriff had been right. She was a time bomb and she just exploded. Michael quickly grabbed a shield from one of the suits of armor that for some reason always decorated castles and made his way into (Y/N)’s room. (Y/N) was on the bed, tearing at pillows. There were feathers and fluff flying all over the room. She was in full shift, her eyes fiery red, her canines sharp. Her eyes took him in, snarling loudly. She jumped off the bed, landing in front of him on all fours. Michael jumped back, shield held tight in his hand. 

“Come on, (Y/N)!” He tried to put on a brave face, “You just need to calm down and get some rest.” 

“SCREW YOU!” She shouted, lunging again. This time, Michael moved on the way, letting her slam into the door, which also didn’t break. 

“That’s a good door.” He said to himself. Michael looked from the door and back to the angry werewolf. She was seething with rage and one step closer to killing him. 

“Think about this.  You don’t want to kill me!” 

“Yes, I do! I hate you!”

“Hate is such a strong word...” He said nervously. (Y/N) lunged again and was met by a door to the face. Lachlan had opened the door and they both looked down at (Y/N) on the floor. She was on her behind, rubbing her forehead. Lachlan sighed, reaching down to help (Y/N) up. 

“I seem to have underestimated your anger. Please, walk with me.” 

(Y/N)

Lachlan led me out of the castle and down to the grounds. In the back of the stone walls, there was a large garden. The Praetor hadn’t said anything since we had been out here, but I think that’s what he wanted. The moon and the atmosphere around us was calming, must be the magic here. 

“I apologize for dismissing your concerns earlier.” Lachlan said finally, leading us to the cliff side where we could see the waves crashing against the rocks, “You have been through a lot lately. More than any new werewolf is expected to handle as well as you have.” When I looked at him, I could tell he was being genuine. 

“I just...” I sighed, leaning against a nearby oak, “I didn’t want to come here. I didn’t want to leave my partner behind. And... I didn’t want to meet the people who told my parents to take my life from me.” 

Lachlan looked up at the moon, the wind flowing through his hair, “Your concerns are near and dear to my heart. My own parents used the Wolf Eclipse spell on me after I mated with a she-wolf from a rival clan. The look in her eyes when I told her I didn’t know who she was... I see it every time I close my eyes. And then I lost her.” His voice shook a bit, “I never forgave them after that.” He looked back at me, “When your parents told us that they had done the spell after the Hale fire, we told them it was a bad idea. You needed to be stronger than ever, maybe even leave Beacon Hills, but they became too attached to the community, to the sheriff and his son.” They stayed for them... I have no idea what my life would have been like without Stiles in it. It was so different. That was a life I didn’t want to think about because it was a life without my best friend and his insane antics. It was a life without Uncle Noah who loved me no matter what. It would be a life without Derek, or at least a life where I wouldn’t be there to meet him again. 

“I remember now that my father thought we were safe.” I wrapped my arms around myself, “Chris Argent is loyal to his word and the code his family is supposed to follow. Unfortunately, he is the only one who follows that code. Even his own daughter was corrupted by his father and his sister and she was dating a werewolf.” 

“Unfortunately, not every hunter can be Chris Argent. From our understanding, he is the only one fighting with his head while the others see us as inhuman.” He chuckled, “You might even say that we are more human than they are.” I chewed on the inside of my cheek. 

“Lachlan?” 

“Hmm?” 

“What am I doing here? Why bring me all this way?” 

Lachlan looked back up at the moon and smiled, “Well, it was originally to restore your memories. Thankfully, that resolved itself. Now, since you are the only member left of your clan - an alpha was two sparks - we were hoping that you could spend some time with us to relearn the basics. And I also want you to relax, experience your culture, your legacy.” 

“That sounds great and all. But I don’t have time to do that. I need to get back to Derek.” 

“(Y/N), you know that it is too dangerous for the both of you to be there. I don’t want you to experience what it’s like to lose a mate. It’s... It’s soul crushing. Losing who you love most - that is the worst pain anyone can feel.” Lachlan turned to go back to the castle, “Think about it. You aren’t a prisoner here. You may leave whenever you like. But I think you could do great things with just a little help.” With that, his footsteps faded into the darkness; leaving me with only my thoughts, the moonlight, and the ocean below. I had to make a decision, one that would ultimately decide my future as an alpha. I just wish someone I knew was here to help me make this decision. If only Uncle Noah were here. He was so level headed and wanted the best for me, but the werewolf drama was probably too much for him already. And Derek would want me to hone in on my skills, even if that meant going into battles alone and possibly losing them. 

I just wish it wasn’t this hard. 

-

After pressing Derek’s contact, I pressed the phone to my ear and listened to it ring. I had no idea what time it was back home, I just needed to at least pretend I was talking to him. 

“Hey Der.” I smiled, “I know it’s late or early. Honestly, I’m not sure. But I wanted to call you and tell you how today went. The flight was long, the food was okay. Uh they made me get a blood test for whatever reason. Oh, and there’s this thing called the Wulver and he was a werewolf that came to peace with his human and animal side. Lachlan’s really nice and doesn’t want to take me from you so the coast is clear on that one. And uh I remembered something today. When we were kids, we got lost in the woods in a storm and we talked about crushes. Funny how you had a crush on a girl who lost her memories.” I laughed, “Anyway... I miss you. And I love you. And I’ll be back as soon-”

I was cut off by a beep and a message telling me that the allotted time of this  message was over. Sighing, I set my phone down and flopped back on the extravagant bed that seemed to form to my body in just the right way. All the fluff and feathers had been cleaned by the time I came back so I should probably thank whoever the cleaning staff were. All I can do is sleep and hope that tomorrow will give me better answers. 

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

Read part 24 here!

I watched Inside today so I am no feeling good. 

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[walkerwords]

“Hear No Evil” Negan X Deaf!F!Reader

Word Count: 1768

Negan x Deaf!Reader

Summary: You are deaf in the apocalypse and you are working on your tech when Negan and Carl pay you a visit. Negan takes a bit of interest in you, but you could care less and just gives him what he need and ignores everything else. However, it seems he kind of likes it. 

Warning: nothing

Song I Wrote To: “Marie Laveau” by Merci Raines

Note: I am not deaf myself, but i have a good friend who is and helped me out with this one. This is just something I wrote while I was waiting for my dinner to cook. not my favourite, but here we are. There probably won’t be a second part.

------

You were bent over an old sprinkler timer in your makeshift workshop in your garage.

You were trying to figure out a way to re-purpose the device to be a light timer so those on guard wouldn’t need to manually turn on the spotlights while on late-night watches. Michonne had mentioned the Governor having something similar at Woodbury and so when you brought the idea to Rick, he trusted you to be the one to figure it all out. 

Lately, Rick had been giving you more and more tasks that appealed to the skills you had acquired before the Apocalypse. Having a Masters in Engineering was something that you took a lot of pride in and you were definitely a coveted member of Alexandria because of it. Sure, there were people like Daryl and Rosita who knew their way around mechanics and weaponry, but you were well-skilled in all aspects of your field. You could fix an engine, rewire a house, and even tune-up the solar panels all before a lunch break. It was something that had made you quite essential in the new world.

However, while you were an asset, you still had to be careful around new people Alexandria would bring in out work with. Being born deaf was not something you expected to ever be a challenge until the Dead began walking. You had gone through extensive speech therapy as a child and well into your late teens. You were fluent in sign language and could read lips. Your cochlear implant worked very well, that is until your battery was damaged in a walker attack four months prior and your world was completely silent since. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it was frustrating and you just had to be even more vigilant on runs. 

When you had met Rick shortly after his group had been run off the Greene family farm, the former sheriff was surprised that you were even alive. He doubted you for a long time when you joined their group. Rick was always worried that you wouldn’t hear when Walkers were around or that you would be too much of a risk on runs, but every time they had run into trouble, you had proved him wrong. 

You were an excellent shot, not to mention you were a wizard when it came to improvised technology. You had managed to set up a night vision camera when they waited out the cannibals from Terminus. That alone had saved Michonne’s life when one had tried to sneak up on her. After that, Rick didn’t question you again.

Then, when you returned home after a run with Sasha and your hearing was once again gone completely, Rick had slipped back into old habits. You were essentially on desk duty now. The only action you had seen since being at the Alexandria Safe Zone was when you had helped dispatch the Wolves and protected Tara and Denise as they worked to save Carl the night the herd invaded the town. Since then, it had been all wires and buttons for you.

You hadn’t held any of that against Rick, but when Maggie was sick and they were ambushed by the Saviors, you were furious. Your father had been a sniper. You knew how to move silently and how to handle yourself. You knew that they had been outnumbered the night the man known as Negan had smashed in Glenn and Abraham’s heads. There was no way any of them could have fought off all the Saviors, but you couldn’t help but think if you had been nearby with your rifle, you could have at least killed a few. Maybe even Negan himself. 

However, you didn’t really know what to think about the man with the baseball bat. You hadn’t seen him and you didn’t know him. What you did know was that he was a murderer who killed two people you cared about and the others were terrified of him. The only thought that kept you going through this new reality of being under the Sanctuary's thumb was that before they met Negan, Rick Grimes was the one everyone was scared of. 

You still believed that was true. 

You blinked a few times, trying to refocus on your work when a vibration rattled your desk, gaining your attention. You turned towards the open garage door to see Carl Grimes set down a wrench he had used to knock against the pipes. He waved at you with a warning look in his eye. You nodded to him and then noticed the large man looming behind the teenager. He was tall with broad shoulders and a scruffy beard. His height alone was intimidating, but the way he carried himself reminded you of horrid men you had met on the road and it sent a chill down your spine. 

Though, it was what was in his hand that made you freeze. A baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire hung loosely in his grip. Your jaw tightened as you slowly stood from your stool, dropping your work completely and raising your hands in front of you. Looking back to Carl, you placed your fingertips to your temple and then pulled it away, folding down your three center fingers. The sign for “why?” 

“(Y/N),” Carl began, signing as he spoke. “The Saviors are here for a pick up,” he explained. Negan was watching Carl’s hands in confusion before it clicked and you nearly gagged at the smile of pleasure that appeared on the killer’s face. 

“What do you want?” you said, hoping your voice wasn’t too scratchy today. You hadn’t spoken in a few days. Most of your original group knew enough ASL to talk to you. Daryl, Carl, and Rick were near fluent and Michonne and Maggie were the next best. The only other person who had been nearly as perfect as you were was Beth who had a deaf best friend growing up. Days like these were when you missed the younger Greene sister the most. 

“Do you have those extra walkie batteries?” Carl asked. you looked between Carl and Negan, your hands clenching. you wanted to yell at Carl, send your hands flying faster than he would probably understand, but you knew it was unwise to show too much emotion in front of Negan. Last thing you wanted to do was fuel his rage or whatever he was exuding at the moment. So you sighed and walked to the other side of your workshop. Carl waited by the door, but Negan made his way around the garage, picking up odds and ends. You kept him in your view from the corner of your eye, making sure he didn’t break anything too valuable.

Hauling a box from behind a half-finished motorcycle you were working on for Jesus, you dug around for what Carl had asked for. You drew four spare batteries and kicked the box back into it’s crevice. You marched over to the kid and nearly slammed the batteries into his chest. “Anything else?” you asked. 

Negan then appeared once again. His back was turned to you, so you missed what he said, but Carl sighed and slipped the batteries into his bag so he could get his hands free. He then gestured to you. “(Y/N), this is N-E-G-A-N,” he fingered spelled, “Negan this is (Y/N),” he introduced gesturing to Negan once again. “She’s our engineer.” Negan then fully turned to you and appraised her. 

“A deaf engineer? There’s a joke in there somewhere,” he said with a twisted smile. You gritted your teeth.

“Funny,” you quipped, “is that why you interrupted my work, to make stupid jokes that I’ve heard my whole life?” Negan seemed surprised at your answer. He narrowed his eyes at you and then looked back to Carl. 

“She can read lips,” Carl explained and Negan almost looked impressed. 

“So, you can spy on conversations from a long ways away?” Negan asked, nearly vibrating with excitement. you crossed your arms, sitting into one hip. 

“I’m deaf, not superhuman,” you said, “now if that’s all, I need to finish my work.” Carl went to leave when Negan rested a hand on the kid’s shoulder, halting him. 

“Well, it looks like someone has already made their mind up about me, hey, kid?” Negan said, still grinning at you. 

“That tends to happen when you murder my friends,” you said, not backing down. Negan laughed and ran a hand over his face. 

“You know what? I like you,” Negan said. 

“Oh great, lucky me,” you said as you turned your back on both of them. Negan went to say something else until he realized it would be futile. You picked up your jacket and slung it around your shoulders. When you turned back to Carl he was looking at you with worry as he usually did when he could tell you were getting pissed. You then hooked your finger toward him in a question mark and then tapped your thumb to your forehead, your palm splayed wide. Dad? 

“He’s with Judith, Olivia had to go help pack up the pantry,” Carl said.

“Thanks,” you said as you moved past the two men who had invaded your space. However, Negan wasn’t done and grabbed your arm. Carl went to stop him when you nearly jumped back three feet, snatching back your arm, your eyes wide and alarmed. Carl was infront of you in a second, explaining that you were okay, not bothering to speak, only moving his hands. You tracked the signs and calmed down slightly. Carl then turned to look at a surprised Negan, keeping his hands visible to you. 

“Grabbing deaf people when they’re not expecting it while living in a world where the Dead walk around trying to eat people isn’t the most comfortable thing,” Carl explained, but it didn’t matter because you were already heading away from them, your hand on your knife. Carl watched as you sped towards his house, looking for Rick. 

“So she actually can’t hear,” Negan said, surprised. Carl looked at him, his one eyes narrowed. 

“You thought she was faking it?”

“She has the implant,” Negan said, gesturing to his own head. 

“Her battery got damaged a few months back. She could hear pretty well from the day I met her until it got broken. We haven’t been able to find a replacement for it yet. That also means she’s not the friendliest of people right now, especially to strangers.”

“I don’t blame her,” Negan grinned, “but you know what? I like her!”

[lightns881]

DTeam Tumblr Demographics Survey Results (Part 2):

What does DTeamblr look like, what does it have to do with MCYT history, and why does it look like a rainbow?

I’ll make an educated guess here and say y'all enjoyed my last post (totally unrelated to the way I gained almost 50 followers overnight). Anyhow, thank you so much for the overwhelming support! I’m so glad a lot of you felt you could relate to my deep-dive into the leading personality type on DTeam Tumblr. It took me so many hours to write and research, and as a math major and honors student, it’s no easy feat, so I’m so grateful for the attention it got!

Today we’re discussing the general demographics of DTeam Tumblr and why they might look the way they do. Number 8 will blow your mind! So make sure to keep reading and hit that little grey heart and arrow at the bottom if you like it, so more people get to see it! Thanks for your support! Now, let’s jump straight into the post!

Your Daily Dose of Data

From the 449 responses we received, these are some pie charts displaying the gender, age, and sexuality of all respondents.

Image Description: Female (52.8%), Non-Binary (37.4%), Male (9.8%)

Image Description: 16-17 (37%), 13-15 (31.4%), 18 and over (29.4%), 12 and under (2.2%)

Image Description: Bisexual/Pansexual (54.1%), Homosexual (16%), Asexual (14.7%), Other (7.8%), Heterosexual (7.3%)

Mmhm, delicious! Y'all ready to dig into these stats? Because I don’t know about you, but they certainly don’t strike me as what the general population looks like!

Welcome to Tumblr, the Only Community Where Straight Men are the Minority

So these statistics certainly didn’t take me by surprise. Mostly because the DNF Shipper Survey I took some time ago revealed a similar trend. Not to mention, Tumblr is probably the QUEEREST internet community on the planet. 

Funny enough, the survey revealed a shocking number of ZERO heterosexual males respondents. I’ll say it louder for the people in the back. ZERO straight males were recorded out of 449 respondents for this survey!

Now, this isn’t surprising for the Tumblr community by itself, but I can say I’m somewhat surprised in terms of the MCYT Tumblr community. (Obviously, the survey specified DTeam Tumblr, but there is a big overlap between both communities, so I will be using them interchengably when it seems relevant.)

Let’s break this down. The survey reveals the largest age population is 16-17, though it’s not by a great margin in comparison to 13-15 and 18 and older, which doesn’t surprise me either. Some of the major critics of the DTeam Fandom and other MCYT Fandoms love to claim the fanbase’s majority age range lies with children and pre-teens. While it’s an undeniable fact children are drawn to Minecraft, it’s also a misconception to paint it as solely a community for younger viewers.

In the MCYT Tumblr and DTeam Tumblr communities, specifically, we see this is not the case. Only 1/3 of the respondents of this survey are under the age of 16 (you could attribute part of it to the fact younger people might be less inclined to participate in this survey, but it is still a notable difference). I can’t say these age ranges are similar in other parts of the community like DTeam Twitter, Tik Tok, or Reddit, but if I had to make a guess, I’d say Tumblr lies toward the older of the bunch, with Reddit being the oldest and Tik Tok being the youngest (I do hope to perform this survey on some of the other communities, so please stay until the end if you want to help with that).

One of the likely explanations to why the ages for DTeam Tumblr look this way is the fact a big chunk of the community has likely been watching MCYT for a long time (even with breaks in between). I, myself, used to watch channels like PopularMMOs, Aphmau, and PrestonPlayz as a kid, and I presume many of you are familiar with them as well. With the resurgence of MCYT in the past year, it likely drew a lot of the older viewers in addition to the new ones.

But enough about age. What I really want to highlight on this post is the attraction of queer individuals to DTeam Tumblr and MCYT as a whole.

Why is the current MCYT Fandom so queer in comparison to the previous generations?

This is a huge open-ended question and considering I can only capture so much of the DTeam and MCYT community, the rest of this post should be taken solely as a theoretical analysis as opposed to fact.

With that out of the way, let’s start by discussing the shift MCYT has undergone over the years (I promise this will circle back to the question of queerness in the MCYT fandom, but we need some background before we can come up with a decent theory).

When Minecraft was first released, it proved to be a monumental change in the gaming industry. This simple little indie game took the world by storm. It was so vastly different from what the general population generally viewed gaming as (first-person shooters, story-driven games, action games, etc.) Not to mention, it didn’t exactly solely appeal to only a small margin of gamers, those being white cis males.

The gaming industry has notoriously been known in the past for its heteronormative community and general prejudice toward minorities. Though it has gone through a significant change over the decades, we certainly can’t say it’s fully gone.

Yet for whatever reason, the recent MCYT has taken the interest of so many queer people in comparison to other gaming YouTube communities. Why? Why are queer people so drawn to this community? And, more precisely, why does it feel so different than the old MCYT? Lastly, how does this relate to the conclusion about the leading personalities of this fandom we made in the last post?

The Niche Communities of MCYT Over the Years

MCYT has always been a huge, over-saturated genre of YouTube with content appealing to a variety of audiences. It’s dominated gaming content for years, and I think we can all safely say it’s never been bigger than it is today.

So why is it that just now it feels like the queerness of the fandom is popping off? Why now as opposed to say five years ago when MCYT was at another one of it’s strongest stages?

It seems like the community has made a tremendous shift in relation to breaking gender norms and LGBTQ+ subjects, not only in the fans but within the creators themselves. Was flirting and calling a pretty-boy streamer pet names as normal in the past as it is today? Were straight gamer guys putting on dresses and a full-face of make-up as supported back then? Were “marriages” and “pregnancies” within Minecraft boys an everyday occurrence like they are now? How is it that MCYT has dominated a Twitch dating show where flirting with the gay host and among straight contestants themselves is just another bit of entertainment? Where is this all coming from?

Recently, I watched a 2 hour documentary depicting all of the stages of Minecraft YouTube and how it has changed over the years. If you haven’t seen it and you have some time to spare, I HIGHLY recommend it! It’s very informative, and it honestly gave me such a strong sense of nostalgia that makes me choke up every time I think about it. I’ll link it below.

The documentary does a great job at exploring the different niche communities that dominated MCYT since it first took off. Some of such communities include the basic Let’s Players, the team-based Let’s Play channels like How2Minecraft, the roleplay story-centric ones like Aphmau and Samgladiator, the tutorial, building and technical side like Mumbo and Grian, the PVP-centric Bedwars or Hypixel channels, the Machinima community, the comedy side like ExplosiveTNT, the parody music videos, and so many more. All of the mentioned communities have dominated Minecraft at one point or another, many of them still having a rippling effect and/or a loyal community today. All of these communities have certain aspects that define them, some of which parallel the current overtaking content in the present.

How can we compare MyStreet to the Dream SMP?

Taking Aphmau as an example, her MyStreet series had a TREMENDOUS success a few years ago, racking in millions of views and bringing in a lot of money that eventually allowed her to hire voice actors and increase the production of mentioned episodes. The roleplay series was so successful it ran for six seasons!

Now, let’s compare that to the Dream SMP. It seems like a big comparison to be making considering they appear so different at first glance. For once, Aphmau is just one channel whose audience caters toward girls and younger people who enjoy romance. The series is set-up in an episodic-format that resembles more of a TV series than actual Minecraft videos.

Meanwhile, the Dream SMP is a collection of content creators with a mix of improvised storylines and the occasional regular video that resembles more of a Let’s Play series than a RP series.

You could say the only true comparisons to draw out of these two are the popularity they had/have and the profit they brought to their respective creators. 

However, there’s two other key similarities that you’ll find not only within these two specific examples, but many other channels and communities as well. Story and characters.

MyStreet’s story aspect is fairly obvious seeing as it’s a episodic series that focuses on a fictional story. The Dream SMP’s story aspect isn’t as clear, but it’s evident there is a story playing out in the foreground and background, whether intentional or unintentional, or improvised or not.

Character is where some of you might start to question me. It’s obvious MyStreet has characters. I mean, it is a fictional story, after all. But the Dream SMP? Light, they’re obviously people!

Well, my answer to that is yes and no--sort of. The Dream SMP’s story heavily relies on roleplay, bits as you might call them. Events that aren’t necessarily planned out as a fictional plot like the typical MyStreet episode is, but they aren’t exactly real. Schlatt is obviously not a villain in real life, he just likes to impersonate as one for the narrative. Wilbur isn’t crazy, but it’s a way to spice up the heroic story surrounding Tommy and him.

It’s video-game improv. Except the actors behind the content just so happen to be real people playing off the personalities and “brands” they have obtained. 

Brands. It all boils down to this. In the entertainment business, without a clear vision of your project and a clear way to brand what your consumer intakes, your project will likely not find a lot of success.

There’s a reason why Tommy plays off his loudness, using an overexaggerated laugh that although may not be completely fake, it is likely not the laugh he uses everyday. Or why BadBoyHalo is this supposed innocent muffin who doesn’t understand the crafting table meme and other references that are fairly easy to google and find the meaning of. Or why Sapnap is this chaotic being who loves starting pet wars and we love to paint as an arsonist in the Dream SMP. While all of these personality traits may be a part of their true selves, they’re played up for the camera--for the story. They act as the personas that define their characters in the narrative.

They have a clear brand and vision that appeals to the audience and makes them tune in on the daily to see how they all come together. It’s like roleplaying a more extreme version of yourself, one that brings home the money.

Story and characters run across every entertainment outlet. They define their brand. Aphmau has her characters and series. Hermitcraft has a set of memorable personalities and episodic videos that formulate its own story that is less like a narrative and more of a history of the server. ExplodingTNT has his recurring cast and comedic sketches. Most of these niche communities have a form of story and character defining them. It’s how they achieve a clear sense of branding and cater to a specific audience.

Queer Theory in MCYT

Having said all that, why does the MCYT of today draw in so many queer viewers?

Let’s think about this. In my last post, I ended by mentioning DTeam Tumblr is a sort of safe haven for INFP and INxx types who might be placed in the “other” category by society. INFPs, specially, are predisposed for escapism--one common form of it being fiction and entertainment. Not to mention, INFPs are feeling types who, as introverts, seek a personable connection. It’s why it’s so easy for them to obsess over book characters or fall in love with content creators.

Now, let’s imagine a whole community of LGBTQ+ INFP and INxx types. Actually, scratch that, we don’t even have to imagine it.

It’s what our community looks like today.

And why are so many so drawn to the DTeam and Dream SMP of all things? It’s a personable storyline that essentially forms a direct tie to the viewer. Unlike pre-recorded fictional TV series you tune into on your device, the Dream SMP is a whole load of chaos that blurs the lines between reality and fiction where fans can directly connect to creators and get to know them as people through a storyline that features sub-textual queer themes and non-conforming behaviors.

The MCYT content creator community of today is more non-conforming than ever before, and knowing this whole fact, knowing that many of them might place themselves in the “other” category or at the very least aren’t afraid to break the norms and be seen in that light, is a comfort in itself for LGBTQ+ INFP types. Once again, it’s a safe space that helps you escape from the troubles of real life, one you relate to.

Okay. So although this does answer why the fans look like they do, what about the creators themselves? Are we really supposed to believe this all came through naturally? That a bunch of straight guys suddenly decided wearing dresses was something they wanted to do?

I don’t mean to sound cynical here, and I’m in no way trying to insinuate creators have solely some sort of corrupt ulterior motive. Things are never as simple as they look. However, the truth is, a part of it lies on the attention it’s gotten.

I’ve talked a lot about DreamNotFound and the way Dream uses it as a marketing ploy. I stand by my point. However, he’s not the only one who does this in the MCYT community. Why did Finn suddenly go from wearing a dress to cross-dressing as a girl for a whole week? Why are so many creators suddenly deciding wearing dresses is fun? Why does every freaking straight MCYT actively want to flirt with George nowadays?

Let’s just let Techno’s favorite word answer this for us: clout.

It gets attention from one of the largest historically underserved minority community in the entertainment business. We might not be able to see gay flirting in every Netflix TV show or guys not minding dresses and getting fake marriages, but you are certainly going to get at least one of those in every Dream SMP stream and video you tune into. It gets attention. It brings home the money. And do I blame them? Not really.

Interestingly enough, there’s a lot of analytical posts on the MCYT Tumblr community that discuss the dangers of these tactics and why gay jokes and the way queer subtext is treated by MCYT creators is harmful. Despite this, it still attracts such a huge community of queers. So why exactly would queer people actively watch something that’s offensive or harmful to us?

I have a lot more to say about this topic and the morality behind Dream’s tactics, but I’m out of breath for today, so I’ll talk about it in my next post. What better way to start the conversation about the DNF and Karlnap questions of the survey than a good ol’ discussion on the morality of queerbaiting and the likes?

If you got this far, I’d appreciate it if you liked and reblogged this post if you enjoyed it and/or learned something new! Also, important news, I would really like to perform a similar study on the DTeam Twitter Community to measure the differences in demographics across platforms. I would REALLY appreciate it if you guys could go like, retweet and share the link I posted on my Twitter about it (tweet will be linked in the reblog below) so it reaches more of the DTeam Twitter community!

However, if you filled out the survey yourself here or you associate more with DTeam Tumblr than DTeam Twitter please DO NOT fill out the survey again! I’m trying to make sure it reaches the audience that mains on Twitter, but I need a little help with that since I don’t have as big of an influence on Twitter than on here for obvious reasons.

Anyhow, thank you so much for all your support! I really appreciate y’all and make sure to hit the follow if you want to lookout for the next demographics post! <3

(Pssst, I’m releasing a MCYT DNF superpower AU longfic next month... You should totally go check out the post on that if you’re interested in it...)

[davidmann95]

now that it's over, thoughts on Bendis' Superman as a whole?

pretenderoftheeast said: So, thoughts on Bendis' Superman and Action Comics' tenure altogether and separately now that it's over?

Anonymous said: Best and Worst things about Bendis' Superman run

Anonymous said: Now that it is over, what are your thoughts on Bendis' runs on Superman and Action Comics as a whole?

Anonymous said: Retrospective thoughts on Bendis' Superman as a whole now that it's, I guess, done?

Anonymous said: Hey so since Bendis’ Superman stuff seems to be done, what did you think of the run as a whole?

I decided to hold off a bit on writing on this one, if only so that I could reread the Action Comics side of it since Superman stood out in my memory a lot more. But now I have, and as we’re heading into a bold new era of Superman (and it’s coming in fast - just since I made my Superman in 2021 predictions we’ve gotten Ed Pinsent finally reprinting his legendary bootleg Silver Age Superman, Steve Orlando announcing his Superman analogue book Project Patron, an official shonen Superman redesign for RWBY/Justice League, PKJ’s Super-debut turning out far better than I ever expected, Superman & Lois’s first proper trailer largely taking people pleasantly by surprise, and my learning that there’s a Sylvester Stallone Old Man Superman analogue movie titled Samaritan coming out this summer) we’re ready to take a look back with at least a touch of perspective. I’ll lead with complaints, so everybody who’s been waiting for me to say that Bendis on Superman was Bad, Actually, savor this because it’s as close as you’ll get.

The Bad

* I hate to say it, but rereading that side of the run there’s no two ways about it: the structure of Action Comics as a whole is a mess. It baffled me from day one that it was the more acclaimed of the two books for so long - I guess people are hardwired at this point to think of ‘street’ stuff as where Bendis is supposed to be - because it was immediately clear that Superman had a well-defined story he wanted to tell, while Action was the usual Bendis off-the-cuff improvisation. It’s barely even a story in the same way, and it’s certainly not the ‘Metropolis crime book’ people took it as: it’s 28 issues of Superman and his supporting cast stuffed a pinball machine with the Red Cloud pinging off of each other as we wait to see who falls in the hole at the bottom, and partway through Leviathan and the Legion of Doom and 90s Superboy are tossed into the mix to keep it going a little longer. On an issue-to-issue basis it’s frequently really good, but the core plot of the book is *maybe* six issues stretched out over two and a half years.

* I’ve gone into this some before, but structure-wise Unity Saga also has problems: Phantom Planet rules but either it needed to be cut or the back half needed to be a year all its own in order to accommodate the scale of what it’s attempting. It’s got an interstellar civil war leading into the formation of the United Planets, family drama, Rogol Zaar’s whole deal, and Jon’s coming of age, and I’d say only that last one is really properly served. Even Jon forming the United Planets, while contextually somewhat justified in terms of 1. The situation being so far gone he’s the only one who’d even think in those terms, 2. Things being bad enough that these assorted galactic powers would be willing to try it, and 3. Him having the S on his chest to sell it, isn’t at all built up to within the run itself.

* Rogol Zaar sucks. He’s made up of nothing but interesting ideas - he’s an ersatz warrior ‘superman’ of a bygone age of empires up against the new model, he’s the sins of Krypton as a conservative superpower come home to roost, he’s while not outright said to be definitely Superman’s tragic half-brother and the culmination of everything this run does with Jor-El - but none of them manifest on the page, he’s just a big punchy dude with a dumb design who screams about how you should take him seriously because he’s totally the one who blew up Krypton. Even a killer redesign by Ryan Sook for Legion of Superheroes can’t fix that. There are lots of bad villains with good ideas who are redeemed with time and further effort, but I can’t imagine Zaar getting that TLC to become a fraction of whatever Bendis envisioned him as.

* The second year of Action Comics, after establishing itself in its first as one of the most consistently gorgeous books on the stands, leads with Szymon Kudranski’s weak output and then concludes with John Romita Jr. turning in some career-worst work. The latter is particularly egregious because for that first year Bendis writes a really collected, gentle Superman so him getting pushed into being more aggressive should have an impact, but Romita draws such a craggy rough-looking Superman in the first place that it mutes any sort of shock value.

 * WE NEVER LEARN WHAT’S UP WITH LEONE’S CAR, WHAT THE HELL. You don’t just DROP THAT IN THERE and then NEVER FOLLOW UP.

The Good

* Superman got his real clothes back after 7 truly ridiculous years.

* Bendis fundamentally gets Clark’s voice in a way unlike almost any other writer - even all-around better writers of the character almost never approach how spot-on he is with having Superman speak and act exactly how Superman should.

* Supporting cast front and center! He writes a dynamite Lois, Perry, and Jimmy (even if many of Lois’s more out-there decisions in the run don’t end up retroactively justified the way you’d hope), Ma and Pa are more fun than they’ve been in decades in their brief appearances, he manages to turn having Jor-El in the mix into a positive, and the Daily Planet as a whole has an incredibly distinctive vibe to it like never before that I hope is taken as a baseline going forward.

* The non-Rogol Zaar baddies? All ruled. Invisible Mafia and Red Cloud are both brilliant ideas executed solidly if overextended. Zod as Kryptonian Vegeta, Mongul as a generational perpetual bastard engine primed to be incapable of self-reflection, and Ultraman as “what if Irredeemable but he’d never been a good guy and also he was a Jersey mobster” are the best versions of those characters by numberless light-eons. Lex is on-point in his sparse appearances. Xanadoth as a mystical cosmic monster older than time who still talks like a Bendis character is however unintentionally a hoot. The alt-universe Parasite is a more intimidating Doomsday than Doomsday ever was. And Synmar as an alien culture’s attempt at creating their own Superman and messing up the formula when they make him a soldier can and should be a legitimate major ongoing villain coming out of this run.

* Pretty much all the art other than what I mentioned already. Fabok does a good job bookending The Man of Steel and Ivan Reis does the work of his career anchoring Superman (special props to Reis as well for drawing the first ever non-Steve Rude interesting-looking take on Metropolis), and meanwhile you’ve got Jim Lee, Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, Doc Shaner, Steve Rude, Kevin Maguire, Adam Hughes, Patrick Gleason, Yanick Paquette, Ryan Sook, Brandon Peterson, and David Lafuente doing their own parts.

* Closely related to the art, all the little flourishes with the powers. Super-speed having a consistent visual with the background coloring changing, Clark internally putting numbers to the degrees of force behind his punches and what situations which numbers are appropriate for, ‘skidding to a halt’ mid-flight before crashing through a window, the shonen-ass major throwdowns as portrayed by Reis, how his super-hearing is handled as a prevalent element. Lots of clever bits that added flavor to what he does.

* While Unity Saga has problems, the whole of what Bendis does in Superman as a means of forward momentum for Clark and his world is excellent. The sort of three-act structure of: 

** Clark is led to question his place in things over the course of a few adventures

** Involvement in the larger cosmos and the impact it has had through and on his family makes him realize the answer to his questions is that he needs to step up in a bigger way because there’s no benevolent larger universe to welcome Earth with open arms, nor a cosmic precedent for everything turning out for the best without some help

** As a consequence of the lessons learned by this change in the status quo Clark is inspired to make his own personal change in revealing his identity (with Mythological basically being an epilogue showcasing a ‘standard’ standalone Superman adventure while simultaneously highlighting his new status quo and how it fits in as a summing-up of Bendis’s take)

…does a great job of shepherding through ideas that lend a lot of forward momentum to Superman of the kind he hasn’t seen in a long time. Not perfect, but far lesser stories with far lesser ambitions have made huge impacts, so I’d certainly hope at least some of this sticks around even if, say, regardless of any retcons to the main line there are always going to be stories with Clark as a disguise and Jon as a kid. Oh, speaking of whom,

* KISS MY ASS, EVERYTHING WITH JON KENT RULED

Ahem. Probably a less confrontational way of putting that.

Do I think there was more gas in the tank for Jon as a kid? Totally, making him likeable and viable was the one really good thing the Rebirth era accomplished for Superman and I expect we’ll continue seeing more of it in the future one way or another. But whether or not him being aged up was Bendis’s decision, or working with marching orders to set up the eventually-(kinda-)discarded 5G, the coming of age narrative here is fire. He keeps the essential Clark Kent kindness and bit of Lois Lane cheekiness that reminds you he’s still their kid, which is a combination Bendis is basically precision-crafted to write, but his trials by fire give him a background entirely unlike the by-the-numbers “and here’s how Superman’s great kid grew up to be a great superhero too” narrative you’d expect while still arriving at that endpoint. If superheroes live and die by metaphors then Jon in here is what it means to grow up written as large as possible: leaving home for the first time (and seeming to shoot up overnight!), getting into the muck of how the real world works, being beaten down by authority wearing faces you’ve been taught to trust, scrambling to get through with the whole world against you, and in the end getting through by learning to rely on your own strength while keeping your soul intact and your head held high, and even managing to speak some truth to power. It gives him a well-defined life story with room to go back to and explore the intricacies of each leg of for decades to come in a way Superman hasn’t had since the original Crisis - someone someday is going to write a The Life & Times Of The Son Of Superman miniseries and it’s going to be one of the greats - and negates any question that he’s earned his stature as the heir apparent.

* Coming out of this, Superman’s world is fascinating. He’s out but rather than giving up his day-to-day life he’s openly spending part of his life as CLARK KENT: SUPER-REPORTER and part of his job on the cape-and-tights side of things is now KAL-EL: SUPER-SPACE-DIPLOMAT, Lois Lane coruns a foundation helping people whose personal continuities have been fucked over by Crisis shenanigans, Jimmy Olsen owns the Daily Planet but is still doing Jimmy Olsen stuff because that’s how he gets his kicks, and Jon Kent is going to college in the future. I’m not anywhere near naïve enough to think that’s how things are going to be forever, or shortsighted enough to think there’s no value left in the traditional setups, but god I hope these developments stick around for a long, long time to come and potentially become the new ‘normal’ as far as the ongoing shared universe stuff goes, because it all feels like the right and promising next steps to take for the lives of these characters. However it got here, for all the pluses and minuses along the way even if I maintain the former very much outweighed the latter as a reading experience, Bendis has a lot to be proud of if that’s the legacy he leaves on these titles.

* The recap pages at the desks!

[starry-sky-stuff]

Sorting the Grisha Trilogy

For this sorting I’ll be using the superb sorting system created by @sortinghatchats. A brief breakdown, there are Primaries, the why, and Secondaries, the how. For a more in depth explanation check out @sortinghatchats or @wisteria-lodge. Here’s a link to a great and succinct explanation. 

Disclaimer: Spoiler warnings apply both for the Grisha Trilogy, the Six of Crows Duology and the Nikolai Duology. 

This turned into a very long post so I cut for length.

Alina Starkov has a very loud Lion Secondary that she increasingly grows into as the series progresses. Alina has literally no chill ever, about anything. She’s always ready to throw down. In Siege & Storm, she’s quite ready to tear the Crown Prince a new one for his suggestion that they lower the draft age. All the while Nikolai watches in exasperation because they very much need to keep the generals and royals on side. But Alina can never be anything other than what she is. he is genuinely disturbed by Nikolai’s ability to switch personas because it is so antithetical to her entire personality. Alina is the same kind of Lion Secondary that Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games is — someone who inspires an army and is ultimately used as a symbol and martyr by others for their own gains.

For her Primary I would also say Lion. Alina has very firm beliefs and they all come from within. She’s also got that lone wolf outlook that Lion Primary’s often struggle with. Repeatedly, she pushes people away and is intent on doing things alone. There’s also elements of the unhealthy Glory Hound Lion Primary, in that, as much as Alina is motivated by doing good, she’s also motivated by gaining power. Greed and power are such integral parts of her storyline. A Snake would claim they were gaining power to protect their loved ones, a Badger just people in general or maybe Ravka as a whole. But Alina gains power so she can defeat the Darkling and save the world. When she kills Mal, as much as it is to save the world, a part of it is also to gain power, for which she pays a price by losing said power. The very core issue in her relationship with Mal is the conflict between a Loyalist and an Idealist. For Mal, his main priority is Alina. For Alina, her priority is defeating the Darkling. 

Loyal and dutiful Mal Oretsev is an incredibly obvious Snake Primary. His entire motivation is centred on Alina. Everything he does is for her. He volunteers to hunt the stag for her, he deserts the army for her, he stays in the capital to protect her even though he hates it. “You’re my flag, you’re my nation” is a very Snake flavoured declaration of love. Mal is not in this fight because he wants to save Ravka or defeat the Darkling. He was completely okay with him and Alina escaping to Novyi Zem at the end of the first book and leaving Ravka to its fate. He commits to the fight when Alina does, and her cause becomes his cause. 

For his secondary, charming, likeable, Mal is a Badger. One of the first things we learn about Mal is that he can fit in anywhere and has no trouble making friends. Although he has a bit of a Lion Secondary Performance, at his core his a team player. He enjoyed the army because it was a community, and he’s at his lowest in the second book because he has no friends and no community. Part of why he’s much healthier in the last book is that he has a community again and a position within that community. In the White Chapel he can train and teach, and once they leave he has his own little team again. He falls into the leader role in the last book, not because he inspires loyalty the way Lion Secondary Alina does, but because he caretakes and looks after people. When they’re underground, and he constantly goes back to check on everybody and talk to them to make sure they keep up, that’s a Badger Secondary looking after his community. It’s probably not at all surprising that Mal has what @the-phoenix-heart has dubbed the love interest sorting. His priority is Alina, and he shows his love by following her and joining her quest, and in the end, sacrificing himself for her. Mal wasn’t going to die to save Ravka. He was sacrificing himself to save Alina. 

Nikolai Lantsov, whose entire motivation in the original trilogy is to gain the throne of Ravka to save Ravka, strikes me as more of a Loyalist than an Idealist. Either he’s a Badger whose community is Ravka, or a Snake who just has a very wide circle. Considering there’s no evidence of him dehumanising people, I would lean towards Snake. We later learn that part of why he wants to fix Ravka is a promise he made to a childhood friend who died in his arms, which strikes me as a very Snake motivation. An Idealist would be more motivated by the cause of helping Ravka, and a Badger would focus on Ravkans being in need of good leadership. I think much of his character arc in Nikolai Duology makes sense through the lens of a Snake Primary moving his priorities, as Ravka as a whole becomes less important and Zoya becomes more important. His primary was very difficult for me to accurately gauge because I think he actively hides it behind his secondary performance. Once we’re in his head, his motivations are very focused on the individuals he cares about. I think he and Zoya also bond over this Snake Primary that was let down by their parents and so transferred their loyalty onto Ravka as a whole. 

Initially, I thought he had a Snake Secondary. After all, Alina’s description of him being similar to a Matryoshka doll, always putting on different personas, is quintessential Snake Secondary. But when you actually look at how Nikolai solves problems, it isn’t with his charm or guile. Yes, he saves Alina by pretending to be Sturmhond, but they get into Ravka because he came up with a flying ship. In the last book, he saves the group because he just happened to have a secret military base he’d developed for a rainy day. In the Nikolai Duology, he literally came up with a plan for someone else to masquerade as him just in case he ever went missing. He solves his problems by pulling out some old tool or plan he’d previously developed on the off chance he’d need it. Total Bird Secondary. Now, Nikolai has a very good Snake Secondary model. It was something he developed in children to deal with his emotionally neglectful parents, by becoming whatever he had to be to get attention. But at his core, he’s an inventor, it’s what he enjoys doing, it’s what he does for fun, and it’s how he solves his problems. 

The Darkling, who views ozatskaya and even other Grisha as beneath him is a Dark Badger Primary. To the Darkling, only the Grisha are human, and even then he still thinks of him and Alina as above other Grisha. When parts of the Second Army turn on him he dehumanises them in turn. There’s an argument for an unhealthy Lion Primary, who believes wholeheartedly that all the terrible things he does are justified and he’s the only one who can save Ravka. But building the Second Army and Little Palace as a place the Grisha could belong seems to me like a Badger Primary looking to build his community. It’s also explains why he can kill all these people and feel no guilt whatsoever because to him they’re not really people. In the Rule of Wolves he even explicitly says that he whilst he values human life in general he does not value human lives specifically. 

The building of the Second Army is proof of his Badger Secondary. A skilled manipulator, he nevertheless uses genuine emotion and pieces of himself in the manipulation that I don’t think a Snake Secondary would find necessary. If you believe he did develop genuine feelings for Alina, then that would probably be a Badger Secondary who fell for his own performance. A Snake Secondary would probably have pretended to want a relationship with Alina without developing any feelings. His primary and secondary work together to explain why he was so affected by the Grisha turning against him. That’s his community, the community he built up from the ground, and when they turn on him he punishes them for their perceived disloyalty. 

Zoya Nazyalensky is a Snake Primary whose circle includes the Second Army and eventually the whole of Ravka. There’s an argument that she’s a Badger Primary who might’ve been a little burned, and she does treat ozatskaya as lesser than Grisha, but I don’t see the evidence of dehumanisation. Her reason for turning against the Darkling is that he killed her aunt, her only family and to her mind the only person who loved her. A Badger Primary might’ve been more motivated by him massacring Novokribirsk as opposed to a particular loss. Also, her feelings of failure are specific to her feeling that she failed her people — failing to stop the Darkling from killing her aunt, failing to protect the Second Army, failing to stop Nina from being captured. Throughout the original trilogy she’s burned. She’s lost her only person and so latches on to what is hers — the Second Army, Ravka, the Little Palace. She protects these things because they’re hers not because of any ideal. In the Nikolai Duology she unburns and opens herself up to admitting more people to her circle (or admitting that they’re actually in her circle and she does care about them). 

Zoya’s secondary was harder for me to pick. She’s definitely an improvisational secondary. We never see her making plans or being worried about being prepared, she just goes into dangerous situations and things work out for her. Snake Secondary in neutral state is possible. For the most part, she’s not particularly chargey for most of the original trilogy and could be a Snake that just doesn’t care. But she treats Nikolai’s Snake Secondary Model with awe and is, I think, too genuinely impressed by it to be a Snake Secondary herself. Lion Secondary makes more sense given that she’s a natural leader who inspires others more than makes herself likeable. The ending of Rule of Wolves also makes me lean towards Lion, since it’s her running headfirst to save Nina without any plan of attack and she doesn’t try to work her away around the situation like a Snake. She just runs straight into danger. 

Genya Safin, who wants nothing more than to belong, is a Badger Primary searching for a community. It’s why she stays loyal to the Darkling even after he destroys Novokribirsk, because he gave her a community and sense of belonging, and she believes these things are reliant on her loyalty and service to him. For her secondary, probably Badger too. Like the Darkling, she falls into the trap of believing her own manipulations and actually becomes friends with Alina. Also, the fact she spent years working on her tailoring skills seems like a Badger to me. 

David Kostyck, the quintessential inventor, has a glaring Bird Secondary. He’s the one who comes up with inventions, like the discs and the portable light, and is more comfortable in his lab than in the field. As for his primary, I think he might also be a Bird. He’s not a loyalist. If he was a Snake Primary then he probably wouldn’t have turned on the Darkling after Novokribirsk because Genya was still with him. He could be a Badger Primary who turned because of the massacre. But I think he’s a Bird Primary. He desires knowledge, not for the sake of power but purely because he wants to understand things. He strikes me as having a very decided morality. Merzost is bad because that’s a core Grisha teaching that he has adopted in his own system. 

Tolya and Tamar are harder to sort because they get less screen time. Tolya’s probably  double Lion, considering his concern with being honourable and his qualms with morally dubious actions. Also, his faith seems to me to be very felt and that is more Lion Primary. Considering his main role is as the muscle, definitely Lion Secondary. Tamar, who is totally okay with the morally dubious actions her brother abhors and, as of the Nikolai Duology, is in charge of spying is probably a Snake Secondary. Her motivations are less clear. Could be that she��s a Snake Primary who based her loyalties first of Alina then on Nikolai. She seems to be more attached to individuals than to any cause or country. 

In summary: 

Alina: Lion Primary/Lion Secondary

Mal: Snake Primary/Badger Secondary, Lion Secondary Performance

Nikolai: Snake Primary/Bird Secondary, Snake Secondary Model

The Darkling: Badger Primary/Badger Secondary, Snake Secondary Model

Zoya: Snake Primary/Lion Secondary

Genya: Badger Primary/Badger Secondary

David: Bird Primary/Bird Secondary

Tolya: Lion Secondary/Lion Secondary

Tamar: Snake Primary/Snake Secondary

[queen-of-deans-booty]

Serotonin

Characters: Dean Winchester x Reader, Sam Winchester

Word Count: 2,031

Warnings: soft smut, cockwarming, fluff, mention of children on cases

Request by @sharp-cheekbones-locked​: Can you write a DeanxReader where a hunt went wrong and the reader needs to get out so Dean drags her into Baby and they drive around. They are no couple yet just best friends. Somewhen they stop it's dawn and they lay on the hood of the car while they watch the sunset and gaze stars. They end up holding hands, cuddling, kissing. If you want smut in baby.

Summary: Dean is your best friend, and you’ve always wanted to be more. If it happens, then it happens, and if it’s going to happen, then it’s going to happen now.

Squares Filled: driving in the impala for @spndeanbingo​ // god helps those who help themselves for @as-the-saying-goes-bingo​ // healer for @spnfluffbingo​ // “I’m fine. It’s just that life is pointless and nothing matters and I’m always tired.” for @spnquotebingo​

Author’s Note: This is unbeta’d and all mistakes are mine. If you have any requests, please send them in!

Hunts don’t always go as planned. Sometimes they allow room for ideas and improvising thinking that can either got o shit or it can save your life. Sometimes the monsters aren’t always what they seem, and you have to change your way of thinking and planning in order to get the monster. Sometimes, a hunt can take a turn for the worst, and you’re left with a dead child, a dead monster, and a lot of blood that’s been spilled.

It’s no one’s fault. You can’t ever predict this kind of behavior. Monsters act on their own accord, and you’re never really sure what you’re dealing with until you do. The child that died wasn’t anyone’s fault--it was a complete accident, but that doesn’t stop your brain from thinking back to your past, the decisions you’ve made, and the worry you now carry on your shoulders.

No one is safe, not even children anymore.

The entire ride home was spent in complete and utter pain of the choices you’ve made, worrying about where they are now and what they’re doing. Wondering if a monster is ever going to attack or grab at your choices. You know for a fact they aren’t in this life because you made sure they were far from it.

It’s weird how all you want is to hold him close as if being right by your side is safer than being on the other side of the world from you.

Dean can see just how much this hunt is taking a toll on you, but he doesn’t know how to ask you about it. The bags under your eyes are heavy, your shoulders sag from all the weight and stress you’ve been carrying, and your body is just tired. As soon as you trudge through the door, he says something.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. It’s just that life is pointless and nothing matters and I’m always tired,” you shrug.

“Okay, come with me.”

“Dean--”

“Just for a drive. Give me twenty minutes of your time.”

“Okay,” you whisper.

Sam takes yours and Dean’s bags since he knows something is up too. He wants to be of help in any way, but he knows Dean is going to help more. You’re much closer to the oldest brother than to the youngest. You’re the oldest sibling as well, you had to parent your younger siblings before, and you had to take on much more responsibilities than the others just to make sure they were having the time of their lives.

You know a thing or two about what Dean has been through, so he’s the brother you leaned on the most whenever you needed someone. You two are just friends, but the possibility of being something more has always been in the back of your mind. You’ve never done anything about it because you don’t want to ruin what you two have.

Plus, your friendship is more than amazing--he’s everything you could ever need in a best friend.

If you two happen, then you two happen. You’re very much happy with either of those choices. As long as he’s in your life, there can be no wrong. You’re just not going to actively search for something that doesn’t want to be found. You haven’t found it in ten years, and you’re not sure if you’ll ever find it in him.

The drive away from the bunker is nice. The windows are down, there is a nice breeze going on outside, the rock music is low and soothing, and your best friend is right next to you. There haven’t been any words exchanged on this ride since you two have got int he car, and that’s alright. Dean knows you’ll talk to him when you’re ready to talk. In the meantime, he’s just going to keep driving.

That twenty minutes took forty that also turned into an hour and a half. Right now, you’re parked on top of a hill that’s surrounded by trees overlooking the small city. The air is so clear and the sky is so dark that you can see the stars as if they were right in front of you and not millions of light-years away. The sun is almost going down, and it gives off a dull pinkish hue that makes everything seem magical. You two are ling on top of Baby’s hood, just lying in silence. That silence is broken when you sigh deeply with a shake of your head.

“You don’t know this about me, but when I graduated high school, I got pregnant,” you begin.

You can’t fathom the thought of looking at Dean right now, so you opt to look at the stars as if they are listening to you.

“I got pregnant with someone horrible. I left and had the baby all on my own. I wasn’t in the right mind to care for a child, so I put him up for adoption. I made sure he got adopted into a loving home with amazing parents--parents who are better than I could ever be. I got pregnant with someone truly horrible, but all I felt for my baby boy was pure love.

“All I could think was, ‘how can someone as beautiful as you come from someone as evil as him?’. I got scared knowing he’s all I’d ever want and need but also knowing that he deserved a lot more than me. Seeing that little boy yesterday brought it all back. I can’t even imagine my son in the hands of those monsters. I can’t even imagine my son always looking over his shoulder because something might be there to eat him if he’s not careful.

“I keep telling myself that with him being on the other side of the world with loving parents and a great home is a helluva lot better than being by my side with monsters and demons and guns. I don’t know what I’d do if I knew he was in danger without me being by his side. I make sure he’s okay. I have the family send me letters and postcards of him without him knowing. I have them sent to a P.O. Box a few towns over.

“But every time I see a child on our hunts, I think of him. What if it is him? What if the monsters got to him because he wasn’t prepared? What if they brought him to me just so they could rub it in my face that they are the ones killing him? It drives me insane just thinking about it, and I hate it. That’s why I get like this whenever a child is involved. I figured if anyone should know, it’s you.”

You finally have the courage to look at Dean, only to find out he’s already looking at you. His green eyes swirl with admiration and sympathy. You’re nothing to admire, but he’s on a whole other level right now.

“Thank you for telling me,” he says.

“You’re my best friend. I figured I owe you at least an explanation instead of shutting you out,” you chuckle dryly.

“You do that anyway.”

“I do,” you laugh.

You two stay like that, just staring into each other eyes. You’re afraid to make the next move in fear of it being the wrong one, so you just stay like that. It’s a nice night, and you don’t want to leave the bubble you blew around yourself. Just you and Dean, Baby, the stars, and nothing else to distract you two. If anything is going to happen, it’s going to happen now--you don’t know when and you don’t know how, but you have a feeling this is what you’ve been waiting for over ten years.

The stars twinkle in support for you two, and you find yourself leaning closer to Dean. Either you’re doing it or he is--maybe both--but your lips meet his in the middle. His lips are a lot softer than you’d imagine them to be with how much he licks, bites, and chews on them. His hand is soft against your cheek, just barely letting you know he isn’t going to be anything but gentle with you. Normally, you’d go for the much rougher side of things, but right now, you’re grateful for some tenderness.

You’re not exactly sure how you two ended up in the backseat of baby, but you can’t think of anything else except for the weight of his body against yours. Clothes peel off like old skin trying to shed from its new body. Two hearts beat as one the longer you spend pressed against his bare body. His lips are cool against your heated skin, yet the ignite the fire within you.

There’s no need for foreplay. You’ve had ten years’ worth of foreplay to encourage this one evening. He slides in easily as if he’s meant to be inside you this entire time. Out of all the men you’ve been with, never has someone felt as good as Dean does. It’s like the stars created you two to be together and with no one else.

Shocks of pleasure course up your spine, causing you to throw your head back. His lips attach themselves to your breasts, his hands grip your hips, and his cock hits places you never knew were there. His hips snap to yours quicker and faster, and the serotonin in your brain kicks in at full speed.

“Shit, Dean, you feel so good,” you moan.

“Are you going to come for me?” he whispers against your skin.

“Yes,” you let out a breathy moan.

“Do you want me to come in you?”

“Yes.”

“As you wish, sweetheart,” he grunts.

At the same time, his hips go just a bit harder causing his cock to push just a bit deeper. The car is filling up with sweat, heat, and the delicious smell of sex. Condensation covers the window, and you’ve always wanted to be like Rose in the Titanic when she has sex in the car with Jack. It’s not needed, but you slam your hand against the window, leaving behind evidence of your love.

Without detaching from your right breast, he moves his hand further south and rubs your clit in small circles. The immediate stimulation from that including the way his cock hits what you can only assume is your g-spot is enough to send you over the edge. Dean has been picturing this moment in his mind for a long time, and now that he gets to experience it with you, it’s enough to send him tumbling over the edge with you.

Your orgasm mixes with his in an attempt to create a child, but you know that’s impossible. Your first and only child was a miracle because you had almost died during childbirth, and the doctor explicitly told you that children weren't good odds for you in the future. Maybe they would happen with Dean, but you’re not getting your hopes up.

You come down from your high, but the serotonin in your brain stays at its peak level. Just being with Dean is enough to keep you on that high for the rest of your life. His cock softens inside you, but he doesn’t move to take it out. He likes staying where it’s warm, and you don’t mind the comfort.

“I love you,” you whisper when you get enough strength to stare into his eyes.

“I love you,” he repeats back to you.

“Let’s stay like this for a while. It feels nice,” you mutter and close your eyes.

“Yeah, it does,” he nods.

He moves while still keeping you locked onto him. You don’t know how he does it, but he has managed to flip you so he’s resting on the backseat with you on top of him. He didn’t want to crush you, but he likes having your weight on top of him. It’s reminding him that there is some good left in this world. It’s hard to find and it’s not always what you’re looking for, but once you have it, all the bad seems worth it.

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[leefi]

Starira MBTI III - Frontier

1. Seisho

2. Siegfeld

3. Frontier

4. Rinmeikan

Aruru Otsuki: ENFP

Just go and reread Karen’s entry.

FJDKSLDKL in all seriousness leaps and bounds of Ne from both of them. There’s a reason they often catch themselves saying the same things and why Karen sees so much of herself in Aruru. Not only are they both Ne doms, they’re the exact same type! Ne and Fi together hold that naturally sunny and joyful disposition they both have, and that extreme, passionate love for the people they’re close to. And her Ne may be even higher off the charts than Karen’s. From the entirety of Captain Twins, to improvising lines on stage with Misora as kids, to being the embodiment of Frontier’s free-spirit, pioneering nature - all of this is extroverted intuition, chasing at every possibility under the sun, no matter how absurd it may seem. Her STRONG tertiary Te -- which is much stronger than Karen's, by the way -- supports her dominant Ne, and this is where her gung-ho attitude comes from. “We have to write our own play?? No problem, wheel out the whiteboard! Nobody has an idea yet?? That’s fine, I’ll throw one out and get the ball rolling! Misora and I need three more people for our play? What are we waiting for, let’s go find them!!” All of this is tertiary extroverted Thinking, implementing your ideas out in the world.

Misora Kano: ISTP

She is so compelling!!! I wish we got to see more out of her!! She's already cultivated so many of her talents (and her function stack is pretty strong for such a young age too) - she'd really shine if you just gave her the spotlight! The second ISTP in this series who had her inferior Fe develop super early due to having 1) a ton of siblings and working with so many people from such a young age and 2) a gf with Fi in her dom/aux slot. I’m gonna start with her Fe again because, like Futaba’s, it’s so strong for how young she is - she is quicker to pay attention to social convention than Fi-aux Aruru, scolding her whenever she refers to older Karen by her first name, for example (don't let her see Aruru call Akira -chan). We see aux Se in how energetic and in the moment she is - she grew up acting and doing backstage work and helping her family with their troupe, and we never really see her stuck in her head or wondering about things that aren’t in the here-and-now. Her partnership with ENFJ Michiru to create a new Troupe is going to be SO SO GOOD in the future. They really are going to draw the best out of each other. As polar opposites, they have the exact same functions, just in reverse (like Karen and Junna, or Hikari and Ichie)! So Misora has Ti-Se-Ni-Fe, and Michiru has Fe-Ni-Se-Ti. It’s the perfect setup for them to complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

Honestly, I really wish we saw more out of Misora - she deserves more than just being Aruru’s sidekick, and that Feeling function in her inferior slot (extroverted, no less) means that it’s difficult for her to communicate what exactly it is that she wants, both for herself and from others. Like with Mahiru, it’s intuitively hard for her to speak up and say “Hey, I feel like I’m being left behind”. Somebody needs to tap Aruru on the shoulder and communicate that to her - Fe-dom Tsukasa, maybe, or ideally, Misora herself. I think that she’s been kind of shouldered into the straight-man role not just by Aruru but everyone at Frontier because they all have such big personalities (like...she’s got Aruru and Lalafin taking up space, which is already more than enough), and she’s likely been in this position before. She’s been helping her parents run a troupe since she was a child, and now she’s (unfortunately) playing second fiddle to Aruru for the most part at Frontier. She’s been mostly stuck using her Ti and Se, and I really really hope that AA has us seeing her use more of that tertiary Ni and advocating for the goals she has for herself. She deserves to shine so much!!

One final note - I find it so interesting that both ISTPs in this series have such strong senses of faith - Misora is cast as the Faith arcana (and, unlike some of the other girls who are cast as the “opposites” of their personalities, Misora’s seems true to hers), and Futaba obviously has that reverent faith in Kaoruko (and is canonically religious???). It’s a bit antithetical to the ISTP personality type, which values its individuality above all else and tends to be a bit of a rebel. I don’t have much to add here - it’s just an interesting observation.

Shizuha Kocho: INFJ

Lalafin: The Count was such a great actor! I’m sure he would’ve been great on stage too…

Shizuha: Heh heh, maybe!

Shizuha: But still, he never went back to his original persona even after his revenge. He had to stay as the count for the rest of his life.

Shizuha: And he was able to do that because he was good at becoming other people.

Shizuha: ...Although I cannot say if that meant he was happy.

Lalafin: Even after his revenge, he still wasn’t happy...That’s one point of view to make his sadness stand out even more!

Shizuha: Right?...Yes. I think I’ll stick to how I’m doing things now.

THE!! LOVE!! OF!! MY!! LIFE!!!!!!! I CANNOT OVERSTATE ENOUGH HOW MUCH I LOVE SHIZUHA KOCHO!!!! She was my first favorite character in the game (and still is!! But frontier gets no content :’)). As I said with Maya, INFJs are old souls - wise and idealistic, but typically reserved. Auxiliary extroverted Feeling shows up in how she suppresses herself so as not to intimidate or make others feel inferior - we see the exact same thing play out with INFJ sibling Koharu. She’s mysterious but amiable, kind and awe-inspiring - just like INFJ sibling Maya. And we see that token INFJ loneliness playing out with all three, as well. What I love most about Shizuha is that she’s a person of extremes. She is so cerebral and intelligent and dignified in a way that reminds you of Maya but she’s also so!!!! Fucked in the head!!!!! Ni doms baby!!!!!!! (I am fucking crazy. But i am free).

Unhealthy INFJs can develop this obsession with making themselves martyrs, and I don’t think I need to rehash out her AA conversation with Aruru (and her entire philosophy towards acting - see above quote) to get that across. I want to dive into this more. Truly I do. Shizuha deserves 10 pages of writing. But she is one of the last I'm writing and I've clicked through 3 different AA stories and accidentally found Rui and Yukko's first so I diverted and finished writing Yukko's entry and I've already spent so much time on this oh god the doc is already 18 pages single spaced uhhhh Shizuha my loveliest love I will write your character deep-dive later I prommy <333

(Also, seeing her synergy with Aruru is soo so cute. INFJ/ENFP supremacy!! Same dynamic as MayaKaren!)

Lalafin Nonomiya: ESFP

(Se dom).

She’s so athletic and energetic and in-the-moment and improvisational and quick on her feet (Se, Se, Se)! Fi over Ti aux because she has a much more subjective view of what’s “fun” - “what do I want to do? Where do I want to go? What kind of character do I want to play???". She’s got that trademark genki energy that so many ExFPs share, particularly that childlike zeal that she and ESFP sister Ichie both have. In her own way, Lalafin embodies Frontier’s pioneering, fun-loving spirit just as much as Aruru.

Tsukasa: Lupin is usually portrayed as mysterious and polished, no? But the way you perform him is more fresh and open -- almost like the main character from a children’s book.

Lalafin: Oh! Come to think of it, the book on Lupin I read when I was younger was written for kids!

Lalafin: It was about this big and had a realistic image of Lupin right on the cover!!

I don’t really have too much to add. She’s just a perfect embodiment of that excitable, fun-loving Se and Fi dom/aux duo. Childlike and simplistic-appearing at a first glance, but there's such a fire in there - just compare her to her ESFP twin Ichie!

Tsukasa Ebisu: ENFJ

I can see that use of Se - love of fashion, sweets, dancing, going out and enjoying life - yes, she had overprotective parents and could just be making up for lost time, but I think that nice material things are something she just genuinely enjoys for herself as well. So at first I thought ESFP, but we can’t ignore that enormously caring attitude she has for others and the way she gravitates towards caretaker roles, which indicates more Fe than Fi. So ENFJ it is! She has that Fe and Se, and we see that inferior Ti in how she struggled to realize something was wrong when she was trapped in the play. I love, love, loved her leading role in the Arise All You Sons event and how she and Yachiyo interacted to bring out the best in each other - we saw Yachi using a lot of that aux Ti to support Tsukasa’s inferior Ti and dominant Fe!

Her dominant Fe is SOOOO clear and contrasts to every other girl in Arise All You Sons. She’s the first to go “hey, wait, hold on - I’m not sure what (inferior Ti) but something about this feels artificial, and I don’t think it’s actually going to help the kids”. Inferior Ti/Dominant Fe speaks before thinking too - “Why did I say that?! Why did I do x?!” - it isn’t until aux Ti Yachiyo shows up to help her that she’s able to work through her thoughts. While she can get stuck in the rut of her own mind sometimes, Tsukasa is one of the most caring, empathetic, and mature characters in the series - and she does all this without sacrificing her own autonomy and individuality, which can be difficult for an Fe-dom to do.

[coniljn]

OP’s Guide To Victorian Dances (Ladies Edition)* 

*uploaded for archive purposes from my old amino account, this was meant to help Kuroshitsuji roleplayers, oc creators, and other but i’m sure would make a good crash course for any Victorian era needs that is in the same period as Kuroshitsuji circa 1880′s. I have also removed some of the images to save space and avoid an unnecessarily long post.

written 2019

Part One: Types of Dances

Part Two: Dress Code

Part Three: Etiquette

It's been ages since I posted anything so let me ask you this: what if you got an invitation to a private ball by some smoldering lord or other aristocrats? Oh my, you think, what am I going to wear, how do I dance, how do i make sure I do not look like a fool in front of all the wealthy suitors?!

Don’t worry! I’m ( OP ) and I’m here to help you ensure you’ll be grabbing everyone's attention this season! Let’s begin with setting our era, dances change through the eras much like clothing does, so with this amino in thought, we’ll be set in the late 19th century through the early 20th century (1880-1900s).

I say dance when these would have been called a ball simply because I don’t want to refer to a ball in the plural. You may say ( OP ) isn’t that a tad pedantic? yes, it is but I digress. These were special occasions usually only capable of being organized by those upper class and wealthy. Some dances were held in public dance halls or in private homes.

There could be a charity ball with the intention of fundraising, a ball for a specific society, a costume ball which was not as frequent but extremely popular, or a debutante ball where young women would be introduced to society. A debutant ball leads into another topic we must discuss before I continue: seasons, not fall or spring no silly I mean the social seasons this was the time of year high society held all its dances, dinner parties, and charity events. This is your time to snag a suitor! Let’s dive right in!

Mihály Zichy 1827-1906  

Part One: Types of Dances

Now you are at a disadvantage because everyone at this ball has had years of practice and experience but confidence is key, right? As long as you don’t ruin the dance circle or throw off another couple you won’t be disgraced from high society. Just say you had wet lungs as a child and that’s why you can’t dance.

It was a tad difficult to explain the dances without very confusing music theory terms so rather I’ll explain these dances by difficulty and the mood, along with videos.

1. Waltz

This is highly popular among ballrooms. Waltz was a bit of a shocker when first introduced to the Victorian world because of dare I say it- closely embracing one’s dance partner, I know scandalous, however, this is one of the dances most well-known and among ballroom dances the friendliest to beginners. ex. 1

2. Polka

A lively folk dance originating from Bohemia. It’s a quick, fast and exciting dance as you and your partner spin around the dance floor. This dance is very fun but with the fast tempo it can be difficult to master but with luckily a good partner you’ll enjoy it no matter what. ex. 1 ex. 2

3. Mazurka

Folk and country dance influenced many dance styles of the era including this Polish folk dance. In the era Mazurka was one of the most difficult dances and often the majority of the attendees did not know these dances. So if for some reason there’s a mazurka and you’re asked to dance just fake a sprained ankle before you actually sprain your ankle. ex. 1

4.Galop

This is another lively dance similar to the polka or the waltz. I’d categorize it as intermediate in its difficulty and this was often the last dance of the evening. So practice this for that Lord I heard he’s got a lot of land. ex.1 ex. 2

5. Cotillion

This is another last of the evening dance. It was made up by a series of improvised moves. It was like a parlor game, the master of ceremonies would call out moves to be preform which lead to chance encounters with other guests. ex. 1 ex. 2

Now that you can dance, or rather have a inkling of how to dance (we’re in the same boat).

What to wear

Part Two: Dress Code

So we’ll be looking at ball gowns, these are a type of evening gown but not the other way around. Kind of like a square is a rectangle but a rectangle isn't a square. The bodice often had a low square or heart-shaped neckline sometimes with a gauze fichu. These dresses did have a bustle but had a gentler decline in the back along with a longer train for easier mobility.

Ball gown with gauze fichu. Unknown 1887-1889

These dresses were also heavily decorated; and if you’re looking for a dress to reference for a rp, with the late 1880s being a transition period of fashion it’s hard to find lots of references, I recommend dresses from 1890 since the manga is only two years away from that.

Do keep in mind a married woman may dress extravagantly with all sorts of loud colors, accessories, and hairstyles, but if you’re a young lady you’ll be dressed more conservatively because people were really into the idea # modest it hottest.

Heart necklines, House of Worth 1887

Along with your gown, you’ll have gloves, preferably long white gloves. Gloves were worn for a few reasons. It’s far too intimate to touch someone of the other gender with a bare hand, don’t even think about it, d i s g o s t i n. But for more practical reasons, your hands will get hot and damp from all the dancing you’ll do, so gloves keep the unpleasant experience of holding a warm, clammy hand from happening.

Other necessities will be a fan and your dance card which tells you everything, who is hosting the event, what songs will be performed, and room to write who you will be dancing with.

House of Worth 1889

Part Three: Etiquette

You can dance the part and dress the part but now you need to act the part. Victorian dances like everywhere else in Victorian society had strict rules for interaction.

Some ground rules to save you from humiliation: don’t eat too much, don’t dance every dance, you must dance at least one dance, only dance with the same person once unless you’ve taken a liking to them and you may dance twice but no more. All of the above would be tasteless acts, and the most awful thing you could do is to forget you promised a dance with someone.

A man may ask any lady to dance but never the other way around, you’ll be waiting on the sidelines usually with your chaperone close by, the gentleman will need to be recognized by you before he may approach you and ask you to dance. It’s a tad confusing but we mustn’t break the rules of decency. A gentleman should never press a lady on the matter of refusing his invitation to dance but unless it is a very serious matter you should never refuse an invitation.

Charles Wilda 1854-1907

Dances were an extremely popular forms of entertainment, despite the severe rules of Victorian society this was a way to meet complete strangers and build your social pool and build connections. This was also the only place to touch a complete stranger, to hold another person. These events could be very romantic with this in mind along with the fact these were great places to find a husband or wife. I’ll leave you with the most important rule of ballroom etiquette: if a gentleman you danced with happens to see you the next day he cannot approach you unless you acknowledge him, so step on all the toes you want and have fun!

*I’d like to note that I’ve learned since writing this it was rude for a husband and wife to dance together at balls, probably because the couple has the opportunity to do such things in their private time and should use the time at the ball to mingle, but this is just a guess on my part.

another thing I’ve learned since then is that if a lady or gentleman refuses a dance they must also refuse another other invitations to dance for the rest of the evening it was incredibly rude otherwise. (10/20/21)

[ranmanjuu]

Me again sorry if I’m spamming can request how the boys react to going to the future with mc be everywhere’s in lockdown thank you and stay safe love you~ (๑ゝω╹๑)

there’s probably a shit ton of them hcs around these parts and i feel like i’m just re-wording a lot of things so like,, ahaha i’m sorry. also the character cast is u-t forces cause ngl we have a lot of oda forces request previously and the coming requests dw just showing love to my kasugayama boys

—shingen:

the moment you stepped into the good ol’ modern times, the first thing you realized was that there’s a pandemic going on and with shingen being immunocompromised, it’s surely a danger more than ever. without a word, you quickly drag him into your apartment first thing’s first.

you quickly told him to take a shower (to which he’d probably jokingly invite you in, but to be fair, he doesn’t really know how bathtubs and shower heads are used). you didn’t have men’s clothing, not for his size so to say, so you just settled with your big, stretchy jackets you had.

after explaining the situation, you did consider going to the hospital for his treatment,, on one hand, if shingen doesn’t do it, he’ll. . .you know. and if he does, there’s a chance that he could get infected (with hospitals being a breeding ground for the virus). 

in the end, you decided to do it.

even after that, you were always careful with things like going out, mostly you taking care of the shopping and everything. you kept reminding him to wash his hands, social distance, etc.

and frankly, while he understands social distancing, he doesn’t like it. he just wants to hug and kiss his deity lover! prepare for the man to just recite poems so damn dramatically for this.

(^ this includes the amount of pickup lines increasing by a lot. the fact that he can now search some up from google doesn’t help.)

there’s a lot of things you do in quarantine, and you’ve found that the amount of carpentry has increased significantly prior to this.

said carpentry ranges from tables and chairs, to small decoration carvings of birds and the likes. the smell of wood now wafts in the air more than ever.

you’ve now replaced yukimura for his dieting of sweets. his illness may be gone, but teeth problems could still arise! but shingen can have some modern candy once in a while, as a treat. 

as for the reaction of the future in general—shingen finds it so, so warming how relatively peaceful it is compared to the sengoku. yes, protests are happening and there’s practically a new type of war going on (he most certainly advocates for human rights, etc), but it’s a step to a new light. a world he wants.

—kenshin:

you’ve had conversations of the future before—most of them on a,,, bizzare note, with the topic being on swords and war (or lack thereof), etc. a silent agreement was made between you two to not have kenshin be in the future since he’s missing one of the things he ‘needs to live with’ (them being war, sake, and you).

but a lot of improv had to be done when the wormhole was much more stubborn and managed to pull you through.

right after you figured out what happened, a security guard immediately came and told you to wear a mask (considering it’s a must). you had to haul kenshin back to your house before he attacks the guard with his sword.

after cleaning the two of you from any virus, you began running things over to him about the future. aaaand he’s already thinking about keeping you in your house by any means so you don’t get caught by it.

but you managed to convince him otherwise, you did have to go shopping and the thought of kenshin doing it with all the foreign technology around him made you sweat nervously.

no, kenshin, sake isn’t a need but you will buy it for him cause he won’t be able to survive, you feel.

you thought a peaceful modern world was bad enough for kenshin to reside in, ohoho, wait until you realize he can’t even go outside and fight sasuke and all that jazz.

a thought crossed your mind to learn how to duel and fight using mop sticks but he shot down that thought.

in the meantime, most of your days were spent in the garden with his sea of bunnies (how they got there, you don’t know) and mostly tending to them so they don’t contract the virus (kenshin almost flipped when you told him that rabbits could do that).

and by night, you spent it by looking out to the city skies (but the light from the buildings doesn’t hit like the stars do) and drinking sake.

he’d also be against social distancing, but—unsurprisingly—only to you. after a while that rule goes out the window as he cuddles you to death from being touch-starved.

i feel like he’d be interested in the past (or future, to him) wars just because. he’d read up about the wars from all sorts of places. and sometimes, you’d catch him with a deadly smile and say, “that sounds like a great idea, i should wage one like that.”

you had to remind him no, you can’t start a war cause you want to.

—yukimura:

he’d flip straight up by the idea of there being a pandemic in your time. you never talked about this when you told him you came from the future!

he’d probably groan at first with the thought of having to hole up for a long time, but he’d quickly understand. it’s for the benefit of the immunocompromised and the old, he’d like to help by following the rules.

besides, he has you. he’ll cope.

at first, his plan was for you to just let him do all the work during lockdown, like going out and stuff. he was non-chalant, if a bit stubborn.

until you mention groceries.

you start firing him questions, do you know what we need? do you know how much of it we need? or which one is which at all?

he shuts up after that.

yukimura will definitely do those workout things on youtube, and you’ll probably be roped into it. rip to you but you’re gettin’ buff during these lazy times.

small, silly arguments would most likely be the norm for you. it’s a bit of spicy bickering back and forth, you both find it amusing and it’s a way to stimulate the brain, no matter how stupid the topic is.

it can range from if mugwort mochi is better than chestnut dumplings, and you’ve even gone out to search for light topics to have small debates over.

occasionally, he’d invite you outside to watch the skies. the colorful lights from the tall buildings kind of reminds you of the loud fireworks during the festival back in the sengoku—only if they became stars instead.

much like shingen, yukimura is thankful of the positive changes in the future. horrible things may have stayed, but as long as there are people advocating for a fair and peaceful world, he can spend his days beside you.

—sasuke:

as any situation, sasuke was prepared as ever. the second you went to the modern days, he pulled out a spare mask (dw it’s clean) from his pocket and handed it to you. remembering the rule of mandatory masks, you quickly put it on.

you couldn’t really have a discussion about time-travel in the open, so you both went to your apartment.

sasuke is definitely well-versed in the virus, dumping most everything he knows unto you to better arm you with it yourself.

somehow, he could calculate how much groceries and overall shopping in any timeframe. a month, two, etc. so you find yourself bringing him out shopping with you.

since he’s now in the modern world, the amount of him being holed up kinda increases. if he’s learnt so much from a youtube tutorial, imagine the absolute machine he’d be by the end of it.

yeah he’s that guy who learns 45 million skills.

sasuke might seem unbothered by having to keep distance from you, but he really isn’t. you can tell; by the way his lips tighten, or the way his eyebrows furrow sometimes.

would regularly remind you to wash your hands, and would always say to take a bath each time you go home from the outside. if you’re ever sick, he’ll somehow have the perfect medicine ready.

you binge watch shows all the time, it’s another form of bonding cause you two already know about them. you’d spend nights on the couch with a blanket and snacks, discussing about things ranging from theories to crack cotent.

you really wouldn’t trade it for the world.

—yoshimoto:

honestly, yoshimoto isn’t even much interested in the future. mostly just how far art’s gotten (and trust me, it’s gotten so far). such is the situation when the wormhole caught you two.

he probably got sidetracked from the first art he could see (probably street art in this scenario) after you barely identified you went to the future.

again you must haul this pretty man after being told off by a security guard for not wearing a mask.

your biggest problem is probably his massive fascination with modern art. endless hours were used to have a talk that, no, he can’t go to an exhibit right now.

so you improvise.

you gave him a hand-me-down phone, or just share a laptop, and teach him the concept of digital art, along with how to operate certain social medias so he can browse around.

downside is he is currently—and unknowingly— planning to get you broke by commissioning artists. also he may or may not’ve been doing posting questionable things on his accounts (you really shouldn’t’ve given him one,,)

and so to fix the problem created to solve a problem, you decided to take it into your own hands.

popping out all the drawing supplies you’ve ever had, you began to doodle anything and everything, every day. and each one, you’d show it off to yoshimoto like a child to their parent.

and each time, he still looks at them so lovingly, no matter if it could hypothetically be classified as chicken scratches. as long as you make it, in his mind, it’ll be something worth cherished for.

but your strong suit has always been stitching, so you start a lot of projects of art on clothing. it counts as the one above.

oh—you know those pretty cloth masks? you now have about 100 of these at least, courtesy to yoshimoto.

[warmest-oceans]

A Non-Paradoxical Moment of Accepting Oneself While Falling in Love with a Best Friend

Set in Phuket, a beautiful large island in southern Thailand, I Told Sunset About You already wins the Best Picture category. The island is magnificent on its own — blessed with emerald clear water, bed of white sand, quiet calm breeze, but the island also has the charm of its old town scenery. Every shot feels like it was shot in a new world. The combination of laid-back island life with culturally rich town is visually pleasing.

Aside from its excellent choice of set, the storyline is the true gem here. In the peaceful island of Phuket, we’re brought into the not-so-quiet lives of our two male protagonists, Teh (Billkin Assaratanakul) and Oh-aew (PP Amnuaydechkorn). From the start we know that these two best friends are about to be involved in something that’s bigger than themselves, something that’s uncontrollable and something that will change their lives forever.

It won’t be a 10/10 series if the actors can’t bring the golden storyline to live. The actors who play our male protagonists apparently have been friends since they were teenagers, making every scene they act on-screen believable. The chemistry can be seen clearly with a dash of improvisation here and there by the actors themselves and the magical direction by Boss Kuno, the director of the series.

I can’t really wrap up my introductory of the series without mentioning the amazing soundtrack and scoring. We only have three songs as soundtrack (with different versions) sung by our male protagonists, but the quality is top-notch, you’ll fall for it!

OK, I’m done with my introductory piece. Now, let me gush about this series. To me, I Told Sunset About You has become a coming-of-age story that left a permanent dent in my heart. It’s everything I ask for in a series; a beautiful set, excellent story, magical chemistry, and incredibly fitting soundtrack. Sadly, the series is almost always lumped into BL category, which I find insulting to the series to be honest.

Although I don’t identify myself as a part of LGBTQ+ community, I relate to the series more than I initially thought. Let me be honest, I am INVESTED in this series. Let me just write down the things that I think make this series is in a whole another league.

Self-acceptance in the middle of everything else

The series is great at delivering the moment of being a teenager who’s in the middle of self-discovery, starting to think about the future (the protagonists are in 12th grade), falling in love (hard) for the first time (on top of that, with your very own best friend!), seeking acceptance and validation, and trying to stay afloat at the same time. The topic seems to be nothing out of ordinary, but its ordinariness that brings up its own charm when it’s combined with excellent character development.

We all go through self-discovery and we all try to accept who we are when we’re teenagers — how crazy it was, restless, tiring, but also exhilarating it was. That’s why I think the series will resonate with most people.

I love how the process of the protagonists discovering and accepting themselves also answers the dilemma of falling in love with the best friend. Personally, I believe that I need to love myself first to love another person (note: if you want it to work and if you want the relationship to be a healthy one).

Thanks to this series I had a pleasure of reliving the experience of self-discovery and self-acceptance once again. No kidding, after I watched the series, I did a bit of self-reflection.

Impulsiveness

I think the first emotion that the series successfully portrayed is the impulsiveness of hot-blooded teens. I love how chaotic and erratic Teh and Oh-aew can be. One day they’re best friend, tomorrow? Who knows. Everything is a mess and everything is truly a collection of fleeting temporary moments.

Nobody in the series got their shit together and it’s supposed to be like that. Nobody figures out shit when they are in 12th grade. Everyone in the series is scattered, explosive, tortured, yet sensitive and delicate at the same time. It really reminds me of my own 12th grade moments!

Most of teens would act out of their gut reactions and that’s exactly what the characters do in this series. They’re not perfectly groomed and planned. So if you’re no longer in your teenage years or maybe if you’re in your 30s, you may find some of their actions to be silly and atrocious even. Tip: try to remember your teenage years. Try to remember all the stupid things you did in 12th grade. It helps you understand the characters.

Jealousy among friends is real and valid

I rarely see a show can realistically execute the side story of jealousy in friendship or even rivalry. Sometimes it’s too mean, sometimes it’s not even brought up (mostly being avoided in a story). I Told Sunset About You portrays jealousy in the most relatable way, through microexpressions. Through Oh-aew’s subtle glance at Teh and Ma or through Teh’s smile when talking to Oh-aew. Really, kudos to the whole team!

Naivety that leads to boldness

I think we can all agree that we’re much bolder when we’re younger, no? That’s because we have this naivety vested in us. Like trying to learn how to ride a bike for the first time, we don’t think much about the risk, we just want to have fun with the bike. We think adults will catch us when we fall anyway.

It’s another thing from the series that makes me fall in love with it. These flawed characters, probably in their 17 or 18, think that everything will be sorted out eventually. While, we adult know that most of the time, we clean our own mess. You’ll know what I’m talking about in episode 4.

Everyone got their own idea of first love

I think love is a complex, hard-to-understand feeling for everyone in every age, let alone for a bunch of 12th graders. Deeply impressed with how the series handles the tenderness and also the chaos of first love. How the series shows different outcomes of loving romantically for the first time is also admirable.

Teh stole my heart. At first, he was so certain about his feeling. He was calm, loving, and patient, the best you could be when you’re in love. But later when he’s in turmoil with himself, he becomes petty, awkward, and impulsive. He thought he loved, but turned out, it wasn’t even the kind of love he’d imagined.

I’m the main character

No character in this series is a filler. Everyone got their own dream and ambitions. Tarn, the female character isn’t just an obstacle between our protagonists. She’s a fully-developed character, an independent woman that works hard for her dream and a dynamic person. Bas, a male character, a good friend of Oh-aew has his own likings and dream. He’s good at some things. He acts on his own. Everyone is the main character in their own world and it’s evident in the series.

Symbolism and color theory

This wouldn’t be one of my favorite series without hidden meanings, symbolism, and color theory. Almost every scene and every material placement is intentional in this series. I won’t talk about it much because it’ll spoil the fun of you finding them.

Nostalgia

I had fun watching, crying, smiling, and laughing throughout the episodes the way they are. Aside from warmth and the feeling of awe, maybe the production crew doesn’t realize that it also makes me feeling nostalgic.

It reminds me of how futile and just fragile some of the moments from my youth were. They looked like big deals when I was in my 17, but now they are just dust. They really don’t matter in the next 5 years.

It reminds me of how insanely good falling in love felt like. It was intense yet tender, messy yet everything fell into pieces perfectly. The feeling that you want to give the person the world, but sometimes that world isn’t what the other person wants or needs. The feeling that you can almost do anything for this person. The suffocating feeling of not knowing what to do, but want to do everything for the other person. The liberating feeling of falling into the abyss. The feeling of surrender… completely.

The series makes me remember how exciting and scary it was when I realized I fell in love with one of my best friends, how confusing it was to even talk to him the next day after the realization. I just wanted to be with him ever since. Nobody could take that away from me and everything just didn’t make sense anymore in my head, just like how Teh and Oh-aew felt.

As you can see, I only have good words for the series. I hope, after watching the series, you’ll feel various emotions but hopefully… they’re all good and warm, because that’s how I felt. I also think that the production crew tried really hard to deliver a heartwarming series (please watch the documentaries/their behind the scene videos, it’s amazing!). I hope this series can be a newfound joy for you.

[jazzicology]

JAZZPRING!

This will seem topsy-turvy to those of you in the Northern hemisphere - but in New Zealand, Spring is just around the corner. And here at Jazzicology headquarters in Queenstown, we’re busy preparing for our Spring jazz gigs. Putting together a set on a specific theme is a great incentive to search for and learn new material. Here’s our ‘Jazzpring’ setlist with some notes on each. We’ve aimed for a mix of tempos and contrasting jazz styles. In amongst some old standards are some quirky additions: possibly the only song written from the perspective of a frightened tomato (Hang on Little Tomato); and a wonderful number that perfectly sets Shakespeare’s ‘It was a lover and his lass’ to a catchy melody and jazz chords – it deserves to be in everyone’s Spring set list. I was amazed how many jazz songs there are on topics relating to Spring – far too many to include in just one gig!

Joyspring. 1954 composition by Clifford Brown, jazz trumpeter and a key figure in the Hard Bop movement. The lyrics I use are by Jezra Kay. This is a super-fast-paced, up-beat tune. I discovered, rather too late for this gig, that there are also some wonderfully poetic lyrics by Jon Hendricks, a leading jazz lyricist who is responsible for the lyrics for many well-known jazz songs composed as instrumentals. You can read about Hendrick’s lyrics for JoySpring here.

You must believe in Spring. Composed by Michel LeGrand (1964), this song shares some features with his other, better-known compositions (Windmills of Your Mind; What Are You Doing For The Rest of Your Life). The chords and melody strike a reflective and melancholy, yet hopeful, mood. It is a truly beautiful number that I had not previously been aware of. I have been listening to Bill Evans’s instrumental version of it – it just incredible - and this vocal performance by Sarah McKenzie. It was originally called La Chanson de Maxence and was written for the French film ‘Les Demoiselles de Rochefort’. Looking at the original French lyrics, it is clear the English lyrics are not a translation; the song’s theme of Spring is entirely attributable to the authors of the English language lyricists Bergman and Bergman. Indeed, these lyrics are so well crafted that it is difficult to believe the phrase ‘You Must Believe in Spring’ wasn’t originally in Le Grand’s mind when he wrote it! Listening to various vocal recordings over the last few weeks, I discovered some additional lyrics that, as far as I can tell, appear only in a recording by Barbra Streisand. I don’t know who wrote them (possibly Streisand), but they seem apt for a troubled world, so here they are for other singers who may be interested in using them:

When angry voices drown the music of the spheres 

And children face a world that’s far beyond their years 

Above the darkest skies, The far horizons lie 

With all the reasons why you must believe in Spring.

Spring can really hang you up the most. Composer Tommy Wolf (1955), lyrics Fran Landesman. Spring isn’t all rainbows and daffodils – like all fun times of year, for those who are down or lonely it can serve to underline your own misery. The title of the song is a jazz twist on the opening line of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land: "April is the cruellest month". My favourite version of this song is by Carmen McCrae – it’s like a masterclass in jazz vocals. I was surprised how difficult this song was to learn – and was relieved to find an entire blog written about it, claiming that the obscene number of verses and lyrics, and wide vocal range and unusual phrasings are clearly the work of someone who hates singers! Fortunately, I love a challenge.

Blue Skies. Irving Berlin (1926). Blue Skies is probably the best-known and certainly the oldest song in this set. Thelonious Monk wrote a Be-Bop number, ‘Suddenly in Walked Bud’, based on the chord progressions in Blue Skies, as a tribute to his friend, the jazz pianist, Bud Powell. The lyrics are a virtual who’s-who list of jazz greats from that time. Monk’s ‘In Walked Bud’ is an example of a jazz ‘contrafact’: where a new melody is laid over existing chords (in this case, Blue Skies). There are lots of examples of this in Bop from the 1940s, because it was a way for jazz musicians to create new pieces “for performance and recording on which they could immediately improvise, without having to seek permission or pay publisher fees for copyrighted materials (while melodies can be copyrighted, the underlying harmonic structure cannot be)”. Since the lyrics and melody for ‘In Walked Bud’ work perfectly well over the chords for ‘Blue Skies’ (apart from the bridge) I’ll incorporate elements of them into our performance.

It might as well be Spring. Composed by Rodgers and Hammerstein (1945) for the movie State Fair, for which it won an Academy Award for best original song. Many people have recorded this, but I’ve been listening to Ella Fitzerald and this lovely French version by (the aptly Spring-named) Blossom Dearie.

They say its Spring. Composers Bob Haymes and Marty Clark (1950s). With a melody and lyrics that are as light and floaty as a feather, this is a quintessential Spring song about being in love. Blossom Dearie appears to have been the first to record it, in 1957.

Nature Boy/Nardis. Composed by Eden Ahbez (1947). Nature boy is on Jazzicology’s set list – but with a twist! We will perform it using the principal motif from Miles Davis’ Nardis in both the Intro and coda. This was an idea developed by me and UK jazz pianist Sid Thomas, and you can listen to Sid and I performing it here. The ‘back story’ to Nature Boy is pretty interesting in its own right and can be found in a previous Jazzicology blog penned by Sid, ‘The one hit wonders of jazz’.

I love Paris in the Springtime. Cole Porter (1954). A classic recording of this by Ella Fitzgerald. However, I very much like this version, which has a Parisian café feel. This is a relatively simple melody to learn, with the chief challenge for the vocalist being the wide vocal range needed to change register.

Timeless Place. Composed by Jimmy Rowles in the 1970s as an instrumental (‘The Peacocks’) and recorded by him and sax legend Stan Getz in the 1975 album of the same name. The wonderful, reflective lyrics were added much later by UK jazz vocalist, Norma Winstone, and included on her 1993 album Well Kept Secret. This song is technically very challenging for a vocalist: the melody over the ‘bridge’ is a little non-intuitive and sits outside the harmony – it creates a tension which resolves into the main refrain. The word Spring appears nowhere in the song, but I’m going to justify its inclusion here because the lyrics include a beautiful formal garden with flowers and trees.

Double Rainbow. Composed by Brazilian jazz maestro, Antonio Jobim in 1970. This is one of his lesser-known numbers. It perfectly captures a spring garden, after a sudden rain-shower, with rainbows, puddles and a little robin hopping about. Actually, because the song is written in Portugese, the little bird in the song is a chico-chico, so robin is used as the equivalent in the English translation (maybe I should use a bellbird instead?). In Portugese, the title is Chovendo na Roseira (the rain is falling on the roses) and I perform it using first the Portugese and then the English lyrics – both are lovely, and the different languages each lend a slightly different feel to song.

Hang on Little Tomato. Music and lyrics by Patrick Abbey, China Forbes and Thomas Lauderdale and released on the Pink Martini album of the same name in 2004. For those who have gotten their tomato seedlings off to an early start, this the song you need to sing to them when they get planted outside. It’s a scary world out there for a little tomato. It’s a seriously cute little song, and a reminder that we all need to keep hanging on to the vine. The song title is apparently a reference to a Hunt's Ketchup ad campaign "Hang On, Little Tomato!" in a 1964 issue of Life magazine. (Is it a coincidence that Pink Martini’s named their own record label Heinz, I wonder?)

Hey Nonny No! Composed by UK jazz composer and pianist Sid Thomas, this up-beat, toe-tappin’ number captures the feel of Spring brilliantly and the melody and chords provide a fabulous setting for Shakespeare’s ‘It was a lover and his lass’ from As you Like it. You’ll be humming this one on the way home.

Seed Leaves. Another Sid Thomas composition, this one setting to music the poem ‘Seed Leaves’ by Poet Laureate and two times Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Wilbur. You can find the poem here. Anyone wishing to request the music for ‘Hey Nonny No’ or ‘Seed Leaves’ can contact Sid Thomas here.

Surrey with the Fringe on top. Rogers and Hammerstein, from Oklahoma (1946). Is it a little bit twee? Maybe, but hey – it is also very sweet. And it was a part of Miles Davis’ repertoire in the 1950s, so there’s no arguing with that!

Up Jumped Spring. Composed by US jazz trumpet player Freddie Hubbard in 1962, and included in his album Backlash. The lyrics were added later by vocalist US jazz vocalist Abbey Lincoln. This clip of the song being sung live by Audrey Silver is really worth listening to - what a confident, flawless performance.

So, there you have it: an eclectic Spring jazz set involving Shakespeare, tomatoes, rainbows, birds, toads, seedlings, melting snow, new love and a little sprinkling of melancholy. The lyrics in this set contain the words ‘isinglass’ and ‘yggdrasil’ – not words you hear every day – come to our gig on September 5th (assuming Queenstown is out of lockdown by then!) and see if you can spot them!

Other suggestions for Spring songs can be found here: 

https://jazz.fm/classic-jazz-songs-about-spring/ 

https://www.wrti.org/post/10-jazz-tunes-remind-you-its-spring

Nance Wilson

Nance Wilson is one half of Queenstown-based jazz duo, Jazzicology, together with pianist Mark Rendall-Wilson. 

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/nance-wilson-trio 

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